Click to prepare for school

THE back-to-school period can be a hectic time for many Tasmanian parents.

But a growing number of time-poor mums and dads are ditching traditional shopping trips and instead turning to the internet to make life easier, placing online orders for everything from textbooks to lunchboxes.

Among those who have embraced technology this year are Richard and Adelaide Reisz, from South Hobart, who recently ordered text books and stationery from the Birchalls website for their son Oscar, 9.

With a few clicks of the mouse they were able to view an official list of items Oscar needed for his grade four class and select the products they wanted.

Within a week the items arrived on their doorstep, saving a trip to the shops.

"We order everything else online these days, so why shouldn't we also buy school books?" said Mr Reisz, who was thrilled to buy online while also supporting a locally owned business.

"It was brilliantly easy," Mrs Reisz added.

Many Tasmanian parents have been raving on social networking sites about the time and money they saved by buying stationery, art supplies, shoes and other back-to-school staples from various websites.

Birchalls Hobart manager Donna Walker said this was the second year Birchalls had offered an online back-to-school service and demand was steadily growing.

"A substantial amount of parents are ordering online," she said.

Miss Walker said it provided greater convenience for parents, especially those who worked full time and didn't have time to visit traditional.

She said online shopping had been popular with families of four or five children, who considered the $10 postage charge a worthwhile investment for the time and effort they saved.

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Celebrating the Snake

ANNUAL Greek and Italian festivals have long been attracting strong crowds in Hobart.

And now Tasmanians can immerse themselves in all things Chinese, with a new festival being held in North Hobart on Sunday.

The Chinese New Year Festival will feature traditional food, music and dancing as well as numerous stalls, children's activities, tai chi and cooking demonstrations by Me Wah chefs.

The free event -- which previews the official start of the Chinese New Year on February 10 -- has been organised by members of the Chinese Community Association of Tasmania who hope Tasmanians of all walks of life will embrace the Chinese culture and help celebrate the Year of the Snake.

Festival chairwoman Ruby Lee said Tasmania's Chinese community had continued to grow since the association began in 1968.

She said the Chinese New Year was a hugely important date on the Chinese calendar and was usually celebrated by families gathering together at home for a special meal.

She said events were also sometimes held in Hobart restaurants, but this was the first time an official public festival had been organised.

The event will be held in the former Chickenfeed carpark, behind the North Hobart restaurant strip, from 10.30am-3.30pm.

Year of the Snake

• The Snake is the sixth of the 12 signs in the Chinese zodiac and symbolises wisdom, caution and romance.

• The Chinese New Year does not fall on a specific date each year -- the Year of the Snake begins on February 10, 2013.

• According to Chinese astrology, those born in the Year of the Snake are likely to be intelligent, graceful, independent, analytical and charming.

• People born in the Year of the Snake make excellent scientists, potters, analysts, jewellers, spiritual leaders, sociologists, dieticians, astrologers, magicians, investigators and painters.

• Famous people born in the Year of the Snake include Muhammad Ali, Tony Blair, Bob Dylan, Henry Fonda, Mahatma Gandhi, Greta Garbo, Dizzy Gillespie, JFK, Carole King, Mao Zedong, Sir Sidney Nolan, Bob Hawke, Pablo Picasso, Oprah Winfrey and Virginia Woolf.

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Chopper sent to Midland crash

FIVE people were injured in a two-vehicle accident on the Midland Highway tonight at Antill Ponds, just north of St Peters Pass.

Two of the injured were trapped in their vehicles and had to be cut out.

The Westpac police rescue helicopter flew to the scene and airlifted a patient to the Royal Hobart Hospital.

Another three people were taken to the Royal Hobart Hospital by road and a fifth person was taken to the Launceston General Hospital by road.

An Ambulance Tasmania spokesman said initial assessments indicated the injuries were not life-threatening.

Tasmania Police said the crash was first reported about 6.50pm.

It involved a Holden Commodore and a Toyota Camry, both towing trailers.

The incident caused long delays for traffic on the highway, with lanes closed for more than an hour and with the helicopter having to land on the road.

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Humans behind tiger's demise

HUMANS alone were responsible for the demise of Australia's extinct native predator, the Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, a new study has found.

Led by the University of Adelaide, the study has used new modelling to contradict a widespread belief that disease must have been a factor in the thylacine's demise.

The thylacine was a unique marsupial found throughout most of Tasmania before European settlement in 1803.

Between 1886 and 1909, the Tasmanian government encouraged people to hunt the carnivores and paid bounties on more than 2000 thylacine carcasses.

Only a handful of animals were located after the bounty was lifted and the last known thylacine was captured in 1933.

"Many people believe that bounty hunting alone could not have driven the thylacine extinct and therefore claim that an unknown disease epidemic must have been responsible," study leader Thomas Prowse said in a statement today.

Dr Prowse said the study tested that claim by developing a network of linked species and evaluated whether the impact of Europeans could have exterminated the thylacine, without any disease.

The new model simulated the effects of bounty hunting and habitat loss and also considered the impact of the reduction in the thylacine's prey, kangaroos and wallabies, because of human harvesting.

"We found we could simulate the thylacine extinction, including the observed rapid population crash after 1905, without the need to invoke a mystery disease," Dr Prowse said.

"We showed that the negative impacts of European settlement were powerful enough that, even without any disease epidemic, the species couldn't escape extinction."

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A lesson in rapid recovery

CLASSES will begin at the new-look Dunalley Primary on February 13 – just weeks after the original structure was razed by fire.

Education Minister Nick McKim today described the project to build a temporary school after the January 4 blaze as brilliant.

Teachers will return on Monday, February 4, to do three days of professional development in the school gym or in the Tasmania Fire Service building in Dunalley.

Student-free days have been declared on Tuesday and Wednesday, with supervised excursions and activities planned for Thursday and Friday.

Monday, February 11, is the Regatta Day public holiday.

On Tuesday, February 12, teachers will organise classrooms and furniture on a third student-free day.

Prep to grade 6 children will return to classes on Wednesday, with kindergarten starting on Thursday.

Almost 130 children are set to return to the school -- only about three fewer than were expected before the devastating blaze.

"This is an outstanding achievement and our thanks go to those dedicated people who have been working around the clock to ensure students would be able to return as soon as possible," Mr McKim said.

"To have a temporary school established on a site that was razed by fire just weeks earlier is a tribute to the dedication and commitment of those many workers who have helped ensure the site is up and running."

All other government schools return on Tuesday, February 5.

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MPs back election betting ban

Senator Nick Xenophon, left, and Tasmanian MHR Andrew Wilkie are calling for both major parties to back a Bill to end a pre-poll flutter.

GAMBLING on elections is an invitation for corruption, say independent MPs Andrew Wilkie and Nick Xenophon.

The anti-gambling pair wants it banned ahead of the September 14 poll.

South Australian Senator Xenophon will introduce legislation to ban gambling on the outcome of state or federal elections, after one betting agency took out a full-page advertisement to promote its markets for this year's vote.

Sportsbet used images of Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott in its ad today, featuring a speech bubble from the Opposition Leader reading: "I'm going to win big on election day".

Senator Xenophon and Tasmanian independent MHR Andrew Wilkie are calling for both major parties to back the bill that would end a pre-poll flutter.

They say gambling on elections creates a corruption risk because party officials or candidates could use insider polling to bet on an outcome.

"When people can bet on an election outcome then surely there is a risk of corruption in the process, particularly if you are a candidate, if you are a party insider, a party official or a pollster, where you can get an unfair advantage in terms of what the outcome can be," Senator Xenophon said.

Mr Wilkie said over the past year the major parties had conducted half a dozen polls in his southern Tasmanian electorate of Denison.

"It would be entirely improper that they be allowed to go out there and place a bet when they're privy to that information," he said.

Should Ms Gillard refuse to ban election gambling, the pair said Labor and the Coalition should stop candidates and officials placing bets on the result of the September 14 poll.

The Australian Electoral Commission should monitor all large bets to ensure the integrity of the electoral system, they said.

Sportingbet Australia chief Michael Sullivan was surprised to hear concerns that election betting was an integrity issue.

"Sportingbet Australia has never had any integrity issues on election betting in the past and does not expect to have any in the future," Mr Sullivan said in a statement.

"After all, it's a government election overseen by the Australian Electoral Commission."

He said they did not offer bets on the elections to South Australians because it was against that state's law.

"Each year we have disappointed punters asking us why, and frankly we don't know why," he said.

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Whale wars on in earnest

ANTI-whaling activist group Sea Shepherd says it has intercepted the Japanese fleet in its annual Southern Ocean hunt "before a single harpoon has been fired".

Sea Shepherd claims to have saved the lives of 4000 whales over the past eight whaling seasons with ever-greater campaigns of harassment against the Japanese harpoon fleet.

The militant environmentalist group said the Brigitte Bardot, a former ocean racer, had intercepted the harpoon ship Yushin Maru No. 3 in the Southern Ocean at a relatively northern latitude.

"Given that the large concentrations of whales are found further south, closer to the Antarctic continent where there are high concentrations of krill, this would indicate that they have not yet begun whaling," said Brigitte Bardot captain Jean Yves Terlain.

Former Australian Greens leader Bob Brown, who assumed leadership of the anti-whaling campaign from fugitive Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson due to legal issues earlier this month, said it was welcome news.

"It is likely that we have intercepted these whale poachers before a single harpoon has been fired," he said.

Mr Watson is wanted by Interpol after skipping bail last July in Germany, where he was arrested on Costa Rican charges relating to a high-seas confrontation over shark finning in 2002.

He is on board Sea Shepherd's main ship, Steve Irwin, but has stepped down as skipper and has vowed to abide by a US court ruling in December banning the group from physically confronting any vessel in the Japanese fleet.

The ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit requires Sea Shepherd to stay at least 500 metres from whaling vessels and prohibits "navigating in a manner that is likely to endanger the safe navigation of any such vessel".

The whaling fleet left Japan for the Southern Ocean in late December, planning to catch up to 935 Antarctic minke whales and up to 50 fin whales.

Tokyo claims it catches whales for scientific research -- a loophole in the international ban on whaling -- but makes no secret of the fact that they ultimately end up on dinner plates.

Sea Shepherd's campaign this year is its biggest yet, involving four ships, a helicopter, three drones and more than 100 crew members.

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Woman sought over card theft

POLICE want help to identify a woman in relation to the alleged theft of several gift cards.

Hobart detectives say the gift cards were stolen from a Sandy Bay home last year.

The cards have since been used at the Cove Hill Coles supermarket in Bridgewater.

Police believe the woman seen in this CCTV image (right) can help with their inquiries.

Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

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All about trust, says Abbott

TONY Abbott has kick-started the election race, welcoming Labor's announcement of a poll date and declaring the campaign about trust.

Repeatedly hailing his "positive plans" in front of a Liberal Party campaign backdrop, the Federal Opposition Leader this afternoon said the Coalition was ready for an election after recently launching its Real Solution policy platform.

"This election is about trust," Mr Abbott said, pointing to trust as important to keep the cost of living down, boosting job security and protecting the nation's borders.

"The choice before the Australian people could not be clearer. It's more tax or less. It's more regulation or less. It's less competence or more. It's less freedom or more."

He recommitted to abolishing the carbon and mining taxes, cutting wasteful government spending, boosting productivity and improving schools and hospitals.

While Mr Abbott focused on positivity, he did attack Ms Gillard's speech before she announced the election date.

"The only real statement in the Prime Minister's Press Club speech was that the Australian people need to pay more tax," he said.

But Mr Abbott did not take questions at his press conference at Parliament House, saying he would do so tomorrow at his National Press Club speech and that frontbenchers Joe Hockey and Christopher Pyne would take questions this afternoon.

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State 'awash in red ink'

TASMANIA'S economic indicators are "awash in a sea of red ink", the latest Deloitte Access Economics report says.

While Deloitte says the state's economy isn't in crisis, it isn't OK either. Unemployment, at 7.3 per cent in seasonally adjusted terms, is well above other states.

"Short-term prospects are fairly weak and the state is hostage to the fortunes of the Australian dollar," it says.

Premier Lara Giddings said the report confirmed the challenges Tasmania faced and highlighted the importance of the Tasmanian Jobs Package.

"The jobs package will help to create more than 3300 jobs and provide a boost to key industries like construction," she said in a statement.

Liberal Treasury spokesman Peter Gutwein said the report was yet another damning indictment of the  Labor-Green minority experiment.

"Ms Giddings can make as many excuses as she likes, but the fact is every other state is facing the same economic factors as Tasmania,'' he said.

"The difference is in Tasmania we've  got a minority government captive to the Greens, which is actively making this worse, such as by shutting down our forest industry."

Read more in tomorrow's Mercury.

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