School bullying continues to worsen with recent media coverage exposing planned attacks on students and subsequent recordings made of them. Worse still is that girls are participating as well.

Schools must act and act firmly and not play the cop out card. All too often weak principals refuse to act and adopt a “blame the victim” attitude leaving victims to leave the school and refusing to punish the perpetrators. Not good enough.

The school principals themselves should be held accountable and punished severely instead of sitting on their hands for fear the bullies may sue them. How can they if the victims cannot?

Even worse is the fact that this stinking attitude also applies to sexual abuse and the inability of schools and their staff to deal with this and protect the victims.

It is bad policy, bad law and poor effort. Lift your game Education department.

WOOLWORTHS AND COLES OWN THE WORLD

Governments introduced laws to encourage price competition amongst like companies and industries through deregulation and other reforms. However competition by definition results in a final winner or a monopoly which we know as not being the ideal situation for consumers. In Australia we are seeing this taking place already and quite quickly with Coles and Woolworths accounting for 25 cents out of every retail dollar spent landing in their massive coffers.

This phenomenon is global and one of the practices that has been banned in some areas is that of predatory pricing. This is where a large company cuts its prices so low that all the customers in an area stopping going to the competition, often the local independent causing that business to close. The larger predator then creates a “local” monopoly and charges what they like. The consumer is ripped off in the long term.

Another practice is for the buying out of the opposition. This practice is sometimes scrutinised by the ACCC but only when the current takeover is considered large enough. However their powers are limited and they cannot consider the cumulative effect of a larger company’s progressive takeovers. Furthermore, this growth is hardly true economic growth at all and as such is merely just a practice which reduces competition.

In Australia today Coles and Woolworths control 80% of the grocery market forming an oligopoly. This is unacceptable.

BIG FOUR BANKS

Originally restricted for this very reason to keep competition, the Hawke Keating government of the 1980’s set up a law to stop any of the big four banks, NAB, ANZ, CBA and Westpac from merging or taking over each other. It has worked although John Howard attempted to tinker with this when he was in office. Not good. It is bad enough that with this so called competition, designed to force downward prices on products – the opposite actually occurs. When one bank puts it rates or fees up, the others normally follow.

Further, the big four don’t swallow up each other by law, but that does not stop them swallowing up other rivals ranked 5 and onwards. Westpac bought St. George, CBA bought Colonial. The Advance Bank disappeared as well. And so it goes.

Perhaps the best suggestion I have heard is that a new law could be created to restrict any company to a limited number of outlets, say 4 or 8 or 12? Interesting huh?

KIMBERLEY THE BELGIAN GIRL

A Belgian girl is suing a tattoo parlour after she “fell asleep” whilst having three tattoos put on her face. She ended up with 56. It beggars the question, how can anyone permit facial tattoos on anyone, let alone a teenage girl. Freedom yes. Stupidity may yet require legislation or parental or medical approval first!

PETER COSTELLO RETIREMENT ANNOUNCEMENT

Alan Jones pampered praise on the former treasurer yesterday sharing anecdotes and analysis with Michael Kroger and Tony Abbott who painted him as the greatest treasurer in our history. This may be a little rich.

Costello fell well short on Superannuation policy, failed to create one such structural change of note in his tenure, the GST does not count, it was a relic from the 1970’s. His debt truck stunt aimed to show how the “Liberal financial gurus” would pay off Australia’s national debt amounted to simply paying down government debt of $96 billion, mostly paid for by increased tax revenues from a renewed booming economy set up by a low inflation economy created by Paul Keating. National debt grew from $200b to $650b in the same period. So Peter, you only told half the story. The good half.