Qld man charged over fire truck joyride

A MAN has been charged after a fire truck was stolen and used on a joyride south of Brisbane.

Police say the 25-year-old man, from Wynnum West, stole the specialist vehicle from Beenleigh Fire and Rescue Station about 9.20am (AEST) on Saturday.

Officers were able to use the truck's GPS to track it to Tamborine Mountain Road, more than 20km away, and put the 30-minute joyride to an end by deploying tyre-deflating stingers.

The man has been charged with unlawful use of a motor vehicle and unlicensed driving.

He's due to appear in Beenleigh Magistrates Court on May 19.

No-one was injured and only the truck's tyres were damaged due to the stinger deployment.

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Attempted assault in inner Melbourne

A SEX offender has tried to assault a woman in inner Melbourne, the third such attack in the same suburb in a week.

In the latest incident, a woman was grabbed from behind by an unknown man who tried to sexually assault her in Hope Street, Brunswick, about 8pm Friday (AEST), police say.

A passer-by disturbed the offender and he ran away.

The attack comes after two similar attacks that occurred minutes apart last weekend in Brunswick, the same suburb where Jill Meagher was snatched from the street, and later murdered, in 2012.

But police say it is too early to link the latest attack to the other two, in which a man grabbed each woman from behind and dragged them down side streets.

Police said one woman, 22, had left a hotel and was walking along Sydney Road about 2.20am Saturday when the man grabbed her and dragged her to a side street.

She managed to break free and flagged down a friend who was driving past in a taxi.

The same man then tackled another 22-year-old woman from behind and wrestled her to the ground on nearby Charles Street. She was also able to break free and run away.

The offender told one of the women he was homeless and it was the first time he'd done anything like it, police say.

Both the women fought back when they were attacked.

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Police probe Vic woman truck jump

ANYONE who saw a woman jump from a moving truck on a Melbourne freeway, causing her serious injuries, is being urged to contact police.

The 30-year-old woman jumped out of the moving white 2002 Mitsubishi single cab tray truck on the Eastern Freeway in Kew on April 12, police say.

They believe she was travelling with a 35-year-old man about noon toward the city, when she jumped from the vehicle about 500 metres before the Chandler Road exit.

She was taken to the Royal Melbourne hospital for serious injuries.

Anyone who saw the truck, with JT Fencing signage, driving in the area prior to the incident should contact Crime Stoppers.

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Rudd accepts batt deaths responsibility

KEVIN Rudd has accepted "ultimate responsibility" for the "deep tragedy" caused by his home insulation scheme.

Queenslanders Matthew Fuller, Rueben Barnes, Mitchell Sweeney, and Marcus Wilson from NSW, lost their lives working under the then-Labor government's $2.8 billion scheme.

The former prime minister has told a royal commission into the program he had to accept the "good and bad" outcomes of his government's policies in 2009 and 2010.

"For those reasons, as I've said repeatedly before, I have accepted ultimate responsibility for what was not just bad, but in this case a deep tragedy, as it affected the lives of the families concerned," he told the commission on Thursday.

During his evidence, Mr Rudd said public servants should have requested more time to address safety concerns.

But none of them can be held personally responsible.

"I cannot point to any of the public servants involved or any of the ministerial or parliamentary colleagues involved and say 'this person is ... a negligent person'," he said.

"The public servants that I have known in this process are of the finest quality."

Mr Rudd said several oversight mechanisms, including appointing Mike Mrdak as coordinator general and senator Mark Arbib as parliamentary secretary, were put in place but it was clear some didn't work.

He said the relatives of the four men who died deserved to know what processes failed them.

"They have bore the brunt of this in terms of what's happened to them and their loved ones," he said.

"Therefore, it's important to understand which of these levels of implementation and oversight failed to deliver or which number of them."

Former environment minister Peter Garrett has already told the royal commission he bore ultimate responsibility as the minister in charge of the stimulus measure.

Lawyers representing the families of the four young men have begun cross-examining Mr Rudd.

Earlier, the father of a dead insulation installer, Malcolm Sweeney, told the inquiry no family should have to endure what his did, when his son Mitchell was electrocuted laying sheeting in February 2010, at a home in far north Queensland.

The home insulation program was cancelled after Mr Sweeney became the fourth fatality.

The inquiry continues.

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Letters to priest window on JFK marriage

THERE is still intense interest in Jacqueline Kennedy's personal life even two decades after her death, and as if to prove it, a newly discovered cache of her letters to a Catholic priest have been publicised and soon will be auctioned off.

The letters were written by the former first lady to her confidant, Joseph Leonard, a 73-year-old Irish priest, and give new insight into her personal joys and struggles.

While still a student at Vassar College in New York, Jacqueline Bouvier met Leonard in 1950 in Dublin, the Irish Times reported.

Their correspondence lasted until 1964, when he died.

There are 33 letters written by Kennedy, comprising a record of the years 1950-64 - the whole period of her marriage to John F Kennedy, her time as first lady and her grief following the death of her husband in 1963.

In one early letter, Jacqueline Kennedy worries even before they are married that he would be unfaithful to her.

"He's like my father in a way - loves the chase and is bored with the conquest - and once married needs proof he's still attractive, so flirts with other women and resents you," she wrote in 1952.

She met Kennedy when he was an ambitious 35-year-old congressman in Washington DC and she worked taking pictures for a newspaper column, according to the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

In a letter to Leonard, she admitted she was in love with the congressman 12 years her senior, however, she also voiced her doubts about the relationship, which was budding just as Kennedy was running for a seat in the US Senate.

"Maybe it will end very happily - or maybe since he's this old and set in his ways and cares so desperately about his career he just won't want to give up that much time to extra-curricular things like marrying me!" she wrote.

After Kennedy was elected senator in 1952, the couple wed the following September. On their first wedding anniversary, she wrote Leonard, "After a year, I love being married much more than I did even in the beginning."

After her move into he White House the intimate letters reveal her inner turmoil as she grieved the deaths of her third child, Patrick, who died shortly after birth, and her husband.

"I am so bitter against God," Kennedy wrote. "I think God must have taken Jack to show the world how lost we would be without him - but that is a strange way of thinking to me."

In a letter sent a few weeks later she wrote, "I feel more cruelly every day what I have lost - I always would have rather lost my life than lost Jack."

The letters are expected to be sold for well over STG1 million at auction in Ireland on June 11.

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Abbott, Hockey stand by budget

Prime Minister Tony Abbott is confident he can get controversial budget measures through parliament. Source: AAP

PRIME Minister Tony Abbott is confident his first budget can survive a two-pronged attack from state premiers and the Senate.

State and territory leaders have organised a meeting for this Sunday to discuss concerns over the federal budget's $80 billion cut to school and hospitals funding.

Labor and the Greens are poised to block many of the budget measures, with the government left to horse-trade with new Senate cross benchers after July 1 to pass a new Medicare co-payment and pension and welfare changes.

Mr Abbott does not believe the Senate will frustrate the budget, but he is open to negotiations.

"I'm not going to be absolutely unreasonable," he told Sky News on Thursday.

However, the prime minister put the responsibility in Labor's hands, arguing the previous government created the budget mess and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten needed to offer his own solutions if he did not accept those of the coalition.

Mr Abbott said Labor previously had supported co-payments for health services while pensioners would have more money in their pockets after the carbon tax was abolished.

Offering an olive branch to the states, Mr Abbott said he had indicated to the premiers the government would fund schools and hospitals based on rises in line with inflation "plus population factor".

Treasurer Joe Hockey says the states will still receive $400 billion in the six years from 2017 for schools and hospitals, once the agreements signed with the previous Labor government expired.

"It is not cost-shifting because we don't run the schools or hospitals," he told ABC TV.

Asked whether he was prepared to horse-trade with senators, Mr Hockey said any changes to the budget would mean debt and deficit would be reduced at a slower rate and medical research would not receive extra funding.

Mr Shorten, who will deliver his budget-in-reply speech on Thursday night, said the budget cuts would rip $5000 a year out of the average family budget.

"I've got some advice for Tony Abbott ... why don't you horse-trade away your paid parental leave scheme ... and perhaps leave the pensioners alone."

Labor has yet to decide whether to support a temporary income tax rise for people earning more than $180,000 a year, but it will oppose the Medicare co-payment, pension changes and the fuel tax lift.

Mr Hockey said the $7 Medicare co-payment was only about the cost of two "middies" of beer and much less than the $22 cost of a packet of cigarettes.

Mr Shorten said the treasurer's comments showed he was out of touch with ordinary Australians.

The Greens will support the fuel tax rise.

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Axed minister now free to criticise:Newman

THE Queensland premier says his sacked assistant health minister will now be free to criticise government policy - from the backbench.

Campbell Newman sacked Dr Chris Davis just before the federal Budget was handed down on Tuesday night.

He said Dr Davis had breached the convention of cabinet solidarity after he publicly aired concerns about the government's changes to the state's crime and corruption watchdog and new work contracts for doctors.

Mr Newman has told reporters Dr Davis is a man of integrity and he hopes he remains in the Liberal National Party and is re-endorsed to stand again for the party in Stafford.

He said Dr Davis would now be free of the rules that govern cabinet ministers.

"He's not bound by that rule anymore," Mr Newman told reporters on Wednesday.

"And I think he'll be liberated by that, and that's a good thing."

He said he was yet to determine who would take over as assistant health minister.

Earlier, Treasurer Tim Nicholls and Transport Minister Scott Emerson said the premier did the right thing in sending a message about what was expected of ministers and assistant ministers.

"In those circumstances where the premier did clearly ask him whether he understood he'd stepped outside those boundaries ... it really left the premier with no alternative but to terminate his appointment as assistant minister," Mr Nicholls told the ABC.

He said Dr Davis had admitted he'd breached the convention, and had apologised for doing so.

Opposition Leader Annastacia Palaszczuk said the timing of the announcement was clearly designed to limit political damage.

"It shows how weak the premier is, and it also shows this premier will not tolerate anyone's views other than his own," she said.

Independent MP Peter Wellington said the premier clearly couldn't stand anyone expressing an independent opinion.

"I think he's using Dr Davis to send a message to all his backbenchers - and some of them certainly are nervous and a bit anxious at the moment - don't dare speak out, or look out," Mr Wellington told the ABC.

Opposition Leader Annastacia Palaszczuk believes the sacking will be followed by a wider cabinet reshuffle ahead of next year's state election.

"Unfortunately Chris Davis has felt the brunt of Campbell Newman when Campbell Newman has stood by other ministers in the past, it doesn't add up, it doesn't stack up," she told reporters.

"It begs the question,'why now?'

"Obviously a reshuffle is on the cards."

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Buswell investigation hearing 'political'

A PARLIAMENTARY hearing examining the police investigation into Troy Buswell's car crashes is "a political exercise designed to cause damage to the government", Premier Colin Barnett says.

It was announced in parliament on Tuesday that the Community Development and Justice Standing Committee would conduct a hearing on May 19 into the conduct of the police investigation into the crashes that ended Mr Buswell's ministerial career, although he remains a backbencher.

The hearing will examine police communications and investigations undertaken in the early hours of February 23, when the former treasurer crashed into parked cars, a pole and the front gate of his Subiaco home while returning from a wedding.

It will also investigate the nature of demand for police attendance on the night, the subsequent conduct of the investigation and collection of evidence, and the decision to prosecute and the charges laid.

Mr Buswell was fined and has his driver's licence suspended after he pleaded guilty to 11 traffic offences including failing to report an accident.

But he was not breath tested because he was inside his house with the lights off when police responded to a tip off from a witness who claimed he had seen a man who looked like Mr Buswell barely able to stand after he crashed his car into a residential gate.

Premier Colin Barnett said the hearing was "clearly a political exercise".

"It should be seen as nothing other than that," Mr Barnett said.

"I want to make it very clear: I completely support our police officers and the commissioner, and I believe they have acted properly and treated Troy Buswell no differently than any other citizen."

A motion put forward by the opposition in parliament last week that called for Mr Buswell to explain more was defeated.

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Fresh violence in Ukraine ahead of talks

SEPARATIST rebels have killed seven Ukrainian soldiers in a bloody ambush in the restive east, rattling efforts by Europe to step up a diplomatic push to resolve the escalating crisis on its doorstep.

The violence flared as German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was in Ukraine to push Kiev and pro-Moscow rebels to come together at the negotiating table after the East-West security body OSCE drew up a roadmap aimed at easing tensions.

But the battle lines remained drawn, with fears Ukraine could be threatened with collapse following weekend independence referendums in the eastern industrial provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk that have been rejected by Kiev and the West.

"In the next few days or weeks, the fate of the Ukrainian state will be decided," Prime Minister Donald Tusk of neighbouring Poland told reporters in Warsaw, adding that the EU must "concentrate on the kind of help that will allow Ukraine to hold elections on May 25th".

Russia, despite expressing support for the "extremely important" roadmap, said Kiev must halt its military operation in the east if rebels are to comply with the peace initiative.

And it accused Ukraine's pro-West authorities of refusing "real dialogue" with the separatists.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said the initiative focuses on "restraint from violence, disarmament, national dialogue, and elections".

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for round-table talks in crisis-hit Ukraine to be as "representative" as possible, but warned there was no place for those who use violence.

Kiev is hosting a meeting on Wednesday involving the government, parliament and regional leaders - but notably not any separatist representatives.

On the ground, the Ukrainian military suffered one of its bloodiest single days since the separatist insurrection in the east erupted.

Kiev said seven soldiers were killed in an ambush by rebels armed with heavy weapons between the insurgent strongholds of Slavyansk and nearby Kramatorsk, bringing to 16 the number killed since mid-April.

Rebels in Lugansk claimed their self-styled governor Valery Bolotov survived an "assassination attempt" on Tuesday after assailants opened fire on his car with automatic rifles.

Violence has raged for weeks in eastern Ukraine as government troops carry out what it describes as "anti-terrorist" operations against well-armed rebels who seized cities and towns in the chaos that followed the ouster of Ukraine's pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych in February.

Interim President Oleksandr Turchynov insisted on Tuesday that the offensive would continue despite the Kremlin's demands.

There had been fears that Putin would move quickly to annex the territories of Lugansk and Donetsk as he did with Crimea in March, despite Western outrage.

And while urging rebels to sign up to the OSCE roadmap, Moscow has also kept up the pressure on Kiev, insisting that negotiations on regional rights must take place before the country's planned presidential vote on May 25.

The crisis has plunged the West's relations with Russia to their lowest point since the Cold War and raised European concerns about the vital supply of Russian gas, much of which flows through Ukraine.

And with the rhetoric still running high, Ukraine's interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk accused Russia of stealing the country's gas.

Yatsenyuk, in Brussels to seek EU support for his beleaguered government, threatened to take Russia to the international arbitration court if it rejected proposals to settle their dispute over gas contracts and prices.

Russia has threatened to cut supplies from June 3 if Ukraine does not settle a $US1.66 billion ($A1.80 billion) bill.

Steinmeier, who travelled to both Kiev and Odessa, said the situation in Ukraine remained "very threatening" but called for "a national dialogue".

Wednesday's round-table discussions, to be moderated by veteran German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger, "are of course only a start", Steinmeier conceded.

In Moscow, the foreign ministry said it "expects" Ukraine rebels to comply with the OSCE roadmap, as long as Kiev does - and called on Ukraine's leaders to agree to talks in the near future.

The Russian ministry also said Kiev had to immediately stop "reprisal raids" in the east - using a term that refers to a Nazi massacre in 1943 - and pull back troops from the encircled cities and towns.

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Tourism funding to rise in federal budget

TOURISM funding will be boosted in Tuesday's budget, federal Trade and Investment Minister Andrew Robb says.

The National Commission of Audit report earlier this month recommended halving funding for the nation's peak tourism body, saying its benefits aren't obvious.

"We're actually increasing the budget for Tourism Australia because it's one of the drivers of prosperity," Mr Robb told reporters at a tourism trade show in Cairns on Monday.

"That's our philosophy - don't put a leg rope or a road block in front of any of the things we're good at, but at the same time live within our means as a government."

But he said the government ultimately wanted industry spending to one day replace federal funding for the sector.

"We are doing all sorts of things to give the opportunity for tourism to maximise the potential that is out there, so that we can replace the role of government spending in driving growth," he said.

Mr Robb, who didn't say exactly how much TA's budget would be increased by, said an extra $50 million would be pumped into a grant scheme that helps small operators sell themselves in international markets.

After the audit report was released, the Tourism and Transport Forum said cutting funding to Tourism Australia would dramatically affect business, local jobs and investment prospects for Australia.

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UK's Freddie Starr 'raw' from abuse ordeal

BRITISH comedian Freddie Starr has stormed out of a television interview about his sex abuse claims ordeal.

Starr, 71, also branded disgraced publicist Max Clifford "a different animal".

The comedian ordered Good Morning Britain presenter Susanna Reid to leave his home on Sunday after she asked whether he had done "anything that could have been misinterpreted" in his past relationships, in an interview due to be broadcast on Monday.

"Are you being serious?" Starr replied, before removing his microphone and walking out of the room.

The veteran comic, who learnt last week he will not be prosecuted over sex allegations after spending 18 months on bail, later returned with his wife Sophie to continue the interview.

"It's hard to have an interview like this with it being so raw," Starr told the program.

"I've only been released three days ago, I'm just catching up on my sleep."

During the interview, Starr claims that he did not know the women who made the complaints against him, branding them "ghosts".

He insists he has been "innocent all along" and felt the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) wanted to "put something there".

"If they could've prosecuted me - they certainly would've done," he says.

Starr also distances himself from Clifford, who achieved widespread fame with his links to The Sun's infamous Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster story, after the PR guru was jailed for eight years earlier this month for a string of indecent assaults.

"Max Clifford was a different animal," Starr says.

"I didn't like Max Clifford - I didn't go out with him, I didn't do anything with him."

Starr's wife Sophie, 33, says her husband was scared to cuddle his own daughter during the Operation Yewtree investigation into him.

"It's changed him as a man," she says.

"It's like even the little things like with his daughter, at one point he was scared to even cuddle her because you've got the world judging you.

"I know Freddie will come back from this.

"I would say he is one of the most caring, gentle men that you can ever meet. He'd do anything for anybody. And the fact is that for him to be accused of this, thank God it is now over, people can start to see the true Freddie and not the person that was portrayed in the media because it's not him at all."

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Arbib didn't know of NZ insulation deaths

FORMER senator Mark Arbib says he would have been "ringing alarm bells" about Labor's home insulation program if he'd known about deaths under a similar scheme in New Zealand.

Three New Zealanders were electrocuted while installing foil insulation in 2007.

The Rudd government scheme, rolled out in 2009, has been blamed for four deaths, including two electrocutions linked to foil insulation.

Mr Arbib has told a royal commission into the scheme that he didn't know three tradesman had died under the New Zealand program.

He said he never saw an email, sent to the government in July 2009, which raised the risk of electrocution and the New Zealand deaths.

"I don't believe I was ever advised of that," he told the inquiry.

"If I was advised about that I would have been ringing alarm bells."

Had he known about the New Zealand deaths, Mr Arbib said he would have made representations to then environment minister Peter Garrett and prime minister Kevin Rudd.

"If I would have seen that I would have raised it with the prime minister's office and ultimately the prime minster," he said.

Queenslander Matthew Fuller, 25, became the first to die working under the scheme when he pierced an electrical cable with a metal staple while securing foil insulation on October 14 2009.

But Mr Arbib said he was not involved in any high-level discussions about Mr Fuller's death.

"I was informed that the prime minister's office and Mr Garrett were dealing with it," he told the inquiry.

"I wasn't being asked into those meetings."

Mr Arbib said he never considered suspending or reviewing the program after Mr Fuller's death.

"I don't recall considering that," he said.

The royal commission continues.

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Union slush fund inquiry starts in Sydney

THE royal commission into union governance and corruption is set to open in Sydney with evidence from a man linked to the slush fund scandal that dogged former prime minister Julia Gillard.

Over the coming months the inquiry will investigate alleged slush funds in relation to the Australian Workers Union, Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, the Communications, Electrical, Electronic, Energy, Information, Postal, Plumbing and Allied Services Union, Health Services Union and Transport Workers Union of Australia among others.

Former AWU official Ralph Blewitt will be the first witness to appear before Justice Dyson Heydon on Monday, after flying in from his home in Malaysia for the hearing.

In the early 1990s Mr Blewitt and another AWU official Bruce Wilson established the AWU Workplace Reform Association, with the help of Ms Gillard, a lawyer with Slater & Gordon and Wilson's girlfriend at the time.

The fund was allegedly put to a range of personal uses.

Ms Gillard has consistently denied any wrongdoing.

During opening remarks at a preliminary hearing in Sydney last month Justice Heydon laid out tough penalties for bribing commission witnesses or obstructing the inquiry, including fines of up to $20,000 and up to five years' imprisonment.

The commission is expected to deliver its final report to the federal government on December 14.

"The terms of reference rest on certain assumptions which are not hostile to trade unions," Justice Heydon said.

"The terms of reference do not assume that it is desirable to abolish trade unions. They do not assume that it is desirable to curb their role to the point of insignificance.

"Instead, they assume it is worth inquiring into how well and how lawfully that role is performed. They assume that it is desirable for that role to be well performed and lawfully performed."

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Two die on WA roads after hitting trees

A 70-YEAR-OLD man who was missing has been found dead after a motorcycle crash south of Perth.

A West Australian police spokesman said the man was riding from Rockingham to Dwellingup but was reported missing after he didn't return home.

Rockingham police found the man's body at Whittaker, north of Dwellingup, where he had crashed into a tree.

Another fatal crash occurred overnight at Karawara in Perth's southern suburbs.

The spokesman said a 21-year-old Bentley man died after he drove onto a median strip and hit a bollard and a tree around midnight.

The driver was taken to Royal Perth Hospital with serious injuries but later died.

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Buswell light rail report light on insight

FORMER West Australian treasurer Troy Buswell's light rail report from a taxpayer-funded trip across Europe is so paltry it could have been compiled in his office, the state opposition says.

Mr Buswell came away from the trip to Europe and China with six key findings about light rail as he planned a network for Perth.

Mr Buswell, now a backbencher after quitting cabinet following a car crash controversy in March, visited Switzerland, Germany and France in August and September last year to study light rail systems.

Before making the trip, Mr Buswell had said non-essential government travel would be temporarily banned and instructed the public service to tighten its belt amid spiralling state debt.

And in December, the state government shelved its MAX light rail project due to WA's ailing finances.

A 20-page report since submitted by Mr Buswell on the trip contained six insights about light rail, with the fact it could be a "very effective, embedded and highly valued component" of a public transport system split over two bullet points.

Mr Buswell also used two bullet points to report that trams could operate effectively in confined urban settings at sensible speeds and with clear community awareness of the operation.

His other points were that right of way for light rail in congested parts of a city was important and that a tram system could be delivered effectively via a public-private partnership, particularly in a greenfields environment.

Opposition transport spokesman Ken Travers said Mr Buswell could have compiled the light rail report from his Perth office and saved taxpayers money.

In China, Mr Buswell met with state-owned conglomerate CITIC and Industrial Bank of China about investment opportunities including Perth Stadium and the long-awaited Oakajee port.

And with his then-fisheries minister hat on, he also held several meetings about artificial reefs, shark barriers and seafood trade.

The total cost of the trip is expected to be tabled in parliament in coming weeks.

On his return to parliament as the Member for Vasse last week, Mr Buswell told reporters it was "entirely appropriate" for ministers to travel for work.

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