Tuna Baron Hagen Stehr

The preferred fish of the Japanese is sashimi.

Hagen Stehr is an interesting man. He served with the French Foreign Legion and was also in the German merchant navy. He jumpd ship in Port Lincoln and married Anna, his wife of 49 years with only a pair of blue jeans and one pound in his pocket. He joined a group of tough migrant fisherman and went hunting for the bluefin tuna. Gone are the days when boats would leave Port Lincoln harbour without navigation lights to get the jump on the opposition. They carried rifles on board and often shot at other boats in a bid to claim the prized catch. They were catching so much tuna that Stehr knew it couldn't go on forever so he had a dream - tuna propogation. The Americans tried to do it but couldn't, the Japanese wouldn't even try and the Europeans spent about 70 million euros and failed. Now his Clean Seas Tuna are propogating bluefin tuna in a land-based tank and he has established the first successful tuna farm in the world.

He was home in Adelaide when he got a telephone call from his chief scientist with the news that their $60 million gamble had finally paid off. "Big fella, you'd better come back" Morton Deichmann said to 6 foot 1 inch Hagen. With tears in his eyes, he jumped in his old Landcruiser and drove like a man possessed to Port Lincoln, over 500 kms away, to see the fertilized eggs with his own eyes.

"They said you couldn't keep tuna for longer than six or eight months, but we proved we can keep them for 10 years. But we had a lot of problems - white pointers, seals, disease and bad weather but all the fish came through. We now have technology to replicate the conditions of the tuna schools as they travel around the coastline. It sounded impossible and they said it couldn't be done but we did it" he said.

He needed help to lift big tuna from the ocean into the onshore facility so he called on his ex-Vietnam chopper pilot buddies to help. It wasn't an easy job but they did it, they lifted tuna from three miles out to sea and brought them to shore. The next step was to get them to spawn. The scientists said you would have to keep them for at least three years to make them sufficiently relaxed to spawn but they did it in three months.

And here's the amazing thing which sounds unbelievable - they replicated the tuna's journey in the wild. These amazing fish swim 320 kms south of Port Lincoln, then head west outside the continental shelf into streams that run west to east. They round the coast at the bottom end of Australia and then head slowly north past Fremantle, Geraldton and Broome and up to the spawning area. After that they come back down the West Australian coast and all the way back to Port Lincoln. And the fish never leave the tank the whole time, they have replicated the different temperatures and seas which all takes place in the tank. Unbelievable.

He admits to having a stubborn German streak and knows that people called him an arrogant bastard at the beginning but he knew it was just a matter of time. Like most founders of mighty industries, Stehr managed everything himself until the company was listed and is now a director. "You have to have deep pockets" he said.

Clean Seas plans to produce 25000 fish this year and 10,000 tonnes by 2015.

A Crime of Passion

There's a theory I tend agree with about romantic relationships- one partner loves more than the other. And should the loved one transfer their affection to someone else, the pain is so acute and the hurt so deep, they lose all sense of reason. The French call it crime passionell or a crime of passion.


Cameron Neil Cook 44 was a respectable lawyer and former policeman. He had his wife followed and when the private investigator showed him footage of her with another man, he went bezerk. Consumed with jealousy and rage, he tried to drown them both by driving off a pier.


He went out and bought chains, a knife and padlocks. He gave their 7 year old son a sleeping pill so he wouldn't hear, bashed his wife and tied her ankles. Then he chained them both inside their car and drove off a pier, his plan being to kill them both. He flew off the end of the pier and through a steel fence with such force, it went flying and almost hit a fisherman before the car plunged into the water. Somehow his wife was able to free herself and was found bleeding with the chains still wrapped around her. Cook was also rescued and taken into custody.


Love can be a very dangerous emotion for some people and this man loved too much. If you give your love utterly and completely to someone without holding something back, you take a big risk. If your beloved walks out, there's nothing left in reserve and you collapse in a screaming heap. It happened to Glen Close in Fatal Attraction when she put the child's rabbit in a pot and cooked it, loving someone too much makes some people do terrible things.


Justice Elizabeth Hollingworth took into account Cook's good character as a police officer and government prosecutor with no previous history of violence, but sentenced him to 15 years with a minimum of 10. He was overheard at one of his court appearances saying "When I get out of here, I'll do the job properly".

Mistakes of War

We heard the tragic news that ten children, eight schoolboys from one family, were killed because of faulty intelligence. They died last December when troops raided a mountain compound, thinking they were known insurgents. They weren't and Nato says the raid should never have been authorised.

Two men whose children and other relatives were killed provided pictures of their dead sons, a sketched map of the compound and copies of the compensation claim forms signed by local officials. Their story was supported by Western military forces. Farooq Abdul Ajan lost eight members of his family in the raid, two sons, two brothers, three nephews and a cousin.

Anger is growing over civilian casualties. The Independent Human Rights Commission said that 63 civilians have died in the past 2 weeks. Assadullah Wafa, who led an Afghan investigation into the incident, said that relatives would get $2,000 compensation for each person killed. What an insult.

We can't shrug off these tragic events as being part of the ugliness of war, these mistakes have got to stop.

Internet Libel

People think they can make defamatory statements on an internet forum and get away with it, believing they are anonymous. Wrong, WA legal counsel Martin Bennett said yesterday that they can be hunted down and found.

"There has been an increasing proliferation of internet chat sites where people feel free to hide their identities and make defamatory comments about companies and their executives and directors" he said.

Someone made nasty comments last November under pseudonyms on the stockmarket forum HotCopper website. They related to technology security company Datamotion Asia Pacific Limited and it's Perth-based Chairman Ronald Moir. One posting appeared under the pseudonym "witch". Datamotion and Mr Moir hired Mr Bennett to find him.

He asked HotCopper for the real name of "witch" plus two others under different names but they refused, so he took court action forcing them to turn over their files. But the registered membership name turned out to be false. He won't say what he did next, but it was pretty clever because he found the culprit, a Mr Graeme Gladman and he was found responsible for Datamotion and Mr Moir being "brought into hatred, contempt and ridicule and thereby suffered damage".

It was resolved last week with Mr Gladman agreeing to pay $20,000 damages and $10,000 costs. He also had to apologise and promise he won't publish any more defamatory statements.

It's so easy to be brave with words when you think no one knows who you are. If you stay on a forum long enough, you will find there are a minority of people who enjoy hurting others with words, they just can't resist it, thinking they are safe. Not any more. Mr Bennett has launched two more cases of brave men/women hiding behind an anonymous name, both are pending before the WA Supreme Court.

Graeme Gladman is founding principal and creator of BrandQuest. Also creative director of Myer/Grace Brothers, Beaurepairs, Amcal Chemists, Mazda, BP, OPSM, Katies, Bendigo Bank, Commercial Union Insurance and Optus, just to name a few. He is partner and Managing Director of his internationally-owned Advertising Agency Batey Gladman.

Britain says sorry for child migration scheme

10 year old twins on their way to Auckland, New Zealand

Prime Minister Rudd says sorry and comforts a victim

Gordon Brown will apologise tomorrow for the UK's role in the child migration scheme which sent thousands of children to Australia and Canada who suffered terrible abuse. The Prime Minister is due to express the Government's regrets about the program in a statement to the House of Commons. Sixty survivors have been flown to London to hear the statement in person.


The scheme ran from the 1920's through to the 1960's and an estimated 150,000 poor children aged from 3 to 14 were sent away to a better life but many ended up in foster homes, orphanages and religious institutions. Children were told their parents were dead and parents weren't informed where their children were, I can't imagine why they would insist on such a harsh rule.


Survivors told that on arrival, they were seperated from brothers and sisters, and had to endure physical and sexual abuse from their carers. How excited these happy children must have been, embarking on a new adventure, being told about the blue skies and sandy beaches of Australia, only to have their lives ruined by sexual predators and constant beatings. It must be a terrible thing to have no one to stand up for you, no mother or father, sisters or brothers, just a child alone in a strange country which made them so very vulnerable. Gordon Brown is expected to announce support for those affected. A black spot in our history books for both countries.

A group of children at Melrose house near Parramatta in 1953

The New Poor of America

Someone called it the Great Recession and for 15 million unemployed Americans, their suffering could go on for years. Most have no savings and are getting close to the end of their unemployment benefits. Who would have believed that a tragedy like this could befall the richest nation on earth. This is one of the 713 comments made in response to the article in the New York Times today.

Welcome to my world. 62 years old, and apparently now permanently unemployable because I'm 'overqualified' - the new euphemism for too old. Forget my resume and former career, I aged out of that but for very rare freelance gigs. Forget any new one because no one is hiring anyone over 50 if they don't have a very unique talent. Savings gone, last dime gone, no benefits of any kind (did I mention that old means uninsurable?) and no state agencies that will help with rent or anything except food and slightly lower utilities if one doesn't have minor children. Now it's borrow from friends who know they might never get it back. So much for working all your life if you didn't make millions doing it and put it all in a sock.

Roughly 2.7 million jobless people will lose their unemployment cheques before the end of April unless Congress approves the Obama administration's proposal to extend the payments.

Jean Eisen 57 has been out of work for 2 years, she used to sell beauty salon products. With no unemployment cheque left, she has survived on local food banks for her groceries and has learned to live without drugs for high blood pressure and cholesterol. With no health insurance, she has turned to religion for solace and hope. She and her husband have to survive on his $1595 monthly disability cheque and the rent on their apartment is $1380 a month. "We are looking at the very real possibility of being homeless" she said.

What a tragic state of affairs, middle-class Americans suddenly as poor as church mice, and God forbid they get sick from all the stress, with no health insurance, they can't afford it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/business/economy/21unemployed.html?em

Muslim Cleric Sent Home

Robert McClelland

Sydney based Iranian cleric Mansour Leghaei has been given 28 days to leave the country. ASIO has been saying for years that he is a security risk so why did Attorney-General Robert McClelland write two glowing character references for him? It seems he wrote them when he was a back-bencher way back in 1997. He described the sheik as an asset to the Australian and Muslim communities.

On Friday, the Migration Review Tribunal didn't agree with him and upheld a decision by the Immigration Department denying him a residency visa and his bridging visa has been cancelled. For more than ten years, he's been in court fighting not one, but two ASIO reports saying that he was in fact a security risk. Finally the Appeals Court agreed and he's on his way home.

Immigration Minister Chris Evans' spokesman said "The Department will seek to engage with Mr Leghaei in the coming weeks to facilitate his departure." he said. The decision also applies to his wife and one of his adult children which means their bridging visas will also be cancelled in 28 days. At least one of his children was born in Australia.