Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says "the turn away rate for people (at) homeless shelters is horrific."

Life on the streets is a maze of uncertainty and danger for Australia’s army of homeless people. “You’re always worried someone’s going to rob you, or beat you or set you on fire when you’re asleep, which has happened on a few occasions,“ explains Snowy, who has been living rough for seven years.
Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has made homelessness a priority for the new Labor government. He has ordered his MPs to visit hostels for those without a home to gauge the scale of the problem.
“The turn away rate for people (at) homeless shelters is horrific,“ Rudd told BBC. “Turn away rates of something like 80 percent or 90 percent. Now this is just wrong in a country as wealthy as ours.“
Charities estimate there are more than 100,000 homeless people in Australia with indigenous people the hardest hit. This transient population includes families with small children and divorced women as well as those suffering addiction and mental illness.
Some are without a place to stay for a few days, while others spend their lives looking for a safe place to sleep in doorways and parks. Many homeless Australians are ’lounge surfers’, who rely on the hospitality of relatives and friends and are always on the move. Government agencies and charities are all working to ease this crisis.
The Wayside Chapel in Sydney’s tough Kings Cross district is a haven for the city’s street people.
It offers food, hot showers, advice and above all respite from a society that often chooses to look the other way.
“Within walking distance of Wayside there are between 300 and 600 people sleeping on the footpath every night,“ said Pastor Graham Long.
There are various triggers to homelessness. Demons unleashed by drug, alcohol and gambling addictions are often responsible. Psychiatric issues play a big part too.
Pastor Long told BBC that the chaotic journey from a secure life with a job and a family to despair on the streets can be frighteningly easy. “You can be functioning quite well and have a mental illness hit you in the same way that a truck would run you over. It all happens in a blink of an eye.“
Alice has been homeless for five years.
Sitting wearily outside the Wayside, she told BBC her story. “You don’t have money to pay rent and it’s impossible to lead a normal life,“ she said.
“My health has diminished a lot in the last five years since I’ve been on the streets. I’m on medication for schizophrenia and depression. When you’re on the street it’s hard to keep your medication going and do the right thing because you get really depressed and you just don’t see any hope,“ she said grimly.
Despite her frustration with the authorities and a lack of social housing, there is a steely and determined edge to 28-year-old Alice. She has needed it.
Charities say that affordable homes for low income families should be top of the new government’s list. Mary Perkins from Shelter New South Wales says there simply is not enough public housing.
“It’s no longer good enough to be doing it tough and to be poor; you have to have other complex problems as well,“ she said.
Many of Australia psychiatric institutions were closed decades ago. Many of the half-way houses and special needs facilities that were promised were never delivered. So state-owned flats often accommodate the mentally ill, while poorer families are pushed to the back of a very long queue.
The situation is equally daunting in the private market. House prices have soared across Australia. Rents have gone the same way, along with interest rates.
The result is increased mortgage stress and crippling costs for some tenants.
“It’s a pretty short road between an unaffordable housing arrangement and homelessness,“ said Mary Perkins. Despite the gloom, charity workers are optimistic that Kevin Rudd’s promise of a more compassionate approach to government will help those without a roof over their heads. Not everyone is convinced though.
“I’ve got no faith in the government,“ roared 48-year-old Snowy. “Maybe Kevin Rudd might change things but as far as I’m concerned one politician is as much of a liar as the next.“

Donors have promised the World Bank record sums to spend in the poorest countries from next year, largely overlooking concerns that the global lender uses the money for political purposes.
Forty-five donor countries have pledged $25.1 billion for the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA). This brings to $41.6 billion the total available for cheap loans and grants to some 80 impoverished countries between mid-2008 and 2011--an increase of $9.5 billion over the current three-year budget, Ipsnews.com reported.
“This is the largest expansion in donor funding in IDA’s history,“ Robert Zoellick, the bank’s president, said. “The donor community has demonstrated its full commitment to helping countries overcome poverty and achieve sustainable growth, especially in Africa.“
The Norwegian government, citing the continued use of interest-free IDA loans to push cash-strapped countries to privatize basic public services such as water, sanitation, health services and education, trimmed its increase by one-fourth.
With 4.2 million dollars held back, Norway’s move was symbolic.
Even so, activists read significance into it because it was unusual and because it followed revelations that the bank continued to attach such political strings to seven out of 10 poverty-alleviation loans despite assertions that it had stopped doing so. The finding came in a report last month compiled by advocacy group Eurodad, the European Network on Debt and Development, and based on official data.
“Despite the fact that the sum withheld is a relatively small one, this is a significant decision to make as very few countries have ever done anything similar,“ said Atle Sommerfeldt, general secretary of Norwegian Church Aid, which lobbied Oslo to deny the bank.
Aid groups appealed to the British government to follow Norway’s lead but were rebuffed: Britain emerged from a pledging session in Berlin Friday, December 14, as IDA’s top financial backer, unseating the United States for the first time in nearly half a century.
Even so, lobbyists said donors would lean on the bank for better results.
“Donors have made important commitments to ensure the bank looks at what the impact of its advice and its lending will be on the poorest and most vulnerable,“ said Elizabeth Stuart of the international charity Oxfam.
Her group “is glad to see extra money available for the world’s poorest countries, but no blank cheques should be given to a development institution that still presses for some policies that harm poor people,“ Stuart added. “More donors should be sending this strong message to Washington: we want to get more development bang for our aid bucks.“
From Zoellick’s perspective, the record result spoke for itself.
“This generous replenishment is both a strong recognition of the importance of multilateral aid and a vote of confidence in IDA as an effective platform for global development aid,“ he said in a statement.
Six new countries were added to the donors’ roll. Former IDA borrowers China and Egypt were joined by Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
“We have been working hard to bring in more donors to IDA,“ said Zoellick. “Broadening the base will help us raise more funds and build a solid foundation for IDA moving forward.“

EU is on course to extending the Schengen borderless area to nine more countries, which will mean a common visa for third-country nationals, common external frontiers, and the abolition of personal checks at internal borders.

European Union is on course to extending the Schengen borderless area to nine more countries, which will mean, among others, a common visa for third-country nationals, common external frontiers, and the abolition of personal checks at internal borders.
As reported by Hindu.com, these measures are already in force across 13 member states, besides Norway and Iceland. The development represents a triumph for the deepening integration process of the bloc which, since the 2004 enlargement into central and Eastern Europe, has been grappling with explosive and acrimonious political debates on questions of illegal immigration, combating organized crime, and the influx of cheap labor into Western Europe.
Whereas EU citizenship guarantees right of entry into all the 27 member states regardless of one’s circumstances, a common visa is valid across the Schengen land for nationals of third countries, both of immense value for business- and tourism-related travel.
The removal of internal border controls in the Schengen area is compensated by a slew of measures in the realm of police and judicial cooperation among states that authorize the maintenance of a sophisticated database on criminals, missing persons, and hazardous goods. The latest expansion of the Schengen area leaves five EU countries, including the United Kingdom and Ireland, outside of its purview.
Although the principle of free movement of persons is one of the pillars of the EU structure, its evolution in practice in the early decades remained largely an inter-governmental rather than an EU initiative.
Beginning with Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg through the 1960s, and France and Germany thereafter, it culminated in the 1985 Schengen Agreement.
Internal divisions over the question of restricting the eligibility for free movement to EU nationals and the implications of collective action on the immigration and asylum policies of individual states contributed to the hesitation of the European Parliament and the European Commission in pressing ahead with a common agenda.
The corpus of Schengen regulations was eventually integrated into EU law in the 1999 Treaty of Amsterdam. Admission to the eurozone and embracing the single currency will mark the next milestone for the erstwhile Eastern Europe.
The prospective opening of internal borders to the relatively new EU members and the economic opportunities that would flow as a consequence are sure to raise expectations among the Balkan states for earlier accession to the union.

The European Central Bank has forecast in its second Financial Stability Review that Turkey’s external debt as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) will decrease to 49 percent in 2008, while it is expected to be 52 percent in 2007.
According to the review figures, current account deficit as a percentage of GDP will be higher than 2007’s expected 7 percent but lower than the 2006 level of 7.8 percent, reported Todayszaman.com.
The review also predicts that Turkey’s current account deficit may rise to 7.5 percent of its GDP in 2008. Turkey’s short-term external debt versus reserves is expected to be 113 percent this year and is forecasted to be 120 percent in 2008. The country’s external debt/GDP is predicted to decline by around 3 percent next year to a level of 49 percent.
The evaluation section about emerging markets states that aside from a possible slowdown in mature economies, a further risk lies in the potential for a protracted period of tighter financing conditions, which may affect emerging economies with large current account deficits dependant on external portfolio flows and bank loans, including economies in emerging Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States and Turkey.
According to the report, the main uncertainty weighing on the outlook for emerging economies was the potential impact of the financial market turbulence on external demand from mature economies.
“Potentially weaker activity in mature economies would have an adverse effect on demand for the exports of emerging economies and could ultimately lead to a decline in commodity prices, thereby affecting commodity exporters,“ the review said.