Man injured in Bathurst ute roll

A MAN has sustained serious head injuries in a ute accident on a private property south of Bathurst, NSW.

Police say the ute rolled at a property at Perthville about 4.30am (AEDT) on Saturday.

A 29-year-old local man who'd been travelling in the ute tray was thrown from the vehicle and suffered serious head injuries.

He's been airlifted to Westmead Hospital and is in a serious but stable condition.

The driver, a 33-year-old man from North Richmond, was taken to Bathurst Hospital with suspected rib injuries.

His front-seat passenger, a 29-year-old man from Pokolbin, escaped with bruising.

Police will interview the men once they are deemed well enough.

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Man hid drug ice in his underpants: police

A Sydney man has allegedly been caught with $11,000 worth of the drug ice hidden in his underpants. Source: AAP

A SYDNEY man has allegedly been caught with $11,000 worth of the party drug ice hidden in his underpants.

Police say they were patrolling the Surry Hills nightclub strip Oxford Street on Saturday when they saw two men acting suspiciously about 4am (AEDT).

Officers stopped and searched the men's car, and a check revealed one was wanted on an outstanding warrant and he was arrested.

The 23-year-old was taken to Surry Hills police station, where it's alleged 41 bags of methamphetamine were found in his underpants.

Police estimate the alleged haul had a street value of $11,000.

More than $4000 cash was also seized during the search, police say.

The man, from Westmead, has been charged with dealing with property suspected of being proceeds of crime, supplying a prohibited drug and possession of a prohibited drug. He was also charged over the outstanding warrant.

He was refused bail during an appearance at Parramatta Bail Court on Saturday, police say, and is due to reappear in court next week.

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Plibersek lashes WA premier

Deputy federal Labor leader Tanya Plibersek (pic) has slammed West Australian Premier Colin Barnett. Source: AAP

DEPUTY federal Labor leader Tanya Plibersek has taken a swipe at West Australian Premier Colin Barnett, saying he has "broken promise after promise" since winning a second term.

Ms Plibersek used much of her address at the state Labor Party's annual conference in Belmont on Saturday to lash the Liberal leader.

"Like the Liberal state premiers in the eastern states, Colin Barnett is showing the people of WA a little preview of what they can expect from a Tony Abbott government," she said.

"You say as little as possible to get elected and you do your worst once you get there."

She lambasted Mr Barnett for cuts to education, closing wheat-belt rail lines, a 12.5 per cent increase in land tax and his government's failure to deliver a pledged redevelopment of Royal Perth Hospital.

"West Australians did not get the Colin Barnett they voted for," Ms Plibersek said.

Also at the conference, there were several references to the need for unity in the party, while Ms Plibersek paid tribute to Labor Senator Louise Pratt, who had endured weeks of stress waiting to find out whether she had retained her seat.

The Australian Electoral Commission will announce the results of the WA Senate recount and distribution of preferences after 2pm (WST).

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Furniture factory ablaze in Sydney

Fifty firefighters are battling a large blaze at a western Sydney furniture factory. Source: AAP

FIFTY firefighters are battling a large blaze at a western Sydney furniture factory.

Fire & Rescue NSW (FRNSW) says no one is feared missing but the fire has spread into the roof of the single-storey factory on Warren Avenue, Bankstown.

The fire has been contained but crews were still working to extinguish the flames on Saturday evening.

One man has been taken to hospital suffering smoke inhalation, a FRNSW spokesman told AAP.

"Firefighters have managed to protect adjoining properties," he said.

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YMCA a child safety industry leader: Hare

ALTHOUGH a childcare centre in Sydney where a pedophile worked has received a low national standards rating, the YMCA still describes itself as an industry leader in child safety.

YMCA NSW chief executive Phillip Hare told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Friday there had only been one audit into its Caringbah service where Jonathan Lord worked, and that was this year.

The YMCA has also been telling parents at Caringbah it had organised external audits of its services when in fact there had only been one audit conducted by the NSW Department of Education and Communities (DEC) in 2013 under new national regulations.

The Caringbah centre was rated on the second last rung of four National Quality Framework Standards.

Mr Hare also told the commission he only became aware of the Caringbah rating during the commission and agreed he should have been concerned about it, as it was the centre where Lord worked for two years.

The commission heard that the YMCA sent out a press release on October 20 saying it "was recognised in the industry and by external audits and peak bodies as a leader in child safety".

Senior counsel representing the commission Gail Furness said: "The external audit did not recognise you as an industry leader?"

Mr Hare repeated that the industry-leader claim was a comparative one and said there had been no intention to mislead people.

He agreed that to say "audits" was incorrect, as there had only been one.

Earlier, Mr Hare told the commission a critical incident review at the YMCA had not examined the period leading up to Lord's arrest, but concentrated on breaches of policy.

In reply to commission chairman Justice Peter McClellan, Mr Hare said he accepted it should have been done.

He said "it was clear it was an error" not to have included it and he took responsibility.

Mr Hare strongly defended the culture within the organisation and said there was no impediment to staff reporting concerns to managers.

Some staff have told the commission they did not feel they could raise concerns with management.

He told Justice McClellan he did not agree the YMCA needed someone to work with them on its processes, but then agreed he would consider it if the commission thought it necessary.

Mr Hare, who has worked with the YMCA since 1988 when he was 21, told the inquiry there was no discussion with him when a senior manager asked staff to sign a confidentiality agreement about a pedophile.

He also accepted that parts of the YMCA's opening statement to the commission could be misleading, including a claim that the organisation had not dealt with an incident of child sexual assault before Lord, when it had done so in the 1990s.

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China blames militant group for crash

A Chinese official has blamed the East Turkestan Islamic Movement for a suicide attack in Beijing. Source: AAP

CHINA'S top security official says the militant East Turkestan Islamic Movement organised an alleged suicidal vehicle attack that killed five people in the heart of Beijing this week.

Meng Jianzhu, chief of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the ruling Communist Party, named the group in an interview with Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television when he was in the capital of Uzbekistan attending a regional security summit and seeking cooperation in counter-terrorism.

"The violent terrorist incident that happened in Beijing is an organised and plotted act. Behind the instigation is the terrorist group East Turkestan Islamic Movement entrenched in central and west Asian regions," Meng said, in a video footage aired on Thursday.

The SUV ploughed through bystanders, crashed and burst into flames near the Tiananmen Gate on Monday, killing three in the car and two tourists, including a Filipino woman, and injuring dozens.

Beijing police said the perpetrators were a man with an ethnic Uighur name, his wife and his mother. Police also have arrested five people - identified with typically Uighur names - on suspicion of conspiring in the attack and called it a planned terror strike - the city's first in recent history.

Uighurs are an ethnic minority residing mainly in China's northwest region of Xinjiang, and they have close cultural and language ties to Turkic peoples of Central Asia.

China believes the East Turkestan Islamic Movement aims to establish an independent East Turkestan in Xinjiang, and blames the group for the low-intensity insurgency in the region.

The United States placed the movement on a terrorist watch list following the September 11 attacks, but quietly removed it amid doubts that it existed in any organised manner.

Instead, human rights groups have questioned whether China uses the security threat as an excuse to suppress the Uighurs and said Uighur extremism has been fueled by China's heavy-handed policies in Xinjiang and discrimination against Uighurs by the country's ethnic Han majorities.

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School kids escape Sydney bus fire

School children have fled a burning bus after it caught fire on the M2 motorway in northwest Sydney. Source: AAP

DOZENS of children from rural NSW had a city excursion to remember, with their bus bursting into flames on a busy Sydney motorway.

All escaped uninjured, but a quick-thinking off-duty policeman who inhaled smoke as he attempted to douse the flames is in hospital under observation on Friday night.

The Transport Safety Bureau will investigate how the fire broke out on the bus as it travelled along the M2 at Baulkham Hills just after 3pm (AEDT).

Inspector Phil Brooks from the NSW Police Traffic and Highway Patrol Command said the officer was riding his motorcycle home from work when the bus burst into flames.

As teachers led about 35 school children away from the burning bus, the officer ran toward it with a small fire extinguisher.

"He was able to intervene very quickly, and we'll certainly look at acknowledging his efforts," Insp Brooks told the Nine Network.

He said the students and teachers were on their way back to Orange in central NSW after a school excursion.

A Fire & Rescue spokeswoman told AAP the engine compartment of the bus had caught fire and the first emergency call came in at 3.13pm.

Three fire crews extinguished the blaze.

A NSW Police spokeswoman said the Office of Transport Safety Investigations would look into how the fire started.

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Graffiti artist Banksy leaves NY divided

The street artist Banksy has ended his month residency in NY City with a final graffiti piece. Source: AAP

THE secretive street artist Banksy has ended his self-announced month-long residency in New York City with a final piece of graffiti, a $US615,000 painting donated to charity and a debate: Is he a jerk or a genius?

Banksy, who created a new picture, video or prank every day of October somewhere in the city, spent his last day like thousands of graffiti artists before him: he tagged a building near a highway with his name in giant bubble letters. The twist was that these letters were actual bubbles: balloon-like inflatables stuck to a wall near the Long Island Expressway in Queens.

As if to underscore his dual identity as both a street punk and an art-world darling, he also donated a painting that was auctioned off on Thursday night for $US615,000 ($A652,000).

The original painting first sold for $US50 at a Manhattan thrift shop that benefits Housing Works, an organisation that fights homelessness and AIDS. Banksy added a Nazi soldier to the landscape scene and Housing Works sold it in an online auction.

Throughout his 31 days in the city, Banksy put pictures of his work on BanksyNY.com, with clues as to locations but nothing precise. That spawned a treasure hunt by fans who hunted the works down, shared locations via social media, then swarmed to see them.

But by the time Banksy was done, New Yorkers were divided in their opinions. Some tweeted "Go home, Banksy!" Others declared their admiration.

The turning point for many was an essay he wrote criticising the building replacing the World Trade Center. Banksy called the new design "vanilla ... something they would build in Canada", and added, "It so clearly proclaims the terrorists won." He offered the essay to The New York Times. The paper wouldn't print it, so he posted it on his website.

"The terrorists won" comment upset many New Yorkers, including Brian Major, 51, of Brooklyn.

"Enough!" Major said. "Who is this guy? Everybody's got a right to an opinion, but what gives him any kind of credibility in New York? Shut up, Banksy! Go home!"

A lifelong New Yorker, Major says he understands graffiti culture, and he also appreciates fine art. But he doesn't think Banksy's art is all that good - "though I'll give him credit, he's a good marketer".

But Sean Lynch, 25, of Staten Island thinks Banksy is "one of the more captivating artists of our generation". Lynch said it was magical visiting Banksy sites around the city and hearing conversations about art that the works inspired, with "people of all different walks and cultures sharing opinions, sharing stories. ... The walls started to talk to them, in a way."

Banksy, who refuses to reveal his full identity, began his career spray-painting buildings in Bristol, England. In New York, many of his images were silhouetted figures or spray-painted messages. The art ranged from a stencil of a dog lifting his leg on a hydrant to a video of a "slaughterhouse delivery truck" filled with stuffed animals.

Some works were defaced by other graffiti artists. But interest grew with each piece, and at least one Banksy street work was covered with plexiglass to preserve it. He also sold some pieces, unadvertised, for $US60 on the street.

Radhika Subramaniam, a professor at Parsons The New School for Design in Manhattan, says Banksy is part of a long tradition of graffiti artists like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat whose work ultimately earned recognition from the art establishment.

But he also fits into a contemporary trend of opening up public spaces to conversations about who owns them and what can happen there - especially in today's cleaned-up New York, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg, when asked about Banksy, called graffiti "a sign of decay and loss of control".

OK, but is Banksy any good? "There's plenty of wit in what he does, as well as some thoroughly ordinary, sometimes pleasant, sometimes banal, but sometimes sweet things," Subramaniam said.

But he's also "not a naf in the art world. After all, who would care if you or I were to set up a blog and enact a residency like this? It's only because he's able to marshal this kind of PR and marketing that ... catapults his residency to another level and elicits these polarised points of view."

In a final gesture that was simultaneously serious and self-mocking, audio commentary posted on Thursday on Banksy's website called his final piece - his name in bubble letters by the road - "an homage ... to the most prevalent form of graffiti in the city that invented it for the modern era. Or it's another Banksy piece that's full of hot air."

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Clive Palmer wins seat of Fairfax

NEWLY declared federal MP Clive Palmer doesn't have a clue how much money, or how many company directorships or properties he has, but reckons it'll be no problem to declare his pecuniary interests.

"Well, you've got within 28 days from when you've been sworn in, so it will be there," a jovial Mr Palmer told ABC television on Thursday after being declared the winner of the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax with a final margin of 53 votes.

Mr Palmer thought he might own up to 20 properties.

He said "who knows, who cares ... don't worry about money" when asked how much he had, and denied he would have any conflict of interest as an MP because of his business interests.

"Conflict of interest only comes if you are a minister of the crown," he said.

He was unable to say how many company directorships he had because he didn't think of them in terms of numbers.

"I wouldn't have a clue, but a lot, maybe 40 or 50," he told the 7.30 program.

Mr Palmer told AAP he was looking forward to the Palmer United Party making a positive contribution to the battle of ideas in Canberra.

"We have three senators and have the balance of power, so I think we can make a significant contribution as a party."

His Liberal National Party (LNP) opponent Ted O'Brien congratulated Mr Palmer, but the party may still challenge the result.

LNP state director Brad Henderson said the validity of any election could be disputed by a petition addressed to the Court of Disputed Returns within 40 days of a declaration.

"Given the sheer scale of this process, in terms of the number and nature of challenges and determinations made, the LNP will now take some time to consider its position", he said in a statement.

Mr Palmer was concerned by the three recounts in Fairfax, one of closest electoral races in Australian history.

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) finally declared him the winner almost eight weeks after the September 7 federal election, and following his party challenging more than 50,000 ballot papers.

Mr Palmer originally finished 36 votes ahead of Mr O'Brien, but the AEC on September 21 automatically ordered a recount because the margin was less than 100 votes.

"I'm very disappointed in the AEC because the first count I won by 36 votes, the second count I won by seven votes and the third count I won by 53 votes," he told AAP.

"That's a bit of a worry, isn't it?"

He said he'd been criticised for challenging the validity of 50,099 of the 89,176 ballots, another Australian record, but the result had vindicated his actions.

The Palmer United Party leader has over the past two months accused both the LNP and AEC of vote fraud and applied for a Federal Court injunction to stop the count in Fairfax.

Mr Palmer also claimed former military officers were controlling the electoral commission and rigging the election.

Despite his grievances, he thanked rival candidates and the local AEC officials "who had a very difficult job and had a great deal of pressure on them from the AEC apparatchik from Canberra and Brisbane".

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Central banks extend liquidity swap deals

SIX of the world's leading central banks say they will provide each other with ready supplies of their currencies on a standing basis, extending arrangements set up to steady the global financial system during post-2007 turbulence.

The decision announced on Thursday extends currency swap arrangements that until now had been considered temporary measures.

The central banks are: the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England, the Bank of Canada and the Swiss National Bank.

The so-called swap lines enable those central banks to make sure banks in their home countries can always borrow ready cash from them in any of the currencies involved, should they need it.

The ECB said the arrangements "have helped to ease strains in financial markets" and "will continue to serve as a prudent liquidity backstop".

The US Fed and the ECB started their first US dollar-euro swap arrangement in December 2007 as the losses on mortgage-backed bonds began to shake the banking system.

Subsequent bilateral deals between the different banks were added during the financial turbulence that followed, which included the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008, plunges on stock markets, the subsequent recession, and Europe's crisis over too much government debt in several countries.

Central banks serve as custodians of their countries' currencies and play an important role in supporting the stability of banks so companies can do business and the economy can function properly.

They typically provide liquidity - ready cash to meet the demands of everyday business - to their banks, even when banks may be having trouble borrowing elsewhere due to market trouble.

With the currency arrangements, they can do it in currencies other than their own.

For example, the European Central Bank holds credit offerings in US dollars for periods of seven days and three months, offering as much in US dollars as European banks may want in return for collateral such as bonds or other securities.

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