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Two of my ancestors were convicts so my family has been in Australia for a long time. As well as that, all four of my grandparents were born in the State where I was born and still live: Queensland. And I am even a member of the world's second-most condemned minority: WASPs (the most condemned is of course the Jews -- which may be why I tend to like Jews). So I think I am as Australian as you can get. I certainly feel that way. I like all things that are iconically Australian: meat pies, Vegemite, Henry Lawson etc. I particularly pride myself on my familiarity with the great Australian slanguage. I draw the line at Iced Vo-Vos and betting on the neddies, however. So if I cannot comment insightfully on Australian affairs, who could?

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21 November 2007

More government by coverup in NSW

Too bad about abused children, of course. DOCS is the notorious NSW Child Welfare Department

Hundreds of public school principals have been gagged from complaining about serious cases of child neglect because to do so is critical of the Iemma Government. The Daily Telegraph can reveal that a statewide survey of schools which revealed concerns about the Department of Community Services' performance was shut down by education bosses. Principals were warned they may be breaking the law by responding to the survey which was organised by their professional body, the Public Schools Principals Forum.

Last night Education Minister John Della Bosca's office accused the organisation of using the issue for "political sport", saying evidence would be taken by the Special Commission of Inquiry into Child Protection headed by Justice James Wood.

Forum chairwoman Cheryl McBride, principal of Sarah Redfern Public School at Minto in Sydney's southwest, claimed education bureaucrats were "protecting the Government from further exposure to criticism over the DOCS debacle" in stopping the survey. "The Principals Forum is interested in one thing only - that is the safety and welfare of all children," Ms McBride said. Principals have revealed thousands of children turn up to school showing signs of severe physical abuse or extreme neglect and are angry many cases appear not to have been followed up.

Almost 200 responses to the survey were received by noon last Friday, when deputy directors-general Trevor Fletcher and Peter Riordan issued a memorandum warning principals not to respond. The memo said: "Principals (or teachers) - as public sector officials - should be aware that there are laws concerning the disclosure of information . . . "Given these laws, principals and other staff are advised not to respond to the Public Schools Principals Forum or any other online surveys about such sensitive matters," it read. It is understood about 50 principals defied the warning and forwarded their responses.

The survey covering about 60 per cent of schools across NSW - the fourth conducted by the forum since 2001 - reveals cases of multiple notifications involving seriously neglected children. Ms McBride said the forum had an "impeccable record in respect of privacy".

Premier Morris Iemma made child abuse and domestic violence his key election platforms when he was returned to office earlier this year. But Opposition education spokesman Andrew Stoner said yesterday the gag showed Mr Iemma's claims of openness and transparency in the inquiry into DOCS were a "sham". "This proves yet again what everyone outside the Government knows - we need a royal commission into DOCS," Mr Stoner said. "While kids continue to slip through the cracks, Mr Iemma's overriding concern is to keep a lid on negative publicity."

A spokesman for the Department of Education and Training denied it was gagging principals. "The welfare of our students is the paramount concern of the department," the spokesman said. "Disclosing details that could potentially identify a child at risk is illegal and irresponsible."

Source




Government by coverup in Queensland too

The internal Queensland Health probe into the death of Ryan Saunders will be restricted to the clinical decisions of Rockhampton Hospital staff with broader concerns over resourcing to be ignored. Premier Anna Bligh yesterday insisted the so called "root-cause analysis" into Ryan's clinical treatment was a sufficient response to the two-year-old's death. Ms Bligh rejected calls for a wider inquiry into the Rockhampton Hospital that have gathered momentum after The Courier-Mail revealed crucial witness testimonies of Ryan's treatment would not be taken.

"The investigation that's being undertaken into the tragic circumstances around little Ryan's death is an investigation into the clinical treatment of the child," she said. "It is absolutely clear this boy was very sick. That is why he was in hospital and why he was transferred to hospital. This is not a matter anybody is disputing." Ms Bligh, who has promised to personally intervene and act on Ryan's case, said the analysis would consider what treatment he received, who he received it from and at what point.

Ryan was originally transferred from Emerald Hospital with a suspected twisted bowel to Rockhampton for an ultrasound scan. However, the results were unreadable after a 20-hour delay in doing the scan. He died at 12.15 am on September - 30 hours after he arrived in Rockhampton.

One witness in the hospital at the time has told how he heard Ryan's screams throughout his ordeal, contradicting Health Minister Stephen Robertson's suggestion that the toddler's pain was only an allegation at this stage.

Opposition Leader Jeff Seeney said Ryan's ordeal combined with the experiences of others showed there were systemic problems at the Rockhampton Hospital that needed to be the subject of an open inquiry. "The people of central Queensland cannot trust Anna Bligh or her bureaucrats to run their own 'root-cause-analysis' and then leave it Anna to decide," he said. However, Ms Bligh dismissed the call, saying Queensland's health system had already been the subject of two commissions of inquiry and each case would be individually investigated.

Source




Lesbian child abuse OK -- of course!

If it had been a male teacher ....

A former teacher has escaped immediate jail after succumbing to her love for a troubled student and having lesbian sex in bushland in Perth. Elizabeth Anne Crothers, 50, received a two-year jail term, suspended for two years, in the Perth district court yesterday after a jury found her guilty on one count of indecent dealing and one count of sexual penetration. In WA, lesbian sex is legal at 16, but the age of consent rises to 18 when one of the couple is in a position of authority over the other - as in a teacher-student relationship.

Crothers was tried on 21 counts of indecent dealing or sexual penetration of a pupil in her care between November 1998 to March 1999. She admitted having a full sexual relationship with the teenager but insisted it happened only after the girl left school in March 1999.

A jury yesterday cleared Crothers on 19 charges but found her guilty on one count of indecent dealing and one count of sexual penetration. Those charges related to Crothers digitally penetrating the girl and allowing the teen to digitally penetrate her in bushland in Perth's hills in February 1999.

The girl told the court she shared her first sexual experience with Crothers who seduced her when she was a troubled student. Crothers, a mother of two, admits she was stupid to meet a student outside school. But she insisted it was not until 2000 that she began fondling and kissing the girl, engaging in mutual digital penetration and giving and receiving oral sex in a live-in relationship that lasted several years.

Judge Michael Muller said the pair were in love and Crothers had resisted a sexual relationship with the "tortured'' child until succumbing in an isolated incident. He found she had not groomed the girl for sex and encouraged her to leave school and home so Crothers could exploit her. "I cannot find you induced the girl to leave school to take advantage of her sexually,'' the judge said.

But he said the breach of trust was very serious. He sentenced the weeping Crothers to two years on each count, to be served concurrently, and suspended the term for two years. She had faced a maximum penalty of 10 years for the sexual penetration and five for indecent dealing.

Source




Researchers strike gold in meningococcal disease fight

Meningococcal disease can strike with frightening speed. Its victims can present with symptoms in the morning and be dead by nightfall. But now, a breakthrough by researchers might go some way to reducing meningococcal fatalities by making it significantly easier to detect the bacteria. It involves the use of nanotechnology, and more specifically, the use of small gold particles being injected into suspected sufferers.

Larraine Pocock knows more about meningococcal disease than most. But it hasn't always been that way. It wasn't until her 21-year-old son Troy travelled to England for a working holiday that she began learning all about the deadly disease. "We got a call from Chelsea Hospital - he'd been admitted and he was critical," she told AM. "We were to ring back in an hour, and I asked them what they thought it was and they thought it was meningitis, and I just realised how serious that was, so I rang back in an hour and he was actually on life support. "So, we rushed to Sydney to try and get to London, but he was to pass away that night."

Ms Pocock now runs a meningococcal foundation named in honour of her son, the Troy Pocock Foundation, based on the New South Wales south coast. She has welcomed the news that new technology might be able to detect the disease within 15 minutes, a far cry from the current testing procedure, which can take up to 48 hours. "Meningococcal disease attacks very quickly and you can be well at breakfast, and you can be actually dead by dinnertime," she said.

Meningococcal disease affects 700 people in Australia each year and 10 per cent of those who contract meningococcal will die from the disease. About 20 per cent of those who contract it will have permanent disabilities.

A prototype device has been developed for the new technology, which involves molecular-sized flecks of gold being covered with antibodies that will attract the protein present in meningococcal bacteria. Jeanette Pritchard is involved in the development of the new technology, which has been designed by Melbourne's RMIT University. She says it has already proven highly successful in tests, and could pave the way for a significant reduction in deaths from meningococcal. "The test result will show either a yes that bacteria are present in the sample, or no the bacteria aren't present," she said. "So, it will basically given an indication that yes, treatment needs to be administered." She says the technology is still in development, but could be in clinics within three years.

Ms Pocock says that while the development of the new technology is welcome, it's far from being a panacea. "We've still got to like raise the awareness for the parent or the teacher or the carer to, you know, take the child to the doctor or the hospital first," she said.

Source





20 November 2007

Snake-training for Australian paramedics

While many people would have freaked out at the thought of holding a snake, Simon Hale couldn't have been more excited. The paramedic is one of the Queensland Ambulance Service's new overseas recruits, and last week had to learn all about the state's creepy crawlies as part of his training to join the service. "It's been very nerve-racking but very, very exciting," Mr Hale, 36, from England, said. "When they asked if I wanted to hold it I was up straight away. It felt very cold and it was quite heavy, actually."



The carpet snake was just one of 11 snakes the 14 new UK, US and interstate recruits had to handle as part of their initiation into the QAS. The training also included getting close to spiders and crocodiles. "It's given me an insight and I know what I'm looking out for, I know what to expect and hopefully I'll be able to deal with it," Mr Hale said.

Not everyone was so keen to get up close and personal with their new country's wildlife, with some recruits cowering in the corner at the sight of redbacks, huntsmen and funnelwebs [spiders]. But English paramedic Harvey Milburm, 41, had a crocodile sit on his lap and said the experience was "fantastic": "Being given the opportunity to see these animals up close has been really great. "We've actually all been really excited about this day. We were all lining up to hold the snakes, and everyone's really enjoyed themselves."

Although Mr Milburm was pleasantly surprised by how soft the crocodile was, he said he hoped he wouldn't have to use his training soon. "Obviously I'd prefer it if the offending animal was away from the patient at the time, but at the end of the day we're here to deal with these situations so, hopefully, we'll all deal with it in a professional manner."

Helping to organise the day was head ambulance officer Darren Ferguson, who said the training was vital for officers as exposure to these critters was increasing. "Urbanisation means there's less trees around, so snakes are inhabiting towns now and the drought is bringing snakes out more. So there's a good probability these officers will see snakes," he said. "It's learning how to identify early and manage a snake bite, before the symptoms progress, more seriously."

The above article by Anooska Tucker-Evans appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on November 18, 2007




The flight to private schools is pushing fees up

The cost of a private education is rising by double the rate of inflation and taking the best schools out of many parents' reach. Although some private schools charge fees of as little as $2000 or $3000 a year, the fees at some of the best secondary schools now commonly total $18,000 a year, and the amount is predicted to go even higher.

If you are thinking about a private education for your children, bear in mind that schools usually offer discounts for siblings, so the cost may not necessarily be double the cost of one child. But fees do not cover additional expenses such as uniforms, books and excursions, the cost of which tends to rise with the more expensive schools. If you've just started a family, then investing the Government's baby bonus immediately will help. It stacks up to a healthy $4187 but you will need to top up the bonus with regular savings in order to cover the full cost of an education. To make funds stretch further, many parents opt for a state primary education and a private secondary school, which cuts costs and gives more time to get enough money together.

Say you were expecting school fees for your child to run to $18,000 a year (in today's money - not indexed) for a total of five years between the ages of 13 and 18. If you were to pay those fees from your income at the time they were needed you'd pay an average of $346 per week - a big dent in the family budget. However, using an education savings plan available from specialist fund managers, kick-started with the $4187 baby bonus from birth, you will only have to save $3400 per year, or around $66 per week from birth to the age of 18 in a balanced fund yielding about six per cent per annum, after fees and taxes, to cover the private school fees....

Matt Walsh of specialist fund manager Lifeplan says: "Depending on the person's time frame and the risk they're comfortable with, you can invest entirely in aggressive equities or entirely in safe bonds if you wish - or something in between. The idea is really to invest aggressively when you have a five-year plus outlook, then to decrease the risk as you near the time that you will need to draw on the money. Then you might shift increasing amounts into the safer funds.'' The proceeds are tax-free as long as you use the money for education purposes, and those can include HECS fees, HELP (the university funding scheme), tuition fees, uniforms, books, computers, sports equipment, school outings - really, anything related to the education. If you don't use the funds for education purposes, the earnings accrued on your contributions are taxed at 30 per cent.

Source




Regulators finally do something about irresponsible bureaucrats

QUEENSLAND'S former chief health officer, Gerry FitzGerald, faces disciplinary action for his role in the Dr Death scandal at Bundaberg Base Hospital after a dogged two-year pursuit by a doctor with the Royal Flying Doctor Service on the other side of the country. The Medical Board of Queensland, which had been reluctant to launch proceedings against anyone over the Bundaberg hospital disaster, with the exception of surgeon Jayant Patel, is preparing to start disciplinary action against Dr FitzGerald, one of its former members, for failing to act swiftly.

The decision of the board is sensitive because it was initially dismissive of calls for top administrators to be held accountable. It was pressed into an investigation of Dr FitzGerald by a West Australian-based doctor with the RFDS, Simon Evans. Documents obtained by The Australian yesterday show the board has now agreed that Dr FitzGerald received serious complaints about Dr Patel in early 2005 but "failed to take proper action to ensure that Dr Patel was limited to surgical work that he and the hospital could satisfactorily perform". Dr FitzGerald said yesterday he was "very disappointed" with the board's decision. He said he had tried to do his best under difficult circumstances.

Dr Evans hopes the latest decision will send a powerful message to senior bureaucrats and administrators in charge of health systems that they are not immune from disciplinary action usually reserved for clinicians. Dr Evans urged the board two years ago to start disciplinary action against Dr FitzGerald, who had resigned from Queensland Health after giving evidence at a 2005 judicial inquiry into the problems at Bundaberg Base Hospital, as well as other administrators. "They told me they had absolutely no intention of taking any disciplinary action against any administrators adversely named in the report (of the inquiry)," DrEvans said yesterday from his home in Derby, in Western Australia.

Undeterred by the rebuffs, Dr Evans researched the evidence in greater detail, cited legislation and administrative negligence cases from Britain, and wrote several letters accusing the board of failing in its responsibilities. "From my time at Queensland Health as a clinician I could see where the major problems were - they were with senior medical administrators," Dr Evans said.

The board has concluded that Dr FitzGerald "failed to recommend suspension of Dr Patel when he could and should have done, thus exposing patients to undue risk of harm". The matter is to be heard by the Health Practitioners Tribunal. Medical practitioners found guilty of unprofessional conduct face penalties ranging from fines to being struck off as doctors.

Serious concerns relating to Dr Patel's performance at the Bundaberg hospital were not properly addressed until senior nurse Toni Hoffman put her job on the line by going public in 2005 with evidence of unnecessary deaths and injuries resulting from Dr Patel's surgery.

Dr Patel, who has lived in Portland in the US state of Oregon since fleeing Australia in April 2005, will be arrested by US marshals when the paperwork is completed between Australian and US authorities, possibly as early as next month. The extradition request is understood to relate to 16 charges, including manslaughter and grievous bodily harm, arising from his time at Bundaberg Base Hospital.

Tess Bramich, the widow of a patient who died at the hospital, said she had "forgiven" Dr FitzGerald. Mrs Bramich said since Dr FitzGerald was facing disciplinary proceedings, other administrators also needed to be dealt with. A senior source said the board had always been uncomfortable with the prospect of taking action against a former member. The board permitted Dr Patel to practise in Queensland, overlooking his history of serious disciplinary action for botched surgery in the US.

Retired Supreme Court judge Geoff Davies QC, head of a public inquiry in late 2005, made strong findings against Dr FitzGerald for not acting on a clinical audit that showed Dr Patel's complication rate was at alarming levels. The inquiry ruled that Dr FitzGerald's decision to permit Dr Patel to continue to practise "was a course designed to minimise publicity and in effect conceal the truth. The interests of the patients were ignored." Mr Davies told Dr FitzGerald: "You knew he had 25 times the complication rate for a very normal piece of surgery. "What more do you want to protect the potential patients of Bundaberg Hospital?"

Dr FitzGerald, who won support from patients and Ms Hoffman because of his candour and his apologies on behalf of the health system, has denied he set out to conceal information. He now works at the Queensland University of Technology.

Source




Unions not the main enemy

MUCH of the criticism directed at Kevin Rudd's Labor Party in the run-up to Saturday's election has been focused on its domination by unions and ex-union leaders. With the notable exception of the regulation of the workplace, and just possibly of support for free trade, I suspect this standard line of criticism gets it wrong.

The real threat to Australia comes not from the unionists but from the other main wing of the Labor Party, what I would describe as the chardonnay-sipping, ultra-PC, anti-traditionalist wing of the Labor Party. These are the people who worry me.

Start with the legal revolutionaries among them. This Labor-voting crowd, well represented among lawyers, judges, teachers and academics, wants power taken away from elected MPs and given to unelected judges. They badly want a bill of rights. They know perfectly well that all bills of rights - be they British-style statutory ones or Canadian-style entrenched models - have precisely this increase-the-power-of-judges effect. Indeed, if they had no effect at all on the power balance, why would anyone push so hard to have one?

This crowd also knows that if voters are asked in any sort of referendum they will always be sensible enough to vote down a bill of rights or some disguised version of one. So these people set up elaborate consultation processes that attempt to give the illusion that a bill of rights is wanted. This is precisely what the state of Victoria did before enacting its statutory bill of rights only last year. Knowing that they could not win a referendum there (or anywhere) a "consultation process" was put in place chaired by a longstanding proponent of bills of rights and lacking even a single opponent of these instruments.

Yet this consultation sham of "like-minded activists talking to like-minded activists" served a useful function for the legal revolutionaries. It helped reinforce the basic selling line that's used. The trick is to just keep repeating the mantra: "We need to protect and uphold fundamental human rights." Never, ever acknowledge that people in Australia simply disagree about what exactly is required to protect and uphold these indeterminately phrased, vague moral guarantees.

So proponents gloss over the patently true fact that smart, reasonable, even nice people simply have different opinions about gay marriage, abortion, how to treat refugee claimants, how to balance security concerns about terrorism against individual liberties and so much more. Those are the sort of things a bill of rights takes away from parliament and puts into the province of the judges.

These instruments are sold to the public by always talking up in the Olympian heights of moral abstractions. They have real bite and effect, however, in terms of contentious, debatable moral issues where none of us, top judges included, have a pipeline to God. The problem is that the chardonnay-sipping wing of the Labor Party does rather tend to think that its moral antenna is more finely attuned than that of everyone who disagrees with it.

It's not the ex-unionists who are the preening, puffed-up moralisers in the Labor Party. Far from it. But the crowd that doth vaunteth itself has calculated that the unelected judges are likelier to give it the moral outcomes it wants than are what it sees as the grubby politicians. And just to make sure of this, it tries to appoint to the bench people in its own image, people who are as much anti-traditionalists, parliamentary sovereignty-loathing activists as it is. One need look no further than Victoria's recent judicial appointments to see what I mean.

Nor do you hear these same legal revolutionaries admit that in a recent poll in Britain 61 per cent of people said they wanted to scrap that country's barely seven-year-old bill of rights. In fact, as the judicially driven absurdities have mounted over there, even some of Britain's Labour ministers who introduced it (no referendum there either) have started to have second thoughts. What absurdities you ask? Well, under its aegis, British judges have said the bill of rights gives prisoners rights to drugs, foreign hijackers the right to live in Britain, Gypsies the right to squat, a native-born Italian murderer of a London headmaster the right to a family life and, from that, somehow, a right not to be deported after serving his sentence.

Needless to say, the chardonnay-sipping wing of Britain's Labour Party, including the whole expansive industry of self-styled human rights lawyers, has blamed the media, not the bill of rights. You see, it rather likes all these outcomes. And many like the judge-driven legalisation of gay marriage in Canada. And the unbelievable entitlement to an oral hearing and taxpayer-funded lawyer for all those who simply claim also to be a refugee in Canada (which costs billions of dollars, much of it going to lawyers).

In the long term it's these sort of anti-traditionalist, ultra-PC people who pose the biggest threat to Australia, not the unionists. It's not the unionists who sneer at patriotism or at Australia's constitutional arrangements. (And let me say straight out that I think our arrangements to be the best in the world.) It's not the unionists who are so politically correct that they can't laugh at anything, including themselves, or who genuflect before every passing grievance-industry complaint. It's not the unionists who implicitly demean the family as the bedrock unit of social life, and look for ways to undermine it by suggesting that all forms of social organisation are as good as each other, a claim belied by every collected statistic related to the comparative outcomes of children from single-parent homes and those from traditional two-parent homes. It's not the unionists who see any and all attempts to legislate against potential terrorists as some descent into an authoritarian, police state hell. It's not the unionists who indulge in politically correct claptrap or fall victim to postmodernist, deconstructionist fads.

One of the attractive things about Australia's left-wing party - as opposed to New Zealand's, Canada's, Britain's and, to a lesser extent, the US's - is that it has not fallen wholly under the control of the preening, smug, holier-than-thou PC brigade who like their moralising to come cheap and easy. Sure, ex-unionists may tend to focus on their members more than on the unemployed. And sure, some of them may not see, or care much about, the wealth-creating effects of free trade, especially for the poor part of the globe. But I'd take them any day of the week over the other main wing of the Labor Party.

Source





19 November 2007

This old Leftie is so good at projection he should run a movie theatre

Projection is of course seeing your own faults in others. It is an old deceptive strategy. Even Jesus Christ condemned it (Matthew 7:3-5). Bob Ellis below keeps saying Leftists "can't say" various things when they in fact say most of them all the time. He attributes speech restrictions to conservatives when it is Leftists who are always trying to suppress anything they dislike in the name of "hate speech". Reading the stuff below you would think that it was conservatives who constantly say "There's no such thing as right and wrong" -- when that is in fact the mantra of the Left. Ellis did once say a few reasonable things but maybe in his old age the booze has got to his brain. He certainly seems to live in a very distorted mental world. Unsurprisingly, the rant was published by Australia's public broadcaster

The Right's dirty tricks are many and cunning and foul and they stink in the nostrils of our neighbourly democracy - disfranchising 200,000 students, vagrants and people between addresses for instance, disqualifying George Newhouse, pretending Hicks, Habib, Haneef and Tony Tranh have somehow, somewhere imperilled Australia, pretending interest payments under Hawke and Keating weren't half, in real terms, of what they are now. But their most remarkable success, I think, has been to abolish - or terminally diminish - the concepts of 'better' and 'worse', and 'right' and 'wrong'.

We're not allowed to use them any more. We can't say, for instance, that many, many Russians are worse off now than they were under Gorbachev Communism, even those that beg on the streets now, as they never used to, or get hunted down and shot for dissident journalism. We can't say that four million Iraqis, those that have fled their homes and can't go back, are worse off now than they were under Saddam. We can't say Cubans are better off than they were under Batista, though 97 percent of them can read now versus 3 percent then, and no-one starves or lacks hospital treatment, even American tourists, even Michael Moore.

We actually can't say these things. We can't say privatisations make things worse though they always do, with Qantas less safe, ETSA more expensive, British Railways more dangerous, Telstra a nightmare of punishing greedy incompetence and higher phone fees. The concepts of 'better' and 'worse' can't apply to privatisations, the Right has decreed. Privatisations are inevitable, modern, trendy, fashionable, the future. If they turn out worse for you, tough titty. They're great for us, the shareholders. I invite you to name one entity that privatisation has made better, just one. Not 'more efficient', which means a lot of people get sacked and the services get worse, and scarier. Not 'more flexible and marketplace-oriented' which means it all goes overseas. Better; better for you. No? Not one? Funny, that.

And we can't say it's 'wrong' to torture people. We don't know what torture is - sleep deprivation, waterboarding, snarling dogs that threaten exhausted men's genitals being not quite cruel enough; torture is that which might 'occasion death' Don Rumsfeld says, so the question doesn't arise. Waterboarding is only 'abuse'; abuse is fine.

We can't say it's wrong to kill a hundred thousand Iraqi people, more than died at Hiroshima, because a ruler of theirs might be hiding a big bomb somewhere, so long as we call it 'minimising civilian casualties', and say we acted on 'the best advice available', then it's not wrong any more. That advice wasn't wrong; it was the best advice available, though Hans Blix's advice, which was right, was available too. Funny, that.

It's not wrong either to give 297 million dollars to Saddam Hussein to buy weapons with, or French perfume, so long as we did it inadvertently. It's not wrong to shoot Iraqi women and children in their moving cars in city streets so long as we do it inadvertently. There's no concept of 'manslaughter' in Americanised Iraq, it seems, the sort that gets you years in gaol for running over a child. We can blam away at civilians to our heart's content so long as we think they acted suspiciously. We're the good guys, and mistakes occur and they're a sad necessity in war. We regret all that, but we're not to blame. They didn't stop their car soon enough, and we 'followed the correct procedures' and blew them all away.

It's not wrong to send back women and kids in leaky boats into stormy seas, or stand by callously while they drown. These drownings serve the greater good. They stop desperate intelligent people from 'jumping the queues', the queues you used to see any day outside the embassies in Kabul when the Taliban ruled, and shot you for trying to leave. It isn't wrong to turn up in a classroom and march off weeping school kids into Villawood and traumatise their classmates; it's a regrettable necessity. Otherwise more little kids might come here and learn in school how to be good Australians, and we couldn't have that.

It's acceptable, apparently, ask Blackwater, to kill people if you offer their families twelve thousand dollars for each dead breadwinner, dead mother or dead child. That makes it all right. Twelve thousand dollars makes it all right. The convicts on Death Row should be told of this. A telethon could raise the money and set most of them free.

What's wrong about all this is not just that it happens but that John Howard seems to think it's fine, or he says he does. He uses the weasel words, mimimising casualties, regrettable necessity, inevitable dangers, and he goes to the soldiers' funerals and hugs their mothers and wives. He's good at all this, he says the right words, he talks the talk, regrettable necessity, served his country.

But he doesn't seem to understand, not even now, that it's simply wrong, dead wrong, to kill people, and it's worse than wrong to kill people who haven't done anything, and it's really wrong to torture people to get them to say things, true or not, that you want them to say, like David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib who in their dodgy confessions under 'quizzing' and 'rendition' impaired and fractured their subsequent lives. And it's wrong to lock up people like Tony Tranh without reason, and wreck his life, and his wife's, and his little son's, without even, thus far, a non-core apology.

And it's wrong that this kind of killing and torture doesn't put Howard and his linguistically slithery co-conspirator Ruddock in gaol, or in the dock in The Hague, or in a public debate on these things with Julian Burnside, or Michael Kirby, or Geoffrey Robertson in the Press Club in Canberra. These are the obvious minimums of response of civilised people in a just society of laws obeyed and crimes forbidden and days in court and jury verdicts and freedom of speech for all. They are the right responses. They serve the good. They make our life on earth better, not worse.

But the Right has its reasons, and 'better' and 'worse' and 'right' and 'wrong' aren't concepts it finds of use any more. When the Right is losing a war it says 'We're making progress in some areas, less progress in others'. When the Right inadvertently murders innocent people in their beds it says 'We're cracking down on an insurgent presence in a dangerous district in Sadr City'. When the Right is randomly kidnapping blameless breadwinners it says 'We're making significant arrests' and 'cleaning out the terrorist presence in a dangerous neighbourhood in Fellujah'.

Kidnapping is what we do, because we're there illegally. 'Making arrests' is what law-abiding people do, in justly constituted societies, after forensic investigation and a stated charge and the reading to the prisoner of his rights which include the right to phone his lawyer. We've kidnapped maybe fifty thousand people in Iraq, and let maybe forty-eight thousand of them go, declaring them probably innocent after months of fruitless torture, the frenzy of their families, the loss or bombing or shooting up of their houses, and the economic ruin of their bloodline's future, without apology, compensation, or even a taxi ride home. Mostly they're just dumped on a remote road and made to walk hundreds of miles to what used to be their family home.

And it's not wrong to do so, we're told. It's only 'mistaken'. 'In war mistakes are inevitably made' John Howard says. And that makes it all right. It's another of his non-core apologies; there will, I guess, be others if he survives in office; many are due.

Right and wrong should come back into the language, I think, and better and worse, even good and bad. Call me old-fashioned, but that's what I think. It's time.

In my late old age, and my darkening humanist despondency (I'm an extremist, fundamentalist, humanist fanatic, my son says unforgivingly but kindly), I've lately thought of issuing a T-shirt, and it reads: 'I think it's wrong to kill people; I think it's wrong to torture people, and wrong to hurt children. That's what I think. I'm a bleeding heart. How about you?'

Because this is all, in the end, a bleeding heart is, and the Right was very shrewd when it made that description of ordinary human decency seem so damning, so naive, so unrealistic in a world of regrettable necessities like the inadvertent killing of tens of thousands of children, and the torture of many with dogs and sleeplessness and simulated drowning. So I'm a bleeding heart, and I believe in right and wrong. And better and worse. How about you?

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Greens to fight Victorian desal plant

Greenies constantly block dam-building and have as a result given most of Australia a water shortage. Governments are now trying to fix that shortage by building desalination plants. But desal is no good either the Greens now say. They clearly WANT us to suffer severe water shortages. I think all known Greenies should have their town water cut off. That might bring them down to earth with a bump. Why let them benefit from what they irresponsibly oppose?. Andrew Bolt goes into the matter further

GREENS leader Bob Brown received a hero's welcome at Kilcunda Beach yesterday as he pledged to do all he could to stop the Victorian Government building a desalination plant. About 300 people turned out to the sixth protest rally in as many months aimed at stopping the $3 billion project. Senator Brown said if the community stuck together there was a good chance the desalination plant would not be built. He described the desalination plant as a monstrosity that wasn't needed, and said that he would take the fight against it to Canberra.

"We determinedly take this into the national Parliament and fight it every step of the way until the only evaporation out of here is those planning for this wrong-headed project," he said. "Politicians who don't listen to the community ultimately suffer the consequences."

Senator Brown said he was more confident heading into Saturday's election than he had been for the past four. The Tasmanian senator, who entered Parliament's Upper House the year John Howard became Prime Minister, said there was a real mood for change across Australia.

Support for the Greens, who could win the balance of power in the Senate, continues to grow, with yesterday's Galaxy poll in the Sunday Herald Sun showing 11 per cent support for the party in marginal seats. "I think the Government is going to lose and that there will be a big move away from the big parties in the Senate," he said. "We are going to have to work with one or other of the major parties if we get the balance of power, and we will do that responsibly. "Leaving either one of them in control of both houses of parliament is not only bad democracy but, everywhere I go, people don't want it."

For the first time, the environment is a crucial election issue across the country with some polls showing 80 per cent of people saying it will affect their vote. Greens policies including drawing up a plan to phase out coal exports, reducing emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, scrapping university fees, forgiving HECS debts and redirecting the $3 billion private health insurance rebates into public health and hospitals.

Senator Brown said Mr Howard was out of touch with the public and his 11 years in office had been plagued with injustice including the treatment of refugees, the war in Iraq and a total disregard for the environment. After yesterday's rally, Senator Brown met Tony and Virginia Eke, whose land will be compulsorily acquired by the State Government to build the desalination plant. The couple have spent the past seven years building their dream of an eco-tourism spa and cottage retreat on the Wonthaggi coastline. "You are the first politician who has come here who is talking from the heart," Mr Eke told Senator Brown.

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Conservatism and Christianity have much in common -- says Howard

There is a historical look at what they DO have in common here

GOD is not a Liberal, but he sure likes Liberal policies, Prime Minister John Howard has told Korean churchgoers in his marginal Sydney electorate. As the election campaign entered the final week, Mr Howard with his wife Janette, was back in Bennelong today amid fears he could lose the seat to the Labor challenger, former journalist Maxine McKew.

At the Riverside Girls High School hall in Gladesville, Mr Howard addressed a Korean congregation through an interpreter telling them he shared their belief in God and the "transforming influence" of Jesus Christ. "I'm not suggesting that God is either Liberal or Labor," Mr Howard said. "He is neither. "But I am suggesting that the influence of Christianity in such policies as families, individual responsibility ... personal choice and free enterprise sit very comfortably with the values of my party."

After the service, Mr Howard took the opportunity to press the flesh with constituents who will have a major role in deciding his fate in six days' time. It could be one of the last opportunities Mr Howard gets this campaign to convince Bennelong voters to give him another term in parliament.

Asked earlier what he expected to be doing the same time next Sunday, Mr Howard said: "I am planning to be preparing for our fifth term in government and I will be talking to the treasurer and deputy prime minister about that." Mr Howard rejected a suggestion that was a cocky remark. "It doesn't demonstrate hubris - it just demonstrates my quiet expectation," he said.

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Public hospital staff warned of prison for media leaks

Health authorities in Western Australia say public hospital staff have been warned they could face two years in prison if they leak confidential reports on adverse incidents. The Health Department is investigating the case of a confidential form, leaked to a Perth newspaper last month, that detailed the case of a man who died from a heart attack in Royal Perth Hospital's emergency department. The man had been admitted for a different health complaint, seen by doctors, stabilised and left on a trolley in the emergency ward awaiting a bed. After 11 hours in emergency, he suffered a massive heart attack and was unable to be resuscitated.

Royal Perth's executive director, Philip Montgomery, said it was the first state breach of a 1973 commonwealth law designed to protect the confidentiality of staff making incident reports under the Advanced Incident Management System, or AIMS. He said the hospital was concerned about the leaking of the AIMS form: "The point of the system is to encourage and facilitate staff to report incidents in such a way that their identity is protected, so clinical care can be improved."

Dr Montgomery said the penalty for releasing incident reports was two years in prison. "The consequence is that we've gone back to all our staff and made them aware you can't breach confidentiality." The matter could be referred to the Corruption and Crime Commission. Dr Montgomery said he accepted the man's 11-hour stay in emergency was too long "but we don't believe there has been any inappropriate clinical care".

An emergency staff doctor told The Weekend Australian the number of AIMS reports had dropped off immediately after the media story, because of staff fears of public disclosure.

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18 November 2007

Australians are unusually happy with their country

They have a lot to be happy about. Any country that has conservative governments regardless of which party is in power has only minor problems. The Australian Labor party is nothing like the assemblage of hate-filled cretins and opportunists that constitute the U.S. Democratic party

Another of the foundations of our national self-image is crumbling: the tall poppy syndrome. Australians like to think of themselves as a cynical bunch, viewing politicians and authority figures as crooks, liars, hypocrites or lazy bastards. The attitude is a remnant of the convict days, we say proudly, when we knew the people pushing us around were no better than we were, so we'd take any opportunity to cut them down to size.

But a survey of 3902 adults just published by the Centre for Social Research at the Australian National University suggests we may not be not so tough-minded after all. Compared with other western nations, we're actually rather idealistic, even enthusiastic about the people who organise our lives.

Last week we reported that the survey, published in a book called Australian Social Attitudes 2: Citizenship, Work and Aspirations (UNSW Press) showed surprising support for trade unions and for taxation, while 61 per cent agreed with the statement "The government doesn't care what people like me think" and 62 per cent said "Political parties do not give voters real policy choices".

But this doesn't mean we are more cynical about political institutions than other countries. An even higher percentage of the population think the government doesn't care in Poland, Japan, Germany, Belgium, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.

Shown the statement "Most of the time we can trust people in government to do what is right", only 40 per cent of Australians agree. But in Japan, only 9 per cent agree. In Germany, it's 10 per cent, in France 22 per cent, in Britain 29 per cent and in the United States 31 percent. The only nations that trust their governments more than we do are Denmark, Finland and Switzerland.

Asked how widespread is corruption in the public service, 80 per cent of Poles, 63 per cent of Israelis, 42 per cent of Japanese, 30 per cent of Americans, and 16 per cent of Australians answered "A lot of people" or "Almost everyone".

Asked about their fellow citizens, 58 per cent of Australians say other people can "almost always" or "usually" be trusted, while that is said by only 15 per cent of Chileans, 26 per cent of Japanese, and 46 per cent of Britons and Americans.

The researchers conclude that when our attitudes are "examined in a cross-national perspective, Australians' assessments of democracy appear rather optimistic. Compared to other rich democracies, Australia experiences high levels of trust in government, a public very approving of how well democracy is working, high levels of personal (internal) efficiency, and very low levels of perceived political corruption. Australians also place more value on obeying laws, honesty in tax payments, and voting than citizens of most other nations examined here ... while Australians can be negative about politics, they remain among the most trusting citizens, both interpersonally and politically, of the world's democracies."

Source




Your bureaucrats will protect you (NOT)

Why does anybody feed these useless know-nothings?

A senior bureaucrat in the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service yesterday denied the existence of a culture in the organisation more focused on producing corporate strategies and business plans than in actually fulfilling their responsibility to keep Australia free of disease. Under sustained cross-examination for most of the day at the government inquiry into the equine influenza outbreak, NSW assistant regional manager for AQIS Julie Sims was repeatedly forced to admit that she had little practical knowledge of on-the-ground operations. Ms Sims, effectively second in command in NSW since 1996, is responsible for the Eastern Creek quarantine station, which has been named as a potential source of the outbreak of equine influenza.

She acknowledged she had not seen the horse stable area for several years, had not read the specific work instructions on the importation of horses and did not know whether they had been implemented in NSW. Nor did she know the exact work roles of the staff. She also acknowledged that she had received no training in regard to risk assessment and had not read a leading author in the field.

While saying there had been a general concern within AQIS for a number of years over a lack of resources and staff, Ms Sims struggled to name the specific aspects of the operation that were being affected by the shortage and also admitted she could not find any documents to demonstrate that she had expressed any concern over a lack of resources at the station.

Counsel for the Australian Racing Board Garry Rich asked Ms Sims: "How can you make sensible decisions ... if you do not know what staff are required to do on a daily basis? You don't think that it is helpful to know what the staff have to do?" Ms Sims replied: "It is not my responsibility to know what the staff have to do." She said the question of what skills were required by staff would be handled by the station's manager.

Ms Sims was also forced to admit that she did not know there was a requirement to inform visitors to the quarantine station of quarantine procedures. She also acknowledged that she was not aware of the procedures for truck drivers and grooms when horses arrived at the airport.

But Ms Sims disagreed with a statement put to her by Mr Rich that there was "a cultural problem with your department that the senior managerial staff are more concerned about their managerial functions, that is, proposing business plans and corporate objective statements," rather than their job of keeping animal diseases out of Australia. "No, I don't agree with that," she said.

Source




THE NSW HEALTH DEPT. STORY

Three current stories below:

Barely-disguised corruption from a State government

Labor push to gag hospital inquiry

The NSW Labor Government has moved to shut down a parliamentary inquiry into Royal North Shore Hospital before it hears more damning evidence of malpractice. The Weekend Australian can reveal Labor used its numbers on the inquiry committee to vote down a proposal by Coalition members, at a closed meeting on Wednesday evening, that would have extended the inquiry's reporting deadline past December 14 and also put aside extra days for public hearings.

The cave-in preceded a direct plea to the inquiry yesterday by the couple whose tragedy at RNSH led to the inquiry being established. Mark Dreyer, whose wife Jana Horska miscarried in a toilet adjacent to the hospital's emergency unit on September 25, begged committee chairman Fred Nile to extend the committee's deadline in order to do a thorough job. "There is no deadline that applies to our ongoing grief," Mr Dreyer said.

Asked by Mr Nile what he hoped for from the committee, he replied: "I hope you give this inquiry the necessary time it needs and not be pressured to finish it off by the recommended time of December -- that's what I'd like to say to you personally. "You are a man of high moral standards so I've got some trust in you to carry out what's required." Mr Dreyer added it was important to allow anybody with a story ample time to bring it to the inquiry. "We certainly won't fail you," said Mr Nile, fully aware the committee had already done so.

Informed of the secret committee vote last night, Mr Dreyer said: "This was always my fear, based on the track record of this Government. I put a challenge out to Nile today to show his supposed impartiality. "If this is going to be the case and we don't get the extension we desperately need, we have an inquiry that is doing half the job. Why bother?"

In an emotional 30 minutes of testimony, Mr Dreyer and Ms Horska both wept as, speaking on his wife's behalf, Mr Dreyer described the nursing care she received at RNSH as cold, robotic and mechanical. "There was no comfort, no reassurance to either of us ... in the darkest hour of this ordeal -- there was nothing," he said. He said his pleas and those of Ms Horska, who was in agony, to nursing staff for assistance were "like talking to the wall". "It was urgent to us but not to them," he said.

In further shocking testimony, he said that after her miscarriage Ms Horska was placed on a trolley and left for an hour with her dead baby between her legs. He described as "unbelievable" the insensitivity of NSW Premier Morris Iemma in expecting the couple to provide evidence to a committee of senior doctors during the same week they received pathology results confirming their baby was a boy.

He said that on the morning after the miscarriage, his wife received a visit from a hospital bureaucrat engaged in "damage control" before she was allowed to see a gynaecologist. Earlier, RNSH's director of medical services revealed the hospital relied on charity for basic equipment such as lasers and specialist operating tables. Sharon Miskell told the inquiry that only the skill of the hospital's surgeons had prevented "adverse outcomes" resulting from broken or decaying equipment.

Source

NSW: Fix the hospital or we'll quit, warn doctors

SENIOR surgeons are threatening to resign if the Government does not restore Royal North Shore Hospital to its former glory. Their warning came as the couple who sparked the latest inquiry, Mark Dreyer and Jana Horska, broke down as they relived their ordeal of her miscarrying in the hospital's toilet.

Silence fell over the room as Mr Dreyer detailed the night his wife lost their unborn child on September 25, when Ms Horska was 14weeks pregnant. "There is no deadline to our ongoing grief and suffering," Mr Dreyer said. "It has cost both of us terrible grief and we will always be wondering if the outcome would have been different if we had been treated as a priority."

Christian Democrats' leader Fred Nile, the parliamentary inquiry committee's chairman, promised the couple "the inquiry won't fail you". Mr Dreyer said he had no faith in the Government for implementing change. "I think people would have had a lot more respect for (Premier) Morris Iemma to come out and take the politics out of it, take away the political spin which has been very hurtful for us," he said. "The insensitivity has just been unbelievable, they don't understand the pain they cause with this rubbish they peddle."

There is only one more day of public hearings, on Monday, before the committee retires to consider its recommendations. But it has been swamped with damning complaints which doctors from the hospital have said are an embarrassment. The inquiry was told equipment was so inadequate that only the competence of surgeons had prevented harm coming to patients. Director of medical services Dr Sharon Miskell said there had been instances where equipment was broken, inadequate or non-existent. "We are unable to perform surgery, we are delaying surgery," she said.

Three of the hospital's senior surgeons spoke of their embarrassment at the gradual decay of the once marquee hospital. Area director of intensive and critical care Professor Malcolm Fisher warned he was on the brink of quitting. "The findings of this committee and the response of the health department are crucial," he said. "They will determine if we give this a go or walk." Other doctors described the health department's "inept system" as failing patients as well as being the cause of the hospital's loss of staff. Intensive care director Dr Ray Raper said he was embarrassed this week at a patient's recount of a hospital stay. "My colleagues have been telling me for a long time they are embarrassed of the conditions of the hospital," he said.

Source

Oppressive health bureaucracy defeated in court

Angry obstetricians have demanded an apology from a regional health service after a judge last week threw out its attempt to sue one of its own doctors to claw back part of a $7.5 million negligence payout. Birth specialists condemned the case brought by the Greater Southern Area Health Service in southern NSW as a waste of taxpayers' money and "a disgraceful attack" on Wagga Wagga obstetrician George Angus. The GSAHS had claimed Angus should be jointly liable to pay $7.5 million awarded in respect of a birth at the Wagga Wagga Base Hospital in 1995 -- even though he was merely the senior obstetrician on-call and denied ever being consulted about the case.

During the birth the baby's shoulders became stuck and the baby's brain was deprived of oxygen for several minutes. The child has cerebral palsy, epilepsy and moderate intellectual disabilities. The health service admitted liability in the negligence claim brought on behalf of the family, and it was settled in May 2003. The GSAHS's subsequent move to sue Angus sparked alarm among obstetricians throughout NSW.

Justice Michael Adams in the NSW Supreme Court rejected the health service's case, ruling that a more junior doctor did not consult Angus on whether a drug to increase contractions should be given to the mother during labour. The judge also ruled there was nothing to suggest Angus acted in a way that was medically inapppropriate on the basis of the knowledge he had at the time. Adams ordered the health service to pay Angus's costs. Megan Keaney, head of claims in NSW for Angus's insurer, Avant, said she was "confident" total costs for both sides would exceed $500,000.

"The fundamental reason that he (Angus) won was that the court confirmed that he had not seen the patient," Keaney told Weekend Health. "It was the hospital's case that he had. It was always our view that the evidence to support that assertion was very slim. "There's no doubt that this has created a lot of ill-will between obstetricians in rural south-western NSW and NSW Health. That's quite understandable, given their (GSAHS's) approach to this claim."

Christine Tippett, president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said had the case gone the other way the "implications for doctors on call would have been very serious". "What it would have meant was that any doctor on-call for a public hospital could have been called as a co-defendant on a claim, even if they had not been called (for advice) or provided any service for the patient," Tippett said. "That's quite untenable. We consider that Angus should receive an apology for the distress that this case has caused him."

Albury-Wodonga obstetrician Pieter Mourik, who was previously the representative for the Wagga region on the RANZCOG council, said the case was a "tragedy" and the GSAHS should "hang its head in shame" for bringing the action. While he welcomed the outcome, he said the "damage has already been done" as Wagga's three obstetricians were no longer working at the Base hospital, now served by locums and overseas-trained doctors.

"The NSW Department of Health is also responsible for this disgraceful attack on a capable, rural obstetrician," Mourik said. Angus told Weekend Health the outcome was anticlimactic "because I didn't think they had a case in the first place".

"To be dragged through the court for 10 days, for something I know nothing about, and didn't know anything about -- and then to be told you're not guilty of something that I was not guilty of in the first place -- it was a bit of a hollow victory," Angus said. "The sad thing about this is the fact that all this public money on a court case that had no merit. (Other doctors) are very suspicious of the health service now -- the GSAHS has done itself a disservice."

After the case GSAHS chief executive Heather Gray declined to say if an apology would be forthcoming. A GSAHS spokesman this week declined to add to her comments. "The Greater Southern Area Health Service and NSW Health is still to review in detail the judgment handed down," Gray said in a statement. "The costs are yet to be determined. GSAHS is making no further comment on the matter at this time."

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17 November 2007

Long wait imposed by Queensland public hospital permanently damages baby

No recognition of what the failure to provide prompt treatment could lead to

Another mother has told of her harrowing experience at the Rockhampton Base Hospital, furious over a bungle that caused her four-month-old daughter to lose an ovary. Nicole Simpson yesterday revealed how she waited two months for contact [an appointment] from the hospital after her daughter Jade was referred there with a hernia by their family doctor.

The details of how Jade was treated will stoke the anger that has reverberated around the state after The Courier-Mail reported this week that two-year-old Ryan Saunders from Emerald had waited 30 hours in September before his twisted bowel was diagnosed in Rockhampton Hospital. Ryan died just as he was about to fly to Brisbane for an emergency operation.

Jade Simpson's ordeal came to light as Queensland Health chief health officer Jeannette Young insisted the Rockhampton Hospital was doing a good job. Dr Young spent yesterday at the hospital to hear directly from staff, many of whom are upset over the attention Ryan's case has received. "They have got a very good paediatric service, there is nothing wrong with it at all," she said.

Jade's hernia burst before the hospital made any contact and she spent three days in pain at the hospital waiting to be transferred to Brisbane by the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Mrs Simpson and her daughter were eventually forced to catch a commercial flight, and Jade was operated on 30 minutes after arriving at the Royal Children's Hospital. The operation in March 2006 came too late to save one of Jade's ovaries. "She has only got a 50 per cent chance of having children when she is older and it is all their fault," an angry Mrs Simpson said. "If she had been seen to earlier should would still have two."

Queensland Health is undertaking its own probe, known as a "root cause analysis". However, Mrs Simpson said her daughter's ordeal was also the subject of a "root cause analysis" which she condemned as little better than a cover-up. "All it basically said was 'we did our best, too bad, so sad'," she said. Mrs Simpson said she warned politicians, from local MP Robert Schwarten through to former premier Peter Beattie, of the hospital's shambolic efforts in a bid to prevent further children from suffering. "The main reason for writing to them was so it didn't happen again but it did and this time someone died," she said.

Dr Young yesterday said she was unaware of Jade's case but insisted the hospital was performing well. She met Ryan's parents Donna and Terry on Monday to discuss their son's treatment and hear their concerns. However, she dismissed criticism of Ryan's 20-hour wait for an ultrasound scan after he had been sent from Emerald with a suspected twisted bowel. "It is not a lack of equipment, it is not a lack of staff, it is not a lack of resources," Dr Young said.

Source




Australia returning to the failed ideas of the past

John Howard is a political dinosaur lumbering towards a humiliating defeat next Saturday. This must be true because the media tells us so. So do opinion polls, bloggers, taxi drivers and my teenagers. They know everything.

Yet for all the hype the biggest dinosaur of them all is Rudd himself. Despite the gloss, Rudd's new Labor remains a Jurassic Park of failed ideas. He showed again this week he is a pleasant enough fellow who tries hard to put a good face on it. But he remains a Labor pedant and a control freak whose credo is from the ark.

If he wins -- and I'm sure he will -- the defining themes will be the resurrection of unionism, a bloated bureaucracy, a rekindling of the handout mentality and a high-risk economic strategy that would fail a probity test. Rudd's central ideas are so ancient they are older than John Howard.

The return of a union-dominated cabinet will be a ticking time-bomb for small business. The Howard era of prosperity and high employment will be swept aside largely because the Prime Minister has been portrayed a yesterday's man by a bored and shifty media in search of fresh meat.

Kevin has painted a gloomy picture of life under Howard and Costello. And it is a false picture. Labor's interest rate record is truly appalling alongside the Coalition's, and the the Bureau of Statistics confirms wages under Howard and Costello have risen higher than grocery prices. No matter. Howard must be sent packing because he is old.

Democracy will be quietly dispensed with in favour of rule by a distant bureaucratic tyranny. Rudd says he will set up no fewer than 67 taskforces, committees and departments, plus 96 policy review teams. This will create an immense and overpowering government sustained by a parasitic class of government employees. Industry and individual effort will be stifled.

Rudd showed us his style as the director-general of cabinet in the Goss Labor government. Even cabinet ministers were prevented from speaking unless they had clearance from Kevin. Later, Rudd opposed the introduction of the GST, saying it would be the ``highest form of fiscal vandalism''. Rudd repeatedly has opposed economic reform. He supported union control of the waterfront while opposing the privatisation of Telstra. He opposed the tariff reduction schedule for manufacturing industries.

At this week's hearts-and-flowers campaign launch in ``Brissy'' Rudd attacked Howard's ``irresponsible spending spree''. Later it was revealed Labor's promises would cost $12billion compared with the Coalition's $11.7billion.

A speech Rudd made to the Sydney Institute in 2000 was more revealing. He said then it was the duty of social democrats like himself to develop a ``New Internationalism''. He outlined a 10-point agenda for New Internationalism. It was dripping with Euro-left sentiment. He said there should be a ``red thread'' running through all policies, including economic management. Rudd has stated ``free markets must also be managed markets'', a statement I find dangerous for someone who pretends he is an economic conservative. Rudd and Swan and Co are barbarians at the gate.

Source




Lessons from Rudd's form in the Queensland government?

The writer below expects that Rudd has learned but we will see

The Goss administration (1989-96) was a control freak's dream. Under the iron grip of the premier, the government was dismissive of caucus, ministers were periodically relieved of policy responsibility, and media control and political spin were highly centralised in the premier's department. Goss famously told his supporters to "take a cold shower", cautioning them not to get carried away with their enthusiasm for change. Rudd was initially principal private secretary to Goss, then director-general of the new cabinet office in 1991.

In this position he was regarded as a centrist controller, somewhat distrustful of professionals, and someone who did not suffer fools gladly. He was convinced there were "right answers" to political and policy problems. One of his public service nicknames was Dr Death. He, along with others, was accused of sin-binning a number of former heads of department in an empty warehouse, giving them nothing to do: the notorious gulag.

Rudd ran a large, activist cabinet office (on the NSW model) with an ambitious policy purview. He hired policy specialists and party operatives, and seconded staff from policy departments. It certainly was not a paper-pushing unit, administratively circulating papers. Rudd was often out fighting departments in the trenches. The cabinet office often overrode ministers and departments, or changed their submissions - sometimes unrecognisably. It developed a culture of adversarial relations with the rest of the public service. It pretended to consolidate all policy at the centre, using terms such as whole-of-government, which was code for the premier's preferences or priorities.

Rudd's diagnosis of the problem in Queensland was that the state lacked policy capacity, that departments were not responsive and that leadership across the public sector was poor to non-existent. But his diagnosis of the commonwealth will be different. The commonwealth public sector is much larger, too multi-faceted and too complex to lend itself to a rigid centralism. There is obvious talent in some departments, and policy capacity is not weak, although in some areas there's a need to exercise it more strategically.

Rudd has, in my view, also learned from the youthful exuberance of the Goss era. In state harness he was a bureaucrat, not a minister; this is an important distinction. He took the severe electoral blows of 1995 and 1996 - rejections of the Goss regime from an "ungrateful" electorate - very hard but learned from the mistakes and excesses. He also lost at the federal level when he first ran for a seat.

Tempered by these events, he remade himself for political life, becoming one of Australia's most hardworking constituency politicians, involved in all manner of local issues. Unlike Wayne Swan, who accompanied him back to Canberra in 1998, he largely eschewed domestic policy issues until he became leader in 2006. If he becomes prime minister he will have to work through a cabinet of senior ministers with their own power bases. Caucus federally is no pushover. His decisions about how he organises his internal advisory structures will set the tone of the government. This includes who he chooses to head his department, whether he will develop a centralist strategic policy unit or enhance the cabinet policy office. How prime ministers will develop in office is always unpredictable.

Rudd has already announced he will establish a razor gang and make cuts to administration and tinker with performance pay. These are the kind of signals that got the Queensland public service's back up in the '90s, and not a good message to send out to the very organisations he will need to rely on when in government.

Rudd is a learner from past experiences. He will approach the task of managing the commonwealth differently, although some of his personal style may remain important. He is likely to remain a workaholic, anxious to be across all briefs (he exceeds even John Howard's capacity for work). He enjoys intellectual sparring and being right. He has centrist tendencies and often chooses to work through a chosen few, expanding this through concentric circles of advisers and staff. He believes in the contestability of policy advice and will seek to avoid group think and instances of self-serving politics.

If he still retains a glass jaw when criticised, he has learned to be more relaxed and comfortable with those with whom he has to interact. He has, in short, learned not to do things the Queensland way.

Source




Past Muslim aggression and hostility breeds distrust of them

As one of the last rural bastions in Sydney, Camden prides itself on keeping that laid-back twang of a true country town. But the once-sleepy hamlet in Sydney's southwest has become the scene of a battle over a proposed Islamic school for up to 1200 students on 15ha wedged between market gardens and pastures. It has roused a community to action on a scale not seen since a Muslim prayer hall was proposed in The Hills district in 2002. Residents, who speak their views plainly, fear it is the first tremor of a seismic change in the area that would be followed by a mosque.

Now the school's developers have asked for calm and a chance to prove themselves as Australians like everyone else. Quranic Society vice-president Issam Obeid told The Daily Telegraph yesterday they didn't expect such a hurtful reaction to the school. "Our aim is to open a school for all Australians, not just the Muslim community," Mr Obeid said. "Hopefully the students are going to be lawyers, teachers and business people or work in IT." Mr Obeid said they chose Camden because it was a beautiful rural area where they were able to buy a large block relatively cheap at $1.45 million. And while students would be free to pray on the site, there were no plans to build a mosque. "We will be teaching Australian values first because we are all Australians. We're not bringing anything bad from overseas and we're not there to teach minority group people," Mr Obeid said. "Hopefully one day when people start to get to know us they will realise we are not like what they think."

A public meeting held in Camden last week attracted more than 2000 people opposed to the development on the corner of Cawdor and Burragorang Rds. Support for the campaign has been gaining momentum through text messages, email and Facebook groups while the first form of "vandalism" at the site came when a wooden crucifix engraved with Christian scripture. The cross, which has been described by some residents as nothing more than irreverent Aussie humour, says in part: "When the enemy comes in like a flood the spirit of the Lord will lift up a flag in victory (Ish 59:19)."

Camden Council, which has received about 300 official objections, has indicated it would only be approved or rejected on planning grounds - not the basis of religion.

Local Rebecca Napier said Camden had a real community concern that the Islamic school wouldn't fit in with because Muslim's "refused to integrate". "We lit up the Christmas tree the other night and that is something they wouldn't be into because they're anti-Christian," Ms Napier said. "It would become more like Lakemba and less like the country town that we love."

Source





16 November 2007

Teacher-training stupidity

Don't the educational theorists know ANYTHING about reality? They certainly don't realize that sometimes more is less. They quite reasonably want to get bright people into teaching so what do they do? They make it compulsory for aspiring teachers to undergo four years of brain-dead half-life in moronic teachers' colleges. Anybody with half a brain would NOT waste 4 years of their life that way. They would do a real degree instead. When a one year diploma was all it took to become a teacher, the applicants for teacher training were of a much higher quality. Connect the dots!

Even a one-year qualification is probably overkill in the case of someone with a good first degree or higher. I went into High School teaching with NO teacher qualifications whatever: Just a fresh Master's degree. And my students got excellent results in their exams! The story below is from Australia but I believe that the situation is similar in the USA -- with intellectual standards in American teacher-training colleges also in the basement

MEDIOCRE students are going on to become teachers because poor pay and low job status is scaring the best people away from the job. Education Minister Julie Bishop yesterday admitted there was a problem in attracting the best people into teaching, as an education expert warned of dire consequences for students.

At an education conference at Melbourne University yesterday, Professor Bill Louden from the University of Western Australia said most teachers now come from the second lowest quartile in school performance results. Mr Louden said the number of high achievers going into teaching has halved over recent years. Universities must lift their intake standards for teacher training before students begin to suffer, he said.

In a debate with opposition education spokesman Stephen Smith, Ms Bishop said low tertiary entrance scores for education was deterring bright students, and said the Howard Government was committed to lifting the social standing of the profession. "Students say they are not going into teaching because of the inflexible salary arrangements and the status of the profession - they want to be in a profession where people are paid on excellence, not on years in the job,'' Ms Bishop said.

Mr Smith said a Labor Government would also focus on getting the best students into teaching. "We have to tell young Australians (teaching) is a noble profession and absolutely essential to our fundamental economic and social prosperity and one of the great challenges for our ageing teacher stock is to become attuned to the digital age.'' He said Labor had committed to a 50 per cent reduction in HECS fees upfront for those studying maths and science, with a 50 per cent remission at the back end where the student takes up a relative occupation such as maths teacher or scientist.

During the debate, Mr Smith said university fees were scaring some students away from tertiary education, while Ms Bishop attacked Labor's plan to abolish full fee places. Ms Bishop said Labor had failed to tell universities how they would be compensated by scrapping the places- worth $700 million nationally. Mr Smith said Labor would release its plans prior to the election. Mr Smith attacked the Coalition's plan for a national curriculum for just years 11 and 12.

Ms Bishop yesterday said the national curriculum for English, maths and science would be headed by hand-picked expert groups, as the Government did with Australian history earlier this year.

A Labor Government would implement a standardised curriculum from kindergarten to year 12, so all Australian students would be learning the same material, he said. A national curriculum board would take the best of currciculum from each state and re-work it into a super-study for all Australian students.

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More public hospital craziness

This is utterly insane. $702m for just 27 more beds -- or $26 million per bed. And that's just the building cost

Plans to redevelop Royal North Shore Hospital will only mean an extra 27 new beds, which would fall short of meeting future demand, doctors have told a NSW parliamentary inquiry into the hospital. NSW Health Minister, Reba Meagher said this week that a $702 million redevelopment would result in the hospital having 626 beds, including 46 critical care beds and 40 mental health beds.

At the inquiry today, the hospital's director of trauma Tony Joseph said the minister's comments was the first time that number had been revealed. "Thus the new hospital will provide a total of 27 more beds than the current total of 599, which is a concern, given the projected population growth for the northern part of Sydney," Dr Joseph said. He said he had done a recent snapshot survey of the hospital and found that 10 out of 24 wards at the hospital's main clinical services block had been closed or converted to "other non-inpatient services".

The inquiry was set up after Jana Horska, 32, miscarried in the toilets of the hospital's emergency department in September. Ms Horska is to appear before the inquiry this afternoon.

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The Christian Right in Australia

The Christian right is nowhere near the force here some would have us believe, writes Chris Berg

CHRISTIAN voters can look forward to receiving special information packs about the election from the Australian Christian Lobby this week, which is bound to send yet another shudder through the inner-city left.

The bogeyman of the 2007 campaign is the idea that there is a growing religious right in Australia - an ambitious movement of social conservatives carrying the banner of Jesus, eager to take control of national politics. In God Under Howard, Marion Maddox described a Federal Liberal Party beholden to Christian groups in the same manner that the Republican Party in the United States is influenced by evangelicals. The disproportionate power held by Family First, the conspicuous musical enthusiasm of the Hillsong Church, and the revelations about the Exclusive Brethren all seem to support this view.

If this is the case, well, such is the nature of representative democracy. Theorists may declare that democracy reflects the voice of the people but it has always been susceptible to highly co-ordinated special interest groups. Organised groups with strong institutions and well-defined agendas do well in a democratic competition. But it is not at all clear that there is a religious right in Australia with the ambitions and influence ascribed to it.

The Prime Minister is fond of describing the Liberal Party as a fusion of two distinct philosophies - liberalism and conservatism. As a result, some in the ranks of the party are undoubtedly social conservatives motivated in part by religious sentiments. But their policy influence is dramatically overstated. Eleven years of the Federal Liberal Party in government has hardly seen regression in ethical policy. We can criticise their reluctance to push for liberalisation in some areas, such as gay marriage, at least until recently. But the Government's record demonstrates a regrettable attachment to the status quo, rather than a desire to return to the God-fearing moral codes of the Victorian era.

Neither does Family First match the description of a religious right. Its focus may be on gay marriage, internet pornography and reducing rates of abortion, but there is little material difference between Family First's policies and the policies of the major parties. And when we investigate the party's platform further, it becomes obvious that on economic issues Family First is well to the left of the Labor Party on foreign ownership, privatisation, tax, workplace relations and free trade. Voters who believe that the ALP has gone soft on many key economic issues such as industrial relations would do well to have another look at Family First. Similarly, most Christian groups are moderately left-leaning. Modern Christianity wields ambiguous and empty phrases such as social justice as easily as any Labor backbencher. This is no surprise - the Bible provides little explicit support for free market capitalism.

The concept of a religious right appears to have been imported wholesale from the US, and uncomfortably shoe-horned into Australia's public debate. Australia, as a country with a small and wealthy population, will always partly depend on imports. But not everything that is imported is easily integrated into the culture or embraced by consumers. Twinkies - the heart attack-inspiring rolls of cream and sponge cake - have never found a willing market in Australia despite being ubiquitous in the US. Rhetoric about the religious right is just as inappropriate in Australia as the Twinkie. The religious right, to the extent that it exists, is small and has little impact on public policy.

Why, then, the breathless hyperbole? Politics is mostly about opposition and demonisation. Perhaps the fantasy that the right wing of Australian politics is a cookie-cutter, sorry, biscuit-cutter duplicate of the hated US Republican Party helps build group solidarity on the secular left. But isn't there enough to enrage the left without awkwardly importing ideas from overseas? Surely rhetorical exaggeration and indignation is one area where it would be better to grow local.

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Aren't we lucky to have Greenie wisdom to guide us?

They don't even know how to grow trees!

Trees are mysteriously dying in front of the new Brisbane City Council executive tower -- hailed as one of Australia's most environmentally sustainable buildings. Six of the native subtropical waterhousea floribunda trees planted at the precinct this year are dead and about 15 others are in visible distress. The Brisbane Square is the largest high-rise office building in Australia to receive a five-star green rating from the Green Building Council of Australia and has been praised by Brisbane City Council for its green credentials. But Reddacliff Place at Brisbane Square, intended to be one of Brisbane's most beautiful and tree-shrouded public spaces, may have to be torn up for remedial work to solve the tree problem.

An investigation by arborist Peter Bishop has found possible problems with drainage design. "The pits for the trees have gravel in the bottom of them and the drainage line is above that," Mr Bishop said. "In effect, you've got a bath tub where the plug is up the side of the tub. The water sits in the bottom of these pits and turns stagnant because it can't get away." Mr Bishop believes the pits need to be re-engineered.

The mature trees are worth $2000 each to replace, while any work to solve the drainage problem is likely to run into six figures.. Brisbane City Council declined to comment on why the trees were dying. A spokeswoman said it did not own the building or the square and only leased space there.

Mr Bishop said the live trees should be removed immediately if they were to be saved. "The drainage issues need to be rectified and new trees will need to be planted and fixed in such a fashion that they can withstand the wind loads that are placed upon them," he said. He predicted if nothing was done, every tree in the square would be dead within a year.

Brisbane City Council has claimed credit for demanding environmentally friendly principles be used in the development, which also houses the Brisbane City Library and Suncorp offices. Some of the features that enabled the $198 million highrise to achieve its five-star green rating include using materials such as goat hair, wool, cotton and hemp in parts of the construction. The building's water-saving features include using river water in airconditioning, on-site rainwater tanks and a sewerage treatment plant.

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15 November 2007

Toddler dies in agony after public hospital negligence

The Queensland government has ordered a review into the death of a three-year-old boy who was allegedly left untreated for 30 hours at a regional hospital. Nationals MP Vaughan Johnson told state parliament today Ryan Saunders was rushed by helicopter from Emerald hospital to Rockhampton hospital "where he lay screaming in agony for over 24 hours with his distraught, traumatised and helpless parents by his side".

Mr Johnson said Ryan was suffering stomach pains and was taken to Emerald hospital by his parents on October 25. He was later transferred to Rockhampton following fears he may have a twisted bowel. Mr Johnson said Ryan was ignored by doctors for more than 24 hours at Rockhampton hospital and died the next day. "They virtually did nothing with him for about 30 hours ... This is just totally unacceptable," Mr Johnson said. The MP called for an investigation into the incident.

Queensland Health Minister Stephen Robertson said the case had been forwarded to the coroner and an independent review would also be carried out. "Central Queensland Health Service District will also be commissioning a root cause analysis to look at the care provided and identify if there are any issues that need to be addressed to improve the care that was provided," Mr Robertson told state parliament. "This analysis will be provided by an expert team external to Central Queensland Health Service District." Mr Robertson said it would be inappropriate to discuss the details of the case but acknowledged "the tragedy that did befall that family".

He said health officials had already met with Ryan's parents and would meet with them again on Friday. "At these meetings, the family will be provided with all available information in relation to the care provided," he said. The minister said the findings and recommendations of the independent review would be made available to the family.

Source




Australian wages soaring



AUSTRALIAN pay packets swelled almost 5 per cent over the year to August, with the average wage now $57,324, but male earnings are still way ahead of female wages. Average weekly ordinary time earnings (AWOTE) for adult full-time employees rose 1.0 per cent in the three months to August for an annual rate of 4.9 per cent, seasonally adjusted, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported today. Private-sector average wages soared 1.3 per cent in the quarter to $1,077.80, seasonally adjusted, reflecting a whopping annual jump of 5.8 per cent.

The strong growth in private-sector wages reflects a booming economy. Employers are having to pay employees more and more as a national skills shortage raise the price of labour. Strong growth in the mining, finance and other service sectors is driving much of the growth. In contrast to strong private-sector gains, public-sector average wages were up just 0.1 per cent over the quarter to $1192.20, seasonally adjusted, for an annual rise of 2.3 per cent.

Full-time adult ordinary time earnings rose by 5.2 per cent for males to $1 172.20 while female wages grew 4.8 per cent to $980.70 in trend terms. But in annual terms, men are earning much more than woman, with the average male wage rising to $60,954, while the average female wage is $50,996. This reflects the different nature of male employment, with males tending to hold more senior role, but also reflects much of the work that female do is poorly paid, according to unions.

While a dump-truck driver working in a mine can expect to be paid between $70,000 to $100,000, the reality is that earnings for largely female child-care workers and those who look after the elderly are struggling to rise over $40,000 a year.

Source




Bureaucratic madness in South Australian "Child welfare" agency

Welfare for bureaucrats would be more like it

The number of bureaucrats earning $100,000-plus in the department that helps the state's most vulnerable people has almost doubled in the past year. The figures have led to claims the Families and Communities Department is building a bureaucracy of "fat cats" rather than helping children and the needy.

The Government questions the figures, revealed in the Auditor-General's report, arguing it was based on staff being moved from a statutory authority. It comes after The Advertiser revealed examples of taxpayers paying out large sums for crisis care. They included:

A SEVEN year old boy costing $500,000 for a rented home and team of full-time private nannies.

A FAMILY of five children under the age of 11 who have been in care for over a year at a cost of more than $1 million.

The Auditor General's report shows staff on $100,000-plus salaries have jumped from from 68 to 129 in the past year, with the most highly paid on more than $320,000. The report found 27 people were on salaries of $150,000 or more, up from 17. The total cost of staff on $100,000-plus salaries has skyrocketed from $9.1 million to $16.7 million.

Opposition Leader Martin Hamilton-Smith believes the money could have been better spent. "The effort needs to be put into getting experienced social workers into families homes to help with their difficulties and identify (those) at risk," he said. "So I think the whole structure needs to be less top heavy, with more workers in the field."

The report also identified an additional $35 million was injected into the department in January to cover cash shortfalls. Treasurer Kevin Foley approved the move after Families and Communities Minister Jay Weatherill advised of "significant cost pressures within Families SA and Disability SA". "It signals problems in the ability to plan and budget their child protection operations and it lines up with this blowout in fat cats," Mr Hamilton-Smith said.

Mr Weatherill said the figures were "simply untrue" and only five extra employees were earning more than $100,000 in 2006-07. "The overwhelming majority of the apparent increase is because disability reform has meant some people who were counted as working for a statutory authority are now working for the department," he said. "Or because employees previously earning less than $100,000 have received standard enterprise bargaining rises.

Source




Another bent cop with a bad memory



Police union chief Paul Mullett has admitted warning a detective his telephone was being tapped, but denied knowing the officer was under investigation over links to a gangland murder. During a five-hour grilling by the Office of Police Integrity into top-level leaks in the Victoria Police, Mr Mullett insisted he believed the taps were part of an investigation into factional politics within the union, unconnected to the murder inquiry. Appearing anxious and wary in the witness box, the police union boss regularly responded "I can't recall" when questioned over his knowledge of internal leaks and telephone intercepts.

At the outset of yesterday's hearing, Mr Mullett changed evidence he gave to an earlier secret hearing, admitting to having given six incorrect answers. And he counter-attacked, accusing Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon of supporting a campaign by his factional rivals to have him forced out as Police Association secretary.

Mr Mullett said he frequently received leaks of sensitive information from disgraced assistant commissioner Noel Ashby, who resigned last Friday, describing him as "a good source". He said confidential information was regularly traded within Victoria Police, despite this being improper and potentially putting lives in danger.

Mr Mullett admitted staging supposedly innocent telephone conversations with Mr Ashby and the target of the murder inquiry, Detective Sergeant Peter Lalor, in a bid to throw investigators off the track after discovering they were being tapped. Mr Mullett denied warning Sergeant Lalor he was being investigated by Operation Briars, the taskforce on the 2003 underworld murder of a male prostitute Shane Chartres-Abbott. Asked by counsel assisting the OPI, Greg Lyon SC, if he told Sergeant Lalor he was the subject of the investigation, Mr Mullett said "no", adding he was offended at the suggestion.

The hearing has been told that information about Operation Briars was leaked by Victoria Police media director Stephen Linnell to Mr Ashby and then to Mr Mullett, who allegedly passed it to the police union president, Inspector Brian Rix. The hearing was told that after Inspector Rix allegedly passed the warning on to Sergeant Lalor in August, calls between Sergeant Lalor and an ex-detective also under investigation by Operation Briars, John "Docket" Waters, suddenly stopped. Sergeant Lalor, who is a union delegate, is alleged to have given Chartres-Abbott's address to an underworld hitman, and to have provided an alibi for the man on the day of the murder.

Mr Mullett agreed he passed on information to Inspector Rix that Sergeant Lalor's phone might be tapped. But he insisted he believed the taps were in relation to an investigation into the so-called "Kit Walker" affair - a probe into anonymous emails allegedly sent around the force by Sergeant Lalor as part of a factional battle for control of the association.

During secret OPI hearings last month, Mr Mullett said he could not a recall a meeting with Sergeant Lalor at the offices of the Police Association, but he said yesterday he had "refreshed his memory" and now recalled that the meeting took place. He changed five other parts of his testimony, saying his memory had been refreshed by reading transcripts of the evidence given at last week's OPI hearings by Mr Linnell, who resigned on Monday, and Mr Ashby. Mr Mullett admitted talking to Mr Ashby about his appearance at the secret OPI hearing after giving evidence last month that he did not. It is illegal to discuss the private hearings of the OPI.

Source





14 November 2007

Bent cop has "refreshed" memory!

If British officials can be "economical with the truth", why cannot an Australian official have a "refreshed" memory? Another most useful excuse for lying!

Victorian police union secretary Paul Mullett has told the Office of Police Integrity (OPI) he wants to change some answers he gave the OPI at a private hearing last month. Senior Sergeant Mullett has told a public OPI inquiry today that since the private hearing "I have refreshed my memory". He admitted today to speaking to former assistant police commissioner Noel Ashby about his appearance at the private OPI hearing after telling the hearing last month he had not. It is illegal to discuss the private hearings of the OPI with anyone.

He also admitted meeting Detective Peter Lalor at the union's headquarters after telling the private hearing he had not. He now says he asked Mr Ashby to make inquiries as to who was on a police taskforce related to a secret investigation. Det Lalor was the target of the internal investigation into the gangland murder of a male prostitute in 2003.

It is alleged Sen-Sgt Mullett was a link in a chain of senior police figures which ended with Det Lalor being tipped off that he was being investigated. It has been alleged Det Lalor gave the address of the prostitute to a hitman. Mr Ashby and director of the police media unit Stephen Linnell have quit in the last week after being found to have lied to the OPI.

Source




More revelations about NSW hospital

Amazing that this was ever tolerated

Cockroaches crawled over patients undergoing surgery and theatre staff were forced to catch a falling patient after an operating table collapsed in the middle of a procedure at the Royal North Shore Hospital. The incidents were part of a litany of horror stories about the hospital that were revealed as a NSW parliamentary inquiry into the RNSH began yesterday. In a written submission to the inquiry, Jeffery Sleye Hughes, who was senior orthopaedic consultant at the hospital for 12 years until this year, detailed:

* patients with infected joints and compound fractures being "left to rot" in wards for 18 hours or more because of "inappropriate theatre management";

* patients being lied to about the reason their surgery was delayed, by units in the hospital trying to cover their backs;

* live cockroaches running over operating theatre tables during surgery;

* high-pressure hoses exploding in theatre during operations and injuring staff; and

* operating tables collapsing during surgery, with surgeons forced to catch falling patients.

The inquiry, which is due to report next month, was called following the publicity surrounding the case of Sydney woman Jana Horska, who miscarried in a toilet adjacent to the hospital's emergency unit in September, after waiting hours for treatment.

In another submission, Sydney woman Maureen Cain told how her husband lost both legs after contracting a staph infection at the hospital in 1998. "The family and I were horrified at the filthy conditions but, as we were so occupied with supporting our husband and father, (we) did not do anything at the time," Mrs Cain wrote. "Wards were dirty, bed frame had congealed matter on it, there was no ventilation in the bathroom, syringe left under the bed for three days before I picked it up - I could go on and on."

NSW Health Minister Reba Meagher insisted conditions would improve under new management and stressed the need for better financial management to end budget overruns. "There will be no cuts to nurses, no cuts to doctors and no cuts to beds," Ms Meagher said. "Our investment in frontline services will continue to increase in those important areas, but it is important that the hospital's financial management is improved and there have been a number of ideas floated."

Acting nursing director Linda Davidson told the inquiry nurses at RNSH had been spat at and abused in the street following coverage of problems at the hospital. "I have had it reported to me that some nursing staff in the community are actually undergoing similar situations that their colleagues at Camden and Campbelltown experienced, which was abuse in the streets and actual spitting episodes," she said. "So when that comes back within that environment, the morale does tend to wane accordingly." Nurses at Campbelltown and Camden Hospitals were abused in the streets when the hospitals were at the centre of maltreatment allegations in 2004.

Source




Believe me Greenies, I tried the bus but it is a lost cause

By Andrew Gall, writing from Sydney

I drove to work the other day. Walk out the door, hop in the car, 15 minutes later I am at my desk after parking at the early-bird rate of $18. Going home is just as low fuss. Problem is I felt a bit guilty with all the talk about greenhouse emissions and carbon footprints, so I caught the bus to work today. As I live in Annandale and work near Wynyard, how hard can it be?

Walk out the door, 50 metres to the bus stop and wait. One hour and seven minutes later I am at my desk, realising I could have walked it quicker. The first thing you notice is that the timetable is just a selection of random times with no relevance to buses actually arriving. Although the timetable suggests there is a bus every four or five minutes the reality is actually no buses for 25 minutes and then four or five buses simultaneously. My neighbour tells me the record is eight buses at once. With narrow streets precluding passing, the result is one or two hugely overcrowded buses followed closely by three almost empty buses.

Once on the bus I discover another problem. The bureaucrats apparently claim that buses are designed to fit the "95th percentile adult". Unfortunately this data appears to be based on 19th-century Lancashire miners or hobbits. I am just over 180 centimetres and I have to bend over while standing in the back of the bus. Jamming my legs into the seats is almost impossible.

The next problem is the route appears to be have been designed by Soviet Central Planning. Annandale is five kilometres west of the city, and as three-quarters of the passengers go into the CBD you would expect the bus route to be generally easterly. Not so. It meanders through the back streets of Camperdown and Glebe before coming out on Broadway and going down George Street. Once the bus turns onto Broadway and joins up with all the other Parramatta Road and King Street services it becomes almost comical as we leave the realm of professional commuters with their TravelTens and weeklies and enter the world of tourists who try to pay with a $50 note.

As people trickle off through Railway Square and Haymarket the buses creep on and begin to clump together until by the Queen Victoria Building, George Street is one long bus queue. Eventually we arrive at Wynyard and I give thanks for one small mercy - that I am not the driver. Today I am driving to work.

Source




Conservatives back calls for a judicial enquiry into a useless Left-run child protection agency

The NSW Opposition is supporting a call for a royal commission into the state's child protection agency. The State Government has been urged by Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper to launch a royal commission into the operations of the Department of Community Services (DOCS). The newspaper has created a petition in the hope of "forcing the Iemma Government to address DOCS' incompetence". They have also called on DOCS workers to come forward to discuss the difficulties faced by the agency and its staff on the ground.

"The Daily Telegraph is now taking a stand on behalf of all children whose lives are at risk through a combination of parental neglect and the mismanagement of the Department of Community Services," the newspaper said. "We are calling for a royal commission to end the shameful events that have led to five children - all known to DOCS - killed, injured or forced to live alone in the past month." The calls come after a series of high-profile incidents involving DOCs, with the latest being a three-year-old Sydney girl named Emily who was admitted to hospital on Monday night after allegedly being bashed by her mother's partner.

Emily's case

Yesterday Emily remained in a stable condition in the Children's Hospital at Westmead suffering severe facial injuries and bruising to her body. Her mother's 23-year-old boyfriend has been charged over the assault. At the time of the attack, the girl was in the care of her mother and the man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, in a housing commission townhouse at Glenfield. [welfare housing].

Neighbours said they heard shouting and arguing throughout Monday afternoon and evening. A neighbour who raised the alarm, Christine, yesterday said she was called over to the house about 5pm. Christine said she saw Emily in the back seat of the family's sedan with a towel on her head. Her face was "blue and purple", one eye was swollen shut and her mouth was covered in blood. "(She looked) just like she's been hit by a truck," Christine said yesterday.

She said she told the mother's boyfriend the child needed to be taken to hospital but he refused, saying he would take her to a "backyard" doctor. When he returned at 8pm, Christine went inside the house and the boyfriend handed her the child, who kept falling asleep and appeared concussed. She said she told the boyfriend she would take the child to hospital but he told her she was all right.

DOCS yesterday confirmed Emily was known to the department but not in relation to physical violence. Emily's mother has been questioned at length by police and released. Her boyfriend is to face Campbelltown Local Court today charged with maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm.

One in hundreds

Emily's case is the latest in a string of publicised cases in which children known to DOCS have died or suffered injuries. Last month the body of two-year-old Dean Shillingsworth was found in a suitcase dumped in a pond in western Sydney. Dean had also been known to DOCS.

"Despite a $1.2 billion, five-year program intended to improve DOCS, the state Labor Government has delivered a system where an increasing number of children, known to authorities as being at risk of harm, are dying in NSW," Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell said today. "Labor won't be able to ignore a royal commission, it will force them to act. "Over the last four years, 422 children have died who were known to DOCS."

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13 November 2007

Head-in-the-sand health bureaucrats

Queensland ambulance bosses were warned months ago about chronic understaffing and overworked paramedics suffering severe fatigue on the job. Confidential workplace health and safety documents obtained bt The Sunday Mail reveal that stressed frontline troops raised concerns as long ago as 2005. They warned that driving ambulances while fatigued threatened paramedics, patients and the public.

One said it was not uncommon for paramedics to have micro-sleeps at the wheel. A supervisor submitted a report to the Qeensland Ambulance Service workplace health and safety officer in May, outlining specific problems in Southeast Queensland. He recommended a review of fatigue policies: using other staff to drive fatigued officers back to the station and then home; and communications officers being more vigilant about overtime. He also called for an investigation by an independent agency.

Sources said yesterday that the report was ignored by QAS management. Stanthorpe ambulance Officer Julie Clark last week gave The Sunday Mail details of a nightmare shift of 36 hours. Ms Clark, 43, a trainee paramedic, said there were major safety concerns for all people involved and that someone could have been "in- jured or worse, killed" if she had fallen asleep. Ambulance Commissioner Jim Higgins said long shifts were "rare" but conceded the Clark situation "could have been managed better".

Paramedics were critical of Mr Higgins' claims and said marathon shifts were common. Several recently complained to their supervisor, who filed a report with the QAS workplace health and safety officer. "As the immmediate supervisor of staff who are regularly driving while fatigued, I have great concern about the safety of these officers and the members of the communitv that are exposed to these fiatigued officers." he wrote. "The QAS itself has identified that fatigue as an issue ... (but) this has not translated ... because we are quite regularly working 16 hours plus.

The supervisor said officers strongly believe that the community deserved better than being treated by a fatigued officer who couid possibly make an incorrect decision about the emergency health treatment given, which could lead to long-term ill-health or even death. Emergency Medical Service Protection Association president Prebs Sathiaseelan said it was just the "tip of the iceberg". "QAS management has known about the problem for a longtime. They received documentation through the normal channels of communication, but it was ignored," he said. Emergency Services Minister Neil Roberts said he had asked Mr Higgins to send a notice to all ambulance officers tomorrow reminding them of measures in place to alleviate fatigue.

The above article by Darrell Giles appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on November 11, 2007




Head-in-the-sand Immigration bureaucrats

Years in jail for nothing and not even an apology two years later! This is rivalling the incompetence of the U.S. immigration bureaucracy!

Details have emerged about the wrongful detention of a man who remains a stateless citizen despite an Immigration Department admission of error. Tony Tran, who was living in Brisbane with his wife and son, was detained in December 1999 when immigration officials told him his visa had been cancelled years earlier. The Department admitted a mistake and released him after five-and-a-half years, but because he and his son have no permanent resident status they still face possible deportation.

Mr Tran had been in Australia for seven years, and after applying for a spouse visa for his wife he was detained. This was despite the fact that a letter notifying him of his cancelled visa had never been properly delivered to him. David Manne, director of the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre, told ABC's Lateline that is illegal. "He should never have been in there in the first place. He should never have been locked up," he said. "Under Australian law, if you're not properly notified of a decision, it is unlawful for you to be detained."

His wife and two-year-old son Hai were not detained, but when faced with detention, his wife willingly left the country. She returned two years later and left her son in Queensland, before returning to South Korea. Mr Tran has not heard from her since.

While Mr Tran was in detention the Immigration Department had his son put in foster care and tried to have him deported, despite his repeated attempts to keep in contact with his son. In 2005 Mr Tran was released with a letter from the Government admitting that he had actually had valid visas since 1993. But two years after his release, there has been no resolution of his or his son's ability to stay in Australia.

Even though he has no rights of citizenship anywhere else and has now been in Australia for 14 years, Mr Tran and his son could still be deported unless they are given permanent residence. Mr Manne says Mr Tran is in legal limbo. "Their future fate is completely uncertain," he said. "They have nowhere else to go, and yet in Australia they have no permanent status." A suit has been filed in the Victorian Supreme Court seeking damages for the unlawful detention, and the reinstatement of Mr Tran's visa.

Source

For more details, see here




Hospital neglect 'killed mother'

"DON'T leave your loved ones alone at Royal North Shore Hospital." That is Lindy Batterham's advice as, one year after the agonising and preventable death of her mother, Joyce, she struggles to come to terms with the negligent care the 90-year-old received at RNSH, and the cover-up that followed. Left at the hospital overnight, simply so that her heart medication could be assessed in the morning, Joyce was dropped on the floor by a nurse, broke her hip, suffered a stroke during surgery and died six days later. "I'll be traumatised by my mother's last six days for the rest of my life, having flashbacks of witnessing her dying in a nightmare of pain," Ms Batterham, 52, said.

Her account of her mother's last days, revealed to The Australian yesterday, is one more RNSH horror story embattled NSW Health Minister Reba Meagher doesn't need as she prepares to front a parliamentary inquiry into the hospital this morning. The inquiry has been forced on the NSW Labor Government following the case of Jana Horska, who was left to miscarry in a toilet adjacent to the hospital's emergency unit in September. Ms Horska's case provoked an avalanche of complaints against the hospital.

When Ms Batterham left her mother at RNSH around midnight on November 10 last year, Joyce, who lived with Ms Batterham, was alert and in sound health. After arriving by ambulance at RNSH emergency at about 6pm with breathing difficulties that had been successfully treated before, Joyce did not see a doctor until 3am the following morning. Those nine hours were spent in great discomfort.

As the result of a pressure sore and poor circulation causing pain in her good leg, Joyce spent much of the time sitting on the edge of her ambulance stretcher, dangling her leg over the side. The doctor said there was nothing much wrong with Joyce and that she could stay overnight in the hospital's aged-care ward and see a specialist about her medication the following morning. Exhausted, Ms Batterham went home, little imagining she would never speak to her mum again.

"She could still be with us now, but because one nurse tried to move my mum, who was a large woman with only one leg, from her wheelchair to a hospital bed without a rail or anything for my mother to hold on to, she was dropped to the ground, resulting in a broken hip," she said. "When I arrived about an hour after Joyce had been dropped, I found they had put her back in the wheelchair and given her painkillers to address the extreme pain she complained of, then left her, with no access to a buzzer. "It was only after I intervened and insisted she be seen by a doctor and X-rayed for a possible fracture, and laid down on the bed instead of with her leg dangling, that these things finally happened." Three hours after being dropped, Joyce was finally seen by an orthopedic surgeon.

But there were more bungles ahead. Joyce's surgery the next day, Sunday, was postponed - without her or Ms Batterham being told. And when Ms Batterham phoned on the Monday morning to ask when the surgery would happen, she was astounded to hear it had already begun. She was unable to comfort her mother before surgery and was denied the opportunity to speak with her again, since Joyce was unable to communicate following a stroke on the operating table.

But what really angers Ms Batterham, as she prepares to lodge a submission with the parliamentary inquiry, is the hospital's lack of accountability and the way key details were airbrushed out of the written report she finally received on Joyce's death, which is being investigated by the Coroner. There was no mention of the fact Ms Batterham had to beg for her mother's hip to be examined by a doctor. No mention of the fact her pain was misdiagnosed by nurses as being the result of poor circulation. Above all, there was no admission that the attempt by a nurse to lift Joyce by herself, with no handrail, was a dangerous practice.

Source




Hysterical poof gets the boot

He apparently thinks that it is cool to abuse women



A Labour party candidate in the Australian federal election has removed a volunteer worker from his campaign after he launched a tirade of abuse at the wife of his opponent. Environment minister Malcolm Turnbull is fighting to retain the seat of Wentworth in Sydney for the incumbent Liberal party. The seat was subject to recent boundary changes and now includes gay districts such as Darlinghurst and Kings Cross, and the Labour party candidate George Newhouse has emphasised the anti-gay position of the present government.

On Saturday Gary Burns, a well-known gay rights activist, campaigning for Mr Newhouse, physically intimidated Mrs Turnbull in the street, calling her a fag hag. Mr Burns later sent an email to Mr Turnbull, quoted on news.com.au: "You will get more angry homosexuals like me attacking you verbally in public because of your fascist leader John Howard, who treats my community like second-class citizens. "Your middle-aged well dressed "fag hag" impersonator of a wife will not protect you from the anger my community has stored up for you and your Government come election day on Saturday November 24. "You are a weak and pathetic excuse for a human being."

Mr Newhouse's campaign director has now confirmed that Mr Burns, not a member of the Labour party, will no longer be working on the campaign. "On behalf of the federal Labour campaign for Wentworth, we regret any inconvenience and apologise to Mrs Lucy Turnbull," the director said.

Last week Mr Turnbull promised that if re-elected his party will allow interdependent gay couples to share each other's public pensions and benefits such as superannuation. He made his pledge at a meeting of lesbian and gay business leaders.

The present government failed to make any decisions on gay equality across a range of issues outlined for them in June by a rep