R.G.Menzies above

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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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7 September, 2009

Dangerous bureaucratic secrecy

THE revelation that Anthony Albanese, as an opposition frontbencher with a keen interest in Sydney airport, apparently ignored former Customs officer Allan Kessing's legitimate and serious concerns over security flaws at the nation's busiest airport highlights the inadequacy of the Rudd government's proposed whistleblower reforms. In particular, it demonstrates that making federal MPs authorised recipients of public interest disclosures by public servants is no substitute for extending legal protection to whistleblowers, who draw serious examples of maladministration to public attention.

Before drawing up legislation, Special Minister of State Joe Ludwig is considering the report of the House of Representatives legal and constitutional affairs committee, chaired by government backbencher Mark Dreyfus QC. The report recommends an elaborate new system for handling whistleblowers' complaints inside the public sector. Complainants would be protected from prosecution only if their complaints were directed to their own public service agency, to an outside public agency such as the Ombudsman or Public Service Commissioner, or to federal members of parliament.

Unless they were exposing an immediate and serious threat to public health or safety, public servants leaking to journalists would remain liable for criminal prosecution and up to two years' jail under the notorious section 70 of the Commonwealth Crimes Act. The section provides no defences, even if the information made public is in the public interest.

Mr Kessing, a former member of Sydney airport's border security team, received a criminal record under section 70 after being convicted of leaking reports outlining lax airport security. He has consistently asserted his innocence. The publication of the reports, in The Australian in May 2005, led to the Wheeler review, which confirmed the parlous state of security at our major airports.

One of the most worrying aspects of the issue is that while the documents at the heart of the affair remained inside the Customs bureaucracy, nothing was done to address the problems. Once the documents were published, however, the Howard government spent $200 million trying to fix the problems, although a brawl between two bikie gangs at Sydney's domestic terminal in March suggested much remains to be done.

Mr Kessing approached Mr Albanese two months before the reports appeared in The Australian out of frustration that the Customs bureaucracy had suppressed and ignored the issue. His disclosure today to legal affairs editor Chris Merritt about approaching Mr Albanese in vain drives home a vital point that apparently escaped the Dreyfus committee. That is, politicians, like Customs officials, are prone to human frailty and do not automatically respond to every issue in the public interest, even in the face of serious disclosures by public servants. But they would be far more likely to address incidents of maladministration if legal structures encouraged them to do so.

Allowing politicians, senior bureaucrats or anyone else to ignore maladministration and remain safe in the knowledge that the law imposes criminal penalties on those who reveal their inaction to the media is a recipe for cover-ups and inertia. That, however, is precisely what will be encouraged if the federal government turns the Dreyfus committee's recommendations into law. It is also a concern that the government's shield laws for journalists fall short of protecting confidential sources, as the public interest requires.

Mr Kessing's disclosures are credible and all the more compelling because he has nothing to gain and everything to lose - including a second prosecution under section 70 - by going public now. For his part, Mr Albanese owes the travelling public, and his electorate of Grayndler, which borders Sydney airport, a detailed explanation of why he failed to act on Mr Kessing's information in 2005. At that time, Mr Albanese was a senior member of the opposition team, and the material provided revealed a serious problem in a key area of national security. Mr Albanese has been a strident critic of decisions about Sydney airport. In his maiden speech in 1996, he attacked the Hawke government's approval of the third runway, which increased aircraft noise for his constituents.

Aside from the questions Mr Albanese must answer, the wider issue this revelation has raised involves the public's right to know about issues of major importance, and the media's right to inform them. Until public sector whistleblowers are free to approach the media on serious matters of incompetence or corruption, the public interest will suffer.

SOURCE




Australia's Federal environmental protection laws have increased costs but delivered little benefit

Environmental regulation should be left to the States

THE centrepiece of Australia's environmental law largely duplicates existing regulations, provides little extra protection and has added more than $820 million in additional costs to business since it came into force nine years ago, an Australian National University survey shows. The ANU Centre for Environmental Law surveyed 155 individuals and companies that had been subject to the approvals processes of the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. It found that rather than leading to improved outcomes, the EPBC regime had left project proponents saddled with up to $2.2m in costs.

The government has made much of its decision to cut business red tape and encourage major projects, yet the survey found the EPBC regime has hit "major infrastructure, mining and urban development activities, the environmental impacts of which are already regulated under other regimes".

The EPBC legislation was designed to create a national scheme of environment, heritage and threatened species protection. It gives the states responsibility for matters of state and local significance, but allows the commonwealth to intervene in matters of national significance. The survey found that "where actions have been regulated, there is evidence the regime is not adding significant environmental value. "The concentration of the environmental impact assessment regime on large infrastructure, oil, gas, mining and urban development projects has stunted its capacity to generate significant environmental gains. "These types of activity are already subject to other federal, state and territory regulatory processes."

The survey said the average cost of the environmental impact process to project proponents varied between $660,000 and $2.2m. "The inability to identify clear environmental benefits from the environmental impact assessment regime has led to questions being raised about its cost effectiveness." Industry groups have already claimed the commonwealth role had added little to the environmental protection achieved through existing processes, but instead burdened business and taxpayers with significant compliance costs.

Australian Chamber of Commerce & Industry director Greg Evans said the survey showed more needed to be done to reduce state and federal overlap. He called on the commonwealth government to restrict its role to "strategic national significance issues", making sure Australia conformed with its international obligations: "There's an issue of whether the commonwealth needs to get involved in a project by project basis."

Environment Minister Peter Garrett referred to the complexities of the act on several occasions while finalising his decision to approve the giant Gorgon gas project off Western Australia last month. A review of the legislation headed by former Department of Defence chief Allan Hawke is due by the end of next month.

A spokesman for Mr Garrett said yesterday most of the study related to how the environmental impact assessment process had been implemented in the Howard years. He pointed to the signing of bilateral agreements with the states for environmental assessments. "Assessments conducted under bilateral agreements cut out unnecessary duplication and are a more efficient way of ensuring we uphold important state and commonwealth environmental protection," he said.

Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt said the Coalition strongly supported further simplification. "Many of the states duplicate the federal process," he said. "We will be working towards a single national approvals process covering matters under the federal jurisdiction."

SOURCE




Queensland's brainless medical bureaucracy

One heroic doctor worked 168 days straight. We're killing people, say tired doctors. The tales of incompetence and bureaucratic bloodymindedness from Queensland Health are legion but the disastrous hours many doctors are asked to work is something that has been going on for decades so is probably Queensland Health's worst bureaucratic excess. The EU now stipulates that no doctor may work for more than 48 hours per week. When will Australia catch up?

ANDREW Reedy's devotion to duty is legendary in rural doctor circles. Even his weary colleagues, beat after days and days without a break, say they can't match the man in Millmerran. Dr Reedy said he worked almost six months without a day off in the Darling Downs town in southeast Queensland. He counts them off 168 days between October 2005 and March 2006. And he wasn't sitting around checking runny noses and writing referrals.

Dr Reedy was on call, meaning he could never be more than 15 minutes away from Millmerran's 15-bed hospital in case of an emergency. Queensland Health did not have a doctor to replace him. So the father of four young children, married to a modern version of Superwoman, ploughed on and on and on.

How did he feel towards the end of the marathon? "Tired, fed up, isolated, questioning my marriage stability," Dr Reedy said. "If I wanted a day off, I would have had to walk away and the town would not have had a doctor. "Queensland Health banks significantly on the goodwill of their employees. They know we won't walk away."

There have been times when Dr Reedy has shivered with sickness. But still he has been called in to the hospital. On one occasion, he stood in the waiting room, produced a thermometer and told the gathered patients that if they could top his fever, he would see them immediately. If they could not, they should go home, take Panadol and come back the next day. No one beat Dr Reedy's mark of 39.9 degrees.

Millmerran now has two doctors, enabling Dr Reedy more family time. But it's not much more time. And the fatigue that has bedevilled the minds of Dr Reedy and many of his colleagues remains one of the key issues for the doctors demanding better conditions from Queensland Health.

Dr Reedy can recall the murkiness when his memory has fizzled. And he admits that he has made mistakes. "There have been times when I've had two to three hours' sleep in four days. I've written incorrect drug orders. I've written incorrect drug amounts. Instead of writing 20mg, I've written 20g," Dr Reedy said. "This is why I rely on my nursing staff. I say that I need them to be checking everything that I do."

Wouldn't it be much easier for him to pack it in, head for a bigger place and revel in a cosier private practice? "If I didn't love my job and I didn't care about the people I treated, I would have left long ago," he said.

Dr Reedy's passion for his career extends to his demands for a fair deal as doctors fight for better conditions. "This is not about the monetary value. It's ensuring that we get what we are entitled to. It's about the conditions," he said. "There are some days when they could offer me an extra $10,000 to work for a day and I would say I would rather have my day off."

SOURCE




Law backs breastfeeding mothers

I think a lot of anti-discrimination legislation is oppressive and wrong but I like this bit

REFUSING a woman the right to breastfeed in public is against the law in Queensland, according to the state's Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Susan Booth.

Last week The Sunday Mail revealed one in four people believed breastfeeding in public was unacceptable. But Ms Booth said women had the right to breastfeed their children in public places. "Queensland's anti-discrimination laws protected their right to do so," she said. "Mothers who breastfeed their babies at work, in education and in cafes, restaurants and shops and public buildings are protected from discrimination under section seven of the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Act 1991."

Ms Booth said each year the Commission received several complaints from people about women breastfeeding in public. "Often the complaints are about women breastfeeding in restaurants. Apparently they don't like watching a baby feed when they are eating." she said.

Ms Booth said the Newspoll survey revealed an unacceptable double standard. "There is general consensus amongst health professionals that breast is best for babies."

SOURCE





6 September, 2009

A True Tale of Two Houses

By Sara Hudson

Once upon a time in a community called Baniyala, the houses were old, there weren't enough houses, and there was no house for the school teacher. However, the community didn't have very much money and they didn't know very much about building houses.

So they spoke to someone who knew about building houses to see if he could help them build one. He could, and with the help of his friends, he managed to raise enough money to buy some materials and talked some people into giving materials cheaply. The people in the community helped build the house because they knew if they didn't, it wouldn't get built. The house only cost around $250,000 to build because most of the labour was voluntary.

Meanwhile in another community, people were waiting for the government to build them houses under the new Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program. They didn't consider building the houses themselves because the government had always done everything for them. The government wouldn't build the houses without the community giving them some land.

After lots of meetings, the community agreed to lease some land. Now the government had to find the people to build the houses. This took a while. Finally, they found three organisations to be part of their Alliance. These partners were keen to start building, but the government couldn't decide who was in charge and how much it would cost to build the houses. They argued for a while and then got someone else to manage the program.

By now, there were six layers of managers and $45.54 million spent but not one house had been built. The community was unhappy. Lots of people had come and talked to them about the sort of houses they would like, but no building had started. The government wrote a paper saying they were three months behind but would catch up and build the houses for $450,000 each.

And then the wet season started.

Moral: People should not wait for the government to do something.

Note: In the Northern Territory, people living on communally owned land cannot borrow money from banks to build their own homes because they do not have individual title over the land. Individual 99-year leases would solve this, but they also could raise the money independently of banks and build their own houses. Except they have been led to believe that the government is responsible for housing and that private homeownership is not for them.

The above is part of a press release dated Sept. 4 from the Centre for Independent Studies. Enquiries to cis@cis.org.au. Snail mail: PO Box 92, St Leonards, NSW, Australia 1590. Telephone ph: +61 2 9438 4377 or fax: +61 2 9439 7310




A cloud of unnecessary debt hangs heavy over Australia

By Joe Hockey, the federal shadow treasurer, who says that the Rudd Government must recalibrate its spending, or Australia's future is gloomy

ONE of the biggest mistakes a government can make is to stubbornly continue with a policy that is no longer necessary or beneficial for the nation. This is the position that the Rudd Government finds itself in with its overblown response to the global financial crisis a multibillion-dollar economic stimulus that is being financed with borrowed money.

The latest national accounts show the Australian economy grew in the second quarter of the year by 0.6 per cent. Let's not forget that many factors contributed to getting Australia through this downturn in good shape.

Australia had a strong and well-regulated financial system, largely due to financial reforms undertaken by the Howard government. Our banks were well-capitalised with relatively low exposure to subprime loans. The depreciation of the Australian dollar in the second half of last year helped keep our exports competitive on world markets. China's solid growth continued to support demand for Australian resources and the large and rapid reduction in interest rates boosted household and business spending power.

Most importantly, the Coalition's sound financial management during its 11 years in government left the country with a world-leading balance sheet: no net debt and money in the bank. We entered the global financial crisis as the envy of the developed world. In less than 18 months, the Rudd Government has managed to turn Australia's strong fiscal position upside-down.

From the outset, the Coalition has argued that the Government was spending too much. In what can only be described as a massive over-reaction to events offshore, the Government whipped out the national credit card, announced to the markets that it was increasing its credit limit and committed taxpayers to more than $52 billion in "stimulus" spending and at least another $50 billion increase in spending over four years.

Treasurer Wayne Swan and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd are always quick to talk up the effects of their stimulus package, but at the same time as the Government was pushing the pedal to the metal in its spending, the Reserve Bank was doing likewise with monetary policy. Interest rates dropped, with home borrowers receiving most of the benefits, although small business received only minor rate reductions.

In recent weeks the Reserve Bank has been sending clear signals to the Government that it would soon increase interest rates. Some economists predict a rate rise as early as next month. The Treasurer has said on many occasions that monetary and fiscal policy must work in tandem. Yet now we face the imminent prospect of the two major levers of economic policy heading off in opposite directions.

The Government's stubborn refusal to change the course of its own spending policy has thrown the recalibration burden squarely on to the Reserve Bank. This will mean higher mortgage interest rates. Some financial commentators are forecasting the RBA's cash rate to hit 5.5 per cent to 6 per cent by the end of 2011. If the rate rises are passed on by the banks, it means an interest cost increase of $9000 a year on a $300,000 mortgage an out-of-pocket expense of up to $175 a week for working families.

The increased cost of rate rises on overdrafts may force some small business owners to let staff go. Undoubtedly it will hinder their ability to hire staff as the economy continues to recover. In the face of an improving global and domestic economy, the Government must recalibrate its spending and allow fiscal policy to work in tandem with monetary policy as the economy recovers. The alternative is clearly higher interest rates and higher taxes to pay off the massive debt.

The refusal of the Prime Minister and Treasurer to do so reveals its spending motives as purely political and not in the best economic interests of the nation. The blame for any interest rate rise will therefore lie squarely with the Rudd Government. Its inability to make tough decisions will pose the greatest threat to Australia's recovery.

SOURCE




Biased Leftist researchers can't see Leftist bias

Anybody who thinks the ABC is right wing lives in cloud-cuckoo land. This study just shows how far Left ANU academics are -- which is also no surprise

Newspapers are left wing, television is right wing, and the media as a whole tends to favour the Coalition. And surprisingly, according to researchers from the Australian National University, the ABC Television news is the most pro-Coalition of them all.

Former Liberal prime minister John Howard railed against the alleged left-wing bias of the ABC, but the researchers found Aunty was more likely to favour his side. Researchers pored over news stories from 1996 to 2007 to establish if the media was biased. The results, released today, point to the media being generally middle-of-the-road, with the Coalition tending to win out.

Researchers found journalists were "a centrist bunch". The exception was ABC TV news, which "had a significant slant towards the Coalition". Newspapers were more pro-Labor, while talkback radio and television were more pro-Coalition. Melbourne's The Age newspaper had the most "slanted" pro-Labor headlines. [That bit is correct]

When it came to editorial slant and donations by the media to political parties, the Coalition was laughing all the way to the polls. More than three-quarters of newspaper editorials endorsed the Coalition. The Herald Sun and The West Australian newspapers endorsed them 100 per cent of the time.

Media companies donated significantly more money - 39 per cent more - to the Coalition than to Labor. Every media company that donated favoured the Coalition. Of course, the Coalition was in power for the period studied.

The researchers found that the more a political party spent on advertising with a media outlet, the more favourable the media coverage. "It is consistent with the simple notion that advertising dollars may be an explicit or implicit payment to proprietors for favourable coverage," the study said. But it said the link could also be explained by political parties advertising with media outlets that were slanted in their favour.

Study author and ANU economist Andrew Leigh concluded that journalists were centrists, but editors were "more likely to take a party line". The study suggested "slant is determined at an editorial level rather than through pressure or article selection by journalists".

The researchers measured bias by counting the number of mentions of left-leaning or right-leaning intellectuals. They also rated the "slant" of front-page election stories and headlines, counted electoral endorsements and tallied political donations. The ABC's Radio National was the only media outlet to score dead even when it came to favouring left-leaning or right-leaning intellectuals.

SOURCE




A great way to get people out of their cars

Bus driver suspended after being caught reading while driving. But how long had this been going on? This is just another reason why people feel safer in their cars. And when the drivers concerned get let off with a slap on the wrist, we see how uninterested governments are in protecting the public. It's only their own long lunches that they care about. All the rest is puffery

A SYDNEY bus driver has been suspended without pay after being filmed by a terrified passenger reading a magazine at the wheel, occasionally glancing at the road. The mobile phone footage - taken on the 4am Westbus service from Toongabbie to Parramatta - shows the driver holding the magazine and turning its pages whilst glancing up at the road.

A Westbus spokeswoman said the company was "alarmed'' when it was shown the mobile phone footage, The Daily Telegraph reports. "We immediately downloaded our CCTV footage from that bus,'' she said. "Westbus takes very seriously any compromise to the safety of passengers, drivers and other road users. "We have tried various means to contact the driver today but have been unsuccessful. "We must speak with him prior to resolving this matter, but in the meantime, he has been stood down without pay effective immediately.''

The news comes after The Daily Telegraph revealed last month that a State Transit Authority bus driver reading a book while driving a packed peak-hour service in May was let off with a warning. A passenger who boarded the bus on William St watched as the driver sat stationary - despite having a green traffic light - because he was so enthralled in the novel.

The passenger, who did not want to be named, then photographed the driver for the next 10 minutes as he crawled along Elizabeth St barely looking up from the novel on the steering wheel.

SOURCE




Right to reject medical care upheld

DOCTORS and paramedics must withhold life-saving medical care if a patient has previously made a ''living will'' that clearly states they do not want a specific treatment, such as kidney dialysis or a blood transfusion. A landmark NSW Supreme Court decision has upheld the right to refuse medical treatment, even if the decision was made only in anticipation, and well before treatment was needed.

Doctors' groups have welcomed the decision, saying it allows them to respect a patient's wishes without fear of prosecution or litigation by relatives. In fact doctors and paramedics who treat a patient against their expressed refusal could be charged with assault and battery or be sued for providing unwanted treatment.

The case concerned Mr A, a Jehovah's Witness, who had been admitted to an emergency department in a critical state on July 1. He subsequently developed renal failure and went into a coma, kept alive only by mechanical ventilation and dialysis. On July 14 the hospital discovered that almost a year earlier Mr A had prepared an advanced care directive that specifically refused dialysis. Aware that stopping the treatment would bring on death, the Hunter New England Area Health Service sought an urgent hearing to determine if the directive was valid.

Justice McDougall said that while there was no legislation covering the issue, the common law right to refuse treatment stood - regardless of its basis on religious, social or moral grounds, and whether or not it was a sensible, rational decision based on the relative risks and benefits.

Furthermore, the directive is still valid despite patients not being informed at the time of writing of the consequences of their decision. ''If an advanced care directive is made by a capable adult, and is clear and unambiguous, and extends to the situation at hand, it must be respected,'' he said. ''What my orders did was recognise his right to make that decision it is no recognition of a 'right to die'.'' An exception could be made if a pregnant woman's refusal of treatment would result in the death of her unborn child.

If a doctor suspected that a directive was made under duress, or the person was incapable of making such a decision, health authorities should ask the court to decide if the directive was valid but administer life-saving treatment in the meantime, he said.

The director of medico-legal relations at the Australian Medical Association (NSW), Sarah Dahlenburg, said doctors faced a stressful dilemma when faced with an advanced care directive, especially when relatives wanted treatment to continue. ''A doctor can now feel comfortable telling the family that they are abiding by the wishes of the patient, and if the family wants to do something about it it's them who should take up the legal case,'' she said.

But a partner at TressCox Lawyers, Don Munro, said hospitals should be reluctant to rely on the Mr A judgement. It would be safer to get an urgent declaration from a judge on each case. ''The legal costs involved would be nothing compared a lawsuit from an aggrieved relative,'' he said.

NSW Health said advanced care directives were legally binding and could not be overruled by family members. But they could not contain instructions for euthanasia or assisted suicide.

SOURCE





5 September, 2009

Repeated deceitful sensationalism from Australia's Green Party



The very self-confident but mentally challenged Ms Siewert above

RACHEL Siewert radiated righteous anger last weekend, after flying over the West Atlas oil rig spill in the Timor Sea, and her alarmist comments guaranteed her the kind of media coverage politicians lust after. The West Australian Greens senator said both the Federal Government and the company that owns the rig, PTTEP Australasia, had misled the public by downplaying the extent of the spill. "Literally from horizon to horizon you see the oil on the surface," she told reporters. "I'm extremely worried about the Kimberley coast because this is only 10 nautical miles, which is 20km, from the coast."

Siewert handed out photographs which she said proved her assertions, one of them showing reefs and mangroves on which she said the oil would have a devastating impact. Then she watched with satisfaction as excited journos rushed to file stories.

It was, as it turned out, nonsense. The slick was nowhere near the coast. The nearest oil was actually 148km from the coastline. But when Siewert grudgingly admitted five days later that what she had thought was oil could be algae, there was virtually no media coverage. As a result, many people still believe her original statements were true. All care and no responsibility. Who said it's not easy being Green?

Bob Brown's party is doing well at the moment, picking up support from voters disillusioned by what they see as Labor's failure to deliver on environmental issues. And with Labor not running a candidate, the Greens have high hopes of polling well in the by-election in Bradfield, the Sydney seat being vacated by former Liberal leader Brendan Nelson.

But Siewert's performance on the West Atlas issue raises questions about the Greens' approach. Are they serious, or a group of populist opportunists?

Light crude oil and natural gas began leaking from the rig early on Friday, August 21. According to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, it started mobilising resources within 15 minutes of being notified. The first concern, rightly, was getting workers to safety. Then an AMSA Dornier plane mapped the spill. Two small planes equipped for spraying chemical dispersant were despatched to Truscott aerodrome. Arrangements were made for delivery of up to 50 tonnes of dispersant. Also, a specialist C-130 Hercules was chartered from Singapore by the company to spearhead the dispersant-spraying effort. (It reached Darwin the next day, and was in action by Sunday.)

Reasonable efficiency on Day 1, you might think. But Siewert was on the airwaves saying that, instead of dispersant having to be flown from Victoria, resources to combat such spills should be based in Northern Australia. In fact, the dispersant was stored in Darwin in case of just such an emergency.

Then, Siewert and Brown demanded that the government establish an immediate judicial inquiry to establish how the oil rig was being operated and how the early stages of the clean-up were undertaken. Talk about putting the cart before the horse! Clearly, at that stage, the priorities had to be dealing with the spill's effects and plugging the leak, not drawing up terms of reference and appointing judges. Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson says there will be an independent inquiry after the leak is capped. Sensible.

Siewert's next foray was over the plan to use a mobile rig to drill into the leaking well and plug it with mud. She insisted the Government force PTTEP Australasia to borrow a mobile rig from Woodside rather than bring one from Singapore or Indonesia. The Government, wisely you might think, preferred to follow expert advice that the overseas rig, capable of fixing itself to the ocean floor to provide a more secure platform, was a better option.

If you can get the Woodside rig there even a day or two earlier, that is 3000 barrels of oil per day that they wouldn't be pumping into the environment, the senator argued. That estimate of 3000 barrels of oil a day appears to be another Siewert special. The Government's experts put the amount leaking closer to 400 barrels a day.

And then came Siewert's flight and her headline-grabbing claims. "The slick is at least 90 nautical miles, which is 180km, east-west from the rig," she said. "And it's fair, it's pretty safe, to assume that it's going north and south as well." In contrast, the observations from AMSA's Dornier aircraft on the same day had the spill covering a rectangular area 15 nautical miles by 60 nautical miles. What's more, only 25 per cent of this area was actually affected, mostly by oil streaks and patches of sheen. The heaviest concentration of oil was within three nautical miles of the rig.

No one would deny that the oil spill is a serious matter. Siewert is right to be concerned. She has an obligation, however, to ensure her information is accurate before she charges in. Considered statements would be more impressive than wild assertions.

SOURCE




Folly of Housing Stimulus without New Houses

By Dr Stephen Kirchner

The increase in the First Home Owners Grant is a key element of the federal government?s fiscal stimulus. But the June quarter national accounts show little benefit in terms of new housing supply. Dwelling investment fell 5.5% over the quarter, the third consecutive quarterly decline, to be down 11% on the June quarter last year.

Where the grant did show was in a 10.6% increase in ?ownership transfer costs,? which measures expenditures made in transferring the ownership of existing homes, but adding only one-tenth of a percentage point to GDP growth. The grant was a boon to the vendors of existing homes, with national dwelling prices up 4.5% in the first six months of 2009, based on RP-Rismark data. Sydney prices were up 5.9%, while Melbourne prices were up 6.5%. But where is the new supply needed to make housing more affordable?

Building approvals for private houses have increased by 4.7% since July last year, but this is offset by a 26.2% decline in approvals for private multi-unit dwellings, leaving overall dwelling approvals down 3.9% on July last year. Moreover, much of the recent increase in housing finance and private house approvals represents a bring-forward of activity to take advantage of the grant that will see a future pay-back in the form of weaker activity as the grant is phased out.

In the December quarter last year, Australia saw only 79 dwelling commencements for every 1,000 persons the ABS estimates were added to the resident population. This is the lowest ratio of commencements to the estimated change in resident population for any quarter going back to 1984, the period for which we have comparable data.

With annual population growth running at just under 2% at the end of last year, Australia does not need to further stimulate housing demand. It needs to start addressing what RBA Governor Glenn Stevens has called the ?serious supply-side impediments? to making housing more affordable.

The above is part of a press release dated Sept. 4 from the Centre for Independent Studies. Enquiries to cis@cis.org.au. Snail mail: PO Box 92, St Leonards, NSW, Australia 1590. Telephone ph: +61 2 9438 4377 or fax: +61 2 9439 7310




Bosses hit new Leftist unfair dismissal laws use as costly

EMPLOYERS have criticised the operation of Labor's new unfair dismissal laws, fearing claims will balloon out to 10,000 a year, a level pre-dating John Howard's Work Choices regime. While the new system is just two months old, employers claim a new telephone conciliation system aimed at resolving claims is being dominated by lawyers, with suggestions the cost of settlements has increased.

The business concern comes as unions attacked a new set of modern awards released yesterday, warning proposals for the offshore oil and gas industries risked "industrial chaos" in the vital sector. Union leader Paul Howes will demand Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard intervene on behalf of workers, accusing the Australian Industrial Relations Commission of allowing employers to exploit the current economic climate to have entitlements cut.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry said the number of unfair dismissal cases being filed with Fair Work Australia showed "that there's probably going to be at least 10,000 dismissal cases a year". "That would be about the number that was there prior to Work Choices," ACCI chief executive Peter Anderson said. "The greater problem will be if the system puts employers to costs and expense which is comparable to the previous system. The number of cases should fall, not remain the same or grow."

A spokeswoman for Ms Gillard, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, last night hit back at the claims, saying the "government understands that there are some in the business community who wanted Work Choices retained". The spokeswoman said there had been 1233 unfair dismissal applications made nationally since July, and 417 claims had already been resolved.

When Mr Howard introduced Work Choices in 2006, he removed unfair dismissal rights from most workers by exempting firms with fewer than 100 employees from claims. Labor has largely restored the Paul Keating model, but extended the probation period for new workers in small businesses.

Mr Anderson said employers were concerned that the new conciliation process was dominated by legal representatives. "The practical impact of the conciliation process is it has a substantial bearing of what ultimately is paid by way of 'go away' money," he said. "There have been representations that price settlements have gone up because (the conciliator) had not been able to directly express an opinion where the employer felt if he had expressed an opinion to the worker, then the worker would have withdrawn the application."

Ms Gillard's spokeswoman said "the majority of cases have actually been resolved successfully at this stage, which means employers don't have to leave their businesses to attend a formal hearing, reducing costs and inconvenience for all parties involved".

The Australian Industry Group said its experience had been reasonably positive. The AIRC yesterday released stage three of the government's award overhaul, with the ACTU claiming thousands of workers would be left worse off.

Mr Howes, national secretary of the Australian Workers Union, said the new award for the offshore oil and gas industries proposed dramatic changes to pay rates and rosters. For decades, employees have worked a two weeks on and two weeks off roster that required a majority workforce vote to be changed. But the commission had proposed that the roster could now be altered at the discretion of the employer. Mr Howes said casual employees also stood to have their pay cut by 75 per cent.

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Dispassionate history an impossible ideal?

That it is difficult does not excuse the ideological abuses of it that so frequently come from the Left. As Windschuttle has shown in detail, a lot of "history" emanating from Leftist historians is just a farrago of lies. We CAN do better than that -- JR

KEVIN Rudd's speech launching Thomas Keneally's Australians: Origins to Eureka has left me scratching my head. It is an odd piece. For example, it includes the statement: "The love for history is, I believe, the handmaiden of country." I have thought hard about what this means but I still do not have a clue; it is just meaningless sludge.

Rudd wants to go beyond "the arid intellectual debates of the history wars". But surely the study of history moves forward only when it engages in intellectual debates, when present interpretations of the evidence are challenged and their inadequacies exposed. Rudd wants to bring the two interpretations, the "black armband" and the "three cheers", together in a love-in. He wants a history that "unapologetically celebrates the good. A history that unapologetically exposes the bad." The problem with this is that he is perpetuating the facile view that the study of history is all about making moral judgments. For him, history is about alternately cheering and booing the past.

This was, in fact, the starting point for the history wars. Some historians in the 1970s and 80s forgot that their role was to inquire into the past and provide as accurate a view of it as possible. For them history was the handmaiden of politics, to be used to support contemporary causes.

Many of those historians who practised the black-armband approach acted as if they were the modern equivalent of Old Testament prophets. They saw themselves as the conscience of the nation. Their role was to scourge the nation by presenting its past in the worst light so that it would repent and right its wrongs.

Manning Clark was the first to don the prophet's mantle. But it was in the area of Aboriginal history, with Henry Reynolds in the lead, that this approach really took off. Historians could influence contemporary politics by making people ashamed of the past. In reaction, the three-cheers brigade, led by Geoffrey Blainey, said: "Hang on, Australia wasn't such a bad place. There were a lot of good people who did good things. After all, they built Australia. We should celebrate their achievements."

The history wars to which Rudd refers long predate the prime ministership of John Howard. They came to public prominence because the agenda of the black-armband brigade was taken up by Paul Keating as part of his "big picture". Their willingness to use history for political purposes provided useful ammunition for Keating on matters such as indigenous affairs, the republic and multiculturalism. Howard was essentially reacting to what he saw as the extreme nature of Keating and his ideological supporters. Rather than going beyond this division, Rudd's approach indicates that he is intent on entrenching it. He seems to think that historical inquiry consists of a constant cycle of celebration and condemnation.

This is not the purpose of studying history. Historians seek to understand the past, to gain an appreciation of how and why people acted in the way they did.

Historians who begin with moral presuppositions, whose concerns are primarily with contemporary political issues, will invariably fail in their endeavour. They will lack the empathy to understand the actions of humans who were quite different from them.

The division of the past into good and bad events is futile. Sometimes bad things happen through no one's fault. For example, the British settlers were not responsible for the diseases they carried with them that wreaked havoc in the indigenous population.

It is not the job of the historian to right the wrongs of the past. They are not prophets, nor will the nation be redeemed if it collectively repents the actions of a past generation. Responsibility for actions in the past lies with the individuals who made them, not with those living decades or centuries after those actions.

The reduction of historical inquiry to moral instruction is not the only piece of muddled thinking in Rudd's speech. He claims that "history is the memory of a nation", that memory "informs and shapes behaviour" and that this "collective memory of the past" is the foundation on which the future is built.

The only problem is that memory is not history. Memory is simply unreliable. The role of the historian is to interrogate the past, to inquire and investigate, to check if the "memory of the nation" is true or false. Their job is to establish, as far as they can, what actually happened. Often they will disagree because they will interpret the available evidence in different ways.

In this sense there will always be history wars because historians, as with scientists, will invariably differ about the interpretation of evidence. This sort of disagreement is a healthy aspect of a liberal democratic society.

Unfortunately, Rudd's speech does nothing to assist Australia's history wars to move from an unhealthy obsession with cheering or booing the past to one in which there is informed intellectual debate. If anything, his speech encourages the unhelpful idea that the real purpose of history is serve moral and political concerns.

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Australians 20 per cent more likely to get married than Britons

The number of Australians tying the knot has hit a 20-year high, throwing the equivalent numbers in Britain into stark relief. Figures released by the Australian bureau of statistics on Monday suggested that 118,756 marriages took place there last year, up 2.1 per cent on 2007 and up 12 per cent on a low of 104,000 in 2001. Australia has an estimated population of about 21,885,000. By comparison, there were 270,000 marriages in 2007 in Britain, from a population of roughly 60.5 million at the time (it is now estimated to be closer to 61 million). This was the lowest since statistics on this subject were first compiled in 1862. It puts the marriage rate an estimated 19 per cent higher in Australia than in the UK.

Frank Bongiorno, a senior lecturer in Australian studies at Kings College London, said that the Australian propensity to settle down may be linked to financial inducements. There is government encouragement in Australia to form households in the shape of first time home buyers grants. And then there are grants for when children are born. Both of those things would tend to encourage people to marry. When I took advantage of it the home buyers grant was about $7,000 but now I believe its much higher up to about $21,000 I think.

There has been concern in Australia about an aging population how it would support the pensions of the increasing number of elderly. You heard more about it five years ago than you do at the moment. But perhaps the policies it led to have fed through and caused this boom.

Bernard Salt, a demographer for financial consultants KPMG in Melbourne, said that the marriage rates were least part of this trend. The divorce rates are also down and the birth rate is up according to the last set of stats, which were for 2008. The economy in Australia didnt really start to take a hit of any kind until earlier this year, in January or February. So it might be that some of this is due to optimism about peoples prospects and their lives in general. Their optimism might have made them more prepared to take on a genetic liability in the form of a child. Plus I think that the present generation of twenty-somethings are more conservative than their parents were. They are into serial monogamy and are less promiscuous.

The data, which were released on Monday, also suggested that 80 per cent of couples lived together before heading down the aisle.

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4 September, 2009

A POLICE GOON ROUNDUP

Three current articles below

Tasers unsafe in the hands of Australian police goons

They are a valuable alternative to gunfire but police use them indiscriminately -- meaning that a valuable tool may have to be taken away from them in order to protect the public from a rogue police force. Can you imagine a cop firing one 28 times into a man lying on the ground? No wonder the guy died of a heart attack! Such an abuse is of course well outside all guidelines for use of the weapon. The cop concerned should be in jail for manslaughter

The controversial Taser stun guns may be scrapped in Queensland after a review warned that the weapons could kill and could not be modified to prevent a repeat of the death of a man this year when he was shot 28 times with the 50,000-volt device.

The joint Crime and Misconduct Commission-police review, launched after the June heart-attack death of north Queensland man Antonio Galeano, has ordered an overhaul of police training and operational policy, requiring the stun guns to be used only when there is a "risk of serious injury".

The review, to be released today and obtained exclusively by The Australian, marks the first time an Australian authority has recognised the possibility the stun guns can injure or kill, especially when fired repeatedly at a person. "The possibility of Taser use causing or contributing to death is possible and cannot be ruled out," the review warns.

The Arizona-based manufacturers have repeatedly denied the weapons can kill.

The report is expected to influence the nationwide rollout of Tasers, amid mounting evidence the weapons are being used by police as an everyday compliance tool and not as a non-lethal substitute for a standard gun in high-risk situations.

Sources have told The Australian a coronial investigation has concluded that amphetamine addict Galeano, 39, was deliberately shot 28 times, each time for a duration of up to five seconds, after he confronted police with a steel bar at his unit in Brandon, south of Townsville. It was initially claimed the stun gun might have malfunctioned or that there was a glitch with the built-in computer system recording the number and duration of shots from the weapon.

But investigators will allege the policeman repeatedly Tasered Galeano, who dropped the metal bar after the first few shots, while he lay unarmed and writhing on the floor. He died minutes later while still in handcuffs.

Civil liberties lawyers called for a criminal investigation into the death of Galeano in June, when The Australian revealed he had been shot 28 times. Until then, police had claimed he had been shot only two or three times.

It will be announced today that the freeze on the rollout of Tasers to 3000 general duties officers -- ordered after the death of Galeano -- will be maintained while police move to implement the recommendations of the review.

Meanwhile, the 1200 Tasers with the Queensland police force will remain in operation. But the use of Tasers is under threat, with the CMC recommending they be modified so a single shot lasts no longer than five seconds, and that a limit be put on the numbers of times the weapon can be fired. Police have been told by the manufacturer that "at this stage, this is not feasible with the Taser X26" -- the $15,000-a-piece weapon being used in Queensland and around Australia.

The review recommends that Queensland Police fit an automatic video device on the weapons, which records every time the Taser is pulled from its holster. Queensland police last year refused to buy the weapons with the optional "Tasercam" because of the cost.

Civil liberties lawyer Scott McDougall, director of the Caxton Legal Centre, said police should be forced to table in parliament every deployment of the stun guns in Queensland. He said an independent medical study should be conducted on the weapons, and a freeze on their use should be implemented until the findings were released. "We have clients who were Tasered who were not offering any resistance to police," he said. "Fears that Tasers would be used as a compliance tool may have come to fruition around Australia."

SOURCE

'Urinating' Queensland cop shocks onlookers

There really are some charmers in the Qld. police

A QUEENSLAND police officer is being investigated after allegedly being caught urinating on a poker machine inside a Sunshine Coast nightclub last night. The officer has been stood down pending the outcome of an investigation. This follows another police officer being stood down after allegedly clocking 223km/h during an authorised pursuit.

In the latest incident, a group of off-duty police officers were celebrating the departure of several colleagues from the force at the Blue Bar at Alexandra Headland, when it is understood an officer was caught urinating on a poker machine inside the premises. CCTV footage from the club has been seized and it is understood the alleged incident was captured on a mobile phone.

Senior officers from the region are investigating the allegations, with oversight from the Ethical Standards Command. The Crime and Misconduct Commission has also been informed about the investigation. Staff at the Blue Bar refused to comment about the incident.

SOURCE

Vindictive NSW police

What a charming lot they are!

Bikie solicitor Lesly Randle may sue police after being thrown in a cell for more than an hour, manhandled and denied access to a telephone - all for not having her driver's licence.



In an uncomfortable role reversal for Ms Randle, who represents Comanchero motorcycle gang members charged over the airport brawl earlier this year, she yesterday faced court as a defendant. Police charged Ms Randle with using a mobile phone when not permitted, driving while not carrying a licence and resisting or hindering police in execution of their duty. But with a two-day hearing due to begin yesterday, police dropped the resisting arrest and licence charge in return for a guilty plea to the mobile phone offence.

Ms Randle yesterday told The Daily Telegraph the events that day had left her "upset, disturbed and absolutely humiliated". She admitted speaking on her mobile phone as she parked outside Waverley Local Court but claimed Senior Constable Adam Staples - who had been having a cigarette nearby - then threatened to "smash" her window if she did not open it and produce her licence. She was ultimately "grabbed" by the arms and dragged in front of the courthouse, in a manner which witnesses described as her being propelled along the footpath.

She was locked in a jail cell with police refusing access to a phone. "I informed the police I was due in court next door for a bail application and due to appear in the Supreme Court at 2pm so it was important that the relevant people be contacted," she said yesterday. However, Ms Randle said a female officer at Waverley simply laughed and told another officer: "Go tell (Ms Randle's client) his lawyer's locked up and he won't be getting bail today."

When Ms Randle was finally let out, on the express orders of the local court magistrate who was informed of the situation by Ms Randle's barrister partner John Korn, she claimed she was pushed twice by officers as she was released.

Ms Randle, who represents most of the Comanchero accused over the fatal brawl at Sydney Airport earlier this year, subpoenaed CCTV footage which she claimed supported her assertions against the police. Magistrate John Favretto fined her $238 plus $76 court costs.

Outside the court, Ms Randle said she was considering a civil suit against police. "It's quite disgraceful that a police officer in the absence of any lawful basis can take somebody's liberty and refuse them access to a telephone at a time when there were only one or two other people in custody," she said.

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Stupid Leftist workplace laws exposed for what they are

Workers and bosses 'worse off'

The Rudd government's award overhaul will be delayed by six months, after the Australian Industrial Relations Commission admitted the revamp would increase costs for employers and potentially cut the take-home pay of workers. The commission ruling undermines Julia Gillard's long-stated claim that the creation of the modern award system was not intended to increase costs for employers or disadvantage employees.

A commission full bench, headed by its president, Geoff Giudice, yesterday found the government's ives were "potentially competing". "It is clear that some award conditions will increase, leading to cost increases, and others will decrease, leading to potential disadvantage for employees, depending upon the current award coverage," the full bench said.

Employers and unions criticised the process yesterday, saying companies and workers would be left worse off. Industry groups said the commission had "brought out into the open" the fact that, despite Ms Gillard's original undertaking, there would be additional costs on business.

The IRC ruling is the latest in a series of setbacks for the government's award modernisation plans. The Workplace Relations Minister was forced to make special provisions for the restaurant and horticulture industries, which had warned that the government's plans would bankrupt many businesses that employed people on weekends and in the evenings.

The ACTU said that, under the IRC's ruling, low-paid workers would effectively suffer a reduction in their take-home pay from January but be forced to wait five years before receiving the full benefits of increased award wages and penalty rates.

Ms Gillard's office last night pointed to part of the commission's decision, which it said made clear the government's "competing ives" would be dealt with through the "formulation of appropriate transitional provisions".

Limiting the proposed five-year transitional arrangements for the new awards to matters affecting pay, the commission said it had decided to shift the start-up date of the new system from January 1 next year to July 1, to allow employers and employees to come to terms with changes that might have a "significant impact".

Increased costs for employers would be phased in through five annual instalments, each equivalent to 20 per cent of the proposed overall increase. Some but not all employers would be able to absorb additional costs into existing over-award payments while workers would be able to apply for "take-home pay orders" where they believed they were worse off.

Employers expressed further concern after the commission stated it wanted to provide protection for new employees from a reduction in take-home pay as a result of the transition provisions. Industry groups said they would seek clarification from the full bench. The commission said the impact of the award revamp on particular sectors of the economy was a matter of great significance in the process. "On the material presented to us concerning the national and international economy, it is clear that we should take a cautious approach where cost increases are in prospect," the full bench said. "We have decided that any costs increases resulting from the introduction of modern awards should be spread over a lengthy period."

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that, even with the transitional arrangements, the new national industrial awards would "have a considerable sting for many employers in industries traditionally covered by state industrial relations systems".

The chamber's chief executive, Peter Anderson, said: "Recognition by the tribunal that current economic conditions warrant a cautious approach in making new awards is welcome. However, the tribunal's conclusion that 'cost increases are in prospect' will disappoint employers who have relied on government assurances that the process was not intended to increase their costs."

ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence accused some employer groups of running a "scurrilous" campaign to overstate the impact of the award changes. He said unions were disappointed that thousands of low-paid workers would have to endure a five-year transition period before they saw the full benefit of a lift in their award wages and penalty rates. "Unions are concerned that the transition provisions are limited to wages and some penalty rates will not apply to workers' allowances and other job conditions," Mr Lawrence said. "This means that many workers will see cuts to their take-home pay through these award modernisation changes. These reductions in allowances and changes to job conditions will come into effect from January 1, 2010, and result in immediate losses for workers." Mr Lawrence said the loss for workers from January next year unfairly contrasted with the five-year phase-in for rises in wages and penalty rates.

The Australian National Retail Association said the acknowledgment from the commission that employment costs would be forced up was long overdue. "Award modernisation has failed to deliver a cost-neutral outcome," said the association's chief executive, Margy Osmond. "On Sundays alone, the cost of retail employment will rise by $100 million. "The transitional arrangements are not unreasonable. The phase-in of higher costs in five equal annual increments is better than the original proposal. "We also welcome the six-month reprieve before higher penalty and casual rates are phased in from July next year."

As Ms Gillard is overseas, Acting Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Mark Arbib last night released a statement saying the commission had done "an exceptional job". "The government welcomes the decision of the AIRC to provide for an orderly and measured transition to the new modern and simple awards," Senator Arbib said. "The government is pleased that the commission has decided to utilise the full five-year transition period provided in the legislation and to phase in key award changes in simple equal instalments. "The government is on track to deliver a profound reform for Australian employers and employees that has defeated governments for several decades."

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What a cock-up!

More badly-needed medical schools graduates are coming out and finding that there are no training places in hospitals for them. A medical degree MUST be supplemented by "hands on" training but places for such training have not been provided for all graduates. Instead we import poorly trained doctors from India and other third-world countries! Yet again, Australia is catching the British disease

PUBLIC hospitals across the country will be forced to close their internships to hundreds of overseas-born, locally trained medical graduates in three years, despite the nation's desperate need for doctors. As Australia prepares to spend $18million trying to recruit health workers from overseas, it has already begun turning away willing interns from the ranks of international students from Australian medical schools because of a lack of training funding and resources.

The Australian Medical Students' Association expects no state will be able to offer internships to international students with Australian medical degrees by 2012, when domestic medical graduate numbers peak. AMSA president Tiffany Fulde said the number of internships available after graduation had not kept pace with the explosive growth in the number of domestic medical students, let alone those from overseas.

About 2920 domestic and 517 international students are expected to graduate from Australian medical schools in 2012, up 60 per cent and 22 per cent respectively on last year's levels. "We're just in front of this wave of students coming through and all the predictions show it's going to be really tough to find enough (intern) spots in 2012," Ms Fulde said.

Overseas students who had trained for up to six years in Australian universities and paid $200,000 in tuition fees would not be the only casualties, she said. The health system would also forgo a cohort of committed graduates trained to Australian standards at a time of chronic health workforce shortages. "Having invested in them and trained them, we send them away and then we spend more money recruiting people from overseas," Ms Fulde said.

Federal and state governments have promised a new national body, Health Workforce Australia, to better co-ordinate the workforce, starting with a $18m international recruitment campaign. But The Australian revealed this week that the agency is one of several new health workforce initiatives, ranging from under-subscribed nursing undergraduate places to return-to-work schemes, that are struggling to get off the ground.

Fourth-year University of Western Australia medical student Nishant Hemanth from Singapore said emotions were running high among overseas students over the poor planning that had led to the internship crisis. "Many were extremely disappointed and shocked. They thought this was a severe case of discrimination," she said.

Most sixth-year international medical students in Western Australia this year will go without an internship offer from their state health department for the first time, and NSW and Queensland have also struggled to meet demand.

SOURCE




More public hospital negligence

Man 'stuck' to bed pan after being left on it for a long period

A SYDNEY hospital is searching for answers after an elderly patient was allegedly left on a bed pan for five days and required surgery to remove rotting skin from his buttocks. However, Dr Matthew Peters, who heads the respiratory ward at Concord Hospital in Sydney's west, is doubtful about some aspects of the story.

The man remains there as a patient. It is understood the 80-year-old man has limited English skills and is a large person.

"It is true that he was on a bed pan for a period ... and he does have a bedsore and that bedsore has complicated his stay," Dr Peters told Fairfax Radio Network. "But it's not even in the ball park of five days. "He was sick before all this started. He remains sick now but he is improving."

Dr Peters challenged a Fairfax newspaper report that said the patient's skin was decayed so much that the bedpan was stuck to him. "I believe that's erroneous," he said. "He certainly has a nasty bed sore on his buttock. "I've never seen an incident of this nature in a very long time in hospital medicine." The man did require surgery "to cut away some of the tissue that had begun to die off", he said.

Dr Peters also said hospital staff were working to determine how the injury occurred. "It is a little bit unclear - the most plausible explanation is a simple error of communication or handover," he said.

NSW Premier Nathan Rees told reporters in Sydney that the incident had been referred to the Health Care Complaints Commission for investigation.

SOURCE




School wins right to hire male handler for aggressive student

Except for the complete destruction of school discipline by Leftist "educators", this would never have arisen. It is a disgrace that anyone was ever exposed to danger by an unrestrained monster like this. Plenty of thrashings in response to his acts of violence would have slown him down and taught him the badly-needed lesson that violence begets violence

A SCHOOL has won permission for a male handler for a primary pupil so violent the principal fears for the safety of teachers and other pupils. The special school in Melbourne's eastern suburbs was given an exemption by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to employ a man to supervise the youngster, because he is too dangerous for women. The school will now spend between $35,000 and $42,000 a year on the "education support" officer, the Herald Sun reports.

The youngster's "extreme" violent behaviour is escalating, despite intensive counselling and constant talks with the boy's family and protective services officers, the tribunal heard. The boy, not yet even a teenager, is so unruly he is allowed to use the playground only for a limited time in school breaks and under one-on-one supervision. He was also regularly hauled from class because of the disruption he caused, the school's application to the tribunal stated. The age of the youngster has not been released, but the school only accepts children aged five to 12.

The school contended it was "very difficult to provide a safe work environment for our staff, most of whom are female, and for our student population, without a male education support officer".

VCAT gave the school an exemption from anti-discrimination laws so that it could specifically employ a man for the role on August 26. "This student has exhibited extreme violence both within and outside school grounds," VCAT deputy president Anne Coghlan said in the tribunal's decision. "He demonstrates threatening and aggressive behaviour towards students and staff."

While the school accepts students with "severe behaviour disorders", its assistant principal confirmed the latest measure was a first. "This is the first time we have ever done it, that's purely something we decided as a staff to do," she said. "Within our school we have mainly women (staff)."

Australian Education Union state president Mary Bluett said in rare cases some special schools had to take the measure for extremely difficult students. "They get to a size and physical strength that it is a challenge to restrain them for both their protection and the protection of others," she said. "What it is, on the face of it, is an enormous effort by the school to maintain the student in their care and education. "At least we are not back in the dark days where these children were actually shut away. "In these cases we have to make every effort to ensure it is a safe working environment for teachers and other children."

Department of Education and Early Childhood Development spokeswoman Karen Harbutt said the department backed the school's decision.

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3 September, 2009

Victorian IVF clinics ask patients for police checks

Infertility is a medical problem. Why are people being harassed because of their medical condition? Will people having treatment for (say) high blood-pressure be singled out next? It would make as much sense. There is Leftist misanthropy behind this

WOULD-BE parents are outraged at new laws forcing them to prove they are not pedophiles or child abusers before they undergo fertility treatment. Victorian IVF clinics have started asking patients to submit to police checks ensuring they are fit to be parents. The new law will affect about 5000 couples each year.

Briony and Lew Sanelle, who completed police checks three weeks ago so they could start trying to have their second child through IVF, said they were insulted by the discrimination. "My friends trying to have babies don't have to have a police check and go and talk to their doctor before they are given the go-ahead to have a baby, so why should I?" Ms Sanelle said. "People who have a shady past who they are trying to direct this at do not have to go through this to conceive naturally . . . this is discrimination."

Tam and Brenton Ward were asked by Melbourne IVF to undertake checks this week. They cannot understand why couples having fertility treatment were singled out. Having already experienced the wonders of IVF with a daughter born 17 months ago, Mr Ward said the emotional and financial hardship meant IVF parents would be least likely to harm or neglect children. "If it applied to the whole community I would not mind, but why single out people like us in particular, especially when we have been through such a rigorous process already - through numerous counsellors, doctors and everyone else."

The requirements were included in the Reproductive Treatment Bill passed by State Parliament last December, which paved the way for single women and lesbians to access IVF. Although the regulations were proclaimed on June 1 they have not yet been enacted because the Government does not have the resources to deal with hundreds of child protection record checks it demands. But clinics are asking patients to volunteer for checks to avoid hold-ups when the laws are adopted, which industry experts expect to happen between November and January 1.

IFV pioneer Prof Gab Kovacs, from Monash IVF, said his patients were stunned when told they would have to undergo police checks. "It is a stupid regulation, a stupid law and it is not evidence-based," Prof Kovacs said. Melbourne IVF chairman Dr Lyndon Hale said the checks were discriminatory and unfair.

A report from the Victorian Law Reform Commission recommends people should be barred from IVF if they have convictions for serious sexual or violent offences, have had children taken from their care, or are assessed as a potential risk to children. [On what basis did they recommend that? How many cases of abused IVF children have there been? None, I suspect. They might as logically bar ALL people from hospitals until they have police checks]

SOURCE




Another Queensland police thug

Law enforcement by a senior cop who has no respect for the law?? He has already killed two people but he apparently wanted another "scalp"



A POLICEMAN has been allegedly clocked doing 223km/h during an unauthorised pursuit, six years after being involved in a wild chase in which two men were killed. Senior-Sergeant Bryan Eaton is being investigated for allegedly racing after a speeding car along a busy section of the Bruce Highway near Brisbane 11 days ago without flashing lights and sirens or approval. The car got away but the pursuit was captured on camera.

Sen-Sgt Eaton has since been stood down as officer-in-charge of the Pine Rivers traffic branch pending an investigation by Ethical Standards Command. The matter also has been referred to the Crime and Misconduct Commission.

The Queensland Police Service changed its pursuit policy in May 2004 after the deaths of Coen stockmen Andrew Hill, 33, and Alan Toohey, 49, on Anzac Day the previous year. Both men died when their unregistered and unroadworthy car crashed into a creek bed and a police four-wheel-drive driven by Sen-Sgt Eaton ploughed into them. A coronial inquest was told the police vehicle reached about 75km/h on a dirt road and in bad light in pursuit of the men, who were driving a "bull-chaser".

State Coroner Michael Barnes found Sen-Sgt Eaton had driven in a "dangerous manner, with little regard for the safety of the occupants of the car he was chasing". Mr Barnes did not recommend charges because he found a reasonable person would not have foreseen the "chain of events that led to the deaths". But he urged "a more restrictive pursuit policy". After the inquest, Hill's widow, Camilla, attacked the decision not to charge Sen-Sgt Eaton, claiming traffic officers could "get away with murder".

The pursuit policy has undergone further modification since 2004, and yesterday a Queensland Police Service spokesman said every pursuit and attempted intercept was closely monitored "to ensure adherence to these policies". Under current policy, officers must immediately abandon a chase if it creates an unacceptable risk to the safety of any person. Officers also must inform police communications of the pursuit and follow their instructions.

Queensland Police Union president Ian Leavers said their best advice to officers was to avoid police chases. "Our union has long recommended to our members that they do not pursue offenders under any circumstances because of the lack of legislative protection and the attitude of the State Coroner should a tragic incident occur," Mr Leavers said. He said earlier this year that police felt extremely frustrated and hamstrung by the pursuit policy, which was seen as preventing them from catching offenders. "I see a lot of anger from police around the state because they are not allowed to do their job," he said.

Sen-Sgt Eaton is continuing to work for the police service in the Metropolitan North regional office. An estimated 650 police chases are conducted by Queensland police each year.

SOURCE




Yet another Queensland ambulance failure

Long delay forces heart victim to take a taxi. A taxi arrived in 5 minutes: The contrast between a government service and a private one. And the government service was the urgent one!

A PETRIE man with a serious heart condition took a taxi to the hospital after he gave up waiting more than an hour for a Queensland ambulance. John Chatfield said his blood pressure soared, his heart was racing and he was shaking with fever when his wife Gaye rang 000 at about midnight on August 9. She called twice more, without being given a projected response time. After waiting an hour and a quarter, they called a taxi. It arrived in five minutes.

"If you have a heart condition, you probably shouldn't drive to a hospital as anything could happen," said Mr Chatfield, who had seven-hour heart surgery three years ago and minor surgery earlier this year. "Speed is important. They need to get their act together."

Wrapped in a blanket, Mr Chatfield rode 45 minutes in the taxi to a private Brisbane hospital, where he was admitted straight away. "I was ill. It wasn't a great ride," he said. He was in hospital for three days battling a bad virus.

The Queensland Ambulance Service said it categorised Mr Chatfield "Code 2 B" meaning a response time of up to an hour. Gaye Chatfield said that if she had been told about the response time, she would have driven him or called the taxi sooner. "Even after the last phone call they couldn't tell me how long it could be. I had in my mind that I could have been another hour," she said. "It wasn't very well handled."

She told dispatchers about her husband's cardiac history, but not about his surgery because she wasn't asked. Instead she was told to turn on lights and put pets away, which led her to believe the ambulance was coming soon.

QAS said more important calls were being handled, and the dispatch category was "appropriate." It said it "regretted" the delay and said it would apologise. [big deal!]

Mr Chatfield does not blame the paramedics or line staff at QAS, but thinks QAS management needs to lift its game. He didn't see his case as a non-emergency, considering his heart problems. "I was getting worried I can tell you," he said.

QAS said dispatchers didn't give callers response times. "QAS works in a dynamic environment and it would not be realistic to provide time frames," a spokeswoman said.

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Young mother victimized by welfare officials for no good reason

Evidence so flimsy that the charges were withdrawn by the prosecution. Why could not competent medical evidence have been sought immediately?

An Ipswich teenage mother - forced to give up her baby for more than 18 months - was overcome with relief when charges alleging she shook her daughter in frustration were finally dropped. The prosecution withdrew its case against the woman after medical testimony revealed it was highly unlikely the baby's serious head injury was the result of being shaken and could have occurred during her birth.

Outside court, barrister Steve Kissick, who represented the mother, said his client was delighted with the result. The young mum was now keen to be reunited with her daughter whom she had been barred from looking after for three-quarters of the child's life. He said the child had been placed in the care of her grandmother after her mother was charged. "(My client) is a lovely young girl and this past year-and-a-half has been terribly upsetting for her," he said. "She is just happy this is now all over and looks forward to getting her daughter back and being a good mother to her."

Mr Kissick said the father of the child played no active role in the child's upbringing, so it was important the child be reunited with her mother. The young mum declined to comment.

The woman, now aged 20, from Collingwood Park, pleaded not guilty in the Brisbane District Court to one count of causing grievous bodily harm to her prematurely born baby at Ipswich between December 2007 and January 2008.

Prosecutor Glen Cash told the court this week that the woman who cannot be named to protect her child's identity admitted to an Ipswich Hospital nurse that she shook her baby briefly, but not violently, when she became frustrated. Mr Cash said the child was first referred to the Ipswich Hospital in January, 2008, with an "abnormally" large head and was found to have fluid on both sides of her brain.

The baby was then transferred to Brisbane's Mater Hospital so the fluid could be drained and has since made a full recovery. But yesterday Mr Cash withdrew the charge against the woman, after the jury heard medical evidence which suggested the baby might have received the head injury during her premature birth. The baby was born via a caesarean section at the Ipswich Hospital in July 2007.

Judge Helen O'Sullivan discharged the mother after Mr Cash formally withdrew the criminal charge.

SOURCE




A Fascist welfare bureaucracy in the Northern Territory

Five days after Rachel Pazos' father died, authorities arrived at the home he had shared with his 14-year-old daughter in Darwin and kicked her out.

Rachel was still struggling yesterday to come to terms with her father's death. Her father had paid rent on their housing commission unit in The Narrows for the next six weeks. But when she returned to the unit, she found officials from Territory Housing changing the locks and boarding the door. It is believed they gave her 10 minutes to pack her bags at the home she had lived in for the past four years.

"I only just found out that my dad passed away," she told the ABC as she sat on a suitcase outside the locked unit.

Clothes still hung on the backyard washing line.

"I'm only 14 and I don't really need all this stress." The teenager said the rest of her family lived in Queensland and she was not in a position to call them for help.

Despite this, it has been reported the Housing Department officials did not phone any support services or government agencies when they evicted the girl. But executive director of the Housing Department's Darwin region, Fiona Chamberlain, said the department had been in contact with police.

She made an unreserved apology today, saying the teenager should never have been thrown out. "We made a mistake and we apologise to the family. An immediate investigation will take place and this will not happen again. "There has been serious error of judgment by our staff."

Country Liberals member for Fong Lim, Dave Tollner, said the actions of the officials were "absolutely outrageous". "I just cannot believe that a government department can kick a 14-year-old girl out onto the street with no means to look after herself whatsoever," he said. "Do these people have a heart?"

Mr Tollner said all of the family's possessions were still in the unit when he visited Rachel, who was crying in the front. Ms Chamberlain said the boarding had been removed and the girl would be allowed to move back in.

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No visas, boys? Welcome to Australia

The Leftist Federal government short-circuits its own already pathetic checks on whether people are genuine refugees or not. "Unskilled economic migrants from third world countries are welcome" is the clear intention and message. Yet we need an influx of brutal Muslim Afghans like a hole in the head

THE Rudd government last night moved to overturn John Howard's controversial policy of processing all asylum-seekers off-shore, allowing a group of detained Afghan youths to leave Christmas Island and arrive on mainland Australia without visas.

In an unprecedented move that coincided with the arrival of yet another boat of asylum-seekers at the Indian Ocean territory last night, the 10 boys boarded a chartered Qantas jet carrying 56 newly recognised Afghan refugees from the island to Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne.

The move, confirmed by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship last night, was welcomed by the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre as a "substantial departure from the previous policy of condemning everyone including children to detention on Christmas Island".

The flight departed Christmas Island, which was excised from Australia's migration zone in 2003 by the Howard government, just hours before a further 52 asylum-seekers and three crew landed on the island after being intercepted by HMAS Ararat near Ashmore Reef on Saturday.

There are now 665 people in immigration detention on Christmas Island; 571 of them are single men being kept at the Howard government's $400 million immigration detention centre on the island's northwest point; 62 are living in a converted construction workers' compound; and 32 are in houses on the island in what is termed "community detention".

The 10 boys allowed to leave the island yesterday arrived at the island on May 7 without their parents or guardians. They will now live at a department-owned hostel called Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation, which is usually reserved for people who have just arrived from Christmas Island after being granted protection visas. They are the first group of asylum-seekers permitted by the federal government to come to the mainland from Christmas Island for processing. The decision comes just two months after the department moved a depressed Kurdish man off the island and into community detention in Melbourne on compassionate grounds.

An Immigration Department spokesman said the decision to allow the boys to travel to the mainland with their paid carers would give them access to a range of classes and recreational activities. "This move will enable the department to finalise their cases and ensure support to this particularly vulnerable group," the spokesman said. "The government considers this is a measured approach that strikes the right balance between applying a strong border protection regime while also ensuring the welfare of children is of primary consideration."

The department refused to acknowledge that the move signalled a policy shift, saying decisions about who was allowed to come to the mainland before their claims were assessed would continue to be made on a case-by-case basis.

There are now 67 asylum-seeker children being taught by five specialist teachers at the Christmas Island District High School, or in classrooms not on the school grounds. One classroom for older male students was established in April following complaints that the boys were too old to be taught in a cluster of classrooms for children in Years 3 and 4.

The business of immigration detention has doubled the population of Christmas Island. The isolated Australian territory is now estimated to have as few as 1000 permanent locals, according to recent Attorney-General's Department figures. As well as 665 detainees, there is a related workforce of 300.

Refugee advocates have applauded several Rudd government measures that soften elements of the former Howard government's approach to immigration detention on Christmas Island, such as the government's recent decision to allow detainees out of the detention centre for excursions with locals. There were 148 excursions for detainees between last December and May. Conducted under guard, these included visits to Lily Beach and the local Catholic church. Those living in community detention or at the former construction workers' camp can go to the movies, the beach and take part in other activities, and are sometimes taken on picnics by the Red Cross.

Refugee advocate David Manne said yesterday he was at a loss to understand why minors [who are often in fact adults understating their age] should be detained, whether on Christmas Island or at the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation. [All youths should be admitted willy nilly??]

SOURCE




No maintenance on Australia's already hopeless submarines??

And with only one out of the six of them operational, I foolishly thought that the news could not get any worse!

MAINTENANCE on Australia's submarine fleet has been suspended following reports they have an unsafe level of cadmium, a cancer-causing metal. Workers from Australian defence maintenance firm ASC raised concerns about the levels of cadmium, a substance used to coat electrical components to minimise corrosion.

Four of Australia's six Collins class submarines are being tested, with results being assessed on HMAS Dechaineux, Collins, Rankin and Sheean. The two remaining submarines will be tested later.

Defence says ASC production staff have been redeployed until tests results are known. "The fleet has not been recalled to harbour," it said in a statement. ["Fleet"? 5 out of 6 are already in harbour] "However, precautions are been taken in accordance with existing Defence policy and procedures for the control and management of cadmium."

SOURCE





2 September, 2009

ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG takes a dim view of the "fun girl" with the "fat old politician" affair in NSW




School covers up brutal bashing

Days after a 15-year-old boy died after a schoolyard brawl, a Gold Coast high school has been accused of covering up a savage assault that left a 17-year-old boy with a fractured skull. Southport State High School student Angelo Feraru, 17, will need plastic surgery after the unprovoked attack on August 21 that broke his nose and fractured his skull. His mother Mihela is just grateful her son, unlike Jai Morcom, is alive.

Angelo was sitting, eating his lunch when he was attacked by another student and punched in the face. His face was covered in blood and he was taken by ambulance to the Gold Coast Hospital where doctors said the teen's nose was badly broken and his sinus bone fractured. Doctors reset his nose and told Mihela her son would need extensive surgery to repair the damage.

Despite the severity of the attack, Southport State High School failed to report it to police. It handled the issue internally by dishing out a 10-day suspension. [What a joke!] Queensland Police yesterday confirmed they had no record of the vicious assault.

It is understood Angelo's attacker is a fellow student with a history of violence. He was expelled from another Gold Coast school after attacking a fellow student, breaking his jaw. He transferred to Southport High School where he assaulted another Southport student only three weeks before attacking Angelo.

On Monday, Ms Feraru and her son went to the Runaway Bay Police Station to report the incident but were warned against the complaint. The officer who dealt with the pair warned Angelo of the potential fallout if he pressed charges. "They tell us to be careful because Angelo has to live with this kid for the next few months before he finishes school," said Ms Feraru.

Gold Coast police district Superintendent Jim Keogh said it seemed 'incredible' police had only been told of the matter nine days after the assault. He said police needed Angelo to make a formal statement before officers could act on the complaint.

Mrs Feraru said she was scared to send her son back to school.... Ms Feraru said she went to the police station hoping they would stop the violence.

The danger of inaction is all too clear after the death of Jai Morcom last week. The 15-year-old died in Gold Coast Hospital on Saturday after suffering massive head injuries during a brutal brawl over lunch tables on Friday. "It make me feel sick in my stomach," said Ms Feraru.

In a statement released yesterday, Education Queensland confirmed 'an incident took place on August 21 and a student required medical attention'. "A student was disciplined in line with the school's Responsible Behaviour Plan," it read. The department said it would investigate any reports of schools not following policy. [So that's policy?? Expose innocent kids to brutal violence and do nothing significant to prevent a recurrence??]

SOURCE




Teachers are powerless to stop schoolyard violence

Not exactly surprising in the light of the severe limits placed on discipline by a Leftist government

The bashing death at school of a 15 year old boy in Mullumbimby last week is a symptom of a much bigger statewide problem in schools. Teachers are too scared to step in before things get totally out of hand. Put simply teachers now have little control. The consequences for students of bad, even violent behaviour, are now so insignificant students simply dont care.

A teacher cannot restrain a student at all, they cant yell at students or else they will be accused of emotional abuse. A teacher must simply say please dont do this and then hope they are obeyed. Step outside this rigid set of rules and you risk being EPACed - every teachers worst nightmare. To be EPACed is to be investigated by the Education Departments Employee Performance and Conduct Unit, a Gestapo-like division.

Students know this and play on it and why wouldnt you if you were a child and knew what you could get away with. Eventually the ultimate punishment for persistent disobedience (after the student refuses to come to detention and throws the detention slip at the teacher) is suspension from school.

This means they are rewarded a holiday for their actions. If there are too many suspensions at a school the department then asks the school Principal to explain why so many students are being suspended and to come up with strategies to reduce the high suspension rate at the school.

Any teacher who physically intervenes in a physical fight in the play ground risks being reported by a student for physical assault and marched off to EPAC, where the onus is on them to prove their innocence.

EPAC acts as policeman, prosecutor, judge, jury and then executioner. EPAC do not make final decisions using the words Guilty or Innocent. Unless a student actually admits they were lying when they complained about their teacher, then the most a teacher can expect if they are innocent is if EPAC finds there is insignificant evidence to prove the conduct occurred the teacher then has this black mark on their record for life.

Some examples of a teacher being EPACed include a primary school teacher and friend of mine in Sydneys North Shore who broke up a fight by physically restraining a student who was bashing another student.

That teacher was then EPACed and although it was found that the teacher trying to exercise their duty of care, the record of this incident is in their teacher job file held in Oxford Street (where EPAC keep all files) for the rest of their teaching career.

Another incident involves a teacher at a high school who whilst taking students on an excursion to an Art gallery was asked about a particular painting which was on public display which may have been interpreted as having sexual themes. The teacher told the students they did not want to discuss this painting and to move on.

Two female students then complained and the teacher was EPACed for allegedly showing students sexually explicit artwork. Even though EPAC decided that there is insignificant evidence to prove the conduct occurred the teacher now has that case in their EPAC file for the rest of their career.

Whilst a teacher is being EPACed they are told by the Principal not to discuss the investigation with anyone at the school. This makes them feel anxious and even more upset and attempts to punish them psychologically even though nothing has been proven against them.

After two accusations where there is insignificant evidence the teachers name is reported to the Commission for Children and Young People, (CCYP) essentially they are labeled a child abuser on the hearsay of often vindictive students who know they have the power now.

As a result of all this is it any wonder that what started as a fight in the playground at Mullumbimby lead to a bashing death of a student?. Students have the power and teachers know they cant intervene physically anymore. The DET student discipline policy and it EPAC procedures are to blame and the situation statewide is only going to get worse as students relish in their new found power at school.

SOURCE




'Evil' axis blamed for high rate of black detentions

This fruitcake must have had NO experience of Aborigines. They are much prone to drunken violence, mostly against one-another. Even do-gooder official reports acknowledge that. Are we supposed to condone their raping little girls etc.?

A LEADING criminologist says an ''axis of evil'' made up of populist politicians, radio shock jocks and intransigent bureaucrats is the reason indigenous juveniles are 28 times more likely to be locked up and detention numbers are rising for the first time in decades. Those three groups of powerbrokers had failed to grasp the damage that tough law and order policies such as NSW bail laws were doing to Aboriginal children, Professor Chris Cunneen said.

The number of juveniles in detention had been dropping since the 1980s, he said, but that slide ended in 2002, while funding for many indigenous services had gone backwards in real terms.

Professor Cunneen was one of several speakers at a criminology conference yesterday who warned of the prospect of another lost generation if juvenile detention rates were not brought down. ''It's 20 years since I first spoke about juvenile justice issues at an Australian Institute of Criminology conference. Now we just hope things don't get worse rather than hoping for improvements,'' he said.

Aboriginal Legal Service lawyers who represent indigenous people charged with criminal offences were paid less than mainstream legal aid lawyers and worked an average of 10 hours more a week, he said. In the Northern Territory, Aboriginal Legal Services are so underfunded that they spend an average of $17 on a client's court costs, compared with $762 a client for mainstream legal aid. [Because there are so many Aboriginal offenders]

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Tom Calma, said something was seriously wrong when Australia's justice system showed a 27 per cent increase in indigenous juvenile detention rates from 2001 to 2007. ''We have a system more intent on locking up our kids than preventing crime in the first place,'' Mr Calma said. [And how are you going to prevent it? Take their booze away? That has been tried and failed many times and Leftists condemn it as "paternalistic" anyway]

SOURCE




Sometimes discrimination can be reasonable

Will the empty-heads of the Left start protesting against women who discriminate against short men or men who discriminate against ugly women? -- JR

By Janet Albrechtsen

IF only the UN were just a comedy gig. When it is merely amusing, it has a harmless, otherworldly quality. Try listening to former foreign minister Alexander Downer recount his recent run-in with UN Security Council Resolution 1325. Littered with dulcet UN lingo such as Reaffirming the important role of women and Expresses its willingness to incorporate a gender perspective into peacekeeping, the resolution calls for gender mainstreaming throughout peacekeeping missions.

Good for a laugh, sure enough this meant sending a gender officer of African extraction to meet Downer, who is now the UN special envoy to Cyprus. When Downer raised the gender mainstreaming idea with Turkish and Greek Cypriot leaders involved in resolving the conflict, lets just say there was Mediterranean bewilderment about the UNs predilection for searching for gender discrimination under every stone.

Unfortunately, the UNs assumption that discrimination is always a dirty word enters more dangerous territory closer to home. Last week a UN special rapporteur on indigenous human rights completed an 11-day fact-finding mission of the Australian governments intervention in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. While James Anaya, an American professor of human rights law, said he would reserve final judgment until he concluded his visit, we all knew where this was going. The UN view from the transit lounge can focus only on the Big D, discrimination, and the Big R, rights. The government was discriminating against indigenous people by breaching several international treaties to which Australia was a signatory, entrenched racism infected the country and the Racial Discrimination Act needed to be reinstated to protect the rights of indigenous people, he said. No nuance enters the UNs discrimination equation.

Having delivered headlines, the clever UN professor then went on his way, not offering up any of his own solutions to solve the dire conditions of Aboriginal women and children in remote Australia. Never mind the circumstances that led to the intervention. When Rex Wild and Aboriginal leader Pat Anderson crossed the country visiting 45 remote communities, they found abuse in every one of them. Never mind that the policy - restricting alcohol, requiring welfare money be spent on food and banning pornography - was introduced to stop the appalling abuse of indigenous children.

Imagine for a moment if Anaya had not succumbed to the UNs default position where any hint of discrimination was derided as an abomination and Australia was given a standard UN bollocking.

Imagine if the UN sermon to the gathering press last week had focused on the need for indigenous people to be accountable for the crimes of violence and neglect so rampant in their communities. Imagine if talk about their rights had been matched with talk about their responsibilities.

Imagine if, instead of praising the new national indigenous representative body, Anaya had the pluck and insight to understand, as Noel Pearson does, that indigenous people do not need another forum for victimhood and agreed with Pearson that the proposed new body was the worst result of all: the ability to complain but no ability to influence or take responsibility. Imagine, indeed.

Outside the UN, those who jumped on their wobbly high-horse of morality to oppose the NT intervention right from the start - such as Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma - have been equally gripped by the BigD and the Big R, regardless of the atrocities uncovered by the Little Children are Sacred report. A few weeks ago, former governor-general Bill Deane said he hoped the word intervention would be expunged from indigenous policy discussions. I cringe with embarrassment every time I hear it, he said, criticising the lack of indigenous participation in indigenous policy.

That lack of participation would be news to Sue Gordon, the indigenous woman who headed the Northern Territory taskforce to protect those most vulnerable from criminal acts within indigenous communities. The view from the city-based armchair and from the airconditioned offices of well-paid indigenous bureaucrats protecting their own power base pays little heed to Gordons plea last year that we listen to what women and some men in the communities are saying about how (the intervention) has changed their lives. Let Deane cringe with embarrassment if it means pursuing a policy where fewer children will cry with pain.

Sermonising about a rights agenda when you have no responsibility is too easy. Responsibility tends to focus the mind. Hence a hooray is due for the Indigenous Affairs Minister responsible, Jenny Macklin. She defended the intervention and responded to Anayas comments by saying: For me when it comes to human rights the most important human right that I feel as a minister I have to confront is the need to protect the rights of the most vulnerable, particularly children.

Whether the issue is solemn or trivial, the wider soft-left liberal mindset is equally unable to comprehend any kind of complexity where there is the slightest hint of discrimination. Mens clubs are inherently evil - a relic of earlier times, according to Julia Gillard. The Deputy Prime Minister has publicly taunted them for not accepting Governor-General Quentin Bryce as a member. Last week, when Bryce was made an honorary member of Lyceum, the exclusive women-only club in Melbourne, the sisterhood had nothing to say about relics.

Now heres a really thorny one. How to respond to recent reports in Britain where local municipal swimming pools have banned swimmers during certain hours unless they comply with a modest code of dress required by Islamic custom: women covered neck to ankle and men covered navel to knees. A relic of earlier times or culturally appropriate discrimination?

And what about religious schools? Victorian Attorney-General Rob Hulls has called for a review of the exemptions under the states Equal Opportunity Act that allow schools to hire on the basis of religious faith. Thats discrimination. It is also a basic exercise of the right to religious freedom. Will the Lefts legal crusader, Hulls, defend that right by using his Charter of Human Rights? Probably not.

Intellectually inconsistent carping about men-only clubs and religious schools pales into insignificance compared with the hollow morality of those who preach about discrimination in indigenous communities. Consider the sad irony that those hailed as protectors of human rights and seekers of social justice continue to give succour to an outdated mindset that has demonstrably failed our youngest and most disadvantaged citizens. Fortunately, it is a sign more sensible times have prevailed when these misguided people are increasingly relegated to the fringes of meaningful debate while ever small children suffer abuse and neglect.

SOURCE




Your regulator will protect you

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has been in a panic after a failure in its on-line listing system for complementary medicines. The system includes a list of Proprietary Ingredients, that is, ingredients where only the TGA knows the full composition. One of the Proprietary Ingredients contains peanut oil, but when sponsors used this ingredient, the warning statement that it contained peanut oil, and need to declare the presence of peanut oil on the product label did not appear. The TGA is now contacting the sponsors of products containing this ingredient, advising them of the need to add the warning statement to the product.

The TGA responds: At the end of July, the TGA became aware the electronic listing facility was not generating a prompt to the sponsor to add the PEANUT warning (which alerts sponsor to add a warning to their label that the product contains peanut) when either the product contained a proprietary ingredient which included peanut, arachis (peanut) oil or Arachis hypogaea as an excipient ingredient , or when the product contained one of these as an active. The issues have all been resolved. In all circumstances these are correctly generating the appropriate warning upon validation. A total of 16 products were found to be missing the required warning label in the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods entry. However of these only 1 of the products was currently being supplied and was found to have the correct warning label on the product already.

SOURCE (Via email)





1 September, 2009

Australian public health insurance system in a mess

Quick summary for non-Australian readers: Australia's Medicare is a government-run health insurance program that covers ALL Australians out of tax revenues. About 40% of Australians, however, want higher quality care than what Medicare will fund so take out private insurance and go to private hospitals. People with private insurance get a tax rebate in recognition of their reduced use of the public system

MEDICARE has been stretched to the point where it risks putting more into doctors' pockets than into care of the chronically ill. A major government-backed report has singled out poorly targeted payments for patient "care plans" as symptomatic of a primary health system fraying at the edges and in need of funding reform.

The long-awaited report into frontline healthcare, including GP services, was launched by Kevin Rudd and Health Minister Nicola Roxon yesterday with a promise to retain the Medicare Benefits Scheme at its core.

But the Primary Health Care Reform in Australia report warns that Canberra is expecting too much of Medicare by extending it beyond simple fee-for-service reimbursements to fund GP care plans for patients with complex, long-term health problems such as diabetes, heart disease and mental illness.

The costly expansion raised concerns that "the quality of care provided is unknown and that the ives of co-ordination and continuity of care may not be being achieved", it said. Ten per cent of GPs, for example, claim 54 per cent of all Medicare items for chronic disease management care plans, leaving the program's impact across the population "open to question", the report noted. Payments to doctors for CDM care plans cost taxpayers $204million in 2007-08 alone.

A Medicare Australia audit found that more than one-third of care plan items claimed did not comply with MBS requirements.

The Professional Services Review, which investigates potential Medicare abuses, has also written to the federal Health Department about the risk the claims could be driven more by business than clinical imperatives, the report revealed. "In particular, the PSR is concerned that plans are being opportunistically generated, based on system-driven templates that do not reflect patients' actual needs and that are not necessarily shared with or even provided to the patient," it said.

In the May budget, the Rudd government used excessive doctors' fees as justification for cuts to reimbursements for IVF, obstetrics and cataract operations, claiming the most prolific 10 per cent of eye specialists earned $1m through Medicare last year.

The latest report opens the door to further payment reforms, breaking away from fee-for-service arrangements towards salaries, pay-for-performance or other incentives.

The centrality of GPs' role in patient care could also be eroded in favour of giving people more direct, affordable access to allied health workers, using pharmacies to assess risk factors, and workplaces to deliver healthy lifestyle programs. "There is widespread agreement that the Australian healthcare system, in common with many other countries, does not provide the highest quality care for the money spent," the report noted.

But AMA president Andrew Pesce warned that patients' health would suffer if they lacked a doctor to co-ordinate overall treatment. "Unfortunately, there are some danger signs in this draft strategy and in the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission Report that the government is planning a lesser role for GPs under the guise of 'health workforce reform'," he said. "The AMA must oppose any diminution of the role of the GP in primary care, and so should the whole community."

The government will not, however, finalise the draft primary healthcare strategy released with the report until late this year at the earliest. Despite receiving the report a month ago, the government will defer decisions on which proposals it will pursue until it strikes agreement with state and territory governments on how Australia's future healthcare system will be funded.

Relations between the government and the AMA have been strained by sharp policy differences on issues ranging from GP super-clinics to budget cuts to private health insurance and the Medicare safety net.

SOURCE




Some twitches of economic rationality within the Labor Party

Despite the huge hit to productivity delivered by its recent pro-union laws

ITS a crucial time for the Rudd governments policy direction. Does it believe in the Hawke-Keating model of enterprise-driven opportunity and prosperity? Or has it regressed to its base interventionist instincts, blending misplaced Whitlamesque idealism with the cynical politicking of modern Labor?

The global crisis provided the expedient cue for interventionism, validated as government spending to plug the hole left by a feared collapse of private demand and rhetorically justified by Kevin Rudds rants against excess finance capitalism. Now it is being exposed for building taxpayer-funded Labor monuments at primary school polling booths.

The next totemic issue may be the cabinet split over removing territorial copyright restrictions on book imports which, among other things, push up the price of student textbooks. The case for book imports is headed by Competition and Small Business Minister Craig Emerson, an economist and a former adviser to Bob Hawke. Yesterday Emerson declared that Labor is the party of competition. It is in the interests of working people, the poor and the vulnerable that business is under strong, competitive pressure, Emerson said in a speech. Competition exerts downward pressure on consumer prices.

Competition makes business tough and resilient, better enabling them to employ people through the good times and the bad. Competition drives innovation, which in turn drives productivity growth. Business managers will have strong incentives to innovate - boosting productivity growth and future prosperity - when they are under competitive pressure from rivals who adopt and adapt the latest technologies and who develop and apply their own best ideas.

This is the language of the Hawke-Keating reforms of the 1980s which, for instance, dismantled import protection on the argument that it was not in the interests of poor and working Australians to be forced to pay more for clothes, shoes and cars. Two decades later, Emerson suggests that most demands for new regulation come from business seeking protection from competition, including supposedly unfair big business competition against small business.

Emerson is not against regulating for competition, such as through Labors criminal sanctions and jail terms for collusive business cartels. But his message to his small business lobby is blunt. Often big business undercuts smaller competitors simply because of the cost efficiencies from being big. Treating this as anti-competitive would simply result in higher prices for consumers.

Moreover, collusion is not restricted to big businesses such as cardboard box makers. Cartels also have been run by small petrol stations in country towns. When it comes to collusion, you dont need to be big to be bad, hesays. Ouch! And Emerson warns that even proposals to curb apparent market power should be rejected if they simply impose another layer of costly red tape, make it riskier for business to invest and so increase prices for consumers.

Such talk is guaranteed to stir up the small business lobby, the so-called consumer lobby and, in the case of books, the cultural protectionists. And Labor has only itself to blame for whipping up small business and kitchen-table protectionism with its populist opposition campaign against grocery prices, petrol prices and interest rates charged by big supermarkets, big oil companies and big banks.

This has encouraged even more wackiness such as the so-called Blacktown amendment to the Trade Practices Act, introduced by independent senator Nick Xenophon and Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce in cahoots with University of NSW legal academic Frank Zumbo. Zumbo claims Woolworths, Coles and the big petrol companies engage in geographic price discrimination. Their prices are lower in suburbs where there is more competition from independents. Thats supposedly because they seek to drive out the independents so they can then raise their prices again.

Named in honour of an independent petrol retailer in Sydneys Blacktown, Marie El-Khoury, the truly bonkers amendment would require retailers to sell their products at the same price at all their outlets within 35km of each other. Ponder for a moment how this could possibly work for fruit and vegetables, groceries, liquor, petrol and so on.

Yes, the weather is not always perfect and business can be tough. But is supermarket competition between Woolies and Coles, and now between new entrants such as Aldi, Costco, FoodWorks and so on, really weakening? And would the guaranteed lowest prices bill really make groceries cheaper? Emerson calls it the Vaucluse amendment, which would require Toorak prices for goods sold in Footscray. [Rich suburb versus poor suburb]

So, given the competition and consumer affairs portfolio in June, Emerson quickly dumped Labors useless GroceryWatch stunt. He pulled business-to-business dealings out of the national consumer contract legislation just as it was about to be introduced to parliament.

A new legal notion of unfair business contracts would put the terms of bank loans to small businesses more at risk of being overturned by the courts. The banks would have to price in this increased lending risk, which would hurt, not help, small business.

But needing political cover, Emerson instead is looking to reduce barriers to new competitors, such as government zoning restrictions on retail development and restrictive leasing covenants required by Woolworths and Coles before they agree to become anchor tenants in shopping centre developments. A Woolies lease would keep Coles out of the centre, and vice versa. Action here may help consumers, unless it makes it harder to develop new shopping centres. But small retailers should really aim their ire not at Emerson but at Julia Gillard.

The main thing the big supermarket chains offer consumers is one-stop shopping for fresh food, packaged food, toiletries, liquor and even petrol, and in the evenings, weekends and public holidays.

Gillards labour market reregulation [pro-union laws] will make it even harder for smaller retailers to compete on convenience. The big supermarket chains are better placed to cope with her unfair dismissal laws and to absorb the increased penalty rates imposed by her award modernisation. This will hinder competition but thats what Australias industrial relations system has always aimed to do. And it will push up supermarket prices for working families, but Labor no doubt will have a press release ready for that.

SOURCE




School bullying shame: three children a class bullied daily

But all schools have "policies" about it -- policies that are a vacuity in the absence of significant disciplinary powers

BULLYING has become such a "pervasive problem" in schools that three children in each class are bullied daily or almost daily. Startling research, held by Queensland's Education Department, shows another five children per class are bullied in some way weekly. Education Department assistant director-general of student services Patrea Walton told a community forum at the weekend that bullying was a "pervasive problem in schools" and had been identified as "one of the biggest fears parents have for their children".

The State Government has hired national bullying expert Professor Ken Rigby to help address the scourge.

Up to 70 per cent of suspensions currently handed out in Queensland schools relate to bullying. The horrific death of year 9 Mullumbimby student Jai Morcom, who suffered massive head injuries after he was allegedly targeted during a schoolyard brawl on Friday, has reignited the debate on student cruelty and violence.

Rising school violence continues to dog Education Minister Geoff Wilson, who is trying a raft of measures to tackle the problem, including hiring Prof Rigby. [Ken Rigby is a nice guy but there are severe limits on what psychology can do]

Australia's largest study of school bullying, released two months ago, showed Queensland had among the highest levels of bullying in the country. The forum, organised by the Queensland Council of Parents and Citizens Associations Metropolitan West Regional Council, heard terrifying accounts of cyber bullying in which students spoke of killing peers. Speakers also told of messages in which students wrote of hurting students' families.

Ms Walton said research showed bullying victims were more likely to be depressed, anxious, have low self-esteem, exhibit medical problems and talk about suicide than their peers. But she said it was not a recent phenomenon and not confined to schools.

Tullawong State High School principal Leonie Kearney, credited with turning her Caboolture school around through a tough stance on bullying and bad behaviour, said 70 per cent of suspensions she administered related to bullying.

Ms Walton said she didn't believe the proportion of suspensions for bullying would be as high across the state, but was unable to provide a figure, citing no agreed definition. More than 50 per cent of the 55,000 suspensions handed out to state school students in 2008 were for physical, verbal and non-verbal misconduct.

SOURCE




Australian immigration rules set for revamp

889,722 people in one year coming into a country with a total population of not much more than 20 million sure is one heck of an influx. No wonder even a Leftist government is beginning to show concern

AUSTRALIA'S immigration policy is set for an overhaul amid concerns that it is failing to meet the nation's long-term needs, with a record influx of more than 600,000 temporary residents adding to the strain of a growing population. In a significant shift, Immigration Minister Chris Evans told The Age that cabinet had approved the development of a five to 10-year plan that would consider the types of migrants that Australia needed, where they should settle, and the extra need for housing, transport, water and other resources to accommodate more people.

New figures to be released today show that Australia's official migration program recorded an intake of 171,318 permanent migrants in 2008-09. When the 13,500 refugees and the 47,780 New Zealanders who settled permanently in Australia are included, the migration program saw 232,598 people arriving in the past year, a 12.8 per cent leap from the previous year's record high of 219,098 people. But according to figures obtained by The Age, a further 657,124 temporary migrants with the right to work arrived in Australia during the past year. The 11 per cent surge in temporary migrants was fuelled by big increases in foreign students (up 15 per cent to 320,368) and working holiday visas (up 22 per cent to 154,148). This compensated for a 9 per cent drop in 457 visas - an employer-sponsored visa for temporary skilled labour introduced in 1995 - to 101,280.

The surge in temporary migrants with a right to work has created an unprecedented, unplanned migration wave. Senator Evans said Australia needed a rational immigration debate, beyond the hysteria about the few hundred boat people who arrive each year. ''The annual figure this year [for skilled permanent migration] was, say, 115,000, but more than 500,000 came into the country. They came in as students, temporary workers, working holidaymakers but the public still focuses on the 115,000 as if it's got anything to do with reality and my attempts to have a more sophisticated debate about this have totally failed.''

Senator Evans said immigration should be the nation's labour agency, meaning a continued high intake of migrants, especially younger, skilled workers. But the desires of migrants - including overseas students who came in on temporary visas in order to gain permanent residency - should not be driving Australia's immigration policy.

Decisions about who came to Australia would be increasingly left to employers although, conversely, Australia would also be competing for the most highly skilled migrants. Senator Evans said to do that successfully the impacts of record high immigration on our liveability had to be tackled. ''In Australia we've got this sense of, 'Well, we're the lucky country' and people will naturally come here, and that's still true to an extent. But other countries are increasingly marketing themselves too.''

He said immigration policy would remain non-discriminatory and that Australia's Muslim communities posed no fundamental threat - despite the arrest of five Melbourne men on terrorism charges, three from Somalia and two from Lebanon. ''I don't want to downplay terrorism It is a serious public policy challenge that has to be tackled But there's also been this slightly irrational fear and debate about people who arrive unauthorised as possibly posing some sort of threat.''

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The never-ending NSW government transport mess

They sure know how to get people out of their cars!



The NSW Government has baptised its new public transport ''super-agency'' with a shiny name - NSW Transport and Infrastructure - and will soon unveil a plan for Sydney's transport. Yes, another new plan. The office of the Transport Minister, David Campbell, this week promised the 2031 Transport Blueprint by year's end. Campbell recently wrote: ''It will not only look at what we need to meet current demand but also to cope with the expected population growth.''

The blueprint is an attempt by Campbell and the Premier, Nathan Rees, to put their stamp on future transport options for Sydney. But as the baseball legend Yogi Berra so memorably remarked: ''It's like deja vu all over again.''

The archives of assorted NSW transport agencies are awash with discarded plans to improve Sydney's sclerotic train and bus networks. Schemes remain just dreams and Sydneysiders have had to endure nearly a century of arthritic transport planning much like the train system at its worst: promises and cancellations, tentative starts, shuddering stops and diversions to nowhere.

Sydney's ghost train history goes back a century but real stagnation set in the 1970s, when Sydney's population boomed without commensurate expansion of transport corridors. In just the past 15 years, at least $28 billion in rail infrastructure was promised by state governments but never delivered. Thirteen projects alone would have extended the rail service by more than 1000 kilometres of track and provided dozens of new stations in areas forced to depend more and more on the family car. Consequently, the city's roads seize with overload as peak periods extend and frustrations overflow.

The blame is mostly levelled at Labor, which has governed NSW for 26 of the past 34 years. Its leaders have made much of their support for public transport to areas that house Labor voters. Their failure to deliver, however, has only heightened the social inequity they complain so loudly about.

Sydney's rail system has changed little since John Bradfield - designer of the Sydney Harbour Bridge - first articulated his vision in the 1930s (it was updated in 1956). Western Sydney's population has increased fivefold since 1940 but its rail lines have extended just 20 kilometres....

Neville Wran won a narrow state election victory in 1976, based largely on a promise to improve public transport. He famously took an early-morning campaign trip from Gosford to Sydney to highlight overcrowding. He finished the eastern suburbs line between Martin Place and Bondi Junction but the extension south to Maroubra was abandoned.

The Greiner government embarked on a public-private partnership to build the underground line to Sydney airport, with stops at Green Square and Mascot, where big housing developments are planned. But the line has been a disaster, with low patronage because commuters find ticket prices too expensive.

Rail plans that would have connected the north-west and south-west with the city - and introduced links between suburban centres such as Hurstville and Strathfield - were abandoned through lack of money or absence of political will. There is now so much cynicism about government proposals - particularly unfulfilled plans by Labor governments, which are supposed to be committed to the provision of public goods and services - that the latest Rees-Campbell blueprint, however well intentioned, is unlikely to convince voters.....

More HERE




More QANTAS gloom

I've returned from overseas having flown Qantas to and from Singapore from Perth. The flight there was suddenly cancelled with no explanation after numerous people had already checked in, the next available flight was five hours later, which was so packed that they had business class passengers in the front of economy getting champagne and the better meals but still sitting with masses! The return journey actually left roughly on time, but the Q video system was broken. I might as well have been on Jetstar at a fraction of the price, I'm sure I would have got a better meal for just a few dollars. Needless to say I will try another airline next time I go overseas. No wonder their profits are down, people are voting with their feet.

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