A good idea: Sue the school if your kid can't read

A mother has won a confidential payout from a top private school for failing to teach her son how to read properly. In a case that raises questions about the extent to which schools are liable for what they teach, the Melbourne mother reached a settlement with Brighton Grammar School yesterday after alleging the school breached the Trade Practices Act. Yvonne Meyer, who cannot discuss the confidential deal, took action against the school because she believed it had failed to deliver on its promise to address her son Jake's reading problems.

Ms Meyer claimed Jake, now aged 13 and in a private secondary school, made it all the way to Year 5 without being able to read properly. Until then, he had been guessing and memorising words. Jake struggled with reading and writing from Preparatory grade when he was enrolled at the government-run Albert Park Primary School. By Year 1, he was a year behind his classmates. He did two terms of Reading Recovery, and despite passing reading tests, little changed.

Ms Meyer, who works in the film and television industry, went to specialists who diagnosed Jake with a significant range of learning difficulties. What none of the experts picked up was that Jake could not read and that he was memorising. At the start of Year 4, Ms Meyer moved Jake to Brighton Grammar, where he stayed for three years.

In her civil action, it is understood Ms Meyer claimed she received assurances from Brighton Grammar that it had the resources to identify her son's problems, and could fix them. But it was not until the end of Year 5 that Ms Meyer worked out that he was memorising words rather than reading them and a solution was found: traditional phonics. Ms Meyer hired a tutor, who dealt with his problems in six weeks.

In December 2004, then federal education minister Brendan Nelson asked Ms Meyer to be one of 10 members of the Government's national inquiry into literacy teaching. Ms Meyer subsequently took civil action in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, alleging Brighton Grammar had breached the act because it failed to deliver the service it promised. It is believed she sought to recoup some of the fees paid, which were up to $15,000 a year. Brighton Grammar headmaster Michael Urwin said: "As far as the school is concerned, the matter is now over."

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Four decades of loss: The reality of the Wave Hill walkout does not pass muster

Leftist fantasies about a real-life disaster

The story of how Northern Territory Aboriginal stockmen were robbed of their future by well-meaning but misguided thinking is an abject lesson that the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions. As Nicolas Rothwell has reported in The Australian, 40 years after the watershed walkout by black stockmen at Wave Hill - who were demanding equal pay for blacks and whites - the first glimmer of economic self-improvement is only now apparent. There is no guarantee it will succeed and it in no way compensates for four decades of loss.

In the end, the walkout served only to help incubate living conditions among indigenous communities that are a national scandal and an international embarrassment. As explored in the book Distance, Drought and Dispossession, by horse-breaker-turned PhD Glen McLaren, the plight of the Territory's Aboriginal stockmen was sealed by impatience and a fatal miscalculation. Impatience because the walkout followed an arbitration commission ruling in favour of a sliding pay scale over time, with the best black stockmen paid well for their labour. And miscalculation because the equal-pay campaign ignored the fact that in addition to paying wages, the pastoralists were also providing for large extended families, effectively providing an economic lifeline through which an association with traditional lands could be preserved.

After walking out, Aboriginal stockmen were effectively left out in the cold. The commonwealth, through welfare, was forced to pick up the financial burden and, without work, the remote communities spiralled into the tragic circumstances brought about by too much time and too little money or productive opportunity. These are the stark realities not readily acknowledged in urban celebration of the land rights struggle, epitomised by former prime minister Gough Whitlam's symbolic 1975 pouring of soil into hands of Vincent Lingiari, the man who led the walkout.

It is the same sentiment in which Lingiari is immortalised in the pop ballad From Little Things Big Things Grow, by Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly. But symbolic gestures and catchy tunes have never been enough. There is still no evidence of the "big things" that are supposed to have grown from the walkout. The Daguragu cattle property set up for the strikers has been deserted for 15 years. The delivery of land rights was never dependent on the walkout. And instead of self-determination, a succession of well-meaning but misguided government policy has left the former stockmen and their children stranded.

That a small number is now showing an interest in joining the cattle industry is cause for optimism. So too are belated efforts to kick-start a viable indigenous cattle industry. But as the land rights warriors of the 1970s meet to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the walkout, they should acknowledge the unnecessary loss suffered to satisfy the stubborn idealism of others.

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Lax doctor registration again

More than a year after the State Government toughened doctor registration in the wake of the Jayant Patel scandal, a Google search has revealed another surgeon with a questionable past. Eugene Sherry has been stood down from his job at Rockhampton Hospital after it was discovered he had served six months in a US jail in 1982 for raping a nurse along with two other doctors.

Dr Sherry, who trained in New Zealand and worked in Mackay for six months before moving to Rockhampton three weeks ago, twice failed to reveal the conviction to Queensland authorities. The Medical Board of Queensland, which was tipped off to his past by the Australian Medical Association, has now asked him to show cause why his registration should not be cancelled. The Crime and Misconduct Commission is examining the case.

Health Minister Stephen Robertson yesterday ordered criminal history checks to be conducted on all 14,000 doctors working in Queensland. Mr Robertson said Dr Sherry had been working in NSW since 1983 and was automatically registered in Queensland under an agreement between the states. "We don't think it is appropriate that doctors with these serious convictions should continue to practise," he said.

Premier Peter Beattie announced that the medical board would again be overhauled to focus solely on the registration of doctors, with a police representative added to ensure there was a thorough check of credentials.

Liberal leader Bruce Flegg yesterday criticised the Government for again failing to ensure proper checking of doctors. "At the end of the day, the Government is the employer. It is up to the Government to check the staff that they employ," Dr Flegg said.

In the wake of the Patel saga, new checks were introduced to ensure overseas-trained doctors seeking registration in Queensland had not been deregistered elsewhere. The checks include a Google search, but it is understood this was not done on Dr Sherry because he was trained in New Zealand and had already worked in NSW for 20 years.

Meanwhile, federal Nationals MP De-Anne Kelly has made a series of further allegations against a Mackay Hospital doctor. Ms Kelly accused Egyptian-trained surgeon Abdalla Khalafalla of falsifying surgical notes during procedures in which he operated alone. Dr Khalafalla, whose competence is being reviewed by the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, is supposed to be prohibited from operating alone. "The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons was well aware that the operating notes for that particular operation were false," Ms Kelly said, when referring to a particular case.

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WWF Too Close To Tim Flannery & Government?

Post lifted from Jennifer Marohasy

Clive Hamilton, Executive Director of The Australian Institute, has written a rather pointed piece for today's Sydney Morning Herald suggesting that Tim Flannery, author of a recent book on global warming, is "a trump card" in Prime Minister John Howard's "nuclear power play". It also suggests that the government has bought off environment group the WWF:

"WWF (formerly the World Wide Fund for Nature) is the foremost of the friendly organisations. It is close to the Government, providing a stream of favourable commentary on its policies and bestowing several awards for the Government's environmental achievements, including three "Gift to the Earth" awards, which the Environment Minister, Ian Campbell, displays in his office. In return, the Government has been generous, sending tens of millions to the fund for various programs.

The force behind the emergence of the organisation as the leading group backing the Government's environment policy is the businessman Robert Purves. He has made a very large donation to WWF and is now its president.

Purves has drawn Tim Flannery into the orbit of conservative environmentalism by funding the preparation of Flannery's book on climate change, The Weather Makers. ... Purves is said to have spent $1 million promoting Flannery's book, including costly backlit billboards outside Qantas Club lounges around the country."

This is not the first time Clive Hamilton has thrown mud at WWF, his first shot was perhaps publication of a report titled 'Taming The Panda' just a couple of years ago.