Lots of Australian judges are Leftist and feminist hacks



Stacking the courts with political favourites was the "main evil" disrupting the administration of justice in Australia, an eminent jurist said last night. In a politically explosive lecture in Brisbane, former Supreme Court judge Geoff Davies, QC, pictured, said political patronage in judicial appointments had eroded the standard and standing of the judiciary. He called for Queensland judicial appointments to be taken out of the hands of politicians and vested in a panel of seven people, including the chief justice and another judge, the presidents of the Bar Association and the Law Society, leaders from church and women's groups and newspaper editors.

Mr Davies, who was appointed by Premier Peter Beattie to help oversee the state's health reforms, said a number of recent appointments, in Queensland and elsewhere, had caused many to be concerned about the future of the judiciary and the administration of justice unless judicial appointments were removed from sole political control. "If governments are not prepared to introduce some independence into this process, others should," said Mr Davies, who was praised by Mr Beattie as "terrific" when his appointment to the commission of inquiry into the hospital system was announced. He said an independent panel could serve as a kind of watchdog committee - with or without government sanction.

Mr Davies' extraordinary speech was seen as a challenge to state Attorney-General and Justice Minister Linda Lavarch, who has caused uproar in legal circles with recent appointments based on gender and politics.

Mr Davies, who also served on the Court of Appeal, Queensland's highest court, reserved some barbs for fellow judges. Some of them, he said, had shown hostility towards him after he proposed a new system of appointments two years ago in an article in The Courier-Mail. "No government happily surrenders power, and some may see the appointment of judges as a means of rewarding loyal party supporters or friends or at least of having their own views expressed by like-minded judges," he said. "More surprising was the hostility which my remarks engendered in some judges, not least some recently appointed ones."

Former federal attorney-general Michael Lavarch, dean of the law faculty at QUT, questioned whether a judicial selection panel would be of value. "Some might comment that Rupert Murdoch appears to already have enough power, without giving one of his newspaper editors a direct say in appointing judges," he said. "Equally, others might question the desirability of opening a debate about the role of the church and the role of the state, by having a head of church included. "A feminist perspective might raise concerns about the track record of the Anglican and Catholic churches in accepting women in positions of authority. Others might welcome the involvement of the imam of the Muslim faith as a refreshing sign of cultural diversity, as this position on the appointing body rotates amongst the various churches."

Source





Dubious quality of Australian professional childcare

These concerns could easily slide into mindless credentialism. Where is the importance of a kind heart mentioned?

Most childcare workers are trained in a system that lacks rigour and accountability, with no monitoring of the quality of the courses offered. At a time when the federal Government is pushing for a greater educational focus in childcare, early childhood expert Alison Elliott describes the industry as a shambles, with huge variations in the quality of care provided and the quality of carer. Dr Elliott, research director of the early childhood program at the Australian Council for Educational Research and a former early childhood professor, said the links between qualified staff and a good start in life for children were well-established.

Yet only 10 per cent of childcare staff had degree-level qualifications and 30 per cent had no qualification or formal training. Only NSW requires childcare centres to have an early childhood teacher on staff, in centres with more than 29 children, and Queensland requires all staff to have a qualification, which could be as little as a six-month vocational certificate.

Dr Elliott said carers in family daycare were unlikely to have a formal childcare qualification and a three- or four-year-old child in a centre or preschool could be in a group with an untrained person, a worker with a vocational certificate or a teacher. "Imagine if the same inequities existed for five-year-old children in the first year of school, some with qualified teachers and some without," Dr Elliott said. "Imagine in hospitals (where) some three- and four-year-old children have care from qualified medical staff, some don't. "There is a remarkable national silence on the appropriate education, professional preparation and credentials for key education and care staff in childcare, kindergarten and preschool. "Despite recognition of the importance of improving staff qualifications and competence, there is no agreement for a nationally consistent ... framework, no accreditation of early childhood preparation courses, no standards for professional practice and no registration for early childhood educators." In a paper presented recently to a workshop on childcare policy, Dr Elliott said the vocational training was guided by a national approach, but there was no consistency in the way the courses were delivered.

The courses - Certificate III, diplomas and advanced diplomas in children's services - are provided under the auspices of the Australian Qualifications Framework and contain only basic statements of what should be taught, lacking any real detail. The National Training Information Service provides the courses to registered training organisations. But Dr Elliott said no expertise was required to become a registered trainer and hundreds of organisations were registered around the country, with 50 in Queensland alone. Some students had passed the courses without speaking English.

"Gradually, strong, specialist early childhood courses are being eroded," Dr Elliott said. "If recent announcements about universal preschool education are to become a reality, early childhood teacher education capacity in universities will need rebuilding." Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop is pushing for a year of preschool for all children, and given the lack of stand-alone preschools in Australia, experts say most children will have that education in a childcare centre.

Source







A small ABC backdown on their support for terrorists

The ABC's style guide will scrap references to "freedom fighters" in its entry on terrorism after a Liberal senator questioned whether organisations such as al-Qa'ida and the Bali bombers could be considered freedom fighters. The revised guide, which is about to be distributed, will scrap from the entry on terrorists and extremists the phrase: "Remember, one person's 'terrorist' is usually someone else's 'freedom fighter'."

The ABC said yesterday the change was part of a routine update of its news and current affairs style guide. But proving that one person's "update" can be another's moral victory, NSW Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells seized on the move as a "step in the right direction". Senator Fierravanti-Wells asked the ABC at a Senate estimates committee in May whether the guide's reference to "freedom fighter" would remain, "given that al-Qa'ida, the Bali bombers, 7/7 (the July 7 bombers in London) could hardly be considered as freedom fighters". "What freedom are they fighting for?" she asked.

ABC stories have previously referred to "freedom fighters" such as East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao, South Africa's Constitutional Court judge Albie Sachs and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos Horta. ABC head of news and current affairs John Cameron said yesterday the original reference was "a note of caution and education rather than instruction".

Source







Medical training funds spent on bureaucracy

Medical schools have accused the states of diverting money meant to fund clinical training of medical students into general hospital coffers. They want the commonwealth to hand control of training funds to universities, warning that inadequate clinical training could threaten the standards of Australian medicine. But the Australian Medical Association has accused universities of siphoning training money into their general administration.

The accusations come amid intensifying concern that public hospitals are not equipped to provide clinical training to the growing number of students of medicine and other health professions such as nursing. The Australian revealed yesterday that Education Minister Julie Bishop was reviewing funding mechanisms in response to complaints that students in allied health professions were being denied clinical training. This followed news that up to 200 physiotherapists might be unable to graduate from universities this year because, while meeting academic requirements, they will not have had adequate hands-on training.

Committee of Deans of Australian Medical Schools chairman Lindon Wing told The Weekend Australian yesterday that public hospitals were under such funding pressure that they were using money previously set aside for training to boost resources for medical treatment. "They are not able to allocate the funds as they might have before," Professor Wing said. "Education is not their focus." Professor Wing said people assumed hospitals had to spend a certain percentage of their funding on clinical training. In fact, hospital budgets had no line item for training.

He said resources were limited and that the situation would worsen because university medical graduate numbers were expected to increase to about 3000 a year in coming years - up from 1250 in 1998. He said CDAMS wanted the federal Government to increase the per-student grant paid to universities for medicine - now about $16,000 a year - or to boost the loading that augmented funding for medical students' clinical training.

However, AMA federal vice-president Choong-Siew Yong said some universities diverted up to half of commonwealth medical student grants into general administration. "The universities must stop using medicine as a cash cow," he said. Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott would not comment.

Source