Public broadcaster bias nibbled at

The ABC faces its biggest cultural shake-up in 20 years when it announces today that programs from chat shows to science debates will have to achieve new standards of impartiality, actively fight "bias" and present more diverse opinions on the network. The ABC's managing director, Mark Scott, will also announce that a new ombudsman-style manager will handle public complaints against the ABC when he addresses staff around the country at midday. Under the guidelines, a wide range of factual shows from children's television to religious programs will have to meet stringent standards, similar to those on impartiality already in place for ABC news and current affairs. [That doesn't say much! Balance is conspicuously MISSING from ABC current affairs programs!]

The changes will open the ABC to far greater pressure from lobby groups wanting to complain about its coverage of contentious scientific and social issues such as global warming, children's vaccinations and sexual mores. The changes, driven by the ABC board, will also affect ABC radio announcers such as Virginia Trioli, Richard Glover, Fran Kelly and Phillip Adams, who will be under greater scrutiny, as well as programs like The Science Show, The Health Report and television documentaries.

Confirming the changes in the new "editorial guidelines", a senior ABC executive told the Herald: "The changes to the ABC editorial policy will give greater emphasis to the need for impartiality to encouraging a range and diversity of opinion." The guidelines represent a compromise between the board and program makers after the ABC was swept up in the "culture wars" with the Howard Government. It overturns both guidelines drawn up only four years ago and previous legal advice on the ABC Act. In a move apparently aimed at appeasing the ABC's opponents, Mr Scott will publicly unveil the changes tonight at Gerard Henderson's Sydney Institute. Henderson, a Herald columnist, has regularly attacked the ABC, saying it is biased and left-wing.

In the 18 months of negotiations over the guidelines, program makers have won some concessions from the board. These include that the diverse views do not have to be presented in a single program but can be achieved across different programs and over time. However, the guidelines require that whenever the ABC runs content that "deals with a matter of contention or public debate", a diversity of "relevant perspectives should be demonstrated across a network or platform in an appropriate time frame".

Insiders say the reach of the strict guidelines is too wide, targeting programs on the arts, children, education, entertainment, history, Aboriginal affairs, lifestyle, natural history, religion, science, health, documentaries, science and even comedy chat shows such as The Glasshouse. At one point, board members were demanding that satirical shows like The Chaser should be subjected to the "impartiality" test. One insider said "there was a moment where it looked like satire was gone" because the guidelines were so strict it could not be produced. Another told the Herald it was "a hell of a battle to stop it being too awful". In the final draft, both performance programs such as The Chaser and opinion programs were exempted, although the ABC is committed to broadcasting a range of opinions.

Long-time program makers are worried the guidelines will make ABC documentaries bland. Some members of the board were anxious to extend the guidelines to documentaries after the ABC broadcast Outfoxed, a program critical of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News. One ABC manager told the Herald that under the new guidelines "the pre-emptive buckle will achieve a new ascendancy". But other ABC executives believe the guidelines will clarify the broad editorial principles already in operation for all factual program makers. "Now they know what the rules are, they can engage with them," said one.

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Victoria's school canteens to impose fatty food ban

Victorian school children will be allowed to eat fatty junk food only twice a term under strict new canteen rules to be imposed next year. For the first time, school tuckshops will be told what they can and cannot sell to the state's 540,000 school students. Chips, potato cakes, dim sims, battered sausages, cakes and ice cream are on the hit list.

The Bracks Government is expected to reveal the latest crackdown today to try to halt the obesity crisis. It is believed the new rules will apply to Victoria's 1600 state primary and secondary schools. Independent and Catholic schools will be encouraged to adopt the new rules. Food will be divided into three groups - everyday, select and occasional - dictating how often it can be sold. Food listed as "occasional" is defined as having high fat, sugar or salt content and will be restricted to twice a term, or eight times a year. Deep-fried food, ice cream, icy poles, croissants and commercially produced cakes and sweet biscuits will be on the "occasional" list. Goodies listed under "select" will have some nutritional value and will be sold irregularly - potentially once a week. This will include party pies, sausage rolls and low-fat ice cream.

Schools will be told to try to sell as much "everyday" food as possible - which includes items with high nutritional value. Fresh fruit and vegetables, wholegrain bread and cereals and salads are in this category. Pikelets, crumpets, baked potatoes and frozen yoghurt will also be available daily. The new rules will apply to school canteens and lunch orders provided by outside caterers and shops. The Government is believed to have taken a different approach to chocolates and lollies [candy] in schools.

It is believed schools will be given information on how to introduce the new rules, which will begin next year. This includes advice on how to make healthier versions of popular food, for example, replacing commercially made pizza with home-made healthier versions. Activities for the classroom, promotional posters, a website and other material will also be available.

The Bracks Government introduced canteen guidelines in 2003 and this is believed to be the next step in the fight against obesity. It is believed the Government wants to send a healthy-eating message to students, who get about a third of their food at school. Many schools have already adopted healthy eating in their canteens, with restrictions on junk food. The tough new rules come after a ban on sugar-loaded drinks at schools and an investigation into restrictions on chocolates and lollies.

Drinks with more than 300 kilojoules a serve will not be sold at canteens or in vending machines. This means sport drinks and mineral water could face the axe. A spokesman for Education Minister Lynne Kosky would not confirm details of the new rules. "While many schools already offer healthy food to their children, the Government feels there is more to do," he said. About 30 per cent of Australian children are overweight or obese.

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The confident denunciation of "fatty" foods above is amusing. I reproduce below a recent post of mine from elsewhere which suggests that the epidemiological evidence for the denunciation is very shaky

ESKIMOS, FAT AND FOOD SUPERSTITIONS

As most readers here will be aware, the extraordinary degree of misinformation about food and health that we read in the MSM has caused me to do a daily blog on the latest health scares and enthusiasms. It is extraordinarily sad how much energy many people put into going along with the nonsense they read. The longevity studies all tend towards showing that NOTHING in the way of diet or lifestyle change will lengthen your life but many people don't want to believe that so they follow any pied piper who comes along with a promise to lead them to the promised land of longer life. And the media simply pander to that.

One of the most persistent themes that you read in health advice these days is that animal fat is bad for you. A diet rich in animal fat is said to doom you to heart disease, cancer and diabetes. I was rather persuaded of that myself at one stage as there seemed to be some epidemiological evidence for it. Now that I am a health blogger, however, I do a bit more background reading in these things than I used to do and something I found while doing such reading was sufficiently amusing for me to put it up here rather than on my more specialized blog.

The eskimos are of course renowned for eating large amounts of meat and fat. They once ate little else (vegetables don't grow well in the Arctic!) and to this day that remains the mainstay of their diet. And the eskimos have always had a shorter life expectancy than inhabitants of less dangerous climates. But is that shorter life expectancy due to their diet? There is much to say that it is not. They have extraordinarily high rates of suicide, smoking and other behavioural pathologies, for instance.

The interesting thing about Eskimos, however, is WHAT they die of. With their huge intake of animal fats they should be dropping like flies of heart disease, cancer and diabetes, according to the conventional wisdom. But that is precisely what they do NOT die of. They have always had very LOW rates of those diseases. No doubt there is much more that could be said about the matter but when the facts on the ground are the OPPOSITE of what the conventional wisdom would predict, should it not make us just a little skeptical about the conventional wisdom?

I did not keep any links from my reading in the above matters but it should be no trouble to google up lots on the subject.

Victoria's public hospitals in deep doo doo



Emergency ambulances are waiting up to three hours to unload patients because of overcrowded hospitals. The Herald Sun has been told patients' lives are at risk as the system struggles to cope. Some hospitals are accused of putting money before patients by refusing to send ambulances on. A Herald Sun Insight investigation has found:

HOSPITALS are going on ambulance bypass or partial diversion at near-record levels.

SOME are forcing ambulances to wait rather than miss financial bonuses by going on bypass.

A CASE when eight ambulances were queued outside an emergency department.

PARAMEDICS are no longer warned when hospitals shut their doors to emergency ambulances.

NEW mobile computers to record patient details are delaying patient delivery.

The Herald Sun revealed in May that the lives of hundreds of critically ill and injured patients were being put at risk by long delays in ambulance black spots. A Department of Human Services source this week told Insight some hospitals were ignoring a system designed to ensure ambulances bypassed overcrowded emergency departments. "They get penalised if they go on bypass so they don't, which in turn affects ambulance services quite badly," the DHS source said. "They can wait two to three hours at some hospitals before a patient is taken off the stretcher."

A Langwarrin ambulance crew was sent to relieve a Rosebud crew left waiting at Frankston Hospital for two hours last Wednesday night. The source said ambulances had been forced to wait three hours on several occasions at Frankston last month. "It's not just a Frankston problem. It's widespread," the source said. On one day in June, eight ambulances were banked up outside Dandenong Hospital waiting for patients to be assessed. Three were eventually treated at the hospital, but beds couldn't be found for the other five.

Leaked documents reveal city hospitals refused all but the most critical cases while on bypass on 65 occasions totalling 130 hours in May. These don't include diversions under the Hospital Early Warning System, introduced in 2002 to cut bypasses. In May, hospitals used HEWS 287 times, 80 more than in May last year. That puts total bypasses and diversions in 2005-06 as high as 4200. City hospitals went on bypass 2021 times in 1999-2000. The Government stopped releasing bypass numbers four years ago and does not publish HEWS figures.

Operational changes introduced last month mean paramedics are no longer told by dispatchers when a hospital goes on bypass or HEWS diversion. They are notified only when they enter a hospital name into an onboard data terminal when loading a patient. Ambulance employees union boss Steve McGhie accused the Government of keeping paramedics in the dark on bypasses ahead of the election. "It's a way of avoiding access to any data regarding hospital bypass by ourselves and ambulance employees," he said.

Paramedics said it took 20-40 minutes longer to enter cases on new handheld computers. "You actually take your mind off what you're doing with the patient at times to type things in," one said.

Opposition health spokeswoman Helen Shardey blamed Government pressure to reduce elective surgery waiting lists. "For the Government to tell us that everything is working well is clearly a distortion of the truth and these horrific stories are evidence of that," she said. Health Minister Bronwyn Pike rejected suggestions hospitals would endanger patients for financial reasons. "But our emergency departments are busy places and if they get an influx of people at the same time then the system has to deal with it," her spokesman said. He said the ambulance bypass rate of 1.3 per cent was a third of what it was in 1999.

MAS emergency operations manager Andre Coia said computerised bypass alerts were part of a new tracking system. He said average "at hospital times" had risen four minutes to 29 because of it, but changes were being made to speed up the process and cut times. The leaked figures show Royal Melbourne Hospital was worst hit, going on bypass for 50 hours and HEWS for 52 hours in May.

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South Australia's public schools in deep doo doo

Private schools with problems like these would have the pants sued off them

Dilapidated South Australian schools are turning to the Federal Government for financial help, with students having been forced to use "disgusting" toilets, 90-year-old chairs and unsafe play equipment. Two schools said they had waited 15 years for outdated chairs to be replaced, another said it had been concerned about dangerous play equipment since 1995 and yet another had been raising concerns about decrepit carpet since 1998. The number of federal funding applications from South Australia's 605 public primary and secondary schools has tripled in the past 12 months, with almost 1000 requests for help this year.

Parents are also being increasingly called upon to raise their own repair funds, with primary school principals saying this was now "essential" to maintain schools. Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop yesterday blamed the State Government for the maintenance backlog.

The Advertiser applied to the Education Department, under Freedom of Information laws, for the reasons behind South Australian schools' applications for funding, but this was denied on the grounds that providing that information would cost $20,904. However, The Advertiser is aware that SA schools requesting financial assistance include:

A NORTHERN suburbs primary school where students said the toilets were so "disgusting" and hard to keep clean they avoided using them;

A HIGH school in Adelaide's northwest with 90-year-old chairs in its school hall;

AN inner-city school where junior primary students were "too frightened" to use the toilets;

A SOUTHERN suburbs primary school where an uneven surface on the school's hard court was causing student accidents;

A COUNTRY school where a playground audit found the equipment was "largely non-compliant and unsafe", leaving junior primary students with no equipment;

A WESTERN suburbs primary school where the outdated air conditioning was so noisy that teachers could not speak to students unless it was turned off; and

A PRIMARY school in Adelaide's north-east where the smell of toilets was "unbearable" and pervaded classrooms in the same corridor.

The Investing in Our Schools program provides grants of up to $150,000 to government and non-government schools for infrastructure projects. SA schools made 339 grant applications in round one and 492 grant applications in round two last year. However, the demand for financial assistance has increased significantly this year, with the number of grant applications for round three this year climbing to 984.

Ms Bishop said the poor standards shown in some of the state's public schools were due to State Government neglect of maintenance problems. She said the $26.5 million that had been provided to SA schools by the Federal Government under its Investing in Our Schools program should have come from the state. "It is a disgrace that state Labor governments are not supporting their schools," Ms Bishop said.

However, state Education Minister Jane Lomax-Smith said the Federal Government's $26.5 million contribution was a "drop in the ocean" compared to the $550 million the state had spent in public school building improvements in the past five years. This included a $300 million school building program in this year's Budget to fund six new schools, as well as many capital projects and school facility improvements. "The Rann Government has instigated Education Works, the biggest school building reform program in three decades, and we would be delighted if the Federal Government backed it with funding," Dr Lomax-Smith said.

SA Primary Principals Association president Glyn O'Brien said yesterday fundraising by governing councils was "essential" as "schools have never got enough money".

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