Hardline Muslim clerics urge tax cheating

Hardline Muslim clerics are encouraging their followers to cheat the tax system because they consider paying income tax contrary to Islamic law. Muslim leaders have warned that fundamentalist imams who put sharia law ahead of Australian law are also condoning welfare fraud and the cash economy as tax-evasion methods.

Sydney-based Islamic leader Fadi Rahman told The Australian that the extremist clerics who were preaching messages against paying income taxes were also staunchly opposed to Western ideologies, including the Australian way of life. He said he had heard hardline clerics at Friday sermons in Sydney highlight the importance of cheating the tax system. "I mean, just like how you've got clerics (with) extreme views who are telling the Muslims in the Western world to declare war against the very country that they live in and the very country that is paying for their day-to-day life, you'll find that these are the clerics who are telling them to dodge the tax system," said Mr Rahman, a youth leader and the president of the Independent Centre for Research Australia. "Tax, itself, is not allowed in Islam. So they (clerics) encourage them that if there's any way that you can dodge paying the tax, then you should do it."

The Australian understands that the clerics pushing for tax evasion espoused a fundamentalist form of Islam called Wahabbism. While sharia law does not require Muslims to pay taxes, it does require them to pay zakat (alms) towards charitable causes.

Prominent Islamic cleric Khalil Shami, who said he had heard of imams encouraging tax evasion but had no direct knowledge of it happening, warned spiritual leaders to abide by Australian laws, saying tax evasion was a form of "theft" that would serve only to undermine the government help given to the Muslim and mainstream communities. "They have to give the right advice to the people because we come to this country and we have to follow the law of this country," said the imam of Penshurst mosque, in Sydney's southwest. "Everything that the Government do, we have to support it, we have to stand behind it ... to help the land and to help the law of the land."

The fundamentalist Ahlus Sunnah Wal-Jamaah Association, which is headed by Australia's most radical cleric, Mohammed Omran, hit back at suggestions that its imams - including Abdul Salam Mohammed Zoud, who heads the group's Sydney branch - were among those calling on their flock to cheat on their taxes. "Of course we pay taxes and we go as far as to collecting money from our Muslim communities and donating it to organisations (such as the Royal Children's Hospital) to help," said the Wahabbi organisation's spokesman, Abu Yusuf. He said the authorities should deal with tax cheats "as they would with anyone else breaking the law".

Muslim community leader Keysar Trad, who worked at the tax office for 14 years, said he believed some Islamic fringe groups would include "cheating on taxes" as part of their teachings. "We know that some fringe groups within the community have some aberrant teachings," the president of the Islamic Friendship Association said. "If one of those fringe groups was giving a message that did not serve society as a whole ... such as cheating on taxes, I would not be surprised." Mr Trad said he was often told by "conservative" clerics to quit his former job at the tax office because they considered it contrary to sharia law.

Mr Rahman, who helps young Muslims turn away from radical Islam and steer clear of criminal activities, said hardline Muslim clerics were not fazed that their followers were "double-dipping" by working cash-in-hand to avoid paying tax and collecting social security benefits on the side. "While we work hard to pay our taxes, it's not fair on the rest of us," he said.

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Stalinists in South Australian education

Year 12 board wants to put parents in the Mushroom Club -- kept in the dark and fed bullsh*t. "The children of the light love the light and the children of the darkness love the darkness" -- to paraphrase Jesus (John 3: 19-20)

The state's examination board is attempting to suppress by law the Year 12 performances of individual schools. The Senior Secondary Assessment Board of South Australia has asked the State Government for new laws to prevent public comparisons between the performances of public and private schools. Under a legislative review to be in place by 2010, the Government is about to force the SSABSA to release these details to the Education Department and the Education Minister, but the board wants to keep this from being extended to public release.

Its existing policy is only to publish statewide results, which do not include variations between individual schools or between government, independent and Catholic systems. Individual schools are able to obtain their own results and compare them with statewide averages through a password-protected website administered by SSABSA.

The board, which sets and approves curriculums and assesses student achievement for Years 11 and 12, is a State Government authority, but is not directly answerable to the Education Minister. Under the Government's review, it will be replaced by a new body called the SACE Board, which will be answerable to the minister. SSABSA says its proposal to block the public release of school performance details would avoid the "damaging effects" of comparing these. [Quite a confession of public school failure!]

Chief executive Janet Keightley said the board was "very clear" that the school a child attended was a "small contributing factor" in academic achievement. "To rank schools on this basis is very, very misleading and very dangerous because it means people will make serious decisions on very, very poor quality information," she said. "Any kind of simplistic comparison is not advantageous."

Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop said yesterday that parents had a right to know the academic standards and overall performance of schools and poorly-performing schools would be shown up by the release of results. "If parents were provided with this information, state governments would have to answer to them for the failings of state education systems," she said.

A spokeswoman for SA Education Minister Jane Lomax-Smith said the State Government did not have a position on the issue. "The Government will develop a policy when in possession of all the facts and responses from the public consultation," she said. South Australian Institute for Education Research president Ted Sandercock said researchers needed the data. "Quite often, you want to see what are the differences and what are they due to," he said. Association of Independent Schools executive director Garry Le Duff said he wanted the same access to information as the Education Department. "It should be released to individual schools and all school sectors, not just to the government sector," he said.

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Another State health system in trouble

The boss of Tasmania's massive Health and Human Services department has quit, halfway through a series of major and "difficult" reforms. DHHS secretary Martyn Forrest yesterday announced his resignation, saying he had accepted an education position in the Middle East.

In the past few years there has been an exodus of senior bureaucrats and medical specialists from the department, which Health Minister Lara Giddings admits is stretched to the limit. Dr Forrest's departure comes as the DHHS is going through budget cuts and unprecedented change and all services -- including public hospitals -- are under review. A new Royal Hobart Hospital is being planned, the swamped child protection system is in the midst of an overhaul and there are fears of hospital closures in the North-West.

Dr Forrest said there was never a good time to leave. He admitted the job had been challenging and stressful and the department had been "in a bit of a moribund state, a bit depressed" when he took charge in late 2005. "Now I think that it has got a bit of confidence about what it is doing," he said.

Ms Giddings admitted Dr Forrest's departure could lead to "very short delays" in the clinical services and primary health services plan. But the State Government was committed to reform to prepare for increased future demands. And she defended the departure of Dr Forrest and other key DHHS people as "nothing out of the ordinary for a workplace of more than 11,000 people". The RHH churned through four CEOs in little more than a year and security marched emergency department head Alastair Meyer out of his office last April. Other resignations include:

-- Children's Commissioner David Fanning, who quit in September saying the system was not coping, and still has not been replaced.

-- DHHS deputy secretary Anne Brand quit last March, telling Dr Forrest it was "time to move on".

-- Alcohol and Drug Service clinical director David Jackson quit last February, saying he could no longer watch young people die of drug addiction.

-- RHH head of obstetrics and gynaecology Melwyn D'Mello resigned just before the election was called last February.

-- And hospital CEO Ted Rayment was deposed under a shroud of mystery in August 2005.

Australian Medical Association southern division chairman Haydn Walters said Dr Forrest had overseen a period when politics, not clinical need, had driven spending. Prof Walters said Ms Giddings now had a good opportunity to appoint someone with experience in health -- which he said Dr Forrest lacked -- to spend money sensibly. "Find somebody who wants to work with the doctors and nurses rather than treat them like the enemy because they spend money," he said.

Australian Nursing Federation state secretary Neroli Ellis said Dr Forrest had replaced senior nurses with bureaucrats from the Education Department. Dr Forrest was head of the Education Department from 1997 until October 2005, when he moved to the DHHS to replace John Ramsay. "ANF has serious concerns with the legacy he has left behind," Ms Ellis said, adding many of the bureaucrats were on five-year contracts.

State Opposition health spokesman Brett Whiteley said Dr Forrest had been an impeccable public servant and his departure was a "major blow". Mr Whiteley said the health system had been in "meltdown" under Labor and delays in vital reforms were expected. Dr Forrest said the Fit program to cut red tape in the bureaucracy had been his major achievement during his 17-month term. Ms Giddings thanked Dr Forrest for his leadership and initiating reforms and said his departure should not hurt the department.

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Hip woes hit under-50s

High-impact exercise blamed

More middle-aged people are having hip replacements because high-impact exercise has wrecked their joints. While osteoarthritis used to be a disease of the elderly, it is increasingly common in the under 50s. Road jogging, strenuous aerobics and skiing are just some of the activities that take a toll on joints, leading to knee and hip replacements.

Bill Donnelly, a surgeon at Brisbane Orthopaedic Specialist Services, estimates 90 per cent of the 30,000 joint replacement operations in Australia every year are because of osteoarthritis. "There is an increase of people under 50 having the operations because of an increase in competitive and contact sports and also high- impact activity," he said.

Twenty years ago, patients under 55 were told they were too young lor surgery, but increased demand and improved technology has changed that. The old-style full hip replacement involved a large part of the femur being removed as well as the ball and socket of the hip joint, but a new technique, hip resurfacing, conserves the damaged areas. The operation is recommended for younger patients who want to continue an active lifestyle.

"In six or seven years, this operation has increased from 2 per cent to 10 per cent of the joint-replacement market," Dr Donnelly said. "There are restrictions, however, and if people go back to jogging, and playing contact sports, the joint will become loose. We tell patients to switch their activities to cycling, walking, swimming and golf."

Dianne Dixon is only 43, but has had a knee operation and hip resurfacing, after years of netball and road jogging. A car accident escalated the problem. The mother of four, from Maroochy Waters on the Sunshine Coast, said that without the surgery she would have been in chronic pain. "I've had to give up the netball and the jogging, but I do keep active with low-impact exercise," she said. Dr Donnelly said joint replacements shouldn't be taken lightly. "They're fantastic, but they are a last resort."

The above article by HANNAH DAVIES appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on March 11, 2007