The health bungles never stop in Australia's oldest socialized medicine system

[Queensland] Health bosses are building a $30 million operating theatre at a Brisbane hospital, while existing theatres sit empty because of a lack of staff. Only last month, the Beattie Government talked of slashing elective surgery spending after a budget blowout. Theatres at Ipswich, Logan and Redland hospitals have been out of action for months because there are not enough staff.

But plans for a new theatre at the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital, which is next to Health Minister Stephen Robertson's electorate, are forging ahead. The project is part of a $95 million refurbishment promised for QEII during the election campaign. It will incorporate 30 beds and will open early next year, aiming to cut the number of patients waiting too long for operations.

The Australian Medical Association has criticised building new theatres when others sit idle. State president Zelle Hodge said: "It's like a scene from 'Yes Minister'. "You have to question why they are building a new theatre when we already have theatres in the same area not being used because of a lack of staff or beds."

Figures show more than 10,000 patients are waiting longer than is clinically desirable for elective surgery in public hospitals - almost 200 of those are classified as urgent. Meanwhile, an operating theatre at the Princess Alexandra Hospital has sat idle for the past four years - used only as a storeroom. It finally opened last month after a Sunday Mail report prompted Queensland Health to take action.

Doctors are disappointed about the new QEII theatre and say other services have been sacrificed to support "another Robertson ribbon-cutting photo opportunity". One member of staff, who refused to be named because of a Queensland Health ban on speaking to the media, said creating more theatres was "a ridiculous plan'. A doctor said: They might as well just pour the money down the drain."

In recent months, two new operating theatres have opened at Redcliffe and Caboolture hospitals at a cost of $68.6 million. The emergency department at Caboolture Hospital is still being managed by a private firm at a cost more than double the standard public running costs - a year after it had to close because of staff shortages.

Opposition health spokesman John-Paul Langbroek said the funding should be spent on extra beds. Queensland Health refused to comment when asked why a new theatre was being built while others stood empty. It also refused to say whether there would be staff available to run it.

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





Christian politician calls for a halt to Muslim immigration

The leader of the Christian Democratic Party, Reverend Fred Nile, has called for an immediate moratorium on Islamic immigration to Australia. Rev Nile, who is the longest serving member of the NSW Legislative Council, was speaking to supporters at a gathering in the Sydney suburb of North Ryde yesterday. He said there has been no serious study of the potential effects on Australia of more than 300,000 Muslims who are already here, and Australians deserve a breathing space so the situation can be carefully assessed before Islamic immigration can be allowed to resume.

In the meantime, Australia should extend a welcoming hand to the many thousands of persecuted Christians who are presently displaced or at risk in the Middle East. "I pray that within a decade, Muslims in Australia will clearly have demonstrated their commitment to Aussie values including democratic pluralism and the rights of women. We can then assess whether Muslim immigration should begin again," he said.

Rev Nile is leading 21 Christian Democratic Party candidates contesting seats in the NSW Legislative Council at the March 24 state election. Fifty-three Christian Democratic Party candidates are also running in Legislative Assembly electorates across the state.

Rev Nile said there are many reasons why it's appropriate for NSW voters to make a statement on a federal issue as important as immigration. He said NSW has the benefit of a big share of Australia's Middle Eastern Christians, and they're rightly alarmed at the rapid growth in NSW of Islamic concentrations, where the English language is disregarded and Australian family values are unknown or despised

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Frozen food now a danger for children

Any hope regarding Crohn's disease is however welcome

World-first research by Melbourne experts has found that frozen food may be the cause of a dramatic rise in immune disorders in children. Studies reveal a bacteria that thrives in freezing temperatures is present in almost half of Victoria's cases of childhood chronic inflammatory bowel disease. Murdoch Children's Research Institute and Royal Children's Hospital experts proved Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis is present in the digestive system in about half of newly diagnosed cases of Crohn's disease. It is also found in cattle and it is the first time it has been linked to Crohn's disease in children.

More than 45,000 Australians diagnosed with the incurable disease and the youngest patient is only two. The breakthrough research could relieve sufferers, who have difficulty eating and can have weight loss, diarrhoea, fatigue and stunted growth. "The worldwide increase in Crohn's disease far exceeds anything that can be explained by a genetic predisposition alone," RCH head of gastroenterology Dr Tony Catto-Smith said. "We know the bug is present in our environment. And 41 of the 100 CD cases have the bug present in blood, and biopsy suggests some form of association. Whether this bacteria is the trigger is unknown, though."

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Leftist avoidance of the education issues

Kevin Donnelly responds to a critique of his new book, saying that Macintyre's review is penned with a "thumbnail dipped in bile". Kevin Donnelly is director of Melbourne-based Education Strategies and author of "Why Our Schools are Failing and Dumbing Down" (Hardie Grant Books). Stuart Macintyre's review of "Dumbing Down" appeared in "The Australian Literary Review" on March 7.

Stuart Macintyre's so-called review of my book Dumbing Down, about the parlous state of Australia's education system, in The Australian Literary Review this month unfortunately teaches the reader more about Macintyre's prejudices and idiosyncrasies than what the book is about.

Macintyre begins his critique by detailing the central role he played in civics projects under the Keating and Howard governments. In the first 880 or so words, we learn that then prime minister Paul Keating personally selected Macintyre to head a review of civics education; that Macintyre, given his unfamiliarity with school curriculum, travelled Australia at taxpayers' expense, researching how civics was taught in schools and how the Kennett government's "draconian policies", to use his words, destroyed Victoria's system of school education.

Readers are also told, notwithstanding an undergraduate degree in English and politics, 18 years teaching secondary school English and social studies and an MEd and PhD in curriculum, that my contribution to discussions about civics education in shared meetings was "restricted to generalities" and "sometimes naive and tendentious". After wading through additional irrelevant and gratuitous comments, such as Kennett government education bureaucrats supposedly describing me as Rasputin and the federal Government employing me as a consultant to the civics education program for a "substantial sum", never quantified but not as much, I would suggest, as some academics earn as a result of Australian Research Council grants, Macintyre finally realises that what he should be doing is reviewing Dumbing Down.

After pointing out some grammatical and other mistakes, Macintyre all too briefly summarises the book's central concerns about falling standards and the politically correct nature of the curriculum. Macintyre also provides a superficial summary of the book's argument that the culture wars of the 1960s and '70s help to explain educational experiments such as outcomes-based education. Macintyre's diatribe finishes with the claim that debates about falling standards and the politically correct nature of the curriculum represent a strategy to divert public attention from the fact that the federal Coalition Government supposedly fails to fund education properly.

Ignored is that state ALP governments have the primary responsibility for funding school education and that the reason federal government funding to non-government schools has increased is because increasing numbers of parents are deserting government schools; the reality, as it should be, is that the money follows the child.

Those who have read Macintyre's book The History Wars, in which he famously compares Prime Minister John Howard with Caligula and extols Keating's big-picture politics on issues such as reconciliation, multiculturalism and the republic, will know, notwithstanding his arguments in support of "academic honesty" and against resorting to "personal abuse", that Macintyre often fails to follow his own advice. When referring to my involvement in civics education, comments such as "He was retained to assist our work by offering specialist expertise but he didn't do much of that" and "Someone from the other side of the table muttered darkly that he was always invigilating the work of the department. Hence his nickname, Rasputin" demonstrate a decided lack of professional integrity.

In arguing that I fail to explain what is meant by outcomes-based education, Macintyre also shows he has either not read the book or, if he has, is guilty of misrepresentation. Not only does the book provide a definition of OBE in its glossary but it also gives a detailed analysis and description of Australia's adoption of OBE in recent years.

Macintyre writes: "The suggestion that outcomes-based education licensed an abandonment of education standards is false: on the contrary, it was an application of evidence-based methodology to the measurement of standards." Not only is such a sentence a prime example of the type of edu-babble that bedevils education, but the claim that Australia's adoption of outcomes-based education is based on evidence that it has been successful, here or overseas, also is wrong. As outlined in Dumbing Down, when outcomes-based education was introduced into Australia, it was experimental, it had been adopted by only a handful of countries and, according to NSW's Eltis report, there appeared little evidence that it had been successfully implemented elsewhere.

Macintyre is also incorrect when he states: "It had taken considerable negotiation for the states and territories to reach agreement in the late 1980s on a set of national statements and profiles that at least identified 'key learning areas'." The facts are that the development ofthe Keating government's national curriculum occurred during the early '90s and most education ministers at the July 1993 meeting inPerth refused to endorse the statements and profiles.

Macintyre states that I am wrong in suggesting Australian students do not perform well internationally, when he writes: "Nor do the standard international studies of student achievement support Donnelly's claims that Australia trails well behind other countries." An unbiased reading of Dumbing Down will show, in relation to achievement, that I never argue that Australia is "well behind other countries"; what I state is that we are in the "second eleven" and consistently outperformed by five to six other countries. I also acknowledge that Australian "students did very well" in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Program for International Student Assessments for 15-year-old students.

Of greater concern, if it were true, would be Macintyre's claim that there is a "paucity of evidence" for my claim, as a result of Australia's adoption of OBE, that standards are falling. Not only do I quote many examples demonstrating that standards have fallen, including a commonwealth study that reveals that almost half the academics interviewed agreed that standards had fallen over time, but I quote from the 1996 national literacy tests showing that 29 per cent of Year 5 children could not read at the minimum level and 33 per cent of Year 5 children did not meet the minimum standard in writing.

In suggesting that I restrict arguments about the curriculum being dumbed down to subjects such as English, history and mathematics, Macintyre conveniently ignores that a good deal of the book addresses broader, but no less important, issues such as the deleterious effect of non-competitive assessment and OBE-inspired approaches to learning such as constructivism and developmentalism.

On the concluding page of The History Wars, Macintyre admonishes those he describes as conservative history warriors for acting like bullies and for forsaking reasoned argument in favour of caricaturing opponents and impugning their motives. On reading what he has to say about Dumbing Down, it is clear he fails to follow his own advice and, to paraphrase Banjo Paterson, Macintyre's review, instead of being balanced, is penned with a thumbnail dipped in bile. [For the victims of a modern education, Donnelly is here alluding to a line in the famous A.B. Paterson poem "Clancy of the Overflow"]

It is also ironic, while Macintyre bewails my contribution to the education debate as "oversimplified, alarmist and opportunist", that the ALP, at both state and national levels, has recently and somewhat belatedly embraced what I have argued since the early '90s, often as a lone voice; that is, that curriculums should be teacher-friendly, concise, written in plain English and based on the academic disciplines.

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