Anti-smacking kit hit

"He that spareth his rod hateth his son" -- Proverbs 13:24

A NEW $2.5 million campaign urging parents not to smack their children has upset a family group that supports smacking. It is not illegal for parents to smack their children, but the federal government-funded "Every Child is Important" campaign argues against it. "Hitting a child does not teach acceptable ways to behave," its material says. "Instead it may result in a repeat of the misbehaviour. "Successful discipline can be achieved without the use of physical punishment."

Family Council of Victoria secretary Bill Muehlenberg said it was wrong to use taxpayers' money to push an anti-smacking line most parents would disagree with. Mr Muehlenberg, who smacked his three boys, said that in some cases with small children it was the only option. "It's usually done as a last resort, done in love, done with moderation, self-control," he said. "It's not the same as abuse -- which we already have laws on the books about."

But Dr Joe Tucci, CEO of the Australian Childhood Foundation, which compiled the "Every Child is Important" campaign material, is opposed to smacking. He said parents should work out why their child was misbehaving and address the cause. "You don't have to hit your children to teach them right from wrong," Dr Tucci said.

Sunrise presenter and father-of-four David Koch is a high-profile smacking advocate. "Smacking is very different to being abusive," he told the Herald Sun. Koch said that it was wrong to smack when you were emotional, but an out-of-control child might need a tap. "I think a smack can be useful because it actually is a circuit-breaker, if you like, from actually being out of control," he said.

The "Every Child is Important" campaign features brochures, CD-ROMs and website advice for parents. It covers -- in 16 languages -- the early years, play, expressing love, harmful words, misbehaviour, siblings, accepting difference, safety and coping with stress.

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I think I would back Biblical wisdom against modern-day do-gooder theory. The do-gooder wisdom about the importance of self-esteem has long since imploded so there is no reason to think that this related thinking will be any different




Union decline puts heat on Labor party

UNION membership has plummeted to just one in five workers, leading the Howard Government to attack Labor for being captive to an ever-shrinking section of the workforce. The 6.6 per cent decline in union ranks - most pronounced in NSW - has also raised fears about Labor's long-term survival. The former federal Labor leader, Kim Beazley, told the Herald earlier this year he feared for Labor's future if it lost the next election because the new workplace laws would destroy the ALP's union base.

The Government seized on the Bureau of Statistics figures as an endorsement of its industrial relations legislation, claiming workers were voting with their feet. The number of private sector workers in unions has fallen to 15 per cent. Union ranks are now dominated by nurses, teachers and public servants.

The bureau's figures dent ACTU claims that the new laws had sent 69,800 workers back into the arms of unions in 2005. That rise has been cancelled by an exodus of 125,900 workers over the 12 months to August 2006. The ACTU blames the new laws. "If Work Choices is so evil, why would people be walking away from unions?" the Minister for Workplace Relations, Joe Hockey, said yesterday. "This sends an emphatic message to Kevin Rudd. Workers are walking away from unions and Kevin Rudd and Labor should walk away from unions as well."

Labor's industrial relations spokeswoman, Julia Gillard, said there was no link between the rate of unionisation and Labor's stance on industrial relations. "We know from published opinion polls, and I know from conversations I have every day, that Australian working men or women, whether or not they are union members, are overwhelmingly opposed to Work Choices," she said.

But the ACTU president, Sharan Burrow, said the new laws had made workplaces much more hostile to union membership. "When you have got industrial relations laws designed to take away people's rights at work, make it harder to bargain collectively and allow employers to force thousands of people onto individual Australian Workplace Agreements contracts each day, then the laws are clearly doing what they were designed to do: put all the power in employers' hands," Ms Burrow said.

Mr Hockey said workers were turning their backs on unions because union officials were spending their dues campaigning against the Government rather than representing their members.

The latest figures represent the second largest annual decline in union ranks since the bureau began regularly surveying employees on union membership in 1990. Almost half of the fall came in NSW, where union membership fell 58,600 to 604,600. In the private sector, apart from pockets of strength in manufacturing, construction and mining, the unionist is almost an endangered species. Fewer than one in 10 employees in fast-growing service industries such as finance and insurance, hospitality, real estate and administrative and support services are union members.

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Operating theatres shut down in Victoria despite high-demand

A STRING of hospitals has been forced to close operating theatres over the Easter holiday break, according to the State Opposition. Opposition health spokesman Helen Shardey said yesterday the stoppage at several regional and two metropolitan hospitals reflected the Bracks Government's failure to adequately fund the hospitals. Kyneton District Health Service, Kilmore Hospital, Bairnsdale Regional Health Service, Casey Hospital and Monash Medical Centre will each close its theatres for a fortnight. Echuca Regional Health will stop elective surgery for three weeks, after a two-week shutdown over Christmas.

But the hospitals and the State Government deny any funding shortfall, saying the routine closures were largely to allow staff to have time off over the holiday period. Ms Shardey said the hospitals were "feeling obliged to say that". "There are concerns that they are running short of funds and are being forced into this action," she said. Ms Shardey said it was inappropriate for the theatres to close for routine surgery while more than 36,000 patients remained on Victoria's waiting lists. "These latest closures are enough to cause further delays in waiting times for essential surgery when patients have already waited long enough," Ms Shardey said.

But Bairnsdale Regional Health Service CEO Gary Gray denied his hospital in East Gippsland was closing surgery for financial reasons. "We are actually operating at a surplus at the moment," Mr Gray said. "We work our closures around Christmas and Easter as part of our leave management strategy; obviously that is when we get the most requests for leave from our staff. "No one is going to have to wait longer for surgery," he said.

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Global warming "could" destroy Great Barrier Reef

Prophecies of doom for Australia's great coral reef were common long before global warming was thought of. Declines used to be blamed on fertilizer runoff from farms. The truth is that, as a huge living system, it undergoes constant change for reasons people can only guess at. It should be noted however that the reef is at its most luxuriant in WARM waters and dies out as it stretches into cooler waters. Clearly, reef-lovers should HOPE for global warming as warmth is one thing that is known to be good for it. You would never guess any of that from the article below, however -- which is just the usual scare story from the usual suspects:



THE world's most spectacular natural wonders, ranging from Australia's Great Barrier Reef to the Amazon River basin, are threatened by the ravages of global warming, the green group WWF said today. It singled out 10 micro-regions across the globe where climate change has already taken a toll, warning that these delicately-balanced ecosystems are, in many cases, in danger of disappearing outright.

"While adaptation to changing climate can save some, only drastic action by governments to reduce emissions" of greenhouse gases can stop the "complete destruction" of others, said WWF scientist Lara Hansen. Up to 60 per cent of the Amazon forest, home to nearly a third of the planet's land species, could become semi-arid savanna if average global temperatures rise 2-3C above 1990 levels, the WWF said. It is very likely that some species will become extinct even before they are identified.

The WWF report comes a day before the world's top climate scientists in Brussels release a large report, the second of three, predicting dire consequences from global warming, especially for poor nations and species diversity. "There is high confidence that climate change will result in extinction of many species and reduction in the diversity of ecosystems," says the 1400-page final draft report, a copy of which was obtained by AFP. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's first report, released in February, forecast temperatures would rise between 1.8-4C by century's end. A final volume, due to be released in early May, will discuss how warming can be mitigated.

Australia's Great Barrier Reef along with other reef ecosystems - which take up only a quarter of a per cent of ocean floor surfaces but sustain 25 per cent of all marine life - are rapidly declining, the WWF warned. The IPCC report says that an increase of only 2C will result in the bleaching of the world's reefs, with catastrophic consequences for species diversity and local economies that depend on them....

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