In Australia, the LEFTISTS want to deregulate!

Which they have historically done to some degree -- but they still want heavy regulation of employment conditions, which is very destructive to jobs. Have a look at France if you doubt that

While most media attention focused on Rudd's compromise industrial relations policy, much of the speech was in fact dedicated to stealing the Liberal equivalent of Labor's battlers, in this case business and independent contractors. Rudd's primary appeal to this traditional Liberal constituency was a commitment to cut red tape. While this might sound platitudinous, like everything Rudd does these days his pitch was firmly rooted in promoting the idea that it is now Labor, not the Coalition, that is better equipped to manage the economy.

How do we know this? Because today Craig Emerson, Rudd's handpicked spokesman on small business and independent contractors, will release a detailed research paper that formed a large part of the economic underpinning of the Opposition Leader's speech. It's an impressive piece of work that seeks to draw a compelling link between what Emerson depicts as Australia's declining productivity and the over-regulation of business. In sentiments reflected in Rudd's presentation, Emerson goes out of his way to reclaim the economic reform legacy of the Hawke-Keating years, something Mark Latham manifestly failed to do.

"The incoming Labor government in 1983 inherited a heavily regulated economy from decades of largely uninterrupted Coalition rule and began the task of deregulating and opening up the economy to competition," Emerson says. "During the last 11 years of Coalition rule, and despite all the reviews, promises and commitments to cut red tape, business has again become shackled by overbearing regulation. As it was back in the early 1980s, so it is now that the task of reducing business regulation as an essential component of a program to lift national productivity will fall to an incoming federal Labor government."

Emerson cites official figures showing that between 2000 and 2006 Australian productivity growth slumped from what he calls "the miracle rate of 2.6 per cent per annum during the 1990s" to 2.1 per cent. "As the governor of the Reserve Bank has pointed out," Emerson says, "labour productivity growth since the end of 2003 has averaged just 1.0 per cent per annum. The governor cautioned that this is a fairly short period over which to be drawing a trend, but nevertheless observed: 'That is quite a slowdown."' To grasp the governor's meaning, consider the following: If Australia's labour productivity growth rate over the 40-year projection period of the Treasury's Intergenerational Report was a percentage point faster than the assumed rate of 1per cent, Australia's national income would be 20 per cent greater by the end of the period.

So, productivity counts. And don't just take Emerson's word for it. Here's the Business Council of Australia on the issue: "More worryingly, labour productivity growth has slowed sharply in Australia. This deterioration in productivity performance is a very real concern." It's one of a number of BCA warnings Emerson sprinkles throughout his paper. Emerson is making a political as well as economic point here: when it comes to the link between productivity and cutting red tape, the BCA is a potential ally of the Labor Party.

Emerson produces figures to show that Australian labour productivity reached 89.4 per cent of US levels in 1998, only to fall to 81.7 per cent in 2006, back to where it was in 1989. But there's a conundrum here that is often used to explain away the chances of the Howard Government being defeated at the next election. Despite falling productivity, the economy is still booming.

Emerson explains it this way: "Australia ranks 16th in the world in labour productivity levels but eighth in prosperity as measured by (gross domestic product) per person. "If today's productivity growth is tomorrow's prosperity, why hasn't Australia slipped down the prosperity rankings? The answer is that during the past decade Australia has experienced not one but two booms: a productivity boom up to 2000, followed by a mining boom. "The boost in our incomes has been estimated at $55 billion every year, equivalent to around $8000 for every Australian household. Australia's mining boom has masked the economic effects of Australia's productivity slump," Emerson says. Again he turns to the BCA: "The benefits that rising commodity prices have provided to the economy, to an extent, have also masked underlying structural weaknesses. "Add to these challenges the impact of an ageing population and slower productivity growth as the benefits of past reforms fade and many conclude that slower growth in the future is inevitable for Australia," the BCA concludes.

Emerson and the BCA have a shared view on one of the ways this productivity slump can be addressed: a concerted assault on business regulation. "In the seven years from 2000 to 2006, the commonwealth passed the same volume of primary legislation as had been passed in the first 82 years of Federation," Emerson says. "And this doesn't include all of the regulations that are made as subordinate legislation, the volume of which has increased more than five-fold since the 1960s."

Again, the BCA is in sync with Labor: "The creeping re-regulation of business and the introduction of policies that are inconsistent and overlapping across jurisdictions are additional examples of how the benefits of past reform can be quietly eroded over time."

So there we have it. On the question of regulation, Labor and the BCA are on a unity ticket. Or at least that's the way Emerson would like to see it. The final balance as to where business comes to rest in terms of election support will, of course, be overwhelmingly influenced by Rudd's final position on industrial relations. The brutal truth is that the kind of constituency the BCA represents wasn't much interested in Rudd's small business and unfair dismissal announcements of Tuesday. What it wants to know is his intentions regarding Australian Workplace Agreements.

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"KEEP 'EM IN THE DARK" argue Nazi-type "scientists"

Airing the views of climate change sceptics in the media may only be serving to keep the global warming controversy boiling, argue scientists. Leading climate change experts have warned the World Conference of Science Journalists in Melbourne, Australia, that a balanced view does not always reflect the consensus of the research community.

Kevin Hennessy, a lead scientist with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said yesterday that media attention on "the view of a handful of climate change sceptics" amplifies their opinions and "implies that there is little agreement about the basic facts of global warming". Hennessy is also with the marine and atmospheric division of Australian government research body, CSIRO. Speaking in a session about climate change reporting, he said editors and journalists have a duty to ensure that facts are presented in context. Balanced reporting, he said, "perpetuates the public's perception that scientists are in disarray, which is misleading in the case of climate change".

Geoff Love, secretary of the IPCC and former deputy director of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, said that IPCC assessment reports from 1990 through to this year are strong evidence of "the coming together of the scientific community." Emphasis on the sceptic view does not help public understanding of climate change, said Love.

Media coverage has not always reflected the consensus of the majority of the scientific community, said Ian Lowe, president of the Australian Conservation Foundation a non-profit environment group. "That only makes the public and political discussion more difficult," he said.

The problem is compounded by a lack of reporting on climate change, according to Chris Mooney, a U.S.-based science journalist attending the conference. Although the 2006 hurricane season attracted a lot of media attention, Mooney presented statistics from the United States showing that climate change has never been a priority in the media.

The situation is similar in Africa, said Ochieng' Ogodoa a Kenyan correspondent for London, U.K.-based news web site SciDev.Net. Articles about deaths caused by floods or other natural disasters, and political scandals related to climate change tend to get precedence, he said.

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I liked the advertisement shown alongside the above article in its original source. I reproduce it below. It is a pic of an INCANDESCENT globe, not one of the fluorescent wonders! The Greenies don't win 'em all!






Some patients get no treatment at all in Tasmanian public hospitals

ONE in seven patients leaves the stretched Royal Hobart Hospital emergency department before being treated because of long waits. Between December and March, 13,058 patients presented to the department but 1821 -- an average 15 a day -- did not to wait to see a doctor. Some of the patients had been assessed as suffering "life-threatening" or "potentially life-threatening" illnesses or injuries and severe pain.

But department director Tony Lawler said the "majority" were patients who had presented to triage with "potentially serious" or "less urgent" conditions. He said there was always a "concern" that patients who did not wait would die, but stressed they were encouraged to stay or given options for medical help. "We don't put people in the waiting room and forget them," Dr Lawler said. "We try to maintain supervision." [Hard to do when they have walked out!]

RHH chief executive Craig White said the "did not wait" figures were steadily climbing but the hospital was working hard to bring them down. The figures come as the emergency department -- which moved into its new $15.4 million home last month -- comes under increasing pressure and criticism. In the past month, nurses, patients, politicians and ambulance officers have complained of long waits for medical help. Ambulances have been "ramping" or building up at the department, unable to offload patients because the hospital is full. And an elderly woman died in the emergency department last month after four days trying to get help and hours in waiting rooms.

Dr Lawler said patients were prioritised on clinical need, sometimes causing frustration. "Sometimes a patient might not appear to be very ill," he said. "It sometimes seems there's an inequitable process about who is seen first." He said some patients felt better and left or decided to see their GP, but conceded some patients who left were rated category one, two and three.

Dr White said waits had increased because more patients were presenting to emergency and beds in wards were harder to access. He said access block was "complex" but recent nursing-home closures meant aged-care patients were taking up 16 beds. Access block figures from the second half of 2006 show 29 per cent of patients admitted through the RHH emergency department wait more than eight hours for a ward bed. This compares with a 27.4 per cent national average.

Dr Lawler said the hospital had started holding daily bed management meetings to free up beds and new systems would help ease the wait. The new emergency department allows patients to be "streamed" through three paths and there is a clinic dedicated to patients in the lowest categories. This means a patient needing stitches can be "in and out" without having to wait for a cubicle. A short-stay unit will open in July for patients who require observation but don't need to be admitted. Dr Lawler said this area would act as a "pressure valve" to the department and reduce waits.

He could not compare the RHH "did not wait" figures to other hospitals but Australian Nursing Federation state secretary Neroli Ellis said they seemed "high". She attributed the figures to the closure of 1B North, a 30-bed ward closed for six months for renovations that only began last month. Ms Ellis said up to 16 patients stayed in the emergency department overnight on trolleys waiting for a bed.

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