Teachers quitting over sex inquiries

Given the way they are treated, men who take on a teaching career are a courageous lot

TEACHERS are quitting their jobs. rather than fighting to clear their name of alleged sex offences, because investigations are taking too long. The Queensland Teachers' Union said some investigations were taking several years and teachers refused to stay in the job with suspicion hanging over their head. "The nature of the job is stressful enough without having that on top of it," said union president Steve Ryan. "There have been a number of teachers who have just resigned because they don't want to go through the trauma."

Education Queensland said that most investigations were concluded in case the teacher sought to be re-employed at a later date. An exclusive report in The Sunday Mail last week revealed 82 state school employees, mostly teachers, were being investigated for alleged sex offences involving students. The allegations ranged from serious sexual assaults to showing sexually explicit material to making sexual comments to children in conversations, phone text messages and on the internet.

Education Queensland said there were 414 outstanding cases involving allegations of official misconduct against staff. As of May 1, there were 12 teachers under suspension, eight with pay and four without. The four without had appeared in court on criminal charges and been committed for trial.

One male teacher who contacted the Sunday Mail said he had fought for two years to clear his name after students accused him of indecent behaviour. The teacher, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, said charges were thrown out of court because of lack of evidence. But Education Queensland had stalled on giving his job back and allowing him to return to the classroom. "Teachers are easy targets for a lot of cheap shots. A small percentage of the community think male teachers are motivated by a desire to be close to children," he said. I have dedicated my whole life to this career ... hopefully I will get my iob back one day."

Mr Ryan said many of the 82 cases against the teachers would eventually be dropped, and it was unfair that parents and students might assume a teacher was guilty if he or she left the profession because the investigation had been prolonged.

The above story by DARRELL GILES appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on May 3, 2007






Truthless Tasmanian Greenie

Greenie "facts" are rarely anything of the sort

CELEBRITY protesters are giving activism a bad name. Australians have endured the truly mediocre musician Pink blathering on about the wool industry, actress Toni Collette sounding off on wool and mining, and now Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan has weighed in (again) on the timber industry... Highly quotable, he is frequently consulted by the ALP's media arm, the ABC, whenever the national broadcaster wants an articulate critic to paint a word portrait of an island state populated by oafish rampaging thugs intent on raping the environment. As the poster boy for the deep Greens, his work has been featured in The Guardian, the voice of the Left in Britain, and has a longish whine currently featuring in London's conservative newspaper The Daily Telegraph, and the Melbourne-based left-wing periodical The Monthly....

Sufficient to say that an injection of fact might enhance some of the author's exports. Another who feels the same way is Federal Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation Minister Eric Abetz, who yesterday took a critic's blue pencil to Flanagan's most recent work at the biennial conference of the Institute of Foresters of Australia and the New Zealand Institute of Forestry at Coffs Harbour on the NSW North Coast.

According to Abetz, who actually does know something about forestry, as opposed to Flanagan, whose knowledge may lie in the literary field, the essay "tells more untruths than Pinocchio on a bad day". In fact, Abetz claims Flanagan has inserted some 70 "deliberate or inexcusably negligent errors of fact, selective citing of fact, or twisting of facts".

He takes the writer to task for making claims such as "the great majority of Tasmanians appear to be overwhelmingly opposed to old-growth logging", and asks, if this is so, why the Greens, the only party with a policy to completely end old-growth forestry in Tasmania, polled just 17 per cent of the vote at the 2006 state election - a decline on the previous election. He also cites the 2004 federal election, noting that Labor, supported by the Greens, lost two House of Representative seats and a Senate seat, and the Greens' vote went backward, with policies aimed at shutting the Tasmanian forest industry.

In the second paragraph of his article, Flanagan makes the claim that the Federal Court has found the forestry industry to be illegal, but this, too, is at best a huge stretch and at worst an untruth because the court actually ruled that in one small patch of forest, Forestry Tasmania was operating outside the terms of the Tasmanian Regional Forest agreement, as defined by the court. Readers on the mainland and in Britain wouldn't have a clue about the details of the case and would no doubt believe Flanagan's bald assertion.

It is a pity his audience won't and don't want to hear Abetz's response, but though the author claims that Tasmania's great forests will soon "belong only to myth as the last of these extraordinary places is sacrificed to the wood-chipper's greed", the reality is that Tasmania will continue to have 47 per cent of its forests forever protected, including 79 per cent of the old-growth forests, and more than half of the Styx.

Nor do Flanagan's repeated claims that old-growth forests are logged for wood chips stand up. Those trees are logged for their precious timber for craft wood, furniture and veneers. Only the residue is chipped for paper - which is better than permitting it to be wasted.

What is it about timber - the most sustainable, most energy efficient of all our resources - that people like Flanagan cannot get their heads around or dislike so intensely? Do they really want to live in concrete boxes decorated with moulded plastics and admire fittings made of long chains of polymer? Tasmania is home to all manner of self-appointed protest groups, Doctors for Forests, Lawyers for Trees, whatever. Perhaps Flanagan wants to initiate Novelists for Paperless Books. What is obvious is his fiction is apiece with the myths that have sustained the Greens and the loopier members of the Green Left for decades, and bears no relation to the realities underpinning the island's industry and economy.

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Your government will protect you -- again

Aged care system overseen by lazy, fat-bottomed bureaucrats who don't give a damn as long as all the boxes are ticked

NURSING homes found to be neglecting, mistreating or providing poor care to patients are being protected by a government-appointed agency, according to aged care critics. The agency is lacking in transparency and reliant on residents and staff too scared to speak out, they say. The watchdog is also accused of being too reliant on paperwork by aged care management and not investigating what is happening in patients' rooms. The frequency of audits by the ACSAA has also been called into question.

And critics also claim the Aged Care Standards and Accreditation Agency, which is responsible for checking the standards of nursing homes throughout Australia, does not provide a true and accurate picture of what is happening in homes because it fails to disclose past reports on its website. The Courier-Mail can confirm aged care facilities which have been sanctioned in the past for horrific standards have their damning reports taken off the ACSAA's website once problems have been "fixed".

Agedcarecrisis.com founder Lynda Saltarelli said this system was protecting homes and failing consumers as it denied future residents and their families access to a home's track record. Ms Saltarelli said some homes were repeat offenders, but consumers had no way of knowing this. Diane Bates, founder of Daniels Shield (Doesn't Allow Neglect In Elderly Lives), said as a former aged care worker, she knew staff were drilled on what to tell the agency when inspections were made - and many residents interviewed were too scared to tell the truth in fear of being thrown out. "Most of their checking is done by checking the bookwork," Ms Bates said. "Now, if I tick a box and say I just won Gold Lotto, it doesn't mean to say I did."

But an ACSAA spokesman defended the agency's reporting rules, saying that while past reports were not on the website anybody wanting a copy of an older report could request it. "That said, the most recent report is usually the most relevant," the spokesman said. He also said 10 per cent of residents or relatives representing them were always interviewed privately and this was always cross-checked with the paperwork compiled.

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Baby incentives work

Australia now pays mothers $4,000 for having a baby



AUSTRALIANS have more than satisfied Treasurer Peter Costello's famous directive to go forth and multiply, achieving the second-highest birth record. Figures released yesterday from the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveal 265,900 babies were born in 2006, the highest number since 1971, when 276,400 arrived. Statisticians predict the nation could greet its 21st million member on June 29.

But 2006 also produced a record number of deaths (133,900, up 2.1 per cent on 2005). But that didn't dampen the spirits of Mr Costello, who could claim some credit for the population boom with his celebrated challenge "one for dad, one for mum and one for the nation". "This is a good thing," he said yesterday.

He predicted the quarter of a million new arrivals would further boost the economy and help care for the elderly. The confidence to breed stemmed from confidence in the strong economy, he said. And while he didn't directly link a Labor election win with a reversal in the birth rate, he hinted at the possibility. "People are confident and feeling secure about employment and think it's a time to start a family," he said.

The ABS says Australia's population was 20,852,000 at the end of 2006, an increase of 1.4 per cent, or 293,100 people, since the end of 2005. Bald Hills mother of three Amanda Hay helped the boom by giving birth to twins last week. Ms Hay, 37, who will return to part-time teaching next year, said the Government's baby bonus only went so far in helping young families. "It just helps out a bit," she said.

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