Foreign doctors 'avoiding security checks'

OVERSEAS trained doctors are avoiding police security checks and assessments of their medical skills because of holes in the system. And more than 1000 doctors employed as trainees in NSW public hospitals are being used to plug workforce gaps before they have been properly trained.

The Joint Parliamentary Committee on Migration last night exposed serious concerns about the scrutiny applied to the 2500 overseas trained doctors entering Australia each year. The committee found hospitals had been using the 457 visa to get doctors into the country quickly because a police security check was not required under this visa. And it called for urgent action to improve both the security and skills checks on doctors entering the country.

Alarm bells were first raised with when Dr Jayant Patel was accused of causing patient deaths in Queensland. Fears grew when the Federal Government this year cancelled the visa of Dr Mohammed Haneef who was related to UK terror suspects. A state and federal plan to improve the checks has foundered because not all states have agreed to them. The parliamentary committee also said the number of occupational overseas trainee doctors employed in NSW hospitals had doubled from 725 to 1326 between 2001 and 2006.

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Federal government housing pitch to counter Rudd surge

This should have been done long ago

PETER Costello will attempt to cripple Kevin Rudd's campaign on housing affordability by promising to release large parcels of commonwealth-owned land during the election campaign. Treasurer Peter Costello in Canberra after the decision that he will play a bigger role in the election campaign. The Treasurer has also vowed to defuse Labor's attack on the Government's Work Choices industrial relations laws by convincing Australians concerned about the laws that they have been duped by a union-backed advertising campaign.

Mr Costello outlined his stratgegy in an interview with The Australian last night in which he said the Opposition Leader was beatable, despite his lead in opionion polls, provided he was confronted on policy.

The Labor leader has campaigned hard on industrial relations and on his claim that the Government has been asleep at the wheel while the cost of housing and rental properties had grown out of the reach of many people. Mr Rudd has announced a series of proposals, including grants for councils to meet the cost of housing infrastructure such as sewers, greater rent subsidies for people paying more than 30 per cent of their income in rent and incentives for superannuation companies to invest in affordable rental property.

Asked what he proposed to do to make housing more affordable, Mr Costello stressed that land supply remained the key, rejecting the concept of using tax reform to boost investment in the low-cost housing sector. "If you get further investment into the housing market, you could actually push housing prices up," he said. "You have got to get supply-side measures in place - land." He said he had completed an audit of commonwealth-owned defence and CSIRO land and had indentified "substantial blocks" around cities that he hoped to release soon. "We are now looking at planning and environmental restrictions to see if we can get them on to the market," he said. "We are looking at these blocks to see if we can do our bit. We are appealing to the states to do their bit." Voters could expect to hear more during the election campaign, he said.

The Treasuer said Labor's battle against the Work Choices laws could be countered if the Government concentrated on bridging the gap between union advertising about Work Choices and the actual on-the-ground experience. He said he understood that the man on the street did not want to be ripped off. "I also think the man in the street is much more likely to have a job and a higher wage than under previous systems," Mr Costello said. "There is a conflict between what they are being told to fear and what they are actually experiencing. I think that as time goes by experience will win out over fear."

He also rejected Kevin Rudd's attempt to paint himself as a leader who could end the blame game between states and the commonwealth over services such as health and education. Mr Rudd was attempting to obscure the fact that state Labor governments were responsible for the poor services. Mr Costello said problems in service delivery almost universally originated from areas of state government responsibility, such as hospitals, transport and law and order, while people were satisfied with commonwealth-run services like social security, employment services and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. "Rudd is just patsying for the premiers," he said. "He doesn't want people to think for themselves and contrast the delivery of services by a federal Coalition government and the delivery of services by state Labor governments. If they did they wouldn't want a federal Labor government."

He said the commonwealth had provided the states with the growing revenue from the Goods and Services Tax and that the answer to poor state services was to press the states to use the money more wisely. "It's about $40 billion between them per annum," he said. "We want them to use that revenue to produce good services. If people don't like the state government, instead of getting rid of the federal Government, get rid of the state government."

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Pregnant women with diabetes refused treatment

You can rely on your government to look after you

A Ballarat University study has found some rural doctors are refusing treatment to pregnant women with type one diabetes. Doctors are reportedly worried that rural medical services would be insufficient to deal with diabetic complications during pregnancy.

The seven women interviewed as part of the national study say there's a lack of information on managing blood glucose levels during pregnancy. They say they rely on websites for information.

Ballarat University lecturer, Associate Professor Rosemary King, says the woman are deflated by the attitudes of some health professionals. "Being told that they might miscarry or the baby might die or they might have abnormalities... particularly when you're pregnant or you're wanting to be pregnant you're pretty vulnerable to those sorts of messages," she said. "[The women] really thought that people were being not very helpful and more judgemental and negative than constructive," Associate Professor King said.

She says the results are not surprising given the shortage of specialists in country areas. "We probably need to be thinking about how to have accessible information available both for professionals and for the women... how do we go about sort of finding out what it is that people want to know, how do we make the information available?" she said.

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There is no conspiracy

By Andrew Bolt

MATTHEW Ricketson until last year headed RMIT University's school of journalism, teaching tomorrow's reporters how the media "really" works. Now The Age's media writer, Ricketson is flogging his views to a wider audience of the Left that's always up for conspiracy theories. Last weekend they got fed a ripe one, with Ricketson warning "something is afoot among columnists on Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspapers: "Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun and, yesterday, Janet Albrechtsen of The Australian, have abandoned their longstanding support for John Howard's prime ministership." Ricketson said: "Other News Limited columnists, such as Paul Kelly, editor-at-large of The Australian, and Steve Lewis of the Herald Sun have already jumped ship".

True enough, several News Ltd columnists - and not a single Fairfax one, strangely - have indeed seen the resignation of John Howard as inevitable and have said so. So, how does Ricketson interpret all this? He suggests only two options, both of which assume Murdoch gave his columnists orders to ditch Howard: "Is Murdoch creating public opinion, as is often alleged, or trying to catch the horse as it bolts from the PM?"

There is, of course, a third and obvious explanation, which Ricketson fails to mention: that Murdoch columnists simply write what they really think, reacting to events that are obvious to anyone with eyes to see and the courage to report. But Ricketson's preference for a conspiracy over reason is rampant among the Left and is even taking hold in the Right, too, as Howard's future now sinks with his polls.

Take Richard Farmer, Labor strategist and writer for an internet gossip site of former Fairfax editor Eric Beecher, who claims: "Murdoch tabloids (are) becoming friendlier to Labor" because "continuing with an anti-Labor campaign dominated by columnists Piers Akerman and Andrew Bolt, only for Labor to still win, would put an end to the illusion of power, which Rupert Murdoch uses to his advantage so ruthlessly".

This theory that Murdoch orders his writers to speak his own mind is peddled by many of the usual suspects, from radical propagandist John Pilger to RMIT's journalism graduates. But here's the hitch: if Murdoch has dictated an anti-Howard line to his columnists, why did two of them, The Australian's Dennis Shanahan and Christopher Pearson, persist this past week in saying Howard should stay? Why was the Daily Telegraph's Piers Akerman - another Murdoch man - on the radio just yesterday, backing Howard and whacking me? Why was his colleague Malcolm Farr counselling Howard to stay? And why did it take until last week for Albrechtsen to argue what I've said for months? Boy, some conspiracy, when half the plotters are attacking the other half.

I know you can't change Ricketson's mind with facts, but I'd love to hear him explain why Murdoch's columnists, allegedly all singing in their master's voice, include such loud Leftists as Jill Singer, Phillip Adams, Paul Syvret, Jim Soorley and NEWS.com.au's Tim Dunlop. Or have him try to work out why I keep fighting our global warming hysteria, when Murdoch says we must give the planet "the benefit of the doubt".

Sorry, Matthew, but Murdoch figured long ago that debate sold papers - and readers were adults with the brains to hear both sides of an argument and decide for themselves. That's why there are more Left-wing columnists on Murdoch's Australian papers than there are Right-wing presenters on the ABC. If Ricketson really has a nose for conspiracy, why won't he sniff at Aunty instead?

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