Australia's universities of Leftism

WHEN federal Treasurer Peter Costello and Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey attacked the credibility of two researchers over a report that found workers worse off under Australian Workplace Agreements, it looked like a classic case of blaming the messenger. That impression was heightened when one of the researchers, John Buchanan from the University of Sydney's Workplace Research Centre, threatened legal action against the ministers over their descriptions of his work as contaminated by trade union connections. But Buchanan's howls of protest regarding his academic impartiality sound a wee bit precious now after revelations in The Weekend Australian that, in a 2005 speech, he described himself as a socialist and counselled his comrades to "strike the enemy (that is, the Howard Government) hard."

Perhaps more disturbing than the firebrand rhetoric, however, is that Buchanan appeared to have already made up his mind in February 2005 on the key issues that he would be reporting on 30 months later: "We are going to see wages get more and more unequal," he said. "We are going to see hours become more fragmented and we are going to see more casualisation and contractors." So why do research?

I was prepared for the Australia@ Work report and the kerfuffle that followed by some other research on the Howard Government's workplace laws released in August. Down and Out with Work Choices, by three academics from the Women and Work Research Group, also at the University of Sydney, concluded that the changes brought about by the new regime "have been negative and deleterious, reducing decency and democracy at work and in society".

Never mind that this was a conclusion based on interviews with just 25 low-paid female workers. More extraordinary was that two of the researchers, Rae Cooper and Marian Baird, chose to launch their report at NSW Parliament, sitting alongside NSW Industrial Relations Minister John Della Bosca, the man identified, more than any other, with the political campaign to use the workplace changes to bring about the downfall of the Howard Government. This was politicisation on a new level and suggested some of our publicly employed intellectuals have decided the game is up for John Howard, so what the hell?

None of the above should come as a surprise. A quick scan, using the internet, of research centres at universities reveals that many are structured around the "softie Left" world view that former Media Watch host David Marr memorably nominated as the primary qualification for entry into Australian journalism.

The University of NSW, for example, boasts a Centre for Corporate Change, a Centre for Primary Health Care and Equity, and a Co-operative Research Centre for Sustainable Tourism. Indeed, sustainable is the buzzword in university research: we have a Centre for Sustainable Technology at the University of Newcastle, a Foundation for Sustainable Economic Development at the University of Melbourne, a Centre for Sustainable Regional Communities at La Trobe, an Institute for Sustainable Systems and Technologies, along with a Centre for Research into Sustainable Health Care at the University of South Australia, a Centre for Research in International Education and Sustainability at the University of New England and, in an apparent attempt to establish a sustainable monopoly, a Sustainability Institute at Monash.

Other highlights of my search included the Centre of Full Employment and Equity at Newcastle, the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion at Macquarie, the Centre for Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood at Melbourne, the Centre for Colonialism and its Aftermath at the University of Tasmania, the Social Justice and Social Change Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney and the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining at the University of Queensland.

What's in a name, you ask, and you could be right. Scholars in all of these centres could be pursuing good work. And perhaps there is no reason to be concerned that, in the era during which the mainstream political class has come to accept the logic of the market, an academic paid to conduct research into the Australian labour market still describes himself as a socialist. For me, however, it confirms a point made by Paul Kelly in last week's Australian Literary Review: "A healthy democracy will see a healthy gulf between its politicians and its intellectuals. But this gulf in Australia is a chasm that demands serious attention."

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Tasmanians detest being told what to do by mainland elites

By Barry Cohen, a federal Labor MP from 1969 to 1990, well-known both for his sense of humour and for his sincerity, and an environment minister in the Hawke Labor government. He is pointing out that the recent Federal government support for the building of a pulp mill in Tasmania -- supported also by the Tasmanian Labor government -- will help the conservative vote in Tasmania in the forthcoming Federal election

IT was a bright, sunny day in the mid-1980s as I winged my way across Bass Strait to do battle with the forces of darkness who wanted to clear-fell and woodchip what was left of Tasmania. OK, I exaggerate a little, but that was the picture painted by the saintly Bob Brown [Greenie leader]. Trying to find the middle road as environment minister was not an easy task. Senator Brown, as he now is, has difficulty with the word compromise.

Mid-flight, the Ansett flight attendant sidled up to me and whispered conspiratorially in my ear. "Mr Cohen, you should know that there is a reception party waiting for you at the Hobart terminal." "How nice," I responded jovially. "Anyone I know?" "I'm not sure you'll want to know them," she answered. "They are loggers and their trucks are lined up back to the city." I must have paled visibly because she started mopping my brow while whispering gently, "Would you like a police escort out the back way?" "That would be nice," I croaked, reminding myself how much I abhorred violence, particularly when it was aimed at me. I was hustled down the plane steps into a police mini-car and whisked out of the airport, thus missing the opportunity to converse with my fellow workers.

On the same plane, my colleague Brian Howe, then minister for social security, blissfully unaware of my act of cowardice, strode languidly across the tarmac to be greeted by cries from the assembled loggers: "There he is, let's get him." I've never been able to look Howe in the eye since.

I recount this anecdote for readers to grasp the depth of feeling that inhabits the breasts of Tasmanians whenever visiting firemen or politicians arrive to tell them what is best for them. Cast an optic over the following list and you will understand what I'm talking about: Lake Pedder, the Franklin River, the southwest Tasmanian forests, Wesley Vale and the pulp mill. See what I mean? It's hard to recall an election in the past quarter of a century when some "environmental vandalism" wasn't being visited on the Apple Isle. Try to imagine a federal election without Brown [the permanently unhappy Greenie leader] whining about the end of Tasmania as we know it. Most of us take these triennial eruptions as par for the course. In Tasmania they take them seriously.

The question, however, that is occupying the minds of John Howard and Kevin Rudd is how will last week's pulp mill decision affect the voters in the five Tasmanian seats up for grabs at the forthcoming election.

Tasmania is entitled to five House of Representative seats because the Constitution guarantees the original states that minimum, otherwise its population would entitle it to only four. Since Federation, Labor has controlled the state government for about 75 per cent of the time, while at the federal level it has been more even, with the Liberals having greater success during the past 30 years.

Things started to go awry for Labor in 1975 when the Whitlam government, which held all five seats, appointed deputy prime minister Lance Barnard as ambassador to Sweden. Barnard had been a long-serving member for Bass. Labor's tariff cuts had bitten deeply into the state's small manufacturing sector, ensuring voters took their revenge at the Bass by-election, won by Kevin Newman with a 17.5 per cent swing to the Liberals. It was the trigger Malcolm Fraser needed to block the 1975 budget and force the dismissal election. Labor subsequently lost the other four Tasmanian seats.

Seven and a half years later, the environmental issue du jour was the proposal to dam the Franklin. Much like the pulp mill debate, the Franklin generated considerable emotion throughout the country, but nothing like the passion it generated in Tasmania, where people bitterly resented being told by those from the mainland what they could do in their own state. In 1983 Labor had hoped to pick up a couple of seats in Tasmania. We were bitterly disappointed. While Bob Hawke won office, all five Tasmanian Liberal MPs saw their majority increase handsomely.

The greens (not yet a political party) claimed credit for Labor's victory because of the vast number of seats they had delivered to Labor on the mainland. It was nonsense. It was impossible to discern a significant anti-dam vote in any mainland seat.

Being the minister responsible for introducing the legislation to stop the damming of the Franklin, I was acutely aware of the passions raging in Tasmania. Nothing like that happened in the rest of Australia. After the Franklin we had the Helsham inquiry into logging in southwest Tasmania. The greens were allowed (not by me) to hand-pick all three of the commissioners, and when the commissioners recommended limited logging the greens denounced them. Much the same happened with Wesley Vale and other environmental issues of the day. Does anyone seriously believe that Brown will accept a decision, by any commission or inquiry, that recommends any industrial activity in Tasmania other than basket-weaving?

Several polls on the proposed mill have been leaked to the media. Those made public indicate widely differing views. The one I liked was taken in Wentworth, in the affluent eastern suburbs of Sydney, the seat held by Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull. It suggests that 98per cent - that's right, 98 per cent - oppose the pulp mill. Imagine how impressed unemployed Tasmanians will feel about the good burghers of Wentworth telling them what's good for them. That will determine the fate of the five Tasmanian seats.

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Greenies are now aiming to control space exploration!

They never let up and they are never happy

It may be a century or two, or even three, before humankind calls another planet home, but researchers say lessons learnt from the settlement of Australia will prove useful for the future colonisation of other planets. NASA plans to send human exploration missions to the Moon and Mars within the next two decades, with scientists hoping this will eventually lead to the building of a lasting civilisations beyond the Earth.

But a University of Queensland research team shows extraterrestrial colonies could end up resembling the worst aspects of outback mining towns. While the images from popular movies, television shows and books tend to shape most people's concept of space travel, the research team has now boldly gone where no researchers have gone before. In an attempt to come up with scenarios for what they say is the inevitable colonisation of other worlds, they have analysed attitudes toward space exploration.

Dr Toni Johnson-Woods says she and her colleagues found there is a prevailing belief that other planets and their natural resources are there simply to be exploited. "The focus is on exploitation of the minerals. Basically, it's just Australia all over again," she said. "You go out like the British did to Australia, you take everything you bloody can out of a place, and then you ping off." [What a totally false depiction of Australian history!]

She says the "spirit of exploration" that has marked the space age appears to have given way to thinking that is closer to that of pre-20th century colonialism. "There's also an idea that there's nothing already on Mars, which I presume there isn't, in the same way that Australia had that terra nullius, like there's nothing in Australia, so, 'we're just going to go there, take what we need and leave'," she said.

The researchers concluded that the digging up and processing of minerals is likely to be a factor driving future planetary colonisation and Dr John Cokley says that is where Australia's experiences could provide valuable lessons. "In fact, some of the space research people, they build little practice colonies, they call them biospheres," he said. "They're actually practising in the desert, in the middle of Australia, because it looks and feels like the surface of Mars."

Sustainability in space

Dr Cokley says the social and environmental mistakes made during the opening up of Australia - and in particular its rugged mining regions - could serve as examples of how not to establish communities in space. "We know that our mining towns have come a long way in the last 30 years," he said. "They used to be pretty challenging places to live and those mining towns - we've all been to pretty rough towns, they're not really sustainable and we talk about sustainability now, when people never did 50 or 100 years ago.

"The other thing is that space is not an infinite resource. If we go to the Moon and litter the Moon and wreck it, there's not another one just down the road. "It costs a lot of money to go there and if it's worth going there, then it's worth looking after."

It may be long into future before people are living and working on the Moon or on Mars or other more distant planets, but Dr Johnson-Woods believes it is not too early to consider the impact a human presence will have on these new and pristine worlds. "You put a footprint somewhere, it's never the same again," she said. "I can just see bubblegum on the undercarriage of a space station... it doesn't take long, and if we do destroy a planet that's uninhabitable, is that a problem? It's an ethical issue."

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ANOTHER DAY OF PUBLIC HOSPITAL REVELATIONS

Three articles below



Grandmother, 91, left in hospital storage room



On the same day embattled Health Minister Reba Meagher met with staff at Royal North Shore Hospital, 91-year-old patient Edith King was wheeled into a storage room - and left there. The shameful treatment of the great grandmother has plunged our public health system to a new low. Suffering from blood clots in her legs and in need of treatment Mrs King, of Hornsby, was wheeled into the storeroom of ward 10B at the embattled hospital - and left there for 24 hours. She was moved to the storage room just hours after her granddaughter Sharon Hooper left her bedside on Monday afternoon.

It came on the same day Ms Meagher visited the hospital to meet with aggrieved medical staff and establish a professional practice unit to deal with complaints from staff and patients. Ms Meagher hoped her visit to the hospital would bring an end to almost two weeks of constant criticism of the State Government.

Despite their spin, Mrs King's treatment proves nothing has changed since expectant mother Jana Horska miscarried in the hospital's waiting room toilet two weeks ago. Hooked up to a drip and monitor and without an emergency buzzer, Mrs King's bed was left just centimetres from a sink and basin - with a bedpan and oxygen tanks stored nearby. Above her bed were shelves stacked with medical equipment. The room affording the ailing woman little privacy or rest. While nurses kept an eye on Mrs King, she suffered the indignity of being left in essentially a thoroughfare with staff pushing past her bed to get to supplies and handbasins.

The Daily Telegraph reports health sources revealing that at least one patient would be housed in the storage room most days. Mrs King was finally moved to a ward yesterday afternoon, but her spot in the store room was taken by another patient.

Mrs Hooper said yesterday she was shocked to learn her grandmother was left in the storage room. "I'm glad you got a picture. She turns 92 on October 24 and she doesn't deserve to be chucked in a room like that," Mrs Hooper, who works as a doctor's receptionist, told The Daily Telegraph. "I work with people who are ill everyday and I know how they should be treated. "That's pathetic when a person can't get up and fend for themselves. "She's confused at the best of times but (being left in a room) would have thrown her right out. "You think your relatives are safe in there. Now I know she's not safe and it's going to worry the daylights out of me every day," Mrs Hooper said.

Mrs King was transferred to RNSH from Hornsby Hospital last Thursday and placed in a ward after 13 hours lying on a bed in the emergency ward. Ms Meagher last night tried to defend the shameful treatment of Mrs King by stating she was moved to the storage room for her "own safety". "I'm advised she was confused and nursing staff decided she needed close observation to prevent her falling," Ms Meagher said. "The decision was made because her allocated room was not in view of the nursing station."

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Stretchers become beds; Ambulance service stopped

SYDNEY'S problem-plagued Royal North Shore Hospital was yet again plunged into crisis this week, with ambulance services crippled by a shortage of beds. Six ambulances sat in the RNSH car park for more than four hours on Monday night, unable to answer calls because their stretchers were needed as beds for patients waiting in hallways.

One patient, an elderly woman brought in by one of the ambulances for a fractured hip at 8.30pm, was still waiting for medical attention at 3.30am. Three others, two men and a woman injured when their car overturned in Delhi Rd on Monday night, waited over four hours to be assessed by a doctor. The chaotic scenes are further proof of the ongoing staffing and management crisis at RNSH, which is already the subject of two clinical inquiries and a massive overhaul.

A paramedic, who did not want to be named, said he feared "someone could die waiting - and it's happened before". "We have more than enough paramedics but what we don't have is beds and doctors," he said. "Normally in half an hour you've unloaded and are ready to go, but there are no beds. "I've been here four hours and I can't do anything but wait."

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Bureaucracy is the public hospital problem: Federal minister gets it

By Tony Abbott, the federal Minister for Health

Inadequate funding has been a serious problem at Royal North Shore Hospital but not as serious as management structures which intimidate staff and cover up bad decisions. A leaked letter from Northern Sydney Central Coast Health's acting chief executive officer shows that, this year, Royal North Shore is expected to make do with $13 million less than last year's budget and $31 million less than last year's actual spending (of $377 million). This is a 9 per cent cut imposed on a hospital already under great strain. The acting CEO's letter to Royal North Shore Hospital managers demonstrates a fixation with meeting budget rather than treating patients. A department or ward is a "cost centre". A hospital is a "major cost centre".

In fact, the whole NSW hospital system is obsessed with meeting budget rather than delivering services. Managers are told that "achieving this [budget] target will be a central component of assessing your performance". They're warned that "efficiency contributions" must be achieved and told that "under no circumstances" can they spend above budget without written authority from the area head office. They're instructed to reduce operational costs by "absorbing additional volume within current funding levels". Given this type of official bullying, it's no wonder that emergency departments are under extreme pressure.

The acting CEO's letter also reveals that the overall Area Health Authority has had a budget increase of just 1 per cent this year (compared with 7 per for the rest of the state) and that even this paltry increase is funded by "internal contributions and efficiencies".

Like Royal North Shore, public hospitals on the (Liberal voting) northern beaches have had a 7 per cent budget cut. The discrepancies between the acting CEO's figures and the self-serving claim of the NSW Health Minister, Reba Meagher, that Royal North Shore had a 10 per cent budget boost over two years reflect the administrative chaos inside NSW public hospitals. No one really seems to be in charge or accountable to anyone else.

The Howard Government is proposing to replace faceless area health bureaucracies with individual hospital boards including local doctors and nurses. These couldn't prevent state governments from imposing budget cuts but they could at least warn people about them in advance. Hospitals with local management boards would be less obsessed with budgets and more focused on treating patients. It would be harder for officials to move services around like pieces on a chess board, regardless of the views of patients and clinicians. This is why state governments don't like them. Although the "Dr Death" Royal Commission in Queensland noted the need for co-ordination of public hospital services, it concluded that "hospital boards . were attentive to local issues [and] planning was firmly focused on the clinical needs of the immediate population".

More money is certainly needed for better public hospital services but it's just as important to reform the way public hospitals are run. Patients, doctors and nurses need access to someone with the authority to fix their problems. A CEO accountable to a local board would treat the hospital budget as a means to an end rather than an end in itself. It certainly wouldn't resolve all the difficulties inherent in meeting public expectations but it would at least guarantee that patient and staff concerns were taken seriously. With real authority over the hospital budget and the capacity to keep extra revenue, the "buck could stop" with a hospital CEO in a way it never can with state health ministers, let alone a prime minister.

Kevin Rudd's claim that, as prime minister, the "buck" would stop with him for every single hospital problem is just spin. It's only necessary to imagine the call: "Mr Rudd, I've been waiting two hours in the emergency department. Could you please get me a doctor?" to dismiss this flaky boast.

Rudd thinks that the ultimate solution to public hospital problems is a takeover by the federal government. By contrast, John Howard thinks that the best answer is a takeover by the local community. Rudd was part of the Queensland Government that abolished hospital boards and cut 2200 public hospital beds. This ultimately produced the current disastrous situation in that state, described by the Dr Death commissioner: "There are so many bureaucrats writing memoranda to one another, reading memoranda from one another and attending meetings with one another that nobody has time left to actually get anything done". Hospitals need fewer bureaucrats but more doctors and nurses. Labor can't deliver this but local boards would.

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