Muslim pedophile case reviewed

It clearly needs appeal, not "review". What was the asshole doing in bed with an 11-year old boy anyway?

A JUDGE'S decision not to record a conviction against a medical student who pleaded guilty to attempting to indecently deal with a boy has caught the attention of Attorney-General Kerry Shine, who is reviewing the case. If he does lodge an appeal in the next month, the matter would be decided by Queensland's Court of Appeal, which has the power to change the original sentence. Third year medical student Shakee Mirza, 26, was punished with 12 months' probation when he appeared in Brisbane District Court on Wednesday over his conduct in late 2005 involving a boy, 11.

At the time, sentencing judge David Searles agreed with a request from Mirza's lawyer that a conviction for the offence not be recorded. If a conviction was recorded, it could have jeopardised Mirza's student visa status. His future registration as a doctor is now a matter for authorities to consider.

The court was told the offence came about as a result of Mirza volunteering for community group Aunties and Uncles - a mentoring organisation for families in need. On the day of the incident, Mirza, the 11-year-old complainant and his brother were watching TV while lying on a single bed when the accused massaged the boy's head before saying "this would feel better if I did it on your penis". But the boy said no and pushed his hand away and the incident stopped.

There was said to be no planning involved in the incident and Mirza, who provided glowing references to the court, has no criminal history. His lawyer characterised the offending as a moment of stupidity - a description accepted by Judge Searles. Mirza reportedly said the offence was almost done in a "joking" fashion.

Judge Searles said after considering all of the submissions from both sides, he was satisfied the circumstances of the case were "exceptional" and out of the realm of an actual custodial sentence. He said he did not think the circumstances warranted a jail sentence and recording a conviction could impact on Mirza's career and put his student visa status in jeopardy.

Anti-child abuse campaigner Hetty Johnson said she contacted Mr Shine's office yesterday about whether an appeal would be lodged and was told the Attorney-General had received a report from the DPP on the matter and would be considering it in coming weeks.

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Leftist public broadcaster attacks abuse revelations

"Noble savages" don't abuse children! Oh No! So the shakiest of grounds can be used to attack reports of it happening

The ABC's Media Watch program has appealed for help from the Northern Territory Government to attack The Weekend Australian over a report on two Aboriginal girls who fell pregnant at the age of 12. The article, "Girls who become mums at age of 12", appeared on the front page of The Weekend Australian on August 18 and detailed issues relating to children in Aboriginal communities becoming sexually active at a young age. In it, journalist Simon Kearney reported that two girls, Marisa Marshall and Marisa Brown, fell pregnant at age 12 in the community of Papunya, northwest of Alice Springs. Permission to name the girls was sought and received from their parents and an aunt.

Aboriginal Territory Labor MP Malarndirri McCarthy yesterday confirmed she had spoken to Media Watch in general terms about the media's coverage of the Howard Government's intervention in indigenous communities. Ms McCarthy, a former ABC journalist, said she did not know the details of this particular case but had concerns about naming children in such circumstances. "Naming of a child when you are talking about sexual abuse or alcohol or substance abuse, of course, I have serious concerns in regards to that," she said. "But this is not about two media organisations fighting. This is about our children and let's see what we can do to fix this and make this (intervention) work, and that includes the coverage."

A Territory Government spokesman said the Government had no wider role in the Media Watch story beyond passing on a request for comment to an MP. "The first I heard about this was when Media Watch contacted me this afternoon," he said.

In written questions, Media Watch story editor Michael Vincent asked Kearney in what language permission was sought for the girl to tell her story, why it was necessary to identify the two girls by name and whether he considered the "further long-term embarrassment" of publication. Kearney was also asked a hypothetical question about whether he would have published the name of a non-indigenous girl living in Sydney who had become pregnant and had an abortion at the age of 12. "In the same circumstances, yes," Kearney replied. Vincent's fifth question to Kearney centred on the "vulnerable" community of Papunya allegedly having a limited understanding of the publicity of the story.

"In my experience, the residents of these communities are not that naive," Kearney replied. "The Central Land Council appears to go out of its way to show people in communities stories about them that appear in the national media. The general level of distrust of the media and the lengths you need to go to gain trust indicates that they are no less naive than anyone in the wider community." Vincent said Media Watch would not comment when contacted yesterday by The Weekend Australian.

The Weekend Australian's editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell said: "As usual, Media Watch is off on a political frolic. "The program would be better off asking why more people in the media had not questioned Clare Martin's $80 million spending shortfall in Aboriginal affairs rather than pushing an unfounded allegation against the national daily, the only media outlet committing the sort of resources needed to fairly report the federal Government's intervention."

Papunya council chief executive Rod Richardson said while he did not know the girls personally, he did not have a problem with their names being used if permission was granted. "I didn't hear anyone running around complaining about it," said Mr Richardson, who said he was also contacted by Media Watch in relation to the issue. The same story is the subject of a complaint to the Australian Press Council, with a complainant expressing concern about the "rights of a child who is a member of a vulnerable population".

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Rudd to raise the bar for schools

He sounds good but the teachers' unions will nobble him

KEVIN Rudd has attacked the nation's schools as unacceptably patchy in quality, expressing sympathy for parents struggling to find schools that provide a decent education. And the Labor leader has promised to impose on schools a level of rigour not yet seen in Australia by linking funding to improved standards rather than handing state governments or private schools "a blank cheque".

In an interview with The Weekend Australian yesterday, Mr Rudd also called for four-year fixed electoral terms "entrenched in stone" and said John Howard had created a whole new class of "forgotten people" marooned by his rejection of traditional liberalism. He also posed his alternative to Mr Howard's vision statement, delivered in the 1996 election campaign, that if elected, he wanted Australians to feel "relaxed and comfortable". Mr Rudd said he wanted Australians to be "confident in their kids' future, confident in Australia's future".

Mr Rudd made the comments in Sydney after a hectic week of campaigning on public hospital standards and amid increasing tension over when the Prime Minister will name a date for the federal election. Asked whether parents could be confident that any government school would provide an adequate education, Mr Rudd said one of the education system's worst problems was its variability. He said he felt sympathy for parents who faced a "vexed choice" on schooling, admitting he had seen excellence in public and private schools as well as inadequacy. "What you'll find us doing increasingly is lifting the bar nationally on performance measures for schools," he said. "When we talk about a new national curriculum, let me tellyou, its core hallmark when it comes to English, maths, science, history, languages, will be absolute rigour."

In an indication that the Opposition Leader is likely to take on the powerful teachers' unions if he wins office, Mr Rudd said Labor would negotiate a national curriculum with states and tie funding increases to improvements in educational outcomes. "We are doing kids an absolute disservice by a lack of rigour in schools' curricula, an absolute disservice by not testing them forrigour all the way through," he said. "And we are doing an absolute disservice to our kids if we don'thave intervention strategies properly resourced to deal with literacy and numeracy non-performance." A Labor government would deliver to the education system "a rigour that I don't believe any federal government has embraced before".

While he agreed he had no magic wand, Mr Rudd said a carrot-and-stick approach would deliver change, with schools measured against tough standards that would be regularly lifted. "Unless school performance continues to improve against robust measures of learning outcomes for kids, whether it's in trades or it's in academic subjects or their primary school equivalents, then we are not in the business of signing blank cheques," he said.

Mr Rudd is a product of the Queensland state school system and sent his three children to state primary schools and private secondary schools. Having ruled out a return to Labor's 2004 election policy, which included funding cuts affecting a "hit list" of exclusive private schools, Mr Rudd said his ambition was for the standard of Australian public and private schools to be the best in the world.....

Mr Rudd said he wanted Australians to feel proud of their country and confident it had the the best-educated and most highly skilled workforce in the Western world. He said he wanted "a country which celebrates enterprise, initiative and success, but which doesn't throw the fair go out the back door".

He said Mr Howard had spent his 11 years in office trying to shift the national character towards one opposed to concern for others and accused him of attempting to "terminate the fair go with extreme prejudice". ....

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MORE PUBLIC HEALTH REVELATIONS

Three articles below:



More deaths due to government medical services

Zoltan Fekete, 30, went into Maroondah Hospital for a routine operation to remove his appendix, but he never went home. The hospital, dubbed "The Killing Fields" by doctors who say it relies on under-trained doctors to manage critical cases, is being investigated by the State Coroner.

Great-grandmother Nancy John died after her doctor's call for an ambulance to respond to her "heart failure" was initially ignored in a mix-up. Paramedics were sent only after the doctor called a second time, demanding urgent help.

The family of 1.98m tall "gentle giant" Mr Fekete are too distraught to talk about their son's death, but they want answers. Mr Fekete checked himself into the hospital on August 22 suffering stomach pains and was told he needed to have his appendix out. But the next day, after he was anaesthetised for surgery, it is understood his heart failed and his brain was starved of oxygen. Family and friends were told there had been "complications". They went to the hospital and found Mr Fekete in a coma. On August 29 his life-support machine was switched off. Friend Mat Veale said: "It was meant to be a simple operation. That's what is so hard to take. We all want to know what went on."

Questions also hang over the August 29 death of pensioner Mrs John, a volunteer for the Red Cross and Dimboola East Ladies Hospital Auxiliary. Andre Coia, of Rural Ambulance Victoria, said a doctor at Mrs John's Dimboola home called for an ambulance at 7.55am. "The doctor said it was heart failure," he said. "It was categorised as a non-urgent case. The doctor then called back at 8.12am saying it was urgent and the patient was quite unwell. A crew arrived at 8.21am." Mrs John was dead when the ambulance arrived. RAV has admitted the case was wrongly categorised, but there has been no external investigation.

Opposition health spokeswoman Helen Shardey said the tragedies pointed to chronic problems in Victoria's health system.

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Bloody-minded hospital bureaucrats again

Five doctors who alleged Melbourne Health tried to force them to work 60-hour weeks for only 36 hours' pay, have been paid $293,000 in compensation. The revelation is an embarrassment for the health service and State Government.

Doctors claimed the network tried to bully them into working the extra hours by warning their contracts would not be renewed. The Australian Salaried Medical Officers' Federation alleged harassment in the Australian Industrial Relations Commission.

The network yesterday confirmed it had settled with the doctors. A Melbourne Health spokesman said the service had "addressed the issues . . . and the matter has been resolved". Opposition Health Spokeswoman Helen Shardey said it was disgraceful the staff were treated in such a way.

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Replace doctors with nurses??

When will they face the fact that they need to train more doctors? There is no shortage of applicants for university medical places -- just too few places

THE Australian Medical Association has slammed a Federal Parliament report suggesting practice nurses could do up to 70 per cent of the work now performed by GPs. The report comes as other GP groups call on both sides of politics to commit to funding a nurse for every general practice in Australia. The Practice Nursing In Australia research paper, by the Australian Parliamentary Library, said: "Review of research into the substitutability of nurses for doctors has also suggested that nurses could assume up to 70 per cent of the work currently undertaken by doctors and this could enhance the quality of primary care services."

But AMA president Rosanna Capolingua, a GP, said the idea was "simplistic" and "puzzling" and suggested the report was part of a Government agenda of "task substitution" directed at addressing the shortage of GPs. She said the current distinction between nurses and doctors, where the doctor is the natural team leader due to their superior medical knowledge, worked well.

On Friday, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners called for the Government to "provide a nurse with every doctor". The Howard Government has spent $234 million since 2001 to entice GPs to employ practice nurses for tasks such as immunisation, wound care and pap smears. Almost 60 per cent of doctors' surgeries now have at least one practice nurse. They cost the Medicare system less with a rebate of $10.60, rather than $30.

Dr Capolingua said practice nurses were not the solution to the GP shortage. "We need to make sure when an Australian needs to see a doctor they get to see a doctor." Australian Practice Nurses Association chief executive Belinda Caldwell said: "Nurses provide a different clinical experience which enhances the experience for the patient, rather than being a substitute for the doctor."

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