The Department for Ignoring Abused Children again

They just don't do their job -- so kids die. Where is the logic of taking away one kid and leaving the others to rot?

The Iemma Government was under pressure last night to explain its inaction over the death of seven-year-old Shellay Ward, as it emerged that the NSW Department of Community Services had been repeatedly warned about the plight of the child and the conditions she lived in. Former neighbours of the Ward family say they contacted DOCS on numerous occasions about the autistic girl, who starved to death. They had told authorities that she never attended school and was forced to spend her days in a room left littered with rubbish and excrement. Shellay, weighing just nine kilograms, was found dead in bed at her home in Hawks Nest, north of Newcastle, on Saturday.

Two former neighbours said yesterday they had contacted DOCS with concerns about the welfare of Shellay and her siblings when the family lived in Matraville. Janice Reid said she rang DOCS when the Ward family was in Matraville, in Sydney's east, and again when they moved to Hawks Nest in August. Mrs Reid, a DOCS foster carer, said she used to see Shellay standing at the window naked and she spent many hours in her bedroom with the door closed.

Industrial cleaners were called in to the three-bedroom Matraville house after the family left. Mrs Reid said the house was knee-deep in rubbish. The room that Shellay had been living in stank of urine and there were patches of faeces on the floor. "It just smelt like a toilet; like a bad, filthy public toilet," she said.

Mrs Reid said that the first time she reported the family to DOCS, social workers investigated and took the youngest of the four Ward children away to foster care. After her second report nothing was done. Once the family moved she made a third report. "I originally reported it because it was an unusual situation when you don't see kids in the yard ... and DOCS did come," Mrs Reid said. She said Shellay was "quite chubby and healthy" when she last saw the child, about eight to 10 months ago.

Another neighbour, Darlene, called DOCS four years ago with concerns. "We'd see them at home through school hours every day of the week. They were dressed in really old dirty clothes. They were really pale like they had never seen the sun and their hair was really matted. In the five or so years they lived there Darlene saw the wife once - going to the letterbox. "This is 2007, there should not be children allowed to die like this. That is the saddest part, that DOCS had taken the baby and left three other children in that situation."

Debbie Jacobson, a board member of the Foster Care Association NSW, said she called the DOCS helpline twice and then met DOCS management about her concerns for the Ward children. "They assured me they would look after it and look into the family [but] months later it still looked like nothing had been done. They said they could not tell me anything more due to confidentiality reasons, but that they were taking care of it."

Ms Jacobson said she knew of at least five complaints made to DOCS in relation to the family. "It just amazes me especially when there were so many notifications put through. I can understand one or two notifications slipping through the cracks but that many should not have gone unnoticed. A child has died and somebody needs to be accountable for it." An email from an unnamed foster carer, read on Macquarie Radio, said a number of people had been in touch with DOCS about the Ward family.

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Australia not a 'welfare state'

AUSTRALIA is no longer a "welfare state" and is on the path to becoming an "opportunity society", John Howard said today. Laying out his economic vision for the future, the Prime Minister said only the Coalition could sustain prosperity, encourage the freedom of an enterprise culture and delivering full employment. In a speech to the Institute of Public Affairs, Mr Howard said Labor's attempt to say it had the same economic policies as the Coalition's was designed to `'conceal'' important differences.

Mr Howard used the speech to argue that only the Coalition was supporting the entrepreneurial and enterprise culture that is vital to economic success. "This election is about the future. It is about positioning Australia as an open, dynamic and flexible economy, able to compete in the global economy, but also able to withstand the economic shifts we know can hit without a warning,'' he said ". And, very importantly, it is about continuing a great national project we have begun - the transition of Australia from a Welfare State to an Opportunity Society.

The prime minister, speaking as the latest figures showed unemployment still at its 33- year low level of 4.2 per cent, again said that getting a person a job was the cornerstone of the economic fabric of the nation.

"We do not need new leadership for an old Australia,'' Mr Howard said. "We need proven leadership of the Australia of today and tomorrow.

Mr Howard said there should be no illusion that economic policies of the two parties were the same. "With the (Labor consultants) Hawker Britton spin machine in overdrive, any day now I'm expecting Julia Gillard to claim the Socialist Forum was really a free market think tank,'' he said. Wages policy was a key part of macroeconomic policy, yet Labor wanted to remove individual contracts and increase the bargaining power of unions with all the risk that it would see labour costs rise faster than the economy can handle, he said. "He can't claim that he would abolish WorkChoices and simultaneously claim there is no difference on macroeconomic policy,'' he said. To do so, is to fundamentally misunderstand the importance of today's labour market arrangements to avoiding a wages breakout, higher inflation, higher interest rates and a return to a boom-bust economy.''

Mr Rudd's practiced the `'art of the subtle sneer'' when dismissed the contribution of the mining industry as just digging up dirt. "As if a job in mining is somehow sub-par and not sufficiently `knowledged-based' for Mr Rudd's sensibilities,'' he said. "In fact mining is one of the most technologically advanced sectors of the Australian economy as well as being a very valuable source of high-wage jobs and export income. "If Mr Rudd were of a mind to check the facts he would find that the mining sector now employs far more people working in research, innovation and other knowledge based industries than it does in actually digging up dirt.''

The Coalition offered a practical approach to climate change rather than Labor's more aggressive anti-mining proposals,'' he said.

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Eight Aussie universities in world's top 100

EIGHT Australian universities have made the top 100 in the latest world rankings of institutions of higher education. The Australian National University at No16, followed by the University of Melbourne (27) and the University of Sydney (31), were the top three performers. Australia's top six research-intensive universities remained in the rarefied top 50 of the Times Higher Education Supplement-QS World University Rankings of the top 200 universities. The ANU ranking remained steady but the University of Melbourne continued its downward slide from 19th two years ago. The University of Sydney climbed seven places from 38th two years ago.

Outside the top three, the University of Queensland leapfrogged Monash and the University of NSW to be the country's fourth top university, according to the THES-QS, with a new world rank of equal 33rd. Monash, previously ranked fourth nationally, slid to fifth and 10 places worldwide to 43rd, down from 33rd two years ago. The UNSW fell from 41st two years ago to 44th.

Outside the top 50, the University of Adelaide came in at 62nd, and the University of Western Australia just behind it at 64th. Well outside the frontrunners, but still with a credible performance against rivals worldwide, Macquarie University came in at equal 168th, the Queensland University of Technology at 195th, the University of Wollongong at 199, RMIT University at 200th, and La Trobe at equal 205th.

Rankings spokesman Nunzio Quacquarelli said the latest rankings showed 21 Australian universities were now among the world's Top 450 universities, a major improvement from last year. The ANU, Melbourne, Sydney and Queensland universities all featured in the Asia-Pacific region's Top 10, he said.

However the THES ranking system has come under fire following a new analysis of it and its main rival, Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Academic Ranking of World Universities. Writing in the November edition of the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, Macquarie academics Paul Taylor and Richard Braddock said the Jiao Tong system was "clearly superior". "In emphasising research, it (the Jiao Tong) focuses on one of the essential functions of a university ... in contrast with the THES system, which gives great weight to (subjective) peer review, the Jiao Tong system concerns itself with genuine criteria rather than mere symptoms of excellence," the pair said.

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Brisbane gets a plug in the New York Times

Excerpt:

ONCE just a stopover for tourists en route to either the Great Barrier Reef or the beaches on the Sunshine and Gold Coasts, the eastern Australian city of Brisbane has emerged as an alluring destination in its own right.

Returning recently to the city where I grew up and left 15 years ago for fast-paced Sydney, I found Brisbane to be almost unrecognizable. No longer a large country town, the capital of Queensland is now Australia's fastest growing city, and a plethora of new cafes, bars and shops, not to mention a beautiful new modern art gallery, add up to the kind of place that you could easily spend several days exploring.

Once known as BrisVegas (thanks to a casino and glitzy night life in the 1980s), the city is bisected by the Brisbane River, which winds its way to Moreton Bay, past former wool stores that have morphed into luxury apartments, and historic Queenslander houses built on stilts to catch the breeze. A former power plant sitting on the water's edge is now a performance center. Catamaran ferries ply the river, taking locals to work and to weekend farmer's markets.

The city's newest attractions are the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) and the just-renovated Queensland Art Gallery, which sit next to each other on the last bend of the river on Stanley Place in South Bank Parklands. GoMA is Australia's largest modern-art gallery, with works by Australian and international artists including the Indian-born British sculptor Anish Kapoor and the German artist Katharina Grosse. Enormous windows frame spectacular city views, and the gallery, which adjoins a brand-new State Library, has its own cinema complex and children's art center. The Queensland Gallery's new additions include a sweeping glass entry and the Historical Asian Gallery.

The museums (www.qag.qld.gov.au) can be reached by strolling down the River Walk, a floating walkway that links the New Farm area to the central business district and runs past South Bank Parklands, an expansive beach and swimming lagoon right on the river overlooking the city.

The museum scene in Brisbane doesn't ignore history. For perspective on Brisbane's role as Pacific headquarters for the allied forces in World War II, visit the MacArthur Museum Brisbane, at 201 Edward Street, dedicated to General Douglas MacArthur, who made Brisbane his base for two years. In those years, millions of Americans passed through the quiet Australian backwater that many thought would change after the war. Instead, central Brisbane almost closed down as a dwindling population moved to the suburbs.

Now, areas like Fortitude Valley, a formerly gritty area known as "sin city," have transformed themselves. The Emporium Hotel just opened on the site of a former bus depot with its own upscale shops and restaurants. Guests can take a dip in the 50-foot saltwater rooftop pool with views of the city and Story Bridge, and recline on loungers, separated by billowing bronze-colored silk drapes. Don't be surprised to see brilliantly hued rainbow lorikeets in frangipani trees outside the hotel, or hear a kookaburra laughing its head off.

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