Long wait imposed by Queensland public hospital permanently damages baby

No recognition of what the failure to provide prompt treatment could lead to

Another mother has told of her harrowing experience at the Rockhampton Base Hospital, furious over a bungle that caused her four-month-old daughter to lose an ovary. Nicole Simpson yesterday revealed how she waited two months for contact [an appointment] from the hospital after her daughter Jade was referred there with a hernia by their family doctor.

The details of how Jade was treated will stoke the anger that has reverberated around the state after The Courier-Mail reported this week that two-year-old Ryan Saunders from Emerald had waited 30 hours in September before his twisted bowel was diagnosed in Rockhampton Hospital. Ryan died just as he was about to fly to Brisbane for an emergency operation.

Jade Simpson's ordeal came to light as Queensland Health chief health officer Jeannette Young insisted the Rockhampton Hospital was doing a good job. Dr Young spent yesterday at the hospital to hear directly from staff, many of whom are upset over the attention Ryan's case has received. "They have got a very good paediatric service, there is nothing wrong with it at all," she said.

Jade's hernia burst before the hospital made any contact and she spent three days in pain at the hospital waiting to be transferred to Brisbane by the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Mrs Simpson and her daughter were eventually forced to catch a commercial flight, and Jade was operated on 30 minutes after arriving at the Royal Children's Hospital. The operation in March 2006 came too late to save one of Jade's ovaries. "She has only got a 50 per cent chance of having children when she is older and it is all their fault," an angry Mrs Simpson said. "If she had been seen to earlier should would still have two."

Queensland Health is undertaking its own probe, known as a "root cause analysis". However, Mrs Simpson said her daughter's ordeal was also the subject of a "root cause analysis" which she condemned as little better than a cover-up. "All it basically said was 'we did our best, too bad, so sad'," she said. Mrs Simpson said she warned politicians, from local MP Robert Schwarten through to former premier Peter Beattie, of the hospital's shambolic efforts in a bid to prevent further children from suffering. "The main reason for writing to them was so it didn't happen again but it did and this time someone died," she said.

Dr Young yesterday said she was unaware of Jade's case but insisted the hospital was performing well. She met Ryan's parents Donna and Terry on Monday to discuss their son's treatment and hear their concerns. However, she dismissed criticism of Ryan's 20-hour wait for an ultrasound scan after he had been sent from Emerald with a suspected twisted bowel. "It is not a lack of equipment, it is not a lack of staff, it is not a lack of resources," Dr Young said.

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Australia returning to the failed ideas of the past

John Howard is a political dinosaur lumbering towards a humiliating defeat next Saturday. This must be true because the media tells us so. So do opinion polls, bloggers, taxi drivers and my teenagers. They know everything.

Yet for all the hype the biggest dinosaur of them all is Rudd himself. Despite the gloss, Rudd's new Labor remains a Jurassic Park of failed ideas. He showed again this week he is a pleasant enough fellow who tries hard to put a good face on it. But he remains a Labor pedant and a control freak whose credo is from the ark.

If he wins -- and I'm sure he will -- the defining themes will be the resurrection of unionism, a bloated bureaucracy, a rekindling of the handout mentality and a high-risk economic strategy that would fail a probity test. Rudd's central ideas are so ancient they are older than John Howard.

The return of a union-dominated cabinet will be a ticking time-bomb for small business. The Howard era of prosperity and high employment will be swept aside largely because the Prime Minister has been portrayed a yesterday's man by a bored and shifty media in search of fresh meat.

Kevin has painted a gloomy picture of life under Howard and Costello. And it is a false picture. Labor's interest rate record is truly appalling alongside the Coalition's, and the the Bureau of Statistics confirms wages under Howard and Costello have risen higher than grocery prices. No matter. Howard must be sent packing because he is old.

Democracy will be quietly dispensed with in favour of rule by a distant bureaucratic tyranny. Rudd says he will set up no fewer than 67 taskforces, committees and departments, plus 96 policy review teams. This will create an immense and overpowering government sustained by a parasitic class of government employees. Industry and individual effort will be stifled.

Rudd showed us his style as the director-general of cabinet in the Goss Labor government. Even cabinet ministers were prevented from speaking unless they had clearance from Kevin. Later, Rudd opposed the introduction of the GST, saying it would be the ``highest form of fiscal vandalism''. Rudd repeatedly has opposed economic reform. He supported union control of the waterfront while opposing the privatisation of Telstra. He opposed the tariff reduction schedule for manufacturing industries.

At this week's hearts-and-flowers campaign launch in ``Brissy'' Rudd attacked Howard's ``irresponsible spending spree''. Later it was revealed Labor's promises would cost $12billion compared with the Coalition's $11.7billion.

A speech Rudd made to the Sydney Institute in 2000 was more revealing. He said then it was the duty of social democrats like himself to develop a ``New Internationalism''. He outlined a 10-point agenda for New Internationalism. It was dripping with Euro-left sentiment. He said there should be a ``red thread'' running through all policies, including economic management. Rudd has stated ``free markets must also be managed markets'', a statement I find dangerous for someone who pretends he is an economic conservative. Rudd and Swan and Co are barbarians at the gate.

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Lessons from Rudd's form in the Queensland government?

The writer below expects that Rudd has learned but we will see

The Goss administration (1989-96) was a control freak's dream. Under the iron grip of the premier, the government was dismissive of caucus, ministers were periodically relieved of policy responsibility, and media control and political spin were highly centralised in the premier's department. Goss famously told his supporters to "take a cold shower", cautioning them not to get carried away with their enthusiasm for change. Rudd was initially principal private secretary to Goss, then director-general of the new cabinet office in 1991.

In this position he was regarded as a centrist controller, somewhat distrustful of professionals, and someone who did not suffer fools gladly. He was convinced there were "right answers" to political and policy problems. One of his public service nicknames was Dr Death. He, along with others, was accused of sin-binning a number of former heads of department in an empty warehouse, giving them nothing to do: the notorious gulag.

Rudd ran a large, activist cabinet office (on the NSW model) with an ambitious policy purview. He hired policy specialists and party operatives, and seconded staff from policy departments. It certainly was not a paper-pushing unit, administratively circulating papers. Rudd was often out fighting departments in the trenches. The cabinet office often overrode ministers and departments, or changed their submissions - sometimes unrecognisably. It developed a culture of adversarial relations with the rest of the public service. It pretended to consolidate all policy at the centre, using terms such as whole-of-government, which was code for the premier's preferences or priorities.

Rudd's diagnosis of the problem in Queensland was that the state lacked policy capacity, that departments were not responsive and that leadership across the public sector was poor to non-existent. But his diagnosis of the commonwealth will be different. The commonwealth public sector is much larger, too multi-faceted and too complex to lend itself to a rigid centralism. There is obvious talent in some departments, and policy capacity is not weak, although in some areas there's a need to exercise it more strategically.

Rudd has, in my view, also learned from the youthful exuberance of the Goss era. In state harness he was a bureaucrat, not a minister; this is an important distinction. He took the severe electoral blows of 1995 and 1996 - rejections of the Goss regime from an "ungrateful" electorate - very hard but learned from the mistakes and excesses. He also lost at the federal level when he first ran for a seat.

Tempered by these events, he remade himself for political life, becoming one of Australia's most hardworking constituency politicians, involved in all manner of local issues. Unlike Wayne Swan, who accompanied him back to Canberra in 1998, he largely eschewed domestic policy issues until he became leader in 2006. If he becomes prime minister he will have to work through a cabinet of senior ministers with their own power bases. Caucus federally is no pushover. His decisions about how he organises his internal advisory structures will set the tone of the government. This includes who he chooses to head his department, whether he will develop a centralist strategic policy unit or enhance the cabinet policy office. How prime ministers will develop in office is always unpredictable.

Rudd has already announced he will establish a razor gang and make cuts to administration and tinker with performance pay. These are the kind of signals that got the Queensland public service's back up in the '90s, and not a good message to send out to the very organisations he will need to rely on when in government.

Rudd is a learner from past experiences. He will approach the task of managing the commonwealth differently, although some of his personal style may remain important. He is likely to remain a workaholic, anxious to be across all briefs (he exceeds even John Howard's capacity for work). He enjoys intellectual sparring and being right. He has centrist tendencies and often chooses to work through a chosen few, expanding this through concentric circles of advisers and staff. He believes in the contestability of policy advice and will seek to avoid group think and instances of self-serving politics.

If he still retains a glass jaw when criticised, he has learned to be more relaxed and comfortable with those with whom he has to interact. He has, in short, learned not to do things the Queensland way.

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Past Muslim aggression and hostility breeds distrust of them

As one of the last rural bastions in Sydney, Camden prides itself on keeping that laid-back twang of a true country town. But the once-sleepy hamlet in Sydney's southwest has become the scene of a battle over a proposed Islamic school for up to 1200 students on 15ha wedged between market gardens and pastures. It has roused a community to action on a scale not seen since a Muslim prayer hall was proposed in The Hills district in 2002. Residents, who speak their views plainly, fear it is the first tremor of a seismic change in the area that would be followed by a mosque.

Now the school's developers have asked for calm and a chance to prove themselves as Australians like everyone else. Quranic Society vice-president Issam Obeid told The Daily Telegraph yesterday they didn't expect such a hurtful reaction to the school. "Our aim is to open a school for all Australians, not just the Muslim community," Mr Obeid said. "Hopefully the students are going to be lawyers, teachers and business people or work in IT." Mr Obeid said they chose Camden because it was a beautiful rural area where they were able to buy a large block relatively cheap at $1.45 million. And while students would be free to pray on the site, there were no plans to build a mosque. "We will be teaching Australian values first because we are all Australians. We're not bringing anything bad from overseas and we're not there to teach minority group people," Mr Obeid said. "Hopefully one day when people start to get to know us they will realise we are not like what they think."

A public meeting held in Camden last week attracted more than 2000 people opposed to the development on the corner of Cawdor and Burragorang Rds. Support for the campaign has been gaining momentum through text messages, email and Facebook groups while the first form of "vandalism" at the site came when a wooden crucifix engraved with Christian scripture. The cross, which has been described by some residents as nothing more than irreverent Aussie humour, says in part: "When the enemy comes in like a flood the spirit of the Lord will lift up a flag in victory (Ish 59:19)."

Camden Council, which has received about 300 official objections, has indicated it would only be approved or rejected on planning grounds - not the basis of religion.

Local Rebecca Napier said Camden had a real community concern that the Islamic school wouldn't fit in with because Muslim's "refused to integrate". "We lit up the Christmas tree the other night and that is something they wouldn't be into because they're anti-Christian," Ms Napier said. "It would become more like Lakemba and less like the country town that we love."

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