Medical negligence in regional public hospital ruins a life

Jamie Oxley is only 22 -- but he already feels like a 60-year-old. Three years ago, Mr Oxley went to the Cairns Base Hospital emergency department after experiencing severe abdominal pain and vomiting. About four hours later he was discharged without his twisted bowel being diagnosed, despite X-rays that allegedly showed "classical" evidence of the problem.

He was rushed back to hospital by ambulance nine hours later and doctors had to remove about 3m of his small intestine, resulting in a permanent disability. Mr Oxley, who worked as a seafood processor before his operation, now struggles to work due to fatigue. Mr Oxley, of Yorkeys Knob near Cairns, is suing for $540,000 damages for pain, suffering, loss of amenities of life, economic loss and loss of earning capacity.

His statement of claim against the State of Queensland, filed in the Supreme Court in Brisbane on November 13, alleges Mr Oxley lost a major portion of his small intestine as a result of the failure to diagnose the obstruction early enough to treat it. A filed medical report by Dr John Raftos, a senior Sydney emergency medicine specialist, said X-rays taken when Mr Oxley first went to hospital showed air-fluid levels in the small intestine. "It would be reasonable to expect any ordinary skilled doctor would interpret this X-ray as being diagnostic evidence of small-bowel obstruction," Dr Raftos said.

Before the emergency operation Mr Oxley and his partner Nichola Easton, 21, had bought their own unit and were working hard for their future. Mr Oxley, who had won a regional trainee award, then lost a chance of promotion to a manager's position and later had to give up his job. "I'm only 22 but I'm finding it hard to do a week's work," he said.

Lawyer Damian Scattini, of Quinn and Scattini, said it was another case of a young Queenslander "being left with a life sentence because a Queensland public hospital dropped the ball". "The problem is that it was entirely preventable, but now Jamie is left to live with the consequences of the hospital's neglect," he said.

The above article by Kay Dibben appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on November 25, 2007






Good to see the end of the cloud-cuckoo-land party

OUTGOING Queensland Democrat Senator Andrew Bartlett yesterday warned the party may never recover from its electoral rout. Mr Bartlett lost his Queensland Senate seat, with less than 2 per cent of the primary vote - well short of the 14 per cent needed after preferences. The Queensland makeup of the Senate is likely to be Ian Macdonald and Sue Boyce (Liberals), Ron Boswell (Nationals) and John Hogg, Claire Moore and Mark Furner (Labor). But The Greens believe they could still win the sixth spot from Labor.

Senator Bartlett said yesterday he was disappointed with the result. "I'm not totally shocked at not winning, but the vote being as low as it is was a surprise," said Senator Bartlett. Party leader Lyn Allison also lost her Senate seat in Victoria, meaning the Democrats will have no representation in Federal Parliament after July. Senator Allison said: "I think we've lost our four remaining seats. I don't call that an annihilation entirely - we will still have one member of parliament in South Australia," she said.

Greens Queensland Senate candidate Larissa Waters has 7.44 per cent of the primary vote and says the result will be determined by postal votes. Pauline Hanson won more than 4 per cent of the primary vote while Family First polled just over 2.3 per cent. Ms Hanson's result means that under Australian Electoral Commission guidelines she stands to pocket funding of $2.10 a vote or $200,000.

Apart from the Liberals with 39.78 per cent, Labor with 39.31 per cent and the Greens (7.44 per cent), Ms Hanson's Pauline's United Australia Party was the only other in Queensland to crack the 4 per cent mark. The ALP looks set to pick up four new Senate positions, building on its 28 seats in the 76-seat chamber.

But the Coalition will hold on to its majority of 39 until next July - putting the Labor Government on a collision course with its rival. Mr Rudd's plan to ratify the Kyoto protocol and scrap industrial relations laws may not happen until the second half of 2008, as the Coalition firmly opposes both policies. Once the new Senate takes shape, Mr Rudd will have to negotiate new laws with the Greens, an Independent and Family First, who will hold the balance of power.

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Only a slight move to the Left

By Paul Sheehan

Ideology is dead in Australia. The electorate made sure of that at the weekend. Australia now has a new leader as conservative as the one the public has just cast aside. The transition was seamless, bloodless and ruthless. Seamless, because the prime minister-elect has committed himself to policy pragmatism, fiscal conservatism and border security. Kevin Rudd is also the only member of the Labor Party who has regularly attended the federal parliamentary prayer group (dominated by social conservatives like Bronwyn Bishop and Bob Katter).

Bloodless, because the election campaign, at least as contested by the principals, was never grubby or personal but remained a contest of ideas. It was left to a few Liberal hacks to provide the grubby, and a few media commentators to provide the personal, the mean-spirited and the one punch thrown in the campaign. Ruthless, because the Prime Minister, John Howard, the supposed political master, may have lost his seat in Parliament, while his deputy, the supposed new leader, Peter Costello, self-decapitated as the heir-apparent yesterday, after he had considered the magnitude of the rebuilding that lies ahead.

So the Australian political system, one of the oldest and most stable democracies in the world, has delivered an emphatic change of leadership with a modest change in direction. The electorate has chosen a Labor leader who locked his party's utopian left wing in a broom closet for the election campaign, and is giving every indication he intends to keep them there. In his final keynote address of the campaign, not once did he mention the words unions, Aborigines, indigenous, apology, refugees or multiculturalism.

It's taken almost 40 years to learn from mistakes and apply the necessary discipline. What rolled over the Howard Government in the past eight months was Labor 3.0, built on the experiences of Labor 1.0 and Labor 2.0. Labor 1.0 was the Whitlam government; after emerging from 23 years in the wilderness in 1972 many of its members behaved like pigs at a trough and it was rejected overwhelmingly by the public in 1975. Labor 2.0 was the Hawke-Keating government, vastly more sophisticated and accomplished, but eventually undone by arrogance and the culture wars, as Paul Keating, Gareth Evans, Nick Bolkus and Robert Tickner led the charge of "racism" every time anyone dared to question its misguided policies on immigration or Aboriginal affairs. It took 10 years for Labor to recover.

Labor 3.0 is encapsulated by Rudd's refusal to contest the culture wars with Howard. The rhetorical tendencies of firebrands like Julia Gillard, Peter Garrett and the trade union ideologues have been conspicuously tempered or measured, or non-existent, since Rudd took charge. On Saturday night, we had the spectacle of Stephen Smith, a senior member of Rudd's shadow cabinet, complaining about "the worst excesses, the ugly face of unionism, which hasn't helped us at all". He was referring to Labor's relative failure in Western Australia.

The utopian Left inside Labor and the Greens will have to come to terms with the reality that Australia will soon have a Labor prime minister who has a temper, an iron will, a fierce intellect and an enormous mandate, who has given the Australian electorate what it wanted. What it wanted was an end to the excesses and the hollowness of the Howard Government, not a deviation from policy pragmatism.

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Sometimes you can't win

And trying to protect Aboriginal children from abuse will almost always be an example of that

ABORIGINAL social workers in Brewarrina say the indigenous community there is confused and fearful after the attempted removal of four children from their families last week, which sent two of them into hiding. Grace Beetson, who runs the Ourgunya women's refuge, described "scenes reminiscent of the film Rabbit-Proof Fence" when Department of Community Services workers and police arrived at the children's house to take four of them into care on Thursday.

"Bystanders watched as police used capsicum spray on emotional fathers and ripped two children [aged three and six months] from their 18- and 19-year-old mothers' arms," Ms Beetson said. "Aboriginal women outside of the house and across the street were crying, whilst children were running around distraught, fearful and screaming."

Ms Beetson said neither mother was aware she was under departmental scrutiny, but a spokesman for the department said it had been working on the case and "seeking to engage the family without success".

Two other children aged eight and 11, who were sisters of the young mothers, had since gone into hiding after learning that they were also scheduled to be removed, Ms Beetson said. "Their mother . has desperately requested support from DOCS in the past. These children had been taken into care and then returned when appropriate placements could not be found. Whilst a care plan was drafted and respite specifically requested, the family received no further support or resources from DOCS," she said.

A protest march was being organised in Brewarrina, amid fears that a radical crackdown like that in the Northern Territory was being planned for western NSW. But the department said the two babies were taken into care "amid serious fears for their safety" and that department case workers "were thrust into a scene of escalating violence and personal risk when attending the premises". "The decision to remove these children was not taken lightly. Such decisions are always difficult," the spokesman said. "DOCS recognises the distress of the family and the community in this case but must put the safety of these children first."

Earlier this month, Brewarrina was the scene of the funeral for two-year-old Dean Shillingsworth, an Aboriginal boy whose body was found in a suitcase in a pond in Ambarvale. Dean's death was the first of a series of tragic incidents this month that has put unprecedented pressure on a department already under strain. Dean's father, Paul Shillingsworth, grew up in Brewarrina. Dean's mother, Rachel Pfitzner, of Rosemeadow, has been charged with his murder.

The Minister for Community Services, Kevin Greene, said two new DOCS case workers began work in October in nearby Bourke and two more positions were being advertised as part of a NSW Government strategy to boost child protection resources in western NSW.

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