NSW government employs drones instead of doctors and nurses

New South Wales Health Minister Reba Meagher rejects claims the clean-up of Royal North Shore Hospital occurred specifically to coincide with a parliamentary inquiry into its performance. RNSH has enjoyed a major spruce-up, with a huge team of cleaners employed to do the job.

The Opposition has been critical of the timing but Health Minister Reba Meagher says she's just trying to improve the hospital. "The concerns about cleaning were raised directly by the nurses to the chief executive and the chief executive has responded to those claims," she said. Royal North Shore has been under siege of late, with patients left to miscarry in emergency and cases of serious misdiagnosis.

Meanwhile, it's claimed 250 nurses could be employed with the money spent on 159 health bureaucrats who are being paid even though they don't have a position. Almost half have had their role made redundant. New South Wales Treasurer Michael Costa has told 2GB's Ray Hadley there is a deadline for these people to find work within the public service. "They're in a different category because they tend to be not highly paid people," he said. "They're given an oppotunity - 12 months - to find an alternate employment opportunity within the public sector. If they fail to find they are given termination and they've got 12 months to get out of the system."

Source

An earlier version of the above article included the following:

The state government has been forced to defend the cost of keeping redundant health workers on the payroll on the same day the inquiry into Royal North Shore Hospital begins. Around $15 million is being spent on health bureaucrats who are without a permanent position but the government insists the workers are not sitting around doing nothing. Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell says the union-secured deal speaks volumes about the government. "The $45 million a year being paid to 600 people to sit around and do nothing would be better spent employing more teachers, nurses and police."




Big failure for Australian-designed cars

Attempts to beat the Japanese at industrial design are just crazy and a waste of time and money. Tariff protection for the Australian car industry has failed and should be cancelled forthwith

In A first for the Japanese car giant, Toyota has beaten the new monthly car sales of Holden [GM] and Ford combined as Australia's manufacturers struggle against a wave of imported vehicles. As the price of crude oil approaches $100 a barrel, new cars are selling at a record pace and sales are tipped to eclipse the milestone of 1 million new cars sold in a year by the end of the year. In Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries sales figures for October released yesterday, market leader Toyota sold 20,212 vehicles, whereas Holden and Ford sold a total 19,621. Significantly, Holden and Ford were among only seven of the 42 brands to not post a sales increase in October. New-car sales were up by 8.6 per cent so far this year, the figures showed.

It is the first time Toyota has held such a strong lead over Holden and Ford and the company is on track to post its fourth year in a row as Australia's most popular car brand. But Toyota wasn't popping champagne corks yesterday, saying it would rather have stronger competition. "The result is double-edged," said Toyota's executive director of sales and marketing, David Buttner. "While it's pleasing to have strong sales we're mindful of the strong industry."

Toyota's Yaris hatch outsold by more than two to one Holden's similarly sized Barina. And Toyota's Corolla outsold the Holden Astra and Ford Focus small cars also by more than two to one. Mr Buttner said Toyota's record sales were due in part to having a newer model line-up (most of its range has been updated or replaced in the past three years) and that Ford and Holden would bounce back as they updated their models.

Holden's Commodore remained Australia's biggest selling car, but sales of the Ford Falcon were down by 22 per cent in the first 10 months of this year compared with the same period in 2006. An updated Falcon is due in March. Contrary to perception, sales of four-wheel-drives have never been stronger. Sales of light cars are up by 9.2 per cent and small cars are up by 5.4 per cent, but sales of four-wheel-drives are up by 15 per cent. Toyota Australia's chairman emeritus, John Conomos, said he expected the new car market would reach the 1.04 million sales mark this year based on present trends.

Source





Bipartisan tax stupidity

The nation's leading universities yesterday called for the abolition of a tax that renders worthless scholarships for disadvantaged and rural students. Chairman of the Group of Eight elite universities Alan Robson said the scholarships were a way of improving those students' access to university but the bursaries were counted as income in the means test on the commonwealth's Youth Allowance. However, the commonwealth's own equity scholarships - about $8500 this year for new students - were exempt.

"It's a real disincentive for any university or donor to offer scholarships because if we do, the Government just cuts their Austudy payment," Professor Robson said. "This makes such scholarships almost worthless and was the reason behind the group's recent decision to discontinue its equity and merit scholarship scheme. "This tax anomaly is a crazy thing," he said.

Under the means test for the Youth Allowance, worth $348.10 a fortnight, students earning more than $236 a fortnight lose half their allowance. If their income rises above $316, they lose 60 per cent of the allowance.

Professor Robson - vice-chancellor of the University of Western Australia - said the proportion of students from low-income families attending university had not risen for more than 20 years. Yesterday, neither party would commit to the change, which would cost an estimated $26.5million a year.

Source





A discriminatory anti-discrimination body

Post below lifted from Leon Bertrand. See the original for links

As readers may be aware, we have exposed the inherent left wing bias of the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Commission (ADCQ). This bias is systemic, and involves multiple breaches of the Public Service Code of Conduct. We have now added links to all our exposes on the sidebar on the left of our blog, for your reading pleasure.

ADCQ is obviously a disgrace, continually practicing the types of discrimination it was established to combat. It engages in left wing activism at public expense and forces parties to attend compulsory conciliations, even if the complaint the conciliation is in relation to does not relate to the Act it is supposed to administer. This is a government organization whose outlook is more discriminatory than Pauline Hanson's policies. Taken together, ADCQ is a big lump of left wing absurdity.

Is there anything that the ADCQ does which can be seen as making a difference in the community? Does anyone read or is anyone persuaded by their left press releases?

There is no doubt that Discrimination legislation should exist. Discrimination is a terrible thing, and remedies should generally be available when people are vilified or discriminated against. Discrimination cases can be litigated in court under the federal Acts, without recourse to the ADCQ and its authoritarian regime of compulsory conciliations. I honestly do not see how these mandatory conciliations benefit anyone. No doubt ADCQ would reply that they exist in order to help the parties reach agreement. This is code for the conciliator putting pressure on the parties to come to an agreement, despite their wishes, and no matter how unjust the terms of the agreement are. When agreement is reached through a compulsory process which would not be reached through a voluntary one, the agreement is almost inevitably the result of coercion.

What we are dealing with is a human rights bureaucracy imposing injustice, and not justice in discrimination cases. If parties want to negotiate or conciliate, they can arrange this to be done privately. If they want to litigate without first going through two conciliation sessions, that should be their right. Parties actually in a dispute are better placed to decide how the dispute should proceed, particularly when they have legal representation. Similarly, employers and employees are better situated to decide the pay and conditions of employment in a workplace. It is generally inappropriate that third parties are able to impose themselves without the consent of the two parties.

In relation to complaints involving smaller remedies than are usually sought in courts of law, perhaps the Small Claims Tribunal should be given jurisdiction to adjudicate such matters. The reason why it is not appropriate to have a specialist tribunal has been pointed out by the H.R. Nicholls Society:

The inevitable problem which arises in every specialist tribunal, unstated by Justice Guidice, is the composition of these tribunals. The type of people who seek appointment to antidiscrimination tribunals, and often succeed in getting appointed, are often women, homosexual, and sometimes disabled (the former head of the Victorian tribunal was a blind woman). They tend to be steeped in student revolutionary culture of the 1970s and are living specimens of an undergraduate time warp. For them, employers, large and small, are the drivers of capitalist oppression. In this time warp, white, middle-aged males harass, intimidate, fail to promote, fail to hire and terminate employees as part of a conspiracy against non-Anglo-Saxons and women. Profoundly ignorant of how markets work in a free economy, and guided by chattering-class perceptions of how and why hiring and firing occurs, they are determined to bring light to the unenlightened and to expose the evils of the market economy. These tribunes are not judges at all-but social engineers sitting on the bench-inspired by the example of Sir William Deane, Sir Anthony Mason and Sir Gerard Brennan.

When a matter needs to be resolved through arbitration or litigation, it is appropriate that the officials are politically impartial, unlike the Anti-Discrimination Commission. This is the fundamental reason why ADCQ and the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal both need to be abolished. Political bias is inappropriate in the public sector, as the Code of Conduct makes clear.

There would also be macroeconomic and microeconomic benefits associated with such a move. Firstly, it would force the socialist bureaucrats at ADCQ top go find real jobs. This would help alleviate the "capacity constraints" in the Australian economy that Wayne Swan keeps talking about. Suddenly there would be a few hundred more workers out there on the job market. Hopefully not all of them are completely useless, and their skills in coercing parties and pushing political agendas could be put to good use in the private sector, or in a left-wing party. Some could apply for jobs to work with Peter Russo, advocating in the political arena for terror suspects.

Secondly, if the Government were to save the money used for ADCQ, to be spent or given back to taxpayers at a later date, these savings would also help curb inflation through reduced government spending. The result would be that another interest rate rise would be less likely.

Some people may think that when I advocate for smaller government and lower taxes that I am advocating that essential services are not provided by the Government. The truth is that I am not extreme - I do realize that health, education, roads and law enforcement are essential services that require government funding. When I call for lower taxes, I mean that Government should stop spending money on stupid things like Anti-Discrimination Commissions, or rebates which do no more than give people back their tax moneys. The economy would function so much more efficiently if Governments stopped propping up left wing institutions and pork-barreling, and stuck to the essential services. In relation to ADCQ, Governments should not fund left wing activists to carry out their activism. Such activism should be done in their own time, and not at our expense.

For all the above stated reasons, ADCQ benefits no-one (except the left) and is a waste of everyone's money. It ought to be abolished. Now.