Tell a big enough lie often enough and people will believe it

As the article below shows, Dr Goebbels has able heirs among the Greenies. That corals FLOURISH in warmer waters is not mentioned. The Great Barrier Reef stretches over 1500 miles from North to South along Australia's East coast -- from quite cool to distinctly warm waters. And corals become MORE abundant moving Northwards -- i.e. as the waters get warmer

It is probably too late to save the Great Barrier Reef and other coral reefs from global warming. Even if governments implement far-reaching measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions, they will not prevent the annihilation of coral reefs around the world. These are the conclusions of analysis by leading marine scientists to be published today in the prestigious journal Science. "There is a terrible future in front of us for the reefs," said Canada-based United Nations University professor Peter Sale, one of 17 authors from seven nations of the Science paper.

On Wednesday, Kevin Rudd told the UN's Bali climate change conference that global warming was threatening Australian natural wonders such as the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu National Park and rainforests, killing rivers and exposing people to more frequent and ferocious bushfires.

The scientists present three scenarios for the future of coral reefs - the world's largest lifeforms - under different climatic conditions. If current conditions continue, with the stabilisation of temperatures and emissions at today's level of 380 parts per million (ppm), reefs will survive but undergo fundamental changes. However, scientists agree that stabilisation of current conditions is not possible. The paper warns that if emissions rise to between 450 and 500 ppm, with an associated temperature rise of 2C by 2050 - the most optimistic outcome predicted by the landmark study by British economist Nicholas Stern - reefs will suffer "vastly reduced habitat complexity and loss of biodiversity".

But if they rise above 500ppm, the minimum emission level forecast by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climage Change by 2050, reefs will become "rapidly eroding rubble banks". "These changes will reduce coral reef ecosystems to crumbling frameworks with few calcareous corals," the paper says. "It is clear that coral reefs as we know them today would be extremely rare." The scientists determined that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere of 380ppm was 80ppm higher than it has been for 740,000 years, and probably for as long as 20 million years.

Professor Sale, who is in Brisbane this week for a World Bank-sponsored marine science conference, said there was no point speculating about the outcome for reefs in the worst-case scenarios outlined by the Stern and IPCC reviews, of temperature rises as high as 6C. "In the best-case predictions, with temperature rises of 2C by 2050, the outlook can hardly be more dire," he said. However, he said some damage could be averted if radical measures were introduced to curb emissions. "There is a ray of hope, but it is fading fast."

Climate change sceptic Bob Carter, a James Cook University researcher, said while he was not familiar with the Science paper, caution needed to be exercised about "alarmist" climate modelling. "Too often these climate models are basically PlayStations which have not been validated scientifically," Dr Carter said.

But the lead author of the Science paper, University of Queensland professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, said the $7billion Great Barrier Reef tourism industry was at risk. "With conservative estimates predicting emission levels exceeding 500ppm, coral reefs will dwindle into insignificance," Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said. "These changes dwarf anything that happened in the Ice Age transitions and they are happening faster than Stern and the IPCC predicted. The outlook is very grim."

Note that Hoeghie has also blamed coral damage on COLD weather. Heads I win, tails you lose

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Rudd fends off climate ambush with a nod to Howard

KEVIN Rudd has avoided an ambush at Bali. It was an ambush prepared by green groups using false expectations and perceptions to lock a 10-day-old Government into unrealistic and binding targets on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. He has done well to avoid the ambush and keep his climate change credentials intact.

The frenetic expectation of dramatic results from the UN climate change conference was based on a misreading of the Rudd Labor Government's climate change policy and the Prime Minister's own position. There is an almost wilful, certainly a wishful, misinterpretation of the new Australian Government's attitude towards targets for cutting carbon emissions. Such a misinterpretation stems from demonising the Howard government's approach, a misleading emphasis during the election campaign and an unfulfilled expectation that Labor had to do anything to get elected and would just change its position after the poll.

Just so that no one is in any doubt about Australia's aim to set medium-term targets for cutting carbon emissions, the Prime Minister spelt it out clearly at the conference this week. The Australian Government is committed to cutting greenhouse gases; such action cannot be unilateral and must be global; developed as well as developing countries, such as China and India, must be committed to binding aims; Australia will introduce a carbon trading system; there is a commitment to mandatory renewable energy targets until 2020; there will be a commitment to medium-term emissions cuts by 2020 and the targets will depend on how they will affect the Australian economy.

All of this is perfectly reasonable at every level. Yet, before Rudd arrived in Bali and before Climate Change Minister Penny Wong had spoken, the expectation was that the Bali conference would lead to targets involving a reduction in emissions of 25 per cent to 40 per cent by 2020. In the long process of international climate change negotiations, the consideration or inclusion of a new set of parameters can shape and direct the international architecture and must be acceded to with great caution.

Green groups complained publicly that Australian officials were obstructing this aim and they hoped things would look up once the ministers arrived. However, when Wong arrived in Bali, things got worse from the green groups' perspective. It was no longer nameless bureaucrats who opposed the adoption of such extreme targets but the minister herself....

In his press conferences and in his speech to the conference, Rudd made it clear Australia would not act on setting targets, which could have a disastrous effect on the nation's resources-led economy, until the economic analysis was completed. By ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, Rudd set himself apart from the Howard government's refusal to do so, but apart from that Australia's approach hardly changed at all....

Rudd's emphasis on ratifying the Kyoto Protocol kept the focus on the pre-2012 climate change debate and gave him a powerful symbolic advantage. Yet - and Rudd made this crystal clear during the campaign - the ALP had the same approach as the Coalition. Howard was not dissembling or exaggerating when he described Rudd's adoption of the Coalition's post-2012 policy as the most stunning turnaround of the election campaign, after Labor's then environment spokesman Peter Garrett had stumbled. Rudd supported the policy and believed in it; he just didn't want to talk about it during the campaign.

But in Bali, in rejecting the international pressure to embrace extreme targets, Rudd had no difficulty in speaking about the post-2012 policy. "It requires a multilateral solution. Unilateral action is not enough," he said bluntly. "Action to tackle climate change will not be easy. It will require tough choices. And some of these will come at a political price," he acknowledged.

Then he outlined that he - not just Wong or the bureaucrats - was prepared to use the Garnaut report to head off the ambush or a panicked reaction. "We commissioned a major study to help us to set shorter-term targets along the way. This study, the Garnaut review, will report in mid-2008. Together with modelling under way in the Australian Treasury and, also critically, informed by the science, this review will drive our decisions on short and medium-term targets," the Prime Minister said.

"These will be real targets. These will be robust targets," he declared, but he wasn't committing to any targets before the analysis was completed and without the developing nations being part of the solution. "We expect all developed countries to embrace a further set of binding emissions targets, and we need this meeting at Bali to map out the process and timeline in which this will happen. And we need developing countries to play their part, with specific commitments to action," he said. That's Rudd talking. Rudd's right, and he believes in what he is saying. It could have been Howard.

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Little girl endured six weeks of sex attacks

THE little girl who was gang-raped in the Cape York community of Aurukun was subjected to a six-week reign of sexual abuse by her attackers. The story of the attacks on the 10-year-old is told in sparse but chilling detail in a police statement presented in court to Sarah Bradley, the District Court judge who failed to jail the attackers. The document also reveals that apart from the gang rape, the little girl was raped at least six times over a period of six weeks by the nine males who pleaded guilty to attacking her.

Steve Carter, the prosecutor who has been stood aside pending an investigation into the case, did not give details of the gang rape during the sentencing hearing in Cairns District Court, which was sitting in Aurukun. Instead, Judge Bradley apparently relied on the statement of facts Mr Carter presented to the court, and released to The Australian yesterday. The statement says the gang rape was committed by Raymond Woolla, 26, Ian Koowarta, 20, Michael Wikmunea, 19, and a number of juveniles at a house in Aurukun on an unknown date between May 1 and June 12 last year.

One of the juvenile offenders told police he went to the house with another boy to see the girl. "The complainant asked this accused if she could have sex with him," the statement says. "Initially, he said he couldn't because she was just a little kid, but she kept asking him so he put a condon (sic) on and had sex with her." Another boy who was in the house told police the girl did not want to have sex, but one of the juvenile offenders forced himself on her. "He had sex with the complainant ... The complainant was telling him to stop."

Koowarta told police Wikmunea had forced him to go to the house. They went there with Woolla. "He said the four of them had sex with the complainant. Michael (Wikmunea) went first, then (a juvenile) then Raymond (Woolla) ..." One of the boys confessed to police that apart from the gang attack, he raped the girl twice, once at a house after a disco and once behind a bank a few days later. Another boy told police he raped the girl the night of someone's 21st birthday party. "They went to her aunty's house on their bike and had sex there," the documents say.

The girl had been living with a foster family in Cairns but against Department of Child Safety advice stayed in Aurukun after being returned to the community for a funeral. Her family and the department had agreed to return her to Cairns, but failed to act soon enough to prevent further attacks in Aurukun shortly after her return last year.

The victim's aunt told The Australian this week the now 12-year-old was a "little girl who has had the light turned off in her life". And her mother claimed the girl had been raped in the past by some of the same Aurukun boys who attacked her after her return to the community last year.

In a record of interview last year, obtained by The Australian, a police officer who had questioned the victim told a high-level investigative review team that when he first met the girl, he suspected she had been sexually abused. "One thing that stood out when she came in, she shaved all her hair off and there's a couple of girls that I've seen and it's always ... been the case that they ... have been the victims of sexual abuse. It's one of the indicators that I've noticed that stands out, the acts of violence in the community, being armed and then out of some sort of shame or whatever they shave their hair." When asked whether that was to "make themselves less attractive", the officer said: "Yeah, and she had, like, a jumper on her head but wrapped up like a bouffant type of ... which - I knew I wasn't dealing with an ordinary child".

The officer said it was difficult putting the child at ease enough to speak with police. He said it was difficult to even get her into the interviewing room. Once they did "build rapport", the officer said the girl had "openly volunteered that she had had 'sex with four or five men', the oldest of whom she thought was 18 and the youngest 19". "The child stated that the boys 'like sex a lot' and that she 'little bit liked having sex'," he said. The officer said the girl was found to be "very talkative in comparison with other children of her own age in that community". "It is understood that this child is intellectually impaired as a result of fetal alcohol syndrome and is known for frequent violent outbursts."

He said the girl had a history with the Department of Child Safety and detailed one outburst when the girl was nine, where she had "gone to the local shop with a stick and wanted to bash the shopkeepers and had done something to a forklift and she'd been in regular trouble in the community". He said she had committed a series of break-and-enter offences in the community.

The department is now caring for the child. "She is currently in a safe place with indigenous carers, maintaining cultural links with her community," the department said last night. "She continues to receive long-distance education, counselling and other therapeutic support, including music and dance lessons. It is hoped she will be able to attend school in 2009."

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Police claim suspected child abuse cases covered up

While there have been numerous cases where child safety officers had failed to pass evidence to police, Det-Sgt Harold said: "It got to a political level at that stage where I believe ministers got involved and certain people were told not to speak to police. My job was to track down each (medical) clinic in the Cape and I got that under way ... but then there was some political issues where a directive came from Brisbane (that) 'You are not allowed to talk to the police - don't tell them anything'."

Det-Sgt Harold said that even the clinics were eventually told not to advise police of any reports they had made of abused or raped children and which had been sent to the Department of Child Safety. The alleged political issues and the ministerial directive came soon after senior Northern Territory prosecutor Nanette Rogers exposed the horror of indigenous violence, sparking widespread outrage in Australia and ultimately leading to the Howard government's intervention in Territory communities. At the time, the Queensland Government was at pains to stress that it did not have the same level of crime in its indigenous communities. Even after a public outcry over the handling of the Aurukun case by the justice and child safety systems, the state Government has rejected the need for a Territory-style intervention.

Det-Sgt Harold also revealed he and other police had insisted that social workers at Aurukun fly the 10-year-old girl to Cairns on June 8 and June 9 last year after she told medical examiners that she had been raped by many men and had contracted gonorrhea. However, two child safety officers did not agree, saying arrangements had been made for the child to spend the weekend with family members on an outstation. The girl did not go to the outstation and on that weekend was raped again in Aurukun by a 15-year-old youth who pleaded guilty to the offence on October 24 last year.

The director-general of the Department of Child Safety, Norelle Deeth, confirmed the girl's family and child safety officers had agreed to move her to Cairns. "Tragically, this safety plan was not enacted prior to further sexual assaults," Ms Deeth said. In a rare statement, Ms Deeth also said the girl was taken out of the Cairns foster home only to attend a funeral in Aurukun, but refused to return and remained in the community with a family member. "Against this backdrop, staff made what they thought at the time was the best decision," Ms Deeth said. "Sadly, this decision subsequently proved to be wrong."

Speaking about the subsequent arrest of the girl's rapists, Det-Sgt Harold said: "All of them made full admissions as well as provided statements nominating - and in a group situation where there were five or six or more raping her - they also provided ... there were other witnesses as well who provided statements nominating other people." Det-Sgt Harold said the girl had gone to the Aurukun clinic on May 5 last year requesting a pregnancy test and told the doctor she was having sex. After the girl was diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease, the Aurukun director of nursing, Peter Fenton, sent a fax message on May 15 to Child Safety. It was never acknowledged.

When Det-Sgt Harold visited Aurukun on June 6 last year, he was told about the girl, and he asked why a report had not been sent to him, as was the normal procedure. He had the girl and her carer, her aunt, brought to the police station, and she told him of the rapes. That was when Det-Sgt Harold instructed that she be taken to Cairns. But it did not happen, and within the next 24 hours, she was raped again. He said that when the girl was flown by the department to Cairns the following week, she was put in the control of an Aurukun woman, and he questioned whether she was appropriate to look after the girl.

"(The woman) had only just got out of jail for an extremely serious stabbing ... so whether she was an appropriate person to be caring for (the girl), I have concerns," Det-Sgt Harold told the review team. He outlined in detail his frustration with the two child safety officers who he said resisted moving the child to Cairns.

An official involved with the review team said they had been instructed that they were not allowed to speak to any government minister, including the then child safety minister Mike Reynolds, who is now the Speaker of the Queensland parliament. Mr Reynolds is overseas and not available for comment, and the two child safety officers did not return calls.

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Yet another case of negligent discharge from a Queensland public hospital

There was a similar incident involving the same hospital a year ago. And "reform" was promised after another similar incident at another hospital several weeks ago



A HOSPITAL patient was forced to use his shirt to make primitive shoes to protect his feet when he was left to walk 13km home from Atherton Hospital during a thunderstorm. Malanda man John Edwards was rushed to Atherton Hospital by ambulance at 11.30pm in early December with a serious cut to his arm. But after he was treated, the hospital left him to find his own way back to Malanda about 2am.

The 38 year old told The Cairns Post of the indignity he felt at being forced to walk home during a thunderstorm and heavy rain. "The bitumen was like glass and every step was agony," he said. "The hospital said it was a bad enough wound to get infected but they let me walk home in the rain and mud. "I fell over a couple of times, wore out my walking stick. "It made me feel like no one cared about me."

The hospital gave Mr Edwards a pair of plastic theatre shoes and offered him blankets so he could sleep in the waiting room on a plastic chair. "When I went to the desk and said I was going to walk home the nurses said OK," he said. "If they had told me a taxi would be available at 6am, I would have waited but they didn't, so I thought I had no other way home except to walk. "The theatre shoes were no good and I had no choice but to rip my shirt because when I was taken to hospital the ambulance crew didn't tell me I would need shoes to walk home. "I was in a state of shock. I just didn't think about it." Mr Edwards had walked 13km of the 20km journey home when a good Samaritan gave him a lift.

Tablelands MP Rosa Lee Long said yesterday Health Minister Stephen Robertson had some serious explaining to do. She said Mr Edwards' case was not an isolated incident and patients should be provided with the means to get home. "I will be writing to the minister and asking for an explanation," she said.

A Queensland Health spokesman said Mr Edwards did not tell staff he was walking home and nurses had provided blankets. "They are in the business of providing acute medical care and are not a transport service," he said. A spokesman for Mr Robertson said yesterday the minister would investigate the matter after he received Ms Lee Long's letter.

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