Telstra/Bigpond arrogance

Some readers may vaguely recall that I have been having something of a "war" with Telstra over the execrable services that they provide. As part of trying to get some sort of civilized and intelligent response fom them, I have been using their own "Bigblog" blogging facility to post criticisms of them. BigBlog was always a primitive affair but I have just found out that it is even more primitive that anyone could have imagined. They turn it off at night! That's right: It is only available during Australian daylight hours! Amazing that Australia's largest provider of internet services cannot keep its own blogs up and running 24 hours a day -- but that is the reality, folks.

Now that I have discovered that, I have of course moved camp and am now blogging about Telstra/Bigpond on blogspot. See here from now on. I have already transferred to there the more recent posts on the BigBlog site.





STUPID AND IRRESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT SCHOOL



When Connor Wilson was turned away from after-school care because his name wasn't on the list, he took matters into his own hands and decided to walk home - all 15km. That threw his mum, his school and police into a panic. Police found the six-year-old walking along Geelong's busiest road, the Princes Highway, more than 6km into his journey to his Whittington home.

Mum Ruth Wilson was furious with Corio South Primary and has pulled Connor out of the school. Ms Wilson said Connor could have been abducted or hit by a car.

On Wednesday morning last week, she organised for him to attend care that afternoon. But when he arrived for the after-school session, the carer told him his name was not on the list and he left. The school contacted police when they realised Connor was missing after 5pm. Ms Wilson said it was the second time in two months Connor had left school after being turned away from care. "I am extremely angry that this has happened again," she said. "Anything could have happened to him."

Ms Wilson said Connor's name was put on the care list for the following morning, Thursday, by mistake. Principal Neil Lynch said the school had apologised for the mistake. All students were routinely told to go to the school office if their parents didn't turn up to collect them, Mr Lynch said. Ms Wilson said Connor was familiar with the route home from the daily drive to and from school. "He is a smart little boy but he certainly won't be doing that again," she said. Ms Wilson said that Connor now knows that if there is a next time he is to go straight to the office.

Source






More high quality government medical care

A BLEEDING pregnant woman was twice told by a doctor in a Sydney hospital that her baby was healthy when the fetus had been dead for a month. It is the second botched handling of a miscarriage to rock the NSW hospital system after a woman miscarried in a toilet at Royal North Shore Hospital earlier this year, prompting a parliamentary inquiry.

In the latest case, Amy Bennett was rushed to Campbelltown Hospital in Sydney's southwest on Sunday after she started bleeding. Ms Bennett told Network Ten a doctor at the hospital had told her in heavily accented English that the bleeding was normal before sending her home. She said she returned to the hospital the next day when the bleeding worsened, but the same doctor diagnosed dehydration and sent her home again. "I woke up the next morning, there was blood everywhere," a distraught Ms Bennett said. "I didn't want to go back to Campbelltown Hospital and have them tell me nothing was wrong when I knew something was wrong. "I've never miscarried before, how was I meant to know?"

Ms Bennett instead went to her GP, who immediately diagnosed a miscarriage. Scans later revealed the baby had been dead for a month. Sydney South West Area Health Service said it had reviewed Ms Bennett's records and found no evidence of inappropriate treatment. [???!!!!]

Source





Pay cuts fund fat-cat rises

Leftist governments look after the little guy -- right?

THE [NSW] State Government has slashed the wages of frontline disability workers in order to create three new levels of bureaucratic fat cats, in yet another public service pay outrage. Confidential documents obtained by The Daily Telegraph reveal secret plans to cut the pay of those who care for the disabled by up to $14,000, while at the same time creating three new management positions of up to $100,000-plus a year.

Existing management salaries have also been bumped up by thousands, while a grade one support worker gets just $31,000 a year - a massive $10,000 cut. The proposed top rate for a grade three disability support worker is now just slightly over $50,000 - barely the average wage and reduced from more than $64,000 under the old system.

Yet at the same time the Government "restructure" has created a new role of "senior business support co-ordinator" on a $106,000 annual salary and a "practice support co-ordinator" on $67,000 a year. And another two new management positions have been created - "team leader 1" and "team leader 2" - replacing a previous single position of "house manager" and bumping up their salary by between $3000 and $5000.

The move directly contradicts the Government's claim to be focusing on boosting frontline services while cutting back on bureaucracy. Already the Department of Ageing Disability and Home Care is struggling to attract disability support workers. One worker told The Daily Telegraph morale among workers was at an all-time low and the quality of care was being threatened. She said Premier Morris Iemma had been hypocritical in supposedly campaigning for workers' rights and claiming to protect frontline workers.

Source





Premier refers coverup claim to watchdog

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has asked the state's corruption watchdog to report to her on claims that government ministers ordered child welfare workers not to tell police about hundreds of cases of suspected child abuse and neglect on Cape York. A north Queensland police officer made the allegations following outrage over the gang rape of a 10-year-old girl in the Cape York indigenous community of Aurukun in far north Queensland.

A team led by the Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) was ordered to investigate why the Department of Child Safety took the girl from a safe foster home in Cairns and returned her to Aurukun, where she was gang-raped for a second time last year, and then failed to report the crime promptly to police.

Cairns-based child protection investigator Detective Sergeant David Harold told the team that details of child safety cases were not being passed on to police. "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," he said in the investigation report revealed in The Australian newspaper. Health clinics also were 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 newspaper said.

The police union later said police officers stationed in Cape York had backed claims that officers from Queensland's Department of Child Safety routinely withheld information of child abuse. Union deputy president Denis Fitzpatrick said the officers from remote Aboriginal communities had spoken of a "systemic problem" with the relay of information from the department to police. He said the department had failed in its primary duty and called for anyone responsible for withholding information to be sacked.

"It seems amazing and remarkable to me as a police officer that an organisation that is set up with its paramount intent of looking after child safety does not relay information of child sexual and physical abuse to the police - it just defies belief," Mr Fitzpatrick told reporters in Brisbane. "If these kids are physically and sexually abused and the option is available to remove them from that environment then that has to be done in the interests of the safety of the child."

Mr Fitzpatrick suggested the government may have been suffering from "a stolen generation hangover" but also placed the blame on former child safety minister Mike Reynolds, who is also a north Queensland MP. "At the time, he made public comment about police," Mr Fitzpatrick said. "He showed disdain, distrust for police and I'm just saying that it may be the case that that sort of intent flowed through this particular organisation."

Ms Bligh told reporters she had asked for advice from the CMC. "I have asked them to advise me of their response to these allegations," she said. Ms Bligh expected later to make public parts of the CMC's initial report dealing with the police officer's allegations, but some details of the report could not be released because of privacy issues.

She said she had spoken to current Child Safety Minister Margaret Keech and former minister Desley Boyle, who denied they made any such directive. But she said she had not yet spoken to former child safety minister Mike Reynolds.

Ms Bligh described the allegations as "very serious", but said they were yet to be substantiated. "These allegations at this stage are just that - allegations," she said. "I am not aware of any evidence that has been bought forward to substantiate them." Ms Bligh noted that the current child safety minister and her immediate predecessor had denied issuing such advice to child safety workers. "Both ... advised me that they never made any such directive, and in fact (with both of them) there is evidence of them issuing directives to the contrary," she said. Ms Bligh said the government would release as much of the initial CMC report as possible.

The opposition wants the federal government to replicate the Northern Territory indigenous intervention in other states. Indigenous affairs spokesman Tony Abbott said uproar about the gang rape of a 10-year-old girl demonstrated the urgency of such a move. Mr Abbott told Sky News it had been impossible for the former coalition government to attempt an expansion of the intervention to the Labor-run states before the federal election. "Now that we have a new government which is supposed to have a good relationship with the states, I think it's very, very important that they try to ensure that the same actions which were put in place in the territory are put in place urgently elsewhere," he said.

Mr Abbott called for a stronger police presence in remote indigenous townships along with tougher action to get rid of alcohol, welfare quarantining and mandatory school attendance. "I think that's what we have to be moving towards as urgently as possible right around Australia in these remote indigenous townships," he said. Such measures were part of the Northern Territory intervention. "It really is a situation which requires national attention," Mr Abbott said.

He also called on the Queensland and federal governments to clarify a report that state government ministers ordered child welfare workers not to tell police about hundreds of cases of suspected child abuse and neglect on Cape York. "I find it almost incomprehensible that the Queensland government could have given such instructions to child-safety workers," he said. "If in fact these reports are true the Queensland government appears to be telling its workers to break the law. "If there is something in it, well frankly, I think heads would have to roll."

But the Queensland premier rejected the call for the federal government's intervention in Northern Territory indigenous communities to be extended into Queensland. "When you talk about a Northern Territory-style intervention, much of what is being done in the Northern Territory is already operational here in Queensland," Ms Bligh said.

The premier will meet with federal indigenous affairs minister Jenny Macklin next week and raise the issue at the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) in Melbourne. Ms Bligh said she expected the federal government to increase its support of remote indigenous communities in Queensland. "There are areas where the federal government can and should be doing more, and they, I believe, will take further action," she said.

Source





Justice catching up with lying do-gooder judge

Judging from the photo he has suffered huge but well-deserved stress over his chronic lying finally being shown up



FORMER Federal Court judge Marcus Einfeld will face a jury and a possible jail term after being committed yesterday to stand trial on perjury and traffic offences. The 69-year-old faces a maximum 14 years' imprisonment for allegedly swearing false statements that other people were driving his car when it was caught committing traffic offences between 1999 and last year.

Deputy Chief Magistrate Helen Syme yesterday dropped a hindering investigation charge against Einfeld, but ordered the former judge and human rights campaigner to stand trial on 13 remaining counts of perjury, perverting the course of justice and making a false statement. He is accused of swearing, both via statement and on oath in court, that other people, including a friend he knew to be dead, and a seemingly fictitious person, were driving his car when it was caught speeding and running a red light.

There was standing room only in Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court to hear the magistrate's ruling. Ms Syme found there was "ample evidence" and a prima facie case that a jury would find him guilty. He and his co-accused, Angela Liati, will appear in the District Court on February 1. Liati was committed to stand trial accused of making a false statement.

Source