Jobs for the girls

Queensland does after all now have a female Premier. An all-Lesbian judiciary coming up? Not mentioned below is that Leanne was involved in the disgraceful prosecution of Pauline Hanson -- thrown out on appeal. As you can see below, Leanne has difficulty looking feminine even when she tries



QUEENSLAND'S controversial chief prosecutor Leanne Clare has been appointed a District Court judge. Attorney-General Kerry Shine said the director of public prosecutions would join barristers David Andrews and William Everson as the state's newest judges. "The three new judges are all highly regarded by the profession, and will complement the existing judges who perform such an important role in meeting the justice needs of Queenslanders," Mr Shine said.

Ms Clare, who has been Queensland director of public prosecutions since 2000, has faced calls for her resignation over a number of cases. She has been criticised over her handling of the extradition of former Bundaberg surgeon Dr Jayant Patel and her department's approach to a case involving nine men who raped a girl, 10, at the Aurukun community, in far north Queensland.

Ms Clare will step down as DPP next week, and Mr Shine said the search would begin immediately for her replacement. Her deputy Paul Rutledge will act in the position while it is being advertised. "The position will be advertised nationally in coming weeks and I am sure will attract a strong field of applicants," Mr Shine said. "As attorney-general I am keen to see that someone with extensive prosecution and legal experience and respect within legal circles is appointed as the next DPP."

Ms Clare began her legal career as a clerk in 1980 and joined the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions in 1986. She has previously acted as a judge of the District Court and was appointed senior counsel in 2006.

Queensland Council for Civil Liberties vice-president Terry O'Gorman welcomed Ms Clare's appointment. "She's been formerly an acting judge, and performed well in the role, so it's appropriate she be appointed," Mr O'Gorman said. "It's been a long time since a judge has been appointed from the DPP's office."

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Earth Hour should be grounded



A lot of hot air is going into tomorrow's Earth Hour, and I don't just mean the hot-air balloon sent up last Saturday to promote this hour-long switch-off. But, good God, why did the organisers choose that way to promote a campaign to make us cut our gases? Sending up the 32-metre light globe-shaped billboard burned so much gas - and emitted so much carbon dioxide - that we'll have to switch off 10,000 lights tomorrow just to make it up.

Perfect, then, that it landed in the Peanut Farm Reserve, and equally symbolic that The Age gave this wildly inappropriate stunt fawning coverage. Why? Because Earth Hour proves that what threatens us is not so much global warming, but lousy journalism. Asking us to turn off lights between 8pm and 9pm is a crusade by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. And already one light is staying on and flashing alarm.

You see, it's always a danger when newspapers take up campaigns. Suddenly they get tempted to report only stuff that pushes their agenda, and to ignore facts that don't. The Age and SMH - already giddy with global warming evangelism - perfectly illustrate this danger.

Earth Hour started last year in Sydney, where the SMH campaigned furiously to get everyone in the CBD to turn off their lights for an hour after dusk to "raise awareness" that our gases from electricity use were allegedly warming the world to hell. But it was a flop - lights blazed on - yet you won't read that in The Age or SMH. On the contrary, the SMH's Sunday paper, The Sun-Herald, instead ran "before and after" pictures purporting to show Sydney plunge from a blaze of light into a great gloom. But the dark "after" picture turned out to have been badly under-exposed compared with the "before" picture. And the "before" picture turned out to have been taken not just before Earth Hour but two days earlier, when, as Media Watch reported, "weather conditions helped make the whole scene look much lighter".

Nothing dishonest was done, of course. It's just that these two "mistakes" suited the paper's agenda. It didn't stop there. Check how The Age now routinely reports last year's "success":

"Last year's first Earth Hour had as many as 2.2 million Sydneysiders and 2000 businesses turn off their lights, causing a 10 per cent drop in the city's energy use."

Really? First, it's mad to think half of Sydney's population switched off for a stunt centred on the CBD. This figure is actually a huge extrapolation from a poll of fewer than 800 guilty people who claimed they'd maybe switched off something or other during the hour. Second, the claimed dip in power was just for the CBD, not all Sydney. Third, the 10 per cent cut claimed for the CBD is itself a gross exaggeration.

A cut so tiny is trivial - equal to taking six cars off the road for a year. But David Solomon, a finance PhD student at the Chicago University's graduate school of business, crunched Sydney's power figures to exclude seasonal and daily fluctuations, and concluded there was actually close to no power saving at all. "When a fixed effect is included for the whole day, the drop in electricity use during Earth Hour is statistically indistinguishable from zero."

So why does The Age exaggerate? Because it's on a campaign to persuade, not inform, which is why it also won't report other awkward facts. Here's one: global temperatures have fallen since 1998. Indeed, all four big global temperature tracking outlets, including Britain's Hadley Centre, now say global temperatures over the past year have dropped sharply. NASA adds that the oceans have also cooled for the past few years.

Why doesn't The Age tell its readers this, instead of scaring them with reports, and balloons, that are just hot air? That's crusading, not reporting.

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PM cracks down on political donations

When I donated to the BNP, I was told that, as a foreigner, I could donate only 200 pounds, so Rudd is being even meaner than that. It seems an invasion of individual liberties to me. A rule that parties had to publicize overseas donations above $1,000 would seem sufficient

The Rudd Government will ban political donations from overseas in Australia and force the disclosure of all donations above $1000. Special Minister of State John Faulkner has confirmed the new laws will be introduced during the next sitting of parliament and the Government aims to pass the laws in the same period.

In a move to tackle candidates such as One Nation founder Pauline Hanson profiting from campaigns through public funding, new laws will also tie election funding to spending. "Our plan is to introduce legislation in the next session for passage in the next session,'' Senator Faulkner said today. The Government will also work on more wide-ranging reforms by commissioning a green paper to reform and modernise electoral laws.

The Prime Minister will write to the states to seek their co-operation in overhauling political donation laws across the country. "In the short term, the legislation will urgently move on five issues. The first is to set the campaign disclosure level at $1000 reversing the Howard government's huge increase in the disclosure level.to $10,0000, indexed,'' Senator Faulkner said. "I am very committed to restoring the integrity of our electoral system in this country.'' [Any proof that it LACKS integrity?]

The Government will also remove loopholes allowing political parties to hide big donations through separate divisions and increase public scrutiny by introducing six-month timeframes for disclosure.

Because political candidates secure taxpayer funding on the basis of the votes they secure, some independent and minor candidates secure a financial windfall while spending little on campaigning. After the 1998 election, for example MsHanson's One Nation secured more than $3 million in public funding, more than the Nationals did. However, the party would have spent just a fraction of that amount on campaigning. At the time, to be eligible for any funding, a candidate or party had to win at least 4 per cent of the formal first-preference votes. The reform plan also follows controversy in NSW over big political donations from building developers in the wake of the Wollongong Council scandal.

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Victoria police under fire for corruption again

GROSS mismanagement and allegations of theft, rorting [misuse of funds] and kickbacks in senior levels of Victoria Police are being investigated by a secret internal corruption taskforce. The taskforce, which includes forensic accountants, is believed to have identified tens of thousands of dollars that are either missing or unaccounted for. One senior manager who allegedly ran up a $5000 monthly bill while operating a private consultancy through his Victoria Police mobile telephone is understood to have been charged with theft. Victoria Police has confirmed a senior manager has resigned as a result of the investigation.

It is understood that investigators have so far found about 90 mobile telephones were distributed without records being kept of where they went. The wife of a senior manager was allegedly given a Victoria Police mobile phone and laptop for her private use. The potential misuse of travel budgets and allegations of kickbacks to police employees from suppliers are also being investigated.

The internal investigation into the troubled Business Information Technology Services department began about a month ago after an audit uncovered wide-ranging financial irregularities. A police source said the investigation had the potential to evolve into one of the biggest and most complex internal probes of its kind ever undertaken by Victoria Police. The information technology department, which is responsible for overseeing all information and computer technology within Victoria Police, has been dogged by controversy and allegations of incompetence, wrongdoing and cost blowouts for years. The investigation is so complex it has been put in the hands of Commander David Sprague, who previously headed such high-profile cases as the execution-style murders of two young police constables in Walsh Street, South Yarra, in 1988 and the hunt for the child killer dubbed "Mr Cruel".

Those under investigation are understood to be mostly civilian public servants employed by Victoria Police and not uniformed officers. The head of the BITS department, Valda Berzins, was appointed chief information officer from outside the force by Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon in 2004 to "clean up" chronic problems with Victoria Police's technology section. Ms Berzins, who is also part of Ms Nixon's executive management group and reports to the Chief Commissioner, declined to comment on the investigation. She referred The Australian to Victoria Police's communications director.

An initial audit of the technology department by the force's Corporate Management Review Division is understood to have resulted in a damning report with 106 recommendations, a number of them critical of the department's top management. The internal corruption investigation was ordered after an initial assessment that criminal behaviour could be involved.

A Victoria Police spokeswoman said a "range of matters around process" had been identified and work was under way to "rectify these issues". "We can confirm that as a consequence of the audit one senior manager has resigned," she said.

Past problems in the department include alleged misbehaviour by senior managers, attempts to cover up budget blowouts and the discovery of child pornography links on a senior manager's laptop. The department was responsible for overseeing a contract that blew out from $151.5 million to $239.5 million.

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New Zealand man 'raped by wombat' claims he now speaks Australian



A bit of fun. This belongs on a humour site but only Kiwis and Australians would get it. A wombat above. They're a sort of burrowing Koala

A New Zealand man has been sentenced to community work after telling police he was raped by a wombat and the experience had made him speak "Australian". Arthur Ross Cradock, 48, from the South Island town of Motueka, called police on February 11 and told them he was being raped at his home by the wombat and he needed help, The Nelson Mail newspaper reported. The orchard worker later called back and said: "Apart from speaking Australian now, I'm pretty all right, you know."

Cradock pleaded guilty in the local court to using a phone for a fictitious purpose. He was sentenced to 75 hours' community work. Police prosecutor Sergeant Chris Stringer told the court alcohol played a large role in Cradock's life. [Sheep too?]

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