Lack of beds delays public hospital surgery

DOZENS of life-saving operations are being cancelled every day in southeast Queensland public hospitals because no intensive care unit beds are available. Nine major surgeries were put off at Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital on just one day last week due to the lack of post-operative ICU beds. Health sources said that was happening every day at the PA - despite a huge injection of extra funding from the State Government in January for this very problem.

The PA received a $10.4 million boost after the mid-year budget review, after the hospital had been forced to turn sick people away last year. A $15 million budget blowout led to 60 beds being closed in October and 20 per cent of operating theatre procedures cancelled. Premier Anna Bligh stepped into the non-surgery crisis and delivered the life-saving funds. "The PA Hospital will progressively reopen beds and restore theatre lists. This will enable the hospital to return to full activity within a few weeks," Ms Bligh said at the time.

But it would appear little has changed. On Tuesday, nine operations were cancelled or postponed because no ICU beds were available. For one cancer patient needing a life-saving Whipple operation, which involves the removal of the head of the pancreas, a portion of the bile duct, the gallbladder and the duodenum, it was the second time in two weeks that surgery was put off. His operation has been rescheduled for Tuesday, but it will go ahead only if there is a spare bed in intensive care for the following two days. Another patient was referred from Ipswich Hospital to the PA last week for heart surgery, but was sent home because no ICU bed was free.

A senior Queensland Health employee, who declined to be identified, told The Sunday Mail that operations were cancelled at the last minute because beds were taken by trauma patients. The source said a spate of major accidents had produced victims with severe injuries at the same time. As a result, patients waiting in hospital wards for serious surgery were sent home. He claimed the Government was reluctant to invest more money in ICU beds, which cost $10,000 a day to run.

A Queensland Health spokesman said there were 568 critical-care beds in Queensland including ICU, coronary, pediatric and neonatal units. More would come on line as new hospitals were built on the Gold and Sunshine coasts. The spokesman said Queensland Health did not collate statewide figures on the number of operations cancelled or postponed because of ICU bed unavailability.

Queensland Health's Public Hospital Performance Report for the 2007 December quarter revealed many patients were still waiting longer than recommended for critical surgery as record numbers presented to emergency departments. The report found that Category 1 patients who had waited longer than the recommended 30 days for surgery had almost doubled to 13.9 per cent in 12 months.

Opposition health spokesman John-Paul Langbroek slammed the Government for not fixing the problem at the PA. "Where has all the money gone? The PA is not allowed to say 'We cannot take people'. It begs the question: What is happening at all the other hospitals?" Mr Langbroek said.

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An admirable and realistic approach to defence reform

Get rid of the bureaucrats, not the soldiers. There is another article here on our new defence minister which is very encouraging

There is "fat" in the non-uniform ranks of the Australian Defence Force (ADF), Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon says in support of his $10 billion savings demand. Mr Fitzgibbon today said while he would not foreshadow where the ADF should make the desired spending cuts, its operational capabilities were quarantined from the major budget review. "I'm not going to pre-empt our review ... but it is pretty obvious to anyone who watches defence closely that on the non-uniform side there is a deal of fat," the minister told Sky News today. "I've made it clear, and the prime minister has made it clear, we won't touch any area which affects operations or logistics or capability. "We're talking about the business side of defence, the bureaucratic side, ensuring it is running as leanly as possible."

His comments come after The Weekend Australian reported the Rudd Government has asked the ADF to slash $10 billion in spending over the next decade. It also says the defence department's 20,000 member civilian workforce has ballooned by almost 4000, or more than 20 per cent, since 2001.

Mr Fitzgibbon today said the savings would not be stripped from the ADF, but reinvested into its "higher priority" projects. He said the Rudd government was committed to ongoing three per cent real annual increases in the ADF's budget. The efficiency drive was necessary as the former Howard government had left the defence budget in "a real mess", Mr Fitzgibbon said.

The former government had invested in new defence infrastructure but there was a $6 billion hole in annual operating and other ancillary costs to support it, he said. "It's like putting aside money in the family budget to pay off the car but not also budgeting for the fuel, the maintenance, the rego, the insurance," Mr Fitzgibbon said. "We've got to ensure that the $22 billion that we invest in defence each year is spent efficiently and effectively, and that means finetuning that department and making sure that we don't carry fat."

A defence watchdog today said finding the desired savings would be difficult, but cuts to the ranks of supporting bureaucrats was the right place to start.

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Union flexes its muscle

This is a bit hard to believe but is alarming if true

THE powerful Maritime Union of Australia is beginning to flex its industrial muscle after a successful meeting with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd at The Lodge in Canberra. A leaked confidential union strategy document reveals the MUA believes it has "strong support" from Mr Rudd and is planning to push new industrial arrangements. The union wants a return to "pattern bargaining", a technique to negotiate increased wages and conditions. Opponents say it would increase inflation and interest rates.

The document also reveals plans to pressure the Government into reversing laws that "penalise" workers with a recreational cannabis habit. Union national secretary Paddy Crumlin met Mr Rudd on Australia Day when, according to the document, the PM agreed to give the MUA access to government-collected personal security information on so-called "scabs" crewing non-union ships.

The question of wages is addressed under the heading "Enterprise Agreement". It advocates "common terms and conditions" for all workers in key parts of the industry. The document, prepared in January, argues against a long negotiating period with individual employers. It suggests using "terms and conditions that are contained in the offshore oil and gas industry agreement as our log of claim". "This will greatly assist in proceeding much quicker to negotiations," the document says. "Those conditions would also need to include appropriate living away from home allowances that apply in remote and expensive living areas, ie northwest Australia."

The effect of such a campaign would be to impose the boom wages and conditions applying in WA to the rest of the country - regardless of productivity. Under the strategy of pattern bargaining, the union would target an industrially weak employer first, gain an agreement and then force it on employers across the industry - again regardless of productivity or conditions in workplaces.

The document is likely to be seized on by the Opposition, which has been warning that under the Government's new industrial relations regime a non-productivity-based wages breakout is much more likely.

On "scabs and parasites" crewing non-union ships, the MUA says it has received co-operation from ministers including Deputy PM Julia Gillard and Attorney-General Robert McClelland.

The Sunday Mail put the MUA's version of the meeting to the Prime Minister's office. A spokeswoman confirmed Mr Crumlin was at The Lodge as part of a National Australia Day Committee event. Questions on non-union crews and their security details were referred by the PM's office to Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus. A spokeswoman for Mr Debus said the MUA had been informed that security checks undergone by foreign crews were more stringent than those required for Australian crew "and that was the end of the matter".

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Australian Study Shows Dramatic Drop in Abortion, Low Proportion of Homosexuals

An extensive study of Australian attitudes towards sexuality and Australians' sexual behaviour has revealed that younger generations of Australian women are obtaining abortions much less frequently then the previous generation. Dr. Julia Shelley of Deakin University in Melbourne, one of members of the team of researchers conducting the study, told NEWS.com.au, "We've plotted a sudden decline in the abortion rate that is so low it harps right back to the time when abortion was illegal and rarely practiced.'' "That means that a young Australian woman these days is about as unlikely to have an abortion now as her grandmother was back in her day.''

The study, begun in 2005, involved 8,205 randomly selected Australians (4,124 females and 4,081 males) being interviewed about various issues related to sexual health and behaviour. "The main aim of the study is to follow a nationally representative group of Australians over their lifetime documenting both the natural history and patterns of health and relationships," reads the official description of the study.

According to the study, less than 5 percent of women born in the 1980s have had an abortion, which is significantly less than the 14 percent of older women. Dr. Shelley pointed out that the peak time for women to obtain an abortion is between the ages of 20 and 25, indicating that the figure of 5 percent for women born in the 1980s is unlikely to climb much higher over time.

The researcher attributed the decline in the abortion rate to several factors, including an increased use of contraceptives and a change in attitude that favors giving birth to children in Australia. According to Shelley, Australia is presently experiencing an increase in birthrate. However, Shelley was only willing to admit that women increasingly deciding not to abort, and instead to give birth to their children "may partially" explain the fall in abortion, instead putting most of the emphasis on an increased use of contraceptives, brought about thanks to an increase in sexually transmitted diseases.

"If women generally are now more willing to have babies if they fall pregnant then it may partially explain the fall in abortion among younger women,'' she said. However, she indicated "safe sex" practices are the primary reason for the decrease in abortion rates. "Widespread sexual education trailed the sexual revolution by some decades and I think the effect of that only more recently cut in and change practices,'' she said. "But probably more significantly, the occurrence of HIV and AIDS has vastly increased condom use which has the side effect of stopping unwanted pregnancies.''

The study also indicated that an extremely small fraction of the Australian population self-defines as "homosexual." Only .66 percent of women and 1.03 percent of men defined themselves as homosexual. This figure is well below the "statistic" of 10 percent that is often touted by homosexual activists. The extremely low percentage of homosexuals in the population agrees with the findings of other similar studies in Western countries. Besides those who self-defined as homosexual, another 1.26 percent of women and 1.23 percent of men defined themselves as bi-sexual.

However, the study also found that Australians have extremely liberal attitudes towards sex and marriage, with 86 percent of women and 88 percent of men agreeing that sex before marriage is acceptable.

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