School test results to go public

Federal education chief ignores school fears and opts for openness. Both creditable and surprising in a dedicated Leftist. Background to the story here



The Federal Government will publish the results of new national literacy and numeracy tests for Years 3, 5. 7 and 9 students, despite strong opposition from Queensland educators, a spokesman for Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Julia Gillard said on Friday. The Government's focus was on achieving higher standards, greater accountability and better results for the whole school system, he said. At least one million students from more than 9000 schools around the country will sit the literacy and numeracy tests from May 13 to 15.

Parents from state and independent schools, many principals and Queensland Education Minister Rod Welferd have voiced fears about publishing the test results, claiming they could damage schools and their communities. They believe that if the wrong type of test is developed and the results publicised, it would waste taxpayer money and hurt the image of many hard-working schools.

Mr Welford wants the tests to be a diagnostic tool that helps uncover problem areas for students, rather than establishing a benchmark that creates a "leagues table" for schools.

Ms Gillard's spokesman said stakeholder concerns were taken into consideration in the development of the test, and the matter would be discussed further at the next meeting of the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs. "By comparing the performance of schools, it would be possible to ensure resources were placed where they would be required most," the spokesman said.

Mr Welford said he had asked Ms Gillard if a regular meeting of state education ministers could be organised before the May tests to discuss the process, but that appeared unlikely to happen. If the test was designed to just set a benchmark, it would only grab a picture of one day in the 13-year schooling life of a student, Mr Welford said. "The idea that we would be creating a leagues table is a folly and a waste of time. It's a scandalous waste of public funding," he said.

The Queensland Joint Parent Committee, which represents parents from state schools, the Catholic and independent sector, and parents of children at isolated schools, has written to Mr Welford opposing any publication of results.

The article above is by Paul Weston and appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on March 2, 2008.






The bloody-minded Queensland Health Dept. again

They don't even give a sh*t about their staff, let alone the patients. That's what happens when you have a bureaucracy that has been bloating up since 1944. Labor party Premier Ned Hanlon instituted in Queensland in 1944 one of the world's first "free" hospital systems

A nurse who was raped on remote Mabuiag Island in the Torres Strait was told by Queensland Health immediately after the attack that if she left the island she would have the days away deducted from her leave. The Australian has been told the nurse had to get a local islander to take her by dinghy on a 30-minute trip to Badu Island, where she was taken by plane to Thursday Island.

Since the attack on February 5, Queensland Health has refused to pay the nurse any wages or expenses, telling her that, because she was "injured" at work, it is an issue for WorkCover and the department was not responsible. This is despite Queensland Health Minister Stephen Robertson yesterday apologising for his department's not acting on a 16-month-old report that assessed the personal risk posed to nurses on the islands as "extreme".

The internal report, which Queensland Health denied existed before it was leaked to The Australian, warned that the residential quarters provided to the nurse on Mabuiag was one of the worst, having no locks on the doors or windows, and no security system or working lights.

A colleague of the nurse said yesterday she had complained about the lack of security before the rape but nothing was done. "She was sent there to quarters that were not secure, without a doctor or police officer on the island, and in quarters where there was no lighting working, no running water, and no gas for the stove," the friend said. "And when she reported the rape to Thursday Island (authorities) and said she wanted to come off, she was told she would have to have any time taken off deducted from leave owed to her. "She arrived on Thursday Island because her partner arranged for a flight, and had to get her own accommodation, and then the nurses' union arranged for her to get to Cairns, where she received medical and psychological assistance."

The colleague said the nurse gave statements to police, who arrested and charged the alleged perpetrator. "Now she has returned to her home outside Sydney and has not been paid a cent since the incident, being told it is the responsibility of WorkCover," the colleague said. "The nurses have advised the Government through the union that they will be withdrawing their labour if security of their accommodation on the remote islands is not brought up to scratch in a month."

A Queensland Health spokesman said the nurse would get "special leave on full pay, with the pay coming through WorkCover". Speaking in Cairns, Mr Robertson said the internal report, revealed in The Australian yesterday, had not been acted on because it had "sat on the desk of a former manager". "That's not acceptable and I apologise for that," he said. Mr Robertson said the Government's QBuild arm would now take over maintenance of the Torres Strait Islands buildings. New security is to be installed in facilities on Mabuiag Island.

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Queensland voting fraud

By Terry Gygar

The recent appointment of former State MP Mike Kaiser as Queensland Premier Anna Bligh's Chief of Staff has again drawn attention to the "elephant in the corner" that the Australian Electoral Commission, the ALP and (it seems) the Coalition Parties, don't want to discuss - the ease with which the Australian Electoral Roll can be "rorted" to skew election results and the apparent frequency with which this occurs.

Kaiser was forced to resign from the ALP and his seat in the Queensland Parliament in 2001 after admitting to signing a false electoral enrolment declaration in 1986. This was apparently part of a branch stacking effort related to an ALP pre-selection ballot. The incident didn't badly affect his career in the Labor Party however, as he moved on to become Assistant National Secretary of the ALP, then Chief of Staff to NSW Premier Morris Iemma in 2005 and now holds the same position for Queensland's Anna Bligh.

Phoney electoral enrolments have apparently been part of ALP culture for time immemorial. Peter Beattie, who feigned shock and horror in 2001 when Kaiser's "indiscretions" became public, admitted, in his earlier autobiographical book In the Arena when discussing the 1983 election campaign: "Doorknocking Alexandra Hills was an interesting affair. One female member of the Labour Party was not at home when I called on her at the vacant allotment where she purportedly lived. To my not particularly great surprise, she later voted in the pre-selection."

This surprisingly candid admission not only shows that Peter was obviously not surprised to find ALP members engaging in false electoral enrolments, which apparently were quite common knowledge, but also illustrates one of the tried and true methods of fiddling electoral rolls. These obviously experienced rorters admitted to fiddling pre-selections, but in doing so they also had the capacity to significantly influence general election results. There are three simple ways of fiddling the poll:

* enrol people at existing addresses when the person enrolled not exist or does not live there;
* enrol people at addresses that don't exist; and
* don't deprive the dead of the right to vote, just because they are no longer alive.

All three methods have been proven to be historically popular with the ALP (in Queensland at least) especially in marginal seats, where a few dozen votes can often make all the difference. Method one led to the downfall of Mr Kaiser, but is not popular with the foot soldiers because it gives a real address at which investigations can commence. Only the most dedicated would take that risk today.

Getting the dead to vote is another matter. On July 26, 1989, Darryl Leonard Cox, pleaded guilty before Mr Page SM in the Brisbane Magistrates Court to falsely and knowingly signing an application for a postal vote in respect of a person who was dead. His actions were excused (in Hansard) by the local ALP MP on the grounds that: "When Darryl Cox signed a statement to be helpful to an elderly person, he was not aware that the person was dead .". The ALP "Campaign Director" and chief spokesman at the time, Wayne Swan, was conspicuous by his silence.

Enrolling people at non existent addresses is perhaps the safest way to organise a rort. You can then forge a postal vote application (if you have a secure "letter drop" address) or, a safer alternative, vote absentee miles away with little fear of detection.

When I was unexpectedly elected to Queensland Parliament in the 1974 anti-Whitlam landslide, I became one of the first MPs to engage in direct mail. Without computers, this was an enormously draining effort which required the entering of the details of every registered voter on a white system card and then sorting the tens of thousands of cards in to street order and personally signing letters to be hand delivered to them. While this task was in progress, some interesting anomalies emerged - people were enrolled in parks, creeks, vacant lots and, most notably, several dozen had their addresses in the Lutwyche cemetery.

The Electoral Office didn't want to know about it (some things never change) and I was forced to physically post a letter to each of these "phantoms", ensure they were returned by the Post Office, and then pay a fee to object to the presence of each on the electoral roll. As a result, over 600 people were removed from the roll before the next election and, to my not great surprise, my majority went up noticeably. Now I can't say for sure that these "phantoms" all voted Labor, but they certainly weren't voting for me.

More here




Greenie people-hate at work



Former Australian of the Year Tim Flannery has lashed out against rising immigration. The renowned scientist and climate change activist said water scarcity was a major argument against bringing in more people. "Any responsible politician needs to consider that first before they can consider increasing the stress on the water situation by increasing the population," Prof Flannery said.

Prof Flannery, last year's Australian of the Year, made the comments last week in response to the South Australian Government's push for more migrants. "In my view, there should be more emphasis on helping those who are already there in the state than just bringing more people in," he said.

Prof Flannery's comments could just as easily have applied to Victoria, which is also aggressively recruiting skilled migrants. Victoria's population is tipped to be 6.2 million by 2020, 10 years earlier than forecast.

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Incredible economic naivety



Innovation Minister Kim Carr reportedly spent yesterday lobbying senior executives of Toyota to secure the production of hybrid cars for Australia. The news will no doubt gladden the hearts of green-collar activists who favour government subsidies for environmentally trendy technologies. It will also be music to the ears of protectionists in the car industry and blue-collar activists in the Australian Metal Workers Union who are intent on protecting jobs in car plants. For the rest of us, though, it means pouring $500 million of taxpayers' money into Toyota's pocket for no appreciable return.

Even when Australia had high rates of unemployment, propping up the Australian car industry made no good economic sense. As economists have argued and experience has demonstrated, subsidies simply distort the market and draw resources away from areas where Australia has a comparative advantage to areas where it doesn't. In an economy that is operating at close to full capacity, protecting inefficient industries just exacerbates labor shortages and drives up wage inflation.

It might give environmental nationalists a warm, green glow to drive a Prius made in Australia, but all it is really doing is putting an already expensive car even further out of reach of the cost-conscious purchaser. The way to make Priuses cheaper in Australia would be to drop tariffs from 10 per cent, as they are, to zero. Priuses in Japan are already more expensive to make than normal cars because they come off a smaller production run. But it will not advance green technology globally to have a smaller, even more expensive production run in Australia.

If Senator Carr really wanted to advance green technology, he would pour money into research and development areas where Australia has a real comparative advantage such as carbon capture and storage technologies to clean up coal, hot rocks geothermal technology and solar energy. In each of these areas, resource endowments, climate or space are already helping us to be world leaders.

Or if it wanted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars, the Government could take the more politically unpalatable step of rationalising its taxes on vehicles. At present, import duty is lower on four-wheel-drives than other cars, providing a perverse incentive to drive these larger vehicles with lower fuel efficiency. Similarly, fringe benefit tax on company cars reduces the further you drive, encouraging people to travel thousands of kilometres they don't need to, simply to get a tax break.

Yet the Government is sending out disturbing signals that it is not interested in being economically rational. Rather than allow the Productivity Commission to review the automotive sector as Treasury argued, it has given the job to former Victorian premier Steve Bracks. Yet while the Productivity Commission could evaluate whether it makes sense for Australia to prop up its car industry with endless billion-dollar subsidies, Mr Bracks has already said that the overwhelming objective will be to have a sustainable passenger motor vehicle, components parts and research and development industry in the auto industry in the future. Senator Carr has left open the option of freezing the industry's tariff protection, which is due to fall from 10 per cent to 5 per cent in 2010, and Mr Bracks has also previously opposed tariff cuts. Kevin Rudd might claim to be an economic conservative but Kim Carr is showing no signs of being an economic rationalist. And taxpayers and consumers will have to pay for it.

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