Girl, 12, in sex change 'brainwashed by mother'

Australia has an age of consent for sex but not an age of consent for sex change??

A 12-year-old girl who a court has allowed to begin sex change treatment has been vindictively "brainwashed" by her mother into making the decision, a relative says. A cousin who stayed with the girl's family for two and a half years from 1999 says that after a bitter break-up the mother has used the girl to get back at the father. "She's been brainwashed from an early age," the cousin, who cannot be named to preserve the girl's anonymity, told NEWS.com.au.

On behalf of the father's side of the family the cousin is appealing to the legal fraternity for pro bono help in fighting the case after the father ran out of money to afford representation in opposing the sex swap request. The girl has begun hormone treatment in the first step toward a complete gender switch after the Family Court in closed session last December gave permission for the mother's request, with the girl being represented by a lawyer paid for by the Victorian Government.

The court was told girl that the girl had always considered herself a boy and was at risk of self harm if she continued to develop into a woman. "There is more to the story than what has been put to court," the cousin said. "I just don't think it is right. The court affidavits only present the mother's point of view in everything." The cousin says he observed from the time he lived with the family that the girl had always been strongly influenced by her mother. "The mother drilled into the girl from an early age that she would have preferred a boy."

He said he had observed the girl was "a bit of a tomboy" who liked playing with boys' toys and the father had mildly disapproved of this but had given way before the mother's insistence the girl should do what she wanted. The girl had only expressed the strong desire to be a boy since the parents had a bitter break-up, according to the cousin. He alleges the mother has sent text messages to the father gloating about the court ruling, which was also supported by a state government observer, an endocrinologist, a psychiatrist and a family counsellor. "This is just one of the many things in her arsenal to inflict pain and suffering on him, " the cousin said. "It seems like she's (the girl) been brainwashed without being given the alternatives." "They've just been lucky enough to get doctors' evidence that she might commit self harm."

The cousin says a psychiatrist employed by the father's legal representation was unable to get access to the girl. Hormones implanted under the 12-year-old's skin every three months will stop her menstruating and prevent her hips and breasts growing. The court heard the hormone therapy was reversible and would give the family "breathing time" with progresive sex change treatments and operations requiring further court orders.

The cousin questioned how "reversible" the treatment was. "There will be psychological consequences that are not reversible," the cousin said. "I don't think the side effects have been adequately considered. How people threat her will have an effect. "She will never have this time in her life again."

He questioned whether the girl was really confused about gender identity or just about her sexuality. "This procedure is being used as a blunt object." The cousin says the father's side of the family was not opposed to sex change procedures for adults. "In these circumstances we just don't think it is appropriate, " he said. "This was the option presented to her and it was so easy to say yes. "If I felt the girl was capable of consenting to this I would say fine."

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RailCorp managers 'dangerously incompetent'

Governments never have been any good at running railways. Think British Rail and Amtrak

INCOMPETENT managers at RailCorp are putting the lives of NSW train passengers at risk, a confidential audit says. A leaked document shows more than 50 per cent of RailCorp areas under audit - 63 out of 117 areas - are deemed high risk, with the other 54 areas regarded as medium risk, The Daily Telegraph reports.

The state-owned body is responsible for the safe operation, crewing and maintenance of passenger trains and stations. But the audit reveals every aspect of information it has made public about dangerous driving - on-time running, customer satisfaction, and disrupted or cancelled services - may be inaccurate or unreliable.

The Rail Tram and Bus Union has called for the secret document, on which the claims are based, to be released immediately. "These revelations are astonishing, revealing a rail system in crisis and a culture of buckpassing by managers who are paid big dollars but continually fail workers and commuters," union secretary Nick Lewocki said in a statement today. "Rather than continually cutting frontline staff the Iemma Government needs to take control of senior management. "At a time when rail workers are struggling to get pay increases we now see RailCorp management incompetence in addition to massive corruption that has cost taxpayers millions of dollars."

NSW Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell said if the Government had nothing the hide, the document should have been released when it was finished eight months ago. "This document listed almost half of all RailCorp activities as high risk and failing to comply with all the expectations," Mr O'Farrell told Fairfax Radio Network today. "It's outrageous commuters first learnt about it through a leak to the media."

Last week former Railcorp boss Vince Graham told an Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) inquiry the cover-up of fraudulent activities at the agency would probably continue for some time. "The culture of not reporting and the culture of cover-ups is certainly an issue I would agree with," Mr Graham said. "And I have no expectation that the cultural issue is going to be dealt with in a week, or a month (or) even a year." Conditions at RailCorp worsened when the reliability of passenger rail services "fell in a hole" in 2004, Mr Graham said last week.

The leaked document, RailCorp Three Year Strategic Internal Audit Plan for 2008-10, on which the latest claims are based, says many high-risk areas will not receive attention for another two years.

A spokesman for Transport Minister John Watkins has denied the document is a comprehensive audit of RailCorp, instead describing it as a blueprint of at-risk issues for future audits. But the union said safety issues were routinely raised by RailCorp staff and ignored by management. "The hardworking staff on Sydney trains and in our stations are doing all they can to keep the system operating but the abject failure of management makes this job near impossible," Mr Lewocki said. "The most concerning part of today's revelations is not just that these risks exist but that in several cases it appears RailCorp management intend to take no action to fix the problems and ensure the safety of workers and the community."

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A new rail boondoggle coming up

Despite the recent experience of the hugely expensive but totally useless Darwin link! It's just "playing trains" on a huge scale

The inland rail route from Melbourne to Brisbane is a bad idea whose time may have come. With $20 billion burning a hole in his pocket, Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese has signalled that the link is close to the top of his list of priorities for his new statutory authority, Infrastructure Australia.

Leading transport economists employed by the Government fear it will be the death knell for rail in Australia. Not only will traffic fail to meet the ambitious projections they expect to be made for it, but it will also destroy what is left of the marginal viability of the Melbourne-Sydney and Brisbane-Sydney rail links.

If the Alice to Darwin rail link somehow encapsulated the Howard government's preparedness to spend a dollar in pursuit of a vote, regardless of the economic cost, the Melbourne-Brisbane rail route exposes the folly of treating infrastructure as an end in itself.

With the exception of the bulk ore lines, the rail industry as a whole is in a parlous financial state. The dismal performance of the leading rail operator, Asciano, which has dropped 60 per cent in value since listing in June last year, is symptomatic of the industry's problems.

It is senseless for the public to be funding massive expansion projects for it until the industry's structural problems have been tackled. However, this falls well beyond the brief of Infrastructure Australia, which is cast as judge in a beauty pageant of grand visions. After more than 11 years of talk, promises and press releases from the Howard government and its various National Party transport ministers, the Rudd Government had taken just a little over 100 days to push the inland rail proposal to the next critical stage, Albanese said when committing $15 million to the feasibility study in March. It is the biggest project which the Government has resolved to advance, and fits the nation-building ambitions outlined in its first budget.

The idea has indeed been around for a long time and is borne of the frustration of business getting goods through Sydney. Former transport minister and National Party leader John Anderson commissioned a study led by Ernst & Young. It found that trains travelling north from Melbourne were on time 60 per cent of the time by the time they hit the outskirts of Sydney. But this dropped to 40 per cent reliability by the time they reached their Sydney terminal. Travelling south from Brisbane, 80 per cent of trains were on time at the outskirts of Sydney but only 30 per cent got to the centre of town on schedule. For traffic trying to get from Melbourne to Brisbane and vice-versa, only 40 per cent of trains make it on time.

The problem is that commuter trains have priority, there are limited passing bays and there are curfews during peak commuter periods. A 10-minute delay that puts a train into the curfew zone can easily make it three hours late.

The rail industry has often argued that the reason it is steadily losing market share to road on routes where there is competition is because of its belief that road is unfairly subsidised. However, the Productivity Commission's study says that on the trunk routes where road and rail are most competitive, there is no demonstrable subsidy. Rail's loss of market share has rather been a result of its inability to get goods to their destination on time.

The advocates of the Melbourne-Brisbane route also argue that it is on the long hauls that rail is most competitive. Certainly, it is the case that the Melbourne-Perth route is the most profitable, carrying about 70 per cent of freight between the cities. So the idea is to bypass Sydney altogether. The cheapest route is deep inland, through Parkes in NSW. This would allow trains that are 1.8km long and double-stacked, which is deemed the ideal for long hauls, and was costed in the study at $3.1-3.6 billion.

It is a basic principle that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes. Stripping Sydney from the route between Melbourne and Brisbane destroys value. Based on Ernst & Young's numbers, there are about 3.05 million tonnes of rail freight on the Melbourne-Sydney-Brisbane route a year, of which 1.35 million tonnes is travelling all the way. On the Melbourne to Sydney leg, traffic to Brisbane makes up 60 per cent of the volume. On the Brisbane to Sydney leg, traffic to Melbourne is 64 per cent of the volume.

Economies of scale in the Melbourne-Sydney and Sydney-Brisbane routes will be lost, while it is doubtful that the Melbourne-Brisbane route alone would have the traffic to warrant a new line. Of course, the feasibility study being conducted by the Australian Rail Track Corp may come to that conclusion, although it would appear to be an interested party.

Rail networks are challenged worldwide by the technological advances in trucking. However, both Canada and the US have profitable rail networks. In the US, this is the case for the first time since the 1920s.

Part of the problem in Australia is the fragmented ownership, with the track generally owned by state government bodies, while privatised operators of rolling stock have struggled in what remain largely state-based franchises. The US-controlled Westrail failed to make a go of it in Western Australia and sold to Queensland Rail. Asciano is under fire because of doubts about its profitability under the weight of more than $3 billion in debt. It is doubtful that profitability on existing routes would be sufficient to warrant renewal of rolling stock.

Whereas in the US and Canada, the operators own the track and will run a train if it covers the marginal cost, in Australia the operators generally have to pay an average cost to the track owners.

The Government's priority should be to identify the barriers to profitable rail operation in Australia and, to the extent these fall within the province of state and federal authorities, facilitate consolidation. There should be investment to make passage of rail freight through Sydney easier, but trying to build rail routes with the objective of taking market share from the roads, which carry 80 per cent of freight between the east coast capitals, is not a sensible use of public funds.

Unfortunately, however, the Melbourne-Brisbane link is a bad idea with bipartisan support. Labor likes rail because it is a unionised industry, the Greens like it because they believe it to be less polluting than road, and the National Party likes it because it goes through their electorates.

Nationals leader Warren Truss claims Labor's support for the project is a case of policy theft. "I have to admit I was initially shocked by the minister's bare-faced cheek and plagiarism, and I likened him to infamous great train robber Ronald Biggs," he said, after Albanese announced the feasibility study.

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This is the infrastructure that the Federal money SHOULD be spent on:

Cruise ship giant Carnival Australia has joined the coal miners and other bulk commodity shippers in urging government action to ease port constraints, especially in Sydney and Brisbane. Carnival yesterday used the results of a company-sponsored economic study to support its claim that the investment was needed to prevent cruise operators from being lured to better-credentialled Asian ports.

According to Access Economics, "cruise-related activity" bolstered the local economy by $734 million in 2006-07 -- $522 million directly from days at port and a further $212 from activity such as maintenance, marketing and travel agents. "The cruise industry in Australia has grown strongly in recent years and is projected to continue to do so over the next three years," Access Economics says.

Carnival Australia, which owns the Cunard, P&O and Princess Cruises operations, boasts a 65 per cent market share. Carnival Australia chief executive Ann Sherry said the historic berthing of Cunard's QE2 and Queen Victoria in Sydney last February only came about because Carnival "begged" the Navy for use of its Garden Island (Woolloomoloo) facility. Ms Sherry said Sydney's facilities were full for next year's cruise season peak in April-May.

Local ports risked losing business to Asian cities such as Shanghai and Singapore, which had upgraded cruise terminals, she said. "If action isn't taken soon, the cruise industry in Australia could be swamped by lost opportunities that will only benefit overseas ports and hurt the local economy," she said.

Heading Carnival's specific wish list is a purpose-built cruise ship facility at East Darling Harbour/Barrangaroo as part of the Iemma Government's redevelopment plan for the precinct. However, this would not entirely solve the problem, since mega-liners Queen Mary 2 and Sapphire Princess cannot fit under the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The Overseas Passenger Terminal at Circular Quay was inadequate because of overcrowding and limited landside access, Ms Sherry said.

Ships experience similar problems with Brisbane's Gateway Bridge, which, along with a narrow swing basin, impedes access to the mixed-use Portside Wharf complex. Ms Sherry said these factors, as well as Portside's "steep" fees, meant Carnival would "carefully assess our commitment to using Brisbane as a key hub in the long term".

Ms Sherry said the company's message was mainly for the state governments, but the custodians of the Rudd Government's newly announced $20 billion infrastructure fund were also a "target group". Carnival Australia, owned by the Florida-based Carnival Corporation, was not interested in a co-investment arrangement because it would not have exclusive access to any upgraded facility.

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