Police goons at work

Very low expectations of the Queensland police have always been wise

A Queensland woman is suing the state government over an alleged assault by police in Brisbane's central business district last year. Lawyers for Suzanne Williams today launched legal action seeking damages from the Queensland Government after she suffered "physical and psychological injuries" from the incident on the night of July 22 last year.

Ms Williams was outside Caesar's Nightclub on Adelaide Street with her two daughters' boyfriends when they were set upon by police officers, lawyer Roger Singh said. CCTV footage of the incident was aired on the Seven Network earlier this month, with Ms Williams telling the Today Tonight program the two males had been drinking. Ms Williams claims she was sober at the time.

Her head was smashed into the footpath when a police officer threw Ms Williams to the ground, Mr Singh said today, and she is still suffering debilitating headaches as a result. "Ms Williams is traumatised by the events of that night and continues to suffer flashbacks and nightmares - symptoms that are consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder," he said. "She has become reclusive, not venturing out as much as she previously did, and one of her daughters describes her as a shadow of her former self".

A charge of obstructing police against Ms Williams has since been dropped. Police officer Michael Anthony O'Sullivan, 35, has been charged with common assault for allegedly attacking Christopher Ahovelo, one of the males with Ms Sullivan. He faced Brisbane Magistrates Court two weeks ago, where the case was adjourned for six weeks. O'Sullivan was stood down from frontline duties in April.

Source






Official police fraud

Sounds like hush money



Chris Hurley - the policeman acquitted of manslaughter over a Palm Island death in custody, only to face a civil claim from the victim's family - received a confidential $100,000 payment from the Queensland Government after the incident.

When autopsy results revealed on November 24, 2004, that Cameron Doomadgee, known in death as Mulrunji, had died of "an intra-abdominal haemorrhage caused by a ruptured liver and portal vein", Palm Islanders rioted and burnt down the police station, watchhouse and officer-in-charge's residence. The officer, Senior Sergeant Hurley, was not on the island at the time. Having arrested the drunk and abusive Mulrunji and hauled him into the watchhouse, Sergeant Hurley was handling Mulrunji when the islander suffered his fatal injuries.

Two weeks after the riots, Sergeant Hurley lodged a claim with the Queensland Police Service for reimbursement of the cost of replacing belongings lost in the fire. Details of the claim were never publicly released. The documents, released to The Australian after a Freedom of Information request a year ago, show that two weeks after the riots, on December 10, 2004, Sergeant Hurley sent his superiors a memo with a list of personal property believed to have been in the three-bedroom residence when it was burnt down. "This list is as exhaustive as possible from memory alone," Sergeant Hurley wrote. The total of the items on the list came to $102,955, but the items were exempted from release under FOI and will remain secret.

Sergeant Hurley sent a similar memo to the district office the same day, with a smaller list of police property and some personal items, including a Parker pen he valued at about $100, a torch valued at $80, two coffee mugs and a 2004 hardcover diary. "In relation to my personal property, as you area (sic) aware the OIC residence was also totally destroyed during the riot hence I have no proof of purchase for my personal items," Sergeant Hurley wrote. "I am prepared if necessary to complete a statutory declaration. "I respectfully request permission to replace these items and have the Queensland Police Service meet the cost," Sergeant Hurley said.

The claim went as high as a deputy commissioner and was paid in full on February 11, 2005, with the QPS expenditure voucher declaring the payment to Sergeant Hurley to be "loss of property compensation".

Andrew Boe, who is representing Mulrunji's family in the civil case against Sergeant Hurley, was outraged when told of the payout. "The ex-gratia payment to Chris Hurley, by government, for his material losses in the riot should be contrasted with the losses sustained by Mulrunji's spouse and family as a result of his death at Hurley's hands, which presently remains uncompensated," Mr Boe said. "It is difficult not to be offended by the irony."

The average sum of household contents insured in Australia - by singles, couples and families of all socioeconomic levels - is $70,000. Palm Island is considered one of the poorest areas in Australia, and has a high crime rate. A police spokesman yesterday revealed the other 10 officers who lost property in the fire were paid only $17,579.90 in total.

The spokesman again refused to list the items claimed for compensation by Sergeant Hurley. "Senior Sergeant Hurley did not provide a statutory declaration and the service had no concerns with the claim," the spokesman said. Sergeant Hurley and the other officers who lost property in the riots benefited from a public appeal run by the Queensland Police Union.

The Australian applied under FOI a year ago for access to documents related to the case. While the QPS recommended certain documents be released, Sergeant Hurley had his lawyers demand an internal review and then took the case to the Office of the Information Commissioner. The Office of the Information Commissioner has now backed the original decision by the QPS, also endorsing the original exemptions used to delete certain information from release.

The QPS payment was made shortly before the start of a coronial inquest into the death, which led Deputy State Coroner Christine Clements to find: "Hurley caused the fatal injuries." The then director of public prosecutions, Leanne Clare, opted not to lay charges, but after political intervention and a review of the case by former NSW chief justice Laurence Street, Sergeant Hurley was charged on February 5 last year with manslaughter and assault. He was found not guilty by a jury in the Townsville Supreme Court on June 20, and has since taken legal steps to have Ms Clements's findings struck off the record. A QPS spokesman was unable to comment on the case last night, and Sergeant Hurley's lawyer, Glen Cranny, declined to comment.

Source




Australia's public broadcaster lets its contempt for ordinary people show a little more clearly than usual

The fact that most Australians watch commercial channels most of the time must rile these elitists



An ABC website has been accused of portraying farmers and forestry workers as evil, and telling kids how much carbon they can produce before they die. The Planet Slayer website, which can be accessed via the science section on the ABC home page, also demonises people who eat meat and those involved in the nuclear industry, a Senate estimates committee heard.

The site has several features including a cartoon series, Adventures of Greena, and a tool called Prof Schpinkee's Greenhouse Calculator to help kids work out their carbon footprint. The calculator lets users compare their own carbon output to the "average Aussie greenhouse pig" and estimates at what age a person should die so they don't use more than their fair share of the Earth's resources. Too much carbon production causes a cartoon pig to explode, leaving behind a pool of blood.

Victorian Liberal senator Mitch Fifield today questioned the accuracy and appropriateness of some of the imagery and content on the website. "I know there's a little bit of goth in all of us, but this might be taking it just a little too far," Senator Fifield said of the quasi life-expectancy calculator. "Do you think it's appropriate that the ABC portray the average Australian as a pig and is it appropriate for a website obviously geared towards kids to depict people who are average Australians as massive overweight ugly pigs, oozing slime from their mouths, and then to have these pigs blow up in a mass of blood and guts?"

Senator Fifield said the Adventures of Greena cartoon series, which follows the exploits of a young female activist, also raised questions. He said episode two of the 12-part series, Fistful of Woodchips, portrayed a logger as "rough and evil". "I don't think that it's a particularly helpful way of depicting hard-working Australians who are trying to go about making an honest living, as though they're these rough and evil dudes out to do bad."

Senator Fifield said other episodes in the series portrayed people who eat meat, those involved in the nuclear industry and farmers who grow GM crops as evil. "I'm not sure if it's helpful to portray struggling farmers who are looking at GM technology to help them improve their yield in a period of drought as some sort of evil promoters of (these) products."

ABC managing director Mark Scott said the site was not designed to offend certain quarters of the community but to engage children in environmental issues. "The site has been developed to appeal to children and its been done in an irreverent way ... to make it engaging," Mr Scott said. "It's not an attempt to write public policy ... it's an attempt to educate school students on the impact of the modern Western lifestyle on carbon emissions and the whole issue that we are dealing with." Mr Scott said the ABC would review the content on the site.

Source





Toddler's surgery cancelled three times in a row by public hospital

A two-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who requires surgery to stop vomiting six times a day has had her surgery cancelled three times, her father has said. The last cancellation, yesterday, happened after the girl and her parents were forced to wait at Sydney Children's Hospital, Randwick, from 10am until 3.45pm, said the girl's father, Nick Thomas.

The toddler, Zara , was told last year she needed corrective surgery to fix a reflux problem, Mr Thomas said. "We were told last year that she needed it because she's been in hospital twice with pneumonia," he told Radio 2UE. "When she vomits ... she can't move [her] head around [and it] ends up back in her lungs, [causing] pneumonia."

After meeting with doctors in January this year, Mr Thomas was told there was a three-month waiting list for the surgery, which was booked for April 22. But the hospital cancelled the surgery because the doctor was away, Mr Thomas said. "They rescheduled and rung us two days before she was meant to go in and cancelled again," he said. Yesterday was the third time the surgery was cancelled, but only after Zara had to wait at the hospital most of the day, Mr Thomas said.

"We got there at 10am, we had to stop her feeding at 7am, and we didn't take any milk with us thinking she was going to have the operation. "They came in at 3.45pm yesterday afternoon and they said they didn't have enough time to do the surgery. "They want us to come back on Thursday and they can't promise it."

Mr Thomas said the hospital staff told him they had complained to the Health Minister Reba Meagher that they needed more theatre time. The minister's office has been contacted for comment. "We're a first world country, this shouldn't happen," Mr Thomas said. "You go there and see all the kids and it's not fair [that] they have to wait."

A doctor at the hospital said Zara's surgery was postponed because more critical cases had arisen. "The hospital sincerely regrets the distress caused by the rescheduling of her previous surgeries," Michael Brydon, director of clinical operations Sydney Children's Hospital, Randwick, said. "The surgeon was required to operate on more seriously ill patients that he deemed to have a higher clinical need than Zara. As is always urgent critical or emergency care must take priority,'' Dr Brydon said. Surgery for Zara had now been scheduled for tomorrow, he said.

Mr Thomas said he did not have private health insurance. But the head of one of Australia's biggest health insurance funds contacted 2UE after hearing Mr Thomas's call, and pledged to cover the full cost of Zara's treatment, the radio station said. The fund did not wish to be named. "I don't know what to say ... that's great, that's awesome," Mr Thomas said, after 2UE called him to inform him of the fund's promise.

Source






Australian troops want to fight

The exclusion of Australia's infantry troops from frontline conflicts, including in Iraq, has left many feeling ashamed of wearing their Australian uniform, an army major says. Major Jim Hammett, who has served in East Timor, Iraq, Somalia and Tonga, also said the policy had exposed Australian troops to "near contempt'' from other foreign soldiers now serving in Iraq, Fairfax has reported. "In the opinion of many infantrymen, the lauding of their contributions to recent operations does not ring true,'' Major Hammett writes in the Australian Army Journal. "Many within its ranks suspect that the role of the infantry has already been consigned to history ... the ongoing inaction (in Iraq) ... has resulted in collective disdain and at times near contempt by personnel from other contributing nations for the publicity-shrouded yet force protected Australian troops.''

Major Hammett said the infantry, which makes up about a third of the army's combat forces, had not been assigned offensive actions since the Vietnam War despite steady overseas deployments since 2001. It was only Australia's special forces, including the SAS, that were sent on offensive operations, he said. "The restrictions placed on deployed elements as a result of force protection and national policies have, at times, made infantrymen ashamed of wearing their Australian uniform and regimental badge,'' Major Hammett wrote. ''(They) have resulted in the widespread perception that our army is plagued by institutional cowardice.''

In a separate article cited by Fairfax, Captain Greg Colton, second in command of the Sydney-based 3rd Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment, said infantry morale had deteriorated in the past 10 years as regular infantry units were given only "second-rate operational tasks''. "There is a growing sense of frustration,'' Captain Colton wrote. "The government and army hierarchy seem to favour special forces for deliberate offensive operations and tasks ... at a lower level the diggers, NCOs and junior officers are starting to question the infantry's role and their part in it, which is having a tangible effect on morale.''

Source