Sperm donor law to be refined

Not before time. Sweden take note (not that they will. They know it all)

Men who donate sperm for use in lVF treatment in Queensland will be freed from child support payments under new state laws. Attorney-General and Minister for Justice Kerry Shine said a loophole in legislation would be closed this week to clarify the status of biological fathers.

Mr Shine said the husband or de facto partner of a woman who conceived using lVF treatment automatically assumed legal responsibility for the child. "However, responsibility reverts to a biological father whose sperm is used to impregnate a single woman or woman in a same-sex relationship, even without his knowledge," he said. "This means an lVF father can be pursued for child support payments even though he never even knew the child's mother.

"This is a legal loophole that has potential for abuse. These men are not deadbeats who have fathered children and then tried to avoid their responsibilities. This is a totally different situation and the law should reflect that reality."

Mr Shine said there had ueen no known cases to date - but the amendment would stop any. "Clearly, if we allow this loophole to remain open, it could affect the number of men willing to become donors because of a fear they'll be up for child payments in the future."

The changes, which would go before Cabinet tomorrow and be introduced to State Parliament this week, would protect men who donated sperm from being unfairly targeted by a mother. The amendment would apply to the Status of Children Act 1978, which conferred responsibility on lVF parents to enable them to exercise the legal powers and responsibilities to care for their children.

Mr Shine said the amendment would be retrospective to clarify the status of children born since 1988, when the provisions were originally inserted. "These laws came in when in-vitro fertilisation was a relatively new technology and it is time to update them for the modern world," he said.

Dr David Molloy, director of the Queensland Fertility Group and obstetrics spokesman for Australian Medical Association Queensland, had brought the loophole to authorities' attention. He said it could also have created uncertainty in respect of an IVF child's legal parents.

The article above is by Darrell Giles and appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on May 11, 2008.





Old-fashioned socialism -- more government spending in more areas of the economy -- back in vogue for Kevin Rudd's Labor

To the old-Labor way of thinking, nation-building was code for picking a lucky project or industry and delivering it truckloads of cash. As such, it was anathema to the drive for market-oriented economic reform. For Kevin Rudd, nation-building is essential economic reform. It's a fundamental shift in thinking. And it is not only drawing fire from the Coalition, it's also making some Labor old-timers nervous.

Disaffected former leader Mark Latham said the Prime Minister's first budget was "hillbilly economics" devoid of any commitment to micro-economic reform. Famously dry former Labor finance minister Peter Walsh said the Rudd Government's approach to industry policy was reminiscent of communist Russia.

During the Howard years, surpluses were usually handed back to voters in the form of government payments and tax cuts. During the Rudd years, a lot of the surpluses will be spent as the Government sees fit, often on building things that have been traditionally the responsibility of the states, such as roads, railways, hospitals and schools. A total of $41billion has already been set aside. More will be added from surpluses to come.

On radio yesterday, Rudd said Australia had "a big choice ... whether we are going to have a national government which is committed to the business of nation-building, using the taxpayers' money to do that ... or, alternatively, whether you do as the previous Liberal governments have done, which is to frankly waste this money on consumption". [Taxpayers spending their own money is "waste"?? The old socialist thinking is certainly coming out now in Rudd]

Add Rudd's declaration that he also saw a role for the federal Government in encouraging new industrial investment, and some of his Labor predecessors are wondering whether he is abandoning the notion that governments should ensure efficient and open markets and then get out of the way. The Rudd Government's answer appears to be that the reform effort has moved into a new and different phase.

In the Hawke and Keating years, micro-economic reform was about competition policy and privatisation, bringing down tariff walls and introducing competition to government-owned businesses and utilities. The Rudd Government says it supports all those things, but now wants to reform sectors previously left out: particularly health, education and transport. And these reforms require a hands-on role for the federal Government - in paying for the improvements or prioritising and streamlining what the states and the private sector do.

Latham's assessment of the shift was scathing in yesterday's Australian Financial Review. Rudd's Government, he said, had "an industry policy mindset: a belief in government intervention and preferment". His evidence was the billions in infrastructure funds, which he contended would be "used to support the Government's preferred industrial projects, companies and unions". The Rudd Government, he said, had no commitment to micro-economic reform at all.

But for the Government the funds are the centre of its reform effort. It insists the money will be used to expand the productive capacity of the economy, and the processes it is setting up - including public advice from an independent advisory board attached to each of the funds - will make sure that the money is dispersed for national, rather than political, good. "All the proposed funding will be assessed by independent advisory committees and their advice will be made public," Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner told The Australian yesterday. "If we choose to invest in something not recommended by those committees, then everybody will be able to draw their own conclusions."

According to Industry Minister Kim Carr, "the entire community - with the exception of Mr Latham - understands that infrastructure bottlenecks are a serious constraint on Australia's growth and prosperity". But Latham takes issue with the industry policy being developed by Carr, particularly his bypassing of the Productivity Commission in setting up reviews into assistance to the auto and textile industries. Latham said the result would be more expensive and inefficient government handouts.

Peter Walsh agreed: "It defies rational explanation to take the car inquiry away from the Productivity Commission. It's the sort of thing you'd expect to happen in Russia, a fake inquiry that is simply designed to churn out the pre-determined answers."

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Double standard on rights in Australia

by Andrew Bolt

OUR top human rights body is so savage on Australia that it claims we're guilty of "genocide". But when it comes to China, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission can't grovel enough. China, it claimed last week, has actually "contributed" to human rights and should not be so criticised by the West and nasty Tibetan protesters. It's doing its best.

You think I exaggerate HREOC's double standards? Then check the astonishing interview HREOC president John von Doussa gave on Chinese state television last week. Von Doussa was in Beijing for an international human rights forum, and his generous hosts couldn't have been happier when he appeared on their CCTV and trotted out their favourite lines on human rights. Run the tape:



Interviewer: The Beijing Olympic global torch relay has been disrupted by some Tibetan separatists, do you think such action complies with the international law on human rights?

Von Doussa: No, I don't ... (The right to protest) doesn't give them the right to engage in violence. And it doesn't give them the right to prevent other people from going about their lawful business and indeed expressing their particular points of view.

Pause the tape. Actually the vast majority of protesters at the rally have been peaceful and in no way breached the human rights they simply asked China to uphold. Most of the violence in the Canberra leg, in fact, seemed to come from pro-Chinese protesters organised by the Chinese embassy. And where is von Doussa's condemnation of China's refusal to let Tibetans and other human rights campaigners to express their "particular points of view" within China itself? Ah, back to the tape:

Interviewer: China has constantly been under attack by some Western media on its human rights situation. There seems to be a trend of politicising human rights and imposing Western standards to the country. Do you think this is a useful way of solving differences?

Von Doussa: No, I don't think it's useful ... the international human rights norms or standards which are being invoked are universal; they are rights to which China has contributed to ...

It has? Excuse me for butting in again but China has, on the contrary, propped up international human rights abusers - sending cash and weapons to Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, propping up Burma's junta, protecting Stalinist North Korea, and blocking attempts to stop the Darfur genocide unleashed by Sudan, its oil supplier and arms buyer. But back to the tape:

Von Doussa: The West is saying, look, for example we have broad, open trials with thorough investigation of crime and so on. You should be doing the same. What that overlooks is the economic situation and the developmental stage of China ... Once you eliminate poverty well then you can move on to a situation where people can much better enjoy a much broader range of human rights.

Pardon? China is entitled to deny fair trials, free speech and a free vote until it gets richer? How rich, exactly? Disgraceful. Von Doussa has entirely bought China's excuse for totalitarianism - that there is a clash between human rights and development, and one must wait for the other.

For the living contradiction of this argument of all tyrants, von Doussa should fly home via India, China's rival, which is also pulling itself out of poverty, but without denying its people the right to speak or vote. Or he could visit free Taiwan, if he doesn't mind outraging his communist hosts. What an appalling piece of cultural relativism - and of toadying to China.

Ironically, von Doussa has just one possible defence for seeming to sell out the values he's paid to uphold - that far from China being the human rights "contributor" he claimed, it is such an enemy of free speech that it censored the criticisms he went on to make. Without such an excuse, or at least an explanation, von Doussa should quit. If he can't be as tough even on China as his commission has been on his own country, he's no friend of human rights -- and, indeed, of the taxpayers who pay his wage.

To see the von Doussa interview on CCTV, introduced by former ABC-staffer-turned-China-mouthpiece Edwin Maher, go here

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Wanna bet these rapists are Muslims?

The Press is so secretive about ethnic origins that it encourages us to speculate when no details are given. There are a lot of Muslims from Africa living at Moorooka and Salisbury is an adjoining suburb. And young Muslim males do tend to move in packs

Four men accused of raping a 14-year-old girl have been granted bail in a Brisbane court. The men - aged 30, 25, 21 and 19 - appeared in the Brisbane Magistrates Court yesterday after being charged yesterday with numerous sex offences. It's alleged the men took the teenage girl to a hotel room in Brisbane on May 3 and repeatedly assaulted her.

Each of the men - including two brothers - were allowed bail on condition they report to police five days a week and have no contact with the girl. The oldest, a 30-year-old man from Sherwood, has been charged with two counts of rape, four counts of indecent treatment of a child and one count of possessing child exploitation material. The 21-year-old man, also from Sherwood, faces two counts of rape, one count each of carnal knowledge of a child under 16 and possessing child exploitation material, and four counts of indecent treatment of a child under 16.

The 25-year-old man from Moorooka has been charged with one count each of rape and indecent treatment of a child under 16. The 19-year-old, also of Moorooka, faces three counts of rape, one count of carnal knowledge of a child under 16 and three counts of indecent treatment of a child under 16. The 25-year-old and the 19-year-old will face court again next month while the other men will reappear in July.

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Note: I would be particularly pleased if the speculation above is incorrect, as it might go a little way towards showing our media elites that their secrecy can have the opposite effect to that intended - i.e. it might cause minorities to be unfairly blamed