Results falling at primary schools

The Leftist domination of education brings the expected results. Destruction is what the Left is good at. Why so? Because destruction of the society they live in is their real aim. All the rest is camouflage

LITERACY and numeracy levels have dropped alarmingly in Queensland primary schools, new figures reveal. State Budget figures show many Queensland students failed to meet national benchmarks for reading, writing and maths from Years 2 to 7. Of the 24 targets set by the State Government for 2007-08, only nine were met. Scores were down in 17 of 24 areas, compared with 2006-07. The worst results were for 11 and 12-year-olds in Year 7.

The Government set a target of 82 per cent of students achieving the national benchmark in numeracy but only 73 per cent passed. In reading, the target was 86 per cent but reached 81.7 per cent. It is the fourth year in a row they have under-performed. In 2004-05, 93.1 per cent of Year 7 students achieved the national benchmark in reading. That mark has dropped by 11.4 percentage points in three years.

For maths, it was 82.3 per cent in 2004-05. Now it is 9.2 percentage points lower. The Government hoped 54 per cent of indigenous Year 7 students would achieve the maths benchmark but only 45.9 per cent passed.

Opposition education spokesman Stuart Copeland expressed concern at the failure to meet the national benchmarks. "Every child should be taught the basics to function in today's society. They should be able to read, write and add up," he said. Former chairman of the Australian Council for Education Standards Colin Lamont said it reinforced his view that children were being "dumbed down". He said while teachers held some responsibility, he blamed bureaucrats who "experimented far too frequently" with the curriculum. "Everything has to be 'relevant' today . . . they have taken away what I call enrichment knowledge and that is a great shame."

Education Minister Rod Welford said he was not overly concerned by what were small fluctuations in the annual figures. "We are setting higher benchmarks these days than 20 years ago . . . I never panic about any one year's results through the primary years," he said. "If the changes have been more significant . . . then that is something we will need to monitor."

Queensland Teachers Union president Steve Ryan said there were "real question marks about the validity of national testing". "If the benchmarks are down, then that is something that needs to be addressed," he said.

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How soft on crime can a Leftist government get?

Convicted rapists, robbers, thugs go free

ALMOST 150 Queensland rapists, armed robbers and violent thugs convicted in the past year were never jailed. The shocking statistics were confirmed by Attorney-General and Minister for Justice Kerry Shine. In 2007-08, 18 rapists, 88 armed robbers and 39 people who committed brutal bashings avoided jail time despite their serious offences. "This highlights the soft approach the Beattie-Bligh Government has taken on crime," Liberal leader and Opposition justice spokesman Mark McArdle said. "The courts are not able to hand out sentences that are a real deterrent . . . what message is that sending out?"

Mr McArdle said the government figures also revealed that of 826 people convicted of rape, attempted rape, armed robbery, robbery and serious assault, not one received a maximum sentence. "Surely some must have warranted a maximum sentence," he said. "If you take 10 per cent, that is about 80 people. One per cent, about eight people. But in Queensland in the past year, not one person received the maximum sentence."

The release of the data followed the re-sentencing of nine males who avoided jail over the gang rape of a 10-year-old girl at a Cape York Aboriginal community. An appeal by Mr Shine resulted in the overturning of non-custodial sentences given to the three adults and six youths. The Court of Appeal jailed the three men for six years, while two of the youths got three years' detention.

Mr McArdle said the public would be stunned to discover that 18 rapists convicted this year were walking the streets. "It is bad enough having attempted rapists on our streets, but how do 18 people guilty of rape not go to jail? Society demands that rapists spend time behind bars." Mr McArdle said blame lay with the Government: "Courts cannot act outside the parameters set by Government. The Penalties and Sentences Act needs to be overhauled."

But Mr Shine said: "The task of sentencing offenders is the responsibility of judicial officers. As Attorney-General, if I believe a sentence imposed is manifestly inadequate, I can appeal that sentence."

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South Australian hospital crisis

Penny-pinching socialist government needs to fire some of their precious bureaucracy and put the money into medical pay

DOCTORS in retirement and on holidays could be called back to work under contingency measures to combat SA's growing public hospital crisis. Health Minister John Hill said yesterday the Government was developing a plan to try and keep the hospitals functioning if as many as 115 emergency doctors and anaesthetists follow through on resignations by the end of next week. Mr Hill said other possible measures included recruiting doctors from interstate, nurses taking on additional duties and GPs being drafted into public hospital emergency wards.

Doctors are seeking a pay rise of up to $111,000 a year while the State Government said it was offering to incease the current annual package for emergency department consultants from about $313,000 to about $356,000. The State Government's packages include on-call allowances, leave loading and salary sacrifice benefits. Mr Hill revealed the measures under consideration yesterday as:

DOCTORS warned more will quit as part of a rolling campaign.

EMERGENCY doctors gave emotional accounts of overcrowded and under-staffed hospitals.

DOCTORS revealed they were starting rescue funds to help those planning to quit pay mortgages and bills.

QUEENSLAND said it would welcome disaffected SA clinicians, who are also being targeted by agencies recruiting for other states.

Mr Hill said the Government was considering a range of options to plug holes left by the resignations in the public health system. He said patients would face "very long waits". Some emergency wards could close, with less serious cases diverted to GP services. "We have to take them seriously and we are working through contingency plans now," Mr Hill said. "We are looking at how you'd bulk up the services; in the city we'd need to keep the spine hospitals - the Royal Adelaide Hospital, Lyell McEwin and Flinders - functioning.

"I am very worried about the circumstances if they do resign. "It might be that GPs come in to the emergency department; some nurses could come in and do the minor things; people who have retired, they might want to come back to work; doctors on leave might come back early . . . or those working part-time might do more work. "Those are the kinds of options we have to look at."

The doctor resignations have been prompted by an impasse in a bitter eight-month long pay and conditions dispute and are effective two weeks from lodgement. Doctors say they want pay parity with their interstate counterparts to attract more doctors as well as equality in a system where groups of doctors in the past have negotiated separate loadings.

SA Salaried Medical Officers Association senior industrial officer Andrew Murray baulked at the Government's contingency suggestions - and accused the Government of not having a plan. "If people who deal with the most seriously sick people that go to EDs suddenly aren't there, what's the contingency for that?" he said. "Does he really expect an old, retired doctor who hasn't practised medicine in five to 10 years to deal with a major road trauma? "As a first fallback, probably the most closely related specialists in dealing with people in trauma are intensive care doctors and anaesthetists . . . hang on, didn't someone tell me the anaesthetists are quitting tomorrow? They don't have a plan."

Mr Murray said the emergency doctors who had quit represented about 75 per cent of those available in the state, not 50 per cent as reported this week. RAH emergency consultant Dr Tony Eliseo said it would be "impossible" for the Government to replace their level of expertise at short notice. Yesterday, more doctors said they would quit over the industrial dispute - including the Women's and Children's Hospital's head of general medicine, Dr Christopher Pearson.

Dr Pearson, who started at the WCH in 1971, said his resignation was "for the future of health in SA". "Without a sufficient package, it will not be possible to attract the bright young minds who will become the senior consultants of the future," he said.

Dr Jane Edwards and Dr Terry Donald, forensic pediatricans in child protection at the WCH, also said they would hand in their resignations tomorrow. Dr Edwards said the pay inequality across specialties in SA was leaving doctors disenchanted. "By giving deals to small groups of doctors, the Government has introduced a cancer to the whole of the health system," she said. "It's festering and pitting doctors against each other; people become jealous and feel they are not worthy." Dr. Edwards also said the hospital was struggling to fill two positions in child protection because they could not compete with other states.

Another 70 anaesthetists also planned to resign tomorrow, but Mr. Hill said a child-protection expert earning a salary package between $198,000-$215,000 would go up to $324,000 under the Government's offer. He also said there were no vacancies in general medicine. Mr Hill said doctors needed to be consistent in their claims, as "the problem we are having is different pockets of people with different goals". "They say they need extra money to recruit and retain doctors; the offer we made would help us with that," he said. "Then they say they want extra money to put them (in line) with `intensivists'. "We had to put extra money into intensivists, that's what the market dictated. It's a different market in other areas."

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Geologist: 'Earth has had massive changes in temperature unrelated to carbon dioxide'

The booming Northern Territory economy is at risk of being "destroyed" by government policy responses to climate change, an academic has said. There will be winners and losers under the system and reducing carbon dioxide emissions is expected to cost industry a lot of money.

But University of Adelaide mining geology professor Ian Plimer says all the expense will be for nothing, as climate change cannot be stopped -- and it isn't even caused by human-created carbon dioxide. "There is no relationship between carbon dioxide produced by industry and climate change," he said.

Professor Plimer said the scientific community had not reached any kind of consensus that carbon dioxide causes global warming. "There's no such thing as surety in science -- 32,000 North American scientists signed a document saying humans don't create global warming whereas the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change only has 2500 scientists saying it does."

Professor Plimer said other factors influenced climate change, such as volcanic eruptions, variations in the Earth's orbit around the sun and the sun's own heat-producing cycle -- none of which had anything to do with human activity. "There's a huge body of evidence showing no correlation between carbon dioxide and global warming," he said.

"Through the geological record we can look back in time and show the Earth has had massive changes in temperature unrelated to carbon dioxide." "Why make massive economic decisions when the science is extraordinarily uncertain?"

Professor Plimer said a misallocation of capital due to government greenhouse gas policies had the ability to destroy industry. "We've had a hint as to what rising energy costs do to food and fuel costs," he said. "If we want to restructure the economy on ambiguous information then we have a suicide wish and will totally destroy the economy. "In Darwin, you'd better look for a cave to live in -- because that's going to be your economy."

Professor Plimer said the only reason the climate change ""scare scenario" had become so popular was because of widespread scientific ignorance.

But Environment Centre NT spokesman Justin Tutty said Professor Plimer was at odds with the "overwhelming" weight of consensus led by the IPCC. "The IPCC's solid analysis has led business and industry groups, such as the Business Council of Australia, to realise the costs of policies to cut emissions are more acceptable than the economic costs of inaction," he said. "Now that the NT Government has come to the table, committing to develop a climate change policy, we hope real progress can be made to reduce the carbon burden of the Territory's future economy."

Mr Tutty said the document Professor Plimer cited had been roundly discredited for "having a very loose methodology". "It's a bit of a stretch to compare an unvetted online petition with a forum of experts appointed by the world's governments," he said.

But Professor Plimer said a lot of the signatories had been senior scientists. "I know many of them personally," he said. His comments come after the Territory Government released a discussion paper on climate change issues last week.

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Risk has its rewards

An encouragingly intelligent essay from a minister in the present Federal government: Craig Emerson

When previously in government, Labor was the party of competition and compassion. In this political philosophy, the role of policymakers is to allow the market to create prosperity and, out of that prosperity, to expand opportunity, not the welfare state. This is the philosophy of like-minded people I call market democrats: the modern champions of traditional Labor values of prosperity, fairness and compassion.

Some say competitive markets bring out the worst in people: greed and avarice. Oddly, they don't say the same about the Olympic Games, football, cricket, netball, music and dance competitions, all based on our most competitive instincts. As Bob Hawke was teaching me the intricacies of betting on horseracing, when I was a fresh recruit to his staff in 1986, he said: "Son, in any race, back the horse called Self-Interest because you know it will be trying."

Self-interest is not synonymous with selfishness. Athletes, singers, artists, dancers, authors and scientists are self-interested but not necessarily selfish. Some may be arrogant and rude, some selfish, others humble and altruistic, but all are self-interested. Without self-interest, economic and social progress is impossible.

The Hawke government began opening up the economy, dismantling the regulatory shackles that had been progressively applied through decades of mainly conservative governments. I came to understand that those Liberal-National governments were not champions of free enterprise but of private enterprise (although they quite liked the ideas of socialising private losses by bailing out insolvent businesses). The conservatives were keen regulators, protecting their private business supporters from competition.

My moral questions were answered through the competitive yet compassionate philosophy of the Hawke and Keating governments, a philosophy that sat easily with Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations. There was, I concluded, no inherent conflict between markets and morality. Labor values of prosperity, fairness and compassion fit well with supporting an open, competitive economy that rewards effort, risk-taking and entrepreneurship, and where opportunity, not welfare, is available to all.

Competitive markets reward effort, risk-taking and entrepreneurship, and they encourage innovation essential to the growth of a market economy. The forces of competition create pressure on businesses to be efficient and apply new ideas in producing goods and services valued by consumers.

Yet markets are chaotic and wasteful. Predicting prices produced by markets is hazardous. Markets force businesses to close, wasting infrastructure and obliging employees to seek work elsewhere. But far more wasteful and chaotic are central planning and governments pretending to be good at running businesses in so-called mixed economies.

Of course, it is unfair if the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. But why should governments try to prevent the rich from getting richer if the poor also get richer as a consequence of the wealth-creation process? Albania, Bangladesh and Ethiopia have more equal income distributions than Australia, but most would agree that Australia's society is fairer. Many Australians earning below-average incomes choose to forgo higher pay in favour of spending more time with their families or just relaxing. By doing so, they are making measured income inequality worse but, through free choice, they are making their own lives better.

In a flourishing democracy, government serves the people. Yet at every twist and turn governments come up with new taxes and new regulations that subjugate the people to the state. By intervening, taxing heavily and regulating, governments have sought to restrict individual freedoms, stifle initiative and inhibit self-reliance. In a market democracy, governments should serve the people instead of seeking to subjugate them to the will of government through high taxes and heavy regulation.

By allowing markets to reward hard work, risk-taking and entrepreneurship without unnecessary interference, market democrats advance freedom and self-fulfilment. If governments are to bring out the best in people, they should not erect disincentives to creating prosperity and good social behaviour such as honesty.

Governments must not imprison the disadvantaged by subjugating them to the state, robbing them of self-esteem and condemning them to a life of dependency; governments must liberate them by providing opportunity for all in a truly fair society. Let us not make the disadvantaged the experiments of social engineers yearning for a different social order but lacking the stomach to practise it in their own lives. It is this social experimentation of romanticising traditional life in the harsh outback that has caused Australia's most vulnerable - indigenous people - to be trapped in misery.

Good on Warren Mundine and Noel Pearson for exposing the immorality of those asserting moral superiority but whose pomposity perpetuates the disadvantage of our indigenous brother and sisters. And good on Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin for having the courage to set her own course.

Market democrats oppose the relentless expansion of the welfare state, where higher taxes are used to obtain revenue for recycling - often to the same people - in return for political support. This was the hallmark of the previous government and, judging by the objections of the Opposition Leader, the shadow treasurer and the Opposition spokesman for families to means-testing the baby bonus and family payments for stay-at-home mothers, remains a defining feature of the Coalition.

The modern welfare state extends beyond recycling tax revenue; it is a state of ever-expanding government regulation. This regulatory welfare reinforces the culture of dependency by discouraging people from taking responsibility for their own actions and their own lives. Regulatory welfare is inimical to a market democracy, since it discourages individual initiative and business risk-taking.

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