RUDD HONEYMOON OVER: "GREEN" PROBLEMS

Kevin Rudd's honeymoon is officially over, with his approval rating taking a significant slide, according to the latest polls. While the Prime Minister is still way ahead of Brendan Nelson in the popularity stakes, the petrol [gasoline] debate has seen Mr Rudd's approval rating plummet. In the past three weeks, Mr Rudd's approval rating has dropped a whopping 10 points. The Essential Research poll also found the Coalition is closing the gap on a two party preferred basis, gaining five approval points to bring them up to 44 per cent, as Labor lost the same amount, bringing them down to 56 per cent.

The voter backlash comes just three weeks after the Government delivered its first budget and suggests last week's Cabinet leaks on the FuelWatch scheme have done them no favours. 'It's clear that the petrol debate and the Opposition leader's prosecution of it has done the Opposition some good and the Government has taken its first big hit in the polls,' said Essential Media Communications' Ben Oquist. In another blow for the Government, the polls showed most people would not be willing to pay more for petrol, even if the money raised was used to tackle climate change. 'It shows the magnitude of the problem for the Government in prosecuting its case for a broad-based emissions trading regime,' said Mr Oquist.

The Opposition has its own challenges, as speculation continues about the future of former Howard ministers like Peter Costello and Alexander Downer. The poll suggests a majority of voters would prefer it if the Liberal MPs stepped down, with just 26 per cent of people wanting the pair to stay in Parliament. Former foreign minister Alexander Downer says he won't be pressured into making a decision either way but says he will make up his mind 'fairly soon'.

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Scared nurses' secret evidence of intimidation from public hospital bureaucrats

The bullying of nurses by hospital management is so rife that about a third who gave evidence at the State Government's inquiry into hospitals chose to do so in secret, fearing retribution if they publicly revealed their stories. Some nurses were too afraid even to be seen seated at the Special Commission of Inquiry into Acute Care Services in NSW Public Hospitals, said Bob Whyburn, a lawyer employed by the NSW Nurses Association support nurses who gave evidence.

The nurses union was so concerned about nurses refusing to come forward due to fears of intimidation by management that it employed Mr Whyburn to attend every one of the 34 sitting days. "Roughly a third gave evidence in closed session and it's likely that a lot of them did because of fear of retribution, because that was expressed by the others in open hearings," Mr Whyburn told the Herald. "In some hospitals we went to the nurses were so concerned about what might occur if they did give evidence that they didn't even come along and listen to any evidence that was given. They were frightened to be even seen near the commission." Mr Whyburn said at one hearing at Westmead Hospital, three senior managers reserved the front row and stared down witnesses during their evidence. "The three of them stayed there all day and scowled."

Marguerite Cullen, who has been a nursing unit manager for almost 30 years, told the inquiry at Westmead on April 10 that nurses who spoke up inevitably experienced "payback". Some nurses cried because of the way they were treated by managers and felt "totally demoralised", she told the inquiry. She also told the inquiry some nurses were too afraid to attend. "They said, 'It's not worth my job. It's not worth it. The repercussions if I went down there would be too much,"' she said. "They are too intimidated. I find that quite distressing."

Besides bullying and poor morale, nurses complained of poor workplace conditions - heavy workloads, double shifts and wards staffed by too many junior nurses. Some cried while giving evidence. They also complained about a lack of consultation when NSW Health issued directives that affected their work practices.

The Nurses Association's submission to the inquiry reported widespread frustration and fatigue. Nurses described their hospitals like a "war zone" or being "in the trenches". "When people become nurses they know it is hard work . but they don't know it is unsafe, that you don't get a break and you are not supported," one nurse said. "Some shifts feel out of control."

The submission recommended an overhaul of policies to prevent and resolve bullying and harassment, saying NSW Health had failed to address a "culture of fear and intimidation embedded throughout the public health sector".

The Minister for Health, Reba Meagher, has been forced in Parliament to defend the Health Department's response to bullying, particularly at Royal North Shore Hospital. A study conducted by the University of Sydney on behalf of unions for the inquiry showed that 60 per cent of nurses said they were exhausted at work and, within the previous 12 months, 60 per cent had seriously considered leaving. The inquiry has concluded and the commissioner, Peter Garling, SC, is due give his recommendations by July 31.

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Ambulance bureaucrats block use of heart-saving system

Sadly, it's just the sort of thing you expect from socialized medicine. Paperwork trumps people every time

When John Plant felt his chest tighten on the drive to work two months ago, he thought his life was over. Less than 70 minutes later, the storeman was in an intensive care unit with a stent in his heart. He was lucky. The ambulance that responded to his emergency in Minchinbury was one of hundreds in Sydney fitted with a system called ETAMI, or early triage for acute myocardial infarction. It allows patients to be taken directly to one of two major hospitals, bypassing all smaller facilities, and getting vital treatment more than an hour earlier, saving lives and limiting damage to the heart muscle.

But more than 70 per cent of Sydneysiders are missing out because the NSW Ambulance Service has instructed most of its staff not to use ETAMI. It believes 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) machines, used to diagnose patients, should be operated only by highly trained paramedics and that junior staff should not be required to manage cardiac arrest patients for the additional time it takes to transport them to one of the major hospitals.

The instructions have angered cardiologists. "We know that the quicker a person is treated, the higher their chance of survival," the director of cardiac services at Westmead Hospital, Pramesh Kovoor, said. "But not everyone who calls an ambulance will get the same treatment and that's unfortunate because I don't believe it requires a paramedic to operate it."

For an ETAMI trial carried out between 2004 and 2007, 20 ambulances were fitted with 12-lead ECG machines capable of sending results by mobile phone to the emergency departments at Westmead or Royal North Shore hospitals. The study, in the European Heart Journal, found about 1500 patients were delivered directly to Westmead's coronary care unit during that time, with 73 per cent on the operating table within 60 minutes and 66 per cent having angioplasty within 90 minutes, compared with 2 per cent of people taken to community hospitals.

A spokeswoman for NSW Health said the results of the trial were still being analysed and the NSW Ambulance Service would issue a statement on the matter within weeks. For Mr Plant, 58, from Sadleir, in Sydney's south-west, the quick treatment meant only five days in hospital and a second chance at life.

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Feminists have tragically misled many women

The strategic silences of feminism are having profound effects on society. For all the brilliant choices ushered in for women - the freedom to forge ahead with careers, to stay single, if that was their wish, not to be tied down by family and babies, if that was their choice - feminism failed women by refusing to inform them that their new-found choices came at a price.

By failing to remind women about their biology and their declining fertility, feminism deliberately ignored the innate desire of most women to have a child. The silence continues. It is there in the classroom where, like previous generations of young girls, the present generation is still not taught that fertility cannot be taken for granted. Fortunately, there are moves to fill in the silence about infertility. If it happens, it may allow young women to make more fully informed choices about work and babies, avoiding the sorrow that afflicted many of their childless forerunners.

Unlike women in the 1950s and '60s, the liberated generation of women that followed in the '70s and '80s had the world at their feet. Yet feminism's mantra of choice made little room for women who chose to eschew careers for babies. Indeed, if we are honest, feminism never had much time for babies. Having babies meant leaving the workplace, opting out of the career track, at least for a time. With its unwavering focus on encouraging women to make great strides in the professions, making their presence felt in the boardroom, the courtroom and parliament, the feminist movement deliberately ignored motherhood as a legitimate choice for women.

The cost of feminism's silence about fertility is etched in the faces of those women who pursued dazzling careers and carefree singledom but ended up childless. Women such as ABC presenter Virginia Haussegger, who a few years ago openly wrote about the price she paid for listening to the feminist mothers, who encouraged us to reach for the sky but failed to tell us the truth about our biological clock. Said Haussegger: "Here we are, supposedly 'having it all' as we edge 40; excellent education; good qualifications, great jobs. It's a nice caffe-latte kind of life, really." But something was missing. "I am childless and I am angry. Angry that I was so foolish to take the word of my feminist mothers as gospel. Angry that I was daft enough to believe female fulfilment came with a leather briefcase."

The cost of feminism's silence about infertility is engraved in the experiences of those who, having delayed motherhood and unable to conceive, underwent in-vitro fertilisation at a great physical and emotional cost. Women such as Jodi Panayotov, who described how her mental anguish at not becoming pregnant had her rifling through her rubbish bin to check whether the second line on her discarded pregnancy test had appeared in the hour since she threw it there, along with dozens of others. "If I thought IVF would be the answer to both my reproductive issues and my mental issues, I was mistaken. Yes, it produced a baby. But it took ages to recover from the emotional toll."

Infertility affects one in six Australian couples. While the causes are many, a woman's age is a critical factor. By age 26, a woman's rate of infertility doubles from one in 10 to one in five. By her mid-30s, a woman has a 15 per cent of becoming pregnant each month. By her early 40s, it falls to 5 per cent. Add in miscarriage rates of 25 per cent for women aged 35 to 39, and 50 per cent for women aged 40 to 44, and the rate of chromosomal abnormalities, which increases from a risk of one in 600 for a 20-year-old woman to one in 39 for a 42-year-old woman, and one realises that female fertility is not a given.

Of course, with male infertility accounting for 40 per cent of cases, there is a need for both sexes to understand fertility. Unfortunately, there is a profound gap between perception and reality. A study by the Fertility Society of Australia in 2006 found that 57 per cent of women in their 30s and 43 per cent of women in their 40s believed they would be able to conceive without any problems. The survey of 1200 women and 1200 men found that 40 per cent of childless men and women in their 30s were still saying they were not ready to have a child. While choosing to marry later and have babies even later may fit the career choices of young men and women, the report concluded that "a real tragedy could occur if these people reach their late 30s and decide they have changed their minds and do want children, only to find that it is biologically too late for them".

The FSA recommended an education program informing young people about their fertility. Last week, a similar plea was made in Britain by new Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority head Lisa Jardine.

It is a message echoed by Candice Reed and Rebecca Featherstone, two young women who call themselves "IVF-lings". Reed, a journalist in New Zealand, was Australia's first IVF baby, born in 1980. Featherstone, a Sydney agent for media personalities, was conceived in Bourne Hall, Cambridge, where Louise Brown, the world's first IVF baby, was born. In the next few weeks, Reed and Featherstone will be sending letters to state education and health ministers across Australia asking that schoolchildren be taught about fertility and IVF.

Featherstone told The Australian students were not receiving enough information. "The only things I was taught at school were about sexual education, condoms and STDs, that sort of stuff. I never learned anything about infertility or how many people go through IVF. I was never taught how a woman's fertility decreases." Ask a schoolteacher. Nothing has changed.

Featherstone says it's critical that young girls learn about their biology. "They may hold off having babies and do the career thing. And then they're like: 'Oh no, I'm 35 and I'll have to do IVF.' She says IVF should not be treated lightly as a fallback position for the next generation of career women. "It's not something nice to go through."

With studies showing that mothers in their late 30s and 40s who have baby girls are perhaps compromising their daughters' ability to have children, the trickle-down consequences of infertility will be profound and many of them yet unknown. One thing is clear. For all of feminism's focus on women's choices, its failure to treat motherhood as a legitimate choice did women no favours.

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