Union voices fears on carbon trade

AUSTRALIA'S biggest blue-collar union has raised concerns about the Rudd Government introducing a carbon emissions trading system without considering the likelihood of other nations lowering their emissions. The 130,000-strong Australian Workers Union yesterday cast doubt on Kevin Rudd's "go-it-alone" strategy, after convening a special meeting with executives from high-emitting companies in Sydney to canvass a joint approach to climate change policy.

AWU secretary Paul Howes said his union remained deeply worried about the impact of an emissions trading scheme on local jobs if the response of companies facing financial penalties under a carbon reduction scheme was to shift their operations offshore. Mr Howes said any scheme introduced for Australia should provide a special place for workers, even allowing valuable carbon permits to transfer to them if they were left unemployed after companies quit Australia. He said the union regarded its proposal as "carbon insurance" to allow displaced workers to sell permits to provide economic support or to be retrained for other occupations.

The AWU and its Queensland patriarch, Bill Ludwig, have provided key political support to Treasurer Wayne Swan over many years. Mr Rudd, who also draws his support from Queensland, will be keen to maintain the union's co-operation as well.

The union is worried about an arbitrary deadline of 2010 under Mr Rudd's policy for the introduction of a carbon trading system. While the union accepts an overall need to tackle carbon leakage and is careful not to directly criticise the Government at this stage, the AWU believes any Australian scheme must be compared with the international response. Of particular concern is the position of China, where carbon emissions are expected to jump from 19per cent to 37 per cent of global output by 2030 as a product of high economic growth.

In an official response to the Rudd Government's green paper on carbon reduction released last week, a position paper issued yesterday by Mr Howes urges the Rudd Government to "harness major emitters such as China" and only proceed with more ambitious carbon reduction targets in co-operation with other nations.

The AWU says it wants the Rudd Government to address concerns as a priority, and pointedly questions the purpose of proceeding and how emissions can be reduced globally if other nations do not take part. "No assessment has been made on how to (achieve), and the likelihood of achieving, a binding international agreement on lower carbon emissions including the major developing emitter nations, when that is precisely what is required to lower global emissions, whether or not an (emissions trading scheme) is implemented in Australia. "What are the strategies for engaging with China in particular on these issues?"

Mr Howes yesterday met business executives from exposed companies in steel, airlines, petrol refineries, cement, aluminium, plastics and packaging, in what is hoped to become a co-ordinated approach. Company executives leaving the AWU's headquarters were tight-lipped about discussions, but sources told The Australian they were deeply worried about the impact of a carbon trading system for businesses that were high emitters.

Mr Howes said afterwards his union had broad support for an emissions trading scheme, but was worried about the impact on trade-exposed and emissions-intensive industries. The experience of carbon schemes in the European Union, he said, showed that some companies took their free permits and still decided to operate offshore. No companies yesterday indicated plans to move offshore, but they also gave no undertakings.

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New Zealand a 'giant transit lounge'

New Zealand has been described as a "giant transit lounge" after an analysis showed many of its immigrants ended up moving to Australia. Nearly 20 per cent of the 37,000 New Zealanders who crossed the Tasman last year intending to stay in Australia permanently or for at least a year were born outside New Zealand, the Dominion Post has reported. In 2003 the number of New Zealand citizens born overseas moving to live in Australia was 4,187, but this rose to 7,159 last year, the newspaper reported.

New Zealand has long been suspected of providing "back-door entry" to Australia because it has less strict immigration criteria and most Kiwis can visit, live and work in Australia without needing to apply ahead for a visa. Most of the people who last year moved to Australia after emigrating to New Zealand were born in South Africa (871) followed by India (696) and England (678).

New Zealand's Revenue Minister Peter Dunne, who leads the United Future political party, has described his country as a "giant transit lounge". "Our immigration and resettlement policy is not effectively encouraging people to make long-term commitments," he told the newspaper.

A spokesman for Australia's Department of Immigration and Citizenship did not wish to comment. "Foreign policy is not a matter for this department,'' he said.

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The NSW ambulance disgrace continues

Government bureaucrats running a health service are not only a disaster; Some of them are downright nasty -- as we see below:

Some ambulance officers had resorted to getting apprehended violence orders against colleagues because management had dealt so poorly with allegations of bullying and harassment, a parliamentary inquiry was told yesterday. Officials of the Health Services Union said members had no confidence in how the NSW Ambulance Service handled grievances. Some even accused it of being so aggressive towards complainants that it was itself harassing them.

The union officials were giving evidence at the inquiry into the management and operations of the service, which has been inundated with submissions about bullying, harassment and inadequate handling of complaints. The union's industrial manager, Dennis Ravlich, told the inquiry that some officers had been "reduced to seeking AVOs on an ambulance station".

Outside the inquiry, Mr Ravlich told the Herald he knew of "at least three or four" officers who had taken out AVOs against colleagues at their stations in the past five years because they felt so frustrated by a lack of action by management. "It's difficult to comprehend that the workplace had become that dysfunctional," he said. Another union official, Raymond Tait, told the inquiry that an eight-year complaint had only just been concluded but was now the subject of an unfair dismissal action before the Industrial Relations Commission. He told the Herald a complainant had been unfairly sacked last month over an unrelated matter.

Mr Tait said the service had kept secret its 2006 report into the eight-year-old complaint of alleged bullying. The complainant could only read the document but not keep a copy of it. And there was a condition that the person did not reveal its contents.

Mr Tait had told the inquiry earlier that the service's professional standards and conduct unit was "judge, jury and executioner" and rejected too many complaints, hoping they would just go away. The inquiry has received several submissions criticising the unit. It has been called an "absolute joke", likened to the NSW Supreme Court in terms of time delays, and referred to as "pathetic standards and cover up".

Mr Ravlich told the inquiry he was unsure whether bullying and harassment were more prevalent than in other comparable organisations. But he said that in dealing with complainants, the unit took "a rather aggressive approach towards staff . almost to the point of being harassing itself". In other evidence, the union told the inquiry it was not unusual for ambulance officers to work up to 14 hours without a meal break.

The officers' appearance before the committee followed a mass demonstration of more than 200 ambulance staff and paramedics who marched through Martin Place to Parliament House. The protesters demanded the State Government employ another 300 paramedics to ease pressure on staff. One officer at the rally, Warren Boon, of Camden station, said that in 2006-07, NSW ambulance staff had dealt with 1,052,000 cases. "The workload has gone from intense to nigh impossible," he said. "Fatigue is a chronic problem for staff and the shortage is affecting services to the public." He cited a recent incident in which he narrowly saved a cardiac arrest patient. "But if it had occurred any time in the previous six weeks, he would have probably died because of a lack of resources," Mr Boon said.

Ambulance officers were also having to work overtime to boost their modest salaries, he said, which were between $900 and $1000 a week for staff with 15 years' service.

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Fire engines sent to cover for ambulances

FIRE engines are being forced to respond almost daily to ambulance call-outs with 250 assigned in the past year, according to Emergency Services. Emergency Services Minister Neil Roberts said 250 fire-engines were sent to triple-0 ambulance calls last financial year. Firefighters provided first aid or CPR at 208 of the cases while the remaining 42 cases involved assisting invalids.

Mr Roberts said fire service crews were not used as automatic first responders in ambulance call-outs. He said the cases represented only 0.4 per cent of all fire call-outs. "The reality is, however, that they are very often the first on scene where people have been injured," he said.

The figures were revealed in a parliamentary estimates hearing under questioning from Opposition emergency services spokesman Ted Malone. Mr Malone said every Queenslander paying the $100-a-year ambulance levy deserved to see a Queensland Ambulance Service staffer if they called for medical assistance.

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Rudd has a sense of humour

KEVIN Rudd gave us both faces of last year's election campaign yesterday -- the feel-good story of a successful appeal for political change, and the blooper tape as well.

Among the latter, the Prime Minister singled out: a dog that deposited its "very significant canine calling card" on stage during a campaign function in Adelaide; a blocked toilet on the press plane during a flight from Mackay to Perth; the lights going out in Townsville during a visit to a solar-powered school; and, most memorably, the elderly, wheelchair-bound woman in a Brisbane shopping mall who put a strange request to the would-be PM.

"She invited me to come close and put my hand on her fulsome bosom, only to reveal that to be the nesting place of her favourite pet marsupial," Mr Rudd said. "It was a terrified sugar-glider that obviously felt it had been trapped in a ravine somewhere in the Himalayas."

Mr Rudd was speaking in Sydney at the launch of Inside Kevin 07, a book about the federal election campaign by Christine Jackman, a senior writer with The Australian.

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