Another disastrous foreign doctor

There have been some appalling cases of doctors trained in India and in Muslim countries. There should be more testing of them before they are hired

Health Minister Stephen Robertson will receive a report tomorrow into an Egyptian- trained surgeon who allegedly bungled operations he performed without supervision. Abdalla Khalifallah, who worked at Mackay Base Hospital, had his contract terminated in August 2006 after he was deregistered by the Medical Board of Queensland.

The report, by the Health Quality and Complaints Commission, is based on almost two years of investigation. The matter was raised in Federal Parliament in August 2006 by former Nationals MP De-Anne Kelly, who outlined the cases of four people she said were injured during unsuccessful operations at Mackay Base Hospital.

Mrs Kelly told Parliament Dr Khalifallah had undertaken three major operations that he was unqualified for without supervision, resulting in complications. One case. to remove a bowel tumour, resulted in fecal matter entering the intestinal cavity, she said.

"This operation was carried out in direct contravention of the decision of the (hospital's) credentials committee," she said. "In July 2005, the hospital's credentials committee determined that Dr Khalifallah must be supervised during major surgery."

Dr Khalifallah became a staff specialist at the hospital in 2004. A spokeswoman for Mr Roberston said the Minister had called for a report into the matter in 2006. "We cannot comment any further until the Minister sees what the report says," she said.

The above article by Suellen Hinde appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on 3 August, 2008. The spelling of the name of the fool seems to vary. In this report, it was Abdalla Khalafalla





Conservative climate policy in Australia is now purely political

The only aim now is to hang the costs of a climate policy on the Labor party

Apart from a final policy position, about the only good thing to come out of last week's near disastrous flirtation by Brendan Nelson with going "brown" on climate change was the emergence of Greg Hunt as a force to be reckoned with inside the Liberal Party.

Politics constantly throws up challenges. The system works best for the country when it also throws up politicians who meet those challenges. In the case of the critical debate over a national Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), this is exactly what has occurred in both major parties. In Hunt, the Coalition's Environment spokesman, and in Penny Wong, Labor's Climate Change Minister, the struggle to fashion an ETS that puts global warming into retreat and at the same time protects Australia's economic interests has thrown up two of the brightest young politicians in the country. Hunt and Wong represent generational change.

As a country we often choose to under-estimate our politicians, to denigrate them as a matter of course as a bunch of venal self-servers who've been tossed up on the shore of the parliament because they're not much good for anything else. Consider 42-year-old Hunt's CV. He has a first-class honours degree from the University of Melbourne and a Master's degree from Yale University. He was a Fulbright Scholar and a dual fellowship winner at Yale. He was Captain of the Australian Universities Debating Team and an Associate to the Chief Justice of the High Court. He started his business career with the global consultancy McKinsey and Co, which like Macquarie Bank is known as a "millionaires factory''. Oh, and he's also run seven marathons. Yet Hunt chose public service over money, becoming an adviser to Alexander Downer before winning the Victorian seat of Flinders at the 2001 election.

Hunt cares passionately about policy, and the environment in particular, and both were on display to the benefit of the Liberal Party last week. He wrote an honours thesis on the merits of emissions trading and a carbon tax in 1990, but says he first became fascinated with the phenomenon years earlier - in 1984, when he was just 18. While Nelson was trying to make the Coalition's support for an ETS conditional on the major emitters - the US, China and India - acting first, Hunt, along with Shadow Treasurer Malcolm Turnbull and Nelson's deputy, Julie Bishop, quickly came to the conclusion that the Opposition had to be "inside the tent'' on an ETS, otherwise it would risk irrelevancy.

Behind the scenes, Hunt worked tirelessly to convince his colleagues an ETS had become the new "belief'' test on climate change; that signing Kyoto was the old one. With the Coalition under John Howard having failed the Kyoto test, Hunt was not about to let it fail the new one. At a critical point in the Shadow Cabinet debate, he presented a detailed breakdown of public opinion polling that showed if the Coalition allowed Kevin Rudd to present them as climate change sceptics, voters would punish them cruelly.

Hunt told his colleagues 90 per cent of Australians believed climate change was real, while 75 per cent wanted immediate action to counter global warming and that 84 per cent believed climate change was already happening. Of that 84 per cent, 96 per cent believe it was man-made.

Australia, Hunt told the Shadow Cabinet, was a nation of climate-change believers. Hunt's concerns, though, were much more broad - and strategic - than simply chasing public opinion. What Hunt realised was that if the Coalition effectively opted out of the ETS debate by making any unilateral action conditional on the big emitters moving, they would, in effect, be deferring the development of any policy indefinitely. And that would have disqualified them from being part of the ETS debate - a disastrous outcome.

As it is, Hunt now thinks that the Opposition is perfectly placed to begin a GST-style campaign against the Labor scheme, attacking its implementation and its unintended consequences - most particularly, what he sees as the Government's disastrous decision to bring the road-transport system into the scheme after only the first year of the ETS's operation. Hunt intends pursuing this not as a core ETS issue, but as an effective tax on food.

With cost-of-living pressures showing no sign of abating, if Hunt's argument bites, it could mean real trouble for Rudd. Precisely because the Coalition is now inside the ETS tent, it will be able to argue that the Coalition model will allow for a more cautious and gradual approach when it comes to road transport. Nelson's "indefinite deferral'' model would not have allowed for the promotion of this alternative proposition.

At the same time, Hunt will embark on a concerted push to develop a "clean-energy revolution'' based on his judgment that the renewable energy area has been neglected in the Government's Green Paper. This judgment is buttressed by the battering that Peter Garrett's credentials have taken asa result of the Budget decision to means-test solar panel rebates. In the unlikely event Brendan Nelson survives as Liberal leader, he may well look back on last week and thank Greg Hunt for his efforts in saving him. From himself.

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Rudd's subtle Israel shift

A few months ago, when I was back in Israel, one of Tony Blair's advisers approached me. Blair, the former British prime minister, is now a special envoy to the Middle East on behalf of the so-called quartet of the US, Russia, the UN and the European Union. "Did you know," the adviser asked me, "that your Government has increased aid to the Palestinian Authority? This was seen as a big deal by the quartet - something John Howard would not have done and a sign, perhaps, of a different approach by Kevin Rudd on Israel."

A week before Christmas the parliamentary secretary for international development assistance Bob McMullan announced Australia had indeed doubled its 2008 aid package to the Palestinian territories to $45 million. A senior Australian diplomatic source told me the increase "succinctly reflected a subtle repositioning and a new approach" in the Middle East.

Earlier this year Downer's replacement, Stephen Smith, gave an interview in Washington in which he said Australia was committed to an "even-handed" approach on Middle East policy. Smith told Tony Walker of The Australian Financial Review Labor would adhere to a long-standing policy acknowledging Israel's right to exist and the rights of a Palestinian nation state. "That's an even-handed approach which Labor has had as its policy for a long period of time. It's a two-nation solution. That's even-handed," Smith said.

Walker, a veteran Middle East watcher, observed that Smith's position "contrasts with the previous government, which tilted Australia's Middle East policy towards Israel and made little pretence of adhering to an 'even-handed' approach". Perhaps he was right. On February 8, Michael Burd, in a letter to the Australian Jewish News, wrote: "It wasn't so long ago Jewish Labor supporters were arguing there was no difference between Liberal and Labor policy towards Israel, and Jews who attended private dinners with Kevin Rudd in Toorak and other private homes were led to believe Labor would continue to support Israel. "This letter writer will be watching for the next Arab/Muslim-backed UN anti-Israel resolution to see if Rudd stands by his commitment to the Jewish community."

Around this time Rudd seemed to allay some fears when he introduced a motion into Federal Parliament honouring the state of Israel, which turned 60 this year. One of his MPs, Julia Irwin - a long-time critic of Israel's conduct - boycotted the motion.

Australia, meanwhile, is watching Israel closely as its Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, prepares to stand down amid myriad corruption allegations. Despite his domestic problems, Olmert has done much to advance the peace process. Australia also watches carefully as Middle East tensions rise over Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons capable of striking the heart of the Jewish state. Senior figures in the Rudd Government will not, based on intelligence briefings, privately rule out a pre-emptive, unilateral strike against Iran by Israel.

There is no doubt that, while the Australia-Israel relationship remains close, there is significant new uncertainty about it. Rudd, who has yet to visit Israel as Prime Minister, does little by accident.

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Previous tough policy allows new relaxed detention rules, says former conservative immigration boss

Phil is right but the conservative legacy may not last for long once the new rules become widely known. The Australian Labor government is just mimicking the failed policies of the Brits

Former federal immigration minister Philip Ruddock says the former government's 'Pacific solution' is the reason why the current Government can afford to relax the rules on immigration detention.

The Government has announced major changes to immigration detention, making it a last resort only for those visa applicants who are deemed a risk to the community. The Government also says it will make the system more humane so most visa and asylum applicants will be able to live in the community while their claims are decided.

Mr Ruddock presided over the so-called 'Pacific solution', where hundreds of people were held in immigration detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island. But he says that policy has led to a very different situation now. "When you've got 300 people, I think about eight or nine, who are actually unauthorised border arrivals, it's very different to having thousands of people that you have to deal with," he said. "The processing demands are very different, the extent to which you can devote resources are very different.

Mr Ruddock says the current Government has its predecessor to thank for the very different circumstances. "We have no unauthorised arrivals in any significant number, and that's of course as a result of the policies of the previous government that managed to contain smuggling operations that were so unwelcome in relation to Australia's border protection," he said.

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