Vengeful regulator costs taxpayers $55 million

The TGA does not like alternative medicines generally and they were particularly cheesed with this guy because they had lost previous legal battles with him. So they used faults in a few of his products as an excuse to shut down his entire business -- even though there was no evidence of problems with over 200 other products. The fact that they had been too lazy to do any inspections in response to earlier complaints would also have counted against the TGA. The big damages payout is clear evidence that the TGA is a typical bureaucracy: At once lazy and irresponsible in the use of its powers. Since they control all access to drugs in Australia, new and less capricious management for them would seem urgent

The former chief executive of Pan Pharmaceuticals will get $55 million in compensation from the Commonwealth government, after the Federal Court found a government agency had been negligent. Jim Selim was the chief executive of Pan Pharmaceuticals, which went into liquidation in 2005, owing some $180 million after faulty batches of its travel sickness remedy Travacalm resulted in at least 87 adverse reactions and 19 hospitalisations. Symptoms included psychotic episodes, hallucinations and blackouts.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) suspended Pan's licence and ordered the immediate withdrawal of 219 of its products. After Pan pleaded guilty to 24 charges relating to defective medication, Mr Selim launched legal action, claiming the TGA had pursued a vendetta against him and Pan.

Today, Justice Arthur Emmett congratulated legal counsel for reaching a settlement in a case he said could have continued for several more weeks. "I see no reason why the court shouldn't act in accordance with the wishes of the parties,'' Judge Emmett said. He made an order confirming the settlement, which will see $50 million compensation paid by the Commonwealth to Mr Selim and an extra $5 million for legal costs, to be paid within 28 days.

Outside the court, Mr Selim said he was thankful for the result but he was still waiting for a public apology from the TGA for its actions, which he said had come at great personal cost to himself.

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A hugely corrupt government railway

The NSW railways have long been notorious -- in part because aggressive unionists have resisted reforms

A welding manager who defrauded RailCorp of $4.28 million and a contracts officer who helped herself to $650,000 are among eight people recommended for prosecution as the Independent Commission Against Corruption begins to release findings from one of the biggest investigations in its history. The corruption watchdog has recommended criminal charges against three former RailCorp staff and three rail contractors. Two accomplices face perjury charges. They face up to seven years in jail. By the time the nine-week hearing ended in May, $19 million in "work improperly allocated to contractors" had been identified, as well as $3 million in kickbacks to RailCorp staff.

Corruption was so widespread at the troubled rail network that the inquiry was forced to draw to a close despite a torrent of allegations about other scams. So many employees and contractors appeared before the hearings that ICAC has taken the unusual step of staggering the release of its findings over several months. The commissioner, Jerrold Cripps, QC, has withheld the core corruption prevention recommendations until all the findings are made public. "The same corruption issues have arisen in several previous ICAC investigations into RailCorp," the ICAC reports say. "To deal with these serious issues, the final report in this series will canvass all of the corruption prevention issues raised during the various segments of the current investigation."

Yesterday's reports focused on scams set up by the former contracts relationship officer, Renea Hughes, and the head of welding in the "metropolitan south" area of the network, Allan Michael Blackstock. Hughes manipulated the computerised contracting system to funnel work to Kuipers Excavation, run by William and Kim Kuipers, against whom ICAC has also made corrupt findings. Of the $650,000 that Hughes scammed from her former employer, she pocketed $366,000. On top of this, she submitted $115,137 in false wage claims that were paid in full by RailCorp, and most of this money, she told the inquiry last year, was spent on poker machines. The Kuipers received $123,109 as part of the scam which relied on false and padded invoices that Hughes authorised.

The Herald revealed last year that RailCorp management had been specifically warned about Hughes in a January 2004 internal corruption report for manipulating the invoice system in a separate scam involving a tree-lopping company. But she was never disciplined. Instead she retained a promotion she was given midway through the internal inquiry, and went on to defraud RailCorp of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Blackstock and his accountant, Youssef "Joe" Madrajat, a Justice of the Peace, were found to have set up a welding company, Precision Wirefeed Welding, specifically to take advantage of Blackstock's capacity to authorise welding contracts. They used second mobile phones, registered in false names, and hid assets and company titles under the names of relatives to avoid detection over several years. Blackstock received more than $1.3 million and Madrajat more than $1.1 million during the life of their covert deal. Blackstock was so awash with cash that he paid down his mortgages and bought two investment properties. He paid for furniture, a Toyota Landcruiser and even a $32,000 fibreglass boat with cash. "There remains a substantial amount of cash unaccounted for, which was apparently spent on shopping, restaurants, holidays and gambling," the ICAC reports say.

Blackstock also covered up two serious rail safety breaches. One involved a train narrowly missing one of the Precision track workers, and the use of high-voltage electrical equipment on live tracks that were not properly certified for safe use.

The inquiry was the seventh corruption probe into the NSW railways since 1992.

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Some Australian universities highly rated

I have a large and ornate document issued to me by the University of Sydney

Australia now has three universities in the top 100 as measured by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, with the University of Sydney joining the Australian National University and the University of Melbourne. However, the number of Australian universities in the top 500 dropped from 17 to 15.

ANU dropped slightly, from 57 to 59, in the world university rankings, while Melbourne continued its relentless climb, jumping six places to 73 in the otherwise fairly stable top 100. Sydney University leapt into the top 100 for the first time, at 97. Vice-chancellor Michael Spence said it was "very pleasing" that three Australian universities were ranked in the Jiao Tong top 100. "It is an indication of the strength and quality of Australian higher education that we perform so well in world class competition," he said.

Down the ranks, which were not specified outside the top 100, the University of Adelaide dropped from the second to the third 100, while James Cook, Tasmania and Wollongong universities moved up from the fifth 100 to the fourth 100, according to an analysis by the country's leading commentator on Jiao Tong, Melbourne University professor of higher education Simon Marginson. The University of New England and Murdoch University fell just below the cut-off line for the last 100 this year, while Griffith University also fell not far below the cut-off line.

While criticism of the Jiao Tong methodology is common, it attracts attention and cachet simply because it meets the need for a global performance measure. The US retained its stranglehold on the rankings, with four of the top five universities: Harvard, Stanford, the University of California at Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are first, second, third and fifth respectively. Britain's University of Cambridge was in fourth place.

According to Professor Marginson, Jiao Tong placements increasingly are seen as an important measure of a nation's economic health and competitiveness. He told the HES that while he would like to see an Australian university in the top 50, having three in the top 100 - and six in the top 200 - compared well with European countries of similar population and wealth, such as The Netherlands. However, Australia was well behind Britain and our top universities lagged behind those of European countries such as Switzerland, whose best was at equal 24, France (42), Denmark (45), The Netherlands (47), Sweden (51) and Germany (equal 55).

Australia also was significantly behind Canada, whose best universities - the University of Toronto at equal 24 and the University of British Columbia at 35 - were stronger. The most striking improvement was shown by China: the number of Chinese universities in the top 500 increased from 25 to 30 last year.

"In (the) future we can expect to see Chinese universities bulking larger in the top 200 and then the top 100, as the hyper-investments in (research and development) of the past 10 years begin to bear fruit in stellar research performance," Professor Marginson said. On the present trajectory, China was on course to become the world's second largest knowledge economy.

In contrast, Australian universities operated in what Professor Marginson described as a hyper-scarce funding environment, where the top institutions sustained research performance by squeezing teaching resources and other facilities, which was a highly undesirable trade-off. "Full funding of research, currently under discussion, is very important because it means research no longer has to be subsidised from resources generated by local and international students," he said.

Professor Marginson noted that in the US, Canada and Britain, full funding of research sustained significantly stronger performance. The US comfortably retained its position as the country with the largest number of universities in the top 500, although the total fell from 166 to 159, according to analysis by Melbourne University's Centre for the Study of Higher Education. Next came Britain, with 42 universities in the top 500, followed by Germany with 40 (down from 41), Japan 31 (down from 33) and China 30 (up from 25).

The Australian Technology Network recently proposed that the performance of Australian universities in world rankings should be a part of formal performance benchmarks.

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More global cooling: Abnormally cold winter in Southern Queensland

It's not your imagination. This is shaping up to be Brisbane's coldest winter in years with minimum temperatures about four degrees below average. So far this August Brisbane has averaged 7.4 degrees in the morning compared with 11.4 degrees at the same time last year. Bureau of Meteorology senior forecast Vikash Prasad said the long term average for August was about 10 degrees. "We're certainly seeing some cooler temperatures associated with the dry south-westerly airstream," Mr Prasad said.

This morning was no different with the mercury sinking to 6.5 degrees in the City and just 2.8 at the Airport. But farther west it was much colder with Amberley reaching a freezing -2.1 degrees, Oakey -3.6, Warwick -4.5 and Applethorpe a bone rattling -5 degrees.

Mr Prasad said the clearing of yesterday's cloud cover contributed to the colder morning. "There's still a bit of high cloud about but with the cloud clearing forward we'll probably see similar temperatures tomorrow as well," he said. Although the cold snap was expected to continue across inland parts, coastal areas should see slightly warmer minimums from next Monday or Tuesday as the winds changed from south-westerly to south-easterly. "That means there's more onshore flow and it should increase the moisture in the air a little bit," said Mr Prasad.

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