People must not be told that a child molester is living next door??

This is getting as mad as Britain

Your neighbour is a convicted child molester. That's the message that landed Debbe McEwan in court. The 46-year-old mum, from Canley Vale in NSW, was yesterday fined $527, ordered to undergo counselling and placed on a good-behaviour bond for intimidating child molester Geoff Reynolds. "I still can't see that I did anything wrong," she said outside Campbelltown Local Court yesterday. "They say he's the victim but what about the child he molested?"

Ms McEwan told the court she believed Mr Reynolds still posed a risk. "I couldn't have lived with myself if he'd done something to another child," Ms McEwan said yesterday. "Even if he does something now I still haven't done enough to stop him."

She was charged with use intimidation/violence to unlawfully influence a person after she sent letters to at least three houses surrounding Reynolds' rented Macquarie Fields home in July. The letters read in part: "Public warning, 1 x convicted child molester x two times @ Macquarie Fields NSW. Watch your children, daughters, sisters, nieces & friends."

Reynolds was sentenced in the late 1990s to 12 months in jail for molesting a then nine-year-old girl. In police facts tendered to court, Mr Reynolds said since becoming aware of the letters he had "become fearful of local residents seeking retribution against him for his past". He had "become guarded with his movements and kept his time in the front yard to a minimum".

Magistrate Glenn Bartley said Ms McEwan and others should understand it was unacceptable to take the law into their own hands. "You don't seem to understand why this is a crime - you can't take the law into your own hands," he said. "He went to prison and there are sex offender registers ... it's not up to you to take matters into your own hands."

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Perverted doctor charged over mutilation of women

This should have been done many years ago -- when the complaints first began. Yet another regulatory failure

A FORMER New South Wales doctor has been charged in relation to alleged sexual assaults and genital mutilations of patients who were undergoing surgery. Graeme Reeves, 58, who was banned from practising obstetrics by the Medical Board in 1997, has been charged with 17 offences against 10 women, Detective Superintendent John Kerlatec said.

Mr Reeves was arrested in the Sydney suburb of Baulkham Hills this morning after extensive investigations into more than 113 allegations of patient misconduct between 2001 and 2003 at Baulkham Hills and at Bega on the state's south coast. The Daily Telegraph was on the scene when Mr Reeves was brought in to a local police station at about 6.45am (AEST) in the back of an unmarked police car.

"It's been a lengthy investigation due to the fact there have been numerous people we've had to speak to including in excess of 100 (alleged) victims and witnesses, medical professionals, plus also examine numerous medical records," Supt Kerlatec said earlier on Macquarie Radio. "We also had to engage our own medical expert to give us advice on the difference between malpractice and what we consider to be criminal action. "This is the first investigation of this size and nature conducted by the NSW Police force and officers are treating the matter very seriously," the Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying.

Police from Strike Force Tarella raided a storage unit allegedly belonging to Mr Reeves last week at Gladesville in Sydney's northwest, where officers allegedly located a raft of medical documents. Mr Reeves is expected to face court today, but police said the probe was continuing. "Today's arrest marks the first phase in this lengthy and complex investigation and inquiries are ongoing," Supt Kerlatec said.

He praised the courage of the former patients of Mr Reeves who had come forward with their allegations. "We were extremely encouraged throughout this whole matter by the strength displayed by these women," he said. "It's been a very traumatic experience for them and it's taken a great deal of courage for them to come forward."

Mr Reeves' appointment by the Southern Area Health Service in 2002 has been examined by Peter Garling SC as part of his wider investigation into the NSW public hospital system. He found that when Mr Reeves applied in 2002 there were "deficiencies" in the system that meant authorities failed to detect he had been banned from practising obstetrics. "I find that Dr Reeves' intentional and calculated dishonesty was the main reason he was recruited to a position he was legally unable to fill," Mr Garling wrote in his report.

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Government medicine at work

On a day the State Government promised to fast-track compensation for as many of 100 of Graeme Reeves' alleged victims one woman tells her story in the hope of creating a more accountable health system

MY DAUGHTER Sarah was delivered by Graeme Reeves at Hornsby Hospital in 1995 - her heart rate was falling, she was in foetal distress and he didn't care. The nurses kept coming back to me saying he wouldn't come in, he wanted them to fax through a copy of the foetal heart monitoring strip because he didn't believe them. I had visited him earlier that day and had an ultrasound and everything was OK, I went into labour that night and the nurses rang him at home and he said 'You couldn't be in labour, you're only 34 weeks'. He got me mixed up with another woman, I was 38.5 weeks.

By the time he arrived and delivered her, Sarah was dead. She was revived, it took some time before she took her first breath and I never really saw him again after that. Sarah has cerebral palsy. It is quadriplegic spasticity which means it affects all four limbs. She's blind, she has an intellectual disability and epilepsy, she is in a wheelchair, she has no communication and is reliant on me for everything. The midwives gave me my paperwork when I left the hospital and said 'you might need this one day'. It was that comment that kept in my head. At the time I was sleep deprived and Sarah was fighting to survive but they knew. That is the sad part. I know nurses complained, a lot of nurses complained but what happens to nurses who complain? They get crucified.

I don't work any more, Sarah is 24/7 care, I have equipment costs, medication costs, I have to lift her in and out of our car because I can't afford to have a wheelchair conversion done, which is about $25,000. We're in hospital at least once every year for several weeks a year. She has had six hip operations, she had more than 100 per cent scoliosis of the spine.

But as much as our family has suffered, it is Sarah who paid the ultimate price, it is her life. She has been deprived of the life she should have had and, while we're doing everything to give her the best life possible, it is nothing compared to what she should have had. She would have been one of these kids that is always running. Sarah is beautiful and we love her to death but the Government was supposed to be protecting us from people like Graeme Reeves. There is no system to provide that protection. Sarah loves life, she is a fighter, she loves music and people. Going out in the car, going for coffee and shopping are some of her favourite things, she is such a girl.

I wrote to the Health Care Complaints Commission in 1997. They wrote back to me that the public interest had been served, Graeme Reeves was no longer practising as an obstetrician and his gynaecological business was under supervision. I was happy no one else could be injured by this man but I still protested to have my individual case investigated. I did the right thing, I put in a complaint with the HCCC. That was the system and the system didn't work, it doesn't protect anyone. When it came out in the media in February, that's when I learnt they hadn't done what they had said, he had been practicing that whole time and no one had been supervising him. I felt sick.

We took action against Hornsby Hospital and Graeme Reeves and that's when we found out Reeves was theoretically uninsured and bankrupt. I had a statement of claim against Hornsby Hospital. It was at a time when the full history of Dr Reeves wasn't known and we had to withdraw from our action in 2003. I had to sign a consent judgment to release us with no costs, which means I could not make another claim. With all this new information and the fact there were 35 complaints received at Hornsby Hospital between 1986 and 1997, I wanted to apply to make another claim with the Government's insurance company. They have rejected us.

My lawyer wrote to Hornsby Hospital lawyers in July asking for their consent for the judgment in favour of the hospital from 2003 to be set aside. It was the only way I could make another claim and it was met with outright refusal.

Former health minister Reba Meagher said in February: "I want to assure the community the NSW Health system will take responsibility for any failings of public hospitals relating to Dr Reeves' practice." The Government has not fulfilled its duty to protect Sarah and cover her needs. It is not interested in my daughter. I am happy charges have been brought against Graeme Reeves for allegedly assaulting women but it should never have got to this point.

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Why we should teach the Bible in all our schools

Fewer and fewer people know the Bible, even among those with religious commitment. The latest National Church Life Survey of 500,000 people across 22 denominations, reported in yesterday's Herald, shows a whopping 59 per cent of respondents read the Bible only occasionally, rarely or never at all. But why would you bother reading it if you didn't have some belief the words of the good Book were true? What could motivate you to wade your way through those strange, cigarette-paper pages?

To my mind, there are still plenty of reasons to bother with the Bible. But at least one is indisputable, and it reveals a gaping hole in the Australian educational experience. You need to know the Bible in order to understand the history, literature and arts of Western culture. In fact, it is an educational and cultural tragedy that the Bible has quietly disappeared from the schooling experience of many Australians.

In the US, a major project to restore biblical literacy is under way, called the Bible Literacy Project. It is a joint venture of Jewish and Christian educators intended to "encourage and facilitate the academic study of the Bible in public schools". In a country where religion and public education mix like oil and water, it is no mean feat they have got their textbook, The Bible And Its Influence, into the curriculum in 40 states, and counting.

The project had its own statistical grounding. A Gallup Poll for the project found only 37 per cent of American high school students could recognise any of Jesus' words from the Sermon on the Mount (Australia would have to be worse). And yet 98 per cent of English teachers surveyed agreed knowing the Bible delivered a distinct academic advantage in the study of English literature.

I know it firsthand. I was the only one in my first year tutorial who understood what the title of John Bunyan's book, Grace Abounding To The Chief Of Sinners was about. (You need to be familiar with the first letter to Timothy, chapter one, verse 16, to get it.) And I laughed alone at the joke in Waiting For Godot when one of the tramps says, "One of the thieves was saved. It's a reasonable percentage." (See Jesus' crucifixion in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 23.) Two ticks to the boy with the Sunday school upbringing.

We need something similar to the Bible Literacy Project, something that enables the teaching of the Bible in the English, art, music and history classrooms. An Australian version of the project would see discussion of Les Murray, Tim Winton and John Coburn in place of Emerson, Melville and Abraham Lincoln. But the backbone is there in the American work: a textbook that respects the content and structure of the Bible, Hebrew and Christian, and then seeks to communicate to students its vast significance for understanding the Western tradition, and more.

There's no need to be sidetracked by six-day creationism, or Zionism, or the subtleties of denominational differences. This is about teaching the Bible in the same way that you teach scales for learning a musical instrument, or the colour palette for painting. It's necessary to the whole task of understanding what is going on in our culture, literature, and history.

I have a vested interest in biblical literacy; after all, I'm a Christian and I think there's something to the big, unfolding story it tells. But I'm also a literary academic, and I can't bear the biblical ignorance students display. Regardless of whether you find something alive and kicking in the Scriptures, there is a strong argument it should be somewhere near the foundation of Australian education.

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Dispelling Delusions: Human-caused climate change and carbon "pollution" mythology

By Dr G LeBlanc Smith, PhD, AIG, AAPG

As a retired CSIRO Principal Research Scientist (geosciences - sedimentology), I make this observation and comment on Minister Wong's statement, (and Professor Garnaut's commentary): "Climate change threatens . icons like the Great Barrier Reef, the Kakadu wetlands and the multi billion dollar tourism industries they support."

Knowing and understanding the past is a vital key to the future, and earth scientists can present much of this information in a context that can assist in exposing the truth and misrepresentations of the current "Climate Change" debate. It is fact that the vast bulk of the Great Barrier Reef area was exposed land and above sea level, prior to 10,000 years ago, when sea levels were over 70m lower than present. There was no great coral reef there until recently, and Kakadu was probably not a swampy wetland then either.

I suggest that statements from Ms Wong and Professor Garnaut should be challenged for veracity by all responsible Government advisors and the CSIRO at the very least, and by any observant scientist to test their logic against evidence. The evidence can be seen from the history of sea level variations mapped as a time-curve derived from joining dots of observed and dated sea levels that track the natural melt-out of the last glaciation ice sheets.

Sea level has risen about 130m in the 10,000 years between 17,000 and 7,000 years ago; with a maximum observed level ~8m above present sea level in marine deposits dated ~ 6000 years old in perched Antarctic lakes. It has subsequently fallen in steps as the planet has cooled to our present level. This is in the published science literature and much can be readily "Googled".

A useful summary sea level vs time graphic can be seen in Robert A. Rohde's artwork (see below) at the following internet address: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png#file. This is largely based on the established 1998 science paper by Fleming (and others) that closely mapped sea level vs time from many sites across the planet. This paper is viewable at the following URL: http://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/~paulj/publications/EPSL1998.pdf Page 1 of 4

The detailed bathymetry levels for the GBR areas can be seen in the many depth maps crafted by Adam Lewis (see below) and in the science paper at: http://www.reef.crc.org.au/publications/techreport/pdf/33 - Adam Lewis.zip

By contrasting the sea levels over time with the land surface elevations it is an obvious inference that the bulk of the GBR AREA would not have supported coral growth as it was above sea level until recently, and has drowned. Any talk of presently located GBR as hundred of millions of years old is incorrect and not based on available science.

The Wong statement should probably more correctly reflect that recent natural climate change did indeed threaten that environment; it drowned the GBR AREA, which was "polluted" by sea water and accompanied by local outbreaks of coral growth, that are now seen as beneficial to our country. On the positive side: a continual current of coral spawn flows down our coasts and will repopulate any suitable growth substrate within a year. This is self evident to any diver who has looked at the thumb-nail sized corals growing on sea grass stems. This holds true also for with the Leeuwin Current on the west coast of Australia.

The massive sea level rise at the termination of the last glaciation would likely also have affected the Kakadu environment, and it may well not have been swamp then, either. Consider the significant difference between ancient Bradshaw rock paintings, dated at around 17,000 years old, and the recent rock art, and the apparent lack of fish and crocodiles in the old artworks. Worth a further thought I would think, to get the true history for these areas in context, so that objective discussion and decisions based of real science can be derived.

More solid facts from the past: It is established fact that the ice core data from both Greenland and Antarctica show information that carbon dioxide variation lags behind temperature variation, throughout the nearly half a million year record contained in the ice cores. I have graphed the last deglaciation to present time (below), from publicly available data of high veracity, which is acknowledged in the graphic. Note the ~1000 year lag of CO2 variation changes behind temperature changes, which are highlighted by the black arrows targeting significant change points on the orange (CO2) and purple (Temp) curves of the EDC ice core. This lagging fact refutes the flawed contention that carbon dioxide is the driver of temperature change. The oceans de-gas and re-gas with CO2 as the global temperatures respectively warm and cool.

The inter-hemisphere variations are striking. The northern hemisphere (green curve) shows massive temperature spikes that range over 22C degrees, which we have not experienced in the southern hemisphere records (purple and blue curves) that reflect moderation with variations under 10C degrees across the deglaciation event. This argues well for Australia, which would appear to be largely exempt from these erratic fluctuations and the extremes of variation as seen in the Greenland records. This should be factored into our planning.

There is no atmospheric hot-spot from "greenhouse CO2" despite over 20 years of serious looking for it (read Dr Evans and Dr Spencer's recent media and US Senate evidence statements). Occam's razor would point to the sun as the driver of climate change of significance. Human generated carbon dioxide is arguably around 3% of the total carbon dioxide budget, and in the light of the above, we are effectively irrelevant to the natural climate change continuum.

Natural climate change has and will continue to pose challenges and threats to human kind. Some of these we can manage for, others we will have to adapt to. My current view is that the suggestion that human-caused carbon dioxide is driving these (natural) changes is built on bad science at best, and any carbon tax will be a fraud at worst.

Much of this above information was submitted into the Garnaut Review, and presented to the Parliamentary Ministers and parties (by me), yet has apparently been ignored.

I contend that those professional scientists and advisors that are knowingly complicit in climate science fraud and all that is derived from it, will continue to be exposed by the science itself.

I wonder if class action legal challenges will flow from any implementation of carbon tax in the future - once the foundations on which it is being built are exposed for what they are? I am surprised that the ACCC has not pulled the current "carbon pollution" advert off TV for lack of truth, and probable deceptions.

I remain open to be persuaded by evidence. In summary, I have yet to see credible proof of carbon dioxide driving climate change, let alone man-made CO2 driving it. The atmospheric hot-spot is missing and the ice core data refute this. When will we collectively awake from this deceptive delusion?

To end on a positive note - Try this for a solution to a non-problem: It is also possible to re-cycle carbon dioxide into food (protein) and fuel (microbial oil) on a sustainable basis. A method I have suggested when representing CSIRO at the 2003 Queensland Science in Parliament Day forum, is to pipe concentrated carbon dioxide generated from oxygen-fired base-load coal fired power stations into farms of solar-bio converters seeded with nutrients, algae, bacteria and yeasts. The pointers to this technology have been around since the 1980s (University Toronto). Our politicians and CSIRO are aware of this.

Using this approach it could be possible to engineer and sustainably generate sufficient microbial oil to supply much of Australian needs. If laboratory production rates (as recollected) are achieved it may be possible to do this with as under 5000 hectares of solar-bio-digesters - to generate 80Mbbl oil per year. Why do our collective government parties continue to ignore this? This sustained inaction has provided us with the opportunity to buy this technology back from overseas - see Sapphire Energy - The Product at http://www.sapphireenergy.com/product .

Key questions remain - What is the real agenda behind this pending carbon tax and is it a fraud? There are a lot of positives - none of which require a carbon tax.

Source (See the original for graphics)