ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG portrays the handover of power in NSW as akin to giving away an old car.






O'Shane again

Pat O'Shane is an aggressive lady and a part-Aboriginal "affirmative action" appointee to the magistrates's bench, well known as soft on crime

The Director of Public Prosecutions is appealing a decision by the magistrate Pat O'Shane in which she dismissed a case after the offender had pleaded guilty, a court has been told. Ms O'Shane threw out the police case against Kim Soon Yeo at Ryde Local Court in January, even though Mr Yeo had pleaded guilty to negligent driving occasioning actual bodily harm. Mr Yeo admitted that the car he was driving hit a cyclist, Graham Lade, at an Eastwood intersection in August last year. He said, however, he had not seen the cyclist until "all of a sudden" he saw Mr Lade "fly up in the air". Mr Lade suffered multiple fractures in the accident including to his skull, collar bone and ribs. He and his bike were propelled at least five metres into the air.

The NSW Director of Public Prosecutions is appealing that decision, arguing that Ms O'Shane, who last month received a 12-month good behaviour bond for drink driving, erred in three areas of the law by dismissing the case. "In this particular case there was an admission and there was evidence clearly upon which that plea of guilt could be seen as a reasonable one," the barrister for the DPP, Ian Bourke, said.

Mr Bourke argued that Ms O'Shane was mistaken in her belief that the police facts about the incident showed no case for negligence. However, he said if she had believed that, she should have clearly directed Mr Yeo and his solicitor to apply to have the plea changed. Mr Bourke also said Ms O'Shane was wrong to have refused an adjournment so police could obtain further information on the case, describing it as a "denial of natural justice".

He asked Justice Peter Johnson to send the matter back to the local court and asked that it not appear before Ms O'Shane. Sally Orman-Hales, who is representing Ms O'Shane and Mr Yeo, told the court the magistrate was correct to have dismissed the case as she had given Mr Yeo and his solicitor "an invitation" to change the plea, but it had not been taken up. Justice Johnson reserved his decision.

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Third graders win mathematics awards



ARE you smarter than a third grader? Don't count on it. A national maths contest has proven Victoria has its share of baby brainiacs. Seven budding mathematicians rose to the top in this year's Educational Assessment Australia maths contest: Eddie Yao from Kew East Primary, Mingyi Wu from Tucker Rd Bentleigh Primary; Kelvin Sun from Parktone Primary; William Ruan from Serpell Primary; Laura Hung from Sunshine Christian School, Martin Huang from Glendal Primary and Morris Gu from Southwood Boys Grammar are Victoria's youngest whizzes.

Each will receive a medal for scoring 39 out of 40 on the written test. Kelvin Sun, 9, was shocked at the result. "I'm so surprised that I got that mark," he said. The New South Wales University's EAA program tests 1.7 million students a year across Australia and NZ.

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Notice something about the kids concerned? It's the usual Asian educational supremacy. And it's only because they work harder, right? So no white kids work hard? If you believe that you would believe anything. Asians are just BORN brighter at mathematics -- and lots else. If you can't cope with that, you've got a problem -- because it is reality. Australia is now about 10% Asian and is fortunate to have them






Governments know how to get people out of their cars

The Queensland Government Railways were always known for featherbedding (union mandated overemployment) and featherbedding breeds negligence. They think (generally rightly) that nothing they do will threaten their jobs

Had the passengers riding peak-hour train 1856 known what was going on in the driver's cabin, they probably would have thought twice about boarding the Cleveland service. As the normal load of schoolkids and workers knocking off early sped across Brisbane's eastern suburbs, none suspected the sleepy driver behind the controls considered two or three hours' sleep a decent kip. Just after 3.46pm on May 26, 2006, as the train departed Thorneside station, the driver's head dropped. "The driver has succumbed to the apparent effects of sleep deprivation and drifted into a level sleep in which the driver's eyes closed and head dropped for a short period," an internal Queensland Rail report stated.

The train was travelling at 73km/h. The driver, now oblivious to a looming red light, awoke too late and overshot the signal by 40m. An investigation found there was a risk of collision or derailment because another train was occupying the same section of track, 850m ahead. Yet the weary driver kept driving through the remaining five stations to Cleveland, although QR insisted that under its policy a guard would have moved into the cabin to keep him awake.

The case is one of several alarming examples of so-called Signals Passed at Danger, or missed red signals, given to The Courier-Mail by Queensland Rail after Transport Minister John Mickel ordered their release. Red signals are meant to stop trains risking collision or derailment if they enter already occupied sections of track. Mr Mickel's intervention followed a Freedom of Information battle for documents found within Queensland Transport. They were ruled to be exempt as they were created by QR, a government-owned corporation excluded from FOI laws.

Despite the minister's intervention, QR still went to extraordinary lengths to try to thwart attempts by his office to release the reports. QR's media unit even said it had done its own privacy test - on top of the one carried out by FOI officers - and claimed the anonymous drivers referred to could be identified due to the nature of the incidents. In the end, Mr Mickel said commuters deserved to know. "In line with the consistent view of the Premier, I believe openness and accountability leads to better public outcomes," Mr Mickel said.

FOI officers nevertheless appear to have blacked out more information than the basic personal details that could identify drivers. Still, the information eventually released painted a disturbing picture. In Gladstone last October, a tutor driver known for "sleeping and dozing" on the job might have fallen asleep and failed to monitor a trainee in a "safety critical" zone. The tutor, with only two hours' sleep after being called in late, moved behind a trainee as a freight train entered a tunnel. The trainee thought the tutor was watching but was actually looking for an electric jug to make some coffee.

"I've got a red here!" the trainee yelled as he passed a red light at 32km/h. He failed to stop for another 89m. Further details about the tutor's movements the previous day were censored, even though it appeared they were unlikely to include identifying facts.

QR insists it has several levels of protection to help prevent and deal with similar Signals Passed at Danger (SPAD) incidents, including alarms on Brisbane rail services which activate brakes if not acknowledged. Statistics showed the number of rail incidents had been on a downward trend for the past decade until a 46 per cent spike last financial year. "We need to reinforce that going through a red signal does not mean a collision is going to happen," a QR spokesman said.

However the drivers' union claimed the measures were inadequate, saying Brisbane was exposed as there were no Automatic Train Protection (ATP) systems like those used in other parts of the state. Australian Federated Union of Locomotive Employees state secretary Greg Smith blamed underfunding from QR for the lack of ATPs in Brisbane. "QR do talk safety but when safety involves an injection of money to address, safety suddenly seems to come second," he said.

The last fatal SPAD collision was the Trinder Park disaster in Brisbane in 1985, in which two people died and 30 others were injured, but other collisions have happened since. Many of the breaches detailed in the release involved trains overshooting red lights by only a few metres. However, some were more serious. Some involved overruns of several hundred metres and, in one freight train case at Hay Point near Mackay last year, more than 1km. The coal train driver blamed misleading "route cards" for the breach by 1.1km, putting it on a section of track occupied by another train.

Some breaches were blamed on basic lapses of attention, including admiring scenery instead of concentrating on the track ahead. Others were due to technical problems with brakes or drivers battling "greasy rails".

Worryingly, some of the antics outlined in the reports echoed recent cases such as the Bundaberg Tilt Train derailment in 2004, which was partly blamed on a co-driver making coffee when he should have been at the controls. On November 26, 2006, a Tilt Train overshot a red signal at Northgate by 50m after departing Roma St. "The basic cause was that the train crew were talking and this distracted them from maintaining observance of the signal," a report stated.

And on September 27 last year a freight train overshot a red signal by 20m at Dingo, near Emerald in cental Queensland, after a tutor driver failed to monitor his trainee. The tutor began restocking a fridge with drinks but noticed an unexpected surge in power. "Red! Red!" the tutor told the trainee as the brakes were applied. "Give it the lot!"

A few weeks later, a high-speed passenger train being driven by a trainee from Robina to Bowen Hills overshot a red signal at Helensvale by 95m. The supervising driver claimed he was distracted by paperwork and failed to notice the trainee, who had taken the train up to 138km/h, had misread a speedometer and failed to reduce speed.

On one night of the Ekka last year, a train driver ran a red signal after the light extinguished on his console near the Campbell St level crossing at Bowen Hills. "This meant the driver was unable to see the speedometer, the AWS sundial or the brake gauge," the report states. "The train driver did not hear the emergency broadcast."

But other breaches were unavoidable, including a peak-hour passenger train involved in a "near-miss" with a delivery van at the Nudgee Rd level crossing, near Doomben, last March. The driver blamed the sun in his eyes, causing him to fail to see the red signal and just miss the van as it cleared the tracks. A week later, another driver was distracted by QR staff cleaning graffiti in a "hazardous manner". The train broke the red by 25m, stopping 200m from another at Eagle Junction. "(It was a) serious incident which could have caused significant property damage, serious injury or death," the report states.

And just after 8pm on November 5 last year, a service exited Brunswick St for the final stop at Bowen Hills. Feeling weary, the driver lost concentration, missed two warning signals and overshot a red by 10m. He was too busy thinking about his dinner break.

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Melbourne public hospital putting women's lives at risk

Victoria's Opposition says internal documents from the new Royal Women's Hospital show lives are being put at risk. Opposition health spokeswoman Helen Shardey has obtained a copy of the hospital's latest operational plan. She says it shows delays in accessing operating rooms and a badly-run outpatient service. She says the $250 million hospital is also suffering from a shortage of nurses.

"What these documents indicate is that the hospital is in trouble. They don't have enough staff, they are being poorly resourced and they will have to cap the number of babies they can deliver," she said. "From this report it appears that the outpatient area is not large enough to accommodate the number of patients that needs to be seen, and this report indicates the architects have been called back to redesign the outpatient area."

The Royal Women's Hospital is playing down possible risks to women and their babies at the new facility. Hospital spokeswoman Mandy Frostick says women should not be concerned about treatment being provided. "We have a yearly risk assessment process, which is a very sophisticated process at the Women's, which looks at any potential risk that could occur in any situation," she said. "And what is most important in identifying any possible risk that could occur is that we also put in place mitigation plans to prevent those risks from occurring. "There are always risks at any major hospital, We are one of three specialist maternity hospitals and we deal with very complex high-risk pregnancies. "And by that very nature we are constantly dealing with risk. We are very experienced in dealing with risk."

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