NSW police goons again

A woman who was shot by police in a unit block is seeking money and an apology from those she thought had been sent to protect her. Susie Bandera, 48, claims she was initially relieved when she saw officers had been called out to the North Parramatta address where a man was allegedly assaulting her in the early hours of December 21. "I believe he would have killed me," she said. "I was in the foetal position where he was eye-gouging me and ear-gouging me. Then I saw the police torches coming and I thought, 'Oh good, I'm safe.' "

Instead, the mother of two has a bullet wound to the chest and another police bullet lodged in her spine after it passed through her liver. Doctors have told Ms Bandera it might be too dangerous to remove the bullet. "My right leg is gone, I can't feel it," she said. "How [the bullet] missed my vital organs, I don't know."

Friends said Ms Bandera was "upset and angry" at police and would be seeking compensation and "probably an apology" from the officers involved.

Police alleged Ms Bandera threatened officers with a knife and refused to surrender the weapon after they arrived at the Iron Street units after neighbours reported a disturbance. When Ms Bandera lunged at police, they alleged, a junior female officer fired two shots. Ms Bandera claims she wasn't armed with a knife but a cocktail fork she had taken as protection as she walked an elderly, vision-impaired neighbour home after watching carols on television. On her way back, Ms Bandera had encountered a 23-year-old champion kick boxer arguing on a public phone. She said he demanded to know what she was looking at. He said he followed her to ask her why she had poked him with a fork.

Anne McCabe, 73, a resident who had just returned home from a Christmas party, said she heard a commotion on the drive leading to the units. She went out to her balcony and claims that she saw the man kicking Ms Bandera in the stomach and groin before Ms Bandera sought refuge in her foyer. "He was kicking the hell out of her," she said. "Neighbours were yelling at him to stop. He was choking, strangling her and I am standing over them yelling and yelling."

The kick boxer has denied he had assaulted Ms Bandera and has said in the media he was trying to subdue her and that he had her under control when police arrived and sprayed them both with capsicum spray.

"When I saw the police I ran towards them for help, to help me," Ms Bandera said. "And as I ran towards them she shot me, point blank." Ms Bandera said she first thought she had been hit by a stun gun but realised she had been shot when she saw the bullet casing next to her on the ground. "I thought he'd shot me. I didn't think it was the coppers," she said. Under observation in Westmead Hospital, Ms Bandera said she had been told her attacker had since gone to Queensland without charge, while she has been depicted as a "knife-wielding maniac" by police. "They didn't even get a DNA sample from him, they got one from me," she said.

A police spokesman said no comment would be made until the critical incident team finished its investigations into the shooting. But for Mrs McCabe, who said she was the prime witness and her unit the crime scene, the case was simple. In her view, when the police officer opened fire in her tiny foyer - with a bullet ricocheting into her unit to miss her by inches - she shot the wrong person. "A woman shouted out and I could hear her shouting out, 'You shot the bloody victim,"' she said. "And that's in my formal statement. The policewoman obviously shot in panic, she shot the wrong person."

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Businesses reap carbon bonanza

NSW businesses are reaping a bonanza from a new greenhouse fund, receiving more than five times the amount in subsidies from the State Government than they would from the Commonwealth, the NSW Opposition says. Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell said the inaugural report of the NSW Climate Change Fund revealed companies and government agencies had received $27 million to reduce their carbon footprint. But the report also confirmed that greenhouse gas emissions had only come down by 127,000 tonnes, meaning the Rees Government was paying emitters $214 a tonne. As part of its new emissions trading scheme, the Rudd Government has capped the cost of greenhouse gases at $40 a tonne for the next five years.

"The Rees Government is subsidising the business sector at a rate of fivefold that of Canberra," Mr O'Farrell said. "Here in NSW, the Government has clearly lost control of this program." Mr O'Farrell calculated the state had spent $27 million to reduce emissions by less than 0.1 per cent. He argued the Government could have achieved the same reduction by buying carbon offsets for about $28 a tonne from commercial websites, saving $23.5 million.

But yesterday, acting Premier Carmel Tebbutt said that suggestion showed Mr O'Farrell had no idea how to achieve emission reductions. "We are transforming the NSW economy to prepare business and the community for a carbon-constrained future. Some early costs are one-off and substantial, and these are reflected in the Government's report."

The report found the major sources of money for the fund were annual contributions from publicly owned water and power suppliers, such as Energy Australia, Integral Energy and Sydney Water. But Sydney Water also received about $3.7 million from the fund to support a water recycling project.

Major property developers and fund and portfolio managers also received public funding, including more than $1.5 million for projects run by EP&T, a company chaired by the former Sydney Olympics chief Sandy Hollway.

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Reprieve for "old" maths in NSW

The "old" syllabus is why NSW students learn more than kids in other States

The NSW Government will delay introduction of a long-awaited new syllabus for Higher School Certificate mathematics courses to avoid confusing schools with further changes when a national curriculum is introduced. The new courses were to be taught to year 11 students from 2010. It is about 30 years since the senior maths curriculum has been reviewed.

The Minister for Education, Verity Firth, has asked the Board of Studies to delay the new documents to avoid complicating the national curriculum agenda. "In light of the current work on the national curriculum, the minister has asked the Board of Studies to complete initial work on the senior maths syllabus but to delay implementation while monitoring the progress of the national curriculum," a spokeswoman said. "This is to avoid confusion for students, teachers and parents."

The NSW Board of Studies said it would meet on February 17 to discuss the status of the new HSC maths courses in the context of a national curriculum.

Representatives of the school-resources publishing industry contacted The Sun-Herald about the delay. A maths editor said book sellers who relied on income from the sale of syllabus documents were concerned.

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