Prime Minister Kevin Rudd rejects US plea on Guantanamo prisoners

Onya Kev! Why should Australia do what is ultimately the bidding of the American Left? They are the ones who have been ceaselessly agitating for Guantanamo closure

Kevin Rudd knocked back a request from George W. Bush for Australia to accept former Guantanamo Bay prisoners for resettlement. The Government yesterday revealed the Bush Administration had asked early last year if Australia could resettle a small group of detainees. Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the Government rejected the request. She said the US had made a fresh request last month but the Government would probably say no again.

"Australia, as an ally of the US, is examining this second request," she said. "Notwithstanding that it is unlikely Australia would accept these detainees, given the fact that the Bush Administration has formally approached Australia with this request, the request demands proper consideration."

Ms Gillard stressed the request was from the Bush White House, not from President-Elect Barack Obama, who will be sworn in on January 20. Mr Obama has promised to close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre and it is possible he could make another request to Australia to accept former detainees. About 250 prisoners are being held by the US at the Cuban military base. The Bush Administration wants to release about 60 detainees who will not be charged with criminal offences. But the prisoners cannot be returned to their home countries because of fears they could be killed. Britain is expected to accept some former detainees and is pushing its European allies to do the same.

Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull said Australia should not accept any former Guantanamo Bay detainees. "It is plainly completely unacceptable to have inmates from Guantanamo Bay being admitted in to Australia as migrants," he said. "If the Americans believe some of these inmates are suitable to be admitted into the Australian community then we have to ask why they do not regard them as being suitable to be admitted into the American community."

Australian Greens spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young said the Bush Administration should house them in the US. "This is the US's mess and they should really clean it up," she said. Australian Lawyers for Human Rights president Susan Harris-Rimmer said the former prisoners would be at risk of being made targets by vigilantes if they were resettled in the US. "I think it's probably wise not sending them to the US," she said. "They could become targets for all kinds of things." She said detainees released in Australia could be monitored by security agencies.

Source





Federal government blocks new nursing home provision in NSW and elsewhere

There are already lots of frail elderly taking up hugely expensive public hospital beds because they have nowhere else to go and the knowall socialists in Canberra are trying to make that problem worse??? Nathan Rees and the other Premiers affected should be making Rudd's ears red until he backs down on the stupid regulations dreamed up by his subordinates

The state's main aged-care home operators have boycotted the Federal Government's annual offer of nursing home bed licences, leading some to predict a significant shortage of places in the near future. "In a few years' time we could be back to the bad old days when people were on huge waiting lists for months," said Rod Young, chief executive officer of the Aged Care Association Australia. The operators, including the non-profit and church agencies, say it is uneconomic to build new nursing homes - now known as high-care facilities - under the Federal Government's funding arrangements that prohibit nursing home bonds.

The Government offered licences for 7663 new residential aged-care places across Australia, 2100 of them in NSW; applications closed last month. The number of licences offered each year is based on a strict formula of predicted need. The state's biggest non-profit operator, UnitingCare Ageing, applied for none of the new bed licences; nor did the other big providers, Catholic Healthcare, Illawarra Retirement Trust and Anglican Retirement Villages. Baptist Community Services applied for only a few licences in order to finish a project.

The managing director of Catholic Healthcare, Chris Rigby, said this would prove a "watershed year" in aged care. "My sense is that the number of providers who have applied for high-care bed licences will be minimal," he said. "From talking to our bankers I understand they won't lend for high care on greenfield sites because they can't see how it will work." He said Catholic Healthcare had handed back some approvals it had received in a previous round: "We just can't make the economics work."

The private company Amity has applied for 350 licences. Its chief financial officer, Peter Forsberg, said: "It's barely economic but we had already secured the land." The director of UnitingCare Ageing, Gillian McPhee, said it cost about $200,000 for each new high-care bed in metropolitan Sydney. But the Federal Government allowed operators to recoup only $120,000 for capital funding through a capped accommodation charge to residents of $26.88 a day. "Aged-care providers are not able to make sufficient margins to make it sustainable," she said.

The Federal Government has made clear it will not introduce bonds for entry to high-care facilities, although bonds are permitted for low-care facilities. Critics say the frail elderly should not have to sell their house to finance entry to a nursing home. The issue proved politically sensitive for the Howard government. Some operators are now lobbying for substantial increases in the daily accommodation charge, little changed in real terms since John Howard introduced it in 1997.

Paul Bradley, general manager for residential care for Anglican Retirement Villages, said it was the first time in the past eight years the organisation had not applied for any residential bed licences, even though it had building sites available. Nieves Murray, chief executive officer of Illawarra Retirement Trust, one of the nation's biggest community providers, said the organisation had several sites on coastal NSW, but the capital cost problem was a main reason it had not applied for licences. She said unless the Federal Government tackled the funding problem, the non-profit sector would not build new homes, leaving the field to private operators and "you may end up with a situation like ABC [child care]".

A spokesman for the Minister for Ageing, Justine Elliot, said that over the next four years funding for aged and community care would reach record levels of more than $41.6 billion, $29.5 billion of that on residential care. It would provide an average of $43,000 for every aged-care resident. The Department of Health and Ageing is sifting through the applicants. However, several agency heads told the Herald they believed the offer would be undersubscribed in NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia.

Source





Amazing! 'Lost kid not our problem,' say Northern Territory cops

They're just horrible buckpassing bureaucrats

A WOMAN who found a lost child at the NT's biggest shopping centre took him to the new police shopfront inside the complex - but was told it wasn't their problem. The concerned mother said she couldn't believe it when the police auxiliary at the newly opened police beat at Casuarina Square in Darwin's northern suburbs told her they were not responsible for lost children and to take him to the information booth. But she said if she had walked outside of the complex and crossed the road to the Casuarina Police Station, not even 50m away, they would have opened up their arms to him. "It is just ridiculous," she said. "You teach kids that they can turn to the police if they are in trouble and need help and here they are turning their backs on them. "I'm just glad it was me who found him - anything could've happened. It reminded me of James Bulger in London where he was taken from a mall, brutally tortured and killed."

The woman, who is also a Darwin school teacher, found the young boy standing by himself near the escalators at the Woolworths end of the centre on the Saturday before Christmas. She said after asking him where his mother was and what his name was, he freely took her hand and followed her to the police shopfront, beside the Body Shop. The information booth is directly outside the police beat, but was manned by one woman who was extremely busy with customers.

NT Police said lost children in shopping centre's were not their initial responsibility. "Initial responsibility lies with security," police said. "This also applies to events such as Royal Darwin Show, V8's, football etc - initial responsibility lies with security at events. "Once all avenues have been exhausted it may become a police matter."

"I think that they could have put their resources to better use," the mother said. "If I needed to go to the police, I'd just walk through the centre and go across to Casuarina Police Station - it's just a few steps to get your business done and then you can come back over to the shops."

The police beat was opened last month in a bid to crack down on anti-social behaviour in and around shopping centres. The boy was reunited with his distressed grandmother soon after.

Source





Campbelltown hospital again

See here for another recent case of negligence there

John Haywood will spend this morning in a church chapel watching a video of the life he shared with his wife of 25 years, Marie. He and his 15-year-old son Johnny won't speak at her funeral - the only word they can think of at the moment is "why." Why was she told she was well enough to leave Campbelltown Hospital despite having pneumonia she contracted in there. "My wife went into Campbelltown Hospital two days before Christmas Day for a routine operation and now she is dead," Mr Haywood said yesterday. "She wasn't going in there to die. "They made her sick and they should have made her better. She was only 43."

Her death has sparked a full investigation into events leading to her death on Monday. Mrs Haywood went into hospital to have fluid removed from her stomach; a minor operation done under local anaesthetic. By Christmas Day she was seriously ill with pneumonia as well but Mr Haywood said a specialist, without actually seeing her, decided she was well enough to go home. "One of the staff there told Marie's sister they didn't have a lot of staff on anyway and she'd probably get better care at home," Mr Haywood said. "She didn't want to go home because she knew was still too unwell."

By December 27 Mrs Haywood could not breathe and was rushed back to Campbelltown Hospital where she was immediately put in intensive care. She died on Monday.

Mr Haywood believes the State Government's penny-pinching in health contributed, in a large way, to her death. "Most of the beds and rooms were closed off when we were in there," he said. "We want to know whether it was the system that fell down or the people." The hospital and state Government argue there was enough staff and would not say more as the matter was being investigated.

Source