Eight bodies huddled to protect a baby

Adoring kids as I do, the story below was deeply upsetting to me. But I do find it redeeming as proof that normal human nature survives the constant Leftist attacks on it -- Leftists who regard the killing of babies in abortion as just another medical procedure and Leftists who try to force equality on everybody in the name of "diversity" (of all things!) and Leftists who, with their love of bureaucracy, PREVENT normal human nature from operating (See, for instance, my Charters Towers story)

Disaster victim identification teams combing Victoria have found large groups of bodies, including one with eight bodies huddled to protect a baby. Australians have been warned to brace for more bad news about the bushfire death count as more shocking details of the tragedy are revealed.

DVI experts are still combing the worst-affected areas and Det-Inspector Bob Sitlington said patience was needed to enable accurate records of victims to be collected. "It is slow but we want to positively identify victims, the last thing we would want to do is misidentify," he said.

Insp Sitlington said he had been with team members in Kinglake yesterday, where earlier in the week experts found horrific sites, including eight bodies huddled around a baby's body. "There was a multiple death in a group, and from what I understand they were trying to protect a baby," he said. "We don't know exactly what happened. Imagine what people naturally do, they tend to cuddle ... and to protect each other, and with the intensity of the fire we do find sometimes bodies are fused together."

The total death toll from the blazes that ripped through the central highlands and Gippsland last Saturday still stands at 181 but is expected to jump above 300. On Friday, police said 1831 houses had been destroyed and more than 7000 people had been made homeless.....

Victorian Premier John Brumby yesterday appointed former Supreme Court judge Justice Bernard Teague to chair the Royal Commission into the bushfires. Mr Brumby said the Royal Commission would be a central part of the "healing process" with victims and relatives of the dead from Kinglake, Marysville and the rest of the state to provide eye witness evidence about the tragic events of February 7 and its horrible aftermath. "It is so important that everybody has their say," Mr Brumby said.

Kinglake couple Joanne Jordan and Greg Holloway picked through the ruins of their property yesterday, but are just happy to have escaped with their lives. "We were so lucky, we lost everything we had, but not each other," Mr Holloway said. Ms Jordan said the significance of Valentine's Day meant little since they escaped Kinglake's raging inferno. "Every day's Valentine's Day when it's six days since you almost died," Ms Jordan said.

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"Only" NINE unqualified doctors in one public hospital

State Health Minister Stephen Robertson has admitted nine doctors at Bundaberg operated on patients for up to five months with wrong credentials. After the Opposition revealed the bungle in State Parliament, Mr Robertson conceded the anomalies were discovered during a routine audit last month. Mr Robertson said none of the locum doctors at Bundaberg Hospital had caused any harm or operated outside their scope of skills.

"This is more an administrative error," Mr Robertson said. "They were presented with their credentials from their base hospital. What hasn't occurred is the transfer of those privileges to technically credential them at Bundaberg." Two of the nine Bundaberg doctors were newly employed.

Two more uncredentialled doctors were found at Rockhampton, where the executive director of medical services has been stood down from management duties. However, Mr Robertson said the bureaucrat was still working as a clinician, despite allegedly ignoring repeated reminders from the department to check credentials.

The Liberal National Party has seized on the errors, with Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg saying they showed the spin about health reforms had been caught short. "If they can't get Queensland Health right in Bundaberg after two royal commissions, then they really can't do anything," Mr Springborg said. "The issue of whether patients were harmed or not is irrelevant. "It's about doctors not being accredited."

A review commissioned in the wake of the bungles and completed on January 23 found all doctors in Bundaberg were appropriately credentialled. Mr Robertson said the case showed his department was picking up on problems immediately. [And black is white, I guess]

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Death blamed on rogue Rockhampton public hospital surgeon

QUEENSLAND Health has admitted a patient died at Rockhampton Hospital following an alleged botched operation by a doctor working without authority. Health Minister Stephen Robertson last night admitted the doctor was not credentialled to work at the hospital and allegedly went rogue, refusing to follow rules for clinical procedures. The doctor is still under investigation after the patient died following a tracheotomy operation in September 2007. The revelations come a day after it emerged nine doctors at Bundaberg Base Hospital were caught without proper credentials this year.

Credentialling is an administrative system that allows doctors performing outreach services to transfer their privileges between hospitals. Queensland Health yesterday stood down the Bundaberg manager responsible for overseeing the nine cases.

As the Bligh Government was accused of covering up the Rockhampton case, Mr Robertson last night said the doctor had been stood down immediately. "It is alleged the treating doctor did not abide by established best practice and hospital policy of Queensland Health in the conduct of the procedure," he said. "As a result of that, the allegation is the patient suffered significant harm and died." The case was referred to Queensland Health's ethical standards unit, the Crime and Misconduct Commission and the Queensland Medical Board.

The doctor's boss was stood down in April after allegedly refusing to do credentials for several doctors despite repeated reminders. The seriousness of the case has surfaced a day after Mr Robertson claimed he did not know details of the issues at Rockhampton after the Bundaberg cases emerged. "I can't remember off the top of my head but there were a number of doctors found who were not credentialled and they were considered to be serious matters," he said on Thursday. Queensland Health will now roll out a credentialling check box as part of a new payroll system so doctors won't be paid if paperwork is incomplete.

Opposition health spokesman Mark McArdle last night accused Mr Robertson of a cover-up. "The public health system is not fixed, despite all that money spent on glossy brochures and expensive advertisements," he said. "This should never have occurred again after the royal commission (at Bundaberg). "This latest hospital crisis is about what this incompetent Health Minister didn't do despite all those positive media statements. "It is about a very dishonest Labor Government that is more worried about bad publicity than telling the truth - and another person has died because of it."

Meanwhile, the Health Quality and Complaints Commission yesterday asked Queensland Health director-general Mick Reid to explain contradictions in evidence provided to the watchdog on credentialling bungles at Bundaberg.

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GREENIE ROUNDUP

Three articles below:

Australia's public broadcaster blames huge fires on global warming!

There might be some logic to it if the seasonal hot weather in Southern Australia really was global but it is at the moment unusually cold in the northern hemisphere and last year also was unusually cool globally. So the ABC is simply propagating lies. Summary below received from Don Parkes [dnp@idl.com.au]

Lateline and the 7.30 report, both very important ABC TV news documentaries did most certainly, and explicitly link the fires to global warming /climate change. Lateline wheeled on its tame but snappy and somewhat confused, (some say untruthful) lapdog, Melbourne University's Professor David Karoly.

He is also an IPCC author who does not appear to like to be challenged. For instance, having promised to undertake and complete by September last year (2008) a review of an important article by Dr. Vincent Gray (NZ) on the climate change 'sham' - has since refused to do so. The reasons appear clear. Karoly cannot cope with Gray's argument and no doubt also found Gray's experience as a former expert reviewer for IPCC, just a bit too hard to handle.

However, when under the wing of a benign TV anchor person he feels free to release his alarmist, income earning mantra for a gullible and 'at the time' devastated audience, last Monday. So a significant and 'public' arm of the Australian media certainly took almost spiteful advantage of the opportunity afforded by the fires to peddle yet again the utter rubbish Karoly (and IPCC) spin out of their partial differential equations.

However anchormen Jones of Lateline and O'Brien of the 7.30 Report NEVER mention that global warming, as preached by the greens and the IPCC, is a mere mathematical construct - totally and absolutely devoid of any replicable evidence. It is as well that medical and pharmacological sciences are subjected to more intense scrutiny!

As for wondering about the coincidental floods of northern Australia and the freezing conditions in the northern hemisphere, yet again, nothing to question the credo of AGW - reading this in the northern hemisphere it must be consoling to know that you feel so cold because it is getting warmer! Those whose lives have been devastated by the fires in Victoria and the floods in northern Australia have been ill served by 'their Aunty ABC's' determination to use and abuse the news, rather than report it.






Shark attacks caused by Greenies too

The NSW Government has conceded sharks are thriving because of environmental controls and bans on commercial fishing, after two shark attacks in Sydney waters this week. The admission yesterday came as professional fishing groups claimed government policy had been dictated too much by the chase for green votes at a cost to maintaining a sustainable local industry.

NSW Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald warned swimmers against entering the water at dusk or dawn, when the risk of shark attack was greater. The minister was responding to heightened public fear after shark attacks on navy diver Paulde Gelder in Sydney Harbour on Wednesday, and surfer Glen Orgias at Bondi Beach on Thursday.

After the closure of Sydney Harbour, Botany Bay and much of the NSW coastline to commercial fishing, industry experts say that a big increase in fish species including Australian salmon, yellowtail, kingfish and silver biddy have led to higher numbers of predatory sharks. They blame a government policy dating back to 2002, when then Labor fisheries minister Eddie Obeid clamped down on estuary fishing and backed the creation of large marine parks along the coast.

Mr Macdonald, Mr Obeid's Labor successor, said yesterday he accepted that shark numbers had increased significantly. "The sort of reports I'm getting from people spotting sharks indicate there seems to be a build-up of sharks in the estuaries as well as along the ocean shore," he said on ABC radio. Mr Macdonald said government "protective measures" in recent years had halted a decline in many shark species. "That, coupled with some improved environmental conditions, plus a reduction in fishing efforts in parts of the state, mean that shark numbers could enhance."

NSW Seafood Council member Graeme Hillyard accused the NSW Government of playing politics instead of basing decisions on scientific research before putting restrictions on fishing grounds. Mr Hillyard said government decisions to create marine parks for most of the NSW coastline and to close down fishing in many of its estuaries was based on buying votes. Other states, he said, had not adopted the same hard line. Mr Hillyard, who also chairs the Hawkesbury Trawl Association, whose fishermen have been limited to working on weekdays only, said: "There is not one estuary, lake or river that has been under threat from commercial fishing. It's about buying votes and appeasing people. The poor old fisherman's views that sustainable fishing is possible has been overlooked." According to Mr Hillyard, cooler sea currents had kept larger numbers of sharks closer to estuaries and shores.

Commercial fishing in Sydney Harbour was banned after a dioxin contamination scare. Commercial fishing in other waters including Lake Macquarie and Botany Bay was stopped after pressure from environmental groups. Large areas of NSW coastal waters from the borders of Queensland to Victoria have been declared marine parks, with fishing allowed in certain zones only. According to a commercial fishing lobby, a growth in bait fish in estuaries and on the coast has boosted shark numbers.

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Australia puts global warming scheme on hold

The Government's emissions trading scheme has been put on hold and might not begin on schedule in 2010. A parliamentary committee has been asked to inquire into the effectiveness of emissions trading as a means to reduce carbon pollution. The inquiry committee will report "in the second half of 2009." Legislation for the Government's already-announced carbon reduction scheme was expected about July. However, this inquiry might put it off for another 12 months, depending on its outcome. Emissions trading is the core mechanism of the proposed scheme, and it would increase costs to business and households.

"Maybe the Government has decided there is no appetite for the cost of an emissions trading scheme when the economy is in trouble," a Liberal source said.

The House of Representatives economics committee was today asked to "inquire into the choice of emissions trading as the central policy to reduce Australia's carbon pollution". It was to see if it could "reduce carbon pollution at the lowest economic cost". The committee also would investigate whether an ETS would encourage investment in clean energy and low-emission technology, and contribute to a global solution to climate change. "We need to take urgent action to help slow down the effects of climate change," the committee's chairman Labor's Craig Thomson said in a statement. "We need to examine sustainable economic options to reduce our carbon footprint effectively and in a timely manner."

A Labor source said the inquiry would not change the content and timing of the carbon reduction scheme and that suggestions big changes were underway were completely wrong. The source said: The package is not going to be dropped. He said it was standard procedure to hold such as inquiry and pointed to Labors majority membership on the committee.

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