Abused black kids taken away by authorities and then sent to other abusive black homes

Because of the Leftist "stolen generation" myth they cannot be sent to white homes -- which is of course blatantly racist. The fact that the lives, health and welfare of black kids are being stolen right now matters not at all to the race-obsessed and hate-filled Left

ABORIGINAL children in care are routinely being placed with relatives in remote communities where they are exposed to sexual abuse and alcohol-fuelled violence, a wide-ranging report on child protection - kept hidden by the Northern Territory government - has revealed.

The Bath report - compiled after an audit of scores of cases of children deemed at high risk who were in the care of the state - exposes the near-total breakdown of child protection systems in the Territory, where background checks on carers are rarely carried out, ministers regularly fail to review the progress of cases, and social services for troubled families are in critically short supply.

Howard Bath, who was appointed Children's Commissioner in the Territory after compiling the extensive report, documents case after case where children were failed by the system that was supposed to protect them. The report - suppressed for more than two years by the NT government - found Aboriginal children were at particular risk, often consigned to carers who lived in violent or abusive homes in remote communities where standard case reviews rarely happened.

Barely any Aboriginal carers underwent a registration process, and the government's bureaucrats warned it that a "sense of complacency" governed the assessment, review and management of cases of children placed in the care of a relative.

Dr Bath found the Aboriginal child placement principle - which states that Aboriginal children should be placed with a relative or other Aboriginal carers if possible - sometimes took precedence over child safety, and that the standards applied to foster carers were followed with much greater rigour than with relative carers. "'The present data suggests, as do some of the decisions in the case studies, that in some cases this principle appears to be given primacy over basic child protection considerations," he says. "It was never the intent of the principle that children should be placed in unsafe situations."

The NT Government, which is under enormous pressure over its handling of child protection after recent damning coronial findings, has kept the full extent of the crisis racking the department of Families and Community Services hidden from the public for more than two years despite mounting evidence of a system on the brink.

Two years after his extensive report was suppressed, Dr Bath warned that child protection had "slipped off the radar" in the NT, as the devastating findings of the Little Children are Sacred report faded from public consciousness. In late 2007, the Labor Government released the Bath report's executive summary and recommendations, but refused to release the damning detail contained in the close to 200 pages of the full report.

The Government is so sensitive about the contents of Dr Bath's report that it has even refused to release it to NT Ombudsman Carolyn Richards, who is investigating 35 complaints against child protection services. The Weekend Australian understands Ms Richards will be forced to issue a summons on Dr Bath to obtain the report.

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Climate alarmists out in the cold

As the wheels keep falling off the climate alarmist bandwagon, it's suddenly become fashionable to be a sceptic. Out of the woodwork have crawled all sorts of fair-weather friends. But where were they when the going was tough, when we were being hammered as Holocaust deniers, planet wreckers, in the pay of the "Big Polluters", bad parents, pariahs, equivalent to murderers? It was pure McCarthyism.

But now, even the most aggressive alarmists have gone quiet or softened their rhetoric and people who sat on the fence have morphed into wise owls. They still think it's acceptable to mock touring British sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton's protruding eyes, a distressing symptom of his thyroid disease, in an effort to marginalise him as a lunatic, rather than address his criticisms. But, when even the British left-leaning, warmist-friendly Guardian newspaper has begun to investigate the fraud involved in "sexing up" climate change science, it's clear the collapse of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's credibility and the holes in the case for catastrophic man-made climate change can no longer be ignored.

We are witnessing an outbreak of neo-open-mindedness and face-saving from people who brooked no nuance. The formerly alarmist British chief scientific adviser, John Beddington, has said: "I don't think it's healthy to dismiss proper scepticism." Hallelujah.

Australia's Chief Scientist, Professor Penny Sackett, who just three months ago was telling us that we had only five years to stop catastrophic global warming, is similarly less gung-ho these days. On ABC television's 7.30 Report this week she expressed concern about "a confusion" between the science and the politics of climate change. "I think that we're seeing more and more a confusion between a political debate, a political debate that needs to happen, it's important to happen, and the discussion of the science. I feel that these two things are being confused and it worries me, actually."

Funny, proponents of the theory of catastrophic man-made climate change never expressed concern about the "confusion", aka politicisation of science, when it was running their way.

Blows to the climate alarm case keep coming, from fraudulent claims about melting glaciers, increased hurricanes and drought, dying Amazon rainforest, disappearing polar bears and the flooding of half of Holland.

The latest, most serious, blow was the revelation this week that an influential paper discounting the so-called urban heat island effect was based on vanished and perhaps fraudulent data from remote Chinese weather stations. The 1990 paper was co-authored by the besieged director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, Phil Jones and a US colleague, who are now accused of a "cover-up".

Jones, of course, and other leading scientists, have been exposed by their leaked "Climategate" emails, as political partisans who tried to suppress data, subvert freedom of information laws, and blackball journals and scientists who didn't toe the alarmist line.

Meanwhile, revelations pile up about shoddy references used to sex up the IPCC's Nobel Prize-winning Fourth Assessment Report of 2007. Among them is the bogus claim that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, based on a speculative interview in a popular science magazine. The IPCC lead author of the chapter that contained the reference, Murari Lal, told Britain's Mail on Sunday last week that he knew the glacier claim was wrong but included it to put political pressure on world leaders to cut emissions. "We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policymakers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action."

Because it was in a good cause it was somehow OK for the United Nations' lead climate change body to slant science, cherry-pick data, and base claims on such flimsy references as Greenpeace and WWF propaganda, a student's master's thesis and anecdotes in Climber magazine.

This sort of "noble cause" corruption appears to have permeated climate change science, and set back the legitimate cause of fighting pollution. The dishonesty will have only ensured a generation of people will no longer trust environmental warnings.

One of the most significant recent revelations is how influential and embedded were environmental activists such as WWF and Greenpeace. Not only were their publications cited in the 2007 report in at last 24 instances as if they were proper peer-reviewed science, but their staffers were in familiar communication with East Anglia climate researchers, and were regarded apparently as "honest brokers" rather than political lobbyists. In one email, Alan Markham from WWF writes to climate scientists urging a paper on climate change in Australia be "beefed up".

WWF "would like to see the section on a variability and extreme events beefed up, if possible," Markham wrote in 1999. "I guess the bottom line is that if they are going to go with a big public splash on this they need something that will get good support from CSIRO scientists."

In another email to East Anglia scientists, WWF's Stephan Singer offers "a few thousand euros" to write a paper about the economic cost of Europe's 2003 heatwave.

They got away with it for a very long time. Today, the bankruptcy of the climate alarm cause is demonstrated by the fact its highest profile champion is Osama bin Laden. "Boycott [America] to save yourselves … and your children from climate change", he said in an audiotape released last week.

Rising in the opinion polls, the opposition leader, Tony Abbott, has found himself on the right side of history. He was even able this week to utter the former heresy that "carbon dioxide is an essential trace gas" and "these so-called nasty big polluters are the people who keep the lights on". But in the game of musical chairs that politics often is Kevin Rudd has found himself with no place to sit.

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Shortage of public hospital operating theatres means tired surgeons operating late at night

HOSPITALS must stop the dangerous and inefficient practice of squeezing in emergency surgery in the middle of the night due to a lack of theatre space, surgeons say. Describing the situation as a "developing crisis in emergency surgery", the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons has called for hospitals to immediately restructure resources so that emergency surgery can be properly planned. "The current practice of performing cases unnecessarily in the evenings or late at night (simply because theatres become available) must cease," it said.

Patrick Cregan, the chairman of the NSW Surgical Services Taskforce, which recently developed a similar policy for the health department, agreed. Dr Cregan, who is also a surgeon at Nepean Hospital, said this week it was safer for patients if they were operated on in daylight hours rather than at night by fatigued surgeons, who were often junior. There was enough theatre space in NSW hospitals, he said, and it would not necessarily mean delaying elective or semi-urgent surgery.

He said developing an extra emergency surgery operating list, to manage conditions such as fracture repairs or appendix removals, would cost a hospital up to $500,000. "Manage the money, manage the staff, manage the resources so that patients get a safer, more effective outcome," Dr Cregan said. "The patient outcomes is significantly better. It's not money going down the toilet. At some stages we are running two or three theatres in the middle of the night at Nepean. It's crazy stuff."

Dr Cregan said emergency surgery was "the most predictable form of surgery around", and could be easily planned. "There's surges in demand every now and then but overall you know there's going to be 20 fractures a week," he said.

Several hospitals in Sydney, including Prince of Wales and Westmead, were developing acute surgery units but most of NSW has been slow to act.

The college said that unnecessarily operating overnight carried both a human cost - in terms of increased patient errors and fatigued clinicians - and a financial cost to the community from overtime payments of staff. "Regularly health workers face a choice between delaying an emergency surgical patient's treatment, thereby prolonging suffering (a potential for harm), and disrupting elective surgery - which unfairly prolongs the waiting time of a patient who may already have waited weeks."

This meant staff worked through the night on "less time critical emergencies" to clear the backlog of emergencies that could be days overdue.

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Internet filtering demand defeated

But the government scheme is still threatening

AUSTRALIAN telcos and download enthusiasts came out on top yesterday after the Federal Court in NSW rejected a landmark legal bid to make internet service providers liable for online copyright infringement. A group of 34 major entertainment companies desperately hoped to convince the court that Perth-based internet firm iiNet authorised its customers to engage in acts of illegal file-sharing on peer-to-peer networks.

However, before a packed courtroom early yesterday, Federal Court judge Dennis Cowdroy dismissed the group's application. In summarising a ruling that ran for more than 200 pages, Justice Cowdroy said the critical issue in the proceeding was whether iiNet authorised copy infringement of certain iiNet users". "While I find that iiNet had knowledge of infringements occurring and did not act to stop them, such findings do not necessitate a finding of authorisation. I find that iiNet did not authorise the infringements of copyright of the iiNet users."

Justice Cowdroy ordered the application by the Australian Federation Against Copyright be dismissed and awarded costs to iiNet. Neil Gane, executive director of AFACT, said it would review the court's decision before deciding whether to launch an appeal. For now, internet providers can continue to let their customers use peer-to-peer networks to share illegal movie and music files without fear of sanction. The file-sharing system accounts for half of all Australian internet traffic and lets individuals share files directly with each other in pieces.

Justice Cowdroy acknowledged that copyright infringement was occurring on a mass scale but said that he could not be compelled to make a finding of authorisation "merely because it is felt that `something must be done' to stop infringements".

The chief and founder of iiNet, Michael Malone, was jubilant about the decision. "We've always said that we don't condone copyright (infringement) in any way," he said. "Copyright violations don't benefit iiNet at all so I guess we'd much rather be working with the studios to find some way to make their content legitimately available to customers."

Yesterday, both Telstra and Optus released statements welcoming the Federal Court's decision. "We welcome the legal clarity that today's judgment provides regarding the role of ISPs," Telstra spokesman Craig Middleton said.

Anita Cade, senior associate for law firm Blake Dawson's intellectual property division, said it could take two years to completely resolve the matter if it were to be pushed to the High Court.

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The products of an "everyone wins" education are losers in the job market

EMPLOYERS are refusing to hire Generation Y workers because they lack a work ethic and spend too much time talking to friends in work hours. "Employers come to us about Gen Y, saying they're looking for a staff member but they don't want anyone in that 20s age bracket because they find they don't understand common courtesy in the workplace," Kristy-Lee Johnston, director of Footprint Recruitment told The Courier-Mail.

And the complaints don't only come from managers and bosses. Social researcher Mark McCrindle said: "They also come from other people in the team who are of another generation."

Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland policy general manager Nick Behrens said the global financial crisis should act as a wake-up call. "The chamber is hoping Gen Y will learn from this, that they can no longer take for granted the good times and will no longer get away with the luxuries they have been given."

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Many Victoria police are crooks in checkered caps

VICTORIA police intelligence-gathering systems have been exposed as outdated and slack after police files were found in the possession of criminals.

A scathing report from the Office of Police Integrity said police operatives used "flawed" practices, putting top-secret information on some of the country's highest-profile criminals, including terrorists and members of Melbourne's underworld, at risk.

The revelations put further pressure on the already embattled Police Minister Bob Cameron, with the Opposition branding him "incompetent and out of touch", and calling for his resignation in Parliament.

Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu said it was another example of the collapse of law and order management under the State Government.

The OPI launched an investigation into the surveillance unit in late 2008 after a 68-page document containing information about a target was found in the home of a murder suspect. More than a year later, Victoria Police on Thursday admitted that it still did not know who leaked the documents.

This is the fourth damaging report into cultural and management problems within the force in the past 12 months. Despite admitting there is a corrupt police officer still working within the force, Mr Cameron continues to insist that all is well.

The OPI report, tabled in Parliament, found although physical security measures in the surveillance unit had improved since the breach, proper procedures were still not being followed due to poor management. "The fact that other sensitive law enforcement data was not accidentally or deliberately released appears to have been a matter of good luck rather than good management," the report warned.

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