When Kevvy knew his time was up

On a bitterly cold morning in Canberra, Kevvy is being chauffeured to Parliament House. It is so cold that Lake Burley Griffin has frozen over. As he jumps out of the Caprice, Kevvy looks over the Lake and notices that someone has peed on the ice and left a message ‘KEVVY SUCKS’.

Kevvy is enraged and orders ASIO to investigate with ‘no expenses spared’ and to report within two weeks. Two weeks later, the ASIO reports to the PM and says ‘our investigation is over and I have three pieces of news for you…………good news, bad news and terribly bad shocking news’.

Well says Kevvy, ‘give me the good news’. The head of ASIO says ‘We spent $5 million dollars on the investigation and have to a successful result.

‘Well’ says Kevvy ‘what’s the bad news?’ The head of ASIO says, ‘The DNA’ testing shows the urine is Wayne Swann’s’. Kevvy is shocked beyond belief.

Looking pale, Kevvy says ‘and what is the terribly bad shocking news?’

The ASIO chief replies…….’Its Julia Gillard’s hand writing’.

Author unknown






Another nasty Leftist liar

And he went on to become Premier of Queensland!

A PREVIOUSLY unseen Queensland police dossier has finally shed new light on the now legendary political baptism of former premier Peter Beattie.

In 1971 Beattie, an 18-year-old university student, was arrested and bashed by police during the city's wild anti-apartheid protests against a visiting South African rugby team.

He has always claimed he was persecuted for his beliefs and that the incident sent him on the road to politics. The incident cast Beattie as Labor hero.

But the 40-year-old dossier, including police reports, witness statements and medical assessments, alleges that it was Beattie himself who taunted police and sparked the melee outside Brisbane's Trades Hall.

And doctors who assessed Beattie in hospital after his supposed bashing declared he showed no signs of having been subject to undue force by the arresting officers.

SOURCE





Conservatives need to insist that endangered children be protected

Because the Left won't do it -- says Jeremy Sammut, a research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies

THE state has a responsibility to protect children from inadequate parents.

For people on the Right, child protection can be a difficult issue. Those who identify with liberal traditions place a premium on limited state intrusion into the lives of individuals. However, child protection reform that upholds the independent rights of children needs to be on their policy agenda.

The clientele of child protection services consists predominantly of members of the underclass, that proportion of Australians who are long-term welfare dependent and have a range of welfare-dependence exacerbated behavioural issues, such as domestic violence and substance abuse.

The complex problems these families experience include the inability to rear children adequately.

In too many child welfare cases the presumed right of dysfunctional parents to retain custody of children is elevated above the best interests of children.

While encouraging parents to change their behaviour and meet children's needs has always been a part of modern child protection, the pendulum has swung too far towards trying to fix broken families and giving parents almost limitless opportunities to change.

A culture of non-intervention in family situations has developed in the state bureaucracies in charge of child protection services.

The statutory investigation of child welfare reports by caseworkers trained to assess whether a child is in need of court-approved removal from the family home has been marginalised in favour of providing support services (drug counselling, parenting programs, home visits) to families.

Instead of focusing on traditional child protection work, social services departments provide parent-centred rather than child-centred services to allow biological parents to retain custody of children, even where children are identified as being in danger of harm.

Child protection failures create the next generation of dysfunctional parents. The paradox, and the dilemma for those on the Right, is that greater intervention is needed in the lives of dependent members of the community to break the intergenerational cycle of neglect and abuse and save future generations.

The broader cultural issue is whether the Right has the will to defend core community standards or whether the questionable perspectives of the Left will continue to dictate social values in child protection.

When the welfare of children is at stake, it is not too harsh to hold parents accountable for bad behaviour in circumstances that contravene John Stuart Mill's principle that liberty should be interfered with only to "prevent harm to others". Mill was one of the 19th-century progenitors of the progressive idea that a child had the right to enjoy their full liberties and opportunities as a future citizen. In On Liberty, he argued that parents who failed to fulfil their "sacred duties" towards their children were guilty of "a moral crime both against the unfortunate offspring and against society . . . if the parent does not fulfil this obligation, the state ought to see it fulfilled".

However, the moral and social judgments that child protection depends on are beyond the comprehension of those who subscribe to leftist cultural politics.

In an article published in June last year in the Australian Journal of Politics and History, Kate Murphy, Marian Quartly and Denise Cuthbert accused those who frowned on drug-addled parenting of supporting the "conservative family policy of the Howard era".

This would be bad enough if it only reflected the dated ideology pervading the social services sector, which is that removing children punishes poor parents who are victims of structural socioeconomic injustice.

The authors' views also reflect postmodern values that cast child protection as a moral panic deployed to authorise the social surveillance and cultural oppression of the powerless and excluded.

The notion given credence by Murphy, Quartly and Cuthbert is that child welfare laws hold parents to socially constructed behavioural standards to buttress the hegemony of traditional bourgeois family values. Treating parental intravenous drug use in a relativist manner - as if drug-addled parenting is a legitimate lifestyle choice - is wrong and dangerous because it denies the reality of child abuse and neglect.

The idea that welfare-dependent heroin addicts have a right to keep their children reveals moral and ideological confusion. Those on the Right need not hesitate out of misplaced doctrinal concerns to make such judgments about the rights of parents as against the rights of children.

SOURCE






Victoria's "speedy" ambulance service again

Don't have an accident in Victoria

A TOP jockey who almost died after a fall waited nearly half an hour for an ambulance. Danny Brereton fell from his mount, Marquee Player, at Moonee Valley last month and lay unconscious on the track with fractured vertebrae.

Doctors called 000 requesting a mobile intensive care ambulance - and "lights and sirens". One doctor, who did not want to be identified, told the Herald Sun it took too long for paramedics to arrive, and when they did it was in an ordinary van. "I said we needed lights and sirens and a MICA (because) this man's dying," the doctor said.

Ambulance Victoria said the delay had occurred because paramedics couldn't find where to go at the track. It took the crew 26 minutes to reach Brereton, well outside the 15-minute benchmark for code one emergencies. Brereton is now in rehabilitation.

Ambulance Victoria acting general manager Simon Thomson said paramedics had reached the area within minutes, but he would review practices with Moonee Valley racing to ensure similar delays were not repeated.

The wait is one of a litany of horrific cases to emerge in Victoria in the past week. The Herald Sun spoke to 28-year-old Sally Smith who has a heart condition but waited two hours, 12 minutes for paramedics after dislocating a knee on grand final night. That was the same night a man died after waiting three hours for an ambulance in Burwood East.

Ms Smith, who suffers from Marfan syndrome which weakens her heart, said her family made up to 10 calls before an ambulance arrived. "I was in agony and screaming in pain," she said.

Meanwhile Andrew Templeton, 45, of Sunbury, said he was told on Tuesday night that he would have to make his own way to hospital unless he could wait an hour for an ambulance, after developing excruciating pain from kidney stones. The father of three said his wife drove him to the Royal Melbourne Hospital, but he felt for those who lived alone.

Ambulance Employees Australia state secretary Steve McGhie said the cases exemplified the "crisis" in ambulance resourcing and said lives were at risk.

A spokeswoman for Health Minister Daniel Andrews said, "Paramedics, Ambulance Victoria and the Government strive to provide the best care to patients."

SOURCE