Australian Politics
Checks fail: Sex offenders cleared to work with kids
Government regulation gives a false sense of security. Its irresponsibility and lack of effective accountability makes it very unreliable
CHILD sex offenders, drug traffickers and kidnappers are among criminals who have reportedly slipped through the net and been allowed to work with children in Victoria.
The Herald Sun says Freedom of Information documents show that three out of four ex-criminals who apply to work with children in Victoria get the go-ahead.
The paper found that the state government vetting process designed to stop dangerous or unsuitable offenders working with children has permitted more than 2700 criminals through the net.
Of those, 43 people convicted of child sex crimes have been allowed to work with kids, despite the Department of Justice's efforts to stop them.
Since 2006 when vetting began, the department has stopped 765 criminals.
Of those who had sought permission, 189 were child sex offenders, billed as the most serious Category One.
But an analysis of the Working With Children Check process reveals 689 Category Two offenders - who include stalkers, kidnappers and drug traffickers to kids - were cleared.
The paper says it is understood the government is looking at ways to tighten the Working With Children Check, which costs $15 million a year to administer.
SOURCE
Media "Inquiry" comes at a bad time for media survival
On Thursday I received an email from the Independent Inquiry into Media and Media Regulation. The organisation's secretariat advised that Ray Finkelstein, QC, and Matthew Ricketson had asked about my availability and interest to participate in the public hearings, which will take place late next week.
I declined the kind offer. The fact is that I do not see any valid reason for the expenditure of public money on an inquiry into the private-sector print media, including online publications.
Finkelstein was appointed to the Federal Court in 1997. He was a member of the full bench of the Federal Court which found for the Maritime Union of Australia during the waterfront dispute. Finkelstein has spent virtually his entire career in the law - primarily as a barrister and then a judge. He has never held a significant role in a private sector business and has no experience in the media.
Ricketson, who is assisting Finkelstein, is an academic who has worked as a journalist for The Age.
I'm no prophet and I have no idea as to what the findings of the media inquiry might be. But it is known that lawyers tend to see the answers to life's problems in legislation, regulation and the like.
Recently Finkelstein wrote to the editors of Australia's main print and media outlets. He quoted with approval from the US publisher and editor Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911) that only the highest ideals would ''save journalism from the subservience to business interests, seeking selfish ends, antagonistic to public welfare". Finkelstein went on to ask the editors "whether, and to what extent" they subscribed to "the view that the press has social responsibilities". He also asked "how this social responsibility is, or should be, implemented".
The problem with such leading questions is that they assume there is such an entity as social responsibility which should be implemented. In a democratic society, which allows almost universal free speech, one person's social responsibility may be another person's social irresponsibility.
Democratic societies work well because they entail the existence of competing values and interests, which express themselves in the political process. It is naive to believe that governments, or public servants or retired Federal Court judges, can determine who is, and who is not, acting in a socially responsible manner. In democracies the role of authorities is to ensure that citizens act within the law. That's all.
To those who understand the print and online media, the real challenge at hand is survival. Seldom before have so many individuals read newspapers. It's just that they increasingly do so online where it is more difficult to make substantial profits.
The task of such entities as News Ltd and Fairfax Media in the medium term is to ensure the continued publication of printed newspapers on weekdays. Yet the left in Australia has chosen this time to launch an assault on the print media.
News Ltd publications such as The Australian and The Daily Telegraph are the principal targets but Fairfax publications would be caught up in the downside of any increase in regulation following from the media inquiry.
In his recent talk at the IQ2 debate on the media (screened by ABC TV's Big Ideas program), the Greens leader, Bob Brown, asked the rhetorical question: "What is the difference between an Australian abattoir, an Australian brothel and an Australian newspaper?" His answer was: "You don't need a licence for an Australian newspaper."
This was an unprecedented call for government regulation of the media. Traditionally, governments have issued licences for radio and television because spectrum space is limited.
However, anyone can set up a print or online publication since there is no limitation beyond what the market can bear. The Greens want to bring about a situation where politicians and bureaucrats determine whether an individual can go into publishing.
Brown concluded with the following saying: "Oscar Wilde said 'in olden days they had the rack, nowadays they have the press'. Well, the king or Crown licensed the rack. It's time the Crown licensed the press as well."
Wilde was a brilliant humorist whose demise was brought about by his own choices - the press was not responsible for his jailing.
Brown followed up his performance at the IQ2 debate with a submission to the media inquiry on behalf of the Greens. Complaining about the fact that News Ltd controls about 70 per cent of the capital city newspaper audience, Brown asked: "If the elected representatives are not to rein in this debasing of the ideals of the fourth estate, who should or will?"
Brown's comments amount to the most serious attempt by an elected politician to control the print media since Arthur Calwell, when information minister in the Curtin government, tried to censor the press during World War II. The story is told dispassionately by Paul Hasluck in The Government and the People: 1942-1945.
In recent days the left-wing Labor senator Doug Cameron has called the Murdoch press "absolutely reprehensible". He, too, appears to want the print media constrained by regulation. Any regulation aimed at News Ltd today could be extended to Fairfax and to as-yet unborn publications in the future. It's difficult to see how the media inquiry can make a positive contribution to the debate.
SOURCE
Labor Government Murdoch-hatred on display
They can't take criticism so rejected a best bid when it came from a Murdoch company
THE debacle over the $223 million Australia Network contract is a product of Labor's meddling in what should have remained an independent public tender.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy put on an extraordinary display of chutzpah last night and tried to blame a succession of ''significant'' media leaks for terminating the tender.
But leaks are merely the symptom of a flawed process. The cause was the government's decision to tear up the rule book when it looked likely Sky News would win the rights to run the network over the ABC. Media scrutiny has ensured the government didn't get away with it.
The resulting saga is far more than a battle pitting Rupert Murdoch and his part-owned Sky News against the publicly funded ABC - although it is that. It is more than a Labor feud with News Limited - though there is an element of that too. And it is more than a manifestation of Labor's internal battle of how you run a government that includes Kevin Rudd and the factional warriors that deposed him - but that's also part of the story.
Rudd had set up a process at arm's length from politics and allowed the bureaucrats to decide the future of the service, intended as Australia's voice in Asia and the Pacific. That came after Labor invited discussion last year on whether to put the Australia Network out to tender again, as it has been every few years since it was launched in the early 1990s.
If there was to be a debate over permanently leaving the service with the ABC, that was the time to have it. But instead the government invited companies to bid in good faith for the contract. Sky News and the ABC both invested heavily to put in their best pitch. Sky News won the day.
But some government members didn't like the prospect of a company linked to Murdoch getting their hands on public money, so they stripped the decision from Rudd's department, gave it to cabinet and handed Conroy the final approval. The government tried to sneak out these changes late on a Friday night. That alone was enough of a hint that something was badly wrong.
But the real problem was the logic behind the changes. It was supposedly the fault of upheaval in the Arab world, but no extra funding was on offer to expand the service. Nor was it clear why the Communications Minister was in a better position to judge the overseas impact than the Foreign Minister. Or the Trade Minister, for that matter.
The Australia Network is supposed to promote Australian values to a middle-class audience in the region. Instead, it has turned into a bad soap opera.
SOURCE
Qantas must cut costs to survive
Qantas yesterday announced the “first phase” of a package of measures to apologise to customers disrupted by the grounding of the airline for two days last Saturday week. It has also been blitzing the media with ads proclaiming the return to certainty for the first time in more than six months, after Fair Work Australia ordered the end of industrial action by unions representing pilots, engineers and ground handlers.
In the week since the grounding, consumers have been stirred up by highly misleading claims about the personal pay packet of chief executive Alan Joyce and have joined in a disgraceful outburst of xenophobia, bordering on racism, against the Australian Irishman.
There are 22 million different opinions about the national carrier and many of them miss the point: Qantas’s costs are too high, especially on long-haul international routes, and must be reduced if it is to survive.
Joyce has been held responsible for the late delivery of new planes by Boeing and Airbus – problems that had nothing to do with with him. That has also been used to argue that he has the wrong fleet strategy, but the Qantas we have would look vastly different if Boeing had not stuffed up development of its new super-plane, the 787 Dreamliner, which is running four years late.
There is also a nonsense being promoted mostly by the unions that Qantas is immensely profitable. In fact, dragged down by its international flying, it is a hiccup away from losing money; as things stand, it would be far better off putting its money in a fixed deposit earning 5 or 6 per cent a year than continuing to fly its planes around the world.
In the year to June, Qantas’s net profit was $249 million on $14.9 billion in revenue – a net margin of 1.6 per cent. Bluntly, that means it is breaking even. In business terms, it is a basket case.
Yet readers of this blog gleefully report they no longer fly Qantas because its fares are too high, especially in business class. To London, for example, you can regularly fly Emirates business class for around $9000 return, while the Qantas rate is nearer $15,000.
That is because Qantas, with all its legacy issues, faces its strongest competition to Europe from what are effectively low-cost carriers, all less than 20 years old – Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad Airways – who can provide the same seat for around 40 per cent less than what it costs Qantas. Singapore Airlines’ operating cost advantage is 20-25 per cent.
Domestically, Qantas’s main opposition, Virgin, also started life 10 years ago as a low-cost carrier and has a 30-40 per cent per-seat operating cost advantage.
Alan Joyce, a mathematician and a self-confessed nerd, knows the numbers all too well. His biggest crime appears to be that he is not a six-foot-tall Australian who speaks with a loud voice.
He has not sold himself well, nor the airline he is trying to create. But most of what is being directed at him in the current poisonous political atmosphere is ignorant and unfair.
SOURCE
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
Monday, November 07, 2011
Chemical company's $1b expansion 'threatened by carbon tax'
A CHEMICAL company that operates in Prime Minister Julia Gillard's electorate says it will shelve a $1 billion world-class expansion because of the carbon tax.
With the Senate set to approve the historic climate change policy tomorrow, Coogee Chemicals says it also threatens the long-term sustainability and jobs at the nation's only methanol factory in Laverton North.
Coogee Chemicals chairman Gordon Martin told the Herald Sun the company had been planning a new $1 billion plant in country Victoria, southern Queensland or in NSW around the seat held by Climate Change Minister Greg Combet.
It would have created 150 high-skilled jobs and export earnings of $14 billion, but Mr Martin said the carbon tax made it "uncompetitive and unviable". "The carbon tax will stop a significant Australian project that would value-add to Australia's abundant gas resource and jeopardise the long-term sustainability of the existing methanol plant at Laverton," he said.
The existing plant is in Ms Gillard's western suburbs seat of Lalor, where she will host Community Cabinet on Wednesday. The Laverton factory takes natural gas from Bass Strait and turns it into clear, colourless liquid called methanol.
Plant manager Grant Lukey said "every home will have something that includes methanol".
It is a critical ingredient for items such as particle board for building, table tops, aerosols, windshield wiper fluid, plastic soft drink bottles, paint, cycling tights and mattress foam.
Overseas it is an alternative to ethanol for car fuel, particularly in China.
Dr Lukey said the Laverton factory had the lowest carbon dioxide emissions per tonne of any methanol plant in the world. He said emissions were four-times greater at coal-based plants in China where 11 were built this year. "We've spent 16 years developing the best technology and now a world-scale project is going to go belly-up," Dr Lukey said.
Opposition climate spokesman Greg Hunt blamed the Government. "There couldn't be a plainer example of the stupidity of the carbon tax than losing a $1 billion investment with all of the associated jobs while sending global emissions up rather than down," Mr Hunt said.
Acting Prime Minister Wayne Swan said when the Senate passed the carbon tax it would be "a historic day for Australia". "As well as a cleaner environment, it will deliver better jobs for our children and grandchildren and a more secure economic future," Mr Swan said. "It's not an easy reform but it's the type of responsible, forward-looking policy that this Government is committed to delivering."
A tax of $23 a tonne will be paid by the top 500 polluters from July 1. Industry gets $3 billion a year in compensation and households $5 billion in tax cuts and welfare.
SOURCE
Vicious little thugs in class of chaos as principals and teachers are abused, threatened or bashed in NSW
PRINCIPALS and teachers are abused, threatened or bashed daily in schools by violent students, angry parents or intruders with a grudge.
Almost 460 serious incidents including 130 violent acts against school staff were logged during term one and term two this year in reports to the Department of Education and Communities.
The reports, obtained under freedom of information laws, show educators receive death threats, are forced to disarm weapon-wielding students and sometimes are injured and hospitalised in attacks.
While some of the most serious incidents involve intruders or angry parents, teachers are also threatened and assaulted by badly behaved students in class.
Some children become so out of control at school they throw furniture, smash windows and assault teachers by biting, kicking and hitting, forcing a number to seek an apprehended violence order for protection. Among the cases documented in reports to the department:
A TEACHER was hit in the back by a rock; and
A THREAT was made during a classroom confrontation to use a hacksaw blade from the industrial arts room.
The Department of Education and Communities said the safety of students and staff was its "top priority".
"Close to 90 per cent of the state's schools regularly report no such incidents and the great majority of the remaining 10 per cent report only one incidence of violence each school semester, with the bulk of these not being serious enough to result in anyone being charged by police," a spokesperson said.
"Schools receive information via students' enrolment information which assists them to safely support students once they are enrolled and to contribute to the safety of everyone in the school community.
"Where required, schools implement behaviour support plans for individual students to promote effective learning and manage factors that may impact on behaviour."
Teachers Federation senior vice-president Joan Lemaire also said schools were overwhelmingly safe places but added she was "deeply concerned" about any violence that occurred.
The federation has complained about inadequate staff and resources to cope with problems in some schools and has concerns some students with behaviour issues are still being enrolled without a thorough risk assessment.
Four years ago a survey of beginner teachers found bad behaviour by students was driving many out of the job.
SOURCE
Auditor-General reveals $4 billion blow-out in NSW Solar Bonus Scheme
The controversial Solar Bonus Scheme would have blown out to almost $4 billion - more than 10 times its original estimated cost to taxpayers - had it been left to continue running as it was, a scathing assessment by the NSW Auditor-General has found.
The report by Peter Achterstraat, released this morning, says the scheme "lacked the most elementary operational controls, had no overall plan and risks were poorly managed."
It also found that the previous government and its agencies "grossly underestimated" the cost of the scheme and the number of people who would be encouraged to install solar systems.
Advertisement: Story continues below
The findings will be embarrassing for the current Labor leader, John Robertson, who was energy minister when the scheme was designed under the former government.
Mr Achterstraat said the likely cost of the scheme to taxpayers is up to $1.75 billion, following the decision by the O'Farrell government to close it to new entrants this year. This was still "significantly more than the original $362 million estimate," he said.
Households who signed up to the original scheme were paid 60 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity their solar panels fed back into the grid.
The Keneally government belatedly slashed the rate paid to customers in the scheme from 60 cents a kilowatt hour to 20 cents last year after the cost blowout was uncovered.
"The New South Wales Scheme was far more generous than other states and contributed to many more people joining the scheme than were expected," Mr Achterstraat said.
In May the Premier, Barry O'Farrell, tried to rein in the blowout by retrospectively cutting the tariff paid to participants from 60 cents a kilowatt hour to 40 cents a kilowatt hour.
The plan caused widespread outrage from existing customers and the solar energy industry and sparked a backbench revolt which forced him to back down and commit to covering the cost in the state budget.
Mr Achterstraat said the Labor government failed to carry out a cost/benefit analysis for the scheme before it was implemented and there was no contingency planning.
"There was no budget for dollars or the number of connections and consequently very little control over the cost of the Solar Bonus Scheme," he said.
SOURCE
Leftist Know-nothings attack union buster
On Friday it was there, live on TV, for anyone who cared to look - an example of why the Gillard government would emphatically lose office if an election were called this year.
In a Senate committee hearing room in Parliament House, Canberra, the government went on the offensive against someone who had directly challenged the power of the unions. Government senators and their Green allies took cheap shots, exaggerated, sneered, distorted, indulged in conspiracy theories, made personal attacks and did everything but exhibit an understanding of how to run a business.
Three Labor senators, Alex Gallacher, Doug Cameron and Glenn Sterle, all former union officials, were joined by two Greens senators, Bob Brown and Scott Ludlam, taking turns putting the boot into Alan Joyce, the chief executive of Qantas. Not one of this pack of inquisitors has ever run a substantial business but all have highly developed ideas of entitlements.
After 83 minutes of inquisition it blew up in the government's face. The opposition industrial relations spokesman, Senator Eric Abetz, asked Joyce what would have happened if the government had invoked section 431 of the Fair Work Act, which entitles the Minister for Transport to stop industrial action if it is damaging the economy. Would that have pre-empted his spectacular action of grounding the entire Qantas fleet last weekend?
"Absolutely," Joyce replied. "Section 431 is very clear. It would have stopped me taking the industrial action I was taking. And would have stopped the lockout."
The great failure in this long-running, slow-burning, highly disruptive industrial dispute was the government's willingness to ignore the multiple pleas from the tourism industry to put an end to the months of industrial guerilla tactics being used by unions representing Qantas engineers, long-haul pilots, baggage handlers and caterers.
Similarly inert was the bureaucratic wing of the Labor Party, Fair Work Australia, which could see no justification for intervening in the dispute. Instead, a Fair Work tribunal found: "It is unlikely that the protected industrial action taken by the three unions, even taken together, is threatening to cause significant damage to the tourism and air transport industries."
Both the government and Fair Work Australia thought it was fair for Qantas to continue losing $15 million a week, continue grounding flights, continue disrupting passengers, and continue to suffer a catastrophic decline in bookings as the unions continued their announced plan to "slow bake" the airline, and its customers, over a period of months.
Problem, what problem? This is how Labor's soft power has been working ever since it passed the Fair Work Act, which enormously expanded the rights of unions to take industrial action about anything they chose.
Fair Work Australia has been stacked with Labor appointments since it was set up in 2009. Of the 11 Fair Work Commissioners appointed by the Gillard government, nine are former union officials or union advocates, and the other two are career public servants.
This is the same Fair Work Australia which has found nothing wrong with the conduct of the former union official and Labor MP Craig Thomson, on whose survival in Parliament the government's fate depends.
Friday's committee hearing was ostensibly about a bill proposed by an independent, Senator Nick Xenophon, which would limit the ability of Qantas to operate subsidiaries using foreign-based staff.
This is what Joyce had to say about the proposal: "It would not make us any more Australian. It would not protect Australian jobs and would have the opposite effect. It would put our business in jeopardy and would threaten Australian jobs. The bill contemplates locking Qantas inside Australian borders. "This is protectionism. No company can hide from the threat and opportunities of globalisation."
I agree. Based on this proposed bill, and his performance on Friday, Senator Xenophon would be better named Senator Xenophobe.
Without a shred of evidence he challenged the veracity of a claim by Qantas that its international division lost $200 million last year.
Joyce responded: "Several weeks ago we offered the ACTU an independent audit … [to] bring the conspiracy theories and the debate over this issue to a close. We are still waiting for a response."
In full xenophobic mode, the senator then raised the spectre of Asian sweatshop workers stealing the jobs of Australian workers. Again, Joyce was obliged to dismiss his scare-mongering: "The $400-a-month contract is a nonsense. These people are making $2000 a month. Our Thai cabin crew are paid 10 times the average salary in Thailand."
Picking up the theme of Asian threat rather than Asian opportunity, Senator Gallacher raised the issue of Joyce's salary, and the decline in the Qantas share price, and linked the cutting of 1000 jobs with a proposal to start a premium airline in Asia.
Joyce responded: "The job cuts … had nothing to do with the creation of an Asian airline, which is not going to lose one single Australian job."
Senator Brown, typically, then ramped up the insults: "You went about deliberately withholding your plan for a lockout from the Prime Minister and the Minister for Transport … "
Joyce: "That's not true, senator … "
Brown: "You were very obscure and devious … "
Joyce: "Sorry, senator, I think that's an absolutely inappropriate thing to say … The lockout wasn't our plan all along, so you're incorrect on that."
Brown: "You had a big stick behind your back and you didn't show it to anybody."
Joyce: "No, it's not true. The Fair Work Act gives us the option of taking industrial action as well. There has to be a balance between a company and its employees. Nobody is complaining about the massive industrial action by unions over an extended period that was killing Qantas. I had to do something."
SOURCE
A CHEMICAL company that operates in Prime Minister Julia Gillard's electorate says it will shelve a $1 billion world-class expansion because of the carbon tax.
With the Senate set to approve the historic climate change policy tomorrow, Coogee Chemicals says it also threatens the long-term sustainability and jobs at the nation's only methanol factory in Laverton North.
Coogee Chemicals chairman Gordon Martin told the Herald Sun the company had been planning a new $1 billion plant in country Victoria, southern Queensland or in NSW around the seat held by Climate Change Minister Greg Combet.
It would have created 150 high-skilled jobs and export earnings of $14 billion, but Mr Martin said the carbon tax made it "uncompetitive and unviable". "The carbon tax will stop a significant Australian project that would value-add to Australia's abundant gas resource and jeopardise the long-term sustainability of the existing methanol plant at Laverton," he said.
The existing plant is in Ms Gillard's western suburbs seat of Lalor, where she will host Community Cabinet on Wednesday. The Laverton factory takes natural gas from Bass Strait and turns it into clear, colourless liquid called methanol.
Plant manager Grant Lukey said "every home will have something that includes methanol".
It is a critical ingredient for items such as particle board for building, table tops, aerosols, windshield wiper fluid, plastic soft drink bottles, paint, cycling tights and mattress foam.
Overseas it is an alternative to ethanol for car fuel, particularly in China.
Dr Lukey said the Laverton factory had the lowest carbon dioxide emissions per tonne of any methanol plant in the world. He said emissions were four-times greater at coal-based plants in China where 11 were built this year. "We've spent 16 years developing the best technology and now a world-scale project is going to go belly-up," Dr Lukey said.
Opposition climate spokesman Greg Hunt blamed the Government. "There couldn't be a plainer example of the stupidity of the carbon tax than losing a $1 billion investment with all of the associated jobs while sending global emissions up rather than down," Mr Hunt said.
Acting Prime Minister Wayne Swan said when the Senate passed the carbon tax it would be "a historic day for Australia". "As well as a cleaner environment, it will deliver better jobs for our children and grandchildren and a more secure economic future," Mr Swan said. "It's not an easy reform but it's the type of responsible, forward-looking policy that this Government is committed to delivering."
A tax of $23 a tonne will be paid by the top 500 polluters from July 1. Industry gets $3 billion a year in compensation and households $5 billion in tax cuts and welfare.
SOURCE
Vicious little thugs in class of chaos as principals and teachers are abused, threatened or bashed in NSW
PRINCIPALS and teachers are abused, threatened or bashed daily in schools by violent students, angry parents or intruders with a grudge.
Almost 460 serious incidents including 130 violent acts against school staff were logged during term one and term two this year in reports to the Department of Education and Communities.
The reports, obtained under freedom of information laws, show educators receive death threats, are forced to disarm weapon-wielding students and sometimes are injured and hospitalised in attacks.
While some of the most serious incidents involve intruders or angry parents, teachers are also threatened and assaulted by badly behaved students in class.
Some children become so out of control at school they throw furniture, smash windows and assault teachers by biting, kicking and hitting, forcing a number to seek an apprehended violence order for protection. Among the cases documented in reports to the department:
A TEACHER was hit in the back by a rock; and
A THREAT was made during a classroom confrontation to use a hacksaw blade from the industrial arts room.
The Department of Education and Communities said the safety of students and staff was its "top priority".
"Close to 90 per cent of the state's schools regularly report no such incidents and the great majority of the remaining 10 per cent report only one incidence of violence each school semester, with the bulk of these not being serious enough to result in anyone being charged by police," a spokesperson said.
"Schools receive information via students' enrolment information which assists them to safely support students once they are enrolled and to contribute to the safety of everyone in the school community.
"Where required, schools implement behaviour support plans for individual students to promote effective learning and manage factors that may impact on behaviour."
Teachers Federation senior vice-president Joan Lemaire also said schools were overwhelmingly safe places but added she was "deeply concerned" about any violence that occurred.
The federation has complained about inadequate staff and resources to cope with problems in some schools and has concerns some students with behaviour issues are still being enrolled without a thorough risk assessment.
Four years ago a survey of beginner teachers found bad behaviour by students was driving many out of the job.
SOURCE
Auditor-General reveals $4 billion blow-out in NSW Solar Bonus Scheme
The controversial Solar Bonus Scheme would have blown out to almost $4 billion - more than 10 times its original estimated cost to taxpayers - had it been left to continue running as it was, a scathing assessment by the NSW Auditor-General has found.
The report by Peter Achterstraat, released this morning, says the scheme "lacked the most elementary operational controls, had no overall plan and risks were poorly managed."
It also found that the previous government and its agencies "grossly underestimated" the cost of the scheme and the number of people who would be encouraged to install solar systems.
Advertisement: Story continues below
The findings will be embarrassing for the current Labor leader, John Robertson, who was energy minister when the scheme was designed under the former government.
Mr Achterstraat said the likely cost of the scheme to taxpayers is up to $1.75 billion, following the decision by the O'Farrell government to close it to new entrants this year. This was still "significantly more than the original $362 million estimate," he said.
Households who signed up to the original scheme were paid 60 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity their solar panels fed back into the grid.
The Keneally government belatedly slashed the rate paid to customers in the scheme from 60 cents a kilowatt hour to 20 cents last year after the cost blowout was uncovered.
"The New South Wales Scheme was far more generous than other states and contributed to many more people joining the scheme than were expected," Mr Achterstraat said.
In May the Premier, Barry O'Farrell, tried to rein in the blowout by retrospectively cutting the tariff paid to participants from 60 cents a kilowatt hour to 40 cents a kilowatt hour.
The plan caused widespread outrage from existing customers and the solar energy industry and sparked a backbench revolt which forced him to back down and commit to covering the cost in the state budget.
Mr Achterstraat said the Labor government failed to carry out a cost/benefit analysis for the scheme before it was implemented and there was no contingency planning.
"There was no budget for dollars or the number of connections and consequently very little control over the cost of the Solar Bonus Scheme," he said.
SOURCE
Leftist Know-nothings attack union buster
On Friday it was there, live on TV, for anyone who cared to look - an example of why the Gillard government would emphatically lose office if an election were called this year.
In a Senate committee hearing room in Parliament House, Canberra, the government went on the offensive against someone who had directly challenged the power of the unions. Government senators and their Green allies took cheap shots, exaggerated, sneered, distorted, indulged in conspiracy theories, made personal attacks and did everything but exhibit an understanding of how to run a business.
Three Labor senators, Alex Gallacher, Doug Cameron and Glenn Sterle, all former union officials, were joined by two Greens senators, Bob Brown and Scott Ludlam, taking turns putting the boot into Alan Joyce, the chief executive of Qantas. Not one of this pack of inquisitors has ever run a substantial business but all have highly developed ideas of entitlements.
After 83 minutes of inquisition it blew up in the government's face. The opposition industrial relations spokesman, Senator Eric Abetz, asked Joyce what would have happened if the government had invoked section 431 of the Fair Work Act, which entitles the Minister for Transport to stop industrial action if it is damaging the economy. Would that have pre-empted his spectacular action of grounding the entire Qantas fleet last weekend?
"Absolutely," Joyce replied. "Section 431 is very clear. It would have stopped me taking the industrial action I was taking. And would have stopped the lockout."
The great failure in this long-running, slow-burning, highly disruptive industrial dispute was the government's willingness to ignore the multiple pleas from the tourism industry to put an end to the months of industrial guerilla tactics being used by unions representing Qantas engineers, long-haul pilots, baggage handlers and caterers.
Similarly inert was the bureaucratic wing of the Labor Party, Fair Work Australia, which could see no justification for intervening in the dispute. Instead, a Fair Work tribunal found: "It is unlikely that the protected industrial action taken by the three unions, even taken together, is threatening to cause significant damage to the tourism and air transport industries."
Both the government and Fair Work Australia thought it was fair for Qantas to continue losing $15 million a week, continue grounding flights, continue disrupting passengers, and continue to suffer a catastrophic decline in bookings as the unions continued their announced plan to "slow bake" the airline, and its customers, over a period of months.
Problem, what problem? This is how Labor's soft power has been working ever since it passed the Fair Work Act, which enormously expanded the rights of unions to take industrial action about anything they chose.
Fair Work Australia has been stacked with Labor appointments since it was set up in 2009. Of the 11 Fair Work Commissioners appointed by the Gillard government, nine are former union officials or union advocates, and the other two are career public servants.
This is the same Fair Work Australia which has found nothing wrong with the conduct of the former union official and Labor MP Craig Thomson, on whose survival in Parliament the government's fate depends.
Friday's committee hearing was ostensibly about a bill proposed by an independent, Senator Nick Xenophon, which would limit the ability of Qantas to operate subsidiaries using foreign-based staff.
This is what Joyce had to say about the proposal: "It would not make us any more Australian. It would not protect Australian jobs and would have the opposite effect. It would put our business in jeopardy and would threaten Australian jobs. The bill contemplates locking Qantas inside Australian borders. "This is protectionism. No company can hide from the threat and opportunities of globalisation."
I agree. Based on this proposed bill, and his performance on Friday, Senator Xenophon would be better named Senator Xenophobe.
Without a shred of evidence he challenged the veracity of a claim by Qantas that its international division lost $200 million last year.
Joyce responded: "Several weeks ago we offered the ACTU an independent audit … [to] bring the conspiracy theories and the debate over this issue to a close. We are still waiting for a response."
In full xenophobic mode, the senator then raised the spectre of Asian sweatshop workers stealing the jobs of Australian workers. Again, Joyce was obliged to dismiss his scare-mongering: "The $400-a-month contract is a nonsense. These people are making $2000 a month. Our Thai cabin crew are paid 10 times the average salary in Thailand."
Picking up the theme of Asian threat rather than Asian opportunity, Senator Gallacher raised the issue of Joyce's salary, and the decline in the Qantas share price, and linked the cutting of 1000 jobs with a proposal to start a premium airline in Asia.
Joyce responded: "The job cuts … had nothing to do with the creation of an Asian airline, which is not going to lose one single Australian job."
Senator Brown, typically, then ramped up the insults: "You went about deliberately withholding your plan for a lockout from the Prime Minister and the Minister for Transport … "
Joyce: "That's not true, senator … "
Brown: "You were very obscure and devious … "
Joyce: "Sorry, senator, I think that's an absolutely inappropriate thing to say … The lockout wasn't our plan all along, so you're incorrect on that."
Brown: "You had a big stick behind your back and you didn't show it to anybody."
Joyce: "No, it's not true. The Fair Work Act gives us the option of taking industrial action as well. There has to be a balance between a company and its employees. Nobody is complaining about the massive industrial action by unions over an extended period that was killing Qantas. I had to do something."
SOURCE
Sunday, November 06, 2011
God may be first casualty as Guides look for a fresh start
Lessons in condom use will be next. More decay of standards just when kids need them most
"I promise that I will do my best: to do my duty to God, to serve the Queen and my country; to help other people; and to keep the Guide law.
THESE are the first words a little girl utters when she becomes a Girl Guide and they haven't changed in more than 40 years.
But now the Girl Guide promise is being reviewed to bring the 100-year-old organisation into the 21st century - and God and the Queen could be casualties of the modernisation.
Advertisement: Story continues below
The word "obedient" as a girl guide law is also under review.
The Board of Girl Guides Australia is asking its 30,000 members to suggest how the Guide promise and law could be made more relevant to their lives today.
The Australian Guides are trying to shed their old-fashioned folksy image to appeal to a wider group from different faiths and cultures. "We're seen as outdated, yet the programs we run are far from outdated," the NSW Guides Commissioner, Belinda Allen, said.
They introduced new uniforms last year, run modern leadership and personal development programs alongside their traditional outdoor activities, and now want to overhaul the promise and law, last updated in 1969.
"We feel it's time it was in language that is appropriate to girls of the 21st century, and to Australia, because the nature and composition of the Australian community has changed dramatically since 1969," Ms Allen said.
The Australian promise - a code of living that Guides strive for - is nearly identical to the promise made by the British Guides.
But Canadian Guides don't mention God or the Queen in their promise. After reviewing their wording last year, they now pledge "to be true to myself, my beliefs and Canada". [i.e. nothing]
Ms Allen is reluctant to publicly single out which parts of the promise and law are likely to change, lest she pre-empt the survey responses of Guides. But it is believed that the references to God and the Queen are key elements up for review. It became optional last year for Australian Guides to promise to serve the Queen.
Guides in the Netherlands and Switzerland can omit the words "with the help of God", while Guides in Britain and the US can substitute their preferred spiritual deity for God.
When it comes to the Guide law Ms Allen has a "big problem" with the sixth law which states "A Guide is obedient". "It is totally out of step with girls in this day and age," she said. "In a time of gender equality it's very important that girls are empowered to think for themselves and make good decisions. I think the word we'd like to use is respect, as opposed to obedience."
After declining during the '80s and '90s, Guides membership has stabilised and is now growing again.
Ms Allen hopes a new, more inclusive promise and law will encourage more girls to join the Guides. "I hope we'll broaden our appeal," she said. "I'm sure there have been cases in the past where girls felt [excluded]."
Ms Allen doubts many Guides will be alienated by any changes to the promise and law. "Anything is controversial where you are looking to change," she said. "With any change do you please everyone? We are listening to our membership."
A new promise and law are likely to be unveiled next March.
SOURCE
Myths, lies and adoption
In 2009–10, 36,000 children were in out of home care in Australia and more than two-thirds had been there for at least two years.
Many of these children will remain in out of home care indefinitely after being cycled in and out of the system following failed attempts to reunite them with their dysfunctional parents. Most will suffer lifelong disadvantage due to abuse at home and instability in care. Almost all would be better off if adopted, at the earliest opportunity, by suitable families.
Yet in child and family welfare circles, a self-fulfilling myth has been cultivated to rule adoption out of bounds.
Those who are ideologically opposed to ‘forced’ adoptions maintain that ‘Australians have, on the whole, been less willing to adopt children [from out of care] … than their counterparts in the United States and Britain.’
This claim is mischievous. The real obstacle is that family preservation-obsessed Australian child protection agencies refuse to take action to legally terminate the parental responsibilities of bad or inadequate parents who could contest adoptions.
What seems to be different here compared to comparable countries is that the official taboo on adoption appears to be much stronger.
The number of children in care per capita in England, the United States, and Australia is very similar. Yet significantly more children are adopted out of care each year in England and the United States.
In England, 3,200 children were adopted from care in 2009–10. If Australian children in care had been adopted at the same rate, there would have been approximately 1,700 adoptions from care in 2009–10.
In the United States, more than 50,000 children are adopted every year from out of care.
If Australian children in care had been adopted at the same rate as in the United States, there would have been approximately 4,800 Australian adoptions from care in 2009–10.
In reality, however, a mere 61 Australian children were adopted by non-relatives and 53 by foster carers in 2009–10.
Australia’s lagging adoption performance has got nothing to do with the so-called unwillingness of Australians to give needy children good homes.
The true culprits are the academics, social workers, and other activists who cling to the meta-myth that vulnerable children ‘are almost always better off with natural parents.’
SOURCE
"Secret" plan to cut nurse numbers?
If this goes ahead, it will be like the British disaster, where many people performing nursing duties have no training at all
THE Baillieu government has developed a secret plan to goad the state's nurses into industrial action so it can force them into arbitration, cut nurse numbers and replace them at hospital bedsides with low-skilled "health assistants".
The secret government document outlines an aggressive approach to achieving its policy - by deliberately frustrating pay negotiations - prompting claims from the nurses' union secretary Lisa Fitzpatrick of "duplicity".
A cabinet-in-confidence submission, signed by Health Minister David Davis in May and leaked to The Sunday Age, confirms that the government had detailed plans to cut the annual nursing budget by $104 million.
Mr Davis did not return repeated calls from The Sunday Age, so it is not known whether cabinet endorsed the strategy.
In order to make the savings, the government planned to make nurse-patient ratios - currently one nurse is rostered on for every four patients - more flexible; replace some nurses with low-paid, low-skilled "health assistants"; reduce the ratio of university-qualified nurses on wards; and introduce shorter shifts and split shifts.
Mr Davis's submission reveals that in return for these cuts, which amount to 4 per cent of the nurses' wage budget, nurses would get a pay rise of just 3.5 per cent per year. Police recently received a 4.7 per cent pay rise.
The government appears determined to pursue its policy despite its submission acknowledging that interstate nurses "receive significantly higher pay rates" than Victorian nurses.
Negotiations for the new agreement began in September, and on Friday nurses voted to give themselves the ability to take legally protected industrial action from Thursday.
The government's aim, revealed in the submission, is to have the crisis continue to a point whereby the industrial tribunal, Fair Work Australia, is either called in or steps in because negotiations have broken down and the nurses' action is deemed harmful to public welfare.
This would force both parties into arbitration, where the government's push to reduce nurses' conditions is likely to be successful because the tribunal is not permitted under the constitution to tell states the "number, identity or appointment" of the workforce they employ.
"[We] believe that a demonstrated preparedness to take such claims to full-blown arbitration (despite the risks involved) is the best means of inducing the ANF to reach an acceptable agreement," the submission argues. "These proposals will be difficult to have agreed in negotiation, but may be successful should the parties end up in arbitration."
The Australian Nursing Federation's Lisa Fitzpatrick told The Sunday Age the government had adopted a "sham approach" to the negotiations.
"They're prepared to force nurses to take industrial action such as bed closures which they then argue is harming the community, and say how terrible the nurses are," she said yesterday.
"But this is what they've set out to do all along. It's duplicity of the greatest proportion - more than we've ever seen before."
Mr Davis's submission details savings of $42 million per year from "roster/shift flexibility", $39.3 million by changing nurse ratios and using "health assistants", and $19.9 million from "nurse-patient ratio flexibility".
It says the government wants "significant replacement [of nurses] at the lower end [of the skill range] by a new generation of assistants", even though the rate of technological change in nursing "easily surpasses that experienced by other professionals".
It says more flexibility is required to make sure that "management prerogative … in relation to workforce planning is enhanced as far as practicable".
At present, state health facilities employ registered nurses who have done a three-year university degree and enrolled nurses who have completed an 18-month TAFE diploma. The government wants to save money on nursing wages by employing unregistered health assistants who have little if any training, similar to personal care assistants who work in the private aged-care sector.
The Austin Hospital is trialling a program whereby health assistants are tending patients on wards, but they are in addition to the existing nurse-patient ratio.
Kate Robinson and Kylie Thompson, nurses at the Royal Women's Hospital, said if the government tried to save $104 million from nurses' wages, they would look for different jobs.
And Hannah Harris, an enrolled nurse at the Peter James Centre, said the move would create so much stress that "we're going to lose nurses, surely".
SOURCE
Arty Christmas horror scrapped
LORD Mayor Robert Doyle has backflipped on a move to install a $285,000 hi-tech Christmas tree in the middle of Melbourne.
Responding to community opposition to the 18m high yuletide decoration he wanted to plant in the City Square, Mr Doyle has decided instead to commission a more traditional tree at the same cost to ratepayers.
In July, the Sunday Herald Sun revealed a plan to erect the futuristic tree fitted with 10,000 LED lights, the capacity to stream sound and vision and display Christmas-related images on its translucent perspex branches and loudspeakers to blare Christmas carols.
Mr Doyle had hoped the tree would help put Melbourne on the world Christmas map.
But in a change of heart, he has decided to scrap the tree, designed with Melbourne artists, and instead turn the square, at the corner of Swanston and Collins streets, into an "urban forest".
In a column for the Sunday Herald Sun, Mr Doyle said he had listened to the people and decided against the hi-tech tree. "Everybody hated it: residents, visitors, businesses," he said. "No one thought it was a striking centrepiece for City Square." So he has decided to turn the City Square Christmas green instead.
"We will turn City Square into an urban forest. Up to 20 big, living hoop pines, native Australian trees that resemble a traditional Christmas tree, will be the central feature of the square," he said.
"There will be one huge tree as the centrepiece, elegantly lit and with a new star. "There will be green turf throughout the square (synthetic because of foot traffic) and many smaller trees and box hedges, all beautifully landscaped. "The City Square will become a green oasis. The base of each large tree will be a gift wrapped 'present'."
Despite his U-turn, Mr Doyle said the Town Hall would press ahead with a $2.6 million budget to shower visitors to the city with festive spirit.
New decorations including a nativity scene and mistletoe bridge will be installed, a Santa's house will be set up for photos, festive images will be projected on major buildings, the Town Hall will be wrapped like a gift and the council has commissioned a Christmas tram.
SOURCE
Lessons in condom use will be next. More decay of standards just when kids need them most
"I promise that I will do my best: to do my duty to God, to serve the Queen and my country; to help other people; and to keep the Guide law.
THESE are the first words a little girl utters when she becomes a Girl Guide and they haven't changed in more than 40 years.
But now the Girl Guide promise is being reviewed to bring the 100-year-old organisation into the 21st century - and God and the Queen could be casualties of the modernisation.
Advertisement: Story continues below
The word "obedient" as a girl guide law is also under review.
The Board of Girl Guides Australia is asking its 30,000 members to suggest how the Guide promise and law could be made more relevant to their lives today.
The Australian Guides are trying to shed their old-fashioned folksy image to appeal to a wider group from different faiths and cultures. "We're seen as outdated, yet the programs we run are far from outdated," the NSW Guides Commissioner, Belinda Allen, said.
They introduced new uniforms last year, run modern leadership and personal development programs alongside their traditional outdoor activities, and now want to overhaul the promise and law, last updated in 1969.
"We feel it's time it was in language that is appropriate to girls of the 21st century, and to Australia, because the nature and composition of the Australian community has changed dramatically since 1969," Ms Allen said.
The Australian promise - a code of living that Guides strive for - is nearly identical to the promise made by the British Guides.
But Canadian Guides don't mention God or the Queen in their promise. After reviewing their wording last year, they now pledge "to be true to myself, my beliefs and Canada". [i.e. nothing]
Ms Allen is reluctant to publicly single out which parts of the promise and law are likely to change, lest she pre-empt the survey responses of Guides. But it is believed that the references to God and the Queen are key elements up for review. It became optional last year for Australian Guides to promise to serve the Queen.
Guides in the Netherlands and Switzerland can omit the words "with the help of God", while Guides in Britain and the US can substitute their preferred spiritual deity for God.
When it comes to the Guide law Ms Allen has a "big problem" with the sixth law which states "A Guide is obedient". "It is totally out of step with girls in this day and age," she said. "In a time of gender equality it's very important that girls are empowered to think for themselves and make good decisions. I think the word we'd like to use is respect, as opposed to obedience."
After declining during the '80s and '90s, Guides membership has stabilised and is now growing again.
Ms Allen hopes a new, more inclusive promise and law will encourage more girls to join the Guides. "I hope we'll broaden our appeal," she said. "I'm sure there have been cases in the past where girls felt [excluded]."
Ms Allen doubts many Guides will be alienated by any changes to the promise and law. "Anything is controversial where you are looking to change," she said. "With any change do you please everyone? We are listening to our membership."
A new promise and law are likely to be unveiled next March.
SOURCE
Myths, lies and adoption
In 2009–10, 36,000 children were in out of home care in Australia and more than two-thirds had been there for at least two years.
Many of these children will remain in out of home care indefinitely after being cycled in and out of the system following failed attempts to reunite them with their dysfunctional parents. Most will suffer lifelong disadvantage due to abuse at home and instability in care. Almost all would be better off if adopted, at the earliest opportunity, by suitable families.
Yet in child and family welfare circles, a self-fulfilling myth has been cultivated to rule adoption out of bounds.
Those who are ideologically opposed to ‘forced’ adoptions maintain that ‘Australians have, on the whole, been less willing to adopt children [from out of care] … than their counterparts in the United States and Britain.’
This claim is mischievous. The real obstacle is that family preservation-obsessed Australian child protection agencies refuse to take action to legally terminate the parental responsibilities of bad or inadequate parents who could contest adoptions.
What seems to be different here compared to comparable countries is that the official taboo on adoption appears to be much stronger.
The number of children in care per capita in England, the United States, and Australia is very similar. Yet significantly more children are adopted out of care each year in England and the United States.
In England, 3,200 children were adopted from care in 2009–10. If Australian children in care had been adopted at the same rate, there would have been approximately 1,700 adoptions from care in 2009–10.
In the United States, more than 50,000 children are adopted every year from out of care.
If Australian children in care had been adopted at the same rate as in the United States, there would have been approximately 4,800 Australian adoptions from care in 2009–10.
In reality, however, a mere 61 Australian children were adopted by non-relatives and 53 by foster carers in 2009–10.
Australia’s lagging adoption performance has got nothing to do with the so-called unwillingness of Australians to give needy children good homes.
The true culprits are the academics, social workers, and other activists who cling to the meta-myth that vulnerable children ‘are almost always better off with natural parents.’
SOURCE
"Secret" plan to cut nurse numbers?
If this goes ahead, it will be like the British disaster, where many people performing nursing duties have no training at all
THE Baillieu government has developed a secret plan to goad the state's nurses into industrial action so it can force them into arbitration, cut nurse numbers and replace them at hospital bedsides with low-skilled "health assistants".
The secret government document outlines an aggressive approach to achieving its policy - by deliberately frustrating pay negotiations - prompting claims from the nurses' union secretary Lisa Fitzpatrick of "duplicity".
A cabinet-in-confidence submission, signed by Health Minister David Davis in May and leaked to The Sunday Age, confirms that the government had detailed plans to cut the annual nursing budget by $104 million.
Mr Davis did not return repeated calls from The Sunday Age, so it is not known whether cabinet endorsed the strategy.
In order to make the savings, the government planned to make nurse-patient ratios - currently one nurse is rostered on for every four patients - more flexible; replace some nurses with low-paid, low-skilled "health assistants"; reduce the ratio of university-qualified nurses on wards; and introduce shorter shifts and split shifts.
Mr Davis's submission reveals that in return for these cuts, which amount to 4 per cent of the nurses' wage budget, nurses would get a pay rise of just 3.5 per cent per year. Police recently received a 4.7 per cent pay rise.
The government appears determined to pursue its policy despite its submission acknowledging that interstate nurses "receive significantly higher pay rates" than Victorian nurses.
Negotiations for the new agreement began in September, and on Friday nurses voted to give themselves the ability to take legally protected industrial action from Thursday.
The government's aim, revealed in the submission, is to have the crisis continue to a point whereby the industrial tribunal, Fair Work Australia, is either called in or steps in because negotiations have broken down and the nurses' action is deemed harmful to public welfare.
This would force both parties into arbitration, where the government's push to reduce nurses' conditions is likely to be successful because the tribunal is not permitted under the constitution to tell states the "number, identity or appointment" of the workforce they employ.
"[We] believe that a demonstrated preparedness to take such claims to full-blown arbitration (despite the risks involved) is the best means of inducing the ANF to reach an acceptable agreement," the submission argues. "These proposals will be difficult to have agreed in negotiation, but may be successful should the parties end up in arbitration."
The Australian Nursing Federation's Lisa Fitzpatrick told The Sunday Age the government had adopted a "sham approach" to the negotiations.
"They're prepared to force nurses to take industrial action such as bed closures which they then argue is harming the community, and say how terrible the nurses are," she said yesterday.
"But this is what they've set out to do all along. It's duplicity of the greatest proportion - more than we've ever seen before."
Mr Davis's submission details savings of $42 million per year from "roster/shift flexibility", $39.3 million by changing nurse ratios and using "health assistants", and $19.9 million from "nurse-patient ratio flexibility".
It says the government wants "significant replacement [of nurses] at the lower end [of the skill range] by a new generation of assistants", even though the rate of technological change in nursing "easily surpasses that experienced by other professionals".
It says more flexibility is required to make sure that "management prerogative … in relation to workforce planning is enhanced as far as practicable".
At present, state health facilities employ registered nurses who have done a three-year university degree and enrolled nurses who have completed an 18-month TAFE diploma. The government wants to save money on nursing wages by employing unregistered health assistants who have little if any training, similar to personal care assistants who work in the private aged-care sector.
The Austin Hospital is trialling a program whereby health assistants are tending patients on wards, but they are in addition to the existing nurse-patient ratio.
Kate Robinson and Kylie Thompson, nurses at the Royal Women's Hospital, said if the government tried to save $104 million from nurses' wages, they would look for different jobs.
And Hannah Harris, an enrolled nurse at the Peter James Centre, said the move would create so much stress that "we're going to lose nurses, surely".
SOURCE
Arty Christmas horror scrapped
LORD Mayor Robert Doyle has backflipped on a move to install a $285,000 hi-tech Christmas tree in the middle of Melbourne.
Responding to community opposition to the 18m high yuletide decoration he wanted to plant in the City Square, Mr Doyle has decided instead to commission a more traditional tree at the same cost to ratepayers.
In July, the Sunday Herald Sun revealed a plan to erect the futuristic tree fitted with 10,000 LED lights, the capacity to stream sound and vision and display Christmas-related images on its translucent perspex branches and loudspeakers to blare Christmas carols.
Mr Doyle had hoped the tree would help put Melbourne on the world Christmas map.
But in a change of heart, he has decided to scrap the tree, designed with Melbourne artists, and instead turn the square, at the corner of Swanston and Collins streets, into an "urban forest".
In a column for the Sunday Herald Sun, Mr Doyle said he had listened to the people and decided against the hi-tech tree. "Everybody hated it: residents, visitors, businesses," he said. "No one thought it was a striking centrepiece for City Square." So he has decided to turn the City Square Christmas green instead.
"We will turn City Square into an urban forest. Up to 20 big, living hoop pines, native Australian trees that resemble a traditional Christmas tree, will be the central feature of the square," he said.
"There will be one huge tree as the centrepiece, elegantly lit and with a new star. "There will be green turf throughout the square (synthetic because of foot traffic) and many smaller trees and box hedges, all beautifully landscaped. "The City Square will become a green oasis. The base of each large tree will be a gift wrapped 'present'."
Despite his U-turn, Mr Doyle said the Town Hall would press ahead with a $2.6 million budget to shower visitors to the city with festive spirit.
New decorations including a nativity scene and mistletoe bridge will be installed, a Santa's house will be set up for photos, festive images will be projected on major buildings, the Town Hall will be wrapped like a gift and the council has commissioned a Christmas tram.
SOURCE
Saturday, November 05, 2011
Qld. Conservative leader to open up some wilderness areas to mining
THE Steve Irwin Reserve set up by former Liberal PM John Howard will be opened up to mining, under plans by LNP leader Campbell Newman to restrict Queensland's landmark Wild Rivers Act.
Mr Newman announced yesterday that statutory protection of rivers would be repealed. It means major developments such as mining will potentially be allowed much closer to rivers under an impact assessment system.
Mr Newman will remove Cape York's Wenlock, Stewart, Archer and Lockhart rivers from legislative protection but - at this stage - leave others to stand. Mr Newman said the changes would give Cape York locals greater control of their economic future.
Terri Irwin, wife of the late Steve Irwin, said she had tried unsuccessfully to talk to Mr Newman about the issue. "Considering that a child dies every 20 seconds ... from drinking polluted water, I think it's absolutely ridiculous to be considering anything other than supporting wild rivers," Ms Irwin said.
Environment Minister Vicky Darling said Mr Newman described his scheme as a pilot plan, which made her wonder what would be next. "I'd urge Mr Newman to go up country and see what people say about wild rivers," she said.
Mr Newman said Cape York would be better protected by his plan. "It is clear wild rivers was designed more to capture green preferences, rather than for genuine, balanced environmental and development outcomes on Cape York," he said.
SOURCE
Nanny state taxation
The nanny state’s irresistible urge to meddle in peoples’ choices, combined with government’s voracious appetite for revenue, is producing a new class of highly targeted behavioural taxes. France recently announced a new tax on sugary soft drinks (which has the typically French twist of harming mostly non-French companies). Meanwhile, Denmark has introduced a new tax on the saturated fat content of food (the ‘fat tax’).
Australia has its own examples. The Labor government introduced the ‘alcopops’ tax in 2009 and imposed a 25% increase in the excise on cigarettes last year. Both of these actions built on the existing excise system in the traditional domain of ‘sin taxes,’ but their motive was the same as the more recent and less traditional French and Danish taxes. Our government is also toying with the idea of using the tax system to jack up the price of wine so that the minimum price would be considerably above existing prices at the low end.
The recent tax forum in Canberra was held just as Denmark’s fat tax hit the news. There were calls from predictable quarters at the forum for Australia to follow suit. In contrast Gary Banks, Chairman of the Productivity Commission, sounded a strong note of caution against behavioural taxes, saying that much of the detail on how to change behaviour through taxation is unresolved and that behavioural taxes may produce perverse results.
Quite apart from Banks’ technical arguments about the effectiveness of behavioural taxes, there are other reasons for Australia not to follow France and Denmark:
* Such taxes take the state too far into the territory of attempting to influence choices freely made by individuals.
* By penalising the great majority who eat and drink in moderation, such taxes use a sledge hammer to crack a nut.
* They make the tax system more complex and more expensive to comply with – the Henry tax review rightly emphasised the need for simplification and broader tax bases.
* The unstated motive is often revenue-raising, but if more revenue is needed it should be raised more efficiently.
When new or increased behavioural taxes are announced, governments invariably say that the increase in revenue is incidental to the main motive. The test of their sincerity is whether they pocket the revenue or hand it back through cuts in other taxes. I have never known the latter to happen. I do not want to see Australian governments go further down the road of nanny-state taxation, but if they do then they should commit themselves to equivalent cuts in other taxes.
SOURCE
Local parks are not free
COUNCILS fear the death of the local park, with the state's pricing regulator finding green spaces are forcing up house prices in new estates.
An analysis of three new land release areas in Sydney's northwest found land for open space and recreation came at a high cost, lifting developer levies by as much as $60,000 per block, which was then put on homebuyers.
However, Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils president Alison McLaren said slashing parks in new neighbourhoods would not solve the housing affordability crisis.
"Western Sydney already has significant problems with unhealthy lifestyles and obesity issues; reducing the access to local recreational space will worsen this problem.
"Without green spaces and parks, these new estates will become unbearably hot, placing a huge new demand on our energy supplies for air conditioning and cooling."
IPART wants a whole-of-government review of the requirements for open space with the aim of scrapping housing levies for parks.
Urban Development Institute of Australia NSW CEO Steven Albin said the industry well understood the importance of parks but much of Sydney's western development had a 60 per cent open space requirement including river corridors, bushfire zones and stormwater management.
"It also has the effect of reducing the total number of dwellings that can be produced and that directly (affects) housing affordability," Mr Albin said. IPART acting chairman James Cox said the review had shown the "particularly high costs" of land set aside for open space.
"The cost of infrastructure should be borne by different groups in proportion to the benefits they receive from them," he said.
An online poll on thetelegraph.com.au found 90 per cent of 2980 readers did not want local parks sacrificed to keep house prices down.
SOURCE
What a horror! Musical garbage imposed on music students
Because it's Australian it's good??? Just aint't so, I am afraid
An HSC music syllabus focusing on contemporary Australian music presented an odd problem for Alice Chance.
Not only did she have to find a piece composed in the past 25 years for the performance component of the course but it also had to be written for a string instrument developed in the 15th century and largely confined to the Renaissance and Baroque periods.
Her instrument of choice is the unusual viola da gamba and she is the first student in 25 years to perform on it for the HSC.
"I eventually found a piece and had to make a few adjustments to make it a bit HSC-friendly and put in a few more show-off bits," Alice, 17, a student at MLC Burwood, said.
The viola da gamba, a relative of the Renaissance vihuela, which preceded the plucking guitar, largely fell out of favour after the 17th century and is a far cry from the modern compositions she and 739 other students will encounter in their Music 2 HSC paper today.
The mandatory area of study is Australian music of the past 25 years and teachers draw upon musical styles from recordings, YouTube and live performances.
More HERE
THE Steve Irwin Reserve set up by former Liberal PM John Howard will be opened up to mining, under plans by LNP leader Campbell Newman to restrict Queensland's landmark Wild Rivers Act.
Mr Newman announced yesterday that statutory protection of rivers would be repealed. It means major developments such as mining will potentially be allowed much closer to rivers under an impact assessment system.
Mr Newman will remove Cape York's Wenlock, Stewart, Archer and Lockhart rivers from legislative protection but - at this stage - leave others to stand. Mr Newman said the changes would give Cape York locals greater control of their economic future.
Terri Irwin, wife of the late Steve Irwin, said she had tried unsuccessfully to talk to Mr Newman about the issue. "Considering that a child dies every 20 seconds ... from drinking polluted water, I think it's absolutely ridiculous to be considering anything other than supporting wild rivers," Ms Irwin said.
Environment Minister Vicky Darling said Mr Newman described his scheme as a pilot plan, which made her wonder what would be next. "I'd urge Mr Newman to go up country and see what people say about wild rivers," she said.
Mr Newman said Cape York would be better protected by his plan. "It is clear wild rivers was designed more to capture green preferences, rather than for genuine, balanced environmental and development outcomes on Cape York," he said.
SOURCE
Nanny state taxation
The nanny state’s irresistible urge to meddle in peoples’ choices, combined with government’s voracious appetite for revenue, is producing a new class of highly targeted behavioural taxes. France recently announced a new tax on sugary soft drinks (which has the typically French twist of harming mostly non-French companies). Meanwhile, Denmark has introduced a new tax on the saturated fat content of food (the ‘fat tax’).
Australia has its own examples. The Labor government introduced the ‘alcopops’ tax in 2009 and imposed a 25% increase in the excise on cigarettes last year. Both of these actions built on the existing excise system in the traditional domain of ‘sin taxes,’ but their motive was the same as the more recent and less traditional French and Danish taxes. Our government is also toying with the idea of using the tax system to jack up the price of wine so that the minimum price would be considerably above existing prices at the low end.
The recent tax forum in Canberra was held just as Denmark’s fat tax hit the news. There were calls from predictable quarters at the forum for Australia to follow suit. In contrast Gary Banks, Chairman of the Productivity Commission, sounded a strong note of caution against behavioural taxes, saying that much of the detail on how to change behaviour through taxation is unresolved and that behavioural taxes may produce perverse results.
Quite apart from Banks’ technical arguments about the effectiveness of behavioural taxes, there are other reasons for Australia not to follow France and Denmark:
* Such taxes take the state too far into the territory of attempting to influence choices freely made by individuals.
* By penalising the great majority who eat and drink in moderation, such taxes use a sledge hammer to crack a nut.
* They make the tax system more complex and more expensive to comply with – the Henry tax review rightly emphasised the need for simplification and broader tax bases.
* The unstated motive is often revenue-raising, but if more revenue is needed it should be raised more efficiently.
When new or increased behavioural taxes are announced, governments invariably say that the increase in revenue is incidental to the main motive. The test of their sincerity is whether they pocket the revenue or hand it back through cuts in other taxes. I have never known the latter to happen. I do not want to see Australian governments go further down the road of nanny-state taxation, but if they do then they should commit themselves to equivalent cuts in other taxes.
SOURCE
Local parks are not free
COUNCILS fear the death of the local park, with the state's pricing regulator finding green spaces are forcing up house prices in new estates.
An analysis of three new land release areas in Sydney's northwest found land for open space and recreation came at a high cost, lifting developer levies by as much as $60,000 per block, which was then put on homebuyers.
However, Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils president Alison McLaren said slashing parks in new neighbourhoods would not solve the housing affordability crisis.
"Western Sydney already has significant problems with unhealthy lifestyles and obesity issues; reducing the access to local recreational space will worsen this problem.
"Without green spaces and parks, these new estates will become unbearably hot, placing a huge new demand on our energy supplies for air conditioning and cooling."
IPART wants a whole-of-government review of the requirements for open space with the aim of scrapping housing levies for parks.
Urban Development Institute of Australia NSW CEO Steven Albin said the industry well understood the importance of parks but much of Sydney's western development had a 60 per cent open space requirement including river corridors, bushfire zones and stormwater management.
"It also has the effect of reducing the total number of dwellings that can be produced and that directly (affects) housing affordability," Mr Albin said. IPART acting chairman James Cox said the review had shown the "particularly high costs" of land set aside for open space.
"The cost of infrastructure should be borne by different groups in proportion to the benefits they receive from them," he said.
An online poll on thetelegraph.com.au found 90 per cent of 2980 readers did not want local parks sacrificed to keep house prices down.
SOURCE
What a horror! Musical garbage imposed on music students
Because it's Australian it's good??? Just aint't so, I am afraid
An HSC music syllabus focusing on contemporary Australian music presented an odd problem for Alice Chance.
Not only did she have to find a piece composed in the past 25 years for the performance component of the course but it also had to be written for a string instrument developed in the 15th century and largely confined to the Renaissance and Baroque periods.
Her instrument of choice is the unusual viola da gamba and she is the first student in 25 years to perform on it for the HSC.
"I eventually found a piece and had to make a few adjustments to make it a bit HSC-friendly and put in a few more show-off bits," Alice, 17, a student at MLC Burwood, said.
The viola da gamba, a relative of the Renaissance vihuela, which preceded the plucking guitar, largely fell out of favour after the 17th century and is a far cry from the modern compositions she and 739 other students will encounter in their Music 2 HSC paper today.
The mandatory area of study is Australian music of the past 25 years and teachers draw upon musical styles from recordings, YouTube and live performances.
More HERE
Friday, November 04, 2011
Somebody upstairs doesn't like false prophets
Massive rain dumped in southern half of WA. Warmist Tim Flannery predicted unending drought
WA farmers are counting the cost after unseasonal rain dumped up to 70mm on some parts of the Wheatbelt, damaging crops and ruining hay.
The Great Southern and Central Wheatbelt were hit with the heaviest falls, with several farmers in the Narrogin and Kukerin areas reporting falls of 70mm in just a couple of hours yesterday afternoon, flooding roads and filling farm dams.
Officially, Narrogin had 47mm; Brookton 49mm; Katanning 42mm, the nearby Katanning research station 46mm; Wagin 39mm and Corrigin 35mm. Newdegate to the east had 22mm.
The heavy rain is a disaster for unharvested crops and cut hay which has been bailed but not yet stored undercover.
WA Farmers Federation president Mike Norton said the rain is causing huge problems for grain farmers who have not harvested crops and could wipe millions of dollars off WA's expected bumper grain harvest.
Albany Airport recorded 54mm up to 7am today, Albany town 31mm, with Rocky Gully, about 70km to the north west recording 51mm.
In the Central Wheatbelt Cunderdin Airport had 52mm, Beverley 51mm, Wongan Hills and York 25mm each.
In the south-east of the state, Ravensthorpe had 39mm, Hopetoun north recorded 28mm and Munglinup 20mm.
Mr Norton said it was too early to put an accurate figure on the losses because they would need to assess the damage to the different categories of crops.
He said this year's estimated 12 million tonne crop worth an average of $300 a tonne would definitely suffer. Some farmers could lose $100 a tonne.
Mr Norton said although many were hoping for $300 a tonne, the figure was more likely to be around $270 or $280, but he would have a more accurate picture of the extent of the damage later today.
He said this was not the first time late rains had affected crops but it had not happened "in a very long time".
Mr Norton said the late rain was detrimental to crops because it had started to distort ingredients in the seed head which in turn lowered the value.
"At this time of year the crops are in their ripening stage and the last thing you want is rain because it starts to stain the crops and for those that are perhaps still growing it starts to force feed them," he said.
"It starts to blow the crop out and pumps the seed full of a lot more moisture which starts to lower the protein level of the grain."
Mr Norton said grain used in bread needed a fairly high level of protein and lower protein content meant the standing crops were more likely to be used for animal feed.
He said the oaten hay crop that had already been cut and on the ground was discoloured due to mould and was "a complete write-off".
"There's no perfect year in this game unfortunately," Mr Norton said.
In the South West falls were widespread with many centres recording up to 15mm. Shannon had 17mm.
Perth's official rainfall was just 6.4mm (to 7am), though many suburbs had heavier falls, with Jandakot recording 11mm; Perth Airport 10mm and Rottnest 9mm.
The rain was caused by a broad surface trough which lies over the west of the state and this combined with a
mid level disturbance to produce scattered showers and thunderstorms over a large part of the state.
The surface trough will move slowly eastwards during the day with scattered showers about western coastal parts gradually easing during the afternoon and evening.
Perth can expect more showers today with the risk of a morning thunderstorm.
SOURCE
Principals' freedom is a winner with schools
THE push to give NSW public schools greater autonomy is gaining momentum, a trend which will be further advanced by near-unanimous support from 47 principals leading a two-year trial.
All principals told an independent review the freedoms allowed had led to concrete improvements at their schools. About 95 per cent said it had increased teacher capacity to deliver the curriculum and 83 per cent said they had been able to do more for their schools at a lower cost.
Some principals pointed to improved NAPLAN and HSC results as proof of success.
The review found principals valued the flexibility to make decisions and to reallocate parts of their budgets to employ staff to suit their schools' needs.
Principals believed creating the right staffing mix for their schools to be essential. "It's always about staffing," one said. "Get this right and nothing else matters."
Under the pilot program principals could choose staff on merit without being subject to priority transfer arrangements administered by the education department. Being able to choose staff was seen as critical if school leaders are to be held accountable for student performance.
"We are asking principals to achieve outcomes for students and be accountable for quality of teachers but we don't allow them to select staff so they don't control this," one said.
NSW, with more than 2200 schools, is among the most centrally controlled education systems in the Western world. Other Australian states have ceded significant power to the school level. Victorian principals are allowed to choose their own staff and in Western Australia schools can choose to operate independently with substantial freedoms.
The pilot program was established by the previous government and will continue under the new rules until the end of next year. The Education Minister, Adrian Piccoli, is leading a consultation program, "Local Schools, Local Decisions", also aiming to devolve power.
The minister hopes to announce new rules for greater school autonomy early next year, which would be implemented in 2013. Simultaneously, special federal government funding will be available next year for 162 schools under the Empowering Local Schools national partnership.
Schools varied widely in the way they used the staffing flexibility, with some hiring an extra deputy principal, one choosing a business manager and another a diversional therapist. Castle Hill High School appointed a head teacher to coach boys in year 12 to improve their HSC results.
"We appointed someone who specifically mentored boys who were close to the top but who were underperforming, disorganised, didn't have a study program and couldn't get their act together," the principal, Vicki Brewer, said.
SOURCE
Report card gives public hospitals an F
AUSTRALIA'S public hospitals are failing to meet government targets for access to emergency department care and elective surgery, a new report says.
The Australian Medical Association's (AMA) latest Public Hospital Report Card has found hospital performance in every state and territory is below Council of Australian Government (COAG) targets on those two critical measures.
It said the number of public hospital beds per capita, which is the strongest measure of capacity, continued to decline.
Fewer beds meant longer waiting times in emergency departments and longer waiting times for elective surgery, said the report card, which looked at hospital performance in 2009/10.
The number of public hospital beds, per capita, had been slashed by more than 67 per cent since the 1960s, and by more than half since the start of Medicare.
In 2009/10 there were only 2.6 public hospital beds per 1000 population, down 3.5 per cent from 2008/09, the report card said.
The report looked at bed numbers and occupancy rates, emergency department waiting times, elective surgery waiting times, hospital efficiency and productivity, funding and provides a state-by-state snapshot of performance.
The AMA said it was clear the nation's public hospitals currently lacked the capacity to meet the demands of an ageing population.
The AMA is holding a press conference to detail its findings this morning.
SOURCE
Another triumph of multiculturalism
A FACE image of a suspect who allegedly attacked a woman in broad daylight on Melbourne Cup day has been made public.
Police have been told a 24-year-old woman was sexually assaulted as she left an accommodation facility on Peel Street, North Melbourne, just after 11am.
The woman saw a man on the corner of Peel and Market Streets who followed and verbally abused her.
But when she told him to go away there was an alleged confrontation.
Investigators have been told the man allegedly forced her to the ground and sexually assaulted her.
The victim, however, screamed and managed to kick the offender to the chin before he ran south through the Queen Victoria Market.
The man is described as having a slim build with a dark complexion and dark eyes.
He also had distinctive dark coloured dread locked hair with orange tips at the end.
He was wearing a dark coloured zip front hooded jumper.
SOURCE
Unrealistic child protection system
They couldn't be as bad as Britain but they're trying
In 2009, the Federal Parliament apologised to the forgotten Australians who were physically, sexually, and emotionally abused in state and charitable-run orphanages between the 1920s and '70s. The apology was accompanied by solemn pledges to never again allow child abuse to go unchecked.
It followed the closing in the 1980s and '90s of virtually all large-scale orphanages because of the detrimental impact of institutionalised care on children. Yet 30 years later, state governments are quietly re-opening institutions to house children who are again being abused by the system that should protect them.
In the past decade, the number of children unable to live safely with their parents and subsequently placed in ''residential'' out-of-home care has increased 56 per cent. Decades of decline have been reversed, with the number of children in residential facilities falling to 939 in 2004-05 and then doubling to more than 1800 in 2009-10.
Residential institutions are now generally smaller-scale group homes operated by state-funded charities where multiple, non-related children are cared for by paid staff. But they have a strong psychiatric care focus and include secure facilities.
The greater use of residential care is a result of the systemic problems besetting the child protection system, which is damaging thousands of children in the name of family preservation.
The standard policy and practice in all states is to keep vulnerable children with their families, and work with dysfunctional parents to try to fix problems such as substance abuse, mental illness and domestic violence. For many children, efforts to prevent maltreatment, including extensive contact with early intervention and other support services, does more harm than good because removal from the family home as a last resort occurs too late. Hence, most of the nearly 36,000 children in out-of-home care have serious emotional, psychological and behavioural problems.
Family preservation is also the reason the $1.7 billion out-of-home care system is increasingly costly and overwhelmed by demand. Rising numbers of children are lingering, often indefinitely, in temporary foster or kinship care while waiting for parents to be rehabilitated so reunions can be attempted. When finally returned home, unrealistic reunions break down and re-damaged children re-enter care after entrenched and hard-to-resolve parental problems re-emerge.
Foster placements involving ''difficult'' children are also more likely to break down. The instability experienced by those who bounce in and out of care, in and out of multiple placements and in and out of failed family reunions, is an additional cause of harm that exacerbates behavioural and other problems.
By adolescence, the children most severely damaged by abuse at home and unstable living arrangements are uncontrollable, violent and self-destructive. Due to their disruptive childhoods, they can no longer live safely with their biological parents or in normal foster homes, and the only suitable placement option is very high-cost residential facilities.
Residential care is absorbing an increasing and disproportionate amount of funding, between a third and up to half of total out-of-home care spending, in some states.
Policymakers should realise that a child welfare system that has to employ armies of taxpayer-funded psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists and counsellors to try to fix the children the system itself has helped damage, is a failed system.
A fundamental rethink is essential. The best way to protect children from dysfunctional parents who are demonstrably incapable of properly caring for them is early and permanent removal by means of adoption by suitable families.
Only 61 children were adopted by non-relatives and 53 by foster carers in 2009-10, despite almost 23,000 children being in care continuously for more than two years. Many of these children should have found permanent homes years ago, but for the official taboo placed on adoption by family preservation-obsessed child protection services, which are unwilling to take legal action to free children for adoption no matter how inadequate their parents.
Strong political leadership is needed to make the system function in the children's best interests. Until then, national apologies for past failings ring hollow. The tragic irony is that a new generation of forgotten children is being harmed, to whom a national apology will one day be owed.
SOURCE
Massive rain dumped in southern half of WA. Warmist Tim Flannery predicted unending drought
WA farmers are counting the cost after unseasonal rain dumped up to 70mm on some parts of the Wheatbelt, damaging crops and ruining hay.
The Great Southern and Central Wheatbelt were hit with the heaviest falls, with several farmers in the Narrogin and Kukerin areas reporting falls of 70mm in just a couple of hours yesterday afternoon, flooding roads and filling farm dams.
Officially, Narrogin had 47mm; Brookton 49mm; Katanning 42mm, the nearby Katanning research station 46mm; Wagin 39mm and Corrigin 35mm. Newdegate to the east had 22mm.
The heavy rain is a disaster for unharvested crops and cut hay which has been bailed but not yet stored undercover.
WA Farmers Federation president Mike Norton said the rain is causing huge problems for grain farmers who have not harvested crops and could wipe millions of dollars off WA's expected bumper grain harvest.
Albany Airport recorded 54mm up to 7am today, Albany town 31mm, with Rocky Gully, about 70km to the north west recording 51mm.
In the Central Wheatbelt Cunderdin Airport had 52mm, Beverley 51mm, Wongan Hills and York 25mm each.
In the south-east of the state, Ravensthorpe had 39mm, Hopetoun north recorded 28mm and Munglinup 20mm.
Mr Norton said it was too early to put an accurate figure on the losses because they would need to assess the damage to the different categories of crops.
He said this year's estimated 12 million tonne crop worth an average of $300 a tonne would definitely suffer. Some farmers could lose $100 a tonne.
Mr Norton said although many were hoping for $300 a tonne, the figure was more likely to be around $270 or $280, but he would have a more accurate picture of the extent of the damage later today.
He said this was not the first time late rains had affected crops but it had not happened "in a very long time".
Mr Norton said the late rain was detrimental to crops because it had started to distort ingredients in the seed head which in turn lowered the value.
"At this time of year the crops are in their ripening stage and the last thing you want is rain because it starts to stain the crops and for those that are perhaps still growing it starts to force feed them," he said.
"It starts to blow the crop out and pumps the seed full of a lot more moisture which starts to lower the protein level of the grain."
Mr Norton said grain used in bread needed a fairly high level of protein and lower protein content meant the standing crops were more likely to be used for animal feed.
He said the oaten hay crop that had already been cut and on the ground was discoloured due to mould and was "a complete write-off".
"There's no perfect year in this game unfortunately," Mr Norton said.
In the South West falls were widespread with many centres recording up to 15mm. Shannon had 17mm.
Perth's official rainfall was just 6.4mm (to 7am), though many suburbs had heavier falls, with Jandakot recording 11mm; Perth Airport 10mm and Rottnest 9mm.
The rain was caused by a broad surface trough which lies over the west of the state and this combined with a
mid level disturbance to produce scattered showers and thunderstorms over a large part of the state.
The surface trough will move slowly eastwards during the day with scattered showers about western coastal parts gradually easing during the afternoon and evening.
Perth can expect more showers today with the risk of a morning thunderstorm.
SOURCE
Principals' freedom is a winner with schools
THE push to give NSW public schools greater autonomy is gaining momentum, a trend which will be further advanced by near-unanimous support from 47 principals leading a two-year trial.
All principals told an independent review the freedoms allowed had led to concrete improvements at their schools. About 95 per cent said it had increased teacher capacity to deliver the curriculum and 83 per cent said they had been able to do more for their schools at a lower cost.
Some principals pointed to improved NAPLAN and HSC results as proof of success.
The review found principals valued the flexibility to make decisions and to reallocate parts of their budgets to employ staff to suit their schools' needs.
Principals believed creating the right staffing mix for their schools to be essential. "It's always about staffing," one said. "Get this right and nothing else matters."
Under the pilot program principals could choose staff on merit without being subject to priority transfer arrangements administered by the education department. Being able to choose staff was seen as critical if school leaders are to be held accountable for student performance.
"We are asking principals to achieve outcomes for students and be accountable for quality of teachers but we don't allow them to select staff so they don't control this," one said.
NSW, with more than 2200 schools, is among the most centrally controlled education systems in the Western world. Other Australian states have ceded significant power to the school level. Victorian principals are allowed to choose their own staff and in Western Australia schools can choose to operate independently with substantial freedoms.
The pilot program was established by the previous government and will continue under the new rules until the end of next year. The Education Minister, Adrian Piccoli, is leading a consultation program, "Local Schools, Local Decisions", also aiming to devolve power.
The minister hopes to announce new rules for greater school autonomy early next year, which would be implemented in 2013. Simultaneously, special federal government funding will be available next year for 162 schools under the Empowering Local Schools national partnership.
Schools varied widely in the way they used the staffing flexibility, with some hiring an extra deputy principal, one choosing a business manager and another a diversional therapist. Castle Hill High School appointed a head teacher to coach boys in year 12 to improve their HSC results.
"We appointed someone who specifically mentored boys who were close to the top but who were underperforming, disorganised, didn't have a study program and couldn't get their act together," the principal, Vicki Brewer, said.
SOURCE
Report card gives public hospitals an F
AUSTRALIA'S public hospitals are failing to meet government targets for access to emergency department care and elective surgery, a new report says.
The Australian Medical Association's (AMA) latest Public Hospital Report Card has found hospital performance in every state and territory is below Council of Australian Government (COAG) targets on those two critical measures.
It said the number of public hospital beds per capita, which is the strongest measure of capacity, continued to decline.
Fewer beds meant longer waiting times in emergency departments and longer waiting times for elective surgery, said the report card, which looked at hospital performance in 2009/10.
The number of public hospital beds, per capita, had been slashed by more than 67 per cent since the 1960s, and by more than half since the start of Medicare.
In 2009/10 there were only 2.6 public hospital beds per 1000 population, down 3.5 per cent from 2008/09, the report card said.
The report looked at bed numbers and occupancy rates, emergency department waiting times, elective surgery waiting times, hospital efficiency and productivity, funding and provides a state-by-state snapshot of performance.
The AMA said it was clear the nation's public hospitals currently lacked the capacity to meet the demands of an ageing population.
The AMA is holding a press conference to detail its findings this morning.
SOURCE
Another triumph of multiculturalism
A FACE image of a suspect who allegedly attacked a woman in broad daylight on Melbourne Cup day has been made public.
Police have been told a 24-year-old woman was sexually assaulted as she left an accommodation facility on Peel Street, North Melbourne, just after 11am.
The woman saw a man on the corner of Peel and Market Streets who followed and verbally abused her.
But when she told him to go away there was an alleged confrontation.
Investigators have been told the man allegedly forced her to the ground and sexually assaulted her.
The victim, however, screamed and managed to kick the offender to the chin before he ran south through the Queen Victoria Market.
The man is described as having a slim build with a dark complexion and dark eyes.
He also had distinctive dark coloured dread locked hair with orange tips at the end.
He was wearing a dark coloured zip front hooded jumper.
SOURCE
Unrealistic child protection system
They couldn't be as bad as Britain but they're trying
In 2009, the Federal Parliament apologised to the forgotten Australians who were physically, sexually, and emotionally abused in state and charitable-run orphanages between the 1920s and '70s. The apology was accompanied by solemn pledges to never again allow child abuse to go unchecked.
It followed the closing in the 1980s and '90s of virtually all large-scale orphanages because of the detrimental impact of institutionalised care on children. Yet 30 years later, state governments are quietly re-opening institutions to house children who are again being abused by the system that should protect them.
In the past decade, the number of children unable to live safely with their parents and subsequently placed in ''residential'' out-of-home care has increased 56 per cent. Decades of decline have been reversed, with the number of children in residential facilities falling to 939 in 2004-05 and then doubling to more than 1800 in 2009-10.
Residential institutions are now generally smaller-scale group homes operated by state-funded charities where multiple, non-related children are cared for by paid staff. But they have a strong psychiatric care focus and include secure facilities.
The greater use of residential care is a result of the systemic problems besetting the child protection system, which is damaging thousands of children in the name of family preservation.
The standard policy and practice in all states is to keep vulnerable children with their families, and work with dysfunctional parents to try to fix problems such as substance abuse, mental illness and domestic violence. For many children, efforts to prevent maltreatment, including extensive contact with early intervention and other support services, does more harm than good because removal from the family home as a last resort occurs too late. Hence, most of the nearly 36,000 children in out-of-home care have serious emotional, psychological and behavioural problems.
Family preservation is also the reason the $1.7 billion out-of-home care system is increasingly costly and overwhelmed by demand. Rising numbers of children are lingering, often indefinitely, in temporary foster or kinship care while waiting for parents to be rehabilitated so reunions can be attempted. When finally returned home, unrealistic reunions break down and re-damaged children re-enter care after entrenched and hard-to-resolve parental problems re-emerge.
Foster placements involving ''difficult'' children are also more likely to break down. The instability experienced by those who bounce in and out of care, in and out of multiple placements and in and out of failed family reunions, is an additional cause of harm that exacerbates behavioural and other problems.
By adolescence, the children most severely damaged by abuse at home and unstable living arrangements are uncontrollable, violent and self-destructive. Due to their disruptive childhoods, they can no longer live safely with their biological parents or in normal foster homes, and the only suitable placement option is very high-cost residential facilities.
Residential care is absorbing an increasing and disproportionate amount of funding, between a third and up to half of total out-of-home care spending, in some states.
Policymakers should realise that a child welfare system that has to employ armies of taxpayer-funded psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists and counsellors to try to fix the children the system itself has helped damage, is a failed system.
A fundamental rethink is essential. The best way to protect children from dysfunctional parents who are demonstrably incapable of properly caring for them is early and permanent removal by means of adoption by suitable families.
Only 61 children were adopted by non-relatives and 53 by foster carers in 2009-10, despite almost 23,000 children being in care continuously for more than two years. Many of these children should have found permanent homes years ago, but for the official taboo placed on adoption by family preservation-obsessed child protection services, which are unwilling to take legal action to free children for adoption no matter how inadequate their parents.
Strong political leadership is needed to make the system function in the children's best interests. Until then, national apologies for past failings ring hollow. The tragic irony is that a new generation of forgotten children is being harmed, to whom a national apology will one day be owed.
SOURCE
Thursday, November 03, 2011
Architects make me thankful for Prince Charles
He may be a bit dotty but he does a good job of keeping architectural ugliness out of London. We need him in Australia too. Look at the scrappy thing below. It looks like some kid has been playing around with bits of string
THE striking Kurilpa Bridge [above] linking Brisbane's CBD with South Brisbane has wowed the judges at the World Architecture Festival awards.
Designed by local firm Cox Rayner, the pedestrian bridge has beaten stiff competition from the United Arab Emirates, China, Sweden, UK and the Netherlands to be named best World Transport Building.
The Brisbane structure - dubbed the fiddlesticks bridge by some - now goes into the running for the top award at the festival to be announced on Friday.
Costing $63.3 million to build, the bridge carries an estimated 50,000 pedestrians and cyclists each week.
It is the world's largest structure to be based upon the principles of 'tensegrity', the term coined by Richard Buckminster Fuller to describe a system of balanced compressive and tensile forces.
Stretching 360m across the Brisbane River, the Kurilpa bridge also connects to 1.5km of continuous pathway from South Brisbane, through the Arts precinct, across the river into the CBD and on to Roma Street parkland.
SOURCE
The ALP wants to waste EVEN MORE of the people's money!
It's great being generous with other people's money
JULIA Gillard is pushing ahead with her bid to raise extra money for the International Monetary Fund despite criticism from the Opposition.
The Prime Minister has offered extra funding from Australia to create a buffer against other countries following Greece into financial collapse.
Ms Gillard has not put a figure on how much extra the IMF needs to guard against further economic turmoil, and has not said how much Australia would contribute.
But she has already spruiked the idea to a business forum on the sidelines of the Group of 20 nations summit in Cannes.
The Prime Minister also plans to garner support for the idea in bilateral meetings with other leaders from the world's most powerful countries.
She is also pushing for support among non-EU members to pressure European leaders to resolve their debt crisis impasse.
In her meeting with Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff, Ms Gillard "discussed the importance of providing the IMF with adequate resources to help manage the crisis and restore confidence to the markets", her spokesman said.
She met plans to meet Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip today and hold a series of further meetings across the next two days.
Opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey called on Ms Gillard to say how much money Australia would provide to help fund a Eurozone bailout.
"The suggestion that we should be putting money into the IMF to bail out the Eurozone when not even the British are prepared to do so is extraordinary," he said.
"The Prime Minister needs to explain to the Australian people immediately how much money she wants to put into a bailout."
Mr Hockey later told ABC Radio that the coalition had "grave concerns" Australian taxpayers would be seen to be bailing out the largest economy in the world.
"We do have a problem giving the Europeans a get-out-of-jail-free card by offering them additional funds through the IMF when they need to resolve this issue themselves and fast."
Ms Gillard was ignoring the fact that Australia was running a deficit and the government would have to increase borrowings to give more funds to the IMF, he said.
SOURCE
Aboriginal crime is a big problem in Western Australia
WA police commissioner Karl O'Callaghan wants a public debate on Aboriginal youth crime following the horrific bashing of an elderly man over the weekend.
'The 73-year-old great-grandfather, known as Wally, was brutally beaten with a baseball bat in an unprovoked attack while looking for the owner of a lost dog in the eastern Perth suburb of Camillo on Sunday night.
The man described his main attacker as a young Aboriginal man who was with a group of six Aboriginal youths.
He is recovering in hospital with two broken ribs, fractured vertebrae, a fracture to his forearm and cuts to his head. The elderly man claimed he would have been killed if not for the intervention of a nearby resident.
WA Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan told 6PR radio today that Aboriginal youth crime needed to be addressed urgently.
"There are a lot of Aboriginal people and Aboriginal groups who really want to do something about this Aboriginal youth crime problem that we've got," the police commissioner said.
"These types of assaults - and we've seen assaults on people in wheelchairs - these things transcend all the taboos that we've got in our society. "The most vulnerable people - elderly and people who are disabled - are being attacked.
"We've got to do something about this - we've got to have a public debate." Mr O'Callaghan said intervention was needed to prevent Aboriginal children from roaming the streets at night and getting into trouble.
"The issue for these kids is that we need to provide some intervention for them and we need to provide it quickly," he said. "If we don't provide that, they're out on the streets potentially doing more of these sorts of bashings."
Mr O'Callaghan said many offences were committed by adults in the company of children and teenagers, who were easily influenced and went on to commit crimes themselves. "We've got kids who are quite young, 14 or 15, who are committing horrific assaults and robberies," he said.
SOURCE
"Fixed" Qld. Health payroll system now making big OVER-payments!
What hope for a bureaucracy that cannot even get its payroll right -- even after two years of trying?
QUEENSLAND Health's latest payroll problems could be solved if staff are paid on a different day, department boss Tony O'Connell claims.
Despite recent overpayments, he told The Courier-Mail the once problem-plagued software is now working as it was supposed to. He said the latest glitches were the result of health workers' fortnightly shift rosters ending on the same time as the pay cycle - an "in-built ability to generate errors". Last-minute shift changes often could not be manually logged before pays were generated, he said.
"For months now, there've been no errors in the way that the software program itself works," Dr O'Connell said. But a casual administration officer, who has not worked for QH since January, told how almost $5000 was unexpectedly deposited into her account in September.
"I haven't worked there for eight months and $5000 is a pretty significant amount to stuff up with," said the worker, who asked not to be identified.
Meanwhile, overpayments continue to mount, with latest figures showing workers were mistakenly handed an extra $7 million in the past five months. The overpayments bill now tops $69 million.
But Dr O'Connell insisted the system was "getting more and more stable" and said QH was in talks with unions to move the pay day so it no longer clashed with close of rosters, giving payroll more time to process shift changes.
"I'm comfortable that if we did change that then the number of errors which occur because of those last-minute weekend shift changes will go down to virtually zero," he said.
Unions are demanding extensive consultation and trials before permanent changes are made, fearing a repeat of last March's disastrous payroll introduction, which was rolled out with little testing and left thousands short-changed.
"This sort of change may be much more straightforward, system-wide, than what we anticipate," Together union assistant secretary Julie Bignell said. "However, the trust is not there in the workforce for changes to be made without a large amount of consultation."
Queensland Nurses Union secretary Beth Mohle echoed the concerns. "We need to work through it and make sure there aren't any unforeseen circumstances."
Dr O'Connell said any changes were at least two months away as union negotiations continued.
SOURCE
Another meat-headed emergency operator
A TRIPLE-0 operator told an anxious caller "No, I won't go faster" as a man lay dying at Sydney airport after a violent brawl involving bikie gang members.
A tape of the call released by the NSW Supreme Court reveals how the emergency operator became increasingly impatient with the airport worker who reported the incident.
Mr Zervas was stabbed, kicked, punched, stomped on and hit with bollards as he lay on the floor of Sydney domestic terminal after a brawl broke out between the rival bikies in March 2009.
Comanchero bikie Mick Hawi today was found guilty of murdering Zervas.
An airport worker called triple-0 for an ambulance as people struggled to resuscitate Mr Zervas.
During the prolonged call, the female operator repeated everything the increasingly frustrated caller said and didn't seem to understand the caller, who said she was watching the incident on a security camera.
At one point, the operator said "No I won't go faster" after saying she was organising an ambulance.
The operator asked the caller if the person was conscious. "If they are doing CPR, I would say not," the caller replied.
Under further questioning as to whether the person was breathing, the exasperated caller replied: "Oh gee, I'm not going to answer these silly questions. If they're doing CPR it means they're in a lot of trouble."
The caller also became frustrated under persistent questioning about the gender of the victim and the victim's approximate age. "I'm on camera - I'm looking on a camera situation on a remote viewing," she said.
The caller eventually cut off the conversation with a "thank you".
More HERE
He may be a bit dotty but he does a good job of keeping architectural ugliness out of London. We need him in Australia too. Look at the scrappy thing below. It looks like some kid has been playing around with bits of string
THE striking Kurilpa Bridge [above] linking Brisbane's CBD with South Brisbane has wowed the judges at the World Architecture Festival awards.
Designed by local firm Cox Rayner, the pedestrian bridge has beaten stiff competition from the United Arab Emirates, China, Sweden, UK and the Netherlands to be named best World Transport Building.
The Brisbane structure - dubbed the fiddlesticks bridge by some - now goes into the running for the top award at the festival to be announced on Friday.
Costing $63.3 million to build, the bridge carries an estimated 50,000 pedestrians and cyclists each week.
It is the world's largest structure to be based upon the principles of 'tensegrity', the term coined by Richard Buckminster Fuller to describe a system of balanced compressive and tensile forces.
Stretching 360m across the Brisbane River, the Kurilpa bridge also connects to 1.5km of continuous pathway from South Brisbane, through the Arts precinct, across the river into the CBD and on to Roma Street parkland.
SOURCE
The ALP wants to waste EVEN MORE of the people's money!
It's great being generous with other people's money
JULIA Gillard is pushing ahead with her bid to raise extra money for the International Monetary Fund despite criticism from the Opposition.
The Prime Minister has offered extra funding from Australia to create a buffer against other countries following Greece into financial collapse.
Ms Gillard has not put a figure on how much extra the IMF needs to guard against further economic turmoil, and has not said how much Australia would contribute.
But she has already spruiked the idea to a business forum on the sidelines of the Group of 20 nations summit in Cannes.
The Prime Minister also plans to garner support for the idea in bilateral meetings with other leaders from the world's most powerful countries.
She is also pushing for support among non-EU members to pressure European leaders to resolve their debt crisis impasse.
In her meeting with Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff, Ms Gillard "discussed the importance of providing the IMF with adequate resources to help manage the crisis and restore confidence to the markets", her spokesman said.
She met plans to meet Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip today and hold a series of further meetings across the next two days.
Opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey called on Ms Gillard to say how much money Australia would provide to help fund a Eurozone bailout.
"The suggestion that we should be putting money into the IMF to bail out the Eurozone when not even the British are prepared to do so is extraordinary," he said.
"The Prime Minister needs to explain to the Australian people immediately how much money she wants to put into a bailout."
Mr Hockey later told ABC Radio that the coalition had "grave concerns" Australian taxpayers would be seen to be bailing out the largest economy in the world.
"We do have a problem giving the Europeans a get-out-of-jail-free card by offering them additional funds through the IMF when they need to resolve this issue themselves and fast."
Ms Gillard was ignoring the fact that Australia was running a deficit and the government would have to increase borrowings to give more funds to the IMF, he said.
SOURCE
Aboriginal crime is a big problem in Western Australia
WA police commissioner Karl O'Callaghan wants a public debate on Aboriginal youth crime following the horrific bashing of an elderly man over the weekend.
'The 73-year-old great-grandfather, known as Wally, was brutally beaten with a baseball bat in an unprovoked attack while looking for the owner of a lost dog in the eastern Perth suburb of Camillo on Sunday night.
The man described his main attacker as a young Aboriginal man who was with a group of six Aboriginal youths.
He is recovering in hospital with two broken ribs, fractured vertebrae, a fracture to his forearm and cuts to his head. The elderly man claimed he would have been killed if not for the intervention of a nearby resident.
WA Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan told 6PR radio today that Aboriginal youth crime needed to be addressed urgently.
"There are a lot of Aboriginal people and Aboriginal groups who really want to do something about this Aboriginal youth crime problem that we've got," the police commissioner said.
"These types of assaults - and we've seen assaults on people in wheelchairs - these things transcend all the taboos that we've got in our society. "The most vulnerable people - elderly and people who are disabled - are being attacked.
"We've got to do something about this - we've got to have a public debate." Mr O'Callaghan said intervention was needed to prevent Aboriginal children from roaming the streets at night and getting into trouble.
"The issue for these kids is that we need to provide some intervention for them and we need to provide it quickly," he said. "If we don't provide that, they're out on the streets potentially doing more of these sorts of bashings."
Mr O'Callaghan said many offences were committed by adults in the company of children and teenagers, who were easily influenced and went on to commit crimes themselves. "We've got kids who are quite young, 14 or 15, who are committing horrific assaults and robberies," he said.
SOURCE
"Fixed" Qld. Health payroll system now making big OVER-payments!
What hope for a bureaucracy that cannot even get its payroll right -- even after two years of trying?
QUEENSLAND Health's latest payroll problems could be solved if staff are paid on a different day, department boss Tony O'Connell claims.
Despite recent overpayments, he told The Courier-Mail the once problem-plagued software is now working as it was supposed to. He said the latest glitches were the result of health workers' fortnightly shift rosters ending on the same time as the pay cycle - an "in-built ability to generate errors". Last-minute shift changes often could not be manually logged before pays were generated, he said.
"For months now, there've been no errors in the way that the software program itself works," Dr O'Connell said. But a casual administration officer, who has not worked for QH since January, told how almost $5000 was unexpectedly deposited into her account in September.
"I haven't worked there for eight months and $5000 is a pretty significant amount to stuff up with," said the worker, who asked not to be identified.
Meanwhile, overpayments continue to mount, with latest figures showing workers were mistakenly handed an extra $7 million in the past five months. The overpayments bill now tops $69 million.
But Dr O'Connell insisted the system was "getting more and more stable" and said QH was in talks with unions to move the pay day so it no longer clashed with close of rosters, giving payroll more time to process shift changes.
"I'm comfortable that if we did change that then the number of errors which occur because of those last-minute weekend shift changes will go down to virtually zero," he said.
Unions are demanding extensive consultation and trials before permanent changes are made, fearing a repeat of last March's disastrous payroll introduction, which was rolled out with little testing and left thousands short-changed.
"This sort of change may be much more straightforward, system-wide, than what we anticipate," Together union assistant secretary Julie Bignell said. "However, the trust is not there in the workforce for changes to be made without a large amount of consultation."
Queensland Nurses Union secretary Beth Mohle echoed the concerns. "We need to work through it and make sure there aren't any unforeseen circumstances."
Dr O'Connell said any changes were at least two months away as union negotiations continued.
SOURCE
Another meat-headed emergency operator
A TRIPLE-0 operator told an anxious caller "No, I won't go faster" as a man lay dying at Sydney airport after a violent brawl involving bikie gang members.
A tape of the call released by the NSW Supreme Court reveals how the emergency operator became increasingly impatient with the airport worker who reported the incident.
Mr Zervas was stabbed, kicked, punched, stomped on and hit with bollards as he lay on the floor of Sydney domestic terminal after a brawl broke out between the rival bikies in March 2009.
Comanchero bikie Mick Hawi today was found guilty of murdering Zervas.
An airport worker called triple-0 for an ambulance as people struggled to resuscitate Mr Zervas.
During the prolonged call, the female operator repeated everything the increasingly frustrated caller said and didn't seem to understand the caller, who said she was watching the incident on a security camera.
At one point, the operator said "No I won't go faster" after saying she was organising an ambulance.
The operator asked the caller if the person was conscious. "If they are doing CPR, I would say not," the caller replied.
Under further questioning as to whether the person was breathing, the exasperated caller replied: "Oh gee, I'm not going to answer these silly questions. If they're doing CPR it means they're in a lot of trouble."
The caller also became frustrated under persistent questioning about the gender of the victim and the victim's approximate age. "I'm on camera - I'm looking on a camera situation on a remote viewing," she said.
The caller eventually cut off the conversation with a "thank you".
More HERE
Wednesday, November 02, 2011
"Ping pong Poms"
Mentioned only obliquely below is the phenomenon of re-emigration. Many returning Poms have become so spoilt by life in Australia that they can't take England any more and emigrate once again to Australia. Some returners have been known to get no further than Heathrow before deciding to go back to Australia -- a decision assisted no doubt by obnoxious British officialdom
For decades, the promise of sunny weather, a family-friendly lifestyle and affordable property has driven hundreds of thousands of Britons to make the move to Australia.
But it seems, for many, their dream life Down Under has turned into something of a disappointment. A record number of Britons left Australia last year, many bored with their ex-pat life and keen to spend more time with family in the UK, research has revealed.
Nearly 107,000 people arrived there from the UK between 2005 and 2010. But more than 30,000 Britons left over the same period. And last year a record of more than 7,000 Britons departed Australia permanently.
Researchers Mary Holmes, a senior lecturer in sociology at Australia’s Flinders University, and Roger Burrows, of the University of York, studied why so many ‘ping-pong Poms’ are returning home.
They said: ‘A better life is not about good jobs, sunshine or bigger houses. ‘What is most important is feeling close to family and feeling “at home”.’
A number of returning Britons left because of ‘boredom’ in Australia, the pair found, complaining of stressful daily routines such as three-hour commutes on hot, crowded trains.
Dr Holmes and Professor Burrows said that while some who left could be described as ‘whingeing Poms’, complaining about the heat and insects, most had better reasons, with family being a common one. Many wanted their children born in Australia to get to know grandparents and other relatives in the UK, even if it meant sacrificing a better quality of life.
And for others, not ‘feeling at home’ in Australia was a crucial factor in their decision to leave, the research showed.
However the researchers did note that some who returned kept their options open by obtaining Australian citizenship before doing so.
One Briton told them: ‘That way, when your duty to your children and grandparents is finally done you are free to go back to make your home in Australia.’
More HERE (Including some amusing pix)
Queensland Health director-general Tony O'Connell to slash 1000 non-frontline staff
He's got the right idea but will it really happen?
QUEENSLAND Health's newly anointed boss has admitted the system is unsustainable and needs to improve.
Tony O'Connell plans to slash non-frontline staff by 1000 while redesigning hospitals to cut unnecessary queuing and delays, freeing up much-needed beds.
The troubled department has this year been rocked by reports of budget blowouts as patient demand continues to soar and mooted cost-cutting measures were condemned by doctors.
Other sections of its workforce have taken to the streets to fight for higher pay, forcing cancellation of elective surgery and throwing some hospitals into chaos.
Dr O'Connell, who became QH director-general last month after acting in the role since June, admitted he faced challenging times.
"That's what national health reform was all about, admitting that if we continue to do things the way that we currently do them, it's unsustainable."
Dr O'Connell, who replaced outgoing director-general Mick Reid, refused to reveal the extent of cost blowouts, saying only that hospitals had been further over budget at the same time last year.
"Month by month, they're above and below the budget so in the end it's only how they are at the end of the year that's important," he said.
But he planned to dramatically reduce "back-office expenditure" after The Courier-Mail last month revealed the mammoth imbalance between doctors and non-frontline staff. The ratio topped one to three in some areas.
Dr O'Connell will push for 1000 of the 3500 voluntary separation packages being offered by the State Government to come from health's bloated corporate office.
Admitting the wages savings would not be channelled directly back to health, he said the move would "indirectly" increase the spend on frontline workers.
Hospitals will also be redesigned, with frontline staff asked to lead the charge on streamlining processes such as axing unnecessary test repeats.
A trial at Logan Hospital had already led to a 10 per cent reduction in patient's length of stay, Dr O'Connell said.
"That means you've got 10 per cent more beds ... and that's much cheaper than building a hospital," the former intensive care and anaesthesia specialist said.
"Because it is such a massive system with millions of experiences each year, there will always be the occasional situation which provides opportunities for improvement."
SOURCE
Incompetent emergency line operator cost the lives of a mother and her son
TOOWOOMBA flood victim Donna Rice could have been attended to by emergency services more quickly if her desperate triple zero call was prioritised by a call centre operator, an inquest heard yesterday.
It wasn't until her son Jordan, 13, phoned the emergency hotline several minutes later on January 10, the day they were swept to their deaths, that three fire units were dispatched. But it was too late by the time emergency services reached the pair.
An inquest into the deaths of 25 flood victims, three of whom remain missing, began at the Coroner's Court in Brisbane yesterday.
Detective Inspector David Isherwood, a relieving regional crime co-ordinator during the floods, said the call made by Mrs Rice minutes before she was swept to her death was classed by Senior Constable Jason Wheeler as a priority three call, otherwise known as a "routine call".
When asked if, had the call been given a higher code priority, police would have attended more quickly, he responded: "It's possible".
Insp Isherwood said there was "no urgency" in the voice of Mrs Rice when she made the call, compared with a call by her son Jordan several minutes later. Jordan had a "great degree of urgency" in his voice.
Six Queensland Fire and Rescue Service units were in operation in the area on the day and were dispatched to the scene where they found the family trapped in floodwaters.
SOURCE
Federal veto power over NT, ACT law stripped
For once I agree with the Greens -- even if their underlying motivation is to facilitate homosexual marriage
NEW legislation that strengthens the territories' right to govern themselves - and strips the Federal Government's veto - is a win for democracy, Australian Greens leader Bob Brown has said.
The lower house has passed a Greens bill which removes the Commonwealth's power to get rid of territory laws it doesn't like.
Until now, a federal minister or the cabinet had the right to scratch laws passed by the ACT or the Northern Territory - as in 2006, when former prime minister John Howard rejected the ACT's civil union laws.
But under the new laws, territory law can now only be disallowed through a vote in the federal parliament.
"The passage of the bill is an enhancement of democracy in Australia," Senator Brown said. "Laws in the ACT and NT can only be overturned by an act of federal parliament rather than at the whim of a federal minister or cabinet."
He said territory citizens had the right to be governed by the people they elected.
Labor voted in support of the Greens bill, despite initial concerns from some MPs that it could make it easier for the territories to legalise same-sex marriage and euthanasia.
In 1996, the commonwealth overruled the NT government after it gave its terminally ill citizens the right to die.
Greens MP Adam Bandt insisted the bill was not about specific issues, but about giving the territories a greater say.
He rejected two last-minute amendments presented by the Coalition to change the wording so territories were prevented from veering into same-sex territory.
"For this Parliament to determine in advance what those chambers may or may not legislate about reflects the kind of paternalism that in fact this bill is seeking to address," Mr Bandt told the lower house.
Labor frontbencher Craig Emerson said the Coalition's amendments were unnecessary and a stunt to try and suggest the government - by not supporting them - was not fully behind the Marriage Act.
"And that's complete bunkum, rubbish," Mr Emerson said. "If there is a debate about the Marriage Act, let's have that debate.
"(But) this is general legislation about the territories and that's what we're debating."
A spokeswoman for ACT Chief Minister Katy Gallagher welcomed the bill.
"After 20 years of self-government, it was time for change," she said. "Canberrans should enjoy the same right as other Australian citizens to have their elected representatives make laws without the prospect of a single minister vetoing."
She said the ACT would like to see a full review of the Self-Government Act.
SOURCE
Mentioned only obliquely below is the phenomenon of re-emigration. Many returning Poms have become so spoilt by life in Australia that they can't take England any more and emigrate once again to Australia. Some returners have been known to get no further than Heathrow before deciding to go back to Australia -- a decision assisted no doubt by obnoxious British officialdom
For decades, the promise of sunny weather, a family-friendly lifestyle and affordable property has driven hundreds of thousands of Britons to make the move to Australia.
But it seems, for many, their dream life Down Under has turned into something of a disappointment. A record number of Britons left Australia last year, many bored with their ex-pat life and keen to spend more time with family in the UK, research has revealed.
Nearly 107,000 people arrived there from the UK between 2005 and 2010. But more than 30,000 Britons left over the same period. And last year a record of more than 7,000 Britons departed Australia permanently.
Researchers Mary Holmes, a senior lecturer in sociology at Australia’s Flinders University, and Roger Burrows, of the University of York, studied why so many ‘ping-pong Poms’ are returning home.
They said: ‘A better life is not about good jobs, sunshine or bigger houses. ‘What is most important is feeling close to family and feeling “at home”.’
A number of returning Britons left because of ‘boredom’ in Australia, the pair found, complaining of stressful daily routines such as three-hour commutes on hot, crowded trains.
Dr Holmes and Professor Burrows said that while some who left could be described as ‘whingeing Poms’, complaining about the heat and insects, most had better reasons, with family being a common one. Many wanted their children born in Australia to get to know grandparents and other relatives in the UK, even if it meant sacrificing a better quality of life.
And for others, not ‘feeling at home’ in Australia was a crucial factor in their decision to leave, the research showed.
However the researchers did note that some who returned kept their options open by obtaining Australian citizenship before doing so.
One Briton told them: ‘That way, when your duty to your children and grandparents is finally done you are free to go back to make your home in Australia.’
More HERE (Including some amusing pix)
Queensland Health director-general Tony O'Connell to slash 1000 non-frontline staff
He's got the right idea but will it really happen?
QUEENSLAND Health's newly anointed boss has admitted the system is unsustainable and needs to improve.
Tony O'Connell plans to slash non-frontline staff by 1000 while redesigning hospitals to cut unnecessary queuing and delays, freeing up much-needed beds.
The troubled department has this year been rocked by reports of budget blowouts as patient demand continues to soar and mooted cost-cutting measures were condemned by doctors.
Other sections of its workforce have taken to the streets to fight for higher pay, forcing cancellation of elective surgery and throwing some hospitals into chaos.
Dr O'Connell, who became QH director-general last month after acting in the role since June, admitted he faced challenging times.
"That's what national health reform was all about, admitting that if we continue to do things the way that we currently do them, it's unsustainable."
Dr O'Connell, who replaced outgoing director-general Mick Reid, refused to reveal the extent of cost blowouts, saying only that hospitals had been further over budget at the same time last year.
"Month by month, they're above and below the budget so in the end it's only how they are at the end of the year that's important," he said.
But he planned to dramatically reduce "back-office expenditure" after The Courier-Mail last month revealed the mammoth imbalance between doctors and non-frontline staff. The ratio topped one to three in some areas.
Dr O'Connell will push for 1000 of the 3500 voluntary separation packages being offered by the State Government to come from health's bloated corporate office.
Admitting the wages savings would not be channelled directly back to health, he said the move would "indirectly" increase the spend on frontline workers.
Hospitals will also be redesigned, with frontline staff asked to lead the charge on streamlining processes such as axing unnecessary test repeats.
A trial at Logan Hospital had already led to a 10 per cent reduction in patient's length of stay, Dr O'Connell said.
"That means you've got 10 per cent more beds ... and that's much cheaper than building a hospital," the former intensive care and anaesthesia specialist said.
"Because it is such a massive system with millions of experiences each year, there will always be the occasional situation which provides opportunities for improvement."
SOURCE
Incompetent emergency line operator cost the lives of a mother and her son
TOOWOOMBA flood victim Donna Rice could have been attended to by emergency services more quickly if her desperate triple zero call was prioritised by a call centre operator, an inquest heard yesterday.
It wasn't until her son Jordan, 13, phoned the emergency hotline several minutes later on January 10, the day they were swept to their deaths, that three fire units were dispatched. But it was too late by the time emergency services reached the pair.
An inquest into the deaths of 25 flood victims, three of whom remain missing, began at the Coroner's Court in Brisbane yesterday.
Detective Inspector David Isherwood, a relieving regional crime co-ordinator during the floods, said the call made by Mrs Rice minutes before she was swept to her death was classed by Senior Constable Jason Wheeler as a priority three call, otherwise known as a "routine call".
When asked if, had the call been given a higher code priority, police would have attended more quickly, he responded: "It's possible".
Insp Isherwood said there was "no urgency" in the voice of Mrs Rice when she made the call, compared with a call by her son Jordan several minutes later. Jordan had a "great degree of urgency" in his voice.
Six Queensland Fire and Rescue Service units were in operation in the area on the day and were dispatched to the scene where they found the family trapped in floodwaters.
SOURCE
Federal veto power over NT, ACT law stripped
For once I agree with the Greens -- even if their underlying motivation is to facilitate homosexual marriage
NEW legislation that strengthens the territories' right to govern themselves - and strips the Federal Government's veto - is a win for democracy, Australian Greens leader Bob Brown has said.
The lower house has passed a Greens bill which removes the Commonwealth's power to get rid of territory laws it doesn't like.
Until now, a federal minister or the cabinet had the right to scratch laws passed by the ACT or the Northern Territory - as in 2006, when former prime minister John Howard rejected the ACT's civil union laws.
But under the new laws, territory law can now only be disallowed through a vote in the federal parliament.
"The passage of the bill is an enhancement of democracy in Australia," Senator Brown said. "Laws in the ACT and NT can only be overturned by an act of federal parliament rather than at the whim of a federal minister or cabinet."
He said territory citizens had the right to be governed by the people they elected.
Labor voted in support of the Greens bill, despite initial concerns from some MPs that it could make it easier for the territories to legalise same-sex marriage and euthanasia.
In 1996, the commonwealth overruled the NT government after it gave its terminally ill citizens the right to die.
Greens MP Adam Bandt insisted the bill was not about specific issues, but about giving the territories a greater say.
He rejected two last-minute amendments presented by the Coalition to change the wording so territories were prevented from veering into same-sex territory.
"For this Parliament to determine in advance what those chambers may or may not legislate about reflects the kind of paternalism that in fact this bill is seeking to address," Mr Bandt told the lower house.
Labor frontbencher Craig Emerson said the Coalition's amendments were unnecessary and a stunt to try and suggest the government - by not supporting them - was not fully behind the Marriage Act.
"And that's complete bunkum, rubbish," Mr Emerson said. "If there is a debate about the Marriage Act, let's have that debate.
"(But) this is general legislation about the territories and that's what we're debating."
A spokeswoman for ACT Chief Minister Katy Gallagher welcomed the bill.
"After 20 years of self-government, it was time for change," she said. "Canberrans should enjoy the same right as other Australian citizens to have their elected representatives make laws without the prospect of a single minister vetoing."
She said the ACT would like to see a full review of the Self-Government Act.
SOURCE
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Julia WAS told she could stop the Qantas grounding -- but did nothing
She has been trying to deny it
JULIA Gillard's office and three senior ministers were told by Qantas management they had "options available" to avoid the fleet grounding and that CEO Alan Joyce was ready to talk to the PM.
A script for the phone calls confirms revelations in The Daily Telegraph that the government was told it had the opportunity to act but it would need to deliver certainty.
It was also stressed that Mr Joyce was available to speak to Ms Gillard, although she never called him until after the revelations yesterday morning.
Qantas government relations executive Olivia Wirth confirmed she spoke according to the script when she called the Prime Minister's chief of staff at 2.05pm on the day of the grounding.
The script was also used by Mr Joyce in calls with Transport Minister Anthony Albanese at 2pm, followed by Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson and Workplace Relations Minister Chris Evans.
All were told: "We recognise the government has a range of options available to you, however we need to make it clear that we will not, and cannot put planes back in the air until these issues are resolved and we have certainty."
This was considered an unmissable suggestion to the PM and ministers that they should ban further action. Ms Wirth confirmed to The Daily Telegraph last night that was "the way you get certainty. No more action".
The PM's chief of staff was also told to let Ms Gillard know: "Alan is available to discuss further details. Alan's here if you want to chat to him." But Ms Gillard did not take this as a request to call Mr Joyce, nor did she have the government declare the strike action illegal, which has stunned many inside Qantas.
Her spokesman yesterday denied the government was given the option to avoid the mass grounding. "The government was presented with the grounding of the planes as a fait accompli," he said.
But Ms Wirth confirmed that the script had been used in all phone calls.
Instead the PM referred the matter to the industrial court Fair Work Australia. By the time the full bench made the same order tens of thousands of passengers had already been left stranded or otherwise disrupted.
In a fiery question time yesterday the Opposition hammered Ms Gillard and her ministers on their handling of the issue. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott wanted to know what the government had done in the three hours between 2pm and 5pm Saturday when the grounding took effect.
His deputy Julie Bishop wanted to know why the prime minister had not spoken personally to Mr Joyce in a bid to circumvent the grounding.
Backbenchers lined up to ask ministers how the government's decision to refer the dispute to Fair Work Australia was good for the nation, the economy, the tourism sector and the travelling public.
Ms Gillard defended the government's decision not to take matters into its own hands. She accused the opposition of "peddling a falsehood" by claiming the government merely had to sign a piece of paper to end industrial action because it was in the nation's interest. "Peddling of that falsehood should stop here and it should stop now," she said.
Meanwhile, Qantas passengers are heading back to the airline's terminals across Australia, with international services expected to return to normal by the afternoon.
All domestic services for today are scheduled as normal, with all international flights expected to return to business as usual by late today, Qantas said.
SOURCE
Qantas workers must face global facts of life
In all the commentary on the Qantas dispute, perhaps the most salient point was raised by journalist Claire Harvey. She was on the Meet the Press panel on Channel Ten, where the principal guest was the Workplace Relations Minister, Senator Chris Evans. Discussion soon turned to the issue of job security.
There are numerous disputes between several trade unions and Qantas management over a range of issues. However, the gist of the various disagreements turns on the assertion by Qantas's management of its right to manage and the demand by trade union leaders that their members should enjoy job security.
This is an unusual industrial dispute in that pay is not the principal driver.
About halfway through the interview, Harvey asked the telling question: "How can any private company guarantee job security into the future? Isn't that an impossibility?" To which Senator Evans replied: "Look, I think that's right. I think Qantas are saying that they're under commercial pressure to change their business."
Evans went on to refine his answer. He declared that "the 30,000-odd employees of Qantas have a right to pursue their job security". The minister added that "those clashing objectives . . . have to be resolved by either negotiation or before Fair Work Australia".
The problem with the second half of Evans's answer is that it completely contradicted the initial response.
The fact is that, in an increasingly globalised world, it is impossible for a private company, such as Qantas, to guarantee job security. Only the public sector - where employment is funded by the taxpayer - can deliver permanency in employment.
Qantas is an international airline competing on the world markets in an industry that historically returns small profits on funds invested. It cannot guarantee jobs without inhibiting its business operations.
Trade unions - representing pilots, engineers or baggage handlers - cannot prevail in the face of this economic fact of life. Nor can tribunals such as Fair Work Australia.
If the Qantas dispute is not settled by negotiation between the parties and it goes to arbitration, Fair Work Australia cannot guarantee job security.
It's possible that Fair Work Australia's tribunal, which is comprised primarily of former barristers and one-time trade union officials, might direct Qantas to preserve jobs in Australia. However, it cannot deliver on such a ruling since no tribunal can stop any business from scaling back on employment or going out of business due to its inability to compete on world markets.
On ABC TV news on Friday, the serial shareholder media tart Jack Tilburn got prime coverage when he declared outside the Qantas annual general meeting: "The workers aren't getting proper salaries and wages and conditions. They're being strangled, they're being bulldozed, they're being knocked over."
Tilburn ended up talking of himself in the third person when he said about Qantas: "It's a board of dictators, says Jack Tilburn, not a board of directors."
The fact is that Qantas pilots, engineers and baggage handlers enjoy some of the best pay and conditions in the international airline industry.
And that is precisely why Qantas management cannot guarantee that all future employees in all Qantas businesses can be remunerated at similar rates.
Journalists and editors should know this better than anyone. There is no job security in the Australian media industry - outside the taxpayer-funded ABC. Likewise, there is no job security in financial services or retail or agriculture or construction or even mining. No private industry that competes in the marketplace can guarantee job security.
However well-meaning, governments cannot prevail against markets.
It is not surprising that the Gillard government's decision to re-regulate the labour market under the Fair Work Act has been accompanied by an increase in unemployment and part-time and casual employment.
The Herald's economics correspondent, Peter Martin, in his analysis of the recent Bureau of Statistics figures commented that "Australia has created so few jobs in the past three months that at the present rate it would take a quarter of a century to reach the 500,000 promised in the federal budget".
In April, Julia Gillard delivered a significant speech to The Sydney Institute on the dignity of work. Her message was that it was in the interests of all Australians that the long-term unemployed should find jobs. Good point. The problem with the Prime Minister's address was that it focused on only one side of the problem.
Sure, the unemployed should be encouraged to work. But who is going to give them a job, particularly full-time employment?
Here the unfair dismissal laws provide a real disincentive for small business operators to give a long-term welfare recipient a job. Why should anyone take such a risk if the government makes it harder to terminate employees for poor performance? Fine sentiments do not make, or retain, a job.
SOURCE
Media censorship on the agenda again
NEWSPAPERS and magazines could be fined up to $30,000 for "exceptionally grave" or persistent breaches of media standards.
In a submission to Julia Gillard's media inquiry, the Press Council has also raised the prospect of securing government funding to expand its coverage to online news and "blog" websites.
And it suggests newspapers could be censured or reprimanded "where appropriate" under sanctions to boost public confidence in the media.
The Press Council part-funded by News Limited has fired the opening shots in the Government's media inquiry with a series of options to beef-up public sanctions against sloppy journalism.
These include a new panel, headed by a retired judge, with the power to impose fines against newspapers or magazines of up to $30,000.
In a letter to the media inquiry, chair Julian Disney said the Press Council was "currently considering" such a process but also raised concerns it could become "legalistic and time-consuming".
The first trickle of submissions were published yesterday by the media inquiry which was established by the Gillard Government following pressure from the Greens.
Retired Federal Court judge Ray Finklestein has been asked to report back to Government by February, including on the effectiveness of the Press Council considered a "toothless tiger" by its critics.
Mr Disney, who is overseas and could not be contacted last night, has put forward a number of options to beef-up the body and expand its coverage over emerging online media.
Raising the issue of government funding will be controversial. Mr Disney has suggested it as an option "to help expand membership amongst online publishers".
But he added it was "essential" funding from government or external sources was given without "conditions".
SOURCE
Green capitalists hijack carbon agenda
by Gary Johns
THERE was a time when capitalists were capitalists. Now, half the bastards parade as greens making money from green ideology. The other half have given up in the face of environmentalism.
The combination of corporate rent-seeking and capitulation makes the world more vulnerable to mishap. No wonder the gormless ferals "Occupying" city squares across the Western world are confused.
Green capitalism wants public corporations to behave not as shareholders and taxpayers wish but as green activists wish. Green activists and corporate people cosy up to regulators and governments, but especially the UN.
Corporations accept the activity as strategic, coping with political pressure for the nebulous desire for sustainability. Some corporations acquiesce, some make money.
There are crooks such as Enron and jokers such as BP (remember Beyond Petroleum?) who play the game. Others just attend conferences. But attending lends weight to stupidity and rent-seeking on a global scale.
These conferences become places where politicians grandstand. Remember Kevin at Copenhagen? A few days ago in Washington, DC, a group of chief executives, "major investors and bankers", together with former British prime minister Gordon Brown and former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, called for a "far-reaching reform of the global financial system". The price of applause is taxpayer subsidies and preferential regulation.
These people helped the US and Europe live beyond their means. Now, under the banner of the UN Environment Program Finance Initiative Global Roundtable they want to direct good money into bad investments under the guise of sustainability.
This is the crowd that brought the massive waste of debt forgiveness, Make Poverty History and the Clean Development Mechanism. Brown has suggested a global tax to raise even more money for aid and the environment. Tell that to the Greeks and the Irish.
This is the crowd plotting the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (or Rio+20) in Rio de Janeiro where even more promises will be made with money that does not exist. They want to "mobilise investment at scale by the banking and investment sectors into the clean energy sector, renewable energy, green buildings and retrofitting, clean vehicles and fuels". You will pay for this.
The farce is that even on its own terms, the combination of green activists, corporate capitulation and UN mischief-making moves the world further from the possibility of coping with issues such as climate change and poverty.
Take the example of nuclear power. Siemens built all of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors. In 2006 Siemens' president and chief executive Peter Loescher said: "In view of global climate change and the increasing power demand worldwide, for us nuclear energy remains an essential part of a sustainable energy mix. Nuclear energy, which is practically CO2-free, will gain in importance above all with a view to climate protection."
In September this year Loescher announced Siemens' withdrawal from the nuclear industry. The firm will no longer build nuclear power stations.
Although the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March pushed it across the line, it was the constant drip of ideology that broke the company's resolve. As Loescher said, it was the firm's answer to "the clear positioning of German society and politics for a pullout from nuclear energy".
Siemens' 17 nuclear reactors accounted for 23 per cent of German electricity production. A lot of solar panels and windmills are going to be built with taxpayers' subsidy to fill that gaping hole. Should the windmills come at the expense of the Greece bailout?
And our little green capitalists' tentacles reach from global to local. A recent press release screamed: "World's largest investors, worth $20 trillion, step up call for urgent policy action on climate change".' It was our friends at the UNEP Finance Initiative, in tandem with the likes of the local Investor Group on Climate Change.
IGCC is a green-capitalist crowd. It represents finance, including church and industry super funds. Being from finance, they seek rent rather than capitulate a la Siemens. IGCC wants to "encourage government policies and investment practices that address the risks and opportunities of climate change, for the ultimate benefit of superannuants and unit holders". You bet they do.
The Australian chief executive is Nathan Fabian, former adviser to Penny Wong in the opposition portfolio of corporate governance and responsibility. Fabian by name, Fabian by nature.
Are the Fabians telling investors that the Senate estimates statement by Treasury's Martin Parkinson on October 20, that "the cost impact of the carbon tax is very, very small", was based on an assumption there would be a global agreement on reductions of CO2 emissions?
Julia Gillard cannot achieve what the great Kevin Rudd could not. An agreement by developing countries attending the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Durban next month to curb emissions will not be forthcoming.
Make sure you tell your members, Fabian.
SOURCE
She has been trying to deny it
JULIA Gillard's office and three senior ministers were told by Qantas management they had "options available" to avoid the fleet grounding and that CEO Alan Joyce was ready to talk to the PM.
A script for the phone calls confirms revelations in The Daily Telegraph that the government was told it had the opportunity to act but it would need to deliver certainty.
It was also stressed that Mr Joyce was available to speak to Ms Gillard, although she never called him until after the revelations yesterday morning.
Qantas government relations executive Olivia Wirth confirmed she spoke according to the script when she called the Prime Minister's chief of staff at 2.05pm on the day of the grounding.
The script was also used by Mr Joyce in calls with Transport Minister Anthony Albanese at 2pm, followed by Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson and Workplace Relations Minister Chris Evans.
All were told: "We recognise the government has a range of options available to you, however we need to make it clear that we will not, and cannot put planes back in the air until these issues are resolved and we have certainty."
This was considered an unmissable suggestion to the PM and ministers that they should ban further action. Ms Wirth confirmed to The Daily Telegraph last night that was "the way you get certainty. No more action".
The PM's chief of staff was also told to let Ms Gillard know: "Alan is available to discuss further details. Alan's here if you want to chat to him." But Ms Gillard did not take this as a request to call Mr Joyce, nor did she have the government declare the strike action illegal, which has stunned many inside Qantas.
Her spokesman yesterday denied the government was given the option to avoid the mass grounding. "The government was presented with the grounding of the planes as a fait accompli," he said.
But Ms Wirth confirmed that the script had been used in all phone calls.
Instead the PM referred the matter to the industrial court Fair Work Australia. By the time the full bench made the same order tens of thousands of passengers had already been left stranded or otherwise disrupted.
In a fiery question time yesterday the Opposition hammered Ms Gillard and her ministers on their handling of the issue. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott wanted to know what the government had done in the three hours between 2pm and 5pm Saturday when the grounding took effect.
His deputy Julie Bishop wanted to know why the prime minister had not spoken personally to Mr Joyce in a bid to circumvent the grounding.
Backbenchers lined up to ask ministers how the government's decision to refer the dispute to Fair Work Australia was good for the nation, the economy, the tourism sector and the travelling public.
Ms Gillard defended the government's decision not to take matters into its own hands. She accused the opposition of "peddling a falsehood" by claiming the government merely had to sign a piece of paper to end industrial action because it was in the nation's interest. "Peddling of that falsehood should stop here and it should stop now," she said.
Meanwhile, Qantas passengers are heading back to the airline's terminals across Australia, with international services expected to return to normal by the afternoon.
All domestic services for today are scheduled as normal, with all international flights expected to return to business as usual by late today, Qantas said.
SOURCE
Qantas workers must face global facts of life
In all the commentary on the Qantas dispute, perhaps the most salient point was raised by journalist Claire Harvey. She was on the Meet the Press panel on Channel Ten, where the principal guest was the Workplace Relations Minister, Senator Chris Evans. Discussion soon turned to the issue of job security.
There are numerous disputes between several trade unions and Qantas management over a range of issues. However, the gist of the various disagreements turns on the assertion by Qantas's management of its right to manage and the demand by trade union leaders that their members should enjoy job security.
This is an unusual industrial dispute in that pay is not the principal driver.
About halfway through the interview, Harvey asked the telling question: "How can any private company guarantee job security into the future? Isn't that an impossibility?" To which Senator Evans replied: "Look, I think that's right. I think Qantas are saying that they're under commercial pressure to change their business."
Evans went on to refine his answer. He declared that "the 30,000-odd employees of Qantas have a right to pursue their job security". The minister added that "those clashing objectives . . . have to be resolved by either negotiation or before Fair Work Australia".
The problem with the second half of Evans's answer is that it completely contradicted the initial response.
The fact is that, in an increasingly globalised world, it is impossible for a private company, such as Qantas, to guarantee job security. Only the public sector - where employment is funded by the taxpayer - can deliver permanency in employment.
Qantas is an international airline competing on the world markets in an industry that historically returns small profits on funds invested. It cannot guarantee jobs without inhibiting its business operations.
Trade unions - representing pilots, engineers or baggage handlers - cannot prevail in the face of this economic fact of life. Nor can tribunals such as Fair Work Australia.
If the Qantas dispute is not settled by negotiation between the parties and it goes to arbitration, Fair Work Australia cannot guarantee job security.
It's possible that Fair Work Australia's tribunal, which is comprised primarily of former barristers and one-time trade union officials, might direct Qantas to preserve jobs in Australia. However, it cannot deliver on such a ruling since no tribunal can stop any business from scaling back on employment or going out of business due to its inability to compete on world markets.
On ABC TV news on Friday, the serial shareholder media tart Jack Tilburn got prime coverage when he declared outside the Qantas annual general meeting: "The workers aren't getting proper salaries and wages and conditions. They're being strangled, they're being bulldozed, they're being knocked over."
Tilburn ended up talking of himself in the third person when he said about Qantas: "It's a board of dictators, says Jack Tilburn, not a board of directors."
The fact is that Qantas pilots, engineers and baggage handlers enjoy some of the best pay and conditions in the international airline industry.
And that is precisely why Qantas management cannot guarantee that all future employees in all Qantas businesses can be remunerated at similar rates.
Journalists and editors should know this better than anyone. There is no job security in the Australian media industry - outside the taxpayer-funded ABC. Likewise, there is no job security in financial services or retail or agriculture or construction or even mining. No private industry that competes in the marketplace can guarantee job security.
However well-meaning, governments cannot prevail against markets.
It is not surprising that the Gillard government's decision to re-regulate the labour market under the Fair Work Act has been accompanied by an increase in unemployment and part-time and casual employment.
The Herald's economics correspondent, Peter Martin, in his analysis of the recent Bureau of Statistics figures commented that "Australia has created so few jobs in the past three months that at the present rate it would take a quarter of a century to reach the 500,000 promised in the federal budget".
In April, Julia Gillard delivered a significant speech to The Sydney Institute on the dignity of work. Her message was that it was in the interests of all Australians that the long-term unemployed should find jobs. Good point. The problem with the Prime Minister's address was that it focused on only one side of the problem.
Sure, the unemployed should be encouraged to work. But who is going to give them a job, particularly full-time employment?
Here the unfair dismissal laws provide a real disincentive for small business operators to give a long-term welfare recipient a job. Why should anyone take such a risk if the government makes it harder to terminate employees for poor performance? Fine sentiments do not make, or retain, a job.
SOURCE
Media censorship on the agenda again
NEWSPAPERS and magazines could be fined up to $30,000 for "exceptionally grave" or persistent breaches of media standards.
In a submission to Julia Gillard's media inquiry, the Press Council has also raised the prospect of securing government funding to expand its coverage to online news and "blog" websites.
And it suggests newspapers could be censured or reprimanded "where appropriate" under sanctions to boost public confidence in the media.
The Press Council part-funded by News Limited has fired the opening shots in the Government's media inquiry with a series of options to beef-up public sanctions against sloppy journalism.
These include a new panel, headed by a retired judge, with the power to impose fines against newspapers or magazines of up to $30,000.
In a letter to the media inquiry, chair Julian Disney said the Press Council was "currently considering" such a process but also raised concerns it could become "legalistic and time-consuming".
The first trickle of submissions were published yesterday by the media inquiry which was established by the Gillard Government following pressure from the Greens.
Retired Federal Court judge Ray Finklestein has been asked to report back to Government by February, including on the effectiveness of the Press Council considered a "toothless tiger" by its critics.
Mr Disney, who is overseas and could not be contacted last night, has put forward a number of options to beef-up the body and expand its coverage over emerging online media.
Raising the issue of government funding will be controversial. Mr Disney has suggested it as an option "to help expand membership amongst online publishers".
But he added it was "essential" funding from government or external sources was given without "conditions".
SOURCE
Green capitalists hijack carbon agenda
by Gary Johns
THERE was a time when capitalists were capitalists. Now, half the bastards parade as greens making money from green ideology. The other half have given up in the face of environmentalism.
The combination of corporate rent-seeking and capitulation makes the world more vulnerable to mishap. No wonder the gormless ferals "Occupying" city squares across the Western world are confused.
Green capitalism wants public corporations to behave not as shareholders and taxpayers wish but as green activists wish. Green activists and corporate people cosy up to regulators and governments, but especially the UN.
Corporations accept the activity as strategic, coping with political pressure for the nebulous desire for sustainability. Some corporations acquiesce, some make money.
There are crooks such as Enron and jokers such as BP (remember Beyond Petroleum?) who play the game. Others just attend conferences. But attending lends weight to stupidity and rent-seeking on a global scale.
These conferences become places where politicians grandstand. Remember Kevin at Copenhagen? A few days ago in Washington, DC, a group of chief executives, "major investors and bankers", together with former British prime minister Gordon Brown and former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, called for a "far-reaching reform of the global financial system". The price of applause is taxpayer subsidies and preferential regulation.
These people helped the US and Europe live beyond their means. Now, under the banner of the UN Environment Program Finance Initiative Global Roundtable they want to direct good money into bad investments under the guise of sustainability.
This is the crowd that brought the massive waste of debt forgiveness, Make Poverty History and the Clean Development Mechanism. Brown has suggested a global tax to raise even more money for aid and the environment. Tell that to the Greeks and the Irish.
This is the crowd plotting the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (or Rio+20) in Rio de Janeiro where even more promises will be made with money that does not exist. They want to "mobilise investment at scale by the banking and investment sectors into the clean energy sector, renewable energy, green buildings and retrofitting, clean vehicles and fuels". You will pay for this.
The farce is that even on its own terms, the combination of green activists, corporate capitulation and UN mischief-making moves the world further from the possibility of coping with issues such as climate change and poverty.
Take the example of nuclear power. Siemens built all of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors. In 2006 Siemens' president and chief executive Peter Loescher said: "In view of global climate change and the increasing power demand worldwide, for us nuclear energy remains an essential part of a sustainable energy mix. Nuclear energy, which is practically CO2-free, will gain in importance above all with a view to climate protection."
In September this year Loescher announced Siemens' withdrawal from the nuclear industry. The firm will no longer build nuclear power stations.
Although the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March pushed it across the line, it was the constant drip of ideology that broke the company's resolve. As Loescher said, it was the firm's answer to "the clear positioning of German society and politics for a pullout from nuclear energy".
Siemens' 17 nuclear reactors accounted for 23 per cent of German electricity production. A lot of solar panels and windmills are going to be built with taxpayers' subsidy to fill that gaping hole. Should the windmills come at the expense of the Greece bailout?
And our little green capitalists' tentacles reach from global to local. A recent press release screamed: "World's largest investors, worth $20 trillion, step up call for urgent policy action on climate change".' It was our friends at the UNEP Finance Initiative, in tandem with the likes of the local Investor Group on Climate Change.
IGCC is a green-capitalist crowd. It represents finance, including church and industry super funds. Being from finance, they seek rent rather than capitulate a la Siemens. IGCC wants to "encourage government policies and investment practices that address the risks and opportunities of climate change, for the ultimate benefit of superannuants and unit holders". You bet they do.
The Australian chief executive is Nathan Fabian, former adviser to Penny Wong in the opposition portfolio of corporate governance and responsibility. Fabian by name, Fabian by nature.
Are the Fabians telling investors that the Senate estimates statement by Treasury's Martin Parkinson on October 20, that "the cost impact of the carbon tax is very, very small", was based on an assumption there would be a global agreement on reductions of CO2 emissions?
Julia Gillard cannot achieve what the great Kevin Rudd could not. An agreement by developing countries attending the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Durban next month to curb emissions will not be forthcoming.
Make sure you tell your members, Fabian.
SOURCE
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
