Workers' funds are not so super

Most funds underperform the stockmarket average and the fees charged are a lead weight.  And the rooster of today can easily become the feather duster of tomorrow.  Studying company form and making your own share purchases is hard to beat

MORE than six million Australians would have been better off stuffing cash under a mattress than putting it in their employers' default superannuation option over the last five financial years.

Today News Limited reveals the worst and best performing super funds in Australia over the past decade and the true cost of our inaction on super.

Most Australians make no active choice when it comes to super; the majority (60 per cent) have their super paid automatically into the default investment option of their employers chosen superannuation fund.

Thanks to the battering of the global financial crisis, every dollar invested in a typical default fund went backwards, after fees and taxes, by 0.3 per cent a year on average over the past five financial years, according to data from SelectingSuper, a service of research group Rainmaker.

Of the 83 default super options available over the five years, 51 delivered negative annual returns for members (6,066,129 member accounts) and 32 delivered positive returns (10,179,634 member accounts).

"The past decade, and the time since the global financial crisis especially, has been a train wreck for super funds," Alex Dunnin, head of research at Rainmaker, told News Limited.

But the SelectingSuper figures show choice of fund is crucial, revealing large and persistent divergences across fund performance.

The top performing default option REST Industry Super - delivered an average annual return of 6.7 per cent, after fees and taxes, to its nearly 2 million members over the decade.

The worst performing default option - Connelly Temple Employer Super - returned just 2.5 per cent a year to its 20,551 members.

So $10,000 invested in the worst fund a decade ago would be worth $12,800 today, but the same amount invested in the best fund would be worth $19,100 - a potential $6,300 windfall just from being in the best fund.

"We're spending all this money on super, but if you're in a dud fund, you're basically just pissing it up the wall," Mr Dunnin said.

The industry's mantra that "past performance is no guide to future performance" was not true, Mr Dunnin added.

In fact, Australians could gain a lot by comparing funds according to their longer term return over five or ten years and switching to the better performing funds.

"It's like footy teams. If you're consistently down the bottom of the league table then you're probably not going to win the championship the next year. Funds that are below average tend to stay below average."

The chief economist at CommSec, Craig James, said it was important not to make knee-jerk reactions to market downturns.

But, in theory, a person who had withdrawn money from their default super fund and put the cash under their mattress would at least have preserved the face value of their money.

"Not that this is a recommended strategy, but with the benefit of hindsight, some one who did that wouldn't have been any worse off, perhaps slightly better off."

Mr James said Australians would have to get used to more modest superannuation returns.

"I think perhaps in the past we had become too accustomed to super normal returns and expecting they were going to last forever. Really, when you think about investing for retirement, the bulk of those savings will be provided by your own hard work."

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Construction code would keep militant building unions in line

THE Queensland construction industry wants a code of conduct and a state regulator to clamp down on militant building unions such as the CFMEU and BLF.

Master Builders Queensland and Australian Mines and Metals Association told a construction industry forum the increased militancy of unions was putting major construction projects at risk.

The claim follows the 59-day strike at the Queensland Children's Hospital site that stopped all construction work, and the Grocon dispute that ended in an ugly street riot in Melbourne.

Master Builders and the Australian Mines and Metals Association said it was made worse by the Federal Government scrapping the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

Master Builders construction policy director John Crittall said the commercial sector of the Queensland building and construction industry over the past year had experienced one of the most difficult periods of unlawful industrial conduct in history.

At the hospital site a picket line was run by a union activist, rather than by the officials of the union, allowing the shutdown of the site to continue after Fair Work Australia ordered a return to work and a federal magistrate banned CFMEU officials from the site.

"The critical issue is the failure of the industrial system and the building unions to abide by the rule of law," Mr Crittall said.

"The emasculation of the ABCC and militant union tactics during agreement-making under the Fair Work legislation have resulted in unprecedented periods of industrial action and lost time."

He said the construction industry needed a stable industrial environment to lure investment and create jobs.

"The failure of the industrial system to cope with industrial disputes adds further weight to the need for a new building industry code of conduct in Queensland to protect building projects."

Australian Mines and Metals Association executive director of industry Minna Knight said the resources sector had been hit by wage blowouts and long delays because of the increased union powers under Fair Work legislation.

"Resources-related construction projects are forecast to create 40,000 new Queensland jobs by 2015, with around $200 billion worth of investment either under way or in the state's pipeline," Ms Knight said.

"But these could face excessive wage blowouts, costly delays by unions stalling agreement negotiations, and illegal strike activity.

"In the recent Grocon-CFMEU dispute, we have seen construction unions openly ignore court orders to return to work and ... cause reckless damage to important developments."

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A SURGEON banned from operating at one of Melbourne's top private hospitals due to patient safety concerns is free to continue operating in other hospitals

His averages  give clear cause for concern

Cabrini Health stopped general surgeon Adam Skidmore performing colorectal surgery last year - but the ban does not extend to other hospitals.

Mr Skidmore strongly denies any wrongdoing.

Cabrini Health is also seeking to extend the ban on Mr Skidmore to exclude him from performing major upper gastrointestinal (GI) surgery.

That decision has been delayed after Mr Skidmore was granted a Supreme Court injunction to defer the decision until next month.

But despite Cabrini's move, which the hospital said was made "in the interests of patient safety", Mr Skidmore is still working unrestricted at the Epworth, Linacre Private, Sandringham and Frankston hospitals.

None of the hospitals or Mr Skidmore would comment when contacted by the Herald Sun while the case was before the court.

But patient advocates say hospitals should be forced to make restrictions public, while Health Services Commissioner Beth Wilson said doctors should be obliged to reveal work bans to all their employers.

Court documents show Cabrini's executive director of medical services, Associate Professor Simon Woods, told Mr Skidmore on April 5 that a review of his patients at Malvern had raised concerns.

"Unless I can be persuaded otherwise I believe that the appropriate course of action is to limit your clinical privileges to exclude major upper GI surgery," he said.

Associate Prof Woods cited four patients of particular concern, including a woman who had a gastric band removed and ended up in intensive care and in hospital for 38 days.

"This is a highly unusual outcome for a procedure normally characterised by an overnight stay," he said.

Mr Skidmore voluntarily suspended all his lists at Cabrini from April 10.

He asked for a review of the decision and complained he had not been afforded procedural fairness or time to defend "these serious allegations".

Mr Skidmore argued his data appeared skewed because he dealt with his most serious and complex cases at Cabrini as it was the only hospital available to him with an intensive care unit.

"Looking at length of stay alone ... is an unhelpful indicator of the performance of the surgeon," his lawyers wrote to the hospital.

The court file contains the terms of reference for the clinical review which states: "Mr Skidmore's case work at Malvern continues to be associated with a long length of stay."

It said that, in 2 1/2 years, 11 of Mr Skidmore's patients had required tracheostomy or ventilation for more than 96 hours.

"This is only exceeded by two cardiothoracic surgeons," the document said.

"The next highest in terms of GI surgeons is four patients."

For surgery on stomach, duodenum and oesophagus cancers it claimed Mr Skidmore's patients had an average stay seven days longer than the hospital's busiest surgeon.

A letter to Mr Skidmore before the court said the hospital needed to "put the safety and quality of patient care above all other considerations" and would restrict his practice "in the interests of patient safety".

The operators of Epworth and Linacre Hospitals confirmed Mr Skidmore is under no restrictions.

Frankston and Sandringham hospitals would not comment on the surgeon's operating privileges, but Alfred Health - which runs Sandringham - said no major upper gastrointestinal surgery took place there.

Australian Patients Association chief Stephen Mason said a doctor's track record should be public so patients could make informed decisions about treatment.

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Cancer patient waits two days before admission in Canberra hospital

A CANCER patient suffering severe breathing difficulties waited for two days in Canberra Hospital's emergency department before being admitted to a ward.

Grandmother Margaret Rees spent at least 10 hours of this time in a corridor, hospital records show. "It was horrible," the 72-year-old Pearce woman said.

Records show Mrs Rees arrived at the emergency department one Sunday morning in July and was not placed in a ward until the following Monday night.

A Health Directorate spokeswoman said the hospital regretted any distress Mrs Rees may have experienced as a result of the 33-hour delay in the ED.
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The spokeswoman said the average waiting time across the past three months for a person to move to an inpatient bed in a ward was 1.79 hours.

About 190 people a day were arriving at the ED during the period when Mrs Rees turned up, many with respiratory conditions.

"The access block was high due to the number of presentations," the hospital spokeswoman said.

Mrs Rees arrived at the ED suffering a narrowed airway, medically known as chronic pulmonary obstructive disease.

She said that when she finally was admitted she spent a week in hospital.

While hospital records say an ED medical officer looked at Mrs Rees at 3.56pm on the first day, the same records also say the decision to admit her was not made until six minutes past midnight.

Mrs Rees said toward the end of her wait for admission - on day two - she was taken to a ward, but after several minutes she was returned to the corridor again because staff had confused her with someone else.  "This was when I broke down crying," she said.

Also at about this time, Mrs Rees said she agreed to the humiliating experience of baring her naked backside in the public corridor to have a vital injection because there was no where else to do it.

ACT opposition health spokesman Jeremy Hanson labelled the elderly woman's case "appalling".

"The new emergency department waiting time figures again confirm that under ACT Labor the ACT's health system has gone from being one of the best in the country to one of the worst," Mr Hanson said.

The hospital maintained Mrs Rees spent 10 hours and six minutes in the corridor, and the remainder of the time in the proper waiting room or the acute section of the ED.

Mrs Rees and her family heartily disputed this, saying she spent well over 20 hours of her wait in the corridor.

She and her family also said they counted more than 20 people waiting in the same corridor.

ACT Labor is under increasing pressure about the Canberra Hospital in the lead up to the territory elections on October 20.

Chief Minister Katy Gallagher this past week pledged to open 72 new beds over four years, including 40 general inpatient beds and six intensive care beds as well as extra beds for home care.

Labor's promise of more beds as well as doctors and nurses will cost $74 million.

The Liberals have put forward an urgent care clinics policy, which would put clinics in Tuggeranong and Gungahlin which would be open 16 hours a day, seven days a week.

The hospital emergency department's reputation was partly disfigured by a data doctoring scandal this year, in which up to 11,700 records were deliberately manipulated.

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An attempted Gore-fraud fails



AN Australian filmmaker refused to sell footage of a firestorm to former US vice-president Al Gore - to use in Mr Gore's climate presentations - because the event was unrelated to climate change.

Chris Tangey from Alice Springs Film and Television recorded the phenomenon on Curtin Springs Station, 360km south-west of Alice Springs, while scouting locations for a film.

The footage has been an international sensation reported widely in global media.

In an email exchange with Mr Gore's office, Mr Tangey said using the footage in a climate-change framework would be "deliberately deceptive", the Northern Territory News reports.

"I am aware that you may have missed the reporting on the very localised nature of this firestorm," Mr Tangey wrote.

"However, in any case, I am confused as to why you would offer to buy a licence to use it at all unless you had conducted even elementary research which might indicate that this Mt Conner event had direct linkage to global warming/climate change."

Joel Lisonbee, manager of the NT Climate Services Centre, agreed and said he would not link such an event to global warming.

"This event was better described as a dust devil within a fire. Most of us have seen dust devils and know they are not uncommon," Mr Lisonbee said.

"You need hot, dry conditions but you get those in desert-like conditions everywhere, regardless of global warming."

Jill Martin, from Mr Gore's office, said the famed American climate change advocate wanted to use the footage for up to five years in his PowerPoint presentations to live audiences worldwide.

"Mr Gore recently saw the amazing footage of the fire tornado taken on September 11, and is interested in showing it during some of the presentations he gives on environmental topics," she wrote.

But Mr Tangey said it was "difficult for me to imagine a fire event less relevant".

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Queensland Premier Campbell Newman blocks "Green" energy rating system for new residential units

CAMPBELL Newman has pulled out of a tougher 6-star national energy rating for new residential units to slash an average $1200 from the cost of building an apartment.

The Premier has also scrapped a deal with the Federal Government for mandatory reporting of energy efficiency standards of new buildings in a move he describes as cutting red tape.

But the Federal Government has accused him of making it harder for people to cut their energy bills.

The deals were agreed between Anna Bligh and Julia Gillard as part of a national program of energy efficiency rules.

Mr Newman's decision to pull out is a blow to Ms Gillard's plans to streamline rules through the Council of Australian Governments.

The new 6-star rating would require better minimum levels of insulation and glazing in new apartment buildings to cut energy use for heating and cooling.

But the Premier warned the new rating would drive up the cost of new buildings without getting much return in lower power costs.

The tougher standards are estimated by Queensland to add an average $1200 per unit to construction costs but are only expected to reduce electricity costs by about $54 a year.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, Mr Newman said the higher 6-star rating was unnecessary in Queensland and suggested it was designed for the climate in other states.

"The Queensland Government cannot justify the cost of transitioning from 5-star to 6-star requirements, especially given that Queensland's climate makes our 5-star units generally more energy efficient than 6-star units in other states," Mr Newman said in the letter.

The Premier also hit out at plans for mandatory disclosure of energy, greenhouse gas and water performance in new units at the point of sale.

He said the scheme would breach his own election commitment to cut red tape and was "unlikely to increase consumer uptake of sustainability features in homes".

Federal Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change Mark Dreyfus attacked the move.

"Energy efficiency means cheaper electricity bills," Mr Dreyfus said.

But the Premier was backed by the building and property industry.

Master Builders' director, housing Paul Bidwell said the Federal Government "had not proved the benefits outweigh the costs" of the 6-star system.

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Immigration crackdown: over 10,000 student visas revoked

THE Immigration Department cancelled more than 10,000 student visas in the past financial year, with many students failing to fulfil course requirements.

The department revoked 2219 student visas in 2011/12 for failure to meet course progress or attendance benchmarks.

Two visas were cancelled on character grounds and 15 visas withdrawn for providing wrong information or bogus documents. A department spokesman said student visas were also cancelled if the holders falsely claimed to be students.

The department cancelled 3107 visas for non-genuine students, breaches of visa conditions and voluntary requests for cancellation. The department is currently compiling figures for the previous financial year.

Earlier this week, The Age reported an underground market for university essays in Australia was proliferating with "online essay mills" targeting international students through Chinese language social media sites.

In the year to August, there were 461,477 enrolments by full-fee paying international students in Australia. But enrolments had declined by 7.6 per cent compared with the same period the year before, according to Australian Education International.

These figures include students studying at university, TAFE and secondary school.

Foreign students make a massive contribution to the Australian economy with international education accounting for $16.3 billion in export income in 2010/11.

But International Association of Universities secretary-general Eva Egron-Polak said international students offered far greater value than income.

Ms Egron-Polak, who spoke at an international education conference in Melbourne this week, said universities around the world needed to foster stronger cultural and academic links with international students. "They really do enrich our lives and our study," she said.

Ms Egron-Polak said Australian universities would face stronger competition to attract foreign students from Asian countries, including China and Malaysia, which were improving the quality of their higher education sectors.

"Those countries have invested heavily in building their own capacity in higher education. China is now almost balancing the number of outgoing and incoming students," she said.

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Woman  told that Queensland Health is too busy to fix her broken arm

A BUNDABERG retiree has been told by Queensland Health that it is too busy to operate on her arm, which has been broken for two years.

Carmel Daniel, 67, is in pain and cannot even lift a bed sheet, but Queensland Health has written to the Category 2 patient, telling her it that is very busy and does not know when it can perform surgery on her shattered arm.

To add insult to injury, the letter from the Royal Brisbane Hospital got her name wrong and said she had been on the waiting list since November 2012.

When the 67-year-old broke both her arms when she fell over walking her two cattle dogs in 2010, she had no idea the health system would leave her wanting for so long.

"I'm very, very frustrated. I think I've been patient," Mrs Daniel told The Sunday Mail.  "If you were to put your hand on the top of my shoulder, you can feel my bone jutting in and jutting out.

"I'm scared. What if I have a fall, will the broken bone go through my arm? I've stopped bowling and going for walks.

"What gets me is, if I fell on to the road today or whatever, it would be done today, the hospital would fix me up."

When Mrs Daniel was first injured, doctors at Bundaberg Base Hospital put both her arms in slings, which is considered standard treatment for her type of break.

But after months of physiotherapy, her left arm remained sore and she sought advice from her long-time GP, Lloyd Sussens.

He ordered an X-ray and after seeing the damage he referred her back to the hospital, which referred her to the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital.

After an initial consultation in Brisbane, Mrs Daniel was told she would only have to wait a couple of months for the surgery, which would be performed at the RBWH. She was listed as a Category 2 patient on November 2, last year.

"It's not ideal, it's unreasonable," Dr Sussens said.  "If she was being treated in the private sector...it would have been done within weeks.  "They will probably need to fuse the bones together...and put a plate across it and do a bone graft."

He said the length of time Mrs Daniel has had to wait would likely make it harder for her to recover.

Former Bundaberg Base Hospital patient advocate Beryl Crosby referred Mrs Daniel's case to Health Minister Lawrence Springborg.

It sparked senior patient liaison officer Alison Love to write to Mrs Daniel to say she was sorry for the delay.

"The reasons for the delay in your surgery are related to your consultant being on leave for three months and the high number of Category 1 (urgent) and trauma patients requiring surgery," Ms Love wrote.

"I have been informed by the orthopedic case manager that your consultant is booked up almost to Christmas with those patients who have been on long wait lists.

"It is regrettable that you are unlikely to have your surgery before Christmas and we are unable to advise you when you will be offered a surgery date at this time."

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You can see why 40% of Australians have private health insurance despite the "free" hospital system.  But paying for private insurance is often difficult for the elderly




Teacher suspended after being diagnosed as pathological liar

A TEACHER has been suspended after being diagnosed as a pathological liar who had been leading a fantasy life.

The Brisbane man, who can't be named for legal reasons, taught at various public and private schools before being diagnosed with "pseudologia fantastica" - an uncommon but long-lasting condition often described as pathological or compulsive lying.

The Queensland College of Teachers suspended his registration last month after a psychiatrist's report.

The assessment, filed in the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal, reveals the sidelined teacher's "unusual behaviour" included telling others of his fictitious involvement in high-level jobs and of top job offers that did not exist, relationships with people later found to be made-up, and links to events that never happened.

The report said it was "potentially dangerous for him to be in a teaching position".

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Tony Abbott is a sentimental man

George Bush Jr. is too.  Both have strong human feelings that are not normally seen



THE woman closest to Tony Abbott has revealed intimate details of their private life together, including how he was a "wreck" when she suffered a miscarriage.

His wife of 24 years, Margie Abbott doesn't enjoy public attention or fit the mould of a political spouse.

But in response to claims her husband has a problem with women, she agreed to a wide-ranging interview with News Ltd about their family life with their three daughters.

When asked if Mr Abbott had cried at the births of their children, Louise, 23, Frances, 21, and Bridget, 19, Mrs Abbott disclosed a personal tragedy which shattered the Opposition Leader.

"He was emotional (at their births) and if I may tell you a very personal story there was an occasion where I actually had a miscarriage between daughters one and two," she said.

"I kept it all together, but Tony was a wreck.

"Having a child is a very happy time, but I don't think tears were part of that (when their daughters arrived safely). Certainly he felt it when I miscarried."

As the Abbott girls were growing it was their father who was the soft touch.

"I am the tough one in the family. He is the soft touch and as a result he has a wonderful relationship with the girls which sometimes I am a little envious of," she said.

"That is the price you pay for making sure the rules are followed in the Abbott house."

She added: "Our girls have been happy to do all kinds of things with their father, from canoeing to kayaking to mountain climbing, almost."

Mrs Abbott talks of a husband who calls twice a day, morning and night, no matter where he is travelling, which is often to several capital cities in a week.

When he is at home in Sydney, Mrs Abbott says her husband is happy to unload the dishwasher, barbecue dinner, get Indian takeaway, or clean the kitchen after she makes dinner.

If they watch a sad movie together he will get "teary," she said.

Mr Abbott said he was embarrassed he became "sooky" in The Year My Voice broke, one of the first movies the couple saw together.

"Just to give you an idea of how it happens in the Abbott household, I'll be grabbing the remote control saying `Can I watch the footy, please?' he will be saying `Oh, but I would really like to watch Downton Abbey,"' Mrs Abbott said.

"So that's the sort of contradiction we have in the Abbott household. The short answer is yes, he likes those sensitive movies and I am very happy watching the footy."

Bridget Abbott is preparing for a month of volunteer duties in a village in Cambodia while Louise is about to begin a new job in Europe, leaving just Frances at home for Christmas.

"I was just checking our credit card bill and there was an amount. I said to him `What's this about?"' Mrs Abbott said.

"Louise is just starting a job in Europe. He purchased for her a little compendium which is going to be waiting on her desk for her first day at work. That was a very touching thing for me and that's what he does. He didn't make a song and dance about it."

For their 24th wedding anniversary last month, Mr Abbott was on the road and sent his wife a bunch of flowers.

"What did I buy Tony for our anniversary? Well, I let the side down. I wished him a happy anniversary," she said.

Mr Abbott interjected: "What Margie gave me for my anniversary was putting up with a politician for a husband."

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Some intolerant tolerance below from columnist Sweetman

Why is it "bullying" to abuse and speak ill of your political opponents?  It may be regrettable but it is normal.    Mr Sweetman should take note of the calumnies heaped on Romney by Obama supporters

BULLIES thrive when decent people don't act because they hope someone else will. No more. Show them our backs and in the process show them the door.

What more can be said of Alan Jones apart from the fact that he is what he has always been: A misogynist bully given to intemperate language and with an inflated idea of his own importance in a small world of devotees.

What more can be said about his Sydney University Liberal Club audience members apart from the fact that they were shamed and did nothing to liberate themselves from that shame.

Let's keep it in perspective. There were grown-up Liberal Party members and Members of Parliament in attendance and they were found morally lacking, cowardly in their initial denial of Jones' outrageous remarks and fatuous in downplaying the hurt.

But this was largely a gathering of young political activists (described by some as Hooray Henrys), no doubt eager to hear what they wanted to hear from their hero, perhaps taken with strong drink and excitement during what Jones called a "hell of a rollicking night".

Foolishness remains a prerogative of youth and, in a political context, this often descends into stupidity.

I strongly suspect a gathering of young Labor, Nationals or Green devotees would have been similarly leavened with insensitive louts had they been served up a platter of vile insults directed at their most bitter political enemies.

It is not without accident that some events and animosities that are now matters of serious national debate began in the juvenile halls of university politics.

It is similarly not without accident that some of the more bizarre, cruel, stupid and offensive statements and policies to darken our political horizons come from the youth wings of our parties.

If it were not for the predictable stupidity, news editors probably wouldn't bother sending staff to cover their conferences.

For all that, the theory of good manners and fair play suggests someone should have stood up and called out Jones for his insult to Prime Minister Julia Gillard and his trashing of her father's memory.

Better still, in an ideal world, every man and woman there should have walked out.

However, when personal hatred rises during a 58-minute gee-up, it takes a certain presence of mind (particularly when desensitised by booze) to detect it, to process it and to act appropriately.

And it takes a certain courage and individuality to defy the pack mentality and make a very public stand on principle.

It would be nice to think that every member of that audience now feels ashamed of his or her lack of principle, but it is the nature of the tribal beast that many, maybe most, people would have reacted pretty much the same.

If Jones is to be condemned for anything other than his own cruelty, it is his practised exploitation of that group instinct, a task made easier by our collective acceptance of casual vilification.

Casual racism, casual sexism, casual ageism, casual cruelty and carelessness are the thin edge of the wedge for people who appeal to our baser instincts.

It is often far removed from active prejudice, but it is the sort of intellectual laziness that afflicts us all when we indulge in or condone pub talk or gossip that ascribes the actions of people to anything from their gender to their ethnicity.

It is the sort of social sadism that takes pleasure in other people's pain and refuses to concede any common humanity.

If offensive or discriminatory labels, derogatory terms and cruelty are routinely part of the conversations around us, we become anaesthetised to their use.

Those who resort to the language of offence and intolerance feel free to take our silence as tacit approval.

And if we don't have the ticker to speak up and declare our abhorrence for them, we become complicit in their use and prey to demagogues who want to hijack public debate for their purposes.

Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull recently lamented the standards of public discourse in Australia, but that is surely because we are too apathetic to reclaim it from those who have stolen it and so demeaned it.

We can't stop the Joneses of our country from speaking, but there is no compulsion to listen, and there is certainly no reason to applaud.

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Phosphate mine wins environmental approval

QUEENSLAND'S environment department has approved plans for a multi-million dollar open-cut phosphate mine northwest of Mount Isa.

Environment Minister Andrew Powell said the department assessed there would be no unacceptable environmental impacts from the Paradise South Phosphate Project.

He said environmental conditions for the mine would include requirements for surface water and groundwater management, and monitoring, waste management and the rehabilitation of mined areas.

The mine, which will have a 20-year life span, will produce up to seven million tonnes of rock phosphate annually.

"Concentrated phosphate ore will be produced on-site before being shipped from the site for sale to domestic export markets," Mr Powell said.

"The benefit to the regional economy will be approximately $150 million per year."

He said the construction stage would create 250 jobs, with a further 325 jobs created once the mine starts operating.

The project still requires final government approvals before construction can begin.

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Finnish education isn't all it's cracked up to be

THE topic for the Festival of Dangerous Ideas forum last Saturday at the Sydney Opera House was Abolish Private Schools and Pasi Sahlberg from Finland was one of the keynote speakers.

Having a speaker from Finland shouldn't surprise. Within cultural-left circles the Finnish education system is the flavour of the month and regularly praised by non-government school critics such as the Australian Education Union and Richard Teese from the University of Melbourne.

Critics argue that Australia should follow the Finnish example as it has top ranking in the OECD's Program for International Student Assessment maths and science tests, and forsake high-risk tests such as Australia's National Assessment Program -- Literacy and Numeracy.

If only it were that simple. While it's true that Finland was at the top of the PISA table in the 2006 tests, ranking first in maths, science and reading, since that time the country's results have gone backwards.

In the 2009 PISA test Finland dropped to sixth in maths, second in science and third in reading. In the 2009 test not only did Shanghai rank No 1 in the three areas but most of the other top performing education systems also were in the East Asian region.

It also needs to be noted that in the other more academically based and credible international test, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, the last time the two countries met Australia outperformed Finland.

In Year 8 maths and Year 8 science Australia was ranked 13th and seventh, while Finland was placed 14th and 10th.

While those opposed to high-risk tests point to Finland to argue there is no value or benefit in high-risk tests and failing students, what is conveniently ignored is that the more successful East Asian countries have education systems that are highly competitive, where students are pressured to succeed and often streamed in terms of ability.

Cultural-left academics and professional associations also like to use the example of Finland to argue Australia's non-government system should not be funded. Unlike Australia, where about 36 per cent of students attend Catholic and independent schools, the supposedly world's best Finnish system is government funded and there are no private schools.

Best illustrated by comments made by Sahlberg on Channel 7's Weekend Sunrise, the argument is that countries can achieve outstanding results without the presence of non-government schools. Abolishing non-government schools is also beneficial, according to Sahlberg, as such schools do well only because they enrol privileged students and they are guilty of reinforcing inequality.

Once again, such arguments lack credibility. As proven by research carried out by Melbourne-based academic Gary Marks, non-government schools outperform government schools even after adjusting for students' socioeconomic status.

OECD commissioned research noted the impact of SES on student and school performance is calculated at between 20 per cent and 35 per cent.

Equally, if not more important, are factors such as teacher quality, having a rigorous curriculum, school culture and the ability and motivation of students.

While critics argue that Australia's education system is riven with inequity and injustice it's also the case, based on the most recent OECD publication, Education at a Glance 2012, that Australia has a high degree of social mobility.

In relation to gaining tertiary entry the statement is made: "Young people from low educational backgrounds have the greatest chances of upward educational mobility in the countries clustered in the upper right quadrant of the chart.

"The chances of completing a tertiary education exceeds 25 per cent in Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, The Netherlands and Sweden, and is greater than 30 per cent in Australia and Ireland."

Research commissioned by the National Catholic Education Commission, published in its submission to the Gonski review of school funding, provides evidence that Australia's non-government school sector is worthy when it concludes that Catholic schools are "high quality-high equity" based on the PISA tests.

Given Julia Gillard's boast that Australian students will be in the top five countries of the PISA test by 2025, and ongoing debates about school funding in the context of the Gonski report, it's understandable why many look overseas for ideas.

The danger in the belief that the best way to strengthen schools and raise standards is to copy supposedly stronger performing systems such as Finland's is that it is simplistic and unrealistic. It's also ironic that as many are looking overseas for answers, the success of Australia's non-government schools is ignored.

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Federal health authorities under fire over Aboriginal health campaign

I can't say I am surprised.  Lucky you can choose your own doctor.  This mob would give you a vet



Australian health authorities have expressed regret over a bungled Aboriginal health campaign featuring a poster of the female body filled with basic errors, including an extra pancreas and the ovaries labelled as the kidneys.

The health department has recalled copies of the embarrassing Female Human Anatomy poster which were distributed to health centres and indigenous workers around the country as part of its "Live Longer!" public health campaign.

The poster confused the stomach with the lungs, labelled the small intestine as the stomach and showed the oesophagus running into the lung.  It also appeared to show a pancreas inside the stomach.

The "unacceptable" mistakes were identified by an opposition MP, Andrew Laming, who is also a doctor.

"The oesophagus runs into the lung," Dr Laming said.  "The ureters look like they join to the small intestine instead of the kidneys, and the bladder is sitting on top of the uterus. The lack of any attention to detail in these posters is an insult to the (indigenous people) who were the target audience for this material."

The poster was intended to improve the health outcomes for the country's indigenous people, who have much lower life expectancy and far higher infant mortality rates than the rest of the population. About 2000 posters were understood to be printed.

"The image printed and distributed had some errors that crept in during the preparation of the final print artwork files and which unfortunately were missed in the final checking process," the health department said in a statement.

The indigenous health minister, Warren Snowdon, said the poster was "unacceptable and shouldn't have gone out".

"I've asked for all affected posters to be recalled immediately," he said.

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Students have 'too much choice'

Absolutely typical Leftist authoritarianism.  Government must tell you what to do "for your own good".  Evans is  right that a  vocational focus is often lacking in choice of courses but how people manage their lives should be their choice.  Some may be happy to do arty things in their own time and earn their living in humble ways

TERTIARY Education Minister Chris Evans says the government's $10 billion-a-year student-demand-driven system of allocating places is not working because students have too much choice.

In what amounts to an about-face, Senator Evans told a Future of Work Conference in Sydney yesterday that the system was too driven by student choices.

"We've got lots of students wanting to do gaming design and no one wanting to do IT or computing now, but we've got thousands of jobs in IT and computing, and about three in game design and lots of graduates."

The new student-demand-driven system was introduced earlier this year.

In January, Senator Evans crowed about the massive increase in university offers, saying the government was producing qualifications necessary for the knowledge economy.

"We are opening the doors of our universities and giving more eligible Australians, from all regions and backgrounds, the skills they need to take advantage of the high-skilled, high-paid jobs of the future," he said.

But yesterday Senator Evans said universities were too focused on meeting student demand rather than meeting the needs of employers.

Universities have come under fire for lowering ATAR cut-offs to attract more students, after the federal government removed limits on the number of undergraduates they could take.

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Greens lose, miners win, under new Qld. govt.

THE end of Queensland's Wild Rivers legislation has breathed new life into a planned Cape York mine which will deliver up to 1700 jobs and add $1.2 billion to the economy.

The State Government has granted Cape Alumina's Pisolite Hills significant project status, meaning it will have to develop an extensive environmental impact study before approval can be granted.

The project was frozen in 2010 when the Bligh Government imposed a 500 metre wide buffer zone around waterways near the project area as part of the declaration of the Wenlock River Basin as a wild river area.

Cape Alumina said this had the effect of reducing the bauxite resources available to the project "for no tangible environmental benefit".

The company said it will now restart negotiations with the traditional owners and expects to start development of the mine in 2014, should approvals be granted.

"The project will be a boon for the traditional land owners and Aboriginal people of Mapoon and other western Cape York communities and (will) provide them with a rare opportunity to gain social and economic independence and prosperity," the company's managing director, Graeme Sherlock said.

Cape Alumina's studies show that the project would boost economic activity by $1.2 billion and create or sustain more than 1700 jobs over the mines 15-year life.

The boost to the far north Queensland economy will be more than $600 million and 1300 jobs.

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Australian universities do well in world rankings again

SIX Australian universities have been ranked in the world's top 100 as the power balance in global higher education shifts to the Asia-Pacific region.

Melbourne is the highest ranked Australian university, according to The Times Higher Education 2012-13 World University Rankings, to be released today.

Australia posted the third-biggest improvement in the world, with its eight top 200 institutions rising an average of 15 places. Six Australian universities are now in the top 100, two more than last year.

Melbourne University (ranked 28th) made the top 30 for the first time, widening its lead on the Australian National University, which moved from 38th in 2011-12 to 37. Sydney (62, down from 58), Queensland (65), New South Wales (85), and Monash (99) also made the top 100.

Adelaide University debuted in the top 200 at 176 and Western Australia University rose one spot to 190.

University performance was judged on 13 indicators, including research, teaching, knowledge transfer, and international activity.

Rankings editor Phil Baty said Australia had improved significantly.

"It has great advantages being close to the exciting innovation and research hotspots in Asia," he said. "If it can fully exploit the geographical advantage it has over Europe and North America, there's every reason to believe it can be part of a higher education revolution in Asia-Pacific."

Mr Baty said Australian improvements were based on better scores for research, in scholarly papers per staff and citation impact.

Universities Australia chief executive Belinda Robinson said the results showed the importance of public investment in universities. "This result shows once again that our universities are not only world-class, but world-leading," she said.

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Is this true?

It sounds believable and it is mentioned a couple of times on the net but I think it needs confirmation

The first group of asylum seekers have been transferred from Christmas Island to Nauru, as part of new offshore processing arrangements.

BUT ONLY SRI LANKANS(HINDUS AND CHRISTIANS) ARE BEING SENT TO NAURU.  AND NOT MUSLIMS. WHY?

(1) BECAUSE NAURU IS A CHRISTIAN COUNTRY

(2) THERE IS NO HALAL FOOD ON NAURU

(3)THE LOCAL PEOPLE KEEP PIGS AND LOVE ROAST PORK.

(4)THE LABOR PARTY DO NOT WANT TO UPSET THE MUSLIMS

(5)NO MOSQUES






ASIC loses another one

Background here.  ASIC was heavily criticized in the Federal Court but was too childish to heed it.  They can really be goons at times.  Wasting taxpayers' money seems to be all they're good at

The High Court's decision to clear Fortescue Metals Group founder Andrew Forrest of allegations he misled investors represents a major defeat for the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

ASIC had filed a civil suit against Mr Forrest over comments he made in 2004 and 2005 when he was chief executive of FMG.  It was alleged that he misled investors when he said he had "framework agreements" with Chinese entities to build Fortescue's iron ore project in the Pilbara.

WA resources analyst Tim Treadgold says ASIC was persecuting Mr Forrest and that its case was a complete waste of time.

"I think the whole case was flawed from the day they started it and there's been no end of unpopularity with ASIC and others voicing that opinion, but I think they completely wasted their time and our money," he said.

"It's astonishing that someone at ASIC decided to persecute Forrest as much as prosecute him because a reasonable man's reading of those announcements made with Chinese companies was that Forrest was telling the truth to the best of his knowledge.

"He got badly let down by the Chinese on the other side of the deal. To me it was wake-up call of what it means to do business with a Chinese partner - just take care.

"And then to get hauled into court, the way he was, and for the whole process to drag on for as long as it has requires a pretty fulsome explanation from ASIC as to what game it was playing."

The full bench of the Federal Court dealt Mr Forrest a blow last year when it said he had engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct.  But Tuesday's High Court decision supported an earlier ruling that Mr Forrest and Fortescue had not misled investors.

The High Court said Fortescue and the Chinese state-owned entities had entered into agreements that each intended to be binding, and that representing them as such was not false or misleading.

Minter Ellison consultant and former Supreme Court judge Bob Austin says Mr Forrest could have been banned as a company director had today's decision been different.  "ASIC, if it had won, would have wanted an order disqualifying him from managing any corporation for some period of time and so that issue is now off the table," he said.

Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan says he cannot comment on the High Court's ruling because he has not read it.

But Opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey says he hopes the corporate regulator has acted independently in its proceedings.

Mr Hockey has tried to link the case to Mr Swan's public attacks on Mr Forrest.  "I think ASIC have some questions to answer because they very aggressively went after Mr Forrest and I know that Wayne Swan has been an outspoken critic of Andrew Forrest so I would hope that ASIC have acted totally independently, I believe they have," he said.

ASIC first announced it was issuing the proceedings in March 2006, at least a year-and-a-half before Labor won office.

Fortescue Metals Group has issued a statement saying the decision brought an end to a "process that ASIC thought was appropriate but was ultimately determined to be wrong".  FMG also said ASIC's allegations had been "an expensive distraction".

ASIC later issued a statement saying it brought the case because it raised issues of integrity of the capital markets.

Deputy chairman Belinda Gibson said compliance with continuous disclosure goes to the heart of ASIC's strategic priority, of fair and efficient financial markets.

ASIC says the loss will force it to assess its continuous disclosure rules.  "Observation of our continuous disclosure laws is essential, not only for investors but for the broader capital markets," Ms Gibson said.

ASIC said the judgment against it raises discussion about what the market would consider to be a significant statement about the nature of an agreement.

It said the judgment also raises the issue of what is necessary to ensure the market is properly informed.

The regulator said it was carefully considering both points.

The Chartered Secretaries of Australia group says the decision highlights concerning trends in the continuous disclosure regime.

"It has given some sense that the courts will look to the commerciality of the decisions," director of policy Judith Fox said.  "Continuous disclosure is a really difficult area and boards really wrestle with it because it's not a black and white area.  "It's about judgment calls, trying to make sure the information you release to the market is not misleading, that it's accurate."

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Controversial Dutch MP postpones Australia visit

Anti-Islamic Dutch politician Geert Wilders has postponed a visit to Australia because of delays in obtaining a visa, despite today's announcement that his application would be approved.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said he had decided to issue a visa to the controversial MP, declaring Australia's democracy is strong enough to withstand a visit by the "extremist commentator".

Mr Wilders was due to speak at events in Sydney and Melbourne later this month at the invitation of the Q Society, which is concerned by what it calls the "Islamisation" of Australia.

But the group says "extraordinary delays" in getting a visa have forced Mr Wilders to delay his visit until mid-February next year.

"Minister Bowen's (announcement)... is too little too late," the Q Society said in a statement.

"When Mr Wilders' visa may be issued is still uncertain; it could be tomorrow, it could be next week, it could be a week after the scheduled departure.

"Q Society asks Minister Bowen why, after lodging papers in late August, has his visa still not been issued?"

A spokesman for Mr Bowen says Mr Wilders was advised by email this morning that his visa application had been approved.

Q Society's spokesman Andrew Horwood has told the ABC that Mr Wilders' speaking tour may now be expanded to include Perth given the strong public interest.

"We've been really inundated by what I'd call the silent majority in Australia who've been looking back and concerned about what's been happening," Mr Horwood said.

Last month, the ABC's 7.30 program reported the processing of the Dutch MP's visa had stalled because it triggered a notification on the Movement Alert List - a database of people of concern to Australia.

It meant his application was held up at the Department of Immigration headquarters in Canberra while more thorough checks were done.

But Mr Bowen this morning announced that after long and careful consideration, he would not be intervening in the process to stop Mr Wilders coming to Australia.

"I've taken the view that he's a provocateur who would like nothing more than for me to reject his visa so that he could become a cause célèbre ," Mr Bowen told ABC radio's AM program.

"I'm not going to give him that opportunity to be the cause célèbre for his cause which is radical and extremist.

"I think our society's robust enough, our multicultural is strong enough, and our love of freedom of speech entrenched enough that we can withstand a visit from this fringe commentator from the other side of the world.

"We should defeat his ideas with the force of our ideas and the force of our experience, not by the blunt instrument of keeping him out of Australia."

As one of the world's most prominent anti-Islam campaigners, Mr Wilders has attracted controversy in many parts of the world.

In 2009 he was refused entry to the UK but later appealed and won.

He was also tried and acquitted in the Netherlands on hate charges over his controversial public comments.

The website for the Q Society, which invited Mr Wilders to Australia, states that: "Aggressive or stealth proselytising and brazen imposition by Islamic organisations and Islamic religious fanatics were our 'call to arms'".

And it has accused the Federal Government of "kowtowing to Islamic supremacists".

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The dumb teacher problem

Getting someone to stand up in front of an undisciplined rabble of a class is such an unappealing prospect in Australia and America today that education departments often have to take almost anyone who will do it.  The teachers' colleges would be amost  empty if high standards were required for admission

The nation's elite universities warn that Australia is at risk of training a generation of "toxic teachers" who will pass their own deficiencies at school on to their students.

The executive director of the Group of Eight research-focused universities, Michael Gallagher, said Australia was "at risk of producing a cohort of "toxic teachers".

"The next generation of teachers is being drawn from this pool" of people "who have themselves not been very successful at school," he said.

Much of the growth in teaching enrolments since 2007 has come from school leavers with scores in the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) range of 50 to 70, prompting the NSW Education Minister, Adrian Piccoli, to start a debate about minimum education standards for teachers. At present, some 20 per cent of teaching enrolments have an ATAR of less than 60.

The Australian Catholic University vice chancellor, Greg Craven, however, has warned any attempt to set minimum standards for entry into teaching courses, such as an ATAR of 70, would be an attack on universities' independence and encounter stiff resistance. He accused the NSW government of dishonesty, hypocrisy, cowardice and blame shifting in its effort to start a debate about teaching standards.

In a speech to be delivered at the National Press Club today, Professor Craven will criticise Mr Piccoli's July discussion paper, Great Teaching, Inspired Learning, for fudging the figures around the demand for permanent teachers, lamenting teacher quality while paying them so little, failing to confront teacher unions over work practices that protect low performance, and attempting to shift blame to universities.

Professor Craven takes particular issue with the assertion that NSW has "a gross oversupply" of teachers.

The NSW discussion paper says although about 5500 teachers graduate each year, only 300 to 500 of them are employed in permanent positions by the NSW Education Department.

This not only omits teachers employed in the large Catholic and independent school systems but hides the reality that "the department itself deliberately has casualised its workforce, so new teachers overwhelmingly go into 'casual positions' that actually may be full time", Professor Craven said.

About 30,000 casual teachers deliver about 2 million days of teaching in NSW a year.

He said ATAR scores were skewed against people from low socio-economic backgrounds and failed to predict success at university.

"What really matters is the quality of a student once they have completed their university degree, not when they enter it … Trying to determine who should be a teacher on the basis of adolescent school marks rather than practical and theoretical training received during their course is like selecting the Australian cricket team on school batting averages while ignoring Sheffield Shield innings", Professor Craven said.

The president of the NSW Teachers Federation, Maurie Mulheron, said: "You can't talk about high teaching standards and professional respect at the same time you are pulling $1.7 billion out of public education".

Mr Piccoli is overseas and unavailable for comment, but a spokesman for the NSW Department of Education defended the discussion paper.

He said university training of teachers was only one of five areas it examined, but acknowledged there is wide variation in the ATAR scores of undergraduates.

"The issues of further improving teacher performance and how to even more effectively deal with those who consistently fail to meet the required professional standards are raised by the paper," he said.

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Elderly patient left to wet bed in Sydney hospital corridor

An elderly woman was left in a corridor for six hours and told to urinate in her bed when she needed to go to the toilet in a disturbing case of neglect at a major Sydney hospital.

Doctors say the incident at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital points to a system in crisis.

The 89-year-old woman's daughter told ABC1's Lateline that her mother was rushed to the hospital with a serious staph infection early last week.

The daughter, who wants to remain unidentified, says her mother was left on a trolley in a corridor in the emergency department for six hours.

"I'm disgusted, terrified that I might be in the same position one day. Where do you go? And what if she didn't have me as her voice?" she said.

When the elderly patient asked for a bedpan her daughter says a nurse told her to urinate in her clothes in bed.

She was sobbing, she said 'I'm 89-years old, I've paid my taxes all my life, and this is what's happening to me. I have to urinate in the bed.' And her anguish transferred to me and I didn't know which way to turn.

The daughter says her mother was left for two hours in the same bed sheets. She says her mother then asked for painkillers.

"She was in extreme pain, was given none of her medication," she said.

"When I told them what medication she was on, a certain painkiller, they said 'we don't use that in emergency because it's too expensive'."

St Vincent's says the system was under stress when the 89-year-old patient entered the hospital and a full investigation will be undertaken.

"The easy answer would be that the hospital was extremely busy at the time, and it was; clearly there was a lot of acute and complex patients who were presenting to the emergency department," spokesperson David Faktor said.  "But that doesn't absolve ourselves of extending just basic levels of care to distressed patients."

The daughter of the patient says the hospital was chronically understaffed.

St Vincent's has apologised to the family, but says it cannot comment on whether this incident is symptomatic of a wider problem.

"I think anyone in those circumstances would be most significantly humiliated," Mr Faktor said.  "But I think the second emotion would be very angry and disappointed and we, as a society, deserve better than that.  "We as a hospital certainly aim to provide care that is leaps and bounds better than that."

System in crisis

Brian Owler, president of the NSW branch of the Australian Medical Association, says the public hospital system is in crisis.

"It's a symptom of a hospital system - whether it's New South Wales or any other state - that's under enormous stress and pressure," he said.

"It's a result of underinvestment in infrastructure of health care, right across the country. Not just governments in place now but governments that have gone before them."

The AMA says emergency departments do not have enough beds to cope with increasing demand and budget cuts are making the situation much worse.

"Having cuts on top of that to a system that's already under stress means that, whether you make the cuts to the back line or not, the frontline clinical services are always going to be affected, particularly in a system that's already under stress, and where there's no surplus jobs that exist in particular in NSW Health," Dr Owler said.

The New South Wales Government rejects the claim that the health system is in crisis.

In a written statement NSW Health Minister Gillian Skinner says she will be redirecting $2.2 billion in savings to frontline health services.

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A bloated public service not healthy

BY: JUDITH SLOAN

IN order to avoid the winter chills of Melbourne, I hang out in Queensland quite a bit these days. A few weeks ago, I was tuned in to the evening news to be told that the LNP government was planning to cut 1500 jobs in health.

Gosh, I thought, 1500 jobs sounds quite a lot. So I decided to find out how many people are employed in Queensland Health. The answer is more than 80,000. Annual natural attrition would account for more than double the proposed job cuts of 1500, which represent a mere 1.9 per cent of total employment.

But here's the rub. A decade ago, employment in Queensland Health stood at 49,000. So in 10 years there has been an increase of more than 32,000 employees - an increase of two-thirds.

But here's a further rub. Whereas the number of nurses in effective full-time terms increased by 65 per cent over the decade, the number of managerial and clerical staff rose by 103 per cent during the same period. There are now nearly 15,000 managers and clerical staff in Queensland Health, a fair proportion of whom hang out in the head office in Brisbane.

The observant reader might make the point that Queensland's population has grown over that time; indeed, population growth has been higher in Queensland than in Australia as a whole. However, the average annual growth in the number of Queensland Health staff has been well over two times higher than the growth in the population.

The media, particularly in Queensland, has been making much of the supposedly "savage" job cuts being implemented by the LNP government, in part picking up the campaign being waged by the trade union movement in the state. What is less often reported is the fact the Queensland public service had been growing at a ridiculous rate under the Bligh Labor government, which had in part led to a 10-fold increase in the state's debt and the downgrading of its credit rating.

As Ken Wiltshire, an expert in public administration, and a Queenslander, pointed out on this page last week, there "was a blowout in the amount spent on public servants across the past decade, at 8.7 per cent a year. Of that, 3.5 per cent was attributed to the number of employees and 5.2 per cent to growth of wages.

"All this is far higher public expenditure growth than the national average."

A very dubious arrangement also emerged in the Queensland public service in which a category of "permanent temporary" staff was created. Many of these permanent temporaries are - quite legitimately - being targeted by the LNP government.

Into this politically toxic atmosphere, made worse by lazy journalism, the federal government has now weighed in with its unbelievable epithet: "We make hard decisions, but we focus on finding efficiencies. The Coalition slashes jobs." But is Penny Wong really telling the truth?

The first point to note is that if there are all these inefficient practices in the federal arena, why has it taken the Labor government five years to do something about them? The second point is that shifting the budget from a $44 billion deficit last financial year to a $1.5bn surplus will not be achieved by shaving a few dollars off printing costs or making senior public servants travel cattle class. (I wonder whether the politicians will also be made to travel down the back of the plane - I don't think so.)

But the most important point is this year's budget explicitly plans for a cut of 3073 in the average staffing level of agencies in the Australian government general government sector - a cut of 1.3 per cent (not much lower than the planned cut to Queensland Health).

And with the super-efficiency dividend of 4 per cent being imposed on government agencies, the number of job cuts will be higher again. Indeed, it is entirely plausible the number could be double the planned reduction of 3000. So, yes, the federal Labor government also slashes jobs; it should just be more explicit about it. Having been told by Kevin Rudd that the "reckless spending" must stop and that a "meat axe" would be taken to the "bloated" public service, in government, Labor went weak at the knees.

The Australian public service has grown by an average of just under 1 per cent a year since the Labor government has been in office.

Evidently, the meat axe was very blunt. It is only now that job cuts are being made.

Returning to the Queensland situation, the LNP government has no alternative but to push on with its planned reduction to the size of the public sector. But in order to sustain a smaller public sector, more thinking needs to be done about the future of particular activities and programs. The experience of the Howard government was that initial cuts to public sector jobs are only temporary, unless constant attention is paid to limiting new spending and new programs.

Ever keen to play politics rather than prosecute good public policy, federal Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten has also decided to become involved in Queensland politics by proposing an amendment to the Fair Work Act to limit the ability of the Queensland government to contract out work.

Shorten's idea is that there will be a new transmission of business provision in the act that will mean any public servant who shifts to work for an outside provider of government services must retain all employment conditions.

He really should know better. He obviously hasn't been paying any attention to the successful outsourcing of employment services, which is undertaken by the federal government through his own department.

Just because there is a case for governments to fund, in full or in part, particular services for eligible persons does not mean that those services have to be provided by permanent public servants. Indeed, present thinking - and this applies to how the National Disability Insurance Scheme will operate - is that competitive outsourcing of many government services leads to both superior offerings and cost savings.

It would not be a surprise if the Queensland government were to give serious consideration to withdrawing the referral of its IR power to the commonwealth government. If Shorten is intent on interfering with the ability of the LNP government to rationalise and reform the public service on its own terms, such a move by the Queensland government makes sense.

The bottom line is the public service, both federally and in a number of states, has become too large and needs to be trimmed. In making the job cuts, it is also important for governments to analyse the rationale behind spending and to concentrate on those areas where there are very high net public benefits.

Experimentation with different means of delivering taxpayer-funded services should also be part of the mix.

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Freedom of speech gets a hearing as street preachers challenge law

A LANDMARK High Court hearing which could enshrine freedom of speech in the Australian Constitution will be heard on Tuesday.

Thanks to Adelaide's controversial street preachers, the challenge could see free speech recognised as a Constitutional right  - comparable to the US First Amendment - and trigger a rewriting of state and council laws that were drafted to stop people being able to "preach", "canvass" or "harangue".

Tuesday's hearing in Canberra has such widespread ramifications that South Australia's Attorney-General has been joined in the matter by the Attorneys-General for the Commonwealth, NSW, Victoria, Queensland and WA.

The Human Rights Law Centre has sided with the Adelaide street preachers Caleb and Samuel Corneloup.

High Court Chief Justice Robert French has made it clear the hearing will be about legal principles rather than religion, telling the preachers: "It will not really be anything to do with, as you would appreciate, the merits of your preaching".

At present there is no guarantee of freedom of speech written into the Constitution.

If the court decides in favour of the preachers it may opt for a narrow interpretation limiting such freedom to political speech - but the justices could use the case as a vehicle for a much broader and more significant decision regarding rights relating to freedom of communication.

The case was triggered by anger at the aggressive style of preaching in public spaces such as Rundle Mall.

Attempts to silence the preachers under Adelaide City Council bylaws, saw the preachers appeal to the full bench of the Supreme Court which in August 2011 ruled certain bylaws were invalid to the extent they prevented free political communication.

The State Government appealed to the High Court, with a spokesman for Attorney-General John Rau saying the appeal concerns the ability of the City Council to regulate its streets.

"It constrains the legislative and executive power necessary to maintain the system of responsible and representative government required by the Constitution," he said.

While the hearing is likely to take an hour, a decision could take months.

SA Law Society president Ralph Bonig said the decision had considerable implications.  "The legal community will be interested in the outcome given its potential for the concept of freedom of speech to be implied in the Constitution," he said.

Lawyer Peter Campbell of Kelly and Co. said the case had the potential to drastically alter the legal landscape.  "A number of legal restrictions and permit regimes may be invalid and unenforceable," he said.

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Chaos at RNS hospital again

PATIENTS are being left overnight on trolleys in rooms intended for waits of several hours at the crowded Royal North Shore Hospital, a senior doctor says.

Dr Greg Purcell, an anaesthetist at Royal North Shore Hospital for 30 years, said the patients were staying in "inappropriate rooms for inappropriate periods", heightening their risk of inadequate care and spreading infections.

Dr Purcell and other senior doctors interviewed by the Herald blamed the situation on a budgetary method to clear overcrowded wards.

Two rooms - the emergency department's medical assessment unit (intended to hold patients for up to six hours) and the transit lounge (intended as a pick-up area for discharged patients) - had been operating as "pseudo wards", they said.

It has been alleged acute patients were regularly left on trolleys or chairs in the transit lounge for up to 12 hours and in some extreme cases overnight when the hospital has been full, Dr Purcell said.

The emergency department's medical assessment unit is a cramped room with four beds, two chairs and one toilet down the corridor.

"It is as far removed from patient- and family-centred care as imaginable and comprehensively abandons any commitment to patient safety, dignity or confidentiality," Dr Purcell said.

The general manager of Royal North Shore Hospital, Sue Shilbury, denied that patients were kept for more than six hours in the medical assessment unit. She added that "any infectious patient in [a medical assessment unit] is isolated in a single room".

A spokesperson for NSW Health said public hospitals were not routinely "using short-stay units, medical assessment units, transit lounges/discharge lounges for prolonged periods of time".

But the Herald can confirm that three major NSW hospitals are misusing such units: Royal North Shore, Dubbo Base Hospital and St Vincent's.

Dr Tony Nocera, an emergency physician at Dubbo Base Hospital, said due to its overcrowded emergency department, the hospital had been leaving hospital in-patients in its emergency medical unit for several days and longer. The hospital's acting general manager, Debbie Bickerton, said this only happened during "periods of high activity", but Dr Nocera said it happened almost every week.

The Herald revealed a week ago that St Vincent's Hospital was misusing a corridor of beds called the medical and surgical transit unit, which was only intended for stays of less than 24 hours. The hospital has been keeping patients in the corridor for up to six days.

A St Vincent's spokesman has since told the Herald the hospital is trying to "fast-track" a move to a more appropriate facility.

The Health Minister, Jillian Skinner, said: "If any patient has a concern about the care they have received in a short-stay unit, they should raise it with hospital management and it will be investigated".

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Skepticism about blood transfusions catching on at last

The bad effects were evident in Swedish research some time ago.  See also here

SURGEONS are being urged to cut their use of blood transfusions, with experts saying the life-saving but risky procedure is being used unnecessarily.

Rates of blood transfusion use differ noticeably between surgeons, and research indicates some are not careful enough to ensure patients don't bleed unnecessarily during surgery.

James Isbister, a professor from the University of Sydney's medical school, said some doctors were using blood transfusions too freely because they believed them to be benign. "If [blood transfusion] is not used appropriately it's got more possible complications than other therapies because you are basically doing a transplant," he said.

"We have talked about alternatives to transplants for years but … a lot of alternatives shouldn't be alternatives - stopping a patient bleeding is not an 'alternative'."

Hospital patients who are Jehovah's Witnesses - who refuse blood transfusions on religious grounds - actually do better than other patients.

Professor Isbister said adherents of Christianity were given better treatment by doctors trying to preserve their blood. As a result they had better survival rates, and shorter hospital and intensive care stays than people who received blood transfusions during surgery.

Studies comparing surgeons have found some used transfusions in only 10 per cent of patients, while others used them in 80 per cent of cases.

Blood transfusions put stress on the lungs and can cause lung injury and organ failure, as well as potentially having long-term consequences, although the reason is unknown.

On Sunday, Professor Isbister addressed the scientific congress of the Australian Society of Anaesthetists about the issue. He said it was also important for patients to consult their GPs before surgery to ensure they had a healthy blood count.

In 2012-13 governments will spend more than $1 billion on blood and blood-related products, according to the National Blood Authority.

Its general manager, Leigh McJames, said while transfusions can be life-saving, evidence showed up to 20 per cent of them could be unnecessary in some patient groups.

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Misuse of the term "Islamophobia"

Below is a transcript of an ABC interview with  Clive Kessler, an  Emeritus Professor in Sociology at the University of New South Wales and a long-time observer of  Islam.  When I knew Clive he was married to a very assertive New York Jewish lady who (frankly) gave me the horrors so I am surprised and pleased to see him speaking out on this.  He is not the doormat I thought

Andrew West: The United Nations General Assembly gets under way in New York this week. Sometime during this session there’ll be a push by the 57 member countries of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to make blasphemy an international criminal offence. Now this has long been a goal for many Muslim countries. But it’s got new impetus after an amateur film mocking the Muslim prophet Muhammad was posted on the internet. Since then a French satirical newspaper has also published some cartoons that depict Muhammad as naked. And in Australia some serving and former soldiers have posted anti-Muslim comments on a website.

The response from the worldwide Islamic community to all these events has ranged from violent, even deadly protests, to a Pakistani government minister offering a bounty for the death of the film maker, to the more general charge of Islamophobia. But is Islamophobia a reality or a myth? One expert says the term has been used to silence debate about Islam. Indeed writing in The Australiannewspaper recently, Clive Kessler called it a moral bludgeon. Clive Kessler is Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales. He’s an expert in the sociology of religion. He’s spent 40 years studying Islam, especially in Asia and specifically in Malaysia and he challenges the idea that Islamophobia is rife.

Clive Kessler: I think we have to look at the term itself. A phobia is an unfounded irrational baseless fear. The term Islamophobia is all too often used by zealous defenders of Islam as they understand it to silence the voicing of views that are uncongenial and unwelcome to them. And we cannot I think, have a situation where the term Islamophobia is used as a silencing device.

Andrew West: Well I think you’ve said in  The Australian that it’s a moral bludgeon.

Clive Kessler: Well that’s what I mean by an attempt to silence people and silence the proper public discussions of issues. But let me take it a step further. We have to recognise that we stand now at a point where the inheritors of a legacy of civilisational rivalry, I won’t say conflict of civilisation but civilisational rivalry, between the world of Christianity, Christendom, and the world of Islam, for a number of centuries, through the crusades, through the colonial period and since then, and there is a legacy of fear, mistrust on both sides. And those fears, that mistrust, those resentments, those anxieties must be acknowledged, must be dealt with rather than all discussion of them being silenced with this moral bludgeon.

Andrew West: Do you think though we often confuse Islam and Islamism—and a distinction has been drawn—do you recognise a distinction?

Clive Kessler: I do. Whatever Islam as a religion and a civilisation may be, we are now in a historical situation where after a century or two of the subordination of Islam, many Muslims in the post-colonial era have now come out and wish to reassert themselves in history, reassert Islam in history. Among some people that is a quite proper and properly conducted enterprise. But among some, the notion of Islam itself becomes ideologised, we might say, becomes a sacred cow, and many of the people who see themselves as simply rallying to the defence of Islam are promoting Islamism as a political agenda.

Andrew West: Is it the case Clive, that you can criticise a political agenda—so in a sense you can criticise Islamism as a political extension of the religion—but if you criticise the religion itself, that’s when people get, you know, very defensive and accuse you of Islamophobia? Is that the problem?

Clive Kessler: That is it, yes. And I do not wish to see any faith community maligned, impugned, publicly humiliated. Under a proper ethic of multiculturalism one doesn’t do that sort of thing. But at the same time we have to recognise that there are a number of difficulties, particularly in the relationships among the three Abrahamic faith communities—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—the dynamic of whose inter-relationships, not just as religions but as civilisations, have shaped the contours of much of modern world history. And we cannot deal with the history, to which we are heirs, unless we get back to understand some complicated things about all of those three faith communities as religions and the dynamics of their civilisational interaction.

Andrew West: Well your piece in The Australian, it’s very measured, I mean, you make the case that one must come to this debate with clean hands, but that’s impossible isn’t it?

Clive Kessler: To be specific about this, let me say that Judaism emerged in the world conceiving of itself simply as monotheism. When Christianity came along it had built into it an attitude towards Judaism, that it was now the true Judaism and the first Judaism, the first dispensation was superseded. It has no inbuilt doctrinal view however of Islam. Islam came into the world self-consciously in its own understanding as the successor, the completion, the perfection of the Abrahamic faith, of the monotheistic revelation. And it has built into it, certain key attitudes towards Christianity—a scepticism towards the whole doctrine of the trinity, as to whether Christ died on the cross—and certainly a number of very decided views about Judaism, not so much born of doctrinal difference but born of the politics of inter-relationships between the community, the faith community of Muhammad and the Jews of Medina in the prophet’s lifetime.

Andrew West: Yes. You make the very strong point in this article that the Islamic writings are indeed infused with a quite dark view of history at times.

Clive Kessler: There is a view built into Islam as a religion and into the civilisation born of it, that it is the completion of the Abrahamic faith, that all that is good in Christianity and Judaism lives on within Islam, perfected and uncontaminated and uncorrupted. That which does not live on—that which Islam has not taken—is inherently erroneous, corrupted and to be repudiated. Now this then gets to the nub, I think the core, of much of the issue about Islamophobia. Many aspects of the civilisation of Islam become subjects of contention but none more so we know, ever since The Satanic Verses, than the status of the prophet Muhammad himself.

Andrew West: So why is that Clive?

Clive Kessler: The crucial thing about Islam is the status of the prophet Muhammad, that according to Islamic doctrine, the Koran is the divine, the word of God himself, that was then injected into the world through the medium of the prophet Muhammad and that is why any questioning of the prophet Muhammad calls into question the whole project of Islam itself.

Andrew West: Does the status of Muhammad, who was a warrior, does that in a sense, shape what are often considered to be warlike or very aggressive defences of him?

Clive Kessler: Certainly there is the notion that the reputation of the prophet must be protected. And certainly Islam came into the world as a success story. It came within a century of the prophet’s death to rule most of the known world. It lived in the world on its own terms. It wrote its own script. Now this was a very complicated process. Standard Islamic historiography says this was all done by…in peaceful ways that war and the sword were no major or key part of the whole project. So anyone who raises those questions about whether the spread of Islam was entirely peaceful is seen as impugning Islam and the prophet.

The problem for modern Muslims is, that for the last two or three hundred years, ever since Napoleon landed in Egypt, the civilisation of Islam has been in some sense a wounded, a violated civilisation that has not lived in the world on its own terms, but has had to live a historical script written by others, that has yearned to live in the world once more on its own terms and which in our present age is seeking to assert itself in that way.

So the consequence in places such as Australia in particular, outside the Middle East, is that Muslims are minorities living with a majoritarian complex born of the long history of Islam’s civilisational ascendency. And that means that many Muslims find it difficult to abide by any public criticism or comment about Islam or Muhammad that they find uncongenial. And that’s when the charge of Islamophobia is habitually raised.

Andrew West: Well in your article you say the term Islamophobia is used indiscriminately. But that implies there is occasionally or from time to time, a legitimate use of it. When would you say the term was used legitimately?

Clive Kessler: I don’t like the term Islamophobia in general but this does not mean to say that I think that Muslims do not have an entitlement to voice their sense of dignity and to say when they feel that the interfaith ethics of a multicultural society have been violated. And I think we all have to be sensitive to those concerns with all faith communities.

Andrew West: Do these protests that have broken out around the world, in the light of this comic film and now we’ve got a new batch of cartoons in a French newspaper—but these upsurges of anger occur periodically—do they suggest though, an immaturity in a reaction to a perceived insult of the faith?

Clive Kessler: They represent a quite, one might say, visceral, an understandably visceral response to the feeling that Islam has been impugned because the prophet Muhammad has been mocked. When I was a small boy growing up in a rather Jewish neighbourhood our local non-Jewish butchers always put pigs’ heads in the windows of the shops and stuck oranges or apples in the heads. And this was truly shocking to most Jews in the neighbourhood but they never said, look, out of deference to our sensitivities they shouldn’t put those pigs’ heads in the windows, after all 40 per cent of the people in this neighbourhood are Jewish. They said, look if we have a problem, that’s our problem; it’s not our society.

And yet you’ll get exactly similar feelings both in Malaysia…in New York there was a recent case in Staten Island and even here where people will say, in our neighbourhood there are so many Muslims here, you shouldn’t be selling alcohol. Or you shouldn’t be selling pork chops. Why? Because to do so, is to confront us with something that we as Muslims find unpalatable or uncongenial and in some sense multicultural ethics require you not to do it. Now this is a case then, I would say, where similarly Muslims have to say, this is a problem of our sensitivities not of everybody’s. But the notion that the world must accommodate to those attitudes, among Muslims is, I think, very often a case of diasporic Muslims seeing the world and responding to things that do genuinely upset them. But responding to the problems of their minority situation through the prism, through the lens, of a majoritarian worldview that is the historic legacy of Islamic civilisation.

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Video games as an "addiction"

This rubbish has been going on for years. Video games are popular with kids so *therefore* they must be bad. For kids with other problems they may seem so but most kids are fine. They just exchange older recreations such as book reading for new recreations. I used to read 3 books a week when I was a kid. Was I addicted to books? My son was allowed to play all the video games he liked when he was a kid but as an adult he is socially popular and has a first class B.Sc. in mathematics. How come if computer games are so bad?

One swallow doesn't make a summer but it is notable that the enemies of games also quote isolated examples only. The available proof of mass harm is ZERO. It is all just opinion

Children addicted to using electronic devices 24/7 will be diagnosed with a serious mental illness if a new addiction, included as "internet-use disorder" in a worldwide psychiatric manual, is confirmed by further research.

The formal inclusion of the new addiction has been welcomed by Australian psychology professionals in response to a wave of "always-on" technology engulfing kids.

The Sun-Herald has spoken to parents of children as young as seven who are aggressive, irritable and hostile when deprived of their iPads or laptops. Psychologists argue video game and internet addictions share the characteristics of other addictions, including emotional shutdown, lack of concentration and withdrawal symptoms if the gadgets are removed.

Other fallout can include devastating impacts for children and families as social interaction and even food are neglected in favour of the virtual worlds the children inhabit.

Australian experts contributed to the Australian Psychological Society's submission to the international manual, supporting the inclusion of an addiction focused on internet gaming.

In recognition of threats posed by increasingly prevalent electronic devices, the bible for the psychiatric profession, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), will include internet-use disorder as a condition "recommended for further study" in its revised edition in May next year.

The inclusion acknowledges risks posed by over-use of seemingly benign technologies, classifying internet-use disorder alongside other mental disorders that need further research before becoming a recognised mental illness that can be formally diagnosed.

Commentary in the United States about the move has raised the spectre of children being over-treated and even medicated for playing computer games.

But some Australian psychologists argue there should be an even broader diagnosis of internet-use addiction, allowing proper treatment of children obsessed by other technologies such as texting and a proliferation of devices such as iPads, tablets and Nintendo DS.

Reflecting problems with children's over-use of technology, Mike Kyrios from Swinburne University of Technology - one of the authors of the APS submission and a clinical psychologist with more than 15 years experience - is formally pushing for the revised manual to broaden internet-use disorder beyond gaming addictions.

Professor Kyrios says once more research is invested in the disorder, it would allow health professionals to diagnose children with addictive behaviours from technology overuse and treat them appropriately, including strategies to change their obsessive over-reliance on being connected.

"With kids, gaming is an obvious issue. But overall, technology use could be a potential problem," he said.

Professor Kyrios said children with underlying obsessive compulsive disorders could be at risk from technology overuse.

Kara Wright was so concerned her 12-year-old son, Jack, had an internet addiction, she banned him from using the laptop over school holidays.

After playing the computer game Minecraft for an hour on his laptop, Jack would become frustrated, angry and often cry, Ms Wright said.

"It is only when he is using technology that those emotions emerge," Ms Wright, who lives Caloundra in Queensland, said. "It had a huge impact on the family."

Her first attempt to address the problem was to limit Jack to a one-hour time limit. When that didn't work, Ms Wright enforced a full ban.

In January, Emil Hodzic, a qualified psychologist with seven years experience, established a video game addiction treatment clinic in Sydney's CBD, because of what he saw as growing demand from frustrated parents and damaged children. He said he was seeing clients as young as 12 addicted to the internet and video games.

"The most typical sign of addiction is anything that looks like withdrawal symptoms," he said. "So any expression of distress, frustration, irritability when they don't get to play."

Mr Hodzic said about 70 per cent of his clients were children and teenagers, with many showing addiction symptoms closely related to anxiety and depression. "A lot of kids I have coming into the clinic have difficultly in being able to tolerate distress without zoning out via the internet or via the games," he said.

But psychiatrist Rhoshel Lenroot, the chairman of child psychiatry at the University of NSW, said it was still too early to know how detrimental technology overuse could be. "I think [it] can be dangerous in not learning how to pay attention in a focused way, but in balance there is nothing wrong with technology."

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Conservative Premier remains popular despite whining from union parasites

QUEENSLAND Premier Campbell Newman's popularity has remained solid despite vocal opposition from federal Labor and unions over his slashing of jobs.

Newspoll figures published in The Australian on Monday reveal Mr Newman's Liberal National Party (LNP) still holds 48 per cent of the primary vote, down only 1.7 percentage points from the 49.7 per cent it crushed Labor with at the state election.

Mr Newman's personal approval rating remains at the same level it was going into the March election, sitting at 47 per cent.

As preferred premier, he has about twice the numbers of Labor leader Annastacia Palaszczuk.  A mere 29 per cent of the 1145 votes polled supported Ms Palaszczuk.

On preferences in a two-party-preferred poll, the LNP commands a 20 point over Labor - 60 per cent LNP to 40 per cent Labor.

Katter's Australian Party has taken a huge blow in the poll.  It garnered 11.5 per cent of the vote at the election, but the figure has since slumped to one per cent.

Support for the Greens has risen from 7.5 per cent to nine per cent.

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Freedom of speech defence in troop families abuse case



Making general comments is a lot different from abusing individuals so I don't think this defence will get him far

A SELF-STYLED Muslim cleric accused of sending offensive letters to the families of soldiers who died in Afghanistan will this week tell the High Court charges against him should be dropped on the grounds they infringed his implied constitutional freedom of political communication.

Man Haron Monis is charged with 12 counts of using a postal service in a menacing, harassing or offensive way, a federal crime which carries a maximum two year jail sentence.

Mr Monis, also known as Sheikh Haron, has been fighting to have the indictment quashed since 2010 but has lost in the District Court and Court of Criminal Appeal. In June, he was granted special leave to appeal to the High Court, where he will argue the legislation is invalid because it substantially curtails the ability of citizens to participate in the political process.

Mr Monis allegedly sent a series of letters to the families of Private Luke Worsley and Lance Corporal Jason Marks, who were killed in Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008.

He is also charged over a letter he sent in 2009 to the family of the Austrade official Craig Senger, who was killed in the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in 2007.

A key issue to be argued is the correct meaning of the word "offensive". In written submissions, Guy Reynolds, SC, for Mr Monis, said the law could catch general media material delivered by post, such as newspapers and magazines, which discuss political and government matters.

The Full Court will hear the matter in Canberra.

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Australia's Leftist government has no problems with jihadis but a big problem with critics of jihadis

Six weeks ago, the leader of the [Dutch] Party for Freedom (PVV), which until recently held the balance of power in the Dutch parliament, applied for a visa to visit Australia. His name is Geert Wilders.

Members of his staff and security detail were granted visas after three days. Wilders received nothing. He is still waiting. The Dutch media are waiting for the insult the Gillard government appears to be preparing for a member of the Netherlands' parliament.

The Australian organisers of the Wilders trip are resigning themselves to being out of pocket by at least $10,000 if the Minister for Immigration, Chris Bowen, continues to stall. The trip was going to be cancelled yesterday but the organisers have decided to hold for a few more days. After six weeks of silence, the federal government hasn't had the courage to deny Wilders a visa. It prefers the back door.

This confirms, as if any more confirmation were needed, the gutlessness that lies at the core of Australia's multibillion-dollar debacle on border security, where the thin blue line on border integrity has been turned into a wide yellow streak. While the government blusters, the people smugglers keep thriving and the cost of processing asylum seekers soars well beyond $100,000 per person.

Wilders is an elected member of parliament, has never been convicted of a crime and is an outspoken defender of pluralism, democracy, feminism and freedom of speech. He believes these bedrock liberal values are being eroded by a steady, incremental challenge from Muslims in Holland. He now lives under constant police protection. Four prominent critics of Islam in Holland have been assassinated or threatened with death in recent years.

Wilders argues that the root cause of growing ill-liberalism in Holland, and also in Belgium and France, is driven by strict adherents of Islam. He does not think the problem is confined to an extreme fringe. Rather, he sees the stresses between Muslims and non-Muslims in Holland as rooted in a general insularity among Muslims because Islam is not only a religion but a social, legal and political system that gives Islam primacy over the state.

Wilders was to have given speeches in Sydney and Melbourne in two weeks, sponsored by a private group, the Q Society, which was funding his visit via private donations and ticket sales.

The Gillard government appears intent on stopping this visit, even though it recently granted a visa to an Islamic fundamentalist, Taji Mustafa, a spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir, the group implicated in the violent demonstration by several hundred Muslims in Sydney two weeks ago, while Mustafa was visiting the country. The Arabic script on headbands and T-shirts worn by many demonstrators were variations of the theme of jihad, such as "We are your soldiers, Muhammad".

An apologist for jihad was allowed into the country to speak while a member of the Dutch parliament has been stopped.

When the Minister for Immigration was asked in Parliament on September 17 why he had a approved the granting of a visa to Mustafa, he said: "Hizb ut-Tahrir has not been proscribed in Australia and nor has it been proscribed in the United States or the United Kingdom. This entry permit was issued in accordance with the normal procedures for British nationals … I conduct myself … in accordance with my responsibilities under the act. To do otherwise would be to open the Commonwealth to potential overturning of the decision and a potential very serious compensation case."

The reason for the Gillard government's willingness to find a cheerleader for jihad acceptable while an elected MP and cheerleader for Western values is tacitly deemed unacceptable would lie partly in a dramatic change in demographics under Labor. This, too, is a subject about which the federal government maintains a deafening silence.

During the five years of federal Labor governments, the ramp-up of immigration and boat people arrivals has helped a historic surge in the Muslim population of Australia, from about 350,000 to 500,000. The number of Muslim permanent residents has risen 75 per cent in the past decade. Labor holds several electorates in western Sydney with significant Muslim populations.

In 1972, when Labor introduced formal multiculturalism under the then minister for immigration, Al Grassby, Muslims represented just 0.2 per cent of Australia's population. This percentage has risen more than twentyfold in the ensuing 40 years. Grassby's reputation has been disgraced by revelations about his numerous links to Italian organised crime.

This would not surprise Wilders, a trenchant critic of multiculturalism, whose policies are much further to the right than those of the Coalition. The PVV rose to prominence after he expressed alarm about problems associated with the rapid growth of the Muslim population, which now exceeds 1 million in a country of 16.7 million and is growing about four times faster than the non-Muslim population.

Meanwhile, back at Australia's border debacle, the Gillard government refuses to embrace policies that have proved to be effective such as temporary protection visas for asylum seekers, or to set up an advanced interception line off Sri Lanka. So the boats keep coming - another three over the weekend with 333 asylum seekers - while the government expends $1 billion a year servicing its own impotence.

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