Australian Politics
Patients walking out of government hospital emergency rooms untreated
After many hours of waiting. Some are just too ill to sit it out any further
PATIENTS are more likely to leave the Sunshine Hospital's emergency department before treatment than any other Melbourne ER. Figures tabled in State Parliament show 4657 patients walked out of the Sunshine emergency department last year, a rate of 7.6 per cent. The average across Melbourne during 2006 was 5 per cent, or 31,437 people. This was an increase from 30,152 patients in 2005. The official figures show fewer than 1 per cent of patients walk out, against medical advice, after treatment has started.
Opposition health spokeswoman Helen Shardey said Melbourne's major hospital emergency departments were not coping. "People are giving up and walking out," Ms Shardey said. "Of more concern is the fact we don't know what happened to these people." Ms Shardey said the figures were in contrast to claims by Health Minister Daniel Andrews that Victoria had a first-class health system. "He is failing to recognise that Victorians are just not getting the treatment they deserve in urgent situations because our major hospitals are simply not coping," Ms Shardey said.
Australian Medical Association Victorian president Doug Travis said hospitals lacked the resources to cope with demand. "(Patients) wait half an hour, one hour, two hours, and they walk out," Dr Travis said. "What we need is a commitment from the Government to understand the fact we don't have enough capacity in the system."
A spokesman for the Health Minister said Victoria's emergency departments were rated as the best in Australia. "More than half of all patients were seen by a doctor or nurse in a Victorian hospital within 19 minutes of arrival compared to the national average of 24 minutes," spokesman Tim Pigot said. [What amazing bull! The wait is 3 to 8 hours]
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At last: Three-months' jail for persistent graffiti vandal
A GRAFFITI vandal has been jailed after a judge overturned a court's decision not to convict him over a five-year wave of attacks that caused $50,000 damage. Noam Jason Shoan, 25, was yesterday sentenced in the County Court to three months' jail over 42 counts of criminal damage carried out on Melbourne's public transport network between 2001 and 2006. Judge Tim Wood said a magistrate's decision in March this year not to convict Shoan and to place him on a community-based order was "totally inadequate".
Shoan's relatives cried loudly and one relative accused Judge Wood of "wrecking our family" as Shoan was led from the dock. Judge Wood said Shoan needed to take responsibility for the destruction he caused. "It's not a case of a young person in a moment of madness damaging property," he said. "It was not your right, in the name of art, to damage the property of others."
The jail term was imposed after the Director of Public Prosecutions won an appeal against a sentence imposed on Shoan in Melbourne Magistrates' Court. It is believed to be the first time in Victoria a graffiti vandal has been sent to prison for such a stretch. This year, NSW vandal Derek Allen spent one day in custody after he was caught breaking into a Carrum Downs train holding yard and spray-painting anti-nuclear slogans on several trains. Allen was fined $1200 and freed the next day.
Residents Against Graffiti Everywhere president Steve Beardon praised Judge Wood for being tough on graffiti vandals, saying it would send them a clear message.
The County Court heard Shoan, of Mt Eliza, was part of a graffiti group dubbed 70k - for '70s Kids - that defaced Melbourne's train network and several CBD buildings with tags such as "Renks" and the notorious "Stan and Bonez" signatures. The wave of vandalism, which included 8m murals of Shoan's markings sprayed on countless trains, caused more than $50,000 damage. He was arrested in July 2005 after police raided his father's St Kilda flat and found 46 spray cans and artwork featuring his "Renks" tag.
In March, magistrate Sarah Dawes chose not to convict Shoan because she said it would interfere with his prospects of working overseas as a graphic designer. "You are a talented artist and I accept you are genuine in your remorse," she said. Shoan was "a hard-working young man who pulls his weight at work and at home", Ms Dawes said back then. She ordered Shoan do 250 hours of community service and pay $30,000 restitution to companies, including Connex, Yarra Trams and V/Line.
Judge Wood yesterday overturned the ruling, saying it was far too lenient. He said Shoan had set out to commit a "sustained and relentless project of damaging property" and deserved jail. "(It was) so prolific that it required a special police unit to put an end to your activities," Judge Wood said. Shoan was convicted on each of the 42 criminal damage charges.
Police set up the transit safety divisional response unit seven years ago to tackle the graffiti scourge and other transport safety problems. The unit has been responsible for catching some of the state's most destructive vandals, including Shoan, "Vosco" tagger Simon Nelsen and several interstate vandals in Melbourne on "graffiti tours".
Mr Beardon said the community would welcome the tough stance against vandals. "It shows this is a crime against the community that costs us a lot of money and will no longer be tolerated," Mr Beardon said.
Source
Australia Stocks Climb for Fourth Day as Subprime Concern Fades
Australian stocks rose for a fourth day, wiping out losses this month. BHP Billiton Ltd. led gains by companies with growing earnings, while Macquarie Bank Ltd. surged on signs the U.S. subprime housing crisis is easing. BHP, the world's biggest mining company, rallied 5.8 percent after saying second-half profit rose to a record. Macquarie, Australia's biggest securities firm which lost money on subprime investments, surged 5.7 percent after the biggest U.S. mortgage lender received an infusion of capital.
``The reporting season has been reasonably good, there haven't been too many disappointments,'' said Jason Teh, who helps manage $6.5 billion at Investors Mutual Ltd. in Sydney. ``Sentiment works both ways, and it looks like sentiment today is coming back into the market in a positive way.''
The S&P/ASX 200 Index gained 159.50, or 2.7 percent, to 6,164.50 as of 11:45 a.m. in Sydney, as more than 12 stocks climbed for each that fell. The gauge advanced 5.9 percent in the past three days, after falling as much as 7.7 percent from the end of July. The S&P/ASX 200 Index's futures contract for September rose 2.4 percent to 6,166. The broader All Ordinaries Index added 2.6 percent to 6,155.40.
BHP rose A$2.02, or 5.7 percent, to A$37.42. The company reported an eighth consecutive record profit of $7.2 billion yesterday on continued global demand for commodities.
Source
Students warned against APEC protests
The Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation meeting next month will include many heads of government, including George Bush, so it is a big occasion (for hot air and not much else) and Australian Leftists are planning to parade themselves in big "protests" at the time. And, in their usual way, they will try to rope in naive school students
NSW Education Minister John Della Bosca says parents should not allow their school-aged children to participate in major APEC protests because they could find themselves in a potentially "dangerous situation". Mr Della Bosca says major protest groups such as Resistance, Mutiny and the Stop Bush Coalition were actively recruiting students to attend APEC protests early next month.
Other recent major protests in Australia and overseas showed they were often not peaceful events, despite organisers' assurances, he said. "Experience has taught us that while the intention of students may be to take part in a peaceful protest, there are some people in the community and some activists groups with anti-social intentions," Mr Della Bosca said. "They have in the past manipulated such protests and put the well-being of young people involved at risk. "Students have found themselves suddenly in the middle of a dangerous situation or a clash with police for which they were not prepared, did not want, and could not control."
Mr Della Bosca said a major protest was planned for Wednesday, September 5, and this was a school day. He said students should remain "at school during school hours under the supervision of their teachers and principals where they are safe". "If students learn their friends or classmates are planning to attend these protests, they should warn them of the dangers involved or discuss the situation with their teachers and principals," Mr Della Bosca said. He also said he had written to the state's school principals and they would also seek to emphasise to parents the risks posed by the protests.
Stop Bush Coalition spokesman Alex Bainbridge said students had a right to voice opposition and concern over global issues such as the war in Iraq and global warming and, domestically, on industrial relations. "They might be missing a day's school but really in the scheme of things, that is a very small price to pay when the issues at stake are saving people's lives in Iraq or global warming, like the future of humanity," Mr Bainbridge said. "I think young people have opinions, they're quite entitled to express them. "It is a lot of speculation and hype really," he added. "I think the government has really hyped up the threat of violence at our protest when the real violence is coming from the Howard government."
Source
Friday, August 24, 2007
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Andrew Bolt on Rudd's hypocrisy
Or, to put the above heading into broad Australian: "Bolty thinks Rudd is bunging on an act and not being fair dinkum" ("Bunging on an act" is a great sin in a traditional Australian scale of values. Fair dinkum = sincere, genuine)
THERE'S an even funnier joke than the one about the drunken Christian socialist who walked into a strip joint. It's the joke Labor leader Kevin Rudd has made of his defence. How we've laughed. And how we should again wonder if Rudd is all spin and no traction.
Like most Australians, I suspect, I barely care that Rudd when blind still got an eyeful at Scores, which ABC newsreaders at first delicately referred to as a New York "gentlemen's club". After all, nothing Rudd did reflects much on what kind of Prime Minister he'd make, and so much of it seems out of character, anyway. I'm sure he's not a regular drunk, and drank himself paralytic this time only to impress the famously gregarious Col Allan, the powerful editor of the New York Post who was not only his host but is said to have the ear of our boss, Rupert Murdoch. Same story with the lap-dancing dive. I'm sure Rudd just tagged along, and Allan thought he'd give this eager bloke something to steam his glasses.
I'm just speculating, mind. Just as I'd guess Allan wouldn't dream of doing the same to John Howard. So, all that we worldly types can gather from this jaunt - as we did from Rudd's busy courting of the disgraced Labor numbers man Brian Burke - is that perhaps Rudd is a little too eager to impress, and a little less sure of himself than he pretends.
Yet that's not the real political damage done to him by this frolic. The true problem with this self-confessed "old-fashioned Christian socialist" winding up blotto in a strip joint is that it's a category error. Like an elephant in tap-dancing shoes, something doesn't quite fit. Either Scores didn't really seem like a strip club - which has been Rudd's hilarious defence. Or Rudd isn't quite the pure package he's wrapped himself to be - which may for many voters become the real question, even if subconsciously.
Just who is this man? Take away the flimflam, what do you really have left, other than an aching ambition? That's a noose that Rudd makes even tighter with each of his increasingly odd explanations of when exactly he figured he was surrounded by strippers, and should be leaving.
Which gives us another category error: a man who this month preached to evangelical Christians about his faith and is again boasting of "levelling completely with the Australian public" is actually telling a string of porkies [lies]. Indeed, Rudd is demonstrating the truth of what any PR pro would tell him: It's not the stripping that hurts you, but the covering up afterwards.
Observe: Scores not only has a spotlit stage with strippers, but is crawling with tectonically-arranged women who sit topless with you for a drink and will dance in your lap for dollars. Even Ray Charles would have noticed. Yet, Rudd says for the life of him he can't remember any ... you know. Here he is with Channel Nine's Laurie Oakes:
Oakes: Were there semi-naked women there and what were they doing?
Rudd: Well, Laurie, because I had actually drunk a fair bit, I don't have a completely clear recollection . . . We can't actually recall anything that you wouldn't see at most pubs across Australia . . .
Huh? Most pubs now have lapdancers? Or is Rudd really insisting he was too blind to see bared breasts? Kerry O'Brien of the ABC's 7.30 Report got much the same mendacious answer from Mr "Levelling Completely":
O'Brien: Can we just get this straight - you can or you can't remember things from being in that club?
Rudd: What I can absolutely recall is that there was nothing inappropriate as far as my behaviour was concerned . . .
(Gee. Too drunk to remember the strippers, but not too drunk to remember not touching them. How does that work?)
O'Brien: But can you remember seeing lap dancers performing?
Rudd: Look, what I can recall in terms of the actual venue itself was that not much more than you would see in the last 20 years in certain of the pubs in Australia, I've got to say.
O'Brien: But . . . you don't see lap dancing in most pubs in Australia. Can you recall seeing lap dancers performing while you were there?
Rudd: No, I can't.
Whew. Glad Rudd finally cleared that up. Or did he? Because despite saying he saw nothing inappropriate - certainly no lap-dancers - he still says he should have left as soon as he saw he was in, er, a lap-dancing club:
Oakes: I suppose the question is why, when you saw what the club was like, you didn't leave again straightway?
Rudd: Well, that's true, and that is a fair question. I think when you are there with a couple of blokes and you've already had a few too many drinks, which I had had on that evening, then I think it is always better to see these things with hindsight. I should have got out of there.
So, did Rudd see strippers or not? Rudd even says he rang his wife the very next day to apologise for ... for what? For having been in a bar with not one lap dancer in sight?
Rudd: Well, I spoke to Therese the following day ... and said that I'd been out with Warren and with Col and ended up at a club, which is a place I shouldn't have been.
Hmm. Sounds like he damn well knew where he'd been and was in a panic. No thanks for the mammaries. There's much more of this laughable same, but you get the centrefold picture. The issue isn't the utterly trivial one of whether Rudd saw naked strippers or not. It's how frantically he'll spin, in order to mislead - even on something so minor. And how obvious that spin is. Again and again Rudd hammers the line that his pollsters have clearly told him works best - whether true or not - in drawing a contrast with soiled Howard. Here it is: "My responsibility is simply to be upfront and accountable for my own actions." And repeat this.
Straight from the focus group. No doubt it will work for the many who lazily buy spin, and don't check for substance, but too much such spinning may soon make Rudd seem too slick and insubstantial. Even now, I wonder how much more can he get away with. Look already. He poses as so tough with Labor's union thugs he kicks out one for swearing, yet promises laws that the same tough gloats will let him "coerce" bosses. Likewise, he's the leader who's put Left-wingers in his key economic portfolios, yet claims he's an economic "conservative".
On it goes. He's the mini-Howard who claims there's not a "slither (sic) of light" between his budgetary policies and the Prime Minister's, yet voted against almost every Howard reform. He's the planet saver who promises to slash our greenhouse gases by 60 per cent by 2050, yet offers not a single voter-scaring policy that comes close to meeting that $2 trillion-plus aim. He's the tough-on-bastard-bosses workers' friend, yet has no criticism of his own millionaire wife for stripping employees of basic conditions for just 45 cents an hour. He's the man who calms business leaders by making Sir Rod Eddington his chief business adviser, yet releases a recklessly pro-unions workplace policy without letting Eddington see it.
Spin, spin, spin. Say what's in your interests, not on your mind. Talk tough to those who want tough, and soft to those who like cuddles. But at some stage it won't all fit - like that drunk Christian with the strippers. Like the Mr "Levelling Completely" who can't be sure he saw the lap-dancers who made him say sorry to his wife. Who agreed to play along with Channel Seven's fake dawn service. Who embroidered a tragedy of his boyhood. You will then wonder: just who is this man, so very eager now to please, and what will he really be like if we make him Prime Minister? Will he still remember us in the morning?
Source
Green/Left paranoia about the Brethren continues
The Green/Left are determined to "get" conservative Christians who campaign against them. And when the Prime Minister meets with the Elect Vessel, the paranoia becomes full-blown. I suspect that, in their heart of hearts, Leftists feel that these religious guys might really have powers not available to ordinary men
JOHN Howard has held a private meeting with the most senior leaders of the Exclusive Brethren, including a man under investigation by police over his massive spending on the Prime Minister's 2004 election campaign. In his parliamentary office two weeks ago, Mr Howard met Sydney pump salesman Mark Mackenzie, whose former company, Willmac, funnelled $370,000 into pro-Howard advertising at the last election. Willmac's spending was later investigated by the Australian Electoral Commission's disclosure arm, and then referred to the Australian Federal Police for a criminal investigation, which is continuing. Also at the August 8 meeting were the secretive sect's world leader, or "Elect Vessel", Bruce D. Hales, his brother Stephen and elder Warwick John.
A Brethren spokesman confirmed to The Age yesterday that the meeting had taken place, but emphatically denied they had asked for Mr Howard's help on the police investigation or offered him support for his campaign against Maxine McKew in Bennelong.
Mr Howard's office said only that he had met members of the Brethren, as he did with a "wide range of groups", and would "continue to do so".
The Brethren spokesman said the elders had "assured the Prime Minister that they were praying for him". "There was absolutely no dialogue concerning Willmac, just as there was no discussion about . Bennelong," he said. "The members of the church primarily assured Prime Minister Howard that they were praying for him, as the leader of the Government, and then went on to discuss the economy. "This was a last-minute opportunity that presented itself. There was no agenda or pre-arranged discussion topics, simply an opportunity to greet Prime Minister Howard. "These mysterious campaign plans being suggested are wild speculation and the reality is they aren't there."
The spokesman also said that the Brethren's private schools, which benefit from millions of dollars of federal funding, were not discussed, nor was the Government's policy to exclude unions from Brethren workplaces. The spokesman added that, in the context of Mr Howard and Kevin Rudd addressing Christians across Australia the following day, "the particular meeting with the Brethren church group seems very unremarkable".
The Age believes the Brethren are likely to be substantial donors to the Liberal Party in the lead-up to this year's election, and that some donations will help fund the Bennelong campaign. Stephen Hales ran the Brethren's pro-Howard drive in Bennelong at the last election, authorising a number of the group's controversial print advertisements using the address of the Brethren school and helping find Brethren members to campaign for Mr Howard.
One Greens campaigner in Bennelong, Matthew Henderson, told The Age the sect was already working on Mr Howard's campaign. At the Prime Minister's recent walk-through at the Eastwood Plaza shopping centre in his electorate, "there were a bunch of people I went to school with . I recognise them as Brethren - and they appeared to be more than familiar with the Liberal Party supporters' group". Greens senator Bob Brown said yesterday that Mr Howard should reveal the "full nature of not just these discussions but his whole ongoing relationship with the murkily mysterious Mr Hales and the Exclusive Brethren". "I am concerned that the Prime Minister should be so guileless and desperate that the access to potential money from this cashed-up sect should be so important him," he said.
Source
Useless female police
Men and women are NOT equal. Female police should not be on general duties
PASSERSBY have come to the aid of two female police officers under attack from an allegedly drug-affected man in Sydney's west. The Bankstown constables attended a Woodville Road car dealership at 3pm (AEST) yesterday after receiving reports of a man causing problems. Police said the 28-year-old man became aggressive and violent towards the officers but when they tried to subdue him with capsicum spray, it had no effect on him.
The man, who police believe to have been affected by the drug ice, then allegedly assaulted them and tried to remove one of the constable's guns from her holster. He then pushed the other officer into a parked car, causing her to hit her head and drop her baton which he then picked up. The man was about to strike the officer with the baton when he was restrained by up to 10 passers-by, including one motorist who stopped his vehicle and ran across six lanes of traffic to assist police.
Police arrested the 28-year-old and took him to Bankstown Hospital for psychiatric assessment. It's expected he'll be charged when he is released.
Bankstown Local Area Commander, Superintendent Dave Darcy praised the officers involved for their courage and tenacity and thanked the public who intervened. "This was a particularly nasty incident and could have ended very differently had it not been from the brave intervention of those passers-by," Supt Darcy said. "It's very positive for us to see this courageous show of support from members of our local community."
Source
Some life in Australian mathematics
The University of Wollongong has defied the sector-wide trend of cutting back mathematics and has more professors and honours students in the field than ever. Departing deputy vice-chancellor for research, Margaret Sheil, said a combination of "opportunity and strategic planning" had given the university eight full professors and 21 honours students. The eight includes three professors recruited in the past year and a half. One of them, Iain Raeburn, bought a whole maths team with him from rival the University of Newcastle.
Professor Sheil, who started as Australian Research Council chief executive officer last week, said the school of mathematics and applied statistics' beefing up had been driven partly by a need to be prepared for the RQF and by a sponsorship from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, a popular graduate destination. "We are looking to build maths more generally; it's going to come back," Professor Sheil said.
A report released last month painted a bleak picture for the discipline across the nation. The National Tertiary Education Union found that at least seven universities had cut maths staff in the past 18 months. Melbourne, La Trobe, Macquarie, Flinders, RMIT, James Cook had all cut staff. The University of New England had made two maths and stats staff redundant but they won their jobs back on appeal.
At a time when enrolments in maths have fallen by 34 per cent (from 1989 to 2005, according to the Australian Councils of Deans of Science) Wollongong has three times as many honours students as normal. "That's because of a combination of our reputation and the fact that we've got a really dynamic group in maths," Professor Sheil said. The university had a history of strength in the discipline, mainly because local industry needed good graduates, and a more recent association with the ABS had kept that strength.
Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute executive officer Jan Thomas said it was good that Wollongong was expanding but other universities needed to do more.
Source
Or, to put the above heading into broad Australian: "Bolty thinks Rudd is bunging on an act and not being fair dinkum" ("Bunging on an act" is a great sin in a traditional Australian scale of values. Fair dinkum = sincere, genuine)
THERE'S an even funnier joke than the one about the drunken Christian socialist who walked into a strip joint. It's the joke Labor leader Kevin Rudd has made of his defence. How we've laughed. And how we should again wonder if Rudd is all spin and no traction.
Like most Australians, I suspect, I barely care that Rudd when blind still got an eyeful at Scores, which ABC newsreaders at first delicately referred to as a New York "gentlemen's club". After all, nothing Rudd did reflects much on what kind of Prime Minister he'd make, and so much of it seems out of character, anyway. I'm sure he's not a regular drunk, and drank himself paralytic this time only to impress the famously gregarious Col Allan, the powerful editor of the New York Post who was not only his host but is said to have the ear of our boss, Rupert Murdoch. Same story with the lap-dancing dive. I'm sure Rudd just tagged along, and Allan thought he'd give this eager bloke something to steam his glasses.
I'm just speculating, mind. Just as I'd guess Allan wouldn't dream of doing the same to John Howard. So, all that we worldly types can gather from this jaunt - as we did from Rudd's busy courting of the disgraced Labor numbers man Brian Burke - is that perhaps Rudd is a little too eager to impress, and a little less sure of himself than he pretends.
Yet that's not the real political damage done to him by this frolic. The true problem with this self-confessed "old-fashioned Christian socialist" winding up blotto in a strip joint is that it's a category error. Like an elephant in tap-dancing shoes, something doesn't quite fit. Either Scores didn't really seem like a strip club - which has been Rudd's hilarious defence. Or Rudd isn't quite the pure package he's wrapped himself to be - which may for many voters become the real question, even if subconsciously.
Just who is this man? Take away the flimflam, what do you really have left, other than an aching ambition? That's a noose that Rudd makes even tighter with each of his increasingly odd explanations of when exactly he figured he was surrounded by strippers, and should be leaving.
Which gives us another category error: a man who this month preached to evangelical Christians about his faith and is again boasting of "levelling completely with the Australian public" is actually telling a string of porkies [lies]. Indeed, Rudd is demonstrating the truth of what any PR pro would tell him: It's not the stripping that hurts you, but the covering up afterwards.
Observe: Scores not only has a spotlit stage with strippers, but is crawling with tectonically-arranged women who sit topless with you for a drink and will dance in your lap for dollars. Even Ray Charles would have noticed. Yet, Rudd says for the life of him he can't remember any ... you know. Here he is with Channel Nine's Laurie Oakes:
Oakes: Were there semi-naked women there and what were they doing?
Rudd: Well, Laurie, because I had actually drunk a fair bit, I don't have a completely clear recollection . . . We can't actually recall anything that you wouldn't see at most pubs across Australia . . .
Huh? Most pubs now have lapdancers? Or is Rudd really insisting he was too blind to see bared breasts? Kerry O'Brien of the ABC's 7.30 Report got much the same mendacious answer from Mr "Levelling Completely":
O'Brien: Can we just get this straight - you can or you can't remember things from being in that club?
Rudd: What I can absolutely recall is that there was nothing inappropriate as far as my behaviour was concerned . . .
(Gee. Too drunk to remember the strippers, but not too drunk to remember not touching them. How does that work?)
O'Brien: But can you remember seeing lap dancers performing?
Rudd: Look, what I can recall in terms of the actual venue itself was that not much more than you would see in the last 20 years in certain of the pubs in Australia, I've got to say.
O'Brien: But . . . you don't see lap dancing in most pubs in Australia. Can you recall seeing lap dancers performing while you were there?
Rudd: No, I can't.
Whew. Glad Rudd finally cleared that up. Or did he? Because despite saying he saw nothing inappropriate - certainly no lap-dancers - he still says he should have left as soon as he saw he was in, er, a lap-dancing club:
Oakes: I suppose the question is why, when you saw what the club was like, you didn't leave again straightway?
Rudd: Well, that's true, and that is a fair question. I think when you are there with a couple of blokes and you've already had a few too many drinks, which I had had on that evening, then I think it is always better to see these things with hindsight. I should have got out of there.
So, did Rudd see strippers or not? Rudd even says he rang his wife the very next day to apologise for ... for what? For having been in a bar with not one lap dancer in sight?
Rudd: Well, I spoke to Therese the following day ... and said that I'd been out with Warren and with Col and ended up at a club, which is a place I shouldn't have been.
Hmm. Sounds like he damn well knew where he'd been and was in a panic. No thanks for the mammaries. There's much more of this laughable same, but you get the centrefold picture. The issue isn't the utterly trivial one of whether Rudd saw naked strippers or not. It's how frantically he'll spin, in order to mislead - even on something so minor. And how obvious that spin is. Again and again Rudd hammers the line that his pollsters have clearly told him works best - whether true or not - in drawing a contrast with soiled Howard. Here it is: "My responsibility is simply to be upfront and accountable for my own actions." And repeat this.
Straight from the focus group. No doubt it will work for the many who lazily buy spin, and don't check for substance, but too much such spinning may soon make Rudd seem too slick and insubstantial. Even now, I wonder how much more can he get away with. Look already. He poses as so tough with Labor's union thugs he kicks out one for swearing, yet promises laws that the same tough gloats will let him "coerce" bosses. Likewise, he's the leader who's put Left-wingers in his key economic portfolios, yet claims he's an economic "conservative".
On it goes. He's the mini-Howard who claims there's not a "slither (sic) of light" between his budgetary policies and the Prime Minister's, yet voted against almost every Howard reform. He's the planet saver who promises to slash our greenhouse gases by 60 per cent by 2050, yet offers not a single voter-scaring policy that comes close to meeting that $2 trillion-plus aim. He's the tough-on-bastard-bosses workers' friend, yet has no criticism of his own millionaire wife for stripping employees of basic conditions for just 45 cents an hour. He's the man who calms business leaders by making Sir Rod Eddington his chief business adviser, yet releases a recklessly pro-unions workplace policy without letting Eddington see it.
Spin, spin, spin. Say what's in your interests, not on your mind. Talk tough to those who want tough, and soft to those who like cuddles. But at some stage it won't all fit - like that drunk Christian with the strippers. Like the Mr "Levelling Completely" who can't be sure he saw the lap-dancers who made him say sorry to his wife. Who agreed to play along with Channel Seven's fake dawn service. Who embroidered a tragedy of his boyhood. You will then wonder: just who is this man, so very eager now to please, and what will he really be like if we make him Prime Minister? Will he still remember us in the morning?
Source
Green/Left paranoia about the Brethren continues
The Green/Left are determined to "get" conservative Christians who campaign against them. And when the Prime Minister meets with the Elect Vessel, the paranoia becomes full-blown. I suspect that, in their heart of hearts, Leftists feel that these religious guys might really have powers not available to ordinary men
JOHN Howard has held a private meeting with the most senior leaders of the Exclusive Brethren, including a man under investigation by police over his massive spending on the Prime Minister's 2004 election campaign. In his parliamentary office two weeks ago, Mr Howard met Sydney pump salesman Mark Mackenzie, whose former company, Willmac, funnelled $370,000 into pro-Howard advertising at the last election. Willmac's spending was later investigated by the Australian Electoral Commission's disclosure arm, and then referred to the Australian Federal Police for a criminal investigation, which is continuing. Also at the August 8 meeting were the secretive sect's world leader, or "Elect Vessel", Bruce D. Hales, his brother Stephen and elder Warwick John.
A Brethren spokesman confirmed to The Age yesterday that the meeting had taken place, but emphatically denied they had asked for Mr Howard's help on the police investigation or offered him support for his campaign against Maxine McKew in Bennelong.
Mr Howard's office said only that he had met members of the Brethren, as he did with a "wide range of groups", and would "continue to do so".
The Brethren spokesman said the elders had "assured the Prime Minister that they were praying for him". "There was absolutely no dialogue concerning Willmac, just as there was no discussion about . Bennelong," he said. "The members of the church primarily assured Prime Minister Howard that they were praying for him, as the leader of the Government, and then went on to discuss the economy. "This was a last-minute opportunity that presented itself. There was no agenda or pre-arranged discussion topics, simply an opportunity to greet Prime Minister Howard. "These mysterious campaign plans being suggested are wild speculation and the reality is they aren't there."
The spokesman also said that the Brethren's private schools, which benefit from millions of dollars of federal funding, were not discussed, nor was the Government's policy to exclude unions from Brethren workplaces. The spokesman added that, in the context of Mr Howard and Kevin Rudd addressing Christians across Australia the following day, "the particular meeting with the Brethren church group seems very unremarkable".
The Age believes the Brethren are likely to be substantial donors to the Liberal Party in the lead-up to this year's election, and that some donations will help fund the Bennelong campaign. Stephen Hales ran the Brethren's pro-Howard drive in Bennelong at the last election, authorising a number of the group's controversial print advertisements using the address of the Brethren school and helping find Brethren members to campaign for Mr Howard.
One Greens campaigner in Bennelong, Matthew Henderson, told The Age the sect was already working on Mr Howard's campaign. At the Prime Minister's recent walk-through at the Eastwood Plaza shopping centre in his electorate, "there were a bunch of people I went to school with . I recognise them as Brethren - and they appeared to be more than familiar with the Liberal Party supporters' group". Greens senator Bob Brown said yesterday that Mr Howard should reveal the "full nature of not just these discussions but his whole ongoing relationship with the murkily mysterious Mr Hales and the Exclusive Brethren". "I am concerned that the Prime Minister should be so guileless and desperate that the access to potential money from this cashed-up sect should be so important him," he said.
Source
Useless female police
Men and women are NOT equal. Female police should not be on general duties
PASSERSBY have come to the aid of two female police officers under attack from an allegedly drug-affected man in Sydney's west. The Bankstown constables attended a Woodville Road car dealership at 3pm (AEST) yesterday after receiving reports of a man causing problems. Police said the 28-year-old man became aggressive and violent towards the officers but when they tried to subdue him with capsicum spray, it had no effect on him.
The man, who police believe to have been affected by the drug ice, then allegedly assaulted them and tried to remove one of the constable's guns from her holster. He then pushed the other officer into a parked car, causing her to hit her head and drop her baton which he then picked up. The man was about to strike the officer with the baton when he was restrained by up to 10 passers-by, including one motorist who stopped his vehicle and ran across six lanes of traffic to assist police.
Police arrested the 28-year-old and took him to Bankstown Hospital for psychiatric assessment. It's expected he'll be charged when he is released.
Bankstown Local Area Commander, Superintendent Dave Darcy praised the officers involved for their courage and tenacity and thanked the public who intervened. "This was a particularly nasty incident and could have ended very differently had it not been from the brave intervention of those passers-by," Supt Darcy said. "It's very positive for us to see this courageous show of support from members of our local community."
Source
Some life in Australian mathematics
The University of Wollongong has defied the sector-wide trend of cutting back mathematics and has more professors and honours students in the field than ever. Departing deputy vice-chancellor for research, Margaret Sheil, said a combination of "opportunity and strategic planning" had given the university eight full professors and 21 honours students. The eight includes three professors recruited in the past year and a half. One of them, Iain Raeburn, bought a whole maths team with him from rival the University of Newcastle.
Professor Sheil, who started as Australian Research Council chief executive officer last week, said the school of mathematics and applied statistics' beefing up had been driven partly by a need to be prepared for the RQF and by a sponsorship from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, a popular graduate destination. "We are looking to build maths more generally; it's going to come back," Professor Sheil said.
A report released last month painted a bleak picture for the discipline across the nation. The National Tertiary Education Union found that at least seven universities had cut maths staff in the past 18 months. Melbourne, La Trobe, Macquarie, Flinders, RMIT, James Cook had all cut staff. The University of New England had made two maths and stats staff redundant but they won their jobs back on appeal.
At a time when enrolments in maths have fallen by 34 per cent (from 1989 to 2005, according to the Australian Councils of Deans of Science) Wollongong has three times as many honours students as normal. "That's because of a combination of our reputation and the fact that we've got a really dynamic group in maths," Professor Sheil said. The university had a history of strength in the discipline, mainly because local industry needed good graduates, and a more recent association with the ABS had kept that strength.
Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute executive officer Jan Thomas said it was good that Wollongong was expanding but other universities needed to do more.
Source
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Federal Leftists to phase out electric hot water
This is crazy. Offpeak heating uses operating reserve at the power stations. Nothing will be saved
LABOR plans to rid Australian homes of off-peak electric hot water systems, in a move it claims will cut Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 7.5million tonnes each year. Half of all systems currently sold are the off-peak electric variety and Labor believes their removal from the market would be equivalent to taking almost two million cars off Australian roads.
The federal Opposition announced yesterday that in government it would work with the states to implement tough new greenhouse and energy minimum standards for hot water heaters. Labor's climate change spokesman, Peter Garrett, said greenhouse-intensive electric hot water systems accounted for 28 per cent of the average home's greenhouse gas emissions and produced three times the pollution of solar, heat-pump or gas systems.
At a housing project in Adelaide, Mr Garrett said Labor's aim was to phase out installation of the off-peak "greenhouse intensive" electric systems from 2010 in new homes or those with access to reticulated gas. By 2012, it would not allow them to be installed in new or existing homes. Off-peak systems already in use will not be affected until they need to be replaced. Mr Garrett pledged to work with industry to make the policy work. "It will be a phase-out over time, which will allow industry to plan for that phase-out," he said.
Mr Garrett said the current federal rebate of $1000 a unit announced last month by the Howard Government would be continued to be offset by the higher cost of solar hot water systems. The Energy Supply Association of Australia yesterday reported increased energy demand last year equal to a new power station, with the biggest growth in demand tracking population and resource booms in Western Australia and Queensland at 4.8 and 4.5 per cent respectively. South Australia also reported a 4 per cent increase in residential demand fuelled by increased installation of air conditioners.
Australia's largest hot water system manufacturer, Rheem Australia, said there would be substantial impact from the move. Rheem national marketing manager Gareth Jennings said the company was digesting the plan, but "understands these sorts of measures need to be taken". Labor will keep existing rebates to encourage take-up of alternatives and believes its plan can save households $300 a year.
Source
Another twisted Muslim doctor
An Indian-trained doctor allegedly plied an intellectually disabled patient with alcohol and told her he had always aspired to a porn star career before having sex her, a tribunal has heard. The attack came only hours after Shamshulhaque Shaikh had treated the 27-year-old, who suffers from epilepsy, a bipolar disorder and intellectual difficulties, at the Toowoomba Hospital emergency department on September 28, 2005.
The Queensland Health Practitioners Tribunal has struck Dr Shaikh, who moved overseas last year, off the registry for five years for conduct "seen as being discreditable to his profession". A scathing judgment of the doctor's conduct was delivered yesterday by judge Kerry O'Brien. "In the tribunal's view, (his) conduct has fallen far below the standards reasonably expected of him by the public or by his peers," Judge O'Brien said.
In an interview before he left Australia, the doctor said he met the woman in a restaurant by coincidence, and they did not have sex. However, Judge O'Brien said Dr Shaikh's account of events was unsworn and he agreed with the board, finding the submissions "are not accepted as a full and truthful account of events".
Source
Researchers start trial of 'world's best' flu jab
RESEARCHERS in Adelaide have developed a vaccine they believe could be the world's best defence against an influenza or bird flu epidemic. The Flinders Medical Centre's influenza vaccine which is in its early trial stage has been boosted by a natural sugar adjuvant. Adjuvants amplify the immune system's response to the virus to increase the effectiveness of vaccines.
Leader of the research team Director of Diabetes and Endocrinology Professor Nikolai Petrovsky says the sugar-based adjuvant is safe. "Our data already shows our adjuvant enhances the immune response against the common flu virus and we expect it to work equally well for an avian (bird) flu vaccine," he said.
Head of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Professor David Gordon said the addition of an adjuvant is critical for providing protection and conserving vaccine supplies in the event of a pandemic. "Traditional vaccines can cause pain for a few days, but another major advantage of our vaccine is that many people have experienced no pain from the injection," he said.
The team is looking to test the vaccine on healthy people aged between 18-70 years who have not received a flu vaccine this year.
Source
Watchdog pulps super-juice claims
PRICEY "superfruit" juices touted as possible cures for cancer, diabetes and other diseases may not be so super after all. Consumer watchdog Choice tested the exotic juices -- which cost up to $85 a litre -- and found people can get the same health benefits from eating an apple. It has asked the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and state food authorities to take action against juice sellers who make the outrageous claims.
The so-called super juices are made from tropical fruits and berries including acai, goji, noni and mangosteen. They are usually only available in health food stores, gyms or via internet and mail order.
Choice spokesman Christopher Zinn said the juices may offer false hope to sick Australians. He said the juices could also be dangerous if ill people believed the hype and used them as substitutes for conventional medicine. "You get a novelty fruit, call it a super-fruit, throw in a secret Himalayan mountain or Chinese valley with mist on it, or a Pacific island with traditional healers that live to 150, and it's a very potent brew. Then if it costs a lot, people assume it must be rare and very good for you," Mr Zinn said.
Some brochures for juices sold in Australia claim mangosteen juice is better than chemotherapy for cancer and also outperforms drugs routinely prescribed for anxiety, arthritis and heroin addiction. One noni juice seller claims its product can cure cancer and diabetes while improving your golf game. "It's the claims they make that are concerning. They're making therapeutic claims, which are not backed up by science," Mr Zinn said.
He said Choice tests found people could get the same antioxidants from red apples and other cheap fruits available at any supermarket or greengrocer. "If you want to spend $85 on these juices and you like them, that's not bad for anything but your wallet. But it's the misleading claims of curative and preventative powers around the juice of these berries that's a concern and a breach of the Food Standards Code."
Source
This is crazy. Offpeak heating uses operating reserve at the power stations. Nothing will be saved
LABOR plans to rid Australian homes of off-peak electric hot water systems, in a move it claims will cut Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 7.5million tonnes each year. Half of all systems currently sold are the off-peak electric variety and Labor believes their removal from the market would be equivalent to taking almost two million cars off Australian roads.
The federal Opposition announced yesterday that in government it would work with the states to implement tough new greenhouse and energy minimum standards for hot water heaters. Labor's climate change spokesman, Peter Garrett, said greenhouse-intensive electric hot water systems accounted for 28 per cent of the average home's greenhouse gas emissions and produced three times the pollution of solar, heat-pump or gas systems.
At a housing project in Adelaide, Mr Garrett said Labor's aim was to phase out installation of the off-peak "greenhouse intensive" electric systems from 2010 in new homes or those with access to reticulated gas. By 2012, it would not allow them to be installed in new or existing homes. Off-peak systems already in use will not be affected until they need to be replaced. Mr Garrett pledged to work with industry to make the policy work. "It will be a phase-out over time, which will allow industry to plan for that phase-out," he said.
Mr Garrett said the current federal rebate of $1000 a unit announced last month by the Howard Government would be continued to be offset by the higher cost of solar hot water systems. The Energy Supply Association of Australia yesterday reported increased energy demand last year equal to a new power station, with the biggest growth in demand tracking population and resource booms in Western Australia and Queensland at 4.8 and 4.5 per cent respectively. South Australia also reported a 4 per cent increase in residential demand fuelled by increased installation of air conditioners.
Australia's largest hot water system manufacturer, Rheem Australia, said there would be substantial impact from the move. Rheem national marketing manager Gareth Jennings said the company was digesting the plan, but "understands these sorts of measures need to be taken". Labor will keep existing rebates to encourage take-up of alternatives and believes its plan can save households $300 a year.
Source
Another twisted Muslim doctor
An Indian-trained doctor allegedly plied an intellectually disabled patient with alcohol and told her he had always aspired to a porn star career before having sex her, a tribunal has heard. The attack came only hours after Shamshulhaque Shaikh had treated the 27-year-old, who suffers from epilepsy, a bipolar disorder and intellectual difficulties, at the Toowoomba Hospital emergency department on September 28, 2005.
The Queensland Health Practitioners Tribunal has struck Dr Shaikh, who moved overseas last year, off the registry for five years for conduct "seen as being discreditable to his profession". A scathing judgment of the doctor's conduct was delivered yesterday by judge Kerry O'Brien. "In the tribunal's view, (his) conduct has fallen far below the standards reasonably expected of him by the public or by his peers," Judge O'Brien said.
In an interview before he left Australia, the doctor said he met the woman in a restaurant by coincidence, and they did not have sex. However, Judge O'Brien said Dr Shaikh's account of events was unsworn and he agreed with the board, finding the submissions "are not accepted as a full and truthful account of events".
Source
Researchers start trial of 'world's best' flu jab
RESEARCHERS in Adelaide have developed a vaccine they believe could be the world's best defence against an influenza or bird flu epidemic. The Flinders Medical Centre's influenza vaccine which is in its early trial stage has been boosted by a natural sugar adjuvant. Adjuvants amplify the immune system's response to the virus to increase the effectiveness of vaccines.
Leader of the research team Director of Diabetes and Endocrinology Professor Nikolai Petrovsky says the sugar-based adjuvant is safe. "Our data already shows our adjuvant enhances the immune response against the common flu virus and we expect it to work equally well for an avian (bird) flu vaccine," he said.
Head of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Professor David Gordon said the addition of an adjuvant is critical for providing protection and conserving vaccine supplies in the event of a pandemic. "Traditional vaccines can cause pain for a few days, but another major advantage of our vaccine is that many people have experienced no pain from the injection," he said.
The team is looking to test the vaccine on healthy people aged between 18-70 years who have not received a flu vaccine this year.
Source
Watchdog pulps super-juice claims
PRICEY "superfruit" juices touted as possible cures for cancer, diabetes and other diseases may not be so super after all. Consumer watchdog Choice tested the exotic juices -- which cost up to $85 a litre -- and found people can get the same health benefits from eating an apple. It has asked the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and state food authorities to take action against juice sellers who make the outrageous claims.
The so-called super juices are made from tropical fruits and berries including acai, goji, noni and mangosteen. They are usually only available in health food stores, gyms or via internet and mail order.
Choice spokesman Christopher Zinn said the juices may offer false hope to sick Australians. He said the juices could also be dangerous if ill people believed the hype and used them as substitutes for conventional medicine. "You get a novelty fruit, call it a super-fruit, throw in a secret Himalayan mountain or Chinese valley with mist on it, or a Pacific island with traditional healers that live to 150, and it's a very potent brew. Then if it costs a lot, people assume it must be rare and very good for you," Mr Zinn said.
Some brochures for juices sold in Australia claim mangosteen juice is better than chemotherapy for cancer and also outperforms drugs routinely prescribed for anxiety, arthritis and heroin addiction. One noni juice seller claims its product can cure cancer and diabetes while improving your golf game. "It's the claims they make that are concerning. They're making therapeutic claims, which are not backed up by science," Mr Zinn said.
He said Choice tests found people could get the same antioxidants from red apples and other cheap fruits available at any supermarket or greengrocer. "If you want to spend $85 on these juices and you like them, that's not bad for anything but your wallet. But it's the misleading claims of curative and preventative powers around the juice of these berries that's a concern and a breach of the Food Standards Code."
Source
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Australia's Leftist leader gets the Bill Clinton treatment
Women's groups refuse to criticise behaviour in Kevin Rudd that they normally deplore. If he had been a conservative, they would have been shrieking to high heaven. Some of the nightclub "girls" below
Voters were divided yesterday on the moral and political implications of Kevin Rudd's admission that he went to a strip club one drunken evening in New York four years ago. But his Labor colleagues - including deputy party leader Julia Gillard - remained tight-lipped on their leader's September 2003 outing. "He's acknowledged he made an error, and I think that's all that needs to be said about it," Ms Gillard said. Opposition spokeswoman on women Tanya Plibersek did not return calls yesterday.
One male frontbencher, who did not wish to be named, said the story could work in Mr Rudd's favour. "It might humanise him a bit. People see him as too much the bookworm and diplomat," he said.
Women's organisations and church groups remained particularly silent on Mr Rudd's night out. "If we hanged every bloke who was stupid, there wouldn't be many left," National Foundation for Australian Women spokeswoman Marie Coleman said. Women's Electoral Lobby spokeswoman and prominent feminist Eva Cox said Mr Rudd had a generally good attitude towards women. "It's not something that represents his usual behaviour," she said. [Fat old Eva Cox nee Hauser -- pic below -- is far to the Left so her defence of a Leftist from behind her thick glasses is to be expected. I gather that Cox cleared out years ago but she still uses his surname. A strange feminist!]
Labor strategist Bruce Hawker said he did not think Mr Rudd - a staunch Christian - would lose popularity among voting women. "People, whether they be women or men, aren't going to be particularly fussed about this," Mr Hawker said. "I think people are much more concerned about how the parties' policies are going to affect them. "I don't think he's demonstrated anything that can be construed as bad character."
Source
Drive for Indian trade deal
Jai hind!
AUSTRALIA will attempt to negotiate a free trade agreement with India as part of a historic shift in relations with the emerging economic powerhouse of South Asia. The new strategic approach towards India has been endorsed by federal cabinet and is considered as important as the embrace of China in the 1980s and '90s and Australia's earlier engagement with Japan. The submission by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer went to the full cabinet, unlike the decision to allow the sale of uranium to India, which was considered by the national security committee.
Analysts believe an FTA would be a substantial challenge, but no more so than pursuing an agreement with China or Japan, which Australia is doing. Trade pacts with India, China, Japan and the US would give Australia almost a complete hand of interlocking treaties with its most important partners, and the world's most dynamic economies. These agreements also provide an important defensive barrier for Australia against any rise in international protectionism, and they are an important advance in trading opportunities for Australian companies in the absence of a successful conclusion of the Doha Round of World Trade Organisation negotiations.
Government figures have been surprised at how rapidly the Indian economy has grown, although the country is experiencing political problems. The Indian Government lurched towards crisis over the weekend as left-wing parties threatened to walk away from the ruling coalition unless the country's civilian nuclear deal with Washington was scrapped. Apart from the obvious synergy in energy trade, the familiar common-law system in India, and its dazzling success in IT, mean that an FTA should also provide enormous opportunities for Australian companies in the services sector. This could be worth billions of dollars to Australia.
The submission regarding India contains a raft of specific initiatives, and is designed to elevate the India relationship to a core element in Australia's international orientation, along with the US, Japan, China and Indonesia. As well as attempting to negotiate an FTA with India, Canberra will continue its fully fledged engagement in the quadrilateral talks involving the US, Japan and India, despite Chinese opposition.
The cabinet submission recognises India's growing importance to Australia, given its growing economic and strategic power. It also notes India's increased engagement with East Asia and the Pacific and Australia's rapidly growing trade ties. The submission contains a series of specific proposals to enhance relations. Apart from allowing the export of uranium -- approval for which was announced last week by John Howard -- these include formal and active diplomatic support for India's bid to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
This is a move that indicates Canberra's elevation of India to core relationship status. Australia has been a long supporter of Japan becoming a permanent member of the Security Council and the Howard Government in the past has also suggested Indonesia should acquire such status. The other two core relationships are with countries that are already permanent members -- the US and China.
Much of the submission is devoted to the sale of energy to India. Given India's rapid economic growth, energy security is becoming as important to India as it is to China and Japan. The submission envisages elevating the joint working group on minerals and energy to ministerial level, as a key tool in managing the energy relationship.
The submission contains a wide range of proposals for enhanced security co-operation. Chief among these are joint naval exercises, as well as intensified co-operation in counter-terrorism, peacekeeping, all aspects of maritime security and greater engagement on border and transport security. A permanent presence in New Delhi by the Australian Federal Police is also being sought. All these recommendations were accepted by cabinet.
Australia is also looking at establishing an Indian studies centre that would parallel the American Studies Centre, which is being set up at Sydney University. Similarly, it is giving consideration to the establishment of an Australia-India forum for government, business and other leaders to promote bilateral co-operation. This would follow the example of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue. The Government will move to provide more legal co-operation mechanisms. It wants to strengthen the education, training and science relationship, including the provision of more scholarships for Indian students to study in Australia.
Federal cabinet does not yet believe Australians fully recognise the dimensions of Indian economic growth, nor their vast implications for Australia. According to cabinet figures, India will this year become Australia's fourth-largest export market, and Australian exports to India have been growing at more than 30 per cent a year throughout this decade. India is Australia's fastest growing export market, growing faster even than China. India is also Australia's second largest source of overseas students and long-stay business visitors.
The Government has identified mining, agriculture, services and investment as sectors for potential large-scale expansion in Australian trade with India. Similarly, the cabinet submission recognises that India is increasingly central to global issues such as climate change. The raft of actions to which cabinet has committed has the potential to transform the Australia-India relationship.
Source
Muslims feel cut off, left isolated by fear
The poor little petals! They are probably projecting their own hostility onto others -- or maybe it's just guilt at being part of such a hostile and destructive religion
FEAR is isolating Australian Muslims, leading to distrust of the Government and driving them outside the country in their search for information and community, the first national fear survey has found. The survey set out to look at how Australians viewed their safety after the events of September 11. 2001 but the pilot study found Muslim reacted very differently to the wider population. "The trial was quite stark," said Mark Balnaves, of Edith Cowan University, who co-authored the nationwide survey. As a result of the early indicators, Muslims, who make up 1.5 per cent of the population, were treated as a special sample, to clarify the early results. [It's not the first time they were given specially favourable treatment either]
"For Muslims it wasn't a generalised fear," he said. "Where non-Muslim Australians may have a fear of travel on planes, Muslims had a fear of going out of the house, of going out into the community. "There is a fear of government, distrust of the media and the [consequent] closure of the [Muslim] community is quite worrying," Professor Balnaves said. The research showed that Muslims were much more likely to have kept the "Be Alert Not Alarmed" packs and had a sense of needing to defend Australia. "Then they realised they might be the very people who were seen as a threat," he said.
Kuranda Seyit, the head of the Forum on Australian Islamic Relations, said mainstream Muslims were a little more cautious about going to public events, but it was not going to stop them going about their business. "With young Muslims, the level of fear is lower, but they are more upset with what is going on. The older generation are more fearful," Mr Seyit said. He knew of people anglicising their names to avoid discrimination when applying for jobs.
The survey comes as Pauline Hanson and another would-be Queensland senator, James Baker, promised to campaign on the issue of Muslim immigration. Mr Baker proposed banning Muslim immigration for 10 years and putting other measures in place "to ensure Australia's Muslim population is in no doubt we mean business in stopping extremist attacks". Those measures included revocation of citizenship and deportations of the families of convicted immigrant terrorists and suicide bombers.
The interviews, where anonymity was guaranteed, revealed Muslims were suspicious of connections between government and the media, believing the media may be controlled by the Government. "So they are going to extreme sources, outside Australia," Professor Balnaves said. "To Al Manar [the Hezbollah-backed website], to blog sites with groups that would be counted as highly radical" in search of information they see as less biased against Muslims.
The fear, which has led to a loss of trust in their own society, has policy implications for the government, Professor Balnaves said. "If they end up being a ghettoised community, they will end up with psychological consequences in these communities. They are very careful now about what goes public and very concerned about their own safety going out in public," he said.
The National Fear Survey, funded by the Australian Research Council, interviewed 750 participants and covered urban, regional and rural areas. Its aim was to help the Federal Government in policy deliberations on how to assist communities that are in fear.
Source
Urgent need for nurses in government hospital
Tiny babies endangered
THE agonising wait is over for the parents of four-week-old Ryan Kelly, who last week received lifesaving heart surgery after two operations were cancelled. The Prince Charles Hospital blamed bed and intensive care nursing shortages for the delay.
But Ryan's father, Damien, said he was angry at the abusive treatment he witnessed towards hospital staff, who were bearing the brunt of public frustration. "It's ridiculous. Yesterday, I saw a nurse getting abused by a relative of one of the patients," Mr Kelly said. "I walked out with this nurse . . . and she burst into tears. Why should these people cop it for bed shortages? It shouldn't be directed at them. Let's direct it at the Premier (Peter Beattie) and his Health Minister (Stephen Robertson)."
As Ryan lies in intensive care after nine hours of surgery, eight-month-old Elijah Nganeko is still waiting for a bed. Elijah, who goes blue when he cries, was born with a hole in his heart. He's been on the waiting list for almost three months. His mother, Jackie, said without surgery, her only child would die, but doctors at the Prince Charles Hospital had been unable to say how long they would have to wait. "They said it could be days, weeks or months," Mrs Nganeko said. "The reason he hasn't had his surgery yet is a lack of intensive care nurses. "They're doing the emergency cases first and then the children that basically come after that."
Mrs Nganeko said the uncertainly over Elijah's operation was putting huge stresses on her and her husband Aaron. "We just don't let him cry at all. I don't get much sleep," she said. "If he cries, within a minute of starting he'll be blue." Despite the strains, Mrs Nganeko said she was not asking for Elijah to jump the queue. "We're saying that we want other people in the same situation to come forward so that Peter Beattie knows how bad it really is," she said.
Prince Charles Hospital acting medical services director Don Martin said children were prioritised for surgery on the basis of medical need. Last week Matthew Kuhne received surgery after a wait of nine days at the Princess Alexandra Hospital with severe spinal injuries also because of nursing shortages.
Source
Women's groups refuse to criticise behaviour in Kevin Rudd that they normally deplore. If he had been a conservative, they would have been shrieking to high heaven. Some of the nightclub "girls" below
Voters were divided yesterday on the moral and political implications of Kevin Rudd's admission that he went to a strip club one drunken evening in New York four years ago. But his Labor colleagues - including deputy party leader Julia Gillard - remained tight-lipped on their leader's September 2003 outing. "He's acknowledged he made an error, and I think that's all that needs to be said about it," Ms Gillard said. Opposition spokeswoman on women Tanya Plibersek did not return calls yesterday.
One male frontbencher, who did not wish to be named, said the story could work in Mr Rudd's favour. "It might humanise him a bit. People see him as too much the bookworm and diplomat," he said.
Women's organisations and church groups remained particularly silent on Mr Rudd's night out. "If we hanged every bloke who was stupid, there wouldn't be many left," National Foundation for Australian Women spokeswoman Marie Coleman said. Women's Electoral Lobby spokeswoman and prominent feminist Eva Cox said Mr Rudd had a generally good attitude towards women. "It's not something that represents his usual behaviour," she said. [Fat old Eva Cox nee Hauser -- pic below -- is far to the Left so her defence of a Leftist from behind her thick glasses is to be expected. I gather that Cox cleared out years ago but she still uses his surname. A strange feminist!]
Labor strategist Bruce Hawker said he did not think Mr Rudd - a staunch Christian - would lose popularity among voting women. "People, whether they be women or men, aren't going to be particularly fussed about this," Mr Hawker said. "I think people are much more concerned about how the parties' policies are going to affect them. "I don't think he's demonstrated anything that can be construed as bad character."
Source
Drive for Indian trade deal
Jai hind!
AUSTRALIA will attempt to negotiate a free trade agreement with India as part of a historic shift in relations with the emerging economic powerhouse of South Asia. The new strategic approach towards India has been endorsed by federal cabinet and is considered as important as the embrace of China in the 1980s and '90s and Australia's earlier engagement with Japan. The submission by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer went to the full cabinet, unlike the decision to allow the sale of uranium to India, which was considered by the national security committee.
Analysts believe an FTA would be a substantial challenge, but no more so than pursuing an agreement with China or Japan, which Australia is doing. Trade pacts with India, China, Japan and the US would give Australia almost a complete hand of interlocking treaties with its most important partners, and the world's most dynamic economies. These agreements also provide an important defensive barrier for Australia against any rise in international protectionism, and they are an important advance in trading opportunities for Australian companies in the absence of a successful conclusion of the Doha Round of World Trade Organisation negotiations.
Government figures have been surprised at how rapidly the Indian economy has grown, although the country is experiencing political problems. The Indian Government lurched towards crisis over the weekend as left-wing parties threatened to walk away from the ruling coalition unless the country's civilian nuclear deal with Washington was scrapped. Apart from the obvious synergy in energy trade, the familiar common-law system in India, and its dazzling success in IT, mean that an FTA should also provide enormous opportunities for Australian companies in the services sector. This could be worth billions of dollars to Australia.
The submission regarding India contains a raft of specific initiatives, and is designed to elevate the India relationship to a core element in Australia's international orientation, along with the US, Japan, China and Indonesia. As well as attempting to negotiate an FTA with India, Canberra will continue its fully fledged engagement in the quadrilateral talks involving the US, Japan and India, despite Chinese opposition.
The cabinet submission recognises India's growing importance to Australia, given its growing economic and strategic power. It also notes India's increased engagement with East Asia and the Pacific and Australia's rapidly growing trade ties. The submission contains a series of specific proposals to enhance relations. Apart from allowing the export of uranium -- approval for which was announced last week by John Howard -- these include formal and active diplomatic support for India's bid to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
This is a move that indicates Canberra's elevation of India to core relationship status. Australia has been a long supporter of Japan becoming a permanent member of the Security Council and the Howard Government in the past has also suggested Indonesia should acquire such status. The other two core relationships are with countries that are already permanent members -- the US and China.
Much of the submission is devoted to the sale of energy to India. Given India's rapid economic growth, energy security is becoming as important to India as it is to China and Japan. The submission envisages elevating the joint working group on minerals and energy to ministerial level, as a key tool in managing the energy relationship.
The submission contains a wide range of proposals for enhanced security co-operation. Chief among these are joint naval exercises, as well as intensified co-operation in counter-terrorism, peacekeeping, all aspects of maritime security and greater engagement on border and transport security. A permanent presence in New Delhi by the Australian Federal Police is also being sought. All these recommendations were accepted by cabinet.
Australia is also looking at establishing an Indian studies centre that would parallel the American Studies Centre, which is being set up at Sydney University. Similarly, it is giving consideration to the establishment of an Australia-India forum for government, business and other leaders to promote bilateral co-operation. This would follow the example of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue. The Government will move to provide more legal co-operation mechanisms. It wants to strengthen the education, training and science relationship, including the provision of more scholarships for Indian students to study in Australia.
Federal cabinet does not yet believe Australians fully recognise the dimensions of Indian economic growth, nor their vast implications for Australia. According to cabinet figures, India will this year become Australia's fourth-largest export market, and Australian exports to India have been growing at more than 30 per cent a year throughout this decade. India is Australia's fastest growing export market, growing faster even than China. India is also Australia's second largest source of overseas students and long-stay business visitors.
The Government has identified mining, agriculture, services and investment as sectors for potential large-scale expansion in Australian trade with India. Similarly, the cabinet submission recognises that India is increasingly central to global issues such as climate change. The raft of actions to which cabinet has committed has the potential to transform the Australia-India relationship.
Source
Muslims feel cut off, left isolated by fear
The poor little petals! They are probably projecting their own hostility onto others -- or maybe it's just guilt at being part of such a hostile and destructive religion
FEAR is isolating Australian Muslims, leading to distrust of the Government and driving them outside the country in their search for information and community, the first national fear survey has found. The survey set out to look at how Australians viewed their safety after the events of September 11. 2001 but the pilot study found Muslim reacted very differently to the wider population. "The trial was quite stark," said Mark Balnaves, of Edith Cowan University, who co-authored the nationwide survey. As a result of the early indicators, Muslims, who make up 1.5 per cent of the population, were treated as a special sample, to clarify the early results. [It's not the first time they were given specially favourable treatment either]
"For Muslims it wasn't a generalised fear," he said. "Where non-Muslim Australians may have a fear of travel on planes, Muslims had a fear of going out of the house, of going out into the community. "There is a fear of government, distrust of the media and the [consequent] closure of the [Muslim] community is quite worrying," Professor Balnaves said. The research showed that Muslims were much more likely to have kept the "Be Alert Not Alarmed" packs and had a sense of needing to defend Australia. "Then they realised they might be the very people who were seen as a threat," he said.
Kuranda Seyit, the head of the Forum on Australian Islamic Relations, said mainstream Muslims were a little more cautious about going to public events, but it was not going to stop them going about their business. "With young Muslims, the level of fear is lower, but they are more upset with what is going on. The older generation are more fearful," Mr Seyit said. He knew of people anglicising their names to avoid discrimination when applying for jobs.
The survey comes as Pauline Hanson and another would-be Queensland senator, James Baker, promised to campaign on the issue of Muslim immigration. Mr Baker proposed banning Muslim immigration for 10 years and putting other measures in place "to ensure Australia's Muslim population is in no doubt we mean business in stopping extremist attacks". Those measures included revocation of citizenship and deportations of the families of convicted immigrant terrorists and suicide bombers.
The interviews, where anonymity was guaranteed, revealed Muslims were suspicious of connections between government and the media, believing the media may be controlled by the Government. "So they are going to extreme sources, outside Australia," Professor Balnaves said. "To Al Manar [the Hezbollah-backed website], to blog sites with groups that would be counted as highly radical" in search of information they see as less biased against Muslims.
The fear, which has led to a loss of trust in their own society, has policy implications for the government, Professor Balnaves said. "If they end up being a ghettoised community, they will end up with psychological consequences in these communities. They are very careful now about what goes public and very concerned about their own safety going out in public," he said.
The National Fear Survey, funded by the Australian Research Council, interviewed 750 participants and covered urban, regional and rural areas. Its aim was to help the Federal Government in policy deliberations on how to assist communities that are in fear.
Source
Urgent need for nurses in government hospital
Tiny babies endangered
THE agonising wait is over for the parents of four-week-old Ryan Kelly, who last week received lifesaving heart surgery after two operations were cancelled. The Prince Charles Hospital blamed bed and intensive care nursing shortages for the delay.
But Ryan's father, Damien, said he was angry at the abusive treatment he witnessed towards hospital staff, who were bearing the brunt of public frustration. "It's ridiculous. Yesterday, I saw a nurse getting abused by a relative of one of the patients," Mr Kelly said. "I walked out with this nurse . . . and she burst into tears. Why should these people cop it for bed shortages? It shouldn't be directed at them. Let's direct it at the Premier (Peter Beattie) and his Health Minister (Stephen Robertson)."
As Ryan lies in intensive care after nine hours of surgery, eight-month-old Elijah Nganeko is still waiting for a bed. Elijah, who goes blue when he cries, was born with a hole in his heart. He's been on the waiting list for almost three months. His mother, Jackie, said without surgery, her only child would die, but doctors at the Prince Charles Hospital had been unable to say how long they would have to wait. "They said it could be days, weeks or months," Mrs Nganeko said. "The reason he hasn't had his surgery yet is a lack of intensive care nurses. "They're doing the emergency cases first and then the children that basically come after that."
Mrs Nganeko said the uncertainly over Elijah's operation was putting huge stresses on her and her husband Aaron. "We just don't let him cry at all. I don't get much sleep," she said. "If he cries, within a minute of starting he'll be blue." Despite the strains, Mrs Nganeko said she was not asking for Elijah to jump the queue. "We're saying that we want other people in the same situation to come forward so that Peter Beattie knows how bad it really is," she said.
Prince Charles Hospital acting medical services director Don Martin said children were prioritised for surgery on the basis of medical need. Last week Matthew Kuhne received surgery after a wait of nine days at the Princess Alexandra Hospital with severe spinal injuries also because of nursing shortages.
Source
Monday, August 20, 2007
The word about the NASA backdown is getting out in Australia
Australian columnist Michael Duffy, writing in the mass-circulation Sydney Morning Herald, reports on the recent NASA correction of their global warming figures. Duffy goes on in the excerpt below to note the really big emerging issue in the matter -- the dubious accuracy of the basic data. So Australians at least have the latest available info in their papers. Mainstream papers in Britain and the USA have now reported the NASA backdown but accompanied it with heavy spin about the changes being unimportant. They did not however mention the matters Duffy mentions below, as far as I saw
Strange as it might seem in a scientific field that spends some $6.4 billion a year on often abstruse research and computer modelling, the integrity of the basic temperature data is emerging as a serious problem. The Goddard Institute claims to correct data from poorly sited stations, but McIntyre says it refused to tell him how it does this in sufficient detail for him to check its results. When he obtained some of the raw data from specific sites and compared it with the processed temperatures created by the institute, he found problems. In one case data from a good site, at the Grand Canyon, had been changed to make the 1930s colder than they were.
Across the Atlantic, the British mathematician Douglas Keenan has claimed that two important academic papers on the reliability of Chinese weather stations are wrong. This is a major issue because one of the papers is cited by the IPCC to support its position that measurement errors owing to urbanisation and the "heat island effect" - which makes cities warmer than their surroundings - are insignificant. Keenan claims to have discovered that some of the Chinese stations have been moved a lot. One, for example, had five different locations from 1954 to 1983, over a distance of 41 kilometres. This makes the data largely useless.
It took several years to gain access to the information needed to reveal this fault with the papers, because the academics involved refused to release it. Keenan finally obtained it by the creative means of using Britain's Freedom of Information Act, on the grounds that an academic who had the information was a public servant.
The climate change establishment is represented by the website realclimate.org. Its response to McIntyre's success in getting the Goddard Institute to reduce US temperature figures for the period since 2000 has been to say that the implication for global averages is imperceptible, since the US is only a very small fraction of the global area. Strictly speaking this is correct, although America's figures are more important than its land area might indicate because they go back so far in an unbroken line, which is fairly unusual.
Since the break-up of the USSR, the number of weather stations in the world has declined by half. Many of them used to be in cold areas. The scientists who compile global averages presumably try to take this into account - although in light of some of the above stories you have to wonder just how well they succeed.
Whatever the scientific implications of McIntyre's revelation, the rhetorical one is huge. America is the centre of the global debate on climate change. No longer will Americans or anyone else be able to say the hottest year on record in their great nation was 1998. Looking at the new top 10, it's hard to see any signs of global warming. The ranking, starting from the hottest year, goes: 1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938, 1939. It's a sad thought, but maybe we and our weather are not as unusual as some want to believe.
Source
Leftist fantasies about Australian blacks finally slide into irrelevance
By Christopher Pearson
LAST year, some of The Australian's commentators contributed essays to a book called The Howard Factor, published by Melbourne University Press. I wrote a piece on the culture wars. Its main focus was on the ways John Howard's opponents have - with varying degrees of success - deployed the zeitgeist and its values against him and how he, in turn, has defied, neutralised or harnessed the spirit of the age to his own advantage and, in doing so, helped to change it.
The spirit of the age is fickle and ever-changing. How politicians manage to position themselves in relation to it and contribute to the dynamics by which it changes are not simple matters. But it seems to me that one of the most useful markers in the ebb and flow of Australian politics is the contest for the high moral ground on Aboriginal policy. In the book, I argued that the Hindmarsh Island affair had been a significant paradigm shift. Labor, under the leadership of Paul Keating, had committed itself to a brand of symbolic politics: backing without question a sacred site claim based on "secret women's business" that couldn't be divulged to any man. The Coalition realised the claim was not based on any ancient tradition and, as the Stevens royal commission in due course found, had been fabricated for political convenience in the mid-1990s.
The ACTU, the ABC, the Fairfax press, the Australian Council of Churches, the minor parties and the conservation movement all strenuously asserted the unquestionable validity of the claim, at vast but largely unconsidered risk to their own reputations. Then four female elders of the Ngarrinjeri tribe came forward to support the anthropological record, denying the claim's authenticity and testifying that the story had originally come from a group of men, some of them white.
It was immediately apparent that the high moral ground belonged to the dissident women and that the claim's supporters, long accustomed to hegemony on indigenous issues, had forfeited it. This only made them shriller as they went into a protracted state of denial, while public opinion turned against a government reckless enough to accept on trust an obviously problematic claim that couldn't, viewed on its own terms, be properly tested or falsified.
There is a perennial tendency for suburban Australia at large - and the soft Left in particular - to romanticise Aborigines and their cultures. Many of the same people also tend to pride themselves on being pragmatic and sceptical and to resent any perceived attempt to trespass on their good nature or dupe them. During the Hindmarsh Island saga, the claim's supporters continually insisted that Aboriginal people would never lie about sacred traditions and for anyone to say otherwise was racist and an assault on indigenous culture. Because in this instance the accusations of racism and cultural insensitivity were rhetorical strategies for evading the crux of the matter - a fabricated claim - the charges suddenly lost a lot of the force with which the zeitgeist had previously invested them.
Two other Aboriginal issues, the report into the so-called stolen generations and the Peter Gunner and Lorna Cubillo case, characterised the changed landscape of the Howard ascendancy. The report was an exercise in advocacy research, designed to create a climate in which a large class of claimants could expect automatic compensation for having been removed from the care of their mothers by the state. It didn't clarify the various categories of removal, from benign welfare intervention at one extreme to draconian enforcement of assimilation policy at the other, and most of the evidence it gathered was untested and anecdotal.
None of these flaws might have proved fatal had it not been for its authors' ill-considered use of the term genocide. Perhaps every generation is susceptible to being flattered into imagining that it is more enlightened than its forebears. But most of us are also level-headed enough to know that we aren't the repositories of all wisdom and can remember enough about our grandparents and their cohort to know that they weren't monsters. The invitation to agree that policies in force as recently as the early '60s could reasonably be described as genocidal was a counterproductive affront to the common sense of the general public, and was widely resented as such.
Having lost the battle in the court of public opinion, the white activists espousing compensation for separated children proceeded in slow motion to lose the two court battles that were meant to be test cases. Normally, such cases would be chosen on the basis that they exemplified the problems associated with child removal and the justice of claims on the state to compensate victims of bad public policy. The Gunner-Cubillo case didn't succeed. Few observers expected it to do so because both instances were easily justified as welfare interventions and there was clear evidence that Gunner's mother had consented to his removal.
By way of an overview, what was happening in Aboriginal policy debate was that there was an increasing disparity between the grand narratives put forward to embody the old rights, reconciliation and self-determination agenda on the one hand and, on the other, the facts in the actual cases. There had always been gaps between the rhetoric and the reality, but they grew to the point where the oratory was no longer sustainable.
Not surprisingly, the first people to understand that dilemma were the younger Aboriginal activists who intuited that, while some people would accept at face value almost anything they were told, rhetorical incoherence was a disaster when it came to persuading middle Australia. Noel Pearson and Warren Mundine in particular saw that a conservative critique of passive welfare and the rights agenda, which focused instead on individual and collective responsibilities, was long overdue, as well as a way of regaining the attention of a federal government and an electorate that were increasingly sceptical and conservative in their thinking.
Although Pearson and Mundine are in some sense men of the Left and Mundine is a former national president of the ALP, both have recognised the damaging consequences of the Left's capture of indigenous issues. They see land rights as important, but want individuals as well as collectivities to hold title to land. They want their people to participate in the real economy and children to get a regular education, neither of which are high on the Left's wish list. Their most urgent priority is effective intervention in those dysfunctional communities where normlessness, violence and the rivers of grog hold sway. The emphasis has moved from self-determination to revisiting the fundamentals of self-control and adult responsibility.
Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott, a long-time supporter of Pearson's work on the ground in Cape York, began a rhetorical bridge-building exercise by calling for "a new paternalism" that addressed problems such as the epidemic of physical violence and sexual abuse involving Aboriginal children. Although commentators on the Left were predictably dismissive, Pearson responded by saying he had no doubt that the terrified kids, huddling in corridors during all-night binge-drinking parties and then too tired to attend school, were entitled to a little more paternalism in their lives.
Two months ago, the federal Government finally lost all patience with Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin's dilatory response to the Little Children are Sacred report and decided to implement a planned intervention in the NT that had been under longstanding consideration. The passage of 500 pages of legislation through the House of Representatives in a day, with barely a dissenting murmur from the political class, shows how comprehensively the zeitgeist has changed.
Pivotal to the passing of the bills were the cumulative effect of Pearson's columns in Inquirer and Mundine's last-minute interventions to stare down a number of Aboriginal spokesmen and the Left of the ALP. Mundine noted, on the eve of the debate, that "many of today's outspoken indigenous leaders had held positions of responsibility while widespread child abuse was taking place and the first task of leadership was to accept responsibility". He also said that he was disgusted by those who described the Government's intervention as an invasion and called on Labor's Left to get real and support the plan. "Some people are caught up in the politics of the past. Everything we've done in the past hasn't worked. I like the intervention because we are putting people's power bases aside and ensuring infrastructure is going in there. We need to ensure these communities are functioning. There's nothing human rights about living in poverty."
Source
Drugs for sadness?
Doctors were too often mistaking common blue moods in their patients for clinical depression and prescribing drugs for normal emotions, a leading Sydney psychiatrist has said. Professor Gordon Parker, the executive director of the Black Dog Institute, wrote in the British medical journal BMJ that the threshold for diagnosing clinical depression had become too low and the definition too broad.
"It's normal for human beings to be depressed," Professor Parker told the Herald yesterday. "Normal depression to my mind means you certainly feel depressed and you feel deflated and you're pessimistic and your self-esteem drops but it's a transient state. After a few minutes, hours, a couple of days, you bounce back."
He said that over the past 20 years diagnostic models had taken "an extreme position" and ran the risk of treating normal emotional states as an illness. "There's been a blurring of clinical depression into normal depression and the consequence of that has been to strain credibility and for many people to have been delivered a bouncing cheque [when drugs do not work]," he said. "There's often an automatic reaching for the prescription pad. People are not looking at the cause." He said the prevalence of depression had increased mostly due to "the incredible broadening of its definition". It was also due to destigmatisation and, to a lesser extent, an actual increase in disorders, he said.
At the opposite end of the debate, published in BMJ yesterday, Professor Ian Hickie, the executive director of the University of Sydney's Brain and Mind Research Institute, said that it was wrong to say depression was being overdiagnosed. Professor Hickie said there was also no evidence of overprescribing. He also said that a study conducted in 27 countries 2003, published in BMJ, showed an increase in the use of antidepressants had led to a decline in suicides. "The answer is do the body count ." he said "In order to save lives you have to treat the mild and moderate cases." He said "the continual demonising of the medicines just plays into the stigma" of mental illness.
"I think it's time the specialists got over it and we got on with the public health issue of identifying those who are likely to benefit and make the wide range of treatments, medication and psychological treatments available," he said. "We're still providing so little treatment to those whose lives are at risk that we hardly need to concern ourselves with overtreatment." Treatment for depression has become more widespread since the early 1990s with the advent of drugs such as Prozac.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare says one in five Australians will experience a mental illness. It estimates that there were 10.2 million general practitioner encounters involving mental health-related problems in 2003-04, more than a third of which were about depression.
Source
Australian patients going private in emergency
MORE patients are turning to private hospitals for emergency treatment as pressure on public hospitals mounts and queues to see GPs lengthen. Although there are only a handful of private hospitals in each state with emergency departments -- which usually charge between $150 and $200 per visit -- many say they are busier than ever, with patient numbers rising 10 per cent or more in the past three years. In one case, numbers rose by nearly 30 per cent in five years. The increases are evident in the "graveyard shift" from 10pm to 6am, when many better-off patients are willing to pay extra to avoid having to wait for hours in a public emergency department while staff attend to more urgent cases.
The Howard Government's report on public hospitals, published last month, found patient numbers at public emergency departments were soaring. The percentage of patients seen within recommended times fell in five of the eight jurisdictions. At the same time, GPs are abandoning after-hours services, with more than half referring patients to a deputising service or emergency departments. Although 24-hour GP clinics were common 10 years ago, a clampdown in the late 1990s on the Medicare rebates they could charge reduced profitability, and many folded or cut their hours.
Andrew Singer, president of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, said the increase in private emergency patients was caused by the combination of difficult access to after-hours GP services and the problems people experienced when they attended public emergency departments. "In the main, private hospitals provide a pretty good service -- there's usually a lot less waiting, and you usually get a reasonably experienced doctor, if not a specialist-level doctor," Dr Singer said. "Patients tend to prefer it, if they can afford it. "I know people who work in private emergency departments, and a lot of them think things are getting busier these days," he said. "The reality is that all EDs are getting busier."
A spokeswoman for Brisbane's Greenslopes Private Hospital -- the biggest private hospital in the nation, with 580 beds -- said its emergency attendances had risen 10 per cent in 2004-05 on the previous year. They rose a further 8 per cent in 2005-06, and a further 5 per cent in 2006-07. The spokeswoman said the latest increase would have been even higher had the figure not been artificially lowered by a change in the contracting arrangements for military veterans, which meant fewer received free treatment at the hospital.
A spokeswoman for Melbourne's 530-bed Epworth Hospital said it was "certainly seeing more patients", and that annual numbers had jumped from about 22,000 in 2002 to about 29,000 this year. And patient numbers at the emergency departments of the John Flynn Private Hospital on the Queensland Gold Coast and the Hobart Private Hospital have risen by about 10 per cent in the past three years. Numbers at Perth's St John of God, Murdoch Hospital have risen by more than 20 per cent, from 20,540 in 2004-05 to 24,898 in 2006-07, although numbers at its sister hospital in Ballarat, Victoris, have climbed only slightly.
Leon Clark, chief executive of the 452-bed Sydney Adventist Hospital on Sydney's upper north shore, said although numbers of emergency patients had remained stable over the past three years at about 20,000 patients annually, the doctors were much busier because patients coming in had more complex care needs. "Our staff are much busier than they were three years ago because of the increased complexity," Dr Clark said.
Source
Australian columnist Michael Duffy, writing in the mass-circulation Sydney Morning Herald, reports on the recent NASA correction of their global warming figures. Duffy goes on in the excerpt below to note the really big emerging issue in the matter -- the dubious accuracy of the basic data. So Australians at least have the latest available info in their papers. Mainstream papers in Britain and the USA have now reported the NASA backdown but accompanied it with heavy spin about the changes being unimportant. They did not however mention the matters Duffy mentions below, as far as I saw
Strange as it might seem in a scientific field that spends some $6.4 billion a year on often abstruse research and computer modelling, the integrity of the basic temperature data is emerging as a serious problem. The Goddard Institute claims to correct data from poorly sited stations, but McIntyre says it refused to tell him how it does this in sufficient detail for him to check its results. When he obtained some of the raw data from specific sites and compared it with the processed temperatures created by the institute, he found problems. In one case data from a good site, at the Grand Canyon, had been changed to make the 1930s colder than they were.
Across the Atlantic, the British mathematician Douglas Keenan has claimed that two important academic papers on the reliability of Chinese weather stations are wrong. This is a major issue because one of the papers is cited by the IPCC to support its position that measurement errors owing to urbanisation and the "heat island effect" - which makes cities warmer than their surroundings - are insignificant. Keenan claims to have discovered that some of the Chinese stations have been moved a lot. One, for example, had five different locations from 1954 to 1983, over a distance of 41 kilometres. This makes the data largely useless.
It took several years to gain access to the information needed to reveal this fault with the papers, because the academics involved refused to release it. Keenan finally obtained it by the creative means of using Britain's Freedom of Information Act, on the grounds that an academic who had the information was a public servant.
The climate change establishment is represented by the website realclimate.org. Its response to McIntyre's success in getting the Goddard Institute to reduce US temperature figures for the period since 2000 has been to say that the implication for global averages is imperceptible, since the US is only a very small fraction of the global area. Strictly speaking this is correct, although America's figures are more important than its land area might indicate because they go back so far in an unbroken line, which is fairly unusual.
Since the break-up of the USSR, the number of weather stations in the world has declined by half. Many of them used to be in cold areas. The scientists who compile global averages presumably try to take this into account - although in light of some of the above stories you have to wonder just how well they succeed.
Whatever the scientific implications of McIntyre's revelation, the rhetorical one is huge. America is the centre of the global debate on climate change. No longer will Americans or anyone else be able to say the hottest year on record in their great nation was 1998. Looking at the new top 10, it's hard to see any signs of global warming. The ranking, starting from the hottest year, goes: 1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938, 1939. It's a sad thought, but maybe we and our weather are not as unusual as some want to believe.
Source
Leftist fantasies about Australian blacks finally slide into irrelevance
By Christopher Pearson
LAST year, some of The Australian's commentators contributed essays to a book called The Howard Factor, published by Melbourne University Press. I wrote a piece on the culture wars. Its main focus was on the ways John Howard's opponents have - with varying degrees of success - deployed the zeitgeist and its values against him and how he, in turn, has defied, neutralised or harnessed the spirit of the age to his own advantage and, in doing so, helped to change it.
The spirit of the age is fickle and ever-changing. How politicians manage to position themselves in relation to it and contribute to the dynamics by which it changes are not simple matters. But it seems to me that one of the most useful markers in the ebb and flow of Australian politics is the contest for the high moral ground on Aboriginal policy. In the book, I argued that the Hindmarsh Island affair had been a significant paradigm shift. Labor, under the leadership of Paul Keating, had committed itself to a brand of symbolic politics: backing without question a sacred site claim based on "secret women's business" that couldn't be divulged to any man. The Coalition realised the claim was not based on any ancient tradition and, as the Stevens royal commission in due course found, had been fabricated for political convenience in the mid-1990s.
The ACTU, the ABC, the Fairfax press, the Australian Council of Churches, the minor parties and the conservation movement all strenuously asserted the unquestionable validity of the claim, at vast but largely unconsidered risk to their own reputations. Then four female elders of the Ngarrinjeri tribe came forward to support the anthropological record, denying the claim's authenticity and testifying that the story had originally come from a group of men, some of them white.
It was immediately apparent that the high moral ground belonged to the dissident women and that the claim's supporters, long accustomed to hegemony on indigenous issues, had forfeited it. This only made them shriller as they went into a protracted state of denial, while public opinion turned against a government reckless enough to accept on trust an obviously problematic claim that couldn't, viewed on its own terms, be properly tested or falsified.
There is a perennial tendency for suburban Australia at large - and the soft Left in particular - to romanticise Aborigines and their cultures. Many of the same people also tend to pride themselves on being pragmatic and sceptical and to resent any perceived attempt to trespass on their good nature or dupe them. During the Hindmarsh Island saga, the claim's supporters continually insisted that Aboriginal people would never lie about sacred traditions and for anyone to say otherwise was racist and an assault on indigenous culture. Because in this instance the accusations of racism and cultural insensitivity were rhetorical strategies for evading the crux of the matter - a fabricated claim - the charges suddenly lost a lot of the force with which the zeitgeist had previously invested them.
Two other Aboriginal issues, the report into the so-called stolen generations and the Peter Gunner and Lorna Cubillo case, characterised the changed landscape of the Howard ascendancy. The report was an exercise in advocacy research, designed to create a climate in which a large class of claimants could expect automatic compensation for having been removed from the care of their mothers by the state. It didn't clarify the various categories of removal, from benign welfare intervention at one extreme to draconian enforcement of assimilation policy at the other, and most of the evidence it gathered was untested and anecdotal.
None of these flaws might have proved fatal had it not been for its authors' ill-considered use of the term genocide. Perhaps every generation is susceptible to being flattered into imagining that it is more enlightened than its forebears. But most of us are also level-headed enough to know that we aren't the repositories of all wisdom and can remember enough about our grandparents and their cohort to know that they weren't monsters. The invitation to agree that policies in force as recently as the early '60s could reasonably be described as genocidal was a counterproductive affront to the common sense of the general public, and was widely resented as such.
Having lost the battle in the court of public opinion, the white activists espousing compensation for separated children proceeded in slow motion to lose the two court battles that were meant to be test cases. Normally, such cases would be chosen on the basis that they exemplified the problems associated with child removal and the justice of claims on the state to compensate victims of bad public policy. The Gunner-Cubillo case didn't succeed. Few observers expected it to do so because both instances were easily justified as welfare interventions and there was clear evidence that Gunner's mother had consented to his removal.
By way of an overview, what was happening in Aboriginal policy debate was that there was an increasing disparity between the grand narratives put forward to embody the old rights, reconciliation and self-determination agenda on the one hand and, on the other, the facts in the actual cases. There had always been gaps between the rhetoric and the reality, but they grew to the point where the oratory was no longer sustainable.
Not surprisingly, the first people to understand that dilemma were the younger Aboriginal activists who intuited that, while some people would accept at face value almost anything they were told, rhetorical incoherence was a disaster when it came to persuading middle Australia. Noel Pearson and Warren Mundine in particular saw that a conservative critique of passive welfare and the rights agenda, which focused instead on individual and collective responsibilities, was long overdue, as well as a way of regaining the attention of a federal government and an electorate that were increasingly sceptical and conservative in their thinking.
Although Pearson and Mundine are in some sense men of the Left and Mundine is a former national president of the ALP, both have recognised the damaging consequences of the Left's capture of indigenous issues. They see land rights as important, but want individuals as well as collectivities to hold title to land. They want their people to participate in the real economy and children to get a regular education, neither of which are high on the Left's wish list. Their most urgent priority is effective intervention in those dysfunctional communities where normlessness, violence and the rivers of grog hold sway. The emphasis has moved from self-determination to revisiting the fundamentals of self-control and adult responsibility.
Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott, a long-time supporter of Pearson's work on the ground in Cape York, began a rhetorical bridge-building exercise by calling for "a new paternalism" that addressed problems such as the epidemic of physical violence and sexual abuse involving Aboriginal children. Although commentators on the Left were predictably dismissive, Pearson responded by saying he had no doubt that the terrified kids, huddling in corridors during all-night binge-drinking parties and then too tired to attend school, were entitled to a little more paternalism in their lives.
Two months ago, the federal Government finally lost all patience with Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin's dilatory response to the Little Children are Sacred report and decided to implement a planned intervention in the NT that had been under longstanding consideration. The passage of 500 pages of legislation through the House of Representatives in a day, with barely a dissenting murmur from the political class, shows how comprehensively the zeitgeist has changed.
Pivotal to the passing of the bills were the cumulative effect of Pearson's columns in Inquirer and Mundine's last-minute interventions to stare down a number of Aboriginal spokesmen and the Left of the ALP. Mundine noted, on the eve of the debate, that "many of today's outspoken indigenous leaders had held positions of responsibility while widespread child abuse was taking place and the first task of leadership was to accept responsibility". He also said that he was disgusted by those who described the Government's intervention as an invasion and called on Labor's Left to get real and support the plan. "Some people are caught up in the politics of the past. Everything we've done in the past hasn't worked. I like the intervention because we are putting people's power bases aside and ensuring infrastructure is going in there. We need to ensure these communities are functioning. There's nothing human rights about living in poverty."
Source
Drugs for sadness?
Doctors were too often mistaking common blue moods in their patients for clinical depression and prescribing drugs for normal emotions, a leading Sydney psychiatrist has said. Professor Gordon Parker, the executive director of the Black Dog Institute, wrote in the British medical journal BMJ that the threshold for diagnosing clinical depression had become too low and the definition too broad.
"It's normal for human beings to be depressed," Professor Parker told the Herald yesterday. "Normal depression to my mind means you certainly feel depressed and you feel deflated and you're pessimistic and your self-esteem drops but it's a transient state. After a few minutes, hours, a couple of days, you bounce back."
He said that over the past 20 years diagnostic models had taken "an extreme position" and ran the risk of treating normal emotional states as an illness. "There's been a blurring of clinical depression into normal depression and the consequence of that has been to strain credibility and for many people to have been delivered a bouncing cheque [when drugs do not work]," he said. "There's often an automatic reaching for the prescription pad. People are not looking at the cause." He said the prevalence of depression had increased mostly due to "the incredible broadening of its definition". It was also due to destigmatisation and, to a lesser extent, an actual increase in disorders, he said.
At the opposite end of the debate, published in BMJ yesterday, Professor Ian Hickie, the executive director of the University of Sydney's Brain and Mind Research Institute, said that it was wrong to say depression was being overdiagnosed. Professor Hickie said there was also no evidence of overprescribing. He also said that a study conducted in 27 countries 2003, published in BMJ, showed an increase in the use of antidepressants had led to a decline in suicides. "The answer is do the body count ." he said "In order to save lives you have to treat the mild and moderate cases." He said "the continual demonising of the medicines just plays into the stigma" of mental illness.
"I think it's time the specialists got over it and we got on with the public health issue of identifying those who are likely to benefit and make the wide range of treatments, medication and psychological treatments available," he said. "We're still providing so little treatment to those whose lives are at risk that we hardly need to concern ourselves with overtreatment." Treatment for depression has become more widespread since the early 1990s with the advent of drugs such as Prozac.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare says one in five Australians will experience a mental illness. It estimates that there were 10.2 million general practitioner encounters involving mental health-related problems in 2003-04, more than a third of which were about depression.
Source
Australian patients going private in emergency
MORE patients are turning to private hospitals for emergency treatment as pressure on public hospitals mounts and queues to see GPs lengthen. Although there are only a handful of private hospitals in each state with emergency departments -- which usually charge between $150 and $200 per visit -- many say they are busier than ever, with patient numbers rising 10 per cent or more in the past three years. In one case, numbers rose by nearly 30 per cent in five years. The increases are evident in the "graveyard shift" from 10pm to 6am, when many better-off patients are willing to pay extra to avoid having to wait for hours in a public emergency department while staff attend to more urgent cases.
The Howard Government's report on public hospitals, published last month, found patient numbers at public emergency departments were soaring. The percentage of patients seen within recommended times fell in five of the eight jurisdictions. At the same time, GPs are abandoning after-hours services, with more than half referring patients to a deputising service or emergency departments. Although 24-hour GP clinics were common 10 years ago, a clampdown in the late 1990s on the Medicare rebates they could charge reduced profitability, and many folded or cut their hours.
Andrew Singer, president of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, said the increase in private emergency patients was caused by the combination of difficult access to after-hours GP services and the problems people experienced when they attended public emergency departments. "In the main, private hospitals provide a pretty good service -- there's usually a lot less waiting, and you usually get a reasonably experienced doctor, if not a specialist-level doctor," Dr Singer said. "Patients tend to prefer it, if they can afford it. "I know people who work in private emergency departments, and a lot of them think things are getting busier these days," he said. "The reality is that all EDs are getting busier."
A spokeswoman for Brisbane's Greenslopes Private Hospital -- the biggest private hospital in the nation, with 580 beds -- said its emergency attendances had risen 10 per cent in 2004-05 on the previous year. They rose a further 8 per cent in 2005-06, and a further 5 per cent in 2006-07. The spokeswoman said the latest increase would have been even higher had the figure not been artificially lowered by a change in the contracting arrangements for military veterans, which meant fewer received free treatment at the hospital.
A spokeswoman for Melbourne's 530-bed Epworth Hospital said it was "certainly seeing more patients", and that annual numbers had jumped from about 22,000 in 2002 to about 29,000 this year. And patient numbers at the emergency departments of the John Flynn Private Hospital on the Queensland Gold Coast and the Hobart Private Hospital have risen by about 10 per cent in the past three years. Numbers at Perth's St John of God, Murdoch Hospital have risen by more than 20 per cent, from 20,540 in 2004-05 to 24,898 in 2006-07, although numbers at its sister hospital in Ballarat, Victoris, have climbed only slightly.
Leon Clark, chief executive of the 452-bed Sydney Adventist Hospital on Sydney's upper north shore, said although numbers of emergency patients had remained stable over the past three years at about 20,000 patients annually, the doctors were much busier because patients coming in had more complex care needs. "Our staff are much busier than they were three years ago because of the increased complexity," Dr Clark said.
Source
Sunday, August 19, 2007
African refugee numbers slashed for Iraqi intake
Hallelujah! The do-gooding Australian Feds created a previously unknown problem in Australia by allowing large numbers of unassimilable African refugees in over recent years, many of whom are Muslims. It now seems that the Feds have finally woken up to some extent. There is of course a great veil of silence over the high rate of crime and welfare dependancy among Africans (Americans will recognize the pattern) but official admissions do sometimes leak out. And Christians from Arab lands are certainly a most endangered and most deserving group with every prospect of assimilating successfully. Lebanese Christians have a long history of prospering in Australia. It is a credit to Australia that it has moved to the forefront in rescuing the Arab Christians
THE Federal Government will dramatically cut its intake of refugees from Africa, while lifting the number of refugees from the Middle East, including large numbers of Christian Iraqis. Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews yesterday announced the Refugee and Humanitarian Intake for 2007-08. It will cut the number of immigrants from Africa by 30 per cent. Only a few years ago Africa accounted for up to 70 per cent of the entire humanitarian program. But integrating African refugees, particularly from war-ravaged Sudan, has been very expensive. It is believed the Government is hoping to help consolidate the African communities and families who are already here.
"The intake from the Africa region reflects an improvement in conditions in some countries and an increase in the number of people returning to their country of origin," Mr Andrews said. The overall number of refugee places will remain stable at 13,000. But the intake from the Middle East and Asia will increase to about 35 per cent each.
Mr Andrews said the increased intake of Iraqis who had fled their country follows an international conference on Iraq convened by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in April. The conference discussed the plight of refugees from Iraq, many Christian.
The most recent Budget saw an additional $209 million over four years allocated to helping refugees settle into Australian life. Mr Andrews said the increased intake from Asia was largely because of resettlement programs for Burmese refugees in Thailand and Bhutanese refugees in Nepal.
Source
Australia relaxes its immigration rules to persuade skilled young Britons to emigrate
Australia is making sweeping changes to its immigration policy in an attempt to attract skilled British workers to move Down Under. The changes - which will target workers in the medical profession, the IT sector and tradesmen and women - will result in the country's points-based immigration system being adapted to make it easier for fluent English-speaking professionals between the ages of 30 and 35 to gain work visas.
Under Australia's Skilled Migration Programme, points are awarded to potential immigrants according to their age, ability to speak languages, occupation, skills and experience. Immigrants who gain a total of 120 points are automatically fast-tracked through the migration process. Previously, however, British professionals aged 30-35 often struggled to gain work visas, losing out on precious points because to their age. Under the new scheme, five extra points will be automatically awarded to anyone who passes an "optional standardised English-language test", making it simpler for English speakers to achieve a perfect score. The new recruitment drive is reminiscent of the country's "Ten Pound Poms" scheme, when British migrants paid a mere œ10 fare to move to Australia to plug gaps in the economy in the 1950s and 1960s. The programme prompted about one million Britons to up sticks and head for a place of work in the sun.
Then, as now, the problem was an acute shortage of skilled labour. Australia has huge gaps in an economy which continues to grow and the government is looking for more immigrants than ever before. It has already increased targets for this year - 102,500 new residents, from its original target of 97,000.
Chris Cook, spokesman for the Australian Visa Bureau, said: "The implications of these changes are vast. The Australian government realises it is lacking workers in many professions which it desperately needs to fill, so the country is throwing its doors open to huge numbers of skilled and experienced British people and making it easier for them to meet the minimum eligibility requirements."
Professionals who are being sought by the Australian government include doctors, teachers, accountants, plumbers, nurses, carpenters, dentists and IT managers. The country's weekly list of migration occupations in demand currently includes 38 managerial and professional jobs, one associate professional position, 10 posts in computing and 46 positions in trades. Australia's capital, Canberra, is experiencing a record-breaking boom in its construction industry, but local unemployment is the lowest in the country meaning that there is a mass shortage of skilled builders.
Between July 2001 and 2002, the total number of Britons who settled in Australia was 8,749. By last year, of the 150,000 foreigners who were granted permanent visas to live in Australia, 24,800 were British, followed by 15,865 Indian nationals and 14,688 Chinese. Two-thirds of the total were skilled migrants. The majority of migrants last year listed their occupations as accountants, computing professionals and registered nurses. Their average age was 31.
Source
"Wogs" OK in Australia
We read:
Senator Brandis is probably best known for pointing out how similar Greenie policies are to the policies of Hitler. See also here on that.
Historically, the term "wog" was applied to poor immigrants from Southern Europe but people from Southern Europe are now so prosperous and well assimilated into the general Australian society that they actually run the parliament of Australia's most populous State (NSW). And some Australians of Southern European origin do now cheerfully describe themselves as "wogs".
All of which goes to show that for an ethnic description to be derogatory and offensive, there has to be some adverse reality behind it. If there is in fact nothing inferior or discreditable about the group concerned, words describing that group ("Redneck" is a good U.S. example) will have little power to offend.
Australian Federal Parliamentary report derides 'Global Warming'
There has been quite a media blackout on this so I am pleased to have finally found a lead-in to the report
The Australian Federal Parliament's Standing Committee on Science and Innovation recently completed a report entitled Between a Rock and a Hard Place, on the subject of "Geosequestration of Carbon Dioxide". However, four members of that committee have issued a "Dissenting Report" which devastates the Committee's major premise-that mankind causes global warming.
The dissenting MPs are former CSIRO scientist Dr. Dennis Jensen, Hon Jackie Kelly, Hon Danna Vale and Mr. David Tollner. Their report was compiled with the assistance of a number of leading scientists, including climate scientist Dr. John Christy, former lead author of the IPCC. It is a must read for anyone concerned with the subject.
They state at the very outset that, "We disagree with the report's unequivocal support for the hypothesis that global warming is caused by man-so-called anthropogenic global warming (AGW). We are concerned that the Committee's report strays well outside its terms of reference. In fact, the committee did not take any evidence relating to anthropogenic global warming."
Some of the chief points of their refutation include:
* Global warming is observed on other planets or moons, including Mars, Jupiter, Triton, Pluto, Neptune and others. Did man cause this?
* That the so-called "overwhelming consensus" embodied in the IPCC report has nothing to do with science, nor does such a consensus even exist. It is in fact drawn from its "Summary for Policymakers" which was written by politicians, not by scientists, and its supposed "90% certainty" is backed up by nothing in the report, but is merely a "consensus opinion arrived at by IPCC bureaucrats"; and, in any case, so-called "democratic consensus" is entirely opposed to scientific method. "Consensus", for instance, once held that the earth was at the centre of the universe, and that it was flat.
* That the "Stern Review" upon which the Committee based its majority report, was drafted by a man who "acknowledges that he had zero understanding of the issue less than one year before the Stern Review . It is staggering that someone with essentially no scientific knowledge on greenhouse effect, within less than one year, had acquired the scientific knowledge to state that the 'scientific evidence is now overwhelming'."
"Indeed, if one paragraph clearly illustrates the one sided nature of this report," the dissenters say, "it is paragraph 5.59. Here, we have a captain of industry (Rupert Murdoch), who, by his own admission is not a scientist, quoted regarding his view on anthropogenic global warming and the need to take action", citing Murdoch's claims that "climate change poses clear catastrophic threats."
There is much more, on glaciers, rising sea levels, Australia's rainfall patterns, etc., and the report is extensively footnoted. It may be accessed here
Source
Ambulance men being used instead of doctors in New South Wales
Another government health system downgrading its services because it cannot provide enough doctors and hospital beds
AMBULANCE officers will be trained to treat non-critical patients and take them to GPs or non-hospital services under a controversial plan. The shake-up of health care roles, kept secret by the NSW Health Department, is aimed at easing the workload of hospital emergency departments. It is part of a growing trend to generalise health care, as seen in the creation of practitioner nurses, community health and hospital-in-home teams.
A draft Ambulance Service of NSW document, obtained by the Herald, said ambulance officers could "safely assess and manage certain conditions in the home without the need to convey patients to hospital for care". Like regular ambulance officers, extended-care paramedics would respond to emergency calls and treat critical patients. However, they would also be required to administer simple drugs such as antibiotics and arrange x-rays and other diagnostic tests as well as make direct patient referrals to GPs and community nurses. "It is becoming increasingly recognised that the emergency department may not necessarily be the most appropriate . destination for the patient to have their health care needs met. However, [it] is often the only current option provided," the draft said.
But emergency experts say the plan is a stop-gap measure in a failing health system, while GPs are concerned the plan may add more pressure to practices.
Extended-care paramedics will be chosen from the ranks of the NSW Ambulance Service and undergo eight weeks of training. Program trials are due to start next month and will involve 12 ambulance officers from western Sydney, where attendance at emergency departments rose more than 9 per cent last year. About 20 per cent of NSW emergency calls attended by ambulances do not result in the patient being taken to hospital, according to the draft proof of the concept document.
Modern ambulance services were facing challenges which included an ageing population, the rise of chronic disease, unpredictable delays at hospital emergency departments and increased demand due to the reduced availability of after-hours GPs, the draft document said. Dr Tony Joseph, chairman of the NSW faculty of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, said the new system could put pressure on paramedics to keep patients at home or refer them to non-acute care instead taking them to hospital. "If you delay someone going to hospital who needs to go, when they do eventually get admitted . they are often sicker, they stay longer in hospital and there will be increased cost to the community," Dr Joseph said. "If we are going to do it right, do it the first time."
Dr Joseph said the program appeared to be another "stop-gap measure for a failing health system". The chief executive of the Nepean Division of General Practice, Michael Edwards, said the plan would "extend an already over-extended workload" for GPs.
Source
Hallelujah! The do-gooding Australian Feds created a previously unknown problem in Australia by allowing large numbers of unassimilable African refugees in over recent years, many of whom are Muslims. It now seems that the Feds have finally woken up to some extent. There is of course a great veil of silence over the high rate of crime and welfare dependancy among Africans (Americans will recognize the pattern) but official admissions do sometimes leak out. And Christians from Arab lands are certainly a most endangered and most deserving group with every prospect of assimilating successfully. Lebanese Christians have a long history of prospering in Australia. It is a credit to Australia that it has moved to the forefront in rescuing the Arab Christians
THE Federal Government will dramatically cut its intake of refugees from Africa, while lifting the number of refugees from the Middle East, including large numbers of Christian Iraqis. Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews yesterday announced the Refugee and Humanitarian Intake for 2007-08. It will cut the number of immigrants from Africa by 30 per cent. Only a few years ago Africa accounted for up to 70 per cent of the entire humanitarian program. But integrating African refugees, particularly from war-ravaged Sudan, has been very expensive. It is believed the Government is hoping to help consolidate the African communities and families who are already here.
"The intake from the Africa region reflects an improvement in conditions in some countries and an increase in the number of people returning to their country of origin," Mr Andrews said. The overall number of refugee places will remain stable at 13,000. But the intake from the Middle East and Asia will increase to about 35 per cent each.
Mr Andrews said the increased intake of Iraqis who had fled their country follows an international conference on Iraq convened by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in April. The conference discussed the plight of refugees from Iraq, many Christian.
The most recent Budget saw an additional $209 million over four years allocated to helping refugees settle into Australian life. Mr Andrews said the increased intake from Asia was largely because of resettlement programs for Burmese refugees in Thailand and Bhutanese refugees in Nepal.
Source
Australia relaxes its immigration rules to persuade skilled young Britons to emigrate
Australia is making sweeping changes to its immigration policy in an attempt to attract skilled British workers to move Down Under. The changes - which will target workers in the medical profession, the IT sector and tradesmen and women - will result in the country's points-based immigration system being adapted to make it easier for fluent English-speaking professionals between the ages of 30 and 35 to gain work visas.
Under Australia's Skilled Migration Programme, points are awarded to potential immigrants according to their age, ability to speak languages, occupation, skills and experience. Immigrants who gain a total of 120 points are automatically fast-tracked through the migration process. Previously, however, British professionals aged 30-35 often struggled to gain work visas, losing out on precious points because to their age. Under the new scheme, five extra points will be automatically awarded to anyone who passes an "optional standardised English-language test", making it simpler for English speakers to achieve a perfect score. The new recruitment drive is reminiscent of the country's "Ten Pound Poms" scheme, when British migrants paid a mere œ10 fare to move to Australia to plug gaps in the economy in the 1950s and 1960s. The programme prompted about one million Britons to up sticks and head for a place of work in the sun.
Then, as now, the problem was an acute shortage of skilled labour. Australia has huge gaps in an economy which continues to grow and the government is looking for more immigrants than ever before. It has already increased targets for this year - 102,500 new residents, from its original target of 97,000.
Chris Cook, spokesman for the Australian Visa Bureau, said: "The implications of these changes are vast. The Australian government realises it is lacking workers in many professions which it desperately needs to fill, so the country is throwing its doors open to huge numbers of skilled and experienced British people and making it easier for them to meet the minimum eligibility requirements."
Professionals who are being sought by the Australian government include doctors, teachers, accountants, plumbers, nurses, carpenters, dentists and IT managers. The country's weekly list of migration occupations in demand currently includes 38 managerial and professional jobs, one associate professional position, 10 posts in computing and 46 positions in trades. Australia's capital, Canberra, is experiencing a record-breaking boom in its construction industry, but local unemployment is the lowest in the country meaning that there is a mass shortage of skilled builders.
Between July 2001 and 2002, the total number of Britons who settled in Australia was 8,749. By last year, of the 150,000 foreigners who were granted permanent visas to live in Australia, 24,800 were British, followed by 15,865 Indian nationals and 14,688 Chinese. Two-thirds of the total were skilled migrants. The majority of migrants last year listed their occupations as accountants, computing professionals and registered nurses. Their average age was 31.
Source
"Wogs" OK in Australia
We read:
"Australia becoming a country of wogs - and it is OK to say so. The federal Arts Minister, George Brandis, said yesterday that calling someone a "wog" is no longer considered offensive or racist because Australians are better at laughing at themselves. "It is a badge of arrival when a racial group can tell a joke against itself," he said.
But the Liberal MP Teresa Gambaro, the Assistant Minister for Immigration whose parents hail from the southern Italian region of Calabria, said using the word depended on the situation. "I wouldn't like a complete stranger to call me a wog. I think I'd be quite offended then."
Source
Senator Brandis is probably best known for pointing out how similar Greenie policies are to the policies of Hitler. See also here on that.
Historically, the term "wog" was applied to poor immigrants from Southern Europe but people from Southern Europe are now so prosperous and well assimilated into the general Australian society that they actually run the parliament of Australia's most populous State (NSW). And some Australians of Southern European origin do now cheerfully describe themselves as "wogs".
All of which goes to show that for an ethnic description to be derogatory and offensive, there has to be some adverse reality behind it. If there is in fact nothing inferior or discreditable about the group concerned, words describing that group ("Redneck" is a good U.S. example) will have little power to offend.
Australian Federal Parliamentary report derides 'Global Warming'
There has been quite a media blackout on this so I am pleased to have finally found a lead-in to the report
The Australian Federal Parliament's Standing Committee on Science and Innovation recently completed a report entitled Between a Rock and a Hard Place, on the subject of "Geosequestration of Carbon Dioxide". However, four members of that committee have issued a "Dissenting Report" which devastates the Committee's major premise-that mankind causes global warming.
The dissenting MPs are former CSIRO scientist Dr. Dennis Jensen, Hon Jackie Kelly, Hon Danna Vale and Mr. David Tollner. Their report was compiled with the assistance of a number of leading scientists, including climate scientist Dr. John Christy, former lead author of the IPCC. It is a must read for anyone concerned with the subject.
They state at the very outset that, "We disagree with the report's unequivocal support for the hypothesis that global warming is caused by man-so-called anthropogenic global warming (AGW). We are concerned that the Committee's report strays well outside its terms of reference. In fact, the committee did not take any evidence relating to anthropogenic global warming."
Some of the chief points of their refutation include:
* Global warming is observed on other planets or moons, including Mars, Jupiter, Triton, Pluto, Neptune and others. Did man cause this?
* That the so-called "overwhelming consensus" embodied in the IPCC report has nothing to do with science, nor does such a consensus even exist. It is in fact drawn from its "Summary for Policymakers" which was written by politicians, not by scientists, and its supposed "90% certainty" is backed up by nothing in the report, but is merely a "consensus opinion arrived at by IPCC bureaucrats"; and, in any case, so-called "democratic consensus" is entirely opposed to scientific method. "Consensus", for instance, once held that the earth was at the centre of the universe, and that it was flat.
* That the "Stern Review" upon which the Committee based its majority report, was drafted by a man who "acknowledges that he had zero understanding of the issue less than one year before the Stern Review . It is staggering that someone with essentially no scientific knowledge on greenhouse effect, within less than one year, had acquired the scientific knowledge to state that the 'scientific evidence is now overwhelming'."
"Indeed, if one paragraph clearly illustrates the one sided nature of this report," the dissenters say, "it is paragraph 5.59. Here, we have a captain of industry (Rupert Murdoch), who, by his own admission is not a scientist, quoted regarding his view on anthropogenic global warming and the need to take action", citing Murdoch's claims that "climate change poses clear catastrophic threats."
There is much more, on glaciers, rising sea levels, Australia's rainfall patterns, etc., and the report is extensively footnoted. It may be accessed here
Source
Ambulance men being used instead of doctors in New South Wales
Another government health system downgrading its services because it cannot provide enough doctors and hospital beds
AMBULANCE officers will be trained to treat non-critical patients and take them to GPs or non-hospital services under a controversial plan. The shake-up of health care roles, kept secret by the NSW Health Department, is aimed at easing the workload of hospital emergency departments. It is part of a growing trend to generalise health care, as seen in the creation of practitioner nurses, community health and hospital-in-home teams.
A draft Ambulance Service of NSW document, obtained by the Herald, said ambulance officers could "safely assess and manage certain conditions in the home without the need to convey patients to hospital for care". Like regular ambulance officers, extended-care paramedics would respond to emergency calls and treat critical patients. However, they would also be required to administer simple drugs such as antibiotics and arrange x-rays and other diagnostic tests as well as make direct patient referrals to GPs and community nurses. "It is becoming increasingly recognised that the emergency department may not necessarily be the most appropriate . destination for the patient to have their health care needs met. However, [it] is often the only current option provided," the draft said.
But emergency experts say the plan is a stop-gap measure in a failing health system, while GPs are concerned the plan may add more pressure to practices.
Extended-care paramedics will be chosen from the ranks of the NSW Ambulance Service and undergo eight weeks of training. Program trials are due to start next month and will involve 12 ambulance officers from western Sydney, where attendance at emergency departments rose more than 9 per cent last year. About 20 per cent of NSW emergency calls attended by ambulances do not result in the patient being taken to hospital, according to the draft proof of the concept document.
Modern ambulance services were facing challenges which included an ageing population, the rise of chronic disease, unpredictable delays at hospital emergency departments and increased demand due to the reduced availability of after-hours GPs, the draft document said. Dr Tony Joseph, chairman of the NSW faculty of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, said the new system could put pressure on paramedics to keep patients at home or refer them to non-acute care instead taking them to hospital. "If you delay someone going to hospital who needs to go, when they do eventually get admitted . they are often sicker, they stay longer in hospital and there will be increased cost to the community," Dr Joseph said. "If we are going to do it right, do it the first time."
Dr Joseph said the program appeared to be another "stop-gap measure for a failing health system". The chief executive of the Nepean Division of General Practice, Michael Edwards, said the plan would "extend an already over-extended workload" for GPs.
Source
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Labor plastic bag ban 'wacky'
A LABOR plan to ban plastic bags if it wins the election has been labelled "wacky" by the Government. Opposition environment spokesman Peter Garrett today told parliament a Labor government would deliver a "legislative ban, if necessary," on plastic bags. Mr Garrett criticised Assistant Environment Minister John Cobb for failing to tackle the problem. "The assistant minister has an extra five advisers ... you have to wonder what the assistant minister does," Mr Garrett said.
But the Government declared the proposal "wacky". Liberal backbencher Don Randall said the Government had done plenty. "We have had a very proactive campaign about not using plastic bags," Mr Randall told parliament. "The Opposition is duplicitous on this. How wacky, you want to ban plastic bags, he (Mr Garrett) is away with the birds again."
Source
$8m Navy flight deck useless
CHOPPERS have been banned from using an $8 million helicopter flight deck fitted to the the navy's biggest ship. The 37,000-tonne fleet oiler and replenishment ship HMAS Sirius, a converted Korean-built tanker, can carry more than 20,000 tonnes of fuel including volatile aviation fuel. The ship has a crew of 60 but in an emergency a helicopter would only be able to land and take off if the vessel was fully laden and in calm seas, with little or no wind. In any other conditions, it would be too dangerous to land on the ship.
The Sirius last year replaced HMAS Westralia as the navy's biggest replenishment ship. She was previously a Greek-owned double-skinned oil tanker named Delos. Bought for about $60 million, it underwent a $70 million refit by the ship builder Tenix. It included construction of a "helicopter landing facility" which was second on the list of five "important requirements" for the ship. "Desirable requirements", later dropped, included a helicopter hangar and maintenance facility. The navy also conducted trials to establish the feasibility of landing on the ship but detailed analysis has only just started.
According to Kim Gillis, the head of systems with the Defence Material Organisation, airflow analysis by Murdoch University revealed problems with helicopter operations even before the refit. Mr Gillis said if the vessel was unloaded or there was any movement, helicopters would be restricted to lowering cargo to the flight deck. Such operations are too risky above the forward part of the ship where the fuel is stored. Mr Gillis said plans to have a helicopter attached to the ship were never seriously considered. The landing deck was engineered to carry all Australian military helicopters except the twin-rotor Chinook. Early graphic images of the Sirius on Defence websites featured a Sea King helicopter parked on the landing deck.
Opposition defence spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon described the landing deck issue as an "incredible bungle". "Unfortunately, bungles such as this are typical of the Howard Government's record on Defence procurement, where lessons aren't learnt and the expensive mistakes just keep coming," he said
Source
Who cares about punctuation?
If punctuation guru Lynne Truss had intended to make the title of her new book ambiguous, then she has succeeded brilliantly. Forget Eats, Shoots and Leaves the surprising international bestseller. This time, Truss has lined up apostrophes for her special attention. The new book is titled The Girl's Like Spaghetti. This is confusing. What the book's title is intending to say is the girl is like spaghetti. It all comes down to the placement of an apostrophe. But for a child looking at the cover, which is pitched for junior primary aged children, they could be forgiven for thinking that The Girl owns something. The point illustrates the need for clarity with punctuation. More than this it is how it is taught that makes it meaningful.
While Truss may find apostrophes pesky little squiggly things, it seems that the apostrophe, like so much punctuation and grammar, is abused. A casual look around any city's signage will find apostrophes missing, floatingly homelessly over a word ending in "s" or placed incorrectly. Then again you'd have to know what is correct to notice.
Understanding apostrophes is just one of the skills in determining a literate child. Others include correct spelling, clear sentence construction and a full suite of punctuation marks. The reality is something very different. On recent state literacy testing, one in four Queensland children at Year 7 level failed the state benchmarks for agreed acceptable minimum literacy standards. Let's be absolutely clear here. The operative word is "minimum". Students who do not make the cut on Queensland's literacy tests are effectively illiterate. This is in no way acceptable.
This uncomfortable reality is one of the reasons why the Federal Government from 2008 will introduce national literacy and numeracy tests at Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Queensland parents need to know if their children compare favourably with children in the other states and territories. If they do not do so, then the reasons need to be understood and necessary action taken.
As uncomfortable as it may be for some, the literacy buck stops with teachers. Sure it is unhelpful if shops and advertising appropriate apostrophes, spelling and punctuation for effect. It is up to schools to correct it. On Queensland evidence, 25 per cent of Year 7 students are not performing at even a very basic literacy level. So who teaches them and how are they prepared?
When research was being undertaken into the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy in 2005, chairman Dr Ken Rowe found that many university students were receiving literacy instruction while they were learning how to be teachers. At the time, Rowe observed: "Many university faculties of education are running remedial English classes for their trainee teachers. Their basic grammar and spelling is that poor." Add to this that up to 30 per cent of students in schools were "simply not achieving to the extent they could or should", Rowe said.
The Queensland Government in the June state Budget promised $35.6 million over four years to improve literacy. That's a lot of apostrophes. Moreover, $10 million over four years has been set aside to meet the literacy and numeracy needs of indigenous students. But unless students can confidently understand how the English language works, apostrophes and all, then this will be money of limited impact. Already the school curriculum, particularly at primary level, is awash with socially based subjects masquerading as a rigorous curriculum. The result of schools looking at animal care, bike safety, dental hygiene and financial management, perhaps all good in themselves, is "literacy lite".
This is why the draft Primary School Charter, released earlier this month by the Australian Primary Principals Association, has recommended four core subjects are essential with art, sport, music and languages in a supplementary role. The core includes: English literacy, Maths and numeracy, Science and Australian history. This makes sense. By uncluttering the curriculum, more time can be given to the inculcation of basic skills in literacy and numeracy. A view expressed by APPA president Leonie Trimper, who has warned that currently, the curriculum is compromising the acquisition of core skills. "Primary schooling marks a cultural milestone in the lives of all young Australians so we must get it right. Children only get one chance to establish a solid foundation on which to build a future," Trimper said on release of the draft Charter.
While Lynne Truss has identified the need for a book about apostrophes, the pity is that it is needed at all. The aim should surely be that all Queensland children know how to spell, punctuate, read and write clearly - let alone amend a rogue apostrophe.
Source
Norf'k language may soon disappear
The unique language spoken by Norfolk Islanders has been recognised by a United Nations body for its distinctiveness. Norfolk Island Chief Minister Andre Nobbs said today the so-called Norf'k language had been included by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in the next edition of its Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger of Disappearing.
Inhabitants of the Australian territory have been seeking greater recognition of the language for many years. The language has survived from the days of the Bounty mutineers and their Tahitian companions. The mutineers' descendants became the first free settlers of Norfolk Island and their creole language has been kept alive to the present day.
Mr Nobbs said the island's government had made a submission to UNESCO, setting out the case for recognition and protection of the language. "The advice from UNESCO is a significant step in building recognition of the unique language and culture of Norfolk Island,'' he said.
Source
A LABOR plan to ban plastic bags if it wins the election has been labelled "wacky" by the Government. Opposition environment spokesman Peter Garrett today told parliament a Labor government would deliver a "legislative ban, if necessary," on plastic bags. Mr Garrett criticised Assistant Environment Minister John Cobb for failing to tackle the problem. "The assistant minister has an extra five advisers ... you have to wonder what the assistant minister does," Mr Garrett said.
But the Government declared the proposal "wacky". Liberal backbencher Don Randall said the Government had done plenty. "We have had a very proactive campaign about not using plastic bags," Mr Randall told parliament. "The Opposition is duplicitous on this. How wacky, you want to ban plastic bags, he (Mr Garrett) is away with the birds again."
Source
$8m Navy flight deck useless
CHOPPERS have been banned from using an $8 million helicopter flight deck fitted to the the navy's biggest ship. The 37,000-tonne fleet oiler and replenishment ship HMAS Sirius, a converted Korean-built tanker, can carry more than 20,000 tonnes of fuel including volatile aviation fuel. The ship has a crew of 60 but in an emergency a helicopter would only be able to land and take off if the vessel was fully laden and in calm seas, with little or no wind. In any other conditions, it would be too dangerous to land on the ship.
The Sirius last year replaced HMAS Westralia as the navy's biggest replenishment ship. She was previously a Greek-owned double-skinned oil tanker named Delos. Bought for about $60 million, it underwent a $70 million refit by the ship builder Tenix. It included construction of a "helicopter landing facility" which was second on the list of five "important requirements" for the ship. "Desirable requirements", later dropped, included a helicopter hangar and maintenance facility. The navy also conducted trials to establish the feasibility of landing on the ship but detailed analysis has only just started.
According to Kim Gillis, the head of systems with the Defence Material Organisation, airflow analysis by Murdoch University revealed problems with helicopter operations even before the refit. Mr Gillis said if the vessel was unloaded or there was any movement, helicopters would be restricted to lowering cargo to the flight deck. Such operations are too risky above the forward part of the ship where the fuel is stored. Mr Gillis said plans to have a helicopter attached to the ship were never seriously considered. The landing deck was engineered to carry all Australian military helicopters except the twin-rotor Chinook. Early graphic images of the Sirius on Defence websites featured a Sea King helicopter parked on the landing deck.
Opposition defence spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon described the landing deck issue as an "incredible bungle". "Unfortunately, bungles such as this are typical of the Howard Government's record on Defence procurement, where lessons aren't learnt and the expensive mistakes just keep coming," he said
Source
Who cares about punctuation?
If punctuation guru Lynne Truss had intended to make the title of her new book ambiguous, then she has succeeded brilliantly. Forget Eats, Shoots and Leaves the surprising international bestseller. This time, Truss has lined up apostrophes for her special attention. The new book is titled The Girl's Like Spaghetti. This is confusing. What the book's title is intending to say is the girl is like spaghetti. It all comes down to the placement of an apostrophe. But for a child looking at the cover, which is pitched for junior primary aged children, they could be forgiven for thinking that The Girl owns something. The point illustrates the need for clarity with punctuation. More than this it is how it is taught that makes it meaningful.
While Truss may find apostrophes pesky little squiggly things, it seems that the apostrophe, like so much punctuation and grammar, is abused. A casual look around any city's signage will find apostrophes missing, floatingly homelessly over a word ending in "s" or placed incorrectly. Then again you'd have to know what is correct to notice.
Understanding apostrophes is just one of the skills in determining a literate child. Others include correct spelling, clear sentence construction and a full suite of punctuation marks. The reality is something very different. On recent state literacy testing, one in four Queensland children at Year 7 level failed the state benchmarks for agreed acceptable minimum literacy standards. Let's be absolutely clear here. The operative word is "minimum". Students who do not make the cut on Queensland's literacy tests are effectively illiterate. This is in no way acceptable.
This uncomfortable reality is one of the reasons why the Federal Government from 2008 will introduce national literacy and numeracy tests at Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Queensland parents need to know if their children compare favourably with children in the other states and territories. If they do not do so, then the reasons need to be understood and necessary action taken.
As uncomfortable as it may be for some, the literacy buck stops with teachers. Sure it is unhelpful if shops and advertising appropriate apostrophes, spelling and punctuation for effect. It is up to schools to correct it. On Queensland evidence, 25 per cent of Year 7 students are not performing at even a very basic literacy level. So who teaches them and how are they prepared?
When research was being undertaken into the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy in 2005, chairman Dr Ken Rowe found that many university students were receiving literacy instruction while they were learning how to be teachers. At the time, Rowe observed: "Many university faculties of education are running remedial English classes for their trainee teachers. Their basic grammar and spelling is that poor." Add to this that up to 30 per cent of students in schools were "simply not achieving to the extent they could or should", Rowe said.
The Queensland Government in the June state Budget promised $35.6 million over four years to improve literacy. That's a lot of apostrophes. Moreover, $10 million over four years has been set aside to meet the literacy and numeracy needs of indigenous students. But unless students can confidently understand how the English language works, apostrophes and all, then this will be money of limited impact. Already the school curriculum, particularly at primary level, is awash with socially based subjects masquerading as a rigorous curriculum. The result of schools looking at animal care, bike safety, dental hygiene and financial management, perhaps all good in themselves, is "literacy lite".
This is why the draft Primary School Charter, released earlier this month by the Australian Primary Principals Association, has recommended four core subjects are essential with art, sport, music and languages in a supplementary role. The core includes: English literacy, Maths and numeracy, Science and Australian history. This makes sense. By uncluttering the curriculum, more time can be given to the inculcation of basic skills in literacy and numeracy. A view expressed by APPA president Leonie Trimper, who has warned that currently, the curriculum is compromising the acquisition of core skills. "Primary schooling marks a cultural milestone in the lives of all young Australians so we must get it right. Children only get one chance to establish a solid foundation on which to build a future," Trimper said on release of the draft Charter.
While Lynne Truss has identified the need for a book about apostrophes, the pity is that it is needed at all. The aim should surely be that all Queensland children know how to spell, punctuate, read and write clearly - let alone amend a rogue apostrophe.
Source
Norf'k language may soon disappear
The unique language spoken by Norfolk Islanders has been recognised by a United Nations body for its distinctiveness. Norfolk Island Chief Minister Andre Nobbs said today the so-called Norf'k language had been included by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in the next edition of its Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger of Disappearing.
Inhabitants of the Australian territory have been seeking greater recognition of the language for many years. The language has survived from the days of the Bounty mutineers and their Tahitian companions. The mutineers' descendants became the first free settlers of Norfolk Island and their creole language has been kept alive to the present day.
Mr Nobbs said the island's government had made a submission to UNESCO, setting out the case for recognition and protection of the language. "The advice from UNESCO is a significant step in building recognition of the unique language and culture of Norfolk Island,'' he said.
Source
Friday, August 17, 2007
Stars and gripes over US loans
This American family's mortgage is one of the reasons you face a home loan rate rise - regardless of what the Reserve Bank does. To purchase their four-bedroom, 3«-bathroom custom-built home in Little Rock, Arkansas in the south of the US, Ron and Doris Smith were forced to go to a subprime mortgage lender.
These are the reckless organisations being blamed for the US housing crisis - record mortgage foreclosures, loan defaults, mortgage company collapses, and falling house prices. The ripple effect from the US crisis is causing a global credit crunch that has now hit Australian shores. At the end of the chain is the Seed family from Rockdale, in Sydney's south, who have taken every precaution to insulate themselves financially, but now face the prospect of further rate rises.
Australian mortgage lenders - including the Commonwealth Bank, which posted a record $4.47 billion annual profit - have said they could be forced to lift their variable rate by 0.25 per cent in coming months, regardless of the Reserve Bank of Australia's action on interest rates, because of the problems in America. The Commonwealth Bank has no direct exposure to the troubled US subprime sector but says the cost of lending money has risen. "The fact of the matter is the price of credit in the market internationally has risen, so there will, at some stage, be some increase in rates," Commonwealth chief executive Ralph Norris said. Australian lender RAMS Home Loans is one of the companies caught up in the US loans debacle and is warning of higher costs. The company sources almost half its funding for Australian home loans from the US market.
But in Little Rock, Mrs Smith said she was angered by the bad publicity and blame being heaped on US borrowers who are forced to go to subprime lenders when the banks refused to give them a loan. The banks would not lend to them two years ago because, Mrs Smith said, it was hard to calculate her husband's income. Mr Smith, 34, owns a removalist company and his wage fluctuates.
But in Rockdale, Commonwealth Bank customers Karyn and Mark Seed said they were working to ensure their home loan was paid off and could not be held responsible for the actions of mortgagees halfway around the world. "It's not our fault, what is happening in America; it shouldn't have anything to do with what is happening to us. We're in a totally different country," Mrs Seed said. "I've got two young children - I've still got to go out and work four or five days a week to help pay my mortgage."
Source
Axe Muslim immigration - Pauline
PAULINE Hanson says she will run on similar policies to those that won her international notoriety a decade ago when she vies for a Queensland Senate seat at the upcoming election. The main difference will be that this time the former fish and chip shop owner, who claims credit for forcing the Howard Government to adopt a harder line on immigration controls, will target Muslims.
"We need to have a look at our immigration levels and I'd like to have a look at putting a moratorium on any more Muslims coming into Australia," Ms Hanson said yesterday. As revealed in The Courier-Mail yesterday, the former One Nation leader has applied to the Australian Electoral Commission to register Pauline's United Australia Party. If successful, the party's abbreviated name, Pauline, will appear above the line on the Senate ballot paper, making it easier for people to vote for Ms Hanson.
The 53-year-old won the seat of Oxley as an Independent at the 1996 election after being expelled from the Liberal Party because of her explosive views on immigration. In her maiden speech, she warned against Asian immigration and went on to launch One Nation which eventually foundered, but not before it grabbed a swag of seats at the Queensland state election. She lost her own seat at the next federal election.
Ms Hanson said "nothing's changed" with her policies. "I think that we need to look at getting out of the 1951 convention of refugees, and not being forced into taking refugees in this country that bring in diseases, who are incompatible with our lifestyle," she told ABC Radio. She said tariffs should also be raised to protect local industry and manufacturing from "cheap imports".
Of Queensland's six Senate spots up for grabs at the election, five are held by the major parties, with the remaining seat held by Australian Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett. Ms Hanson will be up against Senator Bartlett, the Greens' Larissa Waters and Family First's Jeff Buchanan for the required 14.5 per cent of the vote to gain a Queensland Senate seat.
Source
Labor party doing its usual self-destruct act: Internal bickering
One of Labor's most powerful factional bosses has rebuked party leader Kevin Rudd and ordered federal Labor candidates to back off in their confrontation with Queensland Premier Peter Beattie over council amalgamations in the state. Bill Ludwig, a leading union figure in Labor's Right faction, said Mr Rudd and some candidates had been wrong to conclude that the amalgamations could cost the party the federal election. The Queenslander, who is the Australian Workers Union national president and Labor national executive member, said federal Labor was becoming "spooked" over the issue.
New state legislation has slashed the number of councils to 72, but some Labor strategists are concerned that widespread community opposition to the amalgamations could cost the party key seats in the poll. John Howard has attempted to capitalise on the row by promising federal funding for plebiscites on amalgamation proposals on federal polling day. Mr Rudd supports Mr Howard's view that amalgamations should not proceed without local referendums.
But Mr Ludwig said he believed the issue would not cost Labor seats. "I don't think we're going to lose one vote over this. It's not worth worrying about. We will win government with or without this amalgamation business," he said. He said Labor had "allowed themselves to be spooked on council reforms by the National Party, for God's sake". "The National Party shouldn't be capable of spooking a pussy," he said.
But last night, Mr Rudd pledged to continue opposing the council plan. "Mr Beattie has got it wrong when it comes to compulsory amalgamations," Mr Rudd said. "Federal Labor will continue to campaign against them."
Mr Ludwig's intervention is likely to spark a renewed attack from the Coalition over the union movement's power within the ALP. But the controversy has also renewed tensions between Mr Rudd and Mr Ludwig. Both come from Queensland, but Mr Ludwig, arguably the most powerful factional figure in the state's Right, supported Kim Beazley for the leadership over Mr Rudd. At the time, Mr Ludwig said: "I've been bagging Rudd to anyone who will listen." Mr Rudd also stared down Mr Ludwig in December, after he became leader, when, over the union leader's objection, he secured Craig Emerson's elevation to the front bench.
Mr Ludwig said yesterday he had told his Right faction federal candidates in Queensland to "pull their heads in" and not to support Coalition attacks on Mr Beattie over the amalgamations. "I've sent the word out to the candidates. What the state Government has done is fair," he said. "There was an independent commission which looked at the issue. To have 156 councils in Queensland in 2007 is ridiculous."
However, the former Labor MP for the key marginal seat of Hinkler, Brian Courtice, said the amalgamations would hurt Labor at the poll. Mr Courtice said anti-amalgamation sentiment was so strong in some areas that it could cost Labor four seats: Hinkler, Flynn, Leichhardt and Petrie. "Polls show these seats are winnable, but Peter Beattie is guaranteeing they won't fall to Labor," he said. "It's not a question of a big anti-Labor swing. It's the capacity to stop Rudd from winning enough seats to get across the line."
Queensland Local Government Association president Paul Bell said 15 to 20 councils had resolved to hold ballots on amalgamation proposals. This could get them sacked for breaching the new legislation's ban on ballots. Mr Beattie said this week he regretted the timing of the amalgamations and any impact it might have on the poll, but would not back down.
Source
Left unable to face the challenge of black problems that it helped to create
INDIGENOUS Affairs Minister Mal Brough yesterday politicised the intervention in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities, arguing that Labor would never have stood up to the NT Labor Government. Mr Brough said the "sweeping", "breathtaking" and "bold" changes to fight child abuse in 73 of the Territory's indigenous communities would never have been made by a Labor government. "Would a Rudd-led Labor government have taken on Clare Martin, another Labor minister or chief minister, taken her on and said, 'You have failed the people of the Northern Territory?"' he asked.
In a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra, Mr Brough said seminal land rights moments, such as the stockmen's strike of the 1960s and even the High Court's 1992 Mabo native title decision, had impoverished Aborigines, not freed or empowered them.
Mr Brough promised to make sure that while the commonwealth would own the land in the 73 targeted communities for five years during the intervention, sacred sites would be respected. "I've heard that message and I will ensure that all of my managers on the ground ... will be given advice from elders about the significance of things in their communities and that they do not trample over significant issues unintentionally," he said.
He said the Mabo decision -- overturning terra nullius -- and the High Court's Wik judgment of 1996 -- which found native title was not extinguished by pastoral leases -- were very important, but building on the Land Rights Act of 1976 had locked indigenous people into collective tenure. "What got lost in the debate was people thought it was the holy grail, that releasing land would free people and empower people," he said. "It's done just the opposite. It's actually impoverished them. "We need to actually recognise that communism didn't work, collectivism didn't work. It doesn't work to say a collective owns it and you don't have anything."
Mr Brough responded to concerns that the Territory's National Emergency Response Bill offered communities "a reasonable amount" rather than the "just terms" compensation enshrined in the Constitution for the temporary lose of title to their land. Handing down on Monday a majority report on their day-long inquiry into the most dramatic shift in Aboriginal affairs since the 1967 referendum, the four Liberal and three Labor members of the Senate legal and constitutional affairs committee called on the Government to clarify as soon as possible the compensation issue. Mr Brough said yesterday the commonwealth's drafters had told him the legislation -- set to pass the Senate this week -- was drafted in line with the Constitution, but if he received sound advice to the contrary, he would heed it. "It is done in good faith. We've made it very clear, the Prime Minister and I, that this is about just terms and we will honour that. There is nothing to hide here," he said.
Mr Brough also said kava, as well as alcohol and pornography, would be outlawed in communities by the end of the week. Kava was introduced from the Pacific islands to Aboriginal communities in the early 1980s in the hope that it would curb alcohol abuse. Mr Brough brushed aside resistance to the ban on the intoxicating brew, illustrated by the ejection this week of a federal survey team by the Arnhem Land community of Yirrkala.
Rejecting Mr Brough's attack, Opposition indigenous affairs spokeswoman Jenny Macklin said federal Labor was absolutely determined to fight child abuse in Aboriginal communities. "All sides of politics have failed indigenous children. Nothing can be gained from blaming federal Labor or the states for what is everyone's failure," Ms Macklin said. She said federal Labor had moved amendments in the Senate this week to ensure that just-terms compensation was paid when the Government acquired an interest in land. "But the Howard Government refused to support our amendments, despite government senators raising concerns," she said.
Source
This American family's mortgage is one of the reasons you face a home loan rate rise - regardless of what the Reserve Bank does. To purchase their four-bedroom, 3«-bathroom custom-built home in Little Rock, Arkansas in the south of the US, Ron and Doris Smith were forced to go to a subprime mortgage lender.
These are the reckless organisations being blamed for the US housing crisis - record mortgage foreclosures, loan defaults, mortgage company collapses, and falling house prices. The ripple effect from the US crisis is causing a global credit crunch that has now hit Australian shores. At the end of the chain is the Seed family from Rockdale, in Sydney's south, who have taken every precaution to insulate themselves financially, but now face the prospect of further rate rises.
Australian mortgage lenders - including the Commonwealth Bank, which posted a record $4.47 billion annual profit - have said they could be forced to lift their variable rate by 0.25 per cent in coming months, regardless of the Reserve Bank of Australia's action on interest rates, because of the problems in America. The Commonwealth Bank has no direct exposure to the troubled US subprime sector but says the cost of lending money has risen. "The fact of the matter is the price of credit in the market internationally has risen, so there will, at some stage, be some increase in rates," Commonwealth chief executive Ralph Norris said. Australian lender RAMS Home Loans is one of the companies caught up in the US loans debacle and is warning of higher costs. The company sources almost half its funding for Australian home loans from the US market.
But in Little Rock, Mrs Smith said she was angered by the bad publicity and blame being heaped on US borrowers who are forced to go to subprime lenders when the banks refused to give them a loan. The banks would not lend to them two years ago because, Mrs Smith said, it was hard to calculate her husband's income. Mr Smith, 34, owns a removalist company and his wage fluctuates.
But in Rockdale, Commonwealth Bank customers Karyn and Mark Seed said they were working to ensure their home loan was paid off and could not be held responsible for the actions of mortgagees halfway around the world. "It's not our fault, what is happening in America; it shouldn't have anything to do with what is happening to us. We're in a totally different country," Mrs Seed said. "I've got two young children - I've still got to go out and work four or five days a week to help pay my mortgage."
Source
Axe Muslim immigration - Pauline
PAULINE Hanson says she will run on similar policies to those that won her international notoriety a decade ago when she vies for a Queensland Senate seat at the upcoming election. The main difference will be that this time the former fish and chip shop owner, who claims credit for forcing the Howard Government to adopt a harder line on immigration controls, will target Muslims.
"We need to have a look at our immigration levels and I'd like to have a look at putting a moratorium on any more Muslims coming into Australia," Ms Hanson said yesterday. As revealed in The Courier-Mail yesterday, the former One Nation leader has applied to the Australian Electoral Commission to register Pauline's United Australia Party. If successful, the party's abbreviated name, Pauline, will appear above the line on the Senate ballot paper, making it easier for people to vote for Ms Hanson.
The 53-year-old won the seat of Oxley as an Independent at the 1996 election after being expelled from the Liberal Party because of her explosive views on immigration. In her maiden speech, she warned against Asian immigration and went on to launch One Nation which eventually foundered, but not before it grabbed a swag of seats at the Queensland state election. She lost her own seat at the next federal election.
Ms Hanson said "nothing's changed" with her policies. "I think that we need to look at getting out of the 1951 convention of refugees, and not being forced into taking refugees in this country that bring in diseases, who are incompatible with our lifestyle," she told ABC Radio. She said tariffs should also be raised to protect local industry and manufacturing from "cheap imports".
Of Queensland's six Senate spots up for grabs at the election, five are held by the major parties, with the remaining seat held by Australian Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett. Ms Hanson will be up against Senator Bartlett, the Greens' Larissa Waters and Family First's Jeff Buchanan for the required 14.5 per cent of the vote to gain a Queensland Senate seat.
Source
Labor party doing its usual self-destruct act: Internal bickering
One of Labor's most powerful factional bosses has rebuked party leader Kevin Rudd and ordered federal Labor candidates to back off in their confrontation with Queensland Premier Peter Beattie over council amalgamations in the state. Bill Ludwig, a leading union figure in Labor's Right faction, said Mr Rudd and some candidates had been wrong to conclude that the amalgamations could cost the party the federal election. The Queenslander, who is the Australian Workers Union national president and Labor national executive member, said federal Labor was becoming "spooked" over the issue.
New state legislation has slashed the number of councils to 72, but some Labor strategists are concerned that widespread community opposition to the amalgamations could cost the party key seats in the poll. John Howard has attempted to capitalise on the row by promising federal funding for plebiscites on amalgamation proposals on federal polling day. Mr Rudd supports Mr Howard's view that amalgamations should not proceed without local referendums.
But Mr Ludwig said he believed the issue would not cost Labor seats. "I don't think we're going to lose one vote over this. It's not worth worrying about. We will win government with or without this amalgamation business," he said. He said Labor had "allowed themselves to be spooked on council reforms by the National Party, for God's sake". "The National Party shouldn't be capable of spooking a pussy," he said.
But last night, Mr Rudd pledged to continue opposing the council plan. "Mr Beattie has got it wrong when it comes to compulsory amalgamations," Mr Rudd said. "Federal Labor will continue to campaign against them."
Mr Ludwig's intervention is likely to spark a renewed attack from the Coalition over the union movement's power within the ALP. But the controversy has also renewed tensions between Mr Rudd and Mr Ludwig. Both come from Queensland, but Mr Ludwig, arguably the most powerful factional figure in the state's Right, supported Kim Beazley for the leadership over Mr Rudd. At the time, Mr Ludwig said: "I've been bagging Rudd to anyone who will listen." Mr Rudd also stared down Mr Ludwig in December, after he became leader, when, over the union leader's objection, he secured Craig Emerson's elevation to the front bench.
Mr Ludwig said yesterday he had told his Right faction federal candidates in Queensland to "pull their heads in" and not to support Coalition attacks on Mr Beattie over the amalgamations. "I've sent the word out to the candidates. What the state Government has done is fair," he said. "There was an independent commission which looked at the issue. To have 156 councils in Queensland in 2007 is ridiculous."
However, the former Labor MP for the key marginal seat of Hinkler, Brian Courtice, said the amalgamations would hurt Labor at the poll. Mr Courtice said anti-amalgamation sentiment was so strong in some areas that it could cost Labor four seats: Hinkler, Flynn, Leichhardt and Petrie. "Polls show these seats are winnable, but Peter Beattie is guaranteeing they won't fall to Labor," he said. "It's not a question of a big anti-Labor swing. It's the capacity to stop Rudd from winning enough seats to get across the line."
Queensland Local Government Association president Paul Bell said 15 to 20 councils had resolved to hold ballots on amalgamation proposals. This could get them sacked for breaching the new legislation's ban on ballots. Mr Beattie said this week he regretted the timing of the amalgamations and any impact it might have on the poll, but would not back down.
Source
Left unable to face the challenge of black problems that it helped to create
INDIGENOUS Affairs Minister Mal Brough yesterday politicised the intervention in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities, arguing that Labor would never have stood up to the NT Labor Government. Mr Brough said the "sweeping", "breathtaking" and "bold" changes to fight child abuse in 73 of the Territory's indigenous communities would never have been made by a Labor government. "Would a Rudd-led Labor government have taken on Clare Martin, another Labor minister or chief minister, taken her on and said, 'You have failed the people of the Northern Territory?"' he asked.
In a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra, Mr Brough said seminal land rights moments, such as the stockmen's strike of the 1960s and even the High Court's 1992 Mabo native title decision, had impoverished Aborigines, not freed or empowered them.
Mr Brough promised to make sure that while the commonwealth would own the land in the 73 targeted communities for five years during the intervention, sacred sites would be respected. "I've heard that message and I will ensure that all of my managers on the ground ... will be given advice from elders about the significance of things in their communities and that they do not trample over significant issues unintentionally," he said.
He said the Mabo decision -- overturning terra nullius -- and the High Court's Wik judgment of 1996 -- which found native title was not extinguished by pastoral leases -- were very important, but building on the Land Rights Act of 1976 had locked indigenous people into collective tenure. "What got lost in the debate was people thought it was the holy grail, that releasing land would free people and empower people," he said. "It's done just the opposite. It's actually impoverished them. "We need to actually recognise that communism didn't work, collectivism didn't work. It doesn't work to say a collective owns it and you don't have anything."
Mr Brough responded to concerns that the Territory's National Emergency Response Bill offered communities "a reasonable amount" rather than the "just terms" compensation enshrined in the Constitution for the temporary lose of title to their land. Handing down on Monday a majority report on their day-long inquiry into the most dramatic shift in Aboriginal affairs since the 1967 referendum, the four Liberal and three Labor members of the Senate legal and constitutional affairs committee called on the Government to clarify as soon as possible the compensation issue. Mr Brough said yesterday the commonwealth's drafters had told him the legislation -- set to pass the Senate this week -- was drafted in line with the Constitution, but if he received sound advice to the contrary, he would heed it. "It is done in good faith. We've made it very clear, the Prime Minister and I, that this is about just terms and we will honour that. There is nothing to hide here," he said.
Mr Brough also said kava, as well as alcohol and pornography, would be outlawed in communities by the end of the week. Kava was introduced from the Pacific islands to Aboriginal communities in the early 1980s in the hope that it would curb alcohol abuse. Mr Brough brushed aside resistance to the ban on the intoxicating brew, illustrated by the ejection this week of a federal survey team by the Arnhem Land community of Yirrkala.
Rejecting Mr Brough's attack, Opposition indigenous affairs spokeswoman Jenny Macklin said federal Labor was absolutely determined to fight child abuse in Aboriginal communities. "All sides of politics have failed indigenous children. Nothing can be gained from blaming federal Labor or the states for what is everyone's failure," Ms Macklin said. She said federal Labor had moved amendments in the Senate this week to ensure that just-terms compensation was paid when the Government acquired an interest in land. "But the Howard Government refused to support our amendments, despite government senators raising concerns," she said.
Source
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
