Huge Queensland ambulance foulup (1) -- one of three such reported in one day

Girl, 8, died after life-saving defibrillator removed from ambulance. Since the Leftist Queensland State government took over the ambulance service some years ago and made it "free" for all, serious problems have never stopped coming, despite various "reforms" and "overhauls". Some of the problems stem from a typically Leftist love of centralization, with local call centres being abolished and operators in the newly centralized locations being made responsible for distant cities that they know nothing about. That is the exact opposite of what is actually needed. Another example of how disastrous government involvement in medical services can be. There are similar reports from other Australian States -- particularly Victoria

An eight year-old Gold Coast girl in cardiac arrest died after life-saving equipment was removed from the ambulance sent to treat her. Documents obtained by The Courier Mail under Right to Information laws show that the ambulance arrived without a defibrillator – a device used to restore the heart beat – because it had been taken out at the station for training purposes.

A report into the incident, which occurred on December 2, 2007, said the address was less than 3km from the station and an advanced care and student paramedic reached the scene within three minutes. "On arrival the officers identified that they had left the portable resuscitation kit and defibrillator at the station after it had been removed for the purposes of undertaking training," the report said.

"The officers reported that during CPR, copious amounts of vomit was 'flowing from the airway during cardiac compressions'. "Normally the airway would have been suctioned using the suction device in the portable resuscitation kit, however this was not available."

Two more crews were sent and arrived four and seven minutes later, but the girl's pulse was already "unrecordable" and "skin cold". "The patient was transported to hospital and was pronounced deceased a short time after," the report stated. "The officer who removed the equipment was under the impression that they would be the last crew out.

"The officer-in-charge confirmed that it was normal practice (to) remove equipment for training from the spare unit . . . when a spare vehicle was not available equipment would be removed from an operational vehicle."

The investigation concluded that it was "beyond the scope of this investigation to determine if the absence of the oxygen resuscitation kit and defibrillator contributed to the inability to successfully resuscitate the child". However, the absence was "unlikely to have had a significant bearing on the outcome of the patient".

Emergency Services Minister Neil Roberts said the defibrillator should have been there, but evidence suggested the girl would have died anyway. "The Coroner actually investigated that matter as well and there were no adverse findings to the QAS," he said. However, neither his office, nor the Coroner would provide a copy of the report.

Australasian College for Emergency Medicine Queensland chairman David Rosengren said defibrillators were the key to preventing death in this instance, but cardiac arrests were generally a life-ending event. "Everybody knows somebody who's had a cardiac arrest and been resuscitated and survived but they are clearly in the minority," he said.

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Huge Queensland ambulance foulup (2) -- one of three such reported in one day

LORRAINE Silman watched her husband die while a misdirected ambulance took 45 minutes to find their Mackay home. Bob Silman, 63, a wedding photographer and sugar mill groundskeeper, was stricken with a heart attack on November 2 last year and could not be revived. A dispatcher in another city ignored Mrs Silman's directions and sent paramedics to an address that didn't exist.

"The ambulance officer can't be blamed. The system failed us," Mrs Silman said. "If they'd got there in the time frame they should have, he would have stood a chance." Mrs Silman kept her husband alive at their Pleystowe home for 15 minutes using CPR while the ambulance was lost.

Mr Silman left behind his wife of 40 years, three children and three grandchildren. He didn't live to see a fourth grandchild born. Neighbours knew him as the generous man who gave away the vegies he loved to grow and entertained their children in a Santa suit at Christmas

Daughter Alison Silman said it was "an absolute joke" that ambulances didn't have GPS devices and couldn't find homes in well-established areas close to urban areas. "In this day and age, they should be able to know where to respond," Ms Silman said. "This is happening too often. It's not good enough. People's lives are on the line."

The ambulance centre had never corrected a typographical error showing the Silmans lived at No. 2 Griffiths St, when no such address existed. The family lived at No. 20. The family called twice to have the address corrected. Mrs Silman said the ambulance was also told by the family not to cross a landmark bridge and did not send a vehicle from the closest station. "They kept asking me if I was in Miriam Vale. That's nowhere near here," Mrs Silman said. "My husband was dying in front of me. I told the woman I had to get off the phone." Although the station was only 13 minutes away, it took 40-45 minutes, she said. "When they got there, he'd passed away," she said.

Stress after her husband's death took such a toll on Mrs Silman she needed to be hospitalised two weeks later. Her daughter said the family drove her to the hospital rather than risk another ambulance miscue. "I wouldn't trust them," Alison said. "I just lost my dad. I wasn't going to lose my mother too."

The family said they were frustrated to learn a cadet officer in Rockhampton took their emergency call and a mentor supervisor didn't listen to the call.

Mrs Silman has difficulty dealing with the experience and still doesn't sleep well. "It's hard to get through the trauma of that day. I don't think I'll ever get over it. I don't wish any other family to have to go through it," she said. She was frustrated ambulance staff were not more knowledgeable about places they were responsible for.

The Member for Mirani, Ted Malone, the shadow minister for emergency services, raised concerns about the Silman death in Parliament in December.

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Huge Queensland ambulance foulup (3) -- one of three such reported in one day

Paramedic quits after being sent to the wrong city. Once again it's the management, not the men on the frontline who are at fault

PARAMEDICS were ready to break into a Mackay home to treat a suspected heart attack victim when they learned the emergency was actually in Brisbane. Eric Fleissig who later quit the Queensland Ambulance Service in disgust at its management and working conditions, said he was met by a startled and confused person when he attended a Code 1 emergency call. He said he went to an address provided by ambulance dispatchers where the resident told him he knew nothing about an emergency.

The paramedics queried the communication centre, which then realised that the street name was correct but the emergency was in the Brisbane suburb of Ashgrove and not the Mackay suburb of Andergrove. "It happens all the time," Mr Fleissig said. Paramedics say the QAS hasn't done enough to make sure the best maps and direction-finding equipment are available, or to train communications staff who know their areas.

QAS Commissioner David Melville said dispatch systems were not perfect but Queenslanders were given the best possible service regardless of where they lived. "I'd like to think we will get it perfect, but I can't give you a 100 per cent guarantee on it," he said. "We try to give the best possible service no matter where people are." [But HOW HARD do you try? Not very, given the frequency of stupid and dangerous foulups. As well as the three reported today, there was another one reported just a couple of days ago]

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Major Australian conservative political party totally rejects any Warmist laws

The National party invariably forms part of a coalition with the Centre-Right "Liberal" party in government but tends in general to be farther Right. There are however many global-warming skeptics in the Liberal party too

Before we go north of the Tweed, however, let's duck down to Canberra where at the historic Hyatt Hotel, the Nationals yesterday wound up their peak federal council meeting.

And very successful it was too. In the words of the party's federal director Brad Henderson, in his report to conference: "A new treatment of our logo, new website, in our annual report and with a new visual identity our contemporary new look tells Australians that we are changing."

What that "changing" meant became clear as the weekend progressed. In danger of dying a demographic death the Nationals have decided to rededicate themselves to their base.

Again in Henderson's words: "The nub of the changes that we are making is about more assertively advocating the interests of regional Australia."

The trouble is that in doing so they will henceforth not only be seeking to differentiate themselves from Labor but from the Liberals and Turnbull too.

Henderson in his report was clear about this. This new course, he said, "will require protection from bad or clumsy policy because regional Australia has the most to lose from policies like Labor's emissions trading scheme."

The possessive noun "Labor's" as applied to the emissions trading scheme is cursory, of course. What the Nationals really mean is that they are opposed to any ETS: a position the Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce made clear yesterday morning when interviewed on the Nine Network.

Asked by Laurie Oakes whether the Nationals at the conference had decided they wouldn't vote for an emissions trading system under any circumstances, Joyce replied: "That is correct."

Translated, that is a one-finger salute to Turnbull. In other words, no matter what amendments or concessions he manages to negotiate with the Rudd government before the ETS comes back before the Senate in November, the Nationals won't be having a bar of it.

And what's more, said Joyce, making policy not so much on the run as at a gallop, if the Coalition does win government at the next election they'll be dismantling whatever ETS is in place anyway.

More HERE





Violence censored by NSW police to give the public a false sense of security

This is reprehensible. People need all the information they can get in order to keep themselves as safe as possible. And the Leftist government is both behind it and lying about it

POLICE are censoring images of violent crimes to make the public feel safe on the streets. Police spin doctors have issued a blanket ban on releasing photos of criminals carrying weapons during attacks. Officers are also trained to play down violent incidents and public alerts are delayed by hours or days.

Experts said the first hours after a crime could be vital and the tight control of information meant some incidents were never solved.

Publican Peter Nellies, who had a gun repeatedly pointed at his head while his staff were held hostage for two terrifying hours, is angry about the cloak of silence police have thrown around the raid on his pub, the Bradbury Inn in Sydney's southwest. It took 11 hours before a bulletin was issued, giving the criminals a long head start before the public were alerted. Even then, despite the extreme violence, it was described as an "incident" in which people were "detained".

The changes came about last year when police radios were encrypted to keep details of raids secret and the media unit assumed total control of all information released to the public. Since then, carjackings have been described as "concerns for welfare", a violent robbery and shooting at Wentworthville was played down and the Lin family murder was kept secret for five hours before it was released as a "domestic related" incident.

The last time the media unit released images of a victim being terrorised with a weapon was in February 2005. The photograph of a commuter with a gun to his head in a daytime mugging at Harris Park train station appeared on the front page of The Daily Telegraph. Since then The Daily Telegraph has obtained similar frightening images taken during a Parramatta jewellery shop heist and a pub robbery at St Leonards but now even victims are being discouraged from releasing security camera vision. Police media advisers have admitted they would never release such photos due to a "protocol" that prevents the release of images showing the commission of a crime.

Former police officer Tim Priest said: "I have been complaining about the police media unit for years. Basically what it is is censorship. "It is not letting the public know there are dangerous offenders running around doing these sorts of things."

University of Western Sydney Bachelor of Policing degree co-ordinator Dr Mike Kennedy said the media unit was an extension of government. "They are more interested in doing the bidding of the Government," Dr Kennedy said.

A spokesman for Police Minister Tony Kelly denied there was a policy to censor or sanitise images or information about serious crimes.

SOURCE

"Mystery" upsurge of gang violence on Melbourne streets

That Melbourne has in recent years acquired a large population of Muslim and African "refugees" wouldn't have anything to do with it, would it? That is an unthinkable thought in super-"correct" Victoria. And the judiciary are no help. They "compassionately" give slap-on-the-wrist sentences on the rare occasions when such offenders are caught

POLICE are under orders to patrol Melbourne's streets in groups of at least three because gangs of thugs have made it too dangerous for them to work in pairs. Melbourne police division chief Supt Stephen Leane said police were no longer patrolling in pairs because of the dangers posed by groups of young thugs, often called together by mobile phone, who confronted officers.

The revelation came as new figures revealed almost a third of assaults in Melbourne's CBD were carried out by two or more assailants. Experts said there was a growing culture of pack violence. Twelve out of 15 high-profile cases in the past three years, which resulted in a death or a serious injury, allegedly were carried out by groups that outnumbered victims - in some cases by 10 to one.

The dangerous trend has baffled police and criminologists, who cannot explain why young people are increasingly prepared to viciously attack hopelessly outnumbered victims. "It's called swarming," Supt Leane said. Supt Leane said: "It's not just a matter of being punched in the nose. Their mates are joining in and you're getting punched on the nose and getting kicked to the ground. "You're ending up in a fight with more than one person. It continues when you're on the ground."

Supt Leane said police now patrolled Melbourne's streets at night in groups of at least three because of the potential threat posed by groups of people acting aggressively. "You won't see two police by themselves. The minimum you'll see is three," he said. "The days of being able to put two police out on foot patrol have unfortunately passed us by for the moment. We'll stop someone for a chat on the footpath and someone else who's not involved in the discussion is texting and the next thing there's a group of people there." Supt Leane said police in Melbourne hoped to one day to go back to paired foot patrols.

A snapshot of assaults in the Melbourne division from July to September 2008 showed 30 per cent of all assaults were carried out by more than one offender. Deakin University criminologist Dr Ian Warren said CCTV surveillance was highlighting group violence more and more. However, a lack of research meant it was not known why people were engaging in violent swarming behaviour. Dr Warren said people could be less inhibited in their behaviour if they were within a group. "When you're part of a group you're more anonymous; it can make you more willing," he said.

Dr Warren said there appeared to be a change developing where people were prepared to use extreme violence. "If there is a change in the way our society does group violence it's possibly a trend . . . when the intention is to pulverise or really cause real damage. "The brutality of some of this stuff is really worrying." Dr Warren said more research was needed to determine why people were attacking in packs and why they were using such extreme levels of violence.

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Sliming our past - as we repeat it

Better to let endangered black kids die? That seems to be what the Leftists want in their hatred of white society and their addled dreams about "noble savages" etc.

By Andrew Bolt

Kevin Rudd said sorry - and “never again”:

We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country… To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry....

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians. A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.

We must “never, never” again take Aboriginal children from their parents? Then explain today’s news:

WELFARE workers have swooped on the opal mining town of Lightning Ridge in northwest NSW, removing more than 40 Aboriginal children from decrepit homes in shanty towns. Those removed included a four-day-old baby who had barely learned to suckle when taken from his mother’s breast, while she was still in the local hospital, recovering from giving birth.

Aboriginal women, stunned by the removals, say it amounts to a ”modern-day Stolen Generation”, but the most recent statistics on child removals show Aboriginal children are being taken from their parents in numbers much greater than the Stolen Generations… Nationwide, Aboriginal children comprise just 4.4 per cent of all children, and yet make up 24 per cent of all children in care.

The choice is this. Either we are still imposing the racist policies Rudd condemned only last year, or we’re just rescuing even more of the children who truly did need rescuing by the officials Rudd so recklessly accused last year of “injustice”.

I’d say this simply confims there was no “stolen generations”. After all, no one can name even 10 of the up to 100,000 children we allegedly stole to - as Professor Robert Manne put it - ”help keep White Australia pure” in what to Aborigines was a “Holocaust”. Not 10.

SOURCE (See the original for links)




Dumb teachers mean dumb students in Australia

Lack of discipline in the classroom has made teaching an unattractive occupation in Australia so finding capable teachers in maths and science is often impossible. Many teachers dragooned into teaching Maths and science have virtually no background in it.

AUSTRALIAN primary school students are worse at maths and science than pupils in Latvia, Kazakhstan and Lithuania, new figures show. An exclusive analysis of the Trends in International Maths and Science Study rates Australia behind at least 14 of 36 countries.

The report comes as the State Government announced $46 million to hire 200 specialist maths and science coaches to improve teachers' skills and students' results.

Almost one in 10 year 4 students in Australia are failing maths, compared with 3 per cent of Latvian students, 5 per cent of Kazakhstan students and 6 per cent of Lithuanian students. Seven per cent of Australian year 4 students have no basic science skills, while Lithuania and Kazakhstan both had a 5 per cent failure rate and Latvia 2 per cent. The US and England also had less students failing maths and science.

A quarter of Australian primary school teachers do not use a standard maths text book when teaching, while 98 per cent of teachers in high-performing Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong stuck to a rigid curriculum.

Education consultant and maths teacher Russell Boyle said governments failed to attract enough qualified maths and science teachers. "It just does not make sense, something has to change," he said. Australian Education Union state president Mary Bluett said students were missing out because of a "chronic" shortage of maths and science teachers.

Education Minister Bronwyn Pike said as well as the 200 specialist coaches there would be $7.6 million to encourage high-performing maths and science graduates to become teachers.

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Brisbane phone directory reveals Asian migration trend

Australia's population is now about 10% East Asian and the Han Chinese in particular fit in well with the rest of Australia at all levels and make a positive contribution to society. If the most common surnames were "Mohammed", "Hussein" and "Ali", however, we would have a problem, as the Brits now well know

WHEN it comes to Brisbane's most popular surnames, the Lees are catching up with the Joneses. And in at least four Brisbane suburbs, seven of the 10 most common surnames are Asian, according to the latest White Pages. While Smith, Jones and Brown remain the most popular names in the listings, Lee has claimed seventh place in the overall 10 most common surnames in Queensland's capital city.

In suburbs such as Sunnybank, Archerfield, Mount Gravatt and Annerley, Lee and Chen are catching up to Smith, taking the number two and three spots. Seven in every 10 names are non-Anglo in the diverse southern suburbs. Williams, at No.4, is followed by Wang, Wong, Huang, Lin, Liu and Taylor.

Sunnybank resident Hsin-Yi Chen, 25, and her mother Li-Yun Lee, 51, said having two of the most popular surnames in the one family was unexpected. "Chen is a very, very popular surname in China, and Lee is pretty common too, but I never expected them to be as popular in Australia," Ms Chen said. She attributed the popularity of the names to immigration and an increase in overseas students.

There are 5000 Smiths in the Brisbane area, twice as many as the second most popular name in the 2009/10 White Pages, Jones. And you could be forgiven for thinking Joshua Smith, from Chapel Hill, has something of an identity crisis - he knows of four other Joshua Smiths. "It has always been quite popular, even reading down the school roll there were a heaps of Smiths," he said.

Brisbane's west is another area where changing demographics have caused new names to slip into the list. Since 2005, the Vietnamese surname Nguyen has dropped from fourth to eighth place but Lee has moved up from sixth to third place.

Suburbs such as Chermside, Kedron, Deagon and Strathpine in the north are less multi-cultural, dominated by the Smith and Jones duo, which occupy the top two positions. Williams, Brown and Wilson are also popular names for those on the north side of the river.

SOURCE

ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG thinks that the Federal government is too trusting towards China




Another ambulance bungle -- man dies

The widow of a Queensland man said his last act was to trust the ambulance service that ultimately bungled the response to his fatal heart attack. Karen Howlett has recalled how her husband Peter, 44, urged her to call an ambulance when he began to feel the effects of a heart attack in his Mackay home. But a series of communication miscues in the Queensland Ambulance Service were highlighted after Mr Howlett died in front of his three young children before an ambulance arrived.

The ambulance – leaving from a station about 15 minutes' drive away – got lost and arrived almost one hour after the initial Triple 0 call. "He was the one who asked me to call an ambulance. He had faith they would come in time," Mrs Howlett said. "But they didn't and a good man lost his life."

Mr Howlett's death in April 2006 remains the subject of a coronial inquest which has heard QAS admissions that it made several errors in responding to the callout. These include the incorrect prioritising of the call which, the inquest heard, was among factors that led to paramedics making a cup of tea before they headed out.

The incident has been one of many researched by The Courier-Mail as part of a special investigation into the QAS since its 2007 overhaul. The series, from Monday, will look at the QAS's dispatch process, spending and workplace culture.

Mr Howlett's emergency occurred at 7.22am on April 21, 2006, in clear weather at Farleigh, an historic community just off the Bruce Hwy northwest of Mackay. The street and address of the family home, built in the 1980s, were clearly marked. Mrs Howlett called Triple 0 three times while her husband's condition worsened. After her second call, she received a call from the ambulance seeking directions and had to go outside with the phone. "I couldn't hear because Peter was screaming in pain," she said.

Mrs Howlett returned to the room to find her husband "turning purple" and then gave him CPR. "He had his children – who were 8, 6, and 2 at the time – watching this. It was very, very traumatic," Mrs Howlett said.

Mrs Howlett doesn't blame the paramedic, who was new to the area and worked frantically on her husband, or his assistant on her first day on the job. But she has lost confidence in QAS management. "I could never rely on an ambulance again. I would put my family in the car and drive," she said. "It's a shame really. I think about that every day."

Mrs Howlett was angry a tape of the call revealed an ambulance dispatcher felt she was a "stroppy little thing".

The inquest has heard that the call was not given the highest emergency code because of a misunderstanding at the QAS communications centre.

After her husband's death, Mrs Howlett expected an apology and explanation from QAS managers. There was nothing but silence until her brother-in-law complained and a general apology was made. "It seemed all hush-hush to me. My feeling was if we hadn't initiated contact, I don't know that we would have heard anything. They did an investigation but I wasn't asked anything," Mrs Howlett said. "My husband died a very painful death without any medical assistance. I would have appreciated some feedback."

QAS medical director Dr Stephen Rashford told the inquest that mistakes were made and that "this was not a good case for us". The ambulance lacked a backup GPS that could have assisted the paramedic, who had only worked in Mackay for two months.

SOURCE







Another Greenie scare evaporates

Would you believe the evils of dredging a deeper shipping channel into Melbourne?

THEY just won't give up. "Time will tell," moaned a Blue Wedges Coalition spokesman this week. Sure, Port Phillip Bay isn't rotten with the mutant fish the eco-alarmists predicted. Sure, swimmers don't emerge from the waters glowing fiendishly from the "radioactive" waste that Green Wedges was sure would come, making "a trip to the beach a risky outing". Eels aren't flopping weakly on the beaches, poisoned to their gasping gills by "high levels of toxins" or "toxic algae blooms". Nor do the seas roaring through the unplugged Heads now cause "flooding in low-lying areas" or lap the steps of Parliament House.

But think Blue Wedges activists, who cost us millions through their scares, could finally admit they were wrong? Could they admit that the dredging of the bay's shipping lanes, now finished at last, has not caused the devastation they so wildly predicted, with the uncritical support of The Age? Not a bit of it. Being green means never having to say you're sorry -- sorry for being a reckless scaremonger whose two court actions and endless claims of doom helped cost taxpayers another $120 million in legal costs and extra green-proofing of a project that's so vital for the state's trade, now that container ships are much bigger.

Instead, as the giant Queen of the Netherlands dredger departs this week, a good job finished, there was Blue Wedges yet again, warning of monsters. "Time will tell," its spokesman said. Already, he claimed, we'd "lost a generation of anchovies". Indeed, on the Blue Wedges website remains its warning from April: that with these anchovies gone, the penguin colony at Phillip Island could "crash" in autumn.

Well, autumn has gone, but the penguins haven't, which suggests the fishiest thing about Blue Wedges' latest scare isn't the anchovies. Sure enough, the Office of the Environmental Monitor says this claim of "missing" anchovies seems based on no more than a sampling error. Ho hum.

You may say, let it go. Blue Wedges has lost, the rest of the state has won. We have our deeper shipping lanes, and leave the activists to think they at least ensured no fish need fear for it's future. But no. How many scares have we now seen not come to pass? Count 'em -- the scares about nuclear winter, acid rain, giant famines, DDT, the Y2K bug, SARS, avian flu and this swine flu that Australia's chief medical officer warned could kill 20,000 of us this season alone. Now we're told that if we don't turn off the lights we face a warming hell few humans can hope to survive. Seriously.

Enough with the panic merchants. Hold them to account before they slip free to fight another alarmist cause. Blue Wedges was wrong, and was always going to be wrong. The Age was wrong, and was always going to be wrong. Scraping a deeper trench in a giant bay was never going to end all marine life as we know it.

Not that The Age will admit it. For instance, it still hasn't informed readers that its claim that the dredging had caused dead fish to wash up at Newport was false. Just as it won't admit the planet it keeps claiming is warming has spent the past eight years cooling. "Time will tell," comes that moan again. Actually, buster, time has told. And it's told against you.

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Legal revolution? Client confidentiality to be abolished?

JOHN Corcoran is not exactly having kittens, but he is deeply concerned about the latest bright idea being considered by the federal government: "Dob in your clients." What worries the Law Council president is that this could become a legal obligation for all lawyers under the next tranche of the government's anti-money laundering legislation.

Blowing the whistle on clients who are suspected of engaging in dodgy financial transactions might be perfectly reasonable in other professions. But it could backfire terribly if applied to lawyers. If lawyers live up to their professional ethics -- and most do -- public policy is best served by encouraging crooks to be as frank as possible when they seek legal advice about proposed financial transactions.

The basic responsibility of all lawyers is to keep their clients within the letter of the law -- even when the client expresses a clear desire to do otherwise. But how open would some clients be with their lawyers if they knew that as soon as they left the room, their lawyer would be on the phone to the authorities discharging a legal obligation to disclose anything suspicious? That is all we are talking about -- mere suspicion.

Exempting lawyers from this sort of obligation would not amount to punching a loophole in the anti-money laundering regime. It could actually strengthen the net by relying on good lawyers to steer bad clients away from anything improper.

Bringing lawyers within this regime is a step that should be resisted. It would effectively mean that the legal profession had become an arm of the state -- and for no real benefit.

Money laundering would continue, and quite possibly increase, because shady clients would no longer have pesky lawyers urging them to reconsider. But while the majority of the profession can be relied upon to act ethically, what about the rotten apples?

Why not rely on the existing, highly intrusive powers of the law societies and legal services commissioners? And if those powers are considered inadequate, why not crank them up?

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Phones sales are a big risk

A report from the boiler room

I WAS shocked at the number of people who signed up for the life insurance policy I was selling over the phone. Even more worrying was the number of naive people willing to hand over their credit card and bank details to a stranger. If only they could have seen the call centre from my point of view …

After a woeful few days on the selling side of things my team leader pulled me over to give me a few tips.

"Don't mention the word 'insurance'," he said. "It puts people off. Just call it a 'comprehensive policy' - it's far less intimidating."

He also taught me how to craftily manipulate my language so that it sounded as if I was calling from one of Australia's major banks. This was designed to give customers a false sense of security - that they would be able to trace the salesman if anything went wrong. A laughable thought if you could see the employment turnover in the call centre.

The more I found out about the call centre from my colleagues the more depressed I became. For example: "You know if someone takes out accidental death insurance there is this little box they have to tick saying they understand that the policy doesn't cover them if drugs or alcohol are involved in the death. Everybody thinks that this is fine, but what they don't realise is that if they're run down by a drink driver, then alcohol is involved. Their death isn't covered. We're not allowed to mention that part of course."

Finally I was forced to listen to an "exemplary" call to improve my selling skills. Poor Mrs Chan on the other end of the phone didn't speak much English and was desperately trying to end the call without sounding rude. The salesman was more than happy to exploit her weaknesses.

"If you give over your bank details, all the information will be sent to you," the salesman said for the 10th time in his softest, most dangerous voice. This is, of course, entirely untrue. If she gives over her bank details the salesman will sign her up to the policy immediately and $50 will be debited from her account monthly until she notices this and ends the policy.

After 15 minutes Mrs Chan gives over her details in the belief that more information will be sent to her. The salesman gleefully signs her up. I still wonder how long she waited at home for the information to arrive before she realised she was already losing money.

To the naive people out there who continue to buy over the phone: don't. You never know who you're handing your details to or what you're really getting.

SOURCE

ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG excoriates the NSW government for the parlous state of its public hospitals






A Not So Capital Idea

By Dr Stephen Kirchner

It only took until 2pm last Saturday for the Treasurer to pour cold water on a report in the Weekend Australian that the Henry tax review was modeling a capital gains tax (CGT) on family homes worth more than $2 million. The proposal was portrayed in the media as good economics but bad politics.

Journalist David Uren commented that ‘the tax treatment of savings is a dog’s breakfast … savings are taxed on an entirely different basis, depending on whether it is money in the bank, superannuation, shares, trusts, investment property or the family home.’ In this context, the principal residence exemption from CGT is seen by some as distortionary. But another way of looking at it is to ask why we persist in taxing other forms of saving. The Henry review has identified Australia’s relatively high tax burden on capital as a priority for reform. Alleviating the tax burden on other forms of saving would be a better approach to reducing any distortions arising from principal residence exemption.

The 1999 Ralph reforms discounted by 50% the CGT payable by individuals and funds, a measure also widely criticised as distortionary. Yet CGT payable by individuals increased by 317% from 1999–2000 and 2006–07, compared to only a 146% increase in CGT payable by companies, which are not eligible for the 50% discount. Realisations rose 302% for individuals compared to 193% for companies over the same period. The Ralph reforms demonstrate that easing existing taxes on saving is potentially revenue positive.

The principal residence exemption is often said to lead to over-investment in housing, but this argument is looking increasingly threadbare against the backdrop of a chronic national housing shortage. This shortage is not just a cyclical issue but reflects what RBA Governor Glenn Stevens has called ‘serious supply-side impediments to producing … affordable shelter.’ While portrayed as a ‘wealth tax,’ it is worth recalling that 42 Sydney suburbs had a median house price in excess of $1 million prior to the onset of the financial crisis. In the absence of indexation, even a ‘wealth tax’ would capture a growing share of the housing stock.

The above is a press release from the Centre for Independent Studies, dated August 21st. Enquiries to cis@cis.org.au. Snail mail: PO Box 92, St Leonards, NSW, Australia 1590. Telephone ph: +61 2 9438 4377 or fax: +61 2 9439 7310





Not all cultures are good

Australia is multiracial but it should not be multicultural, contends Barry Cohen

"WHEN I hear the word culture, I reach for my pistol." Whether Hermann Goering or someone else spoke those words is immaterial; the sentiment is clear. I feel the same when I hear the word multicultural. By now the language police will have concluded that I am a rabid racist not fit to mix in polite society. It is the standard epithet hurled at those who question multiculturalism. How has it come to this?

I became involved in politics almost 50 years ago with the prime motivation of fighting racism. However, I am aghast at the way multicultural advocates have taken control of the race debate by denouncing as racist anyone who disagrees with their view of the future of Australian society. At this point it may be apposite if I detail my family's ethnic mix. It includes Polish and Lithuanian Jews via South Africa, Celts from Scotland and Ireland, a handful of Thais and the very best British bloodstock.

Born in Griffith in 1935, by the time I was five World War II was well under way. At the time Australia was 97.5 per cent Anglo-Celtic and Christian. Those sectarian differences that did exist then were between Catholics and Protestants, many of whom were not far removed from the battles for Irish independence. As a small Jewish boy I wasn't a threat; more of an oddity, really.

I first experienced anti-Semitism when sent to a Sydney boarding school to study for my bar mitzvah. On my first day at school I was involved in three fights with boys who had greeted me with the welcoming words, "You dirty f..king Jew." Hence my lifetime commitment to fight prejudice. Sure, there were further incidents, often at the most unexpected times, but I remain convinced that Australia is one of the least racist countries.

It is not in the least surprising nonetheless that when Australia, under Ben Chifley, abandoned its practice of only seeking migrants from Britain, and turned to Europe there was some apprehension about how it would work. It was, as we know, a great success. First came the Italians, Poles, Germans, Balts, Dutch and others, followed by those from wherever there was suffering. Millions sought safe haven from wars, oppression, famine or poverty. They came to a country that offered the freedoms they had been denied, provided them with the opportunity to earn a decent living and enabled them to rear a family free from the threat of violence.

Each new wave of migrants followed the same pattern. Arriving with little, they gravitated to areas with cheap accommodation among people who spoke the same language, ate the same food, worshipped at the same church and were familiar with the same culture. Older Australians had doubts about these cultural "ghettoes" but in time they not only got used to them but grew to cherish them. Eventually there was hardly a nationality, religion, race or creed that didn't have its own cultural identity and community in Australia. With a few exceptions the integration was seamless and tensions were rare. Adult immigrants found it hardest to assimilate into the local community. Differences became less obvious with each passing generation. Each group made their contribution towards a new, constantly changing Australian culture.

So why, I hear you ask, do I bridle at the word multiculturalism? We are a multiracial society and a harmonious one. What I object to is the idea promoted by the multicultural lobby that not only should we be a society of a hundred cultures but it is the government's duty, nay obligation, to see that we remain permanently culturally divided. If some groups wish to remain separate from mainstream Australia, then that is their choice, but they should not expect governments to aid and abet those divisions.

Governments have a responsibility to assist new arrivals to settle in by helping them to find work, learn English, obtain housing and, if necessary, provide welfare. They should not help create the society from whence they escaped. In return, migrants have a responsibility to learn about Australia's history and culture, including indigenous Australia and those of Anglo-Celtic origin, which was the dominant culture for 150 years.

Strangely, it is the Anglo-Celtic culture that is continually denigrated. No culture is perfect but few can match the British tradition of equality before the law, respect for minority views, freedom of speech and association, political and civil rights and above all, democracy. The word that best fits that heritage is "tolerance". Oddly, those most critical of that culture often come from the most oppressive and repulsive regimes, those ruled by feudal monarchies, military and theocratic dictatorships and one-party states.

The idea that all cultures are equally good is arrant nonsense. A glance at Freedom House's annual rankings of freedom will attest to that. Australia ranks among the very best.

To those who believe it is the government's responsibility to re-create the culture from whence they have escaped, I suggest they consider other options. Ours is a multiracial and tolerant society, and our culture should be a gradually evolving one, free from government interference and guidance. Let it remain so.

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Some Greenie face-saving

SOME new conditions are being placed on coal-power generators in Queensland which, on the face of it, sound like positive news for the environment.

Announced just minutes ago (from when I started typing!) as part of Queensland’s just-released climate change strategy, the Government has announced it will not allow any new dirty coal-fired power stations to be built in the state.

But there’s a get-out clause - and it’s quite a big one. Hang on - let’s put that another way. It’s HUGE, because some coal-fired power will be allowed.

While generators will have to use “world’s best practice low emission technology” they will also have to show their new power station will be ready to retrofit Carbon Capture and Storage technology - a technology still unproven. What’s more, they’ll have to fit the aforementioned unproven technology within five years of it being proven on a commercial scale.

I’d like to meet the person who has to check that the power plant is ready for something which doesn’t yet exist.

Similarly loose-fitting restrictions have been placed on new coal-fire plants in England, where the Government says it doesn’t expect carbon capture to be demonstrated commercially for at least another decade.

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The parsnip war

Mr Burke may be an attractive onscreen personality (though I believe he is much less attractive offscreen) but he has bitten off more that he can chew over this one. If you just boil the hell out of parsnips in the traditional Australian way, they are certainly not much. But in the hands of a good cook they can be quite reasonable eating. It seems that the problem traces to his mother's cooking and, having myself been subjected during my childhood to traditional Australian/British cooking, I think I know where he is coming from

Gardening Don Burke and master chef Donna Hay have gone to war - over the humble parsnip. Mr Burke fired the first shot last week when he used his radio program to slam Ms Hay and the The Sunday Telegraph for publishing parsnip recipes in the Sunday Magazine. Mr Burke described Ms Hay as "wretched" for serving parsnips to people as they were not fit for pigs.

"I'm outraged, I'm angry, I'm upset, I'm crushed. I'm all of those things and a lot more," he said on air. "If you get that appalling newspaper today, The Sunday Telegraph, and get out Sunday Magazine ... that wretched Donna Hay has got two pages of parsnip recipes. "I respect pigs, I like pigs, but I wouldn't give my pet pig parsnips."

But Mr Burke may have bitten off more than he can chew, with Ms Hay and the parsnip industry rising up to defend this worthy vegetable. Vegetable growers' association AUSVEG said Mr Burke's comments were misguided. "Don Burke is entitled to his view, but his expertise is probably more in the area of plants than vegetables," AUSVEG spokesman Hugh Tobin said.

Parsnip grower Angelo Lamattina, 33, said Mr Burke's comments were "un-Australian". "Where does he get off?" he said. "Here's some bloke who had some TV show and reckons he can come out and bag our work. "It takes six months to harvest a perfect parsnip and Don Burke should take the challenge to come to the farm and see if he's up to it."

Mr Burke stood by his comments last week, but revealed the root cause of his parsnip problem was his mother's cooking, describing her baked parsnips as "hideous". But he insists serving parsnips is an "affront to human dignity".

It's not the first time Mr Burke has had a run-in with parsnip fans. The Burke's Backyard website features an apology and recipes from several years ago after he made "disparaging comments about the vegetable".

The gardener suggested parents who made their children eat parsnips deserved to be shot. "I had people who loved parsnips writing me letters and putting in angry calls," Mr Burke said. "Some challenged me to come to their farms so I accepted I was beaten and we put that on the website."

Mr Burke said he rates Ms Hay as one of world's top chefs. "But I condemn all people who like parsnips and challenge Donna to present them to me in a way that's appealing," he said.

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Bureaucracy at work

This is what Leftists want to lumber us with more and more of: A total lack of normal human feeling and decency. Mindless following of rules, no matter how inappropriate, is the essence of bureaucracy. It's inbuilt

A GRIEVING mother has been sent a bill for the cost of a guardrail damaged during the car crash which killed her daughter. The State Government yesterday apologised for the letter, sent only weeks after 26-year-old Krista Flett died on the Pacific Motorway at Worongary on June 13.

Her grieving mother yesterday told The Courier-Mail bureaucrats needed to think before putting pen to paper. Wendy Flett, of Mudgeeraba, said the family was "flabbergasted" when they received a Main Roads Department letter demanding payment for the damaged guardrail – which ended with a "sorry" for their loss.

The letter, which was signed on behalf of Main Roads South Coast regional director Andrew Cramp, said a bill would be sent to the family because Krista was deemed at fault for the accident. "Roadside property such as guardrails, traffic lights and landscaping are maintained by Main Roads with taxpayers' funds for the benefit of the whole community," the letter read. "By law, this department is required to recover the costs of damage from the responsible driver and this letter is to advise you about that process. "Main Roads has assessed the most economical way of repairing the damage and will invoice the estate of Ms Flett for those costs when finalised. "I am sorry for your loss and understand that this situation may be difficult for Ms Flett's family."

Two days later, the department sent the Fletts another letter saying it had decided "not to proceed with cost recovery".

Yesterday Main Roads Minister Craig Wallace apologised to the family, saying the letter was "inappropriate" and should never have been sent. "This should not have happened, and I apologise for the distress this undoubtedly caused the family," Mr Wallace said. "As soon as my director-general became aware of the letter he immediately arranged for a further letter to be sent to the family indicating that they should disregard this previous correspondence. "He has also made several attempts to contact the family to apologise personally but has not been able to make contact at this stage."

Mrs Flett said that while she accepted the apology, she was not prepared to let the matter be "swept under the carpet". "I never want this to happen to anyone else," she said. "It's unpleasant. "It brings back the whole horror of the night that happened. "You just have to relive it all again."

Mrs Flett said that while she had heard of the department's "cost recovery" policy, the letter was a shock. "I was angry when I read it . . . it shouldn't have happened," she said. "Everyone's just been flabbergasted and said 'how can they do that?' Well, that's what they do. "That's how all bureaucratic processes are handled – they step outside the bounds of human procedure. They follow procedure, type the letter and send the letter. "It's not moral and it needs to be reviewed."

Mr Wallace said a review of the department's policy to seek payment for the cost of damaged road infrastructure in some circumstances had been initiated by director-general Dave Stewart. He said Mr Stewart had sent letters to the department's regional directors, telling them to use "common sense" in their discretionary decisions.

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Literacy tests key to improving student skills

STUDENTS' reading and writing skills improve more quickly if teachers use their literacy test results to adjust teaching methods, new research shows. But not enough teachers are learning to interpret the results effectively.

New Zealand researcher Professor Helen Timperley yesterday presented the findings of a study of 300 schools at the Australian Council for Educational Research conference in Perth. Students involved in the program learned reading and writing skills at twice the rate of the national average.

"Previously, the education system has assumed that if teachers had this information they automatically would be able to use it to enhance student learning, but this is not the case," Professor Timperley, of the University of Auckland, said.

"Teachers need detailed information about what students know and can do, but they also need to know how to use the information to change teaching practice.

"And school leaders need to know how to lead the kinds of change in thinking and practice that are required for teachers to use the data."

Also at the conference, ACER research director Margaret Forster told delegates that standardised test results should be used to test the limits of students' knowledge and challenge them.

"Research shows that effective teachers recognise that learning is most likely to occur when a student is challenged just beyond their current level of attainment," she said.

"Effective teachers understand, therefore, the importance of first determining students' current levels of attainment rather than working from what we expect them to know and understand given their age or year level."

Nationally, the Principals as Literacy Leaders project is this year encouraging school leaders to be more involved in lifting standards in their schools.

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Quack psychotherapy kills

"Encounter groups" and the like once had a certain vogue in mainstream psychology but it became apparent that they often did more harm than good to vulnerable people and they therefore largely fell out of mainstream use. The quacks, however, seem to have reinvented and worsened the procedures.

Last I heard, NSW had psychologist registration laws requiring 6 years of accredited training in some form. I would have thought that the quacks below were in breach of that and could be prosecuted

JOHN Marshall had a sense of deja vu when he heard that Rebekah Lawrence had jumped naked to her death just days after completing a self-help course. Eighteen years earlier, Mr Marshall's stepson died during a self-help program run by the creator of Ms Lawrence's course. "When I first heard about it in the news, I thought, my God," Mr Marshall told The Australian yesterday. "They're identical. They've just changed the dates and the names."

Darren Hughes was 24 when, in 1987, he fell to his death from a 12m-high window during the Breakthrough residential self-help program. In 2005, Lawrence jumped naked to her death from her office window, just two days after completing The Turning Point course. Hughes's course was run by the Walter Bellin Partnership until 1988. Mr Bellin also created The Turning Point course.

The inquest into Lawrence's death heard last week from Geoffrey Kabealo, the chief executive of People Knowhow, the company behind The Turning Point and Breakthrough courses since 1988. Mr Kabealo said last week that "some 40,000 people have come through the (Turning Point) course and we haven't had any episodes like Rebekah Lawrence". Mr Kabealo has since denied any knowledge of Hughes's death.

Mr Marshall, a sergeant with Sydney Water Police, said organisers of the course were aware of his stepson's mental problems. Hughes had been in a psychiatric hospital, had had electric shock therapy and was recovering from drug addiction. Mr Marshall warned one of the organisers that his stepson should not be doing the $1500 course because of his mental health history. "It's all right," the organiser told him. "He's on a higher plane now." The woman he spoke to was a volunteer who had taken the course herself but who did not have any professional training.

The inquest into Lawrence's death heard a similar story about the volunteers' training. The 34-year-old called two members of her "service team" the night before she died. The first team member told the inquest he had not expected to receive calls in the middle of the night. The other told Lawrence she was not qualified to answer her questions. Neither had any formal training or qualifications in counselling or psychology.

Mr Marshall said his stepson, a welder and boilermaker, was on medication and "seemed to be getting himself back on track" before starting the Breakthrough course. It was on the fourth day of the program that Hughes fell 2 1/2 storeys at a guest house in Robertson, in the NSW southern highlands. A policeman told Mr Marshall the group had reacted to Hughes's death "as if nothing had happened".

Mr Marshall said the organisers "took participants' watches away and any personal effects, like photos, that gave them a link to their identities". "The idea was to disorientate them and reprogram them," he said. Hughes's parents describe the course when it was run by the Walter Bellin Partnership as "brainwashing" and "a cult". The inquest into Hughes's death recorded an open verdict, but his mother, Dorothy Marshall, believes the course was to blame. She said she was horrified to discover "that the same people could do it again". "They take innocent young people that trust them and they destroy them mentally," she said.

Mr Marshall hopes the inquest into Lawrence's death will ensure courses use qualified practitioners and are properly regulated. "Otherwise it will happen again," he said.

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Update: There is now a report of a third death allegedly caused by this quackery






Federal Government cracks down on weight-loss industry

This falls under the heading of fraud prevention so has my hearty endorsement. My only question is whether ANY non-surgical weight loss claim will stand up to full scientific scrutiny of its long-term effectiveness

WEIGHT-LOSS programs and products will have to prove they can help people keep off the kilos long-term as the Federal Government cracks down on the $414-million-a-year industry. The Rudd Government's Preventative Health Taskforce is understood to have called for the weight-loss industry to be regulated in a report handed down last month.

It follows growing evidence that diets may actually be adding to the obesity crisis as overweight people lose weight rapidly while following programs but quickly put it back on after they stop.

The taskforce said that young women in particular were spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on programs to manage their weight. Despite this, the nation's obesity rate was climbing with more than 60 per cent of adults now overweight or obese. While weight-loss programs and pharmacy-based meal replacement programs were popular, the task force said there was limited data to show they were actually effective. It wants a wide-ranging review of diet products and a common code of practice drawn up covering the cost, the training of counsellors and the promotion of the diets.

The Dietitians Association of Australia is backing the recommendation. A spokesman told The Daily Telegraph all commercial diet programs should be assessed by a body of experts similar to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which assesses drugs for safety and efficacy before they can go on sale. The association said regulation should require businesses marketing a diet program to provide evidence to a panel of experts showing what percentage of those who used the diet kept the weight off two years after starting.

Chief executive Claire Hewat said a good diet would result in weight loss of about half a kilogram per week. "If you can lose 5 per cent of your body weight you are doing really well," she said. "Diets are not the point, it's lifestyle change that is needed."

A Choice survey of pharmacy diet programs published earlier this year found they were successful at helping people shed kilos in a hurry if followed closely - but they did little to change a person's lifestyle in the long term. Many were so nutritionally deficient that dieters had to take vitamin supplements, while some counsellors selling the programs had just three hours training.

A John Hopkins University study of commercial weight-loss programs last year found 27 per cent of people dropped out in the first month. Just 42 per cent were still enrolled at three months and 7 per cent were still following a year on.

The association also wants national exercise guidelines reviewed because the 30 minutes of exercise a day promoted by the Government is good for general wellbeing but not enough to tackle obesity.

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PUBLIC MEDICINE IN AUSTRALIA

Four current articles below:

Federal government plan to cut its healthcare spending hits a rock

If the federal coalition wants to sink Labor's plan to cap Medicare payments for IVF treatment they've got a willing partner, with the Australian Greens declaring they'll vote against the change. The Rudd government wants to cap reimbursement for a range of items under the extended Medicare safety net - including IVF and obstetric services - in order to save $258 million over four years.

Health Minister Nicola Roxon argues Labor is cracking down on excessive fees being charged by specialists, and the changes won't affect patients charged $6,000 or less for IVF treatment.

But the Greens says the extended safety net is itself inflationary and they'll oppose Labor's changes in the Senate. "While the Greens understand the intent of the proposed changes is to reduce the costs to the public purse, we are not convinced that the government's approach will be effective," health spokeswoman Rachel Siewert said in a statement. "(Labor's) legislation is a half-way house - it only addresses part of the problem and will introduce another set of inequities."

Senator Siewert said the extended safety net advantaged those who could afford to pay upfront fees, and encouraged specialists to raise their prices. It was an "inflationary measure", she said. "The government's amendments are simply to use patients to pressure specialists to reduce their fees, which is unfair to the patients, and ultimately likely to prove ineffective in reducing the burden of unnecessary costs on the public purse."

Earlier today, the coalition announced it would join forces with Family First's Steve Fielding and independent senator Nick Xenophon to delay a vote on the changes. It will move an amendment in the Senate to stymie debate until the government tables regulations outlining exactly who'll pay what under the new scheme.

The upper house was expected to debate Labor's legislation this week, but with senators still thrashing out changes to renewable energy targets there's now a possibility it will be deferred until September.

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Labor Party's attack on private health insurance set for Senate defeat

THE Federal Government is set to add another potential early election trigger to its arsenal, with the Senate likely to vote down its changes to the private health insurance rebate this week. The Opposition vowed to block the move earlier this year because it breaks a Labor election pledge, and key cross-bench senators Nick Xenophon and Steve Fielding are now indicating they'll also vote against the measure.

On Tuesday, the Senate defeated Labor's draft laws which would have allowed universities to charge students a compulsory $250 services and amenities fee. Last week, the Rudd Government's emissions trading scheme was also voted down in the upper house. If defeated Bills are reintroduced after three months and again voted down the Government can call an early election.

Under Labor's changes to private health insurance, the 30 per cent rebate will be means-tested for individuals earning more than $75,000 a year and couples earning more than $150,000 a year. In a double whammy, the wealthy will also be hit with a higher Medicare levy surcharge if they opt out of private cover.

Health Minister Nicola Roxon says it would be "fiscally irresponsible'' for the Coalition to sink the changes, which are expected to raise $1.9 billion over four years. "I don't think that people think it's appropriate for secretaries and nurses to be funding the private health insurance of millionaires,'' she told ABC Radio on Wednesday. "Why is that a good use of public money.''

But Family First's Steve Fielding says the changes undermine families, because they don't take account of how many children are in the household. "I won't be supporting the Rudd Government's proposal to means-test the 30 per cent private health insurance rebate because it's unfair to families,'' Senator Fielding said in a statement. "Under the Government's proposal, a couple with no children on $149,000 will be eligible for the full rebate, while a family of five with a household income of $150,000 would have their rebate reduced. This makes no sense and undermines the family.'' Senator Fielding said he was happy to negotiate with the Government "but the health minister is yet to get back to me''.

Independent senator Nick Xenophon insists he can't support the move until the findings of a Productivity Commission report are released later this year. "The Government made an explicit election promise not to change the rebate,'' he said today. "That's something that people relied on at the last election. I think it's a question of trust.''

The Australian Greens support means-testing the private health insurance rebate but not the surcharge hike. "The Medicare levy surcharge unfairly penalises people who have chosen not to take out private health insurance and support the public health system,'' health spokeswoman Rachel Siewert said in a statement. "The Government is targeting conscientious objectors.'' Senator Siewert said the Greens would move to split the bills so the Senate could vote on each measure separately.

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Another state-of-the-art government hospital

DOCTORS at one of Sydney's oldest hospitals are demanding the State Government urgently rebuild what they claim is ''a slum'', with possum urine on the walls and dangerous cabling snaking across the floors in the operating theatres. More than 40 senior clinicians at Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Hospital have called for a meeting with the Health Minister, John Della Bosca, in a bid to have the hospital renovated before it becomes too unsafe for staff and patients.

Doctors say most of the operating theatres lack emergency arrest buttons, forcing nurses to yell for help; the theatres are too small for modern equipment, which blocks hallways; and wires hang from ceilings and cables run across the floors, putting staff at risk of electrocution. Some ceilings had collapsed from rain damage and possum nests were found near wards.

''It is offensive and medieval,'' the hospital's clinical director of surgery and anaesthetics, Pip Middleton, said yesterday. ''This hospital serves a burgeoning population of young and old with new housing developments everywhere and is on the crossroads of major freeways, yet we have a significant issue with ageing infrastructure.''

Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Hospital admits about 18,000 people a year and has more than 1500 staff, but its physical condition was ''one of the worst in the state'', the chairman of the medical staff council, Richard Harris, said. ''It is really 19th-century stuff. The only thing that keeps this place going is the goodwill and expertise of the staff.''

It was one of the few in NSW without a coronary care unit, despite research 60 years ago that mortality rates from cardiac arrest were halved if patients were treated in a specialist unit rather than a medical ward, Jason Sharp, a cardiologist, said.

The executive clinical director and head of rehabilitation and aged care, Sue Kurrle, said most of the hospital was ''slum-like and primitive with patients living cheek-by-jowl''. ''There is no privacy, there are holes in the floor, possum wee on the walls. Staff have to jostle to look at the one computer on each ward to get blood test and X-ray results. It is simply third-rate.'' The geriatric and rehabilitation wards survived on bequests from former patients, she said. ''We'd be living in a slum like the rest of the hospital if it wasn't for that money.''

A spokeswoman for Mr Della Bosca said staff had been given $1.3 million for maintenance last year and $21 million had gone towards a building to house a new emergency department and maternity ward. The chief executive of the Northern Sydney Central Coast Area Health Service, Matthew Daly, will meet doctors today.

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The difference one dedicated doctor can make

There should be such a facility in every capital city. If needed, fire a bureaucrat to pay for it. Strokes are very common and it is a scandal if people are left needlessly disabled by them

BRITISH tourist Jean Pollock would be severely paralysed - if not dead - if she had not had her brain "vacuum cleaned" at Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Instead of a life of disability, she is looking forward to resuming her holiday after Lotto-sized odds allowed her to shrug off a devastating stroke.

Ms Pollock, 53, flew in from Glasgow planning to surprise relatives by turning up unannounced at her sister-in-law's 50th birthday party in Bendigo this weekend. While visiting friends in Lockleys on Wednesday morning she suddenly slumped, her left arm and leg paralysed, her face droopy and her vision affected. A huge blood clot had blocked an artery in the right side of her brain - a stroke.

Serendipity stepped in. Her friends were aware enough to immediately call an ambulance. Being in Lockleys meant she was in the QEH catchment. The ambulance officers were trained to recognise stroke and called ahead to alert the QEH stroke unit. As seconds played out, the stroke team swung into action, knowing time was as tough an enemy as the clot itself.

On arrival at the QEH, Ms Pollock was quickly assessed with tests including CT scans which confirmed a blood clot in her brain, and that she was clinically eligible for the clot-busting drug tPA. The streamlined stroke management team ensured she had the drug within the mandated three-hour time limit from the onset of stroke. But as one of the 40 per cent of patients on whom the drug doesn't have the desired effect, Ms Pollock faced a future of having her left side paralysed from stroke - or even death.

Serendipity, however, meant she had been brought to one of only two hospitals in Australia with the Penumbra Device, the other being Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital. The QEH has quietly worked to have its stroke unit equipped and trained as an internationally-recognised centre of excellence. Unit head Dr Jim Jannes had seen the Penumbra Device during a conference in Barcelona, and after checking its potential had successfully lobbied to have the $60,000 device installed at the QEH. Since February, two women suffering strokes had been treated by the machine, improving their recovery, although each still faces lengthy rehabilitation.

On Wednesday morning, with the clot-busting drug not working, Ms Pollock was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time to allow one more treatment option - the Penumbra Device. Interventional radiologists Steve Chryssidis and Ruben Sebben used the machine to carefully guide a catheter up arteries from Ms Pollock's groin all the way to her brain, while she was conscious. When it reached the clot a probe gently broke up the clot and it was sucked down the tube, clearing the blockage. "There was a big clot blocking her artery and killing her brain - we went in and just vacuumed it out," Dr Chryssidis said.

Dr Jannes said the stroke team weighed up the situation and decided the chance to restore a good quality of life to Ms Pollock outweighed the substantial risks of the procedure. "She went from being paralysed to giving me the thumbs up from the operating table when the procedure was over," Dr Jannes said. "There is nothing more successful than a complete recovery. She would have been left paralysed, possibly dead, if we had not been able to offer her other treatment."

Ms Pollock faces several days of tests but is expected to be released from hospital early this week, fully recovered. "Someone was looking after me - I get goosebumps just thinking about the odds of what might have happened if I had been somewhere else," she said."You have an absolute jewel in the QEH, you should be proud of the work they do."

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Students fees set for defeat

For years there was the obnoxious situation where all students were forced to pay fees that were largely spent on far-Left activities. The Labor government has been trying to bring that situation back

A FEDERAL Government plan to slug university students with annual fees of up to $250 is facing certain defeat after Family First senator Steve Fielding and the Nationals flagged they would not support it. An upper house vote on Labor legislation allowing universities to charge students up to $250 a year for sporting, cultural, welfare and advocacy services is expected today.

The draft laws wind back the Howard government's Voluntary Student Unionism (VSU), which eliminated the payment by tertiary students of compulsory service fees. Youth Minister Kate Ellis said it was not a return to compulsory student unionism because the money collected could not be used for political purposes [You wanna bet?]. "It's not a return to the past,'' Ms Ellis said today. "This is a new way forward, it's a balanced approach.''

But the move is destined to fail. The Coalition has united to oppose the bill after a Nationals amendment proposing to have sporting facilities "alone'' covered by the fee was defeated. Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce said the amendment recognised that a university was more than just an academic institution but the government, the cross-bench and even the Liberals disagreed.

"The National party amendments ... are far too narrow,'' Labor frontbench senator Kim Carr said. National Union of Students president David Barrow called on the Nationals to support the bill anyway. "We urge the Senate Nationals to support regional students by supporting this legislation when it comes to the vote,'' he said.

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Face-saving deal struck on renewable energy

It is setting a totally unrealistic goal that will not be reached and everyone knows that but it is meant to tell the Greenies that they have been listened to. It will however lead to a lot of useless spending of taxpayer funds on windmills etc. But there has already been a lot of that in Australia and in most of the developed world. Even India seems to have been conned into it

AUSTRALIA is in for a huge boost in renewable energy after the Federal Government and the Opposition agreed to a deal. The deal, agreed today, will see the Government's Bill to have 20 per cent of electricity come from renewable sources by 2020 pass the Senate.

"The Opposition's key concerns have been met by the Government," Opposition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt said in Canberra. "We are delighted that Australia is set to have renewable energy legislation, and the Coalition will support the renewable energy target of 20 per cent for Australia."

Opposition emissions trading spokesman Andrew Robb said there was now "100 per cent bipartisan support" for the Bill. "The position we got to with the Government has had the unanimous support of the Coalition party room, which is a great result," he said.

The Senate is due to continue debating the Renewable Energy Target (RET) bill this afternoon and a vote is expected tomorrow. The Senate last week voted down the proposed emissions trading scheme, which is separate to the RET.

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Murder a toddler? No jail if you are a feral

The toddler was Aboriginal. Welfare authorities knew of the case before the killing but probably threw up their hands from the beginning as Aboriginal families are very commmonly severely dysfunctional, with child abuse frequent. And it is absolutely VERBOTEN to take children away from black families. That used to be done sometimes but in recent years the Left set up a huge howl about "The stolen generation" (the black children fostered out to white families) in reference to the practice. The authorities obviously now feel that it is better to let black kids die than risk any more of that abuse

Rachel Pfitzner was ordered to address her anger management problem exactly a year before she murdered her toddler son, The Daily Telegraph reports. A judge handed her a suspended jail term so she could get the help she needed - and look after her children.

Twelve months later her two-year-old son Dean Shillingsworth was dead, his tiny body shoved into a suitcase and tossed in a duck pond. Pfitzner, 27, yesterday pleaded guilty to murder, the Crown rejecting her claim it was an accidental death. She now admits she murdered him - and meant to end his sad, short life.

Pfitzner faced Acting Judge Joseph Moore in October 2006 over a violent attack on Dean's grandfather and the judge had some sympathy for her. She was the mother of three small children with an alcoholic partner, Paul James Shillingsworth who was also prone to rages. Judge Moore made it a condition of her release that she get help - "especially anger management".

Perhaps if she had listened, or indeed the system had worked, Dean would still be alive.

More HERE

Lawyers who got holocaust denier locked up try to justify their attack on free speech

Freedom of speech should not be freedom to vilify, argue Steven Lewis and Peter Wertheim below -- without offering any evidence that such vilification leads to any physical harm to those vilified. What they offer is just a series of shallow and unsubstantited assertions. Can they name even ONE person who was moved by Mr. Toben's rants to attack a Jew? To show how shallow their argument is, contemplate this: I do my best to vilify the Queensland police, because I believe I have good grounds for doing so. Should I be prevented from doing that? It might also be noted that the lawyers concerned do a fair job of vilifying Mr. Toben. Why is that OK if vilification is of itself such a bad thing? I think that their argument reduces to nothing more than an aways-easy attack on unpopular speech. Wiser heads in the U.S. judiciary have of course ruled that holocaust denial is protected free speech, obnoxious though it may be

In a legal first, Australia's most notorious Holocaust denier, Fredrik Toben, has been jailed for three months following the failure of his appeal this week for contempt of court arising from breaches of Australia's anti-vilification laws.

The sentence follows seven years of Toben repeatedly ignoring court orders requiring him to remove racist material from his Adelaide Institute website.

His journey to prison began in 2002 when the Federal Court found Toben's website breached the racial-hatred provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act.

According to the court, material on the site suggested the Holocaust did not occur, that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz, that Jewish people who believed in the Holocaust were of limited intelligence and that they have exaggerated the number of Jews killed during World War II to profit from what he described as "a Holocaust myth".

But it's not these claims, no matter how offensive they may be, that have landed Toben with a prison term. There are no criminal sanctions under the act.

Toben is going to jail for contempt of court. He was ordered to remove the offending material and he didn't. He promised to remove the material and then reneged. He apologised to the court but then recanted. True to form, he all but invited the court to lock him up.

Toben referred to judges as "the Jewdiciary" and, again true to form, accused them of bias without a shred of evidence. We all have to obey the law and court orders. There are no special rules and privileges for the Tobens of this world.

While the decision to jail Toben will be welcomed by most fair-minded people, questions will rightly be asked about free speech and turning Toben into a poster-boy for racist fringe groups.

The suggestion that Toben, and others like him, should be able to say whatever they like regardless of how hurtful, inaccurate and ugly it might be, goes to the heart of our dearly held belief in freedom of expression.

But does this sort of commentary, publicly attacking people because of their race, ethnicity or religion, really constitute community debate? Is it an exercise of free speech, or an abuse of it? When Jews in Australia are targeted, these questions take on a very sharp edge. Australia has the world's second highest percentage of Holocaust survivors after Israel.

Like all freedoms, the proper limits of free speech are exceeded when it is about causing harm. The basic question is whether vilification is sufficiently harmful to justify an intrusion by the law into this fundamental personal freedom.

Whether it's Jews, Muslims, homosexuals or women, the public vilification of entire groups of people can only undermine, and ultimately destroy, their sense of security, the birthright of every Australian.

Being constantly vilified as a member of a group, instead of being judged on one's individual merits, compromises one's social relationships. One is put on the defensive with workmates, friends, neighbours and anyone else with whom one interacts. Such is the power of modern communications. And vilification is the invariable precursor to violence against members of the targeted group.

The Racial Discrimination Act protects innocent people from this sort of harm.

But the harm has to be proved in court according to objective criteria. The act makes it clear that it is not unlawful to publish material in good faith as part of a genuine academic, artistic or scientific debate, whether anyone takes offence or not. What's clear in the Toben case, and what the court found, was that his material is not part of a genuine debate about history or politics, as he claimed. The real thrust of his material is to use the internet to stoke up hatred against Jews as a group.

Some argue that if Toben had been left alone to spruik from his Adelaide-based hate website he would have remained an obscure failed school teacher talking to like-minded nutters. Not so. Toben is a determined publicity hound. In 1999 he travelled to his native Germany and was convicted in Mannheim of incitement to racial hatred and Holocaust denial. In Germany, for obvious reasons, trying to whitewash the Nazis' crimes is a criminal offence. Toben spent seven months in jail.

In 2006, Toben went to Tehran for an anti-Semitic hatefest, hobnobbing in the media limelight with a cavalcade of some of the world's most notorious racists including Iranian President Ahmadinejad and US Ku Klux Klansman David Duke.

The publicity around the legal proceedings against Toben in Australia has been a mere zephyr in his international media whirl.

For reasons that defy conventional analysis, Toben has spent most of his adult life vainly working to rehabilitate the universally disgraced reputation of Nazi Germany. And for Toben, "the Jews" are the principal obstacle.

If Toben and his patsies confined their activities to ranting among themselves in private, few would care. But using our cherished freedoms and easy access to the mass media as a way of striking at the security of an entire group of people on racial grounds tears at the fabric of our community and ultimately threatens those very freedoms.

History has vividly demonstrated that the relentless infusion of racism into public discourse is like drip-feeding poison into the democratic body politic. And in the words of American philosopher George Santayana: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

SOURCE






Frontal attack on young families by the Federal government

In the name of "safety", childcare is to be made far too dear for most families. This will lead to a lot of "backyard" operations or very impoverished families

QUEENSLAND parents could soon be paying $5000 more a year for child care, under a Federal Government plan to lift preschool education standards. The proposed changes will be rolled out in all Australian childcare centres in a bid to tighten up the industry by improving staff-to-child ratios and qualifications. But industry experts say the cost to parents is likely to be "substantial" and make it even harder to find childcare places. A government report by consultants Access Economics shows how, under one scenario, childcare costs could jump by $125 per child per week if all changes were implemented.

Childcare Queensland president Gwynn Bridge said initial costings suggested most childcare centres in Queensland would likely have to raise annual fees by $5000 a child. She said changes to staff-to-child ratios would force some centres to take even fewer children. "We are extremely concerned about this plan, as the incurring costs to families is looking to be substantial," Ms Bridge said. "The repercussions for Queensland are terrible, and we are in a unique and uncomfortable position compared with other states. "Childcare places for babies are already under high demand, and the proposed changes mean we will be able to take on even fewer. "We are advocating on behalf of families to ensure we get the best outcome for our Queensland families, who are already doing it tough."

The plan will be implemented by July 1 next year, following consultation with the industry, and be fully in place by January 2012. Childcare Queensland will make submissions to the Government by August 31.

Under the planned changes, one carer would be responsible for five children aged between 2½ and 3, rather than the current eight children, and one carer would look after 11 children aged between 3 and 5, rather than the current one staff to 12 children ratio. The current Queensland baby ratio is one to four aged up to 15 months, but this would change to one to three for up to 2 years. Childcare workers would also be required to have one staff member with a four-year teaching qualification at a tertiary level.

Child Care National Association president Chris Buck said families had been kept in the dark about the extra costs involved. "If perceived quality goes up, so do the costs," he said. "The risk being run by the Government is that fewer families will be able to afford child care."

SOURCE





Flight to private health insurers

PEOPLE have flocked to private health insurance in an apparent rejection of the Rudd Government's ability to fix the public health system and in a bid to escape a new levy. The Private Health Insurance Administration Council will today report that private health coverage increased by about 43,000 people since the March quarter – or about 211,000 more people compared with the same time last year.

The Courier-Mail can also report that Queensland Health cancelled 273 elective surgeries in the past month – up from 121 the year before. "Queensland hospitals are currently experiencing an increased demand due to seasonal winter symptoms and H1N1 (and) the increased demand has resulted in some elective surgery patients being postponed due to no ward or intensive care unit beds," a spokesman said.

Federal Opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton questioned the ability of Queensland Health to run an effective system at a time when billions have been diverted to the public health sector, much of it to cut elective surgery waiting lists.

Today's release of the new private health statistics – recorded during rising unemployment, the global financial meltdown and a 6 per cent rise on premiums – comes just days before the Rudd Government introduces a Budget measure that will no longer give high-earners a rebate for taking up private health insurance. But the Bill will be knocked back in the Senate by the Coalition and Independent Senator Nick Xenophon.

The Coalition has accused the Government of breaking its promise to retain support for private health insurance. The Government has already implemented a measure this year, requiring more people to take on private health insurance or face a levy. It sparked the Opposition to claim people would drop out, thereby driving up premiums.

Buoyed by the results, Health Minister Nicola Roxon, who attacked the Liberals yesterday on News Ltd's online site, The Punch, said the Coalition should not use low and middle-income earners to prop up rebates for the rich. Under the new Bill, rebates will be removed for singles earning more than $120,000; reduced from 30 to 10 per cent for those earning more than $90,000; and to 20 per cent for those on more than $75,000.

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Vaccine fear campaign investigated

These fruitcakes certainly are dangerous

A GROUP that claims vaccines cause autism, brain damage and cancer has been reported to the healthcare watchdog for allegedly spreading misinformation and endangering children's health. The official complaint to the Health Care Complaints Commission follows a newspaper advertisement paid for by businessman Dick Smith pleading with parents to ignore the Australian Vaccination Network's fear campaign.

AVN is run by Meryl Dorey, who publishes a website and newsletter, campaigns against mass public immunisation programs and promotes the use of homeopathy to prevent disease.

The Australian Skeptics group supports the complaint that Ms Dorey and the network are breaching the Health Care Complaints Act by making unsubstantiated health claims based on "conspiracy theories", pseudo-scientific evidence and debunked research.

Ms Dorey, of Bangalow on the Far North Coast, says her eldest son, now 20, was "vaccine-injured" from the diphtheria-tetanus-polio immunisation when he was two months old and the measles-mumps-rubella shot at 12 months. She attributes his life-long sleep apnoea and allergies to the vaccinations. Ms Dorey said she was not anti-vaccination, just "pro-information and pro-choice". "We never have and never will tell anyone that they should not vaccinate. We simply fill the information void left by government and the mainstream medical community," she said.

But Dick Smith, the Skeptics and the author of the complaint, Ken McLeod, say Ms Dorey and AVN do not promote choice because her speeches and publications never mention the proven benefits of immunisation, and the group's motto is: "Love them, protect them, never inject them.". "They can have their view but be upfront about it and don't quote dubious scientific evidence that has been debunked," Skeptics executive officer Tim Mendham said.

Mr Smith wrote and funded the advertisement because he believed young, vulnerable mothers were being conned by the network's claim to be an independent voice.

Complaints commission executive officer Kim Swan said the allegations were being assessed, and AVN had been asked to respond. Ms Dorey said the commission did not have jurisdiction over her or the network because she was not medically qualified and did not provide a health service.

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Labor government aims at national teacher rankings

Good stuff but it is rather surprising that they are defying the teachers' unions. Has some deal been done?

TEACHERS' pay could soon reflect their value in the classroom while schools' performance will be made public as an online report card rolls out next year.

Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Julia Gillard believes teachers should be remunerated using a merit-based pay system and will work with education experts to develop a national benchmark that will rank every teacher's value. Ms Gillard said a top-tier band existed in many states and territories and the only way for them to get paid more was to move away from face-to-face teaching. "We want to reward teachers - especially great quality teachers - and (those) prepared to go to disadvantaged schools where their excellent teaching skills can make the most difference," Ms Gillard said.

"Under the system that we're proposing, we would have a national accreditation system where people could be judged against national standards. "Then we want to see school systems better rewarding those highly accomplished teachers, particularly for teaching in disadvantaged schools." Some of those standards incorporate face-to-face teaching skills and knowledge of the curriculum.

From 2010 people will be able to compare schools using an online portal that will rank schools, compare resources and show teachers' qualifications. "We need greater transparency ... so we know what's happening in each and every school and so does the public," Ms Gillard said. Other means include the publication of national education results.

SOURCE

GREENIE ROUNDUP

Four current articles below

Warmists still stuck in the past

Ever since the tiny degree of global warming stopped at the end of the 20th century, Warmists have been looking longingly at the past, even though the present is very different. Their latest claim is that snowfalls in the high-country ski fields of Southern Australia are down by 40 per cent over the last 50 years. That we had exceptionally GOOD snowfalls this year and also last year is ignored. Does CO2 work only in some years and not in others? The Scots still remember battles that took place in the 13th century. Will Warmists still be blathering on during the ice age that seems to be the biggest threat now?

AUSTRALIAN skiers may have to look overseas in search of suitable snowfalls, thanks to global warming. The average snow cover at Australia's highest altitude snow course, Spencer's Creek in the Snowy Mountains, has declined by 30 per cent to 40 per cent in the last 50 years, a conference in Brisbane will be told today. The cost of man-made snow is also likely to increase as more water and electricity are required.

Unlike skiers, specialised plants that have learnt to survive in the Australian highlands don't have the option of seeking out higher ground and may face extinction, Associate Professor Catherine Pickering of Griffith University said. "Some of these plants are found only on the lee side of mountain ridges, where snow lies late into the summer months, long after snow in the surrounding landscape has melted," Prof Pickering said. "We are about to lose two of our rarest plant communities, right before our eyes." "We need to co-ordinate the ad hoc research that is happening on our limited snow country."

Prof Pickering will attend the The 10th International Congress of Ecology, INTECOL conference in Brisbane this week. INTECOL is hosted by the Ecological Society of Australia and the New Zealand Ecological Society. This is the first time the congress is being held in the southern hemisphere.

SOURCE

Temperature readings in isolated Australian locations show no increases for 100 years



Weather observatories in Australia, dating back 100 years or more show cities getting hotter as they get bigger but country towns have generally NOT been warming up. Some have actually been cooling down.

Most scientists recognise that temperature measurements in cities are influenced by non-climate things such as air-conditioners. The cities in Australia also show the same trend as cities in the northern hemisphere with the rate of warming here being less than 1 degree centigrade per century. So the countryside has NOT been warming up whereas cities are getting hotter.

Substantial increases in Carbon Dioxide levels have been observed over this period, so if CO2 really was driving temperature upwards, we would expect a general rise in temperature in the bush and an even bigger rise in cities due to the combined effect of CO2 and non-climatic heating. In many parts of the world it's hard to separate these two effects, so we are lucky here in Australia to have records from isolated country locations that are `un-contaminated' by the big city effect (heat island effect).

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) provides historical weather data on the internet here. The average of the peak temperatures for each month is available and this has been plotted in the attached graphs. Graphs for the mean daily peak temperatures in January are shown for Echuca, Deniliquin and Bathurst - as examples of country sites.

The last graph is for Sydney and shows evidence of the `big city warming effect'. In Deniliquin and Bathurst, there has actually been a fall in temperatures over the last 100 years but in many other regional places there was just no trend, up or down. EM Smith reports a similar pattern of `no warming' based on a large number of world-wide locations used by IPCC. See here

More HERE (See the original for links, graphics)

Food prices to surge under Warmist laws

SHOPPERS face a jump in grocery prices of up to 7 per cent under Labor's scheme to reduce carbon emissions, prompting calls for the Rudd government to come up with a compensation package to help low- and middle-income families. Big retailers have warned the government that the proposed emissions trading scheme would add between 4 and 7 per cent to shopping bills in what would be a de facto tax on food.

Although the government has revealed plans to compensate households for increased energy prices when the ETS is expected to be introduced in 2011, it has yet to announce how it will cover the rise in grocery prices.

Reserve Bank assistant governor Philip Lowe last week told the House of Representatives economics committee that the ETS would add 0.4 percentage points to the Consumer Price Index measure of inflation in its first year of operation. However, the Food and Grocery Council believes the increase in grocery prices would be much higher, about 5 per cent.

As food and grocery shopping is estimated to take up to 20 per cent of the weekly household budget, the council's chief executive, Kate Carnell, says the price rise will amount to a GST on food - the area the Howard government exempted from the tax after a prolonged campaign by Labor and the Australian Democrats. Large retailers are understood to have also done modelling showing similar results, including a rise in food prices of as much as 7 per cent should Australia adopt the 25 per cent target on emissions reductions by 2020.

Large retailers, while privately concerned, are believed to be hesitant to voice their objections to the ETS for fear of tarnishing their reputation among environmentally conscious consumers. Australian Retailers Association executive director Russell Zimmerman said the ETS would lead to a sharp increase in grocery shelf prices as costs increased at every stage of the production and distribution process. "It's going to be a high cost to the consumer - the food manufacturer gets an ETS charge, then there's delivery, and the retailers use refrigeration and lighting, and the cost of that is all going to be handed on," Mr Zimmerman said. "Retail is a very competitive business. There's not a lot of margin in grocery retailing, so these costs can't be absorbed."

The ARA has set out its concerns in a submission to the government's green paper on carbon reduction but Mr Zimmerman said he had little hope the government would shield consumers from higher costs. "The government has said it will cost consumers $1 a day, but that fails to accurately calculate the retail price impact on consumers, and there's no real handle on what it's going to cost consumers in the end," he said.

Retailers' anxiety is matched in the US, amid growing fears about the impact of carbon trading plans. US agriculture companies including grain giant Cargill, meat processor Tyson Foods and food-maker General Mills, have expressed concern they will bear an unfair proportion of the costs resulting from carbon-reduction legislation and warned this would lead to higher food prices. Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce has warned that the ETS, once in place, would raise the retail price of a leg of lamb to almost $100.

The revelations on food prices come as a split emerges in the business community over the ETS. The peak group, the Business Council of Australia, is divided over its position on the plan to reduce carbon emissions. The BCA is torn, with finance sector elements backing the ETS and the mining industry vehemently opposed. The split has led to the circulation of an anti-ETS paper from within the BCA that concludes 67 of its 109 members will not have a carbon permit liability under the government's proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. The overwhelming majority of the 67 are in the finance, legal or legal services sector, which the analysis says are expected to make huge profits out of the ETS.

The paper's author, who does not wish to be named, concludes: "While the BCA is held up as the voice of industry on the carbon scheme, the vast bulk of its members have no skin in the game. That is, they won't have to buy permits. In fact, the bankers and finance consultants like KPMG stand to make a fortune out of it."

The paper's author also names at least 12 senior Labor figures - seven of them frontbenchers, including three cabinet ministers - who they say have expressed doubts about the government's ETS privately to either BCA member companies or their industry group representatives.

SOURCE

Plans for Australian Poverty

The Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition, Mr Viv Forbes, today claimed that both the Turnbull and the Wong Decarbonisation plans were “Plans for Poverty”. Forbes explains:

“The Turnbull plan aims to reduce 2020 emissions to 90% of the 2000 level. “But we have moved on from the year 2000. To get back to 90% of 2000 would require a 20% cut on today’s activities. Moreover, the population by 2020 will be at least 30% above that in 2000. So the Turnbull carbon cuts will need to be more than 33% per capita.

“Emissions are produced by everything we do – if we use electricity, steel, cement, timber, cars, trucks, planes, ships, trains or food from farms, we will always produce emissions. Even people sleeping on the beach burn carbon food energy and emit carbon dioxide. How is each Australian going to trim carbon usage by 33%?

“2020 is just a decade away. There is no chance that wind, solar, geothermal or carbon burial will overcome their technical, engineering, infrastructure, environmental, transmission, economic and stability problems quickly enough to generate significant quantities of emissions-free base load electricity in that time. “That leaves only three ways to achieve the Turnbull cuts – the Green Option, the Secret Plan or the Unspeakable Option.

“The Green Option requires less use of modern technology - a return to candles and chip heaters, wood stoves and wind pumps, charcoal burners and steam engines, sulkies and bicycles, horse power and sailing clippers, possum stew and kangaroo tail soup, mud bricks, shingle roofs and cement floors made from ant bed and cow manure. Some things will disappear unless Malcolm has plans for airships lifted by political hot air, for night-time power generated from moonbeams using lunar panels, or for vegie-steak produced from algae growing in backyard ponds of poo.

“Reducing population will definitely achieve cuts in emissions without cuts in living standards. Is that the Secret Plan? “Or of course we always have the Unspeakable Option – a crash program to build nuclear power plants in the Latrobe, the Hunter, the Barossa, the Fitzroy and the Pilbara.

“Compared to these options, maybe a bit more harmless carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not so bad after all? "The Wong plan and the Turnbull plan are Plans for Poverty. “Both should be rejected.”

The above is a press release of 12 August 2009 from Mr Viv Forbes, Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition, Australia. www.carbon-sense.com. Email: info@carbon-sense.com





High-speed broadband: Another classic Australian boondoggle?

We've had the Snowy, the Ord and the Alice to Darwin railway as vastly expensive but uneconomic feelgood schemes -- now we are getting fibre broadband. It's been Kevvy's pet project for years: The only idea he ever seems to have had

The first national broadband network rollout, in Tasmania, will cost an estimated $20,000 for each premises that takes up the superfast internet connection -- and business leaders say its impact may be minimal. The Rudd and Bartlett governments, which are jointly undertaking the rollout, refuse to reveal the taxpayer-funded plan's cost, business plan or an estimate of the take-up.

However industry sources told The Australian that the take-up rate had been estimated at 17 per cent of the 200,000 target premises -- homes and businesses. Aurora Energy, the state-owned power company undertaking the rollout via overhead cabling, would not confirm or deny this estimate, claiming it was "commercial in confidence". A trial of high-speed internet in Tasmania had a take-up rate of 14-15 per cent, which other industry sources said was more realistic a target for the NBN. With the rollout in Tasmania expected to cost $700 million, a 17per cent take-up (34,000 premises) would mean a unit cost of $20,588 [per household].

Tasmania's peak body for information and communication technology industry, TASICT, said without a take-up rate of 80-90 per cent, NBN would lack the "critical mass" needed to become the focus of service and information delivery. TASICT president Peter Gartlan said even a take-up rate of 20-40 per cent would not "make a big enough difference". "It needs a very good percentage of take-up to make sure you have the benefits of a high-speed connection and for government and industry to leverage it effectively," Mr Gartlan said. "For critical mass it has to be pretty high: up to 80 to 90 per cent. If it is not the focus of delivery, it is just another communications means." He said government might need to step in to offer incentives to increase the take-up, potentially adding to the already unprecedented cost of the project.

Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry managing director Andrew Scobie said he was "challenged" to see how the plan would deliver greater, justifiable benefits than wireless options. "It's very much about marginal rates of return for additional investment," Mr Scobie said. "I am challenged to understand, and our organisation is challenged to understand, what additional utility will come from it." Most businesses did not require the 100 megabits per second speed promised by fibre-optic connection, he said. And the expenditure of $700m-plus was a questionable ordering of priorities, when 12Mbps, delivered more cheaply and easily by wireless technologies, would suit most households and businesses.

"The innovators in the Tasmanian business community will find things to do with it (100Mbps)," Mr Scobie said. "But to me the most significant question is: in the state with the lowest level of productivity, based on the lowest level of education and the lowest levels of infrastructure investment, is this the right priority against all of those? "Is this the right priority for us? Because we don't even have a fully functioning road between Launceston and Hobart."

Premier David Bartlett said the take-up rate "doesn't matter". "I'm not making predictions about what the initial take-up will be and in lots of ways it doesn't much matter," Mr Bartlett said. "This is a project as important to Tasmania's future as the poles and dams and wires of hydro-industrialisation were to the last century. "It's small-minded to consider this project only in terms of who might get a faster internet connection out of it and when they might pay to take that up."

A spokesman for federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said it was inappropriate to reveal take-up projections because a business model was still the subject of negotiations with the Bartlett government.

SOURCE





Australia's Leftist government simply hates private health insurance

The idea that those who work and save get better treatment than those who blow all their money on beer and cigarettes is just anathema to them

Make no mistake about it. The battle to preserve Australia’s mix of public and private health care will be joined in earnest this week. At stake is a worsening of the shaky health of our public hospitals. At stake also is a direct cost impact for almost half the population who have private health insurance and an indirect, or delayed, impact on those who rely on public hospitals for treatment.

Labor’s attack on private health insurance through this year’s Budget will force substantial numbers of people to drop or downgrade their insurance coverage meaning many, many more people will be seeking treatment at public hospitals. Longer waits in Accident and Emergency Departments, longer waits on lists for surgery lay ahead if this attack succeeds.

Nothing holds the potential to increase the stresses and strains on our hospitals more than the changes to private health insurance rebates contained in the erroneously named Fairer Private Health Insurance Incentives Bills, which are expected to be debated in the Senate this week. Every decision Kevin Rudd has taken since coming to Government will make our public health system worse – making a mockery of his oft-repeated promise that he had a plan to “fix” the nation’s public hospitals.

There is no doubt that the health sector is paying a high price for Labor’s reckless spending over the past nine months which has the nation spinning into massive debt. The Government has targeted many areas of health to claw-back savings, but the targeting of private health insurance rebates carries the added factor of ideology – Labor hates private health insurance - and this is a serious direct attack upon it.

It is also a trashing of numerous promises both Mr Rudd and his now Health Minister Nicola Roxon made before the last election - to both the public and the insurance sector - that Labor would not change these rebates paid to those who take out private health insurance and in so doing relieve the call on public hospitals.

The phasing down of the universal 30 per cent rebate, in three stages, to 20 per cent, 10 per cent and eventually to zero for those earning over $75,000 (singles) and $150,000 (families or couples) will mean 1.7 million Australians will immediately face private health insurance premium increases of between 14 and 43 per cent. One million people are likely to drop or downgrade their insurance cover forcing premium increases for all who maintain insurance.

In seeking to cut the rebate to so-called higher income earners the Rudd Government will hammer low and middle income earners with higher prices. It’s worth noting that a million people – one million Australians, probably many of them elderly – earning less than $26,000 a year make the struggle to pay for private health insurance. Does it want them to also opt out of private insurance and join the queue at our public hospitals? If so what impact could all this have?

The private health sector estimates it could transfer 75,000 treatment episodes from private to public health care. Public hospitals will have to accommodate an extra 190,000 bed days at a cost of $200 million. Four million allied health services would no longer be covered by insurance costing another $200 million. Two million dental care treatments for which private insurance would have paid $100 million would also no longer be covered.

If those estimates even partially come to pass, it creates a huge hole in the $1.9 billion in savings Rudd Labor estimates it will make by changing the rebates. It will also push our public hospitals further toward breaking point.

Reductions in Medicare rebates for cataract surgery and various other treatments, caps on the Extended Medicare Safety Net and the 2008 Budget changes to the Medicare Levy threshold all have implications for adding to pressures on the hospital system – the one that Kevin Rudd said he would “fix” by June this year.

The Coalition will oppose the private health insurance rebate cuts when they come before the Senate this week. The savings needed by this Government to the nation’s bottom-line can be achieved in other ways. The Coalition has proposed an increase in the excise on cigarettes that would more than cover the $1.9 billion in savings projected from the rebate changes. Rudd Labor does not have to further threaten our public hospitals which its State Labor Governments have so dramatically mismanaged for far too many years.

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Coverup after negligent public hospital causes two deaths

A HOSPITAL patient, who was discharged and allowed to drive home despite pleas from his family, died minutes later in a car crash that also killed another driver. Rodney Knowles rang his son and brother from Shoalhaven District Hospital in NSW on October 25 last year after having routine dialysis and sounded "delusional". Both separately begged the nurse on the phone not to let him drive home, but he got behind the wheel and had a head-on crash, killing himself and another driver aged in his 50s.

The Health Care Complaints Commission declined to investigate and the NSW Medical Board dismissed a complaint made after the incident. The hospital's doctor, Shanka Karunarathne, acknowledged to the HCCC that he amended Mr Knowles' medical records after Mr Knowles' death to say he offered to admit him, but Mr Knowles declined. Dr Karunarathne said he was the only medical registrar at the hospital at the time and did not have time to complete his notes. "As I was required elsewhere in the hospital at that time, I later made a retrospective entry to confirm the discussion," he wrote in answer to questions from the Health Care Complaints Commission.

Shoalhaven Hospital said Mr Knowles, 71, was medically assessed as competent the day of his death, despite him reporting feeling unwell and skipping some meals. They gave him juice and food which boosted his blood sugar levels prior to him leaving.

The HCCC said an investigation was not warranted because it was unlikely to lead to disciplinary action against the nurse involved, Julie Owen, or any recommendations to Shoalhaven Hospital. The NSW Medical Board also dismissed the complaint against Dr Karunarathne.

Mr Knowles' son Brendan said: "He had kidney failure, we expected at some point he would go, but to happen so tragically and in the circumstances which it happened when we begged them not to let him drive, I just can't fathom how they can turn around and say they couldn't do anything. "We want some answers. We don't want it to happen again. As well as dad being killed there was another gentleman killed, an innocent party. We want some answers for his family too."

Rodney Knowles had been admitted to the emergency department three days before his death with chest pains and was discharged on October 24. He returned the next day for dialysis. Police believe he blacked out and veered onto the wrong side of the road. The coroner said he died "nearly immediately" from traumatic injuries.

Opposition health spokeswoman Jillian Skinner said the family deserved an explanation. "This family has been through hell and deserve a full explanation from Health Minister John Della Bosca," she said. Mr Della Bosca said while he felt for the family, he would not comment on the case until all inquiries had been completed.

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