Australian Politics
Rudd government’s non-solution to hospital crisis a wasteful threat to private practice
By Dr Jeremy Sammut
Under the $275 million Super Clinics program, the Rudd government is funding the start-up costs involved in bringing together GPs and allied health professionals, such as physiotherapists and podiatrists, who want to amalgamate their practices into an initial 36 ‘one-stop shops.’
This move has the potential to nationalise Australian general practice, and the Doctors’ Action group is right to be worried about the impact of Super Clinics on the traditional family GP.
Why would young doctors buy into an established practice when they join a Super Clinic for free with the capital costs paid for courtesy of taxpayers?
The legitimate fear is that state-funded Super Clinics represent creeping socialism and will render private practice uncompetitive. Once it becomes too costly and difficult to establish a private surgery from scratch, future governments might force doctors to work in Super Clinics on a salaried basis.
The official rationale for Super Clinics is they will take the pressure off overcrowded public hospitals. But in reality, taxpayer’s money is being wasted on a non-solution for the hospital crisis.
Every credible study shows that public hospitals are dangerously overcrowded because of the national shortage of hospital beds, which forces over one-third of all seriously ill emergency patients to wait longer than eight hours to be admitted to a bed.
Yet the Rudd government maintains Super Clinics have already proven worthwhile. A Tasmanian Super Clinic has reportedly reduced the number of people with minor illness turning up at the nearby emergency department by 13%.
A number of previous studies have demonstrated that patients with minor conditions such as a cold or sore toe account for only between 10 and 15% of total emergency presentations.
The same studies have also shown that treating these patients constitutes a mere a fraction, 2 to 3%, of the total emergency workload, and that it is far cheaper to treat them in the emergency department rather than incur the capital and infrastructure cost of establishing alternative GP facilities.
In other words, diverting ‘GP-style’ patients into Super Clinics is imposing a huge cost per occasion of service on the federal budget. The Rudd government’s highly inefficient spending on Super Clinics makes a mockery of its supposed commitment to micro-economic reform.
Dr Jeremy Sammut is a Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies and author of ‘The False Promise of GP Super Clinics’ and ‘Why Public Hospitals are Overcrowded.’
The above is a press release from the Centre for Independent Studies, dated November 20. Enquiries to cis@cis.org.au. Snail mail: PO Box 92, St Leonards, NSW, Australia 1590.
Teachers warned off online Facebook contact with students
This is a bit authoritarian but is probably prudent
TEACHERS would be banned from contacting students on social-networking websites like Facebook or Myspace under proposed changes to their code of ethics. The move comes after the WA College of Teaching disciplinary committee reprimanded about 10 teachers in the past year for inappropriate cyber interaction with students. The behaviour included teachers sharing private photos with students and in some cases engaging in online sexual innuendo.
WACOT's disciplinary committee chairwoman, Theresa Howe, said the code of ethics needed to be updated to specifically target inappropriate and over-friendly computer correspondence between students and teachers. ``We're seeing an increase in it and it has to be specifically addressed," she said. ``That should be in both the code of ethics and in professional development courses for teachers."
Under proposed changes, teachers would be banned from becoming friends with students on social-networking sites. Ms Howe said she would take the matter to the WACOT board. She revealed that online behaviour was central to half the investigations conducted by the committee in the past year.
WA Council of State School Organisations president Rob Fry last night agreed that any cyber contact between teachers and students was fraught with problems. ``I do know that there have been issues where teachers have gone down this track and it has caused some very distressing problems," Mr Fry said. ``The problem for a teacher can be that they form a close relationship of a platonic nature that unfortunately can get misinterpreted. ``Once the damage is done and the finger is pointed, the mud sticks. ``There has got to be a barrier between the relationship of a student and a teacher. ``That barrier cannot be crossed."
Catholic Education Office of WA director Ron Dullard said his schools already banned teachers from becoming friends with students on social-networking websites. ``It is covered by our internet protocols and relationships with students," he said. ``We would see that it would be inappropriate for it to occur. ``Teachers shouldn't accept students as a friend unless it is a relative." Mr Dullard said internet guidelines for teachers at Catholic schools were revised every two years to keep pace with the changing medium.
Some independent WA schools have started advising teachers against creating personal profiles on websites such as Facebook or MySpace. Association of Independent Schools of WA executive director Valerie Gould said teachers were told to remember that any information on public websites could be accessed by students and parents.
Education Department boss Sharyn O'Neill said teachers and staff must maintain appropriate boundaries in their relationships with pupils. ``The department expects teachers to exercise common sense and act on the side of caution when dealing with students," she said. The Education Department is reviewing its code of conduct for teachers.
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A typical Telstra experience
I too have got this sort of "service". One overseas helpline operator could not understand what I was saying at all so just hung up on me. Sheer arrogance. I should have been referred to someone higher up, preferably back in Australia
Like most horror stories, this one begins with an everyday setting where the familiar gradually gives way to the sinister. The first harbinger of the pain to come, not recognised at the time, was a letter sent out to me and millions of other Australians on July 20 by Ramon Gregory, "Executive Director, Customer Sales and Service", at Telstra, Australia's largest service company. This places Gregory at the centre of an enormous commercial machine, with huge databases, thousands of operators in call centres, and billions of customer inquiries recorded with Orwellian efficiency.
A study of the conditions in call centres conducted by Ruth Barton of RMIT University, released last week, found high stress levels and oppressive management control, as call centres field an average of 16 million calls a day.
Ramon Gregory's letter was also oppressive. It announced that people who paid their Telstra bill by return mail, or in person, or by credit card, would in future be charged a $2.20 "payment administration fee". He suggested various ways to avoid the fee, which actually did not avoid the fee at all. The letter was so infuriating and so poorly drafted that Telstra customers made their displeasure known in an outbreak of spontaneous combustion. Telstra rescinded the fee earlier this month.
But the company's latent aggression remains. Last Wednesday, my internet service was cut off by Telstra even though I have paid my bills on time, year-in, year-out, with a Telstra home phone account, and a Telstra cable account, and a Foxtel account. My bank statement shows Telstra banked my latest cheque on October 19. I had assumed I would be treated as a valued customer and notified before any drastic, summary action took place. How naive.
Telstra has shown, repeatedly, that it does not grasp the concept of political and consumer blowback. That's why the Rudd Government is destroying Telstra's market value, and why I have the Telstra support number, 133 933, programmed into my mobile phone, because losing service is part of the Telstra experience.
When I called Telstra's inquiry number at 9am last Wednesday, I got a "consultant" called Craig. When he turned out to be a drama queen, I began taking notes. When I suggested that Telstra should have contacted me before taking such draconian action, given my long history of reliability, Craig threw a tantrum. "You can't expect us to send out 50,000 notices to people," he said. Yes, I do. It's part of the service.
"You have to step up to the plate!" Craig replied. "It's your responsibility!" I asked him why he was treating me like a retard. He directed me to "credit management". I called credit management and got a message: "All our operators are busy. You have been placed in a queue." I was not surprised.
A heavily-accented young man came on the line and gave his name as "Matt". I realised I had been directed to a call centre in India when Matt insisted my name was not Sheehan. After he had called me "Mr Goodhope" three times I hung up.
The next operator was "Beau". He, too, was Indian, and simply not coherent. I politely abandoned the call and tried again. Next on the line was "Chari", another Indian. He was the first person I could describe as pleasant and competent that day. He set up a direct debit payment system for future bills, took care of the small outstanding amount, and thanked me for the call, the first of the five Telstra operators to do so. He said my service would be quickly restored.
It was not. It was still blocked the next day. And so the merry-go-round resumed. I was directed to technical support, because the billing department said there was no problem. A technician told me to switch off my modem and then try again. That did not work.
I called the original number again. Another heavily accented operator eventually responded. Her name was "Marie". "Are you in Australia?" I asked. "No," she replied. She told me I could not have my service restored because my account had not been paid. "You need to speak to the billing department." I told her I had spoken to the billing department at great length. She was adamant.
I called the billing department and Kirsty came on the line. She was working from a call centre on the Gold Coast. When I explained that she was the eighth person I had spoken to in two days, and my account was fully paid, she put me on hold and got someone further up the food chain. When she came back, she said the problem was a "shadow" payment system, which was showing my account to be inoperative. Kirsty was a pleasure to deal with, and restored my service.
The real problem was not the shadow payment system. It was the incompetent Indian call centre operators, and it was Telstra's attitude towards its customers. Nothing of my experience will show up on Telstra's key performance indicators.
And Ramon Gregory, it turns out, is yet another American brought in to run Australia's service giant. That explains his tin ear. I received another letter from him on Friday: "Telstra is reinventing the home phone," he proclaimed. He was selling an upgrade called the Telstra T-Hub. I'm interested in going in exactly the opposite direction - getting rid of the Telstra fixed line altogether. And that's just the start.
By the standards of global telco giants, Telstra is an efficient, productive enterprise, but you have to ask at what cost to us, the people who used to own the company, and are now the company's serfs?
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Unbelievable: New South Wales shark spotters gagged
Someone should drop Nathan Rees into the middle of a pack of sharks at this rate
Helicopter shark patrols over NSW beaches this summer will be gagged by the State Government, which last year kept secret warnings about the predators. Despite New South Wales Premier Nathan Rees's promises of open and transparent government, secrecy demands are part of the tender documents for a trial of government-funded helicopter surveillance this summer.
The tender document includes the condition: "Neither the contractor nor crew shall communicate in any way with any media organisation or media representative concerning any aspect of aerial surveillance shark patrol trial without the express written authority of I&I NSW, and must refer all such inquiries to the I&I NSW Media Unit." I & I NSW is the state government department Industry & Investment NSW, based in Orange.
Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald, sacked by Mr Rees last weekend, did not mention warnings of unusually high shark numbers last summer by a privately funded chopper patrol. Within months of the warnings he kept secret, there were three serious shark attacks in Sydney. The trial patrols beaches from December 19 to January 10.
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No ambulance service: Uproar as patients must travel in the back of a truck from a Queensland country town
The interesting thing about this story is that it represents a deterioration of service. In earlier times, there was a regular railmotor service on which patients could be transported in some comfort. The railway line is still there but it is used for occasional tourist outings only. The budget of Queensland Health must have increased at least 100 times since then but the service is worse
THE sick and injured are being carted to the Mt Surprise airport on the back of trucks and utes [pickups] because the town does not have a helipad or suitable patient transfer vehicle.
The rural community, 290km southwest of Cairns, is demanding the State Government provide the basic services after a patient's trauma, following a serious accident, was increased because of the situation. In the most recent example, a patient was loaded on to the back of a ute and was subjected to an excruciatingly painful journey on the rough 5km trip. Open-sided trucks have also been used.
Outraged Mt Surprise resident Rick Tomkies told The Weekend Post these incidents highlighted the need for a suitable transfer vehicle and a helipad in the community. "Not only is the carriage of persons on the rear of a vehicle illegal but it could also cause further trauma to a seriously ill or injured person with serious consequences," he said. "Already there has been an occasion when an attending Royal Flying Doctor was injured by a flapping tarpaulin, used to shade a patient from the sun. And on another occasion, the legs of a patient became sunburnt."
Mr Tomkies said police figures showed the Mt Surprise area had a higher rate of medical evacuation rates compared with neighbouring communities and it was vital the standards were lifted to an acceptable and legal level.
A spokeswoman from Queensland Ambulance Service said the organisation recently held a community meeting at Mt Surprise to set up a first responder unit in the area. "The community were very supportive of the development of this group and several residents were identified as possible members for a first responder unit," she said. "QAS approved the application to develop a first responder unit in Mt Surprise in September and the establishment of the unit in the area will occur over the coming months."
A Department of Main Roads spokesman said: "The question of whether or not a helipad should be built at Mt Surprise is an issue for the Etheridge Shire Council". "Should Council decide to construct a helipad, the Department of Transport and Main Roads would be happy to discuss with them possible avenues for funding assistance," he said.
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Monday, November 23, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
ZEG
In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG thinks that Malcolm Turnbll has more in common with the Labor party than with the conservative party that he ostensibly leads
A remarkable example of Jewish drive
For fellow lovers of onomastics: Edelsten is a slight modification of Edelstein, which means "noble stone" or gemstone -- a typical Ashkenazi surname
LUNCH is over at Bondi's Icebergs Dining Room and Bar and she's American and blonde, teetering on patent-leather heels and wearing a diaphanous dress, short and plunging. He wears black hair, black shoes, a white mattress-ticking cotton linen suit and the thousand-yard stare of hardened celebrity.
Icebergs is the stylish and expensive watering hole where being seen is part of the fare, but surely none of the clientele had seen anything like Geoffrey Edelsten starring in the latest instalment of his life as a movie. In eight days he will marry Oklahoma-born Brynne Mariah Gordon, 26. At 66, it may be his last picture show.
Edelsten has swum in the fountain of youth for years. He wants to be forever young. His first wife, Leanne, was fresh out of Alice Springs and 19, two decades younger than he.
Brynne Gordon burst on to the Australian scene and nearly out of her dress in September at the Brownlow Medal count, when she walked down the blue carpet on Edelsten's arm. Journalists scurried to fill in her background, finding her MySpace entry oddly compelling: "You are only as strong as the tables you dance on, the drinks you mix and the friends you roll with."
With the media treating her words as a life philosophy, Edelsten says they were removed from the website but he has sent a DVD invitation to his second wedding at Melbourne's Crown Casino to hundreds of friends, including Jeanne Pratt, Malcolm Turnbull, Karl Stefanovic, Lisa Wilkinson, that certainly enhances a table-dancing attitude to life.
Not only did Edelsten pay Seinfeld's Jason Alexander and The Nanny's Fran Drescher to narrate their love story but the couple re-enacted their meeting, proposal and courtship.
They were filmed staying at the Beverly Wiltshire Hotel and shopping in Rodeo Drive – two locations, along with Alexander's presence, that prompted memories of the film, Pretty Woman, the heart-warming story of a rich, work-obsessed and lonely man falling for a younger woman.
The Iceberg lunchers watched agog as Edelsten's party left the restaurant. Some might have recognised the GP who introduced corporate medicine to Australia. Others might have remembered him as the face of the Sydney Swans, or the high-flyer who went to jail and was barred from working as a doctor. All were clearly astounded by his bride-to-be. "I hate all the attention," Edelsten says before obligingly going down to the Bondi sand to be photographed with his fiancee.
Once he was the king of the world. The eldest of two sons of financially comfortable Melbourne ragtraders, Edelsten was born in Carlton but grew up in Toorak.
He had been a prefect at Mount Scopus Memorial College, captain of the school Australian rules and cricket teams and shared the 1963 third-year anatomy exhibition at the University of Melbourne with the present vice-chancellor of Monash University, Richard Larkins.
After graduating, he worked as a GP in Sydney and the bush and after some time in the US in the 1970s returned brimming with ideas. He sponsored Carlton's scantily clad cheerleaders and started a chain of medical clinics that offered not only attention-seeking white pianos and chandeliers but bulk-billing of patients. Edelsten earned the ire of the Australian Medical Association, which was upset that mass-produced medicine stopped patient choice and the doctor's handy gap fee.
Having made millions in Sydney, Edelsten was a natural fit to personify a new image of the flagging Swans. He seemed to possess the money, the woman, the cars, the helicopter, the pizazz. The Swans drew crowds of 40,000-plus, got into the finals, somebody won the Brownlow, Swans au go-go.
Then it stopped. There were telephone threats, tricked-up pornographic photographs distributed, resignation, marriage breakdown, bankruptcy, a sensational trial and jail. After being released from Long Bay [jail], he was barred from practising medicine but free to run a medical corporation. He started doing university courses and in four years took masters degrees in law, business administration, sports medicine, occupational medicine, science, family medicine and health-care management and a doctorate in health from New England, Wollongong, Edith Cowan and Charles Sturt. "An achievement believed unequalled in Australia by one individual . . . No, I don't think I'm obsessive," Edelsten says.
Interest in Edelsten waned after his fall from grace. Occasionally there were reports – unsuccessful attempts at re-registration on the NSW and Victoria medical boards, a $200 speeding fine.
Edelsten devotes much energy to challenging media coverage. He has gone to the Press Council, conducts long exchanges with editors, pays Google to alert him when his name appears. A website, australiasworstjournalist.com.au, appeared this week naming 10 journalists – including the Herald's Andrew Hornery and Kate McClymont, the investigative reporter Paul Barry and A Current Affair's Adam Shand. Eight of them have one thing in common – they reported on Edelsten.
Edelsten brought a public relations man to the Icebergs lunch. The waitress had run through the Italian-style menu, lingering on the selection of seasonal fish, when the PR man said Australian journalism liked to tear down tall poppies, and noted that Michael Jackson had been attacked during life but lauded after death. Gordon ordered steak. Edelsten's PR man went for the baby snapper, Edelsten too. When the fish arrived, Gordon said she did not like the eye staring at her.
Edelsten seems to have suffered much illness and injury. The late Fred Hollows removed his right eye in 1985. The next year a car crash broke his legs. He reportedly suffered a heart attack the day after he was struck off the medical roll in Victoria in 1992.
Earlier that year he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. Vinko Dolenc, a neurosurgeon, removed it in July 1995. Edelsten says he feels fine, apart from the fact that when he scratches his nose, he feels it on his left forehead.
Edelsten says he would not do everything again. He worries about the impact of his fame on his family. His father, who died two years ago, loathed the publicity. They did not speak for four years.
But it was not all sadness. "I was driving through east Los Angeles, a poor black area, in a Rolls-Royce, and there are some poor blacks kids, obviously out of work, and they see this car and they get up and they clap. You can see their thoughts: 'one day, maybe me', " Edelsten says.
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Injustice at the hands of the crooked Australian Federal Police
Yet more hot water for an arrogant, incompetent and poorly-led body
A PILOT who spent almost 1000 days in jail for a crime he did not commit is planning to sue the Australian Federal Police and the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions for compensation.
Frederick Martens, 60, was sentenced to five years' jail after being accused of a 2001 sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl in Papua New Guinea. But last week in Queensland's Court of Appeal, Justice Richard Chesterman quashed the conviction on federal child sex tourism charges in 2006 and set aside the jail sentence, finding there was insufficient evidence to support the charge.
And now Mr Martens is demanding a change in the law that left him unable to defend himself against the false accusations. "Because of the nature of the accusations nobody wanted to know me or have anything to do with me," Mr Martens said. "This has totally ruined my life. It has cost my businesses in Papua New Guinea millions in lost earnings. "But more importantly it has cost me the life of my daughter Stephanie, who died at six months old from malaria because I was unable to travel and secure her paperwork to bring her back to Australia for treatment."
The case against Mr Martens, who ran PNG's equivalent of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, hinged on the timing of the assault allegation and the claim he was flying at the time. He requested the official flight records but was told they did not exist.
Justice Chesterman said: "After his arrest the petitioner was released on bail, a condition of which was that he not leave Australia. It was therefore impossible for him to travel to PNG to conduct his own inquiries ... It was, in any event, eminently reasonable for him to rely upon the resources of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the AFP to obtain the records. They undertook the task and informed the petitioner that the records did not exist. "The records have always existed and have now been produced. It is a poor reflection upon the two organisations that one should have failed to find them, and denied their existence, and the other objected to their use in the reference on the ground that the petitioner should have obtained them earlier."
Mr Martens said it was only when his wife, Rose, went to PNG and made a request over the counter at a government agency that the flight records were discovered. "They were there all along," he said.
Mr Martens' solicitor Chris Rose said it was unjust that "anybody can accuse anybody of having sex with somebody overseas and the AFP can take away your passport".
Mr Martens is now with his family at his farm at Mareeba, west of Cairns."This must never be allowed to happen to anyone again," he said. "It has ruined my life."
The AFP declined to comment.
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Conservative politicians are "coming out" over their disbelief in global warming
The Libs' Senate leader is encouraging climate sceptics to speak out. Nick Minchin, the Liberals' Senate leader, is playing a very edgy political game as he tries - in a direct challenge to Malcolm Turnbull - to get the Opposition to vote down the emissions trading scheme. It's high risk for Turnbull, Minchin and the Liberals. Minchin is openly rejecting the science on climate and encouraging other Liberal sceptics to speak out. This is audacious behaviour by the fourth most-senior person in the Opposition, who's in the leadership group.
But it seems likely Minchin, chief of the Liberals' conservative wing, is more in tune than Turnbull with the party's grassroots. Sources report the rank and file has become more critical of the ETS in the past three months, and Minchin's outspoken comments have been getting positive feedback.
The obvious downside for Turnbull is that his pro-ETS view has become increasingly out of sync with the membership (which, of course, should not be equated with the public). However unhelpful Minchin's comments, he's reprising views he expressed in the Howard years. By 2007, the then prime minister, previously himself a sceptic, had shifted, in the desperate hope of getting some ''cred'' on climate, and the government started to look to an ETS.
But Minchin, though government Senate leader, was having none of it. Saying ''scepticism is one of the all-time great Australian attributes'', he told The Age's Katharine Murphy the science of global warming wasn't settled, and ''to have some Mickey Mouse thing in Australia might make some people feel good but will do nothing for emissions and it will hurt the Australian economy''.
If a greater cause demands, he can, however, be flexible on the issue. When in July last year Turnbull and environment spokesman Greg Hunt were trying to stop then Opposition leader Brendan Nelson moving to the right on emissions trading, Minchin backed the Turnbull-Hunt line, presumably fearing that if they were thwarted, the leadership of Nelson, who he supported, would be undermined (it was anyway, even though Nelson gave in).
Minchin is one of the most experienced and savvy Liberal MPs. He is also among the toughest factional warriors, and yesterday was accused by moderate Liberal backbencher Mal Washer of using the climate change issue to pursue the factional war between conservatives and small-l liberals in the party.
In personal style, Minchin is friendly, relaxed and open (perhaps partly because he was always around journalists - his mother was in the federal parliamentary press gallery; his wife worked in The Age's Canberra bureau before their marriage). But in views he's an ideologue, with strong stands on issues ranging well beyond climate. When Howard in 2006 was trying to reassure people he wouldn't bring in even more severe industrial relations changes after WorkChoices, Minchin was caught on tape advocating another wave of reform. He has also championed unfashionable causes such as voluntary voting.
As the emissions trading issue inches towards its dangerous climax, Minchin seems emboldened.
He said last month that even if the Government met all the Opposition's demands, there was no guarantee the party room would approve the legislation (which begged the question of why you'd bother with negotiations).
Then last week came Four Corners, where Minchin said a majority of the Liberal Party wouldn't accept the position that humans were the main cause of global warming; it would be difficult for Coalition members to vote for the scheme, he said.
Addressing the Senate yesterday, Minchin began by congratulating Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce (who won't vote for the scheme in any circumstances) for his ''erudite contribution to this debate''.
In interviews this week, Minchin did not take a backward step. But he insisted it was not about Turnbull's leadership. At one level this might be correct, despite Minchin battling to keep Turnbull out of the leadership after the last election, and later attempting to prop up the failing Nelson. Joe Hockey, the most likely alternative, is a left-winger; his views on climate would be no more acceptable to Minchin than Turnbull's. Minchin would find Tony Abbott's opinions congenial, but knows Abbott lacks one vital attribute - numbers.
Minchin is not, however, going to do Turnbull any favours or worry excessively if his in-your-face campaign against the legislation undermines Turnbull, who has declared that having a credible climate policy is for him a leadership issue.
The tough line taken by Minchin is empowering other hardliners. Earlier, it was thought most critics would be inclined to roll over if they didn't have the numbers. Now their behaviour is unpredictable, which means that if Turnbull gets party support for a deal, the number of Liberals crossing the floor in the Senate could be quite large, putting up in lights how split the party has become.
The irony would be that Minchin, bound by shadow cabinet solidary, would be forced into formal lockstep with his leader.
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Prominent Australian Greenie dubious about immigration
The former Australian of the Year, environmentalist Tim Flannery, is worried what effects a growing population will have on the environment.
South-east Queensland is a region where population pressures are at their greatest, with 2,000 people moving into the area each week. Some are from interstate, others from overseas. Queensland's population is set to double within 50 years.
Professor Flannery says no-one has any real idea of the environmental effects of population growth and it is time for an independent inquiry to look at the issue. "I'm pretty aware that we live in a fragile country with limited water availability, with a significant biodiversity crisis, a limited capacity to feed ourselves because our agriculture is under increasing stress from climate change," he said. "And what I see is a government-set program for immigration, which really seeks to increase our population very quickly but without any proper analysis of the environmental impacts or indeed the social impacts of that program."
Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner has weighed into the population debate, saying it is laughable to argue Australia has too many people at this early stage. He says Bangladesh is roughly twice the size of Tasmania but has seven times the population of Australia.
Professor Flannery says that is a meaningless comparison. "Antarctica is bigger than Australia and it hasn't got any people at all, size isn't everything," he said. "Lindsay Tanner may well be right but we need the figures. We need the analysis to understand what we can do in terms of a sustainable population living at this standard of living. "It's all very well to wave your hands in the air and say everything's going to be okay, but show me the data, that's what we actually need. "At the moment ... all of our population-related policies, such as immigration and rebates for children, all that sort of stuff are just happening in a vacuum and that's not good enough."
Premier Anna Bligh says Queensland can handle the projected population growth. "I think this growth is manageable but it does have to be managed, we can't let it happen unchecked and we can't let it happen without a plan," she said. "What's interesting living in a federation and governing at a state level is that some of the levers on population are often beyond your control but the consequences all fall into your basket. "Some of the levers, such as immigration policy, things like the baby bonus, have consequences and state governments end up having to manage some of those consequences. "It does require serious and careful thinking and serious and careful planning and some very serious infrastructure that does I think need partnership from all levels of government."
Ms Bligh says she agrees with the current immigration levels but says there is scope for better planning between state and federal governments about where the new Australian population should be concentrated. And she says more debate is needed on the issue of sustainability, environment and resources. "Over the last five years, as we've put together our south-east Queensland plan which is a statutory plan to manage growth, there has been a wide consensus about the need to restrict growth and not let it go in to big urban sprawls," she said.
"But as the rubber hits the road on making decisions about higher density in people's neighbourhoods, the community I think is becoming less settled about that. "They're very alarmed by the prospect that they'll see a lot of high rises and concerned about the character of their neighbourhoods and their communities changing and changing too rapidly."
Professor Flannery concedes population growth is needed to grow the economy but he says it's vital to get the balance right. "The economy will always need more people, business will always need more customers, government will always need more taxpayers," he said. "That's not a valid argument for eternal growth. We all know there are limits to growth and we need to work out how to grow our population, if that's what's required, at the appropriate level over the appropriate time scale.
"To do that you've just got to really look at proper triple-bottom-line accounting and the Government's always getting onto businesses about doing triple-bottom-line accounting, well it's time the Government did it itself. "Our environment, social and economic outcomes all have to be fed into these very important policies that will change our country in the long term, change it forever. You can't really wind back population once you've built it in."
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In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG thinks that Malcolm Turnbll has more in common with the Labor party than with the conservative party that he ostensibly leads
A remarkable example of Jewish drive
For fellow lovers of onomastics: Edelsten is a slight modification of Edelstein, which means "noble stone" or gemstone -- a typical Ashkenazi surname
LUNCH is over at Bondi's Icebergs Dining Room and Bar and she's American and blonde, teetering on patent-leather heels and wearing a diaphanous dress, short and plunging. He wears black hair, black shoes, a white mattress-ticking cotton linen suit and the thousand-yard stare of hardened celebrity.
Icebergs is the stylish and expensive watering hole where being seen is part of the fare, but surely none of the clientele had seen anything like Geoffrey Edelsten starring in the latest instalment of his life as a movie. In eight days he will marry Oklahoma-born Brynne Mariah Gordon, 26. At 66, it may be his last picture show.
Edelsten has swum in the fountain of youth for years. He wants to be forever young. His first wife, Leanne, was fresh out of Alice Springs and 19, two decades younger than he.
Brynne Gordon burst on to the Australian scene and nearly out of her dress in September at the Brownlow Medal count, when she walked down the blue carpet on Edelsten's arm. Journalists scurried to fill in her background, finding her MySpace entry oddly compelling: "You are only as strong as the tables you dance on, the drinks you mix and the friends you roll with."
With the media treating her words as a life philosophy, Edelsten says they were removed from the website but he has sent a DVD invitation to his second wedding at Melbourne's Crown Casino to hundreds of friends, including Jeanne Pratt, Malcolm Turnbull, Karl Stefanovic, Lisa Wilkinson, that certainly enhances a table-dancing attitude to life.
Not only did Edelsten pay Seinfeld's Jason Alexander and The Nanny's Fran Drescher to narrate their love story but the couple re-enacted their meeting, proposal and courtship.
They were filmed staying at the Beverly Wiltshire Hotel and shopping in Rodeo Drive – two locations, along with Alexander's presence, that prompted memories of the film, Pretty Woman, the heart-warming story of a rich, work-obsessed and lonely man falling for a younger woman.
The Iceberg lunchers watched agog as Edelsten's party left the restaurant. Some might have recognised the GP who introduced corporate medicine to Australia. Others might have remembered him as the face of the Sydney Swans, or the high-flyer who went to jail and was barred from working as a doctor. All were clearly astounded by his bride-to-be. "I hate all the attention," Edelsten says before obligingly going down to the Bondi sand to be photographed with his fiancee.
Once he was the king of the world. The eldest of two sons of financially comfortable Melbourne ragtraders, Edelsten was born in Carlton but grew up in Toorak.
He had been a prefect at Mount Scopus Memorial College, captain of the school Australian rules and cricket teams and shared the 1963 third-year anatomy exhibition at the University of Melbourne with the present vice-chancellor of Monash University, Richard Larkins.
After graduating, he worked as a GP in Sydney and the bush and after some time in the US in the 1970s returned brimming with ideas. He sponsored Carlton's scantily clad cheerleaders and started a chain of medical clinics that offered not only attention-seeking white pianos and chandeliers but bulk-billing of patients. Edelsten earned the ire of the Australian Medical Association, which was upset that mass-produced medicine stopped patient choice and the doctor's handy gap fee.
Having made millions in Sydney, Edelsten was a natural fit to personify a new image of the flagging Swans. He seemed to possess the money, the woman, the cars, the helicopter, the pizazz. The Swans drew crowds of 40,000-plus, got into the finals, somebody won the Brownlow, Swans au go-go.
Then it stopped. There were telephone threats, tricked-up pornographic photographs distributed, resignation, marriage breakdown, bankruptcy, a sensational trial and jail. After being released from Long Bay [jail], he was barred from practising medicine but free to run a medical corporation. He started doing university courses and in four years took masters degrees in law, business administration, sports medicine, occupational medicine, science, family medicine and health-care management and a doctorate in health from New England, Wollongong, Edith Cowan and Charles Sturt. "An achievement believed unequalled in Australia by one individual . . . No, I don't think I'm obsessive," Edelsten says.
Interest in Edelsten waned after his fall from grace. Occasionally there were reports – unsuccessful attempts at re-registration on the NSW and Victoria medical boards, a $200 speeding fine.
Edelsten devotes much energy to challenging media coverage. He has gone to the Press Council, conducts long exchanges with editors, pays Google to alert him when his name appears. A website, australiasworstjournalist.com.au, appeared this week naming 10 journalists – including the Herald's Andrew Hornery and Kate McClymont, the investigative reporter Paul Barry and A Current Affair's Adam Shand. Eight of them have one thing in common – they reported on Edelsten.
Edelsten brought a public relations man to the Icebergs lunch. The waitress had run through the Italian-style menu, lingering on the selection of seasonal fish, when the PR man said Australian journalism liked to tear down tall poppies, and noted that Michael Jackson had been attacked during life but lauded after death. Gordon ordered steak. Edelsten's PR man went for the baby snapper, Edelsten too. When the fish arrived, Gordon said she did not like the eye staring at her.
Edelsten seems to have suffered much illness and injury. The late Fred Hollows removed his right eye in 1985. The next year a car crash broke his legs. He reportedly suffered a heart attack the day after he was struck off the medical roll in Victoria in 1992.
Earlier that year he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. Vinko Dolenc, a neurosurgeon, removed it in July 1995. Edelsten says he feels fine, apart from the fact that when he scratches his nose, he feels it on his left forehead.
Edelsten says he would not do everything again. He worries about the impact of his fame on his family. His father, who died two years ago, loathed the publicity. They did not speak for four years.
But it was not all sadness. "I was driving through east Los Angeles, a poor black area, in a Rolls-Royce, and there are some poor blacks kids, obviously out of work, and they see this car and they get up and they clap. You can see their thoughts: 'one day, maybe me', " Edelsten says.
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Injustice at the hands of the crooked Australian Federal Police
Yet more hot water for an arrogant, incompetent and poorly-led body
A PILOT who spent almost 1000 days in jail for a crime he did not commit is planning to sue the Australian Federal Police and the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions for compensation.
Frederick Martens, 60, was sentenced to five years' jail after being accused of a 2001 sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl in Papua New Guinea. But last week in Queensland's Court of Appeal, Justice Richard Chesterman quashed the conviction on federal child sex tourism charges in 2006 and set aside the jail sentence, finding there was insufficient evidence to support the charge.
And now Mr Martens is demanding a change in the law that left him unable to defend himself against the false accusations. "Because of the nature of the accusations nobody wanted to know me or have anything to do with me," Mr Martens said. "This has totally ruined my life. It has cost my businesses in Papua New Guinea millions in lost earnings. "But more importantly it has cost me the life of my daughter Stephanie, who died at six months old from malaria because I was unable to travel and secure her paperwork to bring her back to Australia for treatment."
The case against Mr Martens, who ran PNG's equivalent of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, hinged on the timing of the assault allegation and the claim he was flying at the time. He requested the official flight records but was told they did not exist.
Justice Chesterman said: "After his arrest the petitioner was released on bail, a condition of which was that he not leave Australia. It was therefore impossible for him to travel to PNG to conduct his own inquiries ... It was, in any event, eminently reasonable for him to rely upon the resources of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the AFP to obtain the records. They undertook the task and informed the petitioner that the records did not exist. "The records have always existed and have now been produced. It is a poor reflection upon the two organisations that one should have failed to find them, and denied their existence, and the other objected to their use in the reference on the ground that the petitioner should have obtained them earlier."
Mr Martens said it was only when his wife, Rose, went to PNG and made a request over the counter at a government agency that the flight records were discovered. "They were there all along," he said.
Mr Martens' solicitor Chris Rose said it was unjust that "anybody can accuse anybody of having sex with somebody overseas and the AFP can take away your passport".
Mr Martens is now with his family at his farm at Mareeba, west of Cairns."This must never be allowed to happen to anyone again," he said. "It has ruined my life."
The AFP declined to comment.
SOURCE
Conservative politicians are "coming out" over their disbelief in global warming
The Libs' Senate leader is encouraging climate sceptics to speak out. Nick Minchin, the Liberals' Senate leader, is playing a very edgy political game as he tries - in a direct challenge to Malcolm Turnbull - to get the Opposition to vote down the emissions trading scheme. It's high risk for Turnbull, Minchin and the Liberals. Minchin is openly rejecting the science on climate and encouraging other Liberal sceptics to speak out. This is audacious behaviour by the fourth most-senior person in the Opposition, who's in the leadership group.
But it seems likely Minchin, chief of the Liberals' conservative wing, is more in tune than Turnbull with the party's grassroots. Sources report the rank and file has become more critical of the ETS in the past three months, and Minchin's outspoken comments have been getting positive feedback.
The obvious downside for Turnbull is that his pro-ETS view has become increasingly out of sync with the membership (which, of course, should not be equated with the public). However unhelpful Minchin's comments, he's reprising views he expressed in the Howard years. By 2007, the then prime minister, previously himself a sceptic, had shifted, in the desperate hope of getting some ''cred'' on climate, and the government started to look to an ETS.
But Minchin, though government Senate leader, was having none of it. Saying ''scepticism is one of the all-time great Australian attributes'', he told The Age's Katharine Murphy the science of global warming wasn't settled, and ''to have some Mickey Mouse thing in Australia might make some people feel good but will do nothing for emissions and it will hurt the Australian economy''.
If a greater cause demands, he can, however, be flexible on the issue. When in July last year Turnbull and environment spokesman Greg Hunt were trying to stop then Opposition leader Brendan Nelson moving to the right on emissions trading, Minchin backed the Turnbull-Hunt line, presumably fearing that if they were thwarted, the leadership of Nelson, who he supported, would be undermined (it was anyway, even though Nelson gave in).
Minchin is one of the most experienced and savvy Liberal MPs. He is also among the toughest factional warriors, and yesterday was accused by moderate Liberal backbencher Mal Washer of using the climate change issue to pursue the factional war between conservatives and small-l liberals in the party.
In personal style, Minchin is friendly, relaxed and open (perhaps partly because he was always around journalists - his mother was in the federal parliamentary press gallery; his wife worked in The Age's Canberra bureau before their marriage). But in views he's an ideologue, with strong stands on issues ranging well beyond climate. When Howard in 2006 was trying to reassure people he wouldn't bring in even more severe industrial relations changes after WorkChoices, Minchin was caught on tape advocating another wave of reform. He has also championed unfashionable causes such as voluntary voting.
As the emissions trading issue inches towards its dangerous climax, Minchin seems emboldened.
He said last month that even if the Government met all the Opposition's demands, there was no guarantee the party room would approve the legislation (which begged the question of why you'd bother with negotiations).
Then last week came Four Corners, where Minchin said a majority of the Liberal Party wouldn't accept the position that humans were the main cause of global warming; it would be difficult for Coalition members to vote for the scheme, he said.
Addressing the Senate yesterday, Minchin began by congratulating Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce (who won't vote for the scheme in any circumstances) for his ''erudite contribution to this debate''.
In interviews this week, Minchin did not take a backward step. But he insisted it was not about Turnbull's leadership. At one level this might be correct, despite Minchin battling to keep Turnbull out of the leadership after the last election, and later attempting to prop up the failing Nelson. Joe Hockey, the most likely alternative, is a left-winger; his views on climate would be no more acceptable to Minchin than Turnbull's. Minchin would find Tony Abbott's opinions congenial, but knows Abbott lacks one vital attribute - numbers.
Minchin is not, however, going to do Turnbull any favours or worry excessively if his in-your-face campaign against the legislation undermines Turnbull, who has declared that having a credible climate policy is for him a leadership issue.
The tough line taken by Minchin is empowering other hardliners. Earlier, it was thought most critics would be inclined to roll over if they didn't have the numbers. Now their behaviour is unpredictable, which means that if Turnbull gets party support for a deal, the number of Liberals crossing the floor in the Senate could be quite large, putting up in lights how split the party has become.
The irony would be that Minchin, bound by shadow cabinet solidary, would be forced into formal lockstep with his leader.
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Prominent Australian Greenie dubious about immigration
The former Australian of the Year, environmentalist Tim Flannery, is worried what effects a growing population will have on the environment.
South-east Queensland is a region where population pressures are at their greatest, with 2,000 people moving into the area each week. Some are from interstate, others from overseas. Queensland's population is set to double within 50 years.
Professor Flannery says no-one has any real idea of the environmental effects of population growth and it is time for an independent inquiry to look at the issue. "I'm pretty aware that we live in a fragile country with limited water availability, with a significant biodiversity crisis, a limited capacity to feed ourselves because our agriculture is under increasing stress from climate change," he said. "And what I see is a government-set program for immigration, which really seeks to increase our population very quickly but without any proper analysis of the environmental impacts or indeed the social impacts of that program."
Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner has weighed into the population debate, saying it is laughable to argue Australia has too many people at this early stage. He says Bangladesh is roughly twice the size of Tasmania but has seven times the population of Australia.
Professor Flannery says that is a meaningless comparison. "Antarctica is bigger than Australia and it hasn't got any people at all, size isn't everything," he said. "Lindsay Tanner may well be right but we need the figures. We need the analysis to understand what we can do in terms of a sustainable population living at this standard of living. "It's all very well to wave your hands in the air and say everything's going to be okay, but show me the data, that's what we actually need. "At the moment ... all of our population-related policies, such as immigration and rebates for children, all that sort of stuff are just happening in a vacuum and that's not good enough."
Premier Anna Bligh says Queensland can handle the projected population growth. "I think this growth is manageable but it does have to be managed, we can't let it happen unchecked and we can't let it happen without a plan," she said. "What's interesting living in a federation and governing at a state level is that some of the levers on population are often beyond your control but the consequences all fall into your basket. "Some of the levers, such as immigration policy, things like the baby bonus, have consequences and state governments end up having to manage some of those consequences. "It does require serious and careful thinking and serious and careful planning and some very serious infrastructure that does I think need partnership from all levels of government."
Ms Bligh says she agrees with the current immigration levels but says there is scope for better planning between state and federal governments about where the new Australian population should be concentrated. And she says more debate is needed on the issue of sustainability, environment and resources. "Over the last five years, as we've put together our south-east Queensland plan which is a statutory plan to manage growth, there has been a wide consensus about the need to restrict growth and not let it go in to big urban sprawls," she said.
"But as the rubber hits the road on making decisions about higher density in people's neighbourhoods, the community I think is becoming less settled about that. "They're very alarmed by the prospect that they'll see a lot of high rises and concerned about the character of their neighbourhoods and their communities changing and changing too rapidly."
Professor Flannery concedes population growth is needed to grow the economy but he says it's vital to get the balance right. "The economy will always need more people, business will always need more customers, government will always need more taxpayers," he said. "That's not a valid argument for eternal growth. We all know there are limits to growth and we need to work out how to grow our population, if that's what's required, at the appropriate level over the appropriate time scale.
"To do that you've just got to really look at proper triple-bottom-line accounting and the Government's always getting onto businesses about doing triple-bottom-line accounting, well it's time the Government did it itself. "Our environment, social and economic outcomes all have to be fed into these very important policies that will change our country in the long term, change it forever. You can't really wind back population once you've built it in."
SOURCE
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Must not say anything harsh about Muslims
But you can say anything you like about Christians, of course -- and Muslims often do. I gather that Mal Mac Rae is a recent Muslim convert and there are some remarks of his online that are too obscene and disgusting for me to reproduce here. It appears to me that young Douglas Darby was simply paying Mal Mac Rae back in his own coin -- not that that is wise or Christian. Disclosure: Michael Darby is a friend of mine but I do not know his son
ABUSIVE emails written by the son of the campaign manager of the Christian Democratic Party containing anti-Muslim and homophobic comments have embarrassed the party's president, the Reverend Fred Nile, only two weeks before the December 5 Bradfield byelection, in which the party will field nine candidates.
Mr Nile has been forced to apologise to dozens of recipients of the emails, which also attack the Reverend Gordon Moyes, the CDP-turned-Family-First MP in the NSW upper house. Their author, Douglas Darby, the son of the former Liberal identity Michael Darby, who is the CDP's campaign manager, has been expelled from the party.
In one email Douglas Darby attacks a Muslim activist, Mal Mac Rae, as a "stupid moslem c---" and says "muslim scum are too busy stacking ALP branches and raping Aussie chicks".
In another, Douglas Darby suggests Muslims "who habitually engage in child molestation, incest, pack rape … obey the laws of this country or f--- off to Afghanistan where Australians are allowed to shoot you people". Yet another urges Mr Mac Rae to become a suicide bomber. "Please do it inside either a Sunni or Shiite mosque."
The emails are part of a bitter exchange between Mr Darby and Mr Mac Rae that appears to have begun when Mr Mac Rae wrote questioning an aspect of Mr Nile's military service record.
On Tuesday Mr Nile wrote to recipients "on behalf of the Christian Democratic Party to sincerely apologise for the appalling emails you have received". He told them that the CDP "disassociates itself completely" from the comments, "which we totally reject", and apologised to Mr Mac Rae. "No one deserves to be subjected to such language and insult," Mr Nile wrote.
Douglas Darby did not respond to a request for comment, and Michael Darby declined to comment.
Mr Nile said Douglas Darby had begun working for the party but was soon "upsetting people left, right and centre" and was banned from the parliamentary offices of the CDP and its headquarters a year ago.
One of the CDP's campaign slogans for Bradfield is "Stand your ground in defence of Christian values".
Mr Nile and the NSW upper house Liberal MP David Clarke are advertised to speak at an Australian Christian Nation Association conference today which has the theme "Australia's Future and Global Jihad".
Mr Mac Rae said yesterday he had accepted Mr Nile's apology. "However, the vilification of the Islamic community in the party continues behind closed doors." Dr Moyes said he had asked Mr Nile for an apology, "which I haven't received".
SOURCE
Limited public radiotherapy services add to cancer trauma
Australians are given to believe that they can rely on their State government for "free" medical care. "Free" does not mean "available" or "high quality", however. What it DOES mean is that what you save in money, you pay in time
THE last straw for Angela Baines came when she arrived at school 45 minutes late and found the police had been called to collect her children.
The Umina single mother of four had struggled to Royal North Shore Hospital on the train every day for five weeks for radiation therapy after breast cancer because no public facility was available locally and she could not afford private treatment. But any wait for her radiation doses or a missed transport connection could scupper her tight timetable.
"I said, 'That's it. I'm going home. I'm pulling out. I cannot endure another day of this possibly happening again,' " said the 39-year-old of her experience two years ago. Ms Baines told the hospital she was cancelling her last week of treatment, but a doctor immediately called to promise that she would be treated the moment she arrived. She completed the course and is now in good health.
Inequitable provision of radiotherapy services across NSW is resulting in serious emotional trauma to patients already vulnerable from surgery, drug treatment and a potentially life-threatening diagnosis, according to a survey released today by the Cancer Council NSW.
Its Roadblocks to Radiotherapy report collects stories of the practical, financial and psychological hardships experienced by people who have to travel long distances for radiation or miss out on the treatment - which can prevent recurrence and is recommended for at least half of cancer patients but in NSW is received by only 36 per cent.
Based on a telephone call-in earlier this year, the survey found rural and regional patients were impressed and grateful for their treatment, but were distressed by practical difficulties. "We hope showing the human element adds urgency to the need for reform," the council's manager for policy and advocacy, Anita Tang, said.
The Auditor-General concluded in a June report that NSW Health needed to intensify its long-term planning for radiotherapy services, especially in high population growth areas including the Central Coast, Hunter, New England, Illawarra and Shoalhaven areas. The department has prepared a draft Radiotherapy Services Plan 2007-11, but has never released it.
In his landmark report on NSW public hospitals a year ago, Peter Garling identified services for patients outside cities as a major problem, recommending revitalised training for doctors outside urban centres and improved travel provisions for people treated far from home.
The Opposition spokeswoman on health, Jillian Skinner, said: "Labor has failed to match radiotherapy services with population growth, with the result that many families are undergoing extreme hardship just to get access to treatment. Cancer cases are predicted to grow by 30 per cent over the next 10 years … what is Labor waiting for?"
SOURCE
Climate change negotiations hit stumbling block
CLIMATE change negotiations between the Rudd Government and the Opposition have hit a stumbling block just days before an agreement was to be taken to the Coalition party room.
But problems at the negotiating table are being dwarfed by the groundswell of climate-change sceptics and growing speculation that Malcolm Turnbull's leadership could be challenged by Liberal frontbencher Tony Abbott.
It comes as Liberal negotiator Ian Macfarlane, who met Climate Change Minister Penny Wong twice yesterday and will again tomorrow, has admitted for the first time he was facing hurdles. "It's (the negotiations) really got complicated," Mr Macfarlane told The Courier-Mail. "We've had a setback. But I remain optimistic." Mr Macfarlane would not delve into the specifics of the negotiating hurdle, although questions have been raised within Labor and Liberal circles as to how the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme could afford to have expensive amendments.
Mr Macfarlane has taken to the negotiating table five "buckets" with core issues. With agriculture sorted out late last week, it leaves Coalition demands for more money for electricity generators, big polluters, small-to-medium business and coal.
D-day is approaching for the Coalition, which wanted amendments presented to shadow cabinet on Monday. Mr Turnbull has said the Coalition would support amendments only if he had the majority support of the party room. There are only four sitting days left this year and the Government has demanded a vote be taken before Parliament rises.
Former Liberal MP Bruce Baird yesterday said Mr Abbott might have his eye on the top job, but a spokesman for Mr Abbott outrightly rejected any suggestion of a leadership challenge. Mr Turnbull would not answer questions about Mr Abbott, but on the CPRS said: "Our support for the Bill will depend on the outcome of these negotiations. "The idea that you take a unilateral view and either wave it through willy nilly or knock it back willy nilly regardless of how it might be amended, I don't take that view."
SOURCE
Stabbed 5 times -- "unintentionally"!!
This verdict should be set aside as manifestly misguided
The acquittal of a woman who stabbed a teenage girl in an after-school brawl sends a dangerous message to students that fights can be settled with weapons, not words, a police officer says.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had been facing trial for wounding with the intent to cause grievous bodily harm after she stabbed the year 12 student five times in the chest during a fight between the two sets of sisters, opposite a school in south-western Sydney last year. But this week a jury found the 21-year-old not guilty on the grounds that she did not intend to inflict grievous bodily harm when she stabbed the 17-year-old. She was also acquitted of the lesser charge of recklessly causing grievous bodily harm in company.
Her younger sister, a year 11 student, had also been due to stand trial, but pleaded guilty to reckless wounding.
"I am concerned about what message the decision sends to our youth in as far as it was clear that more than one weapon was taken to what was supposed to be a fist fight," said the officer in charge of the investigation, Detective Senior Sergeant Stephen Crews.
But the woman told the Herald that police and the school had not done enough to combat bullying and a gang culture and that she was forced to take matters into her own hands. "I don't condone people carrying weapons … that is the wrong thing to do, but sometimes in situations like that you don't have much time to think about it," she said. "All that is on your mind is ensuring your family member's safety."
During the trial the woman's barrister, Graham Turnbull, SC, argued she had been protecting her sister against two other sisters at the school who had singled her sibling out after an argument over a boy, at Westfield Shopping Centre in Liverpool. Suggestions had been made during the trial that the victim and her sister were affiliated with gang members who carried weapons. But both denied this.
Shortly after the stabbing the woman's sister left the school and their family moved out of the Liverpool area when "weird cars" started to drive up and down her road at night, she said.
Four days after the stabbing, while the victim was still in intensive care, the boy at the centre of the argument was beaten up by two boys. "My friend got stabbed five times because of you and you're going to pay for it," one of the boys allegedly said during the attack.
While Sergeant Crews acknowledged the bashing was "no doubt" connected, he denied the school had a problem with bullies or gangs. "This whole case wasn't about a gang war. It was what should have been a high school fight that went horribly wrong."
SOURCE
Watchdog slams Queensland police corruption
ANTI-corruption watchdog chief Robert Needham has slammed police mishandling of the Mulrunji death in custody, unleashing his most scathing attack yet on an internal police investigation. The Crime and Misconduct Commission is expected to release its report on the police investigation into the 2004 Palm Island death in custody of Cameron Doomadgee, 36, known by his tribal name as Mulrunji, next year.
Mr Needham, the CMC chair, said yesterday the CMC was less than happy with the handling of the police probe into the death of the Aboriginal man inside the Palm Island watchhouse five years ago. "What we've done is go back to ground zero," he said. "We've gone right to the primary documents. We went to every interview that's ever been had with all the relevant officers and gone back through every single thing in great detail."
The CMC report is expected to recommend disciplinary action against senior officers who investigated the death in custody and to criticise the case as an example of police protecting their own. Mr Needham said he would wait until the report was finished before going any further.
Yesterday he released the three-year investigation into policing in remote indigenous communities ordered after the infamous riots and burning of the police station on Palm Island, five years ago today, and another 2007 riot in Aurukun.
The CMC report calls on the State Government to make finalising all outstanding legal matters in the affair by the sixth anniversary of Mulrunji's death next year a high priority "goal".
But the man's family remains sceptical. "It's not over yet,"' said sister Lizzie Doomadgee. Yesterday Lizzie and two sisters admitted to a case of deja vu as they sat in the front row of Townsville Magistrates Court. They sat, resolute, as they did through a first coronial inquest, a CMC inquiry, a Department of Public Prosecutions decision, an Attorney-General's appeal, a manslaughter trial, and now another inquest. "We're waiting for justice," said Ms Doomadgee. They still have a civil damages suit pending against Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley and Queensland Police.
Five years ago, Mulrunji died of internal bleeding with four broken ribs and his liver cleaved in two after a jailhouse tussle with Sen-Sgt Hurley. Sen-Sgt Hurley was tried and acquitted of the manslaughter of Mulrunji in 2007.
Deputy Chief Magistrate Brian Hine yesterday ordered the second inquest be held over 10 days on Palm Island and in Townsville from March 8. The second inquest comes after a Court of Appeal ordered the findings of the 2006 inquest that Hurley caused the injuries to Mulrunji by punching him be set aside.
It later emerged Mulrunji probably died as a result of a catastrophic injury caused by compressive force to his stomach, most likely a knee. [The knee of a hulking cop by the name of Hurley, to be precise]
Counsel assisting the coroner Ralph Devlin said there had been "many conflicting and inconsistent accounts of witnesses".
SOURCE
But you can say anything you like about Christians, of course -- and Muslims often do. I gather that Mal Mac Rae is a recent Muslim convert and there are some remarks of his online that are too obscene and disgusting for me to reproduce here. It appears to me that young Douglas Darby was simply paying Mal Mac Rae back in his own coin -- not that that is wise or Christian. Disclosure: Michael Darby is a friend of mine but I do not know his son
ABUSIVE emails written by the son of the campaign manager of the Christian Democratic Party containing anti-Muslim and homophobic comments have embarrassed the party's president, the Reverend Fred Nile, only two weeks before the December 5 Bradfield byelection, in which the party will field nine candidates.
Mr Nile has been forced to apologise to dozens of recipients of the emails, which also attack the Reverend Gordon Moyes, the CDP-turned-Family-First MP in the NSW upper house. Their author, Douglas Darby, the son of the former Liberal identity Michael Darby, who is the CDP's campaign manager, has been expelled from the party.
In one email Douglas Darby attacks a Muslim activist, Mal Mac Rae, as a "stupid moslem c---" and says "muslim scum are too busy stacking ALP branches and raping Aussie chicks".
In another, Douglas Darby suggests Muslims "who habitually engage in child molestation, incest, pack rape … obey the laws of this country or f--- off to Afghanistan where Australians are allowed to shoot you people". Yet another urges Mr Mac Rae to become a suicide bomber. "Please do it inside either a Sunni or Shiite mosque."
The emails are part of a bitter exchange between Mr Darby and Mr Mac Rae that appears to have begun when Mr Mac Rae wrote questioning an aspect of Mr Nile's military service record.
On Tuesday Mr Nile wrote to recipients "on behalf of the Christian Democratic Party to sincerely apologise for the appalling emails you have received". He told them that the CDP "disassociates itself completely" from the comments, "which we totally reject", and apologised to Mr Mac Rae. "No one deserves to be subjected to such language and insult," Mr Nile wrote.
Douglas Darby did not respond to a request for comment, and Michael Darby declined to comment.
Mr Nile said Douglas Darby had begun working for the party but was soon "upsetting people left, right and centre" and was banned from the parliamentary offices of the CDP and its headquarters a year ago.
One of the CDP's campaign slogans for Bradfield is "Stand your ground in defence of Christian values".
Mr Nile and the NSW upper house Liberal MP David Clarke are advertised to speak at an Australian Christian Nation Association conference today which has the theme "Australia's Future and Global Jihad".
Mr Mac Rae said yesterday he had accepted Mr Nile's apology. "However, the vilification of the Islamic community in the party continues behind closed doors." Dr Moyes said he had asked Mr Nile for an apology, "which I haven't received".
SOURCE
Limited public radiotherapy services add to cancer trauma
Australians are given to believe that they can rely on their State government for "free" medical care. "Free" does not mean "available" or "high quality", however. What it DOES mean is that what you save in money, you pay in time
THE last straw for Angela Baines came when she arrived at school 45 minutes late and found the police had been called to collect her children.
The Umina single mother of four had struggled to Royal North Shore Hospital on the train every day for five weeks for radiation therapy after breast cancer because no public facility was available locally and she could not afford private treatment. But any wait for her radiation doses or a missed transport connection could scupper her tight timetable.
"I said, 'That's it. I'm going home. I'm pulling out. I cannot endure another day of this possibly happening again,' " said the 39-year-old of her experience two years ago. Ms Baines told the hospital she was cancelling her last week of treatment, but a doctor immediately called to promise that she would be treated the moment she arrived. She completed the course and is now in good health.
Inequitable provision of radiotherapy services across NSW is resulting in serious emotional trauma to patients already vulnerable from surgery, drug treatment and a potentially life-threatening diagnosis, according to a survey released today by the Cancer Council NSW.
Its Roadblocks to Radiotherapy report collects stories of the practical, financial and psychological hardships experienced by people who have to travel long distances for radiation or miss out on the treatment - which can prevent recurrence and is recommended for at least half of cancer patients but in NSW is received by only 36 per cent.
Based on a telephone call-in earlier this year, the survey found rural and regional patients were impressed and grateful for their treatment, but were distressed by practical difficulties. "We hope showing the human element adds urgency to the need for reform," the council's manager for policy and advocacy, Anita Tang, said.
The Auditor-General concluded in a June report that NSW Health needed to intensify its long-term planning for radiotherapy services, especially in high population growth areas including the Central Coast, Hunter, New England, Illawarra and Shoalhaven areas. The department has prepared a draft Radiotherapy Services Plan 2007-11, but has never released it.
In his landmark report on NSW public hospitals a year ago, Peter Garling identified services for patients outside cities as a major problem, recommending revitalised training for doctors outside urban centres and improved travel provisions for people treated far from home.
The Opposition spokeswoman on health, Jillian Skinner, said: "Labor has failed to match radiotherapy services with population growth, with the result that many families are undergoing extreme hardship just to get access to treatment. Cancer cases are predicted to grow by 30 per cent over the next 10 years … what is Labor waiting for?"
SOURCE
Climate change negotiations hit stumbling block
CLIMATE change negotiations between the Rudd Government and the Opposition have hit a stumbling block just days before an agreement was to be taken to the Coalition party room.
But problems at the negotiating table are being dwarfed by the groundswell of climate-change sceptics and growing speculation that Malcolm Turnbull's leadership could be challenged by Liberal frontbencher Tony Abbott.
It comes as Liberal negotiator Ian Macfarlane, who met Climate Change Minister Penny Wong twice yesterday and will again tomorrow, has admitted for the first time he was facing hurdles. "It's (the negotiations) really got complicated," Mr Macfarlane told The Courier-Mail. "We've had a setback. But I remain optimistic." Mr Macfarlane would not delve into the specifics of the negotiating hurdle, although questions have been raised within Labor and Liberal circles as to how the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme could afford to have expensive amendments.
Mr Macfarlane has taken to the negotiating table five "buckets" with core issues. With agriculture sorted out late last week, it leaves Coalition demands for more money for electricity generators, big polluters, small-to-medium business and coal.
D-day is approaching for the Coalition, which wanted amendments presented to shadow cabinet on Monday. Mr Turnbull has said the Coalition would support amendments only if he had the majority support of the party room. There are only four sitting days left this year and the Government has demanded a vote be taken before Parliament rises.
Former Liberal MP Bruce Baird yesterday said Mr Abbott might have his eye on the top job, but a spokesman for Mr Abbott outrightly rejected any suggestion of a leadership challenge. Mr Turnbull would not answer questions about Mr Abbott, but on the CPRS said: "Our support for the Bill will depend on the outcome of these negotiations. "The idea that you take a unilateral view and either wave it through willy nilly or knock it back willy nilly regardless of how it might be amended, I don't take that view."
SOURCE
Stabbed 5 times -- "unintentionally"!!
This verdict should be set aside as manifestly misguided
The acquittal of a woman who stabbed a teenage girl in an after-school brawl sends a dangerous message to students that fights can be settled with weapons, not words, a police officer says.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had been facing trial for wounding with the intent to cause grievous bodily harm after she stabbed the year 12 student five times in the chest during a fight between the two sets of sisters, opposite a school in south-western Sydney last year. But this week a jury found the 21-year-old not guilty on the grounds that she did not intend to inflict grievous bodily harm when she stabbed the 17-year-old. She was also acquitted of the lesser charge of recklessly causing grievous bodily harm in company.
Her younger sister, a year 11 student, had also been due to stand trial, but pleaded guilty to reckless wounding.
"I am concerned about what message the decision sends to our youth in as far as it was clear that more than one weapon was taken to what was supposed to be a fist fight," said the officer in charge of the investigation, Detective Senior Sergeant Stephen Crews.
But the woman told the Herald that police and the school had not done enough to combat bullying and a gang culture and that she was forced to take matters into her own hands. "I don't condone people carrying weapons … that is the wrong thing to do, but sometimes in situations like that you don't have much time to think about it," she said. "All that is on your mind is ensuring your family member's safety."
During the trial the woman's barrister, Graham Turnbull, SC, argued she had been protecting her sister against two other sisters at the school who had singled her sibling out after an argument over a boy, at Westfield Shopping Centre in Liverpool. Suggestions had been made during the trial that the victim and her sister were affiliated with gang members who carried weapons. But both denied this.
Shortly after the stabbing the woman's sister left the school and their family moved out of the Liverpool area when "weird cars" started to drive up and down her road at night, she said.
Four days after the stabbing, while the victim was still in intensive care, the boy at the centre of the argument was beaten up by two boys. "My friend got stabbed five times because of you and you're going to pay for it," one of the boys allegedly said during the attack.
While Sergeant Crews acknowledged the bashing was "no doubt" connected, he denied the school had a problem with bullies or gangs. "This whole case wasn't about a gang war. It was what should have been a high school fight that went horribly wrong."
SOURCE
Watchdog slams Queensland police corruption
ANTI-corruption watchdog chief Robert Needham has slammed police mishandling of the Mulrunji death in custody, unleashing his most scathing attack yet on an internal police investigation. The Crime and Misconduct Commission is expected to release its report on the police investigation into the 2004 Palm Island death in custody of Cameron Doomadgee, 36, known by his tribal name as Mulrunji, next year.
Mr Needham, the CMC chair, said yesterday the CMC was less than happy with the handling of the police probe into the death of the Aboriginal man inside the Palm Island watchhouse five years ago. "What we've done is go back to ground zero," he said. "We've gone right to the primary documents. We went to every interview that's ever been had with all the relevant officers and gone back through every single thing in great detail."
The CMC report is expected to recommend disciplinary action against senior officers who investigated the death in custody and to criticise the case as an example of police protecting their own. Mr Needham said he would wait until the report was finished before going any further.
Yesterday he released the three-year investigation into policing in remote indigenous communities ordered after the infamous riots and burning of the police station on Palm Island, five years ago today, and another 2007 riot in Aurukun.
The CMC report calls on the State Government to make finalising all outstanding legal matters in the affair by the sixth anniversary of Mulrunji's death next year a high priority "goal".
But the man's family remains sceptical. "It's not over yet,"' said sister Lizzie Doomadgee. Yesterday Lizzie and two sisters admitted to a case of deja vu as they sat in the front row of Townsville Magistrates Court. They sat, resolute, as they did through a first coronial inquest, a CMC inquiry, a Department of Public Prosecutions decision, an Attorney-General's appeal, a manslaughter trial, and now another inquest. "We're waiting for justice," said Ms Doomadgee. They still have a civil damages suit pending against Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley and Queensland Police.
Five years ago, Mulrunji died of internal bleeding with four broken ribs and his liver cleaved in two after a jailhouse tussle with Sen-Sgt Hurley. Sen-Sgt Hurley was tried and acquitted of the manslaughter of Mulrunji in 2007.
Deputy Chief Magistrate Brian Hine yesterday ordered the second inquest be held over 10 days on Palm Island and in Townsville from March 8. The second inquest comes after a Court of Appeal ordered the findings of the 2006 inquest that Hurley caused the injuries to Mulrunji by punching him be set aside.
It later emerged Mulrunji probably died as a result of a catastrophic injury caused by compressive force to his stomach, most likely a knee. [The knee of a hulking cop by the name of Hurley, to be precise]
Counsel assisting the coroner Ralph Devlin said there had been "many conflicting and inconsistent accounts of witnesses".
SOURCE
Friday, November 20, 2009
Ignorant scientists again: Say "Hobbit" was distinct species
They say the female "hobbit" was too short to be a modern human but, at 3'6' tall, there are Australian blacks alive today of that height. These "experts" are just ignorant of basic physical anthropology -- which is what they are talking about! They obviously know nothing of Australia's pygmy race. I come from the area where they survived and have had them walk right past me in the street. And Australia is quite close to Indonesia
Researchers have added new weight to theories that a prehistoric "hobbit" found by Australian and Indonesian scientists in Indonesia is an unknown human species. Bones belonging to a mini-human and believed to be about 18,000 years old were unearthed on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2004, sparking theories about our ancient relatives. Since then, scientists have debated whether Homo floresiensis was a descendant of a known human species suffering from some sort of genetic disease which caused them to be so small, or whether they belonged to a new species.
A new study of the bones of a female "hobbit" (several skeletons were ultimately unearthed at the site) by American scientists William Jungers and Karen Baab has given fresh impetus to the theory that floresiensis is a genuine ancient human species and not a descendant of healthy humans dwarfed by disease.
Their study, published in the December issue of Britain's Royal Statistical Society magazine Significance, was based on a detailed examination of the individual's skull and other bones which led them to estimate her weight and height. Their analysis suggests it was unlikely she was a relative of Homo Erectus or other known human species and was instead "probably derived instead from an even more primitive hominin species".
They found her brain was "remarkably small" compared to living humans, including modern pygmies, and more similar to those of chimpanzees and ancient hominins like the bipedal "ape men" of Africa. While some scientists have argued the hobbit's head was unusually small because she suffered from a disease, Dr Jungers and Dr Baab found no resemblance between her brain shape and that of modern humans with abnormally small heads.
They suggested the hobbit was not a dwarfed descendant of Homo Erectus but a different species "with already-small bodies and smaller brains when they arrived on Flores".
Dr Jungers and Dr Baab also reconstructed the hobbit's body shape and size and found it to be unlike any modern human because of its shorter thigh and shin bones. They estimated she was much smaller and stockier in shape to modern humans, even when compared to the smallest living people. [Rubbish!]
She was just 106cm tall and weighed 30-35kg, suggesting a "very non-human body shape for our hobbit, in the sense that a relatively large mass is being distributed over a relatively small skeletal frame". "This is not a pygmy human," Dr Jungers, who works closely with the Australian scientists who discovered the skeletons, said.
The Australian Research Council is providing funding for a five-year project so Dr Jungers and Australian scientists can continue their work on trying to establish the hobbit's status.
Dr Jungers said the team would return to Indonesia to examine sites near to where the skeletons were found and where tools dating back one millions years have been unearthed. "We will focus on finding skeletons that go with the tools," he said. "If we dig up bones of H Erectus, the diseased dwarf theory will gain credibility. "But if there are bones like Lucy's (Australopithecus afarensis, a 3.2 million-year-old set of fossils found in 1974) or H Habilis, our hypothesis that this is a more primitive human than H Erectus will gain more support."
SOURCE
Unbelievably brainless waste of taxpayer's money
$600k for 'sub-standard hot-box' house that is totally inappropriate for the tropical climate and for the people concerned. Open timber houses were needed. The most any aborigine would do with such a house is sit outside it
SMALL brick houses with no airconditioning, no fans and no landscaping are costing taxpayers $600,000 a pop to build in remote communities. Kennedy MP Bob Katter has condemned recent federally-funded community housing "slapped up" on Mornington Island, saying it cost $4 million to build seven tiny homes that local contractors have since valued at being worth less than $300,000 each. And the high building costs do not include the "hundreds of millions" blown on the government administration of community housing projects - all to provide indigenous communities with "substandard hot-boxes".
"The house I stood outside of was a hot-box that you couldn't even swing a cat in - it was a bloody disgrace," Mr Katter said. "And they set the taxpayer back about $600,000 apiece."
And indigenous mayors from the Cape met in Cairns yesterday to debate land leases tied to future funding. The proposed 40-year lease system will see indigenous communities sign over their land in return for a share of more than $1 billion in social housing dollars in the next decade. "To me, this is the Federal and State governments saying, 'We're going to give you a fair trial, then we're going to hang you'," Mr Katter said. "They are telling these people they aren't capable of running their own affairs.
"When it (housing) was controlled by the council, they were getting 10 times as many houses built for infinitely less, but if you compare the (Federal Government controlled) Northern Territory to Yarrabah, then I think it will become clear who is doing the better job. "This is just blood sucking for white fella bureaucrats."
The caucus of mayors, who labelled the 40-year-lease as ransom bargaining, unanimously called for the State Government to extend the December 11 deadline for four months to allow the communities to pursue their own legal advice in regards to the land sign-over bid.
"Communities are in dire need of housing, but the delivery should be one of consultations, not predetermined policy and those who must benefit most are those on the ground, not only for this generation but for the generations to come," Cherbourg Mayor Sam Murray said.
SOURCE
Australian conservatism less divided than its American countertpart
By Hal. G.P. Colebatch
AUSTRALIA'S conservative intelligentsia may have a lot to complain about, but there is one thing at least that they should be grateful for: the Australian conservative movement has almost entirely escaped the toxic division, which in the past few years has bedevilled much of American conservatism, into so called neo-conservatives and paleo-conservatives.
This is probably largely due to John Howard's position that the Liberal Party is the bearer of both Australia's liberal and conservative traditions, and the fact that Howard himself has taken, and continues to take, far more interest in the intellectual content of Australian conservative thought than any other Liberal prime minister. It also owes a lot to the fact that most of those associated with Quadrant, Australia's most important anti-left intellectual journal, including long-time editor Peter Coleman, the late P. P. McGuinness and present editor Keith Windschuttle, have not been concerned with expending their energy fighting their own allies, or exposing alleged traitors and heretics in the conservative ranks. Further, since its foundation they have kept Quadrant and its circle free of the "anti-Zionist" ratbaggery that has crept into some American paleo-conservative work.
This anti-totalitarian ethos may owe a lot to Quadrant's founder, Richard Krygier, a Polish Jew and former social democrat and its first editor, the Catholic poet James McAuley. After more than 50 years this ethos seems firmly established.
Certainly there are crank groups on the Right but in terms of serious political and intellectual debate they are of little relevance.
This is in considerable contrast to the situation in the US, where attacks on the so-called neo-cons - and Israel - have become major pre-occupations of Patrick Buchanan, former Reagan speech-writer, former hopeful Republican presidential candidate and founder of the grotesquely misnamed American Conservative, and much of the American conservative circle.
Recent effusions by Buchanan include attacks on the pre-World War II Polish "regime" (his term) for provoking World War II by not giving Danzig to the patient and reasonable Adolf Hitler (a line also taken up recently by some Russian militaristic, ultra-nationalist and anti-Polish circles), and claims that, in effect, the countries liberated from Soviet occupation at the end of the Cold War have no right to self-determination because they lie within Russia's sphere of influence. The fact that tiny Estonia, the victim of countless Soviet atrocities, moved a war memorial erected by the Red Army from the centre of its capital has been described by Buchanan as a reckless provocation to Russia. The American Conservative, as well as all its other attacks on Israel and Zionism, actually published an article after Buchanan left the editorship insinuating - with obvious implications - that Israel had prior knowledge of 9/11.
Buchanan's work is also pushed on a website run by Greek multi-millionaire Taki Theodoracopulos, another ceaseless critic of the neo-cons and of Israel, from a so-called paleo-conservative position. One article published on the Taki website earlier this year, "Little Miss Zionist Gossip Queen", was a self-congratulatory account of how the Palestinian author, one Adam Kharii, had intimidated and chased away a lone Jewish girl in a nightclub: "I shouted at her, 'Don't be here when I'm back.' She was not even worthy of all the insults I'd hurled at her." Such, it appears, are the heroisms of self-styled US paleo-conservatism, descended more or less from the isolationist, anti-Semitic-tinged America First movement of World War II. I doubt it is a conservatism that Ronald Reagan, William Buckley or John Wayne would recognise.
One Australian-sourced attempt in The American Conservative to blame an alleged collapse of Australian conservatism on a neo-con takeover left its author lamenting that no notice had been taken of it. Among the alleged neo-cons listed there were Tim Blair, Andrew Bolt, and the late Frank Devine. The same author lamented elsewhere that his application to edit Quadrant had been, for some reason, rejected. He further described Howard as: "a semiliterate school prefect, haunted (to an extent remarkable even for antipodean statesmen) by what Mencken would have called the nagging fear that someone, somewhere, might be free", a description which, whatever one thinks of Howard, is simply off the planet. The big battle facing conservatives in Australia at present is against the expansion of government power and control in the name of environmentalism and here neo- and paleo- divisions are also irrelevant.
Mike Carlton recently attacked "shameless neo-cons" in The Sydney Morning Herald. His rogue's gallery included Tony Blair, who far from being any sort of conservative is probably the most socially radical prime minister Britain has had.
It appears most Australian intellectual conservatives think that what unites them is more important than what divides them. Most of them also seem to think that Israel is an island of democracy and civilisation, to be supported rather than attacked. On the potentially divisive questions of the war in Afghanistan and attitudes to Barack Obama's America in general, there is little they can do anyway but wait and see.
SOURCE
The Dog on the Tuckerbox
This is indeed a famous Australian song but many people these days don't know why. What is notable about a dog sitting on a tuckerbox? Explanation: The original version, as sung by shearers and other such profane folk, was "The dog shat IN my tuckerbox"
He has always been five miles from Gundagai but now the nation's most famous dog and his tuckerbox are to be relocated to lure tourists to the town. In the legendary original version of the 19th century poem, the dog sat on the tuckerbox "five miles from Gundagai".
Historians are outraged at the idea of moving the iconic statue from its spot of 77 years, just off the Hume Highway, to the far end of town to drag tourists through it, The Daily Telegraph reports. The town is split between those who want tourist dollars funnelled into their drought-stricken tills and those outraged at the changing of history. A consultant has been paid $20,000 by the Gundagai Shire Council to survey the community and find the cost of moving the pup. A report is due soon.
"We're a little town in the bush, doing it tough, and we have a great Aussie icon five miles out of town only benefiting the multinationals," pub owner Peter Lot said. "You come into Gundagai and it's a ghost town. Our biggest enquiry is, 'Where is the dog on the tuckerbox?' People don't realise they've already passed it."
National Trust advocacy manager Graham Quint blasted the move, revealing that the Trust is considering listing the dog on the National Trust Register, which would save it from being moved. "This is probably one of the most well-known and celebrated roadside monuments in Australia," Mr Quint said. "It was dedicated to the pioneers and bullockies who made the highway of today possible. "The very location 'five miles from Gundagai' is part of the Australian psyche and moving the monument to Gundagai would make nonsense of its historic setting and severely degrade its historic significance and purpose."
Mr Quint said the site was chosen five miles from Gundagai rather than at the nine-mile mark in the original poem because it was closer to Gundagai. Town mayor Len Tozer said: "I'm sitting on the fence on this one."
SOURCE
They say the female "hobbit" was too short to be a modern human but, at 3'6' tall, there are Australian blacks alive today of that height. These "experts" are just ignorant of basic physical anthropology -- which is what they are talking about! They obviously know nothing of Australia's pygmy race. I come from the area where they survived and have had them walk right past me in the street. And Australia is quite close to Indonesia
Researchers have added new weight to theories that a prehistoric "hobbit" found by Australian and Indonesian scientists in Indonesia is an unknown human species. Bones belonging to a mini-human and believed to be about 18,000 years old were unearthed on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2004, sparking theories about our ancient relatives. Since then, scientists have debated whether Homo floresiensis was a descendant of a known human species suffering from some sort of genetic disease which caused them to be so small, or whether they belonged to a new species.
A new study of the bones of a female "hobbit" (several skeletons were ultimately unearthed at the site) by American scientists William Jungers and Karen Baab has given fresh impetus to the theory that floresiensis is a genuine ancient human species and not a descendant of healthy humans dwarfed by disease.
Their study, published in the December issue of Britain's Royal Statistical Society magazine Significance, was based on a detailed examination of the individual's skull and other bones which led them to estimate her weight and height. Their analysis suggests it was unlikely she was a relative of Homo Erectus or other known human species and was instead "probably derived instead from an even more primitive hominin species".
They found her brain was "remarkably small" compared to living humans, including modern pygmies, and more similar to those of chimpanzees and ancient hominins like the bipedal "ape men" of Africa. While some scientists have argued the hobbit's head was unusually small because she suffered from a disease, Dr Jungers and Dr Baab found no resemblance between her brain shape and that of modern humans with abnormally small heads.
They suggested the hobbit was not a dwarfed descendant of Homo Erectus but a different species "with already-small bodies and smaller brains when they arrived on Flores".
Dr Jungers and Dr Baab also reconstructed the hobbit's body shape and size and found it to be unlike any modern human because of its shorter thigh and shin bones. They estimated she was much smaller and stockier in shape to modern humans, even when compared to the smallest living people. [Rubbish!]
She was just 106cm tall and weighed 30-35kg, suggesting a "very non-human body shape for our hobbit, in the sense that a relatively large mass is being distributed over a relatively small skeletal frame". "This is not a pygmy human," Dr Jungers, who works closely with the Australian scientists who discovered the skeletons, said.
The Australian Research Council is providing funding for a five-year project so Dr Jungers and Australian scientists can continue their work on trying to establish the hobbit's status.
Dr Jungers said the team would return to Indonesia to examine sites near to where the skeletons were found and where tools dating back one millions years have been unearthed. "We will focus on finding skeletons that go with the tools," he said. "If we dig up bones of H Erectus, the diseased dwarf theory will gain credibility. "But if there are bones like Lucy's (Australopithecus afarensis, a 3.2 million-year-old set of fossils found in 1974) or H Habilis, our hypothesis that this is a more primitive human than H Erectus will gain more support."
SOURCE
Unbelievably brainless waste of taxpayer's money
$600k for 'sub-standard hot-box' house that is totally inappropriate for the tropical climate and for the people concerned. Open timber houses were needed. The most any aborigine would do with such a house is sit outside it
SMALL brick houses with no airconditioning, no fans and no landscaping are costing taxpayers $600,000 a pop to build in remote communities. Kennedy MP Bob Katter has condemned recent federally-funded community housing "slapped up" on Mornington Island, saying it cost $4 million to build seven tiny homes that local contractors have since valued at being worth less than $300,000 each. And the high building costs do not include the "hundreds of millions" blown on the government administration of community housing projects - all to provide indigenous communities with "substandard hot-boxes".
"The house I stood outside of was a hot-box that you couldn't even swing a cat in - it was a bloody disgrace," Mr Katter said. "And they set the taxpayer back about $600,000 apiece."
And indigenous mayors from the Cape met in Cairns yesterday to debate land leases tied to future funding. The proposed 40-year lease system will see indigenous communities sign over their land in return for a share of more than $1 billion in social housing dollars in the next decade. "To me, this is the Federal and State governments saying, 'We're going to give you a fair trial, then we're going to hang you'," Mr Katter said. "They are telling these people they aren't capable of running their own affairs.
"When it (housing) was controlled by the council, they were getting 10 times as many houses built for infinitely less, but if you compare the (Federal Government controlled) Northern Territory to Yarrabah, then I think it will become clear who is doing the better job. "This is just blood sucking for white fella bureaucrats."
The caucus of mayors, who labelled the 40-year-lease as ransom bargaining, unanimously called for the State Government to extend the December 11 deadline for four months to allow the communities to pursue their own legal advice in regards to the land sign-over bid.
"Communities are in dire need of housing, but the delivery should be one of consultations, not predetermined policy and those who must benefit most are those on the ground, not only for this generation but for the generations to come," Cherbourg Mayor Sam Murray said.
SOURCE
Australian conservatism less divided than its American countertpart
By Hal. G.P. Colebatch
AUSTRALIA'S conservative intelligentsia may have a lot to complain about, but there is one thing at least that they should be grateful for: the Australian conservative movement has almost entirely escaped the toxic division, which in the past few years has bedevilled much of American conservatism, into so called neo-conservatives and paleo-conservatives.
This is probably largely due to John Howard's position that the Liberal Party is the bearer of both Australia's liberal and conservative traditions, and the fact that Howard himself has taken, and continues to take, far more interest in the intellectual content of Australian conservative thought than any other Liberal prime minister. It also owes a lot to the fact that most of those associated with Quadrant, Australia's most important anti-left intellectual journal, including long-time editor Peter Coleman, the late P. P. McGuinness and present editor Keith Windschuttle, have not been concerned with expending their energy fighting their own allies, or exposing alleged traitors and heretics in the conservative ranks. Further, since its foundation they have kept Quadrant and its circle free of the "anti-Zionist" ratbaggery that has crept into some American paleo-conservative work.
This anti-totalitarian ethos may owe a lot to Quadrant's founder, Richard Krygier, a Polish Jew and former social democrat and its first editor, the Catholic poet James McAuley. After more than 50 years this ethos seems firmly established.
Certainly there are crank groups on the Right but in terms of serious political and intellectual debate they are of little relevance.
This is in considerable contrast to the situation in the US, where attacks on the so-called neo-cons - and Israel - have become major pre-occupations of Patrick Buchanan, former Reagan speech-writer, former hopeful Republican presidential candidate and founder of the grotesquely misnamed American Conservative, and much of the American conservative circle.
Recent effusions by Buchanan include attacks on the pre-World War II Polish "regime" (his term) for provoking World War II by not giving Danzig to the patient and reasonable Adolf Hitler (a line also taken up recently by some Russian militaristic, ultra-nationalist and anti-Polish circles), and claims that, in effect, the countries liberated from Soviet occupation at the end of the Cold War have no right to self-determination because they lie within Russia's sphere of influence. The fact that tiny Estonia, the victim of countless Soviet atrocities, moved a war memorial erected by the Red Army from the centre of its capital has been described by Buchanan as a reckless provocation to Russia. The American Conservative, as well as all its other attacks on Israel and Zionism, actually published an article after Buchanan left the editorship insinuating - with obvious implications - that Israel had prior knowledge of 9/11.
Buchanan's work is also pushed on a website run by Greek multi-millionaire Taki Theodoracopulos, another ceaseless critic of the neo-cons and of Israel, from a so-called paleo-conservative position. One article published on the Taki website earlier this year, "Little Miss Zionist Gossip Queen", was a self-congratulatory account of how the Palestinian author, one Adam Kharii, had intimidated and chased away a lone Jewish girl in a nightclub: "I shouted at her, 'Don't be here when I'm back.' She was not even worthy of all the insults I'd hurled at her." Such, it appears, are the heroisms of self-styled US paleo-conservatism, descended more or less from the isolationist, anti-Semitic-tinged America First movement of World War II. I doubt it is a conservatism that Ronald Reagan, William Buckley or John Wayne would recognise.
One Australian-sourced attempt in The American Conservative to blame an alleged collapse of Australian conservatism on a neo-con takeover left its author lamenting that no notice had been taken of it. Among the alleged neo-cons listed there were Tim Blair, Andrew Bolt, and the late Frank Devine. The same author lamented elsewhere that his application to edit Quadrant had been, for some reason, rejected. He further described Howard as: "a semiliterate school prefect, haunted (to an extent remarkable even for antipodean statesmen) by what Mencken would have called the nagging fear that someone, somewhere, might be free", a description which, whatever one thinks of Howard, is simply off the planet. The big battle facing conservatives in Australia at present is against the expansion of government power and control in the name of environmentalism and here neo- and paleo- divisions are also irrelevant.
Mike Carlton recently attacked "shameless neo-cons" in The Sydney Morning Herald. His rogue's gallery included Tony Blair, who far from being any sort of conservative is probably the most socially radical prime minister Britain has had.
It appears most Australian intellectual conservatives think that what unites them is more important than what divides them. Most of them also seem to think that Israel is an island of democracy and civilisation, to be supported rather than attacked. On the potentially divisive questions of the war in Afghanistan and attitudes to Barack Obama's America in general, there is little they can do anyway but wait and see.
SOURCE
The Dog on the Tuckerbox
This is indeed a famous Australian song but many people these days don't know why. What is notable about a dog sitting on a tuckerbox? Explanation: The original version, as sung by shearers and other such profane folk, was "The dog shat IN my tuckerbox"
He has always been five miles from Gundagai but now the nation's most famous dog and his tuckerbox are to be relocated to lure tourists to the town. In the legendary original version of the 19th century poem, the dog sat on the tuckerbox "five miles from Gundagai".
Historians are outraged at the idea of moving the iconic statue from its spot of 77 years, just off the Hume Highway, to the far end of town to drag tourists through it, The Daily Telegraph reports. The town is split between those who want tourist dollars funnelled into their drought-stricken tills and those outraged at the changing of history. A consultant has been paid $20,000 by the Gundagai Shire Council to survey the community and find the cost of moving the pup. A report is due soon.
"We're a little town in the bush, doing it tough, and we have a great Aussie icon five miles out of town only benefiting the multinationals," pub owner Peter Lot said. "You come into Gundagai and it's a ghost town. Our biggest enquiry is, 'Where is the dog on the tuckerbox?' People don't realise they've already passed it."
National Trust advocacy manager Graham Quint blasted the move, revealing that the Trust is considering listing the dog on the National Trust Register, which would save it from being moved. "This is probably one of the most well-known and celebrated roadside monuments in Australia," Mr Quint said. "It was dedicated to the pioneers and bullockies who made the highway of today possible. "The very location 'five miles from Gundagai' is part of the Australian psyche and moving the monument to Gundagai would make nonsense of its historic setting and severely degrade its historic significance and purpose."
Mr Quint said the site was chosen five miles from Gundagai rather than at the nine-mile mark in the original poem because it was closer to Gundagai. Town mayor Len Tozer said: "I'm sitting on the fence on this one."
SOURCE
Thursday, November 19, 2009
QANTAS again (1)
Who gives a damn about passengers? They were made to wait 90 mins. on the plane for nothing and then just dumped over an hour's drive away from their destination. No help. No explanation and no apology
Disgruntled passengers say Qantas deserted them at the Gold Coast Airport last night after their flight into Brisbane was diverted due to bad weather. The QF 665 flight was also struck by lightning during its descent into Coolangatta.
Passenger Denis Gailey said the plane landed about 7.50pm but passengers weren't allowed to disembark until 9.35pm.
A Qantas spokesman said the airline didn't have engineering support at the airport, as it was no longer a Qantas port, and had to wait for an engineer from Brisbane to arrive. "That explains why people had to stay on board for that long. "They stayed on board in the expectation we'd get them up again. But unfortunately the plane was declared unserviceable by the engineer," he said.
But Mr Gailey said there was no communication. "When we got off, we were told to follow the staff in yellow safety vests and that buses were on their way. But we never saw anyone in yellow safety vests. "Passengers found their bags themselves. There was no co-ordination," he said. Some passengers organised hire cars while others waited for buses which arrived after 11pm. "We had no food, no direction and no-one to ask.
Qantas spokesman admitted passengers might not have had access to shops or food between the meal served onboard at 6pm and arriving in Brisbane after midnight. "The opportunity to provide refreshments just didn't eventuate unfortunately. "I think our focus would be on getting our passengers to Brisbane as quick as possible," he said. [It was obviously a "focus" that didn't succeed]
Mr Gailey said Qantas crew avoided the group of passengers after disembarking and refused to make eye contact. "The cabin manager had a moral obligation to take control of (the situation) and stay with us." There was no apology or offer of compensation, he said. "It was a complete sham," Mr Gailey said.
The Qantas spokesman said "cabin crew essentially did their job for the day when the flight landed". "Ultimately the crews have responsibilities as far as the flight was concerned and they hand it over to ground crew once they're on the ground. He said he would talk to the customer care department about compensation, but said the event was unavoidable due to the weather conditions. "We certainly regret any inconvenience the incident might have caused our customers but our focus was on getting our customers to their destination as quickly as possible.''
SOURCE
QANTAS again (2)
Cost-cutting has undoubtedly hit maintenance, as well as customer service
A QANTAS passenger plane taking off from Hong Kong was brought to a screeching halt after a pilot heard "a loud bang" from the engine. QF30, a 747 Jumbo with 313 passengers onboard, was heading to Melbourne from Hong Kong International Airport at 9.55am local time yesterday (6:55am AEDT yesterday) when it came to an abrupt halt.
Clasina Cue, a Melbourne grandmother and former airport worker, was aboard along with her friend, Lisa Taliana, also from Melbourne with both returning from a Hong Kong holiday. Both say the plane was nearing taking off speed. “The plane's nose was a bit up in the air,” Ms Cue said. “There was a big bang and a shudder. The pilot slammed the brakes and stopped the plane. It had been close to the point of no return.”
Both Ms Cue and Ms Taliana said they could smell smoke in the cabin. Ms Cue believed it was from the “screeching” tyres. Ms Cue and Ms Taliana both praised the pilot. “It was the pilot’s quick thinking. We could have gone up in the air. It could have been a lot worse,” said Ms Cue. “I’m just thankful we’re not dead,” said Ms Taliana. “The pilot did an awesome job. Not taking off was the best thing he could have possibly done.”...
The Qantas spokesperson said there had been no cockpit indications of engine failure but it was later found that the engine needed new compressor blades. The spokesperson could not say why there was no cockpit indicator of a problem before the bang alerted the pilot.
Qantas planes have been bedevilled with numerous incidents over the past couple of years. There have been union claims that safety is being compromised with maintenance work being outsourced to overseas terminals. The Qantas spokesperson however said the plane in question had been maintained in Sydney.
SOURCE
School defies parents; kills boy; no penalty
Sounds like teachers getting full of themselves again. Maybe a big civil lawsuit will get some questions answered and the guilty parties identified. You don't send your kid to school to have him come home in a coffin. My son is not a good swimmer. It could have been him. But I was told when he was due to swim and was there to watch him
THE parents of a Tasmanian student who drowned say they had no idea he had been going on a school excursion. "We had no knowledge of any excursion to Bells Parade, no permission slip was signed," Sera Levi, the mother of Latrobe High School teenager Rene, told The Mercury. His father Laupule said he had told the school his son was to be excluded from school trips. "He was not a strong swimmer and we did not encourage him going in the water," Mr Levi said.
Tasmania Police spent a couple of hours with the family yesterday afternoon, but Rene's parents were still unsure exactly what had happened at the Mersey River near Devonport on Monday afternoon.
"There were five teachers with 120 students," Mrs Levi said. "Some of the children were swimming. They went under the trees when it started raining. "A boy saw splashing, but no one was there," Mrs Levi said.
Rene's parents did not know their son had drowned; they only knew he was late returning from school. "We went looking for him and turned up at the school, and no one had anything to say," Mrs Levi said. "I was asked to wait for the principal. Phil McKenzie said he was sorry. I asked what for and then ran from the building screaming. "When we arrived at Bells Parade there was no sign of life. He had just been found and he was dead."
Tasmania Police said there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding the teenager's death. The Department of Education, he said, would be asking Latrobe High School staff some more probing questions about the incident in days to come.
SOURCE
Big watchdog bungle -- at the taxpayer's expense
THE corporate regulator has suffered a crushing defeat and been left with a $35 million legal bill after its pursuit of One.Tel founder Jodee Rich and former finance director Mark Silbermann was yesterday thrown out of court.
After one of the biggest cases ever brought before the NSW Supreme Court, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission was criticised for running a civil suit that was "too wide" and "produced an excessively long and burdensome proceeding". The regulator had wanted Mr Rich and Mr Silbermann to pay $92m in compensation for allegedly misleading the board about One.Tel's true financial position ahead of the telecommunications company's collapse in May 2001. It also sought orders banning the pair from managing corporations. Instead, ASIC was told it had "failed to prove any aspect of its pleaded case".
Judge Robert Austin said he did not agree with ASIC's submission that businessman James Packer - a director and financial backer of One.Tel - was "an impressive witness".
To add to the injury, ASIC will pick up Mr Rich's legal bill, which is more than $15m. ASIC is believed to have spent a further $20m during its eight-year pursuit of Mr Rich. Justice Austin said in his mammoth 3000-page judgment that "ASIC's contentions have a superficial appeal". "But time and time again they were shown to be unpersuasive when the underlying financial detail was investigated," he said.
Mr Packer and businessman Lachlan Murdoch, a director of News Corporation, publisher of The Australian, gave evidence in the case, which ran for 232 days from September 2004 to August 2007. Mr Packer's PBL and News Limited, News Corporation's Australian arm, were majority shareholders in One.Tel and jointly invested close to $1 billion in the company. The pair, who proposed a $132m rights issue to recapitalise One.Tel in May 2001, claimed to have been "profoundly misled" about the true state of One.Tel's finances before its collapse.
"Essentially Mr Packer Jr appeared to misunderstand the purpose of cross-examination, and treated it as an opportunity to attempt to `put his side of the story' by argumentative and non-responsive answers, and even occasionally evasive answers; and that was coupled with an inability to recollect important matters," Justice Austin said. The judge said Mr Murdoch had a "poor recollection" of the events, and his evidence should therefore be "treated with caution". He made no adverse findings against the pair in terms of their credibility.
One.Tel's special-purpose liquidator, Paul Weston, said yesterday he was likely to launch legal action against Mr Packer and Mr Murdoch over the collapse of the company within weeks. With interest, Mr Weston said the claim would now top $230m.
Mr Rich told The Australian yesterday he had twice been close to settling the case with ASIC over the years, and claimed he had been placed under political pressure not to fight it. Mr Rich claimed that in 2001 his father was called by Stan Howard, the brother of then prime minister John Howard. "The PM was sending a message through Stan Howard; it was very important that I settle and didn't defend the case," Mr Rich said. "And I thought that was just extraordinary." Last night, John Howard emphatically denied the claims. "I have no recollection of any discussion of that kind," he said. "I didn't do it and I am absolutely certain my brother would not have done that."
Mr Rich kissed his wife, Maxine, after the verdict yesterday. Both had tears in their eyes. Outside court, Mr Rich said he was "absolutely delighted" with the result. The hardest moment was being in the witness box for 33 days, which Mr Rich likened to "climbing the most amazing mountain".
Mr Silbermann was not in court yesterday but was very happy with the outcome. "It is such a good feeling to kick ASIC in the balls," he said. However, he said the damage to his reputation had been done "years ago". "We were crucified without anybody giving us the benefit of the doubt," he said. "I have lost everything, everything."
Justice Austin made a number of criticisms against ASIC in regard to the arguments put before the court and "aspects of its conduct of this case".
"Amongst the more serious are my views that . . . the scope of the case, endeavouring to prove the financial circumstances of a large multinational corporate group over each of four months, was far too wide and produced an excessively long and burdensome proceeding," Justice Austin said. "In a substantial number of significant ways, ASIC's final submissions were outside its pleaded case."
ASIC launched the court case against former One.Tel chairman John Greaves, joint managing directors Brad Keeling and Mr Rich and Mr Silbermann. Proceedings were settled against Mr Keeling in 2003 and Mr Greaves in 2004.
SOURCE
GREENIE ROUNDUP
Three current articles below
The usual Greenie people-hatred
Birth control should be used to cut "greenhouse gas" emissions
INVESTING in birth control to reduce population growth could be more effective in cutting greenhouse gas emissions than building wind turbines or nuclear power stations, according to a United Nations report. Taking action to prevent one billion births by 2050 would save as much carbon dioxide as constructing two million giant wind turbines.
The UN Population Fund report predicted that the global population could reach 10.5 billion by 2050, up from 6.8 billion today, unless urgent action was taken to reduce fertility rates. It said that even its medium-growth forecast of 2.3 billion more people by 2050, which assumes a fall in average fertility from 2.56 to 2.02 children per woman, would make it much harder to achieve the cuts in carbon emissions needed to prevent catastrophic climate change.
The report said that reducing population growth would allow the 2050 target for global average emissions per person to be increased significantly above the 2 tonnes recommended by Lord Stern of Brentford, the author of an influential government report on global warming in 2006. Living standards would be higher because each person would be able to emit more CO2.
The report said: "No human is genuinely carbon neutral. Therefore, everyone is part of the problem, so everyone must be part of the solution in some way. Each birth results not only in the emissions attributable to that person in his or her lifetime, but also the emissions of all his or her descendents."
The report rejected the idea of Chinese-style laws to control population but said that a similar result could be achieved by promoting contraception and better education for women. It said that 215 million women, mainly in developing countries, wanted contraception but had no access to it. Funding from donor countries for the UN's birth control program has fallen from $723 million at its peak in 1995 to $338 million in 2007.
The report also said that the longer women remained in education, the fewer babies they had. Women who had never gone to school had an average of 4.5 children. Those who completed one or two years of university had 1.7. "Dollar for dollar, investments in voluntary family planning and girls' education would, in the long run, reduce greenhouse gas emissions at least as much as investments in nuclear or wind energy," the report said.
It revealed that, contrary to received wisdom, rates of unintended pregnancies were higher in rich countries than in poor ones. In Europe, the US, Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand, an average of 41 per cent of pregnancies were unintended, compared with 35 per cent in developing countries.
However, most of the projected increase in population would be in developing countries. The population of Africa was expected to double to two billion by 2050. The population of all developed countries was likely to rise only 3 per cent, though this masked big differences, with the US population expected to rise by a third to 400 million and Japan's expected to decline by a fifth to 100million.
The Population Fund acknowledged that reducing population growth in developing countries would have little immediate impact on emissions because their inhabitants have relatively small carbon footprints. But it said that the savings would increase as the economies of developing countries grew and levels of consumption - and, therefore, emissions - rose.
The report said that population growth was only beginning to be recognised as an important topic in international negotiations on climate change. It will not be discussed at next month's UN summit in Copenhagen. "Fear of appearing supportive of population control has, until recently, held back any mention of 'population' in the climate debate."
A spokeswoman for Cafod, the Catholic aid agency, said it did not support the promotion of birth control in poor countries, where the "underlying causes of large families ... are lack of education of women and unequal power relationships between men and women".
SOURCE
Up to 30 conservative parliamentarians may vote against Warmist laws
UP to 30 Liberal MPs and senators are set to defy their leader Malcolm Turnbull on emissions trading, one of the party's prominent climate change sceptics said. More than a third of the party would "probably cross" the floor of Parliament to vote against the scheme even if Labor agreed to Coalition amendments, backbencher Dennis Jensen said. "I don't want to name them but there are 30 MPs," he told AAP.
Coalition MPs and senators were expected to consider the outcome of negotiations presently underway with Labor when they meet in Canberra next Tuesday. A Senate vote was expected late next week and any changes the upper house makes to the legislation would need the support of the Lower House, where Labor has a majority. In the Senate, Labor needs the support of at least seven Liberals to win parliamentary approval for its scheme.
SOURCE
Enterprise is not the enemy
A conservative political advisor looks for a middle ground below
Georges Clemenceau, the French prime minister during World War I, said that war is too serious a matter to entrust to military men. In the same vein, the environment is too important to be left to the Greens. Bob Carr made the point recently that the Greens are not the environmental movement, they are a political party.
Environmental issues are mainstream and not a luxury. They go to the heart of how we sustain our growth and living standards in the face of rising population and resource depletion pressures. Environmental costs are not always incorporated in market prices but there is now ample evidence that market approaches, including appropriate property rights, have an important role to play in conservation regimes. They can reduce pollution at lesser costs than regulatory approaches, as the acid rain cap and trade system showed.
There is no incompatibility between private enterprise or capitalism and the environment. The success of capitalism in raising living standards has been used by some Greens to equate it with environmental degradation. The poor state of the environment in Eastern Europe when the Berlin Wall fell demonstrates that there is no corollary between social and economic systems and the condition of the environment.
The Greens have often used environmental issues to peddle an anti-capitalist and populist agenda, focusing on renewable energy sources as good, soft power while rejecting nuclear energy as hard power that is the dirty product of multinational corporations. These attitudes are not shared by many of those who vote Green.
In the previous federal election Labor made a good fist of owning the environment and climate change. In the public mind concern for the environment has come to be equated with action to address climate change. Kevin Rudd focused on the Coalition's failure to sign the Kyoto treaty as evidence of its lack of credentials on environment and climate. The issue was used to define John Howard as backward-looking and not interested in the future.
So Labor now has equity in the issue. Every day that the Coalition spends discussing, and dividing on, climate change is a day lost to other issues more to the Coalition's advantage. The party should neutralise these issues and move on or risk alienating a whole constituency of voters, not restricted to the young, who genuinely feel strongly about these matters but who do not wish to embrace Stone Age living standards.
So does that mean that climate change sceptics should just shut up? No, because scientific inquiry that improves our knowledge and uncovers errors must be encouraged. Scientists should have the moral courage to change their position as ugly facts slay beautiful theories. But as a layman, how do I know who is right in the climate change debate? Is it the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or the scientists who claim that the IPCC has been too timid in its projections of global warming? Is it celebrities jumping on the bandwagon or more isolated scientific voices such as that of Ian Plimer?
How is a politician to make a principled decision on such a weighty matter? The French mathematician and religious philosopher of the 17th century, Blaise Pascal, tackled a related issue. He formulated a wager to guide those wrestling with the concept of faith. Because faith was beyond reasoning he proposed that one should weigh the consequences of belief v unbelief. If you believe and hence lead a virtuous life on earth but there is no hereafter, what have you really lost (apart from a good time perhaps)? On the other hand, if you act as if there is no hereafter and God does exist, you have consigned yourself to purgatory and worse. The cost of unbelief is literally infinite compared with the cost of belief in these circumstances.
Applied to climate change, what are the costs of belief v unbelief? If you act and climate change turns out to be the new Y2K, it is true that resources will have been invested in the transition to a less carbon-intensive economy and there is the opportunity cost of locking up our remaining fossil fuel supply. But provided that there is genuine market in emissions trading the carbon price should crash and restore relativities with fossil fuels and other energy sources.
If climate change is genuine, urgent and otherwise irreversible, then early action pays off while late or no action results in mounting economic and social costs. The most rational strategy for a climate sceptic is to short the carbon market and wait for the big crash.
The recent Lowy poll picked up on a slide in the ranking of climate change as an issue of concern to Australians. Securing jobs was the No. 1 issue. This is the real challenge with polls and governing. People want climate change tackled but they want to do it without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Howard faced up to this dilemma in the 2004 election when he wrestled with what do about old-growth forests in Tasmania. On the eve of the election his advisers were urging him to tuck away a very substantial compensation package to pay for locking up significant forest reserves. The then-Labor leader Mark Latham had highlighted the issue during the year with a high profile visit to Tasmania and the recruitment of Peter Garrett to run in the seat of Kingsford Smith.
For the campaign, Latham put together a big forests package and according to Tim Gartrell, the then ALP national secretary, it polled well. Howard played cat and mouse with Latham during the campaign.
Early on in the campaign in the seat of Richmond on the NSW North Coast, Howard alluded to his dilemma. He was worried about sacrificing the jobs of timber workers in isolated communities with few alternative job prospects. He wanted a fair go for them and the environment. His chance came when Latham finally blinked and went down to Tasmania at the start of the last week of the campaign. The images of him being driven into an underground car park and virtually throwing his plan across the table in a "take it or leave it" attitude said it all.
Howard moved to finalise his policy in consultation with affected communities and in the middle of that week turned up at the Albert Hall in Launceston to announce it. He was rapturously received by the timber workers and their families; he had looked after them and had the courage to meet them and address their concerns. It sent a message to other affected communities on the mainland that Howard was about balancing jobs and conservation.
In a recent welcome development, Bob Brown, the leader of the Greens, and John Gay, the executive chairman of Gunns, have met to discuss the proposed paper mill that has caused no end of controversy in Tasmania. It is good that they are at least talking and perhaps will find a practical outcome to this long-running saga.
SOURCE
Who gives a damn about passengers? They were made to wait 90 mins. on the plane for nothing and then just dumped over an hour's drive away from their destination. No help. No explanation and no apology
Disgruntled passengers say Qantas deserted them at the Gold Coast Airport last night after their flight into Brisbane was diverted due to bad weather. The QF 665 flight was also struck by lightning during its descent into Coolangatta.
Passenger Denis Gailey said the plane landed about 7.50pm but passengers weren't allowed to disembark until 9.35pm.
A Qantas spokesman said the airline didn't have engineering support at the airport, as it was no longer a Qantas port, and had to wait for an engineer from Brisbane to arrive. "That explains why people had to stay on board for that long. "They stayed on board in the expectation we'd get them up again. But unfortunately the plane was declared unserviceable by the engineer," he said.
But Mr Gailey said there was no communication. "When we got off, we were told to follow the staff in yellow safety vests and that buses were on their way. But we never saw anyone in yellow safety vests. "Passengers found their bags themselves. There was no co-ordination," he said. Some passengers organised hire cars while others waited for buses which arrived after 11pm. "We had no food, no direction and no-one to ask.
Qantas spokesman admitted passengers might not have had access to shops or food between the meal served onboard at 6pm and arriving in Brisbane after midnight. "The opportunity to provide refreshments just didn't eventuate unfortunately. "I think our focus would be on getting our passengers to Brisbane as quick as possible," he said. [It was obviously a "focus" that didn't succeed]
Mr Gailey said Qantas crew avoided the group of passengers after disembarking and refused to make eye contact. "The cabin manager had a moral obligation to take control of (the situation) and stay with us." There was no apology or offer of compensation, he said. "It was a complete sham," Mr Gailey said.
The Qantas spokesman said "cabin crew essentially did their job for the day when the flight landed". "Ultimately the crews have responsibilities as far as the flight was concerned and they hand it over to ground crew once they're on the ground. He said he would talk to the customer care department about compensation, but said the event was unavoidable due to the weather conditions. "We certainly regret any inconvenience the incident might have caused our customers but our focus was on getting our customers to their destination as quickly as possible.''
SOURCE
QANTAS again (2)
Cost-cutting has undoubtedly hit maintenance, as well as customer service
A QANTAS passenger plane taking off from Hong Kong was brought to a screeching halt after a pilot heard "a loud bang" from the engine. QF30, a 747 Jumbo with 313 passengers onboard, was heading to Melbourne from Hong Kong International Airport at 9.55am local time yesterday (6:55am AEDT yesterday) when it came to an abrupt halt.
Clasina Cue, a Melbourne grandmother and former airport worker, was aboard along with her friend, Lisa Taliana, also from Melbourne with both returning from a Hong Kong holiday. Both say the plane was nearing taking off speed. “The plane's nose was a bit up in the air,” Ms Cue said. “There was a big bang and a shudder. The pilot slammed the brakes and stopped the plane. It had been close to the point of no return.”
Both Ms Cue and Ms Taliana said they could smell smoke in the cabin. Ms Cue believed it was from the “screeching” tyres. Ms Cue and Ms Taliana both praised the pilot. “It was the pilot’s quick thinking. We could have gone up in the air. It could have been a lot worse,” said Ms Cue. “I’m just thankful we’re not dead,” said Ms Taliana. “The pilot did an awesome job. Not taking off was the best thing he could have possibly done.”...
The Qantas spokesperson said there had been no cockpit indications of engine failure but it was later found that the engine needed new compressor blades. The spokesperson could not say why there was no cockpit indicator of a problem before the bang alerted the pilot.
Qantas planes have been bedevilled with numerous incidents over the past couple of years. There have been union claims that safety is being compromised with maintenance work being outsourced to overseas terminals. The Qantas spokesperson however said the plane in question had been maintained in Sydney.
SOURCE
School defies parents; kills boy; no penalty
Sounds like teachers getting full of themselves again. Maybe a big civil lawsuit will get some questions answered and the guilty parties identified. You don't send your kid to school to have him come home in a coffin. My son is not a good swimmer. It could have been him. But I was told when he was due to swim and was there to watch him
THE parents of a Tasmanian student who drowned say they had no idea he had been going on a school excursion. "We had no knowledge of any excursion to Bells Parade, no permission slip was signed," Sera Levi, the mother of Latrobe High School teenager Rene, told The Mercury. His father Laupule said he had told the school his son was to be excluded from school trips. "He was not a strong swimmer and we did not encourage him going in the water," Mr Levi said.
Tasmania Police spent a couple of hours with the family yesterday afternoon, but Rene's parents were still unsure exactly what had happened at the Mersey River near Devonport on Monday afternoon.
"There were five teachers with 120 students," Mrs Levi said. "Some of the children were swimming. They went under the trees when it started raining. "A boy saw splashing, but no one was there," Mrs Levi said.
Rene's parents did not know their son had drowned; they only knew he was late returning from school. "We went looking for him and turned up at the school, and no one had anything to say," Mrs Levi said. "I was asked to wait for the principal. Phil McKenzie said he was sorry. I asked what for and then ran from the building screaming. "When we arrived at Bells Parade there was no sign of life. He had just been found and he was dead."
Tasmania Police said there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding the teenager's death. The Department of Education, he said, would be asking Latrobe High School staff some more probing questions about the incident in days to come.
SOURCE
Big watchdog bungle -- at the taxpayer's expense
THE corporate regulator has suffered a crushing defeat and been left with a $35 million legal bill after its pursuit of One.Tel founder Jodee Rich and former finance director Mark Silbermann was yesterday thrown out of court.
After one of the biggest cases ever brought before the NSW Supreme Court, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission was criticised for running a civil suit that was "too wide" and "produced an excessively long and burdensome proceeding". The regulator had wanted Mr Rich and Mr Silbermann to pay $92m in compensation for allegedly misleading the board about One.Tel's true financial position ahead of the telecommunications company's collapse in May 2001. It also sought orders banning the pair from managing corporations. Instead, ASIC was told it had "failed to prove any aspect of its pleaded case".
Judge Robert Austin said he did not agree with ASIC's submission that businessman James Packer - a director and financial backer of One.Tel - was "an impressive witness".
To add to the injury, ASIC will pick up Mr Rich's legal bill, which is more than $15m. ASIC is believed to have spent a further $20m during its eight-year pursuit of Mr Rich. Justice Austin said in his mammoth 3000-page judgment that "ASIC's contentions have a superficial appeal". "But time and time again they were shown to be unpersuasive when the underlying financial detail was investigated," he said.
Mr Packer and businessman Lachlan Murdoch, a director of News Corporation, publisher of The Australian, gave evidence in the case, which ran for 232 days from September 2004 to August 2007. Mr Packer's PBL and News Limited, News Corporation's Australian arm, were majority shareholders in One.Tel and jointly invested close to $1 billion in the company. The pair, who proposed a $132m rights issue to recapitalise One.Tel in May 2001, claimed to have been "profoundly misled" about the true state of One.Tel's finances before its collapse.
"Essentially Mr Packer Jr appeared to misunderstand the purpose of cross-examination, and treated it as an opportunity to attempt to `put his side of the story' by argumentative and non-responsive answers, and even occasionally evasive answers; and that was coupled with an inability to recollect important matters," Justice Austin said. The judge said Mr Murdoch had a "poor recollection" of the events, and his evidence should therefore be "treated with caution". He made no adverse findings against the pair in terms of their credibility.
One.Tel's special-purpose liquidator, Paul Weston, said yesterday he was likely to launch legal action against Mr Packer and Mr Murdoch over the collapse of the company within weeks. With interest, Mr Weston said the claim would now top $230m.
Mr Rich told The Australian yesterday he had twice been close to settling the case with ASIC over the years, and claimed he had been placed under political pressure not to fight it. Mr Rich claimed that in 2001 his father was called by Stan Howard, the brother of then prime minister John Howard. "The PM was sending a message through Stan Howard; it was very important that I settle and didn't defend the case," Mr Rich said. "And I thought that was just extraordinary." Last night, John Howard emphatically denied the claims. "I have no recollection of any discussion of that kind," he said. "I didn't do it and I am absolutely certain my brother would not have done that."
Mr Rich kissed his wife, Maxine, after the verdict yesterday. Both had tears in their eyes. Outside court, Mr Rich said he was "absolutely delighted" with the result. The hardest moment was being in the witness box for 33 days, which Mr Rich likened to "climbing the most amazing mountain".
Mr Silbermann was not in court yesterday but was very happy with the outcome. "It is such a good feeling to kick ASIC in the balls," he said. However, he said the damage to his reputation had been done "years ago". "We were crucified without anybody giving us the benefit of the doubt," he said. "I have lost everything, everything."
Justice Austin made a number of criticisms against ASIC in regard to the arguments put before the court and "aspects of its conduct of this case".
"Amongst the more serious are my views that . . . the scope of the case, endeavouring to prove the financial circumstances of a large multinational corporate group over each of four months, was far too wide and produced an excessively long and burdensome proceeding," Justice Austin said. "In a substantial number of significant ways, ASIC's final submissions were outside its pleaded case."
ASIC launched the court case against former One.Tel chairman John Greaves, joint managing directors Brad Keeling and Mr Rich and Mr Silbermann. Proceedings were settled against Mr Keeling in 2003 and Mr Greaves in 2004.
SOURCE
GREENIE ROUNDUP
Three current articles below
The usual Greenie people-hatred
Birth control should be used to cut "greenhouse gas" emissions
INVESTING in birth control to reduce population growth could be more effective in cutting greenhouse gas emissions than building wind turbines or nuclear power stations, according to a United Nations report. Taking action to prevent one billion births by 2050 would save as much carbon dioxide as constructing two million giant wind turbines.
The UN Population Fund report predicted that the global population could reach 10.5 billion by 2050, up from 6.8 billion today, unless urgent action was taken to reduce fertility rates. It said that even its medium-growth forecast of 2.3 billion more people by 2050, which assumes a fall in average fertility from 2.56 to 2.02 children per woman, would make it much harder to achieve the cuts in carbon emissions needed to prevent catastrophic climate change.
The report said that reducing population growth would allow the 2050 target for global average emissions per person to be increased significantly above the 2 tonnes recommended by Lord Stern of Brentford, the author of an influential government report on global warming in 2006. Living standards would be higher because each person would be able to emit more CO2.
The report said: "No human is genuinely carbon neutral. Therefore, everyone is part of the problem, so everyone must be part of the solution in some way. Each birth results not only in the emissions attributable to that person in his or her lifetime, but also the emissions of all his or her descendents."
The report rejected the idea of Chinese-style laws to control population but said that a similar result could be achieved by promoting contraception and better education for women. It said that 215 million women, mainly in developing countries, wanted contraception but had no access to it. Funding from donor countries for the UN's birth control program has fallen from $723 million at its peak in 1995 to $338 million in 2007.
The report also said that the longer women remained in education, the fewer babies they had. Women who had never gone to school had an average of 4.5 children. Those who completed one or two years of university had 1.7. "Dollar for dollar, investments in voluntary family planning and girls' education would, in the long run, reduce greenhouse gas emissions at least as much as investments in nuclear or wind energy," the report said.
It revealed that, contrary to received wisdom, rates of unintended pregnancies were higher in rich countries than in poor ones. In Europe, the US, Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand, an average of 41 per cent of pregnancies were unintended, compared with 35 per cent in developing countries.
However, most of the projected increase in population would be in developing countries. The population of Africa was expected to double to two billion by 2050. The population of all developed countries was likely to rise only 3 per cent, though this masked big differences, with the US population expected to rise by a third to 400 million and Japan's expected to decline by a fifth to 100million.
The Population Fund acknowledged that reducing population growth in developing countries would have little immediate impact on emissions because their inhabitants have relatively small carbon footprints. But it said that the savings would increase as the economies of developing countries grew and levels of consumption - and, therefore, emissions - rose.
The report said that population growth was only beginning to be recognised as an important topic in international negotiations on climate change. It will not be discussed at next month's UN summit in Copenhagen. "Fear of appearing supportive of population control has, until recently, held back any mention of 'population' in the climate debate."
A spokeswoman for Cafod, the Catholic aid agency, said it did not support the promotion of birth control in poor countries, where the "underlying causes of large families ... are lack of education of women and unequal power relationships between men and women".
SOURCE
Up to 30 conservative parliamentarians may vote against Warmist laws
UP to 30 Liberal MPs and senators are set to defy their leader Malcolm Turnbull on emissions trading, one of the party's prominent climate change sceptics said. More than a third of the party would "probably cross" the floor of Parliament to vote against the scheme even if Labor agreed to Coalition amendments, backbencher Dennis Jensen said. "I don't want to name them but there are 30 MPs," he told AAP.
Coalition MPs and senators were expected to consider the outcome of negotiations presently underway with Labor when they meet in Canberra next Tuesday. A Senate vote was expected late next week and any changes the upper house makes to the legislation would need the support of the Lower House, where Labor has a majority. In the Senate, Labor needs the support of at least seven Liberals to win parliamentary approval for its scheme.
SOURCE
Enterprise is not the enemy
A conservative political advisor looks for a middle ground below
Georges Clemenceau, the French prime minister during World War I, said that war is too serious a matter to entrust to military men. In the same vein, the environment is too important to be left to the Greens. Bob Carr made the point recently that the Greens are not the environmental movement, they are a political party.
Environmental issues are mainstream and not a luxury. They go to the heart of how we sustain our growth and living standards in the face of rising population and resource depletion pressures. Environmental costs are not always incorporated in market prices but there is now ample evidence that market approaches, including appropriate property rights, have an important role to play in conservation regimes. They can reduce pollution at lesser costs than regulatory approaches, as the acid rain cap and trade system showed.
There is no incompatibility between private enterprise or capitalism and the environment. The success of capitalism in raising living standards has been used by some Greens to equate it with environmental degradation. The poor state of the environment in Eastern Europe when the Berlin Wall fell demonstrates that there is no corollary between social and economic systems and the condition of the environment.
The Greens have often used environmental issues to peddle an anti-capitalist and populist agenda, focusing on renewable energy sources as good, soft power while rejecting nuclear energy as hard power that is the dirty product of multinational corporations. These attitudes are not shared by many of those who vote Green.
In the previous federal election Labor made a good fist of owning the environment and climate change. In the public mind concern for the environment has come to be equated with action to address climate change. Kevin Rudd focused on the Coalition's failure to sign the Kyoto treaty as evidence of its lack of credentials on environment and climate. The issue was used to define John Howard as backward-looking and not interested in the future.
So Labor now has equity in the issue. Every day that the Coalition spends discussing, and dividing on, climate change is a day lost to other issues more to the Coalition's advantage. The party should neutralise these issues and move on or risk alienating a whole constituency of voters, not restricted to the young, who genuinely feel strongly about these matters but who do not wish to embrace Stone Age living standards.
So does that mean that climate change sceptics should just shut up? No, because scientific inquiry that improves our knowledge and uncovers errors must be encouraged. Scientists should have the moral courage to change their position as ugly facts slay beautiful theories. But as a layman, how do I know who is right in the climate change debate? Is it the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or the scientists who claim that the IPCC has been too timid in its projections of global warming? Is it celebrities jumping on the bandwagon or more isolated scientific voices such as that of Ian Plimer?
How is a politician to make a principled decision on such a weighty matter? The French mathematician and religious philosopher of the 17th century, Blaise Pascal, tackled a related issue. He formulated a wager to guide those wrestling with the concept of faith. Because faith was beyond reasoning he proposed that one should weigh the consequences of belief v unbelief. If you believe and hence lead a virtuous life on earth but there is no hereafter, what have you really lost (apart from a good time perhaps)? On the other hand, if you act as if there is no hereafter and God does exist, you have consigned yourself to purgatory and worse. The cost of unbelief is literally infinite compared with the cost of belief in these circumstances.
Applied to climate change, what are the costs of belief v unbelief? If you act and climate change turns out to be the new Y2K, it is true that resources will have been invested in the transition to a less carbon-intensive economy and there is the opportunity cost of locking up our remaining fossil fuel supply. But provided that there is genuine market in emissions trading the carbon price should crash and restore relativities with fossil fuels and other energy sources.
If climate change is genuine, urgent and otherwise irreversible, then early action pays off while late or no action results in mounting economic and social costs. The most rational strategy for a climate sceptic is to short the carbon market and wait for the big crash.
The recent Lowy poll picked up on a slide in the ranking of climate change as an issue of concern to Australians. Securing jobs was the No. 1 issue. This is the real challenge with polls and governing. People want climate change tackled but they want to do it without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Howard faced up to this dilemma in the 2004 election when he wrestled with what do about old-growth forests in Tasmania. On the eve of the election his advisers were urging him to tuck away a very substantial compensation package to pay for locking up significant forest reserves. The then-Labor leader Mark Latham had highlighted the issue during the year with a high profile visit to Tasmania and the recruitment of Peter Garrett to run in the seat of Kingsford Smith.
For the campaign, Latham put together a big forests package and according to Tim Gartrell, the then ALP national secretary, it polled well. Howard played cat and mouse with Latham during the campaign.
Early on in the campaign in the seat of Richmond on the NSW North Coast, Howard alluded to his dilemma. He was worried about sacrificing the jobs of timber workers in isolated communities with few alternative job prospects. He wanted a fair go for them and the environment. His chance came when Latham finally blinked and went down to Tasmania at the start of the last week of the campaign. The images of him being driven into an underground car park and virtually throwing his plan across the table in a "take it or leave it" attitude said it all.
Howard moved to finalise his policy in consultation with affected communities and in the middle of that week turned up at the Albert Hall in Launceston to announce it. He was rapturously received by the timber workers and their families; he had looked after them and had the courage to meet them and address their concerns. It sent a message to other affected communities on the mainland that Howard was about balancing jobs and conservation.
In a recent welcome development, Bob Brown, the leader of the Greens, and John Gay, the executive chairman of Gunns, have met to discuss the proposed paper mill that has caused no end of controversy in Tasmania. It is good that they are at least talking and perhaps will find a practical outcome to this long-running saga.
SOURCE
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
The Victorian Human Rights watchdog again interferes with people's human rights
VCAT rejects woman's bid to set up women-only travel service -- but Muslims can do anything, of course
A TRIBUNAL has rejected a Melbourne woman's bid to set up a women-only travel service. Erin Maitland, a former tour guide, applied to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal for an exemption under the Equal Opportunity Act to set up her business, Travel Sisters. She argued some women would feel more comfortable travelling in women-only groups and safer than travelling alone.
Ms Maitland said her tours would also be tailored to common women's interests including cooking, shopping and crafts and that women's partners would be more supportive of them travelling if they knew they were with other women. Ms Maitland relied on a ruling two years ago in which VCAT granted an exemption to a woman, allowing her to arrange tours for women only.
But the tribunal must now assess exemption applications in line with the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities. VCAT president Judge Marilyn Harbison refused Ms Maitland's application, saying she had not shown enough evidence that limiting a human right is reasonable or necessary. "The grant of an exemption may well be convenient and practical to assist Erin in the establishment of her business but it cannot presently be justified on human rights principles,'' she said.
Judge Harbison said there were other steps that could be put in place to ensure women feel safe and comfortable travelling in groups, without having to exclude men.
The Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, which argued during the hearing that the evidence provided was "weak'', said Ms Maitland could enforce standards of conduct, select facilities with separate male and female change rooms, ensure privacy for her clients and encourage people to report safety concerns.
The commission said that even without an exemption, market forces could result in Ms Maitland's business being successful because men would not be interested in it. The ruling comes after a Melbourne party company specialising in dance events for lesbians and bisexual women won the right to ban men earlier this year.
In May, VCAT granted a three-year exemption to an inner western suburbs gym, enabling it to conduct women-only swimming sessions and related programs. Many of the women at the YMCA gym in Ascot Vale are Muslim who, because of their cultural and religious beliefs, cannot take part in mixed swimming lessons.
SOURCE
Absurd attack on freedoms in Western Australia
YOU don't have to be a civil libertarian to oppose giving police the powers to indiscriminately stop and search people without so much as a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. Yet that is exactly what the West Australian government is trying to do with legislation before parliament this week.
Think about it for a moment. You could be walking down the street (or even driving a car) and a police officer, for whatever reason, could stop you, frisk you and go through your personal possessions. If you are a woman that includes rifling through your handbag. No reason needs to be given, no discussion had, no consent.
These are extraordinary powers, unprecedented in this country. West Australian Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan defends them on the grounds that they won't be used unnecessarily. But the legislation is silent on this opaque promise, which, with the sands of time, could wash away. Anyone who values their freedoms should be appalled.
The newly elected state Liberal MP Peter Abetz (when he isn't referring to the actions of Adolf Hitler to improve law and order in fascist Germany) says: "When it comes to the crunch, people prefer to be safe than to have freedom."
But a large component of safety is protection against an all-powerful state. That is why the term "reasonable suspicion" is a bedrock of policing standards across the globe.
The real reason the Barnett government wants to introduce these absurd laws is because there have been recent well-publicised cases of botched "reasonable suspicion" arrests resulting in the courts letting the accused walk free. That happens when police don't do their jobs properly. The solution is to improve policing, not simplistically widen their powers so as to infringe on the rights of law-abiding citizens.
And of course Western Australia now has mandatory jail sentences for anyone who assaults a police officer. If you resist a search you can be pinned against the floor and, if you in any way react, you could be deemed to have assaulted the officer who without reason stopped and searched you. So blokes out there, don't go getting too offended when a cop runs his hand up your wife's inner thigh without reasonable suspicion. It could land you in jail.
SOURCE
Rudd is treating us like mugs
THERE is an emerging credibility gap in the Rudd government's navigation of contentious policy issues, a compulsion that denies the obvious and rests on the apparent assumption that Australians are mugs.
There are many examples but the issue of asylum-seekers offers compelling evidence. Kevin Rudd invested much time in parliament on Monday insisting that the 22 asylum-seekers who first left the Oceanic Viking were receiving no preferential arrangement. Asked by 3AW's Neil Mitchell last week if there was special treatment, the Prime Minister replied: "Absolutely not." Yet the terms set out by the Minister-Counsellor Immigration in the Jakarta embassy, Jim O'Callaghan, to the asylum-seekers suggests a set of detailed special arrangements. They were authorised by the Rudd government's border protection committee of cabinet chaired by Immigration Minister Chris Evans.
The Australian's Jakarta correspondent Stephen Fitzpatrick reported yesterday that the Oceanic Viking people were quarantined from others because of resentment at their preferential conditions courtesy of the Rudd government.
There are three key provisions in O'Callaghan's document: if the UNHCR has found a person to be a refugee they will be resettled within four to six weeks of disembarkation; if an individual has already registered with the UNHCR they will be resettled within 12 weeks of disembarkation; and if people are not yet registered and are found to be refugees, they will also be resettled within 12 weeks. These provisions are highly generous. It is no surprise they are exceptional within UNHCR Indonesian operations. There are many refugees in Indonesia and none is given resettlement in four to six weeks.
The Australian offer included English language and orientation classes while cases are being processed. A "highly professional" team of Australian officials will work "every day" to assist refugee applications. The Red Cross will assist in tracing family members. The Sri Lankans were told many services will be provided in the resettlement country and these may include "assistance with housing, medical care and counselling, income support, English language tuition and help to find a job".
Rudd has been desperate to persuade the Sri Lankans to disembark in Indonesia. He had rightly drawn a line in the sand; he would not allow the boat to come to Christmas Island and he had a victory yesterday with reports that all Sri Lankans would disembark after the past month's protracted agony.
To grasp the nature of the special arrangement, consider the following: at October 1 there were 1760 registered asylum-seekers in Indonesia and 573 people recognised as refugees by the UNHCR in Jakarta; the typical delay time for processing and resettlement far exceeds 12 weeks and usually runs beyond 12 months. Australia, in short, is fast-tracking the Oceanic Viking people.
Evans said last week that Australia was "more likely to get the larger proportion" as the final destination. The exceptions to this, mentioned by Evans, was "if, for instance, they've got a first cousin living in Canada". Decoded the message is most are headed for Australia. However, this is far from the normal arrangement.
About 1300 people have been resettled from Indonesia to third nations in recent years and Australia has taken about one-third, with the rest going to Canada, the US, New Zealand, Sweden and France. Having rejected force to remove people, Australia had only one option left: it had to persuade them. Nobody should be surprised at the inducements offered. It was the price Rudd had to pay to keep the boat out of our territory. The price is justified. After the shambles of the past month it is a relief that Australia did not have to offer more. The criticism of Rudd is not that he paid such a price; it is that he pretends he paid no price whatsoever. He seems to think almost any line can be spun and will be believed, even when it is nonsense.
On Monday Rudd tabled a letter in parliament from Immigration Department Secretary Andrew Metcalfe to Evans, dated the same day. It was a classic example of recruiting under duress a senior public servant to buttress the government's line. The letter is a study in fact and political evasion. On tabling Metcalfe's letter, Rudd claimed it showed from the perspective of the departmental secretary "that these are not preferential arrangements". The letter shows nothing of the kind. Indeed, it is significant that Metcalfe avoids any such formulation.
He merely says that the group is being treated in a manner "consistent with that afforded to any other asylum-seeker or refugee in Indonesia". He does, however, say that Australia and Indonesia have agreed on "timeframes for the processing", which may imply a special arrangement. Requesting such a letter achieved nothing and the request should not have been made. Yet Rudd persisted in using Metcalfe as a shield and, responding to criticism from Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull, he claimed that Turnbull was disputing advice from "the independent Public Service of Australia". On the contrary, it shows the government stooping to use the public service to buttress a bad case.
It is noteworthy that Rudd was not involved in authorising the offer to the Sri Lankans. He told parliament on Monday that he was unaware of the offer's terms and did not authorise it. Turnbull seemed to find this unbelievable. But Rudd's denial was unequivocal. It stands despite his subsequent clarification that the cabinet committee that did approve the offer contained Rudd's staff.
The real point is that the Rudd government authorised a necessary special deal and, embarrassed about its domestic ramifications, tried to deny the obvious.
SOURCE
New Zealand less corrupt than Australia?
That's a laugh. NZ is the "orchestrated litany of lies" country. The raters just don't know NZ well
Lawless Somalia and war-torn Afghanistan have topped a blacklist of the world's most corrupt countries drawn up by the anti-graft watchdog Transparency International. Australia ranked as the eighth most honest of 180 countries, according to the annual study. New Zealand, Denmark, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland were the top five least corrupt countries.
TI's corruption index showed how countries devastated by conflict have become overrun by graft, with Iraq, Sudan and Myanmar accounting for the three other states in the bottom five of the chart.
The Berlin-based organisation said that countries whose infrastructure had been "torn apart" by conflict needed help from outside to prevent a culture of corruption taking root. "The international community must find efficient ways to help war-torn countries to develop and sustain their own institutions," said TI's head Huguette Labelle.
Overall, the 2009 corruption list is "of great concern", the organisation said, with the majority of countries scoring under five in the ranking, which ranges from zero, highly corrupt, and 10, which is very clean.
Six years after the US-led invasion and the chaos that followed, Iraq was perceived to be slightly cleaner, with its score rising to 1.5 points from 1.3 points. It also climbed two places in the list. But Afghanistan slid from 1.5 points in 2008 to 1.3 in 2009, giving further ammunition to critics of President Hamid Karzai who has just been re-elected after a vote marred by rampant fraud.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Karzai this week that future financial support from Washington would be linked to steps to tackle graft and said that a culture of "impunity for those who are corrupt" had to end. The Afghan government announced on Monday it had formed a major crime unit to tackle corruption, in a move designed to assuage Western concerns about Karzai who is due to be inaugurated for a second term later this week.
The most corrupt nation on Earth remained Somalia, the impoverished and war-torn Horn of Africa state that has been without a functioning government for two decades, notching up a score of 1.1 points. African countries accounted for half of those in the bottom 20 of the list, including Angola which is now the continent's top oil exporter after emerging from a 27-year civil war.
But it was not just countries riven by conflict that saw their ratings slide. Italy, a member of the Group of Seven rich countries came in at 63rd on the list, from 55th last year. Fellow EU member Greece fared even worse, at 71st, slipping from 57th. [I believe those two rankings]
Seemingly winning the fight against corruption were Liberia - whose score improved from 2.4 points to 3.1 points, shooting up 41 places on the list to 97th - and Gambia, which went from 158 on the list to 106. Other significant improvements were registered by Norway, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Montenegro and Malawi.
The United States inched up from 7.3 points to 7.5, but dropped one place in the rankings to 19th. China's rating was stable at 3.6 points but also fall seven places to 79th. Russia continued to be very low down in the list, coming in at 146th place, although its score edged higher to 2.2 points from 2.1 points.
The five countries seen as least afflicted by corruption were New Zealand, Denmark, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland - the Alpine country seen as a bastion of bank secrecy. New Zealand scored 9.4 points whereas Somalia scored 1.1 points. The score is based on perceptions of the degree of corruption as seen by business people and country analysts.
SOURCE
VCAT rejects woman's bid to set up women-only travel service -- but Muslims can do anything, of course
A TRIBUNAL has rejected a Melbourne woman's bid to set up a women-only travel service. Erin Maitland, a former tour guide, applied to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal for an exemption under the Equal Opportunity Act to set up her business, Travel Sisters. She argued some women would feel more comfortable travelling in women-only groups and safer than travelling alone.
Ms Maitland said her tours would also be tailored to common women's interests including cooking, shopping and crafts and that women's partners would be more supportive of them travelling if they knew they were with other women. Ms Maitland relied on a ruling two years ago in which VCAT granted an exemption to a woman, allowing her to arrange tours for women only.
But the tribunal must now assess exemption applications in line with the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities. VCAT president Judge Marilyn Harbison refused Ms Maitland's application, saying she had not shown enough evidence that limiting a human right is reasonable or necessary. "The grant of an exemption may well be convenient and practical to assist Erin in the establishment of her business but it cannot presently be justified on human rights principles,'' she said.
Judge Harbison said there were other steps that could be put in place to ensure women feel safe and comfortable travelling in groups, without having to exclude men.
The Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, which argued during the hearing that the evidence provided was "weak'', said Ms Maitland could enforce standards of conduct, select facilities with separate male and female change rooms, ensure privacy for her clients and encourage people to report safety concerns.
The commission said that even without an exemption, market forces could result in Ms Maitland's business being successful because men would not be interested in it. The ruling comes after a Melbourne party company specialising in dance events for lesbians and bisexual women won the right to ban men earlier this year.
In May, VCAT granted a three-year exemption to an inner western suburbs gym, enabling it to conduct women-only swimming sessions and related programs. Many of the women at the YMCA gym in Ascot Vale are Muslim who, because of their cultural and religious beliefs, cannot take part in mixed swimming lessons.
SOURCE
Absurd attack on freedoms in Western Australia
YOU don't have to be a civil libertarian to oppose giving police the powers to indiscriminately stop and search people without so much as a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. Yet that is exactly what the West Australian government is trying to do with legislation before parliament this week.
Think about it for a moment. You could be walking down the street (or even driving a car) and a police officer, for whatever reason, could stop you, frisk you and go through your personal possessions. If you are a woman that includes rifling through your handbag. No reason needs to be given, no discussion had, no consent.
These are extraordinary powers, unprecedented in this country. West Australian Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan defends them on the grounds that they won't be used unnecessarily. But the legislation is silent on this opaque promise, which, with the sands of time, could wash away. Anyone who values their freedoms should be appalled.
The newly elected state Liberal MP Peter Abetz (when he isn't referring to the actions of Adolf Hitler to improve law and order in fascist Germany) says: "When it comes to the crunch, people prefer to be safe than to have freedom."
But a large component of safety is protection against an all-powerful state. That is why the term "reasonable suspicion" is a bedrock of policing standards across the globe.
The real reason the Barnett government wants to introduce these absurd laws is because there have been recent well-publicised cases of botched "reasonable suspicion" arrests resulting in the courts letting the accused walk free. That happens when police don't do their jobs properly. The solution is to improve policing, not simplistically widen their powers so as to infringe on the rights of law-abiding citizens.
And of course Western Australia now has mandatory jail sentences for anyone who assaults a police officer. If you resist a search you can be pinned against the floor and, if you in any way react, you could be deemed to have assaulted the officer who without reason stopped and searched you. So blokes out there, don't go getting too offended when a cop runs his hand up your wife's inner thigh without reasonable suspicion. It could land you in jail.
SOURCE
Rudd is treating us like mugs
THERE is an emerging credibility gap in the Rudd government's navigation of contentious policy issues, a compulsion that denies the obvious and rests on the apparent assumption that Australians are mugs.
There are many examples but the issue of asylum-seekers offers compelling evidence. Kevin Rudd invested much time in parliament on Monday insisting that the 22 asylum-seekers who first left the Oceanic Viking were receiving no preferential arrangement. Asked by 3AW's Neil Mitchell last week if there was special treatment, the Prime Minister replied: "Absolutely not." Yet the terms set out by the Minister-Counsellor Immigration in the Jakarta embassy, Jim O'Callaghan, to the asylum-seekers suggests a set of detailed special arrangements. They were authorised by the Rudd government's border protection committee of cabinet chaired by Immigration Minister Chris Evans.
The Australian's Jakarta correspondent Stephen Fitzpatrick reported yesterday that the Oceanic Viking people were quarantined from others because of resentment at their preferential conditions courtesy of the Rudd government.
There are three key provisions in O'Callaghan's document: if the UNHCR has found a person to be a refugee they will be resettled within four to six weeks of disembarkation; if an individual has already registered with the UNHCR they will be resettled within 12 weeks of disembarkation; and if people are not yet registered and are found to be refugees, they will also be resettled within 12 weeks. These provisions are highly generous. It is no surprise they are exceptional within UNHCR Indonesian operations. There are many refugees in Indonesia and none is given resettlement in four to six weeks.
The Australian offer included English language and orientation classes while cases are being processed. A "highly professional" team of Australian officials will work "every day" to assist refugee applications. The Red Cross will assist in tracing family members. The Sri Lankans were told many services will be provided in the resettlement country and these may include "assistance with housing, medical care and counselling, income support, English language tuition and help to find a job".
Rudd has been desperate to persuade the Sri Lankans to disembark in Indonesia. He had rightly drawn a line in the sand; he would not allow the boat to come to Christmas Island and he had a victory yesterday with reports that all Sri Lankans would disembark after the past month's protracted agony.
To grasp the nature of the special arrangement, consider the following: at October 1 there were 1760 registered asylum-seekers in Indonesia and 573 people recognised as refugees by the UNHCR in Jakarta; the typical delay time for processing and resettlement far exceeds 12 weeks and usually runs beyond 12 months. Australia, in short, is fast-tracking the Oceanic Viking people.
Evans said last week that Australia was "more likely to get the larger proportion" as the final destination. The exceptions to this, mentioned by Evans, was "if, for instance, they've got a first cousin living in Canada". Decoded the message is most are headed for Australia. However, this is far from the normal arrangement.
About 1300 people have been resettled from Indonesia to third nations in recent years and Australia has taken about one-third, with the rest going to Canada, the US, New Zealand, Sweden and France. Having rejected force to remove people, Australia had only one option left: it had to persuade them. Nobody should be surprised at the inducements offered. It was the price Rudd had to pay to keep the boat out of our territory. The price is justified. After the shambles of the past month it is a relief that Australia did not have to offer more. The criticism of Rudd is not that he paid such a price; it is that he pretends he paid no price whatsoever. He seems to think almost any line can be spun and will be believed, even when it is nonsense.
On Monday Rudd tabled a letter in parliament from Immigration Department Secretary Andrew Metcalfe to Evans, dated the same day. It was a classic example of recruiting under duress a senior public servant to buttress the government's line. The letter is a study in fact and political evasion. On tabling Metcalfe's letter, Rudd claimed it showed from the perspective of the departmental secretary "that these are not preferential arrangements". The letter shows nothing of the kind. Indeed, it is significant that Metcalfe avoids any such formulation.
He merely says that the group is being treated in a manner "consistent with that afforded to any other asylum-seeker or refugee in Indonesia". He does, however, say that Australia and Indonesia have agreed on "timeframes for the processing", which may imply a special arrangement. Requesting such a letter achieved nothing and the request should not have been made. Yet Rudd persisted in using Metcalfe as a shield and, responding to criticism from Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull, he claimed that Turnbull was disputing advice from "the independent Public Service of Australia". On the contrary, it shows the government stooping to use the public service to buttress a bad case.
It is noteworthy that Rudd was not involved in authorising the offer to the Sri Lankans. He told parliament on Monday that he was unaware of the offer's terms and did not authorise it. Turnbull seemed to find this unbelievable. But Rudd's denial was unequivocal. It stands despite his subsequent clarification that the cabinet committee that did approve the offer contained Rudd's staff.
The real point is that the Rudd government authorised a necessary special deal and, embarrassed about its domestic ramifications, tried to deny the obvious.
SOURCE
New Zealand less corrupt than Australia?
That's a laugh. NZ is the "orchestrated litany of lies" country. The raters just don't know NZ well
Lawless Somalia and war-torn Afghanistan have topped a blacklist of the world's most corrupt countries drawn up by the anti-graft watchdog Transparency International. Australia ranked as the eighth most honest of 180 countries, according to the annual study. New Zealand, Denmark, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland were the top five least corrupt countries.
TI's corruption index showed how countries devastated by conflict have become overrun by graft, with Iraq, Sudan and Myanmar accounting for the three other states in the bottom five of the chart.
The Berlin-based organisation said that countries whose infrastructure had been "torn apart" by conflict needed help from outside to prevent a culture of corruption taking root. "The international community must find efficient ways to help war-torn countries to develop and sustain their own institutions," said TI's head Huguette Labelle.
Overall, the 2009 corruption list is "of great concern", the organisation said, with the majority of countries scoring under five in the ranking, which ranges from zero, highly corrupt, and 10, which is very clean.
Six years after the US-led invasion and the chaos that followed, Iraq was perceived to be slightly cleaner, with its score rising to 1.5 points from 1.3 points. It also climbed two places in the list. But Afghanistan slid from 1.5 points in 2008 to 1.3 in 2009, giving further ammunition to critics of President Hamid Karzai who has just been re-elected after a vote marred by rampant fraud.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Karzai this week that future financial support from Washington would be linked to steps to tackle graft and said that a culture of "impunity for those who are corrupt" had to end. The Afghan government announced on Monday it had formed a major crime unit to tackle corruption, in a move designed to assuage Western concerns about Karzai who is due to be inaugurated for a second term later this week.
The most corrupt nation on Earth remained Somalia, the impoverished and war-torn Horn of Africa state that has been without a functioning government for two decades, notching up a score of 1.1 points. African countries accounted for half of those in the bottom 20 of the list, including Angola which is now the continent's top oil exporter after emerging from a 27-year civil war.
But it was not just countries riven by conflict that saw their ratings slide. Italy, a member of the Group of Seven rich countries came in at 63rd on the list, from 55th last year. Fellow EU member Greece fared even worse, at 71st, slipping from 57th. [I believe those two rankings]
Seemingly winning the fight against corruption were Liberia - whose score improved from 2.4 points to 3.1 points, shooting up 41 places on the list to 97th - and Gambia, which went from 158 on the list to 106. Other significant improvements were registered by Norway, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Montenegro and Malawi.
The United States inched up from 7.3 points to 7.5, but dropped one place in the rankings to 19th. China's rating was stable at 3.6 points but also fall seven places to 79th. Russia continued to be very low down in the list, coming in at 146th place, although its score edged higher to 2.2 points from 2.1 points.
The five countries seen as least afflicted by corruption were New Zealand, Denmark, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland - the Alpine country seen as a bastion of bank secrecy. New Zealand scored 9.4 points whereas Somalia scored 1.1 points. The score is based on perceptions of the degree of corruption as seen by business people and country analysts.
SOURCE
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
