Australian Politics
Millions in donations blown on administration costs
I always give direct to the intended beneficiary -- JR
A NEW MySchool-like website is set to expose charities spending upwards of 60 per cent of the donations they receive on million-dollar campaigns, telemarketers and black-tie balls.
The move to make Australia's 60,000 charities more accountable could prompt big-spending not-for-profits to rein in their administration.
The Courier-Mail today reveals how the sector uses donations collected from 4.6 million Australians each year.
Surf Life Saving Foundation Incorporated was the biggest spender - using 62 per cent of its $23.8 million gross fundraising revenue on administration costs.
Seven prominent Australian charities spent more than 40 per cent of donations on the "cost of fundraising".
But in the competitive world of fundraising, charities have warned "league table" comparisons based on cost ratios - how much they spend chasing the donor dollar - would be unfair and detrimental.
The Gillard Government has already committed $53.6 million over the next four years to set up a new independent regulator called the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission (ACNC).
One of the charity watchdog's first tasks will be to implement a "one-stop shop" information portal that will force charities and benevolent trusts to disclose financial records like never before.
Currently, there is no Australian reporting standard and it is up to individual charities to determine how fundraising and other costs are disclosed, which has led to huge differences in accounting practices
SOURCE
Whingeing woman loses out
A GOLD Coast female hotel employee who accused a male boss of sexually harassing her by allegedly commenting on her "huge knockers" has had her workplace discrimination complaint dismissed.
The Queensland Civil Administration Tribunal, in a just published decision, dismissed a complaint for sexual harassment and discrimination on the "attribute of sex in the area of work" by Aimee Harron because she failed to attend a compulsory conference aimed at resolving the issue last month.
Ms Harron lodged a complaint to the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Commission for alleged contravention of the Anti-Discrimination Act 1991 by former employer Pearls Australasia Mirage 2 Pty Ltd and supervisor Andrew Potts.
QCAT member Michelle Howard, in an eight-page decision, said Ms Harron alleged Mr Potts made comments to another worker that she had "huge knockers" after she was been interviewed for a possible job. "(Ms Harron claims she) had overheard Mr Potts tell other employees ... he had never employed an unattractive girl," Ms Howard said.
"Mr Potts had (also allegedly) spoken to her (Ms Harron) about her brother in unflattering terms, saying that he was a 'dickhead', and also said that he was going to steal her brother's girlfriend."
Ms Harron claimed she had referred the matter to her employer's Human Resources Department. "(Ms Harron) infers that she requested not to be further supervised by Mr Potts, but was not given an alternative," Ms Howard said.
"She states that she resigned to avoid further 'being vilified' by Mr Potts, who had already caused her hurt and humiliation ... (and) she believes ... that Mr Potts' remarks have sexual connotations which amount to sexual harassment."
Ms Howard said the "respondents", that is Pearls Australasia and Mr Potts, contend Ms Harron commenced "casual employment" on May 11 last year and made a complaint less than two months later about a "remark alleged to have been made by Mr Potts after interviewing her for the position".
The company asserted, via staff notes kept regarding Ms Harron's work attendance and attitude, that Ms Harron complained about the new job during her very first shift. "On her first shift on 11 May, she (Ms Harron) said she did not like the work and most likely would not return," Ms Howard said the file note stated.
"On May 15, Ms Harron told co-workers she does not want to work and is going to leave. On May 17, she arrived late for work ... and on May 22, she attended work but went home sick after 2 hours."
Ms Howard said Pearls Australasia claimed it did investigate Ms Harron's complaint and found one staff member who said there had been some comment Ms Harron "had pretty good breasts."
Mr Potts, the tribunal was told, said he had not intended to hurt or offend anyone, and the comment was a "one-off" made before Ms Harron was employed. Mr Potts also denied making comments about having "never employed an unattractive girl or making reference to Ms Harron's brother of his girlfriend".
"The investigation did not establish whether the comments were or were not made, but Pearls Australasia argues that even if they were this would not constitute sexual harassment," Ms Howard said.
The matter was set down for a "compulsory conference", between the parties at Southport on September 21. "Ms Harron failed to attend the compulsory conference," Ms Howard said. "(As such) the complaint of Aimee Harron is dismissed."
SOURCE
Priority patients left waiting for help as ambulance shortage hits Victoria
TWELVE priority one patients were left waiting for an ambulance last night as Victoria's ambulance system struggled under the weight of more than a call a minute. Ambulance Victoria CEO Greg Cassella said 47 cases were left pending in metropolitan Melbourne on Sunday night and 58 on Saturday night.
"In that period of six hours (between 6pm and midnight on Sunday), we were having to respond to more than a call a minute, it's extraordinary," he said.
Mr Cassella said the emergency dispatch centre kept in constant contact with those waiting for an ambulance and no one had died or suffered further as a result of the long wait. But he admitted the thought of the elderly and the injured waiting for help bothered him. "The fact they were left waiting is a concern but there's no evidence that they were in a life-threatening situation," he said.
Priority one patients are "lights and sirens" patients who are in a potentially life-threatening condition.
Ambulance union state secretary Steve McGhie said paramedics were told to offload their patients and get back on the road. "The paramedics would have made those patients as comfortable as they could but that's what they were told," he said.
Mr McGhie said a number of factors made for a severely stretched ambulance service last night. "It will be a combination of things, there will be some absenteeism and sick leave and Workcover and there will be ramping up at hospitals where paramedics are waiting in line to offload their patients," he said.
"The third factor will be that ambulance crews have worked so long that they have to have a meal break so they are putting on a priority zero waiting which means they can only be sent to life-threatening emergencies. "But this has been going on for a long, long time, the pattern is so consistent on weekends now."
The AEA reports an annual six per cent rise in call-outs over the past decade. "There's no way that we have a six per cent increase in staff numbers, (Ambulance Victoria) is a long way from achieving it," Mr McGhie said.
SOURCE
Occupy Melbourne protesters known to police
SOME of those involved in Friday's Occupy Melbourne demonstration were regular protesters known to police. Acting Chief Commissioner Ken Lay said this morning some of the protesters were from BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions), which campaigns against Israel. Others were from the Socialist Alliance - an anti-capitalist political party. "Many of these people in the group on Friday and the week leading up are pretty familiar faces to us," Mr Lay told 3AW.
He said a small group of the protesters were intent on fighting police, despite assuring police they would leave peacefully when asked. "I sensed a group of people that were hell bent on having a blue with the coppers and that's exactly what happened, we know that there was a group of people that simply wanted this for their own reasons."
Protesters were given assurance on the Thursday night police would not surprise them early Friday morning with demands to leave and on Friday they were given four warnings to leave from council and police.
Mr Lay said he was proud of the way police acted and they had an abundance of video to support police tactics and refute claims made by the protesters of brutality. "I was very proud of the way our 400 people worked, it was extremely difficult, it was a very long day for them and what I saw was a very well trained, very well disciplined group of people that did exactly what they were trained to do."
Victoria Police will today start examining CCTV footage of Friday's Occupy Melbourne protest for evidence of criminal offences committed by protesters.
Eight police cars were damaged as the crowd was evicted from City Square, and a police spokesman said CCTV footage would be reviewed to find the culprits.
Occupy Melbourne organisers have arranged to occupy Treasury Gardens on Saturday, claiming they have approval from Aboriginal elders of the Wurundjeri people to occupy the space.
Lord Mayor Robert Doyle said yesterday a team of council compliance officers would prowl the city's streets this week, poised to report any Occupy Melbourne protesters setting up camp. Cr Doyle said the protesters wouldn't have a chance to build an established campsite because compliance officers would catch them as they tried to set up. "We'll certainly task our compliance officers to make sure that we know when they try to set up anywhere. We'll issue them notice immediately that they can't do it and have the tents taken down," he said. "We don't intend to allow people to set up tents anywhere in the city. We have adopted a zero-tolerance policy."
On Friday, police evicted about 100 protesters from City Square, dragging many away writhing and kicking, and set up cyclone fences around the site.
Yesterday Premier Ted Baillieu backed Victoria Police in its use of force, saying protesters had broken their promise. "They said they would move and they didn't, and I think Victoria Police handled the situation well," Mr Baillieu said.
SOURCE
Monday, October 24, 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Ditch the national curriculum
Barry Maley
While preparations continue for the implementation of a uniform, nationwide Australian School Curriculum, some states like NSW are wisely delaying the process. At the same time the draft curriculum, particularly in the humanities subjects of history and English, has been severely criticised as devoid of essential content, ideologically skewed, and absurdly politically correct. Just as important is the weak case for uniformity and centralisation in the first place.
We are told that lack of uniformity between the states is a problem for employers and for children who move from one state to another, but there is scant evidence that this is a serious problem justifying the loss of potential for experimentation and competition for excellence in a non-uniform system.
More importantly, the claim that a national curriculum will produce better educational results deserves scrutiny. It is probably true that the less than satisfactory condition of state schooling owes much to its extreme bureaucratisation and capture by interest groups, especially the teacher unions. But why should we not expect the same, on a national scale, from a large federal bureaucracy and the even more sharply focussed and more extensive power of the same interest groups? If established, how much more difficult it would be to reform a national system if it failed and how much greater the damage if it did?
And what is the evidence for the claim that centralised national systems produce better outcomes?
The International Student Assessment program and the International Mathematics and Science Study assess student performance from countries that have, and countries that do not have, national curricula and standards. The results and statistics are extensive and detailed. The summary outcome is, on one hand, that Australian Students have been outperformed by students from countries with national standards. On the other hand, Australian students have outperformed students from some other countries that also have national standards.
Moreover, many of the lowest performing students come from countries with national standards. If this sort of analysis is confined to OECD countries, a similar pattern holds. The great majority of countries assessed had national standards, but their results did not show that their students regularly outperformed Australian students, and many performed worse. Canadian students, from a country without national standards, do well on international assessments.
To put it briefly, these international assessments show no significant relationship between national standards and curricula and better student outcomes. This, along with the dangers of a loss of variety and innovation with the disappearance of a working states system and the manifest deficiencies of the draft curriculum, justifies abandoning the project before more waste is incurred.
SOURCE
Playing by the rules makes prisoners of children
LIKE many parents, I have been wondering where the space rockets went. In the past decade, space rockets, merry-go-rounds and monkey bars have been quietly disappearing from our playgrounds. Australian Playground Safety Standards have been changing the design of children's play spaces to remove danger, risk and quite a bit of fun.
While the Australian standard for playground equipment is not mandatory, it has become de facto compulsory because compliance can be referred to in court action against childcare centres, schools, restaurants and local councils.
The standards reflect the efforts of lobby groups such as Kidsafe, which have successfully linked injury rates to campaigns to restrict children's play. Kidsafe claims, "Each year about 350 Australian children (aged 0-14 years) are killed and 60,000 are hospitalised because of unintentional injuries." The group peppers its website with warnings such as, "the average backyard is full of dangers".
In reality, serious injuries from play are pretty rare. A 2009 report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found the most common causes of child deaths were traffic accidents, drowning and assault. The most common causes of injuries were falls, road accidents, poisoning, burns and scalds, and assault. And while the number of falls is high the severity is usually not. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 93 per cent of falls were of 1m or less, such as falling off chairs or out of bed.
While play is rarely bad for you, missing out on play can have lifelong health and social consequences. Which is why safety regulations are now being questioned by a range of academics, parents and play activists who are worried kids are being denied opportunities to exercise judgment, weigh risk and take responsibility: in short to grow into adults.
Many parents are looking to reverse this trend and have flocked to advocates of free play, making bestsellers of Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods and Lenore Skenazy's Free Range Kids. Tinkering School founder Gever Tulley's TED talk Five Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do has become a social media hit.
This month the Victorian government acknowledged the shift with VicHealth's Physical Activity Unit, Sport & Recreation Victoria and Playgroup Victoria jointly presenting Tim Gill, author of the British bestseller No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk Averse Society at an event called Taking Play Seriously.
Gill has been visiting Australia for several years since attending the Get Outside and Play conference in Perth in 2007. As someone who travels the world championing freedom in childhood he can see how things are changing. He told The Australian that: "Very few playgrounds in Australia look as grim as playgrounds had become in the UK around the turn of the century . . . children had to abuse the equipment to enjoy it."
Britain got a wake-up call in 2007 when a UNICEF survey rated it among the worst places in the world to grow up. At that time Play England, part of the British National Children's Bureau, found that about half of all children were being prevented from climbing trees and 17 per cent were not allowed to play running or chasing games. The government's response to the UNICEF report was a huge investment in Play England to build 3500 new and better playgrounds.
In Australia things got gradually less fun in our playgrounds but not so badly or quickly as to create a backlash, but eventually the missing space rockets were just too hard to ignore. Gill sees in Australia, "growing pockets of people spreading the word" about the need to restore challenge and fun to childhood.
There are pockets such as the Bush Babies playgroups, which are popping up across the country, and the Bush Kindergarten at Westgarth in Melbourne, which is modelled on the growing movement of Forest Kindergartens in Britain. London now has more than 150 pre-schools that specialise in getting children out into the woods to climb trees, hike and play in nature.
There is a growing desire among parents to revive exciting, fun and adventurous Australian childhoods.
The message appears to be finally making its way to the top thanks to people such as Robyn Monro Miller, chair of the National Out of School Hours Association, who has been putting play on the political agenda. Last year, the Minister for Childcare Kate Ellis introduced a learning framework for outside school hours care programs to ensure children spend more time in active play.
The most significant barrier to the revival of childhood freedom is the persistent fear of strangers. A VicHealth study, Nothing But Fear Itself, found Australian parents are restricting their children's independence and freedom despite the world not becoming more dangerous.
Following the Daniel Morcombe abduction tragedy the Daniel Morcombe Child Safety Program will now be a mandatory part of the Queensland curriculum and Premier Anna Bligh says she will be lobbying for the implementation of the package nationwide. While the final structure of the program is not yet settled, the stranger danger message is clear.
Gill says you cannot ask a family to put a tragedy into perspective or move on; however, we should remember, "the risk from dangerous adults is lower than it's ever been". Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron reinforced this last year, calling for, "a stop to the senseless rules that get in the way of volunteering (and) stop adults from helping out with other people's children".
In the question and answer session after Gill's talk in Melbourne, a mother of three told the audience how she had heard him speak the week before, after which her 10-year-old son asked her if he could go to the local skate park on his own. Thanks to Gill's talk, she said yes. That evening, she saw her son's status update on Facebook: "this was the best day of my life".
Gill admitted later on his blog: "I do not mind saying that I welled up a little as she told that story. Nor that I am welling up now as I type it."
The culture of fear that has defined approaches to the regulation of children's wellbeing appears to be under challenge if not yet reversing. The goal of those advocating for change is to give kids the gift of freedom.
"My dream is that these gifts of freedom are not rare gems to be treasured and celebrated," Gill says, "but part of the everyday currency of family life."
SOURCE
New Farm State School bans tiggy (tag) in playground
A QUEENSLAND primary school has banned popular chasing games Tiggy and Red Rover from the playground. New Farm State School, in Brisbane's inner north, outlawed the popular lunchtime activities because of injury fears. Students have instead been told to play safer games like chess and snakes and ladders.
NFSS principal Virginia O'Neill has outlined the "temporary" ban to parents and students, saying it is necessary to protect students from "Prep to Year 7".
The move has been roundly criticised as "safety madness" and another case of cotton wool kids.
Ms O'Neill says the chasing games have left first aid staff working overtime with frequent accidents and disputes. Instead, pupils could play boardgames or could take part in organised sports such as soccer and netball.
Townsville's Belgian Gardens State School sparked outrage in 2008 after pupils were banned from doing unsupervised cartwheels. It later emerged that some parents had lodged lawsuits seeking compensation for injuries they claimed their children had suffered at school.
Psychologist Karen Brooks said games were crucial to a child's development and physical, emotional and mental wellbeing. "Games like Tiggy and Red Rover teach kids about co-operation, teamwork and risk taking," Dr Brooks said. "It's a way of accomplishing and achieving in their own peer group in a generally safe way where adults aren't involved. To ban it is just so ridiculous."
She added: "We're talking about an obesity crisis and here we are preventing them doing what kids naturally do."
Schools were likely being forced into extreme measures because of pressure from parents to prevent accidents, Dr Brooks said. "Schools are just protecting themselves. This reaction is indicative of society as a whole and it's gone crazy."
Weight loss expert and former teacher Sally Symonds said the dangers of stopping children from playing outweighed the dangers of allowing them to play. "Given the rates of obesity, it's certainly not a great way to go," said Ms Symonds, author of 50 Steps to Lose 50kg ... and Keep It Off.
"For kids, play is a really vital way of encouraging people to see activity as part of normal life."
SOURCE
Bureaucracies can do no wrong
Look who's polluting: Sydney Water's shame. Imagine the outcry if this had been a private company!
UNTREATED sewage and heavy metals from the nation's biggest water utility are contaminating some of Sydney's most picturesque waterways and posing potentially widespread health risks, but the extent of the problem has been kept quiet.
The $32 billion Sydney Water Corporation has breached its pollution licences more than 1000 times in the past five years. And yet the NSW government's Office of Environment and Heritage has not prosecuted one of the breaches.
In many cases, a Sun-Herald investigation has found, untreated effluent overflowed into waterways such as the Georges River, Berowra, Cattai and Narrabeen Creek, which leads to Newport beach.
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Sydney Water has also been unmasked as the state's biggest polluter of mercury, but the OEH has placed no restriction on how much it can discharge.
The federal government's National Pollutant Inventory shows Sydney Water's North Head sewage plant dumped 24 kilograms of mercury off Manly in 2009-10, through its deep ocean outfall pipe. That dwarfs the next biggest mercury polluter, the Springvale Colliery's 0.66 kilograms.
Medical studies published in 2008 revealed the cases of three Sydney children found to have toxic levels of mercury after eating fish, which had long been exposed to mercury.
"Every other industrial facility has managed to reduce its mercury pollution to almost nil," said the chief executive officer of the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, Pepe Clarke, when told of the breaches. "This is an extraordinary situation and they need to explain it to the public."
The Sun-Herald's inquiries reveal hundreds of cases a year involving Sydney Water, many involving a failure to improve environmental performance, odour problems, mechanical failures, high levels of heavy metals and untreated effluent overflowing into waterways, much of it blamed on human error, broken pipes and crumbling infrastructure.
In the mid-1990s, the then Sydney Water chief executive, Paul Broad, said the authority had tackled pollution of beaches and some rivers, but he conceded "the big sleeper has been the sewer overflow issue".
The State of the Beaches report for 2010-11 does show big improvements in pollution levels at ocean beaches. It is a different story for estuarine and freshwater river swimming sites. The worst-rated swimming spots include Malabar beach, the Narrabeen Lagoon and Kyeemagh Baths.
Examination of the OEH's own public records for the past five years shows high levels of zinc and aluminium have been reported in the discharge from some Sydney Water sewage plants. They also show reports of untreated sewage regularly overflowing into unnamed waterways and into one school - again, not identified - in the suburbs around the Malabar treatment plant.
Sydney Water has 24,000 kilometres of pipes, many of which are almost 100 years old, servicing 23 sewage treatment systems across Sydney.
An employee of 20 years and now an environmental scientist at the University of Western Sydney, Ian Wright, said it was well known 5 to 10 per cent of sewage never made it to a treatment plant. "There is a network of creeks around Sydney that are being contaminated," Dr Wright said. "We know there is continual leakage from old, cracked and broken pipes - we can see that from the nutrient spike in the waters. The majority of urban creeks around Sydney would suffer from time to time from sewage … There is also a greater risk than average for any disease that people in that area might be carrying to be passed on. Hepatitis is a classic example."
Sydney Water is not required to publish information on its website about the amounts of heavy metals it discharges. Its managing director, Kevin Young, said it was undertaking a program known as SewerFix to upgrade pipes and infrastructure. By next June it would have spent $560 million over four years fixing leaks and blockages in pipes. In the past five years it had rehabilitated 500 kilometres of its 24,000-kilometre wastewater network.
At a rate of 100 kilometres a year, it would take hundreds of years to upgrade the whole network.
An environmental expert from the University of Wollongong, Sharon Beder, has long warned that Sydney's rivers and beaches are being regularly polluted. Professor Beder, the author of Toxic Fish and Sewer Surfing, said: "Things are getting worse because the licence conditions were set at levels that were achievable at the time [about 20 years ago]."
The government had since loosened licence conditions under which industry pays for the right to pollute. Even the less rigorous conditions were not being met, Professor Beder said. "Basically the system is not keeping up … successive governments have not been willing to spend money on infrastructure."
The OEH had shown itself to be incapable of enforcing environmental laws, she said. The OEH has also not prosecuted the Lithgow sewage treatment plant, operated by the local council, which has shown faecal contamination in its discharged waters every year for five years.
This water goes into the Sydney drinking water catchment area. The OEH has defended Sydney Water's record, saying the utility had made many improvements and that they are working together on pollution reduction programs at North Head, Malabar, Bondi and Cronulla.
The OEH said it had asked for 62 pollution-reduction programs for Sydney Water, issued eight infringement notices and given three warning letters in the past decade. None has progressed to a prosecution. The Environment Minister, Robyn Parker, said she had been advised that Sydney Water had made many improvements. "However, OEH have identified that there is more to do on sewer overflows, particularly during wet weather," she said.
James Clark-Kennedy, the campaign manager for the Clean Oceans Foundation, said the OEH could not properly set the standards or pretend to police them while it was a servant of the same government. "The public perception is that the watchdog is there to protect [the public] … not other government departments," he said. "The teeth need to be put back into the watchdog. We need to create the political will to spend money on improving the system. But while the government is relying on the dividends, it is a bit like being addicted to the pokie tax."
Sydney Water recorded an after-tax profit of $305 million to June. It will pay a dividend of $230 million to the government this year, rising over the next four years. The pricing regulator is reviewing its proposed price rise, which could cost households an extra 15 per cent over four years.
SOURCE
Barry Maley
While preparations continue for the implementation of a uniform, nationwide Australian School Curriculum, some states like NSW are wisely delaying the process. At the same time the draft curriculum, particularly in the humanities subjects of history and English, has been severely criticised as devoid of essential content, ideologically skewed, and absurdly politically correct. Just as important is the weak case for uniformity and centralisation in the first place.
We are told that lack of uniformity between the states is a problem for employers and for children who move from one state to another, but there is scant evidence that this is a serious problem justifying the loss of potential for experimentation and competition for excellence in a non-uniform system.
More importantly, the claim that a national curriculum will produce better educational results deserves scrutiny. It is probably true that the less than satisfactory condition of state schooling owes much to its extreme bureaucratisation and capture by interest groups, especially the teacher unions. But why should we not expect the same, on a national scale, from a large federal bureaucracy and the even more sharply focussed and more extensive power of the same interest groups? If established, how much more difficult it would be to reform a national system if it failed and how much greater the damage if it did?
And what is the evidence for the claim that centralised national systems produce better outcomes?
The International Student Assessment program and the International Mathematics and Science Study assess student performance from countries that have, and countries that do not have, national curricula and standards. The results and statistics are extensive and detailed. The summary outcome is, on one hand, that Australian Students have been outperformed by students from countries with national standards. On the other hand, Australian students have outperformed students from some other countries that also have national standards.
Moreover, many of the lowest performing students come from countries with national standards. If this sort of analysis is confined to OECD countries, a similar pattern holds. The great majority of countries assessed had national standards, but their results did not show that their students regularly outperformed Australian students, and many performed worse. Canadian students, from a country without national standards, do well on international assessments.
To put it briefly, these international assessments show no significant relationship between national standards and curricula and better student outcomes. This, along with the dangers of a loss of variety and innovation with the disappearance of a working states system and the manifest deficiencies of the draft curriculum, justifies abandoning the project before more waste is incurred.
SOURCE
Playing by the rules makes prisoners of children
LIKE many parents, I have been wondering where the space rockets went. In the past decade, space rockets, merry-go-rounds and monkey bars have been quietly disappearing from our playgrounds. Australian Playground Safety Standards have been changing the design of children's play spaces to remove danger, risk and quite a bit of fun.
While the Australian standard for playground equipment is not mandatory, it has become de facto compulsory because compliance can be referred to in court action against childcare centres, schools, restaurants and local councils.
The standards reflect the efforts of lobby groups such as Kidsafe, which have successfully linked injury rates to campaigns to restrict children's play. Kidsafe claims, "Each year about 350 Australian children (aged 0-14 years) are killed and 60,000 are hospitalised because of unintentional injuries." The group peppers its website with warnings such as, "the average backyard is full of dangers".
In reality, serious injuries from play are pretty rare. A 2009 report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found the most common causes of child deaths were traffic accidents, drowning and assault. The most common causes of injuries were falls, road accidents, poisoning, burns and scalds, and assault. And while the number of falls is high the severity is usually not. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 93 per cent of falls were of 1m or less, such as falling off chairs or out of bed.
While play is rarely bad for you, missing out on play can have lifelong health and social consequences. Which is why safety regulations are now being questioned by a range of academics, parents and play activists who are worried kids are being denied opportunities to exercise judgment, weigh risk and take responsibility: in short to grow into adults.
Many parents are looking to reverse this trend and have flocked to advocates of free play, making bestsellers of Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods and Lenore Skenazy's Free Range Kids. Tinkering School founder Gever Tulley's TED talk Five Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do has become a social media hit.
This month the Victorian government acknowledged the shift with VicHealth's Physical Activity Unit, Sport & Recreation Victoria and Playgroup Victoria jointly presenting Tim Gill, author of the British bestseller No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk Averse Society at an event called Taking Play Seriously.
Gill has been visiting Australia for several years since attending the Get Outside and Play conference in Perth in 2007. As someone who travels the world championing freedom in childhood he can see how things are changing. He told The Australian that: "Very few playgrounds in Australia look as grim as playgrounds had become in the UK around the turn of the century . . . children had to abuse the equipment to enjoy it."
Britain got a wake-up call in 2007 when a UNICEF survey rated it among the worst places in the world to grow up. At that time Play England, part of the British National Children's Bureau, found that about half of all children were being prevented from climbing trees and 17 per cent were not allowed to play running or chasing games. The government's response to the UNICEF report was a huge investment in Play England to build 3500 new and better playgrounds.
In Australia things got gradually less fun in our playgrounds but not so badly or quickly as to create a backlash, but eventually the missing space rockets were just too hard to ignore. Gill sees in Australia, "growing pockets of people spreading the word" about the need to restore challenge and fun to childhood.
There are pockets such as the Bush Babies playgroups, which are popping up across the country, and the Bush Kindergarten at Westgarth in Melbourne, which is modelled on the growing movement of Forest Kindergartens in Britain. London now has more than 150 pre-schools that specialise in getting children out into the woods to climb trees, hike and play in nature.
There is a growing desire among parents to revive exciting, fun and adventurous Australian childhoods.
The message appears to be finally making its way to the top thanks to people such as Robyn Monro Miller, chair of the National Out of School Hours Association, who has been putting play on the political agenda. Last year, the Minister for Childcare Kate Ellis introduced a learning framework for outside school hours care programs to ensure children spend more time in active play.
The most significant barrier to the revival of childhood freedom is the persistent fear of strangers. A VicHealth study, Nothing But Fear Itself, found Australian parents are restricting their children's independence and freedom despite the world not becoming more dangerous.
Following the Daniel Morcombe abduction tragedy the Daniel Morcombe Child Safety Program will now be a mandatory part of the Queensland curriculum and Premier Anna Bligh says she will be lobbying for the implementation of the package nationwide. While the final structure of the program is not yet settled, the stranger danger message is clear.
Gill says you cannot ask a family to put a tragedy into perspective or move on; however, we should remember, "the risk from dangerous adults is lower than it's ever been". Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron reinforced this last year, calling for, "a stop to the senseless rules that get in the way of volunteering (and) stop adults from helping out with other people's children".
In the question and answer session after Gill's talk in Melbourne, a mother of three told the audience how she had heard him speak the week before, after which her 10-year-old son asked her if he could go to the local skate park on his own. Thanks to Gill's talk, she said yes. That evening, she saw her son's status update on Facebook: "this was the best day of my life".
Gill admitted later on his blog: "I do not mind saying that I welled up a little as she told that story. Nor that I am welling up now as I type it."
The culture of fear that has defined approaches to the regulation of children's wellbeing appears to be under challenge if not yet reversing. The goal of those advocating for change is to give kids the gift of freedom.
"My dream is that these gifts of freedom are not rare gems to be treasured and celebrated," Gill says, "but part of the everyday currency of family life."
SOURCE
New Farm State School bans tiggy (tag) in playground
A QUEENSLAND primary school has banned popular chasing games Tiggy and Red Rover from the playground. New Farm State School, in Brisbane's inner north, outlawed the popular lunchtime activities because of injury fears. Students have instead been told to play safer games like chess and snakes and ladders.
NFSS principal Virginia O'Neill has outlined the "temporary" ban to parents and students, saying it is necessary to protect students from "Prep to Year 7".
The move has been roundly criticised as "safety madness" and another case of cotton wool kids.
Ms O'Neill says the chasing games have left first aid staff working overtime with frequent accidents and disputes. Instead, pupils could play boardgames or could take part in organised sports such as soccer and netball.
Townsville's Belgian Gardens State School sparked outrage in 2008 after pupils were banned from doing unsupervised cartwheels. It later emerged that some parents had lodged lawsuits seeking compensation for injuries they claimed their children had suffered at school.
Psychologist Karen Brooks said games were crucial to a child's development and physical, emotional and mental wellbeing. "Games like Tiggy and Red Rover teach kids about co-operation, teamwork and risk taking," Dr Brooks said. "It's a way of accomplishing and achieving in their own peer group in a generally safe way where adults aren't involved. To ban it is just so ridiculous."
She added: "We're talking about an obesity crisis and here we are preventing them doing what kids naturally do."
Schools were likely being forced into extreme measures because of pressure from parents to prevent accidents, Dr Brooks said. "Schools are just protecting themselves. This reaction is indicative of society as a whole and it's gone crazy."
Weight loss expert and former teacher Sally Symonds said the dangers of stopping children from playing outweighed the dangers of allowing them to play. "Given the rates of obesity, it's certainly not a great way to go," said Ms Symonds, author of 50 Steps to Lose 50kg ... and Keep It Off.
"For kids, play is a really vital way of encouraging people to see activity as part of normal life."
SOURCE
Bureaucracies can do no wrong
Look who's polluting: Sydney Water's shame. Imagine the outcry if this had been a private company!
UNTREATED sewage and heavy metals from the nation's biggest water utility are contaminating some of Sydney's most picturesque waterways and posing potentially widespread health risks, but the extent of the problem has been kept quiet.
The $32 billion Sydney Water Corporation has breached its pollution licences more than 1000 times in the past five years. And yet the NSW government's Office of Environment and Heritage has not prosecuted one of the breaches.
In many cases, a Sun-Herald investigation has found, untreated effluent overflowed into waterways such as the Georges River, Berowra, Cattai and Narrabeen Creek, which leads to Newport beach.
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Sydney Water has also been unmasked as the state's biggest polluter of mercury, but the OEH has placed no restriction on how much it can discharge.
The federal government's National Pollutant Inventory shows Sydney Water's North Head sewage plant dumped 24 kilograms of mercury off Manly in 2009-10, through its deep ocean outfall pipe. That dwarfs the next biggest mercury polluter, the Springvale Colliery's 0.66 kilograms.
Medical studies published in 2008 revealed the cases of three Sydney children found to have toxic levels of mercury after eating fish, which had long been exposed to mercury.
"Every other industrial facility has managed to reduce its mercury pollution to almost nil," said the chief executive officer of the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, Pepe Clarke, when told of the breaches. "This is an extraordinary situation and they need to explain it to the public."
The Sun-Herald's inquiries reveal hundreds of cases a year involving Sydney Water, many involving a failure to improve environmental performance, odour problems, mechanical failures, high levels of heavy metals and untreated effluent overflowing into waterways, much of it blamed on human error, broken pipes and crumbling infrastructure.
In the mid-1990s, the then Sydney Water chief executive, Paul Broad, said the authority had tackled pollution of beaches and some rivers, but he conceded "the big sleeper has been the sewer overflow issue".
The State of the Beaches report for 2010-11 does show big improvements in pollution levels at ocean beaches. It is a different story for estuarine and freshwater river swimming sites. The worst-rated swimming spots include Malabar beach, the Narrabeen Lagoon and Kyeemagh Baths.
Examination of the OEH's own public records for the past five years shows high levels of zinc and aluminium have been reported in the discharge from some Sydney Water sewage plants. They also show reports of untreated sewage regularly overflowing into unnamed waterways and into one school - again, not identified - in the suburbs around the Malabar treatment plant.
Sydney Water has 24,000 kilometres of pipes, many of which are almost 100 years old, servicing 23 sewage treatment systems across Sydney.
An employee of 20 years and now an environmental scientist at the University of Western Sydney, Ian Wright, said it was well known 5 to 10 per cent of sewage never made it to a treatment plant. "There is a network of creeks around Sydney that are being contaminated," Dr Wright said. "We know there is continual leakage from old, cracked and broken pipes - we can see that from the nutrient spike in the waters. The majority of urban creeks around Sydney would suffer from time to time from sewage … There is also a greater risk than average for any disease that people in that area might be carrying to be passed on. Hepatitis is a classic example."
Sydney Water is not required to publish information on its website about the amounts of heavy metals it discharges. Its managing director, Kevin Young, said it was undertaking a program known as SewerFix to upgrade pipes and infrastructure. By next June it would have spent $560 million over four years fixing leaks and blockages in pipes. In the past five years it had rehabilitated 500 kilometres of its 24,000-kilometre wastewater network.
At a rate of 100 kilometres a year, it would take hundreds of years to upgrade the whole network.
An environmental expert from the University of Wollongong, Sharon Beder, has long warned that Sydney's rivers and beaches are being regularly polluted. Professor Beder, the author of Toxic Fish and Sewer Surfing, said: "Things are getting worse because the licence conditions were set at levels that were achievable at the time [about 20 years ago]."
The government had since loosened licence conditions under which industry pays for the right to pollute. Even the less rigorous conditions were not being met, Professor Beder said. "Basically the system is not keeping up … successive governments have not been willing to spend money on infrastructure."
The OEH had shown itself to be incapable of enforcing environmental laws, she said. The OEH has also not prosecuted the Lithgow sewage treatment plant, operated by the local council, which has shown faecal contamination in its discharged waters every year for five years.
This water goes into the Sydney drinking water catchment area. The OEH has defended Sydney Water's record, saying the utility had made many improvements and that they are working together on pollution reduction programs at North Head, Malabar, Bondi and Cronulla.
The OEH said it had asked for 62 pollution-reduction programs for Sydney Water, issued eight infringement notices and given three warning letters in the past decade. None has progressed to a prosecution. The Environment Minister, Robyn Parker, said she had been advised that Sydney Water had made many improvements. "However, OEH have identified that there is more to do on sewer overflows, particularly during wet weather," she said.
James Clark-Kennedy, the campaign manager for the Clean Oceans Foundation, said the OEH could not properly set the standards or pretend to police them while it was a servant of the same government. "The public perception is that the watchdog is there to protect [the public] … not other government departments," he said. "The teeth need to be put back into the watchdog. We need to create the political will to spend money on improving the system. But while the government is relying on the dividends, it is a bit like being addicted to the pokie tax."
Sydney Water recorded an after-tax profit of $305 million to June. It will pay a dividend of $230 million to the government this year, rising over the next four years. The pricing regulator is reviewing its proposed price rise, which could cost households an extra 15 per cent over four years.
SOURCE
Saturday, October 22, 2011
A thirst for knowledge of ancient history and religion in NSW schools
Rev. Peter Kurti
Rising levels of school retention rates have contributed to record enrolments for this year’s HSC exams, with nearly 23,000 students taking part.
But some interesting and surprising trends have emerged from these figures. While the sciences have held steady according to the NSW Board of Studies, some subjects are fading in their appeal.
Interest in geography has declined steadily since 1998; the same trend can be seen in modern history, economics and information technology, according to figures from the Board of Studies.
It seems that students are now reaching further back into the story of early human civilisation, with ancient history studies increasing in popularity. Only 6,740 students opted for the topic in 1995 – in 2010, that figure doubled to 12,269.
Religion has also surged in popularity with a mere 4,834 students sitting the exam in 1995. Fast forward to 2010 and that figure had risen to 14,182.
Not that The Sydney Morning Herald considered it necessary to mention this, let alone its significance, in a recent article about the changing mindset of students.
According to the NSW Board of Studies, ‘religion has been and is an integral part of human experience and a component of every culture,’ and the increased enrolments suggest students are increasingly aware of this fact.
Through the study of religion, students are gaining an appreciation of society and how it has influenced human behaviour in different cultures. And they seem to be thinking this through for themselves. Perhaps they have also grown weary of sneering secularism and the postmodern scepticism about religion in popular culture.
SOURCE
Backlash brews for plans for a massive expansion of wind farms in Queensland
THE war between farmers and energy companies has moved into a new phase with the emergence of plans for a massive expansion of wind farms in Queensland.
Some farmers in the South Burnett have already walked away from lucrative payouts from wind farm companies of $140,000 a year because of feared impacts on their health and their business.
While the struggle against coal seam gas, coal mines and underground coal gasification rages in other parts of the state, companies like AGL and Ratch (formerly Transfield) are pushing investment of about $3 billion in wind farm technology and getting support from farmers.
The Energy Users Association this week released a report showing Australia will need to spend about $30 billion on wind farms by 2020 to meet with the Government's renewable energy targets.
But there is also a backlash based on apparent impacts on the health of those living near similar facilities in South Australia and Victoria, as well as north Queensland.
Colin Walkden lives about 400m from the Windy Hill wind turbine, near Ravenshoe, in north Queensland, and is on medication for depression because of sleep loss allegedly caused by the constant noise from turbines.
"It's like no other noise you have ever heard," he said describing it as a strong whooshing sound that persists with a westerly wind. "That's about 90 per cent of the year."
South Australian farmer Andy Thomas lives near six turbines at Mt Bryan. In an affidavit in a case against the wind farm, Mr Thomas said the turbine noise was like a jet passing overhead.
"From my home, I can hear five or more turbines at the same time, so it is like having five or more jets overhead at once. At its worst it is like living next to a ball mill of the type used at mines to crush ore," he said.
AGL is now planning a $1 billion, 115 tower wind farm at Coopers Gap, in the South Burnett, while a second project at Kumbia at the base of the Bunya Mountains for about 50 towers has been stalled by farmer opposition. There is also a $1.5 billion plan for 300 turbines outside Mt Isa and other smaller proposals across the state.
Coopers Gap horse breeder Brian Lyons has rejected advances from AGL, despite a potentially big payout of $12,000 a year for each of the 20 turbines planned on his property.
"It's quite a good business for some of (the farmers), but I'm only going to live once," he said.
Despite his rejecting the approach, his neighbours are backing the scheme and it is possible Mr Lyons will still have turbines on his boundary only a short distance from his house.
He said there were at least four wind farm proposals in southern Queensland, with his own community faced with a large new industry that initially they knew very little about.
While the industry maintains the wind farms generate only a small amount of noise, several residents complain it is as loud as a jet engine and that the noise is directional, meaning some residents may not hear it while others will.
"I don't think a company with noise problems at its last operating wind farm should be treated any different to any other industry in Queensland," Mr Lyons said.
Local councillor Cheryl Dalton said low-frequency vibration was also an issue. "I don't understand why consideration hasn't been given to buying all the affected properties," she said.
As yet, there is no planning application before the South Burnett Council and there is confusion over whether it or the State Government will be the one who assesses the development.
Kumbia cattle farmer Paul Newman rallied local residents to a community meeting which overwhelmingly rejected a plan by Next Wind for a 53-turbine farm nearby. His compensation offer was worth about $140,000 a year, but he considered the project just as intrusive to his neighbours and the local community as that of a mine or an industrial development.
"Money is not the solution to everything," he said. He said that to live in a rural community you had to consider your neighbours and how a future project might hurt them.
SOURCE
Global recession the last nail in carbon tax coffin?
Christopher Pearson tries out his crystal ball
THERE now seems to be an even chance that there will be a global recession by the middle of next year.
More than any other consideration, the expected contraction in the national economy is likely to determine the timetable of Julia Gillard's departure from the prime ministership and the annointing of her successor.
I'll be surprised if Gillard survives the next six weeks, because her replacement will need all the time he can get to try to refresh the government before going to an election around Easter. Even if Stephen Smith's poll ratings were not worse than Gillard's, the timing dictates that Rudd -- the once and future king -- is the only realistic option.
It is a given across the political class that, even if the government goes to the polls with its aspirations to a surplus more or less intact, it won't be re-elected in a recession. Federal Labor's hope will be not to win but to minimise the losses by going early.
Rudd will become unstoppable, in spite of the Right's faction leaders who fear retribution, because there are so many members on slender margins who otherwise expect to lose their seats.
At the moment, as many as 40 seats are considered at risk. Gillard has been making a lot of unforced errors and everyone in caucus knows it. It will be a case of "to the life boats, every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost".
Rudd has another advantage because the troubled economic times will suit him. Deservedly or otherwise, he's been given most of the credit for negotiating Australia's path through the global financial crisis Mark I, rather than Wayne Swan, who is a hopeless salesman. Rudd's return would guarantee Swan's departure from the Treasury, because the prospects of them being able to work together are negligible. Swan has been looking very haggard of late, as though he's just begun to understand the predicament he's in and would be glad to be relieved of his responsibilities.
Who would Rudd want as his Treasurer? Chris Bowen has a claim, having been his numbers man and having economic portfolio experience, although his star is scarcely in the ascendant after the Malaysian fiasco. On the principle of keeping your friends close and your enemies even closer, it might be Bill Shorten, the Assistant Treasurer, who helped precipitate the last palace coup. Another contender, simply on the basis of competence, is Greg Combet, currently Climate Change Minister.
There are some commentators who think it would be mad for Rudd Redux to defer the carbon tax, let alone allow the public to vote on the issue before introducing it and provide the Coalition with the chance to claim they have a mandate to junk the tax. But to read the politics of the issue in this way seems to me wrong-headed. Half the reason for Gillard's dire predicament is betraying a categorical assurance and then imagining she could get away with bare-faced lying about the promise.
A global recession would be the ideal vehicle for deferring the tax, because it is going to have a contractionary effect on the economy and deprive major export industries of their competitive advantage. Combet, who is more economically literate than most ministers, would be the ideal person to sell a change of policy while retaining his bona fides as a carbon tax advocate.
On the theme of outposting, there have been reports that Gillard has vowed to vacate her seat if she loses office.
If this were intended to discourage the back bench from drifting to Rudd, it's an empty threat. Even if the worst came to the worst, parliament could rise early and the government could continue in office. Gillard's seat of Lalor is safe enough so that she could be replaced at a by-election before parliament resumes in February.
However, the prospect of her removal raises the interesting question of what her other options are. Rudd wouldn't want her in his cabinet at any price, but could she bear the humiliation of demotion to the outer ministry -- in a scaled-down Social Inclusion ministry, Veterans' Affairs or some such -- or would she prefer to go to the backbench?
It is a measure of how much trouble Gillard is in right now that her main rhetorical thrust in the past week has been to try and persuade people that Tony Abbott neither could nor would want to repeal the carbon tax if it comes into force before the next election.
It is a curious line of attack, in that it reminds everyone who opposes the tax of the way it's been foisted on them and feeds into popular resentment of the democratic deficit involved.
It doesn't matter what she or Swan say now about Labor's determination to oppose the repeal of the tax to the bitter end. They aren't likely to be around then, and even if they were to be in opposition after the next election, would anybody in a smaller caucus be listening to them on the basis of their performance in leadership roles in the past four years?
Even if the caucus consisted mostly of senators in the first and second spot on each state ticket and people in safe seats with a sentimental attachment to the carbon tax, would they be silly enough to oppose repealing it and risk a second defeat at a double dissolution?
They might be, I suppose. But it would be a very expensive folly. No doubt Abbott will turn the next election into a referendum on the tax. A major party that chose to disregard the result could expect a second, more painful lesson to underscore the point that politicians do so at their peril. It's also worth noting that a double dissolution election needn't take long to procure. All it takes is legislation being defeated twice.
There is no need to wait for the newly elected senators to take their places in July of the following year. The whole process could be completed in less that a year. No one who knows Abbott well doubts his determination to deliver on his promise to defeat the carbon tax.
SOURCE
Health boss dodges facts on surgery wait lists
THE WA Health Department has hit back at revelations that increasing numbers of public patients are waiting too long for surgery - including those with cancer and heart problems.
As revealed on the PerthNow iPad last night, the number of people waiting for Category One elective surgery longer than clinically prescribed times, rose a whopping 52 per cent - 134 as at June 30, 2011, compared with 88 at the same time last year.
The figures were in the Metropolitan Health Service Annual Report, tabled in Parliament on Tuesday.
Category One includes patients needing operations to remove their prostate, uterus and gall bladder, those who need cystoscopies, which check for cancer, and also coronary artery bypass graft patients.
People waiting too long for Category Three elective surgery, such as operations to replace knees and hips, also increased in number, with 238 as at June 30, 2011, compared with 160 at the same time the previous year - a rise of 49 per cent.
But WA Health Department director-general Kim Snowball quoted a monthly elective surgery wait list report when responding to the annual report figures, and used percentages to respond to the raw figures in the PerthNow iPad report.
"The percentage of metropolitan patients waiting for elective surgery longer than the clinically desirable time was lower in June 2011 (11 per cent) compared to June 2010 (12.1 per cent)," he said.
He also used state-wide figures rather than metropolitan ones to discuss the metropolitan elective surgery figures when saying: "There was an increase state-wide in the number of cases admitted from the wait list, for example 7,016 admissions in June 2011, compared to 6,933 in June 2010.
"There has been an increase state-wide in the number of surgeries performed in 2009/10 -- 76,195 cases, to 2010/11 - 80,270 cases, which is an overall increase of 5.3 per cent," he said.
The annual report also said that emergency department patients waited too long for treatment, with the proportion of triage Category Three patients seen within the prescribed time of 30 minutes, falling from 48.4 per cent of the total in 2009-10 to 43.2 per cent in 2010-11.
The percentage of Triage Category Four patients seen on time (60 minutes) fell from 58.4 per cent in 2009-10, to 57.5 per cent in 2010-11.
The proportion of Triage Category Five patients treated within the prescribed time of two hours decreased from 88.8 per cent in 2009-10 to 85.6 per cent in 2010-11.
Mr Snowball said: "In the face of an 11.6 per cent increase in Emergency Department presentations in the metropolitan area, we are continuing to see 98.8 per cent of the most urgent (category one) patients immediately".
"It is not unexpected that we have seen a slight reduction in our performance for the less urgent category three and four patients, and we are looking at what we can do to improve this," he said.
"Overall, our patients are spending far less time waiting in emergency departments thanks to the ongoing success of the Four Hour Rule program."
The annual report also showed that the survival rate of stroke patients aged 60-69 in public hospitals also decreased significantly in 2010, with 89.7 per cent surviving, compared with 92.5 per cent in 2009.
Opposition health spokesman Roger Cook said the Barnett Government had been the recipient of "many millions of dollars from the Commonwealth Government" to increase the number of patients operated on for elective surgery.
"What these numbers indicate is that the WA Government has comprehensively failed in that objective and that many people, particularly in the Category One most urgent elective surgery cases, are waiting longer than is clinically recommended," Mr Cook said.
"Category One would be things like cancer operations, it would be some acute orthopaedic operations. That is an acutely unwell patient that needs to be operated on as soon as possible or urgently, and the fact that we've seen a blow out in those patients' waiting time is of great concern."
A spokesman for peak doctor's group, the Australian Medical Association WA, said the AMA was very concerned about "any indication that waiting lists are blowing out or that people are waiting too long for operations".
"As one of the wealthiest states in Australia, we must do all we can to make sure that patients receive the appropriate surgery as soon as possible," the spokesman said.
"Time spent waiting is very often time spent in pain and this is inappropriate.
"We will be studying the annual report and seeking more detailed information as quickly as possible from the Health Minister."
SOURCE
Rev. Peter Kurti
Rising levels of school retention rates have contributed to record enrolments for this year’s HSC exams, with nearly 23,000 students taking part.
But some interesting and surprising trends have emerged from these figures. While the sciences have held steady according to the NSW Board of Studies, some subjects are fading in their appeal.
Interest in geography has declined steadily since 1998; the same trend can be seen in modern history, economics and information technology, according to figures from the Board of Studies.
It seems that students are now reaching further back into the story of early human civilisation, with ancient history studies increasing in popularity. Only 6,740 students opted for the topic in 1995 – in 2010, that figure doubled to 12,269.
Religion has also surged in popularity with a mere 4,834 students sitting the exam in 1995. Fast forward to 2010 and that figure had risen to 14,182.
Not that The Sydney Morning Herald considered it necessary to mention this, let alone its significance, in a recent article about the changing mindset of students.
According to the NSW Board of Studies, ‘religion has been and is an integral part of human experience and a component of every culture,’ and the increased enrolments suggest students are increasingly aware of this fact.
Through the study of religion, students are gaining an appreciation of society and how it has influenced human behaviour in different cultures. And they seem to be thinking this through for themselves. Perhaps they have also grown weary of sneering secularism and the postmodern scepticism about religion in popular culture.
SOURCE
Backlash brews for plans for a massive expansion of wind farms in Queensland
THE war between farmers and energy companies has moved into a new phase with the emergence of plans for a massive expansion of wind farms in Queensland.
Some farmers in the South Burnett have already walked away from lucrative payouts from wind farm companies of $140,000 a year because of feared impacts on their health and their business.
While the struggle against coal seam gas, coal mines and underground coal gasification rages in other parts of the state, companies like AGL and Ratch (formerly Transfield) are pushing investment of about $3 billion in wind farm technology and getting support from farmers.
The Energy Users Association this week released a report showing Australia will need to spend about $30 billion on wind farms by 2020 to meet with the Government's renewable energy targets.
But there is also a backlash based on apparent impacts on the health of those living near similar facilities in South Australia and Victoria, as well as north Queensland.
Colin Walkden lives about 400m from the Windy Hill wind turbine, near Ravenshoe, in north Queensland, and is on medication for depression because of sleep loss allegedly caused by the constant noise from turbines.
"It's like no other noise you have ever heard," he said describing it as a strong whooshing sound that persists with a westerly wind. "That's about 90 per cent of the year."
South Australian farmer Andy Thomas lives near six turbines at Mt Bryan. In an affidavit in a case against the wind farm, Mr Thomas said the turbine noise was like a jet passing overhead.
"From my home, I can hear five or more turbines at the same time, so it is like having five or more jets overhead at once. At its worst it is like living next to a ball mill of the type used at mines to crush ore," he said.
AGL is now planning a $1 billion, 115 tower wind farm at Coopers Gap, in the South Burnett, while a second project at Kumbia at the base of the Bunya Mountains for about 50 towers has been stalled by farmer opposition. There is also a $1.5 billion plan for 300 turbines outside Mt Isa and other smaller proposals across the state.
Coopers Gap horse breeder Brian Lyons has rejected advances from AGL, despite a potentially big payout of $12,000 a year for each of the 20 turbines planned on his property.
"It's quite a good business for some of (the farmers), but I'm only going to live once," he said.
Despite his rejecting the approach, his neighbours are backing the scheme and it is possible Mr Lyons will still have turbines on his boundary only a short distance from his house.
He said there were at least four wind farm proposals in southern Queensland, with his own community faced with a large new industry that initially they knew very little about.
While the industry maintains the wind farms generate only a small amount of noise, several residents complain it is as loud as a jet engine and that the noise is directional, meaning some residents may not hear it while others will.
"I don't think a company with noise problems at its last operating wind farm should be treated any different to any other industry in Queensland," Mr Lyons said.
Local councillor Cheryl Dalton said low-frequency vibration was also an issue. "I don't understand why consideration hasn't been given to buying all the affected properties," she said.
As yet, there is no planning application before the South Burnett Council and there is confusion over whether it or the State Government will be the one who assesses the development.
Kumbia cattle farmer Paul Newman rallied local residents to a community meeting which overwhelmingly rejected a plan by Next Wind for a 53-turbine farm nearby. His compensation offer was worth about $140,000 a year, but he considered the project just as intrusive to his neighbours and the local community as that of a mine or an industrial development.
"Money is not the solution to everything," he said. He said that to live in a rural community you had to consider your neighbours and how a future project might hurt them.
SOURCE
Global recession the last nail in carbon tax coffin?
Christopher Pearson tries out his crystal ball
THERE now seems to be an even chance that there will be a global recession by the middle of next year.
More than any other consideration, the expected contraction in the national economy is likely to determine the timetable of Julia Gillard's departure from the prime ministership and the annointing of her successor.
I'll be surprised if Gillard survives the next six weeks, because her replacement will need all the time he can get to try to refresh the government before going to an election around Easter. Even if Stephen Smith's poll ratings were not worse than Gillard's, the timing dictates that Rudd -- the once and future king -- is the only realistic option.
It is a given across the political class that, even if the government goes to the polls with its aspirations to a surplus more or less intact, it won't be re-elected in a recession. Federal Labor's hope will be not to win but to minimise the losses by going early.
Rudd will become unstoppable, in spite of the Right's faction leaders who fear retribution, because there are so many members on slender margins who otherwise expect to lose their seats.
At the moment, as many as 40 seats are considered at risk. Gillard has been making a lot of unforced errors and everyone in caucus knows it. It will be a case of "to the life boats, every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost".
Rudd has another advantage because the troubled economic times will suit him. Deservedly or otherwise, he's been given most of the credit for negotiating Australia's path through the global financial crisis Mark I, rather than Wayne Swan, who is a hopeless salesman. Rudd's return would guarantee Swan's departure from the Treasury, because the prospects of them being able to work together are negligible. Swan has been looking very haggard of late, as though he's just begun to understand the predicament he's in and would be glad to be relieved of his responsibilities.
Who would Rudd want as his Treasurer? Chris Bowen has a claim, having been his numbers man and having economic portfolio experience, although his star is scarcely in the ascendant after the Malaysian fiasco. On the principle of keeping your friends close and your enemies even closer, it might be Bill Shorten, the Assistant Treasurer, who helped precipitate the last palace coup. Another contender, simply on the basis of competence, is Greg Combet, currently Climate Change Minister.
There are some commentators who think it would be mad for Rudd Redux to defer the carbon tax, let alone allow the public to vote on the issue before introducing it and provide the Coalition with the chance to claim they have a mandate to junk the tax. But to read the politics of the issue in this way seems to me wrong-headed. Half the reason for Gillard's dire predicament is betraying a categorical assurance and then imagining she could get away with bare-faced lying about the promise.
A global recession would be the ideal vehicle for deferring the tax, because it is going to have a contractionary effect on the economy and deprive major export industries of their competitive advantage. Combet, who is more economically literate than most ministers, would be the ideal person to sell a change of policy while retaining his bona fides as a carbon tax advocate.
On the theme of outposting, there have been reports that Gillard has vowed to vacate her seat if she loses office.
If this were intended to discourage the back bench from drifting to Rudd, it's an empty threat. Even if the worst came to the worst, parliament could rise early and the government could continue in office. Gillard's seat of Lalor is safe enough so that she could be replaced at a by-election before parliament resumes in February.
However, the prospect of her removal raises the interesting question of what her other options are. Rudd wouldn't want her in his cabinet at any price, but could she bear the humiliation of demotion to the outer ministry -- in a scaled-down Social Inclusion ministry, Veterans' Affairs or some such -- or would she prefer to go to the backbench?
It is a measure of how much trouble Gillard is in right now that her main rhetorical thrust in the past week has been to try and persuade people that Tony Abbott neither could nor would want to repeal the carbon tax if it comes into force before the next election.
It is a curious line of attack, in that it reminds everyone who opposes the tax of the way it's been foisted on them and feeds into popular resentment of the democratic deficit involved.
It doesn't matter what she or Swan say now about Labor's determination to oppose the repeal of the tax to the bitter end. They aren't likely to be around then, and even if they were to be in opposition after the next election, would anybody in a smaller caucus be listening to them on the basis of their performance in leadership roles in the past four years?
Even if the caucus consisted mostly of senators in the first and second spot on each state ticket and people in safe seats with a sentimental attachment to the carbon tax, would they be silly enough to oppose repealing it and risk a second defeat at a double dissolution?
They might be, I suppose. But it would be a very expensive folly. No doubt Abbott will turn the next election into a referendum on the tax. A major party that chose to disregard the result could expect a second, more painful lesson to underscore the point that politicians do so at their peril. It's also worth noting that a double dissolution election needn't take long to procure. All it takes is legislation being defeated twice.
There is no need to wait for the newly elected senators to take their places in July of the following year. The whole process could be completed in less that a year. No one who knows Abbott well doubts his determination to deliver on his promise to defeat the carbon tax.
SOURCE
Health boss dodges facts on surgery wait lists
THE WA Health Department has hit back at revelations that increasing numbers of public patients are waiting too long for surgery - including those with cancer and heart problems.
As revealed on the PerthNow iPad last night, the number of people waiting for Category One elective surgery longer than clinically prescribed times, rose a whopping 52 per cent - 134 as at June 30, 2011, compared with 88 at the same time last year.
The figures were in the Metropolitan Health Service Annual Report, tabled in Parliament on Tuesday.
Category One includes patients needing operations to remove their prostate, uterus and gall bladder, those who need cystoscopies, which check for cancer, and also coronary artery bypass graft patients.
People waiting too long for Category Three elective surgery, such as operations to replace knees and hips, also increased in number, with 238 as at June 30, 2011, compared with 160 at the same time the previous year - a rise of 49 per cent.
But WA Health Department director-general Kim Snowball quoted a monthly elective surgery wait list report when responding to the annual report figures, and used percentages to respond to the raw figures in the PerthNow iPad report.
"The percentage of metropolitan patients waiting for elective surgery longer than the clinically desirable time was lower in June 2011 (11 per cent) compared to June 2010 (12.1 per cent)," he said.
He also used state-wide figures rather than metropolitan ones to discuss the metropolitan elective surgery figures when saying: "There was an increase state-wide in the number of cases admitted from the wait list, for example 7,016 admissions in June 2011, compared to 6,933 in June 2010.
"There has been an increase state-wide in the number of surgeries performed in 2009/10 -- 76,195 cases, to 2010/11 - 80,270 cases, which is an overall increase of 5.3 per cent," he said.
The annual report also said that emergency department patients waited too long for treatment, with the proportion of triage Category Three patients seen within the prescribed time of 30 minutes, falling from 48.4 per cent of the total in 2009-10 to 43.2 per cent in 2010-11.
The percentage of Triage Category Four patients seen on time (60 minutes) fell from 58.4 per cent in 2009-10, to 57.5 per cent in 2010-11.
The proportion of Triage Category Five patients treated within the prescribed time of two hours decreased from 88.8 per cent in 2009-10 to 85.6 per cent in 2010-11.
Mr Snowball said: "In the face of an 11.6 per cent increase in Emergency Department presentations in the metropolitan area, we are continuing to see 98.8 per cent of the most urgent (category one) patients immediately".
"It is not unexpected that we have seen a slight reduction in our performance for the less urgent category three and four patients, and we are looking at what we can do to improve this," he said.
"Overall, our patients are spending far less time waiting in emergency departments thanks to the ongoing success of the Four Hour Rule program."
The annual report also showed that the survival rate of stroke patients aged 60-69 in public hospitals also decreased significantly in 2010, with 89.7 per cent surviving, compared with 92.5 per cent in 2009.
Opposition health spokesman Roger Cook said the Barnett Government had been the recipient of "many millions of dollars from the Commonwealth Government" to increase the number of patients operated on for elective surgery.
"What these numbers indicate is that the WA Government has comprehensively failed in that objective and that many people, particularly in the Category One most urgent elective surgery cases, are waiting longer than is clinically recommended," Mr Cook said.
"Category One would be things like cancer operations, it would be some acute orthopaedic operations. That is an acutely unwell patient that needs to be operated on as soon as possible or urgently, and the fact that we've seen a blow out in those patients' waiting time is of great concern."
A spokesman for peak doctor's group, the Australian Medical Association WA, said the AMA was very concerned about "any indication that waiting lists are blowing out or that people are waiting too long for operations".
"As one of the wealthiest states in Australia, we must do all we can to make sure that patients receive the appropriate surgery as soon as possible," the spokesman said.
"Time spent waiting is very often time spent in pain and this is inappropriate.
"We will be studying the annual report and seeking more detailed information as quickly as possible from the Health Minister."
SOURCE
Friday, October 21, 2011
ZEG
In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG is celebrating the death of Gaddafi by wishing the same fate on Mugabe
Ya gotta laugh: Warmists now say warming will bring more floods to Australia
When we were in drought the Warmists warned of more drought. Maybe we will have wet droughts!
Australia can expect more frequent devastating floods like those in Queensland this year, and the world is facing decades of unprecedented hardship as a result of climate change, according to the chief scientific adviser to the British government.
"We are facing what I believe will be unprecedented difficult times over the next 20 to 40 years," Professor Sir John Beddington warned. He was speaking as chairman of a panel of scientists launching a major international report about the effects of climate change on people.
The report predicts that migration will increase markedly; that millions will move into, rather than away from, environmentally vulnerable areas; and millions more will be affected but not be able to move.
According to the head of the school of geography and the environment at Oxford University, Professor David Thomas, the cities most affected would include Singapore, Shanghai, Calcutta, Dhaka in Bangladesh, and the towns and villages of the Vietnamese delta.
Australia would experience rising sea levels too but "it will respond differently because of its different economy", he said.
The report says that by 2060, up to 179 million people will be trapped in low-lying coastal floodplains subject to extreme weather events such as floods, storm surges, landslides and rising sea levels, unable to migrate because they are too poor or ill-equipped, or because they are restricted by political or geographic boundaries.
Two-thirds of the world's cities with populations of more than 5 million are at least partially located in coastal zones, including rapidly growing urban centres in Asian and African "mega-deltas", the report said.
Other large cities would suffer water shortages, with 150 million people already living in cities where water is limited.
"Cities need to be more strategic about their location," said Neil Adger, a professor of environmental economics and program leader at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
Migration and Global Environmental Change is the result of a two-year peer-reviewed project by 350 specialists in 30 countries. It was released yesterday by Foresight, part of the British Government Office for Science, which sits within the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
Speaking after the launch, Sir John told the Herald that Australia should not expect the La Nina phenomenon that triggered the Queensland floods to be a once-in-a-generation event. The next one could not be predicted but it would return much more frequently than in the past.
SOURCE
Tax flaw: Australian power bills may rise 20% under Green tax
ELECTRICITY generators have written to all senators warning that unless the carbon tax laws are amended consumers could face power price rises of 20 per cent in the first year rather than the 10 per cent increase on which the government has calculated its household compensation.
The Energy Supply Association is angry the government plans to force immediate payment for forward-dated emission permits, rather than the deferred payment allowed under the former Rudd government's emissions trading scheme.
The generators' association delivered its warning as the Treasury secretary, Martin Parkinson, said he and his colleagues might have to "make a choice with their feet" should the Coalition win office and direct them to dismantle the carbon trading scheme.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Also, the Coalition warned yesterday that the government's $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which will help fund green investment, would "be a honeypot to every white shoe salesman imaginable".
The opposition finance spokesman, Andrew Robb, said the fund would be spent on "all sorts of wild and wacky proposals that the banks would not touch in a fit".
Mr Robb said he was referring to "those energy companies who have been critical but who have strong interests in renewables and could potentially be major beneficiaries of these subsidies." The opposition would scrap the fund.
The Energy Supply Association says the change from deferred payment means some cash-strapped generators will not be able to afford to nail down their carbon price liability by entering into forward contracts with retailers and big industrial companies and instead power prices will rise as they try to manage their financial risk.
"Our members need to begin purchasing forward permits … if they can't afford to they won't be able to lock in a future price for carbon … and that means prices will rise," said the association's interim chief executive, Clare Savage.
Modelling by the economic consultancy ACIL Tasman found that even a 5 per cent reduction in forward electricity contracts could lead to an additional 10 per cent price rise for households and 15 per cent for big electricity users.
"And that's in a single year," Ms Savage said. "You could have two years in a row of that, which would dwarf the carbon price impact.
"It is the Senate's job to fix obvious errors and in our view there is an obvious error in these bills. We have drafted an amendment and … just 20 words and they could fix this problem."
Dr Parkinson secretary has worked on three versions of the scheme for three prime ministers, heading the secretariat that drafted John Howard's emissions trading scheme, running Kevin Rudd's Climate Change Department and helping draw up the Gillard government's scheme as Treasury head.
Asked in a Senate hearing yesterday whether he would assist a government elected on a policy of rescinding the carbon tax he had helped build, the Treasury secretary said as a public servant he would serve the Australian people through the government of the day.
"Everybody has a choice in front of them," he said. "If they are not prepared to implement the policies the government chooses to pursue, and that government has been democratically elected, then they essentially have to make a choice with their feet."
On the issue of payment for permits, Ms Savage said the government had "its head in the sand" and the Coalition was not advocating the industry's proposed changes either.
The government is proposing to auction 15 million forward-dated pollution permits in 2012-13, and the electricity generators say they would like to buy 10 times more than that but do not have the working capital to pay for the impost immediately.
The Senate will vote on the carbon tax laws next month.
The government is offering loans to generators struggling to find the cash to buy future permits but the generators have criticised the measure because the loans are above commercial rates.
Businesses have also been warning about price rises due to the financial risks caused by the Coalition's promise to repeal the carbon tax. The Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, said yesterday those claims were coming from companies who could profit from carbon pricing.
Dr Parkinson said the choice about staying in his job might not be his to make. "Whether I was secretary of the Treasury would be a matter for the prime minister of the day," he said.
SOURCE
Vague laws let courts dictate public morality
SOME recent cases, including the prosecution of News Limited columnist Andrew Bolt, highlight the dangers that flow from the assertion of group rights.
Relying on legislation such as the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act and the Victorian Racial and Religious Tolerance Act, groups of individuals have claimed offence at public comments on the basis that the allegedly offensive comments promote intolerance.
In fact, the idea of toleration, famously espoused by John Locke in his 1689 Letter Concerning Toleration, is being turned on its head. In it, Locke sought to distinguish the business of civil government from that of religion.
Written when controversy surrounded the idea that Catholics should be able to practise their religion in Protestant England, or Jews or Muslims enjoy religious freedom in a Christian nation, Locke argued that the state and the church had separate functions. He sought to find a way that people of different religious beliefs could live together.
As summarised by Jonathan Sacks, toleration "aims not so much at truth but at peace. It is a political necessity, not a religious imperative, and it arises when people have lived through the alternative: the war of all against all." Hence the political separation of faith and power; of church and state: "No person shall be compelled to support any religious worship, but all persons shall be free to profess their religious opinions."
Today the issue is not only religion. It extends to cultural identity and multiculturalism.
If the new philosopher-judges, such as the court in the Bolt case, subscribe to one view of these matters, they are little different from the theologian-judges before the Lockean settlement.
This is occurring when the political notion that the law should not intrude into areas of private behaviour has been transformed into the moral assertion that a person now has the right to do anything not precluded by law.
The political judgment about the boundaries of the law is now translated into a moral judgment about rights.
What one was permitted to do now becomes what one has the right to do. And having asserted a right, many insist it should be protected by the law.
Hence Locke's political toleration has been combined with the new moral relativism.
As Sacks cautions, "When political liberalism is combined with moral relativism it reconnects morality and politics, the very thing liberalism was supposed to avoid."
A moral judgment that liberalism allowed a person to express in the realm of faith and religion, or today culture and identity -- for example about religious belief, including the alleged beliefs, customs or practices of other religions -- is now swept into the political realm.
In morally relative politics, a right to do something must be protected as a new human right. Not only is the activity now a right, but the people involved are right (or at least as right as anyone else). To say otherwise is intolerant. Such intolerance is discriminatory and should be punished. How the wheel has turned in three centuries.
One of the great achievements of the political liberalism of the 17th and 18th centuries was the idea that the individual is the foundation of the polity. The law treated individuals as its basis. This notion was foundational to liberal democracy.
Hence in the spirit of this development, the 1776 US Declaration of Independence boldly asserted that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed".
Under this formulation, it is the individual who possesses political rights and whose consent legitimates government. It was a rejection of the idea that rights subsisted in classes of people, whether determined by birth, hierarchy or membership of a particular group. It is central to the liberal democratic experiment.
Increasingly, however, rights are now being asserted on behalf of groups. A claim is made for example, that the expression of a moral judgment about the beliefs, statements or actions of another group should be unlawful because it is offensive to members of the group or that it is likely to insult that group.
Whereas the laws of defamation protect the individual against libel and slander, it is now claimed that moral judgments or observations about a group should be unlawful and punishable. This is a significant shift.
The main fault lies with the parliaments that have created vague laws from abstract principles about which judges can be tempted to conclusively determine public morality on issues such as speech and thought in a multicultural society.
Laws that enable groups, rather than individuals, to assert rights should be repealed before we head any further down this dangerous path.
SOURCE
Julia Gillard's great leap backwards to the trashy 1970s
by: Greg Sheridan
PERHAPS no decade saw more wretched national government in Australia than the 1970s. We started with Billy McMahon, manifestly not up to the job, who presided over the last, worst years of Coalition rule. Then came the economic catastrophe of the Whitlam government. It is the fashion these days to be nice to Gough, and it is a good fashion. But his government was an economic disaster. Unemployment skyrocketed, industry was crippled, inflation went out of control.
The size of government grew enormously. Then we ended the decade with Malcolm Fraser's government: patrician, arrogant and right-wing in tone, but in substance feeble, ineffective, incapable of dealing with global economic change.
During this period Australia acquired a toxic reputation. Although the comment came later, it was this period that led to Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew to say that Australia risked becoming the "poor white trash of Asia". At that time and afterwards, management books were written that contrasted Japan's seamless social co-operation with the devastating combination of excessive government regulation, union militancy and the inefficiency of Australian business.
Unions were at the heart of the Australian disease of the 70s. They were thuggish, powerful, intrusive, authoritarian, often deeply ideological and sometimes corrupt. They were protected by, and ran, the Australian Labor Party, which had as close a union affiliation as any governing party in the world.
It took a long time for Australia to recover from the bad name we acquired in the 70s. I caused a diplomatic incident once after I had interviewed a senior Japanese economics minister. The interview was dull. Like most Japanese ministers he would do no more than recite extracts from recent speeches in the interview. But that night at a dinner, which I thought was on the record but he thought was off the record, he answered some questions honestly. And he said words to the effect that Australia was notoriously the hardest country in the world to do business in. It was almost impossible to manage the unions sensibly, a point Lee and many other foreign leaders often made.
The union model in the 70s was to help secure government protection for an industry and then claim outrageous pay and conditions that made the industry completely uncompetitive and put an ever greater strain on government protection. Eventually, of course, it broke down.
Now, under the leadership of Julia Gillard, Australia is rushing back to the toxic norms of the 70s, back beyond all the reforms of the Hawke, Keating and Howard governments.
Consider the news items of recent weeks. The Qantas brand, one of Australia's few national champions recognised internationally in any industry, is being systematically trashed by savage, irresponsible union action in support of wage and conditions claims far more excessive than those in comparable airlines. It takes decades to build up a good reputation but it can be destroyed fairly quickly. The unions apparently think Qantas will always be profitable because of its de facto protection on domestic routes and because no government would ever allow it to go out of business.
Consider some other items. The Australian Building and Construction Commission pointed to thuggery and physical abuse committed by union figures in the building industry, And indeed the militancy of building unions is now a big deterrent to infrastructure projects in capital cities.
Toyota, the recipient of endless government largesse as are all the domestic car companies, has faced a series of industrial actions by its unions to get better pay and conditions. The Gillard government has systematically increased union power andwe are paying both an economic and reputational price.
Under Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard, economic reform meant lower taxes, less red tape, increased productivity and a better environment under which to invest. But in the days of Whitlam, and to an extent of McMahon and Fraser, reform had a completely different meaning. It invariably meant increased government regulation, increased government activism and higher taxes.
Under the Gillard government, reform has the Whitlam, McMahon, Fraser meaning. Thus any new, vast and especially expensive social entitlement is a "reform". The keystone reform of the Gillard government is the carbon tax. This is a massive new tax that will yield government many billions of dollars of extra revenue and is all predicated on the ideological faith that a global carbon trading scheme will come into being, though this scheme has no chance at all of ever amounting to anything with credibility or substance.
In every sense, the carbon tax is a perfect 70s reform. In the McMahon and Whitlam eras, the national debate was entirely around the redistribution of national income. It was not about how to generate that national income.
Hawke, Keating and Howard operated on the basis that the world didn't automatically owe Australia a living, that we had to earn that living. Hawke especially was the first prime minister in decades to drum that lesson into the Australian people. The carbon tax, like all the Gillard reforms, proceeds from the assumption that Australia's basic wealth is assured.
The Gillard government can point to relatively low unemployment and government debt in Australia by international standards. But in this respect the Gillard government is like the pre-Whitlam Coalition governments, simply existing off Australia's resources wealth. At the moment all resource-based economies look good, whether that's Russia, Indonesia or Australia. This has very little to do with brilliant economic management. That, essentially, was the pre-Hawke Australian economic model. Our natural resource endowments made us wealthy; everything else was just a way of spending the wealth.
Now we are squandering what may be a non-permanent resources boom. As in the 70s we are chronically in budget deficit. As in the 70s, our non-mining productivity performance is woeful. As in the 70s, we are acquiring the international reputation of being a quarry, a farmand a few good beaches. It is as meaningless, in terms of good economic policy, for us to talk about our trade figures as it is for Saudi Arabia.
And in foreign policy and defence we have become, as in the 70s, essentially irresponsible. Despite our boom and general government profligacy, defence spending is at a paltry 1.8 per cent of GNP. We have never been more Asia illiterate. In absolute numbers, there were more Australian senior school students studying Indonesian in the 70s than now.
We have, as in the 70s, produced a destructive ideological Left. The Greens play the same role as did the Socialist Left of the Labor Party, in alliance with the communist groups, in the 70s, and indeed often they are direct family descendants or indeed ex-communists who have changed formal party allegiance. These forces represent a broad stream of essentially nihilist philosophical rejection of modern Western society and, as in the 70s, are given massive assistance by taxpayer-funded cultural organisations such as the ABC.
Our basic international image is changing fundamentally because of regressive government leadership. In some ways the Gillard government is intensely reactionary, following slavishly a wholly discredited economic and social model of four decades ago. We are stepping back two generations. It's a very bad way to govern a very lucky country.
SOURCE
In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG is celebrating the death of Gaddafi by wishing the same fate on Mugabe
Ya gotta laugh: Warmists now say warming will bring more floods to Australia
When we were in drought the Warmists warned of more drought. Maybe we will have wet droughts!
Australia can expect more frequent devastating floods like those in Queensland this year, and the world is facing decades of unprecedented hardship as a result of climate change, according to the chief scientific adviser to the British government.
"We are facing what I believe will be unprecedented difficult times over the next 20 to 40 years," Professor Sir John Beddington warned. He was speaking as chairman of a panel of scientists launching a major international report about the effects of climate change on people.
The report predicts that migration will increase markedly; that millions will move into, rather than away from, environmentally vulnerable areas; and millions more will be affected but not be able to move.
According to the head of the school of geography and the environment at Oxford University, Professor David Thomas, the cities most affected would include Singapore, Shanghai, Calcutta, Dhaka in Bangladesh, and the towns and villages of the Vietnamese delta.
Australia would experience rising sea levels too but "it will respond differently because of its different economy", he said.
The report says that by 2060, up to 179 million people will be trapped in low-lying coastal floodplains subject to extreme weather events such as floods, storm surges, landslides and rising sea levels, unable to migrate because they are too poor or ill-equipped, or because they are restricted by political or geographic boundaries.
Two-thirds of the world's cities with populations of more than 5 million are at least partially located in coastal zones, including rapidly growing urban centres in Asian and African "mega-deltas", the report said.
Other large cities would suffer water shortages, with 150 million people already living in cities where water is limited.
"Cities need to be more strategic about their location," said Neil Adger, a professor of environmental economics and program leader at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
Migration and Global Environmental Change is the result of a two-year peer-reviewed project by 350 specialists in 30 countries. It was released yesterday by Foresight, part of the British Government Office for Science, which sits within the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
Speaking after the launch, Sir John told the Herald that Australia should not expect the La Nina phenomenon that triggered the Queensland floods to be a once-in-a-generation event. The next one could not be predicted but it would return much more frequently than in the past.
SOURCE
Tax flaw: Australian power bills may rise 20% under Green tax
ELECTRICITY generators have written to all senators warning that unless the carbon tax laws are amended consumers could face power price rises of 20 per cent in the first year rather than the 10 per cent increase on which the government has calculated its household compensation.
The Energy Supply Association is angry the government plans to force immediate payment for forward-dated emission permits, rather than the deferred payment allowed under the former Rudd government's emissions trading scheme.
The generators' association delivered its warning as the Treasury secretary, Martin Parkinson, said he and his colleagues might have to "make a choice with their feet" should the Coalition win office and direct them to dismantle the carbon trading scheme.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Also, the Coalition warned yesterday that the government's $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which will help fund green investment, would "be a honeypot to every white shoe salesman imaginable".
The opposition finance spokesman, Andrew Robb, said the fund would be spent on "all sorts of wild and wacky proposals that the banks would not touch in a fit".
Mr Robb said he was referring to "those energy companies who have been critical but who have strong interests in renewables and could potentially be major beneficiaries of these subsidies." The opposition would scrap the fund.
The Energy Supply Association says the change from deferred payment means some cash-strapped generators will not be able to afford to nail down their carbon price liability by entering into forward contracts with retailers and big industrial companies and instead power prices will rise as they try to manage their financial risk.
"Our members need to begin purchasing forward permits … if they can't afford to they won't be able to lock in a future price for carbon … and that means prices will rise," said the association's interim chief executive, Clare Savage.
Modelling by the economic consultancy ACIL Tasman found that even a 5 per cent reduction in forward electricity contracts could lead to an additional 10 per cent price rise for households and 15 per cent for big electricity users.
"And that's in a single year," Ms Savage said. "You could have two years in a row of that, which would dwarf the carbon price impact.
"It is the Senate's job to fix obvious errors and in our view there is an obvious error in these bills. We have drafted an amendment and … just 20 words and they could fix this problem."
Dr Parkinson secretary has worked on three versions of the scheme for three prime ministers, heading the secretariat that drafted John Howard's emissions trading scheme, running Kevin Rudd's Climate Change Department and helping draw up the Gillard government's scheme as Treasury head.
Asked in a Senate hearing yesterday whether he would assist a government elected on a policy of rescinding the carbon tax he had helped build, the Treasury secretary said as a public servant he would serve the Australian people through the government of the day.
"Everybody has a choice in front of them," he said. "If they are not prepared to implement the policies the government chooses to pursue, and that government has been democratically elected, then they essentially have to make a choice with their feet."
On the issue of payment for permits, Ms Savage said the government had "its head in the sand" and the Coalition was not advocating the industry's proposed changes either.
The government is proposing to auction 15 million forward-dated pollution permits in 2012-13, and the electricity generators say they would like to buy 10 times more than that but do not have the working capital to pay for the impost immediately.
The Senate will vote on the carbon tax laws next month.
The government is offering loans to generators struggling to find the cash to buy future permits but the generators have criticised the measure because the loans are above commercial rates.
Businesses have also been warning about price rises due to the financial risks caused by the Coalition's promise to repeal the carbon tax. The Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, said yesterday those claims were coming from companies who could profit from carbon pricing.
Dr Parkinson said the choice about staying in his job might not be his to make. "Whether I was secretary of the Treasury would be a matter for the prime minister of the day," he said.
SOURCE
Vague laws let courts dictate public morality
SOME recent cases, including the prosecution of News Limited columnist Andrew Bolt, highlight the dangers that flow from the assertion of group rights.
Relying on legislation such as the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act and the Victorian Racial and Religious Tolerance Act, groups of individuals have claimed offence at public comments on the basis that the allegedly offensive comments promote intolerance.
In fact, the idea of toleration, famously espoused by John Locke in his 1689 Letter Concerning Toleration, is being turned on its head. In it, Locke sought to distinguish the business of civil government from that of religion.
Written when controversy surrounded the idea that Catholics should be able to practise their religion in Protestant England, or Jews or Muslims enjoy religious freedom in a Christian nation, Locke argued that the state and the church had separate functions. He sought to find a way that people of different religious beliefs could live together.
As summarised by Jonathan Sacks, toleration "aims not so much at truth but at peace. It is a political necessity, not a religious imperative, and it arises when people have lived through the alternative: the war of all against all." Hence the political separation of faith and power; of church and state: "No person shall be compelled to support any religious worship, but all persons shall be free to profess their religious opinions."
Today the issue is not only religion. It extends to cultural identity and multiculturalism.
If the new philosopher-judges, such as the court in the Bolt case, subscribe to one view of these matters, they are little different from the theologian-judges before the Lockean settlement.
This is occurring when the political notion that the law should not intrude into areas of private behaviour has been transformed into the moral assertion that a person now has the right to do anything not precluded by law.
The political judgment about the boundaries of the law is now translated into a moral judgment about rights.
What one was permitted to do now becomes what one has the right to do. And having asserted a right, many insist it should be protected by the law.
Hence Locke's political toleration has been combined with the new moral relativism.
As Sacks cautions, "When political liberalism is combined with moral relativism it reconnects morality and politics, the very thing liberalism was supposed to avoid."
A moral judgment that liberalism allowed a person to express in the realm of faith and religion, or today culture and identity -- for example about religious belief, including the alleged beliefs, customs or practices of other religions -- is now swept into the political realm.
In morally relative politics, a right to do something must be protected as a new human right. Not only is the activity now a right, but the people involved are right (or at least as right as anyone else). To say otherwise is intolerant. Such intolerance is discriminatory and should be punished. How the wheel has turned in three centuries.
One of the great achievements of the political liberalism of the 17th and 18th centuries was the idea that the individual is the foundation of the polity. The law treated individuals as its basis. This notion was foundational to liberal democracy.
Hence in the spirit of this development, the 1776 US Declaration of Independence boldly asserted that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed".
Under this formulation, it is the individual who possesses political rights and whose consent legitimates government. It was a rejection of the idea that rights subsisted in classes of people, whether determined by birth, hierarchy or membership of a particular group. It is central to the liberal democratic experiment.
Increasingly, however, rights are now being asserted on behalf of groups. A claim is made for example, that the expression of a moral judgment about the beliefs, statements or actions of another group should be unlawful because it is offensive to members of the group or that it is likely to insult that group.
Whereas the laws of defamation protect the individual against libel and slander, it is now claimed that moral judgments or observations about a group should be unlawful and punishable. This is a significant shift.
The main fault lies with the parliaments that have created vague laws from abstract principles about which judges can be tempted to conclusively determine public morality on issues such as speech and thought in a multicultural society.
Laws that enable groups, rather than individuals, to assert rights should be repealed before we head any further down this dangerous path.
SOURCE
Julia Gillard's great leap backwards to the trashy 1970s
by: Greg Sheridan
PERHAPS no decade saw more wretched national government in Australia than the 1970s. We started with Billy McMahon, manifestly not up to the job, who presided over the last, worst years of Coalition rule. Then came the economic catastrophe of the Whitlam government. It is the fashion these days to be nice to Gough, and it is a good fashion. But his government was an economic disaster. Unemployment skyrocketed, industry was crippled, inflation went out of control.
The size of government grew enormously. Then we ended the decade with Malcolm Fraser's government: patrician, arrogant and right-wing in tone, but in substance feeble, ineffective, incapable of dealing with global economic change.
During this period Australia acquired a toxic reputation. Although the comment came later, it was this period that led to Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew to say that Australia risked becoming the "poor white trash of Asia". At that time and afterwards, management books were written that contrasted Japan's seamless social co-operation with the devastating combination of excessive government regulation, union militancy and the inefficiency of Australian business.
Unions were at the heart of the Australian disease of the 70s. They were thuggish, powerful, intrusive, authoritarian, often deeply ideological and sometimes corrupt. They were protected by, and ran, the Australian Labor Party, which had as close a union affiliation as any governing party in the world.
It took a long time for Australia to recover from the bad name we acquired in the 70s. I caused a diplomatic incident once after I had interviewed a senior Japanese economics minister. The interview was dull. Like most Japanese ministers he would do no more than recite extracts from recent speeches in the interview. But that night at a dinner, which I thought was on the record but he thought was off the record, he answered some questions honestly. And he said words to the effect that Australia was notoriously the hardest country in the world to do business in. It was almost impossible to manage the unions sensibly, a point Lee and many other foreign leaders often made.
The union model in the 70s was to help secure government protection for an industry and then claim outrageous pay and conditions that made the industry completely uncompetitive and put an ever greater strain on government protection. Eventually, of course, it broke down.
Now, under the leadership of Julia Gillard, Australia is rushing back to the toxic norms of the 70s, back beyond all the reforms of the Hawke, Keating and Howard governments.
Consider the news items of recent weeks. The Qantas brand, one of Australia's few national champions recognised internationally in any industry, is being systematically trashed by savage, irresponsible union action in support of wage and conditions claims far more excessive than those in comparable airlines. It takes decades to build up a good reputation but it can be destroyed fairly quickly. The unions apparently think Qantas will always be profitable because of its de facto protection on domestic routes and because no government would ever allow it to go out of business.
Consider some other items. The Australian Building and Construction Commission pointed to thuggery and physical abuse committed by union figures in the building industry, And indeed the militancy of building unions is now a big deterrent to infrastructure projects in capital cities.
Toyota, the recipient of endless government largesse as are all the domestic car companies, has faced a series of industrial actions by its unions to get better pay and conditions. The Gillard government has systematically increased union power andwe are paying both an economic and reputational price.
Under Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard, economic reform meant lower taxes, less red tape, increased productivity and a better environment under which to invest. But in the days of Whitlam, and to an extent of McMahon and Fraser, reform had a completely different meaning. It invariably meant increased government regulation, increased government activism and higher taxes.
Under the Gillard government, reform has the Whitlam, McMahon, Fraser meaning. Thus any new, vast and especially expensive social entitlement is a "reform". The keystone reform of the Gillard government is the carbon tax. This is a massive new tax that will yield government many billions of dollars of extra revenue and is all predicated on the ideological faith that a global carbon trading scheme will come into being, though this scheme has no chance at all of ever amounting to anything with credibility or substance.
In every sense, the carbon tax is a perfect 70s reform. In the McMahon and Whitlam eras, the national debate was entirely around the redistribution of national income. It was not about how to generate that national income.
Hawke, Keating and Howard operated on the basis that the world didn't automatically owe Australia a living, that we had to earn that living. Hawke especially was the first prime minister in decades to drum that lesson into the Australian people. The carbon tax, like all the Gillard reforms, proceeds from the assumption that Australia's basic wealth is assured.
The Gillard government can point to relatively low unemployment and government debt in Australia by international standards. But in this respect the Gillard government is like the pre-Whitlam Coalition governments, simply existing off Australia's resources wealth. At the moment all resource-based economies look good, whether that's Russia, Indonesia or Australia. This has very little to do with brilliant economic management. That, essentially, was the pre-Hawke Australian economic model. Our natural resource endowments made us wealthy; everything else was just a way of spending the wealth.
Now we are squandering what may be a non-permanent resources boom. As in the 70s we are chronically in budget deficit. As in the 70s, our non-mining productivity performance is woeful. As in the 70s, we are acquiring the international reputation of being a quarry, a farmand a few good beaches. It is as meaningless, in terms of good economic policy, for us to talk about our trade figures as it is for Saudi Arabia.
And in foreign policy and defence we have become, as in the 70s, essentially irresponsible. Despite our boom and general government profligacy, defence spending is at a paltry 1.8 per cent of GNP. We have never been more Asia illiterate. In absolute numbers, there were more Australian senior school students studying Indonesian in the 70s than now.
We have, as in the 70s, produced a destructive ideological Left. The Greens play the same role as did the Socialist Left of the Labor Party, in alliance with the communist groups, in the 70s, and indeed often they are direct family descendants or indeed ex-communists who have changed formal party allegiance. These forces represent a broad stream of essentially nihilist philosophical rejection of modern Western society and, as in the 70s, are given massive assistance by taxpayer-funded cultural organisations such as the ABC.
Our basic international image is changing fundamentally because of regressive government leadership. In some ways the Gillard government is intensely reactionary, following slavishly a wholly discredited economic and social model of four decades ago. We are stepping back two generations. It's a very bad way to govern a very lucky country.
SOURCE
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Verdict against Bolt will not be appealed
Mainly on cost grounds, presumably. There was a good chance the High court would have struck it down. So we are all losers from this now
THE Herald and Weekly Times will not appeal against the Federal Court decision against Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt and will be forced to publish a prominent corrective notice twice in the next fortnight.
The notice, which outlines the case brought against Bolt by Pat Eatock on behalf of other "fair-skinned Aboriginals" and the court's reasoning why two of Bolt's articles breached the Racial Discrimination Act, is required to be published "adjacent" to Bolt's regular column.
This means the finding against Bolt will take up to two-thirds of the prime real estate in the opinion and editorial pages of the country's highest-selling daily newspaper. The 500-word notice is supplied by the Federal Court.
While Ms Eatock sought an apology from HWT, judge Mordecai Bromberg said he was "not persuaded that I should compel HWT to articulate a sentiment that is not genuinely held". He said the notice would redress the hurt felt by the applicants, restore their self-esteem, inform readers and "help to negate the dissemination of racial prejudice".
HWT reserved the right to appeal against yesterday's court orders, which included costs against the company for the high-profile trial. But in a minor win for HWT (owned by News Limited, publisher of The Australian), costs were awarded against Ms Eatock for the postponement of a directions trial last December.
Ms Eatock rejected a confidential offer of settlement from HWT on March 21 .
The costs of the postponement, while not as sizeable as the costs for the ultimate trial, were described by one party as "not insubstantial".
Justice Bromberg had earlier found the articles by Bolt contravened section 18C of the RDA and had no exemptions under the act.
The notice states they were "reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate some Aboriginal persons of mixed descent" and they were "not written or published reasonably and in good faith".
In a statement, HWT argued there were a number of grounds for appeal but it would not appeal.
"Instead, it is our view that section 18 of the Racial Discrimination Act overly detracts from free speech and should be revisited by the legislature," the company said.
SOURCE
ABC chairman wants to avoid bias
Maurice Newman is ABC chairman. and his views below are admirable but he has no control over programming so don't expect results
WHEN polarisation and partisanship are in bloom all around, the only responsible course for the public broadcaster is the pluralist path. I understand perfectly well that one person's pluralism is often another's bias and that many media academics insist it is simply impossible to achieve.
I also appreciate only too well the allure of the catchphrases you find in discussions about journalistic practice now, such as transparency is the new objectivity. I get all this.
Yet I'm also chairman of an organisation whose responsibilities are bound by statute. And the ABC Act of 1983 is pretty clear on the subject of impartiality.
Freedom of expression is a precious gift, most valued when it ceases to exist. Yet I observe an unhealthy tendency in politics and in society generally to tolerate its abrogation. A growing chorus of voices is directed to shutting down certain narratives. We are being coerced into yielding to self-appointed authority and into accepting without question dubious propositions that support just one side of the argument. Ad hominem attacks substitute for logical and evidence-based discourse that would otherwise allow viewers and listeners the opportunity to decide for themselves where they stand on the issues.
Last year in Beijing, I attended an international conference. On the topic of freedom of the press, media representatives from across the world were asked whether the prophet Mohammed should be treated differently from any other subject. On a show of hands a clear majority voted him off limits. If the prophet is a no-go area, who or what else should be quarantined?
Like forbidden fruit, however, censorship heightens the appetite for what is kept from view and gives added force to rumour, speculation and untested assumption.
The ABC's Jonathan Holmes wrote this year: "Strange though it may seem, a lot of journalists get into the business for the same reason that a lot of politicians do: they want to change the world." However, if journalists are given unrestricted licence by their employers to propagate a selective truth to change the world to their thinking, it is possible neither the public nor the media will be well served. Unlike elected representatives, it is difficult to hold journalists to account and they, no matter their conviction, have no monopoly on wisdom.
Trust is an essential ingredient in respect and there is growing evidence that the public's trust in the media is declining. What are the consequences when there is a public perception that our media is becoming an increasingly unreliable reference point? Who is the public expected to believe?
Amid all the partisan noise, the ABC's responsibility is enlarged. It must offer not the illusion of comprehensiveness but the genuine article. Not some voices but all of them. The ABC town square must be authentically pluralist. Partisanship may affect editorial choices elsewhere, but the ABC must remain dedicated to objectivity and impartiality.
The impression that powerful vested interests wield power over the media can be as easily gained by what is not reported as by what is. Biologist Richard Palmer from the University of Alberta in Canada shares this view. He says scientists selectively report data and find ways to confirm their preferred hypothesis, disregarding what they don't want to see. "Our beliefs are a sort of blindness," he has said,adding once he realised how it was everywhere in science, he became depressed.
And it's no different in economics and finance, where collective illusions also exist.
World leaders, treasury officials, central bankers, Wall Street oligarchs and the mainstream media seem more comfortable selling hope than they are confronting reality. And each time that they have inevitably been proven spectacularly wrong, a little more public faith and trust in these public figures and institutions has been lost.
Sheltering the public from the truth or spinning the facts may temporarily save the hide of the political and financial insiders but, in so doing, the poor unprepared populace is exposed to the full extent of forces the orthodox narrative never foretold. This does not go unnoticed and leads to feelings of betrayal.
So why is it, then, that the world's media has allowed Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, who speak with all the authority and back-up their positions confer, to get away with so many bad calls and so much wealth destruction? Why should they still be credible? Perhaps postmodernist economics has so captivated our journalists that they have suspended the spirit of inquiry, open-mindedness and scrutiny that an informed democracy so desperately needs.
Under relentless pressure, classical economics has become all but a relic of a bygone era. Yet the work of classical economists most likely holds the solution to today's economic ills. It seems many journalists have become subject to the same blindness that Palmer has found in scientists.
In this world of uncertainty, of knowing who to trust, I believe the ABC is wonderfully placed to pursue pluralism with increased enthusiasm and authority so that we accommodate as many voices as are readily available to us.
As the chairman of a taxpayer-funded national broadcaster, I realise that I may be criticised as someone who is sheltered from the cut and thrust of day to day commercial life. I can assure you that I am no stranger to that, but perhaps not having to answer to shareholders every six months allows me the luxury of reflection and distance that pursuing profits may preclude. While the ABC is fortunate still to rate highly on the trust factor, we are not immune, nor should we be, from public scrutiny. Like everyone else in the media business, we must honour the compact we have with our audiences. Once lost, trust may never be recovered, which is why I care so much about our performance.
Partisanship may well become the dominant model within the media in years to come, yet by our insistence on maintaining a public, pluralist presence, pluralism itself ultimately will prevail.
SOURCE
Australians are asset rich
Our incomes are not among the highest but we own lots of valuable stuff -- mainly real estate. Poorer Americans tend to live in trailers (caravans). Very few Australians do, mainly a few retirees
AUSTRALIANS are the world's wealthiest people on a median basis and second in the world behind Switzerland on an average basis, according to a new report.
The Credit Suisse report also notes the European sovereign debt crisis is not expected to stop a new generation of millionaires emerging in the next five years, with the greatest wealth growth likely to occur in the booming Asia-Pacific.
On a median measure Australian adults are worth nearly $US221,704 ($217,559), nearly four times the amount of each US adult. The proportion of Australian adults worth more than $US100,000 is eight times the global average.
The high wealth rate in Australia is attributed to the strong Australian dollar, property ownership levels and a robust labour market. Australia also has one of the highest home ownership rates in the world, with property making up about 65 per cent of consumers' wealth.
The Credit Suisse Global Wealth report shows worldwide wealth is estimated at $US231 trillion and is forecast to hit $US314 trillion by 2016, despite the current market upheaval. The report says there are 27.9 million millionaires in the world, of which Australia accounts for 4 per cent.
Credit Suisse forecasts that number will reach 45.6 million in the next five years with the greatest growth to come from China. It is estimated that the world's fastest-growing economy now has 1.01 million millionaires and that could rise to 2.4 million as the nation's industrialisation and urbanisation continues.
SOURCE
Barrister Tony Morris says Queensland Health faces greater crisis than Jayant Patel affair
THE man who led the original Bundaberg Hospital inquiry says Queensland Health faces "its greatest crisis" - far more serious for patient outcomes than the Jayant Patel fiasco.
Barrister Tony Morris's assessment comes as the state's health system battles more than 4000 work bans imposed by hospital support workers in their fight for higher pay.
Mr Morris, QC, whose 2005 inquiry was cut short after accusations of bias, writes in today's print edition of The Courier-Mail that Queensland Health should brace for resignations unless something is done urgently to address "gross pay discrepancies".
"Queensland Health is facing its greatest crisis - one far more serious, in terms of health outcomes, than the recent payroll debacle; more serious than the Jayant Patel fiasco," Mr Morris, QC, writes.
Queensland Health Deputy Director-General John Cairns yesterday said the industrial action varied at each site, with non-urgent elective surgery having to be cancelled at some public hospitals.
"Across the state, there are 4303 work bans in place," Mr Cairns said.
Unions representing about 30,000 hospital workers are threatening to ramp up their industrial action with more bans from tomorrow, including a refusal to take blood from patients in non-emergency situations.
But Alex Scott, the secretary of Queensland public sector union Together, last night said members were hopeful 11th-hour negotiations with Queensland Health would resolve the dispute. "We haven't exhausted all options and we're trying to do whatever we can to avoid any action that will impact on patient care," he said.
The Bligh Government has offered the workers a 2.5 per cent-a-year pay rise over the next three years, but unions are angry this does not keep up with inflation.
Mr Cairns said that if employees were prepared to introduce "realistic productivity measures", the savings could be passed on in the form of increases above 7.5 per cent. "Without these productivity measures, union claims for increases above 7.5 per cent over three years will impact on our ability to fund ... patient services," he said.
Acting Premier Andrew Fraser said he was confident the dispute would be resolved soon, with no disruption to patients. "Patient safety is the priority here," he said. "We want to reach an agreement where we can pay our health workers a pay rise that's responsible for the budget and responsible for the economy."
SOURCE
Mainly on cost grounds, presumably. There was a good chance the High court would have struck it down. So we are all losers from this now
THE Herald and Weekly Times will not appeal against the Federal Court decision against Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt and will be forced to publish a prominent corrective notice twice in the next fortnight.
The notice, which outlines the case brought against Bolt by Pat Eatock on behalf of other "fair-skinned Aboriginals" and the court's reasoning why two of Bolt's articles breached the Racial Discrimination Act, is required to be published "adjacent" to Bolt's regular column.
This means the finding against Bolt will take up to two-thirds of the prime real estate in the opinion and editorial pages of the country's highest-selling daily newspaper. The 500-word notice is supplied by the Federal Court.
While Ms Eatock sought an apology from HWT, judge Mordecai Bromberg said he was "not persuaded that I should compel HWT to articulate a sentiment that is not genuinely held". He said the notice would redress the hurt felt by the applicants, restore their self-esteem, inform readers and "help to negate the dissemination of racial prejudice".
HWT reserved the right to appeal against yesterday's court orders, which included costs against the company for the high-profile trial. But in a minor win for HWT (owned by News Limited, publisher of The Australian), costs were awarded against Ms Eatock for the postponement of a directions trial last December.
Ms Eatock rejected a confidential offer of settlement from HWT on March 21 .
The costs of the postponement, while not as sizeable as the costs for the ultimate trial, were described by one party as "not insubstantial".
Justice Bromberg had earlier found the articles by Bolt contravened section 18C of the RDA and had no exemptions under the act.
The notice states they were "reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate some Aboriginal persons of mixed descent" and they were "not written or published reasonably and in good faith".
In a statement, HWT argued there were a number of grounds for appeal but it would not appeal.
"Instead, it is our view that section 18 of the Racial Discrimination Act overly detracts from free speech and should be revisited by the legislature," the company said.
SOURCE
ABC chairman wants to avoid bias
Maurice Newman is ABC chairman. and his views below are admirable but he has no control over programming so don't expect results
WHEN polarisation and partisanship are in bloom all around, the only responsible course for the public broadcaster is the pluralist path. I understand perfectly well that one person's pluralism is often another's bias and that many media academics insist it is simply impossible to achieve.
I also appreciate only too well the allure of the catchphrases you find in discussions about journalistic practice now, such as transparency is the new objectivity. I get all this.
Yet I'm also chairman of an organisation whose responsibilities are bound by statute. And the ABC Act of 1983 is pretty clear on the subject of impartiality.
Freedom of expression is a precious gift, most valued when it ceases to exist. Yet I observe an unhealthy tendency in politics and in society generally to tolerate its abrogation. A growing chorus of voices is directed to shutting down certain narratives. We are being coerced into yielding to self-appointed authority and into accepting without question dubious propositions that support just one side of the argument. Ad hominem attacks substitute for logical and evidence-based discourse that would otherwise allow viewers and listeners the opportunity to decide for themselves where they stand on the issues.
Last year in Beijing, I attended an international conference. On the topic of freedom of the press, media representatives from across the world were asked whether the prophet Mohammed should be treated differently from any other subject. On a show of hands a clear majority voted him off limits. If the prophet is a no-go area, who or what else should be quarantined?
Like forbidden fruit, however, censorship heightens the appetite for what is kept from view and gives added force to rumour, speculation and untested assumption.
The ABC's Jonathan Holmes wrote this year: "Strange though it may seem, a lot of journalists get into the business for the same reason that a lot of politicians do: they want to change the world." However, if journalists are given unrestricted licence by their employers to propagate a selective truth to change the world to their thinking, it is possible neither the public nor the media will be well served. Unlike elected representatives, it is difficult to hold journalists to account and they, no matter their conviction, have no monopoly on wisdom.
Trust is an essential ingredient in respect and there is growing evidence that the public's trust in the media is declining. What are the consequences when there is a public perception that our media is becoming an increasingly unreliable reference point? Who is the public expected to believe?
Amid all the partisan noise, the ABC's responsibility is enlarged. It must offer not the illusion of comprehensiveness but the genuine article. Not some voices but all of them. The ABC town square must be authentically pluralist. Partisanship may affect editorial choices elsewhere, but the ABC must remain dedicated to objectivity and impartiality.
The impression that powerful vested interests wield power over the media can be as easily gained by what is not reported as by what is. Biologist Richard Palmer from the University of Alberta in Canada shares this view. He says scientists selectively report data and find ways to confirm their preferred hypothesis, disregarding what they don't want to see. "Our beliefs are a sort of blindness," he has said,adding once he realised how it was everywhere in science, he became depressed.
And it's no different in economics and finance, where collective illusions also exist.
World leaders, treasury officials, central bankers, Wall Street oligarchs and the mainstream media seem more comfortable selling hope than they are confronting reality. And each time that they have inevitably been proven spectacularly wrong, a little more public faith and trust in these public figures and institutions has been lost.
Sheltering the public from the truth or spinning the facts may temporarily save the hide of the political and financial insiders but, in so doing, the poor unprepared populace is exposed to the full extent of forces the orthodox narrative never foretold. This does not go unnoticed and leads to feelings of betrayal.
So why is it, then, that the world's media has allowed Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, who speak with all the authority and back-up their positions confer, to get away with so many bad calls and so much wealth destruction? Why should they still be credible? Perhaps postmodernist economics has so captivated our journalists that they have suspended the spirit of inquiry, open-mindedness and scrutiny that an informed democracy so desperately needs.
Under relentless pressure, classical economics has become all but a relic of a bygone era. Yet the work of classical economists most likely holds the solution to today's economic ills. It seems many journalists have become subject to the same blindness that Palmer has found in scientists.
In this world of uncertainty, of knowing who to trust, I believe the ABC is wonderfully placed to pursue pluralism with increased enthusiasm and authority so that we accommodate as many voices as are readily available to us.
As the chairman of a taxpayer-funded national broadcaster, I realise that I may be criticised as someone who is sheltered from the cut and thrust of day to day commercial life. I can assure you that I am no stranger to that, but perhaps not having to answer to shareholders every six months allows me the luxury of reflection and distance that pursuing profits may preclude. While the ABC is fortunate still to rate highly on the trust factor, we are not immune, nor should we be, from public scrutiny. Like everyone else in the media business, we must honour the compact we have with our audiences. Once lost, trust may never be recovered, which is why I care so much about our performance.
Partisanship may well become the dominant model within the media in years to come, yet by our insistence on maintaining a public, pluralist presence, pluralism itself ultimately will prevail.
SOURCE
Australians are asset rich
Our incomes are not among the highest but we own lots of valuable stuff -- mainly real estate. Poorer Americans tend to live in trailers (caravans). Very few Australians do, mainly a few retirees
AUSTRALIANS are the world's wealthiest people on a median basis and second in the world behind Switzerland on an average basis, according to a new report.
The Credit Suisse report also notes the European sovereign debt crisis is not expected to stop a new generation of millionaires emerging in the next five years, with the greatest wealth growth likely to occur in the booming Asia-Pacific.
On a median measure Australian adults are worth nearly $US221,704 ($217,559), nearly four times the amount of each US adult. The proportion of Australian adults worth more than $US100,000 is eight times the global average.
The high wealth rate in Australia is attributed to the strong Australian dollar, property ownership levels and a robust labour market. Australia also has one of the highest home ownership rates in the world, with property making up about 65 per cent of consumers' wealth.
The Credit Suisse Global Wealth report shows worldwide wealth is estimated at $US231 trillion and is forecast to hit $US314 trillion by 2016, despite the current market upheaval. The report says there are 27.9 million millionaires in the world, of which Australia accounts for 4 per cent.
Credit Suisse forecasts that number will reach 45.6 million in the next five years with the greatest growth to come from China. It is estimated that the world's fastest-growing economy now has 1.01 million millionaires and that could rise to 2.4 million as the nation's industrialisation and urbanisation continues.
SOURCE
Barrister Tony Morris says Queensland Health faces greater crisis than Jayant Patel affair
THE man who led the original Bundaberg Hospital inquiry says Queensland Health faces "its greatest crisis" - far more serious for patient outcomes than the Jayant Patel fiasco.
Barrister Tony Morris's assessment comes as the state's health system battles more than 4000 work bans imposed by hospital support workers in their fight for higher pay.
Mr Morris, QC, whose 2005 inquiry was cut short after accusations of bias, writes in today's print edition of The Courier-Mail that Queensland Health should brace for resignations unless something is done urgently to address "gross pay discrepancies".
"Queensland Health is facing its greatest crisis - one far more serious, in terms of health outcomes, than the recent payroll debacle; more serious than the Jayant Patel fiasco," Mr Morris, QC, writes.
Queensland Health Deputy Director-General John Cairns yesterday said the industrial action varied at each site, with non-urgent elective surgery having to be cancelled at some public hospitals.
"Across the state, there are 4303 work bans in place," Mr Cairns said.
Unions representing about 30,000 hospital workers are threatening to ramp up their industrial action with more bans from tomorrow, including a refusal to take blood from patients in non-emergency situations.
But Alex Scott, the secretary of Queensland public sector union Together, last night said members were hopeful 11th-hour negotiations with Queensland Health would resolve the dispute. "We haven't exhausted all options and we're trying to do whatever we can to avoid any action that will impact on patient care," he said.
The Bligh Government has offered the workers a 2.5 per cent-a-year pay rise over the next three years, but unions are angry this does not keep up with inflation.
Mr Cairns said that if employees were prepared to introduce "realistic productivity measures", the savings could be passed on in the form of increases above 7.5 per cent. "Without these productivity measures, union claims for increases above 7.5 per cent over three years will impact on our ability to fund ... patient services," he said.
Acting Premier Andrew Fraser said he was confident the dispute would be resolved soon, with no disruption to patients. "Patient safety is the priority here," he said. "We want to reach an agreement where we can pay our health workers a pay rise that's responsible for the budget and responsible for the economy."
SOURCE
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Doctor chides fussy women
The men will just get themselves an Asian lady while Miss fusspot crosses her arms and legs. Have a look around at the number of tall Australian men with an Asian lady on their arm. There are going to be a lot of "old maids" in Australia in the future, and they won't be Asian
INSTEAD of freezing their eggs for social reasons, such as waiting for their Prince Charming, women in their 20s and 30s should consider settling for Mr Not-Quite-Right, an IVF specialist says.
Director of Monash IVF, Professor Gab Kovacs, says women shouldn't be conned into thinking egg-freezing offers a guaranteed family in the fridge, The Age reports.
He says the rate of successful births from egg freezing is low and the technology is still improving.
"I think they should be working harder to find a partner or changing their criteria for Mr Right," Professor Kovacs said.
"Maybe there is no Mr Right and you have to settle for Mr Not-Too-Bad. There is no such thing as a perfect person for anybody, and even if they're perfect now, they won't be perfect in five or 10 years time."
SOURCE
Toughen deterrent for boats
Philip Ruddock
Philip Ruddock endorses a return to temporary protection visas and the use of the Nauru processing centre. Source: The Daily Telegraph
THE architect of the Pacific Solution, Philip Ruddock, said the steps taken by the Howard government after the Tampa crisis would not by themselves work a second time round, and additional deterrents would be required to stop the boats.
As figures from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees confirmed a 19 per cent drop in asylum seeker arrivals in the first six months of this year, the long-serving Liberal MP indicated that boatpeople arriving under a future Coalition government could expect much tougher treatment.
The former immigration minister endorsed the existing Coalition policy proposals, such as a return to temporary protection visas and the reopening of the Nauru processing centre, saying they were effective.
But, he said, more forceful measures, particularly in returning failed asylum-seekers to their home countries, may be required.
"It's going to require a lot more effort than any of the measures that are being spoken of at the moment," Mr Ruddock said. "You're going to have to use all of the measures that we used, then you'd be looking around to see what more you could do."
Mr Ruddock's comments align with views expressed by immigration officials that too much information was now public about how the Pacific Solution worked -- including that most refugees on Nauru ended up in Australia and that all bearers of TPVs ultimately ended up with permanent visas -- for the same measures to be as effective a second time round.
They also reflect a view in the opposition that any future Coalition government would probably face a hostile parliament opposed to new laws, requiring it to carry out its promise to stop the boats in a much narrower legal framework.
Mr Ruddock accused Labor of "trashing" co-operative relationships with key countries, such as Indonesia, which had been bruised by the Rudd government's handling of the 2009 Oceanic Viking stand-off.
"A number of measures necessary would be much easier for a Coalition government to pursue than this government," he said. "In my view, the big difference that is going to have to be pursued vigorously is the return of rejected asylum-seekers."
Since 2008 just 252 people -- or 2.1 per cent -- of the 11,994 asylum-seekers who have arrived have been returned to their home country.
The UNCHR said yesterday asylum arrivals in Australia for the first six months of this year were down 19 per cent, compared with last year, bucking an international average 17 per cent rise across industrialised countries. Despite the drop, both sides of politics expect boat arrivals will rise following the demise of offshore processing.
In August the High Court ruled the government's plan to deport 800 asylum-seekers to Malaysia in return for 4000 proven refugees did not comply with the Migration Act.
There is a general view that Nauru is more likely to meet the court's test, but that is arguable.
The court's ruling has been widely discussed in Coalition ranks, with most talk centring on whether reopening Nauru would pass the court's new test. Asking Nauru to change its laws and staffing the centre with Australian officers to ensure the court's stipulations are adhered to are among the options.
Yesterday, opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said a much tougher TPV regime was also essential, with the visas issued for between six months and three years.
SOURCE
Employers want HSC geared to workforce
THE last two years of high school need to be rethought to better engage and prepare the three in four school leavers who are not headed to university, according to a review by the NSW Business Chamber.
Praising the NSW government's scrapping of the "out-dated" school certificate, the chamber said it presents the opportunity for a much wider-ranging review of years 11 and 12.
Specifically, the chamber is seeking more core subjects for the HSC, better quality vocational courses and minimum standards for literacy and numeracy.
"The business community has a vested interest in the education system providing the right training for young people. We want young adults, when they finish their education, to have developed the skills they need to succeed in the workforce," Paul Orton, the chamber's director of policy and advocacy, said.
"Frankly, this area is too important for the state government to accept the status quo. Now is the time to have a serious community debate about how we are performing as a state in helping senior secondary students prepare for life after school.
"The last time we reviewed the HSC was in the mid-1990s at a time when very few, if any, students had even seen or been on the internet."
A blueprint, Could Do Better, will be discussed at a roundtable of key stakeholders in Parramatta tomorrow.
The primary focus is to lift the rigour, breadth and quality of vocational courses offered within the school system. The blueprint says core subjects for the HSC should include subjects such as numeracy, personal development and career planning. The number and capacity of senior colleges, and the range of subject choices available to high school students, should also be expanded.
Tom Alegounarias, the president of the NSW Board of Studies, said he was keen to listen to employers but defended the HSC as a rigorous credential that serves students and business well.
"The challenge we are facing is to ensure that every student can operate at a very high level of literacy and numeracy. This reflects the changing nature of the Australian economy, and education needs to be responsive to it," he said.
"Literacy and numeracy are inherent in being able to do the HSC but employers are looking for more explicit recognition and we are looking to respond to that."
The chamber is looking for more seamless progression between entering the final years of schooling and emerging into the labour market with a trade or significant qualification. Nine out of 10 16- and 17-year-old students enrolled in a vocational program are taking courses the chamber says will not lead to a qualification "adequate for a 21st century labour market".
The blueprint argues that what is learnt needs to lead to a qualification that is valued in the labour market. "Young people in senior high school need to be treated as young adults rather than as young children, and have a learning environment that reflects this," it says.
Mr Orton said university graduates are vital, particularly those with higher level degrees. "But let's do a better job for those who don't go to university," he said.
"We don't want them doing time, so to speak. It would be much better for them to get as much out of it as they can so that they are better equipped for whatever they choose to do."
SOURCE
Australia's future does not lie in "making things"
Do you sometimes worry about Australia becoming a place that doesn't "make things" any more? Let me lighten your load. Kevin Rudd used to worry about such things. In his first press conference as opposition leader in 2006, Rudd stressed he wanted to be the prime minister of "a country that actually makes things".
Today a high dollar is putting extra pressure on manufacturers while also making it cheaper for us to import things that other countries have made.
It is undoubtedly true that only a small proportion of us are engaged in making "things". Just 8 per cent of working Australians are employed in manufacturing, down from 26 per cent in 1966. Meanwhile, the proportion working in the services sector has risen by 54 per cent to 77 per cent.
More broadly, the proportion of employees working in what the Bureau of Statistics classes "production industries", including agriculture, forestry, mining, manufacturing, electricity, gas and construction, has halved from 46 per cent to 23 per cent.
In between we've largely outsourced the making of things to nimble hands abroad who will do it for less. Is that such a bad thing?
An increasingly globalised economy has not only given Australian consumers access to cheaper products, but to a wider variety of goods for purchase - Japanese cars, Korean TVs, Belgian chocolates, you name it.
The benefits to consumers of increasing trade and specialisation are often overlooked. Millions of consumers have less in common and less cause to rally than smaller groups of people employed in declining industries.
It is understandable and entirely predictable that manufacturers and the people they employ should lobby hard to save their jobs. And they have powerful representatives in unions and Federal Parliament to make their case.
But perhaps part of the reason we're not making things as much is that we're not buying things as much. Retail spending here is growing at its slowest annual pace in decades. National accounts figures show annual spending on recreation and culture is up 7 per cent and spending on hotels, cafes and restaurants up 6 per cent. We're spending more on experiences and less on stuff.
Why? Partly it's a symptom of our success. Recreation and household services are what economists call "normal goods"; that is, we tend to buy more of them when incomes rise and they come to make up a higher proportion of our total spending. Overseas holidays are normal goods, while bus tickets are "inferior goods"; we tend to buy them less when incomes rise.
The growing role of women in the workforce, while initially boosting demand for manufactured, labour-saving devices such as fridges and washing machines, has also boosted demand for domestic service employees, such as cleaners and childcare workers. These jobs are not so easily sent offshore.
When the Bureau of Statistics began conducting household surveys about people's employment in the 1960s, the most commonly reported occupation sector was "tradesman, production process workers and labourers". Today, it's "professionals". Now, more than ever, Australians make a living from the agility of our minds rather than the nimbleness of our bodies.
If you want to worry about the future of jobs growth, spend less time worrying about protecting declining industries and more time worrying about the fact that Australian government spending on higher education as a proportion of gross domestic product is one of the lowest of all member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
SOURCE
The men will just get themselves an Asian lady while Miss fusspot crosses her arms and legs. Have a look around at the number of tall Australian men with an Asian lady on their arm. There are going to be a lot of "old maids" in Australia in the future, and they won't be Asian
INSTEAD of freezing their eggs for social reasons, such as waiting for their Prince Charming, women in their 20s and 30s should consider settling for Mr Not-Quite-Right, an IVF specialist says.
Director of Monash IVF, Professor Gab Kovacs, says women shouldn't be conned into thinking egg-freezing offers a guaranteed family in the fridge, The Age reports.
He says the rate of successful births from egg freezing is low and the technology is still improving.
"I think they should be working harder to find a partner or changing their criteria for Mr Right," Professor Kovacs said.
"Maybe there is no Mr Right and you have to settle for Mr Not-Too-Bad. There is no such thing as a perfect person for anybody, and even if they're perfect now, they won't be perfect in five or 10 years time."
SOURCE
Toughen deterrent for boats
Philip Ruddock
Philip Ruddock endorses a return to temporary protection visas and the use of the Nauru processing centre. Source: The Daily Telegraph
THE architect of the Pacific Solution, Philip Ruddock, said the steps taken by the Howard government after the Tampa crisis would not by themselves work a second time round, and additional deterrents would be required to stop the boats.
As figures from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees confirmed a 19 per cent drop in asylum seeker arrivals in the first six months of this year, the long-serving Liberal MP indicated that boatpeople arriving under a future Coalition government could expect much tougher treatment.
The former immigration minister endorsed the existing Coalition policy proposals, such as a return to temporary protection visas and the reopening of the Nauru processing centre, saying they were effective.
But, he said, more forceful measures, particularly in returning failed asylum-seekers to their home countries, may be required.
"It's going to require a lot more effort than any of the measures that are being spoken of at the moment," Mr Ruddock said. "You're going to have to use all of the measures that we used, then you'd be looking around to see what more you could do."
Mr Ruddock's comments align with views expressed by immigration officials that too much information was now public about how the Pacific Solution worked -- including that most refugees on Nauru ended up in Australia and that all bearers of TPVs ultimately ended up with permanent visas -- for the same measures to be as effective a second time round.
They also reflect a view in the opposition that any future Coalition government would probably face a hostile parliament opposed to new laws, requiring it to carry out its promise to stop the boats in a much narrower legal framework.
Mr Ruddock accused Labor of "trashing" co-operative relationships with key countries, such as Indonesia, which had been bruised by the Rudd government's handling of the 2009 Oceanic Viking stand-off.
"A number of measures necessary would be much easier for a Coalition government to pursue than this government," he said. "In my view, the big difference that is going to have to be pursued vigorously is the return of rejected asylum-seekers."
Since 2008 just 252 people -- or 2.1 per cent -- of the 11,994 asylum-seekers who have arrived have been returned to their home country.
The UNCHR said yesterday asylum arrivals in Australia for the first six months of this year were down 19 per cent, compared with last year, bucking an international average 17 per cent rise across industrialised countries. Despite the drop, both sides of politics expect boat arrivals will rise following the demise of offshore processing.
In August the High Court ruled the government's plan to deport 800 asylum-seekers to Malaysia in return for 4000 proven refugees did not comply with the Migration Act.
There is a general view that Nauru is more likely to meet the court's test, but that is arguable.
The court's ruling has been widely discussed in Coalition ranks, with most talk centring on whether reopening Nauru would pass the court's new test. Asking Nauru to change its laws and staffing the centre with Australian officers to ensure the court's stipulations are adhered to are among the options.
Yesterday, opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said a much tougher TPV regime was also essential, with the visas issued for between six months and three years.
SOURCE
Employers want HSC geared to workforce
THE last two years of high school need to be rethought to better engage and prepare the three in four school leavers who are not headed to university, according to a review by the NSW Business Chamber.
Praising the NSW government's scrapping of the "out-dated" school certificate, the chamber said it presents the opportunity for a much wider-ranging review of years 11 and 12.
Specifically, the chamber is seeking more core subjects for the HSC, better quality vocational courses and minimum standards for literacy and numeracy.
"The business community has a vested interest in the education system providing the right training for young people. We want young adults, when they finish their education, to have developed the skills they need to succeed in the workforce," Paul Orton, the chamber's director of policy and advocacy, said.
"Frankly, this area is too important for the state government to accept the status quo. Now is the time to have a serious community debate about how we are performing as a state in helping senior secondary students prepare for life after school.
"The last time we reviewed the HSC was in the mid-1990s at a time when very few, if any, students had even seen or been on the internet."
A blueprint, Could Do Better, will be discussed at a roundtable of key stakeholders in Parramatta tomorrow.
The primary focus is to lift the rigour, breadth and quality of vocational courses offered within the school system. The blueprint says core subjects for the HSC should include subjects such as numeracy, personal development and career planning. The number and capacity of senior colleges, and the range of subject choices available to high school students, should also be expanded.
Tom Alegounarias, the president of the NSW Board of Studies, said he was keen to listen to employers but defended the HSC as a rigorous credential that serves students and business well.
"The challenge we are facing is to ensure that every student can operate at a very high level of literacy and numeracy. This reflects the changing nature of the Australian economy, and education needs to be responsive to it," he said.
"Literacy and numeracy are inherent in being able to do the HSC but employers are looking for more explicit recognition and we are looking to respond to that."
The chamber is looking for more seamless progression between entering the final years of schooling and emerging into the labour market with a trade or significant qualification. Nine out of 10 16- and 17-year-old students enrolled in a vocational program are taking courses the chamber says will not lead to a qualification "adequate for a 21st century labour market".
The blueprint argues that what is learnt needs to lead to a qualification that is valued in the labour market. "Young people in senior high school need to be treated as young adults rather than as young children, and have a learning environment that reflects this," it says.
Mr Orton said university graduates are vital, particularly those with higher level degrees. "But let's do a better job for those who don't go to university," he said.
"We don't want them doing time, so to speak. It would be much better for them to get as much out of it as they can so that they are better equipped for whatever they choose to do."
SOURCE
Australia's future does not lie in "making things"
Do you sometimes worry about Australia becoming a place that doesn't "make things" any more? Let me lighten your load. Kevin Rudd used to worry about such things. In his first press conference as opposition leader in 2006, Rudd stressed he wanted to be the prime minister of "a country that actually makes things".
Today a high dollar is putting extra pressure on manufacturers while also making it cheaper for us to import things that other countries have made.
It is undoubtedly true that only a small proportion of us are engaged in making "things". Just 8 per cent of working Australians are employed in manufacturing, down from 26 per cent in 1966. Meanwhile, the proportion working in the services sector has risen by 54 per cent to 77 per cent.
More broadly, the proportion of employees working in what the Bureau of Statistics classes "production industries", including agriculture, forestry, mining, manufacturing, electricity, gas and construction, has halved from 46 per cent to 23 per cent.
In between we've largely outsourced the making of things to nimble hands abroad who will do it for less. Is that such a bad thing?
An increasingly globalised economy has not only given Australian consumers access to cheaper products, but to a wider variety of goods for purchase - Japanese cars, Korean TVs, Belgian chocolates, you name it.
The benefits to consumers of increasing trade and specialisation are often overlooked. Millions of consumers have less in common and less cause to rally than smaller groups of people employed in declining industries.
It is understandable and entirely predictable that manufacturers and the people they employ should lobby hard to save their jobs. And they have powerful representatives in unions and Federal Parliament to make their case.
But perhaps part of the reason we're not making things as much is that we're not buying things as much. Retail spending here is growing at its slowest annual pace in decades. National accounts figures show annual spending on recreation and culture is up 7 per cent and spending on hotels, cafes and restaurants up 6 per cent. We're spending more on experiences and less on stuff.
Why? Partly it's a symptom of our success. Recreation and household services are what economists call "normal goods"; that is, we tend to buy more of them when incomes rise and they come to make up a higher proportion of our total spending. Overseas holidays are normal goods, while bus tickets are "inferior goods"; we tend to buy them less when incomes rise.
The growing role of women in the workforce, while initially boosting demand for manufactured, labour-saving devices such as fridges and washing machines, has also boosted demand for domestic service employees, such as cleaners and childcare workers. These jobs are not so easily sent offshore.
When the Bureau of Statistics began conducting household surveys about people's employment in the 1960s, the most commonly reported occupation sector was "tradesman, production process workers and labourers". Today, it's "professionals". Now, more than ever, Australians make a living from the agility of our minds rather than the nimbleness of our bodies.
If you want to worry about the future of jobs growth, spend less time worrying about protecting declining industries and more time worrying about the fact that Australian government spending on higher education as a proportion of gross domestic product is one of the lowest of all member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
SOURCE
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
'Domus' gets Aussie visitors into the spirit of a Roman holiday
CARDINAL George Pell and most of Australia's Catholic bishops gathered in Rome yesterday to celebrate the opening of a visitor refuge that they hope will help turn ordinary Australian tourists into religious pilgrims.
About 60,000 Australians visit Rome each year. Cardinal Pell said he believed that the new Australia House, or "Domus Australia", should encourage many of them to focus on the religious aspects of Rome while lifting the church's profile in Australia and Australia's profile in the Vatican.
Valued by informal estimates at about $30 million, the new centre houses a 32-room hotel, a pilgrim information centre and a 115-year-old chapel that has been totally renovated and fitted out with paintings of early Australian Catholic leaders and symbols, including a large Australian coat of arms above the altar.
To the side of the altar is a painting of St Mary MacKillop standing beneath the Southern Cross, and the base of the ceremonial lectern or "ampo" is adorned with three moulded kangaroos.
On the first anniversary of St Mary's canonisation, Cardinal Pell yesterday celebrated a mass with 36 Australian bishops to consecrate the chapel's new altar.
He placed inside it relics of St Mary, Australia's first saint, Pope Pius V and St Peter Chanel, a Marist priest and missionary who was killed by Pacific islanders in the 19th century.
Expressing confidence that the new centre would be financed by renting rooms to tourists, Cardinal Pell said he would be shocked if the facility, in central Rome, could not pay its own way.
"I once said in a moment of rashness that Blind Freddy could make a bob out of this and I think we will be able to," he said.
"It is not an exercise in philanthropy.
"It is like setting up a parish in Rome and parishes have to be self-sufficient so certainly this house has to be self-sufficient. That is the ambition."
Led by Cardinal Pell's Sydney archdiocese, the creation of the centre from a run-down training facility for Marist priests was funded by a combination of loans, private donations and contributions from the archdioceses of Sydney, Melbourne and Perth and the diocese of Lismore.
The Australian bishops were in Rome for a five-yearly meeting at the Vatican.
The Pope is due to open the centre, on the Via Cernaia about 4km east of the Vatican, on Thursday morning (AEDT).
Cardinal Pell, whose own coat of arms adorns the chapel wall, was the driving force behind the project, beginning his search for a suitable site eight years ago.
He will use an apartment in the building as his base in Rome.
The first pilgrim centres in Rome were founded more than 1000 years ago, Cardinal Pell said, but in an era of the cheapest ever foreign travel, it made sense to have a national base for the large number of Australian visitors.
SOURCE
Huge volume of complaints about government hospitals in Queensland
LIFE-SAVING improvements to Queensland's health system are being delayed years because the sector's standards watchdog has been swamped processing complaints.
The Health Quality and Complaints Commission has just seven full-time investigators and last year it had to process almost 5000 complaints.
The watchdog has warned the huge number of complaints from the public is straining its "limited'' investigation resources.
The Courier-Mail understands some investigations are taking years to be resolved.
The revelations come at the same time as frontline Queensland Health staff continue to vent their frustrations over what they claim is a huge imbalance between doctors and nurses and managerial and clerical staff.
Last year, the State Opposition also revealed the number of spin doctors in the crisis-prone organisation had soared to 60.
The independent HQCC was set up by the State Government in 2006 after the Dr Jayant Patel controversy to recommend action to boost the safety and quality of health care for Queenslanders.
The HQCC launched 38 investigations in 2006-2007 and took on 83 in 2010-2011.
Almost 5000 complaints were received in the year ending June 30 an increase of 10 per cent with 58 per cent levelled at public hospitals. Inadequate treatment was the key concern.
Most investigations in the serious category take a minimum of 18 months, but The Courier-Mail understands some are blowing out by years.
The HQCC has 75 staff, including seven full-time investigators and one part-timer who each juggle 10 cases.
The watchdog's total operational budget has remained steady at just under $11 million a year.
In its latest report, it said the number of "serious and systemic healthcare issues" coming to its attention was putting pressure on its "limited investigation resources".
Mooloolah parents Andrew and Trudy Olive lost their four-year-old son, Tom, after an emergency department ordeal at Nambour Hospital on August 25, 2010. With no doctor on hand, a student nurse attended the boy with faulty equipment. Mr Olive was forced to start CPR on his dying son when medical staff failed to notice Tom's heart had stopped. The HQCC launched a formal investigation into Tom's treatment and informed the Olives that medical staff would be interviewed.
The results are expected to be handed to the State Coroner to consider whether an inquest should be held.
"We believe the HQCC investigation could take up to three years, because they are so busy," Mr Olive said. "Surely, there are no higher stakes than people's lives. We have this mechanism to improve health services and drive change, but it's far too slow. If something is going wrong, don't we want to find out as quickly as possible?"
HQCC chief executive Adjunct Professor Cheryl Herbert confirmed nine investigations were yet to be finalised, having run for 12 months or longer.
Mrs Herbert said these investigations were inherently more complex, and involved multiple witnesses, clinical opinions and legal/medical indemnity providers all of which could extend the investigation process.
"We are currently reviewing the composition of the investigations team as part of a broader operational review. This is likely to result in an increase in staffing in the investigations team," she said.
Mrs Herbert said the HQCC had previously sought additional funding for staff, including investigations officers, through the Cabinet Budget Review Committee process (2008 and 2009). These funding submissions were unsuccessful.
SOURCE
The huge cost and poor performance of "made in Australia" defence equipment
The defence bureaucracy don't have a clue -- which will be no news to most diggers
AUSTRALIA'S Collins Class submarines are more than twice as costly to operate as US Navy nuclear submarines. New figures obtained by The Advertiser show the six Collins boats cost about $630 million a year or $105 million each to maintain, making them the most expensive ever put to sea.
At present, just two of the fleet of six boats could go to war and with a maximum of three available at any one time, the costs are even higher when applied to serviceability.
The annual price for "sustainment" (maintenance and support) is $415.9 million for 2011-12, with operating costs (fuel, rations, wages, weapons) running at $213.4 million.
By comparison, a US Navy Ohio Class nuclear attack submarine, which is more than three times the size of a Collins boat, costs about $50 million a year.
The disturbing cost figures come as Defence officials revealed that at least two possible contenders for the navy's new submarine fleet, the Spanish S-80 and French-Spanish Scorpene class boat, have been ruled out of the future submarine project.
Answering questions on notice from Opposition spokesman David Johnston, Defence said both vessels did not meet "Australia's broad needs as outlined in the Defence White Paper". They are smaller than the Collins and the White Paper calls for 12 larger submarines to cost up to $36 billion.
In 2008, an embarrassed navy brass ceased to report on the performance of the Collins fleet in the Defence annual report. The 2007-08 performance outcome for the Collins fleet showed that it achieved just 64 per cent of its mission capability or 559 days of actual availability.
Since then the figures have been classified as "secret", but assuming a similar outcome then sustainment and maintenance of the subs now cost taxpayers a total of $1,643,835 a day for the six vessels or $273,972 a day each. With only two or three available for duty that cost blows out to more than $500,000 a day.
Senator Johnston accused the Government and Defence Minister Stephen Smith of taking their eye off the ball when it came to the submarines. A decision on the direction of the future submarine project is due to be made late this year or early in 2012.
SOURCE
Another big government computer bungle
When will they learn to buy off the shelf?
THE Baillieu government has frozen work on a major computer project involving Victoria Police and VicRoads after the state IT agency, CenITex, blew its budget by $20 million. The agency, which was set up to centralise IT services across the public sector, now faces an uncertain future, with a review to examine its governance and finances and whether it can achieve its aims.
New work will now have to be found for some of CenITex's highly paid external consultants, some of whom get the equivalent of up to $500,000 per year — more than the Premier. "They are in trouble [and] they can't get their act together," a source close to the project told Fairfax Media.
Aiming to save public money by consolidating email, help desk services and internal systems for more than 40,000 computers, CenITex spends $220million each year. Its 269 contractors account for more than a third of its workforce.
In July, the government called in police and sacked six contractors after two CenITex staff allegedly awarded themselves a tender that led to work worth $1.5 million.
Critics of Cenitex claim it is captive to private contractors who are more interested in profits than public sector performance. But its supporters say private contractors are complaining because if CenITex succeeds, there will be less work for consultants.
"There's an endless queue of people lining up Collins Street, waiting for the opportunity to put the boot in [to CenITex], and it's all because by and large it doesn't suit their interests," said IT analyst Steve Hodgkinson. He said the agency wasn't perfect, but all governments struggled with similar tasks.
CenITex chief executive Michael Vanderheide wrote to each government department last week, saying all "transfer related work" is on hold, pending a review by the State Services Authority.
The review will also cover staff morale. A former worker said: "Staff are overworked and poorly supported... [they] live under fear and the imposed threat of what might happen if they ask questions."
A senior CenITex insider denied there were major problems, saying: "Everybody's doing reviews and the government is doing nothing."
Some within CenITex believe it needs more funding to cope with Victoria Police and VicRoads, which handle sensitive data and need more expensive computer security.
CenITex was about to begin merging other department systems with those used by VicRoads and Victoria Police. Now every department head will be asked for their view of CenITex's governance and service delivery.
A major shake-up or revamp is possible, as Fairfax understands CenITex board members have not been told whether their appointments will be renewed beyond next year.
SOURCE
CARDINAL George Pell and most of Australia's Catholic bishops gathered in Rome yesterday to celebrate the opening of a visitor refuge that they hope will help turn ordinary Australian tourists into religious pilgrims.
About 60,000 Australians visit Rome each year. Cardinal Pell said he believed that the new Australia House, or "Domus Australia", should encourage many of them to focus on the religious aspects of Rome while lifting the church's profile in Australia and Australia's profile in the Vatican.
Valued by informal estimates at about $30 million, the new centre houses a 32-room hotel, a pilgrim information centre and a 115-year-old chapel that has been totally renovated and fitted out with paintings of early Australian Catholic leaders and symbols, including a large Australian coat of arms above the altar.
To the side of the altar is a painting of St Mary MacKillop standing beneath the Southern Cross, and the base of the ceremonial lectern or "ampo" is adorned with three moulded kangaroos.
On the first anniversary of St Mary's canonisation, Cardinal Pell yesterday celebrated a mass with 36 Australian bishops to consecrate the chapel's new altar.
He placed inside it relics of St Mary, Australia's first saint, Pope Pius V and St Peter Chanel, a Marist priest and missionary who was killed by Pacific islanders in the 19th century.
Expressing confidence that the new centre would be financed by renting rooms to tourists, Cardinal Pell said he would be shocked if the facility, in central Rome, could not pay its own way.
"I once said in a moment of rashness that Blind Freddy could make a bob out of this and I think we will be able to," he said.
"It is not an exercise in philanthropy.
"It is like setting up a parish in Rome and parishes have to be self-sufficient so certainly this house has to be self-sufficient. That is the ambition."
Led by Cardinal Pell's Sydney archdiocese, the creation of the centre from a run-down training facility for Marist priests was funded by a combination of loans, private donations and contributions from the archdioceses of Sydney, Melbourne and Perth and the diocese of Lismore.
The Australian bishops were in Rome for a five-yearly meeting at the Vatican.
The Pope is due to open the centre, on the Via Cernaia about 4km east of the Vatican, on Thursday morning (AEDT).
Cardinal Pell, whose own coat of arms adorns the chapel wall, was the driving force behind the project, beginning his search for a suitable site eight years ago.
He will use an apartment in the building as his base in Rome.
The first pilgrim centres in Rome were founded more than 1000 years ago, Cardinal Pell said, but in an era of the cheapest ever foreign travel, it made sense to have a national base for the large number of Australian visitors.
SOURCE
Huge volume of complaints about government hospitals in Queensland
LIFE-SAVING improvements to Queensland's health system are being delayed years because the sector's standards watchdog has been swamped processing complaints.
The Health Quality and Complaints Commission has just seven full-time investigators and last year it had to process almost 5000 complaints.
The watchdog has warned the huge number of complaints from the public is straining its "limited'' investigation resources.
The Courier-Mail understands some investigations are taking years to be resolved.
The revelations come at the same time as frontline Queensland Health staff continue to vent their frustrations over what they claim is a huge imbalance between doctors and nurses and managerial and clerical staff.
Last year, the State Opposition also revealed the number of spin doctors in the crisis-prone organisation had soared to 60.
The independent HQCC was set up by the State Government in 2006 after the Dr Jayant Patel controversy to recommend action to boost the safety and quality of health care for Queenslanders.
The HQCC launched 38 investigations in 2006-2007 and took on 83 in 2010-2011.
Almost 5000 complaints were received in the year ending June 30 an increase of 10 per cent with 58 per cent levelled at public hospitals. Inadequate treatment was the key concern.
Most investigations in the serious category take a minimum of 18 months, but The Courier-Mail understands some are blowing out by years.
The HQCC has 75 staff, including seven full-time investigators and one part-timer who each juggle 10 cases.
The watchdog's total operational budget has remained steady at just under $11 million a year.
In its latest report, it said the number of "serious and systemic healthcare issues" coming to its attention was putting pressure on its "limited investigation resources".
Mooloolah parents Andrew and Trudy Olive lost their four-year-old son, Tom, after an emergency department ordeal at Nambour Hospital on August 25, 2010. With no doctor on hand, a student nurse attended the boy with faulty equipment. Mr Olive was forced to start CPR on his dying son when medical staff failed to notice Tom's heart had stopped. The HQCC launched a formal investigation into Tom's treatment and informed the Olives that medical staff would be interviewed.
The results are expected to be handed to the State Coroner to consider whether an inquest should be held.
"We believe the HQCC investigation could take up to three years, because they are so busy," Mr Olive said. "Surely, there are no higher stakes than people's lives. We have this mechanism to improve health services and drive change, but it's far too slow. If something is going wrong, don't we want to find out as quickly as possible?"
HQCC chief executive Adjunct Professor Cheryl Herbert confirmed nine investigations were yet to be finalised, having run for 12 months or longer.
Mrs Herbert said these investigations were inherently more complex, and involved multiple witnesses, clinical opinions and legal/medical indemnity providers all of which could extend the investigation process.
"We are currently reviewing the composition of the investigations team as part of a broader operational review. This is likely to result in an increase in staffing in the investigations team," she said.
Mrs Herbert said the HQCC had previously sought additional funding for staff, including investigations officers, through the Cabinet Budget Review Committee process (2008 and 2009). These funding submissions were unsuccessful.
SOURCE
The huge cost and poor performance of "made in Australia" defence equipment
The defence bureaucracy don't have a clue -- which will be no news to most diggers
AUSTRALIA'S Collins Class submarines are more than twice as costly to operate as US Navy nuclear submarines. New figures obtained by The Advertiser show the six Collins boats cost about $630 million a year or $105 million each to maintain, making them the most expensive ever put to sea.
At present, just two of the fleet of six boats could go to war and with a maximum of three available at any one time, the costs are even higher when applied to serviceability.
The annual price for "sustainment" (maintenance and support) is $415.9 million for 2011-12, with operating costs (fuel, rations, wages, weapons) running at $213.4 million.
By comparison, a US Navy Ohio Class nuclear attack submarine, which is more than three times the size of a Collins boat, costs about $50 million a year.
The disturbing cost figures come as Defence officials revealed that at least two possible contenders for the navy's new submarine fleet, the Spanish S-80 and French-Spanish Scorpene class boat, have been ruled out of the future submarine project.
Answering questions on notice from Opposition spokesman David Johnston, Defence said both vessels did not meet "Australia's broad needs as outlined in the Defence White Paper". They are smaller than the Collins and the White Paper calls for 12 larger submarines to cost up to $36 billion.
In 2008, an embarrassed navy brass ceased to report on the performance of the Collins fleet in the Defence annual report. The 2007-08 performance outcome for the Collins fleet showed that it achieved just 64 per cent of its mission capability or 559 days of actual availability.
Since then the figures have been classified as "secret", but assuming a similar outcome then sustainment and maintenance of the subs now cost taxpayers a total of $1,643,835 a day for the six vessels or $273,972 a day each. With only two or three available for duty that cost blows out to more than $500,000 a day.
Senator Johnston accused the Government and Defence Minister Stephen Smith of taking their eye off the ball when it came to the submarines. A decision on the direction of the future submarine project is due to be made late this year or early in 2012.
SOURCE
Another big government computer bungle
When will they learn to buy off the shelf?
THE Baillieu government has frozen work on a major computer project involving Victoria Police and VicRoads after the state IT agency, CenITex, blew its budget by $20 million. The agency, which was set up to centralise IT services across the public sector, now faces an uncertain future, with a review to examine its governance and finances and whether it can achieve its aims.
New work will now have to be found for some of CenITex's highly paid external consultants, some of whom get the equivalent of up to $500,000 per year — more than the Premier. "They are in trouble [and] they can't get their act together," a source close to the project told Fairfax Media.
Aiming to save public money by consolidating email, help desk services and internal systems for more than 40,000 computers, CenITex spends $220million each year. Its 269 contractors account for more than a third of its workforce.
In July, the government called in police and sacked six contractors after two CenITex staff allegedly awarded themselves a tender that led to work worth $1.5 million.
Critics of Cenitex claim it is captive to private contractors who are more interested in profits than public sector performance. But its supporters say private contractors are complaining because if CenITex succeeds, there will be less work for consultants.
"There's an endless queue of people lining up Collins Street, waiting for the opportunity to put the boot in [to CenITex], and it's all because by and large it doesn't suit their interests," said IT analyst Steve Hodgkinson. He said the agency wasn't perfect, but all governments struggled with similar tasks.
CenITex chief executive Michael Vanderheide wrote to each government department last week, saying all "transfer related work" is on hold, pending a review by the State Services Authority.
The review will also cover staff morale. A former worker said: "Staff are overworked and poorly supported... [they] live under fear and the imposed threat of what might happen if they ask questions."
A senior CenITex insider denied there were major problems, saying: "Everybody's doing reviews and the government is doing nothing."
Some within CenITex believe it needs more funding to cope with Victoria Police and VicRoads, which handle sensitive data and need more expensive computer security.
CenITex was about to begin merging other department systems with those used by VicRoads and Victoria Police. Now every department head will be asked for their view of CenITex's governance and service delivery.
A major shake-up or revamp is possible, as Fairfax understands CenITex board members have not been told whether their appointments will be renewed beyond next year.
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
