Gillard … Resurrects DEATH Duties By Stealth with New TAX!

Well DEATH DUTIES folks is making a comeback it seems as the Labor government under madam Julia and The Greens now seek to bring this back. But in a very sneaky and typically underhanded way, they will not be directly hitting us when we die.  No.

They will be attacking our second largest asset – our superannuation fund!

Under Income Tax Ruling TR 2011/03 when a person dies having a superannuation account, the Australian Tax Office will seek to assess the underlying assets of a superannuation fund for Capital Gains Tax on top of any lump sum tax that will be payable at least at 15% plus medicare.

This effectively implies that your superannuation fund death benefit could by the time this goes to your family be short of up to as much as 40% of your account balance.

So I went to the source, Labors own website to remind myself of those words….Labor Values and I read and of course reflected on their own words.

This government according to Madam Julia “ I’m the best person for this job” Gillard states on Labors Website that:

“ Australia’s superannuation system is unique and provided an important source of finance for Australian businesses during the global financial crisis. But we need to ensure our superannuation savings are enough to provide a secure and dignified retirement to working Australians in the future.”

So I ask simply – why thieve money we have saved for our retirement and ultimately our family with this death tax ? – How simply disgusting and cruel is this thought bubble.

Surely we should be allowed to leave our hard earned asset, for most of us this is our second largest asset to our family.

While perusing the slogans of Labor via their own website on the topic of retirement, it says:

“The Government will increase the superannuation guarantee to 12 per cent. This is expected to benefit around 8.4 million employees. The Government will also extend the superannuation guarantee to cover older workers up to age 75.”

The fact is that a 33% rise in superannuation payments does not come magically from the government.  It comes from the small business owners who are struggling to survive.  If costs increase to business, jobs will be lost.

Also the reason why the government has extended coverage to older Aussies is simply because many are struggling to make ends meet and are back in the workforce at such a late stage in life because the bills are getting larger than the age pension affords them and as a veiled admission of this governments incompetence in pursuit of a Carbon Tax, they also realize that many older folk will be hit hard by such an abhorrent tax which is the largest of its type on Planet Earth.

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'Cairns hospital system has let patients down'

PATIENTS suffering acute heart failure were among almost 50 emergency attendees waiting on stretchers outside Cairns Base Hospital for more than two hours, a three-month snapshot of ambulance ramping at the facility reveals.

A 59-year-old suffering acute cardiac failure waited almost three hours to be admitted to the Emergency Department in March because there was no available bed, documents obtained by The Cairns Post under Right to Information laws show.

A 100-year-old with heart failure waited more than an hour in May.

Craig Crawford, FNQ state councillor for Queensland's ambulance employees union United Voice, said the cases highlight the dangerous strain on the hospital and the failure of the system to provide timely care for critical patients.

"Two hours is quite an alarming time to be waiting, especially if the reason for you being there is for any cardiac problem," he said.  "The system has let them down."

The documents show almost 60 patients were ramped outside the hospital ED between March 1 and June 1 of this year, waiting between an hour to almost eight hours to be admitted.

Ten patients waited more than two hours with either chest pain or cardiac failure.

An 81-year-old stroke victim also waited more than two hours on a stretcher in May.

"Code Black", the term used to describe ambulances being ramped outside the ED, was called at the hospital every day – and most days multiple times – between March 22 and March 27.

Cairns anaesthetist and Together Queensland union vice-president, Dr Sandy Donald, said the critical patient levels at the hospital demonstrated the need for increased "surge capacity".  "You have to be able to deal with the urgent workload," he said.

The snapshot of the ED comes after hospital management last month revealed the facility was regularly at critical patient levels and was struggling to cope with a 15 per cent increase in admissions to the ED in the past year.

Earlier this year, a 12-bed unit was opened in the former oncology unit to relieve pressure on the ED.

Cairns and Hinterland Health Service acting CEO Mary Streatfield said a team began working this month to identify ways to boost efficiency and improve patient care at the hospital.

Ms Streatfield said a new patient flow management program would also be implemented soon.

"Staff at the Cairns Base Hospital are committed to improving emergency department wait times and patient flow to meet increased demand," she said.

Figures for last month show 50 per cent of ED patients across all five categories waited 17 minutes for treatment, and the most critical patients waited less than a minute.

Under sweeping reforms to reduce ramping, hospital management must implement major procedural changes in the ED by January 1 next year.

The reforms are based on 15 recommendations contained in a Queensland Health-commissioned report on ramping, which Health Minister Lawrence Springborg last month promised to adopt.

Under the reforms, all state hospitals will be banned from returning assessed patients to ambulances to wait for an emergency bed, and patients must also be handed over from paramedics to hospital staff within 30 minutes of their
arrival.

The reforms also call for improved processes to discharge sub-acute patients to free up in-patient hospital beds.

Health board chairman Bob Norman has said a contributing factor was that at any one time there were 20 to 30 patients not needing acute care but waiting for disability services or nursing homes.

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Top Queensland cops face Newman Government axe to bolster frontline

A THIRD of Queensland Police Service's top brass is in the firing line as the State Government looks at new ways to save money and get more officers on the frontline.

The Courier-Mail understands an internal review found 143 police officers ranked inspector or above were superfluous and could be shed by restructure or natural attrition.

Of about 10,600 officers in the Queensland Police Service, more than 400 are commissioned officers after 63 more were promoted last year.

Their ranks include Inspector and Superintendent, whereas the Commissioner and his deputies and assistants are ranked as executive officers, of which there were about a dozen.

The Queensland Police Commissioned Officers Union president John Pointing said if the Government did proceed with such a huge cull, it would adversely affect service delivery.

"In this brave new world, if they're going to shed these vast numbers, we'd like to be involved so we know whether now we're focused on productivity as opposed to process," he said.

"I hope any decisions they make are evidence- based, not a dollar figure.

"We've got people all over Queensland and they've got families. We'd hope to be engaged very early to minimise the impact on the families." Commissioned officers' responsibilities are the buffer between the rank and file police, who deliver frontline services, and the senior executive.

Mr Pointing said their importance was widely recognised post-Fitzgerald and his members were almost exclusively very experienced officers.

"It seems to us to be a breach of trust; the Government promised to increase police on the frontline and when you have more workers, you need more supervision," he said. "If these positions are removed we won't be able to provide that high-level overview.

"Historically there's been an unwritten agreement that the number of commissioned officers would be 4 per cent of the entire service.

"Inspectors inspect the work of the police to make sure it's done properly."

Mr Pointing said in many cases his members were the ones who ensured service policy was executed to the letter of the law and acted as the conduit to other government departments, as well as running service programs such as crime prevention, DrinkSafe projects and overseeing internal integrity investigations.

The Queensland Police Union said it was also aware of the review.

"While this is very concerning as it's promotional opportunities for police, we will hold discussions with government in coming months," president Ian Leavers said.

A spokesman for Police Minister Jack Dempsey didn't rule out the proposal, only saying that a review was under way into QPS but it wouldn't be completed until the end of the year.

"He will not be making any decisions about it until then,'' he said.


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Huge bills run up for travel and luxuries by bloated railway bureaucracy

Great that a lot of them are now being made redundant

TAXPAYERS footed the bill for travel bags, clothing and even an umbrella so top executives at Queensland Rail could travel comfortably overseas.

Credit card records of the government-owned corporation's top bureaucrats, obtained under Right to Information laws, have detailed the high-flying life enjoyed by the fat cats.

Under former chief executive Paul Scurrah, senior bosses spent more than $100,000 on lunches, dinners and catering, and on one occasion bought up $406 worth of alcohol for a network planning and strategy meeting.

Among the trips taken were a jaunt to London to meet with Queensland Rail's insurer, a European tour taking in Luxembourg, Madrid, Amsterdam, Zurich and Vienna, a visit to the US for a training course and a speaking engagement in Singapore.

The items executives claimed ahead of these trips included a coat, scarf, gloves and umbrella totalling $514.83, a Trent Nathan travel bag costing $299, and $67.85 worth of travel goods from Zelows.

Travel kits, carry bags, iPhone accessories and toiletries were also charged to taxpayers, and one executive successfully claimed a $750 set of tailor-made multi-focal lenses.

Monthly personal training sessions at $38 each were part of the executives' salary package, said acting chief executive Jim Benstead.

Despite being entitled to free train travel, the executives made good use of taxis, even catching cabs between Central and South Bank stations.

Almost all meetings were catered for with coffee, sandwiches, fruit, biscuits or cashews, and executives regularly dined at Brisbane's top hotels and restaurants including the Hilton, the Sofitel, the Port Office, Il Centro, Sono and Zen Bar.

Transport Minister Scott Emerson said in his opinion, many of the expenses and purchases under Labor "were wasteful and would shock many train users".

"Former transport minister Annastacia Palaszczuk wasn't focused on running an affordable, reliable and frequent rail network," Mr Emerson said.

"Shortly after coming to government, Queensland Rail was told to reduce this type of spending and waste.

"As a result they have found $42 million in consumable savings this year."

The Government is also slashing the executive structure, reducing the number of senior bosses from 77 to 32.

Mr Benstead said his leadership team was well aware that all expenditure would be closely scrutinised.

He conceded some of the items charged to taxpayers would not necessarily be expenditure he would consider appropriate for approval.

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'Hateful' Islam critic Geert Wilders wants visa to speak in Australia

If the views of Mr Wilders are "hateful and divisive", what do we call the views of the violent Muslim demonstrators in Sydney recently?  If Mr Wilders is not fit to be here, what of the demonstrators?

A DUTCH MP who is a outspoken critic of Islam is seeking a visa to visit Australia for a speaking tour next month.

Geert Wilders, who has compared the Koran to Hitler's Mein Kampf, has been invited by the Q Society to give speeches in Melbourne and Sydney.

The Federal Government has not yet made a decision but Multicultural Affairs Minister Kate Lundy described Mr Wilders as "an extreme-right politician promulgating views that are out of step with mainstream Australia".

Mr Wilders, who calls Islam "a retarded culture" is on an international immigration movement red-alert list. The Immigration Department is still considering the case and has not yet presented it to Immigration Minister Chris Bowen.

Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi, who is Tony Abbott's parliamentary secretary, has previously supported a bid by Mr Wilders to visit on the grounds of free speech. He said he was not involved in organising any proposed visit but asked on what grounds should a democratically elected member of a foreign parliament be denied a visa.

Victorian Greens Senator Richard Di Natale criticised Mr Wilders. "His hateful and divisive views are not welcome in Australia, but to deny him a visa risks giving him more oxygen and publicity," he said.

Mr Wilders was refused a visa to enter the UK, but appealed and won.

Q Society vice president of community relations Andrew Horwood said his organisation was not political or religious and sought to educate people about Islam and uphold Australian values. Critics call it anti-Muslim.

Mr Horwood said after last weekend's Islamic riot in Sydney it was timely for Mr Wilders to "offer advice about Islam and we need to listen and take note".

He said Mr Wilders had been waiting three weeks for a visa and asked why the government was able to "process visas for Islamic hot heads in a hurry, but leave MPs from friendly European nations hang out to dry".

He sent a letter to supporters calling on them to urge Mr Bowen to approve the visa.

Mr Bowen defended granting a visa to British Muslim leader Taji Mustafa saying he was not on any alert list, not a member of a proscribed terrorist organisation and had no criminal convictions. He said the Howard government had not banned his organisation Hizb ut Tahrir despite the Opposition now calling him a hate preacher.

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Federal MPs say no to gay marriage

GAY marriage advocates have urged supporters to "maintain their rage" after federal Parliament delivered a crushing defeat of proposed changes to the law.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and former party leaders Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull all voted against same-sex marriage as it was beaten in the House of Representatives by 98 votes to 42.

It came as Mr Abbott sacked Senator Cory Bernardi as his parliamentary secretary after he commented that the push for gay marriage could lead to legalising bestiality and polygamy.

Senator Bernardi told the Senate the "next step" after gay marriage could be "creepy people" who want "consensual sexual relations between humans and animals".

He said: "In the future will we say, 'These two creatures love each other and maybe they should be able to be joined in a union?'."

Mr Turnbull, who supports gay marriage but voted against it because Coalition frontbenchers did not have a free vote on the issue, blasted Senator Bernardi's comments as hysterical, alarmist and offensive.

Mr Abbott said Senator Bernardi had been "ill-disciplined" but was a "decent bloke with strong opinions".

He said after a fairly forthright discussion Senator Bernardi offered his resignation and he accepted it because it was crucial the Opposition be a "strong and disciplined Coalition".

Labor MP Stephen Jones, who sponsored the Bill to change the Marriage Act, urged supporters to "maintain your rage" and predicted he would be attending gay weddings within 10 years.

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Time-wasting red tape leads to exodus of childcare managers

CHILDCARE centre managers are quitting because new regulations are creating unnecessary red tape.

The industry says it fears the exodus could force inexperienced people into management roles, leading to untrained workers caring for children.

The Advertiser has been told some centres have closed, meaning parents will be forced to put their children into unregulated care.

Managers are reporting the new national guidelines, introduced at the start of the year, require them to go above and beyond a normal carer's duty.

The increased red tape means managers are spending the majority of their time filling out paperwork to meet targets and worrying about legal implications of the new rules - rather than the core job of caring for children.

Childcare SA president Barb Langford told The Advertiser she knew of at least six managers who had quit because the new regulations, designed to promote the safety, health and wellbeing of children, were making their job too complicated.  "A lot of the good managers of centres are leaving the industry and saying this is all too hard," she said.

Ms Langford said she had heard of numerous childcare centres closing. "They could see that things were going to get really highly regulated and difficult to maintain so they sold up."

United Voice SA branch secretary David Di Troia said the sector was in trouble. "With 180 educators leaving the sector each week, early childhood education is in crisis."

Goodwood Community Childcare Centre director Lisa Corigliano said she spent hours in the office ensuring guidelines were met.  "We want to just sit and play for a while and enjoy our children (but) a lot of time is taken up with recording, evaluating and doing all that."

Federal Child Care Minister Kate Ellis said centre managers were not required to fill out additional documentation under the new system.

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University of Qld. still on the nose

They are still trying to cover something up

GOVERNANCE reforms at the University of Queensland are to come under fresh scrutiny, with two outsiders appointed to conduct an "independent review" of UQ's moves to clean up its act.

But the move immediately faced accusations that the review was premature and being done by the wrong people.

Vice-Chancellor Debbie Terry said former Wollongong Uni boss Gerard Sutton AO and former Queensland Liberal leader Dr David Watson would report in November on UQ's progress in improving its integrity and accountability in the wake of last year's admissions "irregularity".

Professor Terry announced a package of governance reforms in May after her predecessor Paul Greenfield and his deputy were ousted in a nepotism scandal involving a close relative of Professor Greenfield's.

But public sector ethics expert Howard Whitton said it was an "extraordinary" step.  "What are they reviewing?" he asked.  "They've only just put the reform mechanisms in place. You've got to let it sit for 12 months at least."

Mr Whitton, an adviser to the Commonwealth on whistleblower laws, also questioned the choice of Professor Sutton and Dr Watson, particularly whether Dr Watson would be seen as independent.

He noted that Dr Watson is a former member of the finance committee of the UQ Senate and chairs the board of the Translational Research Institute, a $200 million facility under construction at Princess Alexandra Hospital, where Prof Terry is also a board member, representing UQ.

Prof Terry responded by saying TRI was "a separate entity with its own governance and management structures and processes - therefore there is no conflict of interest between Dr Watson's role as independent chair of the TRI board and his role in supporting Professor Sutton".

Prof Terry also announced the appointment of an associate director, investigations.

In June, UQ made redundant its respected former chief misconduct investigator, Phil Procopis, who was the first to inform the Chancellor, John Story, about the Greenfield matter.

UQ has never disclosed what it found during its investigation into the nepotism scandal, conducted by barrister Tim Carmody SC.

The Crime and Misconduct Commission earlier this year launched separate probes of UQ's handling of that matter and its misconduct investigations in general. It has since passed a brief of evidence to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

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Big brother is watching you -- even at the beach

Surf Life Saving Australia says unmanned aerial drones will patrol some Queensland beaches this summer.  The organisation's head, Brett Williamson, says the drones will be used on North Stradbroke Island in a trial of the technology.

He has told Radio National's Background Briefing program the drones, which have a wingspan of one metre, use cameras to search for swimmers in distress.

Mr Williamson says the drones will be fitted with flotation buoys that can be dropped down to the ocean.

"[Drones] have also been fitted with a siren so if nothing else the UAVs flying along the coast and either sees somebody in trouble or a group potentially in trouble or if there's marine life, dangerous marine life such as sharks or whatever in the area, the siren can be sounded," he said.

Mr Williamson says he would like to see the trial expanded nationally to provide surveillance of remote beaches.

He says he does not think flying surveillance drones over secluded beaches will intrude on people's privacy.  "At the end of the day this is about public safety," he said.

"It's not about intruding on anybody's privacy and, fortunately, with our experience of having the fixed cameras network we haven't had one problem or one complaint or one operator that hasn't operated in strict accordance with those protocols that we have in place."

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End the boatpeople-Welfare cycle

Judith Sloan

FREE-market economists support free trade in goods and services. Free-market economists also support the free movement of capital and labour. But free-market economists warn against the corrosive and adverse effects of government-provided income support and welfare services on people's incentives to participate in the labour market and to improve their economic lot through their own efforts.

I fit comfortably into the category of free-market economist. Not surprisingly, I find the following comment of one of the doyens of free-market economics, Nobel Prize winner Professor Gary Becker, very persuasive.

"Since I am a free-trader, readers might expect my preferred alternative to the present system (of controlled migration to the US) to be 19th-century-style unlimited immigration. I would support that if we lived in the 19th-century world where government spending was tiny. But governments now spend huge amounts on medical care, retirement, education and other benefits and entitlements. Experience demonstrates that, in our political system, it is impossible to prevent immigrants gaining access to these benefits."

This comment applies no less to Australia. Immigrants, particularly those entering under the humanitarian visa (refugee) category, are attracted to Australia in part because of the generous safety net provided by governments. Free health care, free education, income support - these sorts of luxuries are potent magnets for refugees when seeking another country in which to live. It is a form of welfare arbitrage - safety from persecution with the additional advantage of a raft of government-provided benefits.

No doubt, I will be accused at this point of being heartless and ignorant. Surely refugees bring all sorts of economic benefits to Australia and these should form part of the equation when devising the size of the humanitarian quota. After all, refugees have shown determination to leave their homelands and, in the case of those who arrive by boat, to hand over money to people-smugglers to expedite their permanent entry to Australia. Does this sort of energetic resolve not correlate with subsequent economic success in Australia?

Sadly, the figures point to the exact opposite. They show that refugees have very low rates of labour force participation and extremely high rates of welfare dependence, even years after being granted permanent residence. And these figures are the official ones - admittedly released without fanfare - of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

The report, Settlement Outcomes of New Arrivals: Report of findings, was released last year by the department. The report's bland title is a give-away - vacuous, alliterative titles for government reports are virtually de rigueur these days. (Think: Smarter Manufacturing for a Smarter Australia.) The results on settlement outcomes are ugly.

Using the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia, the research describes the position of the three key groups of migrants five years after settlement: skilled, family and humanitarian.

In keeping with the findings of previous research, it is absolutely clear that refugees fare very badly in terms of employment and financial self-sufficiency. And note that this study was conducted during a period of low overall unemployment.

For example, the employment rate of humanitarian migrants from Afghanistan was recorded at only 9 per cent - note this is not the unemployment rate - five years after settlement and nearly 94 per cent of households from Afghanistan received Centrelink payments.

According to the report, "Afghans have a different settlement experience compared with most other cultural groups, such as having poorer English skills and lower qualifications levels. Yet they are more likely to borrow money, obtain mortgages and experience difficulties in paying them."

Those from Iraq did little better, with 12 per cent employed and 93 per cent of households in receipt of Centrelink payments. Interestingly, those who did best in the humanitarian group were from Central and West African countries such as Sierra Leone.

Note that these refugees are the least likely to have arrived by boat.

For the sake of typical bureaucratic "balance", the report notes that "given that we are exploring only the first five years of settlement in this study, [The low proportion in employment] is not a surprising result as many humanitarian entrants are strongly focused on creating a new life, and studying for a qualification is an important step in this journey".

But the comparisons with those entering under the other visa categories - and who are also focused on creating a new life - are stark.

Whereas the overall proportion of humanitarian migrant households in receipt of Centrelink payment was 85 per cent, the figure for the family group was 38 per cent and 28 per cent for the skilled group.

In other words, humanitarian migrant households were three times more likely to receive Centrelink payments than skilled migrant households, five years after settlement. (Note that skilled migrants are not entitled to receive Centrelink payments for the first two years of their residence.) Moreover, skilled migrants were more than five times likely to be in employment than refugees.

So how should policy-makers interpret these results?

The first point to note is that there must be a strict limit to the numbers allowed to enter under the humanitarian visa category given the drain on public finances.

The fact that the numbers were kept at about 13,750 for so long probably is a reflection of this reality. The recent increase in the quota to 20,000 is likely to cause an additional strain on both the federal and state budgets.

The second point is to open the debate about whether a portion of the humanitarian intake should be reserved for those prepared to pay a bond to obtain permanent residence.

Indeed, this has been suggested by Gary Becker. "Given these realities of free immigration, the best alternative to the present system is charging a price that clears the market. That is why I believe countries should sell the right to immigrate."

We have clear evidence that some refugees are prepared to pay people-smugglers to facilitate a speedy entry to Australia.

It therefore seems an obvious policy alternative to allocate a certain number of humanitarian places to proven refugees who are prepared to pay and/or forgo welfare benefits for a period of time.

There is clearly not a particularly strong correlation between refugee status and ability to pay, given the numbers of refugees who have paid people-smugglers to reach Australia.

Surely it would be preferable that this money is paid to the Australian government, rather than to people-smugglers offering travel on rickety boats.

The money raised could be used to benefit refugees who cannot pay.

In the light of the arrival of over 2000 asylum-seekers by boat since the government announced the change of policy to deter boat arrivals - a policy which looks set to fail - there is a clear and urgent case for some lateral thinking.

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The charter school revolution comes to Australia

They're charter schools in the USA and academies in Britain but the concept is the same:  Escaping the educational bureaucracy and the teachers' unions

QUEENSLAND'S first Independent Public Schools have been announced, heralding a new and potentially controversial era in state education.

Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek said 26 schools had been chosen for the first round of Independent Public Schools, which would be given more autonomy than their state counterparts.

Only 30 schools applied for 30 available positions, with just 26 granted, after the Queensland Teachers' Union "strongly" advised principals not to take part.

The QTU had threatened industrial action earlier this year and warned it could create a two-tier state school system turning hard-to-staff schools into impossible-to-staff schools.

Under the changes, principals gain the power to recruit all staff, control their budget and school councils can liaise directly with local industry.

Mr Langbroek said he believed local school communities, parents, teachers and principals knew what was best for their children.

"Independent Public Schools will have the freedom to directly recruit teachers and to build a team that is able to deliver innovative educational practices and have more autonomy to manage infrastructure and financial resources," Mr Langbroek said.

Each school gets $50,000 to assist with the change and an extra $50,000 in funding each year for administration.

"I have no doubt that after the first year, when these 26 schools have experienced the benefits of greater autonomy, we'll see many more schools come forward to become Independent Public Schools," Mr Langbroek said.

Palm Beach Currumbin State High executive principal Stephen Loggie said IPS would enable their excellence programs in academic, cultural and sporting areas to grow.

"It gives them their opportunity to evolve to the next level because IPS removes some of the red tape around the way schools are run and it gives more power to the local community to make decisions that are in their interest," he said.

The 26 include the flagship Brisbane State High School, School of Excellence Palm Beach Currumbin High and Kirwan and Smithfield state high schools in north Queensland.

Primary schools include Ashgrove, Miles, Aldridge, Banksia Beach and McDowall state schools, and Tagai State College in the Torres Strait.

The program will extend to 120 schools over four years.

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Corruption at the CSIRO

Given their stance on global warming, funding trumps all other  concerns

TWO of three CSIRO employees who blew the whistle on alleged "criminal or civil breaches of the law" by the scientific organisation were later made redundant, it has been revealed.
But those officials who were the subject of the complaints remain employed, the CSIRO has confirmed.

The details have emerged after a group of former CSIRO employees began a campaign for a change in culture at the science agency, alleging mismanagement and bullying are rife.

Last Thursday, a parliamentary inquiry examining workplace bullying in Commonwealth agencies published the group's submission. It claims the group is aware of 60 cases involving top-flight scientists and other officials who were bullied or otherwise forced out of the organisation.

This list has names on it such as Maarten Stapper, a soil scientist allegedly pushed out because of his criticism of genetically modified crops, globally recognised oceanographer Trevor McDougall, and award-winning entomologist Sylwester Chyb, who has begun litigation against the CSIRO for misleading conduct and unlawful termination.

The CSIRO has declined to respond to the allegations, but the group says some of those forced out had tried to report misconduct or maladministration. Among the group's recommendations is improved protection for whistleblowers.

"Current whistleblower legislation does not adequately protect from persecution those making public interest declarations," the document says. "This is particularly true in circumstances in which it is hard to identify a direct link between a whistleblower complaint and subsequent, seemingly unrelated adverse action against the employee in his or her workplace."

The organisation is also grappling with a spike in the damages it has had to pay as a result of occupational health and safety claims made to the Commonwealth OH&S regulator and insurer, Comcare. The increased costs of the claims has meant that the premiums Comcare charges the CSIRO have nearly tripled from $1.9 million in 2011-12 to $4.9 million this financial year.

"The CSIRO has consistently achieved lower than average claim frequency and claim cost but has had an upward trend in the average cost of its claims," a Comcare spokesman, Russ Street, said.

At a budget estimates hearing in May, the Tasmanian senator David Bushby asked the CSIRO about its handling of whistleblower complaints and those who made them. In answers provided last month, the organisation confirmed two complaints were lodged in 2010 and one in 2008, all of which made serious allegations about unlawful activity.

But while the CSIRO did not retrench any of those against whom allegations were made, it did retrench the complainants.

"One CSIRO employee, who had lodged a whistleblower complaint on March 10, 2008, was made redundant on August 23, 2010, as there was an insufficient volume of current and projected work to sustain the position," the CSIRO said.

"A second employee, who lodged a whistleblower complaint on February 23, 2010, was made redundant on September 4, 2011 as CSIRO no longer required the job be performed by anyone because of changes in the operational requirements of CSIRO's enterprise."

A CSIRO spokesman, Huw Morgan, declined to describe the nature of the allegations made by the whistleblowers, saying it could help reveal their identities.

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Sex education from as young as 9 in Australian schools

CHILDREN will be taught to "recognise sexual feelings" from age 11 or 12 under a new national physical education curriculum criticised by religious schools.

Physical, social and emotional changes of puberty will be taught in Years 5 and 6, when children are as young as nine and 10.

But Catholic educators have forced the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority to back down from its plan to explain puberty to children as young as seven, over concerns the kids might "freak out".

ACARA had wanted puberty as a topic to be introduced in Years 3 and 4.

Guidelines for the first national curriculum on health and physical education reveal a shift from a focus on sport and fitness, to the politically correct topics of "gender, sexuality, culture, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and psycho-social environments".

The subjects of "sexual and gender identity" and "managing intimate relationships" will be included in the new curriculum, which will be drawn up in detail during the next 12 months.

Sexuality will be explored in Years 7 and 8 when some students are still only 11 or 12 years old as they "learn to recognise sexual feelings and evaluate behavioural expectations for different social situations".

But ACARA had to delay the puberty sessions after education groups raised concerns.

"Respondents from the Catholic education sectors considered the inclusion of content related to puberty in Years 3 and 4 as inappropriate," ACARA states in a summary of educators' feedback to its earlier draft guidelines.

The final guidelines will be used by education experts to write the detailed curriculum that will be drawn up by a group of education experts during the next 12 months.

Australian Medical Association president Steve Hambleton said it was rare for Australian children to hit puberty before the age of 11 or 12.

"(Teaching it in) Years 3 and 4 does seem to be a bit early," he said yesterday.  "They're still out playing hide and seek."

Dr Hambleton said talking to children about puberty and sex was "best done by family", although it was important children did not hear it in the playground first.

Council of Catholic School Parents executive director Danielle Cronin said classroom lessons on puberty could "really freak kids out".

"It's quite confronting, and it can be distressing enough in Years 5 and 6, so Years 3 and 4 are probably a bit too early, especially if you want to avoid them being freaked out," she said yesterday.

An ACARA spokesman said children in Years 3 and 4 would still be taught about body changes but ACARA had "made a shift in the language as a result of concerns".

"The community will have further opportunities to provide feedback on the Health and Physical Education curriculum as it moves through the development process," the ACARA spokesman said.

He said Catholic schools had not been the only educators to object, but would not give more details.

The final guidelines have removed the reference to puberty but state that Year 3 and 4 students "develop and apply the knowledge, understanding and skills to manage the physical, emotional and social changes they begin to experience during this stage of life."

National Catholic Education Commission chairwoman Therese Temby said Catholic schools would take part in ACARA's drafting of the new curriculum.

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Australia seen as too risky, costly for mining companies

MINING companies find the Australian resources sector too tough and too complicated for developing projects compared with its major competitors, according to a global survey of 300 senior industry leaders by Baker & McKenzie.

It's claimed that last week's increase in Queensland coal royalties has only added to the perception of Australia as a high-cost and high-risk investment destination.

Baker & McKenzie also suggested companies may now try to force governments into mine-specific agreements on taxes and charges. The report suggested that senior executives in Australia were more pessimistic about the future of mining investment in this country than those investing in the other jurisdictions surveyed.

About 75 per cent said that investing in the mining sector was more complicated and costly because of increasing red tape and environmental obligations, complex and uncertain project development requirements and the rising costs of mine development and operation.

The survey coincided with a report from the Minerals Council which said the majority of thermal coal developments were at risk and those in other countries had a competitive advantage on cost.

"Each year the completion date of the average Australian coal project is delayed by three to four months," the council said.

It also found that in aluminium, Australia could not compete with the 60 to 80 per cent cost advantage of China.

The Baker & McKenzie report said the level of Commonwealth and state government involvement in the Australian mining industry was also causing concern to investors.

About 60 per cent of respondents said the government was too involved in the industry, and 72 per cent said sovereign risk was on the increase.

Baker & McKenzie global head of mining David Ryan said Australia needed to look much more seriously at the issues impacting the competitiveness of the industry.

"Getting a project across the line in this country is now harder than it should be," he said. "If we want to remain globally competitive and continue to attract investment in the mining industry, we need to look at reducing the complexity of mining regulation and sovereign risk, otherwise we risk companies deploying their capital elsewhere.

"We have already seen a number of high-profile projects shelved in recent weeks. Much of this is due to falling commodity prices and the high Australian dollar."

Mr Ryan said there was a need for a clearer process for project approvals and a more uniform approach to mining regulation across the Australian states and territories.

"Mining is an industry which involves large up-front capital investments and long project lives," he said.

"Investors crave certainty, and miners need more certainty regarding the application of taxes and royalties and land-use restrictions."

While investors were comforted by Australia's security of tenement rights, political stability and enforcement of contracts, the country was still seen by some investors as a greater sovereign risk than Indonesia or South Africa.

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Multiculturalism still has a long road to travel to reach all in Australia

There was much intimidation and considerable violence to and from the Muslim demonstration outside the United States consulate in Sydney on Saturday. The banners included such messages as "Behead Those Who Insult Islam!!!" and "Obama, Obama, We Love Osama!!!". But what was of particular interest was the destination.

Perhaps it is understandable angry Muslims in the Middle East or Africa would demonstrate outside American diplomatic missions against the apparent circulation of a YouTube video mocking the Prophet Muhammad by a person based in the US. There is no such excuse for Australian Muslims.

Citizens and residents of Australia know we live in a democratic society in which the government does not, and mostly cannot, engage in acts of political and religious censorship. That's why Americans have not been able to get the cheap film deleted from the web. And that's why footage of beheadings of non-believers by Islamist extremists remain on the web.

Some Muslim leaders in Australia have condemned Saturday's violent demonstration in which several members of the NSW Police were injured. Others have not. Whatever the response of Muslims, the incident provides yet more evidence that multiculturalism - after a promising start - has failed. If some Australian Muslims do not understand how democracy works, it's time for a rethink.

Some contributors to the debate ran the familiar left-liberal line that, when a small minority get violent, it is not entirely their own fault. Yesterday the Monash University academic Waleed Aly criticised the demonstrators but then went on to refer to the plight of a "humiliated people" who are angry about "the West's disrespect for Islam".

Last year, Aly made a similar point about al-Qaeda's attacks on the US on September 11, 2001. Writing in The Sun-Herald on the 10th anniversary, Aly commented that "it is worth considering how we got sucked into contributing to the process".

Get it? Somehow or other, the West contributed to al-Qaeda's attacks on the US in which Christians, Jews, Hindus and Muslims died. Even though this occurred before the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Interviewed about Saturday's demonstration on ABC Radio 702 yesterday, Aly criticised only one person by name: Tony Abbott. No surprise there - since Aly is on record as claiming the Opposition Leader "embraces a reactionary form of monoculturalism". If Aly were just another leftist academic, this would not matter much. It's just that he presents the influential ABC RN Drive program.

Paolo Totaro, the foundation chairman of the NSW Ethnic Affairs Commission, weighed in with a not dissimilar rationalisation. According to Totaro, "if we have children in the streets calling for beheadings, the fault is not of multiculturalism, but of those - all of us - who have not taught, in enough depth, the democratic values of multiculturalism". In other words, don't blame the advocates of arbitrary beheadings. Blame us all, instead.

Mohammed El-leissy, the Melbourne-based Muslim community worker, had a somewhat different take. He told the ABC Breakfast program yesterday: "When I looked at the footage coming out of Sydney, I didn't really see young Muslims. I saw a lot of angry men from Lakemba … I don't believe in the argument that multiculturalism has failed; I certainly believe that Lakemba has failed". He called for more services.

Most Muslims have settled well in Australia. The notable exception involves some of the Muslim Lebanese who were given special privileges by Malcolm Fraser to settle in Australia around 1976 under what was called the "Lebanon Concession", and their descendants. Much of this group is based in Lakemba. As El-leissy has pointed out, "quite a lot of them have very low employment and a huge lack of education". Some other Muslims identify with this group's alienation.

Where El-leissy's analysis falls down is his solutions. All Muslims in Australia came here voluntarily and/or were born here. All have experienced the generous education, health and welfare benefits available to Australians. The rest of the country are not responsible for any alienation that they feel. Such anger will not be dissipated by the provision of more taxpayer-funded services.

It doesn't matter if the disaffected in a democracy are Catholic-born members of the Irish Republican Army or Muslim-born supporters of bin Laden. If a radicalised group in a Western society does not accept democracy and engages in terrorism or violence, there is only one response. It's over to the police to enforce the law with the assistance, where necessary, of the intelligence services. Then it's up to the judicial system.

Australia is a viable democracy in which virtually all groups have prospered, including the vast majority of Muslims. If last Saturday's demonstrators don't appreciate this, tough. It is not our fault.

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The Australian Labor Party's  'Pacific Solution' now relocating illegals to Nauru


A PLANELOAD of Sri Lankan boat people is expected to land on Nauru today as the Labor Party’s reinvigoration of the so-called "Pacific Solution" gathers pace.

The new arrivals, the second group to go to Nauru since Labor reopened the John Howard-era detention centre on the tiny Pacific island, were expected to touch down shortly after 7am (5am Australian time).

Like the 30 Tamils who arrived on Friday, they will be  taken by bus to the 500-person capacity tent city in the sweltering middle of the island, where they will be hemmed in by thick jungle, the island’s rubbish tip and a rock quarry.

With the Australian Army almost finished building the tent city and with the Christmas Island detention centre already exceeding its capacity due to an influx of boats  this year, today’s arrivals will soon be followed by more. Indeed a boat carrying 10 people was detected off West Australia’s coast last night.

Another planeload of several dozen Tamils are expected later this week, and the first group of Afghan Hazaras early next week. By then the camp will house more than 150 asylum seekers.
Some of those 150 may also turn out to be women, children or whole families, as Immigration Minister Chris Bowenlast week told a press conference that "you can expect to see a broad cross-section of people transferred to Nauru next week and in coming weeks".

Despite promises by Mr Bowen that Labor’s system on Nauru would involve a processing centre, not a detention camp, the site’s inhabitants are forbidden from leaving.

A Nauruan government spokesman, Rod Henshaw, said on ABC radio that the situation was a "period of settling in".

"I know the Nauru government is anxious to have them settled and, over a period of time, to give them the privileges of wandering around."

He said he hoped the asylum seekers would be free to leave the camp in weeks or a month. "I couldn’t put a time on it ... but that is the objective, [to give the asylum seekers] the freedom of the island to some degree."

Questions also continue to be asked about the decision to process the refugee claims under Nauruan law. Last week the regional head of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, Rick Towle, said that Australia was handing over legal responsibility for people seeking asylum in that country.

Some  have  expressed concern that Australia may disagree with a refugee approval made under Nauruan law and refuse to take the person, meaning they can’t be returned to their country or resettled in Australia.

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$A now a reserve currency

Because of Australia's  well-run banks and low level of public debt,  both of which were set in train by the conservative Howard government.  For some background on that see here

UP TO 23 central banks from around the globe have included Australian dollar assets in their foreign exchange reserves, underlining the wide appeal the currency holds among overseas investors.

In a sign this interest goes beyond major trading partners, central banks that hold the dollar range from the National Bank of Kazakhstan to Sweden's Sveriges Riksbank, an internal Reserve Bank document shows.

The document, released yesterday under Freedom of Information laws, said 15 central banks held Aussie dollar assets and a further eight could possibly be holding the currency. Some of the larger institutions holding the dollar include Germany's Bundesbank and the central banks of Switzerland, Hong Kong and Russia.

Central banks that may have invested in the dollar include those of Indonesia, Iceland, Jordan and Moldova, the document said.

Central banks, which have historically invested heavily in euros and US dollars, are looking to diversify in response to the dour outlook in these economies.

Chief currency strategist at Westpac, Robert Rennie, said Australia's AAA credit rating and strong economic outlook was an attractive combination for investors, when compared with many other nations.

"It's entirely logical that central banks are looking away from the traditional US dollar and euro cores in their portfolios," he said.

Such strong interest among foreign investors is one reason for the dollar's resilience despite a weaker economic outlook and falling commodity prices, economists say.

Foreigners held 77 per cent of Australia's $245 billion government debt in the June quarter, just below a record 79 per cent in March.

In a separate document, written in April and released yesterday, Chris Potter from the Reserve's international department wrote: "The apparent preference shift and resulting portfolio shift of foreign investors towards Australian dollar government securities has increased Australian dollar demand."

Yesterday's documents, released after an FOI request from Bloomberg News, also show the bank has been examining if the dollar may be overvalued - a complaint of some manufacturing employers and unions.

A briefing titled "Is the Australian Dollar Overvalued?" was prepared in February, but was redacted except for a comment that "strong $A demand from foreign central bank purchases" had supported the currency.

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Can internet "trolls" be regulated?

I have copped plenty of abuse online but I just regard it as an amusing comment on the inadequacy of the abuser.  Why DO people take the stuff seriously?  Maybe if you've got a weak ego ....

I do answer abuse with abuse sometimes but mostly I ignore it and that is the last I hear of it

Threats of physical harm are quite a different matter from abuse,  however.  Most threats  are probably empty but all should be prosecuted in my view, as doing so could prevent  real harm -- JR

"Trolling is extremely fun," explained one, identified to the Herald only as Apples212.  "I've been trolling my whole life, ever since I can remember. It's extremely relaxing, as all you really have to do is put the 'bait' out there, sit back and wait for someone to bite. I do it because it's fun, and sometimes it's necessary.

"Trolling always makes me feel calm and relaxed, it is one of the best feelings I've ever done [sic]."

The use of the word "troll" for those stirring up trouble in cyberspace goes back nearly 20 years, and was originally derived from the fishing term for trailing bait from a line.

In recent weeks it has been all over the mainstream media, courtesy of much-publicised Twitter attacks on the minor celebrity Charlotte Dawson, and the rugby league footballer and Wests Tigers captain, Robbie Farah.

The Premier, Barry O'Farrell, rushed to Farah's defence, The Daily Telegraph in Sydney sallied forth with a front-page declaration of war against trolls, and the federal Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, and the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, declared a temporary cessation of hostilities with News Limited, the Telegraph's parent company, to congratulate the paper on its "worthwhile initiative".

Roxon promised to consult with state colleagues to see "what other action, if any, can be taken to improve the law in this area".

But lawyers, social media experts, ethicists and even the regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, agree that trying to formulate, and then apply, new black-and-white law in this area is almost certainly doomed to fail.

"If you regulate for specific technologies, different ones will proliferate and your technologically specific policy or legislation will be useless," says associate professor David Rolph, a media law specialist at the University of Sydney.

Rolph and others point out that laws against racial vilification, defamation, harassment or menacing behaviour already exist and could be invoked by those willing to take civil action or press for prosecution. But in practice those laws are not well suited to social media and their application in cyberspace has been little-tested in the courts.

One recent exception is a case in Victoria earlier this year, where Michael Trkulja successfully sued Yahoo!7 for defamation and won himself nearly $250,000, after arguing that the search engine was linking his name unfairly with the Melbourne underworld.

More here






Social media on trial over racism

Socialism has been at least as deadly as racism (See Stalin, Mao etc.).  Why not ban socialism too?

AUSTRALIA'S Race Discrimination Commissioner wants an urgent national summit to address the harm being caused by hateful and racist comments on internet blogs and social media sites.

"I'm quite upset by what has been happening in the past three weeks," Commissioner Dr Helen Szoke said yesterday after complaints prompted Facebook on Friday to restrict Australian access to a new page called 'Are Abos Scum?'

A Facebook spokeswoman said while it did not share the distasteful views, and the page did not violate the company's terms, local access had been restricted "out of respect for local laws".

Ms Szoke said she also was disturbed by "really horrific" online anti-Jewish pages.

She said the problem of hateful online meme pages seemed to be getting out of hand and she would take "a more direct approach" to the problem next week.

"This has now reached a point where we really have to look seriously at what the full options of management of this issue might be and I think it's a multiple approach," she said.

Last night Peter Wertheim, executive director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said Facebook and YouTube could not disclaim all responsibility for the way their platforms were used.

He said there needed to be a multi-faceted effort by governments, the media and internet service providers to deal with racist material on the internet.

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Many aspiring teachers are dummies

STUDENTS who struggle with reading, writing and arithmetic are being accepted into university courses to train to become teachers.

A national scorecard has revealed students with university admission ranks well below 50 - low by Australian standards - are gaining entry to teaching courses.

The Good Universities Guide says the standard ranges from as high as 90 for entry into Sydney University to as low as 46.5 for the Melbourne Institute of Technology.

In Queensland, teacher admission ranks range from 56 at the Australian Catholic University in Brisbane to 77.75 in order to enter a primary school teaching course at the University of Queensland.

But some students are gaining entry with even lower scores under special entry schemes that offer "bonus points" for disadvantage, such as living in regional areas.
What do you think? Does the admission rank matter? Tell us in the comments section below.

The national snapshot underlines the shock findings that almost half of aspiring primary school teachers tested in Queensland in a recent trial struggled with literacy and numeracy questions Year 7 students should be able to answer.

Queensland is struggling to lift the performance of its students in literacy and numeracy testing, with latest results released on Friday ranking Queensland students third-last nationally.

The average Queensland student to sit the NAPLAN tests this year scored below the national average in every category.

All states are moving to enforce tougher standards, with the Gillard Government pushing for reforms to ensure only school leavers ranked in the top 30 per cent for literacy and numeracy can apply.

Professor Stephen Dinham, chairman of teacher education at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, said while some courses demanded very high standards, others did not.

"If you are not confident in mathematics, you can't teach mathematics," he said. " We've really got to draw teachers from the top quarter of the school-leaving population.

"If you're taking kids with a score of 40, it's a worry. I'd be saying don't go below 75."

However, Australian Catholic University spokesman Julian Leeser said high marks did not necessarily guarantee a good teacher.

"You can have students with very high scores who are not good teachers. They lack empathy. Teaching is about relationship building," he said.

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Private schools add value

Literacy gaps  and socio-economic status

As a result of the Gonski report and the recent budget cuts to NSW schools, the relative quality and importance of non-government schools to education in Australia has again been questioned.

The most recent issue of the journal Australian Economic Papers has an article by Paul Miller and Derby Voon comparing the performance of government and non-government schools in the NAPLAN (National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy) tests.

The objective of Miller and Voon’s analysis was to determine the extent to which differences in performance between school sectors can be attributed to the different characteristics of their students, including socio-economic status and gender. Their article builds upon other published research papers that use data from the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) and the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA). The majority of these studies find that socio-economic status does not completely explain school sector differences.

Miller and Voon estimate and compare the contribution of socio-economic status to NAPLAN performance in the different sectors. They find that for Year 3 students, the main effect of socio-economic status is similar in each sector and in each aspect of the NAPLAN tests (approximate r2 = 0.3, a figure that corresponds with the strength of the relationship found between socio-economic status and student performance over the last several decades). The picture changes in high school, however. Among Year 9 students, the impact of socio-economic status is significantly higher in independent schools than in Catholic or government schools.

Overall, the results support the findings of Gary Marks’ studies – the superior test results of non-government schools cannot be fully accounted for by the higher average socio-economic status of their students. There is a ‘moderate value-added effect’ of a school sector once student intake characteristics are controlled.

One limitation of Miller and Voon’s study is that it does not account for the prior ability levels of students. It is well known that literacy gaps exist between students of differing socio-economic status when they begin school. It is therefore likely that students in schools with a lower average socio-economic status have started school with lower literacy levels than their more advantaged counterparts. A similar study comparing the growth in scores between NAPLAN tests in years 3 to 5 and years 7 to 9 would be instructive.

SOURCE

Pickering Post

Scatological cartoonist Larry Pickering is really down on Julia Gillard and now has his own news site up.  There is a lot of commonsense on it.






Queensland homosexuals "bullied" by conservative State government

Because their taxpayer funding was cut off!

A RESPECTED physician has accused the Newman Government of mirroring "the actions of a homophobic schoolyard bully" and has quit the State's newly-formed HIV/AIDS advisory committee in protest.

Brisbane doctor Wendell Rosevear tendered his resignation on Wednesday as the nine-member ministerial advisory committee met for only the second time.

In his resignation letter, Dr Rosevear said the Government had delivered a "king hit" to the gay community by stripping peak body Queensland Association for Healthy Communities of funding with little consultation then effectively silencing other groups under new funding rules.

The rules forbid non-profits from agitating for state or federal law changes if their group receives half or more of its funding from Queensland Health and other state agencies.  The Government has argued the new rules ensure groups focus on "outcomes not advocacy".

A spokesman for Mr Springborg said the QAHC funding was axed because the group had "lost focus" on HIV and AIDS prevention while infection rates soared.

Dr Rosevear, who has worked with HIV/AIDS since 1985, accused Health Minister Lawrence Springborg of "acting to divide and silence" the affected community and then refusing to allow the committee to discuss the issue.

"His office are actually saying what can and can't be on the agenda but the committee's job is to give advice without the interference of the external body, the Minister's office," Dr Rosevear told The Courier-Mail.

Dr Rosevear also took aim at Queensland Health's new HIV prevention campaign, which prominently features the Grim Reaper of 1980s AIDS campaigns, as designed to engender only fear and guilt.

The committee had been asked to "rubber stamp" the campaign once it was already completed, he said.

"When you feed fear then some people don't want to test because they're scared of getting a diagnosis or facing death and so fear actually can be counterproductive for AIDS prevention," he said.

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Man charged for something he didn't do

Charging him for what he MAY have done  -- failing to secure his shotgun -- was not provable so bogus charges were laid

MANSLAUGHTER charges have been laid against the father of a schizophrenic man who killed three people in a shooting spree at Hectorville last year.

Giuseppe Corbo allegedly failed to properly secure a shotgun which his son Donato used to fatally shoot Luc Mombers and his parents-in-law Kobus and Annetjie Snyman in April 2011.

He also tried to kill Mr Mombers' wife, Rika, and their son, Marcel, and wounded two police officers, Travis Emms and Brett Gibbons.

Corbo, 71, had earlier been charged with endangering life and four firearms charges and his lawyer was to have argued there was no case to answer in Adelaide Magistrates Court this afternoon.

Instead, prosecutor Laura Carrocci told Magistrate Sue O'Connor that the endangering life charges had been withdrawn and replaced with three counts of negligent manslaughter.

Corbo did not enter a plea to the new charges and was remanded on continuing bail to face court again in November.

Donato Corbo is detained at James Nash House for life after being found not guilty of the murders by reason of mental incompetence.

SOURCE






Attempted coverup of accident caused by speeding train

A RADIO message sent from Banyo train station to Queensland Rail's main control room will become the centre of a double investigation into what went wrong in Friday's train and truck crash on Brisbane's northside.

QR officials confirmed a staff member at Banyo tried to warn oncoming trains yesterday morning a semi-trailer had become stuck across the tracks on St Vincents Rd, but the driver of the ill-fated train did not receive the message.

The investigation will focus on how a train coming along a straight track in daylight could not stop in time to avoid hitting a stranded truck.

The crash between the semi-trailer and the Shorncliffe-bound train just before 6.30am resulted in the truck being ripped in two, its driver receiving severe leg and pelvic injuries, and morning and afternoon peak-hour services being suspended.

QR Chief Customer Officer Martin Ryan yesterday refused to comment on many aspects of the crash, including the speed of the train or how far away the train was before its emergency brakes were applied, but did confirm the radio call.

Mr Ryan recounted the train driver's initial report, despite many conflicts with police and witness accounts.

"A Shorncliffe train with 11 customers on board, a driver and a guard, has approached Banyo Station and as it has come around the bend has seen a low loader traversing St Vincents Rd crossing," Mr Ryan said.

"He applied the emergency brakes but unfortunately has hit the low loader and has caused significant damage to the train, the track and the truck."

Despite Mr Ryan's claim the train was coming around the bend, the train track runs straight for 1km between Bindha and Banyo stations.

Police Inspector Mark Laing also confirmed witness accounts the truck was stationary at the time of the crash and the truck driver was outside of the vehicle.

Banyo resident John Mahoney witnessed the breakdown of the truck and saw the truck driver, a Victorian, trying to fix the semi-trailer before the northbound train arrived.

"It came roaring in and just took out the semi," Mr Mahoney said. "We got off our train and all you could smell was the burn of the emergency brakes."

The truck driver is in a stable condition at Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital.

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PUBLIC HOSPITAL ROUNDUP

Australian public hospitals demonstrate almost daily why 40% of Australians buy private health insurance as an alternative.  Three current  articles below

Hunger and thirst blamed for 2000 patient deaths in Queensland public hospitals in 2011-12

HUNDREDS of patients are dying every year after becoming dehydrated or malnourished in Queensland public hospitals.

Hunger and thirst were either wholly or partly to blame for more than 2000 patient deaths last financial year and 10 per cent of those weren't malnourished or dehydrated when they were admitted, according to Queensland Health figures obtained by The Courier-Mail under Right to Information laws.

Most of the patients were elderly, prompting concerns they are being neglected because of staff shortages and a lack of supervision at meal times.

Stakeholders warn it's only going to get worse following State Budget cuts while others say the fault lay with under-resourced nursing homes where most of them come from or fasting patients who are continually bumped for surgery.

The Medical Error Action Group said it was a nationwide problem exacerbated by lack of supervision at meal times and the belief older patients were just "bed blockers" who would die anyway.

"It's neglect, just sheer neglect of the elderly in hospitals and they're not supervised in meal times," Medical Error Action Group spokeswoman Lorraine Long said.

“I think it's like if you're at a certain age in hospital, who cares, you're going to die."

Ms Long said for hygiene reasons, the food handlers couldn't unwrap or take lids off the food when it's delivered, but neither could many elderly patients.  “It's then up to the nurse on duty to come around to the patient to make sure they eat it, if they can," she said.

In the 2011-12 financial year, dehydration was either the principal or secondary cause of death for 1190 patients who died - up from 1178 in 2008-09. Of those, 218 were not dehydrated when admitted.

There were another 923 cases last financial year where malnutrition was either the principal or secondary cause of death - up from 676 in 2008-09. Of those, 43 were not malnourished when admitted.

Health Minister Lawrence Springborg said the situation was "unacceptable".  "Without getting in and understanding each individual case, you would actually hope in a hospital environment, the issue of basic nutrition and hydration would be something pretty easy to control you would think," he said.

Mr Springborg said hospital staff should take the time to ensure the packaging was removed, particularly for patients who would struggle with it.

"The simple reality is a person who’s got a dexterity issue, should they actually be presented with a fruit juice in a foil covered thing where it hasn't been pulled back for them? That doesn't take a lot of time to do," Mr Springborg said.

"It's about getting the basic stuff right and that's what we've got to do...and I'm not going to accept shroud waving and excuses."

Queensland Nurses Union secretary Beth Mohle said the issue was complex and hospitals weren't necessarily to blame.

She said people could have medical conditions that affected their ability to swallow, such as stroke patients.

"The main issue is age. Older people do lose their appetite and it is really almost a full-time job to keep some older people interested in their food and fluid intake," she said.

"That's why it's important to have appropriate numbers and skill mix of people working in aged care facilities. If we haven't got appropriate staffing numbers and skill mix of people to understand that nutritional integrity is really important, then patients can easily deteriorate.”

Australian Medical Association Queensland president Alex Markwell said malnutrition was a common medical problem and patients with cancer and cystic fibrosis particularly struggled to maintain adequate nutrition levels.

"A lot of people in hospitals have some form of malnutrition but that's not because we're not trying to fix it," Dr Markwell said.

"Putting a feeding tube down, food supplements, all of those things help but they're not the same as if you were able to eat as much as your body needs through the normal way.”

SOURCE

A hospital Emergency department that is useless in an emegency

Two patients in severe danger left to wait until they give up and go elsewhere

THE parents of a Garibaldi food poisoning victim who required urgent medical attention say they waited eight hours at the Royal Adelaide Hospital before leaving without treatment - and finding a parking fine on their car.

Chilean migrant pensioners Juan and Nancy Fuentes say they took their adult son to the RAH emergency department on May 3 after he attempted to commit suicide.

The couple say they left the hospital after eight hours, without receiving treatment for their son, and found a parking ticket for $50 on their car, written 20 minutes after arrival around 7pm.

They ended up taking their son to a locum doctor and he was later admitted to Lyell McEwin Hospital, where he stayed for a month.  He is now receiving specialist mental health care in Melbourne.

Meanwhile, the couple disputed the parking fine and were sent a letter saying they faced a $424 court-ordered bill - although that has since been waived.  They say the hospital showed "no compassion" for their situation.

The Garibaldi epidemic began in early 1995 when Nikki Robinson, 4, died after eating the smallgoods company's metwurst.  She was among dozens rushed to the Women's and Children's Hospital with severe diarrhoea and abdominal pains caused by E coli and 23 children developed Haemolytic Uraemic Syndrome.

Liberal health spokesman Martin Hamilton-Smith said victims of the Garibaldi food poisoning were "promised gold card-level priority care by the health system" and it was "a disgrace" the Fuentes family were left to wait so long.

"Here is another example of an overwhelmed ED just days after a damning national report which found SA to be the worst-performing state," he said.

Mr Hamilton-Smith said he had written to Health Minister John Hill about the issue of car parking at hospitals.  He suggested doctors and nurses be able to issue "pink slips" to patients who arrive "in crisis" which would waive the fee for parking in a restricted carpark in an emergency.

Mr Hill said he had received correspondence from Mr Hamilton-Smith today.  He said he understood the family waited for five hours, not eight, and that the son's injuries had been classified as category four. Category five is the lowest priority.

Mr Hill said patients involved in the Garibaldi poisoning were given a Health Department card which gave them "priority and free care" but not "an opportunity to use any of our health systems to get service ahead of anybody else who's got a higher medical need".

Mr Hill said the couple were issued with a parking fine because they parked in a spot reserved for an emergency department doctor.

The fine has since been waived but Mr Hill warned "you just can't park in doctors' car parks ... no matter how urgent you think it is because the doctors need those parking spots so they can get in to the emergency department to do their jobs".

SOURCE

Northern Territory public hospitals trump them all for waiting times

SOME patients are waiting more than 24 hours in Territory emergency departments, often because the rest of the hospital is so full there is nowhere else for them to go, a report shows.

The Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) found Territory waiting times have increased since last year and are among the worst in the country. The report used figures taken at 10am on Monday, September 3, which found about one-fifth of Territory patients had been in the emergency department for more than 24 hours.

Health Minister Dave Tollner said the figures were "unacceptable" but did not reveal how the CLP would improve the situation.

"Absolutely I'm concerned about it," he said.  "Until we know the financial context of the situation we find ourselves in, i.e. Labor's debt, we can't do a lot as far as identifying what programs we can afford to run."

Labor spokesman Kon Vatskalis said wait times across the board were bad, but had decreased for category one and two patients.

He said the problem was caused by a doctor shortage.

The national study compared figures for regional groups, one of which comprised seven emergency departments in the NT, SA and ACT

Researchers found there were 302 patients in emergency departments across the three jurisdictions, 46 of whom had experienced "dangerously long" wait times of more than 24 hours.

In contrast, Victorian and Tasmanian emergency departments treated twice as many patients but did not have one person with a 24-hour stay.

ACEM president Dr Sally McCarthy said things needed to change. She said hospitals could reduce emergency waiting times by ensuring inpatient resources catered to demand and introducing over-capacity protocols.

SOURCE

Footballer of Lebanese origins can dish it out but can't take it

Rather what we expect of Middle-Eastern persons



Robbie Farah, the NRL star who has called for tougher laws to fight internet trolls, has apologised for a tweet he sent last year in which he said Prime Minister Julia Gillard should be given a noose for her birthday.

It has been revealed that, in September last year, on Ms Gillard's 50th birthday, Farah responded to a tweet from former league star, now Triple M radio host, Mark Geyer, asking "what would you buy the PM for her birthday? It's her 50th today" with the words: "a noose".

At the weekend, Farah was sent four tweets from a user who called himself Nathan Elliott Gray. In addition to insulting Farah's late mother, Sonia, one tweet referred to Farah himself as a "football playing f---".

The Wests Tigers captain then called on the Prime Minister and the police to put an end to vicious trolls online.

"I was very shocked and appalled to receive this vile comment on my Twitter account," Farah said in a statement on Monday.

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A strange verdict

In many jurisdictions,  defence of others is equated with self-defense

THREE men who acted with "great courage" and selfless concern when intervening after they saw a machete-wielding man harassing a pair of teenagers have been jailed for beating him to death.

The men had been driving along the South Gippsland Highway at Cranbourne North in September 2009 when they saw 24-year-old Scott Shaw chasing and swinging a machete at two 15-year-olds.

When one occupant of their car cried out for Shaw to leave the children alone, Shaw repeatedly struck the car with his machete. It was at that point that Stephen McEwan, 40, got out of his car and was threatened by Shaw, before Shaw continued along the highway, intimidating passing motorists with the machete.

McEwan and his co-accused, James Robb, 53, and Normunds Dambitis, 43, chased after Shaw.
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They eventually cornered him beside a parked bus and attacked him, with McEwan using a fishing rod and Dambitis a tree branch.

Shaw died in hospital six days later of brain injuries.

McEwan was found guilty of murder by a Victorian Supreme Court jury. Robb was convicted of manslaughter, while Dambitis was found guilty of defensive homicide.

The court heard that earlier that evening Shaw and a friend had set upon another two teenagers, and assaulted one of them, without any cause or provocation.

Justice Stephen Kaye said the men had initially intervened out of selfless concern and "acted with great courage".

"It is quite possible that, as a result of your intervention, you may well have saved those young persons from the serious consequences of violence at the hands of Scott Shaw and his friend," he said yesterday.

But while Shaw's conduct that night could be criticised, Justice Kaye said, it was no excuse for the men to have taken his life in a brutal attack,

McEwan was sentenced to 16½ years' jail with a non-parole period of 12½ years.  Robb was sentenced to eight years. He was ordered to serve a minimum 5½ years.  Dambitis was jailed for 11 years, with a minimum of eight.

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A group of 40 asylum seekers plus AFP officers have landed on Nauru

AN Afghan asylum seeker says he doesn't mind risking his life in a boat journey to Australia and staying for years on Nauru, because all of his expenses will be paid for there.

As the first asylum seekers - between 40 and 50 Sri Lankans - land on Nauru this morning in a return to the Pacific solution the Government hopes will stop boats, the 17-year-old who is waiting with others in Indonesia for boats said he had "no problems" with the arrangement.

Medi said his family were in Pakistan waiting for him to find them better life in Australia so he will brave the danger.  "I'll for sure try it," he told ABC Radio from Java about his plans to pay people smugglers, despite the fact he had to be saved in two previous doomed voyages, one in which 200 people died.  "I need a life in peace."

Asked if he had heard of Australia's new policy to process asylum seekers in Nauru and PNG he said: "Yea". "That will be no problem for me because here I have to expend my own money but there all of my expenses are (sic) Australia.  "But still I will risk my life and go by boat and try again and again."

He said he wanted to be a good citizen in Australia.

The comments came as a team of Federal Police landed in Nauru with the first group of asylum seekers about 7.30am (AEST).  They will be taken by bus to the Topside offshore processing camp and stay in tents while permanent accommodation is fixed up.

The last food stocks were delivered to the tent city last night, and final building works finished.

The Government will operate a regular charter air service this month, with the centre expected to host 500 asylum seekers by the end of September.

The Government also announced yesterday it would accept 1000 refugees from Syria in 2012-13.  A recent jump in the humanitarian intake from 13,750 to 20,000 has allowed the Government to accept the refugees.

The federal government has said that reasonable steps would be taken to ensure the asylum seekers followed instructions.

"Section 198AD refers to the taking of people to a regional processing country - provides for certain actions that may be taken to effect that transfer, including placing the person on a vehicle or vessel and restraining them," she said.

"It also provides in doing these things an officer may use such force as is necessary or reasonable."

Also yesterday a boat carrying the fifth-largest group of people to arrive this year was intercepted off Western Australia.

All persons arriving by boat since August 13 run the risk of being taken to Nauru for processing or to another detention facility being reopened on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island.

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Locomotives from five operators hook up to celebrate centenary of the start on the Trans-Australia Railway

TOMORROW will be a train-spotter's paradise: locomotives from five operators across Australia in their gleaming, separate liveries all hooked together for an historic rail trip.

It's 100 years tomorrow since the turning of the first sod, by Governor-General Lord Demnan, on the Trans-Australia Railway - the 1960km stretch of rail from Pt Augusta to Kalgoorlie that connected Australia's east and west coast, decades before bitumen roads.

A special train organised by the Australasian Railway Association and featuring the line-up of locos will leave Keswick passenger terminal at 8am tomorrow.

With a Pichi Richi steam train, it is due to arrive in Port Augusta at 12.30pm for a ceremony led by federal and state transport ministers, Anthony Albanese and Patrick Conlon.

The five-loco train will leave Port Augusta at 3.15pm for a return to Keswick at 8.20pm.

National Railway Museum executive officer Bob Sampson said yesterday train-enthusiast photographers and sound recorders would be out in force at crossings and cuttings along the way.

"We've got train-brains coming in from all states; nothing like this has ever happened before," he said.

One of the drivers will be Adelaide's Mark Mackiewicz in a new loco from Pacific National, which contracts to pull freight as well as the Ghan and Indian-Pacific passenger trains on the line.

"We often see train-spotters photographing trains but I'm tipping there'll be a lot more for this one," he said.

Construction on the Trans-Australia Line continued throughout World War I to be completed in October 1917. It includes what is still the world's longest stretch of straight track: 478km from Nurina to Ooldea.

"The bridging of our nation was one of the great contributors to our economic prosperity and continues to this day," said Geoff Smith managing director of STC, one of the operators providing a locomotive.

Other locos will come from Genesee & Wyoming, QR National, CFCLA and Pacific National.

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Long waits in Canberra public hospitals 'frightening': study

A frightening number of patients are being forced to wait in emergency departments for more than 24 hours before being admitted to hospital, according to the author of a new study.

Professor Drew Richardson, of the ANU and Australian College for Emergency Medicine, said unacceptably large numbers of patients in the ACT, Northern Territory and South Australia were experiencing dangerously long stays in emergency departments.

ANU researchers contacted all accredited emergency departments in Australia on September 3 to find out how many patients were being treated and whether they were waiting for inpatient beds.

The results were not broken down by individual hospitals and the ACT's findings were grouped with South Australia and the Northern Territory. In South Australia and the territories, 46 out of 302 patients had been waiting in excess of 24 hours for admission to a ward.

"There's been an increase in the number of patients waiting for beds - quite a frightening number," Professor Richardson said. "I'd particularly like to emphasise the dangerously long ED times of over 24 hours."

Western Australia EDs had an average of 0.6 patients who had been waiting longer than 24 hours for admission and NSW hospitals averaged 1.3 per ED.

Changes are due to begin in The Canberra Hospital emergency department today, which include the opening of four additional beds and a new process which will involve patients being seen more quickly by doctors. Six more beds will also be opened in a medical ward which will allow quicker admission.

Professor Richardson said Western Australian hospitals had improved over the past three years after the introduction of a four-hour target for having patients treated and admitted or sent home.

There had also been improvements in Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania over the past year but things had deteriorated in the three bottom-ranked jurisdictions.

Professor Richardson said other states had made changes to relieve pressure.  "Other jurisdictions have gone with international best practice. They've reviewed how many beds they've got and how those beds are distributed," he said. "They've introduced protocols that moved people to the wards in a more timely fashion, they've got a proper winter bed management plan."

Professor Richardson said the territories and South Australia had failed to embrace the same changes.

In an election debate yesterday, Chief Minister Katy Gallagher said the government had increased funding for the emergency department by 146 per cent.

"The health system can't be fixed overnight, it takes a long time to address areas of pressure and the emergency department will not be fixed by necessarily investing only in the emergency department," she said. "One of the biggest pressures is how many [hospital] beds we have. We had 114 beds taken out of the system when we came to government and we had to replace them."

Opposition health spokesman Jeremy Hanson said the report provided further evidence of the "shocking state" of ACT emergency departments.  "It's clear that only a change of government will fix the state of Canberra's health system," Mr Hanson said.

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Trawler ban just Greenie hysteria

A TOP fisheries scientist has slammed the government's 11th-hour move to stop the controversial Abel Tasman super trawler as unscientific and driven by political expediency.

Colin Buxton, the director of the fisheries, aquaculture and coasts centre at the University of Tasmania's institute for marine and antarctic studies, said that the size of the 142-metre Dutch-owned trawler did not mean that it posed any greater environmental risk than several smaller vessels.

"It's just staggering [that] popularism and political expediency is now managing our fisheries," he said. "I think it's incredibly dangerous. It's really sad that the decision has been handed down in this way."

Professor Buxton said the 18,000-tonne fish quota given to Seafish Tasmania was sustainable according to solid science.

He said that an ecosystem model developed by the CSIRO - regarded as the "best ecological model available" - had been used to calculate the total population of fish and any potential impact on the food chain.

Professor Buxton, who stressed he had no connection with any company, industry body or regulator, said that "localised depletion" - the danger of emptying out a part of the ocean if a large ship fished too long in one place - was probably less of a risk with the super trawler.

The advantage of the super trawler, which has its own processing facilities and freezers, was that it could fish over a large area without being tied to ports.

"If you had 10 small trawlers tied to a place like Triabunna [in Tasmania], there would be a much, much higher chance of localised depletion," he said. "These same people who are concerned about the … trawler and [are saying] you could take 10 small boats out there and that's a better idea. Based on what?"

He also rejected claims that not enough scientific research existed.

Professor Buxton said that the net size and catching capacity of the Abel Tasman were "not dissimilar" to net sizes already being used in waters off the west coast of Tasmania.

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CSIRO goes off the rails over climate

The CSIRO is supposed to be Australia's premier scientific research organization but hysteria seems to have taken over.  The “Planet under Pressure” conference (PUP) in London in March, 2012, is now just a historical curiosity. It was meant to turbocharge the Rio + 20 eco-summit last June but that summit never quite took us to its poverty-ending, green global economy.  However, the London warm-up is worth a second look, if only because:


 *   More than 40 CSIRO people attended.[1] Assuming $6000 per head on fares, hotels etc, that’s a quarter-million dollars
 
*  Another 40 Australian scientists and academics also went along – make that a half-million dollars total.[2] [3] Did any attend the conference session on “Reinforcing sustainable travel behaviour”?

 *  “Nut-jobs on the internet” claimed the London show pushed for Dr-Evil-style global climate government.  I found coded remarks in the conference verbiage but then turned up a press interview by the conference’ co-chair, our CSIRO’s top climateer Mark Stafford-Smith. He called for a “sustainable development council within the United Nations that has the same level of authority as the Security Council.”[4] Not bad from a non-elected CSIRO politician. Pause to reflect that 55% of the 193 UN countries are dictatorships.[5]

 *   More than 1200 “scientific” papers were showcased, of which  only three or four expressed even a tiny doubt about dangerous human-caused warming (AGW). Yet even the IPCC is only 90% sure. Those papers of interest included “solving the cloud problem in climate models” and “solar forcing of winter climate variability”. The other 1197-plus papers went into third-order issues such as “Solving the problem of how to solve problems: planning in a climate of change”.[6] One I particularly liked went:

“To unite scientists and global publics in a climate change Quest, communicators need to attend rigorously to the narrative-dramatic dynamics of stakeholder sensemaking. The depth of fear and despair when fully engaged with the tragic Downfall plot should not be underestimated…We urgently need to develop the skills of reading and leading climate change plots. In so doing, we can build understanding of the social drama of data.”[7]

 *   Since the purported AGW would change everything in the world, the 1200 papers at London could be multiplied ten-fold or thousand-fold as long as grant-money continues. An example from the conference of the proliferation: “Care and justice: the contribution of feminist and environmental justice approaches to counteract power in environmental governance.”[8]

The CSIRO claims that “almost all” of its 40+ attendees gave papers.[9] Since the conference was four days of 8.30am-5pm, plus a smidgen of slack or “unconference” time before cocktails and dinners, I thought I’d check.

A search elicits 11 CSIRO papers discussed at the conference.  The conference also allowed 13 CSIRO people to put up on the wall, literally, a poster about their research, along with the other 1160 contributors’ posters, thus burnishing everyone’s CVs. Worthwhile? Taxpayers, you be the judge.

One CSIRO scientist scored an own goal in his paper on adaptation of Australian agriculture to climate change. Farmers were managing OK, “given that the climate change signal has not yet exceeded the ‘variability noise’ “.[10] Yet a CSIRO colleague had a paper: “Climate change impacts on farmer mental health: emerging connections”.[11] How can our farmers be going mad from AGW if it’s not yet detectable?

But I’m rambling. What about that world-governing conspiracy? Dr Stafford-Smith gave an interview from the conference to AAP on March 29:

Mark Stafford Smith, scientific director of CSIRO's climate adaption flagship, says it's no longer enough for individual nations to try to be sustainable.

Rather a new "planetary stewardship" is needed, he says.

"Something like a sustainable development council ... in the UN system which has the same level of authority as the security council and which can drive a much more integrated approach," Dr Stafford Smith told reporters via a phone hook-up from London...”

There was now a need for a "constitutional moment", like that in the 1940s which saw the establishment of the World Bank and other institutions, including the International Monetary Fund, to drive the new UN council, he said.[12]

When the conference ended, Dr Stafford-Smith co-drafted with a Dr Lidia Brito the conference’s “Declaration”. As one breathless environment reporter from the New York Times introduced it, humanity’s anti-green obtuseness could hurt the earth as badly as “meteoric collisions”.[13]  The key tract from the Smith/Brito manifesto is:

“Fundamental reorientation and restructuring of national and international institutions is required to overcome barriers to progress and to move to effective Earth-system governance…Current understanding supports the creation of a Sustainable Development Council within the UN system to integrate social, economic and environmental policy at the global level.” [14]

Who is Dr Stafford-Smith, this Napoleon-scale environmentalist? He spent 30 years studying desert bushes and bugs, as a good CSIRO scientist should.[15]

But one of the bugs may have infected him with apocalypse fever. In 2009 he published, with CSIRO colleague Julian Cribb, the paperback “Dry Times: Blueprint for a Red Land”, priced at an alarming $49.95.[16] The book concludes,

“Australians use of the country’s resources, their demand for increasing material standard of living and now their contribution to global climate change [what? 1.5% of global emissions?]  have wrought profound changes to this once isolated continent. The great cities of Australia are already experiencing water shortages. … In fact, the dry part of Australia is expanding. The entire continent is now subject to some disturbing trends, which are starting to resemble the desert drivers. The climate is moving into realms hitherto unexperienced: unpredictable and out of local control…” (p145)

Hardly had the CSIRO book hit the counter, than a vast sheet of floodwater travelled the length of the Eastern States. The rivers turned Lake Eyre into a bonanza for operators of inland sea scenic flights, which continue to this day. The rains replenished the dams of Brisbane and Sydney and even the parched Melbourne dams are now 77% full.

His co-author Julian Cribb, unabashed, put out another CSIRO paperback ($29.95) in 2010,  “The Coming Famine”.[17] As CSIRO’s blurb puts it, “Julian Cribb lays out a vivid picture of an impending planetary crisis – a global food shortage that threatens to hit by mid-century – which, he argues, would dwarf any in our previous experience.”  Deserts, floods, famine, whatever. CSIRO loves the dismal.

Dr Stafford-Smith also claims the scientific community is “thinly-stretched”, which seems a bit whiney after $US68 billion in US federal spending alone on climate research and development from 1989-2009.[18] [19]

The patrons for the London conference were the usual UN apparatchiks, activist and industry reps, academics, and a couple of standouts: our own Climate Comedian – sorry, Climate Commissioner - Tim Flannery and Phil Bloomer, director of campaigns and policy for Oxfam, a charity celebrated for its “75-million-climate-refugees” howler concerning Pacific islanders, whose population is only 7 million in the first place.[22]

A Professor Iain Gordon of the UK’s Hutton Institute told the conference that humans had upped the natural extinction rate by 1000 times, “based on reliable data”, and 10%-30% of mammal, bird and amphibian species are at risk of extinction. The “1000 times” factoid was a statistical raving from a tract by the activist International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and the “10%-30% extinction” factoid from the 2007 IPCC report was exposed several years ago as a complete crock.[23] [24] How could Professor Williams be so credulous? Well, his previous career was with CSIRO, which is is too inward-focused even to take this clanger off its website:

“Australia has experienced the worst drought in recorded history, and as one consequence many cities and regions have faced severe water supply constraints. These issues have highlighted the reality of global climate change, the massive impacts that it is likely to have on our continent...”[25]

If the drought “highlights the reality of global climate change”, what do our recent floods highlight?

Still, climate conferences wouldn’t be the same without the CSIRO’s helpful inputs.

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Dengue vaccine shows promise in clinical trial

Good news for Northern Australia, where Dengue is endemic.  Mosquito eradication keeps it under some control but Mosquito eradication is always imperfect

A major clinical trial of the frontrunner in the race for a dengue fever vaccine is showing great promise.

Every year, the World Health Organisation estimates between 50 and 100 million people are infected with the virus, and the most vulnerable are children and adolescents.

Scientists have been searching for a vaccine for the last 90 years.  But now a drug developed by a French company has shown encouraging results, protecting against three of the four types of dengue virus in Thai children.

Cameron Simmons, a professor working in Oxford University's clinical research unit in Vietnam, says the results are hugely encouraging.  "It's regarded as a neglected tropical disease. The sheer scale of the disease burden in dengue endemic countries is enormous," he told PM.  "It's a major public health problem, places enormous strain on often fragile healthcare systems."

The major clinical trial of the drug involved 4,000 primary school aged children in Thailand.

"We were optimistic and hopeful that we would see protection against all four dengue viruses," Professor Simmons said.  "What the study has shown us is that the vaccine seems to offer protection against three and not four of the dengue viruses.

"There's more research to be done to really try and understand why protection is not against all four but we're heading in the right direction. I think that's the important result."

There is no clinical difference between the four types of virus; the patient still presents with symptoms like muscle and joint pain, fever, rashes, hair loss, intense headache and extreme fatigue.

The one type of dengue not affected by the vaccine was the most prevalent type in the study's region, and there are concerns that may have dragged down the results.

The fact that it appears to have worked on the other three has already led to speculation that that could be enough to prevent severe disease, but Professor Simmons is not so sure. 

"I think a trial of that trivalent vaccine could be possible," he said.  "But it's going to need a lot more research to understand from a modelling perspective what a trivalent vaccine might do to the epidemiology of dengue in an endemic setting and also very importantly the cost effectiveness of such a vaccine."

Professor Simmons says even for countries like Vietnam, where child mortality rates from dengue fever are relatively low, any hope is welcome.  "The disease burden is enormous here, 10 to 15 per cent of the hospitalised patients in the hospital that I work in are dengue cases," he said.

"So it's one of the most important causes of hospitalisation for children. So the scale of the disease burden is enormous, public health importance is very large.  "One dengue virus infection actually predisposes you to a more severe infection a second time around and so it's a complicated disease in that fashion."

A third stage of the trial involving 30,000 people from South-East Asia and Latin America is due to deliver results in 2014.

Professor Simmons says he is hoping for a fully-fledged dengue virus vaccine within five to 10 years.

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Unforgiveable errors in Canberra public hospitals

There have been protocols to prevent things being left inside patients for around a century.  It should NEVER happen.  That it did indicates complete indifference to the job

A patient at an ACT hospital recently required a second operation after medical staff left a surgical instrument inside the person's abdomen, documents reveal.

The incident, described as a "catastrophic" mistake in internal ACT Health documents, sparked an education session for staff to make sure they understood the policy for keeping track of instruments during surgeries.

Audits were also done to reduce the risk of a similar error but ACT Health refuses to reveal which instrument staff left inside the patient.

The patient was admitted for an emergency laparotomy - a large cut made to access the abdominal cavity which contains a number of organs including the liver, pancreas, spleen and kidneys - which is when the blunder was made.

It is not clear at which hospital the mistake was made.

The documents obtained by The Canberra Times outline mistakes made at The Canberra Hospital and Calvary Hospital from July 2011 to July 2012 and also reveal information about:

 * Two deaths in ACT hospitals in the same period have been labelled catastrophic. The deaths of these patients were classed as being unrelated to the natural course of illness and differing from the immediate expected medical outcome.

 * Two "near misses" where too much medication was given to patients, one of whom was given 50 times too much sedative.

 * A surgery done on the wrong side of someone's body, the second case of its kind in the ACT in 18 months.

 * A failure to follow correct guidelines was found when a patient was given another patient's blood, a mistake which did not adversely affect the person given the transfusion.

An ACT Health spokesman said the number of adverse incidents occurring was minuscule when compared with the thousands of procedures performed each year. The Health Directorate did 18,219 surgical procedures in 2011-12.

One of the two deaths described in the documents involved an unrecognised oesophageal intubation.

According to medical references, this mistake occurs when a tube goes into the oesophagus, which leads to the stomach, rather than the windpipe. In the second death referred to in the documents, staff were considering whether to retrospectively refer the patient's death to the coroner. The patient - located in a women, youth and children's ward - had suffered from a condition related to fluid around the heart.

In terms of over-medication cases, the documents say one "near miss situation" involved a patient transferred to the ACT from a regional hospital who was given 50 times too much of a fast-working sedative.

The staff member who gave 25 milligrams of Midazolam to the patient instead of 0.5 milligrams was traumatised by the error which happened when the sedative needed to be administered quickly.

"It seems the error occurred due to communication about the volume of the medication," her supervisor wrote in an internal report.

In a second medication mix-up, a patient was intravenously given 10 times too much paracetamol.

The internal ACT Health documents suggest an administrative error was to blame for surgery being performed on the wrong side of a patient's body.

In a case reported late last year which is now before the ACT Supreme Court, it was revealed an elderly woman, Lima Thatcher, allegedly had an operation on the wrong hip at the start of 2011.

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