Earth hour

Anne and I celebrated Earth hour yesterday in appropriate style. Everybody was supposed to turn all their lights out at 8:30 pm.

So at 8.30pm I turned on every light in the house and Anne served up our dinner on my verandah. We had Forfar Bridies from Syd's, with salad, and they were of course excellent. We washed them down with some Wynn's Coonawarra Shiraz

I live within earshot of "The Gabba", one of the holy grounds of cricket. They had a well-attended (judging by the roars of the crowd) football match there last night. It was of course held under huge floodlights. And they certainly were not turned off at 8.30pm. Thank goodness for sporting Australians.




"Historic" is a much-overused word

But sometimes it is literally true. The crooks of Sussex St. have finally got their comeuppance

Barry O'Farrell vowed to make "New South Wales number one again" after securing a thumping election victory last night. With voters delivering a brutal verdict on 16 years of tumultuous ALP rule in NSW, a measured Mr O'Farrell reached out to many Labor supporters who abandoned their party in spectacular fashion.

The incoming premier vowed to govern for everyone in the state. "There are many people who voted ... who have never done anything except vote Labor," he said. "We will deliver."

The scandal-plagued Labor Government suffered a devastating record-breaking loss, described by the party's campaign boss Luke Foley as "cataclysmic - I mean it's a bloodbath". Premier Kristina Keneally conceded defeat at 9pm, and immediately stood down as leader, after presiding over the shocking defeat.

After a whopping 17 per cent swing against it, Labor could be left with just 17 MPs in the 93 seat parliament as the Coalition swept through previously safe ALP areas in Sydney's western suburbs, and in the Illawarra and the Hunter regions.

On a two-party preferred basis, the Coalition - won 63.9 per cent of the vote, compared to Labor's 36.1 per cent.

So resounding was the victory - picking up at least 29 seats - Mr O'Farrell, the 52-year-old former political staffer who has spent the past 15 years in parliament in opposition. said the Coalition "won seats we never dreamed of ever winning".

Mr O'Farrell also vowed to take the fight to federal Labor in Canberra over the carbon tax, which the Liberals claimed was a key flashpoint in many Labor electorates.

More HERE




Another landslide coming up?

I am a great admirer of Major Newman. He has been a great mayor for Brisbane. He is a former Duntroon man and Duntroon men are are among Australia's finest

QUEENSLANDERS appear to be supporting Campbell Newman's bid to become premier, with a new poll indicating the opposition LNP could have a landslide victory in the next state election.

A Galaxy poll in The Sunday Mail says that with Mr Newman as leader, the LNP has extended its two-party preferred lead over Labor to a massive 16 per cent.

The 58-42 result follows recent internal polling by the LNP which put them ahead 52-48 with former leader John-Paul Langbroek at the helm.

If the boost was to be translated at the next election, due in March next year, it would result in the government losing 33 seats. An overwhelming majority of those polled also preferred Mr Newman over Anna Bligh as premier. Mr Newman recorded 51 per cent support in the preferred premier stakes compared with Ms Bligh's 38 per cent.

The leadership switch has knocked the wind out of Premier Bligh's comeback following the cyclone and the floods. Only late last month a poll showed she gained 23 percentage points as preferred premier to hold a 58-33 lead over Mr Langbroek.

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A nation-shaping event?

Piers Akerman

NSW delivered a tectonic shift in Australian politics yesterday - a shift so dynamic it has the capacity to alter the cultural course of the nation for the next decade and longer.

Most noticeable will be the obvious power shift between the states and the Gillard federal government.

On Friday, there were two conservative state governments. Tomorrow, there will be three - and they have the palpable capacity to dominate the national debate.

Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania are no match for Western Australia, Victoria and NSW in terms of economies, populations or sheer competence and governance.

The shift in political gravity provides the opportunity for a reversal of the Green-Left cultural drift that has been accelerated with the connivance of the Rudd-Gillard governments and their cohorts of morally self-righteous doctors' wives and culturally detached inner-urban activists.

During the last week of federal parliament, Gillard and her minions demonstrated their understanding of this new reality.

The Prime Minister led Labor into a series of responses to her fatally flawed carbon-dioxide tax from a wholly reactionary position.

Her huge election lie on the tax was just a part of it.

In so markedly moving from her "there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead" position, she felt it would be timely to attempt to project a whole series of new political and moral positions, all of them totally contrary to her previous stances on the same issues.

The woman who for many years was a member of the Communist-inspired Socialist Forum now maintains she is actually a cultural conservative.

The atheist politician who presided over the formulation of a curriculum that would strip the discussion of the influence of Christianity on Western civilisation from the school system now says all schools should teach stories from the Bible.

Gillard has even argued for the sanctity of marriage, even though she hasn't entered into matrimony with the man she lives with in The Lodge - perhaps the polls haven't fallen far enough for that paradigm to shift.

She wants the public to believe she thinks the Greens are extremists, but is unwilling to distance herself from them because she needs their support to hang on to power - while at the same time, she excoriates Opposition Leader Tony Abbott for appearing at a rally at which a handful of odd bods held up dissonant posters, and shrilly shrieks that he must dissociate himself from such uninvited attendees at a mass rally.

Gillard is fighting from an uncomfortable corner. She cannot claim any mandate to introduce a carbon-dioxide tax because both parties pledged not to introduce such a tax at the last election, and both parties said they would not introduce an emissions-trading scheme until the country indicated it was ready.

The Coalition made it clear it would not adopt a new tax that would harm the economy.

Labor said it would wait until there was a "consensus" and hired climate alarmist Tim Flannery to head a propaganda team to run its fear-mongering campaign.

Gillard broke her promise and adopted the position of the Greens, who hold just one Lower House seat and favour a number of policies that most Australians would find nauseating.

Her reversal has nothing to do with the environment, as it's now accepted by every economic expert, including those from Treasury, that a carbon-dioxide tax in Australia will have no effect on the planet's temperature.

Gillard's position, and that of her government, is designed wholly to attack Tony Abbott and destroy his leadership of the Opposition. So far, it has had the opposite effect.

Apart from the two or three disaffected malcontents who would be happier in the left wing of the ALP, the party room is revelling in the Opposition's higher profile.

The doctors' wives being courted by Gillard are probably too preoccupied with self-serving good works to understand this or the true rancid nature of the Greens, but the inner-urban Green-Left activists know full well the repellent content of the revolting Green agenda.

In the outpouring of faux outrage that followed Wednesday's No Carbon Tax rally in Canberra, Greens leader Bob Brown sent a note to Gillard in which he confected an apology on behalf of unnamed Australians who may have been offended by a few posters.

As stunts went, it was low-grade, but it served to remind observers, including Tasmania's Senator Eric Abetz, that Brown had not only insulted US president George W. Bush when he visited Australia but that Brown and his party have embraced anti-American, anti-Israeli conspiracists who maintain the fiction that the terrorist attack the World Trade Center towers was a US-Zionist plot.

The Greens voted against a motion in the Senate on Wednesday that acknowledged Israel is a legitimate and democratic state and a good friend of Australia, and denounced the boycott of Israel by the Green-dominated Marrickville Council.

Brown and the NSW Greens have also attempted to deny their support for the boycott of Israeli products, even though ex-Communist and Greens senator-elect Lee Rhiannon was responsible for a motion supported at the NSW Greens' conference last December.

It proposed that Australia and its government "boycott Israeli goods, trading and military arrangements, sporting, cultural and academic events".

Such is the sheer insanity of Gillard's reliable partners in government.

This is the culture that has corrupted much of the nation's education system. This is the culture that must be reversed. Restoring NSW is the first step; restoring Australia must be the goal.

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Unrepentant education bureaucrats in NSW

Casey Heyne's school, Chifley College, cleared in wake of viral video. The bureaucrats think it is enough to give a kid "support" after he has been attacked when what is needed is protection from attack. And they're not backing down one bit. Let's hope the new NSW government enforces more compassionate policies

THE Department of Education has cleared Chifley College of condoning a bullying culture, despite its principal allowing more than 60 incident reports involving Casey Heynes to stack up.

The Year 10 student shot to international fame last week when a video of him fighting back against a schoolyard bully at his western Sydney public school went viral. The 16-year-old is seen pressed against a wall taking punches and taunts from a small Year 7 boy, Ritchard Gale, before snapping and throwing him to the ground.

During an interview with A Current Affair, Casey claimed he wrote between 60 and 70 incident reports to the school about the bullying, yet never got a break from the harassment.

A department spokesman said Chifley College principal Tim Jones would not be disciplined because he had done nothing wrong, The Sunday Telegraph reports.

The spokesman admitted there were students who had been repeatedly abused by bullies but said the department was satisfied the Doonside school provided adequate support to the victims. "Students who are subject to repeated bullying receive regular specialist and individual support," he said. "The school supports students who report being bullied. The students are supported by a full-time counsellor, additional year advisers and peer mediators."

The department has also gagged the media from asking questions directly of Mr Jones or any teachers at Chifley College about the 60 reported complaints of bullying. But speaking on the condition of anonymity, a school source said Casey's incident reports had been ignored.

The department spokesman said every report filed to the principal had been addressed. He would not detail how these had been addressed or how many reports had been received, but said the school had several ways to resolve instances of bullying. These included disciplinary action, self-esteem programs, counsellor intervention and support and learning plans, as well as access to community support agencies. [Bullsh*t, in other words]

Despite none of these methods helping Casey, the spokesman was adamant the school had done nothing wrong and had no need to overhaul its response to bullying.

The video has sparked calls for stronger supervision. "The overwhelming bulk of bullying happens during recess and lunchtime, when students are not being supervised. We need more supervision, more staff in the playground," Parents and Citizens Federation spokeswoman Sharryn Brownlee said.

"The duty of care is all day, not just in your classroom."

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Baby dies after expectant mother waits five hours for a room at Osborne Park Hospital

THE Health Department is investigating whether the tragic death of a baby at a Perth hospital could have been averted. It is alleged the expectant mum, known as Lilli, was forced to wait in an emergency department after her waters broke, only to be told five hours later when she finally got a room that her baby had died inside her.

President of the National African Women's Council of Australia, Casta Tungaraza, was supporting Lilli as she left hospital today. Dr Tungaraza said the heavily pregnant 21-year-old was attending an antenatal clinic at Osborne Park Hospital on Tuesday with her two-year-old son when her waters broke. She was surprised because her baby girl wasn’t due for three weeks.

She got to the emergency department at about 11am and doctors asked that she be put in a room and monitored, as is the practice with women who have gone into labour. However there were none available and she was told to wait in the emergency room while experiencing contractions. She remembers her baby was still kicking and seemingly fine.

Five hours later when a room became available, an ultrasound was taken and it was discovered that the baby had died.

Lilli had to be induced to give birth to her baby daughter despite the fact she had died. Lilli believes if she had been in a room earlier and the proper checks were being made her baby could have been saved.

She was being comforted today by members of Perth’s African community

A spokesperson for the North Metropolitan Area Health Service told PerthNow: “We express our condolences to the family for their loss. "Due to patient confidentiality we cannot comment on specific patient details at this time. However, we are now in the process of fully investigating this matter.”

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