Australian Politics
Government "reforms" have made staffing very expensive. So fewer staff are being employed -- leading to poor supervision
Assaults reported at aged care homes in NSW have risen to the highest level in a decade, with more than 900 incidents recorded last financial year.
The figure is almost triple the number of assaults recorded a decade earlier, Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) data reveal.
The largest jump occurred in April 2021 when the government brought in the Serious Incident Response Scheme (SIRS).
The scheme requires care providers to report all serious incidents to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission and those of a criminal nature to police.
"The increase does seem to be related to an increase in reporting of criminal incidents occurring in aged care facilities," BOCSAR executive director Jackie Fitzgerald said.
The dataset does not show whether the offender was a staff member or a resident, but Ms Fitzgerald said carers and family members could be ruled out as the main culprits with "reasonable certainty".
"We don't have many offender details recorded, so it's hard to know for sure," she said. "Staff don't seem to be the main offenders. I think we'd have reasonable records if that was the case."
NSW Police said the reporting rules "no doubt" affected the number of reports.
Staff under pressure
Brian Draper, a professor of psychiatry and mental health at the University of NSW, said while reporting had increased, the actual number of assaults had likely risen as well.
He said the portion of aged care residents needing a high level of care for behavioural changes had grown considerably in the past decade because people with lesser needs were increasingly managed at home.
"Within the residential aged care sector, we've got a greater concentration of those who have the highest level of needs," he said. "That in itself means that there is greater pressure upon staff to look after these residents."
Lee-Fay Low, a professor of aging and health at the University of Sydney, said inadequate training among carers can lead to residents becoming physically aggressive.
"Imagine if someone was trying to get you to go to the toilet, take your pants off, have a shower. If that's not managed well, then you're going to kick, punch, hit that person," she said.
Professor Low said a high turnover of staff in the industry meant some carers were not appropriately trained.
NSW Police would not say how often officers were called to aged care homes. But data obtained by the ABC under the Government Information Public Access (GIPA) Act show police recorded 4,654 incidents at such facilities last financial year.
That is roughly 12 incidents a day across the state.
However, there was no breakdown of the types of incidents.
At a Cooma nursing home in May, one of those incidents turned fatal. Ninety-five-year-old resident Clare Nowland died after being tasered by a police officer.
Police allege they were called to the facility when staff failed to get her to drop two knives.
The great-grandmother fell, fractured her skull, and died a week later in hospital.
Senior Constable Kristian White has been charged with manslaughter and remains before the courts.
Call for 'clinical input first'
Speaking generally, Professor Low said aged care staff should only call police as a last resort. "You should be bringing clinicians and getting clinical input first," she said. "If you can't get that input straightaway, and it's really dangerous, then perhaps you need to call the police."
Professor Draper said police were not adequately trained for dealing with aged care residents.
"In just the same way there's not adequate training for the residential aged care staff," he said.
NSW Police said they do not run training specifically for dealing with dementia patients, but they are rolling out a course covering aging and disability to all crime prevention officers.
"This training focuses on specific legislation and rights of the elderly," a NSW Police spokesperson said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-29/nsw-elderly-assaults-police-response-nursing-home/103193890
*****************************************Chinese Appetite For Australian Barley Is Back
Three years after steep Chinese tariffs halted imports of Australian barley as tensions between the two countries ratcheted higher, the grain is once again flowing freely.
Barley is not only used to brew beer but to feed pigs, and China was Australia's leading market, taking 50 percent of its barley exports.
China has imported 314,000 tonnes of Australian barley worth 139 million Australian dollars (around $94 million) since the government scrapped its 80.5 percent tariffs in August, the Australian government said in early December, citing official Chinese data.
The resumption of trade is a welcome relief for Australian farmers, who saw a nearly one billion Australian-dollar market evaporate in 2020.
"In the two months following the market's re-opening, Marketing and Trading shipped two vessels of barley to China," said the CBH Group, a cooperative of over 3,500 Western Australian grain farmers, in its annual report.
Tensions between the countries began to mount in 2018 when Australia excluded the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from its 5G network.
Then in 2020, Australia called for an international investigation into the origins of Covid-19 -- an action China saw as politically motivated since it emanated from a close partner of the United States.
In response, Beijing slapped high tariffs on key Australian exports, including barley, beef and wine, while halting its coal imports.
A slowdown in China's economic growth has spurred Beijing to rekindle its relationships with its trading partners.
Meanwhile, Australia sought out and found new markets to offload its harvests -- it is the world's third-largest producer of the grassy grain.
"It caused us to pivot, so we found new markets, like Mexico. We managed to have tariffs lowered, which were previously in excess of 100 percent," Sean Cole, the acting general manager of the GrainGrowers trade association, told AFP.
"With China gone, Australia was really forced to go back to more traditional customers in the feed market, mainly the Middle East and Saudi Arabia, where we've been for over 20 years," he added.
Between June 2022 and June 2023, Saudi Arabia became the leading importer of Australian barley, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES).
Lyndon Mickel farms a 6,000-hectare plot of land near Beaumont in the southwest part of Australia. The latest harvest of his fields of various grains and peas was the 23rd of his career, but it has taken time to bounce back from the Chinese tariffs.
"We've had a reduction in price, but we've been fortunate we've had two very good years in that time crop-wise," he said, "so what we've lost in price, we've gained in tonnage anyway."
But those boom years -- producing over 14 million tonnes of barley in the last two harvests -- are over.
As El Nino -- the cyclical weather phenomenon responsible for higher global temperatures -- returns to the Pacific, ABARES predicts barley production will drop by 24 percent to 10.8 million tonnes for the 2023-24 harvest.
The reopening of the Chinese market could not have come at a better time, said Sean Cole.
"A lot of our barley is classified as feed, but it is still suitable for beer manufacturing in China," he said, "they use slightly different processes, and essentially it means we can get a premium for more of our feed barley".
On average, barley destined for China is sold for "around 38 to 40 dollars a tonne between now and since the tariffs were lifted" and that amounts to "an extra 400 million dollars value for the Australia barley crop next year, even with a smaller crop," Cole added.
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Australian Court Reverses Millions in COVID-19 Fines
More than $36 million (US$24.5 million) in COVID-19 infringements were withdrawn this year by the New South Wales (NSW) fines commissioner following a landmark Supreme Court ruling.
Thousands of fines were issued by NSW Police to members of the public who allegedly contravened health orders during the pandemic lockdowns in 2020 and 2021.
But in a landmark ruling in November 2022, Justice Dina Yehia said the fines were not valid because they did not include a sufficiently detailed description of the offences.
Following this ruling, the NSW Commissioner of Fines Administration withdrew four types of public health order fines which were similar to the ones examined during the Supreme Court case.
These included unlawfully participating in an outdoor public gathering and failing to comply with the requirement of public health order.
According to the NSW Customer Service department’s annual report, $36.3 million in fines were reversed in 2023 following the commissioner’s decision.
A spokesperson for Revenue NSW said this amounted to about 36,600 fines being withdrawn.
“The decision to withdraw these fines does not mean the offences were not committed, but that the fine notices in question had insufficient descriptions of the offences committed,” the spokesperson said.
As of Nov. 20, around 90 per cent of the withdrawn COVID-19 fines had been refunded and the remaining were in the process of being refunded.
A total of 62,138 COVID-19 related fines were issued by police during the pandemic.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/australian-court-reverses-millions-in-covid-19-fines-5555494
**************************************************Proton Mail Says It Will Defy Australia's Impending 'Online Safety' Law
Secure email service provider Proton Mail has added its voice to a growing number of tech companies concerned that Australia's proposed "online safety" regulation will force firms to break encryption to expose user data to governments and potentially criminal syndicates.
Proton offers end-to-end encrypted email, virtual private network (VPN), and online data and password storage services. Its slogan is "privacy by default."
The Australian proposal has already been heavily criticised by the Global Encryption Coalition, which comprises the Center for Democracy & Technology, Global Partners Digital, the Internet Freedom Foundation, the Internet Society, Mozilla, Access Now, and Digital Rights Watch.
Andy Yen, founder and CEO of Proton, told The Epoch Times: "With the current eSafety proposals, the Internet as we know it faces a very real threat. The proposed standards would force online services—no matter whether they are end-to-end encrypted or not—to access, collect, and read their users' private conversations.
"These proposals could not only break encryption, but could put businesses and citizens at risk while doing little to protect people from the online harms they are intended to address."
Australia's eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has released the draft standard, which applies to services including "email, instant messaging, short messages services (SMS), multimedia message services (MMS) and chat, as well as services that enable people to play online games with each other and dating services."
Other "apps and websites ... as well as online file storage services" will also be covered. Everything online, provided it's accessible to Australians (even if there are no visitors) is captured.
While Ms. Inman Grant insists providers will not need to breach encryption to comply with the standard, the Global Encryption Coalition says it will be impossible to do so otherwise.
Proton is the first provider to openly say it will defy the standard if it's introduced.
"Under no circumstances would we break end-to-end encryption," Mr. Yen said. "As other jurisdictions are realising, there is no such thing as technology that can scan everyone’s online activity while also providing privacy and safety.
“There is still time to safeguard end-to-end encryption in the eSafety proposals, and we urge Commissioner Inman Grant to ensure the protection of privacy for Australian citizens. Undermining cybersecurity and encryption in the name of eSafety will only lead to the opposite result, leaving everyone but criminals more at risk."
Proton AG is based in Switzerland, and says it is therefore subject only to Swiss law.
The legal and technical hurdles to enforcing cross-border regulations on entities that have no presence in the country imposing them have yet to be really tested.
While other tech companies have so far expressed disquiet with the proposals, many are moving to tighten encryption.
Telegram, which claims a user base of 200 million people, grew its market by being the first mass-market messaging service with end-to-end encryption, which is now the basis of its brand.
Meta attempted to win back market share for WhatsApp soon after it purchased it, by adding encryption, and has also pledged to work toward encryption and secure data storage across Facebook.
The company also announced the introduction of end-to-end encryption in Facebook Messenger, which is used by over a billion people. Online storage services such as iCloud and Google Cloud are also offering encrypted storage.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
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