Australian Politics
Bent cop has "refreshed" memory!
If British officials can be "economical with the truth", why cannot an Australian official have a "refreshed" memory? Another most useful excuse for lying!
Victorian police union secretary Paul Mullett has told the Office of Police Integrity (OPI) he wants to change some answers he gave the OPI at a private hearing last month. Senior Sergeant Mullett has told a public OPI inquiry today that since the private hearing "I have refreshed my memory". He admitted today to speaking to former assistant police commissioner Noel Ashby about his appearance at the private OPI hearing after telling the hearing last month he had not. It is illegal to discuss the private hearings of the OPI with anyone.
He also admitted meeting Detective Peter Lalor at the union's headquarters after telling the private hearing he had not. He now says he asked Mr Ashby to make inquiries as to who was on a police taskforce related to a secret investigation. Det Lalor was the target of the internal investigation into the gangland murder of a male prostitute in 2003.
It is alleged Sen-Sgt Mullett was a link in a chain of senior police figures which ended with Det Lalor being tipped off that he was being investigated. It has been alleged Det Lalor gave the address of the prostitute to a hitman. Mr Ashby and director of the police media unit Stephen Linnell have quit in the last week after being found to have lied to the OPI.
Source
More revelations about NSW hospital
Amazing that this was ever tolerated
Cockroaches crawled over patients undergoing surgery and theatre staff were forced to catch a falling patient after an operating table collapsed in the middle of a procedure at the Royal North Shore Hospital. The incidents were part of a litany of horror stories about the hospital that were revealed as a NSW parliamentary inquiry into the RNSH began yesterday. In a written submission to the inquiry, Jeffery Sleye Hughes, who was senior orthopaedic consultant at the hospital for 12 years until this year, detailed:
* patients with infected joints and compound fractures being "left to rot" in wards for 18 hours or more because of "inappropriate theatre management";
* patients being lied to about the reason their surgery was delayed, by units in the hospital trying to cover their backs;
* live cockroaches running over operating theatre tables during surgery;
* high-pressure hoses exploding in theatre during operations and injuring staff; and
* operating tables collapsing during surgery, with surgeons forced to catch falling patients.
The inquiry, which is due to report next month, was called following the publicity surrounding the case of Sydney woman Jana Horska, who miscarried in a toilet adjacent to the hospital's emergency unit in September, after waiting hours for treatment.
In another submission, Sydney woman Maureen Cain told how her husband lost both legs after contracting a staph infection at the hospital in 1998. "The family and I were horrified at the filthy conditions but, as we were so occupied with supporting our husband and father, (we) did not do anything at the time," Mrs Cain wrote. "Wards were dirty, bed frame had congealed matter on it, there was no ventilation in the bathroom, syringe left under the bed for three days before I picked it up - I could go on and on."
NSW Health Minister Reba Meagher insisted conditions would improve under new management and stressed the need for better financial management to end budget overruns. "There will be no cuts to nurses, no cuts to doctors and no cuts to beds," Ms Meagher said. "Our investment in frontline services will continue to increase in those important areas, but it is important that the hospital's financial management is improved and there have been a number of ideas floated."
Acting nursing director Linda Davidson told the inquiry nurses at RNSH had been spat at and abused in the street following coverage of problems at the hospital. "I have had it reported to me that some nursing staff in the community are actually undergoing similar situations that their colleagues at Camden and Campbelltown experienced, which was abuse in the streets and actual spitting episodes," she said. "So when that comes back within that environment, the morale does tend to wane accordingly." Nurses at Campbelltown and Camden Hospitals were abused in the streets when the hospitals were at the centre of maltreatment allegations in 2004.
Source
Believe me Greenies, I tried the bus but it is a lost cause
By Andrew Gall, writing from Sydney
I drove to work the other day. Walk out the door, hop in the car, 15 minutes later I am at my desk after parking at the early-bird rate of $18. Going home is just as low fuss. Problem is I felt a bit guilty with all the talk about greenhouse emissions and carbon footprints, so I caught the bus to work today. As I live in Annandale and work near Wynyard, how hard can it be?
Walk out the door, 50 metres to the bus stop and wait. One hour and seven minutes later I am at my desk, realising I could have walked it quicker. The first thing you notice is that the timetable is just a selection of random times with no relevance to buses actually arriving. Although the timetable suggests there is a bus every four or five minutes the reality is actually no buses for 25 minutes and then four or five buses simultaneously. My neighbour tells me the record is eight buses at once. With narrow streets precluding passing, the result is one or two hugely overcrowded buses followed closely by three almost empty buses.
Once on the bus I discover another problem. The bureaucrats apparently claim that buses are designed to fit the "95th percentile adult". Unfortunately this data appears to be based on 19th-century Lancashire miners or hobbits. I am just over 180 centimetres and I have to bend over while standing in the back of the bus. Jamming my legs into the seats is almost impossible.
The next problem is the route appears to be have been designed by Soviet Central Planning. Annandale is five kilometres west of the city, and as three-quarters of the passengers go into the CBD you would expect the bus route to be generally easterly. Not so. It meanders through the back streets of Camperdown and Glebe before coming out on Broadway and going down George Street. Once the bus turns onto Broadway and joins up with all the other Parramatta Road and King Street services it becomes almost comical as we leave the realm of professional commuters with their TravelTens and weeklies and enter the world of tourists who try to pay with a $50 note.
As people trickle off through Railway Square and Haymarket the buses creep on and begin to clump together until by the Queen Victoria Building, George Street is one long bus queue. Eventually we arrive at Wynyard and I give thanks for one small mercy - that I am not the driver. Today I am driving to work.
Source
Conservatives back calls for a judicial enquiry into a useless Left-run child protection agency
The NSW Opposition is supporting a call for a royal commission into the state's child protection agency. The State Government has been urged by Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper to launch a royal commission into the operations of the Department of Community Services (DOCS). The newspaper has created a petition in the hope of "forcing the Iemma Government to address DOCS' incompetence". They have also called on DOCS workers to come forward to discuss the difficulties faced by the agency and its staff on the ground.
"The Daily Telegraph is now taking a stand on behalf of all children whose lives are at risk through a combination of parental neglect and the mismanagement of the Department of Community Services," the newspaper said. "We are calling for a royal commission to end the shameful events that have led to five children - all known to DOCS - killed, injured or forced to live alone in the past month." The calls come after a series of high-profile incidents involving DOCs, with the latest being a three-year-old Sydney girl named Emily who was admitted to hospital on Monday night after allegedly being bashed by her mother's partner.
Emily's case
Yesterday Emily remained in a stable condition in the Children's Hospital at Westmead suffering severe facial injuries and bruising to her body. Her mother's 23-year-old boyfriend has been charged over the assault. At the time of the attack, the girl was in the care of her mother and the man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, in a housing commission townhouse at Glenfield. [welfare housing].
Neighbours said they heard shouting and arguing throughout Monday afternoon and evening. A neighbour who raised the alarm, Christine, yesterday said she was called over to the house about 5pm. Christine said she saw Emily in the back seat of the family's sedan with a towel on her head. Her face was "blue and purple", one eye was swollen shut and her mouth was covered in blood. "(She looked) just like she's been hit by a truck," Christine said yesterday.
She said she told the mother's boyfriend the child needed to be taken to hospital but he refused, saying he would take her to a "backyard" doctor. When he returned at 8pm, Christine went inside the house and the boyfriend handed her the child, who kept falling asleep and appeared concussed. She said she told the boyfriend she would take the child to hospital but he told her she was all right.
DOCS yesterday confirmed Emily was known to the department but not in relation to physical violence. Emily's mother has been questioned at length by police and released. Her boyfriend is to face Campbelltown Local Court today charged with maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm.
One in hundreds
Emily's case is the latest in a string of publicised cases in which children known to DOCS have died or suffered injuries. Last month the body of two-year-old Dean Shillingsworth was found in a suitcase dumped in a pond in western Sydney. Dean had also been known to DOCS.
"Despite a $1.2 billion, five-year program intended to improve DOCS, the state Labor Government has delivered a system where an increasing number of children, known to authorities as being at risk of harm, are dying in NSW," Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell said today. "Labor won't be able to ignore a royal commission, it will force them to act. "Over the last four years, 422 children have died who were known to DOCS."
Source
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Head-in-the-sand health bureaucrats
Queensland ambulance bosses were warned months ago about chronic understaffing and overworked paramedics suffering severe fatigue on the job. Confidential workplace health and safety documents obtained bt The Sunday Mail reveal that stressed frontline troops raised concerns as long ago as 2005. They warned that driving ambulances while fatigued threatened paramedics, patients and the public.
One said it was not uncommon for paramedics to have micro-sleeps at the wheel. A supervisor submitted a report to the Qeensland Ambulance Service workplace health and safety officer in May, outlining specific problems in Southeast Queensland. He recommended a review of fatigue policies: using other staff to drive fatigued officers back to the station and then home; and communications officers being more vigilant about overtime. He also called for an investigation by an independent agency.
Sources said yesterday that the report was ignored by QAS management. Stanthorpe ambulance Officer Julie Clark last week gave The Sunday Mail details of a nightmare shift of 36 hours. Ms Clark, 43, a trainee paramedic, said there were major safety concerns for all people involved and that someone could have been "in- jured or worse, killed" if she had fallen asleep. Ambulance Commissioner Jim Higgins said long shifts were "rare" but conceded the Clark situation "could have been managed better".
Paramedics were critical of Mr Higgins' claims and said marathon shifts were common. Several recently complained to their supervisor, who filed a report with the QAS workplace health and safety officer. "As the immmediate supervisor of staff who are regularly driving while fatigued, I have great concern about the safety of these officers and the members of the communitv that are exposed to these fiatigued officers." he wrote. "The QAS itself has identified that fatigue as an issue ... (but) this has not translated ... because we are quite regularly working 16 hours plus.
The supervisor said officers strongly believe that the community deserved better than being treated by a fatigued officer who couid possibly make an incorrect decision about the emergency health treatment given, which could lead to long-term ill-health or even death. Emergency Medical Service Protection Association president Prebs Sathiaseelan said it was just the "tip of the iceberg". "QAS management has known about the problem for a longtime. They received documentation through the normal channels of communication, but it was ignored," he said. Emergency Services Minister Neil Roberts said he had asked Mr Higgins to send a notice to all ambulance officers tomorrow reminding them of measures in place to alleviate fatigue.
The above article by Darrell Giles appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on November 11, 2007
Head-in-the-sand Immigration bureaucrats
Years in jail for nothing and not even an apology two years later! This is rivalling the incompetence of the U.S. immigration bureaucracy!
Details have emerged about the wrongful detention of a man who remains a stateless citizen despite an Immigration Department admission of error. Tony Tran, who was living in Brisbane with his wife and son, was detained in December 1999 when immigration officials told him his visa had been cancelled years earlier. The Department admitted a mistake and released him after five-and-a-half years, but because he and his son have no permanent resident status they still face possible deportation.
Mr Tran had been in Australia for seven years, and after applying for a spouse visa for his wife he was detained. This was despite the fact that a letter notifying him of his cancelled visa had never been properly delivered to him. David Manne, director of the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre, told ABC's Lateline that is illegal. "He should never have been in there in the first place. He should never have been locked up," he said. "Under Australian law, if you're not properly notified of a decision, it is unlawful for you to be detained."
His wife and two-year-old son Hai were not detained, but when faced with detention, his wife willingly left the country. She returned two years later and left her son in Queensland, before returning to South Korea. Mr Tran has not heard from her since.
While Mr Tran was in detention the Immigration Department had his son put in foster care and tried to have him deported, despite his repeated attempts to keep in contact with his son. In 2005 Mr Tran was released with a letter from the Government admitting that he had actually had valid visas since 1993. But two years after his release, there has been no resolution of his or his son's ability to stay in Australia.
Even though he has no rights of citizenship anywhere else and has now been in Australia for 14 years, Mr Tran and his son could still be deported unless they are given permanent residence. Mr Manne says Mr Tran is in legal limbo. "Their future fate is completely uncertain," he said. "They have nowhere else to go, and yet in Australia they have no permanent status." A suit has been filed in the Victorian Supreme Court seeking damages for the unlawful detention, and the reinstatement of Mr Tran's visa.
Source
For more details, see here
Hospital neglect 'killed mother'
"DON'T leave your loved ones alone at Royal North Shore Hospital." That is Lindy Batterham's advice as, one year after the agonising and preventable death of her mother, Joyce, she struggles to come to terms with the negligent care the 90-year-old received at RNSH, and the cover-up that followed. Left at the hospital overnight, simply so that her heart medication could be assessed in the morning, Joyce was dropped on the floor by a nurse, broke her hip, suffered a stroke during surgery and died six days later. "I'll be traumatised by my mother's last six days for the rest of my life, having flashbacks of witnessing her dying in a nightmare of pain," Ms Batterham, 52, said.
Her account of her mother's last days, revealed to The Australian yesterday, is one more RNSH horror story embattled NSW Health Minister Reba Meagher doesn't need as she prepares to front a parliamentary inquiry into the hospital this morning. The inquiry has been forced on the NSW Labor Government following the case of Jana Horska, who was left to miscarry in a toilet adjacent to the hospital's emergency unit in September. Ms Horska's case provoked an avalanche of complaints against the hospital.
When Ms Batterham left her mother at RNSH around midnight on November 10 last year, Joyce, who lived with Ms Batterham, was alert and in sound health. After arriving by ambulance at RNSH emergency at about 6pm with breathing difficulties that had been successfully treated before, Joyce did not see a doctor until 3am the following morning. Those nine hours were spent in great discomfort.
As the result of a pressure sore and poor circulation causing pain in her good leg, Joyce spent much of the time sitting on the edge of her ambulance stretcher, dangling her leg over the side. The doctor said there was nothing much wrong with Joyce and that she could stay overnight in the hospital's aged-care ward and see a specialist about her medication the following morning. Exhausted, Ms Batterham went home, little imagining she would never speak to her mum again.
"She could still be with us now, but because one nurse tried to move my mum, who was a large woman with only one leg, from her wheelchair to a hospital bed without a rail or anything for my mother to hold on to, she was dropped to the ground, resulting in a broken hip," she said. "When I arrived about an hour after Joyce had been dropped, I found they had put her back in the wheelchair and given her painkillers to address the extreme pain she complained of, then left her, with no access to a buzzer. "It was only after I intervened and insisted she be seen by a doctor and X-rayed for a possible fracture, and laid down on the bed instead of with her leg dangling, that these things finally happened." Three hours after being dropped, Joyce was finally seen by an orthopedic surgeon.
But there were more bungles ahead. Joyce's surgery the next day, Sunday, was postponed - without her or Ms Batterham being told. And when Ms Batterham phoned on the Monday morning to ask when the surgery would happen, she was astounded to hear it had already begun. She was unable to comfort her mother before surgery and was denied the opportunity to speak with her again, since Joyce was unable to communicate following a stroke on the operating table.
But what really angers Ms Batterham, as she prepares to lodge a submission with the parliamentary inquiry, is the hospital's lack of accountability and the way key details were airbrushed out of the written report she finally received on Joyce's death, which is being investigated by the Coroner. There was no mention of the fact Ms Batterham had to beg for her mother's hip to be examined by a doctor. No mention of the fact her pain was misdiagnosed by nurses as being the result of poor circulation. Above all, there was no admission that the attempt by a nurse to lift Joyce by herself, with no handrail, was a dangerous practice.
Source
Hysterical poof gets the boot
He apparently thinks that it is cool to abuse women
A Labour party candidate in the Australian federal election has removed a volunteer worker from his campaign after he launched a tirade of abuse at the wife of his opponent. Environment minister Malcolm Turnbull is fighting to retain the seat of Wentworth in Sydney for the incumbent Liberal party. The seat was subject to recent boundary changes and now includes gay districts such as Darlinghurst and Kings Cross, and the Labour party candidate George Newhouse has emphasised the anti-gay position of the present government.
On Saturday Gary Burns, a well-known gay rights activist, campaigning for Mr Newhouse, physically intimidated Mrs Turnbull in the street, calling her a fag hag. Mr Burns later sent an email to Mr Turnbull, quoted on news.com.au: "You will get more angry homosexuals like me attacking you verbally in public because of your fascist leader John Howard, who treats my community like second-class citizens. "Your middle-aged well dressed "fag hag" impersonator of a wife will not protect you from the anger my community has stored up for you and your Government come election day on Saturday November 24. "You are a weak and pathetic excuse for a human being."
Mr Newhouse's campaign director has now confirmed that Mr Burns, not a member of the Labour party, will no longer be working on the campaign. "On behalf of the federal Labour campaign for Wentworth, we regret any inconvenience and apologise to Mrs Lucy Turnbull," the director said.
Last week Mr Turnbull promised that if re-elected his party will allow interdependent gay couples to share each other's public pensions and benefits such as superannuation. He made his pledge at a meeting of lesbian and gay business leaders.
The present government failed to make any decisions on gay equality across a range of issues outlined for them in June by a report from the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. It listed the 58 laws that need to be changed to give gay, bisexual and lesbian Australians equal rights. Prime Minister John Howard's senior government colleagues split on the issue. Some felt it should not be a priority ahead of the election and were concerned about the cost of reforms. Other Cabinet members, especially those with sizable gay communities in their constituencies, argued that equal provision in areas such as Medicare and pensions must be in place before going to the polls.
A report from the HREOC was presented to the federal parliament in June and the Labour party, favourites to win the election and commanding double-digit leads over the governing Liberal party, are committed to reforms. However, both parties oppose gay marriage.
Source
The hysterical one defends his actions here
Queensland ambulance bosses were warned months ago about chronic understaffing and overworked paramedics suffering severe fatigue on the job. Confidential workplace health and safety documents obtained bt The Sunday Mail reveal that stressed frontline troops raised concerns as long ago as 2005. They warned that driving ambulances while fatigued threatened paramedics, patients and the public.
One said it was not uncommon for paramedics to have micro-sleeps at the wheel. A supervisor submitted a report to the Qeensland Ambulance Service workplace health and safety officer in May, outlining specific problems in Southeast Queensland. He recommended a review of fatigue policies: using other staff to drive fatigued officers back to the station and then home; and communications officers being more vigilant about overtime. He also called for an investigation by an independent agency.
Sources said yesterday that the report was ignored by QAS management. Stanthorpe ambulance Officer Julie Clark last week gave The Sunday Mail details of a nightmare shift of 36 hours. Ms Clark, 43, a trainee paramedic, said there were major safety concerns for all people involved and that someone could have been "in- jured or worse, killed" if she had fallen asleep. Ambulance Commissioner Jim Higgins said long shifts were "rare" but conceded the Clark situation "could have been managed better".
Paramedics were critical of Mr Higgins' claims and said marathon shifts were common. Several recently complained to their supervisor, who filed a report with the QAS workplace health and safety officer. "As the immmediate supervisor of staff who are regularly driving while fatigued, I have great concern about the safety of these officers and the members of the communitv that are exposed to these fiatigued officers." he wrote. "The QAS itself has identified that fatigue as an issue ... (but) this has not translated ... because we are quite regularly working 16 hours plus.
The supervisor said officers strongly believe that the community deserved better than being treated by a fatigued officer who couid possibly make an incorrect decision about the emergency health treatment given, which could lead to long-term ill-health or even death. Emergency Medical Service Protection Association president Prebs Sathiaseelan said it was just the "tip of the iceberg". "QAS management has known about the problem for a longtime. They received documentation through the normal channels of communication, but it was ignored," he said. Emergency Services Minister Neil Roberts said he had asked Mr Higgins to send a notice to all ambulance officers tomorrow reminding them of measures in place to alleviate fatigue.
The above article by Darrell Giles appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on November 11, 2007
Head-in-the-sand Immigration bureaucrats
Years in jail for nothing and not even an apology two years later! This is rivalling the incompetence of the U.S. immigration bureaucracy!
Details have emerged about the wrongful detention of a man who remains a stateless citizen despite an Immigration Department admission of error. Tony Tran, who was living in Brisbane with his wife and son, was detained in December 1999 when immigration officials told him his visa had been cancelled years earlier. The Department admitted a mistake and released him after five-and-a-half years, but because he and his son have no permanent resident status they still face possible deportation.
Mr Tran had been in Australia for seven years, and after applying for a spouse visa for his wife he was detained. This was despite the fact that a letter notifying him of his cancelled visa had never been properly delivered to him. David Manne, director of the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre, told ABC's Lateline that is illegal. "He should never have been in there in the first place. He should never have been locked up," he said. "Under Australian law, if you're not properly notified of a decision, it is unlawful for you to be detained."
His wife and two-year-old son Hai were not detained, but when faced with detention, his wife willingly left the country. She returned two years later and left her son in Queensland, before returning to South Korea. Mr Tran has not heard from her since.
While Mr Tran was in detention the Immigration Department had his son put in foster care and tried to have him deported, despite his repeated attempts to keep in contact with his son. In 2005 Mr Tran was released with a letter from the Government admitting that he had actually had valid visas since 1993. But two years after his release, there has been no resolution of his or his son's ability to stay in Australia.
Even though he has no rights of citizenship anywhere else and has now been in Australia for 14 years, Mr Tran and his son could still be deported unless they are given permanent residence. Mr Manne says Mr Tran is in legal limbo. "Their future fate is completely uncertain," he said. "They have nowhere else to go, and yet in Australia they have no permanent status." A suit has been filed in the Victorian Supreme Court seeking damages for the unlawful detention, and the reinstatement of Mr Tran's visa.
Source
For more details, see here
Hospital neglect 'killed mother'
"DON'T leave your loved ones alone at Royal North Shore Hospital." That is Lindy Batterham's advice as, one year after the agonising and preventable death of her mother, Joyce, she struggles to come to terms with the negligent care the 90-year-old received at RNSH, and the cover-up that followed. Left at the hospital overnight, simply so that her heart medication could be assessed in the morning, Joyce was dropped on the floor by a nurse, broke her hip, suffered a stroke during surgery and died six days later. "I'll be traumatised by my mother's last six days for the rest of my life, having flashbacks of witnessing her dying in a nightmare of pain," Ms Batterham, 52, said.
Her account of her mother's last days, revealed to The Australian yesterday, is one more RNSH horror story embattled NSW Health Minister Reba Meagher doesn't need as she prepares to front a parliamentary inquiry into the hospital this morning. The inquiry has been forced on the NSW Labor Government following the case of Jana Horska, who was left to miscarry in a toilet adjacent to the hospital's emergency unit in September. Ms Horska's case provoked an avalanche of complaints against the hospital.
When Ms Batterham left her mother at RNSH around midnight on November 10 last year, Joyce, who lived with Ms Batterham, was alert and in sound health. After arriving by ambulance at RNSH emergency at about 6pm with breathing difficulties that had been successfully treated before, Joyce did not see a doctor until 3am the following morning. Those nine hours were spent in great discomfort.
As the result of a pressure sore and poor circulation causing pain in her good leg, Joyce spent much of the time sitting on the edge of her ambulance stretcher, dangling her leg over the side. The doctor said there was nothing much wrong with Joyce and that she could stay overnight in the hospital's aged-care ward and see a specialist about her medication the following morning. Exhausted, Ms Batterham went home, little imagining she would never speak to her mum again.
"She could still be with us now, but because one nurse tried to move my mum, who was a large woman with only one leg, from her wheelchair to a hospital bed without a rail or anything for my mother to hold on to, she was dropped to the ground, resulting in a broken hip," she said. "When I arrived about an hour after Joyce had been dropped, I found they had put her back in the wheelchair and given her painkillers to address the extreme pain she complained of, then left her, with no access to a buzzer. "It was only after I intervened and insisted she be seen by a doctor and X-rayed for a possible fracture, and laid down on the bed instead of with her leg dangling, that these things finally happened." Three hours after being dropped, Joyce was finally seen by an orthopedic surgeon.
But there were more bungles ahead. Joyce's surgery the next day, Sunday, was postponed - without her or Ms Batterham being told. And when Ms Batterham phoned on the Monday morning to ask when the surgery would happen, she was astounded to hear it had already begun. She was unable to comfort her mother before surgery and was denied the opportunity to speak with her again, since Joyce was unable to communicate following a stroke on the operating table.
But what really angers Ms Batterham, as she prepares to lodge a submission with the parliamentary inquiry, is the hospital's lack of accountability and the way key details were airbrushed out of the written report she finally received on Joyce's death, which is being investigated by the Coroner. There was no mention of the fact Ms Batterham had to beg for her mother's hip to be examined by a doctor. No mention of the fact her pain was misdiagnosed by nurses as being the result of poor circulation. Above all, there was no admission that the attempt by a nurse to lift Joyce by herself, with no handrail, was a dangerous practice.
Source
Hysterical poof gets the boot
He apparently thinks that it is cool to abuse women
A Labour party candidate in the Australian federal election has removed a volunteer worker from his campaign after he launched a tirade of abuse at the wife of his opponent. Environment minister Malcolm Turnbull is fighting to retain the seat of Wentworth in Sydney for the incumbent Liberal party. The seat was subject to recent boundary changes and now includes gay districts such as Darlinghurst and Kings Cross, and the Labour party candidate George Newhouse has emphasised the anti-gay position of the present government.
On Saturday Gary Burns, a well-known gay rights activist, campaigning for Mr Newhouse, physically intimidated Mrs Turnbull in the street, calling her a fag hag. Mr Burns later sent an email to Mr Turnbull, quoted on news.com.au: "You will get more angry homosexuals like me attacking you verbally in public because of your fascist leader John Howard, who treats my community like second-class citizens. "Your middle-aged well dressed "fag hag" impersonator of a wife will not protect you from the anger my community has stored up for you and your Government come election day on Saturday November 24. "You are a weak and pathetic excuse for a human being."
Mr Newhouse's campaign director has now confirmed that Mr Burns, not a member of the Labour party, will no longer be working on the campaign. "On behalf of the federal Labour campaign for Wentworth, we regret any inconvenience and apologise to Mrs Lucy Turnbull," the director said.
Last week Mr Turnbull promised that if re-elected his party will allow interdependent gay couples to share each other's public pensions and benefits such as superannuation. He made his pledge at a meeting of lesbian and gay business leaders.
The present government failed to make any decisions on gay equality across a range of issues outlined for them in June by a report from the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. It listed the 58 laws that need to be changed to give gay, bisexual and lesbian Australians equal rights. Prime Minister John Howard's senior government colleagues split on the issue. Some felt it should not be a priority ahead of the election and were concerned about the cost of reforms. Other Cabinet members, especially those with sizable gay communities in their constituencies, argued that equal provision in areas such as Medicare and pensions must be in place before going to the polls.
A report from the HREOC was presented to the federal parliament in June and the Labour party, favourites to win the election and commanding double-digit leads over the governing Liberal party, are committed to reforms. However, both parties oppose gay marriage.
Source
The hysterical one defends his actions here
Monday, November 12, 2007
It looks like Britain does not have a monopoly on filthy public hospitals
Cockroaches crawled on operating tables during procedures, the inquiry into Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital has been told. Health Minister Reba Meagher is the first witness to face the inquiry this morning, being held at NSW Parliament. The hospital's doctors and former management are giving evidence into the hopital, which has been the centre of many complaints over the past two months. One doctor, who has since resigned, complained of the filthy conditions in operating theatres.
Nationals state MP Jenny Gardiner told the inquiry the allegations were made in a submission from the doctor who worked at the hospital for 16 years. "He refers to the killing of live cockroaches on operating theatre tables during operations and `no response when I forward a written complaint and response is requested'."
Ms Meagher said that was unacceptable. "That is why the new management has responded to concerns of staff at the hospital and ordered a complete clean of the hospital," Ms Meagher said. Contract cleaners were sent to the hospital on the eve of a tour of the facility by the parliamentary committee. Ms Meagher has denied the clean-up was an attempted cover-up, saying it was done after a request by staff and had been arranged before the committee indicated it would visit.
Source
Two crooked cops down
But plenty more where they come from
VICTORIA police media director Stephen Linnell, who is answering corruption allegations at an independent inquiry, has resigned. Mr Linnell's lawyer, Martin Grinberg, told the Office of Police Integrity (OPI) inquiry today Mr Linnell had resigned. OPI delegate Murray Wilcox indicated Mr Linnell, believed to be at the inquiry today, would still be required to give further evidence..
His resignation follows that of Assistant Commissioner Noel Ashby who quit on Friday after three days of explosive evidence implicated him in a Victoria Police corruption scandal.
Mr Linnell was expected to return to the witness box for a second day of grilling at the inquiry today. The OPI is examining leaks over a botched secret police task force investigating police links to a 2003 murder. The task force, dubbed Operation Briars, was investigating claims a police officer gave the address of slain male prostitute Shane Chartres-Abbott to a hitman. The leaks resulted in the police suspect being tipped off about the investigation.
A police spokeswoman confirmed Mr Linnell had tendered his resignation to Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon this morning. Ms Nixon may comment later today.
Source
What a great idea!
Car hoons [speed hogs] will have their vehicles crushed and the video posted on the internet in a bid to deal with the growing defiance of speed obsessed drivers in Sydney. But first they will have to witness their car destroyed under crash test experiments in RTA labs. As four more cars were confiscated at the weekend in drag racing offences across Sydney, The Daily Telegraph can reveal NSW premier Morris Iemma is planning a major offensive against this increasingly reckless - and often fatal - behaviour.
On Saturday night, a P-plater [provisionally licenced driver] crashed into a tree at high speed in Londonderry, in Sydney's west. The 20-year-old driver and his 16-year-old passenger suffered multiple fractures and were last night in Nepean Hospital. It was what The Daily Telegraph warned in August would continue to happen unless NSW adopt Los Angeles' style laws that not only confiscate cars but destroys them.
Following a campaign sparked by a flood of support from Daily Telegraph readers - in the wake of the deaths of Alan and Judith Howle, allegedly killed by street racers - the Government has agreed to toughen the laws for car hoons. And if crushing their cars does not change the behaviour of young drivers, the Government will consider posting the entire spectacle on YouTube as an education tool. "These modified, loud and often illegal vehicles confiscated from car hoons will be smashed to pieces in our crash labs, the results filmed and analysed, and the wrecks shown to other young drivers as a warning," Mr Iemma said.
In four other incidents at the weekend police charged four drivers and confiscated their cars after two street racing incidents in Sydney's southwest. A 23-year-old P-plate driver and a 23-year-old man were given court attendance notices for street racing at Lansvale and had their cars confiscated. Two Holden sedans were also seen racing on Victoria St, Wetherill Park, on Saturday night.
Source
Huge success about to be thrown away?
If you have ever wondered which country has the healthiest, wealthiest population in the world, you don't have to look far. Providing you are not an Aborigine, the average Australian's chances of combining long life with comfortable lifestyle are the best in the world. Bar none. The statistical evidence is emphatic. Australia ranks equal third in average longevity. It ranks eighth in per capita wealth among nations with populations larger than that of greater Sydney. Average household wealth has doubled in the 11« years since the Howard Government was elected. Unemployment is the lowest in 30 years. You, personally, may, or may not, have never had it so good, but we, as a population, have never been as healthy and wealthy as now.
Australia is thus approaching a fascinating historical juncture. Amid such benign economic conditions, we may be on the brink of an unprecedented experiment in power politics - giving control of every government in the nation to a political machine with a proven record of insularity and self-serving public patronage on a large scale.
This is uncharted territory. Nine Labor governments out of nine. Nine governments able to cross-fertilise each other's power base, exercising complete control over appointments to the judiciary and the senior bureaucracy. Nine Labor governments with big debts to the unions that underpin their finances. It could change Australia's political culture for a generation.
Kevin Rudd presents impressively and has wisely targeted the Government's obvious weaknesses in education policies, labour law reform and climate change. He has managed to operate above the realities of Labor's machine politics. But then so did Premier Bob Carr, and he bequeathed to NSW a state Labor Government riddled with cronyism, addicted to gambling, coddling the public sector unions, and providing inefficient public services.
On Friday the former federal Labor leader Mark Latham, in an essay in The Australian Financial Review, portrayed the modern Labor Party as far more committed to self-preservation than idealism. In the process he also demolished a core element of Rudd's presidential campaign - the idea that Australia has a housing affordability crisis.
"It seems strange," Latham wrote, "to hear people talking about a private housing affordability crisis when, over the past decade, Australia has experienced its greatest ever boom in private housing investment . In most cases, [home buyers] are enjoying a quality of housing well beyond the expectations of their parents and grandparents before them . Bargains are still available. In south-west Sydney, for example, home buyers can purchase a three-bedroom brick house in a decent neighbourhood for less than $250,000 . There is no crisis in the private housing market, just the manufactured hysteria of the political class."
Latham is half right. Rising interest rates have been offset by income tax cuts from the Federal Government. Housing prices have been rising in most areas, which means the net wealth of home buyers has been rising. Reserve Bank statistics show no meaningful mortgage delinquency. There is no crisis. That said, the Government has stimulated the economy, and the housing market, with rolling tax cuts, a gang-busters immigration policy (120,000 immigrants a year plus a surge in short-term work visas). Per capita private debt has ballooned. While wealth creation and rising real incomes have been spread right across society, the gap between rich and poor has widened.
There is the other manufactured "crisis" that has been helped along by government missteps. The unions have financed a campaign against the Work Choices legislation built on a series of scares presented by actors masquerading as victims. In contrast, since Work Choices became law, work creation has boomed. Last Thursday's employment figures showed the economy at the highest rate of employment and job-creation in a generation.
The Prime Minister made one of the great mistakes of his career by investing so much political capital in Kevin Andrews, who oversaw sweeping labour market reforms via Work Choices, reforms that have stimulated job growth and job creation, as intended, but have also been overly ambitious, overly cumbersome and very much a work in progress. The Government needs to address this reality or die.
Labor's confection of a sense of crisis, in the midst of real-world growth and prosperity, is thus based on some real-world stress, much of it self-inflicted by a consumer-driven culture, plus a great deal of hot air and false hope. As Latham wrote on Friday: "We have reached the zenith of policy convergence in Australian public life. Everything else is just play-acting, a bit of media melodrama to keep the public entertained. Australia is having a Seinfeld election, a show about nothing."
Once again, he is only half right. There is great deal of play-acting. There is a great deal of policy convergence between Labor and the Coalition. There is, however, a real schism, a real issue that divides the Government and the Opposition - the restoration of union power. That is what the election on November 24 is really about. Under a Labor government, the deputy prime minister and minister for industrial relations would be a hard-left union ideologue and labour lawyer, Julia Gillard. The attorney-general would be Senator Joe Ludwig, who, in the great tradition of the Labor patronage machine, is the son of a Queensland Labor powerbroker, Bill Ludwig, the national president of the Australian Workers Union. Leaders of the machine would dominate the ministry.
Everything is in place. With Labor so close to the holy grail of power - every government in Australia - the machine, and the Labor left, are maintaining an iron discipline, and a patient silence.
Source
Cockroaches crawled on operating tables during procedures, the inquiry into Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital has been told. Health Minister Reba Meagher is the first witness to face the inquiry this morning, being held at NSW Parliament. The hospital's doctors and former management are giving evidence into the hopital, which has been the centre of many complaints over the past two months. One doctor, who has since resigned, complained of the filthy conditions in operating theatres.
Nationals state MP Jenny Gardiner told the inquiry the allegations were made in a submission from the doctor who worked at the hospital for 16 years. "He refers to the killing of live cockroaches on operating theatre tables during operations and `no response when I forward a written complaint and response is requested'."
Ms Meagher said that was unacceptable. "That is why the new management has responded to concerns of staff at the hospital and ordered a complete clean of the hospital," Ms Meagher said. Contract cleaners were sent to the hospital on the eve of a tour of the facility by the parliamentary committee. Ms Meagher has denied the clean-up was an attempted cover-up, saying it was done after a request by staff and had been arranged before the committee indicated it would visit.
Source
Two crooked cops down
But plenty more where they come from
VICTORIA police media director Stephen Linnell, who is answering corruption allegations at an independent inquiry, has resigned. Mr Linnell's lawyer, Martin Grinberg, told the Office of Police Integrity (OPI) inquiry today Mr Linnell had resigned. OPI delegate Murray Wilcox indicated Mr Linnell, believed to be at the inquiry today, would still be required to give further evidence..
His resignation follows that of Assistant Commissioner Noel Ashby who quit on Friday after three days of explosive evidence implicated him in a Victoria Police corruption scandal.
Mr Linnell was expected to return to the witness box for a second day of grilling at the inquiry today. The OPI is examining leaks over a botched secret police task force investigating police links to a 2003 murder. The task force, dubbed Operation Briars, was investigating claims a police officer gave the address of slain male prostitute Shane Chartres-Abbott to a hitman. The leaks resulted in the police suspect being tipped off about the investigation.
A police spokeswoman confirmed Mr Linnell had tendered his resignation to Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon this morning. Ms Nixon may comment later today.
Source
What a great idea!
Car hoons [speed hogs] will have their vehicles crushed and the video posted on the internet in a bid to deal with the growing defiance of speed obsessed drivers in Sydney. But first they will have to witness their car destroyed under crash test experiments in RTA labs. As four more cars were confiscated at the weekend in drag racing offences across Sydney, The Daily Telegraph can reveal NSW premier Morris Iemma is planning a major offensive against this increasingly reckless - and often fatal - behaviour.
On Saturday night, a P-plater [provisionally licenced driver] crashed into a tree at high speed in Londonderry, in Sydney's west. The 20-year-old driver and his 16-year-old passenger suffered multiple fractures and were last night in Nepean Hospital. It was what The Daily Telegraph warned in August would continue to happen unless NSW adopt Los Angeles' style laws that not only confiscate cars but destroys them.
Following a campaign sparked by a flood of support from Daily Telegraph readers - in the wake of the deaths of Alan and Judith Howle, allegedly killed by street racers - the Government has agreed to toughen the laws for car hoons. And if crushing their cars does not change the behaviour of young drivers, the Government will consider posting the entire spectacle on YouTube as an education tool. "These modified, loud and often illegal vehicles confiscated from car hoons will be smashed to pieces in our crash labs, the results filmed and analysed, and the wrecks shown to other young drivers as a warning," Mr Iemma said.
In four other incidents at the weekend police charged four drivers and confiscated their cars after two street racing incidents in Sydney's southwest. A 23-year-old P-plate driver and a 23-year-old man were given court attendance notices for street racing at Lansvale and had their cars confiscated. Two Holden sedans were also seen racing on Victoria St, Wetherill Park, on Saturday night.
Source
Huge success about to be thrown away?
If you have ever wondered which country has the healthiest, wealthiest population in the world, you don't have to look far. Providing you are not an Aborigine, the average Australian's chances of combining long life with comfortable lifestyle are the best in the world. Bar none. The statistical evidence is emphatic. Australia ranks equal third in average longevity. It ranks eighth in per capita wealth among nations with populations larger than that of greater Sydney. Average household wealth has doubled in the 11« years since the Howard Government was elected. Unemployment is the lowest in 30 years. You, personally, may, or may not, have never had it so good, but we, as a population, have never been as healthy and wealthy as now.
Australia is thus approaching a fascinating historical juncture. Amid such benign economic conditions, we may be on the brink of an unprecedented experiment in power politics - giving control of every government in the nation to a political machine with a proven record of insularity and self-serving public patronage on a large scale.
This is uncharted territory. Nine Labor governments out of nine. Nine governments able to cross-fertilise each other's power base, exercising complete control over appointments to the judiciary and the senior bureaucracy. Nine Labor governments with big debts to the unions that underpin their finances. It could change Australia's political culture for a generation.
Kevin Rudd presents impressively and has wisely targeted the Government's obvious weaknesses in education policies, labour law reform and climate change. He has managed to operate above the realities of Labor's machine politics. But then so did Premier Bob Carr, and he bequeathed to NSW a state Labor Government riddled with cronyism, addicted to gambling, coddling the public sector unions, and providing inefficient public services.
On Friday the former federal Labor leader Mark Latham, in an essay in The Australian Financial Review, portrayed the modern Labor Party as far more committed to self-preservation than idealism. In the process he also demolished a core element of Rudd's presidential campaign - the idea that Australia has a housing affordability crisis.
"It seems strange," Latham wrote, "to hear people talking about a private housing affordability crisis when, over the past decade, Australia has experienced its greatest ever boom in private housing investment . In most cases, [home buyers] are enjoying a quality of housing well beyond the expectations of their parents and grandparents before them . Bargains are still available. In south-west Sydney, for example, home buyers can purchase a three-bedroom brick house in a decent neighbourhood for less than $250,000 . There is no crisis in the private housing market, just the manufactured hysteria of the political class."
Latham is half right. Rising interest rates have been offset by income tax cuts from the Federal Government. Housing prices have been rising in most areas, which means the net wealth of home buyers has been rising. Reserve Bank statistics show no meaningful mortgage delinquency. There is no crisis. That said, the Government has stimulated the economy, and the housing market, with rolling tax cuts, a gang-busters immigration policy (120,000 immigrants a year plus a surge in short-term work visas). Per capita private debt has ballooned. While wealth creation and rising real incomes have been spread right across society, the gap between rich and poor has widened.
There is the other manufactured "crisis" that has been helped along by government missteps. The unions have financed a campaign against the Work Choices legislation built on a series of scares presented by actors masquerading as victims. In contrast, since Work Choices became law, work creation has boomed. Last Thursday's employment figures showed the economy at the highest rate of employment and job-creation in a generation.
The Prime Minister made one of the great mistakes of his career by investing so much political capital in Kevin Andrews, who oversaw sweeping labour market reforms via Work Choices, reforms that have stimulated job growth and job creation, as intended, but have also been overly ambitious, overly cumbersome and very much a work in progress. The Government needs to address this reality or die.
Labor's confection of a sense of crisis, in the midst of real-world growth and prosperity, is thus based on some real-world stress, much of it self-inflicted by a consumer-driven culture, plus a great deal of hot air and false hope. As Latham wrote on Friday: "We have reached the zenith of policy convergence in Australian public life. Everything else is just play-acting, a bit of media melodrama to keep the public entertained. Australia is having a Seinfeld election, a show about nothing."
Once again, he is only half right. There is great deal of play-acting. There is a great deal of policy convergence between Labor and the Coalition. There is, however, a real schism, a real issue that divides the Government and the Opposition - the restoration of union power. That is what the election on November 24 is really about. Under a Labor government, the deputy prime minister and minister for industrial relations would be a hard-left union ideologue and labour lawyer, Julia Gillard. The attorney-general would be Senator Joe Ludwig, who, in the great tradition of the Labor patronage machine, is the son of a Queensland Labor powerbroker, Bill Ludwig, the national president of the Australian Workers Union. Leaders of the machine would dominate the ministry.
Everything is in place. With Labor so close to the holy grail of power - every government in Australia - the machine, and the Labor left, are maintaining an iron discipline, and a patient silence.
Source
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Law 'turns boys into rapists'
TOUGH new rape laws which make it clear being drunk does not constitute consent have been condemned by barristers, who insist: "It will turn our sons into criminals." The NSW Bar Associations reckons the "No means no" law goes too far and will lobby Upper House members to vote against it when it is up for debate next week. The law will define the meaning of consent for the first time, making it clear that being drunk or under the influence of drugs does not mean consent has been given. It will also introduce an "objective fault test", meaning a man can no longer use the defence that he thought he had consent if the circumstances appear unreasonable.
"It will turn our sons into criminals," new Bar Association president Anna Katzmann SC said yesterday. "For years women have been insisting 'No' means 'No'. What troubles us about this new legislation is that it introduces a new regime where 'Yes' may mean 'No'." Ms Katzmann gave the example of a woman on a first date who might not want to have sex but after both she and the man had drunk too much said "Yes". The next day she feels guilty and tells her mother, who goes to the police. "That would be rape under the new laws," Ms Katzmann said. "The fact that he was drunk cannot be taken into account. The fact that she was drunk is no excuse for him.
Chair of the Bar Association's criminal law committee Stephen Odgers SC said the law made sexual assault a crime of negligence. "The stupid, the negligent, the intoxicated, the crazy will be treated as if they are the same as the true rapist, who knows there is no consent to sexual intercourse," Mr Odgers said.
Opposition attorney general, former Crown prosecutor Greg Smith, said the Attorney-General John Hatzistergos needed to spell out the law better. Mr Hatzistergos said the introduction of an objective fault test was canvassed during the State Government's exhaustive consultation process and had wide support, including police and the Rape Crisis Centre. "Although Mr Odgers might like to draw a distinction between the stupid or drunk rapist and normal rapists, for rape victims they're categories that don't matter," he said.
"If a person is drunk it does not automatically mean that consent can't be given. What it means is that the onus is on the other person, usually a man, to show he had reasonable grounds to believe the woman had consented. "It's difficult to take the Bar Association seriously on this matter when, in their own submission, they concluded that just because a woman was asleep or unconscious (it) doesn't negate consent." Earlier this year The Daily Telegraph launched the Justice For Women Now campaign to give sexual assault victims equal justice and to encourage more women to report assaults
Source
GM paranoia hurts Australian farmers
This week academics at the University of Melbourne released news of the latest victory in the environmental movement's war on Australia. The ban on growing genetically modified canola is costing our struggling farmers a whopping $157 million a year. No green group has yet claimed credit for this triumph of economic terrorism, but no doubt one will soon. On its website, Greenpeace lists among its main achievements the decision by five states to impose moratoriums on the commercial release of the first proposed GM crop. The greens applied pressure on the states after both Australia's independent regulators, Food Standards Australia New Zealand and the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator, approved the general release of two types of GM canola in 2003.
This is a hot issue because most states are reviewing the bans, due to expire next year. It matters more generally because canola was the first big battleground in the public debate here over the acceptability of genetically modified foods.
The errors and misconceptions the green activists were able to lodge in our minds then have influenced our attitudes to this new frontier of science ever since. Basically, Australians remain pessimistic while other countries have moved on and are reaping the benefits, and not just from canola. The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics has estimated that we stand to lose $5.8 billion in a decade if we don't access all new GM crop varieties. (Mind you, we are not always consistent. Most of the cotton grown in Australia is genetically modified. We hear no complaints from the greens about this. A cynic might say this is because if it wasn't modified it would require a lot more water and pesticides to grow. But the same applies to GM canola.)
Professor Rick Roush and Dr Robert Norton from the Faculty of Land and Food Resources at the University of Melbourne have looked at more than 20 recent reports on GM canola in Australia. They have compared this with the situation in other countries that have not banned GM canola, particularly Canada. A comparison of the experiences of Australia and Canada enables us to review the claims against GM canola made by the greens.
Let's start with the economics. The greens have sometimes argued that Australia, far from benefitting, would lose financially by growing GM canola, because foreign markets would gradually shut out not just GM canola but all canola from countries that grew the GM strains. In fact, just the opposite has happened internationally. More markets have now opened up to GM canola. The biggest is the European Union, which has approved the importation of GM canola grain and oil. As a result of this market expansion, Canada's canola production has increased by 40 per cent since 1996. It has been able to do this in part because GM strains are more productive. Canada's average yields have increased by 40 per cent over the past decade. In Australia, they've gone into reverse, declining by 10 per cent. Because of this and the drought, last year Australia actually imported a large quantity of Canadian GM canola.
This failure in the greens' economic predictions should not surprise us. In the past decade, as green spokesmen took to cutting their hair and wearing suits, they also began to argue their case on financial as well as environmental grounds. It was part of the appeal for respectability. But where it has been possible to test green economics, it has often been found wanting.
Perhaps the most persistent example of this has been in relation to the timber industry. Whenever Bob Carr created a new national park and destroyed yet another small town's economic basis, there was a claim from some city-based green group that the local folk would gain far more from "green tourism" than they lost from the closure of their timber mill. This proved to be fantasy.
Of course, it's not just a question of economics. Over the years green activists have presented a wide range of arguments against GM canola. But their basic position is one of faith: they are fundamentalists. On its website Greenpeace announces it is "opposed to the patenting of life". It is not clear whether this opposition is based on disapproval of capitalism or science or both, but as a general statement it leaves little if any room for debate.
A more positive view of genetic modification is that it's the latest stage in several thousand years' efforts by humans to improve crops. One of the great achievements of the past half-century has been the boom in agricultural productivity. Those who've benefited most have been the world's poor. If further improvements mean "patenting life", so what?
A perverse result of the successful green opposition to GM canola is the harm it has done to the environment. As Roush and Norton explain in their paper, growing the current types of (non-GM) canola requires large amounts of herbicides that stay active in the soil for considerable periods and can be aquatic pollutants. In contrast, GM canola would do far less damage. The Canadian experience shows that GM canola is good for the economy, and good for the environment. Indeed, Canada is planning a 70 per cent expansion of its crop by 2015. Buckling to green propaganda in 2003 was a major failure of leadership by Australia's premiers. Let's hope they reverse that decision next year.
Source
One reason for the housing shortage
Delays of as much as six years and complications for developments as minor as a cubby house are among a catalogue of complaints about Sydney's clogged planning system. Even government ministers and senior bureaucrats have fallen foul of slow council approvals, according to the collection of horror stories seen by The Sunday Telegraph. One applicant ended up in hospital with heart problems. Leichhardt and Ku-ring-gai are the most commonly complained-about councils.
Among the plaintive pleas for assistance to Planning Minister Frank Sartor was one addressed from the coronary unit at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. Its author was recovering there after acute heart troubles he attributed to a long battle over minor renovations to his 1880s cottage. A State Government minister, whose identity was not revealed, encountered similar problems over a 1.3m extension to her bathroom.
Mr Sartor, who has received dozens of unsolicited cries for help so far this year, said they had galvanised him to reform the system. Under changes revealed to The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Sartor plans to radically increase the number of so-called complying developments - smaller projects under $1 million that can be approved without a development application. Legislation to go before Parliament by June will introduce targets for complying developments of 50 per cent by 2012, up from their existing level around 10 per cent.
A father of five wanted to carry on his podiatry practice at his Westmead home. The most significant physical alteration involved a 8m by 4m shed to house his car, a kayak and his son's bicycle. "It certainly took its toll,'' he said. "I'm not normally the sort of person to bear a grudge - I like to just move on - but it left a mark.''
However, Local Government Association president Genia McCaffery said decisions needed to consider the wider community. "(Mr Sartor) only seems to be hearing the applicants, but every applicant has a neighbour,'' she said.
Source
Incorrect Australian men
A collection of some things they have said has just been published
Nick Bideau, the former trainer and boyfriend of the Aboriginal Olympic sprinter Cathy Freeman, is included for saying: "I never turned away from Cathy. No matter how fat she was."
Commenting on the trial of pregnancy - for men - Joe Hockey, a government minister, once said: "Well, it's exhausting for me, her being pregnant. "I don't know why, during the birth process they only focus on the women. What about the men standing there? I mean, that's pretty hard. Well, as long as they get the cricket in the hospital."
The book is the culmination of a tongue-in-cheek contest started in 1993, when a group of women gathered in Sydney to celebrate the retirement of a notoriously sexist trade union official named Ernie. The gathering gave rise to the annual Ernie Awards, "the world's premier event shaming men for outrageous sexism".
The Ernies Book, subtitled "1,000 terrible things Australian men have said about women", features quotes from sportsmen, businessmen, journalists and politicians - including the prime minister John Howard.
Magistrates also make an appearance. One in New South Wales told a female defendant: "Come back when your IQ is as high as your skirt."
Source
TOUGH new rape laws which make it clear being drunk does not constitute consent have been condemned by barristers, who insist: "It will turn our sons into criminals." The NSW Bar Associations reckons the "No means no" law goes too far and will lobby Upper House members to vote against it when it is up for debate next week. The law will define the meaning of consent for the first time, making it clear that being drunk or under the influence of drugs does not mean consent has been given. It will also introduce an "objective fault test", meaning a man can no longer use the defence that he thought he had consent if the circumstances appear unreasonable.
"It will turn our sons into criminals," new Bar Association president Anna Katzmann SC said yesterday. "For years women have been insisting 'No' means 'No'. What troubles us about this new legislation is that it introduces a new regime where 'Yes' may mean 'No'." Ms Katzmann gave the example of a woman on a first date who might not want to have sex but after both she and the man had drunk too much said "Yes". The next day she feels guilty and tells her mother, who goes to the police. "That would be rape under the new laws," Ms Katzmann said. "The fact that he was drunk cannot be taken into account. The fact that she was drunk is no excuse for him.
Chair of the Bar Association's criminal law committee Stephen Odgers SC said the law made sexual assault a crime of negligence. "The stupid, the negligent, the intoxicated, the crazy will be treated as if they are the same as the true rapist, who knows there is no consent to sexual intercourse," Mr Odgers said.
Opposition attorney general, former Crown prosecutor Greg Smith, said the Attorney-General John Hatzistergos needed to spell out the law better. Mr Hatzistergos said the introduction of an objective fault test was canvassed during the State Government's exhaustive consultation process and had wide support, including police and the Rape Crisis Centre. "Although Mr Odgers might like to draw a distinction between the stupid or drunk rapist and normal rapists, for rape victims they're categories that don't matter," he said.
"If a person is drunk it does not automatically mean that consent can't be given. What it means is that the onus is on the other person, usually a man, to show he had reasonable grounds to believe the woman had consented. "It's difficult to take the Bar Association seriously on this matter when, in their own submission, they concluded that just because a woman was asleep or unconscious (it) doesn't negate consent." Earlier this year The Daily Telegraph launched the Justice For Women Now campaign to give sexual assault victims equal justice and to encourage more women to report assaults
Source
GM paranoia hurts Australian farmers
This week academics at the University of Melbourne released news of the latest victory in the environmental movement's war on Australia. The ban on growing genetically modified canola is costing our struggling farmers a whopping $157 million a year. No green group has yet claimed credit for this triumph of economic terrorism, but no doubt one will soon. On its website, Greenpeace lists among its main achievements the decision by five states to impose moratoriums on the commercial release of the first proposed GM crop. The greens applied pressure on the states after both Australia's independent regulators, Food Standards Australia New Zealand and the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator, approved the general release of two types of GM canola in 2003.
This is a hot issue because most states are reviewing the bans, due to expire next year. It matters more generally because canola was the first big battleground in the public debate here over the acceptability of genetically modified foods.
The errors and misconceptions the green activists were able to lodge in our minds then have influenced our attitudes to this new frontier of science ever since. Basically, Australians remain pessimistic while other countries have moved on and are reaping the benefits, and not just from canola. The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics has estimated that we stand to lose $5.8 billion in a decade if we don't access all new GM crop varieties. (Mind you, we are not always consistent. Most of the cotton grown in Australia is genetically modified. We hear no complaints from the greens about this. A cynic might say this is because if it wasn't modified it would require a lot more water and pesticides to grow. But the same applies to GM canola.)
Professor Rick Roush and Dr Robert Norton from the Faculty of Land and Food Resources at the University of Melbourne have looked at more than 20 recent reports on GM canola in Australia. They have compared this with the situation in other countries that have not banned GM canola, particularly Canada. A comparison of the experiences of Australia and Canada enables us to review the claims against GM canola made by the greens.
Let's start with the economics. The greens have sometimes argued that Australia, far from benefitting, would lose financially by growing GM canola, because foreign markets would gradually shut out not just GM canola but all canola from countries that grew the GM strains. In fact, just the opposite has happened internationally. More markets have now opened up to GM canola. The biggest is the European Union, which has approved the importation of GM canola grain and oil. As a result of this market expansion, Canada's canola production has increased by 40 per cent since 1996. It has been able to do this in part because GM strains are more productive. Canada's average yields have increased by 40 per cent over the past decade. In Australia, they've gone into reverse, declining by 10 per cent. Because of this and the drought, last year Australia actually imported a large quantity of Canadian GM canola.
This failure in the greens' economic predictions should not surprise us. In the past decade, as green spokesmen took to cutting their hair and wearing suits, they also began to argue their case on financial as well as environmental grounds. It was part of the appeal for respectability. But where it has been possible to test green economics, it has often been found wanting.
Perhaps the most persistent example of this has been in relation to the timber industry. Whenever Bob Carr created a new national park and destroyed yet another small town's economic basis, there was a claim from some city-based green group that the local folk would gain far more from "green tourism" than they lost from the closure of their timber mill. This proved to be fantasy.
Of course, it's not just a question of economics. Over the years green activists have presented a wide range of arguments against GM canola. But their basic position is one of faith: they are fundamentalists. On its website Greenpeace announces it is "opposed to the patenting of life". It is not clear whether this opposition is based on disapproval of capitalism or science or both, but as a general statement it leaves little if any room for debate.
A more positive view of genetic modification is that it's the latest stage in several thousand years' efforts by humans to improve crops. One of the great achievements of the past half-century has been the boom in agricultural productivity. Those who've benefited most have been the world's poor. If further improvements mean "patenting life", so what?
A perverse result of the successful green opposition to GM canola is the harm it has done to the environment. As Roush and Norton explain in their paper, growing the current types of (non-GM) canola requires large amounts of herbicides that stay active in the soil for considerable periods and can be aquatic pollutants. In contrast, GM canola would do far less damage. The Canadian experience shows that GM canola is good for the economy, and good for the environment. Indeed, Canada is planning a 70 per cent expansion of its crop by 2015. Buckling to green propaganda in 2003 was a major failure of leadership by Australia's premiers. Let's hope they reverse that decision next year.
Source
One reason for the housing shortage
Delays of as much as six years and complications for developments as minor as a cubby house are among a catalogue of complaints about Sydney's clogged planning system. Even government ministers and senior bureaucrats have fallen foul of slow council approvals, according to the collection of horror stories seen by The Sunday Telegraph. One applicant ended up in hospital with heart problems. Leichhardt and Ku-ring-gai are the most commonly complained-about councils.
Among the plaintive pleas for assistance to Planning Minister Frank Sartor was one addressed from the coronary unit at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. Its author was recovering there after acute heart troubles he attributed to a long battle over minor renovations to his 1880s cottage. A State Government minister, whose identity was not revealed, encountered similar problems over a 1.3m extension to her bathroom.
Mr Sartor, who has received dozens of unsolicited cries for help so far this year, said they had galvanised him to reform the system. Under changes revealed to The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Sartor plans to radically increase the number of so-called complying developments - smaller projects under $1 million that can be approved without a development application. Legislation to go before Parliament by June will introduce targets for complying developments of 50 per cent by 2012, up from their existing level around 10 per cent.
A father of five wanted to carry on his podiatry practice at his Westmead home. The most significant physical alteration involved a 8m by 4m shed to house his car, a kayak and his son's bicycle. "It certainly took its toll,'' he said. "I'm not normally the sort of person to bear a grudge - I like to just move on - but it left a mark.''
However, Local Government Association president Genia McCaffery said decisions needed to consider the wider community. "(Mr Sartor) only seems to be hearing the applicants, but every applicant has a neighbour,'' she said.
Source
Incorrect Australian men
A collection of some things they have said has just been published
Nick Bideau, the former trainer and boyfriend of the Aboriginal Olympic sprinter Cathy Freeman, is included for saying: "I never turned away from Cathy. No matter how fat she was."
Commenting on the trial of pregnancy - for men - Joe Hockey, a government minister, once said: "Well, it's exhausting for me, her being pregnant. "I don't know why, during the birth process they only focus on the women. What about the men standing there? I mean, that's pretty hard. Well, as long as they get the cricket in the hospital."
The book is the culmination of a tongue-in-cheek contest started in 1993, when a group of women gathered in Sydney to celebrate the retirement of a notoriously sexist trade union official named Ernie. The gathering gave rise to the annual Ernie Awards, "the world's premier event shaming men for outrageous sexism".
The Ernies Book, subtitled "1,000 terrible things Australian men have said about women", features quotes from sportsmen, businessmen, journalists and politicians - including the prime minister John Howard.
Magistrates also make an appearance. One in New South Wales told a female defendant: "Come back when your IQ is as high as your skirt."
Source
Saturday, November 10, 2007
DOCS negligence yet AGAIN
If only the parents had been a respectable middle-class couple whom some idiot had accused of "witchcraft"! The "social workers" would have taken all their kids off THEM in double-quick time! Feral parents, however, must be treated with "respect" -- and too bad about the kids
New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma is being told to stop denying there aren't major problems within the Department of Community Services (DoCS), with a baby known to the department in hospital suffering cardiac arrest and severe head injuries. The 14-month-old had just been returned to her mother and partner who is on parole for murder.
Opposition leader Barry O'Farrell says the Premier has a lot to answer for. "Morris Iemma needs to explain how laws used last year allowing DoCS workers to bypass the courts and rescue children in serious risk of harm aren't being enforced." "These laws may have prevented death and injuries, and Morris Iemma needs to explain why they're not being used."
An ambulance was called to the little boy's Blacktown home early yesterday morning, there they found the 14-month-old in cardiac arrest with head injuries. He is being treated in Westmead Hospital where he remains on life support. It's believed the child had been in the care of his grandmother, and previously DoCS, before being given back to his 19-year- old mother just weeks ago. DoCS has confirmed it was aware of the child, and the fact that his mother's partner has just been released from prison after serving time for homicide.
Shadow Community Services Minister Katrina Hodgkinson says it's yet another tragedy. "Why are babies who are clearly at risk not looked after properly by the Department of Community Services, when there is obviously a need for that to be happening?"
It's the latest in a series of abuse cases involving children known to DoCS including two-year-old Dean Shillingsworth, found dead in a suitcase and seven- year-old Shellay Ward, who starved to death at Hawks Nest.
Source
Racial tensions behind 'turf wars' around Brisbane
RACIALLY motivated "turf wars" are happening regularly at shopping centres, in the city and at railway stations, a Brisbane City Council investigation has found. South Bank Parklands, the Queen Street Mall and the Chermside and Garden City shopping centres were all identified as hot spots for hostilities. City Hall says police, youth justice workers and council staff confirmed "inter-communal hostilities" happened regularly in Brisbane involving Pacific Islander, African, Vietnamese and Indigenous youths. The investigations formed part of council research into a strategy designed to prevent incidents like the 2005 Cronulla riots from occurring in Brisbane.
On Tuesday, City Hall endorsed a new draft plan, Rites of Passage: Social and Economic Pathways for Culturally Diverse Young People, that aims to create better social and employment opportunities for new arrivals and refugees.
Lord Mayor Campbell Newman this week acknowledged that conflicts occurred in the city but said multiculturalism was working well and Brisbane did not have the kind of racial problems experienced interstate. "There will be gangs, there will be young people of different backgrounds having a go at one another - that has happened in this city from the moment it was formed," he said. "But wholesale racial tensions, vilifications, are not something that we're prepared to allow to develop."
Cr Newman said council's strategy was designed to address unemployment and other root causes of potential conflicts by dealing, in particular, with young men from all cultural backgrounds. Labor's community services chair Cr Catherine Bermingham played down the talk of "turf wars", saying they were not new in Brisbane. "When I was growing up there were gangs, so to speak, and I remember my parents talking about gangs such as bodgies and widgies and all that sort of thing," she said. "There's always going to be some sort of youth conflict." Cr Bermingham said the Rites of Passage strategy would help to build inclusiveness and provide opportunities for young people from different backgrounds.
Cr Bermingham said some African members of her own East Brisbane ward had complained of being ostracised after comments like those by federal Liberal MP Gary Hardgrave, who last month said his Moreton electorate was "exhausted" by the intake of African refugees.
A spokeswoman for South Bank said there had been no increase in incidents within the parklands and the corporation was working with police to proactively address security. In a statement, the Queensland Police Service said it was not aware of any "turf wars" between culturally-specific groups. It acknowledged that groups of youths from different backgrounds frequented many public spaces in Brisbane.
Source
Rudd attacked by previous Leftist leader
"Biffo" runs true to form but what he says is mostly right for all that
Delighted Coalition ministers yesterday welcomed back former Labor leader Mark Latham, who emerged from self-imposed political exile to sneer at Kevin Rudd's campaign. Mr Latham called this the Seinfeld election - "a show about nothing" - and said Mr Rudd was a conservative like Prime Minister John Howard. He also undermined the core of Mr Rudd's campaign by questioning whether working families were in financial trouble, and praised the Australian health system as one of the best in the world.
The controversy he stirred took up a lot of campaign time Labor would have wanted to devote to other issues. "He's talking about his views of the world. That's a matter for him," said Mr Rudd, who had not read his former colleague's sharply-worded article in The Financial Review. "I'm about the future with fresh ideas for Australia." [That's a joke! Rudd's only ideas are "me too"s to what Howard says]
John Howard most certainly had read it and said: "I have broken the drought by mentioning Mr Latham." He said Mr Latham had confirmed a Rudd government would drop its conservative policies once elected. "Mark Latham said, 'We all expect, we all hope it will be a lot more . . . progressive if the Labor Party gets in'," Mr Howard said. "He uses the word progressive, I use the word radical."
However, the article said the opposite. Mr Latham had suggested there was a hope a Rudd administration would drop conservative policies, but he expected it would become even more conservative. That didn't stop ministers gleefully spreading the misreading. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Labor's environment spokesman Peter Garrett had said last week that Mr Rudd would "change it all" in government, and Mr Latham had confirmed this. "Mr Latham is a former leader of the Labor Party and whatever people in the Labor Party try to say about him, he knows people in the Labor Party, he's talking to them constantly and Mr Latham has confirmed what Mr Garrett said last weekend," Mr Downer said. "Mr Latham and Mr Garrett together have demonstrated precisely where Labor really stands, which is cheat our way into office by pretending we're like the Government and then we can begin our radical agenda."
In fact Mr Latham had written that nothing would change regardless of who won the election because Australian public life had reached the "zenith of policy convergence". "The dominant ethos is greed, not generosity. I expect a Labor administration to be even more timid, more conservative," he wrote.
Taking aim at Labor's campaign on housing affordability, he said there was no crisis - "just the manufactured hysteria of the political class". "There is no crisis for the hundreds of thousands of families that have put themselves into debt and built large new homes, the so-called McMansions, across the country," he wrote.
Source
A crooked senior cop again
Reminiscent of having the police chief sent to jail -- as happened a few years ago in Queensland
ASPIRING chief commissioner Noel Ashby was yesterday forced to quit Victoria Police in disgrace. Former assistant commissioner Ashby faces jail for allegedly lying to a corruption inquiry and trying to pervert the course of justice. His ambition for the top job came crashing down after damning evidence against him was aired at an Office of Police Integrity hearing.
A shattered Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon said yesterday she felt betrayed by Mr Ashby, a 30-year veteran of the force, and her media director, Steve Linnell, who she said could both face charges. "I want to say to the community how disappointed I am by this whole episode," she said. In another day of stunning evidence, the OPI hearing was told:
POLICE Association secretary Paul Mullett asked Mr Ashby to personally handle a serious disciplinary case against union delegate Jenny McDonald in the hope she would be treated leniently.
BUGGED phone calls revealed Mr Ashby told Sen-Sgt Mullett he would try to get her case reassigned to him.
DEPUTY Commissioner Simon Overland was part of an OPI sting to catch media director Steve Linnell leaking to Mr Ashby.
THE OPI got Mr Overland to ring Mr Linnell and provide him with confidential information to see if he would leak it to Mr Ashby -- he did so 11 seconds later.
MR ASHBY tried to stop Insp Brett Curran being appointed chief of staff to Police Minister Bob Cameron and enlisted Sen-Sgt Mullett's aid.
SEN-SGT MULLETT told Mr Ashby that his (Mr Ashby's) stocks were rising significantly with Premier John Brumby, and Mr Ashby replied "watch this space" in an apparent reference to his being appointed Chief Commissioner.
OPI bugs repeatedly caught Mr Linnell and Mr Ashby being crudely critical of Ms Nixon, Mr Overland and various assistant commissioners, with Mr Ashby calling them "the shiftiest bunch of c---s". Mr Ashby admitted he was jealous Mr Overland was being sent on a study trip to France, and that he and Sen-Sgt Mullett tried to stop it.
Counsel assisting the OPI, Dr Greg Lyon, SC, has accused Mr Ashby and Mr Linnell of leaking confidential information relating to the 2003 murder of gigolo vampire Shane Chartres-Abbott. Dr Lyon said that information was relayed to Sen-Sgt Mullett and Police Association president Brian Rix. He said that one of the targets of the murder investigation, Police Association delegate Det-Sgt Peter Lalor, was tipped off soon afterwards. Mr Linnell was taped telling Mr Ashby it would be difficult to convict Det-Sgt Lalor because "cops get off". Mr Ashby immediately responded, "yeah, yeah, but might get Docket". Docket is the nickname of former Victoria Police detective David Waters.
Mr Waters and Det-Sgt Lalor are both targets of Victoria Police taskforce Operation Briars, which is investigating the Chartres-Abbott murder. Operation Briars is probing allegations that Det-Sgt Lalor passed Chartres-Abbott's address to the hitman hired to kill him. It is also investigating claims Mr Waters was at a meeting where plans to kill Chartres-Abbott were hatched.
Ms Nixon said the OPI told her in September that Mr Ashby and Mr Linnell were being investigated in relation to the Chartres-Abbott matter. "It's been a very difficult time to know people who were close to you were being accused of these matters," she said. "Now, as we have heard, the evidence has confirmed the real concerns (the OPI) had."
More here
If only the parents had been a respectable middle-class couple whom some idiot had accused of "witchcraft"! The "social workers" would have taken all their kids off THEM in double-quick time! Feral parents, however, must be treated with "respect" -- and too bad about the kids
New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma is being told to stop denying there aren't major problems within the Department of Community Services (DoCS), with a baby known to the department in hospital suffering cardiac arrest and severe head injuries. The 14-month-old had just been returned to her mother and partner who is on parole for murder.
Opposition leader Barry O'Farrell says the Premier has a lot to answer for. "Morris Iemma needs to explain how laws used last year allowing DoCS workers to bypass the courts and rescue children in serious risk of harm aren't being enforced." "These laws may have prevented death and injuries, and Morris Iemma needs to explain why they're not being used."
An ambulance was called to the little boy's Blacktown home early yesterday morning, there they found the 14-month-old in cardiac arrest with head injuries. He is being treated in Westmead Hospital where he remains on life support. It's believed the child had been in the care of his grandmother, and previously DoCS, before being given back to his 19-year- old mother just weeks ago. DoCS has confirmed it was aware of the child, and the fact that his mother's partner has just been released from prison after serving time for homicide.
Shadow Community Services Minister Katrina Hodgkinson says it's yet another tragedy. "Why are babies who are clearly at risk not looked after properly by the Department of Community Services, when there is obviously a need for that to be happening?"
It's the latest in a series of abuse cases involving children known to DoCS including two-year-old Dean Shillingsworth, found dead in a suitcase and seven- year-old Shellay Ward, who starved to death at Hawks Nest.
Source
Racial tensions behind 'turf wars' around Brisbane
RACIALLY motivated "turf wars" are happening regularly at shopping centres, in the city and at railway stations, a Brisbane City Council investigation has found. South Bank Parklands, the Queen Street Mall and the Chermside and Garden City shopping centres were all identified as hot spots for hostilities. City Hall says police, youth justice workers and council staff confirmed "inter-communal hostilities" happened regularly in Brisbane involving Pacific Islander, African, Vietnamese and Indigenous youths. The investigations formed part of council research into a strategy designed to prevent incidents like the 2005 Cronulla riots from occurring in Brisbane.
On Tuesday, City Hall endorsed a new draft plan, Rites of Passage: Social and Economic Pathways for Culturally Diverse Young People, that aims to create better social and employment opportunities for new arrivals and refugees.
Lord Mayor Campbell Newman this week acknowledged that conflicts occurred in the city but said multiculturalism was working well and Brisbane did not have the kind of racial problems experienced interstate. "There will be gangs, there will be young people of different backgrounds having a go at one another - that has happened in this city from the moment it was formed," he said. "But wholesale racial tensions, vilifications, are not something that we're prepared to allow to develop."
Cr Newman said council's strategy was designed to address unemployment and other root causes of potential conflicts by dealing, in particular, with young men from all cultural backgrounds. Labor's community services chair Cr Catherine Bermingham played down the talk of "turf wars", saying they were not new in Brisbane. "When I was growing up there were gangs, so to speak, and I remember my parents talking about gangs such as bodgies and widgies and all that sort of thing," she said. "There's always going to be some sort of youth conflict." Cr Bermingham said the Rites of Passage strategy would help to build inclusiveness and provide opportunities for young people from different backgrounds.
Cr Bermingham said some African members of her own East Brisbane ward had complained of being ostracised after comments like those by federal Liberal MP Gary Hardgrave, who last month said his Moreton electorate was "exhausted" by the intake of African refugees.
A spokeswoman for South Bank said there had been no increase in incidents within the parklands and the corporation was working with police to proactively address security. In a statement, the Queensland Police Service said it was not aware of any "turf wars" between culturally-specific groups. It acknowledged that groups of youths from different backgrounds frequented many public spaces in Brisbane.
Source
Rudd attacked by previous Leftist leader
"Biffo" runs true to form but what he says is mostly right for all that
Delighted Coalition ministers yesterday welcomed back former Labor leader Mark Latham, who emerged from self-imposed political exile to sneer at Kevin Rudd's campaign. Mr Latham called this the Seinfeld election - "a show about nothing" - and said Mr Rudd was a conservative like Prime Minister John Howard. He also undermined the core of Mr Rudd's campaign by questioning whether working families were in financial trouble, and praised the Australian health system as one of the best in the world.
The controversy he stirred took up a lot of campaign time Labor would have wanted to devote to other issues. "He's talking about his views of the world. That's a matter for him," said Mr Rudd, who had not read his former colleague's sharply-worded article in The Financial Review. "I'm about the future with fresh ideas for Australia." [That's a joke! Rudd's only ideas are "me too"s to what Howard says]
John Howard most certainly had read it and said: "I have broken the drought by mentioning Mr Latham." He said Mr Latham had confirmed a Rudd government would drop its conservative policies once elected. "Mark Latham said, 'We all expect, we all hope it will be a lot more . . . progressive if the Labor Party gets in'," Mr Howard said. "He uses the word progressive, I use the word radical."
However, the article said the opposite. Mr Latham had suggested there was a hope a Rudd administration would drop conservative policies, but he expected it would become even more conservative. That didn't stop ministers gleefully spreading the misreading. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Labor's environment spokesman Peter Garrett had said last week that Mr Rudd would "change it all" in government, and Mr Latham had confirmed this. "Mr Latham is a former leader of the Labor Party and whatever people in the Labor Party try to say about him, he knows people in the Labor Party, he's talking to them constantly and Mr Latham has confirmed what Mr Garrett said last weekend," Mr Downer said. "Mr Latham and Mr Garrett together have demonstrated precisely where Labor really stands, which is cheat our way into office by pretending we're like the Government and then we can begin our radical agenda."
In fact Mr Latham had written that nothing would change regardless of who won the election because Australian public life had reached the "zenith of policy convergence". "The dominant ethos is greed, not generosity. I expect a Labor administration to be even more timid, more conservative," he wrote.
Taking aim at Labor's campaign on housing affordability, he said there was no crisis - "just the manufactured hysteria of the political class". "There is no crisis for the hundreds of thousands of families that have put themselves into debt and built large new homes, the so-called McMansions, across the country," he wrote.
Source
A crooked senior cop again
Reminiscent of having the police chief sent to jail -- as happened a few years ago in Queensland
ASPIRING chief commissioner Noel Ashby was yesterday forced to quit Victoria Police in disgrace. Former assistant commissioner Ashby faces jail for allegedly lying to a corruption inquiry and trying to pervert the course of justice. His ambition for the top job came crashing down after damning evidence against him was aired at an Office of Police Integrity hearing.
A shattered Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon said yesterday she felt betrayed by Mr Ashby, a 30-year veteran of the force, and her media director, Steve Linnell, who she said could both face charges. "I want to say to the community how disappointed I am by this whole episode," she said. In another day of stunning evidence, the OPI hearing was told:
POLICE Association secretary Paul Mullett asked Mr Ashby to personally handle a serious disciplinary case against union delegate Jenny McDonald in the hope she would be treated leniently.
BUGGED phone calls revealed Mr Ashby told Sen-Sgt Mullett he would try to get her case reassigned to him.
DEPUTY Commissioner Simon Overland was part of an OPI sting to catch media director Steve Linnell leaking to Mr Ashby.
THE OPI got Mr Overland to ring Mr Linnell and provide him with confidential information to see if he would leak it to Mr Ashby -- he did so 11 seconds later.
MR ASHBY tried to stop Insp Brett Curran being appointed chief of staff to Police Minister Bob Cameron and enlisted Sen-Sgt Mullett's aid.
SEN-SGT MULLETT told Mr Ashby that his (Mr Ashby's) stocks were rising significantly with Premier John Brumby, and Mr Ashby replied "watch this space" in an apparent reference to his being appointed Chief Commissioner.
OPI bugs repeatedly caught Mr Linnell and Mr Ashby being crudely critical of Ms Nixon, Mr Overland and various assistant commissioners, with Mr Ashby calling them "the shiftiest bunch of c---s". Mr Ashby admitted he was jealous Mr Overland was being sent on a study trip to France, and that he and Sen-Sgt Mullett tried to stop it.
Counsel assisting the OPI, Dr Greg Lyon, SC, has accused Mr Ashby and Mr Linnell of leaking confidential information relating to the 2003 murder of gigolo vampire Shane Chartres-Abbott. Dr Lyon said that information was relayed to Sen-Sgt Mullett and Police Association president Brian Rix. He said that one of the targets of the murder investigation, Police Association delegate Det-Sgt Peter Lalor, was tipped off soon afterwards. Mr Linnell was taped telling Mr Ashby it would be difficult to convict Det-Sgt Lalor because "cops get off". Mr Ashby immediately responded, "yeah, yeah, but might get Docket". Docket is the nickname of former Victoria Police detective David Waters.
Mr Waters and Det-Sgt Lalor are both targets of Victoria Police taskforce Operation Briars, which is investigating the Chartres-Abbott murder. Operation Briars is probing allegations that Det-Sgt Lalor passed Chartres-Abbott's address to the hitman hired to kill him. It is also investigating claims Mr Waters was at a meeting where plans to kill Chartres-Abbott were hatched.
Ms Nixon said the OPI told her in September that Mr Ashby and Mr Linnell were being investigated in relation to the Chartres-Abbott matter. "It's been a very difficult time to know people who were close to you were being accused of these matters," she said. "Now, as we have heard, the evidence has confirmed the real concerns (the OPI) had."
More here
Friday, November 09, 2007
The Department for Ignoring Abused Children again
They just don't do their job -- so kids die. Where is the logic of taking away one kid and leaving the others to rot?
The Iemma Government was under pressure last night to explain its inaction over the death of seven-year-old Shellay Ward, as it emerged that the NSW Department of Community Services had been repeatedly warned about the plight of the child and the conditions she lived in. Former neighbours of the Ward family say they contacted DOCS on numerous occasions about the autistic girl, who starved to death. They had told authorities that she never attended school and was forced to spend her days in a room left littered with rubbish and excrement. Shellay, weighing just nine kilograms, was found dead in bed at her home in Hawks Nest, north of Newcastle, on Saturday.
Two former neighbours said yesterday they had contacted DOCS with concerns about the welfare of Shellay and her siblings when the family lived in Matraville. Janice Reid said she rang DOCS when the Ward family was in Matraville, in Sydney's east, and again when they moved to Hawks Nest in August. Mrs Reid, a DOCS foster carer, said she used to see Shellay standing at the window naked and she spent many hours in her bedroom with the door closed.
Industrial cleaners were called in to the three-bedroom Matraville house after the family left. Mrs Reid said the house was knee-deep in rubbish. The room that Shellay had been living in stank of urine and there were patches of faeces on the floor. "It just smelt like a toilet; like a bad, filthy public toilet," she said.
Mrs Reid said that the first time she reported the family to DOCS, social workers investigated and took the youngest of the four Ward children away to foster care. After her second report nothing was done. Once the family moved she made a third report. "I originally reported it because it was an unusual situation when you don't see kids in the yard ... and DOCS did come," Mrs Reid said. She said Shellay was "quite chubby and healthy" when she last saw the child, about eight to 10 months ago.
Another neighbour, Darlene, called DOCS four years ago with concerns. "We'd see them at home through school hours every day of the week. They were dressed in really old dirty clothes. They were really pale like they had never seen the sun and their hair was really matted. In the five or so years they lived there Darlene saw the wife once - going to the letterbox. "This is 2007, there should not be children allowed to die like this. That is the saddest part, that DOCS had taken the baby and left three other children in that situation."
Debbie Jacobson, a board member of the Foster Care Association NSW, said she called the DOCS helpline twice and then met DOCS management about her concerns for the Ward children. "They assured me they would look after it and look into the family [but] months later it still looked like nothing had been done. They said they could not tell me anything more due to confidentiality reasons, but that they were taking care of it."
Ms Jacobson said she knew of at least five complaints made to DOCS in relation to the family. "It just amazes me especially when there were so many notifications put through. I can understand one or two notifications slipping through the cracks but that many should not have gone unnoticed. A child has died and somebody needs to be accountable for it." An email from an unnamed foster carer, read on Macquarie Radio, said a number of people had been in touch with DOCS about the Ward family.
Source
Australia not a 'welfare state'
AUSTRALIA is no longer a "welfare state" and is on the path to becoming an "opportunity society", John Howard said today. Laying out his economic vision for the future, the Prime Minister said only the Coalition could sustain prosperity, encourage the freedom of an enterprise culture and delivering full employment. In a speech to the Institute of Public Affairs, Mr Howard said Labor's attempt to say it had the same economic policies as the Coalition's was designed to `'conceal'' important differences.
Mr Howard used the speech to argue that only the Coalition was supporting the entrepreneurial and enterprise culture that is vital to economic success. "This election is about the future. It is about positioning Australia as an open, dynamic and flexible economy, able to compete in the global economy, but also able to withstand the economic shifts we know can hit without a warning,'' he said ". And, very importantly, it is about continuing a great national project we have begun - the transition of Australia from a Welfare State to an Opportunity Society.
The prime minister, speaking as the latest figures showed unemployment still at its 33- year low level of 4.2 per cent, again said that getting a person a job was the cornerstone of the economic fabric of the nation.
"We do not need new leadership for an old Australia,'' Mr Howard said. "We need proven leadership of the Australia of today and tomorrow.
Mr Howard said there should be no illusion that economic policies of the two parties were the same. "With the (Labor consultants) Hawker Britton spin machine in overdrive, any day now I'm expecting Julia Gillard to claim the Socialist Forum was really a free market think tank,'' he said. Wages policy was a key part of macroeconomic policy, yet Labor wanted to remove individual contracts and increase the bargaining power of unions with all the risk that it would see labour costs rise faster than the economy can handle, he said. "He can't claim that he would abolish WorkChoices and simultaneously claim there is no difference on macroeconomic policy,'' he said. To do so, is to fundamentally misunderstand the importance of today's labour market arrangements to avoiding a wages breakout, higher inflation, higher interest rates and a return to a boom-bust economy.''
Mr Rudd's practiced the `'art of the subtle sneer'' when dismissed the contribution of the mining industry as just digging up dirt. "As if a job in mining is somehow sub-par and not sufficiently `knowledged-based' for Mr Rudd's sensibilities,'' he said. "In fact mining is one of the most technologically advanced sectors of the Australian economy as well as being a very valuable source of high-wage jobs and export income. "If Mr Rudd were of a mind to check the facts he would find that the mining sector now employs far more people working in research, innovation and other knowledge based industries than it does in actually digging up dirt.''
The Coalition offered a practical approach to climate change rather than Labor's more aggressive anti-mining proposals,'' he said.
Source
Eight Aussie universities in world's top 100
EIGHT Australian universities have made the top 100 in the latest world rankings of institutions of higher education. The Australian National University at No16, followed by the University of Melbourne (27) and the University of Sydney (31), were the top three performers. Australia's top six research-intensive universities remained in the rarefied top 50 of the Times Higher Education Supplement-QS World University Rankings of the top 200 universities. The ANU ranking remained steady but the University of Melbourne continued its downward slide from 19th two years ago. The University of Sydney climbed seven places from 38th two years ago.
Outside the top three, the University of Queensland leapfrogged Monash and the University of NSW to be the country's fourth top university, according to the THES-QS, with a new world rank of equal 33rd. Monash, previously ranked fourth nationally, slid to fifth and 10 places worldwide to 43rd, down from 33rd two years ago. The UNSW fell from 41st two years ago to 44th.
Outside the top 50, the University of Adelaide came in at 62nd, and the University of Western Australia just behind it at 64th. Well outside the frontrunners, but still with a credible performance against rivals worldwide, Macquarie University came in at equal 168th, the Queensland University of Technology at 195th, the University of Wollongong at 199, RMIT University at 200th, and La Trobe at equal 205th.
Rankings spokesman Nunzio Quacquarelli said the latest rankings showed 21 Australian universities were now among the world's Top 450 universities, a major improvement from last year. The ANU, Melbourne, Sydney and Queensland universities all featured in the Asia-Pacific region's Top 10, he said.
However the THES ranking system has come under fire following a new analysis of it and its main rival, Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Academic Ranking of World Universities. Writing in the November edition of the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, Macquarie academics Paul Taylor and Richard Braddock said the Jiao Tong system was "clearly superior". "In emphasising research, it (the Jiao Tong) focuses on one of the essential functions of a university ... in contrast with the THES system, which gives great weight to (subjective) peer review, the Jiao Tong system concerns itself with genuine criteria rather than mere symptoms of excellence," the pair said.
Source
Brisbane gets a plug in the New York Times
Excerpt:
ONCE just a stopover for tourists en route to either the Great Barrier Reef or the beaches on the Sunshine and Gold Coasts, the eastern Australian city of Brisbane has emerged as an alluring destination in its own right.
Returning recently to the city where I grew up and left 15 years ago for fast-paced Sydney, I found Brisbane to be almost unrecognizable. No longer a large country town, the capital of Queensland is now Australia's fastest growing city, and a plethora of new cafes, bars and shops, not to mention a beautiful new modern art gallery, add up to the kind of place that you could easily spend several days exploring.
Once known as BrisVegas (thanks to a casino and glitzy night life in the 1980s), the city is bisected by the Brisbane River, which winds its way to Moreton Bay, past former wool stores that have morphed into luxury apartments, and historic Queenslander houses built on stilts to catch the breeze. A former power plant sitting on the water's edge is now a performance center. Catamaran ferries ply the river, taking locals to work and to weekend farmer's markets.
The city's newest attractions are the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) and the just-renovated Queensland Art Gallery, which sit next to each other on the last bend of the river on Stanley Place in South Bank Parklands. GoMA is Australia's largest modern-art gallery, with works by Australian and international artists including the Indian-born British sculptor Anish Kapoor and the German artist Katharina Grosse. Enormous windows frame spectacular city views, and the gallery, which adjoins a brand-new State Library, has its own cinema complex and children's art center. The Queensland Gallery's new additions include a sweeping glass entry and the Historical Asian Gallery.
The museums (www.qag.qld.gov.au) can be reached by strolling down the River Walk, a floating walkway that links the New Farm area to the central business district and runs past South Bank Parklands, an expansive beach and swimming lagoon right on the river overlooking the city.
The museum scene in Brisbane doesn't ignore history. For perspective on Brisbane's role as Pacific headquarters for the allied forces in World War II, visit the MacArthur Museum Brisbane, at 201 Edward Street, dedicated to General Douglas MacArthur, who made Brisbane his base for two years. In those years, millions of Americans passed through the quiet Australian backwater that many thought would change after the war. Instead, central Brisbane almost closed down as a dwindling population moved to the suburbs.
Now, areas like Fortitude Valley, a formerly gritty area known as "sin city," have transformed themselves. The Emporium Hotel just opened on the site of a former bus depot with its own upscale shops and restaurants. Guests can take a dip in the 50-foot saltwater rooftop pool with views of the city and Story Bridge, and recline on loungers, separated by billowing bronze-colored silk drapes. Don't be surprised to see brilliantly hued rainbow lorikeets in frangipani trees outside the hotel, or hear a kookaburra laughing its head off.
Source
They just don't do their job -- so kids die. Where is the logic of taking away one kid and leaving the others to rot?
The Iemma Government was under pressure last night to explain its inaction over the death of seven-year-old Shellay Ward, as it emerged that the NSW Department of Community Services had been repeatedly warned about the plight of the child and the conditions she lived in. Former neighbours of the Ward family say they contacted DOCS on numerous occasions about the autistic girl, who starved to death. They had told authorities that she never attended school and was forced to spend her days in a room left littered with rubbish and excrement. Shellay, weighing just nine kilograms, was found dead in bed at her home in Hawks Nest, north of Newcastle, on Saturday.
Two former neighbours said yesterday they had contacted DOCS with concerns about the welfare of Shellay and her siblings when the family lived in Matraville. Janice Reid said she rang DOCS when the Ward family was in Matraville, in Sydney's east, and again when they moved to Hawks Nest in August. Mrs Reid, a DOCS foster carer, said she used to see Shellay standing at the window naked and she spent many hours in her bedroom with the door closed.
Industrial cleaners were called in to the three-bedroom Matraville house after the family left. Mrs Reid said the house was knee-deep in rubbish. The room that Shellay had been living in stank of urine and there were patches of faeces on the floor. "It just smelt like a toilet; like a bad, filthy public toilet," she said.
Mrs Reid said that the first time she reported the family to DOCS, social workers investigated and took the youngest of the four Ward children away to foster care. After her second report nothing was done. Once the family moved she made a third report. "I originally reported it because it was an unusual situation when you don't see kids in the yard ... and DOCS did come," Mrs Reid said. She said Shellay was "quite chubby and healthy" when she last saw the child, about eight to 10 months ago.
Another neighbour, Darlene, called DOCS four years ago with concerns. "We'd see them at home through school hours every day of the week. They were dressed in really old dirty clothes. They were really pale like they had never seen the sun and their hair was really matted. In the five or so years they lived there Darlene saw the wife once - going to the letterbox. "This is 2007, there should not be children allowed to die like this. That is the saddest part, that DOCS had taken the baby and left three other children in that situation."
Debbie Jacobson, a board member of the Foster Care Association NSW, said she called the DOCS helpline twice and then met DOCS management about her concerns for the Ward children. "They assured me they would look after it and look into the family [but] months later it still looked like nothing had been done. They said they could not tell me anything more due to confidentiality reasons, but that they were taking care of it."
Ms Jacobson said she knew of at least five complaints made to DOCS in relation to the family. "It just amazes me especially when there were so many notifications put through. I can understand one or two notifications slipping through the cracks but that many should not have gone unnoticed. A child has died and somebody needs to be accountable for it." An email from an unnamed foster carer, read on Macquarie Radio, said a number of people had been in touch with DOCS about the Ward family.
Source
Australia not a 'welfare state'
AUSTRALIA is no longer a "welfare state" and is on the path to becoming an "opportunity society", John Howard said today. Laying out his economic vision for the future, the Prime Minister said only the Coalition could sustain prosperity, encourage the freedom of an enterprise culture and delivering full employment. In a speech to the Institute of Public Affairs, Mr Howard said Labor's attempt to say it had the same economic policies as the Coalition's was designed to `'conceal'' important differences.
Mr Howard used the speech to argue that only the Coalition was supporting the entrepreneurial and enterprise culture that is vital to economic success. "This election is about the future. It is about positioning Australia as an open, dynamic and flexible economy, able to compete in the global economy, but also able to withstand the economic shifts we know can hit without a warning,'' he said ". And, very importantly, it is about continuing a great national project we have begun - the transition of Australia from a Welfare State to an Opportunity Society.
The prime minister, speaking as the latest figures showed unemployment still at its 33- year low level of 4.2 per cent, again said that getting a person a job was the cornerstone of the economic fabric of the nation.
"We do not need new leadership for an old Australia,'' Mr Howard said. "We need proven leadership of the Australia of today and tomorrow.
Mr Howard said there should be no illusion that economic policies of the two parties were the same. "With the (Labor consultants) Hawker Britton spin machine in overdrive, any day now I'm expecting Julia Gillard to claim the Socialist Forum was really a free market think tank,'' he said. Wages policy was a key part of macroeconomic policy, yet Labor wanted to remove individual contracts and increase the bargaining power of unions with all the risk that it would see labour costs rise faster than the economy can handle, he said. "He can't claim that he would abolish WorkChoices and simultaneously claim there is no difference on macroeconomic policy,'' he said. To do so, is to fundamentally misunderstand the importance of today's labour market arrangements to avoiding a wages breakout, higher inflation, higher interest rates and a return to a boom-bust economy.''
Mr Rudd's practiced the `'art of the subtle sneer'' when dismissed the contribution of the mining industry as just digging up dirt. "As if a job in mining is somehow sub-par and not sufficiently `knowledged-based' for Mr Rudd's sensibilities,'' he said. "In fact mining is one of the most technologically advanced sectors of the Australian economy as well as being a very valuable source of high-wage jobs and export income. "If Mr Rudd were of a mind to check the facts he would find that the mining sector now employs far more people working in research, innovation and other knowledge based industries than it does in actually digging up dirt.''
The Coalition offered a practical approach to climate change rather than Labor's more aggressive anti-mining proposals,'' he said.
Source
Eight Aussie universities in world's top 100
EIGHT Australian universities have made the top 100 in the latest world rankings of institutions of higher education. The Australian National University at No16, followed by the University of Melbourne (27) and the University of Sydney (31), were the top three performers. Australia's top six research-intensive universities remained in the rarefied top 50 of the Times Higher Education Supplement-QS World University Rankings of the top 200 universities. The ANU ranking remained steady but the University of Melbourne continued its downward slide from 19th two years ago. The University of Sydney climbed seven places from 38th two years ago.
Outside the top three, the University of Queensland leapfrogged Monash and the University of NSW to be the country's fourth top university, according to the THES-QS, with a new world rank of equal 33rd. Monash, previously ranked fourth nationally, slid to fifth and 10 places worldwide to 43rd, down from 33rd two years ago. The UNSW fell from 41st two years ago to 44th.
Outside the top 50, the University of Adelaide came in at 62nd, and the University of Western Australia just behind it at 64th. Well outside the frontrunners, but still with a credible performance against rivals worldwide, Macquarie University came in at equal 168th, the Queensland University of Technology at 195th, the University of Wollongong at 199, RMIT University at 200th, and La Trobe at equal 205th.
Rankings spokesman Nunzio Quacquarelli said the latest rankings showed 21 Australian universities were now among the world's Top 450 universities, a major improvement from last year. The ANU, Melbourne, Sydney and Queensland universities all featured in the Asia-Pacific region's Top 10, he said.
However the THES ranking system has come under fire following a new analysis of it and its main rival, Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Academic Ranking of World Universities. Writing in the November edition of the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, Macquarie academics Paul Taylor and Richard Braddock said the Jiao Tong system was "clearly superior". "In emphasising research, it (the Jiao Tong) focuses on one of the essential functions of a university ... in contrast with the THES system, which gives great weight to (subjective) peer review, the Jiao Tong system concerns itself with genuine criteria rather than mere symptoms of excellence," the pair said.
Source
Brisbane gets a plug in the New York Times
Excerpt:
ONCE just a stopover for tourists en route to either the Great Barrier Reef or the beaches on the Sunshine and Gold Coasts, the eastern Australian city of Brisbane has emerged as an alluring destination in its own right.
Returning recently to the city where I grew up and left 15 years ago for fast-paced Sydney, I found Brisbane to be almost unrecognizable. No longer a large country town, the capital of Queensland is now Australia's fastest growing city, and a plethora of new cafes, bars and shops, not to mention a beautiful new modern art gallery, add up to the kind of place that you could easily spend several days exploring.
Once known as BrisVegas (thanks to a casino and glitzy night life in the 1980s), the city is bisected by the Brisbane River, which winds its way to Moreton Bay, past former wool stores that have morphed into luxury apartments, and historic Queenslander houses built on stilts to catch the breeze. A former power plant sitting on the water's edge is now a performance center. Catamaran ferries ply the river, taking locals to work and to weekend farmer's markets.
The city's newest attractions are the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) and the just-renovated Queensland Art Gallery, which sit next to each other on the last bend of the river on Stanley Place in South Bank Parklands. GoMA is Australia's largest modern-art gallery, with works by Australian and international artists including the Indian-born British sculptor Anish Kapoor and the German artist Katharina Grosse. Enormous windows frame spectacular city views, and the gallery, which adjoins a brand-new State Library, has its own cinema complex and children's art center. The Queensland Gallery's new additions include a sweeping glass entry and the Historical Asian Gallery.
The museums (www.qag.qld.gov.au) can be reached by strolling down the River Walk, a floating walkway that links the New Farm area to the central business district and runs past South Bank Parklands, an expansive beach and swimming lagoon right on the river overlooking the city.
The museum scene in Brisbane doesn't ignore history. For perspective on Brisbane's role as Pacific headquarters for the allied forces in World War II, visit the MacArthur Museum Brisbane, at 201 Edward Street, dedicated to General Douglas MacArthur, who made Brisbane his base for two years. In those years, millions of Americans passed through the quiet Australian backwater that many thought would change after the war. Instead, central Brisbane almost closed down as a dwindling population moved to the suburbs.
Now, areas like Fortitude Valley, a formerly gritty area known as "sin city," have transformed themselves. The Emporium Hotel just opened on the site of a former bus depot with its own upscale shops and restaurants. Guests can take a dip in the 50-foot saltwater rooftop pool with views of the city and Story Bridge, and recline on loungers, separated by billowing bronze-colored silk drapes. Don't be surprised to see brilliantly hued rainbow lorikeets in frangipani trees outside the hotel, or hear a kookaburra laughing its head off.
Source
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Public hospital kills baby
By way of the usual short-staffing
A mother who accidentally suffocated her newborn baby says she will consider suing a Brisbane hospital after a coroner found nurses failed to follow guidelines. Baby Arisa was less than a day old when her lifeless body was found in mother Yumiko Huber's bed at the Mater Mothers' Hospital in South Brisbane on August 17, 2005. She was revived but was found to be brain dead and died the next day when she was taken off life support.
A report by Deputy State Coroner Christine Clements - made public today - found the first-time mother had been exhausted after a difficult birth, on pain relief medication and antibiotics, and had a fever when she was left breastfeeding her daughter at about 5am. It found staff had left the pair for one hour and 45 minutes before discovering the child and her sleeping mother - contrary to hospital guidelines which required checks on mothers breastfeeding in bed every 15 to 30 minutes. "The evidence was also clear that no specific warning was given to the mother before the baby was placed with her for breastfeeding in bed," the report said.
The report said the midwife should have advised Ms Huber to take care and call for assistance if she or the baby became sleepy.
The parents were too upset to speak today, but a statement released by the father, Philip Huber, was highly critical of the hospital and its nurses, who he blamed directly for his daughter's death. The couple's lawyer Sarah Yellop today said they were considering legal action against the hospital and the two nurses who were on shift that night. "That's something that we've got to consider and, obviously, they are giving some thought too," Ms Yellop told reporters. "Given the findings of the inquest, I'd consider that there would be very strong grounds for compensation claims." But, she said, it was too early to comment on how much compensation might be sought.
The coroner's report recommended better training for nurses and more education for new mothers, especially involving the dangers of having the baby in bed with them. The report also noted "extremely heavy" workloads for nurses and low staffing levels which led to shortcuts being taken.
A statement from the hospital today said the report's recommendations had already been implemented. "Mater Health Services continues to express its deepest sympathies to the Huber family," it said. "Immediately after the death of Arisa Huber, Mater reviewed its policies and procedures in the Mater Mothers' Hospital. "Since the tragic event occurred two years ago, the recommendations made by the coroner in the report have already been implemented by the Mater." The changes included a new education program for staff and patients. [New policies? What about implementing the old ones?]
Source
Ambulance disaster just waiting to happen
A trainee paramedic who worked virtually 36 hours straight this week is so tired driving her ambulance she sees "little monsters" on the road in front of the vehicle. Stanthorpe ambulance officer Julie Clark blames the marathon shift at the Granite Belt station on chronic understaffing with paramedics regularly working 20 hours straight. Her stint - from 8am on Monday to 8pm on Tuesday - included two quick power naps, two return trips to Warwick and an eight-hour return drive to Brisbane with patients. "Lives are at risk because of this," Ms Clark told The Courier-Mail last night. "I have been so tired I have seen little monsters running all over the road."
The revelations are another embarrassment for the Bligh Government as it investigates why record funding for the Queensland Ambulance Service is resulting in worsening service [The experience of governmenrt medical services worldwide]. The QAS yesterday offered Ms Clark, 43, a transfer to a quieter station after her frustrated partner blew the whistle about the problems and forced the QAS to let her talk.
But Ms Clark insisted a transfer would not solve the problems as eight staff regularly worked 20-hour shifts as their "on-call" time became rush hour. "We love our jobs and we do get overtime but this just isn't safe for me or the patients," said the paramedic of 18 months. "By the time I came home, I was dizzy from very little sleep and I wasn't safe to drive especially long distances, or do my job. "I told the Assistant Commissioner I want to stay here but we just need more staff. That's the problem."
Emergency Services Minister Neil Roberts has requested a report of the situation with rosters over the past five days being checked. A QAS spokesman admitted the station had experienced extraordinary conditions with "a spate of serious, potentially life-threatening incidents in the Stanthorpe area this week". "A dedicated ambulance officer at the Stanthorpe station was called to attend a number of these incidents while rostered on for emergency availability at the time of these incidents," the QAS spokesman said.
But the statements were met with anger from the Ambulance Employees Australia Union and the State Opposition, which both demanded an independent inquiry into the service. Coalition emergency services spokesman Ted Malone said the understaffing was typical of a system in crisis right across Queensland. "She was a danger not only to the patients she was treating but to herself and (this) goes well beyond any workplace health and safety guidelines," Mr Malone said. AEAU secretary Steve Crow said the problem was associated with busy regional stations that had inadequate staff. "Surely there is a way to look after the patients better by actually looking after the paramedics," Mr Crow said
Source
Police negligence frees child-killer
West Australian police "stuffed up" when they failed to DNA test the blood-splattered shorts worn by child-killer Dante Arthurs when he attacked another young girl four years ago, police chiefs admit. Arthurs, 23, was sentenced to life in jail with a minimum of 13 years yesterday for the murder of eight-year-old Sofia Rodriguez-Urrutia-Shu in a toilet cubicle at a Perth shopping centre last year.
During his sentencing in the Supreme Court yesterday it was revealed that a pair of shorts worn by Arthurs at the time he allegedly attacked another eight-year-old girl in 2003 were not tested until last month. It was only then that a bloodstain on the shorts was found to match the eight-year-old victim of the 2003 attack.
The case was dropped in 2003 by Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Robert Cock because police bungled the interview, intimidating Arthurs when they thought video and audio tapes had been turned off. Mr Cock was also told there was no forensic evidence to support a prosecution.
WA Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan said today he had contacted the Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC) to investigate "what the hell went wrong". "I think WA police have to accept this has been stuffed up," Mr O'Callaghan said. "What we've seen is DNA evidence that could have been analysed in 2003 and the WA police have let the community down. "I think to call it a bungle would be an underestimation."
Yesterday, Sofia's parents stayed away from Arthurs' sentencing to save themselves from the pain of what they labelled a "lack of effective justice".
Source
Aussie crowned top winemaker
A SOUTH Australian has been crowned the world's winemaker of the year at the International Wine and Spirit Competition in London. Michael Fragos, the chief winemaker at McLaren Vale's Chapel Hill winery, was named winner of the prestigious gong last night. "I am absolutely ecstatic," Mr Fragos said today.
The International Wine and Spirit Competition, founded in 1969, is regarded as the premier competition of its kind in the world. Last month, a Chapel Hill wine selling for $25 a bottle was named the best cabernet sauvignon at the London competition. The Chapel Hill McLaren Vale 2005 cabernet sauvignon also won a gold medal at the prestigious competition. Chapel Hill's 2004 McLaren Vale shiraz claimed the trophy for the best Australian red wine at the competition, while the 2005 vintage of the shiraz won a gold medal.
Source
By way of the usual short-staffing
A mother who accidentally suffocated her newborn baby says she will consider suing a Brisbane hospital after a coroner found nurses failed to follow guidelines. Baby Arisa was less than a day old when her lifeless body was found in mother Yumiko Huber's bed at the Mater Mothers' Hospital in South Brisbane on August 17, 2005. She was revived but was found to be brain dead and died the next day when she was taken off life support.
A report by Deputy State Coroner Christine Clements - made public today - found the first-time mother had been exhausted after a difficult birth, on pain relief medication and antibiotics, and had a fever when she was left breastfeeding her daughter at about 5am. It found staff had left the pair for one hour and 45 minutes before discovering the child and her sleeping mother - contrary to hospital guidelines which required checks on mothers breastfeeding in bed every 15 to 30 minutes. "The evidence was also clear that no specific warning was given to the mother before the baby was placed with her for breastfeeding in bed," the report said.
The report said the midwife should have advised Ms Huber to take care and call for assistance if she or the baby became sleepy.
The parents were too upset to speak today, but a statement released by the father, Philip Huber, was highly critical of the hospital and its nurses, who he blamed directly for his daughter's death. The couple's lawyer Sarah Yellop today said they were considering legal action against the hospital and the two nurses who were on shift that night. "That's something that we've got to consider and, obviously, they are giving some thought too," Ms Yellop told reporters. "Given the findings of the inquest, I'd consider that there would be very strong grounds for compensation claims." But, she said, it was too early to comment on how much compensation might be sought.
The coroner's report recommended better training for nurses and more education for new mothers, especially involving the dangers of having the baby in bed with them. The report also noted "extremely heavy" workloads for nurses and low staffing levels which led to shortcuts being taken.
A statement from the hospital today said the report's recommendations had already been implemented. "Mater Health Services continues to express its deepest sympathies to the Huber family," it said. "Immediately after the death of Arisa Huber, Mater reviewed its policies and procedures in the Mater Mothers' Hospital. "Since the tragic event occurred two years ago, the recommendations made by the coroner in the report have already been implemented by the Mater." The changes included a new education program for staff and patients. [New policies? What about implementing the old ones?]
Source
Ambulance disaster just waiting to happen
A trainee paramedic who worked virtually 36 hours straight this week is so tired driving her ambulance she sees "little monsters" on the road in front of the vehicle. Stanthorpe ambulance officer Julie Clark blames the marathon shift at the Granite Belt station on chronic understaffing with paramedics regularly working 20 hours straight. Her stint - from 8am on Monday to 8pm on Tuesday - included two quick power naps, two return trips to Warwick and an eight-hour return drive to Brisbane with patients. "Lives are at risk because of this," Ms Clark told The Courier-Mail last night. "I have been so tired I have seen little monsters running all over the road."
The revelations are another embarrassment for the Bligh Government as it investigates why record funding for the Queensland Ambulance Service is resulting in worsening service [The experience of governmenrt medical services worldwide]. The QAS yesterday offered Ms Clark, 43, a transfer to a quieter station after her frustrated partner blew the whistle about the problems and forced the QAS to let her talk.
But Ms Clark insisted a transfer would not solve the problems as eight staff regularly worked 20-hour shifts as their "on-call" time became rush hour. "We love our jobs and we do get overtime but this just isn't safe for me or the patients," said the paramedic of 18 months. "By the time I came home, I was dizzy from very little sleep and I wasn't safe to drive especially long distances, or do my job. "I told the Assistant Commissioner I want to stay here but we just need more staff. That's the problem."
Emergency Services Minister Neil Roberts has requested a report of the situation with rosters over the past five days being checked. A QAS spokesman admitted the station had experienced extraordinary conditions with "a spate of serious, potentially life-threatening incidents in the Stanthorpe area this week". "A dedicated ambulance officer at the Stanthorpe station was called to attend a number of these incidents while rostered on for emergency availability at the time of these incidents," the QAS spokesman said.
But the statements were met with anger from the Ambulance Employees Australia Union and the State Opposition, which both demanded an independent inquiry into the service. Coalition emergency services spokesman Ted Malone said the understaffing was typical of a system in crisis right across Queensland. "She was a danger not only to the patients she was treating but to herself and (this) goes well beyond any workplace health and safety guidelines," Mr Malone said. AEAU secretary Steve Crow said the problem was associated with busy regional stations that had inadequate staff. "Surely there is a way to look after the patients better by actually looking after the paramedics," Mr Crow said
Source
Police negligence frees child-killer
West Australian police "stuffed up" when they failed to DNA test the blood-splattered shorts worn by child-killer Dante Arthurs when he attacked another young girl four years ago, police chiefs admit. Arthurs, 23, was sentenced to life in jail with a minimum of 13 years yesterday for the murder of eight-year-old Sofia Rodriguez-Urrutia-Shu in a toilet cubicle at a Perth shopping centre last year.
During his sentencing in the Supreme Court yesterday it was revealed that a pair of shorts worn by Arthurs at the time he allegedly attacked another eight-year-old girl in 2003 were not tested until last month. It was only then that a bloodstain on the shorts was found to match the eight-year-old victim of the 2003 attack.
The case was dropped in 2003 by Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Robert Cock because police bungled the interview, intimidating Arthurs when they thought video and audio tapes had been turned off. Mr Cock was also told there was no forensic evidence to support a prosecution.
WA Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan said today he had contacted the Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC) to investigate "what the hell went wrong". "I think WA police have to accept this has been stuffed up," Mr O'Callaghan said. "What we've seen is DNA evidence that could have been analysed in 2003 and the WA police have let the community down. "I think to call it a bungle would be an underestimation."
Yesterday, Sofia's parents stayed away from Arthurs' sentencing to save themselves from the pain of what they labelled a "lack of effective justice".
Source
Aussie crowned top winemaker
A SOUTH Australian has been crowned the world's winemaker of the year at the International Wine and Spirit Competition in London. Michael Fragos, the chief winemaker at McLaren Vale's Chapel Hill winery, was named winner of the prestigious gong last night. "I am absolutely ecstatic," Mr Fragos said today.
The International Wine and Spirit Competition, founded in 1969, is regarded as the premier competition of its kind in the world. Last month, a Chapel Hill wine selling for $25 a bottle was named the best cabernet sauvignon at the London competition. The Chapel Hill McLaren Vale 2005 cabernet sauvignon also won a gold medal at the prestigious competition. Chapel Hill's 2004 McLaren Vale shiraz claimed the trophy for the best Australian red wine at the competition, while the 2005 vintage of the shiraz won a gold medal.
Source
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
What a racket!
In the story below, a guy who looks as pink-skinned as I am is somehow classed as black so gets half a million bucks of taxpayers' money because concerned child welfare authorities took him off his natural parents when he was a kid and placed him with white foster parents. How awful of them! These days they just let the abused black kids die, of course. ANYTHING is better than placing them with white families!
The guy below should be thankful for his pink skin in fact. In the old days the authorities didn't think there was much they could do for blacks. It was only half-caste children whom they thought had a chance and whom they therefore endeavoured to save. And even then it was only in some States that they even went that far. If there was any crime committed, it was that so FEW children were removed from abusive black families.
The "stolen generation" is just a myth concocted by Leftists. There was no "generation" removed from their parents -- just a few isolated and endangered individual childen. Note that the individual below is the FIRST to be judicially classified as "stolen". If there was a whole generation, where have all the rest of them been hiding all these years?
The first member of the stolen generation to be awarded damages by a court has asked for 50 years of interest on his $525,000 compensation. Aborigine Bruce Trevorrow was awarded the payout in August after a South Australian judge ruled the state falsely imprisoned him as a child and owed him a duty of care for pain and suffering. In the SA Civil Court yesterday, Julian Burnside, QC, for Mr Trevorrow, asked for the interest on the compensation be backdated to 1957 when Mr Trevorrow was taken as a child.
Mr Trevorrow was taken from his family in the Coorong in 1957, when he was 13 months old and was given under the authority of the Aborigines Protection Board to a woman, who later became his foster parent, without his natural parents' permission.
Source
So exactly when did Aussies have it better?
It may be of some relevance to note that in political history, the sentence "You never had it so good" is most often associated with Britain's Conservative "Supermac", who went on to win the subsequent election
JOHN Howard's biggest problem right now isn't that he's a liar. It's that he told the truth. And how Labor is now hammering the Prime Minister for it. Night after night I see ads starring a new Whingeing Wendy, whining how Howard once said "working families have never had it so good". "Really, Mr Howard?" she snarls with a voice like a bandsaw, just like the original Whingeing Wendy, designed by ad man John Singleton, who nagged Howard to defeat in his 1987 campaign against Bob Hawke. "How can you say that when my childcare and grocery prices are higher than ever?"
On she goes, yammering about her various bills, like someone astonished to find herself living in an age where you actually had to pay for stuff. We'll be seeing more of Whingeing Wendy and her bills, I'm sure, after today's announcement by the Reserve Bank board of another interest rate rise - the sixth since the last election. In fact, Wendy has been whingeing about them already: "And those interest rate rises, they've stretched us to the limit ... 'Never better off?' You've lost touch, Mr Howard."
Er, Wendy? Excuse me, dear, but it's actually you who's lost touch. By almost any measure you care to take, Australians in general are indeed better off than ever. In fact, the most astonishing thing about this election is that Howard is about to be junked despite an economic record he could bronze and hang in his study with pride. Take it from me, Howard can't believe it himself.
Check the stats. More people have jobs than ever before. Pensions are high. Wages have gone up and up. The place is booming. Your family home is now worth plenty. Tax cuts for the average wage earner have more than covered the rises in mortgage rates, which are still lower than what we had when Howard was first elected.
As for Whingeing Wendy's groceries, an analysis by CommSec's chief economist shows that more than two-thirds of a basket of 50 items typically bought from supermarkets have got more affordable over the past six years. Indeed, after-tax wages have risen twice as much as overall prices. We've got it not just made, but buttered on crumpet.
All of this is perfectly obvious to visitors. Simon Heffer, columnist for Britain's Daily Telegraph, dropped in last month to report on Australia and rhapsodised: "For an Englishman or anyone else coming here now, the place is humbling. "We really do see a people who have never had it so good. "Indeed, it is hard to name a nation in history that has ever had it so good as the Australians are having it now."
Or ask Australians returning from overseas, even from Scandinavian countries that our socialists long hailed as Nirvana. An acquaintance who has spent the past eight years living in Norway yesterday emailed to say he'd had enough, and was coming home to heaven. He listed the things that had left him cold among the fjords: "$12 beers, 25 per cent GST, $12 pack of cigs, $50 pizzas, world's worst taxes on cars and petrol, world's close-to-highest electricity prices." Whingeing Wendy would pop a valve.
Yet telling the truth about our good fortune has been a huge blunder by Howard, who has scrabbled since to assure voters they really are poor, sad, picked-on little battlers, who need lots of loving and as much free money as would choke Dick Pratt. The charitable reading of this phenomenon is that voters don't want their leaders to seem complacent, as if they've given us as much as they're ever going to give and will now put up their feet on the Kirribilli ottoman. With Howard already seeming like he's worn out his welcome, and worn through his agenda, his boast couldn't have sounded worse.
But the less charitable - and perhaps more accurate - explanation for our Whingeing Wendys is that many Australians like to praise themselves for their successes, but blame others, especially the Gummint, for their failings. In other words, they're whingers inclined to give politicians nothing more generous than the two fingers, and themselves nothing more harsh than a free pass.
A classic example of the species is Monash University ethicist Leslie Cannold, who this week wrote a column in The Age savaging the Howard Government for making her want to take her son out of a bad (Victorian-run) state school and into a private one she couldn't afford. "The rot comes from the way we fund our schools," she raged. "And it is making me so angry ... that I can hardly breathe. "(My son) can see how frustrated I am at my inability to give him the wonderful educational opportunities we both see dispensed like lollies all round us; how sad and guilty I feel that despite the fact that we are doing the best we can, our best isn't good enough..." And so on, like Whingeing Wendy's twin sister.
As it happens, the Howard Government has actually spent more than ever to make it possible for more parents - many poorer than Cannold - to send their children to private schools. And as it also happens, Cannold might well be able to afford to send her son to a private school, too, if she made the same sort of sacrifices I've seen other parents make. This is, after all, the same woman who only recently wrote a whole column confessing she spent money on botox injections, and would consider cosmetic surgery as well. But don't let nasty John Howard suggest Cannold might actually be doing pretty well to so indulge herself. That would just prove he was out of touch, wouldn't it?
That's sure what Labor leader Kevin Rudd argues, as he bids for the whingers' vote: "Mr Howard says working families have never been better off ... (but) my experience across the country is that working families have a radically different take." Clever politics, but since it's wrong to say working families have never had it so good, I have a question for Rudd: What year exactly did they have it better? No, I can't remember, either.
Source
Leftist power grab coming to Australia
ANY survey of Kevin Rudd's policies leads to an inescapable conclusion: that he wants a sustained increase in the executive power of the prime minister across the spectrum of government. Such an interpretation will be denied. It must be denied, since Labor says John Howard has assumed and abused too much executive power, implying that Labor will remedy such defects. But a tough-minded analysis of Rudd's proposals for office leads to different conclusions.
Remember the most important signal Rudd has sent about office is his plan to select the ministry as well as allocate the portfolios. "Let me be clear about this," Rudd said on September 27. "I'll be determining the composition of the Labor ministry should we be elected to form the next government of the country." This is a direct strike for greater prime ministerial power over the factions and the caucus. Rudd's bid for this power is unqualified and courageous. It sounds Whitlamesque in its "crash through or crash" intent. It is a break from tradition and reflects Rudd's distrust of factional influence. It is inconsistent with the caucus rules and requires caucus consent. Rudd has chosen to confirm only three ministers, Julia Gillard in industrial relations, Wayne Swan as treasurer and Lindsay Tanner in finance. The rest of the ministry is open.
If Rudd gets his way then he, not caucus, will select ministers and victory will surely guarantee he gets his way. Rumours abound about whether various shadow ministers will survive but nobody knows. It is a reminder that Rudd's campaign is presidential, that he owes few debts and that his plans for office are kept tight.
Beyond the claim to select the ministry, Rudd plans vast changes in the system of government. There is, however, one unifying theme: greater prime ministerial power. Consider three priority areas: security, climate change and federalism. Rudd's policy involves the creation of an office of national security within the PM's department. This would be headed by a new position in the Australian system: national security adviser. It is proof that Rudd intends to enhance one of Howard's innovations: the prime minister as national security chief.
The office of national security is probably a re-badging of the existing National Security Division within the PM's department. But the national security adviser is a new concept. It implies the creation of a second officer at secretary level within the department. The critical issue is whether this officer is just a bureaucratic co-ordinator (highly unlikely) or whether Rudd invests this post with policy-making authority. In this case the national security adviser reporting to Rudd would become a rival policy source to defence, foreign affairs and the chief of the defence force.
Note that Rudd plans to commission at once a new defence white paper, sweeping in conception, which deals with the region, militant Islam and WMD proliferation. Once this paper is received Rudd intends, among other things, to "write a more comprehensive national security statement". Such formalisation of a national security strategy has been resisted by Howard.
Such initiatives must be seen in context. Rudd would be the most security aware incoming PM since Malcolm Fraser in 1975. He will have in Robert McClelland as foreign minister and Joel Fitzgibbon as defence minister, deeply inexperienced incumbents. It will be a situation with a PM versed in security policy, equipped with an advisory apparatus that exceeds anything Howard built, and with novice ministers. At the same time Labor has long been pledged to create a department of homeland security, a vast cultural change to the public service and regulatory agencies.
The misgivings within the bureaucracy and the national security community are legion. The new department will include Labor's proposed coastguard, Customs, ASIO, Office of Transport Security, Australian Federal Police, emergency management, anti-money laundering and the Australian Crime Commission. Shadow minister Arch Bevis significantly likens this revolution to the Whitlam government's 1970s creation of a super defence department that incorporated the departments of army, navy, air force and supply. Last month Bevis said Labor would commission a counter-terrorism white paper to define a whole-of-government response and attacked the Howard Government for its rejection of the homeland security philosophy.
Now there are three things you need to know. This is an American concept. It is an American title. It is an American failure. The US Department of Homeland Security has been little short of a disaster. Howard would not touch the notion. For Australia, it will constitute a huge project in governance and there are many security experts in Canberra warning Labor to halt this innovation. They are in for a shock. Rudd is determined to establish the homeland security department.
Consider climate change. Rudd has announced that an office of climate change will be created within the PM's department, signalling his plan to lead on this issue domestically and internationally. Howard began this process but Rudd will command it. He will entrench a climate change policy window into the prime ministership. Rudd's first climate change priority is to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and this will be orchestrated at the level of prime minister. Having used climate change to define his modernist agenda, Rudd will make the post-2012 Kyoto negotiations into a central theme of his head of government diplomacy.
Don't think for one moment the environment minister will control this operation. The report by Ross Garnaut on a national emissions trading scheme was commissioned by Rudd and he will be the principal actor in decisions and implementation following the Garnaut report.
Consider Rudd's pledge to fix the federation. He has raised the greatest expectations about serious federal-state reform since Whitlam. The Council of Australian Governments will become far more important as an instrument of reform. Rudd will become the pivotal figure in this process, backed by his department and working with the premiers.
This list hardly scrapes the surface of Rudd's new agencies and statutory authorities. He will create a health and hospitals reform commission (within the first 100 days), a skills Australia authority, an infrastructure Australia authority and dozens of other statutory bodies, departments, offices, inquiries and new arrangements for industry. It raises the question: does Rudd want to govern the nation or just reorganise its government?
Here is the Rudd paradox. While an agent of me-tooism on many policies, Labor's structure of government agenda reveals an entirely different story. The public servants working on the transition plans can hardly believe their eyes. This Labor agenda means a deepening of the prime minister's powers and a reorganisation of government that is Whitlamesque in its scope and its obsession about process.
Source
Surge in medicine errors in major South Australian public hospital
The direction of change is almost invariably for the worse in Australia's public hospitals
HUNDREDS of medication errors have been recorded at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in the past year, hospital documents reveal. In a situation the state's peak medical body yesterday described as "devastating", it can be revealed 728 medication-related mistakes by doctors and nurses at Royal Adelaide Hospital were reported last financial year compared with 611 in 2005-06. Details of the 19 per cent increase in errors is in RAH safety and quality unit documents, obtained by The Advertiser under Freedom of Information laws.
The Patient Incidents - Medication Related reports show the most common errors are omissions, prescribing problems and overdoses. In 46 cases last financial year, the wrong medication was given and in 11 cases medication given to the wrong patients. During the first six months of this year, seven patients suffered "major permanent loss of function or permanent lessening of bodily function" as a result.
Central Northern Adelaide Health Service acute services executive director Kaye Challinger said there were no patient deaths recorded because of medication errors during the past two financial years. She said, in a written statement, the RAH regarded the incidents as "serious" and a "range of initiatives" had been put in place, including a new medication chart and pharmaceutical reforms. Incident reports are phoned through to a contact centre via a 1800 number.
But doctors, nurses and the State Opposition fear most incidents are going unreported. Australian Medical Association state president Dr Peter Ford said there was a lot of pressure, with hospitals running at more than 95 per cent occupancy. "This really is a scenario for mistakes to occur," he said. "It is a devastating finding."
Australian Nursing Federation state secretary Lee Thomas said the errors "reflected a workforce under pressure". Opposition Leader Martin Hamilton-Smith said the figures were "very alarming". "The statistics for all hospitals should now be made publicly available," he said. But Health Minister John Hill said medication errors affected just 0.37 per cent of the total number of patients treated at the hospital in 2006-07.
Source
In the story below, a guy who looks as pink-skinned as I am is somehow classed as black so gets half a million bucks of taxpayers' money because concerned child welfare authorities took him off his natural parents when he was a kid and placed him with white foster parents. How awful of them! These days they just let the abused black kids die, of course. ANYTHING is better than placing them with white families!
The guy below should be thankful for his pink skin in fact. In the old days the authorities didn't think there was much they could do for blacks. It was only half-caste children whom they thought had a chance and whom they therefore endeavoured to save. And even then it was only in some States that they even went that far. If there was any crime committed, it was that so FEW children were removed from abusive black families.
The "stolen generation" is just a myth concocted by Leftists. There was no "generation" removed from their parents -- just a few isolated and endangered individual childen. Note that the individual below is the FIRST to be judicially classified as "stolen". If there was a whole generation, where have all the rest of them been hiding all these years?
The first member of the stolen generation to be awarded damages by a court has asked for 50 years of interest on his $525,000 compensation. Aborigine Bruce Trevorrow was awarded the payout in August after a South Australian judge ruled the state falsely imprisoned him as a child and owed him a duty of care for pain and suffering. In the SA Civil Court yesterday, Julian Burnside, QC, for Mr Trevorrow, asked for the interest on the compensation be backdated to 1957 when Mr Trevorrow was taken as a child.
Mr Trevorrow was taken from his family in the Coorong in 1957, when he was 13 months old and was given under the authority of the Aborigines Protection Board to a woman, who later became his foster parent, without his natural parents' permission.
Source
So exactly when did Aussies have it better?
It may be of some relevance to note that in political history, the sentence "You never had it so good" is most often associated with Britain's Conservative "Supermac", who went on to win the subsequent election
JOHN Howard's biggest problem right now isn't that he's a liar. It's that he told the truth. And how Labor is now hammering the Prime Minister for it. Night after night I see ads starring a new Whingeing Wendy, whining how Howard once said "working families have never had it so good". "Really, Mr Howard?" she snarls with a voice like a bandsaw, just like the original Whingeing Wendy, designed by ad man John Singleton, who nagged Howard to defeat in his 1987 campaign against Bob Hawke. "How can you say that when my childcare and grocery prices are higher than ever?"
On she goes, yammering about her various bills, like someone astonished to find herself living in an age where you actually had to pay for stuff. We'll be seeing more of Whingeing Wendy and her bills, I'm sure, after today's announcement by the Reserve Bank board of another interest rate rise - the sixth since the last election. In fact, Wendy has been whingeing about them already: "And those interest rate rises, they've stretched us to the limit ... 'Never better off?' You've lost touch, Mr Howard."
Er, Wendy? Excuse me, dear, but it's actually you who's lost touch. By almost any measure you care to take, Australians in general are indeed better off than ever. In fact, the most astonishing thing about this election is that Howard is about to be junked despite an economic record he could bronze and hang in his study with pride. Take it from me, Howard can't believe it himself.
Check the stats. More people have jobs than ever before. Pensions are high. Wages have gone up and up. The place is booming. Your family home is now worth plenty. Tax cuts for the average wage earner have more than covered the rises in mortgage rates, which are still lower than what we had when Howard was first elected.
As for Whingeing Wendy's groceries, an analysis by CommSec's chief economist shows that more than two-thirds of a basket of 50 items typically bought from supermarkets have got more affordable over the past six years. Indeed, after-tax wages have risen twice as much as overall prices. We've got it not just made, but buttered on crumpet.
All of this is perfectly obvious to visitors. Simon Heffer, columnist for Britain's Daily Telegraph, dropped in last month to report on Australia and rhapsodised: "For an Englishman or anyone else coming here now, the place is humbling. "We really do see a people who have never had it so good. "Indeed, it is hard to name a nation in history that has ever had it so good as the Australians are having it now."
Or ask Australians returning from overseas, even from Scandinavian countries that our socialists long hailed as Nirvana. An acquaintance who has spent the past eight years living in Norway yesterday emailed to say he'd had enough, and was coming home to heaven. He listed the things that had left him cold among the fjords: "$12 beers, 25 per cent GST, $12 pack of cigs, $50 pizzas, world's worst taxes on cars and petrol, world's close-to-highest electricity prices." Whingeing Wendy would pop a valve.
Yet telling the truth about our good fortune has been a huge blunder by Howard, who has scrabbled since to assure voters they really are poor, sad, picked-on little battlers, who need lots of loving and as much free money as would choke Dick Pratt. The charitable reading of this phenomenon is that voters don't want their leaders to seem complacent, as if they've given us as much as they're ever going to give and will now put up their feet on the Kirribilli ottoman. With Howard already seeming like he's worn out his welcome, and worn through his agenda, his boast couldn't have sounded worse.
But the less charitable - and perhaps more accurate - explanation for our Whingeing Wendys is that many Australians like to praise themselves for their successes, but blame others, especially the Gummint, for their failings. In other words, they're whingers inclined to give politicians nothing more generous than the two fingers, and themselves nothing more harsh than a free pass.
A classic example of the species is Monash University ethicist Leslie Cannold, who this week wrote a column in The Age savaging the Howard Government for making her want to take her son out of a bad (Victorian-run) state school and into a private one she couldn't afford. "The rot comes from the way we fund our schools," she raged. "And it is making me so angry ... that I can hardly breathe. "(My son) can see how frustrated I am at my inability to give him the wonderful educational opportunities we both see dispensed like lollies all round us; how sad and guilty I feel that despite the fact that we are doing the best we can, our best isn't good enough..." And so on, like Whingeing Wendy's twin sister.
As it happens, the Howard Government has actually spent more than ever to make it possible for more parents - many poorer than Cannold - to send their children to private schools. And as it also happens, Cannold might well be able to afford to send her son to a private school, too, if she made the same sort of sacrifices I've seen other parents make. This is, after all, the same woman who only recently wrote a whole column confessing she spent money on botox injections, and would consider cosmetic surgery as well. But don't let nasty John Howard suggest Cannold might actually be doing pretty well to so indulge herself. That would just prove he was out of touch, wouldn't it?
That's sure what Labor leader Kevin Rudd argues, as he bids for the whingers' vote: "Mr Howard says working families have never been better off ... (but) my experience across the country is that working families have a radically different take." Clever politics, but since it's wrong to say working families have never had it so good, I have a question for Rudd: What year exactly did they have it better? No, I can't remember, either.
Source
Leftist power grab coming to Australia
ANY survey of Kevin Rudd's policies leads to an inescapable conclusion: that he wants a sustained increase in the executive power of the prime minister across the spectrum of government. Such an interpretation will be denied. It must be denied, since Labor says John Howard has assumed and abused too much executive power, implying that Labor will remedy such defects. But a tough-minded analysis of Rudd's proposals for office leads to different conclusions.
Remember the most important signal Rudd has sent about office is his plan to select the ministry as well as allocate the portfolios. "Let me be clear about this," Rudd said on September 27. "I'll be determining the composition of the Labor ministry should we be elected to form the next government of the country." This is a direct strike for greater prime ministerial power over the factions and the caucus. Rudd's bid for this power is unqualified and courageous. It sounds Whitlamesque in its "crash through or crash" intent. It is a break from tradition and reflects Rudd's distrust of factional influence. It is inconsistent with the caucus rules and requires caucus consent. Rudd has chosen to confirm only three ministers, Julia Gillard in industrial relations, Wayne Swan as treasurer and Lindsay Tanner in finance. The rest of the ministry is open.
If Rudd gets his way then he, not caucus, will select ministers and victory will surely guarantee he gets his way. Rumours abound about whether various shadow ministers will survive but nobody knows. It is a reminder that Rudd's campaign is presidential, that he owes few debts and that his plans for office are kept tight.
Beyond the claim to select the ministry, Rudd plans vast changes in the system of government. There is, however, one unifying theme: greater prime ministerial power. Consider three priority areas: security, climate change and federalism. Rudd's policy involves the creation of an office of national security within the PM's department. This would be headed by a new position in the Australian system: national security adviser. It is proof that Rudd intends to enhance one of Howard's innovations: the prime minister as national security chief.
The office of national security is probably a re-badging of the existing National Security Division within the PM's department. But the national security adviser is a new concept. It implies the creation of a second officer at secretary level within the department. The critical issue is whether this officer is just a bureaucratic co-ordinator (highly unlikely) or whether Rudd invests this post with policy-making authority. In this case the national security adviser reporting to Rudd would become a rival policy source to defence, foreign affairs and the chief of the defence force.
Note that Rudd plans to commission at once a new defence white paper, sweeping in conception, which deals with the region, militant Islam and WMD proliferation. Once this paper is received Rudd intends, among other things, to "write a more comprehensive national security statement". Such formalisation of a national security strategy has been resisted by Howard.
Such initiatives must be seen in context. Rudd would be the most security aware incoming PM since Malcolm Fraser in 1975. He will have in Robert McClelland as foreign minister and Joel Fitzgibbon as defence minister, deeply inexperienced incumbents. It will be a situation with a PM versed in security policy, equipped with an advisory apparatus that exceeds anything Howard built, and with novice ministers. At the same time Labor has long been pledged to create a department of homeland security, a vast cultural change to the public service and regulatory agencies.
The misgivings within the bureaucracy and the national security community are legion. The new department will include Labor's proposed coastguard, Customs, ASIO, Office of Transport Security, Australian Federal Police, emergency management, anti-money laundering and the Australian Crime Commission. Shadow minister Arch Bevis significantly likens this revolution to the Whitlam government's 1970s creation of a super defence department that incorporated the departments of army, navy, air force and supply. Last month Bevis said Labor would commission a counter-terrorism white paper to define a whole-of-government response and attacked the Howard Government for its rejection of the homeland security philosophy.
Now there are three things you need to know. This is an American concept. It is an American title. It is an American failure. The US Department of Homeland Security has been little short of a disaster. Howard would not touch the notion. For Australia, it will constitute a huge project in governance and there are many security experts in Canberra warning Labor to halt this innovation. They are in for a shock. Rudd is determined to establish the homeland security department.
Consider climate change. Rudd has announced that an office of climate change will be created within the PM's department, signalling his plan to lead on this issue domestically and internationally. Howard began this process but Rudd will command it. He will entrench a climate change policy window into the prime ministership. Rudd's first climate change priority is to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and this will be orchestrated at the level of prime minister. Having used climate change to define his modernist agenda, Rudd will make the post-2012 Kyoto negotiations into a central theme of his head of government diplomacy.
Don't think for one moment the environment minister will control this operation. The report by Ross Garnaut on a national emissions trading scheme was commissioned by Rudd and he will be the principal actor in decisions and implementation following the Garnaut report.
Consider Rudd's pledge to fix the federation. He has raised the greatest expectations about serious federal-state reform since Whitlam. The Council of Australian Governments will become far more important as an instrument of reform. Rudd will become the pivotal figure in this process, backed by his department and working with the premiers.
This list hardly scrapes the surface of Rudd's new agencies and statutory authorities. He will create a health and hospitals reform commission (within the first 100 days), a skills Australia authority, an infrastructure Australia authority and dozens of other statutory bodies, departments, offices, inquiries and new arrangements for industry. It raises the question: does Rudd want to govern the nation or just reorganise its government?
Here is the Rudd paradox. While an agent of me-tooism on many policies, Labor's structure of government agenda reveals an entirely different story. The public servants working on the transition plans can hardly believe their eyes. This Labor agenda means a deepening of the prime minister's powers and a reorganisation of government that is Whitlamesque in its scope and its obsession about process.
Source
Surge in medicine errors in major South Australian public hospital
The direction of change is almost invariably for the worse in Australia's public hospitals
HUNDREDS of medication errors have been recorded at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in the past year, hospital documents reveal. In a situation the state's peak medical body yesterday described as "devastating", it can be revealed 728 medication-related mistakes by doctors and nurses at Royal Adelaide Hospital were reported last financial year compared with 611 in 2005-06. Details of the 19 per cent increase in errors is in RAH safety and quality unit documents, obtained by The Advertiser under Freedom of Information laws.
The Patient Incidents - Medication Related reports show the most common errors are omissions, prescribing problems and overdoses. In 46 cases last financial year, the wrong medication was given and in 11 cases medication given to the wrong patients. During the first six months of this year, seven patients suffered "major permanent loss of function or permanent lessening of bodily function" as a result.
Central Northern Adelaide Health Service acute services executive director Kaye Challinger said there were no patient deaths recorded because of medication errors during the past two financial years. She said, in a written statement, the RAH regarded the incidents as "serious" and a "range of initiatives" had been put in place, including a new medication chart and pharmaceutical reforms. Incident reports are phoned through to a contact centre via a 1800 number.
But doctors, nurses and the State Opposition fear most incidents are going unreported. Australian Medical Association state president Dr Peter Ford said there was a lot of pressure, with hospitals running at more than 95 per cent occupancy. "This really is a scenario for mistakes to occur," he said. "It is a devastating finding."
Australian Nursing Federation state secretary Lee Thomas said the errors "reflected a workforce under pressure". Opposition Leader Martin Hamilton-Smith said the figures were "very alarming". "The statistics for all hospitals should now be made publicly available," he said. But Health Minister John Hill said medication errors affected just 0.37 per cent of the total number of patients treated at the hospital in 2006-07.
Source
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
