Muslim students seeking jihad fatwas

AUSTRALIAN Muslim university students eager to become jihadis are regularly seeking advice from Islamic spiritual leaders in the hope of winning religious approval to travel overseas and fight. Leaders have warned that the obsession among some young Muslims to become holy warriors was also driving them to "shop around" for fatwas - religious rulings - should their initial request be turned down.

Moderate Sydney-based Islamic cleric Khalil Shami said young Muslims, "predominantly university students", frequently asked his advice on travelling to war-torn countries to fight in the name of Islam. This comes two years after hardline Islamic university students were involved in the London bombings that killed 52 people and injured 700 others. It also follows The Australian's revelations in January that a 25-year-old Somali Australian, Ahmed Ali, died fighting alongside Islamists in his country of birth in December last year.

Sheik Shami said he always warned aspiring Islamists against fighting because he believed Muslim countries were being run by corrupt leaders who were more interested in making money and advancing their political profiles than liberating their people. "There are some people who would like to go and perform jihad," he told The Australian in an Arabic and English interview. "I say don't go. Because those fighting aren't truly fighting in the path of God. I've been asked numerous times and I've advised against going," added Sheik Shami, an imam at Penshurst Mosque in Sydney's southwest. He said young Muslims interested in jihad either called him anonymously to ask his advice or approached him at the mosque.

Sheik Shami, who is also an Australian Federal Police chaplain, said he had not notified authorities about Muslims interested in jihad because he did not want to betray the trust of people making the inquiries. "If you come to me and tell me about something, it's not nice for me to go and tell the authorities about you because you trust me and I have to just keep your secret," he said. "I know I have enough faith in myself. I'm not going to hurt the person or hurt the authorities."

The federal Attorney-General's department last night said clerics were not obligated under common law to pass on national security information. "A Muslim cleric would have the same obligations as any other member of the community," a department spokesman said. "The Government would expect that any person in receipt of such information, whatever their religious beliefs, would have a duty to prevent terrorist activity and pass the information on."

Sheik Shami's comments follow revelations in The Australian last week that Muslims were refusing to give national security authorities counter-terrorism tip-offs, fearing they might implicate themselves or be labelled traitors by fellow community members. Sheik Shami said young men often became more enthused about seeking advice on jihad after seeing horrific images of fellow Muslims caught up in conflict.

Islamic Friendship Association of Australia president Keysar Trad admitted hearing young Muslims asking their cleric for advice on going to fight jihad overseas. He said some even went to more than one imam in the hope of getting a green light for joining the battle. "Some people will shop around, what you might term as fatwa shopping, and I am yet to meet an imam who would say yes, go," Mr Trad said. "My personal assessment of these kind of people is they want the imam to reassure them that staying here in luxury and comfort is OK, that's all they're doing. But then they go (and say), 'I would've gone only if the imam let me'."

Melbourne cleric Isse Musse said aspiring jihadis do not usually ask for fatwas from their imams to approve their departure for battle. And while the Somalian imam had never been approached by young Muslims wanting to join overseas terror outfits, he said in most cases people would only seek advice about such issues from their clerics.

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Australian police and courts not interested in punishing racist attacks by Muslims

They were walking home after a night at the Woolooware Golf Club - two men and two women - when a Toyota Camry pulled up and the driver asked: "Have you been at Cronulla today?" One of the men, Dan, replied: "It's bullshit down there. Don't go there."

It was an innocuous answer, but the six men in the Toyota had earlier been part of a 100-car convoy that assembled in Punchbowl and made its way to the southern beaches that night, December 11, 2005. They had already been involved in violent incidents at Maroubra and Brighton-le-Sands, part of the self-styled "intifada" that exposed the inertia of the police and the court system. The full magnitude of this inertia is yet to be fully understood. The failure is ongoing.

Dan's response didn't really matter. These men were not on a peace mission. The car doors were flung open. "Get the Aussie dogs!" one of them shouted. Dan told his friends: "Run!" They began sprinting down the street. Then he heard another comment: "Get those f---ing Aussie sluts."

He stopped. Even though there was a group of malignant strangers chasing him, something more forceful than fear pulled him up. "I turned around and fronted them," he told me. "As the first one got to me I punched him in the head. He went down. It was a good punch." He was swarmed. "They knocked me down. I was face down, with my arms up to cover my face. I had one on either side of me, kicking my head. It was like a pendulum. The other guys were stabbing me and whatever." The stabbing would have been worse except that the knife was struck with such force that the hilt broke off, leaving the blade stuck in Dan's back. The attackers stopped and drove off after another car approached. Dan was prostrate on the street.

"There was blood everywhere," he said. When someone walked over Dan said he could feel something in his back. "There's a knife, it's broken off," the man said. "Fair enough," Dan replied. "I pulled out my mobile and called the ambulance." There were so many emergency calls that night that a TV crew arrived before the police. He heard a shocked policewoman screaming down the radio: "He's bleeding out!"

Why had he stopped to face a fight he could not win? "Because," he replied, "when I heard them say 'Get those sluts', I thought, 'What are they going to do to those girls?"' He knew that young men like these - men who used "Aussie" as an insult, who hunted in packs, who called non-Muslim women "sluts" - had committed numerous gang rapes and sexual assaults in Sydney. They had sexually confronted and intimidated hundreds of young women over the years. He decided to absorb the attack so the women could get away. He almost died in the process.

Despite the hundreds of violent incidents on this night and the two nights that followed, not a single major conviction and sentence has been handed down. In Dan's case, it took the help of the media. The police were able to break the case after a TV news broadcast of an appeal for witnesses on May 23 last year. The broadcast showed photographs of a beige 1988 Camry sedan, and the first three letters of its registration, plus police computer images of three of the attackers.

Soon after, calls began coming in to the phone of Yahya Jamal Serhan, 21, of Chester Hill. Police recorded various unidentified males telling Serhan that his father's car was on the news and one of the police images looked like him. Serhan and another who cannot be named because he was under 18 at the time were charged with affray and maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm.

Earlier this year, the police prosecutor Sergeant Brett Eurell, presenting the prosecution case, told a court: "This was a joint criminal enterprise by members of a group of males who engaged in an unprovoked, racially motivated, premeditated attack." He opposed bail in order to protect the witnesses. The magistrate, Paul Falzon, after reading the statement of police facts, concluded: "They believed someone would roll and provide information to police, that they had to locate that person and bash him. Now, that is not consistent with innocence."

Serhan and the other assailant were convicted. Both had been in prison for nine months pending the trial. They were sentenced to time served. So on the last day of the trial they walked free. The other four men in the Toyota that night were never identified by Serhan and his accomplice. They were never charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

For leaving an innocent man to die on the street in an unprovoked attack, two men were sentenced to nine months in prison and four men got away with it. Nor were their violent actions elsewhere that night ever the subject of prosecution.

"I had been warned by the detectives to be prepared for the worst," Dan told me. "I was told what would happen and then it did actually did happen. I couldn't believe it. I believed that, given the severity of the assault, and their refusal to name the other guys in the car, these guys would be locked up for three or four years. They just walked away." Dan went into a decline after the trial. He has been receiving counselling. He, along with every one of the victims in the nine gang-rape trials involving young Muslim men in Sydney in recent years, went to the courts for justice and got a circus.

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Radical move: Catholic schools to teach Catholicism!

The Catholic archdiocese of Sydney wants its 167 school principals, its deputy principals and religious education co-ordinators to publicly commit to a "vow of fidelity" by adhering to church teaching on homosexuality, birth control and women's ordination. In a first for the Australian church, the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, is set to extend the oath of fidelity and profession of faith, a requirement of church law for bishops, priests and heads of seminaries, to all senior educational leaders. The oath demands "religious submission of intellect and will" on questions of faith and morals - even if these are inferred but not defined by the pope and his bishops - and an acceptance that everything solemnly taught by church tradition is divinely inspired. It suggests they would be bound not only to impart these teachings but to live by them.

The controversial requirement is contained in a draft pastoral plan circulated to all parishes of the Sydney archdiocese for comment. The plan, at least two years in the drafting, gives a series of priorities, goals and strategies for the archdiocese from 2008 to 2011. Among its other new measures are marriage preparation classes for senior secondary school students, twice-yearly reviews of its educational bodies, and forums so Catholic politicians can be updated on church teachings. There will also be renewed efforts to teach youth about "sexuality and life issues" through formal courses and seminars, and measures to bring in to the fold young people inspired by next year's World Youth Day.

Cardinal Pell has taken an intense interest in Catholic education, ordering the rewriting of the religious education curriculum, and aiming to turn around Catholic thinking that faith is caught, not taught. The oath has symbolic value as a public commitment to the moral teachings and identity of the church and is not an attempt at control, the archdiocese says.

But a recent Vatican push to institute an oath for theologians in the US was greeted as an attack on academic independence and an attempt to impose tighter doctrinal controls over education institutions connected to the church.

One critic of the archdiocese's plan says it contains "shades of the Opus Dei", the Spanish-founded conservative Christian movement that achieved notoriety as the villain of the fictional bestseller The Da Vinci Code.Writing for the online magazine Catholica, a Sydney priest, Father Dan Donovan, said the plan needed a serious rewrite and failed to take note of the "infiltration" of Opus Dei and the Neocatechumenal Way, a lay movement that heads the turbulent Redfern parish. In addition, the plan lacked a suitable process for "critiquing structures and providing just outcomes, and was directed to the needs of clergy and not churchgoers", he said. "There must be developed a listening hierarchy who are able to connect with the broad masses of the faithful and their issues rather than endorsing the agenda of the various movements."

The Sydney Auxiliary Bishop Julian Porteous said the oath would act as a reminder to educational leaders of their role in promoting church teachings. "It's not about control," he said. "The oath gives greater clarity to the importance of the role of principals in schools, that their first responsibility is that the Catholic faith is taught and lived authentically within the school. "Anybody who speaks in a Catholic education institution is meant to be presenting the Catholic faith in its integrity. There can be a place for theologians to make explorations of criticism, but in teaching positions the role is to very much be faithful to the teaching of the church."

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Hospital cutbacks in Tasmania provoke rage

THOUSANDS of concerned demonstrators marched through the cold and rain at Latrobe yesterday to protest against the planned downgrade of the Mersey Hospital. Labor Braddon MHA Brenton Best was one of the estimated 2000 to express anger at the sweeping health reforms.

Mr Best's colleague Health Minister Lara Giddings, who last week pleaded with the people of the North-West to give her plan a chance, did not attend the rally. She wants to make the Mersey Hospital a dedicated hospital for minor day surgery. Under her plan, Burnie would become the emergency and acute-care centre for the North-West.

Mr Best, who has built his political career on supporting the Mersey, told the hostile crowd he would consider crossing the floor to vote against the reform. West Coast Mayor Darryl Gerrity said the promise had drawn applause. He said there was a lot of distrust of Ms Giddings in regional Tasmania, which would feel the hospital downgrades and closures the most. "We are now officially second-class citizens," he said.

He said there was anxiety on the West Coast, where the Rosebery Hospital will lose its 24-hour staffing. "There is no public transport, we can't get up (to Burnie)," Cr Gerrity said. "All we have got on the West Coast is volunteer ambulance officers."

Mersey Community Hospital support group chairman Steve Martin said yesterday's march showed the community's passion for the hospital. "It's the biggest march I think Latrobe has ever seen." He said Ms Giddings had no real plan, funding or personnel and not enough ambulances. "This will put people's lives at risk," Mr Martin said.

The State Opposition chose yesterday to air its first concerns about the reform. Opposition health spokesman Brett Whiteley said the Government had not listened to the smaller communities, such as Rosebery and Ouse. "One thing of which people can be sure is that we won't be in lock-step with Ms Giddings on absolutely everything she proposes," he said. He said Rosebery was an isolated community with dangerous roads to the nearest hospitals.

Treasurer Michael Aird said the Government had no choice but to introduce reforms, which were driven by safety and financial sustainability.

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A totally unhinged Leftist in Australia's mainstream media

Post below lifted from Slatts. See the original for links

All I can suggest is that the gods must be in a destructive mood. Andrew Bolt reproduces an insane farrago of unsubstantiated vitriol by demented lefty David "Hedy La" Marr. Extract:

Since 1996, Howard has cowed his critics, muffled the press, intimidated the ABC, gagged scientists, silenced non-government organisations, neutered Canberra's mandarins, curtailed parliamentary scrutiny, censored the arts, banned books, criminalised protest and prosecuted whistleblowers.

Presumably Marr's superiors at Fairfax have examples of Howard muffling them. Instead of the vapors-prone one embarrassing his bosses with merely unbacked hysterical allegations, perhaps he could provide us with these examples.

Incredible bungle: Queensland hospital bureaucrats build TWO unusable operating theatres

HOSPITAL bosses spent $2.5 million building two operating theatres, and then shut them down because doctors said they were unsafe to use. The theatres built for cardiac surgery at Brisbane's Prince Charles Hospital have been out of action for a month while modifications are made. Doctors say it has put a strain on resources, meaning patients are having to wait even longer for operations.

But managers described the situation as "normal" and denied that patients were suffering. They refused to reveal how much the renovation work would cost taxpayers, but said it involved changing benches, a stock room, flooring, airconditioning and electrics [just a few things!] in order to meet workplace health and safety guidelines.

One senior staff member, who can't be named because Queensland Health has banned its staff from speaking out, said the situation was "extremely serious". He said: "The fact is, people needing cardio procedures are dying while we sit here and look at new surgical theatres we can't use because the Government stuffed up building them. "They're boarded up because they are the wrong size and the wrong building materials have been used."

Figures show there are 391 patients on the waiting list for heart operations at the Prince Charles Hospital, of whom 57 have been waiting longer than is considered clinically safe. The theatres were in use for only two months before staff found the range of problems.

Mary Montgomery, district manager for Northside Health Service District, said staff had since been consulted [What an original idea!] about the modifications. "It is normal for any new operating theatre to have an adjustment period in which some refinements and modifications may need to be made," she said. "It is only through using the new theatre that any necessary adjustments can be identified."

Opposition health spokesman John-Paul Langbroek said it was not "normal" to factor an adjustment period into an expensive project. "I can't believe we have credible people saying it's normal to spend $2.5 million on operating theatres and then to find fault with them," he said. "It doesn't happen in private enterprise because businesses would go broke if they ran things like that."

Queensland Health has a history of shutting down its operating theatres. In March, The Sunday Mail reported how theatres at Ipswich, Logan and Redland hospitals were out of action because there were too few staff to run them. Previously, a theatre at the Princess Alexandra Hospital was used as a storeroom for four years. It was opened only after a Sunday Mail report prompted health bosses to take action.

The above story by HANNAH DAVIES appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on May 3, 2007




PM warns of 'Garrett recession' over Greenie emission controls

AUSTRALIA faces a recession it does not have to have if voters back Kevin Rudd at the next federal election and endorse Labor's preference for big cuts to carbon emissions. This was the warning from John Howard yesterday as he urged voters to consider "who do you trust to make these vital decisions about our future". The Prime Minister asked the electorate to weigh up whether Labor could manage the economy through the climate issue, the "most important economic decision in the next decade".

Mr Howard was speaking at the Liberals' last set-piece meeting before the federal election, the Liberal Party federal council in Sydney, where he shifted ground after years of denying that Australia could go it alone on combating climate change. He promised to set a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions after the federal election and to create a carbon trading system by 2012. Adopting the findings of his hand-picked emissions trading task group released last week, Mr Howard claimed his resistance as a virtue, saying it was now time to create a system that would serve Australia's economic priorities.

The Prime Minister singled out Labor environment spokesman Peter Garrett for ridicule, warning that his preference for big cuts to carbon emissions was a recipe for a recession. Mr Howard said Mr Garrett's proposal to cut emissions by 20per cent of 1990 levels by the year 2020 could only be met by replacing every coal-fired and gas-fired power station with a nuclear plant and removing every car, truck and motorbike from the Australian roads.

"Can I say that again, removing all vehicles from our roads," he told conference delegates. "A 20 per cent cut from 1990 levels from 2020 would be the recipe for a Garrett recession. That is not a recession which Australia has to have. Labor wants to approach the biggest economic challenge of our time with a policy framed in Europe for European conditions, as if Australia were a small, densely populated nation with high winds somewhere east of Denmark."

His move to highlight the economic risk associated with addressing climate change came on the eve of an opinion poll showing growing support for the Coalition. The Galaxy poll, published today, has the Coalition up four points to 47 per cent on a two-party-preferred basis and Labor slipping four points to 53per cent.

Mr Howard yesterday said the world was not about to end because of climate change, "but equally we would be foolish to ignore the accumulated scientific evidence that mankind's behaviour has contributed to the process of global warming". "We must get this right," he said. "If we get this wrong, it will do enormous damage to our economy; to jobs and to the economic wellbeing of ordinary Australians, especially low-income households. The question I pose to the Australian people, quite directly, is this: who do you trust to take the vital decisions about our future?" The Coalition's "aspirational" emissions target would be set only after an exhaustive study by the federal Treasury, an approach that stood in stark contrast to Labor, Mr Howard said.

Labor says it would like to see a 60 per cent cut in emissions from 2000 levels by 2050, with a trading system up and running by 2010, and has commissioned former senior public servant Ross Garnaut to examine the issue. The Opposition Leader said last night that after 11 years, Mr Howard was trying to convince voters he was not a climate change sceptic by not revealing his target until after the election and doing nothing to stop emissions for five years. "His only target is the upcoming election," Mr Rudd said.

Mr Garrett said Mr Howard's "outrageous" comments warning of a recession were an affront to leading companies represented on the Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change, including BP, Origin Energy and Visy, which had independently endorsed a target of a 60 per cent cut in emissions by 2020. Mr Garrett said Mr Howard was in "disarray" after having rallied against unilateral action in the past. "The very clear message that comes from the Prime Minister today is that he is only seeing climate change through the eyes of his electoral prospects."

In his speech, Mr Howard endorsed businesses's preferred model of a "cap and trade" system - where a federal government issues permits, either for free or at a nominal price of $20 for one year at the beginning of the scheme. Businesses can trade with their permits or pay a penalty for more. Over time the market would determine the price of carbon.

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University of NSW fails economics

The place is run by a Prof. of business management so you expect him to know nothing about real-life business -- and so it has proved to be

THE University of NSW will pay up to 148 students stranded by the closure of its Singapore campus as much as $85,000 each to study in Sydney. Compensation, redundancies and lost revenue could mean the failed venture's costs could amount to more than $40 million. The university will pay students for travel, visa and accommodation costs in Sydney for the life of their degree. Another 126 students are eligible for return air fares to Sydney and 12 months' accommodation in compensation. UNSW vice-chancellor Fred Hilmer has admitted that $17.5 million had been spent on the Tanglin campus before it opened this year.

The shortfall in enrolments for the first semester had cost a projected $15 million in revenue because only 148 of the anticipated 300 students signed up. UNSW Asia had leased a building from the Singapore Government until the end of 2009, when its Changi campus was supposed to open.

The university has flown in "teams of people" to Singapore to help students with visa applications. It may face penalties for not seeing through the deal. The NSW Auditor-General's Report To Parliament 2005 said the Singapore Economic Development Board would provide funding, capped at $S100 million ($78 million), for start-up costs over the first 10 years. The board's managing director, Ko Kheng Hwa, said the terms that were typically offered "normally comprise tax incentives, loans or grants, which are recallable if pre-agreed milestones and outcomes are not met".

As well, 64 local academic and general staff employed by UNSW Asia are yet to agree on redundancy packages. Another 41 staff from Australia are unsure about their future. An Australian academic, who did not want to be named, said his wife had given up a good job to move to Singapore and he had taken a two-year lease on a house. "There are many senior professors who have moved here, who have given up senior positions at ANU and other universities, sold family houses, given up retirement plans, to move here with young children," he said. He said the damage to UNSW's reputation, and those of Australian universities in general, was enormous. "UNSW has killed off any hope of ever marketing itself as an international university, certainly in our lifetime. "It has been a monumental mismanagement."

Another academic believes that only between four and six of the Australian teaching staff out of a faculty of 48 will be offered jobs at the Sydney campus because of recent redundancies and a freeze on casual staff. "There are a group of very distressed people who are desperate for information from the university and it's not coming," he said.

In announcing the closure, UNSW promised all students a place in the same course in Sydney. Of the 148 students who enrolled, 100 Singapore residents will be offered $17,340 a year for the duration of their degree. The other 48 will be offered $9460 a year. This will total almost $2.2 million a year. President of the UNSW's student representative council Jesse Young said: "It's a disappointing waste of taxpayers' money that could have been spent on the Sydney campus." A UNSW representative said 13 students had accepted a place at UNSW Sydney.

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POLITICIZED MEDICAL JOURNAL CONDEMNS AUSTRALIA

Medical journals moving out of their area of competence is folly. And a journal from the home of the ever-decaying "National Health Service" lecturing Australia on its health system really is hilarious. See Matthew 7:3-5

ONE of the world's [once] most respected medical journals, The Lancet, has called for regime change in a once-great country whose health policies are succumbing to "the politics of fear and neglect" and "profound intolerance". Its target? Zimbabwe? Pakistan? Kazakhstan? No, The Lancet was referring to Australia and the Howard Government. In an editorial which might have been ghost-written by Mark Latham in a particularly bilious mood, the journal called upon voters to let shine "a new enlightenment to Australian health and medical science".

Earlier this month its editor Richard Horton visited Sydney. He must have briefed himself on the state of Australian science. The editorial, for instance, quotes "the respected scientist Ian Lowe" on the "extraordinary lengths" that the Government had taken to "silence independent opinion within the research community". Lowe is a respected scientist, but failing to mention his position as president of the Australian Conservation Foundation to Lancet readers is like describing Peter Garrett as a respected rock star, not as a Labor politician and a former president of the ACF.

I don't regard myself as a Coalition supporter, but I am alarmed at this heady mix of politics and medical science. Opposition health spokeswoman Nicola Roxon was a bit hasty in describing the editorial as "a devastating indictment of the Howard Government's record on health". Words like these could create an expectation that within a few months after an election victory enlightened Labor Party researchers will cure the obesity epidemic, the asthma epidemic and the depression epidemic, along with finding a solution to Aboriginal health woes. Unhappily, The Lancet editorial is only the most recent example of a worrying increase in advocacy science in top-flight journals. Traditionally, these luminaries have confined themselves to their areas of expertise. Public policy in areas such as HIV/AIDS or Aboriginal health was discussed in terms of specific programs, not as political huckstering.

But with the election of conservative governments in both the US and Australia, neurons in editorialists' cerebellums started to misfire madly. Not only The Lancet, but also the British Medical Journal and Nature and the US-based New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association and Science have become increasingly hostile towards the George W. Bush administration.

With some reason, of course. The American health system is a mess. The Bush administration has apparently tinkered with official reports, sacked recalcitrant scientists and placed sympathetic officials in key positions. But that's exactly what voters expect politicians to do. When they read newspapers, they hold their noses and measure governments' ever-improving graphs and optimistic forecasts with a bulldust meter.

But not when they read medical and science journals. Like Labor's Roxon, they naively expect that the white-coated gods of science speak truth to power in words uncontaminated by ideological prejudice. No longer. The journals have more or less squarely allied themselves with the liberal side in America's culture wars over abortion rights, therapeutic cloning, sex education, AIDS policies and population control. It has become nearly impossible for dissident scientists to get papers published in these sensitive areas because - they claim - independent opinions are silenced. The new field of stem cell research offers the most egregious example.

Back in 2003, after President George W. Bush had restricted funding for embryo research, the editor of the NEJM, Jeffrey Drazen, vowed to aggressively seek out and publish research on embryonic stem cells. "Physicians and scientists in the US should be at the centre of the action, not on the sidelines," he argued. He dismissed ethical objections.

The other journals, including The Lancet, did much the same, even though they admitted that there were "few tangible clinical benefits to report". The consequences of this ideologically blinkered policy were not long in coming. Science rushed into print two stunning articles about the creation of the world's first human therapeutic clones and stem cell lines. It was a brilliant coup that vindicated its editorial opposition to Bush's ethical and scientific caution.

And it turned out to be the worst fraud of the past hundred years, the handiwork of a publicity-hungry South Korean researcher who knew that Western journals were equally hungry to prove their case. How the editor of Science, Donald Kennedy, responded to this humiliating turn of events is instructive. Like any beleaguered politician, he appointed his mates to an investigating committee: three editors at Science, one former editor at Science, and two of the most passionate advocates of embryonic stem cell science in the US. It was hard to imagine a team less likely to ask tough questions. Had editorial misgivings been steamrollered because of his partisan commitment to embryo research? We will never know.

The real victims of a growth in political advocacy will be the journals themselves. With rising levels of fraud and self-serving commercialism in the ivory towers of academe, the credibility of leading journals is a more valuable asset than ever before. Politicking editorials can only tarnish this. And a habit of playing politics can backfire in unexpected ways. In an entertaining example of holier-than-thou-manship, the British Medical Journal is campaigning to knock The Lancet's halo into a cocked hat. Out of "sisterly concern for a fellow journal", it has called for a boycott because The Lancet's publisher, Reed Elsevier, organises a few fairs for the international arms trade. Richard Horton's explanations have been rather feeble. If The Lancet's friends play games like this, there is little need for the Australian Government to panic over the attack on its own far-from-perfect record.

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The stupidity of a British medical journal

The editor of "The Medical Journal of Australia" comments below on the editorial mentioned above: "Australia: the politics of fear and neglect". Lancet 2007; 369: 1320

From the first days of European settlement, our colonies were bombarded with bureaucratic edicts from the Motherland, until Federation and Australia's emergence as a proud and independent nation put an end to our dependency. But the Motherland's long-lost role was recently revived in an editorial in The Lancet entitled Australia: the politics of fear and neglect. Short, simplistic and sensational, it proclaimed that Australia's progressive and inclusive culture was burdened by a dark underbelly of political conservatism.

It further asserted that the Australian Government had effectively silenced dissent in the scientific community, and propagated a political view "that those who spoke up for indigenous health were simply `establishing politically and morally correct credentials'". To top it off, the Prime Minister was portrayed as ruthlessly exploiting Australia's strong undercurrent of political conservatism.

And The Lancet's solution? Gratuitous advice to oust the conservatives at this year's federal election and usher in a new era of "enlightenment" for Australian health and medical science!

Significantly, the editorial was silent on the concerted efforts of dedicated Australian researchers and doctors working to improve Indigenous health, and the fearless advocacy of this goal by various professional bodies and this Journal. Despite The Lancet's assertion of "silenced" scientists, its editorial was strangely silent on the conservative government's unprecedented investment in health and medical research.

Following The Lancet's edict, a commentary in The Australian warned scientific and medical journals not to engage in politics+ and put their public standing, independence and integrity at risk. As long as there remain unresolved issues in the delivery of health care to all Australians, requiring political attention and action, the MJA will never heed this injunction. But, in pursuit of this goal, the recent edict from London is hardly an example to emulate.

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Rudd may face second crisis over union video

LABOR Leader Kevin Rudd is facing further embarrassment from militant unionists, with revelations a senior CFMEU official has been caught on video allegedly threatening employers with revenge after a Labor election victory. According to industry sources, CFMEU official, Joe McDonald, is shown on the tapes telling an employer words to the effect: "You wait till f..king Kevin Rudd's elected. I'll be back!".

He was allegedly caught on camera making the threats by inspectors from the building industry watchdog, the Australian Building and Construction Commission, set up by the Howard Government to police the industry. He was allegedly trespassing on a company site at the time - a practice outlawed following the Cole Royal Commission into the construction sector.

If authenticated, the video would suggest unions were simply waiting for Mr Rudd to be elected before expecting their rights to unilaterally interfere in workplaces to be restored. The ABCC Commissioner, John Lloyd confirmed evidence produced in a case involving a firm called Broad Constructions "includes two videos". Sources said the evidence involved footage shot by ABCC inspectors of Joe McDonald, and described him as being "over the top and making threats".

Mr McDonald's CFMEU colleague and union state secretary, Kevin Reynolds, has criticised Labor's decision to retain the ABCC until 2010, accusing Mr Rudd of caving into employers. But Mr Rudd told the WA Labor Party Conference yesterday: "When it comes to the construction industry, we support a strong cop on the beat."

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Labor's green 'fanatics' in denial, says Turnbull

The Federal Government is stepping up its attack on the Opposition's climate change policies. The Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull is defending the Government's decision to wait until next year before setting pollution reduction targets. He told the ABC's Insiders program it is a sensible approach. "Are you going to trust a bunch of fanatics, which is really where Garrett and Rudd are at the moment?" he said. "They are on a fanatical, moralising campaign blind to the economics, blind to the realities, determined to prove they are greener than the greenest green. "And if you have policies based on that type of ideology you may feel pure but you will be pure at the price of being very poor."

Labor leader Kevin Rudd has said his party is committed to a 60 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Mr Turnbull rejects the suggestion that the Government has been in denial on climate change, citing initiatives such as a move away from incandescent light bulbs, and its funding to stop deforestation. "Labor are the real climate change deniers, they are denying the global perspective of climate change," he said. "Labor has not thought any of this through."

The Prime Minister will focus on global warming and carbon emissions trading when he delivers a major speech today at the Liberal Federal Council in Sydney. Mr Howard will tell the council that managing climate change will mean higher costs for business and householders but he will argue the Coalition would do a better job of managing that than a Labor government. He is expected to attack the Opposition's approach, accusing it of being irresponsible for setting a greenhouse reduction target but not doing the modelling to know how that would hit the economy.

He will stress that a carbon trading system is necessary. Mr Howard will lay out the principles of emissions trading that his task force has called for and explain how the Government is moving towards implementing it. Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese says the Government has been in denial on climate change for too long and he has labelled the scheme a political stunt.

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More cutbacks in Melbourne public hospitals

WARDS are being closed, surgeries cancelled and hospitals left in disrepair as the health network serving some of Melbourne's poorest battlers reaches breaking point. Western Health network is slashing its services, including to children, because of costs. Surgeons in the network -- which includes Western Hospital, Sunshine Hospital and Williamstown Hospital -- were told of the deepening crisis this week. It is understood there will be budget cuts estimated at $15 million. The consequences are believed to be:

MORE than 2000 elective operations to be axed in the '07/'08 financial year

ONE ward being closed at Western Hospital, with patient numbers down by about 100

UP TO 40 people waiting on trolleys each day in emergency departments at Western and Sunshine

AND two of the three pediatric surgeons at Sunshine Hospital are taking leave because their working hours are being slashed.

A Western Health network spokesman confirmed the budget troubles on Friday. Staff in the Western Health network have confirmed the ward closure at Western Hospital. Staff told of there often being "more than 20 people in the Emergency Department on trolleys awaiting admission". AMA Victoria president Dr Douglas Travis confirmed Western Health had over-run its budget. He said: "There is a planned general reduction in services. "Administrators go through great anguish deciding how best to 'cut the cloth to fit'."

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State political party wants gun training for kids



CHILDREN should start firearms training from age 10 and shooting programs should be reinstated at schools, says the NSW gun lobby. At present children as young as 12 can gain a gun permit, allowing them to shoot semi-automatic pistols, bolt-action rifles and other firearms under supervision.

NSW Shooters Party MP Roy Smith told the Sunday Telegraph his group would lobby parliament to allow 10-year-olds to gain two years' experience with air rifles before they sat for gun licences. "Kids these days get in trouble because we don't trust them with anything," Mr Smith said. "BB guns and air rifles now have to be registered when, in my day, all the boys were running around with them; we don't trust kids with pocket knives and we don't trust them with (fire) crackers. "So essentially the first taste of responsibility kids get in Australia nowadays is when we hand them the keys to the car - often with tragic consequences." Mr Smith said his party would also lobby for gun safety programs and shooting lessons to be reintroduced into school curriculums.

In contrast, the Coalition for Gun Control last week urged the State Government to abolish gun permits for minors. Spokeswoman Sam Lee said the law was "absurd". "It is dangerously ironic that a young person cannot possess a fake or replica handgun but that they can legally use a real one," she said. "We don't let them get a driver's licence until they are 17, because it's too dangerous, but we let them shoot with a semi-automatic handgun before they are even teenagers."

Sporting Shooters Association of Australia statistics show big increases across all ages - including minors - in its membership. Spokesman Adam Leto said in 2000, there were just 15 members under the age of 18. Last year that figure had jumped to about 400, with an average of 120 new members signing up every three months. "We now have about 1000 members under the age of 18," he said.

Western Sydney schoolboy Matthew Woolnough, 12, earned his gun licence two months ago and goes to target practice with his brother Aaron, 14, at an SSAA indoor range. "I enjoy it," he said. "It gives you confidence although the other kids say, 'you can't play soccer so you have to shoot guns instead'. "I have a disease which makes my cartilage disintegrate so I can't (run around on the field)."

Ashleigh Bell, 17, took up shooting initially because of her dream of becoming a policewoman. "You feel really strong and confident when you know how to use a gun and the other kids think it's pretty cool," she said. "It's relaxing, it improves your concentration and when you're feeling angry you can come here and shoot instead of taking it out on a person."

Her sister Rebecca, 12, currently has her temporary membership exemption - a precursor to a minor's permit, which she is due to receive next month. "I wanted to do it because I saw my sister liked it so much," she said. "I've been told I've got a pretty good eye so I'm pretty happy with that."

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Top universities to tackle languages dieback

Hmmm... I am a bit dubious about this. Although I am myself a great dabbler in languages, it is undisputable that acquiring a native command of a foreign language is a rare feat that is usually accomplished only under conditions of total immersion in that language -- and even immersion is often not sufficient. So most students of a foreign language are wasting their time if they expect a useful outcome from it. It is however a good cultural experience. For me, being able to understand Schubert Lieder in the original is sufficient recompense for my studies of German. So I think availablity of foreign language study should be there but I would oppose any compulsion or mandatory requirements

Leading universities are demanding radical action to tackle a crisis in the number of Year 12 students graduating with a foreign language, which has dropped from 40per cent to six per cent over the past four decades. The Group of Eight universities want a second language to be compulsory for all students from primary school to Year 10, more incentives to study languages at university and an advertising campaign promoting the benefits of learning a foreign tongue.

The Group of Eight, consisting of research-intensive institutions such as Melbourne, Sydney and Queensland universities, say the number of foreign languages taught at the tertiary level has almost halved, from 66 to 29, in the past 10 years. "Crisis is not too strong a word to describe the decline in foreign language education in our schools and universities," Group of Eight executive director Michael Gallagher said. "Despite many positive efforts from committed teachers and language experts, the percentage of Year12 students graduating with a second language has fallen from 40per cent in the 1960s to as low as 6per cent in some states in Australia today."

He called for a national approach involving schools, universities and state and federal governments. "Our national deficit in foreign-language capability is something we can no longer afford to ignore," he said. "It is Australia's great unrecognised skills shortage, and the one most directly relevant to our competitiveness and security in an increasingly global environment."

A planning paper released yesterday by the Group of Eight found that most schools, public and private, do not require students to take a second language. It says this lack of emphasis on foreign languages at school put pressure on university language departments. "The number of languages taught at our universities continues to fall," it says. "Of the 29 languages still on offer at tertiary level, nine are offered at only one Australian university and only seven are well represented across the sector."

The Group of Eight found only five universities offered courses in Arabic and fewer than 3per cent of university students studied an Asian language despite Asia representing 70per cent of Australia's largest export markets. The Group of Eight proposals include more funding to strengthen language education, especially at universities. Targeted funding to boost the morale, skills and number of language teachers was also recommended, along with the expansion of bonuses for students who took languages in Year 12.

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When eating "right" goes too far

EXTREME healthy eating is becoming such an obsessive ritual that it is risking young women's health and spawning a new eating disorder - orthorexia. A term coined by international doctors in the past decade, orthorexia is when sufferers - particularly adolescent girls - become hooked on healthy and "pure" eating and put serious and damaging restrictions on their diets.

One leading Sydney expert, who said she was seeing an increasing number of teenage girls with the condition, said orthorexia could have short and long-term effects on bone quality, mood and immunity. The Children's Hospital at Westmead dietician Susie Burrell told The Saturday Daily Telegraph the signs of orthorexia were hallmarks of a serious eating disorder to come. "These are usually girls who only want things very healthy, they are very fat-phobic, they cook the meals themselves, they are very fussy about what they will and won't eat," she said. "There is a focus on keeping lean and thin and looking good and it's often smart girls who are doing well; they get very good grades, they're a good daughter and it goes to the next extreme."

Sufferers of the modern food affliction tend to control their meal portions to the extent where they avoid processed foods entirely and eat very small amounts and sometimes exercise obsessively. Unlike clinically diagnosed eating disorders such as anorexia, orthorexia is characterised by sufferers who have a fixation with food, rather than with weight loss.

Anthea Durrell, 14, said she saw schoolgirls in her year who became fanatical about what they ate and said messages about obesity could be misconstrued. "Lots of celebrities these days are really skinny, like Nicole Richie, and they have such a bad impact on what girls see as beautiful," she said. "It gives them messages that it is really bad to be even on the edge of being chubby.

Eating Disorders Foundation chief executive Amanda Jordan said current messages in regard to childhood obesity and increased weight gain could be wrongly interpreted in young, image-obsessed women. "You get really valuable messages that are getting interpreted in a way that actually works against a person's health," she said. Ms Jordan said orthorexia could become an obsession cycle of self-starvation which then escalated into life-threatening eating disorders. "There is a clear trend in people thinking there is a right way to eat and people going too far in following those guidelines," Ms Jordan said. "It's good to be working against having an obese population, particularly in children but the message over time is getting confused with the message that all fat is bad. "The tendency is sometimes to go overboard and I am really worried it will lead to an increase in eating disorders."

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Wait for elective surgery getting longer

WAITING times for elective surgery have jumped, with patients nationally now typically having to wait more than a month before receiving the treatment they need -- and in many cases nearly a year. Median waiting times for patients admitted to hospital from waiting lists have been creeping up since 2001-02 by one extra day each financial year, reaching 29 days in 2004-05.

The latest nationwide hospital statistics, published today by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, show patients needing elective surgery had to wait a median of 32 days in 2005-06. This means half of the patients waited 32 days or more. Waiting times are blowing out on some other measures too, such as the time needed to get 90 per cent of patients admitted. In 2005-06 this was 237 days, up from 217 days a year earlier, and 44 days more than in 2003-04.

However, the Australian Hospital Statistics 2005-06 report found a lot of variation between states and territories. Queensland took only 127 days to see 90 per cent of the patients, whereas the ACT took more than a year, 372 days. The ACT was the worst performer on elective surgery waiting times, with 10.3 per cent of its elective patients waiting for more than a year.

Of the states, Tasmania performed the worst, with 8.7 per cent of elective admissions taking more than a year and 90 per cent of patients seen within 332 days. The Northern Territory was next (7.7 per cent waiting for more than a year, and 313 days needed to see 90 per cent of patients), followed by NSW (5.4 per cent and 291 days). However, the proportion of patients nationally having to wait more than a year fell slightly - from 4.8 per cent in 2004-05 to 4.6 last year.

A spokesman for ACT Health Minister Katy Gallagher said the territory's median waiting figures had increased due to a policy of targeting patients facing extremely long waits. An extra 94 patients who had been waiting two to three years had their operations in 2005-06 and the "additional throughput" had affected median waiting times. A spokesman for the Tasmanian Government said the biggest hospital reforms in the state's history, including plans for an elective surgery hospital, had been launched. A spokeswoman for NSW Health Minister Reba Meagher said more elective surgery was being done than ever before, and only 66 people had been waiting longer than a year for elective surgery - down from more than 10,000 in January 2005.

John Dwyer, chairman of the Australian Healthcare Reform Alliance, said long waits cost the system more because patients often required expensive drugs.

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Captain Cook was a wise and compassionate man

The report below corroborates many other reports of him by non-political writers -- including of course Cook's own detailed journals of his voyages and other reports by those who accompanied him. To modern-day Leftist historians, however, his heroic voyages of discovery in the Pacific on behalf of the British navy -- including the first reports of the East coast of Australia -- are just another example of evil white men exploiting noble primitive people. A short biography by Richard Alexander Hough offers good factual background



It was high summer, 1774, when Georg Forster crossed the Antarctic Circle on board Captain James Cook's ship Resolution. But as he recalled several years later, it did not feel, look or sound like summer to the 118 men shivering with cold and fear on the converted coal carrier. "Fogs and storms alternated with each other; often a storm would rage even during dark fogs; often we did not see the sun for a fortnight or three weeks," wrote Foster, who was 17 at the time. Vast masses of ice "emerged from the sea like floating islands", moving unseen until the last moment, encircling the ship. "How often were we terrified by being able to hear the waves breaking on the ice without being able to lay our eyes on the object of our fear," reflected Foster in a remarkable essay written in German in 1787, but only now published in English.

More revealing, though, than the conditions during the three-year expedition - Cook's second great voyage of exploration - is the picture that emerges of the conduct of the captain. Not only did Cook deny himself many of the pleasures due his position, but he showed uncharacteristic "fatherly care towards his men", Foster, a German naturalist, philosopher and polyglot adventurer, said. "At just the right moment he allowed them to have a party. Or, when the weather was too cold or the work had exhausted the crew, he would personally serve an invigorating drink." He even gave up his own quarters to make the overworked sailmaker more comfortable.

Foster's essay goes some way towards restoring a hero's reputation that has been tarnished by a series of recent "revisionist" histories. "There has been a bit of a backlash against the traditional idea of 'Cook the great white explorer'," says Nigel Erskine, curator of exploration at the Australian National Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour. Indeed, books written from the point of view of indigenous people - such as the acclaimed Discoveries by Nicholas Thomas - have so moved minds that Cook is in danger of being rebirthed as "someone who shot his way round the Pacific".

Now, belatedly, the publication of Foster's essay Cook, der Entdecker (Cook, the Discoverer) - accompanied by a facsimile of the original German text - provides yet another correction. Erskine says Foster had the literary skills to transport readers with no knowledge of life at sea into the shuttered wooden world of the Resolution. "When the sea is very rough the mast may swing up to 38 degrees from the perpendicular," he writes. "At such times I have seen the tip of the yardarm immersed in the crest of a wave. "Every wave, therefore, swings a sailor on a yardarm some 50 yards up the mast through an arc of 50 to 60 feet."

From such vivid accounts, Cook re-emerges as a hero - not just an extraordinary finder of far-off lands, but a man who combined courage, compassion and a seafarer's eye for detail. Ultimately, Foster eulogises Cook, who was clubbed to death in Hawaii in 1779. "I imagine him as one of the beneficient heroes of antiquity who, on the wings of eagles, ascended to the assembly of the blessed gods."

Foster had sailed with his father, Johann Reinhold Foster. It was not a happy trip: a shipmate later described Foster snr as an "unsociable, ill-tempered, lying, bribing, knavish . piratical pretender of knowledge". On their return, relations with the British establishment deteriorated further, as the Fosters became involved in a strikingly modern wrangle over publication rights to Cook's voyage.

In a limited edition of 1050 copies, Foster's essay is the sixth book in the museum's Australian Maritime Series. Derek McDonnell, of the publisher, editor and translator Hordern House - which tracked down a copy of the German book in Massachusetts - says: "Cook is still a superstar."

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The morally blind "Amnesty" organization

They think in terms of race rather than in terms of harm done to people. So who are the racists? Article below by Australian columnist Andrew Bolt

AMNESTY International has a lethal dose of our new intellectual disease - the racism of the anti-racists. It's got it so bad that what was once the world's most admired human-rights group can no longer tell the moral difference between a democrat and a dictator. At least, not when the democrat is as white as - yes! - John Howard, and the genocidal despot is not.

Amnesty's secretary-general, Irene Khan, last week released its 2007 report, and in its foreword listed what to her were the greatest threats to human rights. "Today far too many leaders are trampling and trumpeting an ever-widening range of fears," trumpeted Khan, a Bangladeshi Muslim whose own country, by the way, is under military rule. And she named four leaders - no one else - who demonstrated to her this kind of "myopic and cowardly leadership".



The Muslim and morally blind Ms Khan above. Not an unusual combination of attributes. Muslim respect for human life and their love of Western civilization is well-known

First, was our own Prime Minister Howard - prime evil for stopping boats of illegal immigrants. Second, was US President George Bush, for invoking "the fear of terrorism" just "to enhance his executive power". (I know, that fear was invoked not by Bush, but by terrorists on September 11, 2001, and ... but we're interrupting Khan's lecture.) Trailing in third place, in Khan's pantheon of evil, was Sudan's Islamist President, Omar al-Bashir, behind a genocide in Darfur that's killed some 200,000 people. Last was Robert Mugabe, who has turned Zimbabwe into a cemetery for the starving, although Khan merely accuses him of grabbing land for his supporters.

This grouping of two leaders of free democracies with two genocidal thugs is bizarre, but does have supreme virtue for the modern anti-racist racist. See? Two whites were "balanced" by two dark-skins. Two Westerners by two Third-Worlders. Two Christians by a Muslim and an old Communist. What could be fairer? And that fake balance - so kind to the cruel - ran right through Khan's essay. A typical line: "The politics of fear has been made more complex by the emergence of armed groups and big business that commit or condone human rights abuses." How about that? Al-Qaeda (which Khan never mentions by name) is no more deadly than a big business like Nike.

Here's another: "If unregulated migration is the fear of the rich, then unbridled capitalism, driven by globalisation, is the fear of the poor." Perfectly balanced. The capitalism that actually makes poor people richer, is thought by Khan to be as scary as the race riots and no-entry immigrant enclaves of France, or the bomb plots of jihad-minded sons of immigrants in Britain.

Nowhere does she note that the West is swamped by migrants from the East precisely because the East has too little capitalism. And, of course, too many dictators. Nor does Khan acknowledge that the fears expressed by her hated Western politicians have very real causes, often originating in lands ruled by Muslim theocracies and autocrats.

You might think I've read too much into one article, but Khan has form in likening the worst to the West, and seeing an equivalence between those defending the West and those trying to destroy it. Three years ago, for instance, she said that of all the horrors of the world, the US-led "war on terror" (her scare quotes) was "the biggest attack on human rights, principles and values". Honest. To Khan, defending ourselves against Islamist terrorists is deadlier to human rights than, say, the brutalising of Zimbabwe, the mass murder in Darfur, the state oppression in China, the civil wars in Algeria and Sudan, the withering of democracy in Russia, the Islamist fascism of Iran, and the open jail of North Korea.

The following year, Khan even called Guantanamo Bay the "gulag of our time" - this time making a prison for 400 suspected terrorists seem as terrible as the vast Soviet network of forced labor camps in which millions of innocent civilians were jailed in conditions so brutal that countless of them died. This outraged Pavel Litvinov, a former Soviet "prisoner of conscience" adopted by Amnesty, who warned: "By using hyperbole and muddling the difference between repressive regimes and the imperfections of democracy, Amnesty's spokesman put its authority at risk."

I wish. In fact, Khan's anti-racist racism and consequent likening of white democrats to black totalitarians has made her a hero. In 2004, she was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize and invited to give the University of South Australia's annual Hawke Lecture, broadcast across the land by the ABC. How the audience at that lecture cheered Khan as she cried there was a "feeling in many parts of the world that the West has lost its moral high ground to advocate human rights" - an irrational feeling she has tried harder than most to whip up. Those cheers confirmed that Khan simply reflected a suicidal tendency among the West's intelligentsia to see the worst in the West and the best in the totalitarians pledged to destroy it.

Want recent examples? There are our prominent Leftists - ABC host Phillip Adams, propagandist John Pilger, columnist Jill Singer, Islamist Keysar Trad - who've invited Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez to visit and "inspire" us. That is, when he's not too busy closing down TV stations that criticise him, rigging laws to stay in power and calling George Bush a "devil".

There's Age cartoonist and National Living Treasure Michael Leunig, who similarly draws Bush as a devil, Howard as a murderer and Israel as Auschwitz, but demands we treat terrorist chief Osama bin Laden as our "relative" and "consider (his) suffering". There's the Melbourne University Press boss, Louise Adler, who two weeks ago likened al-Qaeda recruit David Hicks to Nelson Mandela.

There's University of Technology Sydney's Islamic law lecturer, Jamila Hussain, who this week called visiting author Ayaan Hirsi Ali an "extremist" who should stay "where she came from" when real extremists - Muslim ones - have forced this liberal Sudanese-born feminist and critic of misogynist Islam to bring her bodyguard to ensure she doesn't suffer the fate of her former colleague, director Theo van Gogh, assassinated in 2004.

Or take the Global Peace Index released this week by The Charitable Foundation of local IT millionaire and philanthropist Steve Killelea. It rated Australia at 25 in its ranking of countries most at peace - and the US at just 96, below even Syria, China, Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia and Libya. Democratic Israel was rated the least peaceful of all, apart from Sudan and Iraq. Not one report I saw of that survey drew the obvious conclusion: that this was madness. That this was a manifestation of a moral blindness among our elites.

And now Amnesty International is as blind as the rest, flailing at the very societies that most protect the freedoms it claims to defend. How defenceless we are, when even this once-great defender of human rights now treats us as one of the deadliest enemies of all.

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Another gross bungle in a Melbourne public hospital



In the photo above the former patient is holding the plum stone the careless public hospital doctors could not see -- plus the X-rays they could not see either

A PROFESSIONAL opera singer performed eight shows with a plum stone stuck in her throat after doctors failed to see it in an X-ray, even though it was "clearly visible". Soprano Tania de Jong could not eat solid food for six days after the emergency department bungle. The Alfred hospital later admitted it had misread the X-ray and vowed to review its procedures.

"I underwent the most excruciating pain," Ms de Jong said. "It felt like I was being strangled. "The stone was sitting between my mouth and vocal cords, and it really hurt to do anything - eat, drink, sing."

After the April 2005 debacle, Ms de Jong was forced on to a diet of baby food, painkillers and anaesthetic sprays for a week until she sought advice from a different hospital. X-rays revealed the object in her badly swollen oesophagus, and the stone was removed in an urgent operation.

The Herald Sun has seen letters in which the Alfred admitted its mistake and agreed to reimburse Ms de Jong's medical expenses on condition the law graduate did not sue. The hospital's emergency department head, Prof Mark Fitzgerald, wrote in an email sent in May 2005 that the stone was "clearly visible" and "should not have been missed". On July 7, the hospital apologised to her in writing, saying it would introduce a system of "double checking" X-rays.

Ms de Jong is satisfied the hospital has reviewed its systems. The accomplished performer founded singing group Pot-Pourri and runs entertainment consultancy Music Theatre Australia. "It could have been life-threatening, and with me being an opera singer it could have affected my whole livelihood," she said. "I was told I may never sing again because they'd have to stretch my vocal cords so much to get it out. "It was very, very frightening."

Her story follows the Herald Sun's report this week about nurse Bernadette Ireland, who says the Alfred sent her packing after she swallowed part of a mussel shell. Prof Fitzgerald last night said such cases were common. "Often the symptoms resolve and then people aren't sure whether they still have something in their throat or whether it's a scratch on the surface of the oesophagus that's caused in the passage of the object," he said. Some objects did not show up clearly on X-rays and it was easy to overlook them because of "variation in light and shade". He said he was still investigating the case of Ms Ireland, who had not lodged a formal complaint with the hospital.

Health Minister Bronwyn Pike said yesterday an Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report showed Victoria's emergency departments were the nation's best. Half of all patients were seen by a doctor five minutes faster than the national average. [So the other half weren't! Meaning no overall difference!]

But Opposition health spokeswoman Helen Shardey said the same report revealed median elective surgery waiting times had increased by four days - more than for any other state.

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PM wants diseased migrants and refugees kept out

PRIME Minister John Howard says he wants procedures in place to stop migrants and refugees with contagious diseases from coming to Australia. The Australian National Audit Office found that the Immigration Department knowingly approved visas for migrants with serious communicable conditions, despite authorities' inability to monitor them.

Mr Howard said today that a review of the situation was imminent and the best outcome would be a ban on migrants and refugees who were HIV-positive or who had leprosy. "My view is the best result is that no one with those sort of ailments is allowed into the country," Mr Howard said on Macquarie radio. "I'm going to review the current position, and I want procedures put in place that see as far as possible that that doesn't happen. "We are looking at it the next week or so."

Fairfax newspapers reported today that HIV-positive migrants could be forced to report to health authorities within a month of arriving or face losing their visas. Health Minister Tony Abbott and Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews had advised Mr Howard to adopt the policy. The report said the Federal Government could also advise state health authorities of new HIV-positive migrants, but was weighing up the policy against privacy considerations. The federal Health Department would also audit state and territory guidelines for dealing with people who knowingly expose others to HIV.

Last month, Mr Howard said he did not believe HIV-positive people should be allowed into the country, but would seek advice on the matter. Victorian Health Minister Bronwyn Pike last month partly blamed HIV-positive migrants and residents from interstate in a rise in HIV infection numbers in Victoria.

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Widespread parent dissatisfaction with Australian schools

AUSTRALIAN parents are largely unhappy with the quality of school education, says a new Federal Government report. The survey of 2000 parents, conducted earlier this year, found many believed their children were receiving a substandard education. Only 58 per cent of parents said primary schooling was up to scratch, and less than 40 per cent said secondary schooling was acceptable. Dissatisfaction has jumped since the last Parents' Attitudes to Schooling survey in 2003, where 61 per cent of parents said primary school education was good or very good, and 51 per cent said secondary education was good or very good.

Those with a child in a non-government school were happier with both education and teacher quality than those with a child in a state school.

Just over a third of parents surveyed this year said they believed their child would leave school with adequate literacy and numeracy skills. Only one in five thought their child had learned enough about Australian history, and less then half said they had received adequate science lessons. However, more than 72 per cent were satisfied with the quality of teaching at their child's school.

Premier Steve Bracks yesterday defended the state's schools, saying Victoria has the best-performing education system in the country. "Our completion rates for year 12 education and its equivalent is going up, our literacy and numeracy levels are going up, we have the lowest teacher to student ratios ever in Victoria's history," Mr Bracks said. "Also, we have committed to rebuilding or modernising every school in the state. "The survey was done before the Budget where we committed $1 billion to . . . education."

Australian Education Union Victorian president Mary Bluett said the survey did not accurately reflect parents' attitudes. "In terms of their child's school and teachers, parents say they have high satisfaction; however, when asked . . . how they think education is going, their attitudes change and that reflects a general talking down of schools. "There has been a relentless attack on standards and the quality of teaching from the Federal Government, and parents have picked up on that."

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Gay bar win opens can of worms

HOTELS and nightclubs should be given the green light to ban men or women at venues with a "gender imbalance", the Australian Hotels Association said yesterday. The AHA made the claim yesterday after a landmark decision at the state planning tribunal allowing a Melbourne gay pub to ban heterosexuals.

AHA state CEO Brian Kearney said the decision should lead to more leniency for venues wanting to address the issue of gender balance. "We are hopeful this decision might result in a more flexible attitude to publicans who want to ensure a good mix of men and women at their venue," Mr Kearney said. "There have been a few cases before VCAT by hotels wanting the right to refuse entry to males or females when the balance isn't right, but they have been overwhelmingly rejected."

The Herald Sun yesterday revealed the owners of Collingwood pub the Peel won the right to refuse entry to straight men and women. Owner Tom McFeely argued the exemption, under the Equal Opportunity Act, would help prevent "sexually based insults and violence" towards its gay patrons. Mr McFeely said that while the pub welcomed everyone, its gay clientele had expressed discomfort over the number of heterosexuals and lesbians coming to the venue over the past year. "We've had instances in the past where, for example, a bucks' night has come up to the Peel or a hens' night," he said. "Our whole atmosphere changes immensely."

Mr McFeely said that before the ruling it was illegal to refuse entry to a large group of people based on sexuality, making his gay customers uncomfortable and unable to express their sexuality freely. He said there were more than 2000 venues in Melbourne that catered to heterosexuals, but his pub was the only one marketing itself predominantly to gay men. "Heterosexuals have other places to go to, my homosexuals do not," Mr McFeely said.

But he said there had already been a backlash against the decision, with dozens of people phoning with homophobic abuse. "The phone honestly hasn't stopped ringing and that's sad," Mr McFeely said. "But it also, in my head, demonstrates the need for this type of thing because there is still quite a bit of homophobia in the general community."

The Peel yesterday received support from the Equal Opportunity Commission, which said gays had the right to socialise in a safe place. "From my understanding this was not a move for a blanket ban of straight people. It was a decision taken to maintain the safety of the hotel's gay patrons," EOC chief Helen Szoke said. Ms Szoke said while the decision was unique, it did not necessarily open the floodgates for other venues wanting discrimination exemptions. "Each case before the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal is looked at on its own merit," she said. "It is not OK in all cases to ban men or women just to get the gender balance right." [So she has prejudged the matter]

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Gross public hospital negligence



A WOMAN claims emergency doctors at The Alfred hospital told her to go home and take a Panadol after she had a mussel shell wedged in her throat. Experienced nurse Bernadette Ireland, 56, said she endured four days of excruciating pain and edged perilously close to death before medics finally took an X-ray. It revealed the razor-sharp shell lodged in her oesophagus at the base of her neck.

Ms Ireland said she was shocked when doctors in the hospital's emergency department suggested she had only imagined her problem. "They said, 'You only think it's in your throat -- it's only scratched your throat when it went down'," she claimed. Ms Ireland, a nurse of 35 years, said her protests fell on deaf ears. She said she told them: "I'm a registered nurse and I'm pretty sure it's in my throat."

The aged care nurse had been dining at Albert Park's Misuzu Japanese restaurant on April 27 when the shell piece -- bigger than a 20c coin -- lodged in her throat. Ms Ireland kept her composure and called for an ambulance but was told her case was not urgent enough, so she drove to The Alfred.

After she waited 45 minutes, a doctor said she would not be X-rayed as it would probably not reveal any shell fragment. "Nobody would listen to me, that's the worst part," Ms Ireland said.

She said she could not swallow after the ordeal but was instructed to down pain-killers. "They said, 'Take two Panadol and go home and the pain will go'," Ms Ireland claimed, so she took soluble Panadol every two hours overnight and into the weekend. Weak and unable to eat, she visited a GP on Monday morning who told her to get back to the hospital urgently.

Ms Ireland said she arrived with a fever of 38C and X-rays finally revealed the shell. It was surgically removed under anaesthetic about 11pm that day. Ms Ireland stayed in hospital for the next three days on an intravenous drip of antibiotics.

She said the hospital offered no explanation. "I didn't even get a sorry," Ms Ireland said. She said she went public because she feared her case would not be taken seriously if she went back to the hospital.

An Alfred hospital spokeswoman said it was looking into the claims. Ms Ireland's is the latest horror story to emerge since Health Minister Bronwyn Pike was forced to defend claims hospital were taking drastic steps to cut costs as the financial year ends.

A great-grandmother, 91, died from heart disease 15 hours after she was discharged from the Royal Melbourne Hospital in April. A memo, published in the Herald Sun, revealed that the Royal Melbourne Hospital has set discharge quotas ahead of July 1. The Monash Medical Centre has blacked out most elective surgery procedures this week, leaving doctors idle and patients waiting.

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Labor Party backs down on plan to unleash rogue unions

LABOR has enraged unions with a pledge to keep the Howard Government's building industry watchdog for almost three years if it wins Government. Opposition IR spokeswoman Julia Gillard said Labor would retain the Australian Building and Construction Commission until 2010. "We will not tolerate old school thuggish behaviour," Ms Gillard said. "Anyone who breaks the law will feel the full force of the law."

Ms Gillard told the National Press Club the ABCC would eventually be replaced by a watchdog under Labor's workplace authority, Fair Work Australia. The pledge to keep the ABCC, even for just a few years, is a significant shift by Labor and will be used to blunt attacks that it is too close to the union movement. Ms Gillard said the industry was rife with illegal activity. "Under a Rudd government, there will not be a single moment where our construction industry is without a strong cop on the beat," she said.

Unions savaged the announcement, saying the ABCC could interrogate building workers with the threat of jail hanging over those who refused to answer questions. Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union national secretary Dave Noonan said Labor should be pledging to axe it as soon as possible. "The abolition of the ABCC should be brought forward, not pushed back," Mr Noonan said. "Labor ought to take a clear stand here in favour of workers, and that Labor ought to be abolishing this body and the laws it operates under."

ACTU president Sharan Burrow said the peak union body would continue to fight for the regulator to be axed. Ms Burrow said the laws covering the ABCC meant ordinary workers could be fined tens of thousands of dollars for taking industrial action.

Ms Gillard also announced Labor would ensure appointees to its watchdog were not just ex-unionists, and would have to be given the green light by all sides of politics. Officials from each state and territory would have to sign off on Fair Work Australia members, she said.

Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey said Ms Gillard could not be trusted to keep the unions at bay. "She released her workplace relations policies more than a month ago and they've changed with every speech and interview," Mr Hockey said.

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Independent schools are the model to which state schools should aspire

By Joanna Mendelssohn

RECENTLY I had a reunion with my very first friend, Anne. Our parents had been neighbours so we were babies together. Anne is blessed with an analytical talent for numbers, yet is a born communicator. She became a maths teacher. For more than 35 years she has taught maths to generations of students in state schools, in the city and the country.

She was able to take this path because, when we left school at the end of 1967, the NSW Education Department gave her a teaching scholarship that paid all fees and a generous allowance in return for her agreement to teach. This used to be the norm across the country; bonded teaching scholarships gave ordinary Australians the opportunity for a financially comfortable university education while ensuring a steady supply of young, qualified teachers for the state system.

In the 1970s, with the baby boom at an end, the system changed. Suddenly there was an oversupply of qualified teachers, so newly qualified teachers were freed of both their bonds and guaranteed jobs. Those who really wanted to teach could find soul-destroying work as casual relief staff until a vacancy occurred, but many left teaching altogether.

Before other avenues were open to us, teaching was often seen as the ideal profession for women, but by the 1980s this was not the case; there were also problems with teacher education. Andrew Leigh and Chris Ryan's research at the Australian National University has tracked the entry grades of teaching students during a 20-year period. From 1983 to 2003, the percentile rank of teaching students fell from 74 to 61, while the rank of new teachers fell from 70 to 62. The drift was to a mediocre middle.

In those years the teaching force in state schools, bulging with teachers who had qualified in the late '60s, became stagnant as few new staff were employed. When, after years of casual teaching, young teachers finally found a job, they were often already burned out by a system that had failed them.

Anne told me of the school she remembers with greatest affection. It was deep in rural NSW. Because this school was so distant from any big town, the staff had no choice. They had to live near the families of the children they taught and they had to relate to the community. Teachers also socialised with each other outside of school hours. The direct result of this physical isolation was a culture of connectedness between the staff, students and community, and they worked together for the common good. Whenever I hear politicians speak of values and education in the same sentence, I think of this country school.

Education has been dragged to the centre stage of the political debate, where it is squabbled over as some kind of trophy in an increasingly infantile battle between politicians, teachers unions and dogma-led lobby groups. Meanwhile, parents are left puzzling their way through the verbiage as they try to decide which school can possibly deliver the most appropriate education for their children.

The problem with Australian schools is not whether they are independent, state or faith-based, but the size of their governing bureaucracy and the nature of the culture within that bureaucracy. State schools, independent schools and faith-based schools all teach to the same curriculum (albeit a different one in each state). The first great advantage of independent schools is not their manicured sports grounds or sandstone buildings (some of the best schools have neither). It is that they are small, discrete entities. The bureaucracy has a human scale and an easily identified chain of command. Parents and children know where to go if they have a problem. Each school employs its own staff and is free to foster their professional development, and promote them when they excel.

It used to be the case that teachers working in independent or faith-based schools tended to be poorly qualified in comparison with those in state schools. They were also paid considerably less. As the salaries and status of state teachers sank, in a kind of seesaw effect, the salaries, status and qualifications of teachers in independent schools rose.

The way this happened is at the heart of the state of school education today. When the state systems would not employ their newly trained teachers, private and faith-based schools leapt at the chance to upgrade their staff, and many state school-trained teachers, once rejected, now hold leadership positions in elite independent schools.

In the '70s and '80s, innovative principals, including Rod West of Sydney's Trinity Grammar, went out of their way to encourage first-class scholars to think of teaching as a career. Thanks to a significant real increase in school fees and increased government support for non-state schools, teachers in these schools are paid the same or more than those in the state system. They do, however, earn their money, as these teachers are faced with far higher expectations. As well as teaching in the classroom, teachers in independent and faith-based schools are expected to become a part of the school community. They need to be available (often by email) out of school hours and, above all, to adopt the ethos of the school where they work. It is amazing what a school can achieve if the entire school community is travelling in the same direction.

The key to developing quality teachers in whatever system comes back to how they are appointed, mentored and promoted. Good schools look after their staff. Smaller, flexible administrative units make it easier for independent schools to identify the talent, mentor new staff to ease them into a career path and then promote staff or redeploy them to where they can be most useful to the school.

By contrast, state systems are still struggling to free themselves from their historic bureaucratic past. Australia's state school systems were established well before Federation, when every state proclaimed itself to be a nation. In other English-speaking countries, where the population was less sparse, schools tended to be run by local authorities. Australia is unique in the immense size and scope of our centralised education administration. There is in any bureaucratic institution a tendency to "team think". In schools, this tendency was exacerbated by a tightly controlled employment structure where, for more than a century, almost all employees had started as school-leavers and risen up a well-defined hierarchy.

Because the dominant group entering this workforce was from an aspirational working-class background, there was from the start a strong union presence. The union presence was embedded within the departmental hierarchy so the junior teacher would often discover that the person supervising her was also the union representative.

Times change, but workplace cultures change slowly. Although there have been some reforms in the way staff are appointed, it is still the case that individual state schools in Australia have less flexibility in appointing and dismissing staff than government-funded schools in equivalent countries.

The Prime Minister has recently declared that he will require a situation where principals alone have the choice to hire and fire staff. At the same time, he has declared a fatwa on bullying in schools. I'm not sure that replacing an unfeeling bureaucracy with an authoritarian hierarchy is going to change school cultures to something inclusive.

A school is a large and complex organisation. Surely the best way to build a team with the school community is to have each school appoint staff, but using a committee that includes parents and colleagues as well as the hierarchy. Bringing the community into the life of the school is a big task. Independent and Catholic schools do this well by co-opting that most effective cultural glue, Saturday sport. All students in these schools are expected to play a team sport and every Saturday, across the country, parents are car pooling and driving to ovals in distant parts of the city. At the ovals parent groups run barbecues, and cheer on their children. The teachers also participate as coaches and wise school principals call by. The schools' sense of community comes from such small weekly acts.

If sporting clubs could liaise with local state schools and be funded so that all state school children could play competitive Saturday sport, and if state teachers could also be involved with supporting their students, then more parents would be involved in the daily life of their schools. It is the kind of cultural glue our schools need to make them strong and help give them a sense of community.

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Foolish scapegoating of majority white society

ABORIGINAL culture isn't just nice dot paintings, it includes binge drinking and wife bashing. The facts are that tribal ways do not work, writes Andrew Bolt.

An Aboriginal woman interrupted the Prime Minister's "reconciliation" ceremony in Canberra on Sunday to give him a reconciling spray. "We have been genocided . . . by your Government, your court," she shouted. And newspapers confirm: "The crowd erupted in loud applause."

How they clapped, those "genocided" Aborigines, with government cheques in their pockets and a government lunch in their bellies. That's genocide? Let them confront what's really killing young Aborigines. And it's not some white politician. No, it's their fantasy that you can live tribal ways and get Western outcomes. That Aborigines don't have to choose between "blackfella ways" or health and wealth.

Read Prof Helen Hughes's new book, Lands of Shame. See where black suffering is worst? Where we'll most likely find children sick or neglected, women bashed, men unemployable, and so many parents drunk or idle? It's not among the many Aborigines assimilated to Western culture. It's among the Aborigines who live furthest from it, leading lives more truly "Aboriginal", as deemed by spokesmen with well-funded jobs, white partners and suburban homes.

Labor leader Kevin Rudd now glibly vows to close the black-white gap in life expectancy "within the next generation", and was cheered by the same Howard hecklers for nothing but words. If kind wishes were dollars, Aborigines would be rich. Rudd's promise of a "sorry" and $261 million more in health and education spending to add to the $3.3 billion a year already spent by the Government on Aborigines will solve nothing.

No, we must instead end our love affair with the Noble Savage. You want Aborigines to be richer and healthier? Then give them every help to make lives in Western society and to leave the shattered tribal homes and culture that destroy so many. Already people who have dedicated their careers to black causes are suggesting what was once unsayable.

Prof Peter Sutton, anthropologist and author of the searingly frank The Politics of Suffering, asks how much longer Aborigines can remain in "racially segregated communities" and avoid the need to change their culture. That culture isn't just nice dot paintings, he says. It can also include binge drinking. Or wife bashing. Or letting children decide whether to go to school or -- mostly -- not. Or favouring relatives over better workers. Or blaming sorcerers for avoidable deaths. Or rejecting delegated authority. Or . . . Writes Sutton: "So many are in denial over the need for cultural change if indigenous disadvantage is to be addressed at its roots."

Hughes agrees and attacks decades of apartheid policies that gave us this failed "socialist homeland model" -- a string of cultural ghettoes which leave many Aboriginal children unable even to speak English, their futures destroyed. Cultural change hurts. For Aborigines, assimilating implies a rejection of their past. BUT assimilation will also be fought by intellectuals, whose own culture, as famed psychologist Prof Steven Pinker says, "is loath to admit that there could be anything good about the institutions of civilisation and Western society".

So corrupt is that intellectual culture that a privileged crowd cheers even preposterous claims that Aborigines are being "genocided" by their trying-hard Western government. So corrupt, that it praises instead the broken tribal culture that truly destroys black children. For shame.

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Union thug lets us know what's coming when the Labor party lets unions off the leash



HE describes employers as "greedy pr. .ks" and compares workplace inspectors with paedophiles. Meet Electrical Trades Union secretary Dean Mighell the ugly face of unionism that Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd does not want you to see. In a foul-mouthed address to members of the Electrical Trades Union obtained by The Daily Telegraph, Mr Mighell brags about getting pay rises for his workers by threatening to strike.

"Now we have kept that 4 per cent agreement across our industry and I'd like to know how many millions of dollars they've paid workers that we've racked up through that little bulls. .t stunt," he told a mass meeting of members at Melbourne's Dallas Brooks Hall. "But it was good fun and it's still there, so that's a couple of pots (of beer). Just remember a little bit of bulls. .t, put it aside every week, have a little smile when you have a beer because some d. . .head's paid for that that shouldn't have."

In his speech, Mr Mighell, who apparently struggles to complete a sentence without an expletive, displayed the type of thuggish behaviour that Mr Rudd and industrial relations spokeswoman Julia Gillard have been trying to play down. The speech was delivered in November last year but a recording only emerged yesterday. Mr Mighell has since described Prime Minister John Howard as a "skidmark on the bedsheet of Australian politics".

In his tirade, Mr Mighell unleashed on government inspectors from the Australian Building and Construction and Commission, set up to clean out corruption in the building industry. He described the inspectors as "c. .k smokers" before comparing them with paedophiles. "Some of you might have seen them, usually fat blokes that look like rundown coppers," he said. "What they'll do is, they're not allowed to enter your home, which is pretty good because you just can't be too sure of their orientation in terms of certain things you wouldn't want them near your home, wouldn't want them near your children."

The maverick unionist also vowed to ignore the Federal Government's law preventing union organisers from coming on to a worksite without giving notice. "Our employers in our agreements we've negotiated don't want that. They're happy for us to go on 24/7 because they're not terrorists and we don't often belt them up unless they deserve it."

While the Opposition decides how to placate the hundreds of thousands of workers on individual contracts, Mr Mighell left his audience in no doubt that he and his union colleagues would tear them up.

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Big advance in cornea surgery

Australian surgeons have restored a man's vision by performing a procedure that eliminates the need for a complete transplant of the cornea. The procedure causes fewer complications and restores eyesight faster than a cornea transplant, doctors say. Rasik Vajpayee, head of the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital's corneal unit in Melbourne, who performed the surgery, said it was an exciting development. "This new treatment has the potential to help sufferers of endothelial corneal blindness to see again, offering them the ability to lead an independent life," Professor Vajpayee said.

Diseases of the cornea -- the clear surface at the front of the eye that lets it focus -- can lead to blurred vision or blindness. Previously, doctors would make a large incision in the eye, remove the diseased or damaged cornea and replace it with a donated cornea, using sutures. Although the procedure has a 90 per cent success rate, it can take 12 months for the eye to heal and patients can experience complications, including infection and distorted vision. Some require corrective surgery if the replacement cornea becomes loose.

In the new procedure, which rarely requires sutures, surgeons make a small incision in the eye and remove only the diseased layer of the cornea, which is then replaced with a layer of healthy donor tissue. "Previously we were replacing the whole cornea, which has about five layers," Professor Vajpayee said. "But there is a serious shortage of corneas around the world. This procedure could allow us to treat two or three patients with tissue from the same donor."

Professor Vajpayee said surgeons had performed the procedure on hundreds of patients in the US, with great success. "The complete transplant uses up to 20 sutures, which all have to be removed," he said. "This has better outcomes and patients recover faster."

David Wall's vision has improved daily since a fortnight ago, when he became the first Australian to undergo the procedure. The 75-year-old's eyesight had deteriorated significantly over the past year. "Eventually I couldn't see anything out of my left eye, it was just a blur," Mr Wall said. "It was affecting my balance and I had to concentrate really hard on the ground when I walked, so I didn't fall." Mr Wall said he could already see objects and read large letters. "It's getting better each day -- I'm very happy with it."

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Testing methods mask our failings

Good marks from one source can't disguise Australia's falling standards of education, writes Kevin Donnelly. The PISA assessments are very undemanding

HOW well are Australian students performing? Based on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Program for International Student Assessment test, they appear to be doing very well. The results of the 2000 literacy test ranked Australia second out of 32 countries and in 2003 only four countries outperformed our 15-year-old students in mathematics. Groups with a vested interest in arguing that all is well, such as the Australian Education Union and the Australian Council for Educational Research, quote the results in their submissions to the Senate inquiry into education standards as evidence that there is no crisis.

Wrong. While the PISA test reflects favourably on Australian students, it is open to a number of criticisms. As argued by the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute in its Senate inquiry submission, the PISA test "is not a valid assessment of mathematics knowledge, as only a fragment of the curriculum is tested".

The outstanding performance of Australian students in the PISA literacy test is also open to doubt, as students did not lose marks for faulty spelling, grammar and punctuation. If our students had been corrected, many would have failed as, in the words of one researcher, "It was an exception rather than a rule in Australia to find a student response that was written in well-constructed sentences, with no spelling or grammatical error."

A second measure of the performance of Australian students is the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study carried out in 1995, 1999 and 2003 and involving up to 46 countries. These tests assess essential mathematics and science knowledge. Australian students in Years 4 and 8, while doing well, are in the second XI as measured by TIMSS and are consistently outperformed by countries such as Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, The Netherlands and the Czech Republic.

In more successful overseas education systems, more students achieve at the highest level. In the 2003 TIMSS science test, only 9per cent of Year8 Australian students performed at the advanced level, compared with 25 per cent from Taiwan and 15 per cent from Japan and England. In mathematics, only 7 per cent of Australian Year8 students performed at the advanced level, compared with 44 per cent of students in Singapore. There is also a significant gap in Australia between better performing and less able students. Successful countries overseas are able to get more children to perform at the higher end of the scale, while Australia has a long tail of underperformers.

Further proof is found in a US report by the American Institutes for Research, published on April 24. While acknowledging the difficulties in terms of methodology and making comparative judgments, the report interprets the TIMSS Year8 test results in the light of the expected levels of performance (basic, proficient and advanced) as measured by the US-based assessment of educational progress. On analysing the 1999 TIMMS results for Year8, the US report lists the following countries as having greater numbers of students achieving at the advanced level: Singapore, 34 per cent; South Korea, 26 per cent; Hong Kong, 23 per cent; Japan, 24 per cent; and Belgium, 15 per cent. The percentage of Australian students who achieve at the advanced level is 8 per cent.

The situation is not as bad with the Year8 science results: only Taiwan and Singapore appear to have significantly more students performing at the advanced level. But in the 2003 Year8 TIMMS test, Australians students again underperformed. While 35 per cent of Singaporean students performed at the advanced level, 24 per cent from Hong Kong, 29 per cent from South Korea, 30 per cent from Taiwan and 20 per cent from Japan, only 5 per cent of Australian students achieved at the top level.

Much has been made of the dumbing-down influence of Australia's adoption of outcomes-based education, where everyone is a winner and the curriculum promotes a one-size-fits-all approach, in explaining student underperformance. But also of concern is the way Australia carries out its national benchmark testing in literacy and numeracy.

The results over the past four years at Years3 and 5 suggest all is well in numeracy. About 90 to 94 per cent of students reach the benchmark standard and in reading the figure hovers close to 92 per cent. Such results appear worth celebrating. Not so. Not only is the benchmark described as the agreed minimum acceptable standard - defined as "standards of performance below which students will have difficulty progressing satisfactorily at school" - but there is the suspicion that the bar is set so low that the overwhelming majority of children are guaranteed success.

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