Lodhi is our enemy: Long jail sentence for would-be Muslim terrorist sends a signal to all those who wish Australia harm



The 20-year jail sentence imposed on Faheem Khalid Lodhi sends important signals to all sorts of Australians. For a start, it is a welcome wake-up call for those who refuse to accept we are all on the front line in the war on terror. Lodhi planned an attack on the electricity grid, to wreak havoc on a country that he professed to call home.

His conviction also sends a clear message that individuals in our midst with murder on their minds cannot use the legal system as a shelter from the consequences of planning or committing evil acts. Certainly, self-confessed al-Qa'ida footsoldier "Jihad" Jack Thomas was acquitted of terror offences last week because of police errors in the way he was interviewed. But Lodhi is now convicted, and sentenced to two decades in prison.

The job of the police and the courts is to justly protect us from the mad and the bad. And this sentence shows how it can be done according to law. Lodhi's imprisonment may not deter the most adamant of the enemies of all Australians from taking his place. But some may consider his fate and think again before they plot against us. Lodhi will rot in prison for 20 years, knowing that Australians of all and no faiths despise him for what he planned. Their contempt is a message he deserves to hear loudly and often and for many, many years.

There is also a message for other Australians in Lodhi's conviction and sentence. Despite years of mass murders by Islamic terrorists all over the world, there are still some who say the war on terror is a political contrivance designed to frighten us all. They should consider the judgment of Justice Anthony Whealy in sentencing Lodhi when he warned that even though the plan was amateurish and ill-conceived, it could have caused death and damage.

It is an essential argument. From Bali to London, mass murderers have demonstrated it does not take any special ability to kill innocent people and to shatter the social cohesion and trust that democracies depend on. "Australia has, to this time, not been a country where fundamentalist and extreme views have exposed our citizens to death and destruction within the sanctuary of our shores. One has only to think of the consequences on the national psyche of a tragedy such as the Port Arthur massacre to realise how a major terrorist bombing would impact on the security, the stability and wellbeing of the citizens of this country," Justice Whealy said.

Nor was Lodhi acting to address any grievance that could ever be addressed in a democracy. As Justice Whealy put it: "The extremist views, which he must in truth be taken to have espoused, are not representative of the true nature of his Islamic religion. Rather, they are a distortion of it." In his duplicity and his intent, Faheem Lodhi is our enemy. His conviction will not end the danger of attack, but in removing the risk from a bad man, and reminding us all of the dangers we face, it is a victory in the war on terror we needed.

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Abortionist guilty



A Sydney doctor faces a lengthy jail term after being convicted for an illegal abortion in the first case of its kind in NSW in 25 years. Suman Sood was tried in the NSW Supreme Court on two counts of unlawfully giving abortion drugs to a young woman in May 2002 and for the manslaughter of the woman's premature baby boy. Sood, 56, who ran the Fairfield Women's Health Clinic in Sydney's southwest, pleaded not guilty to three charges at the start of her five-week trial.

After three days' deliberation, the jury of eight women and three men today acquitted Sood of manslaughter. She was convicted of the two illegal abortion charges, each of which carries a maximum 10-year jail term.

Sood was consulted on May 20, 2002, by a 20-year-old woman who had just discovered she was five months pregnant. Several clinics refused to terminate her pregnancy after 20 weeks but the woman was told the procedure could be done at Sood's clinic for $1500. The jury heard Sood inserted a prostaglandin tablet and gave her two more pills to swallow, in preparation for a termination procedure the next day.

But the woman delivered a baby boy on the toilet at home overnight. The baby died five hours later. Born at 23 weeks gestation, the baby's lungs were underdeveloped and he was pronounced dead about five hours later, the jury was told.

Abortion is legal in NSW if a doctor forms the genuine belief, based on reasonable grounds, that continuing the pregnancy would endanger the mother's life, or physical or mental health.

Prosecutors said Sood acted illegally because she did not question the patient about her medical, social or economic circumstances or why she wanted the abortion. They claimed she therefore could not have judged whether the abortion was necessary to preserve the patient's wellbeing.

The jury rejected Sood's defence that she never intended to terminate the woman's pregnancy and only gave her painkillers, not prostaglandins. Defence barrister Phillip Boulten, SC, also argued there was insufficient evidence that the baby was born alive, meaning a manslaughter charge was not applicable.

The ambulance officer who retrieved the newborn from the toilet said he was blue, was not breathing and had no heartbeat. The mother and baby were taken to Westmead Hospital, where he was observed with a pink colour and a "fluttering" heartbeat, gasping for breath every two to three minutes. But the jury heard conflicting medical evidence about whether these were conclusive signs of independent life, and Mr Boulten said they could not convict Sood of manslaughter if they were satisfied the baby had not been alive.

Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi, QC, alleged Sood was motivated by greed to perform the abortion, and "was more intent on maximising her income than she was on the welfare of her patient". The last person tried in NSW for an illegal abortion was also a doctor, George Smart, who was convicted in 1981 of unlawfully procuring a teenage girl's miscarriage. Sood was granted bail ahead of sentencing next month.

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Public hospital negligence kills in New South Wales



The family of a Sydney teenager have demanded to know why health officials said she did not need medication that might have prevented her death from meningococcal disease. Jehan Nassif, 18, from Yagoona in Sydney's south-west died from the disease in Bankstown Hospital last Friday.

Her boyfriend George Khauzame had recently returned from a holiday to Greece with his cousin Elias. Elias was diagnosed with meningococcal upon returning to Australia, while Mr Khauzame was given antibiotics as a precaution. Worried his girlfriend might also contract the disease, Mr Khauzame today said he asked a public health official if Jehan was at risk. He said he was told she would be fine. "I asked the lady at public health should Jehan be treated because I had made contact with her for three hours on Monday nights," he told reporters. "She said Jehan was safe and didn't need to be treated. "I asked again and she said she she would be fine."

Mr Khauzame said his concerns for Jehan's health were further inflamed when the pair went to visit Elias in hospital. He said Jehan had asked if she needed a face mask but was told by the nurses that she didn't need to wear one, even though the nurses were.

Jehan's father, Tony Nassif, is now demanding to know what happened to his daughter. "I want to know why she died," he told reporters. "She was beautiful, she wanted to be a teacher." Mr Nassif said his daughter wanted to go to hospital last Friday morning but was told by ambulance officials it would be a two to three hour wait at Auburn Hospital. After she lost her vision, her ability to walk and a purple rash broke out on her body, the family called the ambulance again and she was rushed to Bankstown Hospital, where she died a short time later.

NSW Ambulance operations director Michael Willis today said ambulance officers who were called to Jehan's home at about 3am on Friday had said she refused to be transported to hospital. "The two officers that attended that case have recorded that they found a female patient suffering with vomiting and diarrhoea and after an examination with the family, in fact that patient refused transport," he told reporters. The ambulance officers had not been aware Jehan had been in contact with a person with meningococcal and had not diagnosed her with the condition, Mr Willis said. "They were unable to detect any signs of meningococcal at that stage," he said.

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A truly Irish Australian

Her surname must have helped. It's about as Irish as you can get. Having plenty of Irish blood myself, I am delighted by this story. It does a sentimental Celtic heart good



A trainee teacher from Brisbane has become Ireland's sweetheart after winning the Rose of Tralee contest. Millions of Irish TV viewers tuned in to see Kathryn Feeney, 23, become this year's Rose in a glittering ceremony in County Kerry.

The competition, which celebrates the Rose of Tralee folk song, aims to find the most charming and beautiful women in Ireland and Irish communities around the globe. Kathryn, whose grandfather was Irish, won the Queensland heat earlier this year. Her whole family, including some from the US, joined her in Dublin and yesterday they toasted her triumph with a few pints of Guinness.

Noela McCormick, of the Queensland Irish Association, was with them in the audience as Kathryn was declared the 2006 Rose. "She couldn't believe she had won, but I'm not surprised. The Irish fell in love with her right from the start," she said. "All of the girls in the contest have been treated like movie stars. They've been on TV all week and people have been scrambling for their autographs.

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Heroic country people



They breed 'em tough out Roma way. A seven-month survey by ambulance officers in the southwest Queensland town found 97 patients made it to hospital under their own steam despite serious injury or illness. Ambulance officer in charge at Roma, Karl Radford, said patients drove themselves or loved ones up to 80km over "goat track" roads rather than call Triple-0.

Patients made the journey suffering heart attacks, broken bones, migraines and asthma, Mr Radford said. "It's not just one or two people here and there," he said. But he warned that resourceful country Queenslanders risked their lives by taking medical transport into their own hands. "Something like asthma, that just goes bad in the blink of an eye - you could be literally dead in three minutes," he said. "I'm astounded that we haven't had an accident because somebody was rushing themselves to hospital. "Somebody who's having, for example, a heart attack, they run such a terrible risk."

Mr Radford, who has been in charge at Roma's ambulance station for four years, urged locals to take advantage of the state's free ambulance cover. "They need to realise the services that are available to them. Here in Roma, we've got a four-wheel-drive ambulance," said the father of two. "Even if it was a really remote and isolated property and there was an airport or landing strip, there's the option of getting aircraft in there. "All my family have been told call Triple-0 - if I didn't think it would work, I wouldn't tell my own people."

Rural Doctors Association Queensland president Christian Rowan said selfless rural Queenslanders often made the hazardous drive to hospital rather than tie up an ambulance needed elsewhere. "I can think of a fellow who was lighting up a grass fire and his trousers caught fire," Dr Rowan said. "He basically burned one leg with third-degree, full-thickness burns. "He drove himself and that would've taken at least half an hour. "He was in a lot of pain but he was one of those tough old bushies who thought to himself, 'Oh, I won't need an ambulance, there may be someone else in greater need than me'."

Dr Rowan also advised Queenslanders living outside urban areas to call for help. "Sometimes a particular health situation really requires assistance. They should ask for it and not feel guilty about it." Roma Mayor Bruce Garvie backed the calls. "People are tough in the bush because they have to be to survive through the elements," he said. "It's bred in them. But they probably do need to reach out more than they do. "Often they take things on themselves and don't realise how serious it is

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Callgirl enters Einfeld fray

The legal fallout from Marcus Einfeld's speeding ticket now threatens to engulf his solicitor, Michael Ryan, after a spurned prostitute gave police a suitcase full of documents. The papers were handed over by Marie Christos, a former legal secretary who claims she was regularly paid for sex by Mr Ryan.

She said she became involved in the Einfeld affair during the bitter break-up of her six-year relationship with Mr Ryan, a partner in McClellands Lawyers. The relationship allegedly started soon after Ms Christos left a secretarial position with a top Sydney silk. She said she met Mr Ryan in a brothel and had begun a relationship with him in which he paid her up to $500 for sex. To seek retribution against Mr Ryan after they broke up, Ms Christos said she rifled through his garbage looking for information to use against him.

She has since been quizzed by police about a draft statement she said she found, which appeared to have been prepared on behalf of Mr Einfeld. The statement was believed to have been about who was driving Mr Einfeld's silver Lexus on the night the luxury car was picked up for speeding in January. Ms Christos said yesterday that police had told her that when they interviewed Mr Ryan last week he had denied any connection with the draft statement, which Ms Christos later supplied to The Daily Telegraph newspaper in Sydney. "He has told police it was a set-up," she said.

Mr Ryan has refused to respond to a number of requests for comment from The Australian. Ms Christos said yesterday that she has since given police other versions of the draft statement that she had had found in Mr Ryan's garbage. Those extra documents, while torn and crumpled, had been placed in plastic bags by police and taken away for finger-printing, she said. Daily Telegraph editor David Penberthy said last night that his newspaper had made a formal statement to police on Monday.

Ms Christos's involvement in the Einfeld inquiry is the latest twist in the bizarre chain of events that was triggered by Mr Einfeld's decision to fight a $77 speeding ticket. Mr Einfeld, a former Federal Court judge, is facing a fraud squad investigation into evidence he gave to Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court that allowed him to avoid the speeding fine. He told the court that at the time of the offence in January this year, he had lent his car to Teresa Brennan, a professor who had been visiting from the US. After the court proceedings it emerged that Brennan had died in 2003, and that two doctorates held by Mr Einfeld had been conferred by institutions which some claim are little more than "diploma mills".

This follows complaints last year that, before he left Federal Court, one of his judgments had failed to acknowledge material that was identical to work by Sydney University academic John Carter. Mr Carter said this week that the material had been identical to that contained in one of his books. "I recognised my own work," he said. Mr Carter had put the matter in the hands of his publisher, and Mr Einfeld later said that a footnote had been accidentally omitted from the judgment.

Mr Einfeld was a Federal Court judge at the time his two postgraduate degrees were awarded. The Californian university that gave Mr Einfeld a PhD - which cost $3413 at the time it was awarded - has since conceded that it is trying to rise above claims it was a "diploma mill" in the past and become an accredited academic institution. Pacific Western president Ronald Detrick admitted the university's chequered history was a stumbling block in its efforts to win federal accreditation. He said Pacific Western's reputation was so bad that he recommended to the new owner, Florida-based chiropractor Steven Warfield, that it be closed down.

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States' stand against history teaching weakens

The states' opposition to teaching history as a stand-alone subject faltered yesterday with Queensland Premier Peter Beattie pledging to introduce a compulsory Australian history subject if re-elected. The West Australian and Tasmanian governments also indicated they would look at how history was taught in schools, with the Carpenter Government not opposed to teaching Australian history as a separate, compulsory subject in years 9 and 10. But West Australian Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich dismissed the importance of students knowing historical dates, saying they could use the internet.

The history summit last Thursday, attended by 23 distinguished historians and commentators, urged the states to replace the subject Studies of Society and its Environment, under which history is now taught, with a traditional teaching of history, including making Australian history compulsory in years 9 and 10. Only NSW and, from this year, Victoria teach history as a stand-alone subject, with the remaining states teaching it under SOSE ["studies of society and environment"] with geography, environment, political and other social studies.

Mr Beattie's support for a separate Australian history subject overruled his Education Minister, Rod Welford, who is strongly opposed to the idea. On the campaign trail yesterday, Mr Beattie said he believed Australian history should be taught more thoroughly in schools, with particular emphasis on Aboriginal history before white settlement. "If re-elected, I want to ensure that there is a stand-alone compulsory unit on Australian history," he said. "When I went to school, I was taught lots about British history, German, Russian, but so little about Australian history, which I picked up by reading after I left school and when I went to uni."

After the summit, Mr Welford said it would be "educational vandalism" for the federal Government to force the separate study of history on the states. "To talk about history as a stand-alone subject, as a list of events, is an educational absurdity," he said. But a spokeswoman for Mr Welford yesterday said Mr Beattie's support for the subject was under the umbrella of SOSE. The spokeswoman said not all teachers taught Australian history under SOSE and Mr Beattie wanted to ensure it was a compulsory unit not separate to SOSE.

Ms Ravlich dismissed the knowledge of key historical dates as unimportant and was reported yesterday as saying it was akin to not knowing "the internal workings of a computer". She said the advent of the internet and search engines, such as Google, meant students had those dates at their fingertips. But Ms Ravlich went on to say that in terms of making Australian history a compulsory subject in years 9 and 10, "I don't have a problem with that necessarily". Tasmanian Education Minister David Bartlett did not rule out reinstating history as a separate subject but said it had been taught as part of SOSE for 25 years. "I'm happy to look at how we go about teaching in all our curriculum areas. We always want to continue to improve our curriculum framework and therefore what's taught," he said.

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A wonderful story

And a testimony to the desirability of accelerated education



Terry Tao was just two when he stunned a family gathering at home in Adelaide by giving a maths and spelling lesson to friends' children who were up to five years his senior. Using blocks, and knowledge he had gleaned from television, Tao showed the children how to add up and to make words.

Tao's father, Billy, an Adelaide pediatrician, remembers his son's party-stopper. "The children were playing and the adults were talking ... suddenly, we found the children had gone very quiet," Billy Tao says. "We found that Terry was teaching them numbers and the alphabet. The other kids were a lot older. He was showing them how to add and so on. I said 'how do you know all these numbers and alphabet?' and he said 'From watching Sesame Street'."

It was an early indication that the boy would become a world-beating genius with a 221 IQ: he had two university degrees by the age of 17, was made a professor of mathematics at 24 and, last night, the 31-year-old Tao was presented with the world's highest prize in mathematics, the Fields Medal, regarded as the discipline's Nobel prize. He is Australia's first winner.

The International Mathematical Union, which bestows the award, cites Tao as "a supreme problem-solver whose spectacular work has had an impact across several mathematical areas". "He combines sheer technical power, an other-worldly ingenuity for hitting upon new ideas and a startlingly natural point of view that leaves other mathematicians wondering, 'Why didn't anyone see that before?'."

Tao himself is modest about the honour: "I don't really know how it will affect my career. I haven't had an award like this before. I'm trying to focus on continuing my research and other work, such as advising graduate students."

An early mentor and academic supervisor, the director of the International Centre of Excellence for Education in Mathematics, Garth Gaudry, says Tao is a phenomenon. While most leading research mathematicians work on two or three projects at a time with collaborators, Tao juggles 10 to 15, Gaudry says. When Gaudry took on the 12-year-old Tao at Billy Tao's behest, the youngster had already exhausted several private tutors. Then a maths professor at Flinders University, Adelaide, Gaudry taught Tao on Wednesday afternoons. He remembers "a tiny little boy, a delightful kid" with staggering "insight and brilliance", who was "completely off the scale". "By age 14 he was doing very advanced mathematics, the sort of thing in US first-year graduate study, and I gave him the hardest stuff," Gaudry says. "He was just so creative. I'd give him some really esoteric problems and he would just invent things and he was absolutely spot on. The creativity was like flashes of lightning in front of my eyes. I've never had a student like this." Gaudry says they both loved the sessions. "He was just such a happy person who enjoyed every moment of what he was doing. It was a great relationship from the beginning and that has continued to this day," he says. Gaudry was in Madrid last night to witness Tao's investiture into the maths hall of fame.

With backgrounds in pediatrics and maths teaching, Tao's parents, Hong Kong Chinese who came to Australia in 1972, were well-placed to plan their first born's schooling. After a premature start at primary school, Tao went back to Bellevue Heights Primary School in the Adelaide hills at age four. His parents and principal Keith Lomax designed a staggered schooling for him. At age six, Tao was studying some classes in grades two and three, and maths at grade six and seven level. His father says: "Some education people think that accelerated education is the way to go with all gifted children. But my concept is you have to design courses according to people. Don't accelerate beyond what is good for the child."

Tao started classes at Blackwood High School at Eden Hills in Adelaide at age seven but he remained in some classes at Bellevue Heights. By eight he had finished primary school and, while he was studying such subjects as geography, biology and chemistry at Year 7 and 8 level, Tao was already devouring Year 11 and 12 maths and physics. "His subjects were never strictly according to the timetable of the curriculum. It was always very loose," Billy Tao says. "This allows him to develop academically according to his intellectual ability but kept him normal socially."

Tao was always in good company. Parents Billy and Grace produced three nodes of extreme intelligence. Brother Trevor, 29, is an autistic music savant and chess champion with degrees in music who last year earned a PhD in applied mathematics from the University of Adelaide. He works for the Defence Science Technology Organisation. Youngest brother Nigel, 27, has degrees in computer science and economics and works for the internet search company Google in Sydney.

Tao's next step into higher education was also a mixed one. He was enrolled at Flinders at the age of nine while still studying at Blackwood High. By 16 he had completed a bachelor of science degree and the following year he wrapped up a masters of science degree with honours. A PhD in maths at Princeton University in the US followed at 21 and, at 24, Tao was made professor of mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Apart from stints at the University of NSW in 1999 and 2000 and the Australian National University in Canberra from 2001 to 2003, Tao has lived full-time in the US since starting his PhD. It was Gaudry who encouraged Tao to leave Australia.

"It worked out well for me as I was exposed to different types of mathematics that I didn't encounter in Australia," says Tao. "I think I am going to stay over here (in the US) more or less permanently, though I do plan to visit Australia about once a year." He lives in LA where he is married to Laura, an American of Korean background, and they have a son, three-year-old William, whom Billy says is "very smart, reading by himself".

Tao's work, like that of many mathematicians, is esoteric, understood and appreciated by very few, although its applications power the hi-tech modern world. He works in a theoretical field called harmonic analysis - an advanced form of calculus that uses equations from physics - as well as non-linear partial differential equations, algebraic geometry, number theory and combinatorics. He has also made mathematical descriptions of wave motions of light in fibre-optic cables. His latest breakthrough, in a collaboration with Ben Green of Cambridge University, is to show that it is possible to compile any sequence of evenly spaced prime numbers. This is called number theory and it has challenged, confounded and entertained mathematicians for centuries. Euclid in 300BC was the first to prove that there are infinitely many prime numbers. Number theory is at the heart of the encryption codes that organisations such as banks use to protect electronic information from hackers.

But Tao and Green's work is so new and so advanced that even they don't know what its uses might be. "Ben and I are investigating these tools further and it looks like they are going to have many applications though of course it's hard to say at this point," Tao explains. The under-appreciation of maths is not lost on Gaudry. "People don't appreciate that there is an enormous amount of maths research going on," he says. "The problem for maths is that some of the most famous and wonderful advances in our subject are hidden inside the technology that we enjoy." Compact discs, mobile phones, MP3 players and special effects in movies are all products driven by maths research.

But under-appreciation of maths is not limited to the uninitiated. Maths is struggling in our universities. A recent survey by the Australian Mathematical Science Institute of job ads in The Australian's Higher Education Supplement found that in an 18-month period, 70 mathematicians had quit academic posts but only 18 ads had called for replacements. "It's a disaster (but) the effects are not immediate," says ANU professor of mathematics Neil Trudinger. "In time they'll be translated into disadvantages in the whole scientific, technological effort in keeping up with the rest of the world."

Earlier this year, the maths department at the University of New England in northern NSW was cut from seven positions to four. "There's an expectation that four faculty members can deliver an entire academic program ... at a place that calls itself a university; it's pathetic," Trudinger says. AMSI director Philip Broadbridge says Tao was fortunate to have studied when he did. "The time when Tao was taught and mentored you could go to virtually any university in Australia and think you could receive an education of that quality," he says. "These days, I'm not so sure."

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Bad food coverup in Sydney

They are made public in New York, London, Toronto, Copenhagen, Los Angeles and dozens of other cities, but Sydney has ruled that the addresses of restaurants caught breaching food safety regulations must remain secret. Clover Moore, the independent MP and the Lord Mayor of Sydney, has long fought for stronger laws to protect the public's right to know, but her chief executive, Monica Barone, has refused a Herald appeal filed under freedom of information laws for access to the addresses where staff issued 78 fines over the past year. The council has released a list with the date and amount of fines imposed, but has blacked out names and street numbers, defying a worldwide trend towards disclosing such information.

In customer-focused New York, a website carries the results of inspections and will send you for free the results of any five restaurants you nominate. In Toronto restaurants must display a sticker in the window that reveals the results of health inspections with similar systems operating across the US and increasingly in Britain. Ms Barone dismissed any relevance such overseas practices might have for Sydney on the grounds that any publication of results was done "presumably in accordance with legislation which is applicable in those places". In NSW, she said, the Privacy Act prohibited her from revealing the names of the individuals fined.

While the street address of restaurants are in the phone book and available to passers-by, they remain secret on the grounds they are "information concerning the commercial or business affairs of a person". Revealing them could "reasonably be expected to have an unreasonable adverse effect", she said.

Similar fears were expressed in Europe and North America before the names of offending restaurants were published, but there have since been reports that many restaurants now prefer these details to be public as it becomes another way they can distinguish themselves from competitors and attract customers.

But Ms Barone said she could not release the information as it would be "reasonable to expect that advertising of the locations of these food premises may give a false representation of the condition of each of the premises, which could lead to a downturn in custom, thus reducing income and causing possible hardship for the proprietors". [But would that not be deserved?]

Besides, the imposition of fines had fixed the problems permanently in a way that did not seem to happen overseas. 'I am informed that following the issue of a [fine], City [of Sydney] staff return to the premises to ensure hygiene standards are being complied with," Ms Barone said. "I am also informed . all premises were complying [with one exception, which was then prosecuted]."

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Odd! A Left-supporting God is beyond criticism

When Bruce Baird declared that he could not support a Liberal Party bill for the first time in a 19-year parliamentary career, he did so for religious reasons. The Sydney Liberal MP and former NSW Liberal frontbencher could not get out of his head the experience of visiting those in detention centres across Australia and the recurring Christian rejoinder: "These are your brothers, these are your sisters."

An openly religious and caring Christian, Baird did not abstain from voting on the Coalition's bill to excise the Australian mainland from asylum-seekers arriving by boat because he was a member of the Liberal Left; he never joined the Left faction in all his years in the NSW Parliament. No, he did so because his conscience, informed by his Christian beliefs and experience, directed him. "Whether or not we use a Christian analogy, certainly we know that we are encouraged to look at the weak and vulnerable as a starting point. While we build our riches as a nation, the danger for us is that, in this process of collecting a glittering prize of materialism, we lose our soul," Baird told parliament. "We have had conscience votes on RU486 and other things. This is a conscience vote."

Other Coalition and Labor MPs cited religious beliefs and support of the churches for refugees, particularly those seeking to come to Australia from Indonesia's West Papua. Labor's Peter Garrett declared his own Christian position and his colleague Duncan Kerr praised the role of the Catholic Church in helping Papuans. Crucially, in the Senate, the Nationals' Barnaby Joyce and Family First's Steve Fielding cited Christian compassion for not being able to support the bill. Because Liberal senator Judith Troeth had decided to vote against the bill, the opposition of Joyce and Fielding meant John Howard had to kill the bill.

In opposing the bill, Joyce used the Christian image of the holy family: Mary, Jesus and Joseph, fleeing the persecution of Herod and being turned away from modern Australia. Fielding's party represents family values and has strong support from church groups of all descriptions, including many evangelical churches. When the bill was pulled, the Coalition rebels and Fielding were praised for their courage, for acting on conscience, for the quality of their decisions and standing up to bullying.

This is a lovely, warm tale, a positive example of a victory of conscience, principle and parliamentary strength triumphing over the executive and party bullies. But there's something missing, something that is illogical and contrary to the prevailing political mood and a golden thread that joins this act of conscience with others on a range of moral issues: Where are the attacks on all these people for acting on religious beliefs? Where is Australian Greens senator Kerry Nettle's sectarian T-shirt mocking Joyce's Catholicism and urging him to keep his "rosaries off our refugees"? Why isn't Australian Democrats leader Lyn Allison deploring Fielding's links with "Hillsongy types"? Was this not a conspiracy between the churches and proselytisers of the US Bible Belt and our home-grown bible bashers?

It seems that it's OK to have God in politics as long as he's on the so-called progressive side. It's fine for Greens leader Bob Brown to campaign for Tibet and the Dalai Lama and against China's persecution of the spiritual movement Falun Gong, but not to start parliamentary business with the Lord's Prayer. It's fine for Catholic nuns to help refugees on the run or for Catholic justice groups to help West Papuans, but it's not OK for them to attempt to influence politicians on abortion or embryonic stem cell research. A bishop's remarks against industrial relations laws are used widely, but bishops who speak out against abortion are decried as men in dresses who should keep their hands off women's ovaries.

The Catholic Church, Uniting Church and evangelical groups that support resettling refugees using religious ties are praised, yet Family First is accused of belonging to the neo-conservative religious Right with its roots in the US, and of threatening democracy. Baird confirmed to The Australian this week that he'd received no criticism from other MPs and senators about his religious stand on the refugee bill, not even from those who bitterly attack and campaign against his harmless organisational role in a multi-faith parliamentary prayer breakfast. "You're right," he said. "They tolerate it when you are being nice to them."

But when Nationals' Senate leader Ron Boswell mounts an anti-abortion campaign or warns against accepting the Lockhart recommendations for creating human-animal hybrid embryos for research, he's dismissed as a Catholic scaremonger. Allison argues Tony Abbott should not be Health Minister because he's a Catholic, and the Democrats have criticised Howard and Peter Costello for addressing the Hillsong church.

Allison has gone further in her anti-religious crusade, establishing a God and Government website aimed at fighting the "undue influence" of religion in politics. Setting aside Allison's lack of irony in not recognising that the MPs who have taken a stand on moral grounds against the abortifacient RU486 and allowing embryonic stem cell research have lost parliamentary votes in recent years, she allows her conspiracy theories to fabricate arguments.

Earlier this week I contacted her office about a claim on the God and Government website that the Prime Minister said "immigrants who don't share Christian values should leave" Australia. Allison stood by her claims but, after two days and an angry demand from Howard in parliament that the Democrats change their website, she relented. Allison told The Australian she was sure Howard had said it and had gone further, demanding, at the height of a terrorism scare, that immigrants who didn't support Christian values should be removed from the country. Then she said Costello, "who had addressed Hillsong", had said it.

She admitted later neither had said it and that it appeared she'd made it up. She had indeed. The Democrats' confused campaign to rightly maintain a separation of church and state is being misdirected against the equal right of individuals to hold religious beliefs and use them in exercising their parliamentary duty.

After all, it is inarguable that those MPs representing religions and voting on conscience represent millions more Australians than do the dead men and women walking of the Democrats, a husk of a party reduced to an asterisk in political terms, which aggressively attacks opponents on deep moral issues on the grounds of their religion. The right to express a religious view in politics without harassment depends on which way you vote. It seems that God in politics is OK as long as he's on your side.

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Some hope for the ABC?

Credit where it's due. As a long-time critic of the ABC's endemic culture of ideological bias, I've been surprised and encouraged by just a few recent signs of sanity, balance and intellectual openness in the national broadcaster's presentation of important issues.

Not that we should get carried away. Clearly some taxpayer-funded staffers still have trouble deciding who's the most evil person in world affairs today - the Pope or George W. Bush. And clearly some still think that presenting "both sides" of a case means getting one interview with the ALP Left and another with the Greens. After all, who could forget that Four Corners report into the Tasmanian forest industry in 2004? The report, by journalist Ticky Fullerton, was so biased in favour of the greenies that the Australian Communications and Media Authority ruled it failed to meet the ABC's own code of practice on impartiality.

Nevertheless, the sensible treatment by ABC news and current affairs of this month's visit to Australia by provocative conservative thinker Mark Steyn is a good sign that senior figures in ABC news and current affairs recognise a world of ideas that extend beyond the outer ideological limits of the Ultimo/Southbank staff cafeterias. And that this is a world well worth reporting. Within a day of being in Australia, the Canadian columnist was invited as a guest on the ABC's PM, Lateline and Counterpoint programs. His discussion with fellow conservative Owen Harries at a Centre for Independent Studies event on Monday night is scheduled to be broadcast early next week on Radio National.

This has been excellent coverage - especially given that this is a media institution notorious not only for opposing intelligent conservative viewpoints but, even worse, pretending that they don't exist. Perhaps new ABC managing director Mark Scott - who has diplomatically pointed out that there's a distinction between issues that interest the ABC newsroom and issues that interest the Australian people - is changing the culture as no MD has done before. Or perhaps the new board of directors is asserting itself.

A curious recent incident involving "censorship" allegations against the ABC's Helen Razer was, in a perverse way, a further positive sign for Aunty. Writing in The Age earlier this week, ABC Triple J regular guest Melanie La'Brooy claimed the ABC's Razer had censored a guest interviewee, film-maker Bob Weis, when he tried to call ABC board member and writer/publisher Keith Windschuttle a "Holocaust denier" over his published views on Aboriginal history.

Understandably, Razer killed the Weis interview, mid-sentence, because she feared it would be defamatory: a pretty safe assessment from any responsible live broadcaster, one would have thought. Yet Razer now stands accused, in print, by staff cafeteria types of censoring "reasonable" views. But this is not censorship. If anything, the Razer incident shows that ABC broadcasters are showing more signs than ever of understanding intellectual debate in the real world. Calling someone a "Holocaust-denier" because you disagree with them on Aboriginal history, and when they are not present to defend the charge, is not debate but defamation.

But back to Steyn. I do not single out the ABC's recent coverage because I regard Steyn himself as infallible. To the extent that I'm a conservative, I rebel at the line run by Steyn, and like-minded right-wingers, that the Iraq war was a terribly clever idea that only leftist loonies could oppose. I opposed it too: any strategic threat did not justify a preventive war; no clear links were established between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden; and democracy can't be exported by military force to such an ethnically and tribally divided society in the heart of the Muslim world. Still, Steyn's general world view, including his depiction of the West's cultural, moral and social decrepitude, deserves to be heard - and the fact that his ideas have been brought to us at length by the ABC, of all the unlikely institutions, is cause for celebration.

But the ABC's main problem goes beyond news and current affairs. It's also about lifestyle and entertainment shows, where there is no charter requirement for impartiality, such as theoretically holds sway (very theoretically, you might say) in news and current affairs. Unfunny jokes about setting fire to the Pope on The Glasshouse, gay kisses on Spicks and Specks and extended Andrew Denton interviews with eccentric Christian "peace campaigners" who attack military bases are all standard in ABC entertainment.

Interestingly, it's the Australian-made and ABC-made programs that are the problem, while quality international imports like British satirical series Absolute Power, starring Stephen Fry, are not only funny, but succeed in making you think. But, like Steyn, that must also be brought in from overseas. When ABC entertainment starts breeding its own local quality, I'll give three cheers.

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Governments raid home-buyers

Crippling State Government taxes make up more than $160,000 of a $550,000 new house and land package in Sydney, official figures reveal. The staggering sum supports Treasurer Peter Costello's argument that state tax grabs are pushing the Australian dream of home ownership out of the reach of ordinary wage earners. The levies and taxes, described by Housing Industry Association managing director Ron Silberberg as extortionate, include the charging of stamp duty twice during development. Stamp duty is then levied a third time, when the buyer purchases the total package. On a $150,000 block of land, developers and builders pay:

* up to $10,000 in stamp duties at stages of development;
* $15,000 State Government roads levy;
* $15,000 state services charge;
* $120,000 in two lots of state development and infrastructure levies.

The addition of local government charges and taxes raises the cost of the block of land to $350,000 - even before the house has been built. By contrast, the only tax paid on the purchase of a $550,000 established house in NSW is the stamp duty, at $24,750.

In the past three years the price of a land block in Sydney has skyrocketed 300 per cent. The revelations come in the wake of claims by outgoing Reserve Bank governor Ian Macfarlane that State Government land release policies and upfront levies on new homes were making it harder for people to enter the housing market. Authorities want state governments to accept financial responsibility for building community infrastructure. Infrastructure levies are pushing the price of an average block up by $120,000, which is then passed on to buyers.

"It is grossly unfair," Peter Rich, general manager of house and land for property group Clarendon Residential, said. "The person who buys that house and land package is contributing to the cost of setting up the infrastructure, but the benefits go way beyond the use of that buyer. "It isn't user-pays - it's user pays for future generations."

After the GST, revenue from housing taxes provides the biggest source of tax receipts for state governments. In 2003/04, states and territories collected more than $10.47 billion in stamp duty and $3 billion in land tax. Purchasers of new homes believe they're only paying stamp duty once on the final purchase price," Mr Silberberg said. "In reality, the final purchase prices includes stamp duty levied on a range of taxes, compounded at each stage by the collection of that stamp duty".

Official figures released last week revealed that national affordability for first home buyers fell 5.3 per cent during the June quarter and average mortgage repayments topped $2000 a month for the first time.....

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18,000 patients harmed by hospital mistakes in NSW

Thousands of patients a year are being harmed by often avoidable mistakes such as being given the wrong drugs, incorrect treatment or falling down while in the care of public hospitals or other parts of the health system. An analysis, to be released today, of the first full 12 months of data from a NSW program designed to encourage reporting of so-called "adverse events" has found there were 125,000 notifications in the year to July 2006, of which 18,750 resulted in some level of injury or harm to patients.

NSW accounts for about one-third of the healthcare episodes across Australia, so on a national basis the figures could be expected to be three times higher. But because reporting events to the system is voluntary, the true level of mistakes and problems in the public hospital system is likely to be higher still. Falls represented the biggest category of adverse events, accounting for 26 per cent of all notifications or 32,500 incidents. Medication errors -- patients given the wrong drug or the wrong dose -- came next, accounting for 18 per cent of notifications or 22,500 incidents.

Incorrect clinical management -- in cases where the patients' conditions may have been misdiagnosed, diagnosis was delayed, or the wrong treatment given -- accounted for 13 per cent of notifications, or 16,250 incidents. The figures were compiled by the NSW Clinical Excellence Commission, whose CEO Cliff Hughes will present some of the findings at today's Australasian Conference on Safety and Quality in Health Care in Melbourne. Professor Hughes told The Australian that all but about 400 to 500 incidents a year resulted in minor or no harm to the patients. About 37,000 of the 125,000 notifications were of a non-clinical nature, such as lost or stolen property, or complaints over how a patient was spoken to. However, he conceded many incidents could be prevented by better hospital procedures, and said the data was being used to change the times at which some common yet potentially dangerous drugs were given.

An example was the blood-thinning drug warfarin, which is commonly used to reduce the risk of strokes and heart attacks or for patients with irregular heart rhythm. Too large a dose could cause haemorrhage, while too small a dose meant the drug would not work, Professor Hughes said. For historical reasons, such as the fact the results of blood tests ordered in the mornings would only be available in the evening, warfarin was usually given to patients at about 8pm to 9pm. But the figures showed a three-fold spike in adverse drug events at about that time. NSW was changing procedures to have the drug administered at about 4pm, when more staff would be on duty to monitor effectiveness and handle adverse consequences, he said. "That's a pretty good example of how this data can be used to drill down and look at the trends, and make changes in healthcare to make it safer for patients."

Professor Hughes said analysing the figures showed inadequate knowledge or skills on the part of doctors or nurses was linked to about 56 of the 500 or so serious adverse events. Over three times more (170) were due to communication issues -- for example, when key details about the patient's condition were not transferred to another ward or hospital department. "Any adverse event is the end-point of some deficiency in the system," Professor Hughes said.

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Crucifix banned

A Christian teenager has been banned from wearing a crucifix by her school. Jamie Derman, 17, told News Ltd newspapers she was stunned when told to remove her crucifix or she could be suspended. A Sunbury Downs Secondary College student, Ms Derman's cross is outlawed as part of the multicultural college's new rules on jewellery and dress. But churches have criticised the ban, saying it discouraged students' religious aspirations.

Ms Derman said she felt discriminated against. "I am angry, confused and upset," she said. "I honestly believe I should be allowed to acknowledge (my Christianity). Being told to take it off hurts. It cuts really deep." The cross had sentimental value because her baptism gifts were missing, Ms Derman said. "I can't understand why it is not all right for me to wear a cross," she said. "I honestly felt like crying."

Her father, Gordon, said the ban was the equivalent of ordering a female Muslim student to take off a religious head dress. "Nobody should take offence to anybody wearing a religious sign," Mr Derman said. "She has a right to wear it. I believe it is discriminatory. If we had a Muslim girl come wearing a headscarf, nobody would say `boo' about it."

A reasonable demonstration of one's faith was something Australians should rejoice in, said Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne auxiliary bishop Christopher Prouse. "People's religious aspirations need to be respected," Bishop Prouse said.

Sunbury Downs principal Brett Moore said teachers had enforced the new dress code. "It is not my decision, it is the policy," he said. "Necklaces should not be visible."

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Leftist calls for merit pay for teachers

At midnight last night, Australia lost another of our youngest and brightest teachers to the British education system. Luke Hall, 23, a maths and science teacher from country Victoria, hopped on a jet for a new life working in London. His departure and that of thousands of other teachers each year has led to calls by Labor backbencher Craig Emerson for a model that would allow all state school principals to pay teachers more money for good performance instead of seniority.

According to previously unpublished data obtained by Dr Emerson, Australia is experiencing an exodus of teachers, with 8400 teachers leaving our shores in 2004-05, twice the number who left a decade earlier. Even after taking account of foreign teachers coming to the country, Australia has lost more than 18,000 teachers in the past decade, whereas before then there had been a small net gain.

Dr Emerson says that to stem the trend, Australia must introduce performance pay in all state schools. Under his model, which will anger unions, principals would get more money to attract and retain the best teachers. "The principal could offer extra money to a teacher or teachers that the principal wants to retain, or offer extra money to teachers that the principal wants to attain from other schools," he said. "The principal knows who the best teachers are because other schools are after them."

Under Dr Emerson's plan, the state education departments would enter into an arrangement with principals to give them "greater discretion to pay the best teachers more". Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop has already proposed granting cash bonuses to teachers who produce outstanding results. But Dr Emerson opposes her model, arguing it is too bureaucratic. [Good to hear from a Leftist]

Emerson's book Vital Signs, Vibrant Society, launched in April, contains a suggestion that extra money be given to needy schools to attract teachers at higher wages, but he did not go as far as to suggest that all school principals be given more.

After six months working at Bright P-12 College, 310km northeast of Melbourne, Mr Hall will join a growing number of teachers leaving for better pay and different experiences. Mr Hall said he felt teachers were undervalued in Australia. "When I got the contracts I thought 'Jeez, that's all right'. It's much better than what I get here," he said. [He might get a shock when he finds what unruly pupils he gets sent to work with in Britain -- "inner-city" students] I think it would get more frustrating (the pay) as I go into it longer. I think that's why a lot of people tend to drop out of it after a few years."

Dr Emerson said at a time of acute skill shortages, Australia could not afford the ever-worsening exodus of teachers. Most teachers start on a salary of about $43,000 to $45,000, with NSW teachers receiving slightly more, averaging $48,000 to $50,000. The incremental rises stop after eight or nine years, reaching a top salary of about $68,000.

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Federal bias against sick men in Australia

Men are being denied free access to a cancer drug, even though it is available to female patients. Women fighting breast cancer can get the chemotherapy drug Taxotere (docetaxel) free on prescription under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. But men with prostate cancer who don't have private medical insurance have to pay almost $3000 for each treatment. Some patients need up to 20 treatments, making it impossibly expensive for many. Taxotere is the only chemotherapy drug proven to extend the lives of men with incurable prostate cancer.



Leading urologist Prof Tony Costello said 3000 men died every year from the disease in Australia. "A significant proportion would be candidates for the drug," he said. Tony Gianduzzo, Queensland chairman of the Urological Society of Australasia, agreed: "It would be nice to have it available for those men who would benefit."

They agreed men were victims of their failure to lobby as effectively as women did. "Men have been pretty poor advocates for their own cancer," Prof Costello said. "It's up to people like us who have to look after these folk to lobby for the drug to be made available on the PBS."

Taxotere was made available for breast cancer patients in 1997. Two years ago, it was discovered that it could also be used to treat men with malignant prostates - the biggest cause of cancer deaths in males. The treatment has been found to extend the lives of prostate patients by an average two months more than standard treatments, and up to two years in some cases. For breast cancer patients, the average increase was 2.2 months.

Federal Labor frontbencher Wayne Swan, who was successfully treated for prostate cancer five years ago, backed the push for the drug to be made freely available. "There is a strong case for the listing of this drug. I would give the doctors all the support I possibly could," said the Member for Lilley, on Brisbane's northside. "It certainly looks like there is a double standard in its use, and you can only assume the decision was financial, not medical."

A spokeswoman for Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott said an application by the manufacturers of Taxotere for it to be added to the PBS for prostate cancer treatment had been rejected. "It's up to them to try again," she said. "The Government doesn't go touting for drug companies to apply." The Federal Government spent $157 million in 2004-05 subsidising several breast cancer treatments.

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Taxpayers pay to re-create a swamp

Taxpayer funds will be used to buy back environmental water flows from irrigators to help restore one of Australia's most environmentally significant wetlands. Federal Parliamentary Secretary Malcolm Turnbull yesterday announced the allocation of $13.4 million from the Water Smart Australia scheme to free about 15,000 megalitres of water for the internationally recognised Macquarie Marshes in central NSW. The funding will be matched by the NSW Government, which in July allocated funds to buy back 30,000 megalitres of water for the marshes.

The marshes have become little more than semi-arid bush as water flows have dwindled through the 150,000ha of river red gums and reeds since 2001. They are the victim of competition for land and water from the nearby grazing and cotton industries coupled with drought. As the drought has worsened, the two primary producers have been feuding over who is to blame for the environmental mess. Graziers are accused of over-stocking and siphoning off water for their own use without paying for it, while cotton growers are accused of coveting an over-allocation from the upstream Burrenjong Dam.

Mr Turnbull was joined yesterday by local MP and former National Party leader John Anderson to seek a compromise that will effectively mean taxpayers fund the water flows needed to help the marshes. Mr Turnbull said the scheme would provide a model for the Water Smart program to address other environmental problems around the nation. "Our landscape is designed to cope with significant fluctuations in rainfall, but there is no doubt we are going through a drying and heating period that means we are going to have the problem of coping with less rain. We've got to be careful not to exacerbate it."

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Another crooked overseas doctor found in a Queensland government hospital

Labor was embroiled in a new health scandal with revelations that a grandmother died after an overseas-trained doctor failed to treat her properly. Lillian Shaw, 67, died last year in Lowood, west of Ipswich, after Indian-trained GP Dr Jaideep Bali failed to diagnose a perforated stomach ulcer despite visiting her three times in 36 hours. A coronial inquest also found Dr Bali had given the mother-of-seven a potentially fatal injection of morphine 2« hours before she died, and later tried to cover it up.

Mrs Shaw's family and the Coalition yesterday said the Beattie Government had to share responsibility for the tragedy. "It's another Dr Death," said Mrs Shaw's son Karhl Earnshaw. "It goes all the way up to the Beattie Government and the Health Minister. "To say we are furious would be an understatement. If you knew the agony we've been through over the last 18 months . . ."

Mrs Shaw died on the evening of January 13, 2005, two days after she began suffering abdominal pain and vomiting. She was visited at her home in Lowood three times in 36 hours by Dr Bali, a GP from the Lowood Medical Centre. Mrs Shaw's husband, Ian - described by the coroner as "an impressive and intelligent witness" - said the doctor did not examine his wife during any of the visits.

The inquest heard that Dr Bali did not make any record of having administered morphine during his last house call and continued to tell Mrs Shaw's family for some months that he had not done so.

Coroner Matthew McLaughlin concluded that Dr Bali was not a reliable witness and said he strongly suspected the GP had "deliberately been untruthful" and, initially at least, did his best to conceal the fact he had given Mrs Shaw morphine.

Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg said tragedies such as Mrs Shaw's death were "the Beattie Government's real record on health". He said: "The Government has run the health system down so much they have driven away Australian-trained doctors and are desperate to fill the void by giving substandard people licences to practise." Health Minister Stephen Robertson said he had directed Queensland Health to forward the coroner's report to the Medical Board for immediate assessment.

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That wicked sugar and salt again



Alarming amounts of sugar and salt are being added to breakfast cereals, new tests reveal. Food experts have found five popular cereals contain more than 30 per cent sugar, while some were saltier than a packet of potato chips. Even cereals that appear to be nutritious are laced with sugar and salt, according to Australian Consumers' Association food policy officer Clare Hughes.

ACA experts examined 150 brands of cereal and found just 40 of those would make a healthy everyday breakfast. "It was quite disappointing to see that a lot of cereals targeted at children weren't the type of the things we should be giving kids every day," Ms Hughes said. "Many consumers don't think about the salt content of their breakfast cereal because they may not taste overly salty." Ms Hughes said any cereal that had more than 27g of sugar per 100g was considered high in sugar. "Eight of the kids' cereals had very high levels of sugar (more than 40g)," she said. A suitable cereal would have more than 3g of fibre, less than 27g of sugar per 100g, and less than 600mg of sodium per 100g.

The Sunday Mail found popular breakfast cereal Honey O's contained 42.2g of sugar per 100g - a higher proportion of sugar than a Cadbury Picnic bar (36.1g).

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Australian safety survey kills feminist distortions

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Personal Safety Survey has finally emerged and along with its appearance, the statistical myths of feminist's victimhood and women's class oppression - particularly those relating to claims of epidemic violence against women - have immediately vaporised. Their silence is deafening.

The survey reveals a picture of what any rational person should have assumed about life simply by observation of the world around them and their day to day existence in it. The survey reveals what most people should have known or should have suspected about the facts of social violence - it is men rather than women who have the most to fear regarding their personal safety. It further reveals that the perpetrators of violence, in all their ugly forms and diversity, are not just men, and that the domain of perpetrators includes a significant percentage of women.

There are few surprises in this survey other than it seems to have been conducted with appropriate propriety. A refreshing breath of fresh air given the lies and spin of so many preceding studies and surveys conducted on this subject. But before delving into some its facts and figures, there are a couple of points that should be clarified about the survey itself.

As surveys go, it seems to have been done responsibly. It has encompassed a sizeable sample of the population - 16,300 adults in total, about 0.1% of the Australian adult population - so its findings could be seen to be a reasonable reflection of what's really going on in Australia today. That's excellent. However, for some peculiar reason, over twice as many women were surveyed than men - 11,800 women compared to only 4,500 men.

Why? Aren't men's experiences of personal safety as valid as those of women? Did they expect that women's experiences of violence would be more valid, diverse or significant? Or was it simply a matter of funding as is implied in the survey's notes? Whatever the reason for it, and there is no fair or justifiable stance that could possibly be taken for this glaring discrepancy, the question remains, why were men relegated to being less than second class respondents?

Who will provide an answer? No one, you can bet, and you can go figure it for yourself, but perhaps we can hope this imbalance will be addressed in any further surveys where the sex of the respondents is relevant.

For now though, when digesting the results, it must be realised that the men's data should be seen to be less accurate than that of the women. In fact, in some cases, reflected in the ABS tables, the data for men is so shabby that annotations have been made indicating that the data are of dubious reliability. Given the importance and far reaching social implications of this survey, this exclusion of men's experiences is a travesty of their rights as taxpayers and citizens of the nation. Especially as it turns out that men are singly the most severely effected members of society where personal safety and violence are concerned.

This treatment of men is a clear statement by the John Howard Liberal government that they see Australian men as being second rate and less than half as important as the women of the nation. Yet, in the Liberal's defense, it must be argued that they are the first government in Australia to include men in such a survey - previous Labor governments simply didn't care about the safety of men and only ever conducted safety surveys for women. That development in itself is at least some consolation for Australian men and is a positive step forward.

The other glaring concern about the production of this ABS survey was the sexist exclusion of men as interviewers. 100% of the interviews were conducted by women. The survey does point out that male interviewers were available upon request for those respondents who may have been so inclined, however, it reports that all those interviewed accommodated the default female interviewers. It is therefore important to realise that the 100% use of female interviewers could possibly have led to an underreporting of spousal and partner violence of men by females due to personal embarrassment in front of women interviewers.

Despite these sexist anomalies however - in a national survey of this significance, one could have at least expected squeaky-clean adherence to equal-sex political correctness - the survey reveals for the first time much important information about personal safety and the victims and perpetrators of personal violence. A subject, which has long been obscured by the murky fog of feminist advocacy.

This survey has revealed some very important truths about social violence and has exposed feminist lies. The following statements, derived directly from the ABS survey, are just our initial findings and a fuller investigation by readers of the finer detail is encouraged. Unfortunately, the ABS has presented its findings in a way that may not be readily interpreted by men's rights advocates in the form they are used to seeing them, therefore we have represented them, expressed in a way with which our readers will be more familiar.

Our statements below compare the freshly published data to the often colloquially quoted rhetorical statistics of feminist propaganda and remember this, these are official Australian government research figures and not some trumped up biased university faculty's data or those of some politically biased independent non government organisation. Facts - the ABS survey has revealed that -

* Men are more than twice as likely as women to be the victims of violence and are being physically or sexually assaulted or threatened at the rate of up to 2 incidents per second

* Women are not the victims of family (domestic) violence as often as the quoted 1 in 4, nor even 1 in 8, nor even 1 in 10, but actually 1 in 100

* Women are not being raped every 26 seconds, nor even every 90 seconds, as feminists frequently claim, but are in fact experiencing sexual assault - not necessarily rape - including both reported and all unreported incidents, at a rate of less than 1 per 5 minutes. This is a rate 91% less than that which feminists have previously claimed

* The ratio of female to male family (domestic) violence victims in a home is not 99:1, nor 9:1, nor even 5:1, but is actually closer to 2:1

These statements above are all calculated from the ABS survey data without corruption. They are the figures. Of course there will be some deviation from the survey compared to real life figures, just as in all studies (read the fine print of the survey) but, remember, the data for women is more than twice as likely to be accurate as it is for men and the data for men may have been tainted by the use of default female interviewers, some of whom may even have been staunch feminists, possibly resulting in underreporting of men's experience of family violence as victims.

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An interesting Leftist comment on Australia's Federal environment policies

With its strongly pro-business orientation, the Howard Government has found it difficult to gain credibility for its environmental policies. It has nevertheless made considerable headway through the use of a clever and aggressive strategy of dividing the environment movement by cultivating friendly organisations and individuals and punishing those that refuse to fall into line.

WWF (formerly the World Wide Fund for Nature) is the foremost of the friendly organisations. It is close to the Government, providing a stream of favourable commentary on its policies and bestowing several awards for the Government's environmental achievements, including three "Gift to the Earth" awards, which the Environment Minister, Ian Campbell, displays in his office. In return, the Government has been generous, sending tens of millions to the fund for various programs.

The force behind the emergence of the organisation as the leading group backing the Government's environment policy is the businessman Robert Purves. He has made a very large donation to WWF and is now its president. Purves has drawn Tim Flannery into the orbit of conservative environmentalism by funding the preparation of Flannery's book on climate change, The Weather Makers. Flannery, who came late to the climate change debate, has eloquently summarised the work of hundreds of climate scientists and his book has undoubtedly raised public awareness and understanding of the threats posed by global warming. Purves is said to have spent $1 million promoting Flannery's book, including costly backlit billboards outside Qantas Club lounges around the country.

But isn't there an inconsistency here? Why would Purves, sympathetic to the Government, spend large sums funding and promoting a book that rings alarm bells about climate change, which can only make life more difficult for the Government? The answer is that Flannery's book does not make life harder for the Government, but sends the sort of message the Government wants us to hear.

Flannery is an advocate of individual consumer action as the answer to environmental problems. Instead of being understood as a set of problems endemic to our economic and social structures, we are told we each have to take personal responsibility for our contribution to every problem. Flannery concludes his book by arguing that "there is no need to wait for government action" - voluntary action by well-meaning consumers is the only way to save the planet. "It is my firm belief that all the efforts of government and industry will come to naught unless the good citizen and consumer takes the initiative, and in tackling climate change the consumer is in a most fortunate position." He then lists 11 things concerned citizens can do to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions, urging each of us to "do the right thing" in the belief that these noble appeals will transform the market: "If enough of us buy green power, solar panels, solar hot water systems and hybrid vehicles, the cost of these items will plummet."

This is music to the Government's ears. The assignment of individual responsibility is consistent with the economic rationalist view of the world, which wants everything left to the market, even when the market manifestly fails. Yet it is at best a naive, and at worst a reckless, approach to the looming catastrophe of climate change. The world did not eliminate the production of ozone-depleting substances by relying on the good sense of consumers in buying CFC-free fridges. We insisted governments negotiate an international treaty that banned CFCs. We did not invite car buyers to pay more to install catalytic converters, the greatest factor in reducing urban air pollution. We called on government to legislate to require all car makers to include them.

When pressed, Flannery will call on government to act, too, but his consistent headline message is an appeal to consumers. Thus, when accepting a prize for his book recently, he gave a four-word acceptance speech: "Install a solar panel." Green consumerism such as that advocated by Flannery privatises responsibility for environmental decline, shifting blame from elected governments and industry onto the shoulders of individual citizens. The cause of climate change becomes the responsibility of "all of us", which, in effect, means nobody. It is obvious why a government that wants to do nothing finds such an approach appealing: it can pretend to be concerned while protecting powerful business interests.

Flannery's "firm belief" that we can be saved only if consumers take the initiative is one he shares with the ideologues of the right-wing think tanks who argue that environmental problems should be left to the unfettered market. If consumers don't make green choices then it is obvious they don't care much about the environment. But it is not just his advocacy of do-nothing green consumerism that endears Flannery to the Government. Alone among Australian environmental advocates, he has declared his support for the development of a nuclear industry. The Prime Minister, John Howard, now regularly buttresses his nuclear push by saying that even some environmentalists "like Tim Flannery" support nuclear power.

Even Howard knows it would be folly to build nuclear power plants in Australia, a fact that his nuclear inquiry will conveniently affirm. The Prime Minister's game is to provide cover for his plan to expand uranium mining and get an enrichment industry established. Flannery is now part of the climate change debate, and whether he likes it or not, has become a trump card in Howard's hand.

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Prominent do-gooder becomes further unglued

The pretensions of righteousness hide a fraud and a liar



Former judge Marcus Einfeld obtained a PhD degree from a university that has been debunked in the US Congress as a "diploma mill". Pacific Western University, which awarded one of the two doctorates claimed by Mr Einfeld, was investigated by the USGovernment Accountability Office and named in Congress in 2004 for handing out doctorates for the flat fee of $US2595 ($3413). The other doctorate is from the Century University in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is not accredited with the relevant American legal bodies. University of Sydney law dean Ron McCallum said he had never heard of the two universities, but said doctorates issued by degree mills "are not worth the paper they are written on".

Mr Einfeld, a former Federal Court judge, is facing a fraud squad investigation into evidence he gave to a Sydney magistrates court last week that allowed him to avoid a $77 speeding fine. He told the Downing Centre Local Court that at the time of the offence in January, he had lent his car to professor Teresa Brennan, who had been visiting from Florida. It later emerged that Brennan, an Australian-born academic, had died in 2003.

He will be interviewed by fraud squad detectives next week. The NSW Police State Crime Command has been called in to investigate whether he gave false evidence in the case. "Detectives attached to Strike Force Chanter have spoken with the retired judge's lawyers and now expect to interview him during the week commencing Monday, August 21," a NSW Police statement said yesterday.

In correspondence with the court, Mr Einfeld, who retired as a judge in 2001, styles himself as"The Hon Justice Marcus R.Einfeld AO QC PhD". The accountability office told US Congress that Pacific Western University sold its PhD degrees for $US2595 ($3390). It offered academic credit for "life experience" and did not require any classroom instruction, the office said. Pacific Western University, which is based in San Diego, is not accredited by the American Bar Association or the Association of American Law Schools. Century University, where Mr Einfeld says he holds a doctorate of law, is also unaccredited with the ABA or the AALS. ABA accreditation is granted to law schools only after inspections and assessments of factors including staff-student ratios, academic research and law libraries, according to the chairman of the Council of Australian Law Deans, Michael Coper.

When Mr Einfeld was invited yesterday to discuss his recent troubles, he said: "You have got to be joking. Thank you for calling. Goodbye."

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Australia's fishery protection policies must be biting at last

Forgive the pun



Indonesian fishermen are demanding the right to work in Australian waters. They said Australia's 200 km exclusion zone should be reduced to 100 km from the mainland, a report in today's Northern Territory News says. The fishermen believe they should be able to fish within sight of the Tiwi Islands. And they have claimed Australia's isolated Ashmore Reef is actually Indonesian territory.

They say their families have been working in what are now Australian waters for hundreds of years and it is unfair of Australia to stop them now. The fishermen also deny they are overfishing. "We don't know anything about that," said 32-year-old Jambrin. "We fish only to feed our families. If we don't fish, we go hungry. It's as simple as that."

The fishermen, based at Papela on the island of Roti, say about 175 boats operate inside Australian waters from their village. Mandra, 28, who spent three months in Darwin prison for illegal fishing, said the Australian Government was being "too harsh". But he said he had been treated well in jail in Darwin - the guards did not beat him and the food was "very good". "My wife and children went hungry while I was away," he said.

Lagingu, 25, spent one month in Darwin prison. "I was treated very well - Australia is a good country," he said. Lagingu said his experience would not stop him working in Australian waters again. "Give me the money to equip a boat and I will go tomorrow," he said. "There are many sharks near Australia."

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Greenie-inspired land-use restrictions under fire

State governments must release more land or housing affordability will remain a problem, Prime Minister John Howard says. Mr Howard said state governments are using the housing development process as a money-maker. "The cost of land is the problem," Mr Howard told the South Australian Liberal Party annual general meeting in Adelaide today. "Until state governments around Australia start releasing more land and stop using the development process as a method of raising revenue, we are going to continue to have a problem with the affordability of housing.

"I don't suggest that interest rates are irrelevant, not for a moment. "But if we are to have a proper debate about the cost of housing, state governments have got to face the need to release more land." Mr Howard said security for families depended on good job prospects and housing affordability. "Having interest rates at a low level are important to that," he said. "But even more important is to make sure that the ordinary economy of supply and demand are in better balance than they are at the present time."

He said unless state governments addressed the issue "we will continue to have this difficulty with the affordability of housing". "I do worry about that," he said. "I worry about the affordability of housing for young Australians, it's all right for those of riper years but it's not good for young people. "It's very important we give attention to this issue and it's very important we have an honest debate and an honest discussion about the fundamental causes of the problem."

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THE LATEST ON AUSTRALIA'S HISTORY WARS

Three current articles below:

PM takes a strong position on history teaching

John Howard has issued a personal declaration to the states that he wants reform of the teaching of Australian history in all schools and feels "very strongly" about it. Speaking a day after the national history summit in Canberra, the Prime Minister played his trump card to increase the pressure on the states - the supportive stance of former NSW premier Bob Carr.

But the states have signalled they will fight the pressure from Canberra and leading historians. South Australian Education Minister Jane Lomax-Smith said yesterday she had absolute confidence in the way history was taught in the state. Queensland, criticised at the summit for having "no prescribed curriculum" for history in its Studies of Society and its Environment course, also remained defiant. Dr Lomax-Smith said she was impressed by the knowledge students demonstrated in the area. "We teach history. It may not be called history, it may be called Studies of Society and the Environment, but I can tell you it's certainly history," she said. "It's irrelevant what you call it, whether you call it society and environment or history and geography or history."

But a paper presented to the summit by Monash University associate professor Tony Taylor reveals the "learning outcome" specified for South Australian SOSE in the senior years of high school is: "Students critically analyse continuities and discontinuities over time, and reflect upon the power relationship which shape and are shaped by these."

Mr Howard criticised the fact that there was "no structured narrative" to the teaching of schools in most Australian schools. "I think we have taught history as some kind of fragmented stew of moods and events, rather than some kind of proper narrative," he said.

Historians who attended Thursday's meeting said yesterday the summit, combined with pressure from parents, would leave the states with little room to manoeuvre if they tried to resist a return to traditional Australian history subjects in years 9 and 10. "I think the teaching of Study of Society and its Environment is on death row," Mr Carr told The Weekend Australian.

University of Wollongong academic Greg Melleuish also criticised the summit last night, saying a day was not enough, there were too many delegates and the results delivered "the lowest common denominator of Australian history". "In a way they (the delegates) threw up their hands in horror because it was becoming too hard," he told ABC's Lateline.

The summit set up a five-person working party, chaired by LaTrobe University professor John Hirst, that will develop a set of "open-ended questions", along with a chronology, that federal Education Minister Julie Bishop will present to the states as a model curriculum. "I think a lot of fears will be allayed when they see ... the approach we're suggesting, which won't take quite the form that they fear," he said.

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Our history in disrepair

The Howard Government's decision to re-establish history as a core academic discipline in all schools opens a new contest about education and rights in the battle of ideas in Australian politics. This decision is a direct response to the postmodernist and progressivist grip on the humanities in schools and universities. One consequence has been the degrading of history and the study of Australian history. The aim of federal Education Minister Julie Bishop, as she told this week's history summit in Canberra, is to "see a renaissance of Australian history in our schools".

Why is this aspiration so contentious? Why does it provoke outcry from several states and attacks from the academic community? The answer is because it seeks to overturn the prevailing educational ideology heavily identified with the Labor Party. The tactical dilemma facing Labor, state and federal, is whether to fight this reform, which is likely to have intellectual merit and public support on its side. Labor's dilemma is acute because the history debate highlights in miniature Labor's educational dilemma: that it is locked into backing producer interests (the education professionals) too often at the cost of the consumers (children and parents).

It is significant, therefore, that Opposition education spokeswoman Jenny Macklin described this week's history summit as "an important opportunity to do something lasting and positive for the teaching of Australian history". The summit had nothing to do with the laughable notion of imposing a John Howard British Empire view of Australia on our children. Nobody at the summit would tolerate such an idea, certainly none of the professional historians. It was never entertained and it was never discussed. Any claim about a return to a content-only single historical narrative is nonsense.

The communique produced by the summit enshrined the proposal that Australian history "should be sequentially planned through primary and secondary schooling and should be a distinct subject in years 9 and 10" as an "essential and required core part of all students' learning experience". The summit said that Australia's history was unique in many ways. A knowledge for students of their own nation was vital when many of our public debates invoke this history. For the record, the communique repudiated any idea of "a single official history" and affirmed that "history encompasses multiple perspectives".

The summit wanted a co-operative approach. It urged the commonwealth to work with the states and territories to achieve these changes. It was explicit about the need to carry teachers behind the project, saying that the changes had to be teachable, that they had to be doable, with a feasible time allocation within the curriculum, and they had to be sustainable. This involved "quality curriculum resources, professional learning for teachers and national profile events such as Australian History Week in schools".

One of the important conclusions was that history should be based on a "clear chronological sequence" so the big Australian stories of democracy, identity and economic progress were seen in their narrative sweep.

Summit participant and former NSW Labor premier Bob Carr, who saved Australian history as a mandatory discipline in his state, went to the core issue. "History should be taught as a stand-alone discipline," Carr said. "It shouldn't be absorbed in other subjects." Bishop put this more bluntly: "We should seriously question, for example, the experiment of mushing up history in studies of society and environment. There is a growing body of evidence that this experiment is failing our children."

That evidence came in a summit paper prepared by Monash University associate professor of education Tony Taylor. After a study of each curriculum, he concluded: "There is no guarantee that the vast majority of students in Australian schools will have progressed through a systematic study of Australian history by the end of Year 10. Indeed, the opposite is almost certainly the case. By the time they reach leaving age, most students in Australian schools will have experienced a fragmented, repetitive and incomplete picture of their national story."

This is a polite way of stating the failure. It is documented by Taylor in his analysis of each state and territory system. Herein lies the significance of this week's summit: it is bringing transparency to the system. Just as tariffs could not survive once their true cost was tabled on the bar of public opinion, so the present educational ideology cannot survive once its true nature is exposed in sunlight. This will be a long struggle....

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The new reactionaries: Education ministries are the last bastion of the history haters

The tide of postmodern education is receding in Australia. At this past week's history summit, a diverse group of thinkers and historians including Geoffrey Blainey, Bob Carr and Reconciliation Australia's Jackie Huggins issued a communique agreeing that history teaching needs to be reformed, that the subject should be taught as a separate and stand-alone course and that students learn best from a narrative, chronological approach to the past. If this sounds like common sense, it is. Yet it continues to elude most of the country's state education departments, which have spent years dismantling old history curriculums (which were far from perfect) to construct in their place a new postmodern establishment where history is sublimated within broad fields such as "Studies of Societies and the Environment", or SOSE. Just as in English courses where Shakespeare is forced through Marxist paradigms of race, sex and class, in such watered-down history courses students quickly learn to parrot approved ideas. Thus in opposing the narrative teaching of history as a stand-alone subject, education ministry bureaucrats have become an elite gang of establishment reactionaries, barricading the door against parents and historians revolted at what children are taught today.

While the state education ministers of Queensland, South Australia and West Australia all vociferously opposed what they believe is commonwealth interference in their respective patches, it was Queensland's Rod Welford who best summed up the arrogance of this group. Complaining of the summit's "educational vandalism", the Sunshine State's education minister said: "To talk about history as a stand-alone subject, as a list of events, is an educational absurdity." But if anyone is guilty of educational vandalism, it is Queensland's curriculum developers. Students in Years 4-10 spend just 60 hours a year on SOSE. There, history must compete with a laundry list of other "studies" that fall under the SOSE umbrella ranging from politics, sociology and anthropology to environmental sustainability, gender and peace. Similar outrages are committed in virtually every other state and territory by bureaucrats keen to protect their fiefdoms.

Speaking at the summit, John Howard was quick to point out that the reform is not about creating an "official" history. Nor should it be. But what could be wrong with teaching, as Gregory Melleuish lays out in today's Inquirer section of The Weekend Australian, a narrative of the country tracing our development from penal colony to free society to a federation and democracy? This is not about denying negative aspects of our past, as suggested by the witless wags of yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald. As this newspaper has repeatedly argued, knowledge of history is important for individual students and for the nation as a whole. Insisting that it be taught as a stand-alone subject is not an imposition, it is common sense. Those in the education industry who disagree should consider just whom they are in business to serve.

Above is an editorial from "The Australian"

AUSTRALIA'S HISTORY WARS: UPDATE

Three current articles below

States told to reinvigorate history teaching

Three state governments risk losing billions in schools funding after dismissing the finding of a summit of historians that recommended postmodern subjects be replaced with a traditional history course. The history summit communique foreshadowed a massive shift in the teaching of history, as well as a new level of commonwealth interference in state and territory education systems.

But the Queensland, South Australian and West Australian education ministers yesterday dismissed the need for a stand-alone subject. Apart from NSW and Victoria, the states and territories have replaced stand-alone history offerings with cross-disciplinary, outcomes-based subjects with titles such as Studies of Society and its Environment. Queensland Education Minister Rod Welford said it would be "educational vandalism" for the federal Government to force on the states the separate study of history. "To talk about history as a stand-alone subject, as a list of events, is an educational absurdity," Mr Welford said. "It will do absolutely nothing to students' understanding or interpretation of their place in the world."

Speaking on behalf of the 23 participants in the event, held in Canberra yesterday, former NSW premier Bob Carr said: "History should be taught in our schools, in Year 9 and 10 especially, as a stand-alone discipline. "It shouldn't be absorbed in other subjects. It should be taught as history." Urging state and territory governments to join in "a nationwide revival in the teaching of Australian history", the summit communique said that "the study of Australian history should be sequentially planned through primary and secondary schooling and should be a distinct subject in years 9 and 10. This would be an essential and required core part of all students' learning experience to prepare them for the 21st century".

The summit, also attended by historian Geoffrey Blainey and the co-chair of Reconciliation Australia, Jackie Huggins, formed a five-member working group to develop a standard Australian history curriculum, including a chronology and set of "open-ended questions", which federal Education Minister Julie Bishop will urge the states and territories to adopt. If they do not co-operate, Ms Bishop has refused to rule out using the upcoming quadrennial funding agreement, worth about $13 billion in commonwealth money for state schools, to force their hands....

Launching the summit, the Prime Minister threw down the gauntlet to the states and territories, announcing he wanted them to reinstate history as "astand-alone subject in our school system". "We want to bring about a renaissance of interest in and understanding of Australian history," Mr Howard said.

Yesterday's summit was called following concerns raised by Mr Howard in January that the orderly teaching of Australian history had been "replaced by a fragmented stew of themes and issues". Rejecting the current approach, the summit said "development of history study needs to be firmly based on a clear chronological sequence of key events spanning indigenous presence to recent decades".

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Leftists grumble that the new history courses might be politically biased!

The have the hide to complain about replacing Leftist bias with facts

History is set to become compulsory in Australian high schools. The debate now is whose history is it? The one-day History Summit in Canberra ended yesterday with an agreement for the development of "a clear chronology of events" shaping Australia. The summit agreed history should be a stand-alone and "essential and required" discipline for Years 9 and 10. And otherwise reluctant students will be encouraged by the possibility of a $100,000 prize.

Prime Minister John Howard made the surprise announcement of a new history prize as he addressed the summit yesterday morning. The "Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History", judged by academics, will be for a for a "substantial written work or a documentary or film". The prize and the summit are part of a long-running bid by the ruling Coalition to reshape the history curriculum, which it believes has been dominated by the political Left.

Mr Howard denied he was advocating a regression to a more nostalgic historical narrative, which celebrates the achievements of colonialism and lessens the emphasis of Aboriginal dispossession. He told the summit, attended by academics Greg Melleuish and Tony Taylor - who will flesh out recommendations on curriculum improvements - that history students needed a solid foundation from which to work. "I do not believe . . . that you can have any sensible understanding and, therefore, any sensible debate about different opinions of Australian history unless you have some narrative and method in the comprehension and understanding of history," Mr Howard said. "How you can just teach issues and study moods and fashions in history, rather than comprehend and teach the narrative, has always escaped me."

Education Minister Julie Bishop denied the government was trying to create an "official" version of Australian history. But Labor, the Greens and the Democrats fear the Government is about to re-fashion Australia's past into a reflection of its own world view. "The teaching of history is very important in our schools but the last thing we want is John Howard pushing his ideology down the throats of our children," Opposition education spokeswoman Jenny Macklin said.

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Let's understand our Western institutional heritage

Excerpts from the speech of Prime Minister John Howard, at the history summit yesterday

We do want to bring about a renaissance of both interest in and understanding of Australian history, and that must involve a greater focus on the disciplined teaching and understanding of history in Australian schools. My assessment is that it varies enormously around the country. In some parts of Australia, the school curriculum has a welcome emphasis; in other parts I don't believe it does.

I want to make it very clear that we are not seeking some kind of official version of Australian history. We're not seeking some kind of nostalgic return to a particular version of Australian history, although I do not believe, and the Government does not believe, that you can have any sensible understanding, and therefore any sensible debate, about different opinions of Australian history unless you have some narrative and method in the comprehension and understanding of history. How we can just teach issues and study moods and fashions in history rather than comprehend and teach the narrative, have a narrative, has always escaped me.

I don't think you can have a proper teaching and comprehension of Australian history, of course, without having a proper understanding of indigenous history and the contribution of the indigenous experience to Australia's development and the Australian story. Equally, I don't believe that you can have a proper understanding of Australian history without some understanding of those movements and attitudes and values and traditions of other countries that had an influence on the formation of Australia. And obviously we need an understanding of those institutions we inherited from the British and the other European influences on Australia.

We need to understand the influence of religion in the formation of attitudes and development in Australia. We obviously have to see Australia as heavily influenced by the Western intellectual position, the Enlightenment and all that's associated with it.

I don't want to give The Australian newspaper a free plug, but I know Education Minister Julie Bishop in her speech last night (see Cut & Paste yesterday) quoted that (opinion page) article by Roy Eccleston about the experience of his daughter in having been taught in the American school system and been taught a little bit about some of the formative events in American history. And whilst I don't necessarily suggest we pick that up root and branch and transplant it, obviously we have our own way of doing it, but I thought it made a good point.

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Permissive doctor regulation rejected

Surgeons insist that a trainee neurosurgeon will never operate again despite a medical board clearing the way for his return to medicine next year after being convicted on child pornography charges. A Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria inquiry into Abraham Stephanopoulos found his proclivity for downloading and storing "large amounts of child pornography" - including images of children between the ages of four and seven - did not make him a pedophile.

The 31-year-old doctor was suspended from practice for being caught with having 1400 pictures at his home, in his car, and on computers at Monash Medical Centre, in Melbourne's southeast, of naked children. The board said he would be able to return to medicine in March next year, but that he would be banned from treating patients younger than 18 for the following eight years.

But the Victorian president of the Australian Medical Association, Mark Yates, attacked the board's decision yesterday, saying it would bring the medical profession's image into further disrepute. "The board is there to protect the public, it says, but it's not there to maintain the good standing of the profession necessarily," he told The Australian. "Clearly this person has acted in an unethical way, has brought the profession considerable discredit."

Dr Stephanopoulos received a five-month suspended jail sentence in July last year on three charges of knowingly possessing child pornography between 2000 and 2003. A spokeswoman for the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons said the 31-year-old would not be able to practice surgery in Australia again. "He's been dismissed from our training program," she said.

Dr Stephanopoulos justified his obsession with child pornography as an avenue for coping with a heavy workload, the medical board said in the 44-page report of its inquiry, published on its website on Wednesday. It found his reason for saving the downloaded pornographic images onto his computer was because it was "exceptionally easy - just one mouse-click". "He emphatically denied that he has an attraction to children," the board inquiry said. "He noted that he also saved images of adult males and made the point that he also had no attraction to them. "He emphatically denied receiving any sexual gratification from the illegal images which he viewed and downloaded onto the hard disc on the work computer." But the board ruled the misconduct was "abhorrent". "By his addiction to such material ... he provided encouragement to the producers and purveyors of illegal material that violates the innocence of children," it said. "As a consumer of their product, he has taken his place in the chain of their criminality."

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Farmers campaign to reverse knee-jerk Greenie bans

Farmers in the Nyngan, Cobar and Tottenham districts of western NSW are celebrating a win in their campaign to sway public opinion about the clearing of native invasive scrub in order to have native vegetation regulations changed. A national current affairs television program aired a story filmed in the far west yesterday morning which challenged claims by green groups that land clearing is damaging the environment.

The chairman of the Regional Community Survival Group, Doug Menzies, says it was a real victory for farmers. "I think it should go a long way to debunking the myth that western New South Wales or the so-called hot spot for clearing in western New South Wales is not tearing the environment apart or anything and quite the contrary, in fact," Mr Menzies said.

The Opposition spokesman on Natural Resources, Adrian Piccoli, says he is hoping the revelations about flaws in land clearing policy will mean a return to science-based decisions. He says locking up land that is now being invaded by woody weeds was driven by emotion because the Labor Government has had to mould policy to secure Green preferences. Mr Piccoli says the story on the Sunday program has now taken the debate to a wide metropolitan audience. "Farmers have had a lot of difficulty getting the message across to the media about the good things that some of those farm practices achieve and what are some of the negative consequences of current government policy," he said. "I think the Sunday program illustrated that this sentimental notion that you can just lock up areas of land and it will return to some sort of pristine environment is not in fact correct."

Mr Menzies says his group will maintain its community-funded PR campaign until next year's state election. "I think it's going to take us a little while, the Greenies have been working on this for 30 years so we're not going to catch up overnight," he said. "But we've got to keep plugging, keep telling the truth, you know, we've got problems that we can demonstrate but that's something the other side doesn't have, they've got to rely on rhetoric and nonsense."

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