Criticism of Leftists an 'attack on freedom' -- again

The first thing any Leftist does when someone disagrees with him is to question the motives of the other person. Does the other person work for "big oil" etc.? But do they howl when the same is dished out to them! No suggestion that they work for "big Labour" is allowed. And you CERTAINLY must not mention that the Leftist "researcher" concerned is an avowed admirer of Mao Tse Tung! It all shows just how rigid, dogmatic and elitist Leftists are. They really believe that their simplistic theories and demonologies are the whole truth and that any criticism of them is illegitimate

Personal criticism of a researcher by Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey was "extremely silly" and an attack on academic freedom, University of Sydney vice-chancellor Gavin Brown said yesterday. Speaking at a forum organised by the National Tertiary Education Union, Professor Brown said Mr Hockey had "played the man and not the ball" in attacking Sydney University's John Buchanan and other researchers over their findings that some workers were paid less under Work Choices legislation.

"It is legitimate for a minister to criticise conclusions but it is extremely silly to simply smear on the fact that the study was partly funded through the union movement," Professor Brown said. "I believe that universities have a sacred trust to do a critique of society. "I certainly think there should be no undue pressure placed upon researchers. Academic freedom is under attack."

Mr Hockey said the work was that of "former trade union officials who are parading as academics". His criticism of Dr Buchanan was echoed by opinion writers in The Australian, who said he lost objectivity by being "overtly political and passionately militant" and by telling unions they should follow Mao Zedong's teaching and "retreat to their strongholds and protect their militant cores".

Dr Buchanan, director of the university's Workplace Research Centre, said he was not alone in being attacked. "Anyone in the IR field who has stuck their heads up lately has been brutally treated by the Government," [If he were living in his beloved Maoist China the loon would know what brutality meant] he said.

Fellow academics Rae Cooper, Marian Baird, Barbara Pocock and David Peats had also felt the lash of criticism. [How AWFUL for them!] "If they can't write without being vilified, then it is a very sad state of affairs," Dr Buchanan said. He said the attack on personalities obscured the debate on the biggest change in labour laws in 100 years. "This scares researchers," he said. "If I can't say things freely as an individual because it might affect my professional (standing), that limits free speech."

He said the "lowest act" came on October 6 when The Weekend Australian published a front-page story on a speech he had given at a pub in 2005 in which he had warned that leftists would be "locked up" and "crushed" under the Howard Government's IR laws [Which was a false prophecy if ever there was one]. "That (story) ruined my Saturday ... but what made me happy was not one news source contacted me for comment (to follow up the story)," he said.

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Deadly airline OK for Australia?

This is just politics. Must not offend Muslim Indonesia

GARUDA will be allowed to continue carrying tens of thousands of Australians to Bali and Jakarta despite Federal Government warnings that Indonesia's aviation standards do not measure up. Garuda, along with all Indonesian airlines, was banned earlier in the year from using European airspace by European Union aviation authorities concerned about their abysmal safety record.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) yesterday ducked calls for a ban locally amid widespread dismay at how badly the Garuda pilots got it wrong in the Yogyakarta crash that killed five Australians. The authority said it would not review the airline's access to Australian airspace until it had read the full crash report.

Both sides of Australian politics urged the Indonesians to consider laying charges against the pilots who ignored 15 alerts before the crash on March 7. Transport Minister Mark Vaile warned that safety standards in Indonesia were below those in Australia. "Australians travelling overseas should understand that that level of safety doesn't necessarily exist in every country across the world," Mr Vaile said.

Garuda carries about 80,000 passengers to Bali every year, with daily flights from Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Darwin.

CASA tried to downplay any threat to Australian lives, saying Garuda had not put a foot wrong since the March crash. [Big deal!]

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Your government WON'T protect you

It cannot even protect vulnerable children. 100 kids die despite calls to DOCS

More than 100 children died in NSW last year despite the fact they or their families had been reported to the state Department of Community Services in the three years before their death. This figure, to be released in the NSW Ombudsman's annual report on Friday, has remained almost constant over previous years, despite the department receiving $1.2 billion of additional funding since 2002. While Ombudsman Bruce Barbour did not release the exact figures contained in the report, he did confirm yesterday that recent trends relating to these deaths were set to continue. This means that about 30 of these 100 children died in suspicious circumstances or as the result of neglect or abuse, while one in 10 was murdered.

"We continue to see examples of multiple reports to DOCS where there is, in our view, an inadequate or no assessment made of risk to the children," Mr Barbour said. "DOCS closes many cases on the basis of competing priorities or on the basis of resource issues. "We still have concerns that cases were closed that should not be closed."

The failure of DOCS to adequately investigate all children reported to it has been highlighted by the death of two-year-old Dean Shillingsworth, whose body was found in a suitcase in Sydney's southwest. Dean's mother, Rachel Pfitzner, was charged with his murder and is due to face court in December. Dean's father, Paul Shillingsworth, was released from jail yesterday. It had been expected he would be released temporarily for his son's funeral, but he was instead granted general parole.

The Australian revealed yesterday that Dean's family was referred to DOCS by the police as early as February last year, while the department has confirmed a number of subsequent calls were made to its Helpline.

Embattled NSW Health Minister, Reba Meagher, who was responsible for the department until March this year, denied yesterday she or her staff had been contacted about Dean. The current minister, Kevin Greene, told parliament that of the 286,000 calls regarding children at risk made to DOCS in 2006-07, "each and every one of those reports was assessed" at the department Helpline. "None of these reports could reasonably be assessed that the child's life was in danger," he said.

DOCS's annual statistical report for 2004-05, however, reveals that of more than 140,000 calls to its Helpline that were judged to require further assessment that year, it was carried out in only half of those cases. Mr Greene told parliament DOCS had improved since then, but it was impossible to guarantee against another death. "I can advise the house that one in every 15 children is reported to DOCS - it's a shocking figure," he said. "Of all those hundreds of thousands of calls, there is no foolproof way of identifying which case could sadly end in death," Mr Greene said.

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A blatantly ideological judiciary

Most senior judicial appointments in Australia have always been made with overwhelming regard for legal ability and experience. That convention has now been decisively broken down by a Leftist government

Strident Howard government critic and human rights lawyer Lex Lasry QC - famous for defending international drug traffickers and terror suspects - has been installed as a judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria by the state Government. The Victorian Attorney-General, Rob Hulls, yesterday came under fire for his latest round of judicial appointments which - aside from Mr Lasry - also includes a former ACTU assistant secretary, Iain Ross. The promotion of Dr Ross - a former ALP member and union official - to the County Court was immediately attacked by the Liberal Party as the latest in a long line of political appointments.

And Mr Lasry's appointment to the bench of the Supreme Court has ruffled feathers within pockets of the Labor Party concerned about the number of "unilateral" civil libertarians being appointed to the bench. Mr Hulls has previously installed three former presidents of civil liberties group Liberty Victoria to the bench, with left-wing lawyer Gregory Connellan the latest to become a judge.

Overall, he has made sweeping changes to the judiciary in Victoria - appointing more than half of the 214 judges since he became Attorney-General in 1999. Even one of his former chiefs-of-staff, Fiona Hayes, was made a magistrate this year, and one-time Labor candidate Stuart Morris served as head of the Victorian Civil and Administrative Appeals tribunal before resigning earlier this year. Several of Mr Hulls's appointments, including County Court head Michael Rozenes and Court of Appeal judge Frank Vincent, were members of a group called "Lawyers for Labor", which backed Mark Latham's election bid in 2004.

After a career as a trade union official, Dr Ross served for 12 years as a vice-president of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission before becoming a partner at law firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth. Opposition legal affairs spokesman Robert Clarke attacked Dr Ross's appointment, saying he had spent only a brief period as a solicitor and that his judicial experience was questionable. "His appointment seems to owe as much to his union or industrial relations background as to his qualifications for the bench," he said. "It's worrying that an increasing number of judicial appointments are coming from a strong Labor or union background under Rob Hulls."

However, Mr Clarke endorsed the appointment of Mr Lasry, who was described by one of his legal peers yesterday as the leading criminal advocate in Victoria not already on the bench. Mr Lasry has been a successful and high-profile criminal lawyer who has represented terror suspect Jack Thomas, two of the so-called Bali Nine drug smugglers, as well as convicted heroin trafficker Van Nguyen, who was executed in Singapore. He has assisted several royal commissions and inquiries, including the Costigan royal commission and the inquiry into the 2003 Canberra bushfires.

He was once a member of the ALP but has recently criticised the party's stance on refusing to stand up for Indian-born Queensland doctor Mohamed Haneef, pushed out of Australia despite the farcical collapse of charges of aiding terrorism levelled against him.

A spokeswoman for Mr Hulls said Supreme Court and County Court appointments were advertised and he always consulted widely before taking recommendations to cabinet.

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Leftist leader rejects homosexual marriage

This is in line with his general adherence to the status quo but it may also show that he still retains some sensitivity to what the workers want -- instead of being totally in the grip of the Left intelligentsia

KEVIN Rudd has rejected homosexual marriage, insisting the institution should be reserved for men and women. But the Labor Leader has also insisted on equal legal rights for homosexual couples in all other areas, including superannuation and inheritance.

Mr Rudd today took his campaign for the November 24 election to younger voters with an appearance on Sydney radio 2Day FM and heard controversial broadcaster Kyle Sandilands demand gays be allowed to marry. Mr Rudd: "Look I know it's not a popular opinion on this program and with you, but I actually believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. "But when it comes to the other legal discriminations which exist, we're committed ... to making sure that all those things are taken away. "But on the institution of marriage itself our view is this _ it's an institution between a man and a woman and that's just been our traditional continuing view.''

Asked what he would do if one of his three children way gay, Mr Rudd said he would "love them equally''. "When it comes to respecting same-sex relationships I understand the absolute important of that _ absolute importance,'' he said. "But on the institution of marriage I think it's important that we articulate a clear view on that. "But I don't think at all that people in such relatiobships are in any way second class citizens at all.''

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Lance the bloated beast of hospital bureaucracy

Even better to abolish the bureaucracy altogether and send the money direct from the Treasury to the hospitals

In another bout of me-tooism Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has picked up John Howard's proposal to encourage retired nurses back into the public hospital system by declaring, yet again, whatever you can do I can do better. Confronting the chronic shortage of hands-on nursing staff in the country's public hospitals, a problem encouraged by the introduction of university training for nurses, Howard has announced plans to establish 25 hospital-based training schools for nurses. Howard has also foreshadowed plans to replace state government management of the 750 public hospitals around the country with community-based boards - something that Rudd has rejected, claiming it will add another tier of bureaucracy in the system.

This is rubbish. It is in fact what is urgently needed to attack the bureaucratic monster created by the state Labor governments which is sucking the life out of our public hospital system. It is a sad fact that only about one in six people employed in the public health system is engaged in face-to-face patient care. The bulk of the remainder are involved in what are essentially administrative areas. Hospital funding needs to be directed away from the back office staff and towards the areas where it is needed most - direct patient care.

You can see where the money goes when you look at the plethora of bureaucratic bodies that administer public hospitals in NSW alone under the state Government's Health Department. The charter for these Area Health Services sounds simple - even altruistic: to keep people healthy; provide the health care they need; deliver high-quality health services and manage these services well; and to provide sound resource and financial management with skilled and motivated staff, and so it goes on. Pity it's not working.

And it will be interesting to see if the parliamentary inquiry into a string of patient care and administrative crises at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital, which the Iemma Labor Government has reluctantly agreed to hold, will address the real problem of a bloated and dysfunctional bureaucracy. Royal North Shore is one of 20 hospitals situated in the area from Sydney's north shore to the NSW central coast covering a population of 1.3 million. These are administered by the Northern Sydney Central Coast Health Service, which is one of eight similar health service administrative bureaucracies overlording all public hospitals and health care facilities in the state through a complex web of sub-services and committees.

The NSCCHS has a 50-member executive structure operating under a chief executive, with a total staff, including casuals, of 15,700. The 2005-06 annual report by the NSCCHS gives an insight into how this bureaucratic system staggers along in the state. It is clear that an enormous amount of time is spent in strategic planning to identify areas of need and improve efficiencies through seemingly endless reviews. But to what end? For example, detailing its workforce strategies, it says, in part, that it was unlikely the medical and nursing workforce would be enhanced significantly in the next five years. And the report shows that about 35 per cent of emergency department patients had still not been admitted to a hospital bed within eight hours of active treatment starting.

In pointing to a major challenge in clinical sustainability the report acknowledges "a lack of critical mass" in a range of services offered at many acute facilities such as intensive care, emergency services and maternity. It goes on to state that this situation "has the potential to produce many undesirable effects such as inefficiencies, quality and safety concerns, unsustainable rostering demands for current staff and insufficient volumes for teaching purposes". It seems to have concluded that the best way to address this was to instigate a five-year review plan.

But as one senior specialist told The Australian this sort of approach to the crisis in public hospitals was like sending a fire engine to a burning building and then initiating an inquiry into how the fire started before rescuing those trapped inside. Another specialist recounted the story of a senior nurse in a NSW baby health care centre who wanted to change one line in a brochure given to new mothers to make it more intelligible. The process took 12 months and was the subject of innumerable conferences and committee meetings before the change was finally agreed to.

Rudd, like Howard, has identified the extent of the hospital crisis. That is why he announced plans on Friday for a federal Labor government to spend $600 million to help reduce the waiting list for elective surgery in public hospitals. But simply pouring more money into the hospital system in the fond hope that it will go where it is needed it is like filling a bucket full of holes: it's an endless and pointless process. And by the time these funds have gone through the administrative sieve there is not enough left to maintain the sort of health care standard the community deserves.

Howard's move to restore the traditional system of individual hospital boards is a sound start to dealing with waste and mismanagement which has flowed from the over-bureaucratised structure of hospital administration established under the Labor state governments. If the Liberals and Labor are serious about addressing this disgraceful waste of tax dollars and resources they should commit to a national audit of public health care spending to identify where the areas of greatest need are and make sure that commonwealth funding is not sidetracked away from these.

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Leftist State government blames hospital boss for keeping the doors open

They say he should put his budget first, not patients

The boss of the Princess Alexandra Hospital said it was overworked as he slammed Government claims his overspending had led to crucial patient services being cut back. As Premier Anna Bligh yesterday blamed clinical chief executive David Theile for bed and waiting list closures, Dr Theile sent an email to staff explaining how they were recently praised by Queensland Health for efficiency and performance. He said the PA had handled trying conditions "extremely well" in recent months, frequently saving southeast Queensland's health system from "crisis".

A budget blowout over the first quarter forced 40 of the hospital's 892 beds to close and 10 per cent of operating theatre procedures to be cancelled. "For an increased expenditure of 2.1 per cent, we delivered 7.8 per cent more crucial clinical services," Dr Theile said in the email obtained by The Courier-Mail . "When all others were on bypass, we kept our doors open by ad hoc setting up of beds in radiology and theatre recovery. "Please be assured of my pride in this organisation and its achievements, and continue to deliver with the same professionalism in these times of restricted activity. "The administrative efficiency of our delivery has been acknowledged by Queensland Health."

The revelations come less than a week after Ms Bligh praised the progress of the Government's $10 billion health action plan in State Parliament. In a thinly veiled swipe at Dr Theile yesterday, Ms Bligh rejected more funding for the hospital, saying taxpayers were "entitled to see strong management ensuring that budgets are maintained". "The PA, like every other hospital, has to live within its budget," Ms Bligh said. "The PA Hospital budget this year has increased by $33 million. That is a very significant increase that will buy extra and additional services."

The war of words comes after the Government blamed Dr Theile on Friday for the closures. Acting Health Minister Rod Welford distanced the Government from the overspending, saying the PA was managed by a clinical chief executive and not a bureaucrat. "The decision about managing the work flow of surgery is a local hospital decision made by the most senior medical officer in the hospital, the CEO," Mr Welford said.

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Diabetes treatment from pig cells?

Promising but early days yet. Rejection problems might not be so bad as pig valves (politely called "tissue valves") are routinely used to replace faulty human heart valves -- which also makes the bans on this work extremely stupid

A RADICAL pig cell treatment being tested by an Australian drug company has raised hopes of a cure for diabetes. A Russian woman injected with pig cells four weeks ago has not needed the regular insulin injections she had relied on to keep her type 1 diabetes in check. A second patient, a Russian medical student, has seen his insulin injections cut by 40 per cent in the four months since receiving the pig cell transplant. Melbourne scientists have been conducting the trial in Moscow's Sklifasovsky Hospital because animal-to-human transplants have been banned in Australia until 2009.

Living Cell Technologies medical director Prof Bob Elliott said the early trial results were stunning. "These early-stage results have exceeded our expectations," Prof Elliott said. "Both patients are doing very well, and we hope to continue to see such positive results as the trial progresses."

The middle-aged woman and young student are the first of six Russians to be implanted with DiabeCell, made from neonatal pig islet cells collected from the pancreas of disease-free pigs bred on a remote New Zealand island. Cells are then put in coated capsules and injected into the abdominal cavity of the type 1 diabetes patients. The pig cells are intended to produce insulin, mimicking a healthy body's natural production of the hormone that controls blood glucose levels.

Pig cell treatments have been tested before, but Prof Elliott's 12-month trial is the first to use the cells without the need for drugs to stop the human body rejecting them. About 520,000 Australians have been diagnosed with diabetes, but just as many don't realise they have the disease. Type 1 diabetes, in which the pancreas does not produce insulin, accounts for 10 to 15 per cent of all cases. It is usually diagnosed in childhood or early adulthood. Current treatment centres on daily insulin injections and regular tests to check blood glucose levels.

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Surprising BBC impartiality

In debates between political opponents, the media almost always say that the Leftist "won". The Australian media certainly did so in reference to the debate last night between Prime Minister Howard and challenger Kevin Rudd. But not the BBC. Their report below:

Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his opponent, Labor leader Kevin Rudd, have faced each other in a TV debate as the election approaches. The two sparred over economic policy, climate change and troop levels in Iraq in the live, 90-minute clash. Both politicians grew more irritable as the debate went on, but the BBC's Nick Bryant in Sydney says neither was able to land a knock-out blow.....

The two also sparred over Mr Rudd's commitment to pull Australian forces out of Iraq by the middle of 2008, even if it damages relations with the Bush administration - a commitment Mr Howard argues will embolden terrorists.

But our correspondent says neither man was able to claim outright victory in the debate. Current opinion polls suggest Mr Howard, who is seeking a fifth term in office for his Liberal-National coalition, trails his Labor rival by between six and eight percentage points, with five weeks to go before election day.

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The notorious DOCS (child welfare agency) of NSW under fire again

THE horrific death of a toddler mauled by dogs will be raised in State Parliament this week amid claims the Department of Community Services ignored cries for help. As new figures show the number of child abuse cases is rising, the Opposition will demand answers from Community Services Minister Kevin Greene. Mr Greene told Friday night's budget estimates hearing that one in 15 NSW children was now reported to DOCS, but he deflected an Opposition question about Tyra Kuehne's death.

The four-year-old died in July 2006 after she was attacked by three dogs in a neighbour's yard in Warren, in the state's north-west. Her violent death was the catalyst for the tightening of the state's dog laws.

Opposition community services spokeswoman Katrina Hodgkinson said the minister's response to the tragedy was inadequate. "I wrote to him on September 3 on behalf of Tyra's father, who is seeking answers about his daughter's death," Ms Hodgkinson said. "It is simply not good enough for the minister to say he will seek extra information when he already knew about the case. The minister cannot plead ignorance. Given the lack of answers, I am definitely going to pursue this in Parliament this week."

Ms Hodgkinson said she was sickened by the details of Tyra's case. "This little girl was in need of attention and she slipped through the DOCS cracks," she said. "She needed to be taken out of that situation and be put into care. "It really is up to the minister to make sure the children in this state are cared for properly regardless of where they live."

A spokeswoman for Mr Greene said an ongoing DOCS investigation meant he could not comment. Tyra's distraught dad Peter, of Windsor, said yesterday that the loss of his "little princess" followed a series of family tragedies that included the loss of their home and all their possessions, when another child accidentally caused a fire. He said he had made repeated attempts to find out from DOCS the status of its investigation into his daughter's welfare.

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And another failure by DOCS

The boy, Dean Shillingworth, appears to have been shaken to death by his mother, Rachel Pfitzner -- who only had occasional care of him. He was normally cared for by loving grandparents. The boy was Aboriginal and the father is in jail -- and child abuse is very common in Aboriginal families -- so DOCS probably gave up on the case from the outset. Given the usual intractibility of Aboriginal family problems, that is perhaps a little understandable but it is inexcusable that DOCS overlooked the fact that the boy had loving grandparents who were anxious to do all they could to protect him



THE NSW Department of Community Services (DOCS) will review its handling of the case of a two-year-old boy whose body was found in suitcase in a pond in Sydney's south-west last week. It emerged yesterday that the boy had previously been referred to DOCS. NSW Community Services Minister Kevin Greene said today he could not say how many times DOCS had been contacted about the boy or in what period of time the calls were made. The 26-year-old mother of the boy has been charged with murder after his body was found in a pond in Ambarvale.

"There were calls to the department's helpline about this tragic child," Mr Greene told ABC Radio today. "Some of these cases are extremely complex where there are various parents involved, different relationships and often different surnames. "We'll be doing a review of all the processes and procedures that were undertaken ... but there will also be an internal investigation by our department because there has been a death of a child, and certainly the ombudsman will undertake a review of the case."

An ombudsman report from 2005/06 said 190 DOCS case workers dealt with 240,000 calls a year relating to 110,000 children - roughly 1200 calls and 600 children per caseworker. "Seventy five per cent (of calls) come from police, health workers or also school teachers," he said.

Mr Greene said the DOCS helpline service manager had said the service could cope with the number of calls it received. "In the last five years the NSW Government has committed an additional $1.2 billion so we can provide over 1000 extra case workers over the last five years,'' he said.

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Obesity epidemic among children is 'overstated'

A STUDY has revealed that the obesity epidemic among children has been grossly overstated, and that the problem is concentrated among poorer families and some ethnic groups. Fairfax newspapers say the study shows children from low-income families are twice as likely to be obese as children from high-income families, and their risks are increased if they are from Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, Aboriginal or southern European background.

Based on a national sample of 8500 children aged six to 18, the study of health, fitness and fatness is the first of its kind to measure social class and ethnicity. Jenny O'Dea, associate professor of nutrition and health education at the University of Sydney, will present the findings today at the Community and Change conference, hosted by the university's faculty of education and social work. Dr O'Dea said the child obesity rate is "not rocketing out of control" and appears to be levelling off. "There's a suggestion the whole of Australia is at risk of obesity and that's been blown out of the water by this research," she said.

The big increase in childhood obesity had occurred between 1985 and 1995, when the rate grew from 1.5 per cent to 5 per cent. By 2006 the proportion of obese children had grown slightly to 6.3 per cent. "High-income Anglo children are at very low risk of obesity compared to low-income children from Aboriginal, Islander or Middle-East backgrounds," Dr O'Dea said. The main health risk for obese children was developing type 2 diabetes, she said.

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Global warning to Prof Tim Flannery

A satirical comment from Tim Blair

JUST like our precious planet, Tim Flannery's reign as Australian of the Year is quickly coming to an end. And what a topsy-turvy, harum-scarum reign it's been! Flannery's endured crushing lows (complaining in February about "a real attempt to marginalise me and what I say") and soaring peaks (reacting in June with, as he described it, "lofty disdain" to mockery from NSW Treasurer Michael Costa). And all the while, he's kept up an international travel-and-lecture schedule such as would stomp down a carbon footprint deep enough to conceal Thunderbird 2.

You didn't get that sort of drama with the likes of Patrick White (Australian of the Year, 1973) or Sir Gustav Nossal (2000). Then again, Pat and Gus weren't in the business of predicting the coming apocalypse (well, maybe Pat was, but nobody ever read any of his books to find out; for all we know, he was listing Melbourne Cup winners in there). Gus mainly occupied himself in 2000 quietly writing songs for a then-unknown comedy team called The Chaser and inventing Crazy Frog ringtones. [Sir Gustav Nossal is in fact a distinguished medical scientist and also something of a do-gooder]

No such distractions for Flannery, who in between marginalisations and loftiness and pushing his books in the US - just this month he's appearing in North Carolina, Virginia and New Mexico - stuck determinedly to telling us we were screwed. And not just us; on the Ten Network's brilliantly low-rating National Carbon Test, Flannery distressed the two or three children watching by telling them "it's likely to be too late for the polar bear". That's our Tim; always ready to fun things up for the kids with a joke or a quip. He puts the "pal" into "palaeontologist"!

I wonder if he does birthday parties. He sure provides gifts. Journalists requiring a few lines to support their theories about the End of Times need only turn to Flannery, or dial up his latest ABC appearance. Flannery, the original Energizer Glummy, just keeps on delivering the major-league sad long after all the others have quit.

The Melbourne Age's Kenneth Davidson - who, speaking of sad, looks like a Soviet drone who's just been told production at Official State Girder Factory No. 5 has fallen 14 per cent below optimum - quoted Flannery last weekend: "Professor Tim Flannery said the International Panel on Climate Change 'synthesis' report for 2007 due next month would show that greenhouse gas levels already in the atmosphere have 'the potential to cause dangerous climate change' . . . "Flannery said in an ABC interview: 'We are already at great risk of dangerous climate change. It is not next year or next decade - it is now'."

Interestingly, people always cite Flannery on the magnitude of the problems we're allegedly facing but they rarely mention any of Flannery's suggested solutions. That's because Flannery, when he's in solution mode, switches from sane-sounding (inasmuch as we've heard so many other science-type people say the same things) to Ranting Guy with Theories About the Role of Television Antennas in Hair Loss. Further into the ABC interview Davidson quoted, here's Flannery's idea for saving the planet from global warming:

"I think that what needs to happen is we need to put the people who own those tropical lands in direct contact with the people who want to buy their climate security. And we could do that using these amazing things we've got now, like Google Earth. "You can imagine, you know, Googling 50 villages in Papua New Guinea who've got some carbon to sell, who want to regrow their forests. You could buy it over eBay. A lovely thing that keeps everyone honest." Hmm. "Regrowing forests" in Papua New Guinea isn't exactly creative or labour-intensive work. It's mainly a passive profession, sort of like being a wave builder at Bondi, or a volcano eruption engineer. The human element isn't hugely significant. Chopping forests down; now, that's going to take a bit of effort. Some tools would be required, for a start. Chainsaws and the like. But growing them? I can take care of that from Sydney by the simple tactic of not going to Papua New Guinea and chopping them down. Send your carbon simoleons my way, Professor. Saving the planet here.

Policing this enterprise might be difficult even if I'm not involved. Who's going to check that our lovely forest regrowers (in their internet-connected remote villages) are being honest? In fact, how could you tell that you're actually dealing with a genuine highland chieftain/carbon entrepreneur? I bet those old "villagers" getting us all hot in forest regrowth carbon websites and asking for money turn out instead to be nothing but Swedish babes in lingerie having pillow fights. The internet's like that. Always letting you down. It's only a few months until Tim Flannery hands in the Gilded Wallaby Sceptre, or whatever it is Australians of the Year carry around to indicate their elevated status. Who will be chosen next? My (serious) pick: Noel Pearson. More likely: Oh, I don't know. David Hicks [former Guantanamo Bay inmate], probably

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This is the sort of thug that the Labor party intends to put in Federal Parliament



This is one of several who have now been unmasked. How many more of their numerous union candidates are this type?

A LABOR candidate has been forced to resign on the eve of Kevin Rudd's crucial televised election debate with Prime Minister John Howard. Labor campaign headquarters forced the candidate for the Queensland seat of Maranoa, Shane Guley, to quit after allegations he acted as a union thug, assaulting one of his managers and routinely intimidating co-workers. Mr Rudd has pledged to adopt a "zero-tolerance" policy towards "violence or thuggery in any workplace."

The resignation follows a concerted campaign by John Howard in which the Prime Minster has claimed Labor is controlled by the unions and that Mr Rudd will be powerless to stand up to them if he wins government. The claims have been backed by an advertising blitz pointing out that 70 per cent of the Opposition frontbench have union backgrounds.

Queensland State Secretary Milton Dick confirmed the resignation. Mr Guley's letter read: "Dear Milton, I write to tender my resignation as the endorsed Australian Labor Party candidate for Maranoa. I take this step in response to the re-surfacing of allegations made against me more than six years ago. These matters were dealt with by the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission, and my claim was upheld. However, I take this step today so that my candidacy does not distract in any way from the election of a federal Labor Government. Yours sincerely, Shane Guley". Mr Dick said in a statement: "Nominations for Maranoa will be re-opened on Monday and we expect to have a new candidate in the following days."

Mr Guley is a former AMWU delegate who held a number of union positions and worked for Queensland Rail at the Rockhampton Railway Workshops. It's now been revealed that, in 2001, he was sacked after years of persistent violent behaviour that included:

* Assaulting a manager in a pub in front of several work colleagues;

* Making a threatening phone call to the same manager, saying: "I will f****** get rid of you, you're No 1 on my hit list ..."

* Threatening to call in his political connections in the Queensland Labor government to get rid of people on his "hit list";

* Threatening and intimidating a work colleague who had made allegations against him of bullying and harassment;

* Intimidating investigators brought in to investigate employee complaints against him, and;

* Allegedly making vexatious and vindictive allegations against other employees in response to their legitimate complaints.

Following two Queensland Rail investigations confirming Mr Guley's repeated bullying and threatening behaviour, he made an unfair dismissal claim to the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission. The QIRC upheld his claim on a due process technicality but found he had engaged in repeated bullying and intimidation of co-workers. It refused his application for reinstatement on grounds that his conduct "was unacceptable and inappropriate behaviour to the extreme."

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Labor Party's committment to Kyoto would be costly

Labor's goal is to reduce Australia's CO2 emissions to 60 per cent of 2000 emissions by 2050. This sounds fine in the abstract - but what might it mean in reality? In 2000 Australia's total emissions were about 550 megatonnes in CO2-equivalent terms. So Labor's policy translates into a target of 330 megatonnes of emissions by 2050. In the absence of any policy interventions, business-as-usual greenhouse emissions are projected to grow strongly. Indeed, the Australian Greenhouse Office's best-case scenario projects that even with abatement measures in place, total emissions will be about 700 megatonnes by 2020 -- which is more than double Labor's 2050 target.

By 2050, Australia's emissions will probably exceed 1000 megatonnes. In other words, achieving Labor's target could easily be equivalent to eliminating more than 100 per cent of current activities that use fossil fuels. All of this in order to reduce global temperatures by exactly nothing.

The other part of Labor's climate change policy is to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. This is a strange objective, given Kyoto is basically dead in the water. The Kyoto Protocol limits emissions to percentage changes from a 1990 baseline. The biggest problem is not with the targets themselves, but the process by which emissions cuts are supposed to be achieved. The ratifying countries were forced to agree to their Kyoto targets without knowing what the costs of meeting those targets would be. This is like agreeing to spend the rest of your life with someone you have only just met during a one night stand. It is simply not a credible or sustainable commitment.

As a result, most Kyoto-ratifying countries have failed to significantly abate their greenhouse emissions and reach their targets. And why should they? There is nothing unreasonable about exceeding emissions targets by significant amounts when you are unsure of the costs of meeting those targets. Any other course of action would be sheer folly.

But Kyoto has very little to do with reasonableness. Just ask the New Zealanders. Our friends across the ditch signed up to Kyoto in December 2002, even though a 2001 National Interest Analysis on the case for ratifying the Kyoto Protocol could not decide whether moderate global warming would be detrimental or beneficial for New Zealanders. Helen Clark's Government ignored this information and committed her country to a program of reducing emissions over the 2008-12 period to 1990 levels or to take responsibility for the difference. In practice, that means hundreds of millions of Kiwi tax dollars will be paid to former Soviet Union countries, which have been lucky to accumulate carbon credits.

Actually, luck has had little to do with it. The surest way for a country to reduce greenhouse emissions and accumulate carbon credits is to implement policies which wreck the economy - something at which many former Soviet Union countries excel.

The New Zealand Treasury estimates New Zealand's Kyoto liability currently stands at NZ$708 million. This doesn't sound like very much, but this guess is more than double what it was two years ago. At that rate of increase, at the end of the first Kyoto commitment period in 2012, New Zealanders will owe about NZ$4.2 billion - or about NZ$1000 per person. So, in a nutshell, the main effect of Kyoto will be for New Zealand taxpayers to subsidise bad economic policies by politicians in the former Soviet Union. Does Kevin Rudd have similar plans for Australia?

On the one hand, ratifying Kyoto and committing to a process which has unknown costs seems to be a very strange policy, particularly for someone who constantly bombards us with claims that he is an economic conservative. On the other hand, history suggests Labor has a strong record of reducing greenhouse emissions. The only prime minister who has managed to do it was Paul Keating in the early 1990s, when he engineered "the recession we had to have" and our emissions levels plummeted. Perhaps this is exactly what Rudd has in mind.

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Bishop too fat for surgery

In general, discrimination on the basis of weight sounds to me no different from discrimination because of skin colour. But I have to agree with the doctors here. The vast weight of the man would undoubtedly be a factor in why his knee has collapsed and leaving the weight as is could well make a replacement knee largely futile

A BISHOP who has dedicated his life to the church has been refused surgery by a Victorian hospital because he is too fat. Bishop R.J. Gow of St Mary's House of Prayer, at Elaine, west of Ballarat, is in desperate need of a left knee replacement. "It's my praying knee," the good humoured priest said. "I'm having a lot of trouble walking and standing at the altar."

Three months ago the clergyman, 66, was referred to an orthopedic surgeon. "The surgeon said the waiting list at Ballarat Hospital for that surgery was two years, but he was now doing surgery at Bacchus Marsh hospital so to go there," Bishop Gow said. "I made an appointment, but within five minutes of them seeing me they said "unless you lose weight you won't be having surgery here". Bishop Gow, who stands six feet tall, weighed 147kg (330 lb.). Since that first appointment he lost 15kg in 11 weeks and is now 132kg. "They told me to lose 17 kilos before I came back," he said. "But when I came back they told me I'd have to lose another five before I see the anaesthetist on October 26. "The only way I can do that is to starve myself."

Bishop Gow said he was annoyed at the level of discrimination towards overweight people. "This is a hospital discriminating against people who are overweight," he said. "They're excluding people and I'm not the only one. I heard them saying to the person in front of me that they would also have to lose weight before an operation. "I questioned her about it and she said it was hospital policy. She showed me a copy of minutes of a meeting where it was stated they would only operate on patients who had a BMI (body mass index) of below 40. "This is discriminatory. Obesity is a disease caused by pyschological or physical factors - people don't get fat because they want to. "But what really annoyed me was I had a look around the hospital and there were empty beds. What's happening with our health care?"

Bishop Gow, who has spent more than 20 years working with the poor, sick and disadvantaged, said his knee was deteriorating and he was in a lot of pain. "But I haven't private health insurance and the operation would cost thousands of dollars," he said. Bacchus Marsh Hospital's Acting CEO David Grace said the hospital had a policy on surgery for the obese "for patient safety. We use an objective BMI assessment. "If someone is higher than the cut-off point of 40 they're considered a high anaesthetic risk and we wouldn't allow treatment." He would not comment on a specific case, but said he didn't consider the practice discriminatory. "It's about patient safety," he said.

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Australia's education wars

Education unions and left-wing education academics cling to proven failures in education theory, despite years of evidence demonstrating the errors of their thinking. They reject, for instance, the research-based evidence showing that "whole language" dominated reading programs do not work for a large proportion of children.

The power of sensible thinking by political leaders in holding off barbarian ideologues can be seen in the influence of the former NSW premier Bob Carr, who saved NSW from the worst educational excesses suffered elsewhere, particularly in Western Australia, where a decade-long experiment in outcomes-based education has just been abandoned.

But while governments control the purse strings they have little effect on deep-rooted cultural prejudices in organisations such as the ABC and teacher unions. In the battles for hearts and minds, they are outclassed by ideological guerillas, who can only be vanquished from within. At last, however, there are encouraging signs from teachers that the civil war may have begun.

Take the English Teachers Association, which claims to speak for all English teachers. Its most honoured operative is former president Wayne Sawyer, an associate professor at the University of Western Sydney, who has helped develop the NSW English curriculum and is editor of the journal English in Australia. It was his editorial that blamed the Howard Government's 2004 re-election on the failure of English teachers to properly educate their charges in critical theory.

And in the last edition of the International Journal of Progressive Education, Sawyer tackled the discredited "whole language" theory of teaching reading in an article entitled Whole language and moral panic in Australia. He claimed "moral panic" was behind a "media campaign . to demonise whole-language methods" of teaching reading, despite the fact the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy (which I served on) spent a year examining the worldwide evidence about the best way to teach children reading and came down on the side of systematic, direct instruction in phonics.

If you ever wondered how the teaching of reading could be politicised, the journal is instructive, having devoted its entire June edition to whole language, including "the multilayered dimensions of social justice activism involved in whole language teaching". The articles read like a long confession from the stubborn practitioners of a movement which has condemned so many underprivileged children to illiteracy, while professing to care about injustice.

In an article about teaching sixth graders in Grover Cleveland Middle School, New Jersey, the authors "search for ways to disrupt the pre-service [trainee] teachers' traditional notions of teaching, learning, and curriculum . We strive to help our pre-service teachers understand that their roles as teachers include a political dimension . "Too often," they complain, the teachers "fall back into the direct instruction model with which they feel comfortable."

Naughty teachers, trying to teach rather than indoctrinate their students. But Sawyer and his acolytes at the association have so provoked those they purport to represent they have sparked a grassroots protest movement of teachers across the country. In Western Australia, one group of teachers became so fed up at having to implement outcomes-based education, a favourite of the English Teachers Association, that they managed to have it overturned this year. Their lobby group PLATO, People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes, persuaded the West Australian Government to reinstate the traditional syllabus, concentrating on literacy and numeracy.

Now a group of secondary English teachers from Catholic, government and independent schools in Western Australia have formed the English Teachers Forum, the ETFWA, in direct opposition to the English Teachers Association, because they are "concerned about the misrepresentation of English teachers and their views regarding the implementation and the efficacy of the English Course of Study". In a letter to the association, the breakaway group wrote: "The ETAWA must realise that the collective voice of the majority of English teachers simply cannot be ignored any longer. It is not just a matter of numbers. It is also a matter of fairness." The English Teachers Forum has also managed to have Western Australia's year 11 and 12 curriculum reviewed by a "jury" of impartial classroom teachers, with the result the West Australian Government agreed to rewrite the courses by 2010.

In NSW, there is similar grassroots unhappiness with the English Teachers Association, judging by a letter I have received from an anonymous secondary English teacher of 30 years. "The problem in NSW English teaching is not the syllabus. It is the way the syllabus has been interpreted by the English Teachers Association of NSW and its transformation from a wonderfully principled, supportive professional association to a site of left-wing political activism and ideological posturing .. "My dismay comes from a jettisoning of our literary heritage for an obsession with critical literacy and an approach to English based on overt critical theory. "I look through my past issues of [the association's journal mETAphor] and ask myself what has happened to the aim of fostering a love of literature in our children? What has happened to the great works of literature?"

That journal is full of articles about postmodernism and such literary gems as: "Power Struggles in the Big Brother House" and "Earnestly Queer: Responding to Oscar Wilde's The Importance of being Earnest Through the Critical Lens of Queer Theory" by Mark Howie, the president of the English Teachers Association. It is no good for Australian students that a body promoting extremist ideology should have come to represent their English teachers. But it seems their teachers have finally had enough. Hoorah for them.

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Another Muslim serial rapist

Gets only nine years. If a Muslim serial rapist (such as Bilal Skaf) gets a really long sentence, the legal establishment turns itself inside out to overturn the sentence -- though they don't seem to have been able to do anything about the disgusting Hakeem Hakeem -- so I suppose this is the best we can hope for

A man has been jailed for at least nine years for raping four women and attacking two others. Sedat Avci, 21, of Broadmeadows, terrorised women in the northern suburbs between April and August 2005. Most victims were walking alone in the evening and were subjected to terrifying sex attacks. Avci had pleaded guilty to seven counts of rape.

County Court Judge Jeanette Morrish said yesterday Avci had waged a "cowardly, aggressive and violent campaign" on vulnerable women but believed his prospects of rehabilitation were good because of his youth and his return to the Muslim faith. She sentenced Avci to 16 years in jail, with a minimum of nine. The maximum term for rape is 25 years.

Crime Victims Support Association president Noel McNamara slammed the jail term and said he planned to write to the acting Director of Public Prosecutions, Jeremy Rapke. "That's 1.5 years each for six women who have got life sentences -- it's a terrible disgrace," Mr McNamara said. "It's a great insult to the victims and the community." Mr Rapke will review the case.

Avci was just 19 when he violently assaulted women in Coburg, Coolaroo, Brunswick and Hawthorn. One victim was about to drive off when Avci asked to use her mobile phone. He then forced his way into her car and repeatedly raped her. In a victim impact statement read in court, the woman said her life had been turned upside down. "I will have to work every day of my life to make sure this doesn't define who I am," she said. A victim who was raped twice while walking her dogs said the memory of the attack haunted her.

Avci also pleaded guilty to a count of aggravated burglary and another charge of robbery after attacking a pregnant woman in front of her children, aged three and four.

The serial rapist was arrested in August 2005 after police matched his fingerprints to those on a newspaper at the scene of an attack. A psychiatric report revealed Avci did not have a mental impairment at the time of the attacks, but was using amphetamines. Avci threatened most of his victims with a knife and in one case told a woman who tried to escape he would shoot her if she tried again.

In a letter of apology to his victims, Avci said he had "no good excuse" for what he had done. "To say sorry is not enough to heal the heartache and pain I have caused to your lives and your families' lives," he said.

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Hope for the innumerate

A teaching program that helps students "trust their heads" to recall basic mathematical facts has turned students failing maths into some of the best performers. The QuickSmart program, developed at the University of New England at Armidale in northern NSW, targets students failing national numeracy benchmarks who enter high school struggling with basic arithmetic and who often still count on their fingers.

John Pegg, who developed the program with Lorraine Graham, said QuickSmart was a last chance for students who needed to be proficient in basic maths before the end of primary school to develop the skills and proficiency required in high school. "These students use inefficient and error-prone approaches to learning and recalling information," he said. Professor Pegg, director of the National Centre of Science, ICT and Mathematics Education for Rural and Regional Australia, said students likened the improvement to "trusting their heads", meaning the answer to a sum like 7x5 came immediately.

The program received funding last week worth $200,000 from the federal Government and is being used with 800 students in 60 schools in NSW and the Northern Territory, including remote indigenous communities, where the rise in test scores is more than double the improvement in the average student.

At Orara High School in Coffs Harbour on the NSW north coast, about 70 students in Year 7, with about one in three having failed to meet minimal national numeracy benchmarks, were then taught using QuickSmart. Learning support teacher Lyn Alder said the school had a large proportion of students from low socio-economic backgrounds and about 11 per cent were indigenous. When they sat the NSW numeracy test earlier this year, the improvement in their results had almost doubled compared with the rest of the state, while the indigenous students' marks more than doubled compared with other indigenous students.

Ms Alder said about 40 per cent of the students jumped two levels in the four-level assessment system, from low to proficient or elementary to high. "It's given students the confidence to put up their hands and answer questions in class," she said. "They may not always be correct but they're prepared to have a go, and when you're dealing with students in a low socio-economic school, that's not always the norm."

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Mad ideas crack me up

Andrew Bolt comments on the latest Greenie commandments

NOT a month goes by without even more crackpot schemes to save a planet that shows no sign of sickness - and we are the ones to suffer. It's official: global warming zealots really do want humans to go rot to "save" the planet. Barrister Robert Larkins, founder of the Victorian Environment Defenders' Office, this week confirmed what I always suspected. No more cremations, he demanded. Hell is hot enough without us cremating our globe as well. As he puts it: "Cremation produces carbon dioxide and pollutants that go directly into the atmosphere."

And what does all our wicked carbon dioxide do, children? Repeat what you've been taught, please: That's right: it is killing your world. It is causing blistering heat. It is causing seas to drown whole islands. So, plop the dear departed in a cardboard box and offer his body to the species of life that best symbolises sacred Gaia: feed him to . . . a tree.

Oh, yes. Heed the sermon of "natural burial advocate" Roger Short, a Melbourne University professor: "Being buried at the base of a tree is such a simple way to go . . . it's the best sequester of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that's ever been invented, powered by sunlight and giving off oxygen as a waste product."

Such a comfort to the grieving. Feed humans to the trees to save the world. Says it all. After all, what is there left that we must not give up to "save the planet"? We're told by the Greens to "use alternatives to air conditioner", by Greenpeace co-founder Paul Watson to fly not in jets but "solar power blimps", by Greens leader Bob Brown to scrap coal-fired power, by Rough Guides founder Mark Ellingham to "travel less", by the Brumby Government to shower shorter, and by the Howard Government to use only stark-light low-energy globes.

You'll be sweaty, smelly and stuck at home lit like a toilet block with only a dole cheque to cover your soaring power bills. But that's OK -- it's to save the world, a cause so great that we must even sacrifice our children.

Absolutely true. Britain's Optimum Population Trust this year said having a large family should be regarded as an "environmental misdemeanor". Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery has called for our population to be cut by up to a third, and ABC radio even ran a lecture by a green zealot suggesting we "put something in the water, a virus that would be specific to the human reproductive system and would make a substantial proportion of the population infertile."

Not a month goes by without even more crackpot schemes to make us suffer to save a planet that shows no sign of sickness, or gratitude. Here's some newspaper reports from the last two weeks alone.

Item: More kangaroos should be slaughtered and eaten to help save the world from global warming . . . Greenpeace . . . urged Aussies to substitute some red meat for roo (or vice versa, actually) to help reduce land clearing and the release of methane gas. Now, even Skippy must die to save the planet from gassy cows?

Item: Plans to switch 90 per cent of milk supplies to long-life UHT have been put forward by (British) Government officials. They claim the move would help curb carbon emissions. Drink foul coffee after eating your roo -- for the planet's sake!

Item: Flat screen television manufacturers will have to become greener after the release of a (Howard Government) discussion paper suggested many plasma and some LCD TVs could be banned for being energy hungry.

Remember how Mao Zedong once demanded the Chinese peasants melt their cooking woks for scrap iron to feed the revolution? How we laughed at such a brainless gesture, which just left people even worse off. Now, the laugh is on us. And, again like Mao, we force even children to do useless work to show their faithful hearts. Here's a news report on an Adelaide child care centre which has just been given an certificate for forcing children to work for the planet:

"They help their carers by planting seedlings in the yard, recycling plastic containers and hanging out the washing on the line, rather than using the power-hungry clothes dryer." Work, children, work! It won't alter Adelaide's weather by a zephyr, but the planet demands your sacrifice, even though it hasn't actually heated since 1998 and may soon cool.

Of course, you'll console yourself with the thought that nobody could ever force such schemes on you. Not in a democracy. But the faithful have thought of that problem, as Professor David Shearman, an assessor with the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, explained this week on ABC radio.

"Do you believe that climate change can be arrested under our own sacrosanct system of liberal democracy?", he sneered. We voters would never agree to the "solution" to global warming, and "this condemns democracy".

Shearman, a medico, had a better idea: "If you were a patient in the intensive care unit, would you wish each decision made authoritatively by a medical expert or by a democratic committee?" So, feed democracy to the trees, too! To save the planet! And I can only ask: save the planet for what? It sure isn't being saved for humans, or even Skippy. So for whom?

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MORE OF THOSE GREAT GOVERNMENT HEALTH SERVICES

Three current articles below:

Negligent NSW public hospital staff doomed baby boy

GRIEF-stricken Fatima Abdallah should be celebrating her baby boy's four-month birthday this weekend - instead she is mourning his death and left wondering how a Sydney hospital failed to diagnose her son's life-threatening heart condition. Marwan Yahya died on June 19, five days after being sent home from Liverpool Hospital despite showing signs of a serious problem.

NSW Health has launched an investigation but his heartbroken mother contacted The Daily Telegraph yesterday desperate for authorities to explain the bungle. "It's been four months and I still haven't been told anything," a distraught Ms Abdallah said yesterday. "I keep calling the hospital but they brush me off and tell me to wait. I have a feeling they just want this to go away."

The first-time mum knew something was wrong with her little boy just hours after he was born. Marwan was blue around his mouth and fingers, breathing faintly and, as the hours passed, he refused to eat - just laying in his cot. Ms Abdallah said she asked nurses what was wrong but was told his condition was "normal". "I didn't enjoy those first few days with him because I was so worried. I knew something was wrong. I felt like they were treating me as if I had no idea," she said.

Her worst fears were confirmed when the two-day-old infant was sent home and started having seizures because his brain was starved of oxygen. After rushing back to Liverpool Hospital, Ms Abdallah and Marwan were transferred to the Children's Hospital Westmead, where tests revealed he had hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Doctors told the family that, had the condition been detected at birth, Marwan could possibly be alive today. "They had booked him on a flight to Melbourne where the operation is performed but when they found out how severe his brain damage was, there was nothing they could do," Ms Abdallah said. "We were told to say goodbye to him and they turned off the machines."

The harrowing ordeal follows a litany of hospital scandals that have embarrassed Health Minister Reba Meagher. South Western Sydney Health Service apologised to the family when they met with them yesterday. A health service spokeswoman said the disease that claimed Marwan can be "difficult to detect at birth". Ms Abdallah said she could not comprehend how doctors or nurses at Liverpool could have missed her son's condition. "He may still have been alive today if someone had listened to me," she said.

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Man dies after old ambulance breaks down

Plenty of money for bureaucrats but no money for new vehicles

A MAN has died after paramedics from a broken-down ambulance were forced to run almost two blocks to try to revive him in Melbourne's southeast. Ambulance Employees Australia (AEU) general secretary Steve McGhie confirmed a 56-year-old man died from a cardiac arrest before paramedics could reach him at his Elwood home last night. Mr McGhie said an ambulance broke down about two blocks from the house about 6pm (AEST), forcing paramedics to run with life-saving equipment, including a defibrillator. But the man's heart had stopped by the time the paramedics arrived.

"The vehicle had 160,000 on its odometer - it should be retired ... even though the Government has assured Victorians that they are safe and secure," Mr McGhie said. "The ambulance had power failure and they couldn't keep it running. "They grabbed the defibrillators and the oxygen equipment and ran to the house. "They tried to resuscitate the man at the scene but were unsuccessful."

The death follows a bitter dispute between the Metropolitan Ambulance Service (MAS) and its members' union over "unsafe" vehicles. Paramedics last week said the MAS threatened them with $6000 fines unless they use the vehicles, which have exceeded their agreed service life of three years or 150,000km. About 45 Mercedes ambulances had exceeded their agreed lifespan, Mr McGhie said.

Mr McGhie called on Victorian Health Minister Daniel Andrews to get new ambulances on the road, saying it "was a sad state of affairs in Victoria" if paramedics are forced to run to save their patients. "This is the sixth incident in the last two weeks and the Government has to step in," he said. "They've got to get more vehicles."

Tim Pigot, spokesman for Mr Andrews, said it was an operational decision by the MAS of how they managed resources. "We have more than doubled funding for ambulance services across Victoria since 1999," Mr Pigot said. "This has resulted in an extra 738 paramedics and 101 ambulances on Victorian roads. "Victoria has the safest and best ambulance system in Australia." Metropolitan Ambulance Service spokesman James Howe said the service was investigating the incident.

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Inert bureaucracy incapable of dealing with the sort of family problems they are set up to deal with

More "child welfare" destructiveness. They should sack all the Left-indoctrinated social workers and employ experienced mothers instead -- who would have learnt some commonsense from experience and who should at least be a lot less intimidatory. If the mother below had REALLY been a druggie, they would have had the kid back with her straight away. That is the firm rule of social workers worldwide -- because it shows how "non-judgmental" they are. Accusing normal middle-class families of "witchcraft" and the like is fine, however

All Michelle wants is what most mothers take for granted. To be able to tuck her seven-year-old son tightly into bed every night with a kiss and a fond "sleep tight". But for five long years, that has not happened often. For Michelle is the mother of Cameron, the autistic boy whose plight of being trapped for five years in an inappropriate respite centre for severely disabled and disturbed people in Hobart was raised in the Tasmanian Parliament on Thursday.

After a public furore yesterday, the State Government announced last night that Cameron would finally be leaving the Lutana facility where he has lived most of his young life this weekend to live with a foster family. The Government's Director of Children Services, Mark Byrne, said on Thursday that despite four years of trying, it was not possible for Cameron to live with his own family. Human Services Minister Lara Giddings wrote in a letter to Opposition Leader Will Hodgman in March that "after many efforts to support Cameron in his home environment" his mother had acknowledged "he could not return home as she was unable to care and support him".

It is these sort of official judgments and comments that make Michelle distraught, bewildered and angry. "I'd move heaven and earth to get Cameron living here with us," a tearful Michelle said yesterday. "There's not a day that goes by that I don't wish he was here with all of us. "And I've never said I won't have him. I just want him home."

The first Michelle and her partner knew about the uproar over Cameron's plight was when she looked at the newspaper yesterday morning. She could not believe what she read. First, that letters expressing dire concern about her son and his future had been circulating between ministers and within high levels of the Government for the past 12 months, without her being told. Second, that the Government was claiming Cameron's mother did not want him to return home. And finally, that allegations were being made that she was somehow a "troubled mother" with a dysfunctional lifestyle and a drug problem who had given Cameron a horrific start to life and who then rarely visited him while he was in care.

Michelle and her partner claim nothing could be further from the truth. It is why yesterday morning they rang Mr Hodgman -- who highlighted Cameron's predicament in Parliament this week after 11 months of government inaction -- and then got in touch with the Mercury. They wanted to tell their side of the story. And it is a very different one to that portrayed.

Instead of being a tale of abandonment and a callous lack of caring by a little boy's mother, it's a story of how battling families can become so worn-down and demoralised by government bureaucracy, bullying and inertia that they feel they no longer have any rights or say about their own child. Mixed in with that is a sorry saga of government departments failing to communicate with each other. And of a mother, fearing judgments were being made about her every time she visited her son or met Child Protection case managers, developing a reluctance to interact with government officials and disability workers about her own aspirations and wishes for Cameron.

But amid the sadness and lack of communication, there is also hope. Hope instilled by a close-knit Glenorchy family with little money but lots of resilience, desperately longing for nothing more than to have Cameron back living in their midst, alongside his four brothers and sisters. A shiny new boy's bicycle sits in the backyard of the red-brick home on a steep hill. It's the longed-for bike that Michelle and her partner gave to Cameron last weekend for his seventh birthday, when he came home for an afternoon visit after a birthday party organised by staff from the Lutana home at Hungry Jack's in Glenorchy. All the family were there to see Cameron, including his sister and brother. And there was the new bike, a big chocolate mudcake covered with candles -- and plenty of love and excitement.

A weepy Michelle shows photos of Cameron, a beaming smile on his face as he tried out his bike surrounded by family and friends. "We all love him to bits, he's such a gorgeous fantastic kid," Michelle's partner said. "Sure, he can be a handful, but Michelle's a great mother and she adores that kid -- we all do. "All this about him having troubled family life and Michelle having a drug problem, it's all just rubbish."

Michelle says she has never been on drugs or had a drug issue. She doesn't deny when she left Cameron at Lutana aged just under two that she was at her wit's end. He had just been diagnosed as autistic, she had a tiny baby and older boy to cope with too, her partner had just left her, and she was clinically depressed. Just after putting Cameron into respite care, for what his mother hoped would be just a short-term stay, she had a nervous breakdown and tried to commit suicide by overdosing on pills. But since then, and since moving in with her partner to his Glenorchy home four years ago, life has become much more settled for Michelle and her extended family.

Cameron, a bright little boy who loves nothing better than curling the hair of visitors, is at Glenorchy Primary School, while his brother is a budding soccer star. Michelle has just got a part-time job working in a canteen, while her partner is a pensioner while he waits for a knee reconstruction next week. "We've always been battlers, but the kids come first," Michelle's partner said. "It's like that when Cameron comes to stay -- we take him out fishing on the boat or take him driving in the four-wheel-drive -- we'll do anything to help our kids."

Michelle angrily denies she has not visited Cameron for six months at a time and disputes court documents that say she has refused to collect Cameron or "engage with (departmental) services (staff).". Instead, she tells a story of not being offered help. Of not being told about support systems that were available -- which she has since been offered in droves since yesterday when Cameron's case was made public. "It's not as if I ever said that `OK, he's autistic, I'll dump him here and someone else can deal with him'," Michelle sobs. "But you just feel after a while that you are banging your head against a brick wall; that the department is stretched to the limit and doesn't seem to have the funds or the services they need to have to help people like me or Cameron."

The big issue for the couple is really as much about public housing as getting more support to cope with an autistic child. They say they cannot have Cameron back with them while they live in their Glenorchy home surrounded by steep steps, footpaths, fast cars and a little back garden. "Ideally, we need another government house that is a bit bigger and out of town on a bigger flat block, where Cameron can ride his bike and play, without me having to watch him 24 hours a day," Michelle said. "I've never said I don't want Cammy, just that this house is too dangerous for him to live in."

The family have never been offered a combined case management session with a public housing representative and a disability services or child support worker. Last night, Michelle was told that a foster family had been found for Cameron to live with immediately. At first tearful, she then conceded it was probably a good thing in the short term for Cameron, if only to get him out of the inappropriate Lutana centre. But after the fuss of the past day, Michelle and her partner are determined to get Cameron back living with them in the long term, and for regular access visits in their home while he remains in foster care.

Mr Byrne said he was reviewing all of Cameron's case and was absolutely prepared to "re-engage with the family" if they wanted to be involved. Michelle said: "All I can hope is that out of all these half truths and lies told about me and my family in the past day, that it is all for Cameron's good in the long run. "I don't want empty promises -- I've had enough of them -- but if we can get a more suitable house and some help with Cameron and then get him home, that's all I could ever want."

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Red in more ways than one

Background: Julia Gillard, the Deputy Federal leader of the Australian Labor Party has red hair. The rather nauseating picture below shows her cosying up to Australia's most famous former union leader, who looks distinctly wary. Pic of peacenik Cindy Sheehan with Jesse Jackson (who also seems unmoved) included for comparison. Such "liberated" women!



Comment by Andrew Bolt:

What you were matters less than what you are, so it can't hurt Julia Gillard to admit her past -- and reject it. Then why won't she? Fact: for at least eight years the deputy Labor leader was an official of the hard-Left Socialist Forum. Here's how Melbourne University's archives describe her group: "The Socialist Forum was established in 1984, initially by disaffected members of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). Its membership included Australian Labor Party (ALP) members and political activists . . . (Its) stated aim was to contribute to the development of democratic socialism in Australia . . ." And one of its unstated aims was to help former communists join Labor.

Back then Gillard had no trouble admitting to that communist influence, writing in an SF pamphlet: "Around 45 of the forum's members left the Communist Party of Australia in the division of a year ago . . ." She'd know. She not only wrote such pamphlets for the SF's 200 or more members, but worked until 1993 -- when she'd already become a lawyer -- as its organiser and then on its management committee. The policies she pushed were the usual sandwich-board stuff: scrapping our US alliance, super-taxing the rich, introducing death duties, blah blah. But here's a novel one: twinning Melbourne with Leningrad -- renamed now, post-communism, St Petersburg.

Of course, most of us grow wiser with experience and -- note well, young radicals -- leave such heady but ruinous Leftism behind. But has Gillard? It's a fair question to ask someone who wants to be our deputy prime minister, in charge of workplace "reform", especially when she's part of a Labor team of which some 70 per cent are ex-union officials. But here's the troubling thing about her replies. Far from repudiating her past radicalism, she refuses to even admit to it. Here, for instance, is part of her interview on the ABC's Lateline program on Wednesday:

Gillard: I was a full-time university student and I had a part-time job for an organisation called Socialist Forum, which was a sort of debating society . . .

Interviewer: It wasn't a front organisation for communists?

Gillard: Certainly not. It was an organisation where people who identified themselves as progressives, some in the Labor Party, some outside the Labor Party, would come together and would talk about ideas. I did clerical and administrative work . . .

Good skills with that airbrush, Julia.

Gillard -- a long-time official and a leader of a group created by communists -- is transformed. In her new version, she becomes just a part-time typist in her "student days" for "progressives", who merely debated stuff. Her communists become simply people "outside the Labor Party". That's neither frank nor, I suggest, quite honest. And when asked a direct question . . .

Interviewer: Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?

Gillard: Tony, I think that question shows how silly all of this is getting, though I suspect in this interview, probably the Howard Government would think you're the dangerous radical. After all, I'm only from the Labor Party, you're from the ABC.

A "no" would have been shorter. But more importantly, can Gillard now own up to her past radicalism, and explain how she came to reject it? After all, she's still of the Socialist Left and as Labor's health spokesman at the last election offered us the Whitlamesque Medicare Gold disaster, after choosing as her leader the anti-American Mark Latham. She has some reassuring to do.

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Another shocking public hospital

With official coverup, of course

TWO sisters told yesterday how they kidnapped their mother from the troubled Hervey Bay Hospital because they feared she was starving to death. The sisters, who are nurses, said they were horrified at the treatment their mother, Marjorie Holland, was receiving after suffering a stroke in November last year. Cecile Lyons and Michelle Downes, 51-year-old twins, said they tricked hospital staff into thinking they were taking their mother out for fresh air.

"My partner John (Reason) was waiting in the carpark for a quick getaway," Ms Lyons said. "I took her out in an armchair with wheels. We ditched the chair in the carpark and sped off to the Royal in Brisbane. "We had no choice. She was lapsing into unconsciousness."

The twins accused some hospital staff of incompetence in a formal complaint in which they alleged their 76-year-old mother was dehydrated and starving. Other more serious allegations cannot be reported on legal advice. They said their mother did not see a doctor for days and was not put on a drip until her eighth day in hospital.

In hospital Mrs Holland developed deep vein thrombosis and later had her leg amputated at Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital. Mrs Lyons said she and her sister were the first to diagnose the DVT. "It was a nightmare," Ms Lyons said. "She was left to dehydrate and starve as a treatment for stroke. She did not have food for 17 days yet the hospital told us my mother was happy with her care."

An expert panel set up by the Health Quality and Complaints Commission to investigate the sisters' complaints agreed Mrs Holland should have been given intravenous fluids earlier. The panel led by the University of Queensland's Professor Ian Scott, also found that "heparin (anticoagulant) therapy should have been given from the date of admission". However, earlier treatment "was unlikely to have changed the outcome for Mrs Holland", Professor Scott said. The commission concluded that the care provided to Mrs Holland at Hervey Bay was "reasonable".

Mrs Holland, who suffered some brain damage, now lives in a NSW retirement village. There were findings against Hervey Bay Hospital in 2005 in the health inquiry headed by Geoff Davies, QC. The Courier-Mail understands several former patients have since received confidential settlements.

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Government hospitals under fire for mistreating elderly

POOR care of the elderly in some hospitals is prompting nursing homes to photograph their patients before admission and as they leave. Aged patients are often discharged from hospital malnourished and with bed sores, a national survey of 370 nursing homes found. A majority of nursing homes said they experienced several cases every year of residents returning from hospital with ulcers and skin tears, but without acknowledgement in the hospital's clinical notes. The author of the study, Tracey McDonald, professor of ageing at the Australian Catholic University, said the numerous "compromised skin integrity" cases raised by nursing homes was "a very disturbing issue".

The reputation of some hospital staff was such that at least four nursing homes had taken to photographing their residents' skin before and after hospital stays to prove to relatives of the patient that the nursing home care was of good quality. Nursing home staff saw few attempts by hospital staff at preventing trauma or even treating wounds when they occur. "In fact, respondents [to the survey] perceive an attitude of mendacity and blame emanating from the hospitals . where some clinicians falsely accuse aged care homes of causing the wounds and even mislead families into blaming the aged care home."

Professor McDonald's report was commissioned by Aged Care Association Australia, which represents nursing homes, as a result of significant concerns about the condition of patients transferred between nursing homes and hospitals. The report assessed the detailed answers from 371 nursing homes who responded. A breakdown of the findings showed that NSW hospitals performed better than other states on most indicators, but poorly on medication arrangements for aged care patients leaving hospital. Inadequate or absent notification of drug requirements could lead to "dangerous" problems in such areas as the prescription of sedatives and psychotropic drugs for mental illness.

Poor nutrition of elderly patients was also at disturbing levels and while NSW reported fewer problems, the issue was still a cause for concern, with 40 per cent of nursing homes in large regional centres reporting residents with nutritional problems on return from hospitals. Another key issue was the timing of transfer of residents to aged care facilities, which said Professor McDonald, could often be late at night and at short notice, a confusing experience for people in their 80s or 90s.

Other shortcomings often mentioned were lack of patient records provided by the hospital on the patient's treatment, hampering the home's efforts to provide proper care of what could be life-threatening conditions. Poor care of mental health patients was also reported, with evidence suggesting that in some cases patients were sedated before departure from hospital, leaving them unsupervised and vulnerable at points in the transfer process.

The chief executive of the Aged Care Association, Rod Young, called for urgent action to avoid harm to vulnerable and confused patients which, he said, would inevitably end up "leading to death in some instances".

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Government school unable to stop bullying

Good at bulldust, though



Dale Fitzhenry was a happy grade 4 student until he was picked on by a vicious school bully last term, his family says. Over 12 weeks Dale, 10, said he was repeatedly kicked, punched and pushed by a classmate. He claims he was assaulted so badly he suffered concussion one lunch time. His glasses were shattered in another playground attack at River Gum Primary School in Hampton Park.

His attacker, who was in Dale's 3/4 composite class, received a suspension, Dale's mother said. The school said the accused bully was moved to another class. It said every effort was made to settle a dispute between the students.

Dale now attends another school. His mother said her boy suffers nightmares and his doctor has recommended that he see a psychologist. Mum Melissa Fitzhenry believes the school did not do enough to protect her son. "I was going up to the school every second day, begging them to do something, telling them my son is coming home terrified," she said. Ms Fitzhenry said the school's decision to keep the bully in Dale's class made no sense. "I am so angry that I have had to pull Dale out of school while the bully remains in class," she said. "I think the bully should have been pulled out of the school."

Acting principal Joan Johnston said the school put strategies in place to deal with the situation and kept Ms Fitzhenry informed with letters and offers of further help. "Any bullying is taken very seriously at River Gum Primary School and is simply not tolerated," Ms Johnston said. "If any students or their parents have any concerns they are always encouraged to come and see me and we will take immediate and appropriate action. "I can assure parents that it was taken very seriously at the time by the school and dealt with promptly and appropriately."

Dale said he was disappointed with the school. "They just told me to stay away from him, but he kept coming after me," Dale said. "It made me very sad and angry, and I just wished they would have made him stay inside at lunch time like I asked, or I wished they expelled him." Bullying expert Evelyn Field said the school had failed Dale. "The situation always seems to end with the bullies staying and the victims leaving," said Ms Field, a psychologist.

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Howard tells Rudd to 'grow up'

The usual Leftist glass jaw again. (In boxing, a fighter who is easily knocked out is said to have a "glass jaw")

PRIME Minister John Howard has told Labor Leader Kevin Rudd to "grow up" and stop complaining about government attacks on him and his party. The government has this week run ads attacking Mr Rudd and his treasury spokesman Wayne Swan as inexperienced L-platers. Labor quickly launched counter-ads in which Mr Rudd says the ads are part of a government scare campaign.

Mr Howard today said Mr Rudd's complaints about being attacked were "extraordinary". "What the Labor Party is saying is please don't attack us," Mr Howard told reporters in Brisbane. "What they're really saying is it's unfair and illegitimate for the Labor Party to be attacked in this election campaign."

Mr Howard said Mr Rudd and Labor seemed entirely happy to attack the government and were applying a double standard. "Can I just say to Mr Rudd: grow up," Mr Howard said. "I mean realise that you are in a very willing political contest, and this is a contest for the government of Australia, it's a contest for the hearts and minds of the Australian people."

Mr Howard said "of course" the government would point out in its new ads that 70 per cent of Labor's frontbench were former union officials: "It's not negative, it's not dirty, it's not personal, it's true."

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Australians getting rich

Treasury data shows local consumers have never been in better financial shape. Australians' average net wealth has doubled in the past five years to about $408,000 - up $22,000 in the past three months. It's the world's fastest rate of growth in personal wealth over five years, according to a Boston Consulting Group study. Much of the 19 per cent annual gain was boosted by a slide in the US dollar, but Australia's rate of growth was more than twice the increase in the global average of 8.6 per cent a year.

CommSec chief economist Craig James said yesterday wealth levels were now likely to level off after the solid gains of recent years. "But rather than slow down, private-sector wealth has picked up steam, rising in the past quarter just shy of the fastest pace in nine years," he said. Mr James said the financial strength of Australians meant most consumers could cope with another interest rate rise as early as next month. A hike in an election month would be unprecedented, but financial markets said it was nearly an each-way bet, with the pricing at 46 per cent. "The Reserve Bank will look at the wealth figures and conclude that Australians can weather another rate hike," Mr James said. "The economy is at full capacity. The good news is that immigration and investment are rising and supply is continuing to expand. "The Reserve Bank clearly has reason to be worried about inflation."

The publication of September quarter inflation numbers next Wednesday will be a critical point in the RBA's negotiations on Melbourne Cup Day. Westpac senior economist Anthony Thompson said the bank expected headline inflation to reach 1.1 per cent in the quarter. Higher food, housing and alcohol expenses were likely to make the largest contribution to price increases.

BCG partner and Australian financial services practice head Matthew Rogozinski said the increase in wealth was due to the combination of strong financial market performance over an extended period, and the superannuation system, which had mandated a high level of savings.

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Ears to the pulpit, when it suits

The article below by Gerard Henderson might also have mentioned the enormous outrage when a tiny Christian sect -- the Exclusive Brethren -- supported the conservatives in the last election. A non-Leftist church was just unforgiveable and had to be in the wrong

Believe it or not, it now appears that Christian leaders in Australia can enter the political debate without being lectured concerning that which belongs to God and that which belongs to Caesar. Provided they choose a fashionable topic, of course. As in criticising the Howard Government's Work Choices legislation.

Take the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, for example. Earlier this year Cardinal George Pell was severely criticised for his public comments opposing a bill to expand stem cell research, which was then before the NSW Parliament. So much so that his views were referred to the Privileges Committee, for possible censure, by the Greens MP Lee Rhiannon. Pell was cleared. But this does not negate the fact that Rhiannon believes the Archbishop's views should be curtailed when he speaks out on what is clearly an issue of faith and morals.

Last Wednesday Pell addressed the National Press Club in Canberra on the topic of World Youth Day, to be celebrated in Sydney in July. Following the talk, he was asked a number of questions, including one on Work Choices. Pell reaffirmed that he'd been critical of the Howard Government's industrial relations reform agenda but said he was "very pleased" to see that the Coalition had "reinstated the no-disadvantage clause, especially for minimum wage earners".

Did Rhiannon have any objection to Pell's criticism of the original Work Choices legislation? Not at all. It seems the Greens MPs only get upset when church leaders speak about morality and are unfazed by their entry into political debate, provided their views are at least compatible with a regulatory agenda.

During the question period, Pell was asked about Labor's education policy under Kevin Rudd - who has junked Mark Latham's approach at the 2004 election and brought the ALP into line with the Coalition. He replied that he was "certainly happy to endorse . the schools policy, for the Catholic and independent schools, of the Labor Party". Fair enough.

On the ABC Radio Sunday Profile program last weekend, the presenter, Monica Attard, claimed that Pell "has come out in support of the ALP - and its education policy, in particular". Pell has not endorsed either Labor or the Coalition. Rather, he made it clear at the National Press Club that he was "more than happy" to leave the choice between John Howard and Rudd "to the individual voters". This is the kind of howler that should be picked up by the ABC TV Media Watch program. But as Attard presents that program as well, this seems unlikely. Attard is focused on the (alleged) errors of others.

Attard's false claim re Pell occurred during an introduction to her guest Peter Jensen, the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney. As was to be expected, the presenter indicated her disagreement with Jensen on such matters as the consecration of female bishops in the Anglican Church. However, the questions were much softer when Jensen criticised the Howard Government's reform of industrial relations. His point was that Australians are "financially wealthy" but "relationship poor". He advocates a re-regulation of the industrial relations system to bring about a "shared day off".

When the likes of Pell and Jensen express doubts about industrial relations reform, they invariably receive sympathetic coverage in the media. This suggests that, now at least, it's okay for church leaders to talk about politics - at least when they are opposing deregulation in particular and economic reform in general. Most of the journalists and academics who comment on such matters agree with the Pell/Jensen position and this ensures favourable coverage.

For politicians who are committed to an economic reform agenda, however, the publicly expressed views of church leaders and clerical organisations can be frustrating. This was evident when the federal Health Minister, Tony Abbott, addressed the Institute of Public Affairs, also on Wednesday. Abbott, a Catholic, criticised bodies such as the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council and stated that "a political argument is not transformed into a moral argument simply because it's delivered with an enormous dollop of sanctimony".

Abbott's frustration is understandable. Industrial relations reform started with Paul Keating's Labor government and the rate of change was substantially increased due to the initiatives of Howard, Peter Costello, Abbott and the like. Before the reform process, unemployment was more than 10 per cent. It is now close to 4 per cent, with a rate of about 3 per cent a real possibility.

Yet the publications of such bodies as the Social Justice Council and the Australian Catholic Council for Employment Relations make virtually no reference to the fact that unemployment has been substantially reduced following the industrial relations reform. Interviewed on the PM program on Thursday, Sister Libby Rogerson, social justice director for the Parramatta Catholic diocese, ran the same line as those two councils when she complained that "a young person from Mt Druitt going for his or her first job" is in "no position to negotiate their pay and conditions". Clearly she wants the trade unions involved.

Rogerson seems oblivious to the fact that, without industrial relations reform, such a young person would have found it very difficult - if not impossible - to find a job. This is something that church leaders, and organisations run by the Christian churches - such as the Social Justice Council and Anglicare - rarely acknowledge.

The unfashionable fact is that nations which have paid heed to Catholic social teaching have had poor economic outcomes. Ireland and Italy come to mind. Ireland recovered from high unemployment only after it embraced economic reform. The churches have a right to enter the public debate. And citizens - Christian and non-Christian - have the right to contest their views with respect to the secular and the spiritual.

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Amazing medical job offer

Politicians trying to spin out of it

A job offer made to a doctor who pleaded guilty to contributing to the death of a patient has been withdrawn, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has said. The Queensland Medical Tribunal yesterday banned Dr Jaideep Bali from practising for 10 months after he pleaded guilty to misconduct over the death of Lillian Shaw, 67, in January 2005. The tribunal heard that despite the plea, Logan Hospital, south of Brisbane, was prepared to offer the foreign-trained doctor a job.

Ms Bligh today said the offer was always conditional on the tribunal's decision, and had now been withdrawn. "An offer by Logan Hospital of a temporary junior doctor position was always conditional on the doctor having current registration and meeting other medical board and Queensland Health requirements," Ms Bligh told state parliament. "The offer to Dr Bali has been withdrawn following yesterday's outcome in the tribunal."

Ms Bligh said the case was proof that the checks and balances put in place after the Dr Jayant Patel scandal were working. Dr Patel fled to the US after he was linked to the deaths of 17 patients at Bundaberg Base Hospital. "Queensland Health will not employ any doctor who does not have current registration with the Medical Board," Ms Bligh said. "Put simply - no registration, no job - this doctor did not get through our screening processes."

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