Australian Politics
WTF! What would a Cambridge Don know about blackfellas?
His statements are mostly "motherhood" ones so why do we need them? Actually spending time among the blackfellas and getting to know their perspective is what is needed rather than a lot of do-gooderism by blow-in whites
UNDERSTANDING the culture of indigenous patients will help doctors close the gap in life expectancy between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, an international health professional says.
Doctors also need to foster trust, which is being eroded by "officialdom" and socioeconomic issues, Professor David Simmons from Cambridge University told a meeting on indigenous health and chronic disease.
Speaking at the Royal Australasian College of Physicians 2011 Congress, Prof Simmons said as well as examining the extensive statistics on health problems in indigenous communities, doctors need to look at how they are engaging with indigenous patients. "Officialdom at various levels from political to stakeholder engagement, along with a range of socioeconomic issues, has made trust fraught," he said.
Prof Simmons said a number of initiatives aimed at improving the health of diabetic Aborigines, Torres Strait Islanders and Maoris had been very successful, and should be used in other areas. "Ensuring the health of the indigenous patient or community is important.
"As is understanding that cross-cultural issues, such as differing priorities and beliefs, will inevitably arise. "Building trust in indigenous health is imperative to the overall success of closing the gap and addressing disparities. "There will always be competing perspectives and agendas from within and outside the indigenous community, and beyond the individual patient."
The congress will also hear from Australia's leading addiction specialist Kate Conigrave on the issues that lead to drug and alcohol addiction. "Many communities have acted with great strength to tackle substance misuse but they need sustained support and access to treatment," Associate Professor Conigrave said in a statement. She said advances in medication could double the chance of success, and called for improved access to modern treatment in Aboriginal communities.
The 2011 congress, over three days, will address a range of areas including alcohol consumption during pregnancy, the challenges of paediatric care in remote communities, and indigenous dementia.
SOURCE.
(Since those who do not know Aborigines are unliklely to be aware of it, I mention that Aborigines most commonly refer to themselves as "blackfellas". "Aborigine" is a pure Latin word: ab origine -- JR)
The NSW Industrial Relations Commission, a huge burden on the backs of the NSW taxpayer
During the 16 years the previous Labor government held office, the bedrock of its electoral strength and party finance was public sector unions and public sector employees. By a happy coincidence, this core constituency enjoyed multibillion-dollar largesse under Labor. Real public sector wages in NSW increased 23 per cent during the life of the government, a rate more than double the 11 per cent increase in real wages in the private sector.
Between September 1997 and June last year, real public sector wages in NSW increased 10.6 per cent more than real private sector wages. This also outstripped real public sector wages in other states by 6.9 per cent.
The commission has a reputation for handing down wage increases without regard to the state's capacity to pay for them. The commission delivered one-size-fits-all wage agreements, where unions won awards of the same size as other awards, without reference to differences in productivity growth between sectors.
The commission oversees a punitive occupational health and safety legal system, which operates under a presumption of guilt by employers and innocence by employees and is conspicuously biased in favour of union power.
The Labor government tried to rein in its self-imposed wage burden by legislating to cap wage increases at 2.5 per cent. Any additional increases had to be offset by cost savings. The policy failed as the commission continued to hand down wage increases of more than 2.5 per cent while only half the promised cost savings materialised.
An exasperated Premier told me on Friday: "One of the key reasons why wages policy has not achieved necessary savings is because of constant arrangements entered into at the commission based on planned future savings which have not been delivered. To my mind, it is simply wrong that we should risk the state's financial security on projections for savings with no real guarantee of having these savings realised."
This failure is expensive. The state's wages bill is now $28 billion a year. Every 1 per cent increase in wages costs the NSW budget almost $280 million a year. To stop subversion of the budget projections, the government is introducing legislation requiring that cost savings used to justify wage increases be achieved before the wage agreements are negotiated. Real savings will thus replace phantom savings.
The government is also introducing legislation to bring workplace safety laws into line with federal laws enacted by the federal Labor government. Responsibility for these cases will be moved from the Industrial Relations Commission to other courts where defendants have the same rights as plaintiffs and unions do not have de facto police powers of search and seizure.
SOURCE
A parasitic government welfare agency in South Australia
The equivalent body in Queensland has been heavily criticized too -- doing all it can to delay release of funds from its grip
GARY Norris had $7000 in savings in 2006 when his finances were taken over by the Public Trustee. Just three years later, his bank account was empty.
The intellectually disabled man from Mt Gambier handed his financial affairs to he Public Trustee after his carer was unable to continue with the responsibility.
Mr Norris's mother, Jan, said her son's savings were chewed up in Public Trustee fees and charges. And Mrs Norris is worried that other disabled pensioners will suffer the same fate when the State Government closes the Disability SA Client Trust management fund, forcing many to use the Public Trustee.
The $2.2 million savings measure was announced in last year's State Budget, but the Government has delayed the fund's closure by 12 months, to July next year.
The closure has been opposed by the Public Advocate and welfare groups which say pensioners will be slugged $45 a fortnight in fees if their funds are managed by the Public Trustee.
Disabilities Minister Jennifer Rankine said the deferral would provide clients with more time to consider their options. "That is, whether to transfer management to the Public Trustee, another financial service or whether they wish to manage their funds themselves," she said.
Mrs Norris said she would take over the management of her son's finances. "We are not going to chance it again," she said.
Opposition disability spokeswoman Vickie Chapman said the Government was back-pedalling to try to save itself from political embarrassment. "Delaying it (the fund closure) won't stop us raising the inequity of it," Ms Chapman said.
Dignity for Disability MLC Kelly Vincent said the deferral would not "undo the frustration, worry and panic many of these people have already experienced".
SOURCE
Revolting Melbourne public hospital
HARROWING conditions at Footscray's Western Hospital - including blood splatters, dirty beds and vomit-covered toilets - have prompted an urgent investigation into its hygiene standards.
When James Juranke, 24, rushed girlfriend Miranda Taylor, 25, to the emergency room at Western Hospital in Footscray last week to be treated for a pinched nerve, they were horrified by the state of the hospital. "It really made me sick to go in there, thinking that this is Australia," Mr Juranke said. "We shouldn't have to have situations like this.
"The staff were friendly and they tried to do the best they could with what they had available (but) Footscray was absolutely atrocious."
After sitting in a waiting room for more than four hours, Ms Taylor was given a bed in the fast track ward. But when she pulled back the sheets, she found the bed she was lying on was coated in filth, seen in photos provided exclusively to the Herald Sun.
The hospital said it would launch an immediate inquiry. "Western Health is extremely disappointed at the unacceptable level of cleanliness and hygiene which is reflected in the photographs you have brought to our attention," the hospital said in a statement.
"We have commenced an urgent investigation into the matter as it appears that, in this instance, the standards we expect have not been met. "We will be working with our staff and volunteers to identify how we might do this differently and better into the future."
When the couple arrived at 5.30am, they were the only people in the emergency waiting room other than an apparent homeless man who soon thanked staff and left. They did not get a formal diagnosis for Ms Taylor's pain until after 9.30pm, when nursing staff confirmed it was a pinched nerve and she was discharged.
"I felt like my leg was being ripped off, that's why we went there, and to be waiting that long in such disgusting conditions, not knowing what's going on, is pretty traumatic," Ms Taylor said.
Blood they had noticed at the hospital entrance was still there when they left, more than 14 hours later.
The only men's toilet in the waiting room was covered in vomit more than four hours after it was discovered by staff.
Wheelchairs in the X-ray department were secured with chains and when Mr Juranke asked why, he was told that if left unsecured, they would be taken by other departments.
"I wouldn't go back, not at all," Mr Juranke said. "The conditions were just putrid and disgusting and if I'd known I would have told Miranda to wait until 8am and just taken her to Williamstown and got some painkillers from the local 7-11."
Victoria's Health Services Commissioner, Beth Wilson, said patients were entitled to be treated with respect and dignity under the Australian hospitals charter. "Being subjected to dirty conditions is not dignified treatment, it's not respectful, she said.
The hospital said it was regularly subject to cleanliness audits and had consistently exceeded benchmarks. [That says a lot about the benchmarks]
SOURCE
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Unlimited free phone calls for illegals detained in Australia -- a big hit on taxpayers
The figures below relate to only one of the many "detention centres" (jails) in operation
PHONE bills at the Scherger defence facility near Weipa have soared by more than a quarter of a million dollars in the first six months of the centre being used to house asylum seekers. The hidden cost is revealed in a bill for $259,455 that Defence sent to the Department of Immigration this month.
The revelations come as the Government faces a series of political attacks on its border protection policies, with the Opposition and Greens calling for inquiries into the way immigration detention centres are run.
Departmental staff will face a grilling from Opposition senators in Budget estimates hearings this week over an estimated $1.7 billion cost blowout in border protection.
Labor's plans to swap 800 asylum seekers with 4000 refugees from Malaysia will cost about $292 million. These costs are likely to increase, with the Government discussing similar deals with other countries, including Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Thailand.
The phone bill is outlined in a Government contract notice for the Scherger detention centre.
It comes after the temporary use of the Cape York centre as an immigration detention centre was extended for another year. Numbers of asylum seekers housed in the remote far north Queensland facility have almost doubled from the original capacity of 300. There were 591 detainees in the centre this month, according the most recent data.
About 100 Afghan and Sri Lankan detainees were involved in violent clashes at the centre last week, raising fears of overcrowding.
Immigration Minister Chris Bowen declined to comment on the telephone costs. But a Department of Immigration spokeswoman said the costs related to all phone calls from the remote centre between October 2010 and March this year. "The figure is for the cost of all phone calls from Scherger immigration detention centre made by Defence, DIAC, Defence service provider... and local detainee phone calls," the department's spokeswoman said.
Opposition MP Jamie Briggs, who runs the Coalition's "waste watch" committee, demanded the Government provide a detailed breakdown of phone costs at Scherger and other immigration detention centres. "It appears to be an extraordinarily high cost," he said.
Mr Briggs said he did not oppose asylum seekers being able to call their families overseas, but said taxpayers should not be paying for "excessive" numbers of calls. He said he knew of examples of detainees running up large phone bills in other centres through daily calls to destinations including Iran.
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison yesterday urged a wide-ranging inquiry into the immigration detention system.
The Greens and independent MP Andrew Wilkie have backed the inquiry but have called for it to consider scrapping mandatory detention.
SOURCE
Mother had to be flown interstate to have triplets
Australia is getting as bad as Canada -- where patients often have to fly to the USA to get treatment
A WOMAN pregnant with triplets had to be flown interstate to give birth because one of Sydney's largest maternity units did not have enough specialist neonatal cots to care for her babies.
Bronwyn Burns said she was told that she could have her babies at Sydney's Royal Women's Hospital in Randwick, but after the triplets arrived one of them would have to go to Nepean Hospital, 50kms away, while another would be flown to Melbourne for care.
The 33-year-old said she did not want her babies separated, so last Thursday she was flown to Canberra Hospital which had three neonatal cots available for triplets Montayah, Jaquarhn and Jyqueel.
The babies, two boys and a girl, were born via caesarean section on Friday morning at 31 weeks gestation, weighing 857g, 1.02kg and 1.48kg. They are all breathing on their own, but the smallest boy remains in neonatal intensive care while his siblings are in the hospital's special care nursery.
"It was a worry because we didn't know where I would end up having the babies," Ms Burns said yesterday. "First I was going to be taken by ambulance to Newcastle, but then when that couldn't happen, we had to be flown to Canberra. "My mum came with me but we weren't allowed to bring much so all the baby stuff I brought and all of mum's clothes and things are still in Sydney."
A NSW Health spokesman last night said there were 130 neonatal intensive care (NICU) cots and 400 special cots across the state. It was against NSW Health policy to separate a new mother and her babies, he said.
"If at any time the Royal Hospital for Women's Maternity or Neonatal Intensive Care Unit reaches capacity as would be the case at any other hospital in NSW, mothers and babies can be referred through the state-wide network to other NICUs," he said. "However, it is best practice, wherever possible to move the mum before the birth."
Ms Burns, a single mother with three older children, drove from her home in Dubbo to Randwick for a specialist appointment last Monday. After she underwent a number of tests, doctors decided the babies would need to be delivered by caesarean section as there were concerns about their slow growth rate.
SOURCE
Government electricity is extra special
Government-owned electricity networks are charging almost twice as much as privately-owned operators
THE government-owned electricity networks in NSW and Queensland are charging almost twice as much as privately owned operators in Victoria, resulting in soaring bills for consumers, a new report warns.
The report, obtained by The Australian, argues the government-owned poles and wires that deliver power are delivering windfall profits to state governments at the expense of electricity consumers.
The government-owned networks also have more frequent and longer outages than the private networks that operate in Victoria and South Australia.
The report was commissioned by the Energy Users Association of Australia - whose members include Rio Tinto and Wesfarmers - and recommends the privatisation of the NSW and Queensland distributors, as well as regulatory reforms to empower consumers.
EUAA executive director Roman Domanski said it was crucial that the energy networks became more efficient to cut costs because power was becoming less affordable and climate change policies were set to further inflate electricity costs.
The warning comes as one of the nation's biggest electricity suppliers, TRUenergy, yesterday warned that household power bills would double over six years with the introduction of a carbon price. Last night, TRUenergy chief executive Richard McIndoe estimated that households would on average face a further $300 hike to their power bills if a carbon price were introduced at about $20 a tonne.
Mr McIndoe said this would come on top of a 40 per cent rise over the past three years - largely driven by rising energy network charges - and a further 30 per cent rise over the next three years related to rising gas prices and the costs of the mandatory targets for renewable energy generation.
"You are looking at a doubling of electricity pricing over a six-year period, which is pretty significant for households," Mr McIndoe told The Australian.
He added that a much higher carbon price - of at least $60 a tonne - would be needed to drive a switch from using coal to gas or renewables to generate electricity. "Really, at that level, a $60-plus price, you are going to see quite a lot of industry frankly closing down in Australia."
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh yesterday said she would not back the carbon tax until she had seen the details of it, including how it would impact on households. The Prime Minister has blamed the states for skyrocketing electricity bills, saying there is now a costly spending catch-up after under-investment in the networks - and has said that other states could learn from the example set by Victoria.
The Kennett government privatised its entire electricity industry in the 1990s and South Australia followed suit, but NSW and Queensland have both retained their poles and wires networks in public hands.
More HERE
GREENIE ROUNDUP
Three articles below
The prophesied end of the world did not come on May 21 but the Greenie prophecies of doom never stop
This is an old one though: Sea levels could rise a metre by 2100. And aerial pigs could appear too -- particularly when one considers that the sea level rose only 7" (18cm) over the entire 20th century. Even journalists are no longer swallowing the bunk whole, however. Note that they use the Australian slang term "spruik" to describe the prophecy. "Spruiking" is what a con-man or an over-enthusiastic salesman does
The federal government's climate commission says global warming could cause the world's sea level to rise up to one metre by the end of the century - higher than previously thought.
The commission, established by Labor to spruik the case for tackling dangerous climate change, is also calling for a fresh approach to reducing carbon emissions. It suggests that rather than focusing on interim targets based on percentage cuts, governments should commit to emitting no more than an agreed carbon dioxide "budget" by 2050.
This so-called budget approach would allow greater flexibility and encourage investment in the most-effective technologies rather than quick-fix solutions.
The commission is releasing its first major report, The Critical Decade, on Monday. "A plausible estimate of the amount of sea-level rise by 2100 compared to 2000 is 0.5 to one metre," it says. That's higher than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's top range of 0.18m to 0.76m.
Commissioner Will Steffen, a Canberra-based climate scientist, made the assessment after surveying the existing literature and speaking to experts. "Some people may take issue with that - but that's my judgment," Professor Steffen told AAP ahead of the report's release at Parliament House. [Good for you Prof. But how good is your judgment? Prophecies are almost always wrong, you know]
The report states that even a rise of 0.5m could lead to an increase in extreme flooding events for coastal areas of Sydney and Melbourne "by factors of 1000 or 10,000 for some locations".
The global sea level has risen by about 20cm since the 1880s. But the rises aren't uniform - they vary according to ocean currents and the local conditions on the land.
In Australia, sea levels are rising fastest on the northern coastline. Around Arnhem Land it's rising by more than seven millimetres a year while the global average is 3.2mm. [So if it's not global, is it unrelated to global warming?]
Prof Steffen notes that's bad news for Kakadu. "It is low-lying and already we're seeing some salt water intrusion into some of the fresh water wetlands," he said.
When it comes to damage to the Great Barrier Reef, the Australian National University academic argues the report contains "solid data that says we are indeed starting to see some of these affects on calcifying organisms".
Prof Steffen said he hoped the report would refocus the political debate on the risks posed by climate change. "The costs of not doing something about climate change will almost surely be far, far greater than the costs of doing something about it," he said.
When it comes to taking action, the report suggests focusing on limiting emissions to an agreed global budget.
"The strategic challenge (then) changes from whether the 2020 target is a five per cent, 25 per cent or 40 per cent reduction against a particular baseline to how do we implement the transition to a low- or no-carbon economy by 2050 with the least economic and social cost while staying within the budget," the report states.
For humanity to have a 75 per cent change of limiting temperature rises to two degrees Celsius it would need to emit no more than one trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide between 2000 to 2050. Some 30 per cent of that budget has already been spent.
The report acknowledges the difficulty with this approach would be allocating the global budget to individual countries.
But Prof Steffen points out the new method "really focuses attention on the endgame which is to decarbonise economies by the middle of the century". The report argues this would encourage investment decisions to be taken from a long-term perspective.
SOURCE
Prominent Australian conservative attacks Climate Commission report as 'nonsense'
LIBERAL [party] powerbroker Nick Minchin has attacked a new report that declares the world is in imminent danger from human-induced climate change as offensive nonsense from known "global warming alarmists".
Senator Minchin, who played a key role in terminating Malcolm Turnbull's leadership over his support for emissions trading, said there was still a legitimate debate over the role of humans in climate change. “The so-called Climate Commission is a Labor government-appointed committee of known climate alarmists, selectively appointed ... to further the cause of global warming alarmism,” he said following today's release of the commission's first report.
“I think everybody should take anything they say with a grain of salt,” Senator Minchin said. “What's most offensive is (climate commissioner) Will Steffen suggesting the scientific debate is over. “That's nonsense because there is a very lively scientific debate about the role of human-induced Co2 emissions in climate change.”
The Climate Commission report says the world has at best 10 years to cut carbon emissions or it will face dangerous atmospheric warming and sea level rises. [They have been putting out these 10 year warnings for years -- and none of them have ever come true]
Professor Steffen also called today for an end to “fruitless, phoney” debate, saying climate change denial is a luxury the world can no longer afford.
Senator Minchin is retiring in July but he remains a close confidant of Tony Abbott and his views as a party elder are widely sought. He is on the record as being sceptical of mainstream climate science, saying earlier this year he believed the world was more likely to be cooling than getting hotter.
Senator Minchin said the new report did nothing to further Labor's case for a carbon tax. “What I think is most frustrating in all of this is this report provides no basis for Australia acting unilaterally on a carbon tax,” he said.
“Given we are responsible for about one per cent of the world's emissions of CO2 and when it's clear that China's additional emissions over the next few decades will completely swamp any reductions in our emissions, anything Australia does will be utterly pointless and have no impact whatsoever on the global climate.”
Greens senator Christine Milne backed the commission's finding that Australia faced a critical decade on climate change, and also called for an end to the debate over whether climate change is real. “What this report will do is actually help the Australian population see that what we've been having is a phoney debate in Australia that's been run by the sceptics, financed by big business, by coal, by oil around the world,” she said. [Focus on finance rather than on the scientific issues?]
SOURCE
Hate speech, political violence and climate change
The Australian Greenie writing below unconvincingly tries to brand two prominent conservatives as hate speakers and then manages to find only two lone hate-speakers, the deranged Loughner and some other loner. And as for quoting the lightweight and self-contradictory David Neiwert, see here. And as for the sensationalist SPLC! Exaggerated scares are their fundraisers.
Our Greenie's lack of hard data leaves him entirely reliant on recycling judgments by others (including members of the Obama administration) that are as shallow as his own. So his fancied "culture of hate" turns out to be a mirage.
He makes no mention of the extremely hostile utterances by Greenies about skeptics. No mention at all of prominent Warmists like James Hansen who compared coal trains to Nazi death trains, thus helping to excite febrile rage among some gullible young Brits -- rage which they acted out by causing what little damage they could to Kingsnorth power station. When has a skeptic acted out any rage against Warmists?
And how about this little bit of hate-speech, also from the site which hosts the rant below?
So skeptics are "pseudo-scientific" and "manufacturing doubt" like the hated tobacco industry. Identifying anybody with tobacco is hate speech coming from a Greenie.
And who were those "same individuals" who were doubters about both tobacco AND global warming? There are none. It is a lie. The only individual whom Warmists sometimes refer to is Fred Singer, who once pointed out some dubious EPA statistics about SIDESTREAM smoke -- criticisms which were subsequently resoundingly confirmed. See also here and here and here and here and here and here
I could go on -- mentioning for instance the hostile emails and comments that we skeptics constantly get from Warmists -- but I would end up writing an even longer article than the one below if I did. The comments attached to the original article cover both sides of the issue, however -- including some juicy hate-speech against skeptics. I have reproduced only part of the article below but I doubt that much has been lost in my doing so
"If politicians are intent on whipping up a lynch mob to divert attention from their own culpability, it is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies." -- Miranda Devine.
"This is not some nice little debate. This is war." -- Tom DeWeese, American Policy Center, think tank linked to Exxon-Mobil and Koch Industries.
Hate speech seems to pose three serious threats to the green movement. Firstly, it may lead to acts of political violence directed against politicians, leaders or activists. Secondly, hate speech undermines the constructive political discourse we need in order to deal with climate change. Thirdly, hate speech is the leading edge of a dangerous, new species of politics that is emerging in the USA.
We are dealing with hate speech when death threats are made towards a group (or an individual based on his or her membership of a group); for example, when directed against US President Barack Obama on the basis that he is an African-American. I propose that hate speech is present in Miranda Devine’s slippery quote above, in which she sneaks a proposal to lynch greenies behind a hypothetical IF-THEN clause.
Hate speech is shifting our culture, creating a social licence to commit political violence against people who belong to designated groups: Jews, greenies, Muslims, progressives of any stripe. It is part of the deliberate political programme of the extreme right in the USA, and is funded by various ‘philanthropists’, most notably the Koch brothers, who own America’s biggest private corporation, Koch Industries (a major polluter).
The issue of hate speech and violence crystallised early this year, after the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. On 8 January 2011 a rightwing assassin shot Congresswoman Giffords in the head, killed 6 people, and injured another 13. Giffords is hated for being Jewish, pro-choice and supporting community solar energy (and despite her relatively conservative positions on immigration and in support of gun rights).
The point is that the culture of hate erodes the social taboo against political violence and reinforces the ‘intuitive’ worldview of the mob. Professor Rod Tiffen of the University of Sydney says that the political parties and the Murdoch media work in tandem to drive populism. He writes, “Together they form an outrage industry that absents proportion, reason and reasonableness, and where it is difficult – soon, perhaps, near impossible – to have a measured debate of policy options.”
David Neiwert is a US journalist who specialises in investigations of extremists. His 2009 book The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right explains how the conservatives got as crazy as they are and where they are headed.
The Eliminationists cites the story of Jim Adkisson, who killed two people and wounded seven in an act of extremist political violence in July 2008. Adkisson wrote, "Know this if nothing else: This was a hate crime. I hate the damn left-wing liberals... Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House...”.
Neiwert believes it is a logical step from the right-wing extremism of Fox News and sections of The Republican party to get to violence. If greenies and liberals are in a global conspiracy with climate scientists, Jews, bankers and the UN to enslave the West, then it makes ‘logical’ sense to eliminate them. Ever since the Exceptional Case Study Project, the Secret Service has implemented protective security using behavioural analysis of these ‘logical’ precursors to assassination.
SOURCE
Note: I have two other blogs covering Australian news. They are more specialized so are not updated daily but there are updates on both most weeks. See QANTAS/Jetstar for news on Qantas failings and Australian police news for news on police misbehaviour
The figures below relate to only one of the many "detention centres" (jails) in operation
PHONE bills at the Scherger defence facility near Weipa have soared by more than a quarter of a million dollars in the first six months of the centre being used to house asylum seekers. The hidden cost is revealed in a bill for $259,455 that Defence sent to the Department of Immigration this month.
The revelations come as the Government faces a series of political attacks on its border protection policies, with the Opposition and Greens calling for inquiries into the way immigration detention centres are run.
Departmental staff will face a grilling from Opposition senators in Budget estimates hearings this week over an estimated $1.7 billion cost blowout in border protection.
Labor's plans to swap 800 asylum seekers with 4000 refugees from Malaysia will cost about $292 million. These costs are likely to increase, with the Government discussing similar deals with other countries, including Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Thailand.
The phone bill is outlined in a Government contract notice for the Scherger detention centre.
It comes after the temporary use of the Cape York centre as an immigration detention centre was extended for another year. Numbers of asylum seekers housed in the remote far north Queensland facility have almost doubled from the original capacity of 300. There were 591 detainees in the centre this month, according the most recent data.
About 100 Afghan and Sri Lankan detainees were involved in violent clashes at the centre last week, raising fears of overcrowding.
Immigration Minister Chris Bowen declined to comment on the telephone costs. But a Department of Immigration spokeswoman said the costs related to all phone calls from the remote centre between October 2010 and March this year. "The figure is for the cost of all phone calls from Scherger immigration detention centre made by Defence, DIAC, Defence service provider... and local detainee phone calls," the department's spokeswoman said.
Opposition MP Jamie Briggs, who runs the Coalition's "waste watch" committee, demanded the Government provide a detailed breakdown of phone costs at Scherger and other immigration detention centres. "It appears to be an extraordinarily high cost," he said.
Mr Briggs said he did not oppose asylum seekers being able to call their families overseas, but said taxpayers should not be paying for "excessive" numbers of calls. He said he knew of examples of detainees running up large phone bills in other centres through daily calls to destinations including Iran.
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison yesterday urged a wide-ranging inquiry into the immigration detention system.
The Greens and independent MP Andrew Wilkie have backed the inquiry but have called for it to consider scrapping mandatory detention.
SOURCE
Mother had to be flown interstate to have triplets
Australia is getting as bad as Canada -- where patients often have to fly to the USA to get treatment
A WOMAN pregnant with triplets had to be flown interstate to give birth because one of Sydney's largest maternity units did not have enough specialist neonatal cots to care for her babies.
Bronwyn Burns said she was told that she could have her babies at Sydney's Royal Women's Hospital in Randwick, but after the triplets arrived one of them would have to go to Nepean Hospital, 50kms away, while another would be flown to Melbourne for care.
The 33-year-old said she did not want her babies separated, so last Thursday she was flown to Canberra Hospital which had three neonatal cots available for triplets Montayah, Jaquarhn and Jyqueel.
The babies, two boys and a girl, were born via caesarean section on Friday morning at 31 weeks gestation, weighing 857g, 1.02kg and 1.48kg. They are all breathing on their own, but the smallest boy remains in neonatal intensive care while his siblings are in the hospital's special care nursery.
"It was a worry because we didn't know where I would end up having the babies," Ms Burns said yesterday. "First I was going to be taken by ambulance to Newcastle, but then when that couldn't happen, we had to be flown to Canberra. "My mum came with me but we weren't allowed to bring much so all the baby stuff I brought and all of mum's clothes and things are still in Sydney."
A NSW Health spokesman last night said there were 130 neonatal intensive care (NICU) cots and 400 special cots across the state. It was against NSW Health policy to separate a new mother and her babies, he said.
"If at any time the Royal Hospital for Women's Maternity or Neonatal Intensive Care Unit reaches capacity as would be the case at any other hospital in NSW, mothers and babies can be referred through the state-wide network to other NICUs," he said. "However, it is best practice, wherever possible to move the mum before the birth."
Ms Burns, a single mother with three older children, drove from her home in Dubbo to Randwick for a specialist appointment last Monday. After she underwent a number of tests, doctors decided the babies would need to be delivered by caesarean section as there were concerns about their slow growth rate.
SOURCE
Government electricity is extra special
Government-owned electricity networks are charging almost twice as much as privately-owned operators
THE government-owned electricity networks in NSW and Queensland are charging almost twice as much as privately owned operators in Victoria, resulting in soaring bills for consumers, a new report warns.
The report, obtained by The Australian, argues the government-owned poles and wires that deliver power are delivering windfall profits to state governments at the expense of electricity consumers.
The government-owned networks also have more frequent and longer outages than the private networks that operate in Victoria and South Australia.
The report was commissioned by the Energy Users Association of Australia - whose members include Rio Tinto and Wesfarmers - and recommends the privatisation of the NSW and Queensland distributors, as well as regulatory reforms to empower consumers.
EUAA executive director Roman Domanski said it was crucial that the energy networks became more efficient to cut costs because power was becoming less affordable and climate change policies were set to further inflate electricity costs.
The warning comes as one of the nation's biggest electricity suppliers, TRUenergy, yesterday warned that household power bills would double over six years with the introduction of a carbon price. Last night, TRUenergy chief executive Richard McIndoe estimated that households would on average face a further $300 hike to their power bills if a carbon price were introduced at about $20 a tonne.
Mr McIndoe said this would come on top of a 40 per cent rise over the past three years - largely driven by rising energy network charges - and a further 30 per cent rise over the next three years related to rising gas prices and the costs of the mandatory targets for renewable energy generation.
"You are looking at a doubling of electricity pricing over a six-year period, which is pretty significant for households," Mr McIndoe told The Australian.
He added that a much higher carbon price - of at least $60 a tonne - would be needed to drive a switch from using coal to gas or renewables to generate electricity. "Really, at that level, a $60-plus price, you are going to see quite a lot of industry frankly closing down in Australia."
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh yesterday said she would not back the carbon tax until she had seen the details of it, including how it would impact on households. The Prime Minister has blamed the states for skyrocketing electricity bills, saying there is now a costly spending catch-up after under-investment in the networks - and has said that other states could learn from the example set by Victoria.
The Kennett government privatised its entire electricity industry in the 1990s and South Australia followed suit, but NSW and Queensland have both retained their poles and wires networks in public hands.
More HERE
GREENIE ROUNDUP
Three articles below
The prophesied end of the world did not come on May 21 but the Greenie prophecies of doom never stop
This is an old one though: Sea levels could rise a metre by 2100. And aerial pigs could appear too -- particularly when one considers that the sea level rose only 7" (18cm) over the entire 20th century. Even journalists are no longer swallowing the bunk whole, however. Note that they use the Australian slang term "spruik" to describe the prophecy. "Spruiking" is what a con-man or an over-enthusiastic salesman does
The federal government's climate commission says global warming could cause the world's sea level to rise up to one metre by the end of the century - higher than previously thought.
The commission, established by Labor to spruik the case for tackling dangerous climate change, is also calling for a fresh approach to reducing carbon emissions. It suggests that rather than focusing on interim targets based on percentage cuts, governments should commit to emitting no more than an agreed carbon dioxide "budget" by 2050.
This so-called budget approach would allow greater flexibility and encourage investment in the most-effective technologies rather than quick-fix solutions.
The commission is releasing its first major report, The Critical Decade, on Monday. "A plausible estimate of the amount of sea-level rise by 2100 compared to 2000 is 0.5 to one metre," it says. That's higher than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's top range of 0.18m to 0.76m.
Commissioner Will Steffen, a Canberra-based climate scientist, made the assessment after surveying the existing literature and speaking to experts. "Some people may take issue with that - but that's my judgment," Professor Steffen told AAP ahead of the report's release at Parliament House. [Good for you Prof. But how good is your judgment? Prophecies are almost always wrong, you know]
The report states that even a rise of 0.5m could lead to an increase in extreme flooding events for coastal areas of Sydney and Melbourne "by factors of 1000 or 10,000 for some locations".
The global sea level has risen by about 20cm since the 1880s. But the rises aren't uniform - they vary according to ocean currents and the local conditions on the land.
In Australia, sea levels are rising fastest on the northern coastline. Around Arnhem Land it's rising by more than seven millimetres a year while the global average is 3.2mm. [So if it's not global, is it unrelated to global warming?]
Prof Steffen notes that's bad news for Kakadu. "It is low-lying and already we're seeing some salt water intrusion into some of the fresh water wetlands," he said.
When it comes to damage to the Great Barrier Reef, the Australian National University academic argues the report contains "solid data that says we are indeed starting to see some of these affects on calcifying organisms".
Prof Steffen said he hoped the report would refocus the political debate on the risks posed by climate change. "The costs of not doing something about climate change will almost surely be far, far greater than the costs of doing something about it," he said.
When it comes to taking action, the report suggests focusing on limiting emissions to an agreed global budget.
"The strategic challenge (then) changes from whether the 2020 target is a five per cent, 25 per cent or 40 per cent reduction against a particular baseline to how do we implement the transition to a low- or no-carbon economy by 2050 with the least economic and social cost while staying within the budget," the report states.
For humanity to have a 75 per cent change of limiting temperature rises to two degrees Celsius it would need to emit no more than one trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide between 2000 to 2050. Some 30 per cent of that budget has already been spent.
The report acknowledges the difficulty with this approach would be allocating the global budget to individual countries.
But Prof Steffen points out the new method "really focuses attention on the endgame which is to decarbonise economies by the middle of the century". The report argues this would encourage investment decisions to be taken from a long-term perspective.
SOURCE
Prominent Australian conservative attacks Climate Commission report as 'nonsense'
LIBERAL [party] powerbroker Nick Minchin has attacked a new report that declares the world is in imminent danger from human-induced climate change as offensive nonsense from known "global warming alarmists".
Senator Minchin, who played a key role in terminating Malcolm Turnbull's leadership over his support for emissions trading, said there was still a legitimate debate over the role of humans in climate change. “The so-called Climate Commission is a Labor government-appointed committee of known climate alarmists, selectively appointed ... to further the cause of global warming alarmism,” he said following today's release of the commission's first report.
“I think everybody should take anything they say with a grain of salt,” Senator Minchin said. “What's most offensive is (climate commissioner) Will Steffen suggesting the scientific debate is over. “That's nonsense because there is a very lively scientific debate about the role of human-induced Co2 emissions in climate change.”
The Climate Commission report says the world has at best 10 years to cut carbon emissions or it will face dangerous atmospheric warming and sea level rises. [They have been putting out these 10 year warnings for years -- and none of them have ever come true]
Professor Steffen also called today for an end to “fruitless, phoney” debate, saying climate change denial is a luxury the world can no longer afford.
Senator Minchin is retiring in July but he remains a close confidant of Tony Abbott and his views as a party elder are widely sought. He is on the record as being sceptical of mainstream climate science, saying earlier this year he believed the world was more likely to be cooling than getting hotter.
Senator Minchin said the new report did nothing to further Labor's case for a carbon tax. “What I think is most frustrating in all of this is this report provides no basis for Australia acting unilaterally on a carbon tax,” he said.
“Given we are responsible for about one per cent of the world's emissions of CO2 and when it's clear that China's additional emissions over the next few decades will completely swamp any reductions in our emissions, anything Australia does will be utterly pointless and have no impact whatsoever on the global climate.”
Greens senator Christine Milne backed the commission's finding that Australia faced a critical decade on climate change, and also called for an end to the debate over whether climate change is real. “What this report will do is actually help the Australian population see that what we've been having is a phoney debate in Australia that's been run by the sceptics, financed by big business, by coal, by oil around the world,” she said. [Focus on finance rather than on the scientific issues?]
SOURCE
Hate speech, political violence and climate change
The Australian Greenie writing below unconvincingly tries to brand two prominent conservatives as hate speakers and then manages to find only two lone hate-speakers, the deranged Loughner and some other loner. And as for quoting the lightweight and self-contradictory David Neiwert, see here. And as for the sensationalist SPLC! Exaggerated scares are their fundraisers.
Our Greenie's lack of hard data leaves him entirely reliant on recycling judgments by others (including members of the Obama administration) that are as shallow as his own. So his fancied "culture of hate" turns out to be a mirage.
He makes no mention of the extremely hostile utterances by Greenies about skeptics. No mention at all of prominent Warmists like James Hansen who compared coal trains to Nazi death trains, thus helping to excite febrile rage among some gullible young Brits -- rage which they acted out by causing what little damage they could to Kingsnorth power station. When has a skeptic acted out any rage against Warmists?
And how about this little bit of hate-speech, also from the site which hosts the rant below?
"Precisely the same pseudo-scientific “institutes,” using the same pseudo-scientific jargon and the same pseudo-scientific “conferences” are now seeking to create the appearance of a “debate” about the fundamentals of climate science. Indeed, the very same people - yes, the same individuals - who were involved in manufacturing doubt about the link between smoking and cancer are now also involved in manufacturing doubt about climate science"
So skeptics are "pseudo-scientific" and "manufacturing doubt" like the hated tobacco industry. Identifying anybody with tobacco is hate speech coming from a Greenie.
And who were those "same individuals" who were doubters about both tobacco AND global warming? There are none. It is a lie. The only individual whom Warmists sometimes refer to is Fred Singer, who once pointed out some dubious EPA statistics about SIDESTREAM smoke -- criticisms which were subsequently resoundingly confirmed. See also here and here and here and here and here and here
I could go on -- mentioning for instance the hostile emails and comments that we skeptics constantly get from Warmists -- but I would end up writing an even longer article than the one below if I did. The comments attached to the original article cover both sides of the issue, however -- including some juicy hate-speech against skeptics. I have reproduced only part of the article below but I doubt that much has been lost in my doing so
"If politicians are intent on whipping up a lynch mob to divert attention from their own culpability, it is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies." -- Miranda Devine.
"This is not some nice little debate. This is war." -- Tom DeWeese, American Policy Center, think tank linked to Exxon-Mobil and Koch Industries.
Hate speech seems to pose three serious threats to the green movement. Firstly, it may lead to acts of political violence directed against politicians, leaders or activists. Secondly, hate speech undermines the constructive political discourse we need in order to deal with climate change. Thirdly, hate speech is the leading edge of a dangerous, new species of politics that is emerging in the USA.
We are dealing with hate speech when death threats are made towards a group (or an individual based on his or her membership of a group); for example, when directed against US President Barack Obama on the basis that he is an African-American. I propose that hate speech is present in Miranda Devine’s slippery quote above, in which she sneaks a proposal to lynch greenies behind a hypothetical IF-THEN clause.
Hate speech is shifting our culture, creating a social licence to commit political violence against people who belong to designated groups: Jews, greenies, Muslims, progressives of any stripe. It is part of the deliberate political programme of the extreme right in the USA, and is funded by various ‘philanthropists’, most notably the Koch brothers, who own America’s biggest private corporation, Koch Industries (a major polluter).
The issue of hate speech and violence crystallised early this year, after the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. On 8 January 2011 a rightwing assassin shot Congresswoman Giffords in the head, killed 6 people, and injured another 13. Giffords is hated for being Jewish, pro-choice and supporting community solar energy (and despite her relatively conservative positions on immigration and in support of gun rights).
The point is that the culture of hate erodes the social taboo against political violence and reinforces the ‘intuitive’ worldview of the mob. Professor Rod Tiffen of the University of Sydney says that the political parties and the Murdoch media work in tandem to drive populism. He writes, “Together they form an outrage industry that absents proportion, reason and reasonableness, and where it is difficult – soon, perhaps, near impossible – to have a measured debate of policy options.”
David Neiwert is a US journalist who specialises in investigations of extremists. His 2009 book The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right explains how the conservatives got as crazy as they are and where they are headed.
The Eliminationists cites the story of Jim Adkisson, who killed two people and wounded seven in an act of extremist political violence in July 2008. Adkisson wrote, "Know this if nothing else: This was a hate crime. I hate the damn left-wing liberals... Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House...”.
Neiwert believes it is a logical step from the right-wing extremism of Fox News and sections of The Republican party to get to violence. If greenies and liberals are in a global conspiracy with climate scientists, Jews, bankers and the UN to enslave the West, then it makes ‘logical’ sense to eliminate them. Ever since the Exceptional Case Study Project, the Secret Service has implemented protective security using behavioural analysis of these ‘logical’ precursors to assassination.
SOURCE
Note: I have two other blogs covering Australian news. They are more specialized so are not updated daily but there are updates on both most weeks. See QANTAS/Jetstar for news on Qantas failings and Australian police news for news on police misbehaviour
Sunday, May 22, 2011
LOL! "Nearly all" Solar panel installations faulty
THE NSW government has ordered a statewide safety audit of solar panels after nearly all rooftop installations inspected were found to be faulty.
A Fair Trading report, obtained by News Limited, found nearly every installation under the contentious Solar Bonus Scheme was faulty and one third suffered from serious electrical defects.
Inspectors would be conducting further audits, particularly in Sydney and the Blue Mountains, Fair Trading deputy commissioner Steve Griffin told News Limited.
NSW Fair Trading Minister Anthony Roberts has ordered the review, comparing the solar panel installations to federal Labor's failed pink batts scheme. "Not only was Labor's solar bonus scheme a financial disaster for the state, it has clearly resulted in significant problems for people who raced to get panels on their roofs to cash in on the lucrative rates being offered," Mr Roberts told News Limited.
The audit by Fair Trading focused on installations in Port Macquarie, uncovering 29 per cent had potentially life-threatening electrical defaults and 64 per cent were in breach of the Home Building Act.
Premier Barry O'Farrell faces an uphill battle in parliament to push through legislation to slash the feed-in tariff for subscribers to curb a $759 million budget blowout to the scheme.
SOURCE
Muslim radio stays on airwaves
A MUSLIM group accused of having links to a "radical cult" will keep broadcasting on radio in a ruling that mainstream Islamic groups have condemned.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority has renewed 2MFM's community radio licence for five years, angering Muslims who say it is linked to a "fringe group that promotes extremist views".
Muslim Community Radio Incorporated, the operator of 2MFM, has ties to the Islamic Charity Projects Association, which is associated with the group Al-Ahbash.
Al-Ahbash was founded in Lebanon and critics say it is a violent cult, but members deny the claim and say they promote Islamic pluralism.
Station manager Malek Jouddawi said criticisms of the station were "utterly wrong … whoever listens to our radio station can tell very clearly that we're moderate … We don't want to waste time responding to these people."
The endorsement by the authority was "evidence that 2MFM is serving the community responsibly".
The authority approved the licence renewal on the condition the station encouraged greater participation by "members of the wider Muslim community".
But Keysar Trad, the president of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia, said the condition would change nothing "because no Muslims in the wider community want to have anything to do with them - no one will go near them."
Mustapha Kara-Ali, a founder of 2MFM who has distanced himself from the group, said the condition could work but it was crucial "for the [Muslim] community to overtake the Al-Ahbash and run the radio station for the whole community."
SOURCE
The Labor party's education "revolution" again
It certainly is revolutionary -- but not in a good way. NSW has been ground zero for these bungles
GOVERNMENT officials have admitted to a giant "stuff-up" after a pole was erected in the middle of a stairwell of a $3 million classroom complex, funded under the Building the Education Revolution scheme.
Teachers at Chatswood Public School are demanding an urgent safety inspection be undertaken of the building, claiming the pole is just one of a litany of defects in the building, which was completed in mid-March.
They say cracks have begun appearing in the walls, the stairs are incorrectly fitted, electrical fittings have fallen off walls, while gaps are evident between the lino and the walls.
Teachers were forced to buy 12 electric heaters as the gas was not connected to any of the six new classrooms.
Teachers have strapped gym mats around the pole - which supports a veranda - amid fears children walking down the stairs could slam into it.
NSW BER program director Angus Dawson admitted there had been a "stuff up", describing the bizarre placement of the pole as an error in "clash management". "It's clearly a stuff-up. It will be fixed at no cost to the taxpayer," he said. "We've had engineers look at the building and are happy to pass on their findings to the school."
Two existing demountable classrooms will be used if the building is found to be unsafe. Construction issues were identified last year, when the building was 60 per cent completed, by a BER Implementation Taskforce.
Its report found "a number" of defects, particularly in the roof, and recommended the NSW Education Department follow up with a certifying engineer.
Forty concerned teachers last week voted for a separate, independent safety inspection to be undertaken.
Opposition spokesman for education, Christopher Pyne, said a judicial inquiry was needed into the scheme.
A NSW Teachers Federation's spokeswoman said there were concerns for the welfare of staff and students.
SOURCE
Real estate fraud unpunished
Why not some time in the big house?
A BANKRUPT real estate agent has been "reprimanded" for his failure to complete a $25,000 prize draw promotion used to sell 50 properties in 2006.
The Queensland Civil and Administration Tribunal, in a just-published two-page judgement, reprimanded, but did not further punish, Terry Hubert Little after he "failed to fulfil" the promotional prize draw.
QCAT member Professor Adrian Ashman last month reprimanded Mr Little under section 529(1) of the Property Agents and Motor Dealers Act 2000 after action instigated by the Queensland Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation.
"It is alleged that he (Mr Little) failed to fulfil a 2006 promotional obligation to complete the draw for a prize of $25,000, participants in the draw being owners of 50 properties sold and settled through Mr Little's agency," Prof Ashman said.
"(The department) asserts the draw was never held and ... the prize money was subsequently withdrawn, along with other monies from the agency's general account."
Prof Ashman said a former business co-director, David Colston, in August 2007 did not deny the allegations levelled against Mr Little.
"Mr Little had at least six months to fulfil obligations arising out of the agency's promotion but he failed to do so," he said. "The delay in completing the promotion and awarding the prize money provided the opportunity for Mr Little's co-director to withdraw the money ... and move it elsewhere.
"I am satisfied that Mr Little did not act in a conscientious way to fulfil his obligations to the property owners who qualified for entry into the draw."
Mr Little, in his submission to QCAT, said he was "experiencing personal and financial difficulties" at the time.
The department submitted to QCAT that Mr Little be fined $1000, reprimanded and ordered to pay the costs of the proceedings.
Prof Ashman said there were significant "mitigating circumstances" which warranted only the reprimanding of Mr Little.
"First, Mr Little admitted his shortcomings and did not seek to contest the matter," he said. "Second, he is an undischarged bankrupt and employed on a commission-only basis, which is at a subsistence level.
"It would seem to be a pointless and overly severe act to impose a further burden upon an individual who is already experiencing serious financial hardship."
Mr Little's agency and location was not revealed in the judgment.
SOURCE
Note: I have two other blogs covering Australian news. They are more specialized so are not updated daily but there are updates on both most weeks. See QANTAS/Jetstar for news on Qantas failings and Australian police news for news on police misbehaviour
THE NSW government has ordered a statewide safety audit of solar panels after nearly all rooftop installations inspected were found to be faulty.
A Fair Trading report, obtained by News Limited, found nearly every installation under the contentious Solar Bonus Scheme was faulty and one third suffered from serious electrical defects.
Inspectors would be conducting further audits, particularly in Sydney and the Blue Mountains, Fair Trading deputy commissioner Steve Griffin told News Limited.
NSW Fair Trading Minister Anthony Roberts has ordered the review, comparing the solar panel installations to federal Labor's failed pink batts scheme. "Not only was Labor's solar bonus scheme a financial disaster for the state, it has clearly resulted in significant problems for people who raced to get panels on their roofs to cash in on the lucrative rates being offered," Mr Roberts told News Limited.
The audit by Fair Trading focused on installations in Port Macquarie, uncovering 29 per cent had potentially life-threatening electrical defaults and 64 per cent were in breach of the Home Building Act.
Premier Barry O'Farrell faces an uphill battle in parliament to push through legislation to slash the feed-in tariff for subscribers to curb a $759 million budget blowout to the scheme.
SOURCE
Muslim radio stays on airwaves
A MUSLIM group accused of having links to a "radical cult" will keep broadcasting on radio in a ruling that mainstream Islamic groups have condemned.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority has renewed 2MFM's community radio licence for five years, angering Muslims who say it is linked to a "fringe group that promotes extremist views".
Muslim Community Radio Incorporated, the operator of 2MFM, has ties to the Islamic Charity Projects Association, which is associated with the group Al-Ahbash.
Al-Ahbash was founded in Lebanon and critics say it is a violent cult, but members deny the claim and say they promote Islamic pluralism.
Station manager Malek Jouddawi said criticisms of the station were "utterly wrong … whoever listens to our radio station can tell very clearly that we're moderate … We don't want to waste time responding to these people."
The endorsement by the authority was "evidence that 2MFM is serving the community responsibly".
The authority approved the licence renewal on the condition the station encouraged greater participation by "members of the wider Muslim community".
But Keysar Trad, the president of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia, said the condition would change nothing "because no Muslims in the wider community want to have anything to do with them - no one will go near them."
Mustapha Kara-Ali, a founder of 2MFM who has distanced himself from the group, said the condition could work but it was crucial "for the [Muslim] community to overtake the Al-Ahbash and run the radio station for the whole community."
SOURCE
The Labor party's education "revolution" again
It certainly is revolutionary -- but not in a good way. NSW has been ground zero for these bungles
GOVERNMENT officials have admitted to a giant "stuff-up" after a pole was erected in the middle of a stairwell of a $3 million classroom complex, funded under the Building the Education Revolution scheme.
Teachers at Chatswood Public School are demanding an urgent safety inspection be undertaken of the building, claiming the pole is just one of a litany of defects in the building, which was completed in mid-March.
They say cracks have begun appearing in the walls, the stairs are incorrectly fitted, electrical fittings have fallen off walls, while gaps are evident between the lino and the walls.
Teachers were forced to buy 12 electric heaters as the gas was not connected to any of the six new classrooms.
Teachers have strapped gym mats around the pole - which supports a veranda - amid fears children walking down the stairs could slam into it.
NSW BER program director Angus Dawson admitted there had been a "stuff up", describing the bizarre placement of the pole as an error in "clash management". "It's clearly a stuff-up. It will be fixed at no cost to the taxpayer," he said. "We've had engineers look at the building and are happy to pass on their findings to the school."
Two existing demountable classrooms will be used if the building is found to be unsafe. Construction issues were identified last year, when the building was 60 per cent completed, by a BER Implementation Taskforce.
Its report found "a number" of defects, particularly in the roof, and recommended the NSW Education Department follow up with a certifying engineer.
Forty concerned teachers last week voted for a separate, independent safety inspection to be undertaken.
Opposition spokesman for education, Christopher Pyne, said a judicial inquiry was needed into the scheme.
A NSW Teachers Federation's spokeswoman said there were concerns for the welfare of staff and students.
SOURCE
Real estate fraud unpunished
Why not some time in the big house?
A BANKRUPT real estate agent has been "reprimanded" for his failure to complete a $25,000 prize draw promotion used to sell 50 properties in 2006.
The Queensland Civil and Administration Tribunal, in a just-published two-page judgement, reprimanded, but did not further punish, Terry Hubert Little after he "failed to fulfil" the promotional prize draw.
QCAT member Professor Adrian Ashman last month reprimanded Mr Little under section 529(1) of the Property Agents and Motor Dealers Act 2000 after action instigated by the Queensland Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation.
"It is alleged that he (Mr Little) failed to fulfil a 2006 promotional obligation to complete the draw for a prize of $25,000, participants in the draw being owners of 50 properties sold and settled through Mr Little's agency," Prof Ashman said.
"(The department) asserts the draw was never held and ... the prize money was subsequently withdrawn, along with other monies from the agency's general account."
Prof Ashman said a former business co-director, David Colston, in August 2007 did not deny the allegations levelled against Mr Little.
"Mr Little had at least six months to fulfil obligations arising out of the agency's promotion but he failed to do so," he said. "The delay in completing the promotion and awarding the prize money provided the opportunity for Mr Little's co-director to withdraw the money ... and move it elsewhere.
"I am satisfied that Mr Little did not act in a conscientious way to fulfil his obligations to the property owners who qualified for entry into the draw."
Mr Little, in his submission to QCAT, said he was "experiencing personal and financial difficulties" at the time.
The department submitted to QCAT that Mr Little be fined $1000, reprimanded and ordered to pay the costs of the proceedings.
Prof Ashman said there were significant "mitigating circumstances" which warranted only the reprimanding of Mr Little.
"First, Mr Little admitted his shortcomings and did not seek to contest the matter," he said. "Second, he is an undischarged bankrupt and employed on a commission-only basis, which is at a subsistence level.
"It would seem to be a pointless and overly severe act to impose a further burden upon an individual who is already experiencing serious financial hardship."
Mr Little's agency and location was not revealed in the judgment.
SOURCE
Note: I have two other blogs covering Australian news. They are more specialized so are not updated daily but there are updates on both most weeks. See QANTAS/Jetstar for news on Qantas failings and Australian police news for news on police misbehaviour
Saturday, May 21, 2011
ZEG
In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG has a shot at both Bob Brown and Malcolm Turnbull over the carbon tax
One in the eye for a nasty bitch: "The Director of Military Prosecutions, Lyn McDade"
She's not even a good lawyer, let alone knowing anything about army combat. Prosecuting our men for defending themselves was always utter slime. Get rid of the stupid bitch!
THE case against two army reservists charged with manslaughter in Afghanistan will not go to a court martial after a judge advocate yesterday dismissed the charges. However, Sergeant J and Lance Corporal D could still face alternative charges pending a decision by the Director of Military Prosecutions, Lyn McDade.
At a pre-trial hearing in Sydney, judge advocate Ian Westwood dismissed the case against Sergeant J and Lance Corporal D. That means a court martial set down for July 11 will not go ahead and Brigadier McDade must now decide whether to bring different charges against the soldiers.
It is not clear what yesterday's decision means for a third soldier - the unit's commander - who is yet to face a court martial and whether the lieutenant colonel is likely still to be prosecuted.
The charges related to a February 12, 2009, incident involving members of the Special Operations Task Group undertaking a compound clearance operation in Oruzgan province. Six civilians, including five children, were killed. [When a Talib fired on our men at close range from the middle of a room housing the women and children. The deaths were entirely on the head of the Taliban!]
Sergeant J and Lance Corporal D had been charged with manslaughter and, in the alternative, two counts of dangerous conduct, with negligence as to consequence.
Brigadier Westwood agreed with their defence team that the charges should be thrown out because they "did not disclose service offences". He said the issue of whether there was a duty of care was of "fundamental importance".
It had to be established that the soldiers had a duty of care before it could be decided whether or not they'd been negligent. But in reading through the Defence Force Discipline Act, he found an "absence of plain words" on any duty of care to non-combatants.
Brigadier Westwood said his ruling did not detract from the personal tragedy inherent in the prosecution's allegations or diminish the importance of the lives lost.
He said soldiers were in a unique position when they were engaged in armed combat. Australian law authorised the application of force, including lethal force, when troops were sent into combat. In fact, soldiers were compelled on "pain of penalty" to carry out attacks on the enemy and they could not simply decide not to take any further part in hostilities.
There was rarely time for calm reflection in what were frequently life or death situations. He noted that the prosecution had been unable to find previous cases where manslaughter charges were brought in an active combat situation and that illustrated the difficulty in proving a duty of care.
Former defence force chief Peter Cosgrove said he felt relief for the soldiers, who had got their lives back. "They had to stand up straight and let the legal system work itself out," he told Macquarie Radio. "It must have been terrible for them and their loved ones and their mates while they went through this process."
Lawyer Patrick George, who represented Sergeant J, said last night the charges were misconceived because soldiers clearly did not owe a legally enforceable duty of care for their actions in combat.
SOURCE
Julia rolls out the pork barrel for Tony Windsor
Using taxpayer's money as a bribe for his support in Parliament
THERE'S a golden glow in New England, enhanced by frequent bursts of cargo from Canberra, the occasional vroooom of RAAF jets and the crisp cutting of ribbons right across the House of Tony Windsor.
Like many others, Col Murray, the Mayor of Tamworth in the independent MP's northeastern NSW seat of power, feels that lovely warmth, too. "Tony Windsor has got his little piece of sunshine, and I guess that he got the PM up here shows she recognises that he's got the sunshine, too," Murray told The Weekend Australian.
In a season of supposedly "tough" budgets, Labor ministers have been making pilgrimages to this already bountiful region to deliver dams, roads, health facilities, training centres and more.
Julia Gillard made a two-day visit to New England this week - an eternity compared with the usual prime ministerial drop-ins of a few hours - and she didn't come empty-handed or to boot-scoot. The trip's indelible image was the Prime Minister and local MP descending the stairs of the RAAF VIP plane in Tamworth in the bush regal manner of Liz and Phil, those other much-loved Windsors in these parts.
Planes are a fixture in the skies here, with BAE Flying Systems winning a six-year, $120 million, Australian Defence Force contract the other day to continue basic flying training at Tamworth.
On Tuesday, Ms Gillard announced $20m in new funding for medical training facilities in Windsor's home town and in nearby Armidale.
Mobbed by schoolchildren, the Prime Minister opened a $10m sports dome in Tamworth, half of which was paid for by Labor's economic stimulus dollars. She and Windsor also visited Tamworth Hospital to promote a $120m allocation for a redevelopment and a $31.6m grant for a regional cancer centre, both projects financed by the $5 billion Health and Hospitals Fund.
So far, NSW has been allocated $1.115bn from the HHF. Although New England is one of 48 federal seats in the state, its $151.6m represents 13.5 per cent of all NSW HHF grants.
The following day, the House of Representatives partners travelled the 110km northeast to Armidale, where they flicked the switch on the first mainland section of Labor's $36bn National Broadband Network - a project Windsor has fervently supported and which he cited as crucial to winning his support for Labor after last August's federal election stalemate.
The launch was attended by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and NBN Co chief executive Mike Quigley, although only seven of the more than 4000 homes connected in Armidale were using the fibre-optic network.
This month, Health Minister Nicola Roxon was on hand with Windsor to turn the first sod on the site of a proposed GP Super Clinic at Gunnedah. New England has received a number of health grants from Labor's "nation-building" HHF, $1.8bn of which has been earmarked for a regional priority round, secured by Mr Windsor and his fellow NSW independent, the member for Lyne, Rob Oakeshott.
Tamworth hospital's director of nursing and acting general manager, Chris Coombs, said the development would take the hospital from dispersed 1950s building stock into the 21st century. "The building will be state of the art," she said. "It's just wonderful." Coombs said that in the 13 years she has worked at the hospital, the number of emergency patients had grown from 18,000 a year to more than 50,000.
Tamworth's mayor said he was delighted by the healthcare funding boost, but detected a subtle force at play. "We've been seeking funding for the base hospital for many years and it has been going around and around for a lot of years, but now there's been a flood of commitments delivered in the first year," Murray said.
He also points to the Chaffey Dam upgrade, announced in February with $17m in federal funds. As well, Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese visited Tenterfield last Friday to promote with Windsor a $6m grant for a feasibility study for a realignment and bypass of the New England Highway.
During her visit, Gillard was repeatedly asked about her special relationship with the New England MP and what locals saw as Windsor's uncanny ability to secure funding for a long "wish list" of projects. "Tony Windsor is a very important part of our Australian parliament, and of course his support for the government is important to me and to the government," the Prime Minister told ABC regional radio listeners on Wednesday. "Tony Windsor, I think, is a very determined person, a very methodical person, so he works constructively with the government, raising the issues of concern to the region and that's good to see. "It's what we want local members to be doing."
Asked by The Weekend Australian if his position as a kingmaker had allow him to secure an unfair amount of funding, Windsor replied: "If that's the interpretation, I don't apologise . . . because I think country members have sold their electorates out in the past because of the need for the marginal city seats to receive the funding to buy the votes. I think it's rectifying inequities rather than some sort of pork barrel."
In any case, Labor had laid the ground work for its wooing of the rural independents over the course of its tumultuous first term under Kevin Rudd. As this newspaper has previously reported, New England received above-average stimulus funds for the primary school building program and road "black spots". Grants for social housing ($81m) and community infrastructure ($9m) ran at twice the national average.
Allocations from the Trade Training Centres in Schools program are running at almost $23m at five locations in New England. Labor has so far allocated $1.028bn over three funding rounds on these training centres. Given this program extends to every electorate, an average allocation would be $6.9m, so Windsor's seat has done extremely well from a measure Tony Abbott vows to cut in government.
When Gillard was trying to woo Windsor after last year's election, she was able to present a dossier of local projects that would be lost under Coalition rule.
Windsor said the substantive issues contained in the agreement he struck with Labor had benefited regional Australia generally, rather than one particular electorate. "I've been arguing for those things for a number of years," the independent said. "If you can put a bit more pressure on, well good luck."
Asked if that extended to pressuring government for the benefit of his electorate, Windsor replied that that was his job.
SOURCE
Julia hugely unpopular in Queensland
And Qld. is the swing state that any party has to win to form government
JULIA Gillard's support in Queensland has collapsed, with Labor's vote plummeting to record lows across the state. Labor's primary vote has crashed to 28 per cent, a Galaxy poll conducted exclusively for The Courier-Mail reveals. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has pulled in front of Ms Gillard as preferred prime minister by a strong 16 percentage point margin.
And former Labor leader Kevin Rudd is now preferred Labor leader by 59 per cent of Queensland voters.
Queensland voters have turned against Ms Gillard's minority Government, with 39 per cent saying the hung Parliament has been worse than expected. In a sign the Government is failing to sell its plans for a carbon tax, only 8 per cent of respondents said climate change was the most important issue facing Australia.
Labor's primary vote has slumped from 33.6 per cent at the last election to 28 per cent, according to the poll conducted on Wednesday and Thursday nights. The party would face an electoral wipeout if these results were replicated across crucial marginal seats in Queensland.
This result would see the Coalition win by 59 per cent to 41 per cent on a two-party-preferred basis, assuming similar flows of preferences to the last election. Support for the Coalition has soared from 47.4 per cent primary vote at the last election to 53 per cent in the Galaxy poll.
For the first time in any recent opinion poll, Mr Abbott has pulled ahead of Ms Gillard as preferred prime minister by 53 per cent to 47 per cent. In a further blow to Ms Gillard, former prime minister Kevin Rudd has three times more support to be Labor leader.
Previous polls had already suggested Mr Rudd had more support than Ms Gillard as Labor leader both in Queensland and across the country. But the new poll shows Mr Rudd now has majority support among Queenslanders to take back leadership of the Labor Party. He has a massive 40 per cent lead as preferred Labor leader over the woman who deposed him as prime minister. Ms Gillard only secured 19 per cent support as Labor leader, down from 33 per cent in February.
"Such is the popularity of Kevin Rudd in Queensland that there is consensus between Labor and LNP supporters, with both of the opinion that he is now the best choice to lead the federal Labor Party," Galaxy chief executive David Briggs said.
The recent Federal Budget has not helped Treasurer Wayne Swan's popularity either. Support for Mr Swan to take over as Labor leader has fallen to 9 per cent from 15 per cent in February.
The poll shows voters' growing sense of disillusionment about Ms Gillard's power-sharing deal with the Greens and Independents. The number of people who said the hung Parliament was worse than expected has risen from 23 per cent in February to 39 per cent.
Almost half the people polled said it was too early to tell how the minority Government was working. But this was down from 62 per cent who were prepared to hold their judgment in February.
Economic management and cost of living were ranked as the most important issues, followed by illegal immigration and education standards.
SOURCE
Queensland Health staff angry as police called in over payroll debacle
Looks like the new minister is even more clueless than the old one
STAFF have accused Queensland Health of treating them like criminals as it attempts to claw back money wrongly claimed during the payroll debacle. The department has confirmed 88 health workers had been handed to fraud investigators.
The Courier-Mail understands 587 cases were first referred to the Crime and Misconduct Commission, but most were rejected because they involved minor payments of under $500. The remainder involved average cash payments of $5300 and were passed on to police.
But staffers who insist they mistakenly claimed too much in hardship payments said they were ready and willing to pay back any money they owed. Many were furious they had been subjected to the "humiliation and indignity" of detectives knocking at their doors alleging fraud, without any prior contact from Queensland Health.
The employees felt they were being further victimised by the disastrous system that left thousands unpaid or underpaid after its implementation last March. [And it's still not fixed!]
The department has insisted all cases were "thoroughly examined" before referrals to the police.
But two workers told of their trauma after being hauled before police, only to later be cleared of any wrongdoing. "The stress these allegations have caused are enormous. Sleepless nights, breakdown in marriage ... all because of false allegations," one man, who asked not to be named, said. "I am also out more than $2000 in legal fees to clear my name."
Another nurse released without charge said the process was "heavy-handed and insensitive", especially because she was encouraged by management to accept the interim payments.
The Queensland Nurses Union is pushing for compensation for those wrongly accused. A nurse said he was visited at home by detectives over a $500 emergency payment. "I've worked for Queensland Health for 20 years and I'm treated like a criminal and police come around and ask to question me in front of my family," he said.
General human resource services deputy director John Cairns said yesterday all staff were presumed innocent and referrals to police did not indicate guilt.
Police had also agreed to allow Queensland Health to first contact staff before detectives arrived, he said. Mr Cairns said 21 people had been been charged so far with fraud, with four pleading guilty.
SOURCE
Note: I have two other blogs covering Australian news. They are more specialized so are not updated daily but there are updates on both most weeks. See QANTAS/Jetstar for news on Qantas failings and Australian police news for news on police misbehaviour
In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG has a shot at both Bob Brown and Malcolm Turnbull over the carbon tax
One in the eye for a nasty bitch: "The Director of Military Prosecutions, Lyn McDade"
She's not even a good lawyer, let alone knowing anything about army combat. Prosecuting our men for defending themselves was always utter slime. Get rid of the stupid bitch!
THE case against two army reservists charged with manslaughter in Afghanistan will not go to a court martial after a judge advocate yesterday dismissed the charges. However, Sergeant J and Lance Corporal D could still face alternative charges pending a decision by the Director of Military Prosecutions, Lyn McDade.
At a pre-trial hearing in Sydney, judge advocate Ian Westwood dismissed the case against Sergeant J and Lance Corporal D. That means a court martial set down for July 11 will not go ahead and Brigadier McDade must now decide whether to bring different charges against the soldiers.
It is not clear what yesterday's decision means for a third soldier - the unit's commander - who is yet to face a court martial and whether the lieutenant colonel is likely still to be prosecuted.
The charges related to a February 12, 2009, incident involving members of the Special Operations Task Group undertaking a compound clearance operation in Oruzgan province. Six civilians, including five children, were killed. [When a Talib fired on our men at close range from the middle of a room housing the women and children. The deaths were entirely on the head of the Taliban!]
Sergeant J and Lance Corporal D had been charged with manslaughter and, in the alternative, two counts of dangerous conduct, with negligence as to consequence.
Brigadier Westwood agreed with their defence team that the charges should be thrown out because they "did not disclose service offences". He said the issue of whether there was a duty of care was of "fundamental importance".
It had to be established that the soldiers had a duty of care before it could be decided whether or not they'd been negligent. But in reading through the Defence Force Discipline Act, he found an "absence of plain words" on any duty of care to non-combatants.
Brigadier Westwood said his ruling did not detract from the personal tragedy inherent in the prosecution's allegations or diminish the importance of the lives lost.
He said soldiers were in a unique position when they were engaged in armed combat. Australian law authorised the application of force, including lethal force, when troops were sent into combat. In fact, soldiers were compelled on "pain of penalty" to carry out attacks on the enemy and they could not simply decide not to take any further part in hostilities.
There was rarely time for calm reflection in what were frequently life or death situations. He noted that the prosecution had been unable to find previous cases where manslaughter charges were brought in an active combat situation and that illustrated the difficulty in proving a duty of care.
Former defence force chief Peter Cosgrove said he felt relief for the soldiers, who had got their lives back. "They had to stand up straight and let the legal system work itself out," he told Macquarie Radio. "It must have been terrible for them and their loved ones and their mates while they went through this process."
Lawyer Patrick George, who represented Sergeant J, said last night the charges were misconceived because soldiers clearly did not owe a legally enforceable duty of care for their actions in combat.
SOURCE
Julia rolls out the pork barrel for Tony Windsor
Using taxpayer's money as a bribe for his support in Parliament
THERE'S a golden glow in New England, enhanced by frequent bursts of cargo from Canberra, the occasional vroooom of RAAF jets and the crisp cutting of ribbons right across the House of Tony Windsor.
Like many others, Col Murray, the Mayor of Tamworth in the independent MP's northeastern NSW seat of power, feels that lovely warmth, too. "Tony Windsor has got his little piece of sunshine, and I guess that he got the PM up here shows she recognises that he's got the sunshine, too," Murray told The Weekend Australian.
In a season of supposedly "tough" budgets, Labor ministers have been making pilgrimages to this already bountiful region to deliver dams, roads, health facilities, training centres and more.
Julia Gillard made a two-day visit to New England this week - an eternity compared with the usual prime ministerial drop-ins of a few hours - and she didn't come empty-handed or to boot-scoot. The trip's indelible image was the Prime Minister and local MP descending the stairs of the RAAF VIP plane in Tamworth in the bush regal manner of Liz and Phil, those other much-loved Windsors in these parts.
Planes are a fixture in the skies here, with BAE Flying Systems winning a six-year, $120 million, Australian Defence Force contract the other day to continue basic flying training at Tamworth.
On Tuesday, Ms Gillard announced $20m in new funding for medical training facilities in Windsor's home town and in nearby Armidale.
Mobbed by schoolchildren, the Prime Minister opened a $10m sports dome in Tamworth, half of which was paid for by Labor's economic stimulus dollars. She and Windsor also visited Tamworth Hospital to promote a $120m allocation for a redevelopment and a $31.6m grant for a regional cancer centre, both projects financed by the $5 billion Health and Hospitals Fund.
So far, NSW has been allocated $1.115bn from the HHF. Although New England is one of 48 federal seats in the state, its $151.6m represents 13.5 per cent of all NSW HHF grants.
The following day, the House of Representatives partners travelled the 110km northeast to Armidale, where they flicked the switch on the first mainland section of Labor's $36bn National Broadband Network - a project Windsor has fervently supported and which he cited as crucial to winning his support for Labor after last August's federal election stalemate.
The launch was attended by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and NBN Co chief executive Mike Quigley, although only seven of the more than 4000 homes connected in Armidale were using the fibre-optic network.
This month, Health Minister Nicola Roxon was on hand with Windsor to turn the first sod on the site of a proposed GP Super Clinic at Gunnedah. New England has received a number of health grants from Labor's "nation-building" HHF, $1.8bn of which has been earmarked for a regional priority round, secured by Mr Windsor and his fellow NSW independent, the member for Lyne, Rob Oakeshott.
Tamworth hospital's director of nursing and acting general manager, Chris Coombs, said the development would take the hospital from dispersed 1950s building stock into the 21st century. "The building will be state of the art," she said. "It's just wonderful." Coombs said that in the 13 years she has worked at the hospital, the number of emergency patients had grown from 18,000 a year to more than 50,000.
Tamworth's mayor said he was delighted by the healthcare funding boost, but detected a subtle force at play. "We've been seeking funding for the base hospital for many years and it has been going around and around for a lot of years, but now there's been a flood of commitments delivered in the first year," Murray said.
He also points to the Chaffey Dam upgrade, announced in February with $17m in federal funds. As well, Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese visited Tenterfield last Friday to promote with Windsor a $6m grant for a feasibility study for a realignment and bypass of the New England Highway.
During her visit, Gillard was repeatedly asked about her special relationship with the New England MP and what locals saw as Windsor's uncanny ability to secure funding for a long "wish list" of projects. "Tony Windsor is a very important part of our Australian parliament, and of course his support for the government is important to me and to the government," the Prime Minister told ABC regional radio listeners on Wednesday. "Tony Windsor, I think, is a very determined person, a very methodical person, so he works constructively with the government, raising the issues of concern to the region and that's good to see. "It's what we want local members to be doing."
Asked by The Weekend Australian if his position as a kingmaker had allow him to secure an unfair amount of funding, Windsor replied: "If that's the interpretation, I don't apologise . . . because I think country members have sold their electorates out in the past because of the need for the marginal city seats to receive the funding to buy the votes. I think it's rectifying inequities rather than some sort of pork barrel."
In any case, Labor had laid the ground work for its wooing of the rural independents over the course of its tumultuous first term under Kevin Rudd. As this newspaper has previously reported, New England received above-average stimulus funds for the primary school building program and road "black spots". Grants for social housing ($81m) and community infrastructure ($9m) ran at twice the national average.
Allocations from the Trade Training Centres in Schools program are running at almost $23m at five locations in New England. Labor has so far allocated $1.028bn over three funding rounds on these training centres. Given this program extends to every electorate, an average allocation would be $6.9m, so Windsor's seat has done extremely well from a measure Tony Abbott vows to cut in government.
When Gillard was trying to woo Windsor after last year's election, she was able to present a dossier of local projects that would be lost under Coalition rule.
Windsor said the substantive issues contained in the agreement he struck with Labor had benefited regional Australia generally, rather than one particular electorate. "I've been arguing for those things for a number of years," the independent said. "If you can put a bit more pressure on, well good luck."
Asked if that extended to pressuring government for the benefit of his electorate, Windsor replied that that was his job.
SOURCE
Julia hugely unpopular in Queensland
And Qld. is the swing state that any party has to win to form government
JULIA Gillard's support in Queensland has collapsed, with Labor's vote plummeting to record lows across the state. Labor's primary vote has crashed to 28 per cent, a Galaxy poll conducted exclusively for The Courier-Mail reveals. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has pulled in front of Ms Gillard as preferred prime minister by a strong 16 percentage point margin.
And former Labor leader Kevin Rudd is now preferred Labor leader by 59 per cent of Queensland voters.
Queensland voters have turned against Ms Gillard's minority Government, with 39 per cent saying the hung Parliament has been worse than expected. In a sign the Government is failing to sell its plans for a carbon tax, only 8 per cent of respondents said climate change was the most important issue facing Australia.
Labor's primary vote has slumped from 33.6 per cent at the last election to 28 per cent, according to the poll conducted on Wednesday and Thursday nights. The party would face an electoral wipeout if these results were replicated across crucial marginal seats in Queensland.
This result would see the Coalition win by 59 per cent to 41 per cent on a two-party-preferred basis, assuming similar flows of preferences to the last election. Support for the Coalition has soared from 47.4 per cent primary vote at the last election to 53 per cent in the Galaxy poll.
For the first time in any recent opinion poll, Mr Abbott has pulled ahead of Ms Gillard as preferred prime minister by 53 per cent to 47 per cent. In a further blow to Ms Gillard, former prime minister Kevin Rudd has three times more support to be Labor leader.
Previous polls had already suggested Mr Rudd had more support than Ms Gillard as Labor leader both in Queensland and across the country. But the new poll shows Mr Rudd now has majority support among Queenslanders to take back leadership of the Labor Party. He has a massive 40 per cent lead as preferred Labor leader over the woman who deposed him as prime minister. Ms Gillard only secured 19 per cent support as Labor leader, down from 33 per cent in February.
"Such is the popularity of Kevin Rudd in Queensland that there is consensus between Labor and LNP supporters, with both of the opinion that he is now the best choice to lead the federal Labor Party," Galaxy chief executive David Briggs said.
The recent Federal Budget has not helped Treasurer Wayne Swan's popularity either. Support for Mr Swan to take over as Labor leader has fallen to 9 per cent from 15 per cent in February.
The poll shows voters' growing sense of disillusionment about Ms Gillard's power-sharing deal with the Greens and Independents. The number of people who said the hung Parliament was worse than expected has risen from 23 per cent in February to 39 per cent.
Almost half the people polled said it was too early to tell how the minority Government was working. But this was down from 62 per cent who were prepared to hold their judgment in February.
Economic management and cost of living were ranked as the most important issues, followed by illegal immigration and education standards.
SOURCE
Queensland Health staff angry as police called in over payroll debacle
Looks like the new minister is even more clueless than the old one
STAFF have accused Queensland Health of treating them like criminals as it attempts to claw back money wrongly claimed during the payroll debacle. The department has confirmed 88 health workers had been handed to fraud investigators.
The Courier-Mail understands 587 cases were first referred to the Crime and Misconduct Commission, but most were rejected because they involved minor payments of under $500. The remainder involved average cash payments of $5300 and were passed on to police.
But staffers who insist they mistakenly claimed too much in hardship payments said they were ready and willing to pay back any money they owed. Many were furious they had been subjected to the "humiliation and indignity" of detectives knocking at their doors alleging fraud, without any prior contact from Queensland Health.
The employees felt they were being further victimised by the disastrous system that left thousands unpaid or underpaid after its implementation last March. [And it's still not fixed!]
The department has insisted all cases were "thoroughly examined" before referrals to the police.
But two workers told of their trauma after being hauled before police, only to later be cleared of any wrongdoing. "The stress these allegations have caused are enormous. Sleepless nights, breakdown in marriage ... all because of false allegations," one man, who asked not to be named, said. "I am also out more than $2000 in legal fees to clear my name."
Another nurse released without charge said the process was "heavy-handed and insensitive", especially because she was encouraged by management to accept the interim payments.
The Queensland Nurses Union is pushing for compensation for those wrongly accused. A nurse said he was visited at home by detectives over a $500 emergency payment. "I've worked for Queensland Health for 20 years and I'm treated like a criminal and police come around and ask to question me in front of my family," he said.
General human resource services deputy director John Cairns said yesterday all staff were presumed innocent and referrals to police did not indicate guilt.
Police had also agreed to allow Queensland Health to first contact staff before detectives arrived, he said. Mr Cairns said 21 people had been been charged so far with fraud, with four pleading guilty.
SOURCE
Note: I have two other blogs covering Australian news. They are more specialized so are not updated daily but there are updates on both most weeks. See QANTAS/Jetstar for news on Qantas failings and Australian police news for news on police misbehaviour
Friday, May 20, 2011
Violent "refugees"
Are these the people we want in Australia? All offenders should be denied permission to stay
THREE critical incidents are being reported each day across detention centres in what insiders claim is a system out of control.
Documents revealed to Federal Parliament show there were more than 3400 incidents reported across the detention network in the nine months to February this year. Of those, 850 were deemed critical.
According to reporting protocols adopted by Serco, the company contracted to run the centres, critical incidents include assaults, bomb threats, chemical and biological threats, death, sexual assaults, riots, escape, hunger strikes, damage to facilities or protests.
"Are things out of control? They have been out of control for five years," one worker said.
SOURCE
Harsher penalities for school thugs in Victoria
TOUGHER penalties for violent parents and students are on the way as more schools resort to lockdowns to protect students and staff. More than one state school a week is now locking students in to protect them from violence and aggression, compared to less than one a month five years ago.
Education Minister Martin Dixon yesterday told the Herald Sun he planned to increase penalties for the sorts of behaviour that often spark lockdowns. "There is a high expectation in the community that schools are safe places," Mr Dixon said. "Teachers expect that, parents expect that and children expect it and we've got to do everything in our power to ensure that remains the case."
Mr Dixon said schools were generally safe places, but there were some worrying trends with violence that needed to be addressed. He said a department taskforce was working to determine appropriate penalties.
Australian Principals Federation president Chris Cotching said the federation had been pushing for tougher penalties for all illegal behaviour on school grounds. He said higher penalties - as applies to attacks on emergency service workers - were needed to curb a marked upsurge in violence, particularly from parents, in the past two years. "We want schools to have a status that is greater than that of a public park," Mr Cotching said. "When (people) come into a school there should be an understood and accepted requirement about how they behave."
New data obtained by the Herald Sun shows 11 schools locked in students in the first two months of the school year - nine of them because of aggressive or antisocial behaviour. In 2010 there were 23 school lockdowns for aggression and antisocial behaviour for the entire school year. Across 2008 and 2009 there were 53 violence-related lockdowns, up from 20 in 2006 and 2007.
Last month Flemington Primary was forced to hire a security guard after a father who was angry over a personal issue allegedly became threatening and aggressive.
Mr Cotching said principals have no protection or timely support in dealing with parents "who seem to think it is their unrestricted right to abuse, harass and intimidate" principals and teachers.
SOURCE
Seriously ill man being loaded into a maxi-taxi instead of an ambulance
TAXIS are being used in the place of ambulances to ferry seriously ill patients amid union fears the State Government is planning to privatise patient transportation.
The Ambulance Union has provided this photograph taken by an appalled paramedic which they say shows an elderly, unwell man being loaded into a maxi-taxi at the Princess Alexandra Hospital last Friday to be taken back to a Queensland Health-run aged care facility at Redland Hospital.
He was brought to the PA Hospital by taxi that morning as an outpatient and was accompanied by a nurse on the return journey.
Jeanette Temperley from the Ambulance Union said if anything had gone wrong during the ride home an ambulance would have had to be called anyway.
"If they're accompanied by a nurse, that suggests they need some sort of medical care," she said. "If there's a problem with the person in the vehicle, there's no equipment."
Ms Temperley said it was not the first time taxis or limousines had been used to transport seriously ill people. "We've had members say, 'I've seen a person put in a taxi that I don't think should've been there'," she said. "It could be that they're accompanied by a nurse which would indicate they need some sort of medical care, or that they're on a drip or an oxygen tank."
Dr David Thiele from Queensland Health said in the case of the patient photographed, the PA Hospital had not organised the transport and did not provide the chair loaded into the maxi-taxi.
He said there were "long-standing guidelines" for patient transport that had not recently changed. "The Queensland Ambulance Service is used for patients who require clinical care while travelling," Dr Thiele said.
He did not say what role Redland Hospital played in the case but it is understood the nurse who accompanied the patient is employed by Queensland Health at the hospital's aged care facility.
In August 2009, Queensland Ambulance Service medical director Stephen Rashford demanded an investigation by Queensland Health when two seriously ill children were transported by taxi between hospitals.
At the time, Dr Rashford questioned whether the cases represented "fiscal rather than clinical" decision making.
Queenslanders pay an annual levy of $109.90 per household which raises about $150 million a year towards maintaining the fleet of 435 ambulances and 630 personnel.
Opposition health spokesman Mark McArdle said taxis were not equipped to deal with "medical matters". "Having a nurse with a patient in a taxi is an acknowledgement the patient needs constant care," Mr McArdle said. "If anything went wrong there could be a major complication."
Taxi drivers also slammed the practice, saying cabbies were not trained to deal with medical emergencies. "Looking at this (photograph) makes me shudder," said Cab Drivers' Association of Queensland secretary Lee Sims. "The driver might be held liable for anything that happens to the patient. We aren't trained ambulance people."
The Government recently issued a tender for non-emergency patient transportation on the Gold Coast.
"What we're saying is" 'Is this the thin edge of the wedge? Is it about privatising more of the ambulance service?'," Ms Temperley said. "The government's denying privatisation is being considered but we need some guarantees."
Dr Thiele said the Chief Health Officer had given written assurances to the union that QH has no plans to increase the use of community and private transport providers.
SOURCE
More staff than customers on NBN books
THE government company rolling out the National Broadband Network has more staff than it does customers. NBN Co, which has 784 staff, has at most 607 customers after Julia Gillard and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy launched the first NBN site on the mainland in Armidale yesterday, with just seven users. And none of the network's users is a paying customer yet.
Opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull last night seized on the figures, declaring them further proof that the government should have done a cost-benefit analysis of the $36 billion project. Given the "great hoopla" when the Prime Minister connected seven customers in Armidale, Mr Turnbull said, "who knows what tumultuous celebrations will occur when the NBN's customers actually exceed their staff". "It will be possibly declared a national holiday," he said.
NBN Co yesterday defended the numbers. "That's because we are in the process of building a network, establishing systems and trialling services in concert with our telecommunications partners on the way to offering a ubiquitous wholesale broadband service to all Australians over the course of the next nine years," said NBN Co spokesman Andrew Sholl. "There are no paying customers. We're in test phase."
Yesterday, NBN Co's head of product development, Jim Hassell, said the number of users in Armidale would be "increasing over the next few months" until trials finish in September "and then we open up to connection to everybody that we've passed".
"There isn't a take-up rate as such; it's just trials," Mr Hassell told ABC Radio.
NBN Co confirmed yesterday that there were about 600 "active services" in Tasmania - a take-up of about 15 per cent of the 4000 premises the network had passed in the towns of Smithton, Scottsdale and Midway Point since it started last July.
Senator Conroy said many customers were still waiting to get off their long-term Telstra packages so they could take advantage of the retail competition the NBN had created.
Mr Hassell, meanwhile, dismissed concerns that take-up in Tasmania was low, as connections had started 10 months ago at the end of July. "It's a new technology which has been rolled out," he said.
"I don't think it is a surprisingly low rate of connections. I think that's pretty good for the homes that we've passed and where we've got to. People will have agreements in place with their current service providers. Some of those will last over a period of time, so you don't expect them to change immediately."
NBN Co spokeswoman Rhonda Griffin said Tasmanian retail service providers - which bought wholesale broadband from NBN Co and then offered services to home and business users - were not paying commercial rates because the project was a pilot.
NBN Co is in talks about introducing charges.
Mr Hassell said almost 1000 customers would be connected as part of a trial of the first five release sites on the mainland - Armidale, Willunga, Kiama, Brunswick and Townsville - that would continue to the end of September. On average, 74 per cent of premises in these sites had agreed to have fibre connected. Just 50 per cent in the three Tasmanian test-site towns had agreed.
SOURCE
Are these the people we want in Australia? All offenders should be denied permission to stay
THREE critical incidents are being reported each day across detention centres in what insiders claim is a system out of control.
Documents revealed to Federal Parliament show there were more than 3400 incidents reported across the detention network in the nine months to February this year. Of those, 850 were deemed critical.
According to reporting protocols adopted by Serco, the company contracted to run the centres, critical incidents include assaults, bomb threats, chemical and biological threats, death, sexual assaults, riots, escape, hunger strikes, damage to facilities or protests.
"Are things out of control? They have been out of control for five years," one worker said.
SOURCE
Harsher penalities for school thugs in Victoria
TOUGHER penalties for violent parents and students are on the way as more schools resort to lockdowns to protect students and staff. More than one state school a week is now locking students in to protect them from violence and aggression, compared to less than one a month five years ago.
Education Minister Martin Dixon yesterday told the Herald Sun he planned to increase penalties for the sorts of behaviour that often spark lockdowns. "There is a high expectation in the community that schools are safe places," Mr Dixon said. "Teachers expect that, parents expect that and children expect it and we've got to do everything in our power to ensure that remains the case."
Mr Dixon said schools were generally safe places, but there were some worrying trends with violence that needed to be addressed. He said a department taskforce was working to determine appropriate penalties.
Australian Principals Federation president Chris Cotching said the federation had been pushing for tougher penalties for all illegal behaviour on school grounds. He said higher penalties - as applies to attacks on emergency service workers - were needed to curb a marked upsurge in violence, particularly from parents, in the past two years. "We want schools to have a status that is greater than that of a public park," Mr Cotching said. "When (people) come into a school there should be an understood and accepted requirement about how they behave."
New data obtained by the Herald Sun shows 11 schools locked in students in the first two months of the school year - nine of them because of aggressive or antisocial behaviour. In 2010 there were 23 school lockdowns for aggression and antisocial behaviour for the entire school year. Across 2008 and 2009 there were 53 violence-related lockdowns, up from 20 in 2006 and 2007.
Last month Flemington Primary was forced to hire a security guard after a father who was angry over a personal issue allegedly became threatening and aggressive.
Mr Cotching said principals have no protection or timely support in dealing with parents "who seem to think it is their unrestricted right to abuse, harass and intimidate" principals and teachers.
SOURCE
Seriously ill man being loaded into a maxi-taxi instead of an ambulance
TAXIS are being used in the place of ambulances to ferry seriously ill patients amid union fears the State Government is planning to privatise patient transportation.
The Ambulance Union has provided this photograph taken by an appalled paramedic which they say shows an elderly, unwell man being loaded into a maxi-taxi at the Princess Alexandra Hospital last Friday to be taken back to a Queensland Health-run aged care facility at Redland Hospital.
He was brought to the PA Hospital by taxi that morning as an outpatient and was accompanied by a nurse on the return journey.
Jeanette Temperley from the Ambulance Union said if anything had gone wrong during the ride home an ambulance would have had to be called anyway.
"If they're accompanied by a nurse, that suggests they need some sort of medical care," she said. "If there's a problem with the person in the vehicle, there's no equipment."
Ms Temperley said it was not the first time taxis or limousines had been used to transport seriously ill people. "We've had members say, 'I've seen a person put in a taxi that I don't think should've been there'," she said. "It could be that they're accompanied by a nurse which would indicate they need some sort of medical care, or that they're on a drip or an oxygen tank."
Dr David Thiele from Queensland Health said in the case of the patient photographed, the PA Hospital had not organised the transport and did not provide the chair loaded into the maxi-taxi.
He said there were "long-standing guidelines" for patient transport that had not recently changed. "The Queensland Ambulance Service is used for patients who require clinical care while travelling," Dr Thiele said.
He did not say what role Redland Hospital played in the case but it is understood the nurse who accompanied the patient is employed by Queensland Health at the hospital's aged care facility.
In August 2009, Queensland Ambulance Service medical director Stephen Rashford demanded an investigation by Queensland Health when two seriously ill children were transported by taxi between hospitals.
At the time, Dr Rashford questioned whether the cases represented "fiscal rather than clinical" decision making.
Queenslanders pay an annual levy of $109.90 per household which raises about $150 million a year towards maintaining the fleet of 435 ambulances and 630 personnel.
Opposition health spokesman Mark McArdle said taxis were not equipped to deal with "medical matters". "Having a nurse with a patient in a taxi is an acknowledgement the patient needs constant care," Mr McArdle said. "If anything went wrong there could be a major complication."
Taxi drivers also slammed the practice, saying cabbies were not trained to deal with medical emergencies. "Looking at this (photograph) makes me shudder," said Cab Drivers' Association of Queensland secretary Lee Sims. "The driver might be held liable for anything that happens to the patient. We aren't trained ambulance people."
The Government recently issued a tender for non-emergency patient transportation on the Gold Coast.
"What we're saying is" 'Is this the thin edge of the wedge? Is it about privatising more of the ambulance service?'," Ms Temperley said. "The government's denying privatisation is being considered but we need some guarantees."
Dr Thiele said the Chief Health Officer had given written assurances to the union that QH has no plans to increase the use of community and private transport providers.
SOURCE
More staff than customers on NBN books
THE government company rolling out the National Broadband Network has more staff than it does customers. NBN Co, which has 784 staff, has at most 607 customers after Julia Gillard and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy launched the first NBN site on the mainland in Armidale yesterday, with just seven users. And none of the network's users is a paying customer yet.
Opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull last night seized on the figures, declaring them further proof that the government should have done a cost-benefit analysis of the $36 billion project. Given the "great hoopla" when the Prime Minister connected seven customers in Armidale, Mr Turnbull said, "who knows what tumultuous celebrations will occur when the NBN's customers actually exceed their staff". "It will be possibly declared a national holiday," he said.
NBN Co yesterday defended the numbers. "That's because we are in the process of building a network, establishing systems and trialling services in concert with our telecommunications partners on the way to offering a ubiquitous wholesale broadband service to all Australians over the course of the next nine years," said NBN Co spokesman Andrew Sholl. "There are no paying customers. We're in test phase."
Yesterday, NBN Co's head of product development, Jim Hassell, said the number of users in Armidale would be "increasing over the next few months" until trials finish in September "and then we open up to connection to everybody that we've passed".
"There isn't a take-up rate as such; it's just trials," Mr Hassell told ABC Radio.
NBN Co confirmed yesterday that there were about 600 "active services" in Tasmania - a take-up of about 15 per cent of the 4000 premises the network had passed in the towns of Smithton, Scottsdale and Midway Point since it started last July.
Senator Conroy said many customers were still waiting to get off their long-term Telstra packages so they could take advantage of the retail competition the NBN had created.
Mr Hassell, meanwhile, dismissed concerns that take-up in Tasmania was low, as connections had started 10 months ago at the end of July. "It's a new technology which has been rolled out," he said.
"I don't think it is a surprisingly low rate of connections. I think that's pretty good for the homes that we've passed and where we've got to. People will have agreements in place with their current service providers. Some of those will last over a period of time, so you don't expect them to change immediately."
NBN Co spokeswoman Rhonda Griffin said Tasmanian retail service providers - which bought wholesale broadband from NBN Co and then offered services to home and business users - were not paying commercial rates because the project was a pilot.
NBN Co is in talks about introducing charges.
Mr Hassell said almost 1000 customers would be connected as part of a trial of the first five release sites on the mainland - Armidale, Willunga, Kiama, Brunswick and Townsville - that would continue to the end of September. On average, 74 per cent of premises in these sites had agreed to have fibre connected. Just 50 per cent in the three Tasmanian test-site towns had agreed.
SOURCE
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Victoria's Premier drops compulsory Aboriginal welcome
Good riddance to a stupid bit of tokenism. It is pioneers such as my ancestors who made Australia what it is today. If you are going to single out any group in multicultural Australia, a better case could be made for honouring them.
I have a picture of my grandfather's bullock team on my wall and every time I look at it, I am reminded of the quiet heroism with which they laboured to bring civilization to this vast country. Henry Lawson knew the bullockies (teamsters) well. Read his poem "The Teams" to get a picture of them. He describes my grandfather pretty well
The Premier has confirmed he will no longer force ministers and public servants to acknowledge traditional Aboriginal land owners at official events.
In a major policy shift that has upset some indigenous leaders, the State Government has dumped a Labor protocol as too politically correct. Brumby government ministers had to acknowledge the "traditional owners and custodians of this land".
But Mr Baillieu believes Labor's stance was dictatorial and has told his ministers that such acknowledgments aren't compulsory.
Former premier Steve Bracks has also slammed the state government calling their decision a "retrograde step." "I acknowledged the traditional land owners of Australian regularly when I spoke as premier." "I would have thought we would have moved on quite a bit," he said. "Thousands of times I started my speech with an Aboriginal welcome and I always felt very strongly about it."
He warned that people in defiance of the government could start using Aboriginal welcomes to embarrass the party. "That's what will come of this, it's the wrong step," he said.
Wurundjeri elder Auntie Di Kerr said she was saddened by the change, which comes as the AFL prepares for its indigenous round. "It's nice to be actually recognising first nation's people because we've been neglected and downtrodden for so many years," she said. "It shouldn't be a forced thing either, it should be a respectful acknowledgment and honest."
Mr Baillieu still acknowledges traditional owners at indigenous functions, but uses a new form of words at mainstream events.
"Can I particularly acknowledge all of those, past and present, including our indigenous communities, whose love of this land has made this a place we treasure and a state we all seek to nurture," he said at the recent inauguration of Governor Alex Chernov.
A government spokesman said the only requirement was that ministers and MPs used respectful language, including appropriate acknowledgments to particular audiences. "Unlike the former Labor government, ministers are free to express themselves as appropriate for the occasion," he said.
The issue has been raised at the federal level, with Tony Abbott attacking Labor MPs for "tokenism" and misplaced political correctness.
Tim Wilson, policy director for the Right-wing think tank Institute of Public Affairs, said the new policy made sense because indigenous acknowledgment were over-used. "The obsessive acknowledgment can only belittle and undermine the intent of such statements," he said.
Labor's spokesman for aboriginal affairs, Richard Wynne, said: "Labor believes it is the right thing to do to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land and it causes great offence to Aboriginal people when political leaders fail to do so."
SOURCE
You can be a brainless twit (or even a blonde bombshell) if you are a Warmist
A junior Warmist at the University of Melbourne (Parkville) has excited the derision of Prof. Bunyip. He comments about the happy soul below, one Ailie Gallant
It is not Allie’s efforts to attract attention (which can also help with the funding), but her co-authored paper on water flows in the Murray Darling Basin which has brought so much reassurance.
In particular, it is the remarkably specific conclusion that there is precisely, and she is very exact about this, a 2.3% likelihood that any of the many droughts over the past 1500 years were worse than the one just ended - the same dry spell during which the she began smokin' dos' stats in her climate crib. It was a popular meme a few years ago, back when rain refused to fall and climate change was replacing global warming, so her enthusiasm at the time was understandable.
And her methods? Well, let's just say that the Professor is -- yo, lab bitches -- down with them.
The Original Custodians were not big on meteorological records, so that was a problem for Allie right there. She might have gone off to Barmah (a lovely spot) and cored a few red gums or somesuch, measured their transected rings and deduced when it had been hot and dry or cool and wet.
That was not her preferred method, however. Rather, nice and comfy at a Parkville work station, she consulted those who went before, mining their studies of celery top pines in Tasmania, teak in Indonesia, some tall timber in Western Australia, Tongan corals, kauri in New Zealand and other interesting bits of Bali, Fiji and the Great Barrier Reef. The closest survey site was a good 900 kilometres from the Murray, the furthest a 10-hour flight, even for Tim Flannery.
Data sources so far removed from the river she intended to study might have suggested an insurmountable obstacle to those who know not the miracles of modern modelling. By reviewing numbers here, sifting charts there and rejecting discordant figures in accordance with recognised climatological norms and norming, Ailie was able to feed what was left into a computerized vitamizer and - golly gosh, guess what? - demonstrate with charts and graphs that the recent drought really was the worst in centuries, just as the Phage, ABC, Guardian, World Wildlife Fund had been saying all along!
Indeed, by Ailie's reckoning, it was even worse, which must have convulsed the WWF's fund-raisers with shivers of delight: the drought was not the nastiest in 100 years or even 1,000 years - it was a full 1500 years since Australia had seen the arid like. Just to put things in perspective, that is not too long after the Romans pulled out of Britain. Amazing, ain't it, what climate science can learn about a river in southern Australia from a bit of Bali coral someone else has studied? And don't getting suspicious, thinking nobody could be that precise on the basis of such much-handled data.The science is settled, Ailie assures us, and to a 97.7% certainty, no less!
And that, as Ailie rapped the other night, is what climate science is all about. She is proud of her research, naturally, and quite probably eager to tackle the next challenge -- pinpointing Warrnambool's worst hailstorm since the Council of Trent, perhaps.
SOURCE
Commenter on Bunyip's site, David Joss, said...
It's a great pity that instead of studying proxies, these people did not peek into the history books.
The Federation drought ran almost as long as the most recent one.
The World War 2 drought may have been worse. It began in 1937. The Murray stopped running at Echuca in 1945 and seven million sheep died that year.
But the drought which lasted from the early 1830s until 1842 (some say 1844) was probably the worst one documented. By 1835 the Murrumbidgee had run dry at Gundagai. An early settler near Echuca, the squatter Henry Lewes, wrote that Horseshoe lagoon at Moama was dry when he arrived in 1842. There were trees growing in its bed which he reckoned were probably eight or nine years old. He watched them die as floods refilled the lagoon. And if the trees were as old as he believed, the lagoon had to dry out before the seeds could germinate.
Eye witness accounts trump tree rings every time.
Australian ski resort to open three weeks early
RECENT low temperatures and snowfalls will allow Australia's largest ski resort to kick off its winter season three weeks ahead of schedule. Perisher will officially open its Snowy Mountains Front Valley slope on Friday, following a successful round of snow-making last week.
It's the first of Perisher's snowfield to begin operations and the other slopes will follow on June 11, the official start of its season. "We are thrilled to ... be opening the resort way ahead of time," Perisher chief executive Peter Brulisauer said.
Temperatures at Perisher Valley are currently hovering around 5.7 degrees during the day. The average minimum during winter is about -3.7 degrees.
SOURCE
Patient spends six hours in waiting room on a drip and plastic chairs at Gold Coast Hospital
BEDS are in such short supply at the Gold Coast Hospital Emergency Department, a young man with an infected tooth had to lie across three chairs with a drip in his arm. But Queensland Health insists his care was "of a high standard".
The case comes as ambulance ramping continues to be a problem outside hospitals in the state's southeast, with Logan Hospital on bypass at 10am yesterday.
The man, who was in pain, had a swollen face and was experiencing fevers, spent more than six hours in the waiting room during the Easter long weekend before even getting inside the Accident and Emergency Department. When the 21-year-old was finally seen by a doctor and put on a drip, he said he had no choice but to lie across the plastic chairs.
"There was no way I could have sat up. I had to lie down," he said. "There was no bed. It was really bad. The chairs aren't made to lie down on."
When he first arrived at the hospital with his girlfriend about 10pm on the night of April 26, he said he was informed he was "low priority". "I was in copious amounts of pain. The fever was just terrible. I couldn't concentrate on anything. I was dizzy all the time, nauseous," he said.
The young man, who asked to remain anonymous, admits he was given a pain-killing injection in the waiting area within half an hour of arrival, but said he was then ignored until the next morning. "The worst part was definitely sitting in there after I'd been told I was low priority and then no one asking if we were OK," he said.
His mother said she was "horrified" when she arrived to find her son lying across chairs and using his girlfriend's leg as a pillow. "I could not believe what I was seeing," she said. "He was really sick. He was exhausted too. It wasn't good enough. "I could understand if he was a 21-year-old that had come in drunk and carrying on, but he hadn't. "He was sober."
The man's mother said she had to ask nurses to find her son a pillow.
Although Gold Coast Health Service District chief executive officer Adrian Nowitzke acknowledged the patient's accommodation "may have been uncomfortable", he said it was clinically appropriate. "I can confidently say that his care, including an expeditious specialist review, was of a high standard," Dr Nowitzke said.
He said the man was one of 186 patients seen through Gold Coast Hospital's Emergency Department that day.
The man eventually was admitted to the hospital overnight. His condition was reviewed by a specialist maxillo-facial team.
Opposition Health spokesman Mark McArdle said the case was a prime example of the problems facing the Queensland health system. "What shocks me is that over the past seven years we've spent $42 billion in the health portfolio and these are the outcomes we are getting," he said. "Bed numbers are a critical issue that need to be addressed."
Australian Medical Association state president Gino Pecoraro said Queensland was about 1200 hospital beds short of what was required. "We need more beds but they need to be real beds with sheets, in a ward, not a chair in a corridor, and with staff allocated and paid to nurse them," he said.
"My heart goes out to anybody who is in pain, needs medical care and has to wait to get a bed. "As a parent, as a potential patient one day, I'd like to think if I need to go to hospital, there will be a bed for me."
SOURCE
Note: I have two other blogs covering Australian news. They are more specialized so are not updated daily but there are updates on both most weeks. See QANTAS/Jetstar for news on Qantas failings and Australian police news for news on police misbehaviour
Good riddance to a stupid bit of tokenism. It is pioneers such as my ancestors who made Australia what it is today. If you are going to single out any group in multicultural Australia, a better case could be made for honouring them.
I have a picture of my grandfather's bullock team on my wall and every time I look at it, I am reminded of the quiet heroism with which they laboured to bring civilization to this vast country. Henry Lawson knew the bullockies (teamsters) well. Read his poem "The Teams" to get a picture of them. He describes my grandfather pretty well
The Premier has confirmed he will no longer force ministers and public servants to acknowledge traditional Aboriginal land owners at official events.
In a major policy shift that has upset some indigenous leaders, the State Government has dumped a Labor protocol as too politically correct. Brumby government ministers had to acknowledge the "traditional owners and custodians of this land".
But Mr Baillieu believes Labor's stance was dictatorial and has told his ministers that such acknowledgments aren't compulsory.
Former premier Steve Bracks has also slammed the state government calling their decision a "retrograde step." "I acknowledged the traditional land owners of Australian regularly when I spoke as premier." "I would have thought we would have moved on quite a bit," he said. "Thousands of times I started my speech with an Aboriginal welcome and I always felt very strongly about it."
He warned that people in defiance of the government could start using Aboriginal welcomes to embarrass the party. "That's what will come of this, it's the wrong step," he said.
Wurundjeri elder Auntie Di Kerr said she was saddened by the change, which comes as the AFL prepares for its indigenous round. "It's nice to be actually recognising first nation's people because we've been neglected and downtrodden for so many years," she said. "It shouldn't be a forced thing either, it should be a respectful acknowledgment and honest."
Mr Baillieu still acknowledges traditional owners at indigenous functions, but uses a new form of words at mainstream events.
"Can I particularly acknowledge all of those, past and present, including our indigenous communities, whose love of this land has made this a place we treasure and a state we all seek to nurture," he said at the recent inauguration of Governor Alex Chernov.
A government spokesman said the only requirement was that ministers and MPs used respectful language, including appropriate acknowledgments to particular audiences. "Unlike the former Labor government, ministers are free to express themselves as appropriate for the occasion," he said.
The issue has been raised at the federal level, with Tony Abbott attacking Labor MPs for "tokenism" and misplaced political correctness.
Tim Wilson, policy director for the Right-wing think tank Institute of Public Affairs, said the new policy made sense because indigenous acknowledgment were over-used. "The obsessive acknowledgment can only belittle and undermine the intent of such statements," he said.
Labor's spokesman for aboriginal affairs, Richard Wynne, said: "Labor believes it is the right thing to do to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land and it causes great offence to Aboriginal people when political leaders fail to do so."
SOURCE
You can be a brainless twit (or even a blonde bombshell) if you are a Warmist
A junior Warmist at the University of Melbourne (Parkville) has excited the derision of Prof. Bunyip. He comments about the happy soul below, one Ailie Gallant
It is not Allie’s efforts to attract attention (which can also help with the funding), but her co-authored paper on water flows in the Murray Darling Basin which has brought so much reassurance.
In particular, it is the remarkably specific conclusion that there is precisely, and she is very exact about this, a 2.3% likelihood that any of the many droughts over the past 1500 years were worse than the one just ended - the same dry spell during which the she began smokin' dos' stats in her climate crib. It was a popular meme a few years ago, back when rain refused to fall and climate change was replacing global warming, so her enthusiasm at the time was understandable.
And her methods? Well, let's just say that the Professor is -- yo, lab bitches -- down with them.
The Original Custodians were not big on meteorological records, so that was a problem for Allie right there. She might have gone off to Barmah (a lovely spot) and cored a few red gums or somesuch, measured their transected rings and deduced when it had been hot and dry or cool and wet.
That was not her preferred method, however. Rather, nice and comfy at a Parkville work station, she consulted those who went before, mining their studies of celery top pines in Tasmania, teak in Indonesia, some tall timber in Western Australia, Tongan corals, kauri in New Zealand and other interesting bits of Bali, Fiji and the Great Barrier Reef. The closest survey site was a good 900 kilometres from the Murray, the furthest a 10-hour flight, even for Tim Flannery.
Data sources so far removed from the river she intended to study might have suggested an insurmountable obstacle to those who know not the miracles of modern modelling. By reviewing numbers here, sifting charts there and rejecting discordant figures in accordance with recognised climatological norms and norming, Ailie was able to feed what was left into a computerized vitamizer and - golly gosh, guess what? - demonstrate with charts and graphs that the recent drought really was the worst in centuries, just as the Phage, ABC, Guardian, World Wildlife Fund had been saying all along!
Indeed, by Ailie's reckoning, it was even worse, which must have convulsed the WWF's fund-raisers with shivers of delight: the drought was not the nastiest in 100 years or even 1,000 years - it was a full 1500 years since Australia had seen the arid like. Just to put things in perspective, that is not too long after the Romans pulled out of Britain. Amazing, ain't it, what climate science can learn about a river in southern Australia from a bit of Bali coral someone else has studied? And don't getting suspicious, thinking nobody could be that precise on the basis of such much-handled data.The science is settled, Ailie assures us, and to a 97.7% certainty, no less!
And that, as Ailie rapped the other night, is what climate science is all about. She is proud of her research, naturally, and quite probably eager to tackle the next challenge -- pinpointing Warrnambool's worst hailstorm since the Council of Trent, perhaps.
SOURCE
Commenter on Bunyip's site, David Joss, said...
It's a great pity that instead of studying proxies, these people did not peek into the history books.
The Federation drought ran almost as long as the most recent one.
The World War 2 drought may have been worse. It began in 1937. The Murray stopped running at Echuca in 1945 and seven million sheep died that year.
But the drought which lasted from the early 1830s until 1842 (some say 1844) was probably the worst one documented. By 1835 the Murrumbidgee had run dry at Gundagai. An early settler near Echuca, the squatter Henry Lewes, wrote that Horseshoe lagoon at Moama was dry when he arrived in 1842. There were trees growing in its bed which he reckoned were probably eight or nine years old. He watched them die as floods refilled the lagoon. And if the trees were as old as he believed, the lagoon had to dry out before the seeds could germinate.
Eye witness accounts trump tree rings every time.
Australian ski resort to open three weeks early
RECENT low temperatures and snowfalls will allow Australia's largest ski resort to kick off its winter season three weeks ahead of schedule. Perisher will officially open its Snowy Mountains Front Valley slope on Friday, following a successful round of snow-making last week.
It's the first of Perisher's snowfield to begin operations and the other slopes will follow on June 11, the official start of its season. "We are thrilled to ... be opening the resort way ahead of time," Perisher chief executive Peter Brulisauer said.
Temperatures at Perisher Valley are currently hovering around 5.7 degrees during the day. The average minimum during winter is about -3.7 degrees.
SOURCE
Patient spends six hours in waiting room on a drip and plastic chairs at Gold Coast Hospital
BEDS are in such short supply at the Gold Coast Hospital Emergency Department, a young man with an infected tooth had to lie across three chairs with a drip in his arm. But Queensland Health insists his care was "of a high standard".
The case comes as ambulance ramping continues to be a problem outside hospitals in the state's southeast, with Logan Hospital on bypass at 10am yesterday.
The man, who was in pain, had a swollen face and was experiencing fevers, spent more than six hours in the waiting room during the Easter long weekend before even getting inside the Accident and Emergency Department. When the 21-year-old was finally seen by a doctor and put on a drip, he said he had no choice but to lie across the plastic chairs.
"There was no way I could have sat up. I had to lie down," he said. "There was no bed. It was really bad. The chairs aren't made to lie down on."
When he first arrived at the hospital with his girlfriend about 10pm on the night of April 26, he said he was informed he was "low priority". "I was in copious amounts of pain. The fever was just terrible. I couldn't concentrate on anything. I was dizzy all the time, nauseous," he said.
The young man, who asked to remain anonymous, admits he was given a pain-killing injection in the waiting area within half an hour of arrival, but said he was then ignored until the next morning. "The worst part was definitely sitting in there after I'd been told I was low priority and then no one asking if we were OK," he said.
His mother said she was "horrified" when she arrived to find her son lying across chairs and using his girlfriend's leg as a pillow. "I could not believe what I was seeing," she said. "He was really sick. He was exhausted too. It wasn't good enough. "I could understand if he was a 21-year-old that had come in drunk and carrying on, but he hadn't. "He was sober."
The man's mother said she had to ask nurses to find her son a pillow.
Although Gold Coast Health Service District chief executive officer Adrian Nowitzke acknowledged the patient's accommodation "may have been uncomfortable", he said it was clinically appropriate. "I can confidently say that his care, including an expeditious specialist review, was of a high standard," Dr Nowitzke said.
He said the man was one of 186 patients seen through Gold Coast Hospital's Emergency Department that day.
The man eventually was admitted to the hospital overnight. His condition was reviewed by a specialist maxillo-facial team.
Opposition Health spokesman Mark McArdle said the case was a prime example of the problems facing the Queensland health system. "What shocks me is that over the past seven years we've spent $42 billion in the health portfolio and these are the outcomes we are getting," he said. "Bed numbers are a critical issue that need to be addressed."
Australian Medical Association state president Gino Pecoraro said Queensland was about 1200 hospital beds short of what was required. "We need more beds but they need to be real beds with sheets, in a ward, not a chair in a corridor, and with staff allocated and paid to nurse them," he said.
"My heart goes out to anybody who is in pain, needs medical care and has to wait to get a bed. "As a parent, as a potential patient one day, I'd like to think if I need to go to hospital, there will be a bed for me."
SOURCE
Note: I have two other blogs covering Australian news. They are more specialized so are not updated daily but there are updates on both most weeks. See QANTAS/Jetstar for news on Qantas failings and Australian police news for news on police misbehaviour
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Govt blocks sharia law push by Federation of Islamic Councils
THE GILLARD Government has quickly moved to block calls for sharia law to be introduced in Australia.
In its submission to the parliamentary inquiry into the government's new multiculturalism policy, The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils has called for Muslims to be granted “legal pluralism".
Attorney-General Robert McClelland stomped on the request. “There is no place for sharia law in Australian society and the government strongly rejects any proposal for its introduction," Mr McClelland said.
Sharia has faced repeated criticism. It is again in the headlines following an Iranian court's decision to delay a planned “eye-for-an-eye" act of justice against a man who threw acid at a woman's face because she refused his marriage proposal.
“As our citizenship pledge makes clear, coming to Australia means obeying Australian laws and upholding Australian values," Mr McClelland said. “Australia's brand of multiculturalism promotes integration. “If there is any inconsistency between cultural values and the rule of law then Australian law wins out."
Mr McClelland is keen to assert Australia's position as a “stable democracy" where “rule of law" underpins society.
“People who migrate to Australia do so because of the fact that we have a free, open and tolerant society where men and woman are equal before the law irrespective of race, religious or cultural background."
SOURCE
Pay for Muslims to feel at home?
AUSTRALIA'S top Muslim organisation wants taxpayers to finance the expansion of Islamic schools and halal food outlets into mainstream suburbs.
And in a sign of growing community tension, the nation's peak Jewish authority has called for new migrants to be put on probation while their commitment to Australian values and laws is checked.
In a submission to a federal inquiry into multiculturalism, the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils said Muslims were forced to live in enclaves near Islamic schools, mosques and halal food outlets. "The Government should invest in expanding services like halal and kosher meat and food outlets as well as faith-based schools," it said. "If the Government and politicians cannot recognise this as essential, it should no longer accuse the Australian Muslim community of intentionally living in enclaves."
Heba Ibrahim, the AFIC board member who wrote the report, told the Herald Sun there were reasons groups were drawn to certain suburbs. "I'm saying there needs to be a greater investment generally in schools that wish to go out into other areas that are not heavily populated with particular migrant and religious groups," she said.
Governments do not contribute to the building of new private schools, but private colleges get state and federal cash for running costs and upgrades. For example, Springvale Islamic school Minaret College received about $10 million in recurrent financing and almost $2 million in capital expenditure in 2009, according to the latest MySchool website data.
Melbourne has several halal butchers, but AFIC wants government help to make halal food more widely available. Houssam Dannawi, from Madina Halal Meats in Brunswick, said his customers were not limited to Muslims. "They try it and they come back. They like the diversity of what we offer," Mr Dannawi said.
In a separate hearing, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry has told a Federal Parliament committee on migration that Australia must learn from the failed "anything goes" model of multiculturalism in Europe.
It wants migrants put on probation to enable a "confident assessment of their acceptance of Australian values and laws before granting full citizenship".
The council's executive director Peter Wertheim said there was concern about Islamic extremists. "If they're involved in criminal activity or incitement of violence or incitement of racism, that's something that should be taken into account," he said.
The organisation also wants mandatory English training for migrants.
SOURCE
Gillard and Swan: meet the fiscal incredibles
By economist Sinclair Davidson
Treasurer Wayne Swan claims to have cut some $22 billion out of the federal budget. Well actually that’s not quite right – he claims to have found savings of some $22 billion. Over four years.
Then we discover that some of those savings are actually tax increases. Not to mention the whole heap of new spending initiatives. No wonder people are confused and the budget hasn’t been well received.
To be fair – a tax increase is a ‘saving’ to the Commonwealth budget in some accounting sense but it is not a saving to the taxpayer. So in the very first instance the Government has a framing problem. They have framed their budget as an ‘us versus the taxpayer’ document and it is no wonder they have been accused of class warfare. Being proud of their ‘Labor budget’ doesn’t help either.
The blunt reality is that the Government’s spending cuts are simply not credible. There are actually some good spending cuts proposed in the budget yet good policy doesn’t sell itself and this government has proven to be incapable of selling anything.
While strictly speaking not counted as a spending cut the move to ‘reform’ the Disability Support Pension highlights the communication problem this government faces. It is a good idea to get people on the disability pension to work more – if they can. But this should not be framed in the context of labour force participation. Getting disabled people to work is never going to solve any so-called skill shortages.
Rather this should be undertaken as a social inclusion policy. That means that policy is likely to be expensive. Ideas here would be to exempt disabled employees from payroll tax – that means the Commonwealth would have to compensate states - or to refund their income tax payments to provide them with greater incentive to participate and so on.
The cuts to family payments, designed to save some $2 billion over four years, are incoherent. That isn’t to say they are bad policy. The economic narrative the Government has pursued in justifying those cuts is incoherent.
The Government have been unable to settle on a sensible description of the economy. On the one hand, we’re told Australian economic growth is the envy of the developed world, our net debt is low, unemployment is below 5 per cent, terms of trade are the highest since whenever, and so on. Yet, we’re also being told about the need for frugality, and the two-speed economy, and how the Government understands that families are doing it tough.
Of course, the Government is simply reflecting the uncertainty of current economic conditions but it hardly surprising that average Australians are experiencing some angst over that uncertainty. Winding back the social safety net would be difficult at the best of times – but it is much harder when people feel insecure.
Where the Government is struggling is in defining middle-class and middle-income. Almost everyone conflates the two definitions, but of course they are very different. The middle class is much larger than middle-income earners. Households with an income of $150,000 are not rich but they are well above the middle-income.
Any crack-down on middle-class welfare will require these households to effectively pay more tax or consume fewer public goods. As yet the Government has made no argument why this should occur, apart from vague references to ‘fairness’ and ‘labor values’. True, the prime minister did say on radio recently that ‘high-income earners like you and me do get asked to look after ourselves’. She earns an income far in advance of $150,000 and has few household expenses.
The lack of a coherent narrative isn’t the only problem the Government faces. Some of their cuts are lazy policy. The efficiency dividend will cut a mere $1 billion over four years. Sure everybody wants to have an efficient government, but the amount is trivial in the face of deliberate waste on pink batts and economic aid budget increases by almost $2.5 billion over four years. So while public servants scrimp and scrap to provide Australians with services the Government will be splashing out on foreigners. Does that make sense to anyone?
To place the ‘$ 22 billion over four years’ spending cuts in perspective, think about the total spend of some $362 billion – spell that out to three hundred and sixty-two thousand million dollars to get some idea of the magnitude. Next financial year alone, that amount is some $22.6 billion short of revenue.
Swan’s savings over four years are simply not enough. To make matters worse he is incapable of articulating why the budget needs to be in surplus and how best to achieve that goal. In an open globalised economy government is going to have less control over revenues and spending control is the only mechanism government has to ensure fiscal responsibility.
In 2007 Kevin Rudd stated, ‘this reckless spending must stop’. He was right then; he would be even more right now. This budget does have some good ideas in it, but not enough and those good ideas will wither on the vine unless the Government gets out there to articulate why fiscal responsibility sooner rather than later is good economic policy.
SOURCE
Students caught in the culture war crossfire
Public schools are again the battleground of a culture war. Make no mistake, the debate about the chaplaincy program and religious teacing really is a conflict about culture rather than God's place in a classroom.
The government announced in last week's federal budget an extra $222 million for the National School Chaplaincy program and providing religion classes in public schools. Yet revelations that Access Ministries chief executive Evonne Paddison had spoken in a 2008 conference about the "need to go and make disciples" through a "God-given open door to children and young people" will no doubt further rattle those who resist such moves. The Victorian teachers union called at the weekend for an end to religious teaching in schools.
The battle is an extension of the skirmishes during the Howard years around what constitutes Australian identity and history. Many supporters of Christianity-oriented Special Religious Instruction (SRI) would argue, for instance, that Australia has after all been peopled and shaped by Christians of various denominations.
They have a point. In 1947, 88 per cent of Australians identified with one of these denominations. Even the most recent ABS census reveals that Christianity remains demographically prominent, with 64 per cent claiming at least nominal adherence. Inevitably, in some circles, being Australian is conflated with being Christian.
However, the reasoning that this aspect of Australian national identity needs to be preserved – some would say expanded – is faulty in the same way that an exclusively "white" or Anglo conception of it is false and potentially dangerous. Our social reality is no longer the monoculture it once was and it will never be that way again. Much as Christians would see opposition to SRI as an attack on their values and God himself, the glaring truth is that Australians embrace a range of belief systems that are also life-giving. Religious plurality is simply not the same as moral relativity.
What is thus insidious about volunteer-run religion classes is not that they might result in young people taking up a creed, but that in Victoria in particular, it is being run by a patently Christian organisation whose executive has reportedly said, "without Jesus, our students are lost". For we can all soberly agree that young people need a safe, structured forum for exploring what is right and wrong, but we cannot honestly teach them that Christianity has a monopoly on moral values. We insult their intellect when we do so. We also legitimise prejudice against other faiths.
This culture war, however, is not just about Christianity versus other faiths, but faith versus secularism. It is interesting to see secularists argue with slightly more vehemence than Christians what the character of Australian society really is. They see it progressing inexorably away from religious traditions and structures. The separation of church and state is often invoked, though the constitution merely prohibits imposition of a state religion and a religious test for public office.
They may not realise that many church organisations in fact do a lot of work for the state, especially in social welfare. Why is it that no one seems to be concerned, for example, by the prospect of a homeless man turning to God because of his encounters with the Salvation Army, which receives government grants?
More to the point, when secularists (humanists and atheists by another name) argue that religion has no place in schools, they make exactly the same mistake that Christian proselytisers do: they insult young people's intelligence by doing their thinking for them.
This, in the end, is what evangelists and atheists have in common, the fear that young people will be lost if the other got hold. It is what underpins all culture wars – fear for the future.
Christians, however, should not use government schools as a platform for a new-found crusade against secularism. They will lose. They will lose once young people figure out that being secular is not the same as being amoral. Neither should secularists dismiss religion wholesale, as if it does not offer young people a view that is as humane and ethical is theirs. If they genuinely wish for students to be able to freely choose, then that choice must be made authentic by having all options on the table.
From shared fear, perhaps both camps can thus share a common hope: that young people who wish to live authentically and decently as human beings will find what they are looking for.
SOURCE
THE GILLARD Government has quickly moved to block calls for sharia law to be introduced in Australia.
In its submission to the parliamentary inquiry into the government's new multiculturalism policy, The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils has called for Muslims to be granted “legal pluralism".
Attorney-General Robert McClelland stomped on the request. “There is no place for sharia law in Australian society and the government strongly rejects any proposal for its introduction," Mr McClelland said.
Sharia has faced repeated criticism. It is again in the headlines following an Iranian court's decision to delay a planned “eye-for-an-eye" act of justice against a man who threw acid at a woman's face because she refused his marriage proposal.
“As our citizenship pledge makes clear, coming to Australia means obeying Australian laws and upholding Australian values," Mr McClelland said. “Australia's brand of multiculturalism promotes integration. “If there is any inconsistency between cultural values and the rule of law then Australian law wins out."
Mr McClelland is keen to assert Australia's position as a “stable democracy" where “rule of law" underpins society.
“People who migrate to Australia do so because of the fact that we have a free, open and tolerant society where men and woman are equal before the law irrespective of race, religious or cultural background."
SOURCE
Pay for Muslims to feel at home?
AUSTRALIA'S top Muslim organisation wants taxpayers to finance the expansion of Islamic schools and halal food outlets into mainstream suburbs.
And in a sign of growing community tension, the nation's peak Jewish authority has called for new migrants to be put on probation while their commitment to Australian values and laws is checked.
In a submission to a federal inquiry into multiculturalism, the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils said Muslims were forced to live in enclaves near Islamic schools, mosques and halal food outlets. "The Government should invest in expanding services like halal and kosher meat and food outlets as well as faith-based schools," it said. "If the Government and politicians cannot recognise this as essential, it should no longer accuse the Australian Muslim community of intentionally living in enclaves."
Heba Ibrahim, the AFIC board member who wrote the report, told the Herald Sun there were reasons groups were drawn to certain suburbs. "I'm saying there needs to be a greater investment generally in schools that wish to go out into other areas that are not heavily populated with particular migrant and religious groups," she said.
Governments do not contribute to the building of new private schools, but private colleges get state and federal cash for running costs and upgrades. For example, Springvale Islamic school Minaret College received about $10 million in recurrent financing and almost $2 million in capital expenditure in 2009, according to the latest MySchool website data.
Melbourne has several halal butchers, but AFIC wants government help to make halal food more widely available. Houssam Dannawi, from Madina Halal Meats in Brunswick, said his customers were not limited to Muslims. "They try it and they come back. They like the diversity of what we offer," Mr Dannawi said.
In a separate hearing, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry has told a Federal Parliament committee on migration that Australia must learn from the failed "anything goes" model of multiculturalism in Europe.
It wants migrants put on probation to enable a "confident assessment of their acceptance of Australian values and laws before granting full citizenship".
The council's executive director Peter Wertheim said there was concern about Islamic extremists. "If they're involved in criminal activity or incitement of violence or incitement of racism, that's something that should be taken into account," he said.
The organisation also wants mandatory English training for migrants.
SOURCE
Gillard and Swan: meet the fiscal incredibles
By economist Sinclair Davidson
Treasurer Wayne Swan claims to have cut some $22 billion out of the federal budget. Well actually that’s not quite right – he claims to have found savings of some $22 billion. Over four years.
Then we discover that some of those savings are actually tax increases. Not to mention the whole heap of new spending initiatives. No wonder people are confused and the budget hasn’t been well received.
To be fair – a tax increase is a ‘saving’ to the Commonwealth budget in some accounting sense but it is not a saving to the taxpayer. So in the very first instance the Government has a framing problem. They have framed their budget as an ‘us versus the taxpayer’ document and it is no wonder they have been accused of class warfare. Being proud of their ‘Labor budget’ doesn’t help either.
The blunt reality is that the Government’s spending cuts are simply not credible. There are actually some good spending cuts proposed in the budget yet good policy doesn’t sell itself and this government has proven to be incapable of selling anything.
While strictly speaking not counted as a spending cut the move to ‘reform’ the Disability Support Pension highlights the communication problem this government faces. It is a good idea to get people on the disability pension to work more – if they can. But this should not be framed in the context of labour force participation. Getting disabled people to work is never going to solve any so-called skill shortages.
Rather this should be undertaken as a social inclusion policy. That means that policy is likely to be expensive. Ideas here would be to exempt disabled employees from payroll tax – that means the Commonwealth would have to compensate states - or to refund their income tax payments to provide them with greater incentive to participate and so on.
The cuts to family payments, designed to save some $2 billion over four years, are incoherent. That isn’t to say they are bad policy. The economic narrative the Government has pursued in justifying those cuts is incoherent.
The Government have been unable to settle on a sensible description of the economy. On the one hand, we’re told Australian economic growth is the envy of the developed world, our net debt is low, unemployment is below 5 per cent, terms of trade are the highest since whenever, and so on. Yet, we’re also being told about the need for frugality, and the two-speed economy, and how the Government understands that families are doing it tough.
Of course, the Government is simply reflecting the uncertainty of current economic conditions but it hardly surprising that average Australians are experiencing some angst over that uncertainty. Winding back the social safety net would be difficult at the best of times – but it is much harder when people feel insecure.
Where the Government is struggling is in defining middle-class and middle-income. Almost everyone conflates the two definitions, but of course they are very different. The middle class is much larger than middle-income earners. Households with an income of $150,000 are not rich but they are well above the middle-income.
Any crack-down on middle-class welfare will require these households to effectively pay more tax or consume fewer public goods. As yet the Government has made no argument why this should occur, apart from vague references to ‘fairness’ and ‘labor values’. True, the prime minister did say on radio recently that ‘high-income earners like you and me do get asked to look after ourselves’. She earns an income far in advance of $150,000 and has few household expenses.
The lack of a coherent narrative isn’t the only problem the Government faces. Some of their cuts are lazy policy. The efficiency dividend will cut a mere $1 billion over four years. Sure everybody wants to have an efficient government, but the amount is trivial in the face of deliberate waste on pink batts and economic aid budget increases by almost $2.5 billion over four years. So while public servants scrimp and scrap to provide Australians with services the Government will be splashing out on foreigners. Does that make sense to anyone?
To place the ‘$ 22 billion over four years’ spending cuts in perspective, think about the total spend of some $362 billion – spell that out to three hundred and sixty-two thousand million dollars to get some idea of the magnitude. Next financial year alone, that amount is some $22.6 billion short of revenue.
Swan’s savings over four years are simply not enough. To make matters worse he is incapable of articulating why the budget needs to be in surplus and how best to achieve that goal. In an open globalised economy government is going to have less control over revenues and spending control is the only mechanism government has to ensure fiscal responsibility.
In 2007 Kevin Rudd stated, ‘this reckless spending must stop’. He was right then; he would be even more right now. This budget does have some good ideas in it, but not enough and those good ideas will wither on the vine unless the Government gets out there to articulate why fiscal responsibility sooner rather than later is good economic policy.
SOURCE
Students caught in the culture war crossfire
Public schools are again the battleground of a culture war. Make no mistake, the debate about the chaplaincy program and religious teacing really is a conflict about culture rather than God's place in a classroom.
The government announced in last week's federal budget an extra $222 million for the National School Chaplaincy program and providing religion classes in public schools. Yet revelations that Access Ministries chief executive Evonne Paddison had spoken in a 2008 conference about the "need to go and make disciples" through a "God-given open door to children and young people" will no doubt further rattle those who resist such moves. The Victorian teachers union called at the weekend for an end to religious teaching in schools.
The battle is an extension of the skirmishes during the Howard years around what constitutes Australian identity and history. Many supporters of Christianity-oriented Special Religious Instruction (SRI) would argue, for instance, that Australia has after all been peopled and shaped by Christians of various denominations.
They have a point. In 1947, 88 per cent of Australians identified with one of these denominations. Even the most recent ABS census reveals that Christianity remains demographically prominent, with 64 per cent claiming at least nominal adherence. Inevitably, in some circles, being Australian is conflated with being Christian.
However, the reasoning that this aspect of Australian national identity needs to be preserved – some would say expanded – is faulty in the same way that an exclusively "white" or Anglo conception of it is false and potentially dangerous. Our social reality is no longer the monoculture it once was and it will never be that way again. Much as Christians would see opposition to SRI as an attack on their values and God himself, the glaring truth is that Australians embrace a range of belief systems that are also life-giving. Religious plurality is simply not the same as moral relativity.
What is thus insidious about volunteer-run religion classes is not that they might result in young people taking up a creed, but that in Victoria in particular, it is being run by a patently Christian organisation whose executive has reportedly said, "without Jesus, our students are lost". For we can all soberly agree that young people need a safe, structured forum for exploring what is right and wrong, but we cannot honestly teach them that Christianity has a monopoly on moral values. We insult their intellect when we do so. We also legitimise prejudice against other faiths.
This culture war, however, is not just about Christianity versus other faiths, but faith versus secularism. It is interesting to see secularists argue with slightly more vehemence than Christians what the character of Australian society really is. They see it progressing inexorably away from religious traditions and structures. The separation of church and state is often invoked, though the constitution merely prohibits imposition of a state religion and a religious test for public office.
They may not realise that many church organisations in fact do a lot of work for the state, especially in social welfare. Why is it that no one seems to be concerned, for example, by the prospect of a homeless man turning to God because of his encounters with the Salvation Army, which receives government grants?
More to the point, when secularists (humanists and atheists by another name) argue that religion has no place in schools, they make exactly the same mistake that Christian proselytisers do: they insult young people's intelligence by doing their thinking for them.
This, in the end, is what evangelists and atheists have in common, the fear that young people will be lost if the other got hold. It is what underpins all culture wars – fear for the future.
Christians, however, should not use government schools as a platform for a new-found crusade against secularism. They will lose. They will lose once young people figure out that being secular is not the same as being amoral. Neither should secularists dismiss religion wholesale, as if it does not offer young people a view that is as humane and ethical is theirs. If they genuinely wish for students to be able to freely choose, then that choice must be made authentic by having all options on the table.
From shared fear, perhaps both camps can thus share a common hope: that young people who wish to live authentically and decently as human beings will find what they are looking for.
SOURCE
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
