State of secrecy over University of Queensland job loss

They fired a whistleblower but bribed him to stay silent about his job loss.  Big Bikkies, no doubt!  Taxpayer bikkies

THE University of Queensland will have us believe that Phil Procopis, the whistleblower in the uni's nepotism scandal, was made redundant simply because his department was restructured.

Procopis was the director of a unit known on campus as ARMS, an acronym for Assurance and Risk Management Services. ARMS no longer exists.

Procopis's position was abolished and he signed a confidentially agreement to receive his payout. Restructures happen. So does nepotism. So does secrecy.

Vice-chancellor Professor Paul Greenfield and his deputy Michael Keniger left the university after The Courier-Mail revealed a "close family member" [his daughter] of Greenfield had gained entry to the medical faculty without the proper entry requirements.

Greenfield denied any wrongdoing, saying the relative was admitted to the medical school as the result of a misunderstanding.

Procopis is central to the story because The Courier-Mail recently revealed he was the mysterious whistleblower who raised concerns about the improper admission with Chancellor John Story.

The scandal got a head of steam, I believe, because it shattered our perceptions that post-Fitzgerald Queensland was relatively free of cronyism and that our society had at last become a (cliche alert) "level playing field".  In a broader sense, it also challenged national ideals of egalitarianism and the fair go.

Until the university scandal, most of us naively believed Queenslanders were rewarded on merit. The truth was a little different. Now we know it will not harm your prospects to have friends or relatives in high places.

Nepotism exists in Queensland across business, the arts, law, medicine and even the media.  Premier Campbell Newman admitted it existed in government and shrugged his shoulders when asked what he was going to do about it.

The university controversy also got a head of steam because the venerable institution at first issued misleading press releases about Greenfield and Keniger leaving. Greenfield was forced out after the university commissioned an investigation by Tim Carmody, SC. Carmody's report remains secret and we don't even know for sure the name of the student at the heart of the affair.

The university made a mockery of the the new regulatory body, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, by refusing to hand over the Carmody report.

TEQSA chief commissioner Dr Carol Nicoll told a Senate estimates hearing the uni would not release the document, claiming confidentiality and privilege.

Tertiary Education Minister Senator Chris Evans was cryptic, telling the hearing it was a "complex case", and not as "straightforward" as some suggest.  Was he suggesting universities are beyond the reach of Federal Cabinet?

Greenfield walked away with a payout of $952,000, reports tabled in Parliament revealed. His deputy, Keniger, a key figure in the imbroglio, also quit. He got $695,000.

The Crime and Misconduct Commission has completed its investigations into the scandal and its brief of evidence is in the hands of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Meanwhile, the university has not released all the details surrounding the exit of Procopis. It should.

The academic committee set up to evaluate ARMS was chaired by Dr Len Gainsford from Victoria. It praised Procopis's unit and gave it seven "commendations".

"ARMS is widely respected by managers across UQ," it reported. "The unit consists of a committed and dedicated team." It said ARMS "responded well to governance initiatives" and its audits were "well regarded".

It added: "The introduction of a risk-management framework and development of commitment towards its progress has been effective."  Despite the glowing report card ARMS was abolished.

Vice-Chancellor Deborah Terry says the restructuring was the result of a "routine, cyclical" review initiated before the admissions scandal.

Terry says "it would be inaccurate and wrong" to link the role of Procopis in unearthing the scandal to his redundancy.

Procopis's redundancy and the disbanding of his department happened despite Terry announcing on May 17 that Procopis would have a central role in misconduct matters under a package of governance reforms.

Terry told The Courier-Mail recently that at the time of her May announcement, "the proposed reorganisation ... had not been finalised".

In a letter to staff she added: "The review and the re-organisation were unrelated to the fact that Mr Procopis communicated to the Chancellor information he had received (about the scandal). It was entirely appropriate for Mr Procopis to do this, as UQ policy identified his position as a receiver for disclosures of this nature."

As the only ARMS employee made redundant, Procopis must be feeling unlucky. An insider tells me Procopis never wanted to be a whistleblower. He was just doing his duty.

Until recently he was also chair of the Crime and Misconduct Commission's audit committee.

Who tipped him off remains a mystery. "The university will not disclose their identity," says Terry.

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Canada spy case rocks Australian spooks

AN ALLEGED Canadian spy has compromised Australian intelligence information in an international espionage case that has sent shock waves through Western security agencies.

Jeffrey Paul Delisle, a naval officer, is alleged to have disclosed a vast trove of classified information to Russian agents on a scale comparable to the alleged handover to WikiLeaks of United States military and diplomatic reports by US Army private Bradley Manning.

Sub-Lieutenant Delisle's activities have been the subject of high-level consultation between the Australian and Canadian governments and were discussed at a secret international conference in New Zealand earlier this year.

Much of the information allegedly sold to the Russians was more highly classified than the disclosures attributed to private Manning, and included signals intelligence collected by the "Five Eyes" intelligence community of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Australian security sources have privately acknowledged that the security breach compromised intelligence information and capabilities across Western intelligence agencies, especially in the US and Canada but also including Australia's top secret Defence Signals Directorate and the Defence Intelligence Organisation.

Australia's High Commissioner to Canada, Louise Hand, was briefed by the Canadian government on the case shortly after Delisle's arrest on January 14.

Information released under Australian freedom of information laws shows Ms Hand discussed the case with Stephen Rigby, National Security Adviser to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. But her cabled report, classified "secret - sensitive" and sent to Canberra on January 30, has been withheld in full on national security grounds.

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation was also briefed on the Delisle case through liaison with its counterpart, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, which also discussed the matter at a security conference attended by ASIO in NZ in February.

Another Australian diplomatic cable dated February 1 that refers to the case has also been withheld in its entirety.

Delisle worked at the Royal Canadian Navy's Trinity intelligence and communications centre at Halifax, Nova Scotia. He previously worked at defence intelligence headquarters in Ottawa. He was arrested after the Canadian Security Intelligence Service concluded he was passing classified information to Russian operatives.

Although Canada has for diplomatic reasons avoided publicly identifying Russia as the foreign power involved in the case, several Russian diplomats in Canada were recalled to Moscow before completing their postings.

Delisle is accused of communicating classified information to an unnamed foreign entity between July 2007 and January 2012. He faces possible life imprisonment.

His information access reportedly covered signals intelligence produced by the US National Security Agency, the UK's Government Communications Headquarters, Canada's Communications Security Establishment, Australia's Defence Signals and NZ's Communications Security Bureau.

An Australian security source told The Age that Delisle's access was "apparently very wide" and that "Australian reporting was inevitably compromised".

"The signals intelligence community is very close, we share our intelligence overwhelmingly with the US, UK and Canada," one former Defence Signals Directorate officer said.

A former Australian Defence Intelligence Organisation officer and now adjunct professor at Macquarie University, Clive Williams, said: "Close intelligence relations inevitably result in some overlap in espionage cases, because of the very extensive sharing of information."

An Australian Defence Department spokesperson said that "consistent with long-standing practices, the Australian government does not comment on intelligence matters".

Delisle will appear before the Nova Scotia Supreme Court for a preliminary hearing in October.

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Members furious over union spending

UNION members have reacted with fury to revelations that millions of dollars of their money found its way into the coffers of the union boss Michael Williamson and his family.

The Temby report, an internal investigation into allegations of corruption within the union leaked to the Herald, revealed that companies controlled by Mr Williamson and his family received $5 million from the union over the past four years.

The report revealed that Canme, the company of Mr Williamson's wife, was paid $385,000 from 2005 to 2009, but that amount could be as much as double, as the Herald understands Canme was being paid up to $15,000 every two months from about 2000. Mr Temby raised questions as to whether the work was actually performed.

While the average salary of Health Services Union members is between $50,000 and $60,000, Mr Williamson was collecting more than six times that amount. His union salary was revealed to be $395,000; on top of that he received another $150,000 from union-related board positions.

Mr Williamson received a 25 per cent pay rise last year. He achieved only a 2.5 per cent rise in wages for his members.

It is understood that the union's administrator has cut off Mr Williamson's salary and payments, including the $1000 a day he was charging the union for legal costs while dealing with ongoing police matters, including the legal dispute over the contents of Mr Williamson's bag which was seized during a police raid on union headquarters.

Law enforcement sources have indicated that the prosecution of any HSU official could prove difficult as there were no corporate governance regulations in place within the HSU East branch and trade unions are "registered associations" under the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act.

"If he was director of a company it would be a completely different matter," a police source said.

"The use of company funds to buy personal benefits by a director is prohibited," said James Lonie, a partner at Henry Davis York. "Time and time again, courts have held that personally benefiting through the misappropriation of company funds is simply wrong." For breaching their director's duties, company directors face fines of up to $200,000, and if the director has been reckless or intentionally dishonest, imprisonment for up to five years, he said.

The opposition spokesman on workplace relations, Eric Abetz, yesterday criticised the government for not instituting tougher penalties against unions. "We moved an amendment in the Parliament to ensure the same penalty applies to union bosses as apply to company directors [five years imprisonment and a $200,000 fine] if members' funds were misappropriated. Labor, the Greens and Craig Thomson voted it down. You've got to ask: if this is a one-off, why won't they increase the penalties?"

Senator Abetz said that Labor's penalty of a $6600 fine was insufficient. "How is a small fine an effective deterrent from a multimillion-dollar rip-off?"

Vandy Kang, a former HSU-east member and a drug and alcohol counsellor in Surry Hills, quit the union in disgust just before Christmas last year.

"It makes me angry and very upset. We are lower-paid workers and have paid the union for years and years, so to hear of the misuse of union fees is very hurtful to me," he said. "This is a democratic country. How can you let this group of people abuse members' fees for so many years?"

Meanwhile, a union organiser, Bob Hull, yesterday launched his election campaign to run the union when a ballot takes place later this year. "Of all the other tickets running in this election, the Bob Hull and the Members First Team is the only one not of self-interest, we aren't running for the ALP or Kathy Jackson. We are running for the members," Mr Hull's press release said.

Ms Jackson was in the Federal Court seeking to overturn last month's decision to appoint the retired judge Michael Moore as the administrator of the union.

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Time for more competition in the taxi industry

DOES changing the government make much difference? Both sides of politics always assure us it will. But judging by the infrequency with which we do change, we seem doubtful.

At the state level the national swing from Labor to the Coalition is almost complete, providing a good opportunity to test the question. And a good test is the regulation of industry.

Despite both sides' protestations of undying concern for the welfare of ordinary voters, it gets harder to avoid the suspicion that governments regulate industries for the benefit of the businesses rather than their customers.

Take the case of taxis. We've been dissatisfied with the service provided by taxis for many a moon. They're expensive, but often don't offer good service: they're too hard to find at certain times, they don't turn up or take far too long to arrive. Too many drivers don't know where to go, or are unfriendly.

But the outgoing Labor government did far too little to improve the position. It got so bad in Victoria the Baillieu government promised action and appointed Professor Allan Fels, former chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, to conduct an inquiry. The government is now considering his final report.

The taxi industry is highly regulated. What's the goal of this regulation? It's supposed to be to ensure we're provided with a safe and reliable taxi service at a reasonable price. In practice, the goal has evolved into the protection of a highly lucrative financial investment, the taxi licence plate.

Since about the time of the Depression, governments have sought to control the number of taxis by issuing a limited quantity of licence plates. Initially, and for many years, these licences were issued free to people wanting to drive taxis.

Because the supply of licences was limited relative to the demand for them, licence plates became valuable in their own right. They exist in perpetuity, and people who'd been given one by the government were able to sell it to someone else.

That someone may be a person who wants to drive a taxi, but doesn't have to be. And ownership of taxi plates doesn't imply ownership of the car to which those licence plates are screwed. You can ''assign'' (rent) the plates to a taxi operator for a fee, who buys the car and puts it on the road. Operators may drive the car themselves, or they may get others to do the driving.

Thus did the taxi licence plate transform into a valuable financial investment, with an active market in their purchase and sale. According to Fels' interim report, the value of plates has been rising for years and Melbourne plates now change hands for up to $490,000 a pop.

Licences are assigned to operators for a fee of about $35,000 a year, thus yielding a direct return to their owners of about 7 per cent. Allow for capital gain and the overall return rises to about 16 per cent a year.

Not a bad investment. Now get this: according to the Fels report, in 1985 only about 4 per cent of Victorian taxi licences had been assigned to others. By 1998, about 45 per cent of metropolitan licences had been assigned. And by December last year it was up to about 70 per cent.

Because assignment fees are so high, not enough income is left for taxi operators and even less for drivers. Taxi fares are controlled by the government and the need to pay drivers more - they get an average of about $13 an hour, according to Fels - is often used to justify fare increases. But every time fares increase so do the assignment fees charged by the licence owners, justifying a further rise in value of licences.

Fundamentally, however, what causes the rising value of licences is their growing scarcity relative to demand. Who is it that limits the number of licences on issue? The government. Who does this benefit? The owners of licence plates. The industry is being regulated largely for the benefit of absentee landlords, so to speak.

Taxi drivers get a terrible deal. They generally get 50 per cent of their take, but they're not employees and have to bear many costs themselves. They get no workers compensation cover, no holidays or superannuation and have to pay the goods and services tax.

Is it any wonder the quality of drivers is often poor, turnover is high and it's hard to get recruits? And yet most of our complaints about taxis relate to the performance of drivers.

Fels' key proposal is for the government to issue new taxi licences to any qualified person for a fee of $20,000 a year. New licences would not be transferable and issued only to owner-drivers. This would make it easier for drivers to become owners. It would force the existing licence plate owners' assignment fee down to $20,000 a year, still leaving them a reasonable return, but lowering the capital value of their plates to about $250,000.

Taxi operators would benefit from the lower assignment fees and this would allow the drivers' share of their take to be raised to 60 per cent. This, in turn, would justify making greater demands on drivers, including requiring them to pass a more stringent street and location knowledge test.

Now you see why licence-plate owners are opposing these reforms so vigorously. We'll see if Ted Baillieu stands up to them with any more fortitude than his Labor predecessors.

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Shaping nation part of who I am, says Kevin Rudd

A revealing confession of Leftist arrogance.  What if the people don't want the shape Rudd wants?  What about letting the people shape their nation by their own individual actions and choices?  This idea that a "shape" can be imposed from on high is pure Fascism

HE is not supposed to be talking about a comeback, but former prime minister Kevin Rudd has given an interview in which he opens up about wanting to shape Australia's future well into the next decade.

Mr Rudd, who unsuccessfully challenged Julia Gillard for the Labor leadership in February, has told the Australian Women's Weekly that shaping the nation - which is somewhat difficult to do from the backbench - is "part of who I am, and you gotta be who you are".

Mr Rudd's decision to grant an interview to the magazine, which hasn't hit the streets yet, is causing ructions in Canberra, where leadership speculation is again roiling.

It comes just weeks after his wife, businesswoman Therese Rein, gave an interview to The Sydney Morning Herald in which she said the family would be happy to serve, if called upon.

The Rudd interview was granted to the Women's Weekly as part of a feature on the arrival of Mr Rudd's first grandchild, Josephine Therese Tse, born to his daughter Jessica and her husband Albert Tse in May.

The 54-year-old told the magazine the arrival of the baby had prompted "a feeling about what sort of country you want this new generation to be brought up in".

"Without wanting to sound too sort of pious about it all, you just have a keen eye to where will the country be in half a century's time when this little one's contemplating grandchildren," the former prime minister says.

"I mean, the judgments I make in my life I think are pretty simple at the end of the day. What do you believe in and why? What can you do about it? "And so that frames my approach to what I do.

"And if you're pretty passionate about this remaining a decent place to live for kids and now for grandkids (you have to serve)."

Mr Rudd softly presses his credentials, too, saying: "Everything around Australia has been changing rapidly ... the world's been dominated by Western English-speaking democracies. We live in a decade where that will cease to be as China becomes the largest economy in the world."

Asked directly whether he wanted an ongoing role for himself, Mr Rudd said: "Oh definitely, it's just who I am. You gotta be who you are."

He was quick to say that "the position you occupy in life is less important".  "What's more important is being involved directly in shaping the nation's future, to the extent that you can," he said.

"So I suppose what I'm saying through all that is: when you see this little possum ... you think of where she'll be beyond that and what sort of Australia and what sort of world she lives in.

"So many things that we take as certainties now will not necessarily be certain (when she grows up) so, you know, having always been a bit of a nerd about these questions, unapologetically so, and that is trying to think through the future and how we secure a good and fair and prosperous future for the country. And now there's a real personal dimension."

Mr Rudd tells the Women's Weekly that he happily renominated for his Brisbane seat of Griffith, despite every poll saying Labor will be in opposition by the next election.  "Queenslanders are very optimistic people," he says.

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Labor support drops in latest Newspoll

The latest Newspoll shows federal Labor's primary vote falling below 30 per cent for the first time in three months.

The poll, published in The Australian newspaper, shows the Government's primary vote has dropped three points to 28 per cent.

The Coalition's primary support was 46 per cent, down two points, while the Greens remained steady on 11 per cent.

Two-party preferred results were steady – the Coalition maintained its 56 per cent to 44 per cent lead over Labor.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott gained one point as preferred prime minister, extending his lead to four percentage points over Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Forty per cent of respondents said Mr Abbott was their preferred leader compared to 36 per cent for Ms Gillard.

The poll has a three per cent margin of error.

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Dick Smith blasts News Ltd over ad 'censorship'

If I were asked to publicize some criticism of myself, I wouldn't do it either

Australian entrepreneur Dick Smith has blasted the head of News Limited, accusing the organisation of biased and intimidating reporting.

In a scathing letter to News Limited CEO Kim Williams, Mr Smith says the organisation has no interest in free speech, merely profits for its shareholders.

In the letter, he writes that Mr Williams' recent claims the Government is endangering freedom of speech is "claptrap".

As an example he accuses News Limited of not running one of his paid advertisements because it criticised the organisation.

More here




Time to move town for much of country Australia

I recently spent nine days driving 4,500 kms across remote NSW – from Wagga Wagga to Ivanhoe, Broken Hill, Wilcannia, Bourke, Brewarrina, Walgett, Lightning Ridge, Collarenebri, Moree, Boggabilla, Toomelah, and Dubbo. Aside from giving me an appreciation for how vast Australia is, the field trip also highlighted the changing fortunes of country towns.

The beautiful, old sandstone post office at Wilcannia conjured up more prosperous times when the town was known as the ‘Queen City of the West.’ Today, boarded-up shops with barred windows line the main street; only a service station, pub and a few shops remain open. Even the larger town of Broken Hill is showing signs of decline, with ‘for lease’ signs in front of many shops on the main street and old pubs and motels closed down.

Locals told me of the changes wrought by multinationals buying up land to grow cotton, irrigation depleting the rivers, the clearing of trees removing shelter needed to raise sheep, and the run-off from fertilizers and pesticides killing the weeds needed for oxygenating rivers.

The sides of the road across the Moree plains looked as though it had snowed recently because of the large amounts of cotton that had fallen from the bales on their way to cotton gins. Cotton farms now employ only a few people as just about every process has been mechanised.

Those towns that have found ways to adapt are doing slightly better. Although the opal industry has dwindled, enterprising locals in Lightning Ridge have found other ways to make a buck. One miner has transformed his 100-year-old mine into a gallery by carving more than 500 beautiful sculptures into its walls and enticing tourists with his creations.

Others, such as the Toomelah community on the site of an old mission 14 kms from Boggabilla, are clearly going backwards. Over the years, I have visited many different Aboriginal communities but I have never seen as many houses so obviously vandalised as those in Toomelah. Two out of three of the 50 or so houses had holes kicked into the walls, windows smashed, parts of the roofs missing, and graffiti painted over them. The sense of rage and despair in the air was palpable.

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald in May suggested the government was considering closing down Toomelah and relocating residents elsewhere. Tracker denied this was ever the case, and that the story was based only on the words of a frustrated government employee fed up with trying to improve a community resistant to change.

Whatever the truth may be, propping up towns artificially clearly is not working. Toomelah is no better off despite millions of government funding over the last two decades. The question that needs to be asked is, should government and townspeople let natural attrition and decline continue or should they do something about it? Residents of Toomelah, like many country folk before them, have to ask themselves why they want to stay and what is there for them in the future?

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Australia has spies too

The secret service has delivered an unprecedented glimpse of the character of Australia's spies - nearly half of them women, of mixed ethnic heritage, and overwhelmingly young.

And the self-confessed man of "carefully cultivated shadows" confirmed Australian spooks have helped with the arrest of dozens of terrorists in south-east Asia as recently as a few months ago.

Nick Warner, head of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, delivered a landmark speech in Canberra yesterday on the transformation of Australian espionage to a packed audience - including at least three officials from the Chinese embassy taking copious notes.

Mr Warner said the work of the service had new urgency and importance, from the collection of secrets to include operations against terrorist networks, people smugglers and alongside troops in Afghanistan.

It marks the first time in the 60-year history of the secretive outfit a serving director-general has given a public address.

"ASIS reporting has been instrumental in saving the lives of Australian soldiers and civilians, including kidnap victims," he said.

But he also offered a rare insight into the work of intelligence officers in the field, describing "a cadre of highly trained intelligence officers" that recruit human sources overseas known as agents to obtain secrets and every year produce thousands of reports.

"Intelligence in our particular realm can be defined as secret information gleaned without the official sanction of the owners of that information," he said.

In the crowd was former Australian ambassador Jeremy Hearder - son of one of the three founders of the secret service, former British army officer Roblin Hearder, who in 1952 based the espionage operations out of a military base in Melbourne.

For years, Mr Hearder was unaware of his father's secret work until he was officially briefed as a diplomat about the existence of ASIS.

"We knew he was working in Victoria Barracks, but we assumed he was working in retirement for the Defence Department," Mr Hearder said.

Mr Warner hinted at the "far-flung" operations of Australia's spies across Asia, the Pacific, south Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East - naming threats from extremists in Indonesia, Pakistan and Somalia.

With regard to Afghanistan, he said: "The ASIS personnel deployed with the ADF have developed strong bonds, and it's difficult to see a situation in the future where the ADF would deploy without ASIS alongside."

He also warned of cyber operations as "the most rapidly evolving and potentially serious threats to our national security".

About 65 per cent of his spies are aged between 25 and 45 - with 20 per cent of recent recruits drawn from an ethnic background. Three quarters speak a second language.

He said Australian spies do not use violence, blackmail or threats - but its officers can use weapons in self-defence or to protect agents.

Mr Warner said ASIS operated on an annual budget of $250 million.

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BOMs new data set, ACORN, so bad it's funny

What would YOU make of a data set that showed minimum temperatures larger than the maximum temperatures?  BOM is the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Australia's authority on global warming (Don't laugh!)

When independent auditors found errors, gaps and deep questions about the HQ (High Quality) dataset for the official record of Australian temperatures, the BOM responded by producing a completely new set called ACORN in March 2012. But this set is also plagued with errors. One of the independent auditors, Ed Thurstan writes to me to explain that though the BOM says it aimed for the “best possible data set” and specified that they check internal consistency of data (one such check is to make sure that the maximum on any given day is larger than the minimum) when Thurstan double checked ACORN he found nearly 1000 instances where the max temperatures were lower than the minimums recorded the same day.

This raises serious questions about the quality control of the Australian data that are so serious, Thurstan asks whether the whole set should be withdrawn.

Why are basic checks like these left to unpaid volunteers, while Australian citizens pay $10 billion a year to reduce a warming trend recorded in a data set so poor that it’s not possible to draw any conclusions about the real current trend we are supposedly so concerned about.



The BOM goes to great lengths to assure us it’s high quality, peer reviewed, and rigorously checked, but with a days work, independent audits find major flaws

Errors in ACORN_SAT Data

Ever since the documentation for ACORN-SAT was released, I have had doubts about the ability of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to honour their published intention to release all software that generated the ACORN-SAT data. ( I might amplify that thought later.)
In March 2012 the BOM released the report

“Techniques involved in developing the Australian Climate Observations Reference Network – Surface Air Temperature (ACORN-SAT) dataset CAWCR Technical Report No. 049  Blair Trewin

This specifies in great detail both the background to the development of the database, and the checks applied to the data. As Blair Trewin writes in the Abstract of this report:

“The purpose of this data set is to provide the best possible data set to underlie analyses of variability and change of temperature in Australia, including both analyses of annual and seasonal mean temperatures, and of extremes of temperature and other information derived from daily temperatures.”

I decided to take that document as a Program Specification, and write code to perform those data checks.
The very first check specified in section 6.1 of the above report is
“1.   Internal consistency of daily maximum and minimum temperature

 Since the temperature recorded at the time of observation (09:00 under current practice) is an upper bound for minimum temperature on both the day of observation and the following day (i.e. Tnd ≤ T0900,d and Tnd+1 ≤ T0900,d), and a lower bound for maximum temperature on both the day of observation and the preceding day (i.e. Txd ≥ T0900,d and Txd-1 ≥ T0900,d), daily maximum and minimum temperatures must satisfy the relationships:

Txd ≥ Tnd

Txd ≥ Tnd+1

If one or both of these relationships was violated, both maximum and minimum temperatures were flagged as suspect unless there was strong evidence that any error was confined to one of the two observations.”

In testing my code for the first of the two conditions specified above (which says simply that the maximum temperature recorded on any day must be greater than the minimum temperature recorded for that day), I found violations of this condition in the BOM data.
The following are extracts from the full violation log. The errors occur in many different sites and are spread across many decades:

In total, the ACORN-SAT database released in March displays about 1,000 (one thousand) violations of that simple rule that for any day

The Maximum Temperature must be greater than the Minimum Temperature.

This is a blindingly obvious type of error which should not have escaped quality control. It throws serious doubt on the whole ACORN-SAT project. In my opinion, these violations indicate that the entire ACORN-SAT database is suspect, and should be withdrawn for further testing.
Ed Thurstan
thurstan AT bigpond.net.au
July 16, 2012

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Ambo wait puts lives at risk at Cairns

CAIRNS paramedics are being forced to wait more than one hour before patients find a bed at Cairns Base Hospital, a situation a key union says is putting lives at risk.

The waiting times, which can vary anywhere between 45 minutes to several hours, coincides with a spike in emergency calls in the past month.

As a result, paramedics and emergency department staff are being forced to engage in the practice of "ramping" patients on ambulance stretchers more often until hospital beds are made available.

The Cairns Post witnessed seven ambulances ramped outside the ED at Cairns Base Hospital’s ambulance bay yesterday afternoon, with eight patients waiting for beds.

The situation left only one remaining ambulance for the entire Cairns region.

When this unit was called to an emergency at Mt Sheridan, Mareeba ambulance station was the closest first responder.  [Mareeba is hours away]

"It has been a huge issue for us, probably our No.1 issue, for the last couple of years," United Voice Far Northern region state councillor Craig Crawford said.  "In the last month, it’s got worse, as in there’s been more patients ramped for longer periods of time."

The total ramping time for ambulances yesterday at the ED was 8.25 hours, with the longest individual ramping time for a patient clocked at 45 minutes.

Mr Crawford said while a range of factors was to blame for ramping, including a greater influx of hospital patients over the past month, paramedics were being frustrated by the "bed lock" problem.

"It’s heart wrenching for our crews because they’re standing on the ramp at our hospital listening to our comms department trying to get a crew … and there’s no one that can do it. It’s madness," he said.  "Someone could die out there in a house or in a car accident because we cannot send an ambulance, and we’re getting closer and closer to that mark."

Cairns and Hinterland Health Service District chief operating officer Robin Moore agreed ramping had been a strain on ED staff and paramedics, but denied there was a communication breakdown between first responders and hospital management.

"We have experienced unprecedented numbers through the ED, especially over this weekend, it’s been very busy," Mr Moore said.

"QAS and I are regularly in touch as soon as there’s any look of ramping, we’re in communication so QAS know what our processes are and how long they will be in that situation."

Meanwhile, Mr Crawford implored the government "to take control" of the ramping issue and implement the recommendations outlined in the recent Metropolitan Emergency Department Access Initiative to improve hospital management practices.

SOURCE






Bungling bureaucrats ready to flood Brisbane again?

THE State Government should speed up plans to reduce Wivenhoe Dam to 75 per cent capacity because of the threat posed by wet winter weather, an Ipswich councillor says.

Flood victim Paul Tully, whose Goodna family home was destroyed by last year's floods, is concerned that Wivenhoe has reached 99.4 per cent capacity.

"We have had a wet autumn and winter and there are only 19 weeks to summer but the dam is being held at levels reminiscent of the weeks leading up to last year's flood," he said.

"Wivenhoe Dam engineers admitted to the floods inquiry they paid no regard to weather forecasts in managing the dam and let nature take its course."

Weather bureau statistics support Cr Tully's concern about the wet winter.

Up to 60 per cent of the state experienced above-average falls in June.  Across the state, three daily rainfall records and four monthly records were broken last month.  The average rainfall was 33mm, which represented the highest figure in five years.

The wettest month was recorded by Tomewin, near Tweed Heads on the border of Queensland and NSW, where 338.4mm fell.  But places such as Noosaville had 293mm and the Sunshine Coast airport recorded 114.4mm in one day.

Seqwater confirmed they had begun minor releases of water from Wivenhoe after two weeks of rain.

But Cr Tully doesn't believe the state should wait until November to follow flood inquiry recommendations to lower dam levels to 75 per cent to accommodate the inflows from the coming wet season.

"It is incomprehensible they have buried their heads in the water and crossed their fingers hoping for a dry summer," Cr Tully said.

"Residents are fearful of another Brisbane River flood and feel the bureaucrats have abandoned them in their quest to maximise dam levels."

Cr Tully also suggested the State Government consider building another dam in southeast Queensland to enable Wivenhoe Dam to be used principally for flood mitigation.

"(Former premier) Joh Bjelke-Petersen promised Wivenhoe Dam would prevent major Brisbane River floods," Cr Tully said.  "Seqwater is playing with people's lives and again is mismanaging the operation of Wivenhoe Dam."

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Why W.A.  teachers exit 'toxic' system

SWAMPED teachers who quit the classroom say their passion has been "killed off" and they feel "overwhelmed and undervalued".  And the profession has been described as "toxic" with a possible "crisis" looming.

The damning descriptions are part of exit surveys of 261 teachers and staff who resigned from the Education Department between January 2011 and January 2012, outlined in a report obtained by The Sunday Times this week.

The report also shows:

* More teachers blame poor work-life balance and workload pressures for their decision to quit, with those reasons cited in 13.4 per cent of resignations.

* Eleven per cent cited family reasons and just under one in 10 said they wanted to pursue other interests.

* Health issues were blamed by 8 per cent of those who quit in the past year.

* Staff said the department's methods for dealing with disruptive students needed the greatest attention.

* Seven out of 10 teachers leaving the department said they would consider returning in the future, indicating most were generally happy.

One experienced teacher, who described the first 10 years of teaching as "very rewarding", said the passion had been "killed off".

"Over the past four years, I have seen a steady decline by the department on the importance of children's self-esteem and social and emotional wellbeing only to be replaced by ridiculous tests (NAPLAN)," the teacher wrote.

"The children at my school need help to develop as a whole child as they have many home- life issues.

"I believe the department is only interested in achieving results and running schools like a business rather than thinking about what is important the children.

"I want my children to have fun while learning, develop skills and be happy. Not to just be able to spew out useless information so that their school 'looks good'."

Another employee called for a "closer look at schools with extreme behaviour management problems" because the administration was "encouraged to hide/cover up the behaviour management issues in their school to look better".

"If students are swearing, bullying and attacking other students and staff, they should have consequences," the employee wrote.

A qualified teacher told the department to "get your act together" after being told to "reapply for the same job every year, offering no job security" despite forecasts of teacher shortages in the coming years.

Another leaving employee said the department "should hang its head in shame" for the way it managed its restructure, from 14 districts to 75 school networks in eight regions.

"The last six months in this department have been terrible," they wrote.  "It is such a toxic work environment in here that it has affected me physically and emotionally. It upsets me greatly to sit back and watch such hard-working, dedicated officers treated so appallingly.

Another employee said "after many years of teaching", they felt workload pressures had become a "forgotten issue".

"Morale in schools is very low and as the baby boomers retire I fear a crisis will happen as younger teachers will not put up with the demands that are increasingly placed on teachers' time and efforts," they wrote.  "Much of the goodwill that teachers used to have has gone as they feel overwhelmed and undervalued."

Another teacher said they had simply "run out of steam to keep going" when they saw the "debacle with the national curriculum".

Some said they wanted more job security, better pay and greater recognition, while others said they loved their job and seeing the children flourish.

"My days at work were very happy and rewarding ones," one wrote. "I felt true achievement when in the classroom teaching students," another said.

Education Department workforce executive director Cliff Gillam said "only a tiny proportion" of leaving staff completed the voluntary survey, with 978 resignations, including 366 retirements.

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Junk food companies and lack of playgrounds behind obesity crisis, academic says

There is no such thing as "junk" food.  A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potato.  If that is bad we are all in the poo.  And the best evidence is that demand levels of fat, salt and sugar are harmless.  Too little salt can in fact kill you (Google hyponatremia if you doubt it)

FAT people are not to blame for being overweight, a top Melbourne academic claims.

Dr Samantha Thomas, who spoke at the annual Castan Centre for Human Rights Law Conference in Melbourne, said the war on obesity was failing because society put too much emphasis on personal responsibility.

"Obesity rates are still increasing because we put all the responsibility on the individual, but are completely reluctant to tackle the corporations that are part of the cause - the junk food companies, the soft drink companies, even the town planners who design new suburbs with no backyards or playgrounds," Dr Thomas said.

Dr Thomas, a senior research fellow at the Monash University School of Marketing, said more should be done to prevent obesity, rather than simply telling people to lose weight.

"It is easy to say 'I do the right thing, why don't they?', but for some people, for a variety of reasons, it is very hard to make the right decisions. We really need to create a healthy environment to help people do that," she said.

Dr Thomas said the anti-obesity fight should be similar to the war on smoking, with big tobacco companies blamed rather than individuals labelled weak or lazy.

"With the anti-smoking movement, we realised that tobacco was being heavily marketed at adolescents and we were disgusted," she said. "Junk food is heavily marketed at children and adolescents but, instead of trying to stop that, we just put all the responsibility on parents."

Dr Thomas said more than 60 per cent of the population was overweight or obese, so the situation affected more people than many would admit.

But YMCA Victoria spokesman Stephen Bendle said while environment did play a role in health, people needed to learn to make the right choices themselves.

"The YMCA encourages people to take responsibility for their weight and, just as importantly, for their overall health and wellbeing," Mr Bendle said.

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Global warming takes a break in chilly July

Report from the Northern Territory

TERRITORIANS were left shivering last night as some of them endured the coldest July in 35 years.

Alice Springs residents experienced overnight lows averaging -0.4 C - a long way below the average of 4.1C that is normal for this time of year.

The last time nights were this cold in Central Australia was back in 1977.

Top End rural residents woke up with teeth chattering after the mercury dropped to 9C overnight.

In Darwin things weren't much warmer, with the thermometer registering 16C, the coldest overnight temperature in 10 days.

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'Dangerous' NSW mum wins back stolen kids

It's appalling that a mere opinion can lead to such punitive official action

ROBBED of her beloved kids and branded a "dangerous" mum, a NSW woman has spoken of her joy of being reunited with her daughter after nine years of separation.

For 19-years, the mother struggled to keep her family together as childcare authorities were hellbent on tearing them apart.

But her courage and conviction has finally won. The baby "stolen" from her 23 days after she entered the world in 2002 is safely by her side.

The youngster has spent her life in foster care after childcare authorities believed the mum suffered from the discredited condition known as Munchausen syndrome by proxy in 1993.

"I've been waiting 10 years to bring my baby home," said the elated mum, who has requested not to be identified for the childrens' sake. She was labelled with the condition, in which mothers harm and even kill their children to gain attention, after her second-born son failed to thrive. Her next two children were removed as well.

Community Services Minister Pru Goward told The Sunday Telegraph she was pleased the matter had been resolved, but has demanded an explanation from her department.

"This will help my understanding of the events which led to the removal of these children," said Ms Goward, who made representations on the mother's part when she was in opposition.

With three children removed between 1993 and 2002, the woman went on the run to give birth to a son in December 2003 to avoid detection. Authorities made the child a ward of the state in her absence and when she was tracked down in October 2008 in Moree, they removed the boy who was then four.

After an 18-month court battle, the boy was returned to his mother in April 2010 and has lived with her ever since.

The two older children are grown up and no longer wards of the state. Her nine-year-old daughter had expressed wishes to be returned to her real mother and after her foster carer relinquished care, the child was returned.

"She gets in bed with me in the morning and says: 'I'm so happy', it's just beautiful',' the woman said.

Munchausen syndrome by proxy was coined by British paediatrician Sir Roy Meadow.

It was discredited in 2003 after Meadows' evidence wrongly jailed three women for murder.

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Schools are adopting a new 'tough love' teaching initiative

SCHOOLS are clamouring to adopt a revolutionary "tough love" teaching initiative - replacing empty praise and gold stars for coming last.

KidsMatter is a radical shift from three decades of enhancing student self-esteem through positive reinforcement and rewards.

Students are now getting lessons in reality and learning self-management, responsible decision-making, and coping with difficulties and mistakes.

Adolescent psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg said it was time for all teachers and parents to focus on social and emotional competencies.

"Young people in Sydney would be far better off if we spent time teaching them anger management, problem solving, decision making, conflict resolution, and how to name and recognise not just their own thoughts and feelings but those of other people, too," Mr Carr-Gregg said.

Carlton Public School in Sydney's south this week introduced the social and emotional learning skills.

Principal Stephen Cooper said it emphasised personal and social development and relationship skills.

"I think the modern generation of kids are protected and they need to be exposed to situations that challenge them," he said.

Despite a successful pilot in 2006, the take-up of KidsMatter remained slow. Of the 800 primary schools across Australia implementing the program. the majority have signed up this year.

It was developed in collaboration with Principals Australia, the Australian Psychological Society, and BeyondBlue. The federal government and BeyondBlue will fund rollout to another 1400 schools by 2014.

Psychology professor Dr Helen McGrath said schools were rethinking the emphasis on self-esteem.

"Change in any sector such as education can be slow but I think there are an enormous amount of schools aware of what is happening," she said.

However, one western Sydney principal said some parents pressured schools to recognise their child with awards.

"I think it's come generally from society in that you can't fail any more," he said.

Dr Carr-Gregg said the self-esteem movement protected children from failure, robbed them of loss and grief and created a spate of anxiety disorders in young people unable to cope when they leave the protective cocoon of school or home.

"The idea of not actually allowing kids to be inspired by misfortune and the terrible things that can happen to them from time to time is almost cruel," he said.

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Federal anti-gun push blocked

RIFLE shooters will keep their historic home in southern Sydney after a court ruled that the federal government had no right to evict their organisation.

In a major blow to plans to convert the Malabar headland into a national park, the 150-year-old NSW Rifle Association yesterday won its court battle against the government to stay at the Anzac Rifle Range.

A Supreme Court judge found the government unfairly tried to evict the NSWRA, which has called the Malabar range home for nearly 45 years, without first finding it an alternative home.

The government issued three "remedy notices" earlier this year, claiming the shooters had failed to keep its buildings in good condition.

It gave the NSWRA a little over two weeks to repair damaged asbestos and comply with a fire-safety plan or be driven out for licence breaches.

However, the association claimed the real motive was to fulfil election promises made by local MP Peter Garrett.

Yesterday NSWRA chairman John Fitzgerald said forcing the group out without a new base would have been "devastating" for the sport in the state.

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Blackman blacklisted by horse name censors

One of Australia's top trainers has been ordered to change the name of one of his young racehorses.  Hall of Fame trainer David Hayes has been told two-year-old filly Blackman cannot keep her original name.

The filly, whose father is Excellent Art, was named after renowned Australian artist Charles Blackman.

But the change was ordered by Racing Information Services Australia (RISA), which controls the registration and naming of racehorses, after it received one complaint.

"Certainly the name itself is a surname and certainly respected the connection back to the artist Charles Blackman after which it was named," RISA spokesman Myles Foreman said.

"But (RISA) also found that where the name is used without the known context back to a surname, it could be construed as being offensive which is where ultimately the complaint started.

"Through a consultative process what we've landed at is retaining the original part of the name but placed Lady in front of it so that it is now known as Lady Blackman."

Mr Foreman said requests to change inappropriate names were rare.

"I think probably on average a name would be changed where a complaint has been raised about once a year, and we name around 13,000 names a year."

Hayes was not available for comment but he has been quoted as saying "it's the most ridiculous thing, the biggest reaction I've ever seen".

His view is shared by Sydney trainer David Payne.  "I think it's crazy," he said.  "What happens if you call a horse Whiteman? Would you have to change the name as well? It's just ridiculous."

Payne said he was forced to change the name of a horse in his native South Africa.  "One of my clients called it Islam and we had to change the name, but I think that's more serious than Blackman."

Peter Jurkovsky from the Thoroughbred Racehorse Owners Association of Victoria says the case highlights the perils of naming. "In the context of how the horse was named in particular, I think that is the most disappointing aspect," he said.

"The horse is by a stallion called Excellent Art and it was named after a famous painter and therefore in the context it is Blackman, not black man.

"It was one complaint. We find that a little bit incongruous. "But having had a look at the rules again, they are fairly clear that the registerer can do whatever they please and whatever they deem necessary under the rules."

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Unqualified child safety workers forced to deal with at-risk children

I think a social work degree is usually more a hindrance than a help so am not too concerned about this

A BURN and churn of stressed-out Queensland child safety workers has left unskilled officers taking a frontline role in caring for vulnerable children.

With more Queensland children in state care than inmates in prison cells, it's been revealed many child safety workers have no formal qualifications in caring for disturbed children or communicating with dysfunctional families.

PeakCare, an umbrella group for child protection services, says hundreds of social workers have fled the sector because of the stress, and poor decisions are being made which can rip apart families.

PeakCare, representing more than 580 organisations, will use the newly created Queensland child protection inquiry to push for mandatory qualifications for key child safety personnel.

It will also use a landmark British childcare study to pressure a "process-driven" bureaucracy to allow a more flexible approach to child safety, with a view to reducing the number of children removed from families."

It is an extraordinarily stressful job and the turnover of staff has just been immense in recent years," PeakCare executive director Lindsay Wegener said.  "Many social workers have just left the area altogether."

The disappearance of social workers from the field coincides with a worrying rise in children being removed from families.

The child protection inquiry revealed on Tuesday there were 7602 children in some form of out-of-home care, a jump from 5972 in 2000. By contrast, there are 5527 inmates in Queensland prisons.

Mr Wegener said governments had been left with little choice but to fill frontline positions with unqualified workers. Social workers have historically been the preferred professional group to work in the field of child protection.   "Now many no longer want to work for the department," Mr Wegener said.

Many of the former teachers, police and nurses hired over the past decade as youth workers and residential care officers had brought a valuable skills base to the sector, Mr Wegener said.

He said the Government would argue that newly recruited child safety officers had tertiary qualifications.

"The point is that for some time, it has been unlikely that their qualification will be a social work degree or even a human services or psychology degree," he said.  "It is more likely to be a criminology degree, teaching degree or some other degree."

A landmark British study on child protection, the Munro review by Professor Eileen Munro, highlighted the need for the skilled social workers to be at the frontline of child protection.

"Experienced social workers should be kept on the frontline even when they become managers so that their experience and skills are not lost," the Munro review recommends. "The expertise and status of the social work profession should be improved with continual professional development that focuses on the skills needed in child protection."

In the Queensland inquiry, Commissioner Tim Carmody has painted a disturbing picture of the state's most vulnerable.

Katherine McMillan, Senior Counsel assisting at the inquiry, has made it clear staffing will be a crucial area for examination at the 10-month inquiry.

But Ms McMillan said the most "vexed question" the inquiry faced was whether and how a child assessed as an unacceptable risk could be kept safely in their home.

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Legal system out of touch with social media

LAWS designed to protect an accused person's right to a fair trial are out of touch and in need of reform, journalism lecturer Catharine Lumby said, referring to comments on social media after the arrest of the alleged killer of teenager Thomas Kelly yesterday.

Within hours of the charging of Kieran Loveridge, Twitter and Facebook users had published his photo and prejudicial comments about him.

Such publication had a "very high potential to interfere with the administration of justice", warned media lawyer Mark Polden, as it could influence witnesses in their identification and might also impact on future jurors should the case go to trial.

The difficulty was enforcing the laws prohibiting such publication and holding the websites responsible because they often did not have a real presence in Australia which put them beyond the reach of injunctions by Australian courts, he said.

But technology lawyer Philip Argy said the case differed little from comment in traditional media at the time of the Chamberlain case, it was merely the technology which had changed.

He said the potential of social media to have an impact on a trial might be exaggerated, saying: "My gut instinct is we haven't yet reached the stage where the ordinary person who sits in a jury would have been influenced by what's on social media because they are unlikely to follow the Twitter feed."

But, he warned, reporting by traditional media of trends on social media might bring the problematic publication to the attention of jurors and worsen the problem.

Dr Lumby said the law was behind in its understanding of technology and society. "The law has a fantasy … of being able to tell people what to do and control people. It's not how the world works any more … the law needs to catch up with society."

David Vaile from the cyberspace law and policy centre at the University of NSW said regulators and lawyers had failed to take early action against social media, and in previous cases they had only been warned, rather than hit with heavy penalties.

In England, attempts to use injunctions to restrain publication of stories about celebrities deemed to breach their privacy largely failed because of the difficulty of restraining social media. In NSW, the courts recently recognised the difficulty in controlling publication on the internet in media beyond the websites of traditional media companies.

Mr Vaile said the ability to enforce current laws which prevent comment on matters which are sub judice was questionable, but what was needed was a change of culture and emphasis on ethics.

In Australia, tweets posted on the social networking site Twitter have become the basis for defamation cases.

Liberal Party pollsters Lynton Crosby and Mark Textor are suing federal Labor MP Mike Kelly for defamation over a tweet in which he accused their campaign consulting firm of push polling.

Joshua Meggitt, a man wrongly named as the author of a hate blog, is now suing Twitter.

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S. Aust.: More hospital beds won't fix Flinders Medical Centre's hold-ups, say experts

POOR hospital management rather than a lack of beds is to blame for ramping at Flinders Medical Centre, a report into ambulance queueing has found.

Dr Mark Monaghan's report, released yesterday, found the state's hospital system was ailing under outdated patient flow processes.

His report contains 52 recommendations, including that Flinders immediately establish a temporary supervised "holding bay" of stable, assessed emergency department patients who were ready to be admitted.

A long-term response must then be established at the site within six months.

Health Minister John Hill admitted ramping had occurred at Flinders, after earlier denying this was the case.

The Monaghan report found it was "inappropriate and unreasonable to recommend that (Flinders emergency department) cease their current practice" of ramping.  It also found changes must be developed by clinicians and management locally at each site.

The Australian Medical Association and nursing union said staff must be supported to make changes because all hospitals were operating above capacity.

The report found access to care was constrained at Flinders and other hospitals because senior clinicians were not available at all times, holding up surgery and patient discharge.

It also found that the $111 million previously poured into patient flow improvements under the department's former chief achieved "very little improvement".

Speaking by video link from Western Australia, where he has led similar reform, Dr Monaghan said extra beds would not fix the problem at Flinders.  "Unless you get very good processes, adding beds on to those inefficient processes doesn't actually get you a lot," he said.

Mr Hill said the hospital must now determine how to use existing beds, resources and staff in the most productive way.

Opposition health spokesman Martin Hamilton-Smith said the report was damning.  "The report outlines a litany of ED process issues which Labor should have fixed over the last 10 years," he said.

AMA state president Peter Sharley said many questions remained unanswered, but solutions were needed immediately to alleviate overcrowding.  "Every public hospital is feeling the same pressures," he said.

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A glut in public hospital admissions causes ambulance delays, prompting a 'code orange' health alarm, according to Ambulance Victoria

VICTORIA'S ambulance service was so overwhelmed yesterday that it activated the government's emergency response plan to put doctors on notice so they could be called in to help.

A spokesman for Ambulance Victoria yesterday said high levels of winter illness had caused it to call a "code orange" between midnight and 8.30am.

The code is the second highest level of alert in the state's Health Emergency Response Plan, which was designed to manage healthcare for disasters such as bushfires and mass-casualty transport accidents.

Ambulance Victoria spokesman Danny McGennisken would not tell The Age how often the emergency plan was invoked for normal winter demand, but said it was "not unusual" to use it during peak times.

However, the ambulance union and state opposition said it was extraordinary for the service to use the plan for predictable increased demand in winter, and they questioned why the service could not bolster its own resources to respond adequately.

The move came as the service also revealed it had introduced a controversial new plan to drop less urgent patients in emergency department waiting rooms to reduce the time spent handing patients over to medical staff.

Ambulance Employees Association state secretary Steve McGhie said he had heard of the

service invoking the emergency plan only a handful of times, including during a heatwave and on one night last year when a man died after calling for an ambulance 11 times.

"This is an ambulance service in crisis," he said. "There would not have been one additional staff member put on yesterday and, if anything, they were probably below their minimum resourcing requirements because they're not filling shifts when people are off sick.

"This is day-to-day ambulance work. Winters have been going for hundreds of years and we can't plan for it?"

Mr McGhie said although the government had partly honoured its commitment to increase paramedic numbers by about 200 of the 310 promised, the service was losing about 150 a year through resignations.

Opposition health spokesman Gavin Jennings said the government was failing to meet demand with its own resources. "It's extraordinary. The plan was not meant to be used for this reason," he said.

Ambulance Victoria has also started trialling a plan for paramedics to leave less urgent patients in emergency department waiting rooms rather than staying with them until a full handover to medical staff.

The plan has infuriated Australian Medical Association state president Steve Parnis, who said he had not been notified of it.

"If a patient is deemed unwell enough that they needed to be transferred to hospital by ambulance, it would be completely unacceptable for them to be unloaded into a waiting area or any other part of the emergency department without a proper form of clinical hand-over. It would be dangerous and completely inappropriate," he said.

"A huge aspect of risk management is safe and thorough clinical handover, so if the problem is with a lack of resources, that's the thing that needs to be addressed here … cutting corners at the risk of patient safety is unacceptable."

Dr Parnis, an emergency physician, said hospitals had been under enormous pressure in recent weeks as high levels of flu had hit Victoria's ageing population.

Mr McGennisken said the trial involved paramedics having some discussion with hospital staff. "Patient safety is imperative and normal handover practices at hospitals are always followed," he said.

Health Minister David Davis did not answer questions on the issues last night. However, he said the emergency trial would help free up ambulances while he worked to deliver a $151 million election commitment to boost the ambulance service.

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Twist in 'sex on the job' payout case

A public servant who fought for and won workers' compensation for an injury sustained while having sex in a motel room on a work trip could have the money taken away after the Commonwealth appealed to a full bench of the Federal Court.

In November 2007, the woman - who cannot be named - had been sent by her government employer to a country town for a departmental meeting and put up in a hotel.

The night before the meeting she suffered facial and psychological injuries when a glass light fitting came away from the wall above the bed as she was having sex with a male friend.

The Commonwealth workers compensation agency Comcare originally rejected her application for compensation - a decision upheld by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

But earlier this year Justice John Nicholas of the Federal Court overturned that decision, finding that the woman was entitled to compensation on the grounds that she was "in the course of her employment" when the injury occurred.

However, Comcare has now appealed this decision to a full bench of the Federal Court. Court documents show that Comcare will claim that having sex on a work trip was not an activity that was "expressly or impliedly induced or encouraged" by the woman's employe.

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A Big Picture View of Problems in Australia's Maths Curriculum

Re: Ferrari J.,New maths course inadequate, The Australian, 18/7/12

Dear Professor  Wildberger

I should like to suggest for your consideration that the problems that you have identified in the proposed new national curriculum for Year 11 and 12 maths are likely to have a systemic cause which implies a need for a different curriculum development process. While this will not be immediately obvious, the cause of the problem is likely to be the biases that limit the effectiveness of ‘rational’ centralised decision making.

Your reported criticism was that "The draft national curriculum replaces core material such as algebra, geometry, and applications of calculus with a lot of advanced statistics and, for the higher strand, tertiary-level topics”. As an engineer who has done a lot of work related to the social sciences, it seems to me that the proposed national curriculum is biased towards to needs of (say) social science and medical research in which statistics play a major role, at the expense of the algebra / geometry / calculus needs of the applied sciences and engineering.

It can be noted that the national history curriculum contains a similar dysfunctional bias (see Proposed National History Curriculum: Information without Understanding?, 2010). And, as with the proposed national maths curriculum, this bias reflects a lack of concern for practical issues.

    Explanation: The national history curriculum sought to impart understanding of diverse societies, without ensuring coverage of the societies and ideas that had contributed directly to Australia’s institutions and character. Culture has practical consequences which are significant in causing history – so it is important to ensure that students gain a solid understanding of those that have led to practical success (and why this is so). The national history curriculum does not seem to do this. Though this will not be immediately obvious, the importance of ensuring understanding of what has led to success and failure in history can be seen by considering current unresolved concerns about Australia’s response to asylum seekers (see The Biggest Issue Missing from the Asylum Seeker Debate).

In both these cases the problem is arguably that reform proposals have been developed (and in one case already implemented) on the basis of a particular point of view, and this has not taken account of other considerations that are outside the expertise and experience of the persons involved. In relation to this, it is further noted that:

    There are limits to human rationality that are recognised in management, public administration and economic literature. For example, the inability of central planners to acquire the information required to make appropriate decisions is economists’ primary justification for a market economy;

    The application of reforms to governments and universities which involved an autocratic implementation of particular ideologies has led to severe problems (eg see Toward Good Government in Queensland , 1995 and A Case for Restoring Universities, 2010). In the Queensland Government case (which was replicated in various ways Australia wide - see Decay of Australian Public Administration, 2002) attempts to ‘reform’ government across-the-board on the basis of particular (but narrow) understandings of what was required led to the elimination of much of the knowledge and skills which was vital for practical success in government operations - but which the ‘reformers’ did not appreciate. Crisis prone government administration across Australia over the past couple of decades is the consequence. A general account of the problems facing government in Australia is in Australia's Governance Crisis and the Need for Nation Building (2003+). This emphasises the need for institutional reforms for which one important focus involves enabling complex issues that are beyond simple ‘rational’ prescriptions by potential reformers to be better managed.

A better approach to developing curriculum (as with the other concerns above) would involve a shift away from centralised attempts to make ‘decisions’ towards centralised efforts to identify the issues requiring change while encouraging proposed responses to emerge from existing practitioners. This would ensure that new curriculum would build on existing strengths while taking into account new requirements, rather than being biased towards the central decision maker’s perception of the new requirements while potentially eliminating existing strengths that are not centrally understood.

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G20 summit helps seal Queensland's place in political sun

The G20 leaders summit to be held in Brisbane in 2014 will be the biggest political meeting ever held in this country. The G20 represents two-thirds of the world's population and 90 per cent of its gross domestic product. The right to host the meeting sparked a State of Origin war between Queensland and NSW, which, as usual, Queensland won.

The only other time the G20 met in Australia was the meeting of central bankers and finance ministers in Melbourne in 2006. It was a very successful meeting, but it generated awful television coverage for the city. A self-styled "Stop G20" movement surrounded the venue and tried to prevent delegates getting in and out.

Aid groups attacked the forum as being indifferent to, or conniving in, global poverty. The celebrity aid activist Bono gatecrashed the event to hold forth on how the leaders were failing the world. And the Victorian police allowed demonstrators to smash property - even police property - as part of a rampage through city streets. The pictures of Melbourne beamed around the world looked just like the scenes we are now seeing from riots in Athens or Madrid.

I should make it clear that frontline police did a magnificent job and were appalled by the violence and disruption. Their commanders were keen to take a tougher line, but this was the time when Christine Nixon was the commissioner of Victorian Police. Sensitive policing meant giving young anarchists a free hand and picking them up after they had caused their vandalism and damage.

When it was all over, Nixon saw no fault with her policing methods. She said the mayhem showed it was not "appropriate" to hold such events in major cities. In other words, ministers and leaders who obey the law should stay away from Melbourne because protesters and demonstrators do not. After that experience there was no chance Melbourne would host another important international event like that again - at least not while the G20 and that theory of policing were fresh in the memory.

Sydney and Brisbane see the value in staging large international political and diplomatic events. If New York can host the United Nations, if Washington can host the International Monetary Fund, if London, Toronto and Pittsburgh can host the G20, why shouldn't Sydney and Brisbane put themselves on the international map? Brisbane will be the centre of the world for a weekend in November 2014. It will come of age as an international city.

In 1956 Melbourne put itself on the international map by hosting the Olympics. It reflected ambition and confidence. In 2000 Sydney, which by then was a lot more brassy and confident than Melbourne, hosted the Olympics. And with the G20 summit the centre of gravity will move north again.

This is in keeping with the direction of economic opportunity and the population growth that is following it. Queensland is profiting from a mining boom just as Victoria did in the 19th century. It does not see itself as a provincial backwater. Nor will the global media as they report the deliberations of world leaders in 2014.

Sydney and Melbourne will have to get used to growing political clout coming out of Brisbane. Queensland now has 30 seats in the House of Representatives compared with 37 for Victoria and 48 for NSW. On current polling there could be as many as 29 Queensland Liberal National members elected to the lower house at the next election. They could be the largest state bloc in the Coalition party room. With more members, they will claim more seats in the cabinet. One reason the next Coalition government will be different from the last will be the enormous sway held by the Queenslanders.

The landslide victory of Campbell Newman in the state election has given the Queensland LNP enormous confidence. Newman sees himself as the "can-do" Premier. He is not afraid of controversial decisions. He wants to change the state. He is intent on turning Queensland around and making it an economic powerhouse.

Over the past 18 months, Coalition governments have been elected in each of the three eastern states. It will be natural for people to compare them. If Queensland becomes the pacesetter on reform, it will put a lot of competitive pressure on the other states to lift the tempo of their efforts.

Melbourne's lord mayor, Robert Doyle, said the city did not want to host the G20 summit. If so, Melbourne took the attitude of Hobart and Adelaide.

But Sydney still has ambition. As does Brisbane. Which is now gaining on its once more fancied rivals.

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Proposal to end 'sacrosanct' confessions

Parliament can propose but the church will dispose.  Are they going to lock up priests who adhere to their canons?  Not very likely

CATHOLIC priests may be forced to reveal if they heard about crimes during confession under a proposal before Victoria's inquiry into child sex abuse.

Priests would be ordered to reveal crimes told to them in private confessions but priests say they will resist any such moves, the Herald Sun says.

A parliamentary committee also will look at new laws that would see bishops face criminal charges for the misconduct of their priests.

The committee is asking those making submissions whether they think mandatory reporting rules should be imposed on the confessional.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne would not comment because it did not want to pre-empt the work of the inquiry.

Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, has previously said the confessional must remain sacrosanct.

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Australians eating the "wrong" foods?

I don't know what business it is of anybody but the eaters -- and the fact that Australians have one of the world's longest lifespans is not addressed

SOARING obesity rates, falling fruit and vegetable intake and a fast-food industry cashing in on an appetite for fatty foods - Australians seem to be gluttons for punishment.

A damning government report on nutrition and dietary habits said more than 60 per cent of adults and almost a quarter of children aged 2-16 are either overweight or obese.

It's leading to serious health problems such as heart disease and diabetes, costing more than $8 billion a year in health care and lost productivity.

But it's little wonder our waistlines are growing, with almost 30 per cent of the average household food budget spent on fast food and eating out.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report found the average family spent more each week on alcohol than meat, fruit and vegetables.

Even when families buy healthy food, much of it ends up in the bin -- with an average $600 worth of food thrown out annually per household.

Of an estimated total $5 billion worth of food disposed of annually, $1.1 billion was fruit and vegetables.

AIHW spokeswoman Lisa McGlynn said more than 90 per cent of adults did not eat the recommended five serves of vegetables each day -- and half did not eat enough fruit.

"The good news in all this is that we know the state we're in and we know what we can do about it," she said.

"We can all start with small changes like just having a couple of extra pieces of fruit or serves of vegetables."

Newcastle family day-carer Robinanne Lavelle said she often saw parents packing their children's lunch-boxes with processed foods, sandwiches smothered in chocolate spread and lollies.

"We're in a society where we have a lot more money than we did a few decades ago and children are often becoming the ones who choose these products," she said.

"I believe working parents who are short on time might not want the hassle while they are out at the shops so they will buy something just because the children want it."

According to the report, lower income earners, Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders were most at risk from poor diet and obesity. With healthy food costing up to 30 per cent more for people living in rural and remote regions, they too were at increased risk.

Dietitians Association of Australia spokesman Dr Trent Watson called for a fundamental change in the way authorities tackled the problem, with more funding for prevention.

"Unless we start shaping our health care system to target these determinants of health as an absolute priority, we're going to be in an unsustainable position," he said.

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Don't let the prudes deprive us of the spice of sexual banter

IT'S been a red-hot month for sex therapist Marty Klein. The well-known Californian psychologist - soon to give a lecture tour in Australia - has spent more than 30 years writing about sexual issues, often attracting the blowtorch of indignation from the US's powerful conservative groups. But he's never experienced anything like the frothing-at-the-mouth nastiness he's experienced since commenting on a recent controversy over an unwanted sexual invitation.

It started when a woman, Elyse Anders, was speaking at a sceptics' conference. She was approached by a couple she'd had contact with through Facebook who presented her with a SwingLifeStyle card that included their names, phone number and a semi-naked photo of them. They then left.

Anders posted a seething blog on her website, ranting about how offensive this was, how it undermined her professionalism. "I do important work. The work I do saves lives. And yet I still have to worry about whether I'm worthy or if I'll ever be respected beyond my f---ability. And that's bullshit. I deserve better than that."

In his regular column in Psychology Today, Klein took up the issue, perhaps foolishly disguising some details of the case to present a more general scenario. But he made a powerful argument, suggesting the issue here isn't sexual harassment but rather unwanted sexual attention. He then described the legal, ethical and social differences between the two.

Klein argued that sexual-harassment law was never designed to protect women from merely feeling uncomfortable and that in a typical workday, for instance, both men and women face many sources of discomfort: the infertile face co-workers' desks with photos of their kids; fundamentalist Muslims and Jews face people dressed with arms and legs uncovered; atheists face people wearing crosses. Why do we privilege unwanted attention that happens to involve sexuality?

We all cope with unwanted attention every day, Klein said, coming up with some telling examples: overly personal stories from strangers on planes; awkward compliments from co-workers; grocery clerks sympathetically inquiring about the brace on your wrist; and "Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormon missionaries asking if they can talk with you for just a moment about their invisible friend in the sky".

Klein pointed out that he had fought hard against sexual coercion and sexual harassment but suggested the whole "Eek! An unwanted sexual invitation - gross! My day/week/year is ruined" is a bit precious. He concluded that surely we should be able to handle a friendly sexual invitation in a genuinely safe environment without losing our composure.

He makes a good point. It seems extraordinary that Anders got her knickers in a twist about simply being handed a piece of paper, with no pressure to make any further response.

Since Klein's article was published, Anders has responded with 5000 words of venomous blog, tearing him apart and nit-picking about his inaccuracies, but never discussing the important issues he raised. The article also led to hundreds of furious comments, blogs and threats to interfere with his regular writing assignments.

There's a very real issue at the heart of this silly controversy - namely, the notion that sex is peculiarly dangerous and the rules of normal adult interaction must be adjusted when the subject is sex so no one ever feels uncomfortable.

Look at the constant skirmishes now taking place in workplaces, where the wrong joke, comment or sexual reference risks accusations of sexual harassment. Yet, as even the feminist website ffeusa.org points out, there are women who make and enjoy sexual banter. As this site suggests: "Overbroad restrictions on sexual material infantilises women and shores up destructive Victorian stereotypes that women are (or should be) so pure that any expression about sexuality offends and demoralises them."

Sexual banter, the exchange of jokes and flirty comments can be the welcome spice of life for women, as well as men, and it's foolish to let the prudish in our midst determine what is appropriate behaviour.

Demonising sexuality inevitably distorts a proper perspective on sexual crimes, leading to politically inspired calls for absurdly longer sentences, misinformation about the likelihood of offenders to reoffend and exaggeration of the emotional damage to the victims of minor abuse. Our prurient interest in sex crimes often robs the perpetrator of any chance of redemption - as the sad death of cricket commentator Peter Roebuck bears witness. This is why allegations of child sexual abuse feature so regularly in fierce battles over child custody - the hint of sexual misbehaviour is a weapon like no other, leaving a lifelong taint on character.

The absurd overreaction from Anders and her colleagues to Klein's serious discussion of unwanted sexual attention makes the case that reason disappears when sex rears its head. Klein has spent his career arguing that sexuality deserves better treatment, and that's what he'll be talking about in Australia in October.

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Rates gap a fair price to pay for safer banks

As I'm sure you've gathered, a surprising number of our industries are going through a painful, job-shifting process economists euphemistically refer to as "structural adjustment". You've heard at length about the tribulations of mining, manufacturing, tourism, retailing, aviation, bookselling, newspapers and free-to-air television.

Then there's all the angst and words spilt by the media, politicians and people with mortgages over structural change in banking. Huh?

When people have been carrying on about how the banks have stopped moving mortgage interest rates in line with changes in the Reserve Bank's official interest rate, they've actually been complaining about just one consequence of the structural change that's being imposed on banks around the world in reaction to the devastation wrought by the (continuing) global financial crisis.

Just how the banks are being forced to change was explained by the deputy governor of the Reserve Bank, Dr Philip Lowe, in a speech last week (on which I'll be drawing heavily).

All of us can remember the halcyon days before the financial crisis when mortgage interest rates moved in lock step with the official rate. Unfortunately, they were only halcyon on the surface. Underneath, big trouble was brewing.

Particularly in the United States and Europe, there was a lot of cheap money flowing around, so the banks got quite slapdash about whom they lent to. They lent at interest rates that were artificially low, failing to reflect the riskiness of the project and the chance they wouldn't get their money back.

They also greatly increased their "gearing" - the ratio of borrowed money to shareholders' capital they used to finance their activities. When business is booming, becoming more highly geared accelerates the rate at which your profits grow. When business turns down, however, it hastens the rate at which profits shrink and turn to losses.

As we know, the day of reckoning did come, many banks in the US and Europe got into deep trouble and had to be bailed out by their governments to prevent them collapsing and causing a depression. Even so, the North Atlantic economies dropped into deep recession, from which they've yet to properly emerge.

In the meantime, the bank regulators and the global financial markets are forcing the world's banks to change their ways and lift their game - in short, to operate more safely, reducing the risk of getting into difficulties. Although our banks are well regulated and didn't get into bother, they're still affected by this tightening up.

Banks are now required to hold a higher proportion of their funds in shareholders' capital and a higher proportion of their assets in liquid form, making it easier for them to cope with a surge in depositors wanting to withdraw their money.

The financial crisis made Australians realise how dependent our banks had become on using short-term overseas borrowings to meet the needs of local home and business borrowers. Before the crisis the interest rates our banks paid on these foreign borrowings were unrealistically low; now they're much higher, to adequately reflect the risks involved.

Our authorities, and our sharemarket, have been pressing the banks to do their overseas borrowing over longer periods and raise a higher proportion of their funds from local depositors.

Do these efforts to make our banks safer and more crisis-proof sound like a good thing? They are. But, like everything in the economy, they come at a price.

What banks do is act as intermediaries between savers on the one hand and borrowers on the other. The costs they incur in performing this invaluable service (including the return on the shareholders' money invested in their business) are called the "cost of intermediation", which is the gap between the average interest rate they charge on the money they lend out and the average interest rate they pay to depositors and other lenders.

The cost of making our banks safer - by requiring them to hold higher proportions of share capital and liquid assets - has raised the cost of intermediation. Most of this higher cost has been passed on to the banks' mortgage and business borrowers.

The higher cost of borrowing abroad and borrowing from local depositors has also been passed on.

This explains why, since the early days of the financial crisis, the banks have been raising mortgage rates by more (or cutting them by less) than movements in the official interest rate. Over the 10 years to 2007, the variable mortgage rate averaged 1.5 percentage points above the official rate. Today, it's about 2.7 percentage points above.

That's what all the complaints have been about. Now you know why it's happened. But this bad news has been accompanied by three bits of good news which have had far less attention.

First, much of the increase in mortgage rates is explained by the very much higher rates being paid to depositors as the banks compete furiously for our money. Before the financial crisis, deposit rates were well below the official rate; now they're above it (particularly on internet accounts). Depositors outnumber people with mortgages by two to one.

Second, safer banks mean people who invest in bank shares (which is everyone with superannuation) are running lower risks - meaning their profits don't need to be as high. The boss of Westpac, Gail Kelly, said recently its return on shareholders' equity had fallen from 23 per cent before the crisis to 15 per cent.

Finally, to reduce the pressure on bank borrowers caused by the banks' now higher margin above the official rate, the Reserve Bank has cut it by about 1.5 percentage points below what it would otherwise be.

Structural adjustment is always painful - but there's always someone who's left better off.

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