R.G.Menzies above

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Two of my ancestors were convicts so my family has been in Australia for a long time. As well as that, all four of my grandparents were born in the State where I was born and still live: Queensland. And I am even a member of the world's second-most condemned minority: WASPs (the most condemned is of course the Jews -- which may be why I tend to like Jews). So I think I am as Australian as you can get. I certainly feel that way. I like all things that are iconically Australian: meat pies, Vegemite, Henry Lawson etc. I particularly pride myself on my familiarity with the great Australian slanguage. I draw the line at Iced Vo-Vos and betting on the neddies, however. So if I cannot comment insightfully on Australian affairs, who could?

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11 May, 2008

A risk-averse health bureaucracy puts its whims before patient welfare

Contrary to a claim made below, there is no clear research evidence about the best procedures for avoiding surgical site infections but that appears to be unknown to the bureaucrats. It is fire risk that moves them -- even though there have been no fires. They are prepared to take a daily risk in order to avoid a remote risk! It's just a bee in the bonnet of some bureaucrats and they are allowed to dictate patient care methods. Leaving surgical procedures to the surgeons concerned is too much to ask, apparently

PATIENTS are being put at risk because NSW Health had an inexplicably inconsistent approach to infection control procedures before operations, an orthopedic surgeon says. Dr Robert Molnar has for the past six months unsuccessfully sought an explanation from the Health Department as to why he is not permitted to use alcoholic surgical preparation solution on his patients at Westmead Hospital, yet he is able to at St George and Sutherland public hospitals.

The rules vary across hospitals: alcoholic solution can be used at Fairfield, Concord, Prince of Wales, Royal Women's and Royal Prince Alfred hospitals but is barred at Liverpool, Nepean, Gosford, Canterbury or Royal North Shore.

Dr Molnar believes a Westmead patient contracted an infection after surgery on a hip fracture last year because the hospital deemed the alcoholic preparation he wanted to use a fire risk. The patient has had 10 more operations, including one to remove the metal plates and screws in his hip, and now needs a hip replacement. Dr Molnar had used an aqueous antiseptic to prepare the skin. "You may as well spit on the wound. This guy's life is ruined; it's tragic and it's so predictable," he said, noting that alcoholic solution could be used at most private NSW hospitals.

After a series of letters between him, the Health Department and the office of the Health Minister, Reba Meagher, Dr Molnar was given exclusive permission last November to use the solution at Westmead but not in conjunction with electrically induced heat due to the risk of fire. That ruled out 95 per cent of his operations, he said. There has been no theatre fire in NSW due to alcoholic solution, a spokeswoman for the Health Department said.

In a letter in March to the parliamentary secretary for health, Noreen Hay, Dr Molnar wrote: "I believe the situation places patients in western Sydney at significant risk of morbidity." Dr Molnar told the Herald: "Most orthopedic surgeons wouldn't operate without it, just because of the risk of infection. They're ruining people's lives. It's bureaucratic madness."

A Sydney orthopedic surgeon, Doron Sher, said that if the surgeon was appropriately educated the risk of fire was minimal. "There is evidence in the literature showing that infection rates are lower using alcoholic Betadine," he said. "I use the alcoholic solution when I get the option because I believe that you get a lower infection rate."

Sydney West Area Health Service, which includes Westmead, put the restriction down to fire risk. Northern Sydney Area Health Service did not explain why it was not used. South Eastern Sydney Illawarra Area Health Service said it allowed alcoholic preparation at all its hospitals.

The Opposition Health spokeswoman, Jillian Skinner, said: "Infection is rife in our hospitals so I would expect Reba Meagher would endorse the use of products that are considered world's best practice."

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Pregnant women 'lie' to get beds in Melbourne's better public hospitals

The "equal high quality for all" idea behind public hospitals is not mirrored in reality

DESPERATE pregnant women are using fake addresses so they can give birth at Melbourne's leading maternity hospitals. The Royal Women's and Mercy hospitals and Monash Medical Centre are sending women who are not from their areas and who do not anticipate complications elsewhere. The hospitals say they want to keep the beds for at-risk patients.

Hundreds of mothers from Melbourne's northwest suburbs have launched a protest against the Brumby Government, saying they are being shortchanged. Since October, mothers from Coolaroo, Craigieburn, Roxburgh Park and Meadow Heights have automatically been referred from the Royal Women's to the Northern Hospital in Epping if their pregnancy was expected to be straightforward. The state's other top level maternity wards - Mercy Hospital for Women and Monash Medical Centre - also direct women with uncomplicated pregnancies to local hospitals.

Women have lied to secure a bed at the highly regarded Women's. One pregnant woman, who asked not to be named, said she was scared to go to the Northern Hospital because she had suffered a miscarriage there. She had used a friend's address to get a booking at the Royal Women's.

Protest group Fair Go For Hume has bombarded Premier John Brumby with more than 460 complaints. Royal Women's Hospital spokeswoman Mandy Frostick said births at the hospital had jumped from 4600 in 2001 to 6500 last year. She said the hospital had to send women with low-risk pregnancies from the northern suburbs to the Northern Hospital. Mercy chief Stephen Cornelissen said it had a duty to care for mothers with "more complex" needs.

A Monash spokeswoman said they shared pregnancies between themselves, Casey and Dandenong, depending on circumstances. Northern Hospital maternity director Hammish Manning said they offered high-quality care. [The customers obviously don't think so]

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Catholic schools join same-sex lockout

CATHOLIC schools in Queensland have joined the crackdown against students escorting gay partners to Year 12 formals. With the formal season under way, Catholic secondary students have been reminded by their school administrators that it would be inappropriate for same-sex couples to attend major school events such as the formal. "The Catholic Church has a particular vision of family and sexuality flowing on to a responsibility to model this vision for children through formal activities in the life of the Catholic school," said Queensland Catholic Education Commission executive director Mike Byrne. "As such it is not seen as appropriate for students to attend an event such as a school formal as a same-sex couple."

Brisbane's Anglican Church Grammar School last month banned male students from taking same-sex partners to the school formal on June 19. But other secondary schools are more relaxed about who students can take to their formal. Brisbane Girls Grammar School principal Amanda Bell said the school imposed no restrictions on who pupils could take to the dance. "Guests may include male or female friends, cousins, parents, siblings, anyone," she said. "Some girls choose not to bring a guest. The school encourages the girls to invite someone who will support and enjoy this event in a positive spirit."

Karen Spiller, the principal of St Aidan's Anglican Girls School in Brisbane, said the school had "no policy" on who students could or could not bring. "We're very happy for our girls to go along and enjoy their formal in the company of their own friends and cohorts or to bring a friend or a partner," she said. "The focus is on appropriate behaviour and enjoying their relationships with their cohorts."

Queensland state high schools also have their own guidelines regarding school formals, with no restrictions on same-sex couples.

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Independent senators to flex muscles

THE Rudd Government could be forced to consider amendments to its industrial relations laws that would reintroduce individual statutory agreements, after two senators about to take balance-of-power positions in the upper house said they would consider pushing for change. It was widely assumed that statutory agreements would be phased out of the industrial relations system after the Government introduced laws allowing for them to continue only during a transitional period and the Coalition abandoned its Work Choices policy.

But anti-pokies South Australian senator-elect Nick Xenophon told The Weekend Australian fair statutory agreements would be better for higher paid workers than the common law contracts proposed by Labor. "If Labor accepts the proposition that workers earning over $100,000 should be able to strike some kind of agreement, I cannot understand why it should not be a statutory agreement that would allow them to resolve disputes quickly and easily, rather than in expensive and protracted action before the courts," Mr Xenophon said.

Family First senator Steve Fielding was also looking at ways to "improve" Labor's major industrial relations laws when they are brought into the Senate later this year. "Family First is not against individual statutory contracts per se; we were just against John Howard-style AWAs (Australian Workplace Agreements)," he said.

After bitter internal debate, the Coalition did not oppose the first stage of the Government's industrial laws in the Senate earlier this year. But Opposition workplace relations spokeswoman Julie Bishop said the Coalition would be working with the independent senators to improve the Government's second piece of industrial relations legislation. "We have been hearing very serious concerns from the business community about the impact of the second stage of Labor's laws, and we have said common law agreements are no substitute for statutory agreements," she said. "We believe Labor's laws will be fundamentally flawed and we will be working hard in the Senate to try to change them."

Despite having "buried" Work Choices soon after being elected leader, Brendan Nelson said this week Treasury advice on the possible inflationary effects of Labor's regime, revealed in The Australian this week, meant Mr Howard's approach had been right. The Government rejects the claim its approach will increase inflationary pressures, saying its laws will link wage rises with increased productivity.

In the new Senate, which technically takes effect from July 1 but will sit for the first time in August, the Government will need the support of the Greens, Senator Fielding and senator-elect Xenophon to pass legislation. A combination of the Coalition, Senator Fielding and Mr Xenophon could pass an amendment to Labor's laws.

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10 May, 2008

Seven year hospital wait

In one of the world's oldest (from 1944) "free" hospital systems



It took five years for this woman to get a seven-minute operation. The queues are growing and people are ... still waiting. Dorothy Bauer does not believe the State Government when it says Queensland's beleaguered health system has improved. Not when she waited five years for an eye operation that takes seven minutes. The Bundaberg 84-year-old still needs surgery on her other eye, joining another 36,000 Queenslanders on waiting lists for elective surgery. "Anything can happen. Nobody has any guarantees today with this health system," Mrs Bauer said.

It has been 1000 days since the State Government promised to fix the health system. Then-premier Peter Beattie made the pledge after scathing findings from the Davies inquiry helped expose the real waiting lists and systemic problems within Queensland Health, a development headlined by The Courier-Mail as The Truth At Last. However figures released yesterday show waiting lists for elective surgery have blown out by almost 15 per cent in those 1000 days. And the list of people waiting to see specialists has rocketed by 50 per cent to a record of almost 160,000. Only 900 hospital beds have been added in the same time.

Health Minister Stephen Robertson insists the system is working better than in September 2005. "We are reforming the system root and branch," he said. Premier Anna Bligh yesterday defended the system. "We have a larger, stronger workforce and are treating more Queenslanders than ever before," she said.

Queensland Health yesterday said $4.3 billion of $10 billion it had pledged to be spent by 2010 had been used. However it hasn't been enough to allow Mrs Bauer to have cataract surgery on both eyes. The former school teacher was forced to give up charity work because she couldn't read music to play the piano at fundraisers. Then late last year Queensland Health finally arranged for surgery for one of her eyes. The dramatic change allowed her to return to charity work and to care for her sister, who is 86. Mrs Bauer praised the doctors and nurses who treated her, but condemned politicians and health bureaucrats who "played God to people's lives".

Seven people who were profiled in the 2005 Courier-Mail series, The Truth at Last, say they owe their lives to getting off elective surgery waiting lists. All eventually had their health issues resolved, and some credited media attention for accelerating their cases.

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Surgery blowouts hit reform agenda

A blowout in the number of clerks and administrators would be more accurate



QUEENSLAND Health says it is being swamped with patients as it defends blowouts which have pushed surgery waiting lists to record levels. A Queensland Health bureaucrat said the state's public hospitals treated 825,725 people last year - up 6 per cent or three times population growth. However the key barometers - waiting lists - have ballooned by a greater margin. In the 1000 days since then premier Peter Beattie promised to fix the health system:

* The waiting list for elective surgery has increased by almost 15 per cent (31,478 to 36,030).

* The list of patients waiting to see a specialist is up by almost 50 per cent (108,568 to 159,223).

* In comparison to other states, Queensland spends less per capita on health and the number of hospital beds and medical staff per 1000 people is lower, according to the Productivity Commission. The Government says it is closing the gap.

* There has been an increase of only 900 hospital beds despite a 100,000 population gain.

* In the past 12 months, the number of patients waiting longer than the expected 30 days for the most urgent Category 1 surgery has blown out by 112 per cent.

* The number of patients waiting for Category 2 surgery, which has a 90-day benchmark, has increased by 16 per cent but the figure for the least-urgent Category 3 surgery (365 days) has decreased by 19 per cent.

Dr Stephen Duckett, Queensland Health's executive director for health reform and development, said the system was improving. "There is no doubt in my mind we are much better than we were three years ago," he said. "We're up 20 to 30 per cent in doctors and nurses, and have many, many more beds." Dr Duckett said public hospitals had treated a record number of patients in emergency departments last year. But concern continues in the community.

Deception Bay resident Sally Stanley remains upset after her brother died while waiting for a cardiac defibrillator. "The promises made didn't get kept," Ms Stanley said. "I think staff are doing the best they can with the resources they have. Politicians give them a bit, but it's not enough."

Australian Medical Association state president Ross Cartmill said the health system remained "chronically underfunded" by both state and federal governments. "I find it frustrating that the two levels of government are always arguing about which one hasn't paid its way," he said. "For health, we don't need a 2020 Summit, we just need to fund things properly." Dr Cartmill acknowledged the state was pumping an increasing percentage of funds into health, "but because we started so low, we still have not reached the level of other states."

Opposition health spokesman John-Paul Langbroek, a former Gold Coast dentist, blamed poor management and planning for inadequate beds and staff, while a bureaucratic culture continues to drive away doctors.

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Australia in the grip of a baby boom

AUSTRALIA is in the middle of a new baby boom, with the nation's birth rate the highest in 10 years. The nation's statistician says women can now expect to have 1.8 children during their lifetime. There were 265,900 births registered in 2006, the highest number in 30 years, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said.

The Australian Government has in recent years tried to encourage a higher birth rate to combat the ageing of the population. Former treasurer Peter Costello urged families during one famous Budget news conference to have "one for mum, one for dad and one for the country".

The new data also reveals 63 per cent of mothers, with children aged under 15 years, were employed in March 2008, compared to 54 per cent a decade ago. As the number of mothers employed increased, so too did the use of formal childcare. The percentage of children under the age of 12 years attending formal care increased from 14 per cent in 1996, to 23 per cent in 2005.

In the same year, 44 per cent of employed mothers with children under two had jobs with flexible hours, 39 per cent were permanent part-time workers, while 27 per cent worked from home. More than two-thirds (67 per cent) of mothers in a relationship with a child under 15 said they "always or often felt rushed or pressed for time" compared to 61 per cent of single mothers in the same category.

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No change so far to freedom from information practices

Kevin Rudd insists his Government remains committed to honouring its pre-election pledges to enhance Freedom of Information laws, despite suggestions Labor is providing no greater access to documents than the Coalition. The Prime Minister yesterday stood by commitments Labor made to the Your Right to Know coalition of media organisations, which includes The Weekend Australian. "We said prior to the election that we would be implementing to the letter the commitments we gave in response to the Right to Know coalition - that includes FOI reform," Mr Rudd said. "Those commitments I reiterated in a speech I made in Sydney (on Thursday) and we stand by every one."

However, the Government has come under mounting criticism over its failure to improve access to information. Rick Snell, one of the nation's leading experts on FOI, said the Government had "set themselves up for a fall" on the issue. Mr Snell, senior lecturer in law at the University of Tasmania, said the Government was "continuing the old regime" of the Howard government and "the old ways of processing FOI requests". Earlier this month, federal Treasury refused an FOI request by the ABC to release documents on the inflationary impact of the Government's proposed changes to industrial relations laws.

Mr Rudd said the Government would introduce legislation to reform "the particular objection which news organisations have, which is the previous government's use of conclusive certificates" to block FOI. There have been claims that Mr Rudd's chief of staff, David Epstein, has taken an interest in FOI applications, but the Prime Minister insisted he and his ministers would back the official decision-makers. "On the question of individual FOI decisions within departments ... that lies with individual FOI decision-makers within the bureaucracy," he said.

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The Rudd vision

This could easily be the agenda of a conservative government

Kevin Rudd has an economic policy - but in the budget process his mind has turned to an economic narrative. It is urgently needed. Australia under Rudd faces slower economic growth for three years, high interest rates and ongoing spending restraint. Witness the latest monetary policy warning from the Reserve Bank that the slowdown must be protracted. In this climate, 24-hour spin will not suffice. The Labor Government needs a story to explain the slowdown and a story that reveals a long-run vision. These stories will start with the budget.

Rudd is passionate about burying what he calls short-termism. He wants to project a long-term narrative and that rests upon three priorities. They are: a sustained restructuring of national spending to revive Australia as a low inflation nation; an integrated reform of the tax/welfare/retirement income provisions to maximise personal incentive and reduce the call upon the state; and an interventionist strategy to lift productivity by investment in human capital, infrastructure, a better working federation and more competition policy. For Rudd, this gameplan runs beyond the initial three-year term. The challenge is in delivery and in branding.

There is one notion gaining oxygen that Rudd wants to kill: that his Government is a national version of the state Labor incrementalism. He knows this is a political death warrant and it offends his policy credentials. Rudd's ambitions mean the budget has a dual role. As well as giving immediate effect to Labor's agenda, it signals the long-term path and priorities of the new Labor Government.

The first message from Rudd and Wayne Swan is that containing inflation is a lengthy project. That means spending restraint now and in the future and a re-ordering of spending priorities. It is about making a virtue of being a fiscal conservative, a position that Brendan Nelson's Liberal Party has surrendered in an act of folly.

Rudd's second priority is the most complex. In the long run he wants lower tax rates, a more competitive tax system, elimination of barriers in the welfare-to-work transition and better superannuation provision by utilising the surplus to boost individual superannuation accounts. These superannuation options were examined in the budget context but deferred.

The third priority is a cluster of productivity-enhancing measures. It is also the most risky because it means a more active government role in industry policy in fostering what Rudd calls "the culture of innovation".

He wants to project an interventionist government delivering better broadband, improved infrastructure, better school retention rates and more rigorous education, easing urban congestion, promoting biotechnology and industries of the future along with the "seamless national markets" from the 2020 Summit that caught his attention.

Paul Keating was a master of the economic narrative. It is appropriate that, on budget eve, Keating's former senior aide, Don Russell, in a recent speech divided politicians into two categories: those who were nice to the voters hoping the voters would be nice to them and those who felt that leaders must be useful and become "doers". Rudd sees himself in the "doer" category. The proof, one way or another, is at hand. Faced with the current economic slowdown, political "doers" would seize it as an opportunity to introduce reform as part of a new narrative.

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9 May, 2008

Do-gooders reject controlled spending for blacks

Drinking their welfare payments rather than spending it on other needs is common among blacks so the Feds are instituting a type of food stamps program in an attempt to change that. Unlikely that it will change much -- but the do-gooder idea of more jobs for social workers would certainly change nothing at all. But trying to get blacks to behave like middle-class whites is pissing into the wind anyway. I used to run a boarding house in a bottom-rung area (Ipswich) and few of my tenants worked. I noted that lots of whites there had a big piss-up on the welfare "payday", only to be left scratching for the rest of the fortnight. I made a point of putting my hand out for rent every "payday". I guess the government is trying to do something similar

The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) says the Rudd Government's proposed welfare debit card is not the best way to help struggling families. The Federal Government has confirmed a new electronic national welfare card will be included in next week's Budget. The debit card will contain a portion of a family's welfare payment which can only be spent on necessities like food and clothing.

Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin says the card will be issued from July in certain Northern Territory Aboriginal communities and will eventually be used for some non-Indigenous welfare recipients across Australia. The scheme is an attempt to encourage people to spend their welfare payments on food and clothing, rather than on drugs and alcohol.

But ACOSS President Lyn Hatfield Dodds says the card will not work. "ACOSS doesn't believe that quarantining payments is the best way forward," she said. "We would prefer to see Government investing in the supports and services that families need. "Quarantining at best will keep those families in a holding pattern, but it will not build their capacity or capability to make different choices and move out of crisis. "It is really an issue where there are families with low parenting capacity - families with histories of alcohol and drug abuse and gambling addiction," she added.

Opposition families spokesman Tony Abbott says the card will not work because it will become an administrative nightmare. Mr Abbott says the problem will be getting the states to hand over private information about which children are at risk, and therefore which parents should be targeted. "I think they could end up spending hundreds of millions of dollars on this new card technology and find that it is essentially redundant because the states won't give them the information," he said. "A much better system would be for an across the board quarantine of, say, 50 per cent of these payments."

But Minister for Human Services Joe Ludwig says the new scheme will help businesses as well as families. Senator Ludwig says the previous NT store card system excluded small businesses from taking part in the scheme. "It does help local business, it helps them participate in the income management scheme, it will increase the competition and it'll also give families greater choice," he said. "We really need to start dealing with all those issues in a very thoughtful, serious, respectful way, to come alongside families and help them move out of crisis."

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Old document used in land rights push



A 172-year-old document that is claimed to guarantee Aboriginal rights will be used in a new land rights campaign in the far west of South Australia. The Kokatha Mula people say the Letters Patent established the rights of Aborigines in early 1836 at the time it established the province of South Australia.

Representative Bronwyn Coleman-Sleep will outline the case to the Aboriginal lands parliamentary committee of State Parliament. She says the document's powers have never been rescinded.

"Always, for always have a right to the enjoyment and occupation of our land - it's written in black and white for whoever wants to read it," she said. "The question is whether anybody's got the substance required to deal with the Letters Patent and what it says."

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Dogs not racist



A council has defended using muzzled dogs for security in the streets of a town in South Australia's far west. It concedes that a few Aboriginal people have complained of being unfairly targeted by the council street patrols. There has been a three-month trial targeting illegal camping and other offences, with Ceduna council keen to get funding for a permanent program.

Ceduna mayor Allan Suter says the patrols are targeting all law-breakers and cannot be accused of being racist. "They've issued a reasonable percentage of fines to non-Indigenous people and any suggestion that there's an attempt to target Aboriginal people is just rubbish," he said. "Essentially we've had a large amount of support from members of the Aboriginal community and I think most of the noise is coming from a small group of people who've been agitated by a few individuals who've totally misunderstood what's happening."

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Federal district passes civil unions law for homosexuals

The ACT is similar to America's DC. The Federal government barred them from allowing homosexual marriages so a watered down arrangement was passed

The ACT Assembly has passed a watered-down version of its civil unions bill after it failed to secure the support of the Federal Government. The ACT Government was forced to scrap its plans for laws to legally recognise same-sex civil union ceremonies after the Federal Government refused to support the move, on the grounds that the arrangement mimicked marriage. The laws introduce a relationships register similar to that in place in Tasmania and Victoria.

ACT Attorney General Simon Corbell says the laws still represent a significant step foward for the ACT. "Same sex couples will now be recognised under Territory law," he said. "No longer will they have to rely on proving some sort of de facto status, no longer will the power bills and bank accounts have to come out to demonstrate that you are actually in a committed caring relationship."

Chief Minister Jon Stanhope says he is disappointed that the Government was forced to change the legislation. "This is not the outcome that the ACT Government wanted," he said. "It doesn't deliver the equality under the law that the ACT Government had wished to deliver. "It is a matter of embarrassment to me that my party did not stand up for this fundamental principle."

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8 May, 2008

Rudd tougher on asylum seekers than Howard

Great news if it's true across the board. Refugees from Africa have been the sort of disaster that everyone without his head in the sand would have expected. There is no place in the world where Africans are not far out ahead of everyone else in committing violent crimes

THE Rudd Government is rejecting asylum seeker applications at a higher rate than the Howard government, according to an analysis of new figures. An Asylum Seeker Research Centre report says the immigration department has knocked back 41 of the 42 cases it has had referred to it since Labor took power after the November 2007 election, a rejection rate of 97.6 per cent. The report, authored by ASRC chief executive Kon Karapanagiotidis, says that is the highest rejection rate since the Victoria-based ASRC started in 2001.

ASRC community campaign co-ordinator Pamela Curr conceded some of the 42 did not have compelling cases, but said others certainly did. "There is no way you can look at some of these cases and, with the guidelines for ministerial decision making, reject them," Ms Curr said. "We don't have the figures yet from other advocacy agencies but we know this is going on all around Australia."

Ms Curr said wrong decisions were being made because of Immigration Minister Chris Evans' emphasis on clearing backlogs and making decisions more quickly. She said the figures made a mockery of Senator Evans' assurance that he would bring humanity back to the immigration portfolio. "I think that this government is absolutely dead scared on the refugee issue, after all they lost an election on this back in 2001," she said. "Now they're in power, they've got a wonderful majority, they've got the country behind them but they're too gutless to tackle the hard issues."

Ian Rintoul of the Refugee Action Coalition said he believed the promise of a new dawn in immigration was not being delivered. "I think the minister is still paying too much attention to the immigration department rather than trying to implement the cultural change that was promised," he said. Mr Karapanagiotidis said while it was too early to form a complete picture of Senator Evans' approach, it was looking as if the change in government had not brought change for asylum seekers.

Jack Smit from refugee advocacy group Project SafeCom called the figures "disturbing". The ASRC claims to be the largest provider of aid, advocacy and health services for asylum seekers in Australia.

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Blessed are the sceptics



In 1633 Galileo Galilei was hauled before the religious authorities of his day, the Inquisition, for daring to concur with Copernicus that the Earth was not the centre of the universe and also that it orbited the sun rather than the other way around. For his pains, he was placed under house arrest and forced to recant. Giordano Bruno failed to recant and suffered a crueller fate.

Today we are faced with a newer religion known as environmental activism which has insinuated itself into some aspects of science. It shares some of the intolerance to new or challenging ideas with the old. Immolation at the stake is no longer fashionable but it has been replaced by pillory in the media. The new faith makes it apostasy to question the proposition that our river systems are dying and that nothing like this has ever happened before. And it is the blackest heresy to suggest that the beatification of StAl and the Goronites may be a little premature.

The symbols and practices of the new and the old faiths are remarkably similar. The crucifix has been replaced by the wind turbine; where before there was the hair shirt and self-flagellation, mortification of the flesh now consists of switching off your airconditioner when it's hot and your patio heater when it's cold.

The head of the University of Tasmania's school of government, Aynsley Kellow, has pointed out the close similarity between medieval papal indulgences and carbon offsets. However, these things matter less than the corruption of science by faith and the failure to recognise the contingent nature of scientific concepts. Concepts are only valid until such time as they are demolished by the scientific methods of observation, measurement, experimentation and analysis. Phrases such as "the argument is over, the science is settled" are so much fatuous nonsense and should almost never be used in the scientific community.

Throughout history dissenters, sceptics, contrarians and innovators have suffered criticism, abuse and even persecution, but it is these people who have driven progress. To quote Thomas Huxley, "scepticism is the highest of duties, blind faith the one unpardonable sin". Where would we be without the Galileos, Newtons, Darwins and Pasteurs? I would like to think that some time in the future we could add the names of our scholars to that list.

So what is this partnership between the Institute of Public Affairs and the University of Queensland to support environmental research about? What are we doing it for? There are two main reasons. First, to provide a haven for our scholars without ideological or commercial interference and with no prescription as to the end point of their inquiries. If they challenge orthodoxies and assumptions, particularly mine, then that's good. If they find that conventional wisdom is correct, then that's good, too. The only criterion is to seek empirical evidence.

Second, it is important that any research that our scholars undertake is made available to aid the development of better, more rational public policy. Good public policy means applying our resources more efficiently to achieve the outcomes we desire, such as lifting the poor out of their poverty, feeding the hungry, healing the sick and, in our case, managing our environment sensibly and productively.

I would like to think that what we have launched today is just the first step in something much bigger. I envisage that, in the future, to environmental lawyers and scientists we will add other disciplines: biologists, economists, statisticians, even philosophers. What we need to do is shine the hard light of reason and critical thinking on our environmental problems, aided by multiple skills and points of view. As they say, from tiny acorns do mighty oak trees grow; or, to make the metaphor more geographically relevant, from tiny gumnuts do mighty river red gums grow.

That's all I have to say but I would like to leave you with one thought. For those of you have a feeling of despair about the direction that some aspects of environmental science is taking, remember that most people now believe that Galileo was right.

The above is an edited version of a speech by Perth philanthropist Bryant Macfie, who is funding a research partnership between the Institute of Public Affairs and the University of Queensland.

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The expected union mayhem is getting underway

Rudd will need more than easy tokens to deal with this. He will lose the next election unless he gets tough with union coercion

UNIONS have launched a direct challenge to the Rudd Government and the ACTU by pursuing wage claims of up to 19 per cent to offset rising inflation and to "catch up" on pay rises lost under the Howard government. As Kevin Rudd came under pressure last night to release Treasury analysis on the inflationary effects of his industrial relations changes, unions in Victoria vowed to chase annual pay rises of up to 6 per cent for the next three years to compensate for the 4.2 per cent inflation rate and suppressed pay under John Howard.

Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary Brian Boyd told The Australian a deal struck by teachers in Victoria endorsing pay rises of up to 15.2 per cent exemplified the catch-up increases unions wanted under the Prime Minister. "I am quite aware that a number of key private sector unions and groups of workers are arguing for 5 per cent (a year) to get ahead of that 4.2 (per cent)," he said. "There are agreements already being looked at around 15 per cent over three years, and some will even go to 18-19 per cent. "(It's) not only to compensate for inflation but also to compensate for the restriction on the ability you had for decent wages under the previous government."

The Australian understands the pay push includes unions in the construction, manufacturing, transport, electrical and plumbing sectors. The Victorian teachers' deal has also buoyed public servants across several states - including teachers and nurses - on the verge of pay negotiations. The wage push came as Brendan Nelson demanded Mr Rudd release Treasury advice prepared in February showing whether his industrial relations reforms would drive up inflation.

Mr Rudd rejected the relevance of earlier Treasury advice, prepared in April last year, which criticised Labor's industrial relations policies as likely to cause wage spirals and drive up interest rates. The Australian published the leaked advice yesterday. Mr Rudd said the leaked advice was written before Labor had released its full policy and implementation plan, which included the abolition of the Howard government's individual workplace contracts, known as Australian Workplace Agreements.

The Opposition Leader seized on the comment to demand that Mr Rudd disclose the more-recent advice, which Treasury last week refused to release in full in response to an application by ABC television under Freedom of Information laws. "What Mr Rudd must do now is show Australians the evidence that his changes to workplace relations will not result in unemployment and higher inflation," Dr Nelson said. "The question for us is: 'Why is he not coming clean with Australians and telling Australians that Treasury has told the Australian Government that its plan to get union bosses back into workplaces is actually going to put people out of work and push up inflation?"'

Mr Boyd said the Victorian teachers' deal was a "good case in point" of unions playing catch-up after wages were suppressed under the Howard government. "There has been a lot of wages curtailed in the last three or four years of the Howard government and people are trying to catch up," he said. Ordinary working people were not responsible for rising inflation, but were entitled to receive compensation for higher petrol and grocery prices, he said. "The union movement is an independent voice for trying to find a fair market price for workers they represent in the capitalist market place," he said. "We have put up with 11 years of IR laws that have been aimed at restricting our ability to find a fair price for labour. "Just because (John) Howard got elected for a decade doesn't mean we accept that these harsh IR laws were justified in restricting our ability to find a fair price for labour. "So I have no qualms in saying if we want to play the catch-up game for wages and conditions, we'll do it."

Mr Boyd said he did not accept the wage push would exacerbate game for wages and conditions, we'll do it." Mr Boyd said he did not accept that the wage push would exacerbate inflationary pressures. "Ordinary working people didn't cause the inflation situation," he said. "Other factors caused that. The oil price internationally is one of them, and grocery prices going up has nothing to do with what workers do. "They're entitled to get compensation for that. That's why I'm calling it a catch-up process, not a breakout process."

Mr Boyd denied the pay push could lead to a wages breakout. "It's not really a wages explosion, in my view. It's a catch-up that is currently going on because of what happened over the last few years of Howard," he said. "It's making up lost ground. I think there should be an understanding that a lot of the workforce across the country, not only in Victoria, are viewing their situation in terms of inflation and (consumer price index) rises, in terms of the cost of living, in terms of petrol prices and power prices, and so on. "It's all about catch-up in terms of their current situation, and what their situation as ordinary people has been for the past few years. It's got nothing to do with an explosion. It's catch-up."

Dr Nelson said the leaked Treasury advice showed "John Howard was right and Kevin Rudd was wrong" about industrial relations, despite his having said several times since Labor won November's election that the Howard government's Work Choices laws were a mistake.

Earlier yesterday, The Australian asked Mr Rudd through his office to furnish the February Treasury advice. As of late yesterday, he had not replied. Wayne Swan had nothing to add yesterday when asked whether he was concerned that excessive wage demands could fuel an upwards pay spiral and feed into inflation, referring The Australian to his comments at a media conference on Tuesday after wage concerns were raised by the Reserve Bank. Asked at the press conference if he was concerned about wages claims, the Treasurer said: "No, I'm not, because our industrial relations policy has wage rises based on productivity. What we should have with wage settlements is settlements which are reached based on productivity."

Victorian Premier John Brumby yesterday insisted the teachers' pay rise was not out of step despite being above inflation, saying significant productivity improvements were factored in. [It's hard not to laugh at the "productivity improvements". They seem to consist of teachers agreeing to work an extra 10 minutes per day! Will anybody notice?]

Source




"Healthy lifestyle" absurdities

READING policy documents can be a hard way to make a living. But sometimes you simply can't believe what you are reading. Last year the Labor Party released its GP super clinics policy, co-authored by Kevin Rudd and Nicola Roxon, which contained the following statement: "Preventative health care needs to be made more accessible to ordinary Australians struggling to find the time in their busy lives to look after their own health. We can't expect people to take better care of their health if we won't help provide the health services they need to make this a reality."

Not sure whether to laugh at the absurdity or be outraged by the patronising tone, I was intrigued to figure out how anybody could endorse such an extraordinary notion. Public health experts have argued since the 1970s that people make unhealthy choices out of ignorance and that governments, therefore, have a duty to tell them through public health education campaigns how to change their lifestyle to protect their health. For more than 30 years, Australian governments have told us to quit smoking, eat moderately and exercise regularly, most memorably through the "Life! Be In It" campaign. We have listened, up to a point at least, and the easy prevention work has now been accomplished.



Many middle-class people are converts to the wellness cult: they have stopped smoking, improved their diet and started to exercise. But many others, particularly those on lower incomes, prefer to live for the day and have ignored the healthy lifestyle message. Recent reports on public health policy in Britain and Australia found that despite decades of spending on prevention programs, levels of physical activity have not increased and obesity levels have shot up. Obesity-related chronic disease already puts pressure on the health system and it will accentuate the challenges we face as the population ages.

Prevention hasn't worked because however intensively the health lifestyle message is pushed, it comes down to individuals to have the will, self-discipline and impulse control to change longstanding behaviours that are often pleasurable. As international studies have found, the main reason anti-obesity initiatives have failed is that many people find it difficult to sustain lifestyle modifications for long periods.

But instead of acknowledging these limits to prevention, public health experts are going further, to justify even greater public health spending. Obesity has been redefined as an epidemic, as if victims passively contract it (infected, of course, by wicked and coercive fast-food advertising). As the victims of this epidemic are concentrated in lower-income groups, obesity has also been classified as health inequality, which makes it a social problem. The blame for it falls on "a catastrophic failure of governments to implement effective evidence-based action".

Even though governments took health experts' advice and spent millions on preventive education, it is now the government, rather than the individual, that the experts deem responsible for obesity, because it has not done enough to force people to drop their hamburgers and get off the couch. While this obviously ignores the role individuals play in continuing to make unhealthy lifestyle decisions, this argument has nevertheless managed to convince some politicians that governments must indeed take action to stem the epidemic.

Hence we have the truly remarkable, paternalistic policy endorsed by the Labor Party. The Government's policy documents acknowledge that public health campaigns had at least made most people aware of the lifestyle changes required to promote good health. But in Rudd and Roxon's view, what recent history - the failure to curb obesity - really demonstrates is how the system failed to provide help to turn knowledge into practice. So-called ordinary Australians therefore need Medicare-funded preventive health care, of course, because unless the government was prepared to help them, how could they be expected to take care of their own health.

The Labor Party has announced an initiative: a national network of super clinics to be located in lower-income communities. In a forerunner of the Prime Minister's one-stop shop childcare centres proposal, the Government's plan in health is to bring a range of allied health services under one roof, so super clinics can deliver what are ominously titled lifestyle interventions. The Government will pay teams of sleek middle-class health professionals to harass the bulging lower orders and help them eat food they don't like and get exercise they don't want to take.

Life! The Government Will Make You Be In It: this could be the slogan of the super clinics. But the Government can't make you be in it, and its policy is neither evidence-based nor effective. Unsurprisingly, studies show that even high-intensity lifestyle interventions have little impact, especially on long-term diet and exercise habits. Why, then, is the Government lumbering all of us with the cost of ineffective preventive care?

Cheered on by the experts, the Rudd Government is determined to unfurl a new range of preventive policies to try to contain the future cost of Medicare. Prevention's better than cure, as they say. But the evidence suggests the Government's policies won't work. It should let ordinary Australians be and help ordinary taxpayers instead. Millions of taxpayers' dollars are already wasted every year preaching the virtues of brown bread, wheatgrass juice and jogging to those who won't be converted.

Source





7 May, 2008

Treasury slams Labor's workplace plans

LABOR'S industrial relations changes are likely to trigger job losses and higher inflation that will ultimately create "wage-price spirals" and drive up interest rates, according to Treasury's official analysis of the plan to scrap Work Choices. The Treasury critique also finds that limiting unfair dismissal laws will cut jobs, increase red tape for small business and make it more difficult for people to move from welfare to work.

The disclosure of the highly critical economic assessment of the plan to scrap John Howard's Work Choices laws came as Wayne Swan insisted that fighting inflation and taking price pressures off working families were the Government's prime budget objectives. The Reserve Bank also warned yesterday of the danger of a wages breakout forcing interest rates higher, putting the Government on notice after Victorian teachers this week won a massive pay rise from the state Government that could trigger follow-up claims.

Treasury's assessment of the Prime Minister's industrial relations blueprint before last year's election is contained in an executive minute dated April 18, last year, which is the subject of a Freedom of Information claim. The minute, obtained by The Australian, is a response to issues raised one day earlier by Mr Rudd in a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra, which he used to flag the industrial relations changes Labor would make in government. The analysis, delivered to then treasurer Peter Costello, looks at Labor's key workplace reforms, including the abolition of Australian Workplace Agreements; the restoration of guaranteed penalties, overtime and holiday pay; linking wages to living standards; and changes to the unfair dismissal laws.

ABC television reported last week that Treasury had rejected part of a separate FOI request for advice about whether Labor's workplace changes would cause higher inflation. The decision came despite Labor promising more openness in government, including reform of FOI laws. According to the secret Treasury advice, the department, under Treasury secretary Ken Henry, concluded that the abolition of AWAs and the return of guaranteed penalty rates would cut jobs, put "upward pressure on prices", create more "flow-on" wage claims from sectors such as mining to less productive sectors and allow unions to "bid wages up above their market level".

The Treasurer yesterday said he was not concerned that Labor's industrial relations changes would undermine his anti-inflationary budget "because our industrial relations policy has wage rises based on productivity". The Government would "bring down a responsible budget", he said. "We are going to build a strong surplus to fight inflation." Commenting on the Victorian teachers' pay rise, he said any wage rises had to be based on productivity gains. Labor's workplace changes were led by Julia Gillard, now Deputy Prime Minister and Employment and Workplace Relations Minister.

In his speech in April last year, Mr Rudd said Labor would deliver "a productivity lift" and "create a new balance between fairness and flexibility in the workplace, and in doing so, restore the rights of working families to have proper access to penalty rates, overtime and shift allowances". "Our laws will abolish AWAs - and we will do so without apology," he said. "Our laws will return the right to basic working conditions, like penalty rates, overtime and public holiday pay."

Although it has pushed through laws to scrap AWAs, Labor has allowed a form of private contracts for workers on more than $100,000 a year after pressure from employers, particularly the mining sector, and will allow current AWAs to expire over a period of five years. "The core question for Australia's long-term economic prosperity is how we rebuild our flagging productivity growth," Mr Rudd said in the speech. "This is the only way we can continue to improve living standards once the mining boom passes."

Mr Rudd cited Dr Henry's framework for economic growth - "the 3Ps: population, participation and productivity". But the Treasury analysis of the abolition of AWAs and the move to protect penalty rates, overtime and holiday pay found the changes would lead to "reduced flexibility". "This reduced flexibility, together with forcing business to pay higher rates of pay during certain hours of business, is likely to lead to lower levels of employment," the minute says. "The shift to a more centralised wage system might reduce employment and increase inflation. For example, higher unit costs, either through higher real labour costs, lower productivity, or a combination of both, will place upward pressures on prices, which effectively lowers real disposable incomes, consumer spending and thus employment. The rate of flow-on of wage increases from high-productivity firms and sectors to low-productivity ones may increase. Reinstalling union power will raise the ability of unions to bid wages up above their market level."

Treasury said Work Choices was "expected to allow a more expansionary monetary policy setting and result in higher rates of employment". Mr Rudd's promise that Labor would "ensure a minium wage, set by the independent umpire that keeps track with living standards" drew the conclusion from Treasury that "linking wages growth directly to living standards (headline inflation) may expose the economy to wage-price spirals - higher inflationary outcomes leading to higher interest rates". Treasury said Labor's plan to lower the limit for unfair dismissal claims from employers with 100 to 15 employees was likely to cost jobs.

Last night, Ms Gillard said it was impossible the Treasury analysis could cover Labor's policy because "Forward with Fairness" was not released until the Labor conference a week after Mr Rudd's press club speech. "This is a document of the former government and it can't be an analysis of Labor's policy," she said. "Take, for instance, the example of setting the minimum wage, which doesn't reflect Labor policy."

The first tranche of Labor's workplace laws, dealing with the abolition of AWAs, has passed through parliament. The second tranche will be introduced after July, when the Coalition has lost control of the Senate.

Source




The Fascist instinct is never far beneath the surface with the Left

Freedom of the press? Who cares about that?

Believe it or not, Perth has become the toughest environment in the country in which to practise the public service of journalism. The boom state has become the goon state, where standover and intimidation against the media is the Labor Government's weapon of choice. Police raids by armed officers on busy newsrooms, secret telephone tapping, grilling of reporters by Corruption and Crime Commission investigators that can't be reported - or even whispered to wives, husbands or, incredibly, bosses and employers - are becoming commonplace.

The days of the cabinet leak are over. Clarification: the days of the leak not organised by the Government Media Office are over, particularly those that have the potential to cause electoral pain to a Government led, ironically, by the former journalist Alan Carpenter. It is a sign of the times that many senior working journalists in WA take it as a given that their mobile phones are being, or have been, bugged. Evidence given to the CCC over the past two years confirms that what would have been a silly, paranoid suggestion only a matter of years ago is now an undeniable possibility.

Wednesday's raid on The Sunday Times newsroom by armed officers was overkill bordering on the ridiculous. The Department of Premier and Cabinet wants the CCC and police to catch those responsible for leaking a relatively innocuous yarn about Treasurer Eric Ripper wanting more taxpayers' money for advertising should the Government go to the polls early.

Several other senior journalists at the paper - and at least three at The West Australian, two at commercial television stations and one at the ABC - have over the past two years been dragged into the CCC's St George's Terrace HQ or confronted at home and told to answer questions under the 2003 CCC Act. If they refuse, they can be arrested.

Source




Hospital bathroom birth 'cover-up'

The notorious Royal North Shore Hospital again

The grandmother of a baby girl born in a Sydney hospital toilet with the umbilical cord around her neck, has accused the hospital of a cover-up. Nick Patsidis yesterday said hospital staff were "too busy" to treat his wife Cathy Patsidis or administer an epidural when she went into labour on Monday morning and gave birth in the toilet of a nursing suite.

However, Royal North Shore Hospital (RNSH) has denied any wrongdoing in its treatment of Cathy Patsidis. It said two experienced midwives had helped deliver her healthy baby after a "precipitous labour".

Nick's mother Maria Patsidis today accused the hospital of lying. She said she was afraid her granddaughter would die in her arms. "Everything was a lie. Whatever they said - they're just trying to cover themselves up," she told Fairfax Radio Network. "It wasn't (a quick labour). The midwife who was standing on top of Cathy should have known what this was. She didn't call a doctor, she didn't call anybody. "This midwife is holding her legs together and my son opens her legs to let her baby come out. "What if Nick didn't do that - the baby had the (umbilical) cord around its neck. "I will never forget - what I saw was something you would see out of a horror movie."

Maria Patsidis said the family felt the need to speak out to prevent the same thing happening to other families. "We had to come out and talk about it because this is happening in our hospitals - this is 2008," she said.

Source




NSW electricity privatization

Former Labor Party Prime Minister Paul Keating gives a lashing below to opponents of the moves in NSW to privatize the electricty supply. Despite the howls from unions who fear that their members might have to work for a change, it seems that reform will go ahead

So the lemmings at the Labor Party conference have given the Premier and the Treasurer a bruising. Well may they come to regret it. Governments are hard enough to put in place; keeping them there is even harder. The Premier, Morris Iemma, and his Treasurer, Michael Costa, are as honest a pair of souls as NSW politics has had, but more than that, they want to actually do something; in this case, to break the back of electricity reform in this state, stymied now for over a decade.

Iemma, having won a difficult election for Labor, should have enjoyed the support of this conference rather than its naked obstructionism. Bernie Riordan, the state president, may be a conscientious barracker for his electrical trades constituency but he is a woeful party president, someone who does not understand that the president's main task is to manage the party to keep it supportive of the Government.

I was state party president between 1979 and 1983. I took the job to see the Wran government remain in office amid chronic factional strife while, at the same time, paving the way for the federal Labor Party to defeat Malcolm Fraser. I did not take the job to press personal causes or to indulge my authority. But I had helpers. Barrie Unsworth was running the Labor Council and Graham Richardson was running the party. Both were attuned to their responsibilities to the state government in office and the federal party in the wings.

These days the Government in Macquarie Street has no helpers. The party president indulges himself as a microeconomic expert while the Unions NSW secretary, John Robertson, sees his role as providing T-shirts to protesters. Intellectually, both these men know that from the day the National Electricity Market, established by the Keating government, went into operation in 1995, there was no economic or commercial reason why any state would retain state ownership of power generating capacity.

When lights are turned on in NSW now, much of the electricity is provided by private electricity generators in other states. Indeed, electricity prices in the national grid are priced every 30 minutes, so competitive is the national electricity market. Yet the debate over the weekend was had as if the National Electricity Market, all down the east coast of Australia, does not exist. Electricity generation has been around now for about 120 years. It is truly industrial archaeology; anyone can build a station and the capital is almost available at your local bank. And that is without tapping the $1200 billion of Australia's superannuation savings.

A state, these days, simply does not have to burden its balance sheet with expensive lumps of these old technologies. The fact is, the sole thing worth owning in electricity is the reticulation system, the poles and the wires, which of their essence form a natural monopoly. And a monopoly that importantly has the link to the customer. And a central feature of the Iemma Government's proposals is that the distribution network and the transmission grid not be sold. This is where the Laborness of their proposals is most striking.

Riordan and Robertson complain the Premier and the Treasurer developed their plans more or less exclusively. Whatever validity there is in that criticism, the criticism should have fallen away once the Premier told the parties he was prepared to bring the Government's proposals before the state conference for a full debate. That amounted to the ultimate in consultation.

Critics will say that I am writing in these terms because of my association with Lazard Carnegie Wylie, a company chosen to co-advise the State Government on its privatisation proposals. But what motivates me is seeing the last block of the Keating government's electricity reform program into place. It is already in place in Victoria and in South Australia and to some extent in Queensland. But the biggest state, NSW, has since 1995 been the standout.

Riordan's previous foray into this issue was a decade ago when he downed Bob Carr and Michael Egan. Then the power stations were worth $35 billion. A decade later the price discussion for the same stations is about $15 billion. That is, $20 billion in lost value; $20 billion that could have been spent on education, health and vital new infrastructure. A vast sum even by national government standards.

The Iemma Government's proposals represent a dramatic and important microeconomic reform to the infrastructure base of the largest state and hence to the nation. The NSW economy represents just on 40 per cent of national gross domestic product. This is why the federal Treasurer, Wayne Swan, said over the weekend he supported the reforms, because "they go to the heart of the COAG agenda". Dead right. More than that, they go to the very kernel of the Rudd Government's federal-state reform program.

The irony is that it is Iemma who is seeing this important part of federal policy into place while the NSW industrial obscurantists are doing their best to retro-rivet the largest state to the 20th century. What is more, they are determined to do it by jettisoning the parliamentary seats of individual state MPs who won their places in difficult circumstances without much help from them.

Source





6 May, 2008

MEDICAL MYSTERY

A $2 MILLION hyperbaric chamber at Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, which has never been used since it was built in 2002, will not see its first patient for at least another year. Health Minister Stephen Robertson had promised the machine, critical in the treatment of respiratory ailments, would be up and running by January. But a Queensland Health review of hyperbaric treatment at the hospital is expected to stretch into the next financial year, with the first treatment of a patient unlikely before late 2009, sources told The Sunday Mail.

A Queensland Health spokeswoman yesterday said the machine "is not a white elephant" and "it was never intended to be immediately commissioned", but was part of "long-term planning". Opposition health spokesman John-Paul Langbroek called it another government health "embarrassment".

The article above is by Darrell Giles and appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on May 4, 2008.




Another university lurches Left -- in the usual simplistic Leftist way

Macquarie University students will be forced to "do good" and "change the world" -- but what has that got to do with academic ability or achievement? And what if I think that I "do good" simply by entering one of the professions? The definition of "doing good" is unclear but seems to be very unsophisticated for a university. I am glad that I was able to concentrate on my studies when I was there. And what about all the students who have to work their way through university? How are they going to fit in all this crap?

All students at a leading university will have to undertake volunteer work and study subjects from the arts and sciences under an overhaul of its curriculum designed to provide a broader education and more socially aware graduates. In a first for an Australian university, Macquarie University Vice Chancellor Steven Schwartz today will announce a partnership with Australia Volunteers International that will create a mini peace corps, giving undergraduate students the opportunity to do volunteer work overseas.

Called the Global Futures Program, it will develop programs with local communities throughout Australia, the South Pacific and Southeast Asia. Some form of community work will be compulsory for all undergraduate students at Macquarie under the new curriculum, to start in 2010. In addition, the university will require all undergraduate students to study subjects from the humanities, social sciences and sciences so that arts students must take science subjects and science students must take arts subjects.

The university, in northern Sydney, had also considered making the learning of a foreign language compulsory but it was not feasible at this stage. Professor Schwartz told The Australian that the new curriculum was based on three themes of place, planet and participation, and was designed to provide students with a broader education than one geared solely to a vocation and getting a job. "Universities are more than just narrow vocational schools; they have the opportunity to change the world, to shape society and shape democracy [Is that what the taxpayer is paying for? And what if the student is content with the world as it is and does not WANT to change it -- preferring to concentrate on more personal things? Is there no place for such a person in a university? It would seem gross political bigotry to say so!]," he said. "It's about education for life not just for a job. We're trying to infuse the institution with more than just a utilitarian vocational mission as one that also makes difference to a more democratic and inclusive society."

Professor Schwartz said the new curriculum developed the university's commitment to social inclusion and equity, and fitted in with programs already in place at the university, such as MULTILIT, a remedial literacy program being used in Queensland's Cape York, and the Teach for Australia scheme. Macquarie University, in partnership with Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson's Cape York Institute, is developing the Teach for Australia program. It is based on similar schemes in the US and Britain to recruit the brightest graduates to teach for a short time in disadvantaged schools before they start their professional careers.

Macquarie's focus on a broader education follows the restructure at Melbourne University, called the Melbourne Model and based on US college degrees, which offers six broad undergraduate degrees followed by a graduate professional degree in specialist areas such as law or medicine.

Professor Schwartz said providing an education based purely on skills was inadequate. "I used to be a dean of medicine and I believe probably a lot of skills we taught students were obsolete before they graduated," he said. "Our students graduating this year will retire about 2050. We don't know what the world will look like in 2015, let alone 2050. "At Macquarie, we want to give students the right skills to get ahead in the community and we want to give them employable skills but we also want to make them open to equity issues, to social progress and social justice in terms of equal opportunity."

Source




Young Aussies 'losing' male role models

This is right. What male in his right mind would be a schoolteacher these days? And suspicion of queer scoutmasters keeps a lot of kids away from Scouts

The social development of many young Australians may be stunted because potential male role models will not engage with them for fear of being wrongly accused of child abuse. Men are worried about putting themselves in positions where such an allegation may be levelled against them, either within families and more broadly at school or in social settings such as team sports, warns Australian Institute of Family Studies director Alan Hayes.

This may add to the problems of the current generation of children, who are more anxious and have more developmental problems and mental health issues than previously, he says. In a paper presented to the Australian Family Law conference, Professor Hayes notes that while the significance of harm caused by child abuse should not be underestimated, the public focus on shocking instances has wider ramifications, particularly on the raising of boys.

"Within families, concern over child sexual abuse has ... altered the nature of relationships and the behaviour of fathers and male members of extended families particularly," he writes in the paper, to be published this week in the AIFS Family Matters series. "There is a sense in which families have also been touched by what, at times, can be an overly fearful focus on child abuse. "Beyond the family, the changes have been even more marked, with increasing anxiety surrounding children's interaction with their teachers, clergy and coaches, among others. "The fear of accusations of sexual abuse may be one driver ... for the decline in the proportion of males entering teaching."

Professor Hayes says the reported levels of child abuse in 2006-07 -- 309,517 notifications and 58,567 substantiated cases involving 32,585 children -- underestimates the prevalence of the problem. He says Aboriginal children are among those most at risk. But this, he says, represents 0.7per cent of the child population aged 0-16. "While there can be no room for complacency about a situation such as this in a nation with the advancement and wealth we possess, the unanticipated negative effects on the rest of the population also cannot be ignored."

He says the problem is most acute for the nearly 30 per cent of children growing up in single-parent households or households with a step-parent. "For both boys and girls, especially those growing up in sole-parent families, the lack of male role models is of concern."

Professor Hayes says other factors are making the current generation of children's lives more challenging, including the fact that more children are being born into disadvantaged homes.

Source




Amazing waste of medical time in public hospitals

HOSPITAL doctors spend more time socialising with colleagues, filling out paperwork and being interrupted than they do treating patients. Australian researchers found doctors working on hospital wards spend just 15 per cent of their working days treating patients. They are also struggling with constant interruptions, according to the University of Sydney report, which found doctors devoted a third of their time on "professional communications" such as meetings and requests for information not related to medication.

Doctors trying to see patients on their wards are interrupted to attend to other tasks every 21 minutes on average, and up to 15 times an hour for those working in emergency departments. Author Prof Johanna Westbrook said the study debunked doctors' commonly held perceptions about the time consumed by specific tasks. "What we found was that doctors on wards are interrupted at considerably lower rates than those in emergency and intensive care units," she said. "On average doctors spent 15 per cent of their time with patients. The results also confirmed what interns have been saying for a long time that they are dissatisfied with their level of administrative work and documentation."

The team from the university's Health Informatics Research and Evaluation Unit observed 19 doctors at four wards at a 400-bed teaching hospital in Sydney. Publishing the results of the study in the Medical Journal of Australia, Prof Westbrook said doctors had complained that searching for X-rays and records took "all their time", however that actual time spent on such tasks was less than 1 per cent.

Prof Westbrook said this study looked at changes after the introduction of computerised medical record systems. "While such systems are promoted as reducing administrative tasks of clinicians, concerns were raised that many tasks . . . may have actually been quicker with the paper-based systems," she said.

Source





5 May, 2008

EMISSIONS TRADING - A WEAPON OF MASS TAXATION

Press release about Australia's latest Greenie nonsense below -- from Australia's Carbon Sense Coalition -- via Viv Forbes [vforbes@bigpond.com]

The Carbon Sense Coalition today described the proposed Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) as "A Weapon of Mass Taxation". In a submission to the Garnaut Enquiry, the chairman of "Carbon Sense", Mr Viv Forbes, claimed that the scheme would have no effect whatsoever on world climate but every Australian would feel the oppressive cost and dislocations caused by it.

"Staggering estimates of the costs of forcing industry to purchase permits to emit CO2 are just starting to emerge: Germany (100 billion euros), Australia (up to $22 billion), New Zealand ($4.5 billion). The amazing fact is that even though consumers in many countries will bear oppressive costs, there may be no reduction whatsoever in CO2 emissions, and no beneficial effects on the world climate.

For full details of the submission by the Carbon Sense Coalition to the Garnaut Enquiry see here (PDF)




Radical laws to ban drinking alcohol at home

Paternalism gone mad in attempt to solve the unsolvable -- chronic and widespread alcohol abuse by blacks. Bans were tried decades ago and didn't work then but Leftists always feel the need to "do something", no matter how foolish it is

DRINKING a glass of wine in your own home could be illegal under extreme new liquor laws that rubber-stamp the use of no-go alcohol zones in NSW. Stirring up images of 1930s' prohibition in the US, the Iemma Government is using the total ban on alcohol in some Aboriginal communities as a blueprint. Under the plan, drinking hotspots across the state can be labelled as "restricted alcohol areas" for up to three years under new laws that are just 10 weeks away.

A document recently published by the State Government reveals the detail of the alcohol bans outlining that areas of "chronic alcohol abuse" can be slapped with a range of restrictions. "Restrictions will not be limited to indigenous communities," the paper reads. Under the new laws, any area of the state can be declared a restricted alcohol zone and it applies to the sale of alcohol as well as possession and consumption in any premises - licensed or not.

Speaking with The Daily Telegraph, teetotaller Gaming Minister Graham West said the bans will only be implemented if requested by a broad section of the community and will not be government enforced. Mr West said they would be decided on a case-by-case basis and developed specifically for the area. "This is for communities that say 'we have a specific issue and we want to try this as part of the solution'. It might be a restriction of types of alcohol, times of alcohol sales or (a ban on) alcohol being brought into the area," he said. "It could be that light beer only is allowed or it could be a restriction on all alcohol brought into the area - it is a full range of options that have been left pretty broad. "It must be community initiated. It is not a big brother approach."

Mr West said it was "new territory" and it was still undecided as to what penalties might be imposed if someone was caught with alcohol in a banned zone. He said the legislation was more likely to work in a rural town where it was more easily policed but did not rule out it being used in any Sydney metropolitan area. "We've got to work all this out. It is new ground for us. We want to see what the community wants to do and then look at the regulations that go with that," he said.

Drug and Alcohol Research and Training Australia's Paul Dillon said it was a radical solution for a serious problem. "This sort of thing drives things underground. No one who has any expertise in this area is saying we should ban alcohol," he said.

Source




Imams say that the naughty bits in Islamic tradition must not be mentioned

The usual Islamic/Leftist respect for free speech, intellectual diversity and open discussion of ideas (NOT)

ANGRY Muslim groups have attacked the University of Western Sydney over an Islamic studies course they claim is too sexually explicit, promotes lesbianism and derides the Koran as misogynistic. Students, community members and the Australian National Imams Council have complained about the content of the course, Women in Arabic and Islamic Literature, being taught at the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies. They say it gives a negative view of women in Islam.

The imams council has circulated a petition recording its "deep concern with regards to the course structure and content", saying it involved "repeated and unjustified attacks upon Islam". Another group, Muslims for Peace, has branded the centre as "evil" and demanded lecturer Samar Habib be dismissed and the course abolished. "Now that its wicked nature should be crystal clear for all to see, Muslims should fear Almighty Allah and break all connections with this diabolical centre of Kufr (non-believers)," a bulletin on the Muslims for Peace website reads.

Dr Habib has declined to comment. UWS executive dean of the College of Arts Wayne McKenna said that, although the university was yet to receive a direct complaint, it was examining the content of the course.

The NCEIS, set up last year with federal government funds, operates out of three universities: the University of Melbourne, Griffith University in Queensland and UWS. It was established to advance knowledge and understanding of Islam and to play a leadership role in public debate on contemporary Islam. The course includes excerpts from The Perfumed Garden by Sheik Nafzawi, a book on Arabian erotica written in the 16th century and translated into English in 1886 that has been likened to the Indian Kama Sutra.

Dr Habib, who has written her PhD thesis on female homosexuality in the Middle East and has written an introduction in an erotic lesbian novel published overseas entitled I Am You, has been accused of promoting lesbianism. Homosexuality is forbidden in the Koran for both sexes. Dr Habib has also been accused by Muslims for Peace of teaching that it is not obligatory to wear the hijab, that the Hadiths (sayings of the Prophet Mohammed) are just Chinese whispers and that Muslim scholars can be ignored because they are males.

University of Melbourne's Sultan of Oman professor of Arab and Islamic studies, Abdullah Saeed, said concerns about the course had been raised at the centre's community consultative committee meeting this week. "Everyone has a right to express their opinion and views and that is what is happening," Professor Saeed said. "One of the essential things is to uphold academic freedoms and intellectual freedoms of students and the staff."

The imams council does not believe the course represents the normative traditional Islam as practised by most of the world's Muslim population. "The subject's emphasis on sexuality and its explicit sexual content is not reflective of normative Islam, which is what we thought the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies would attempt to portray," ANIC president Sheik Moez Nafti wrote.

Source




Bra wars

Childish accusations from Leftists expose them to the same

West Australian premier Alan Carpenter has been forced to deny claims that he exposed a colleague's bra to fellow MPs as his political rival fights to keep his job over the notorious chair-sniffing incident. Mr Carpenter has said he is the victim of "scuttlebutt allegations", while Opposition Leader Troy Buswell says he is confident he won't be replaced by angry colleagues.

Mr Carpenter has come out fighting over suggestions that he lifted the top of a female colleague at a karaoke party in 2004, exposing her bra to 30 Labor MPs. Mr Carpenter is also alleged to have put his face near the breasts of another female colleague at the time. The premier, who returned to Perth from Europe yesterday, denied both incidents. He said the allegations were "baseless scuttlebutt designed to damage me politically". "There is no basis to it. We had a lot of fun. No one was upset," Mr Carpenter told The West Australian.

"Suddenly four years later in the middle of some sensitive political issues a suggestion is run around that I, and only I apparently on the whole night, did anything that anybody was concerned about. And yet 30 or 40 people in the room didn't see a thing."

Mr Buswell faces a spill motion a party meeting today in the wake of the embarrassing chair sniffing scandal. The Liberal leader has been under intense pressure to resign after admitting last week that in 2005 he sniffed the chair of a female Liberal staffer at parliament house after she had stood up. Party whip Graham Jacobs has said he will move a spill motion at a party room meeting today and support treasury spokesman Steve Thomas to take over from Mr Buswell.

But Mr Buswell told The West Australian that he had contacted MPs over the weekend and had been assured of their support. "My view is that I have had good feedback from my colleagues," Mr Buswell said. "I have had discussions with a large number of them over the weekend." Before becoming leader in January, Mr Buswell admitted snapping the bra of a Labor staffer last year and was accused of making sexist remarks towards another MP.

Mr Thomas said yesterday if he were nominated for the leader's position, he would accept. "I think the one thing I offer that nobody else does is a fresh start," Mr Thomas said. Meanwhile, the Liberal Party has set up a special committee to investigate the leaks relating to Mr Buswell's behaviour. The committee, headed by state president Barry Court, is expected to report within weeks. The committee was set up at the state council meeting at the weekend, where it's understood Mr Buswell was given a standing ovation after delivering an address about his indiscretions, The West Australian said.

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4 May, 2008

Public hospital chaos

A chief doctor at a major hospital reveals below how our frontline medical system is in chaos. But many don't care, he says, until they need emergency treatment

I work in a public hospital emergency department, so that means any time you are in my part of the world, you are potentially my patient - you, your family, your friends. Tomorrow could be the day that a bad thing happens to you and your life is changed forever. That heart attack you knew was coming sooner or later, the crash on the freeway, the toddler found face-down in the swimming pool. Tomorrow, you could be rushed to my hospital - and I'll be doing my best to help you. But, as your doctor, I have to warn you: things are not good.

I'm a Queenslander born and bred and have worked in public hospitals since 1982. I am a specialist in emergency medicine. My team and I save people's lives for a living. We are good at it, and enjoy it. We deliver first-class emergency care to Queenslanders and those visiting (yes, tourists, I'm your doctor, too). I've travelled enough to know our state has a fantastic emergency response service and I'm proud to be part of it. Queenslanders expect it and you deserve it. So what isn't good? Put simply, our emergency departments - the place every ambulance rushes to - are already clogged with people. You'll notice that from the time you arrive.

It may be some time before we can find a space for you. Only the sickest people get immediate attention: the ones who can't breathe, the ones who are unconscious. If that's you tomorrow, I'll see you as soon as you arrive and I'll use my skills and experience to stop you from dying, work out what's wrong with you, give you the immediate treatment you need and then move you on to another doctor who specialises in your kind of problem. You usually don't remember me, but I don't mind. If I smile when I see you in the hospital kiosk next week, it's because I like seeing a good result. For everyone else, I'm sorry about the wait.

We try to be thorough and that means taking time with every patient. When it is your turn you will get the same treatment. But although year-on-year more people are seen in emergency departments across the country, that's not the only reason we're clogged with patients. A bigger problem is that we can't get people out of the emergency department.

Hospitals (public and private) often have no available inpatient beds, no available intensive-care beds, or no available coronary-care beds. Often, very sick patients stay in my emergency department until a bed somewhere comes up. Sometimes that takes hours or even days. They stay in the beds we need for the people coming through the door. We don't have rubber walls. Somebody has to suffer. Patients on trolleys are in the corridors, and there they stay until a free bed is found. Sound dangerous? Sure is. I am making life and death decisions in an overcrowded noisy chaotic environment, and it is your life or death I am deciding about. No wonder we're both stressed.

As your doctor, I warn you that when you come to my emergency department tomorrow your experience may not match All Saints with a neat solution after 47 minutes plus ads. I will do the best I can to keep you alive and get you where you need to be. That's all I can do. Since you are going to be my patient tomorrow, I have requests for some of you:

TO THE 28-year-old salesman whose car hits a tree after the party tonight: You can't drive better with a few drinks under your belt. And don't take your mate's girlfriend for a spin; after tomorrow, she'll never look the same again.

TO THE 78-year-old male retired railway worker with chest pain: I know your GP is very familiar with the medicines you take, but I will need to know in a hurry and sometimes it's hard to get through to the GP. Please make a list of your usual drugs and keep it up to date.

TO THE 42-year-old businessman: Don't tell people you're going to kill yourself if you don't mean it, especially if you're drunk. It will take hours before I can talk sensibly to you and, yes, you do have to stay in my department all that time. And you have to have a blood test. Really.

TO THE 19-year-old student, nine weeks pregnant and bleeding: We know how upset and worried you are. We'll get you into a bed soon. But mostly, what happens will happen, whether we get you into a bed or not. But we'll still try.

TO THE 85-year-old retired coalminer and respiratory cripple: We have the technology to pull you back from the brink over and over, but it's like skipping a stone - each skip is shorter and lower than the last and eventually there's not a lot to be gained from skipping again. When a few more days or weeks aren't worth the needles, the tubes, the masks and the whole carry-on, let me know. Say you don't want to do it any more. I will look after you. But don't wait until tomorrow, because by then you'll be on the brink again and too starved of oxygen for me to listen to you. No matter what you say then, I will resuscitate you. You need to tell it to your loved ones now. Then tomorrow, when you tell me you don't want to be resuscitated, that you want comfort measures only, I can check with someone who knows you and I will do my best to follow that wish.

TO THE 35-year-old female shop manager with recurrent abdominal pain: Please see your GP again before coming to us. Yes, we deal with belly pain, but your GP is well on the way to discovering what is wrong with you. Please persist with him or her. If you come to see us we'll just have to start all over again.

TO THE 21-year-old male: Don't inject speed. If you act psychotic we will need to treat you, even if you don't want it. Please don't hit us, bite us or spit on us, we are only looking out for your best interests.

AND finally, to the 53-year-old Queensland Health senior manager: We are drowning down here in the emergency department. I am your doctor, too, and I am tired of waiting for the problem to be fixed. Quality emergency care is critical for all of us. It's in everyone's best interest to get my department cleared and functioning optimally. I want space, I want staff who can do this job well, and I want time to train them. The situation needs some action now. We are all at risk.

To other doctors: I am your doctor, too. Please help me when I ask you for help with a patient. I'm not doing it to spoil your day. I've got people building up behind them and there's nowhere else to go.

Politicians and powerbrokers: I am your doctor, too. I know you have private medical cover; I know you have a good GP and other specialists who look after you well. But tomorrow it may be you who collapses while walking the dog, it may be you collected by the BMW that lost it on the corner, it may be your child who is hurt on the school excursion. No one is going to check for a private health insurance card. They'll bring you to me and I'll be your doctor then. How prepared and capable do you want me be?

To all of you who are my patients: I am doing the best I can under the circumstances. I can't save everyone. I can't be right every time. I won't be able to get to you as quickly as I would like, and nowhere near as quickly as you would like. And please be understanding. It's hard enough keeping you alive without being abused while I'm doing it.

Source




The Left's grip on learning

Comment by Imre Salusinszky



When I abandoned university teaching at the beginning of 2003, after 20 years, I was careful not to construct a "God that failed" narrative around my reasons for going. You know what I mean: how the university system let me down, by its surrender to political correctness, or managerialism, or economic rationalism, or whatever.

In fact, while all those forces had some impact on the working lives of academics between 1983 and 2003, universities remained outstanding places to work. There are few jobs, possibly none, that allow their employees as much freedom to pursue their own interests. And within the constraints of increased demands for accountability -- demands that have affected every sector of the workforce, not just tertiary education -- universities in Australia continue to provide supportive environments for teaching and research.

I left for largely personal reasons and without a trace of bitterness or resentment. That said, there were irritating, almost daily incidents on campus that confirmed the takeover of universities by the world view of the green Left. For example, there was the exchange student from the US who, close to tears, told me of how, during a role-playing exercise in a drama class, his tutor had instructed him, in front of the other students: "You're an American, so you play thebully."

Then there was the honorary degree proffered to anti-nuclear messiah Helen Caldicott. Modern universities are creatures of the Enlightenment and should advance its aims. If there is a more potent counter-Enlightenment figure in Australia today than Caldicott, I can't think of him or her. At the time she was honoured, I mused on the confused response I would surely have elicited from the relevant committee if I had nominated a true Enlightenment figure and a genuine intellectual, such as Paddy McGuinness, for a doctorate.

And speaking of the counter-Enlightenment, every election would see the doors of some of my colleagues in the humanities faculty plastered with Greens propaganda, with several standing as candidates.

All of this was harmless, up to a point. One of the lessons life has taught me is that the inherent qualities of human beings -- their decency or mendacity, goodwill or nastiness -- cannot easily be read from their political opinions. I got on well with my colleagues and, even after I "came out" as a supporter of microeconomic reform and started moonlighting as a columnist who specialised in sending up the cultural Left, most of them seemed well disposed towards me.

Along with much else, the situation in universities, and my own situation, shifted ground after 9/11. Following the terror attacks, the cultural Left (as distinct from the mainstream political Left) made the classic misjudgment it has made whenever democracy and fascism have come into conflict in the past century: it refused to pick sides on the principle that anybody who attacks the US and its allies cannot be all bad.

My colleagues' expressions of horror at the loss of life on 9/11 were heartfelt, but were almost always followed by a subordinate clause beginning -- like this one -- with but. Exactly a week after the attacks, I received an email from the academics' union representative on campus inviting me to a candlelight "vigil for justice and peace" in support of the victims of 9/11: not the 3000 victims of the terror attacks, but the arbitrary and so far hypothetical victims the Great Satan was about to unleash his fury upon.

"We have all been saddened, horrified, at the events in the US last week," the email began. "Many of us are now extremely worried about the talk of war and vengeance on the yet unidentified enemy, and the escalation of violence that may occur if bombing of towns and cities in targeted countries occurs." The email went on to encourage union members to attend the vigil, "if you would like to stand up and be counted and send a message to our civic leaders and fellow Australians that indiscriminate violence against 'suspects' will not be OK, that the targeting of Muslims, Arabs, Afghanis or other people of a certain ethnicity, as undesirable, is not OK, or if you just want to be with others who are sad, worried and concerned about war and justice." I didn't. Events such as this, while they did not cause me to leave the university, certainly did not incline me to linger.

So what has prompted these autobiographical meanderings? It is that the Young Liberals have launched a campaign, under the banner Make Education Fair, in which they are asking university students to report examples of political bias by their lecturers, with a view to holding a Senate inquiry into the issue. The Young Libs have already been accused of a sinister exercise in McCarthyism, but that tends to be the response whenever the question of bias in public institutions -- schools, universities, public broadcasting, museums and galleries -- is raised. Those for whom diversity is a key buzzword appear to flee the concept when it is applied to them.

I don't think there is anything wrong with left-leaning academics or ABC broadcasters. I don't think they need to be disciplined, far less sacked. But the dangers of allowing the political spectrum in these institutions to begin at Bob Brown and veer left from there are manifold. It leads to a bifurcated culture in which intellectuals lose contact with the mainstream and frequently develop a sense of hostility and embattlement towards it. Second, it means students are not being introduced to some of the most exciting intellectual ideas of our time, those associated with free-market economics and contemporaryliberalism.

And in the longer term, the effect of an undiluted green gospel, presented as a curriculum in schools and universities, could be devastating. If the idea is allowed to take hold unchallenged that, rather than wealth creation, it is the effort to limit and regulate wealth creation that underwrites our wellbeing, future generations will have a much lower standard of living than we enjoy.

Rather than sinister, I regard the Young Libs' campaign as quixotic. You won't, and shouldn't, change the beliefs of people who work in universities or other public institutions; rather, you should try and make sure there are a range of beliefs represented. Diversity really is the point. But when it is those already in place who control recruitment, courtesy of staff capture, the possibilities of cultural change quickly recede.

Source




The rise and rise of the secretive state

Below is a Saturday editorial in "The Australian" which says that freedom of speech has become a critical issue in Australia

TODAY'S World Press Freedom Day is about much more than journalists being able to do their jobs unimpeded. It is about the public's right to know the truth about how the governments they elect and the services they pay for, such as police and hospitals, operate. This year, the day comes at the end of an appalling week for press freedom.

On Wednesday, armed police from the Major Fraud Squad raided the Perth office of The Sunday Times newspaper. They spent four hours trying to prise out the source of a story that had embarrassed the Government of Alan Carpenter, a former journalist. The story was in the public interest, relating to a request by Treasurer Eric Ripper for $16 million to pay for advertising for the Government's re-election campaign. It was the second time in a month that police, whose stretched resources would be better employed fighting crime, had entered the Sunday Times offices to uncover the sources of political stories.

Speaking on behalf of the media coalition, Australia's Right to Know, News Limited chairman and chief executive John Hartigan said: "This is a disturbing reminder that governments in Australia will resort to legal muscle to redress political embarrassment. Do we now live in a country where whistleblowers and journalists can expect to be hunted down and charged if they reveal government information that is a matter of legitimate public interest? The answer, regrettably, appears to be yes."

The armed raid, reminiscent of those in countries such as Malaysia, erodes Australia's credibility in speaking out against the intimidation again meted out to the media this week in Fiji. The Fijian Government, known for its brutality, corruption and totalitarian rule, arrested Evan Hannah, managing director of The Fiji Times on Thursday night, forcibly removing him from his home, pending deportation. The arrest came two months after another Australian, Russell Hunter, publisher of the rival Fiji Sun, was arrested in a night-time raid on his home and deported.

Amid such repression, it should be reassuring to know that federal Labor, in the run-up to the November election, promised a mature and open approach to freedom of information. A Rudd government, the ALP's policy document said, would "drive cultural change across the bureaucracy to promote a pro-disclosure attitude". Information would be withheld only "where this is in the public interest". The Australian community would be able to "properly access information in the possession of the commonwealth Government."

These fine commitments have already melted into hollow rhetoric with the federal Government using FOI laws to block the release of advice about the wage-push inflationary effects of its industrial relations changes. In response to an FOI request from the ABC, the bulk of the 38 pages produced this week were censored. A Treasury official's lily-livered excuse was that full disclosure would "be contrary to public interest as they are internal documents containing information which could raise unnecessary debate on matters considered by cabinet". This ridiculous mindset, reflective of Orwell's Big Brother, deems economic debate "unnecessary" and against the public interest.

In reality, Treasury concerns about Labor's abolition of the Howard government's IR reforms have been known for months. In August, Treasury secretary Ken Henry underlined the importance of flexible labour markets for sustaining full employment. Months after the triumphant abolition of Work Choices, full disclosure of the relevant Treasury advice would have been no more than mildly embarrassing for the Rudd Government. But a cynic might suggest it feared the advice could come back to haunt it in the event of an inflationary wages breakout. The public interest, however, demands openness rather than a cover-up and Mr Rudd's silence on the subject yesterday was deafening.

This penchant for secrecy pervades both sides of politics and much of the legal system, to the detriment of public life. This newspaper, for instance, spent much of the last parliament battling former treasurer Peter Costello's blocking the release of data about bracket creep and the use of the First Home Buyers Scheme. The Australian lost the case in the High Court.

In a report released at last night's Australian Press Freedom Media Dinner in Sydney, the Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance noted numerous perturbing instances of censorship. These included the sentencing of former public servant, Allan Kessing, to a nine-month suspended jail term after he was found guilty of leaking a report on serious gaps in airport security to The Australian. The issue was vital to the public interest.

In the US, freedom of speech is fundamental to national culture and guaranteed under the First Amendment. Australia's establishment, in contrast, is increasingly embracing the censorious, "less is more" mentality of the taciturn British civil service. At every turn, civil libertarians battle to keep the public in the dark about lawyers' clients facing charges. States such as Queensland keep pertinent school performance data under wraps, while Tasmania refuses to release details of secret proposals for taxpayers to subsidise pipelines to service the controversial Gunns pulp mill. Secrecy, control and spin have rendered free speech fragile. This is bad for democracy and the issue deserves elevating to the centre of national debate.

Source




Chair sniffer defended

It's a sad day when harmless jocularity is persecuted



Troy Buswell's wife has vehemently defended her husband - saying he is a good man and that others in parliament behave far worse. In her only interview following the latest damaging revelations about his past behaviour with women, Margaret Buswell also said the beleaguered Liberal leader was deeply remorseful about the chair-sniffing incident, but it was "just a joke that missed the mark''.

Mrs Buswell said her support for her husband was "rock solid'', that he had never done anything she would be ashamed of and that he should be judged on his policies and vision, despite the recent reports that have left him fighting for political survival. "He's sorry for what he did. He understands that what he did was offensive. But he would never intentionally offend someone,'' she said ahead of a party meeting tomorrow that will decide whether a leadership vote will occur.

"I think it was just a joke that missed the mark. I've known him since I was 16 and he's always had a sense of humour. That's probably one of the reasons people love him so much.'' She said her husband had a lot of integrity and she and both their families were very proud of him. "I think there's a lot of other people (in parliament) who should be worried, but it doesn't come out,'' she said. "Troy's not corrupt. He's not an adulterer. He hasn't run off with anyone up there, and that's all going on (in parliament). "That's why so many good people don't go into politics, because of all the rubbish that goes on.

"Is there anyone who could stand up and say that they've not done something that was misinterpreted in the past?'' The 39-year-old accountant said it should be remembered that the incident, revealed by The Sunday Times last week - where Mr Buswell sniffed the chair of a former Liberal female staffer in his parliamentary office - dated to 2005. That report followed others in this paper revealing Mr Buswell's infamous bra-unclipping incident, which happened at parliament in October 2007.

"He's changed his behaviour since he became the leader,'' said Mrs Buswell, who also spoke to this paper in March about the first incident. "He understands what is required of him now and he's trying to lead his party to the next election.'' Mrs Buswell said her husband initially denied the sniffing incident because he wanted to protect the woman involved, who had insisted that the events not be publicised. "That's the truth,'' she said. "The timing sucked. She changed her mind. It may have been the pressure she was under.''

Mrs Buswell understood why women might be offended by the reports of her husband's behaviour, but they weren't getting the full picture. "I'm not making excuses for what he did,'' she said. "What he did obviously offended (the woman) and if you were to hear about what he did on the radio, or read it in the newspaper, you may find it offensive. "But we've had hundreds of emails and texts and phone calls of support, non-stop, from people who know him and know his personality and sense of humour. "(They) know that he would never intentionally offend someone like that.

Source





3 May, 2008

Call to adopt the tyrannical and much-criticized Canadian approach to "discrimination"

The usual Leftist devotion to crushing individual liberties below. Hans Bader has emailed me the following comment on it: "The Australian Race Discrimination Commissioner, Tom Calma, has made the pernicious proposal to put the burden of proof on people accused of racism to prove themselves innocent, rather than the government having to prove them guilty. Worse, he claims that that is how it is done in America. That is a false claim, since under U.S. federal antidiscrimination law, it is the plaintiff and government -- not the defendant -- that has the burden of proof, according to the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in St. Mary's Honor Center v. Hicks (1993) and Texas Department of Community Affairs v. Burdine (1981)". I reproduce a comprehensive article by Bader immediately after the article below

A STUDY of racial discrimination laws in several Western countries has prompted a call for the Government to toughen Australia's 33-year-old laws. Race Discrimination Commissioner Tom Calma wants the burden of proof in cases of racial discrimination to fall on the alleged offender, instead of the person making the complaint. Mr Calma said Australia's laws made it difficult to prove there had been discrimination.

A Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission analysis of other countries, including the US, Britain and Canada, shows that in those countries the onus of proof shifts to the person who has been accused of discrimination once the complainant has established an initial case. In Australia, the burden of proof rests on the person making the complaint.

Mr Calma will ask the Federal Government to review the Race Discrimination Act, which was established in 1975 and was the first human rights legislation introduced in Australia. The only amendments to the act were the introduction of racial hatred provisions in 1995. Mr Calma said some people who had been racially discriminated against did not lodge a complaint because they felt the process was too hard. "It is a difficult exercise to be able to get that evidence together and if the offending party doesn't want to co-operate then you can't progress it," he said. "We do get occasions where people don't want to co-operate, and then we're forced to terminate a case, and then the case might have to be taken forward to a court." The alleged offender can be summoned to court to defend themselves, but then it gets very expensive.

A spokesman for Attorney-General Robert McClelland said the Race Discrimination Act had been a "strong and effective protection against racism". He said the Government had committed to conducting a wide-ranging national consultation on how to best protect the rights and responsibilities of Australians. "The courts have not identified significant areas of deficiency or inconsistency in the operation and interpretation of the act, which could be resolved by amending the act," he said. The Age believes that consultation could start by the end of the year. The nation's attorneys-general have also agreed to examine options to make Commonwealth and state anti-discrimination laws more consistent.

Mr Calma said if people were forced to defend themselves, it might make them think twice before offending. These kinds of complaints were usually a last resort. "A lot of people will tolerate behaviour, consider it a joke, until it comes to crunch point," he said. "You don't get vexatious complaints for the sake of complaints."

Peter van Vliet, executive officer of the Ethnic Communities' Council of Victoria, said Australia's racial discrimination laws needed to be strengthened. "There is a serious power imbalance, particularly between larger organisations and individuals who are being discriminated against," he said. "We certainly have a large body of anecdotal evidence that systemic racial and religious discrimination, particularly with regards to employment, exists in Australia."

Source

Using International "Law" to Subvert Basic Legal Protections and Democracy

Article below by Hans Bader. Bader is legal counsel to the Competitive Enterprise Institute and has had experience in bringing and defending race discrimination claims in the U.S. courts. For a short time he also helped adjudicate discrimination claims at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The original of the article below has numerous links

International courts and "human rights" bodies issue rulings that purport to have the force of law. But much of their reasoning is based not on written laws found in any law book, or agreed to by any legislature or citizenry. Instead, it is based on vaguely-defined "customary international law," principles of so-called "natural law" derived from a supposedly "clear consensus" by enlightened people across the globe. But that "consensus" is often illusory, since it can easily be fabricated, manipulated, or distorted by international lawyers.

Lawyers are, on average, further to the left politically than the average citizen. And so-called international lawyers are even more so. (I used to practice international law at Skadden, Arps). Just as the grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence, lawyers often claim that the law is more liberal elsewhere in the world than in their own benighted country, and that such liberal norms - at odds with their own country's law - constitute customary international law. Thus, it is commonly argued that customary international law bans the death penalty for mass murderers, and requires countries to ban disfavored forms of speech (such as "hate speech," or criticism of any religion), although in reality, the strongest support for bans on such speech actually comes from undemocratic regimes like Cuba and China.

It is hard to fight these claims even when they are false, because ordinary people (and even most lawyers) don't know much about foreign law. The lawyers who fashion "customary international law" are thus largely unaccountable. Perhaps as a result, customary international law is generally of poorer quality than domestic law. Scholars have cited this fact in celebrating the Supreme Court's recent decision in Medellin v. Texas (2008), which refused to make Texas hear yet another challenge to a murderer's conviction (which had already twice been upheld by different court systems) when ordered to do so by the International Court of Justice (a ruling at odds with the fact that virtually all ICJ member countries permit only one appeal of a conviction, not successive appeals).

Misleading the public about foreign law is common among "human rights" officials. For example, an official in Australia's new Labour government claims that people accused of race discrimination should have to prove themselves innocent, rather than being proved guilty. To justify this outrage, he and Australia's "human rights" commission claim that is the practice in America, when in fact it is quite the contrary.

American law puts the burden of proof on the complainant and the government, not the alleged offender, in discrimination cases. The U.S. Supreme Court explicitly so ruled in Texas v. Burdine (1981) and St. Mary's Honor Center v. Hicks (1993). But Australia's Race Discrimination Commissioner, Tom Calma, and the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission falsely claim that under American law, "the onus of proof" is on "the person who has been accused of discrimination." (See "Call to Switch Onus on Racist Offenses," The Age, News, April 5, 2008).

Joseph H.H. Weiler, a law professor who co-drafted the European Parliament's Declaration of Human Rights and Freedoms, made American legal thinking seem more liberal than it is, by inviting to Europe to represent it two of America's most radical law professors: the University of Michigan's Catharine MacKinnon, who considers most heterosexual sex to be rape; and Harvard Law School's Duncan Kennedy, who advocated having law school professors periodically exchange their positions with college janitorial staff in order to promote diversity and social equality.

By contrast, when laws across the world are more conservative than a law professor's own, they are studiously ignored in formulating "human rights" law (like the world-wide aversion of most countries' legal systems toward civil punitive damages and late-term abortions, which U.S. law often permits).

The very international "human rights" lawyers who insist that "hate speech" should be curbed are often radicals who are blind to certain forms of prejudice. A classic example of this is the disturbing Richard Falk, recently appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council to investigate Israel. Falk, a liberal Princeton professor emeritus, has likened Israel to the Nazis, praised the Ayatollah Khomeini (the Iranian dictator whose regime ordered the killings and torture of many religious and ethnic minorities in Iran), and promoted 9/11 conspiracy theories that accuse the U.S. government of complicity in the 9/11 attacks. Falk's wackiness may offend the general public and Israel, which plans to bar him from coming to Israel, but it apparently does not offend lawyers and state judges very much: it did not stop the Washington State Supreme Court from citing his advocacy of affirmative action to uphold a discriminatory, gender-based affirmative-action set-aside in public contracting, in Southwest Wash. Chapter v. Pierce County, 667 P.2d 1092 (1983).

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Feds demand that banks cut fees - or else

I am in general suspicious of regulation but Australian banks are so appalling that they need something to shake them up. They are nearly as bad as Australia's phone companies -- and in both cases competition has done little to civilize them

AUSTRALIA'S profit-rich banks have been warned they face a new wave of regulation if they fail to cut fees and make it easier for customers to switch lenders. Laying down a big challenge to the finance sector, Treasurer Wayne Swan has called on the banks to review their existing fee structures. Mr Swan has promised fresh laws if they don't make it easy for customers to switch home loans and other accounts. In a bluntly worded letter to the CEOs of Westpac, Commonwealth, ANZ, NAB and St George, he said he would consider regulatory options.

The Government's tough attitude follows a review of bank fees, which found Australian customers were paying more for services than in Britain and the US. The Government is sensitive to claims it is not doing enough to protect consumers and is calling on the banks to review their fee structures.

"I would encourage lenders to review their existing fee structures, especially where exit fees are high relative to industry averages and might not reflect the underlying cost of terminating the loan," Mr Swan said, in his letter. He also called on the banks to look at ways to provide simpler fee wording to customers and improved fee disclosure. "I am committed to an industry-based solution to remove impediments to (bank) switc