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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9 February, 2010

“Understanding the Ruddy ETS”

The Carbon Sense Coalition today claimed that the Emissions Trading Scheme proposed for Australia and now before the Australian Parliament was far more than “A Great Big New Tax”. The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that PM Rudd’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme combined a Big New Tax with a War-Time Rationing scheme and an Income redistributing compensation scheme, all to be run by a regulatory army probably bigger than our real army.

He continued: “Let’s try to understand this Ruddy ETS. “To simplify things, let’s look at just the electricity industry.

“If Rudd’s ETS ever rules Australia, companies producing electricity from carbon fuels must beg, buy or borrow a permit to burn coal, gas or diesel. “They can beg a free permit from some mate in Canberra; they can buy a permit from some lucky sod who managed to get more permits than he needs; they can borrow a permit by entering into some tricky derivative trade with a speculator in Chicago; or they can pay carbon credit penance to a shifty land owner in some foreign land who promises solemnly not to clear his trees. “No matter which option is chosen, power costs will go up and companies must pass the extra cost (plus GST) onto their customers or go broke. “There will be no effect on climate.

“Now look at consumers. “The ETS must push up the cost of all goods and services using carbon fuel. It will boost the cost of electricity, food, transport and travel. When this happens, consumers will suddenly understand the ETS Tax and politicians who voted for it will feel their anger.

“But there is a plan: “Let’s compensate all those likely to vote for us”. “If these subsidies work properly, the lucky consumers will be in the same position as they were before ETS, except for the extra bureaucracy. For these consumers, there is no signal to reduce their consumption of carbon fuels. The ETS will do nothing except create a tangle of red tape which consumes and redistributes wealth.

“But for the un-subsidised consumers, the ETS is an extra tax on everything. “And for the power companies, the ETS will produce nothing except a heap of angry customers, and lots of red tape.

Mr Forbes claimed that Tony Abbott was wrong about the ETS. “It is not just a Great Big Tax. “It’s a Great Big Tax PLUS a mountain of Red Tape. “And it will have absolutely no effect on world climate.”

Press release from Carbon Sense above




Kevin Rudd under fire for 'broken' hospitals pledge

KEVIN Rudd's election pledge to fix the nation's hospitals is under fresh attack after the Prime Minister said he wanted a "compromise" with states. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott jumped on Mr Rudd's comments and accused him of "walking away" from his promise of a federal takeover of hospitals if the states disagreed with his reform plan. In a sustained attack, Mr Abbott accused the Prime Minister of a string of broken promises and labelled him deceptive, weak, tricky and a lifelong bureaucrat addicted to process in a foretaste of the Coalition's election campaign.

Opposition Treasury spokesman Joe Hockey said: "If the Prime Minister cannot keep his 2007 election commitments, how can he be trusted with his 2010 election commitments?"

Labor previewed its attack, repeatedly questioning the Coalition's economic credentials. Mr Rudd said Mr Abbott's attack was "distraction with a capital D" to deflect from former Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull's climate change rebellion. Mr Turnbull confirmed he would cross the floor to support Labor's emissions trading scheme in an impassioned speech where he bucketed Mr Abbott's alternative plan. He said that schemes like Mr Abbott's – where "bureaucrats and politicians (would) pick technologies and winners, doling out billions of taxpayers dollars" – were neither economically efficient nor environmentally effective.

During a failed censure motion, Mr Abbott accused Mr Rudd of breaking several election promises, from fixing the the hospital system by mid-2009, to preventing homelessness and ensuring no worker would be worse off under Labor's workplace changes.

Opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton told The Courier-Mail: "This puts a big question mark on Kevin Rudd's integrity (and he's) had two years of wasted opportunity in health." He said Mr Rudd's willingness to compromise with the states was "confirmation he won't be able to fix hospitals".

SOURCE




OECD queries cost of new broadband network

But it's Kevvy's own idea -- his only one -- so he's likely to stick to it

THE OECD has questioned Labor's $43 billion national broadband network as the Communications Minister Stephen Conroy fends off an Auditor-General's report that shows $30 million was lost after he ignored public service advice that his original scheme risked failure.

As the opposition yesterday seized on the Australian National Audit Office report's findings that the government had been given "clear advice" of the risks in implementing its NBN election commitment, the head of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Australia desk, Claude Giorno, called on the Rudd government to apply more rigorous cost-benefit analysis to its infrastructure spending, including its $43 billion broadband network. Mr Giorno said "questions need to be answered" about Labor's broadband network because of the amount of spending involved and the apparent lack of any cost-benefit analysis.

The government's proposed fixed fibre technology network required "very careful assessment". "Maybe not everybody needs to have a very-high-speed broadband connection," he said. "Maybe it would be less costly to develop alternative technology depending on where you are geographically."

Taxpayers lost $17m and bidders about $13m. The government paid $604,918 to a panel of experts and $10.96m to consultants - including legal adviser Corrs Chambers Westgarth ($3.45m), investment, financial and commercial adviser KPMG ($2.85m) and regulatory adviser Frontier Economics ($1.31m). The experts panel, which assessed the original NBN bids, included: Tony Mitchell ($168,893.56); Rod Tucker ($161,476.63); Tony Shaw ($112,895.94); Reg Coutts ($128,892.49); and John Wylie ($32,759.49).

Opposition Senate leader Nick Minchin accused Senator Conroy of misleading the Senate on February 3 last year when he said the government's ambition was to sign a contract for the NBN by March. This was despite Senator Conroy having received a report from the expert panel on January 20 that none of the bids represented value for money.

Senator Conroy denied he had misled parliament, saying on February 3 that a range of policy options was still open to the government.

Opposition communications spokesman Tony Smith said taxpayers should be worried as Senator Conroy embarked on the new NBN proposal. "Taxpayers have every reason to be worried that the same master of this disaster is presiding over even more taxpayers' funds on the reckless NBN II proposal, which was announced without a cost-benefit analysis or a business plan."

SOURCE




Western Australia: Gifted kids let down by system

THOUSANDS of potential child geniuses are going unrecognised in schools, leaving many in danger of never reaching their full potential. For some of WA's 35,000 gifted children, their overlooked "gifts" have become a burden, forcing them to turn to misbehaviour or switch off from lessons.

According to US child intelligence expert Deborah Ruf, the education system - particularly primary schools - is failing to get the most out of gifted children. Dr Ruf, who will be speaking at the University of WA this week, said schools spent more time focusing on struggling pupils. "The brightest children spend nearly the entirety of their school years being instructed far below their capacity to learn, with the result that we are losing them and what they could become," she told The Sunday Times.

"Many of these exceptionally bright children are living right now in homes and learning in classrooms where the adults responsible for them often don't know or don't fully understand their potential. "Some of them are mistakenly labelled as behaviour problems. Others flounder in classrooms designed to meet the needs of children who are far behind them in their learning."

Gifted and Talented Children's Association of WA spokeswoman Kriss Muskett said gifted children went unnoticed because teachers did not know how to identify them. She called for teachers to be trained "at an undergraduate level" to recognise different levels of giftedness and how to deal with those children.

The Education Department said gifted primary school pupils were given the opportunity to extend themselves through the Primary Extension and Challenge Program. The part-time program is available to students in Years 5, 6 and 7. There are also 16 secondary schools that offer selective programs.

David Axworthy, executive director of school support services, said WA was the only state to test every student in Year 4 to see if they needed to be challenged, and more than $7 million a year was spent on public school programs designed for gifted students. Education Minister Liz Constable said she was committed to the development of gifted children because she had completed her PhD in the area.

SOURCE




Queensland Health a bureaucratic mess

ONE of the world's top medical experts has delivered a damning assessment of Queensland Health five years after the Bundaberg Hospital scandal. The unflattering report comes despite billions of dollars in extra funding being poured into the system after the Bundaberg fiasco. The top-level review, conducted by recently retired UK chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson, found the department and the independent watchdog set up following the 2005 health inquiries had little idea who was responsible for improving patient safety.

Obtained by The Courier-Mail, the August 2009 report said hospitals had overlapping and unclear safety standards, were too reliant on overseas-trained doctors while staff were burdened with duplication. There was also no strategy for remote and regional areas while the public was given a "weak voice" in the system.

In one of a raft of botched policies, Sir Liam identified an "ambiguity" between the roles of Queensland Health and the Health Quality and Complaints Commission. "(There is) no clear agreement on the respective roles of the (HQCC) and Queensland Health in quality improvement," the report said.

Sir Liam, who visited for a week last year focusing on clinical governance, said Queensland had made a "major commitment" to reform, including an impressive roll-out of programs, strong leadership and accountable services. But he also identified areas where policy was ill-defined or lacking, including unclear and varying reporting standards. "Some standards have strong clinical and managerial credibility, others are not valued," the report said.

Sir Liam, whose bill is expected to hit about $40,000, said recruitment was strengthened but that it took four to five months to hire doctors. "Many areas are still heavily dependent on locums (mainly international medical graduates)," the report said.

It also said that the role of the QH Patient Safety Board needed refocusing. "At the end of every meeting, the board should ask itself: 'Have we concentrated on the most important things?'," Sir Liam said.

Sir Liam noted patient safety was comparable to other countries but the PRIME incident reporting system was overburdening staff. "There is a clear sense of 'implementation fatigue' permeating the current system," Sir Liam said.

Predicting tensions, Sir Liam said QH should own responsibility for quality standards but said the HQCC was "ambitious" and wanted to be proactive in patient safety culture. "On the other hand, it is unlikely that Queensland Health's senior management would accept a wide-ranging quality improvement and cultural change role for the commission," he said.

Centre for Healthcare Improvement boss Tony O'Connell said it was moving in the right direction but admitted more work was required. "This is always a work in progress and we'd never say we'd completed all tasks," he said.

SOURCE




Australia Tightens Immigration Rules

Foreign doctors, nurses and school teachers who speak good English and have jobs already organised will be Australia's top priority migrants under new immigration policy

Australian Immigration Minister Chris Evans announced Monday several reforms to his country's immigration policy, including several policy changes aimed at attracting more highly-skilled immigrants to the country.

Criticizing the ongoing trend for new immigrants to enroll for vocational courses for gaining residency, Evans said that Australia would change the current list of 106 skills in demand and review a points test based on qualifications, skills and proficiency in English currently used to assess migrants. He said that the present list will now be replaced by a "more targeted" Skilled Occupations List.

"We had tens of thousands of students studying cookery and accounting and hairdressing because that was on the list and that got them through to permanent residency," Evans told Australian radio, adding that such courses will no longer be an assured path to permanent residence.

"The current points test puts an overseas student with a short-term vocational qualification gained in Australia ahead of a Harvard-educated environmental scientist," Evans said.

"We want to make sure we're getting the high-end applicants," Evans said, stressing that the changes brought about by the new immigration policies would try to attract more health workers, including more doctors and nurses, as well more qualified professionals in the fields of engineering and mining.

"The new arrangements will give first priority to skilled migrants who have a job to go to with an Australian employer. For those who don't have an Australian employer willing to sponsor them, the bar is being raised," Evans said.

"If hospitals are crying out for and willing to sponsor nurses, then of course they should have priority over the 12,000 un-sponsored cooks who have applied and who, if they were all granted visas, would flood the domestic market," he added.

Evans also pointed out that some 170,000 people applied for living and working permanently in Australia last year alone, when there were just 108,000 vacancies available. He added that all lower-skilled applications lodged before 1st September 2007 would be withdrawn and application fees worth A$14 million ($12.15 million) refunded.

The reforms in Australia's immigration policy comes in wake of reports that thousands of students from overseas, mainly from Asia, were manipulating the existing system by providing fraud documents to enroll for vocational courses at private Australian colleges, purely to gain residency permits.

SOURCE





8 February, 2010

Kevvy's true colours are beginning to show

KEVIN Rudd is turning Left and Tony Abbott is turning Right. This sets the context for the coming election battle. It means that ideology has returned strongly to Australian politics.

After two years of prevarication the Prime Minister's recent defiant speech promising a continuing splurge on infrastructure has now branded this as a big spending socialist government clearly in the mould of the Whitlam government. It includes the centralisation of power over the states and intervention in urban policies. Rudd has not learned the lessons of the Hawke and Keating governments, which were more adept at using market forces to achieve their policy objectives and much more in partnership with the private sector.

This trend will continue throughout the year, which already presents some key opportunities for more government intervention and attempts at redistribution of wealth.

The Henry tax review, the Cooper Report on superannuation and a tight budget will provoke a response from this government, which will see greater slugs on business, as too will the poorly designed Emissions Trading Scheme.

Higher income earners will also be targeted, especially through steeper means tests so beloved of Wayne Swan. The justification offered will be to offset the sequence of interest rate rises that are going to emanate from the Reserve Bank throughout 2010, because once again it will be the mortgage belts around the capital cities that will determine this coming election.

This is because the economy will return to centre stage as the election issue. Climate change will fade as an issue in the minds of voters in the aftermath of the Copenhagen debacle, recent lack of confidence in the scientific integrity of the UN Intergovernmental Panel and the weakening of expert international support for the kind of cap and trade schemes the Rudd government is so doggedly pursuing.

Indeed the unseemly speed with which the government tried to ram its legislation through last year was of great concern given that virtually no attempt was made to inform and educate the public on one of the most expensive and interventionist policies in Australian history.

Similar arguments are true of the ill-conceived, taxpayer-funded broadband scheme, which could just as easily be achieved through private sector funding and tweaked regulation.

The hidden agenda is in workplace relations where it is clear that the trade union movement has been promised further fulfilment of its aims in a second term of office to honour its key role in the election of the government . Just after becoming Liberal Leader, Tony Abbott made a monumental mistake in flagging a return to elements of the Howard government's Work Choices industrial relations regime as this will galvanise union support and funding for Labor in the coming election even from those unions that have been disenchanted with the tepid action from Julia Gillard on key planks of union policies during the first two years of office.

Abbott is taking the Coalition in many conservative directions on economic and social-ethical policy, which is cementing closer relations with the Nationals, and it is clear the public has warmed to the concept of an opposition that puts up a real fight to the government. But it is not clear that his missiles are guided ones. In modern politics all policy pronouncements need to be part of a carefully honed strategy, especially in an election year.

For this coming election will be close. The focus on opinion polling, which has the government well ahead, has taken attention away from the fact that it would take no more than a uniform swing of just over 2 per cent to topple the Rudd government. There are a string of marginal seats in NSW and Queensland; states in which Labor governments are performing very poorly. Recent experience shows us that a party's performance at state level does affect the support it receives at national elections. There are elections in South Australia and Victoria this year that will probably see Labor returned to office but the national government has few prospects of gains of marginal seats in those states.

This emphasis on states reminds voters of the enormous disappointment of the much touted Council of Australian Governments that, for the past two years has tinkered with, but produced no significant, reforms to the federation including the so-called "education revolution", which has proved such a damp squib.

But the key policy failure has been health. Here the best that COAG could come up with was a promise of a "decision-making framework", while ambulances are being turned away from emergency departments, patients lie in beds on hospital verandas, and people wait in vain for places in aged care accommodation rather than in hospital. The failure of the Rudd government to take over state hospitals stands as the most serious of its eight major broken promises from the previous election. Health is going to be a significant election issue.

Labor is going to lose some votes to the Greens at the coming election because of its compromise approach to climate change and it cannot be assured that these will all return to Labor in the form of preferences. And on this score there will be no double or triple dissolution on climate change. Labor cannot control the Senate through this tactic; it would just increase the number of Greens in the upper chamber, which would provide a headache, and climate change will fade as an issue. In the world of political reality a double dissolution is a desperate "crash or crash through" strategy, when all else has failed. There has been only one joint sitting of parliament, in far more dire circumstances than these. There is no need for a double dissolution. At present it looks like a bluff to try to divide the Coalition and maybe stockpile some other bills to keep the pressure on the opposition especially over industrial relations.

Australians tend to give new governments a second chance and the polling during the past two years would seem to suggest that the odds favour Labor this time round. But this coming election will be fought on ideological grounds, which has not occurred for some time and will at least give citizens a fresh chance to think seriously about the role of governments in their lives.

SOURCE




Something's rotten in the state of NSW - comprehensive public schools

The comprehensive public school classroom is an unreformed rotten borough of public policy. The My School website represents the first significant, successful reform of the Rudd/Gillard era and a welcome departure from decades of union resistance to desperately needed educational change.

Education is a sector sufficiently charged with mythology and vested interests that it's virtually impossible for us to tell each other the truth. At the risk of unfairly disparaging a legion of inspirational teachers, I will now have a crack at that task.

Education in NSW is delivered in five distinct packages: state selective schools, elite private schools, other independent schools (Anglican, Muslim, other religious and non-religious), the Catholic parochial schools, and the state comprehensive schools. The competing power centres, in order of influence, are the NSW Department of Education, the education unions, the federal Ministry of Education (essentially a funding and testing body), principals, teachers and parents. Four out of five pistons are firing - all effort must now be concentrated on lifting the teaching and learning environment of the comprehensive public school.

From a "consumer value" perspective" the selective state school is at the top of the food chain. It costs little to attend, requires little parental involvement and is the most ruthlessly exclusive model. Almost all students attending these schools are the children of first-generation migrants, mainly from Asia and the subcontinent. The smart parents of these smart kids worked out quickly which side of the bread the butter was on. By spending a few thousand dollars on coaching in primary school they can avoid shelling out 50 times that amount to gain access to the quality of teaching and the peer group they want for their children. In terms of results, it's a subsidy worth paying. The Anglo Australians are either too dumb or too complacent to make the same commitment to their children's future.

The selective government school system was extended in the 1980s and '90s as a response to the growing tide of evacuation from public to private schools - worse in NSW than any other state. The NSW Department of Education widened the range of selectivity from academic and agricultural to include centres of excellence in sport, technology and the performing arts. The move was largely successful in fostering great public schools, by drawing on motivated teachers and creating a positive peer-pressure environment.

The problem for public schools generally had been a vacuum of culture. While the non-government schools could define themselves by some coherent religious (or Steiner or other) ethic and community, the public system, in the absence of selectivity, took refuge in concepts of inclusiveness and tolerance, which lacked the horsepower to inspire commitment from parents, teachers and students. The resulting vacuum has been filled by behaviourally challenged students and defensive, disengaged parents - a problem massively exacerbated after the state selective schools and the non-government sector hoovered up the most talented and motivated students.

The so called "comprehensive" school lost its student role models. One public high school principal confessed to me the difficulty he was facing in getting students to accept academic awards at speech day for fear of being mocked and bullied in the playground.

In that climate, the academic results and overall school discipline went into free fall. Many outer suburban "comprehensive" schools, with no effective means to discipline chronic misbehaviour, became a chapter out of the Lord of the Flies. There is a tipping point where the forces of bullying, abuse, high staff turnover and low common-room morale, vandalism and outright violence overwhelms the educational project. Teachers become mere child minders, enduring a job they hate, trying desperately to do something for the few kids who really want to learn. With limited government budgets and without a supportive school community, there is no money for new initiatives.

The comprehensive primary school often evidences a complete drought of male teachers. Low remuneration, low prospects of merit promotion, the risk of sexual allegations in a low-trust culture, and the militant feminism of the teacher unions, creates an intensely male-unfriendly environment. The absence of strong, sporty male teachers is a disaster for boys' education. Education unions, rightly sensing the odds were stacked against them, adopted a strategy of resisting any kind of accountability for teacher and school performance and resisting the empowerment of principals that might distinguish one school from another. Most have no ability to select their own staff or nurture their own ethic, instead suffering a revolving door of department-directed staff transfers.

The unions have worked to maintain a victim culture under which the answer to every question is "more funding", putting all their creative energy into political campaigns that are designed to provide cover for the abysmal performance of most (but not all) outer-suburban comprehensive public schools.

However, there is hope. All the research shows the strongest ballast against the forces of darkness is an inspiring principal. I have witnessed non-selective public schools, drawing heavily from housing department estates and low-income suburbs, that bristle with pride, energy, courtesy and learning - invariably revolving around an inspirational principal..

The My School website is an excellent first step towards parent empowerment and engagement. It allows high-performing public schools to receive the credit they richly deserve, and flushes out the complacent among the privileged private schools.

It should be expanded to include: the number of teacher absences, the turnover of teaching staff, the number of teachers on stress leave, the number of former teachers in litigation with the department, physical assaults, the ratio of male to female staff and some metric for the effectiveness of the school council and the P&C association. It must now be accompanied by genuine devolution of budget and policy autonomy from the department to principals, and opportunities for merit promotion and more money for the motivated teachers we so desperately need to retain.

SOURCE




Coal is king -- despite the Greenies

The Greenies hate coal but they seem to have been steamrollered over this one. The Leftist State government loves the deal. No doubt the Greens will manage a few whines, though

MINING billionaire Clive Palmer has just announced the economic deal of the century -the creation of up to 70,000 new jobs. The Queensland entrepreneur has clinched a contract with one of China's biggest power companies to export $69 billion worth of thermal coal from new mines in central Queensland over 20 years. "This deal is Australia's biggest-ever export contract," he said proudly. "The best years of this state are yet to come." Mr Palmer said the deal would provide a massive boost to the state economy, and likely result in the restoration of Queensland's prized AAA credit rating.

Under the agreement, China Power International Development Limited will take more than 30 million tonnes of coal - worth over $3 billion - each year from six mines to be built near Alpha in the Galilee Basin, west of Emerald in central Queensland. The mines will be operated by China First, a subsidiary of Mr Palmer's massive privately owned company, Resourcehouse Ltd. He last week awarded an $8 million construction contract to Metallurgical Corporation of China, which built Beijing's Bird's Nest Olympic stadium. The project also involves construction of a 500km rail line linking the mine to a new coal ship terminal at Abbott Point, near Bowen.

The news was greeted enthusiastically by Premier Anna Bligh as "a massive shot in the arm for the Queensland economy". "I set out to create 100,000 jobs in this term of government. With the signing of this deal we take that target a huge leap forward," Ms Bligh said.

Standing side by side at the announcement, the irony of the LNP's biggest financial backer helping the Labor Premier achieve her election goal was not lost on either. Both said political differences - nor even an active defamation lawsuit by Mr Palmer against the Premier - would get in the way of creating jobs for Queenslanders.

The deal still has to clear the final hurdles of what the Premier described as "rigorous" environmental assessments. But if approved, work should begin later this year, with the mines fully operational by 2014. Mr Palmer said 7500 people would be employed directly, with 50,000-70,000 indirect jobs flowing on from the initiative.

This deal comes just seven months after Mr Palmer bought the threatened Yabulu nickel refinery in Townsville, saving 950 jobs.

Royalties from the coal exports will pump between $400 million and $700 million a year, depending on coal prices, into the Queensland Government's coffers - a welcome boost but not enough, says the Premier, to justify abandoning the sale of state assets. "This is great news for the Budget down the track," she said. "If everything goes to plan for the project, we will start to see significant mine royalties in 2014. "That's four years away. I'm not going to let the Queensland economy and Budget drift and lag in the meantime."

The deal cements the future of Alpha and the Galilee Basin as an economic powerhouse for the state into the future. With other mines also proposed, the region has the potential to produce 100 million tonnes of coal a year. In the long term, Mr Palmer said it could deliver more than the Bowen Basin, which fuelled much of Queensland's success over the past decade.

SOURCE




Time to scrap Rudd climate plan - academics

A COALITION of academics who doubt the science on the causes of climate change has called on the Rudd Government to dump plans for an emissions trading scheme and consider alternatives.

Their call comes as a Nielsen poll, published in Fairfax newspapers today, shows Australians prefer the federal coalition's climate action policy. Of those polled, 45 per cent favoured the Opposition's direct action emissions fund over the 39 per cent who backed Labor's carbon pollution reduction scheme.

The Australian Climate Science Coalition believes the Government is losing the political high ground on global warming. "The debacle in Copenhagen demonstrated the futility of Australia adopting a go-it-alone strategy,'' executive director Max Rheese said in a statement. Public faith in the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had been shaken following revelations about some of its information-gathering processes, he said.

SOURCE




The self-selected immigrants are flocking in to Australia

Just utter the magic word "asylum" and the door is open. Comments below by Scott Morrison, Australia's Federal opposition spokesman on immigration and citizenship

Christmas Island is overrun with asylum seekers to the point where the detention centre has become a visa factory for people smugglers. Ten days ago I stood on the shore at Flying Fish Cove on Christmas Island watching 30 Afghan asylum seekers transfer from HMAS Larrakia into the custody of immigration officials. Their boat was one of two that had been "intercepted" within 12 hours of each other the previous weekend. It's usually not too hard to find these boats, because they are usually looking for us. Getting intercepted is the point. Christmas Island is no longer a deterrent, it's the destination. The arrival of another boat is not a strange sight. It occurs twice a week these days. They're more predictable than Sydney ferries.

Immigration, Customs officials and police have the transfer process down to a fine art. They should, they've been getting plenty of practice. Since August 2008, 78 boats have illegally arrived in Australian waters, carrying almost 3600 people. Just this year, there have been 10 arrivals at an average rate of 100 passengers per week.

When I left the island I was told they had 1848 beds (including 200 in tents) and there was currently 1556 people in residence. While this represented a ten-fold increase in the detention population over the past year, it was clear, things were only getting worse. Since then another 320 people have been intercepted or transferred to the island, including one large vessel, carrying 181 passengers that motored straight into the harbour. Another was picked up on Thursday morning near the Ashmore Islands. During the same time, only 89 people left the island.

Despite its denials, operations at Christmas Island, under the government's failed border protection policies, are simply not sustainable. It is therefore no surprise that last week I was able to reveal in Parliament that the costs of running operations on Christmas Island had blown out by $132million this year, that's more than a 100per cent increase.

We are a generous nation and this is reflected in the way asylum seekers are being treated. In fact, if we looked after our first Australians in central Australia, where I visited last year, as well as we do those on Christmas Island, then there would be no gap to close. The key difference is that within 100 or so days, the vast majority of those on Christmas Island will be living on the Australian mainland with a permanent visa. Indigenous children have no such guarantee of ever being released from their desperate situation.

One of the more pleasing elements of the visit was to see that the many reforms introduced by the former Coalition government, such as case management, parallel processing, community detention for those at risk, separate facilities for families, women and children and a range of other improvements, are making a real difference.

In fact there is not one practical reform you can point to on Christmas Island that has been introduced as an initiative of the current government. Where they have made changes is to undermine the fundamentals of our border protection regime, by providing permanent visas to those arriving illegally, doing special deals for the Oceanic Viking passengers that traded away national security and being prepared to compromise offshore processing by taking people to the mainland before their asylum claims have been determined.

The government's changes have enhanced the product offered by people smugglers. They are now doing a roaring trade, but you can only come if you have the money. It is not uncommon, as I saw, for those arriving to have wads of cash in various currencies, in excess of $US1000 ($1140) at least. This is after paying up to $20,000 per person. Residence in Australia should not be driven by the highest bidder, where people smugglers ultimately decide who comes.

The government's changes have created a sea highway to Christmas Island that has become a visa factory for people smugglers. As long as these policies remain and the government continues in denial, people will continue to risk their lives on this journey. Also, places for those waiting five years in Indonesia and generations in camps, like those in Thailand, will be asked to wait even longer. These seem to me to be good reasons to change these policies and stop the boats.

SOURCE





7 February, 2010

Sea terrorists obstructing Japanese whalers again

For the sake of Australia's farmers, one must fervently hope that the Australian government keeps right out of this. It has taken decades to open up the Japanese market to some Australian farm products but if the Japanese consumer gets the idea that Australia is backing these hostile and dangerous publicity-seekers, that market would come to an abrupt dead end. Most countries have "country of origin" labelling laws for goods in their shops and the Japanese government would just have to step that up a bit for Japanese consumers to get all the signal they need

ANTI-WHALING activists have described how Japanese whaling ships circled their protest vessel "like sharks" before ramming it off Antarctica. Sea Shepherd founder, Captain Paul Watson, said the Japanese harpoon ship rammed the conservationists' ship the Bob Barker and tore a 90cm gash in the hull above the water line. The incident happened about 300 kilometres off Cape Darnley, in the Australian Antarctic Territory, about 3pm (AEDT) yesterday. No-one was injured in the incident.

Capt Watson said the collision was "entirely intentional" on the part of the Japanese. "Four Japanese ships circled the Bob Barker like sharks," he said. "Then one of them, the Yushin Maru 3, did a quick turn and rammed a three-foot gash in the hull. "Luckily, the waters are calm at the moment and we have a welding crew working to fix it."

The anti-whaling vessel was blocking the slipway of the Nisshin Maru, the Japanese whaling fleet's factory ship, when the collision occurred.

Japan's Fisheries Agency said however, the activist boat caused the collision by suddenly approaching the harpoon vessel to throw bottles containing butyric acid in an attempted attack on the Japanese ship. The Japanese agency accused Sea Shepherd of "committing an act of sabotage" on the Japanese expedition, noting that it is allowed under world whaling restrictions as a scientific expedition. "We will not tolerate the dangerous activity that threatens Japanese whaling ships and endangers the lives of their crew members," it said in a statement late yesterday.

Capt Watson called on the Australian government take action on illegal whaling. "The Japanese are violating Australian laws on whaling and nothing is being done to stop them," he said.

This is the second major clash between Japanese whalers and anti-whaling activists this year, after the Ady Gil sank following a collision with a Japanese whaling ship in the Southern Ocean on January 6.

SOURCE




West Australian police powers going the way of Nazi Germany

The W.A. wallopers already have a very poor reputation in their community and this is going to make it worse. NOTE: I have given up on posting here stories about the Queensland police. I now post such stories solely on my Qld. police blog -- and that is a very active blog -- with three separate stories just today. -- JR



TWO retired senior police officers have likened a proposal to give police unprecedented stop and search powers to Nazi Germany. Retired police superintendents Dave Parkinson and John Watson have spoken out against the proposal, which has been at the centre of controversy this week. They said the laws were draconian, similar to what would have been used in Nazi Germany. "This is becoming a police state," Mr Watson said. "It is wrong."

The pair claimed that removing the requirement of "reasonable suspicion" for a search to be conducted would affect innocent people, not the thugs it set out to target.

Their comments came after police representatives told a parliamentary committee this week that police did not request the extra powers and failed to guarantee they would reduce crime. But Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan has rejected the claims, saying he personally discussed the proposal with the former Labor government. Police Minister Rob Johnson has also stood by the proposal, saying it is needed to combat growing anti-social behaviour in night spots.

SOURCE Extended commentary here




Australia's immigration-fueled population growth too fast to be affordable

AUSTRALIANS must prepare for a fundamental shift in the way we live because the country cannot afford to cope with 36 million people. Economic modelling produced for the Herald by PricewaterhouseCoopers shows the task of building the new roads, houses, schools, supermarkets and recreation facilities needed by 2050 will be so great that the nation's current pool of savings will struggle to cover it, even with the help of foreign capital.

As a consequence Australians will have to make major lifestyle changes. These range from dramatic increases in housing density and an end to our reliance on the car, to the creation of self-sustaining urban communities capable of generating their own energy to avoid the need for new power stations.

Planning experts say we must also consider whether population increases will be accommodated in larger regional centres rather than allowing cities such as Sydney to grow. "The bottom line is 'prepare for change'," the PWC economics and policy team leader, Jeremy Thorpe, said. "The task of providing this infrastructure is a very significant one and at the moment we don't have the savings to cover it. Governments have to make a decision about what trade-offs they want to make to maintain a standard of living." Using figures from the government's intergenerational report, Mr Thorpe and his colleagues have calculated Australia will need 6.9 million more homes to cope with a population of 36 million by 2050. This represents 82 per cent of our existing housing stock.

Should Australians continue to rely on the car, the country will need 173,348 kilometres of new roads - a 51 per cent rise equivalent to the entire road network of Thailand. We would need 3254 new schools, 1370 new supermarkets and 1370 cinema screens.

In dollar terms, the amount spent by both government and the private sector on infrastructure would need to increase by approximately $2.5 billion every year until 2050.

The PWC economists say that while the government talks about increasing productivity, it makes no mention of the crucial role the national pool of savings plays in funding infrastructure. "The banks rely quite heavily on the savings of individual people to provide capital for investment in infrastructure. Because as a nation our savings are currently quite low, there is a real risk that there will be a significant shortage of credit."

As a result, both the private sector and government have come to rely heavily on foreign capital. But the global credit crunch has dramatically lifted the costs of overseas borrowing, requiring government and companies to take on extra debt.

The ageing population exacerbates this situation as older people contribute less to the savings pool, and tend to draw more from government coffers in the form of social security and healthcare.

But a spokesman for the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, dismissed the analysis. "Australia's reputation as one of the most attractive investment destinations in the world allows it to access large savings pools of foreign investors … to fund high levels of investment in our own economy," he said. "We are able to be a net importer of capital because foreign investors are confident we use their capital so well."

SOURCE




ANOTHER BIG GREENIE ROUNDUP

Four current articles below:

Reality dawns: The Greenest of the Greenies suddenly want factories -- but nice ones, of course

A factory owner would need to have a lot of heart to risk locating himself among such intolerant loonies

It's the Queensland town renowned for a postcard setting, caring community and laidback lifestyle ... but has Maleny become too green for its own good? As the children of a generation of tree-changers begin their working lives, Maleny is discovering that being green is no protection against that scourge of rural communities: youth unemployment. While other towns can rely on mining or agriculture to provide job opportunities, Maleny's young people are increasingly forced to desert the Sunshine Coast hinterland to find work, leaving behind an ageing population.

Community concern has become so acute that even local greenies are calling for drastic action and putting out the welcome mat for new industry. In the town that famously opposed Woolworths, business leaders, families and greenies are now united in their calls for a light industrial precinct to boost employment. Such a precinct could attract anything from brick making to glass fabrication but would have to meet local environmental guidelines. However, under existing council plans, there is no land set aside for industrial growth in Maleny.

Young job seekers currently have to compete for the few jobs at the town's biggest employers, Supa IGA and Woolworths, which both have workforces of about 100.

Latest census figures show Maleny has a median age of 42, compared to 36 for the whole of Queensland.

Hinterland Employment Service owner Jenny Jones said families who moved to Maleny in search of an idyllic lifestyle were often disappointed. "It's a great place to live and bring up children but when the kids leave school, there's just not a lot up here," she said.

Maleny Commerce president Stephen Dittmann said green activists had traditionally held sway in the town but there was now recognition that some development was necessary. "We need measured growth, we can't stand still," Mr Dittmann said.

Paul Gilmour-Walsh, president of local environmental group Green Hills, said even so-called greenies could see the need to grow the town. "There's definitely a need for an area, to put aside land for something like that up here," Mr Gilmour-Walsh said. "We need a balanced community so kids leaving school have somewhere to work; it's as simple as that."

David Schaumberg, 19, loves Maleny, his home since the family left Brisbane for a better lifestyle 16 years ago, but he cannot find a steady job. David recently worked for four months as a jackaroo in Kingaroy to earn some cash but is back in Maleny looking for a job. His friends are in the same situation, with many leaving town. "I actually think an industry precinct would be good for variety . . . as long as they do it the right way and not impact on the environment," he said.

Mother of five Maria Dodd said her eldest son Andrew, 19, held little hope of attaining his goal of a local electrical apprenticeship. The family moved from Brisbane about 10 years ago. "He keeps getting bit jobs. He's a hard worker but there's not much around," she said.

SOURCE

Costs of the greenhouse gas scheme remain a mystery to the party behind it

The Rudd government has failed its first GST-style test over the details of its emissions trading scheme and the compensation being offered to Australians for rising prices. Lulled into a sense of false security through Coalition support for an ETS last year and a largely sympathetic media, Kevin Rudd and his ministers have found themselves ill-equipped and under-prepared to answer basic questions people want answered, whether they are climate change believers or sceptics. After three years of Labor being formally committed to an ETS, ministers can't answer simple questions. The Prime Minister himself has conceded the government has failed to address the "complexity" of the ETS.

In parliamentary question time and in interviews, ministers, including Rudd, have blathered and blustered, dissembled and distracted when asked simple questions. Tony Abbott, once an adviser to John Hewson in his failed campaign to introduce a GST, knows how to run an aggressive retail political campaign on rising food and energy prices and to exploit complexity in policy.

As the treasurer who introduced a GST, Peter Costello rehearsed offsets and compensation for almost three years. He declared later it "scarred my life". But that drab work equipped Costello to answer the thousands of questions he received about the price of Coca-Cola and even the Hockey Bear pyjamas from Korea that Labor's Simon Crean produced in parliament one day, without falter.

This week in parliament, Rudd was unable to answer questions about what compensation a single person earning $45,000 a year would get or what a double-income couple on $65,000 each -- a NSW policeman and teacher -- would get.

Small Business Minister Craig Emerson blustered about the "most stupid question" he had heard when a dairy farmer's concerns were raised about electricity price rises from the introduction of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme being added to price rises everyone was already feeling now.

Aged Care Minister Justine Elliott could not address a concern that had been raised for months about pensioners in nursing homes facing increased living costs because of higher energy bills and not getting compensation. Some opposition frontbenchers actually won a bet that Elliott would read her set- piece answer to everything that didn't mention the ETS.

Yesterday, Assistant Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said "low- and middle-income earners are fully compensated" for prices rises passed on by power stations. In fact, half of all households will be "fully compensated".

When a government has not laid the groundwork for a major policy, when it can't explain it and makes mistakes about the costs to families it's on the back foot and in the wrong argument.

SOURCE

More Greenie-inflicted costs on the whole Australian community

ALL Australian homes will soon have to undergo a mandatory energy-efficiency assessment costing up to $1500 per property. The assessment has to be done before any property can be sold or rented under new laws to tackle carbon emissions.

The mandatory assessment - being drafted into law by the federal and state governments - will rate homes by an energy efficiency star system, similar to the ratings given to fridges and washing machines. It will apply to all commercial properties from later this year and to all residential properties from May 2011, Adelaide Now reports.

A spokesman for State Energy Minister Pat Conlon said the ratings would inform prospective owners or tenants of a building's energy use, so they could factor it in to their buying or rental decision. The spokesman said details of the "Mandatory Disclosure" scheme - including who would carry out the assessments and how much they would cost - were yet to be decided.

Energy efficiency expert Arthur Grammatopoulos, of Helica Architecture, said rating properties could cost up to $1500 per house. "I think this is a positive move for the industry but the question has to be asked, will there be enough experts to cope with demand when the law is introduced?" he said. A similar scheme with a six-star rating has been operating in the Australian Capital Territory's property market for several years.

Queensland's State Government introduced a mandatory Sustainability Declaration form on January 1, requiring homeowners to declare their property's green credentials to prospective buyers or risk a $2000 fine.

Mandatory disclosure has been criticised by property experts as an unwarranted expense that will not influence purchasing decisions or cut household pollution. The Real Estate Institute of SA said governments were playing environmentally "popular politics" by introducing a law that they say will simply add to the cost of selling and renting a home. "I think they are patronising people who are making the biggest purchase decision of their life by thinking a rating system will influence that decision," REISA chief executive Greg Troughton said. "It's already hard enough to buy and sell a home and this is just another financial impost that also has the potential to delay the sale of a property."

While Mr Troughton said vendors would bear the cost of having their home rated by a licensed expert, independent SA MLC and former Valuer-General John Darley said landlords would look to pass the cost on to tenants. "This will be an extra cost to working families who have to rent because they can't afford a mortgage," he said. "And we need this like a hole in the head unless the governments can convince us there is a definite benefit, like a reduction in household pollution."

The Council of Australian Government's National Strategy on Energy Efficiency says Mandatory Disclosure will "help households and businesses prepare for the introduction of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme".

SOURCE

A professor of baseless insults

(Professor Andrew Pitman is Co-Director, Climate Change Research Centre (CCRC) at the University of NSW)

Last week a paid public servant spoke untruths, but instead of being exposed by the media, he was aided by our taxpayer-funded public broadcast network. Andy Pitman spoke about the socio-economic position of a group he avoids, and let down UNSW, abused the title “Professor”, and misled the public.

The journalists allowed the baseless smears to be broadcast without question, not just once, but twice. Professor Andy Pitman on ABC Radio: Sarah Clark interviews Andy Pitman on glaciers. Robin Williams thought it was so “useful” he rebroadcast the same factually incorrect, irrelevant material on his “science” show. Oops. It’s hard to cram more anti-truths into one declaration:

“My personal view is that climate scientists are losing the fight with climate sceptics. That the sceptics are so well funded, so well organized, have nothing else to do, they kind of don’t have day jobs, they can put all of their efforts into misinforming and miscommunicating climate science to the public, whereas the climate scientists have day jobs and this isn’t one of them. All of the efforts you do in an IPCC report is done out of hours, voluntarily, for no funding and no pay, whereas the sceptics are being funded to put out full scale misinformation campaigns…”

Let’s correct the six seven-delusion paragraph

1. Skeptics are well funded?

Let’s put a perspective on just how spectacularly wrong these claims on ABC radio are. ExxonMobil paid all of $23 million to skeptics worldwide in total, over ten years. In the same period, the US government alone was spending around $2 billion a year on climate scientists. And if you include other climate industry players, from 1989-2009, the total funding is $79 billion dollars. Hence believers of the big-scare could dip into a pot that was at least 3,500 times as large as anything the skeptics of the same scare could draw from. (All this info comes from my Climate Money paper).

If there was any equivalent funding for skeptics, Greenpeace would have found that paper trail and the scare-friendly press would have told you all about it. Big-Oil could hardly hide $79 billion now could they?

Andy Pitman earns far more from his beliefs than this skeptical advocate and infinitely more than most skeptics (who earn nothing) while he postulates on things he has done no research on and misleads the public. (Take me to court Andy. I don’t mind discovery of documents, but I don’t pander to bullies’ requests in public.) Most skeptical scientists are those no longer in the pay of government or other alarmist organizations, free to speak up without losing their jobs. They are mainly retired.

In reality it can cost money to be an active skeptic. To print out handouts, to organize speeches at local community halls, to do mail outs to our representatives, or to pay for transcripts of interviews that misrepresent the science. It says a lot that there are so many people willing to put themselves out, money and time-wise, in order to save us from the scare with no evidence.

Pitman has received over $6 million in grants – obviously not paid to him personally, but paid into accounts he controls–for research he directs. Presumably he also earns at least the base salary of a UNSW Professor, I gather, $190,000 a year. For a science PhD that’s not bad, especially if you throw in multiple overseas trips with all expenses paid, and the odd-rock-star-radio interview with no hard questions. It’s a wicket worth defending.

2. Skeptics are “well” organized?

Organized how exactly? With no PR department, no union, no association, no office, no UN agency, usually no budget, and … though you can see how we fund national multi-million dollar televised Ad campaigns like “Think Climate, Think Fraud”, oh that’s right … that was Kevin Rudd: “Think Climate, Think Change” (give us your money). That cost Australian taxpayers $13.9 million dollars.

Pitman cries poor while his scare campaign team includes the major western governments, the UN, the banks, big oil (they always funded alarmism more, and now don’t fund skeptics), the green movement, the alternative energy suppliers, the reinsurance industry, and many businesses. About all the skeptics have is donors on blogs and a few dedicated organizations of like minded people, such as the indefatigable Heartland (which is in turn funded mostly by private donations, with no more than 5% from any single corporation). Skeptics are tiny voices against vast machines.

Pitman wouldn’t recognize a genuine grassroots movement if it mowed him down.

3. Skeptics are misleading the public?

Misleading? You mean like climate scientists who are using tricks to “hide the decline”, removing data from 75% of worldwide temperature stations, ignoring the best ocean temperature network data, colluding to keep contrary papers out of publication, avoiding FOI requests, abusing statistics to make scary hockey sticks no matter what data you feed them, and ignoring the masses of data and analysis (much of it peer-reviewed) that undermines the carbon dioxide theory of global warming? Or, how about putting most “official” thermometers next to airport-tarmac or air conditioner outlets, or pretending that one tree in far north Russia can measure global temperatures?

Strangely, it’s not skeptics who howl that “only peer review counts” while at the same time pretending that speculative information from the WWF, Greenpeace and a student’s paper of mountaineering anecdotes were peer-reviewed research by hundreds of experts.

4. “Explaining science is not my job”.

According to the UNSW Guidelines, it is. It’s what Professors are paid to do: to foster leadership and excellence in their academic area within the university and the community. As it happens, over the last 18 months, I’ve asked Pitman in writing to publicly name any misleading points from the Skeptics Handbook. He has refused.

5. I, Andy Pitman, volunteer to help the IPCC

As Andrew Bolt so aptly pointed out, Andy Pitman’s grants list includes around $60,000 in funding “for costs incurred as lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”. That’s not most people’s idea of volunteer work.

6. Skeptics don’t have day jobs

Pitman, contradicting himself suddenly, claims many “fully funded” climate skeptics don’t have day jobs, and for once he’s half-right, but scores an own goal by using the truth. Most active skeptics don’t have day jobs, precisely because there aren’t any paid climate skeptic positions to have. Many skeptics are retired, because no one else has time to audit the IPCC “for fun”.

As far as I know (correct me if I’m wrong), total ARC grants specifically available for research aiming to disprove the theory of AGW in 2010 are exactly $0.00, as has been the case since time began. (That’s another scandal, for another day.)

Who should be protecting Australia from paying reparations based on bogus science? When the bogus science is climate science, Andy Pitman ought be high on that list. Instead, he helps to sell out the nation that supports him to a corrupt unaudited foreign committee whose recommendations will mainly end up profiting large financial houses.

7. An ad hominem attack is “scientific”?

Notice how we’re not talking about climate science? Why, on a planet that goes around the sun, is a professor of science launching ad hominem attacks? A science undergraduate should grovel with embarrassment for making this mistake. High school debaters have stronger reasoning skills. Yet, the science reporters on the ABC don’t even blink.

So what if I was paid, oh, let’s say, $190,000 a year, by… an oil sheik (I’m not). But if I was, how would that change the satellite recordings that I write about from Universities on the other side of the world from me? What kind of conspiracy theory do you have to hold in your head to nullify the evidence with any information about funding? I’m a commentator forgoodnesssake, I don’t even collect, hold or publish results from the sediments, corals, ice cores, pollen, diatoms, boreholes, or tree rings that I talk about.

Aren’t we all grown up enough now to attack the ball and not the man? (Which goes for Penny Sackett too, our Chief Scientist, who said that exact thing tonight on The 7.30 Report. Where was Sackett last week? Did she miss the chance to admonish Pitman for attacking skeptical scientists?)

Look Mum. No logical errors here: Lest anyone think I’m committing the same logical error as Pitman by pointing at his vested interests, let’s put a razor fine point on it. He claims we are winning the debate because we have so much funding. We claim he’s losing because he has no evidence. At no point have I ever said his science is wrong because he is paid. So why post about his funding?

One: To show that he’s not only illogical, but spectacularly wrong as well. It’s a baseless smear campaign.

Two: The $6 million in research grants vs the $0 in skeptical grants tells us nothing about the atmospheric climate, but shows that there is a Gravy Train, and he is on it. And he’s the one who suggested that people’s opinions were affected by funding. Go soak in that irony.

Three: If people are going to try to bully and smear us, it helps to make it painful for them, by pouring the truth right back at them.

Since he effectively said “follow the money”, I just said, “ok”. And did I mention that the carbon market was worth $130 billion last year?

Speaking of money, who is paid to audit the IPCC? Officially, no one is. No agency, no institution, no government department. Information from that UN conglomerate committee controls global markets, and yet answers to no elected government, no ASIC, no SEC, no ACCC. Nothing. There ought to be teams of skeptical scientists paid to check on the alarmists, but no one at all is checking, except a few unpaid scientists and bloggers.

The bottom line: Pitman peddles misinformation about science and misinformation about skeptics. He could start by apologizing to the Australian people who pay his salary. Then he could say thanks to the Australian scientists working pro bono to do part of his job for him.

What a sad week for Australian science, a dismal day for Australian universities, and a low point for the ABC. It’s not so hot for taxpayers either, we’re funding someone who throws baseless speculation and insults back at the same Australian citizens he’s supposed to serve.

SOURCE (See the original for links)





6 February, 2010

Abused black kids taken away by authorities and then sent to other abusive black homes

Because of the Leftist "stolen generation" myth they cannot be sent to white homes -- which is of course blatantly racist. The fact that the lives, health and welfare of black kids are being stolen right now matters not at all to the race-obsessed and hate-filled Left

ABORIGINAL children in care are routinely being placed with relatives in remote communities where they are exposed to sexual abuse and alcohol-fuelled violence, a wide-ranging report on child protection - kept hidden by the Northern Territory government - has revealed.

The Bath report - compiled after an audit of scores of cases of children deemed at high risk who were in the care of the state - exposes the near-total breakdown of child protection systems in the Territory, where background checks on carers are rarely carried out, ministers regularly fail to review the progress of cases, and social services for troubled families are in critically short supply.

Howard Bath, who was appointed Children's Commissioner in the Territory after compiling the extensive report, documents case after case where children were failed by the system that was supposed to protect them. The report - suppressed for more than two years by the NT government - found Aboriginal children were at particular risk, often consigned to carers who lived in violent or abusive homes in remote communities where standard case reviews rarely happened.

Barely any Aboriginal carers underwent a registration process, and the government's bureaucrats warned it that a "sense of complacency" governed the assessment, review and management of cases of children placed in the care of a relative.

Dr Bath found the Aboriginal child placement principle - which states that Aboriginal children should be placed with a relative or other Aboriginal carers if possible - sometimes took precedence over child safety, and that the standards applied to foster carers were followed with much greater rigour than with relative carers. "'The present data suggests, as do some of the decisions in the case studies, that in some cases this principle appears to be given primacy over basic child protection considerations," he says. "It was never the intent of the principle that children should be placed in unsafe situations."

The NT Government, which is under enormous pressure over its handling of child protection after recent damning coronial findings, has kept the full extent of the crisis racking the department of Families and Community Services hidden from the public for more than two years despite mounting evidence of a system on the brink.

Two years after his extensive report was suppressed, Dr Bath warned that child protection had "slipped off the radar" in the NT, as the devastating findings of the Little Children are Sacred report faded from public consciousness. In late 2007, the Labor Government released the Bath report's executive summary and recommendations, but refused to release the damning detail contained in the close to 200 pages of the full report.

The Government is so sensitive about the contents of Dr Bath's report that it has even refused to release it to NT Ombudsman Carolyn Richards, who is investigating 35 complaints against child protection services. The Weekend Australian understands Ms Richards will be forced to issue a summons on Dr Bath to obtain the report.

SOURCE




Climate alarmists out in the cold

As the wheels keep falling off the climate alarmist bandwagon, it's suddenly become fashionable to be a sceptic. Out of the woodwork have crawled all sorts of fair-weather friends. But where were they when the going was tough, when we were being hammered as Holocaust deniers, planet wreckers, in the pay of the "Big Polluters", bad parents, pariahs, equivalent to murderers? It was pure McCarthyism.

But now, even the most aggressive alarmists have gone quiet or softened their rhetoric and people who sat on the fence have morphed into wise owls. They still think it's acceptable to mock touring British sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton's protruding eyes, a distressing symptom of his thyroid disease, in an effort to marginalise him as a lunatic, rather than address his criticisms. But, when even the British left-leaning, warmist-friendly Guardian newspaper has begun to investigate the fraud involved in "sexing up" climate change science, it's clear the collapse of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's credibility and the holes in the case for catastrophic man-made climate change can no longer be ignored.

We are witnessing an outbreak of neo-open-mindedness and face-saving from people who brooked no nuance. The formerly alarmist British chief scientific adviser, John Beddington, has said: "I don't think it's healthy to dismiss proper scepticism." Hallelujah.

Australia's Chief Scientist, Professor Penny Sackett, who just three months ago was telling us that we had only five years to stop catastrophic global warming, is similarly less gung-ho these days. On ABC television's 7.30 Report this week she expressed concern about "a confusion" between the science and the politics of climate change. "I think that we're seeing more and more a confusion between a political debate, a political debate that needs to happen, it's important to happen, and the discussion of the science. I feel that these two things are being confused and it worries me, actually."

Funny, proponents of the theory of catastrophic man-made climate change never expressed concern about the "confusion", aka politicisation of science, when it was running their way.

Blows to the climate alarm case keep coming, from fraudulent claims about melting glaciers, increased hurricanes and drought, dying Amazon rainforest, disappearing polar bears and the flooding of half of Holland.

The latest, most serious, blow was the revelation this week that an influential paper discounting the so-called urban heat island effect was based on vanished and perhaps fraudulent data from remote Chinese weather stations. The 1990 paper was co-authored by the besieged director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, Phil Jones and a US colleague, who are now accused of a "cover-up".

Jones, of course, and other leading scientists, have been exposed by their leaked "Climategate" emails, as political partisans who tried to suppress data, subvert freedom of information laws, and blackball journals and scientists who didn't toe the alarmist line.

Meanwhile, revelations pile up about shoddy references used to sex up the IPCC's Nobel Prize-winning Fourth Assessment Report of 2007. Among them is the bogus claim that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, based on a speculative interview in a popular science magazine. The IPCC lead author of the chapter that contained the reference, Murari Lal, told Britain's Mail on Sunday last week that he knew the glacier claim was wrong but included it to put political pressure on world leaders to cut emissions. "We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policymakers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action."

Because it was in a good cause it was somehow OK for the United Nations' lead climate change body to slant science, cherry-pick data, and base claims on such flimsy references as Greenpeace and WWF propaganda, a student's master's thesis and anecdotes in Climber magazine.

This sort of "noble cause" corruption appears to have permeated climate change science, and set back the legitimate cause of fighting pollution. The dishonesty will have only ensured a generation of people will no longer trust environmental warnings.

One of the most significant recent revelations is how influential and embedded were environmental activists such as WWF and Greenpeace. Not only were their publications cited in the 2007 report in at last 24 instances as if they were proper peer-reviewed science, but their staffers were in familiar communication with East Anglia climate researchers, and were regarded apparently as "honest brokers" rather than political lobbyists. In one email, Alan Markham from WWF writes to climate scientists urging a paper on climate change in Australia be "beefed up".

WWF "would like to see the section on a variability and extreme events beefed up, if possible," Markham wrote in 1999. "I guess the bottom line is that if they are going to go with a big public splash on this they need something that will get good support from CSIRO scientists."

In another email to East Anglia scientists, WWF's Stephan Singer offers "a few thousand euros" to write a paper about the economic cost of Europe's 2003 heatwave.

They got away with it for a very long time. Today, the bankruptcy of the climate alarm cause is demonstrated by the fact its highest profile champion is Osama bin Laden. "Boycott [America] to save yourselves … and your children from climate change", he said in an audiotape released last week.

Rising in the opinion polls, the opposition leader, Tony Abbott, has found himself on the right side of history. He was even able this week to utter the former heresy that "carbon dioxide is an essential trace gas" and "these so-called nasty big polluters are the people who keep the lights on". But in the game of musical chairs that politics often is Kevin Rudd has found himself with no place to sit.

SOURCE




Shortage of public hospital operating theatres means tired surgeons operating late at night

HOSPITALS must stop the dangerous and inefficient practice of squeezing in emergency surgery in the middle of the night due to a lack of theatre space, surgeons say. Describing the situation as a "developing crisis in emergency surgery", the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons has called for hospitals to immediately restructure resources so that emergency surgery can be properly planned. "The current practice of performing cases unnecessarily in the evenings or late at night (simply because theatres become available) must cease," it said.

Patrick Cregan, the chairman of the NSW Surgical Services Taskforce, which recently developed a similar policy for the health department, agreed. Dr Cregan, who is also a surgeon at Nepean Hospital, said this week it was safer for patients if they were operated on in daylight hours rather than at night by fatigued surgeons, who were often junior. There was enough theatre space in NSW hospitals, he said, and it would not necessarily mean delaying elective or semi-urgent surgery.

He said developing an extra emergency surgery operating list, to manage conditions such as fracture repairs or appendix removals, would cost a hospital up to $500,000. "Manage the money, manage the staff, manage the resources so that patients get a safer, more effective outcome," Dr Cregan said. "The patient outcomes is significantly better. It's not money going down the toilet. At some stages we are running two or three theatres in the middle of the night at Nepean. It's crazy stuff."

Dr Cregan said emergency surgery was "the most predictable form of surgery around", and could be easily planned. "There's surges in demand every now and then but overall you know there's going to be 20 fractures a week," he said.

Several hospitals in Sydney, including Prince of Wales and Westmead, were developing acute surgery units but most of NSW has been slow to act.

The college said that unnecessarily operating overnight carried both a human cost - in terms of increased patient errors and fatigued clinicians - and a financial cost to the community from overtime payments of staff. "Regularly health workers face a choice between delaying an emergency surgical patient's treatment, thereby prolonging suffering (a potential for harm), and disrupting elective surgery - which unfairly prolongs the waiting time of a patient who may already have waited weeks."

This meant staff worked through the night on "less time critical emergencies" to clear the backlog of emergencies that could be days overdue.

SOURCE




Internet filtering demand defeated

But the government scheme is still threatening

AUSTRALIAN telcos and download enthusiasts came out on top yesterday after the Federal Court in NSW rejected a landmark legal bid to make internet service providers liable for online copyright infringement. A group of 34 major entertainment companies desperately hoped to convince the court that Perth-based internet firm iiNet authorised its customers to engage in acts of illegal file-sharing on peer-to-peer networks.

However, before a packed courtroom early yesterday, Federal Court judge Dennis Cowdroy dismissed the group's application. In summarising a ruling that ran for more than 200 pages, Justice Cowdroy said the critical issue in the proceeding was whether iiNet authorised copy infringement of certain iiNet users". "While I find that iiNet had knowledge of infringements occurring and did not act to stop them, such findings do not necessitate a finding of authorisation. I find that iiNet did not authorise the infringements of copyright of the iiNet users."

Justice Cowdroy ordered the application by the Australian Federation Against Copyright be dismissed and awarded costs to iiNet. Neil Gane, executive director of AFACT, said it would review the court's decision before deciding whether to launch an appeal. For now, internet providers can continue to let their customers use peer-to-peer networks to share illegal movie and music files without fear of sanction. The file-sharing system accounts for half of all Australian internet traffic and lets individuals share files directly with each other in pieces.

Justice Cowdroy acknowledged that copyright infringement was occurring on a mass scale but said that he could not be compelled to make a finding of authorisation "merely because it is felt that `something must be done' to stop infringements".

The chief and founder of iiNet, Michael Malone, was jubilant about the decision. "We've always said that we don't condone copyright (infringement) in any way," he said. "Copyright violations don't benefit iiNet at all so I guess we'd much rather be working with the studios to find some way to make their content legitimately available to customers."

Yesterday, both Telstra and Optus released statements welcoming the Federal Court's decision. "We welcome the legal clarity that today's judgment provides regarding the role of ISPs," Telstra spokesman Craig Middleton said.

Anita Cade, senior associate for law firm Blake Dawson's intellectual property division, said it could take two years to completely resolve the matter if it were to be pushed to the High Court.

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The products of an "everyone wins" education are losers in the job market

EMPLOYERS are refusing to hire Generation Y workers because they lack a work ethic and spend too much time talking to friends in work hours. "Employers come to us about Gen Y, saying they're looking for a staff member but they don't want anyone in that 20s age bracket because they find they don't understand common courtesy in the workplace," Kristy-Lee Johnston, director of Footprint Recruitment told The Courier-Mail.

And the complaints don't only come from managers and bosses. Social researcher Mark McCrindle said: "They also come from other people in the team who are of another generation."

Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland policy general manager Nick Behrens said the global financial crisis should act as a wake-up call. "The chamber is hoping Gen Y will learn from this, that they can no longer take for granted the good times and will no longer get away with the luxuries they have been given."

SOURCE




Many Victoria police are crooks in checkered caps

VICTORIA police intelligence-gathering systems have been exposed as outdated and slack after police files were found in the possession of criminals.

A scathing report from the Office of Police Integrity said police operatives used "flawed" practices, putting top-secret information on some of the country's highest-profile criminals, including terrorists and members of Melbourne's underworld, at risk.

The revelations put further pressure on the already embattled Police Minister Bob Cameron, with the Opposition branding him "incompetent and out of touch", and calling for his resignation in Parliament.

Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu said it was another example of the collapse of law and order management under the State Government.

The OPI launched an investigation into the surveillance unit in late 2008 after a 68-page document containing information about a target was found in the home of a murder suspect. More than a year later, Victoria Police on Thursday admitted that it still did not know who leaked the documents.

This is the fourth damaging report into cultural and management problems within the force in the past 12 months. Despite admitting there is a corrupt police officer still working within the force, Mr Cameron continues to insist that all is well.

The OPI report, tabled in Parliament, found although physical security measures in the surveillance unit had improved since the breach, proper procedures were still not being followed due to poor management. "The fact that other sensitive law enforcement data was not accidentally or deliberately released appears to have been a matter of good luck rather than good management," the report warned.

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5 February, 2010

Darwin attack motivated by stingy insurance payout

Insurance companies can be very arbitrary and arrogant so I am surprised that this is the first such attack. The TIO obviously left this guy in such a bad position that he obviously felt he had nothing left to lose. It appears that they refused to compensate him for loss of earnings after he was injured on the job, leaving him destitute. One hopes that in future all insurance companies will be wary of leaving insured people in that position -- JR

AN attack at a Darwin shopping centre which left 15 people injured has been compared to a smaller scale domestic version of the first Bali bombings. A man angry with his workers' compensation payout loaded a shopping trolley with jerry cans of fuel and set it alight after what many initially feared was a terrorist attack.

The injured were taken to the Royal Darwin Hospital after the man entered the Territory Insurance Office (TIO) claim branch about 11am - pushing a shopping trolley loaded with fuel and fireworks which were already lit. It hit a reception desk and started to burn out of control. Northern Territory Police Commander Colleen Gwynne said the attack was a rapid burning fire - not an explosion.

The bomber reportedly goes by the name "Bird" and is a former security guard who worked at a Darwin pub until being injured on the job in October 2007. He allegedly blamed TIO for loss of earnings that forced him to leave his three-bedroom home in Humpty Doo and move into a shipping container.

The accused ran from the scene, leaving those inside to take the brunt of the flames and smoke. He immediately handed himself into police.

More HERE




Sadly for the Left, the attacks on Indians are NOT the work of "racist" white Australians

I have been saying this for years now but Andrew Bolt's comments below might get more attention -- JR

IT'S because so many people want to believe Australians are racist that Jaspreet Singh became the latest fake example of our evil. Singh, a 29-year-old Indian "student", turned up last month burned to a crisp, with a tale of having been attacked in Essendon by four racists with a can of petrol. The story smelled from the start, and not just of premium unleaded. Police even warned it sounded suss, starting with this notion that gangs roam Essendon late at night with cans of petrol, looking for Indians to burn.

But what followed is a golden example of a phenomenon that's made this country seem like a madhouse lately. If people really want to believe something they will, and facts barely matter. Indeed, facts are then evil.

That's why so many millions believe in the "stolen generations", for instance, especially when no one can name even 10 children stolen just for being Aboriginal. That's why millions more are sure man is heating the world dangerously, even when the planet has cooled for more than eight years.

And that's why so many of our preacher-teacher class, from academics to ABC broadcasters, have so eagerly insisted that every Australian (except themselves, funnily) is a racist redneck - a smugly self-regarding lie they're now shocked to see is believed of them, too, by an Indian media only too happy to pander to its own chip-on-the-shoulder xenophobes.

It's the wanting to believe that counts. So here's what we read last month about the bizarre barbecueing of Jaspreet Singh from Indian journalists and Australian cause-pushers.

Sindh Today, January 9: "Days after India asked Australia to take urgent action against those behind the murder of an Indian student a week ago, a 29-year-old Indian was set ablaze Saturday by four unidentified attackers in Melbourne, putting bilateral ties under strain."

The New Indian Express, January 11: "Victoria Police say ... there is no reason at this stage to consider this (attack) racially motivated. If the statement had been calculated to enrage, it could hardly have been more provocatively phrased. Perhaps, in Australia, opportunist crimes also involve setting the victim ablaze. In any other country, this would prima facie be considered a hate crime, in this case racist."

The Communist Party of India, January 12: "In the past two weeks, racist attacks on Indians in Australia have claimed two lives (Ranjodh Singh and Nitin Garg) while 29-year-old Jaspreet Singh is now recovering from burns ... "

The Sydney Morning Herald, January 15: "Aboriginal leader Tom Calma believes the recent attacks on Indian students in Australia could be racially motivated."

AND more. Even former Defence Force chief General Peter Cosgrove, too ready to bend with the fashionable wind, just days later gave an Australia Day speech claiming attacks on Indians had "erupted over the last several weeks to become a major problem", and "it is easy to conclude that they are racially targeted".

Just as well he didn't mention the now singed Jaspreet by name, because here's what we read this week of our latest martyr to Australian racism: "Singh, 29, of Grice Crescent, Essendon, in the city's north, faced an out-of-sessions hearing early this morning ... charged with making a false report to police and criminal damage with a view to gaining a financial advantage."

Of course, Singh could be completely innocent. Let the court decide whether he really just blew himself up while trying to torch his car - but do let the Indian Government now apologise for jumping to its own inflammatory conclusion about our wickedness.

But this is not the first time an example of Australian racism has gone up in smoke like Singh's shirt. Let me quote from a statement sent to Indian newspapers just last week by Australia's man in New Delhi: "The Australian High Commissioner, Mr Peter Varghese, today welcomed advice that the NSW police had arrested three persons in connection with the murder of Ranjodh Singh, a 25-year-old Indian man, whose burnt body was found in the NSW town of Griffith on December, 29, 2009. Gurpreet Singh, 23, and his 20-year-old wife Harpreet Bhullar faced the court on January 29. A third man was arrested on the same day and will also be charged with Mr Singh's murder. Mr Varghese said ... the identity of those arrested (all three are Indian nationals), as well as the conclusions reached by the investigation, clearly showed that racism had not been a factor.

Mr Varghese said that this case had been widely reported in the Indian media as a racist attack and he hoped that those, which carried such reports, would now set the record straight. Yeah, dream on, Peter. Why would we expect Indian journalists to stop jumping on every attack as proof of old-fashioned white Australian racism, when our own are just as likely to do the same - or to be so scared of seeming racist that they refuse to tell us all the forgiving truth?

THAT'S been the case ever since our media first paid serious attention to attacks on Indians - in 2008, when Sukhraj Singh was almost bashed to death in a Sunshine shop. The racial identity of those thieving attackers, officer? Can't say, couldn't see. The ethnicity of the boys who bashed Singh, Mr Reporter? Didn't notice, won't write. In fact, and said by almost no one, Singh had been belted by an ethnic gang of whom the only one since publicly identified in court is Zakarie Hussein, a 21-year-old from Somalia. But, you see, our police command and journalists would rather all Australians seemed racist than risk being called racist themselves for giving the facts.

And on this circus rolled. Take the notorious bashing on the Werribee train last year of Sourabh Sharma, which led The Times of India to declare that a "tribe of extreme nationalists who champion an exclusivist, white Aussie identity seems to be increasing in Australia". Check the CCTV vision and you could see what the police and journalists would not say - that the attackers seemed to include youths who weren't "white", and at least one who looked very Indian.

Indians and Pakistanis here actually know this "white racism" bogey is a myth, of course. Macquarie University student Mukul Khanna, called back home by his worried parents, told a local paper that a lot of his Pakistani friends had been bashed and robbed, but "interestingly, the attackers are mostly not locals and are themselves people of foreign origin".

Most of the reported robberies on Indian taxi drivers in the inner west in one six-month period were likewise by African gangs - but which police chief would dare say such a thing? Gosh, no; former chief commissioner Christine Nixon not only banned the term "gang", but falsely claimed at the last federal election that the Howard government was wrong - Sudanese immigrants did not have a crime rate higher than the average. She still hasn't apologised for deceiving you. Facts! Who needs them? Indeed, who's a racist boy for even pointing them out?

The joke is, of course, that this country is actually so short of real racists that it drives our manners police mad. In 2001, for instance, Equal Opportunity Commission Victoria's then chairman moaned: "I am not aware of any conclusive evidence that suggests that discrimination is increasing."

Solution? Instead of closing up shop, saying its job was done, the EOCV pushed the Labor Government to pass draconian new laws against racial "vilification" to help create more racists for it to go catch.

Our federal race commissioners have had the same problem, and lusted for the same solution. One, Zita Antonias, admitted a decade ago that complaints of racism had fallen by more than a third, but insisted we couldn't be that nice: "The figures are incongruent with anecdotal evidence."

Tom Calma, who succeeded her and now claims that the attacks on Indians may well be racist, was just as peeved to find so little real proof of these legendary (white) Australian racists. He blamed our stupid laws for having "made it difficult to prove there had been discrimination", and demanded the Rudd Government fix this disgraceful lack of racists by changing the laws to reverse the burden of proof. And since Indian papers say we're all racist, bingo, we must be, too, unless someone can prove we're not.

SO whether Jaspreet Singh got toasted by racists or soon will be by judges hardly matters. We're racist until proven innocent -but to prove we're not we must say who's behind much of this mayhem. And to do that would be, er, racist. Caught each way.

So our police and politicians, glowing with self-righteousness, meekly argue instead that we're not racist because - drum roll, please - the rest of us are just as likely to be bashed, robbed and raped as any Indian on our streets. Oh, goody. I can't tell you what a relief that news will be to anyone catching a late-night train to Sunshine.

SOURCE




IPCC goofs again: now Holland is drowned

By Andrew Bolt

Yet another blunder in that IPCC 2007 report which Kevin Rudd uses to justify his great green tax to “stop” global warming:

A United Nations report wrongly claimed that more than half of the Netherlands is currently below sea level.

In fact, just twenty percent of the country consists of polders that are pumped dry, and which are at risk of flooding if global warming causes rising sea levels. Dutch Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer has ordered a thorough investigation into the quality of the climate reports which she uses to base her policies on.

Funny how every mistake now coming to light is of the kind that tended to make global warming scarier. You know, that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, the Amazonian rain forests were extremely vulnerable, the Antarctica would become too fragile even for dirty shoes. And funny, too, how the IPCC boss cadged so many grants, directorships and business deals as his IPCC hyped the dangers. (Just read a fuller list of IPCC controversies here.)

Nor is that the only sceptical news from the Netherlands:

Dutch researchers reporting to Minister Cramer on Wednesday said that global warming appears to be slower than had been assumed.

Surely Cramer’s demand now for a review of the climate science by her scientists is exactly what’s needed here, too. I mean, shouldn’t Climate Change Minister Penny Wong be saying exactly this sort of thing herself:

Dutch Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer says she will no longer tolerate errors by climate researchers. She expressed her anger to Dutch researchers who presented their annual report on the state of the climate on Wednesday.

Here’s Tony Abbott’s way out of the pinch of claiming to still believe in dangerous man-made warming, yet blocking Rudd’s emissions trading scheme. Surely there’s now so many scandals engulging the IPCC and its science, that it’s mad for us to spend a single dollar more until an inquiry - with sceptical scientists on board too - reviews all the science we were once falsely told was “settled”.

Demand an inquiry now.

UPDATE

India goes even further:

India has threatened to pull out of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and set up its on climate change body because it “cannot rely” on the group headed by its own Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr R K Pachauri…

In India the (IPCC’s) false claims (on the Himalayas) have heightened tensions between Dr Pachauri and the government… In Autumn, its environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, said that while glacial melting in the Himalayas was a real concern, there was evidence that some were actually advancing despite global warming…

(L)ast night Mr Ramesh effectively marginalised the IPC chairman even further. He announced that the Indian government will establish a separate National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology to monitor the effects of climate change on the world’s “third ice cap”, and an “Indian IPCC” to use “climate science” to assess the impact of global warming throughout the country.

“There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am for climate science. ...” he said.

SOURCE




Leftist health reform proving rocky in Australia too

In America, Obamacare seems to have stalled -- JR

AN OPPOSITION'S lot in life is a thankless task; there are the long hours, minimal resources and they spend most of their time hitting brick walls. But sometimes there are small victories. As the Federal Government was taking the wraps off the third Intergenerational Report – a road map to 2050 on the challenges of the ageing population – the Coalition was forcing Labor into a backdown that would help older Australians now.

The win came on cataract surgery, and unless you are waiting to get your eyes fixed and face being out-of-pocket, it might seem like a loose-change victory. But Opposition health spokesman, Queenslander Peter Dutton, was able to force Health Minister Nicola Roxon to limit the cut in rebates for cataract surgery to 12 per cent instead of the proposed 50 per cent.

Dutton points out that for the three months before Roxon and specialists striking a deal, patients who needed their cataracts rectified had to pay hundreds of dollars or go to the public hospital system. Ophthalmology has the longest waiting times of any surgical speciality.

Backdowns from this Government are rare, but the win on cataracts illustrates that Labor has chinks in its armour on health. Dutton is also adept at attacking state governments on their health policies.

Despite all the hot air on climate change in Canberra as federal politicians returned for the unofficial start of the federal election, voters remain concerned about the here and now of improved health and hospital care and getting a decent education for their kids.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Roxon argue they have put money back into the hospitals system. Rudd repeatedly argues the former Howard Government took $1 billion from health and his administration has put $5 billion back in and helped reduced elective surgery waiting lists – but voters cannot actually see new beds with plaques on them or shorter waiting times to visit a GP.

Rudd's bold election promise to fix the nation's ailing hospital system and consider a federal takeover is still in the limbo-land of consultations. He has invested a lot of political capital in the issue, and his pledge that the buck would stop with him resonated with voters. But the Government has found it is far easier to say it will build super-GP clinics than actually get the construction off the ground, and massive reforms to the hospital system means having to navigate around state interests.

Roxon is now facing defeat again on the Government's budget measure to means test the 30 per cent private health insurance rebate. If it goes down a second time in the Senate, it hands the Government another double dissolution trigger.

Rudd argues the Intergenerational Report, prepared by Treasury, showed the Opposition's blocking of the scheme would rip about $100 billion out of the Budget by 2050.

But Dutton's detective skills from his former career as a policeman are still in good working order and he pointed out the figure was not in the actual report. It was instead provided to the Government in some briefing papers. Which brings us back to cataracts.

Dutton has also made mileage out of highlighting seemingly penny-pinching decisions by Rudd and Roxon such as the initial plan, before they reconsidered it, to cap the Medicare Safety Net for people seeking IVF treatment and the postponed proposal to reduce funding for chemotherapy drugs.

The Opposition is making inroads on health but they have a long stretch ahead in the lead-up to the federal election.

SOURCE




Boat people blow Australia's immigration detention budget

A flood of "asylum seekers" has blown the federal government's immigration detention budget, the opposition says.

Opposition immigration and citizenship spokesman Scott Morrison said the government had been forced to more than double the money it allocated in the last budget for offshore immigration processing. "In the May budget the Rudd government had allocated $125 million for offshore processing,'' he said in a statement today. "However additional estimates figures reveal the government is now asking for another $132 million for this work, an increase of more than 100 per cent.''

The claim comes on top of the arrival of another boatload of asylum seekers in Australia's northern waters today and fears the detention centre at Christmas Island will be unable to cope with further arrivals.

The boat was intercepted by HMAS Armidale at 11am (AEDT) about 11 nautical miles (20km) north of the Ashmore Islands, the federal government said. Initial indications suggest 89 passengers and four crew were on board. The group will be transferred to Christmas Island where they will undergo security, identity and health checks and their reasons for travel will be established.

It is the 10th asylum seeker boat to be intercepted in Australian waters this year. The Rudd government is under pressure over its border protection regime with detention facilities on Christmas Island at breaking point. There are already almost 1,800 detainees in immigration facilities on the island which have a capacity of 1900.

Mr Morrison said the government's border protection policy had failed. "Barely a day after 89 asylum seekers were flown to the Australian mainland in a futile effort to reduce overcrowding on Christmas Island, another 89 asylum seekers plus three crew are on the way to take their place,'' Mr Morrison said. "Seventy-eight boats have now arrived since the Rudd government started weakening the border protection regime they inherited from the coalition government, with 10 arriving this year alone with 602 people on board.''

SOURCE





4 February, 2010

Kevin Rudd, the man who isn’t there

As Opposition Leader, Rudd dragged out the brand new conservative suit Therese had bought for him, and vowed to halt reckless government spending. He said climate change was the greatest moral challenge of our time and pledged to tackle it, promised to take over hospitals in a year and bring in an education revolution, threatened to take the Japanese to court over whaling, warned he would turn back refugee boats, and promised to live at the Lodge.

He has done none of those things, and I doubt he ever will.

I don’t know why he is there, who he thinks or is, or what he thinks a Prime Minister’s job involves. It actually means he can and must do things, big things, which can shape the country he leads and not just spin from one pic fac to another.

In his first term, Howard took on his own base and reformed gun laws, an action which has had a hugely positive impact on Australian society; challenged the stranglehold of unions on the waterfront, and began the difficult task of introducing a goods and services tax. At the same time his Treasurer, Peter Costello, wiped out billions of dollars of deficit and put the Budget back in the black.

Consider just two examples of Rudd’s gross dereliction. First his approach on climate change. It was lazy and gutless. He relied on the media to make the opposition the story - and the Liberals stupidly obliged - and to pressure Malcolm Turnbull to support the Government’s policy. He failed to take his arguments to the people, to explain what his scheme entailed, and how they would be affected by it.

Second. When he was casting around for something else to do, he commissioned Ken Henry to undertake a comprehensive review on tax reform. He is now treating it as if someone has sent him a stink bomb. They probably have. It’s an independent report, he tried to tell Laurie Oakes the other day, it’s got nothing to do with the Government, and we might or might not pick up its recommendations. Oakes pointed out the head of Treasury was not exactly independent from the Government.

The man’s got a teleprompter where his ticker should be. Granted he succeeded in staving off the recession threatened by the economic crisis which saved him from disappearing into vapor, but any fool could do that by spraying around billions of dollars. The trick is to spend money wisely on long term productive enterprises, and there is little evidence that is happening.

By the time people realise how much has been wasted, and how hard it will be to repay, he will be long gone, and Julia Gillard will probably be out there trying to explain it all.

That can’t come soon enough for me. I watched all the Oakes interview with Rudd on Sunday. It went about 20 minutes and it felt as if half my life had slipped away. His voice acts like a verbal sedative. He throws in lots of facts and figures and uses his favorite expressions – you know something? Guess what?- as if he is about to offer some profound insight, then whacks us with another cliche. He is both anal and banal.

Away from the cameras, the secret Kevin is given to hissy fits, foul language and bursts of revenge. In public he is the eminently reasonable, totally predictable, and infuriatingly, nauseatingly hammy actor who got elected Prime Minister. Like I say, if anybody finds the real Kevin Rudd, please call his family.

Tony Abbott on the other hand can’t help but be interesting. It is both a blessing and a curse. He has opinions and he expresses them in ways people can immediately understand and the reactions are not always positive.

The trick for politicians is to be interesting enough to attract attention, but not too interesting so that they come across as scatter brained or weird or ill-disciplined(see Barnaby Joyce) and invite the kind of media exposure than can end up killing them.

So far Abbott is having some success. He is rattling Rudd’s cage like a great white shark in red speedos. Rudd is so tightly wound, it wouldn’t take much to unhinge him and if Abbott keeps his team united he might just manage it. Bring it on.

SOURCE




Couple sues Queensland government hospital over stillborn baby

PARENTS of a baby delivered stillborn at Redcliffe Hospital claim medical staff repeatedly ignored warning signs their unborn baby was distressed. Kym Marie Body and Robert Wayne Body, of Mango Hill in Brisbane's north, are suing the State Government which runs Redcliffe Hospital for nearly $300,000 in negligence and damages. Documents filed to the Supreme Court allege a midwife ignored and turned down the volume of an echocardiogram alarm that sounded for more than three hours while Mrs Body was in labour.

The documents also claim Mrs Body was diagnosed and treated for deep vein thrombosis and thrombophilia (blood clotting) at Redcliffe Hospital after the birth of her first child in 2004. She alleges the hospital ought to have known her medical history and the risks associated and failed to recognise a natural birth "could not be performed safely".

The documents show Mrs Body was admitted to hospital at 8am on February 26, 2007, and was monitored at half-hour intervals between 9.30am and 3pm. Her waters were broken by a doctor about 4pm and at 4.30pm an epidural was administered. It is alleged that at 5.10pm an echocardiogram alarm attached to Mrs Body began making loud noises, but the volume was turned down by a midwife. The documents claim four other times when the alarm sounded, indicating the baby's distress, it was turned down by the same midwife. The echocardiogram alarm continued to sound until 8.20pm but medical staff did not respond to it.

It wasn't until 9.30pm, when Mr Body requested for Mrs Body to have an internal exam that one was performed, court documents claim. By 10.40pm, Mrs Body was told the baby's heart rate was "low" and "we need to get her out now". Paige Hannah Body was delivered by vacuum extraction about 11pm. She was not breathing and could not be revived.

Mr and Mrs Body, who say they suffer anxiety and depression, are suing Redcliffe Hospital for $278,200. The State Government is yet to file a defence.

SOURCE




Gold Coast corruption again: Ex-police officers sue for $2m over bullying claims

TWO former Gold Coast detectives are suing for more than $2 million in compensation, claiming they were bullied out of the police service partly because they refused to act on illegal search warrants.

The revelation came as Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson admitted the Gold Coast's "Las Vegas" lifestyle may have corrupted some local police. He said there had been concerns about possible police misconduct on the Glitter Strip for at least a decade.

Ex-Gold Coast detectives Kurt Krebs and Graham Cameron have launched legal action against the Workers Compensation Regulatory Authority (Q-Comp) after they were refused compensation for alleged bullying-related stress. They claim they were driven out of the QPS after being branded as lazy for refusing to act on allegedly dodgy warrants. They are each seeking more than $1 million in compensation.

A magistrate this week ruled evidence relating to warrants could be admitted as part of Mr Krebs' case. Q-Comp's lawyers had been seeking to have the evidence excluded, arguing the warrant issue had not directly contributed to Mr Krebs' stress. However, Southport magistrate Michael O'Driscoll ruled the warrant evidence could support Mr Krebs' claim and to refuse to admit it would be a denial of "fair and natural justice". The case was adjourned.

Mr Atkinson yesterday held a crisis briefing with Crime and Misconduct Commission officials after The Courier-Mail revealed details of a major investigation into alleged police links to organised crime and the Coast's nightclub drug scene. The Surfers Paradise police station was raided by CMC investigators last weekend as part of the CMC probe that sources said would be "the biggest corruption scandal since the Fitzgerald inquiry". More than 20 officers are understood to have given evidence at secret CMC hearings.

Mr Atkinson yesterday likened the Gold Coast to Las Vegas and Kings Cross, with "temptations" greater than other areas, and some police may have "succumbed". "With 10,000 police, obviously from year to year some will do the wrong thing. That's unavoidable," he said. While he was "terribly concerned", he was confident there was no "widespread, systemic, organised corruption" in the police service and said the vast majority of officers were honest.

Mr Atkinson said the CMC had investigated concerns about possible police misconduct on the Gold Coast "for years", but nothing had been substantiated. "I believe we've done all we possibly can," he said on the Coast yesterday morning. "Every suggestion, every claim has been fully examined." Mr Atkinson called on the CMC to "clear the air" over the investigation. He said it should be finalised quickly to avoid affecting police morale.

Police Minister Neil Roberts ruled out calling an inquiry, saying the CMC already had royal commission powers. The CMC said speculation about the scope of its investigation risked hindering the probe "and unnecessarily undermines public confidence in the Queensland Police Service". "On the basis of current evidence, some aspects of recent media reports about the investigation are exaggerated or simply inaccurate," the commission's Director of Misconduct Investigations, Russell Pearce, said.

The Queensland Police Union has thrown its support behind those officers who give evidence against police accused of corruption. A union spokesman yesterday confirmed the QPU was providing legal representation for any witnesses required to give evidence by the CMC for its Operation Tesco. President Ian Leavers said it was obvious there needed to be a thorough investigation. "It is in the best interests of police and the community that the CMC investigation is conducted in a timely manner," Mr Leavers said.

SOURCE




Another dangerously incompetent bureaucracy

Schoolkids forced to wade croc-infested water. Bureaucrats don't give a stuff about anybody else

A PROMISED bridge that would save Northern Territory kids from wading through croc-infested waters to get to school has not been started. The NT and federal governments and the Victoria Daly Shire had planned to have a $1.5 million upgrade of the causeway in Palumpa - near Wadeye - finished by the return of the wet season, according to the Northern Territory News. Announcements of federal and NT government funding were made as early as June last year, but work on it has yet to begin.

Locals fear heavy rains expected soon will once again cause the billabong to flood the causeway, leaving residents cut off from the essential services, including the school, all on the other side of town. A 5m croc that was stalking the flooded causeway last year has reportedly not been caught.

A local man said people were disappointed nothing had happened. "There's nothing happening," he said. "It looks like a false promise."

It is believed the delay has been caused by "design issues", and work is not expected to happen until this dry season.

SOURCE





3 February, 2010

"My School" brawl exposes teachers' culture of mediocrity

I myself received what I regard as an excellent education at a country State school. I still remember much of the German "Lieder" and Latin grammar I learnt there around 50 years ago. I even remember enough basic physics to know what a crock global warming is. And I sent my son to a State school for part of his education. So I have no great objection to State schools as such. But it is when discipline is abandoned and the curriculum is dumbed down to politically correct pap that an alternative is needed -- and it is often sorely needed these days-- JR

In the mid 1990s the teachers credit union Satisfac came up with a kindly and seemingly innocent idea to celebrate the excellent work of its teacher members. The credit union, which historically had served teachers but like many other institutions now has a wide customer base, decided that to recognise the role of the teaching profession in its own development it would establish an annual awards event called The Best Teacher Awards.

But when the awards were initially proposed the reaction from the teachers union was one of outrage and dismay. Satisfac was told in no uncertain terms to shelve the idea, with the union arguing it was the height of impertinence for a credit union – or anyone else for that matter – to declare that some teachers were better than others.

This quaint Marxist view of the world has been on full display this past week as teachers unions around the country descend into apoplexy over the Rudd Government’s apparently wicked policy of letting parents know how their kids’ school compares to other like schools.

The unspoken backdrop to the unions’ long-standing hostility to any form of comparative rankings is, obviously, industrial self-interest. The danger which a website such as MySchool presents to the union is that parents might start asking hard questions if they see that their school is performing well down the list of comparable schools. For the first time, this website provides the public with data that is so rich that it’s possible to discern a drop-off in certain years or certain subjects.

There could be several reasons for a decline in performance. It could be a funding shortfall, which can be sheeted home to the relevant state government or education department. It could be explained by a change in the profile of the students in a certain year. It could also be that one of the teachers is no good.

It’s this last point which the teaching unions object to the most. They have taken the all for one, one for all philosophy to such a ludicrous extent that they have made the profession less enticing for passionate people who might consider a career as an educator, if not for the fact that you will forever be held back in terms of both workload and remuneration by the non-performance of the minority of disengaged or dud teachers.

If the unions were intellectually honest, this website would be welcomed as a long-overdue vindication of the excellence of most public schools. As the proud graduate of a public school, I’ve taken a perverse delight in monitoring the non-performance of some of the toffiest schools in the land, seeing nuggetty little public schools kicking the stuffing out of joints that charge several thousand dollars a term with an unchallenged promise of a better level of learning.

My School has shown that many parents are effectively being fleeced by this empty promise. They might get one of those nice triangular stickers for the back of the Range Rover, and young Angus might end up rubbing shoulders with a future front rower for the Wallabies, but if it’s reading and writing you’re after, you might do better to skip down the road to the local public school.

My School is not without flaws – we spent a couple of hours on it the other night, our child’s school, in Sydney, was compared to a school in Ballina, which at 739km away is a heck of a commute. But the fixation on such glitches – which are inevitable and can be easily recognised by the average user anyway on a website of this size – is an obvious ploy by the teaching unions to undermine the credibility of the entire venture in a fruitless bid to shame the government into its withdrawal.

There’s one criticism levelled against the site which carries much more weight and which the Federal Government must take very seriously. Opposition education spokesman Chris Pyne is absolutely right when he says there is little point identifying systematic problems with the performance of a minority of teachers, without also giving principals the industrial power to act against them. And to anyone who would say this is a teacher bashing exercise, it is not. It’s the polar opposite of one.

In the new age of transparency created by My School, it is logical and right to shift next to a discussion of performance pay. And it should have less to do with punishing the minority of bad teachers than giving greater reward and opportunity to the enormous pool of dedicated and brilliant teachers.

Thinking back to my school days I can only remember a couple of teachers who were so bad that they should have been frogmarched off the school grounds. They really should have been. There was one guy who seemed to be motivated by nothing other than a pathological dislike of young people. He would habitually tell kids at this largely working class school that they were so dim that they would be better off leaving immediately and going for an apprenticeship popping rivets at the nearby Mitsubishi factory.

And then there were teachers such as Anna Polias, an English teacher who would habitually write 10 or even 15 A4 pages of comments on your essays, stay back after school to organise extra-curricular stuff such as cycling days, bookshop visits into the city, where she would take us out to coffee, talk about politics and travel and our futures. People such as Ms Polias represent the majority of teachers in the public system. She should have been paid half as much again as what she was earning; the fellow I mentioned before had no right to be in a schoolyard at all.

I suspect there are a lot of hard-working teachers who privately believe that things should change but are afraid to say so for being marginalised by the union crowd.

The most appropriate memento from my school days for illustrating this entrenched hostility towards assessment and ranking is the absurd trophy I “won” while playing Aussie Rules for the Under 13s. In keeping with the post-70s educational zeitgeist, it had been decreed that it was unfair to simply have a best and fairest and that, just like at the Easter Show, every player should win a prize. The humiliating gong I won read “Most Attentive at Training” but should really have been inscribed “Most Incompetent Back Pocket” or “Pea-hearted pretender who avoids the hard ball”. Rather than getting a pat on the head as a reward for my uselessness, the coach should have taken me aside and explained politely that I was to Aussie Rules what Gary Ablett was to romantic poetry, and pointed me in the direction of the library.

Pretending that everybody is doing quite well at almost everything is no way to prepare them for later life. And teaching is the one profession where the unions believe that this same bankrupt philosophy should apply to working adults.

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Rudd's empty talk on productivity

Deregulation and cutting the bureaucracy would raise productivity but in true Leftist style, all Rudd can think of is spending ever more of taxpayers' money

To get themselves re-elected, governments have to demonstrate they've been working hard to solve the biggest problems facing the country and that they've got big plans for further advances in their next term. To this end, Kevin Rudd has been stumping the country early in this election year promising to avert the looming slowdown in our rate of economic growth caused by the ageing of the population by lifting the annual rate of improvement in the productivity of labour from its weak 1.4 per cent average in the noughties to the outstanding 2 per cent average we achieved in the 1990s.

Rudd says we "must take decisive action to drive productivity growth forward - to improve living standards, to deliver better services while keeping the budget on a sustainable footing, and to improve Australia's international competitiveness". But how does Rudd plan to achieve his productivity surge? By doing more of what he's already been doing, "investing in the key drivers of productivity".

"By investing in record levels of long-term nation-building economic infrastructure - more than $18 billion worth of investments, including in roads, rail and ports," he says.

"By implementing an education revolution, doubling the investment in Australian schools over the next five years, and increasing overall real investment in education by over 50 per cent.

"By investing in business innovation, including innovative manufacturing and helping businesses use technology to work smarter and faster wherever they are, through the high-speed national broadband network."

And "by implementing micro-economic reforms to cut red tape for business and build a seamless national economy".

Convinced? I'm not. Though most of the items on that list are worthy and their continuation and enhancement would make a positive contribution to productivity, they're most unlikely to be sufficient to lift labour productivity improvement to anything like as much as 2 per cent a year.

Remember, the 2 per cent annual improvement experienced during the '90s was exceptional. It's generally agreed by economists to have been caused by the sweeping micro-economic reforms of the late 1980s and early 1990s: deregulation of the financial system, floating the dollar, phasing out tariff protection, tax reform, the move to enterprise bargaining and reform of government-owned utilities.

Even if Rudd had the courage - which he clearly doesn't - he couldn't put together a reform program of anything like the size and scope of the Hawke-Keating agenda. That was a once-only clean-out of the regulatory stables that yielded a once-only lift in the level of productivity. The present micro reforms Rudd refers to are pathetic by comparison, involving a move to uniform national rather than state-by-state regulation of a handful of industries. Worthy but no big deal. In any case, those reforms have got bogged in the bowels of the Council of Australian Governments.

As for all he's doing to "invest in business innovation", this is a reference to his neo-protectionist and inefficient government assistance to the vehicle and other industries. And it takes a lot of faith to believe his national broadband network will boost rather than knock a hole in national productivity.

Since Rudd clearly has no taste for the kind of controversial regulatory reforms that invariably arouse the ire of present holders of economic privilege, we're left with the category of measures that do good by spending money: building more economic infrastructure and investing in education.

It's not clear to what extent we face the "infrastructure backlog" Rudd talks about but, assuming we do, it's likely to require a lot more spending than he has presently committed. And his unqualified commitment to return the budget to surplus - drawing no distinction between capital and recurrent spending - leaves him little scope for additional infrastructure spending. Similarly, he has little scope for the greatly increased spending at all levels - early childhood, school, TAFE and university - needed to overcome the stinginess of the Howard years and affect a genuine "education revolution".

It became clear to me that Rudd wasn't fair dinkum in his commitment to an education revolution from the moment during the 2007 election campaign that he said "me too" to Peter Costello's three years of tax cuts. No, Rudd isn't sufficiently productive as a policy-maker - matching deeds to stated intentions - to bring about the marked improvement in national productivity he's promising.

SOURCE




The Queensland wallopers never change

Even putting a chief of police in jail has not slowed them down. Now it's drug trafficking. Good to see that the CMC have finally got off their fat behinds, though. Given the CMC track record, however, they could still go to water over this

THE biggest corruption scandal since the Fitzgerald inquiry, with claims of police in major drug trafficking, is set to rock the force. The allegations centre on the Gold Coast and are believed to concern some members of the Queensland Police Service, The Courier-Mail reports. The Crime and Misconduct Commission is tipped to call a public inquiry into allegations Gold Coast police have been involved with organised crime gangs, including outlaw bikies, importing drugs and dealing them through some of the Glitter Strip's nightclubs.

More than 20 officers are understood to have been hauled before secret CMC hearings to forcibly answer questions or give evidence against allegedly crooked colleagues. Phone taps, listening devices and covert surveillance are believed to have been used to gather evidence. "This will be the biggest corruption scandal since Fitzgerald," a senior police source said. "It will unfortunately drag down the reputation of the police service once again."

A multimillion-dollar cocaine bust on the Gold Coast last year is believed to have helped spark the CMC probe, which has been running for several months. The CMC is investigating allegations cocaine went missing from a Gold Coast police station. The Surfers Paradise police station was raided on Sunday, as well as another Coast station.

On Monday, in a separate incident, a Surfers Paradise constable was stood down on full pay pending an investigation after a drug bust in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley.

The scandal follows last year's Operation Capri which resulted in the damning CMC report Dangerous Liaisons. "This will make Capri look very small," the police source said. "We're talking about allegations of police involvement in importing drugs into Australia and distributing them through the Gold Coast nightclub scene. "Police on the Coast, by nature, work pretty closely with the seedier side of the tourism industry and it would seem some may have fallen for temptation and dragged the rest of their colleagues down with them."

Another source said drug dealers were blatantly plying their trade in nightclubs - with off-duty police present.

It is believed key players have not been questioned by the CMC, leading to speculation a public inquiry was imminent. Yesterday, the CMC said suggestions of a "major drug trafficking investigation" were "incorrect". But a spokeswoman said illegal drugs were part of an ongoing police misconduct probe, Operation Tesco, and would not rule out a public inquiry.

SOURCE




Rogue unions out of control under Rudd

SHIPPING company Total Marine Services has caved in to union threats of further strike action and agreed to wage and allowance increases of up to $50,000 over three years for workers servicing the lucrative oil and gas industry.

Together with an escalating dispute between Woodside Petroleum and its Pilbara workforce, the Total Marine deal confirms that Western Australia's minerals-rich north has become the front line in a new industrial push that employers warn could spread throughout the resources sector.

Employer groups have used the Total Marine agreement to attack the Rudd government's workplace laws, warning that the deal could flow across the shipping industry.

The Australian Mines and Metals Association said the deal contained no productivity offsets and was struck just two hours before workers were to embark on another 48-hour strike against the company. Steve Knott, the association's chief executive, said the dispute had been a "litmus test" for Labor's workplace laws, and the company had been forced into agreeing to the union claim. "The MUA (Maritime Union of Australia) took crippling strike action until vessel operators were no longer able to afford to withstand the action," Mr Knott said.

"This dispute has clearly demonstrated the Fair Work Act has made it easier for unions to initiate damaging strike activity and, as seen in the latest round of illegal stoppages in Western Australia, there seems to be little commitment from government to prevent such action."

The Australian Shipowners Association last night said Total Marine could only "resist repeated strike action for so long". Teresa Hatch, the association's executive director, said the wage rises could flow on to other shipping companies. But Paddy Crumlin, the union's national secretary, said the wage increases in the "historic" agreement were "reasonable".

The 30 per cent wage increase comprises 8.5 per cent back-dated to September last year; 3.5 per cent from this month; and three 6 per cent wage rises payable between July this year and July 2012. The union has also succeeded in winning a new construction allowance, which is believed to start at about $175 a day before increasing to $214 a day. The union said it was close to securing agreements with other vessel operators, including Farstad and Go Offshore.

More HERE




Perth girl crowned Australia's brainiest student

Interesting that the winner is of Indian origin and the runner up is of Chinese origin

A 14-YEAR-OLD'S knowledge of neuroscience has led to her crowning as Australia's brainiest student. Uma Jha, from Perth's Shenton College, in inner-west Shenton Park, outsmarted more than 4000 national competitors to win the 2010 Australian Brain Bee Challenge.

The neuroscience competition tests high school students on a range of topics, including intelligence, memory, emotions, sleep, Alzheimer's disease and stroke. In front of a live audience in Sydney on Monday, Uma competed against other state winners in the national final of the competition, which included a brain-teasing anatomy exam, doctor-patient diagnosis and a neuroscience quiz.

"The competition was tied right up until the end and it was a really nerve-wracking finish," Uma said after the event. "I've never won a national science competition before, so it's amazing."

As the Australian Brain Bee Champion, she will travel to California for the International Brain Bee Challenge in August. Competition national organiser and Queensland Brain Institute professor Linda Richards said it would be a fantastic opportunity for Uma. "She has shown that she has a special talent and passion for neuroscience and we're very proud of her to be representing Australia at the international level," Prof Richards said.

The Australian runner-up was Andrew Li, from James Ruse Agricultural High School in New South Wales.

SOURCE





2 February, 2010

Australian pro-liberty thinktank vindicated on climate

By Greg Lindsay, Executive Director

Eighteen months ago in Tokyo, my two year term as President of the Mont Pelerin Society, founded by F.A. Hayek in the wake of World War II, came to an end. I was succeeded by development economist Professor Deepak Lal.

In my Presidential address, I traced the history and intellectual lineage of that famous Society back to the great thinkers of the Enlightenment and speculated about some of the problems and threats to freedom that modern-day liberals faced.

What I singled out in particular was the so-called ‘debate’ about the theory that man-made carbon emissions are responsible for causing potentially catastrophic increases in global temperatures. My concern wasn’t the evidence for this theory, per se, but what I described as ‘the regrettable features of the climate change debate, which I believe has descended into anything but a reasoned and scientific discussion judged by Enlightenment standards.’

My point was that scepticism – the rigorous evaluation of evidence – a fundamental building block of intellectual and scientific progress, was in danger of being swept away by a new form of pre-enlightenment quasi-religious belief and rent seeking:

'What is disquieting, and should be disquieting to all who cherish the principles of the Enlightenment, is the certainty of belief displayed by some of the believers . . . The politics of climate change have become intensely ideological, and far distant from a rational debate which allows for a free exchange of ideas. The debate, such as it is, has struggled to rise above the ridiculous, at its worst demonstrated by the morally offensive use of the labels ‘denier’ or ‘delusionist’ to discredit all who are so ‘unsound’ as to question the dominant interpretation of the science . . .

There is no question that we should apply the best scientific techniques to discover the truth about this issue and then deal with it appropriately. Unfortunately, one has to question the integrity of a great deal of climate research. This is because climate research has become an industry which is heavily reliant on the steady drip of government funding. Competing and challenging research is too often swept away . . .'

Just a year after that speech, a torrent of disclosures about dubious climate science practices has underlined my concerns. Popular tags such as Climategate have been applied and will stick; reputations have been tarnished and many will most likely be trashed. It seems that key scientists have allowed questionable objectives to politicise their science and have put at risk the standard procedures of the scientific method including peer review.

If the disclosures of the past few months do anything, they should restore some balance to this debate and allow competing ideas, theories and evidence to be tested. Apocalyptic visions distilled from the propaganda of climate activists that ended up in official reports should be seen for what they are. That international bureaucracies such as the IPCC should be taken in by such material should come as no surprise.

If anything good comes out of all this it should be to question the increasing dependence by scientists in all fields on government funding. Hopefully, policymakers will also pause to think through the implications of the dirigiste policies they plan to combat ‘global warming’.

The above is a press release from the Centre for Independent Studies, dated February 1. Enquiries to cis@cis.org.au. Snail mail: PO Box 92, St Leonards, NSW, Australia 1590.




Rudd warns poll defeat a possibility after shock Newspoll result

For non-Australian readers this is a bit complex. Votes for minor parties are not discarded but are reallocated to the voters' second preference in the major parties. It is now only the voters for minor parties (mainly the Greens) who are keeping Rudd afloat in the polls

KEVIN Rudd has warned voters there is "no guarantee" Labor will win the next election in the wake of a shock Newspoll finding that the Coalition has overtaken Labor on the primary vote. The Prime Minister said today the reality was that Mr Abbott would be prime minister if two or three people in 100 changed their vote at the next election.

Newspoll, published exclusively in The Australian today, finds that Labor retains an election-winning lead of four points - 52-48 - on par with the result that delivered the 2007 election win. But for first time since the 2007 federal election, the Coalition leads Labor - 41-40 - in primary vote support.

Tony Abbott responded to the good news this morning during a pre-dawn bike ride up Red Hill, telling cameramen who assembled at 5am that the result was “encouraging, but that there's a long way to go”.

The Prime Minister, who attended church with Mr Abbott and other MPs today to mark the resumption of parliamentary hostilities, launched a media blitz with interviews on breakfast television and radio.

As Mr Abbott prepares to unveil his alternative climate change policy today, the Rudd government is preparing to face more political heat with the arrival of another boatload of asylum-seekers. This time, more than 180 passengers are on board, with the Prime Minister maintaining Christmas Island can still cope with the latest large arrivals without having to activate contingency plans to take arrivals to Darwin for processing.

More HERE




Anonymous internet comments made illegal in South Australia

This is very troubling. People often have good reasons for anonymity. For instance: Known supporters of California's successful Proposition 8 (banning homosexual marriage) were subsequently harassed and attacked by homosexuals

SOUTH Australia has become one of the few states in the world to censor the internet. The new law, which came into force on January 6, requires anyone making an online comment about next month's state election to publish their real name and postcode. The law will affect anyone posting a comment on an election story on The Advertiser's AdelaideNow website, as well as other Australian news sites. It could also apply to election comment made on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

The law, which was pushed through last year as part of a raft of amendments to the Electoral Act and supported by the Liberal Party, also requires media organisations to keep a person's real name and full address on file for six months, and they face fines of $5000 if they do not hand over this information to the Electoral Commissioner.

Attorney-General Michael Atkinson denied that the new law was an attack on free speech. "The AdelaideNow website is not just a sewer of criminal defamation, it is a sewer of identity theft and fraud," Mr Atkinson said. "There is no impinging on freedom of speech, people are free to say what they wish as themselves, not as somebody else."

Mr Atkinson also said he expected The Advertiser to target him for sponsoring the law. "I am also certain that Advertiser Newspapers and News Limited will punish me personally, viciously for being the attorney-general responsible for this law," he said. "You will publish false stories about me, invent things about me to punish me."

The Advertiser's editor, Melvin Mansell, said: "Clearly this is censorship being implemented by a government facing an election. "The effect of that is that many South Australians are going to be robbed of their right of freedom of speech during this election campaign. "The sad part is that this widespread suppression is supported by the Opposition. "Neither of these parties are representing the people for whom they have been elected to govern."

The Right to Know Coalition, made up of Australia's major media outlets including News Limited, publisher of The Advertiser and parent company of news.com.au, has called the new laws "draconian". "This is one of the most troubling erosions of the right to free speech in Australia for many years," Right to Know spokeswoman Creina Chapman said. Ms Chapman also pointed out that newspaper blogs such as AdelaideNow were moderated and publishers and broadcasters took responsibility for the material they published.

Opposition justice spokeswoman Vickie Chapman said yesterday while the Liberal Party had supported the amendment to the Electoral Act, she believed it would be too broad to implement if it included Facebook and Twitter. Ms Chapman said Mr Atkinson should introduce a regulation to limit its scope. "It is clearly not the intention of what we understood that to be," she said.

The SA law - which could also apply to talkback radio - differs from federal legislation, which preserves the right of internet users to blog under a pseudonym. The law will apply as soon as the writs for the March 20 election are issued. The writs for the election can be issued any time between now and 25 days before the election. The law will then lapse at 6pm on polling day. Mr Atkinson said there was no intention to broaden the law to take it beyond the period of elections.

SOURCE




Incompetent teachers must be given the boot

More power for principals to hire and fire would help

THE suggestion that poor children will not do well at school is both offensive and misguided. Anyone who knows much about education and teaching understands this simple fact: quality educational outcomes are directly related to quality teaching. It is the sleeper in the My School website.

Research has persistently shown better teachers mean better results. Do you think I am overstating the case? Well, consider this. According to the findings of the benchmark 2005 Department of Education, Science and Training's national inquiry into the teaching of literacy: "Highly effective teachers and their professional learning do make a difference in the classroom. It is not so much what students bring with them from their backgrounds, but what they experience on a day-to-day basis in interaction with teachers and other students that matters. Teaching quality has strong effects on children's experiences of schooling, including their attitudes, behaviours and achievement outcomes.

"Thus there is need for a major focus on teacher quality, and building capacity in teachers towards quality, evidence-based teaching practices that are demonstrably effective in maximising the developmental and learning needs of all children."

Even so, Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority chairman Barry McGaw, in The Weekend Australian, trotted out the tired and irresponsible argument that governments need to do more to "reduce the impact of demography on school results".

The demographic argument has been used by state governments for years to justify low school achievement. No matter that before the My School website indicated performance nationwide, the Australian Council for Education Research could demonstrate that it was not a question of where you lived but who taught you that affected educational outcomes.

If this was not the case, why then are the Teach for Australia flying squads of super university graduates targeting underperforming schools? While the Teach for Australia idea is significantly flawed in terms of adequate classroom preparation of teachers, it has identified that good teachers make a difference. McGaw cites evidence that, on the basis of comparable OECD data, in Australia "poorer schools and schools in poorer communities struggle to a greater extent". However, the answer is not physical resources or postcodes but who is in front of the class. I am a secondary teacher. I came from a poor family, lived in a working-class area and was superbly taught in Victorian state schools. My father was a storeman and bought me a desk, on hire purchase, so I could do my schoolwork. There were many children just like me. I owe my tertiary education to gifted teachers.

Why does the Australian Education Union cover for incompetence? What the AEU fails to address with any kind of serious intent is working co-operatively with governments to get rid of poor teachers. Education Minister Julia Gillard is savvy on the question of quality assurance in the classroom. This is why she can say: "A poor child can get fantastic results." How? Teacher quality must improve.

National primary and secondary principals associations have recognised that there is a direct correlation between a principal's ability to select staff and school results. Leonie Trimper, president of the Australian Primary Principals' Association, pithily noted last December: "Name any company that sits back for Centrelink to ring and say, `Here's your 10 staff.' "

In Victoria, taking a leaf out of Queensland's approach, there are $50,000 golden goodbyes on the table for poor teachers.

While the AEU can recite the mantra that the My School website - as federal president Angelo Gavrielatos did on ABC radio on the morning of the launch - is "inaccurate, incomplete and invalid", the question every parent in the country should be asking is: Does my school have quality teachers? If not, why not?

Those who link demographics with student performance are simply not facing reality. Poor children deserve quality education. If they do not get it, then look to the teachers.

SOURCE




High levels of immigration will be disastrous for the quality of life in Australia

By Barry Cohen, a former minister in the Hawke Labor government

NOW that Kevin Rudd has informed us that he favours a "big Australia" with a population reaching 35 million by 2050, will he also tell us what happens then? Do we continue to pursue policies that will further double our population by 2100, causing us to cease immigration altogether and then apply the Chinese solution: one child per family? And if the population is to increase to 35 million, what's the rush to get there so quickly?

Thanks to the ABC, Kerry O'Brien and The 7.30 Report, which devoted most of last week to showcasing the question of population growth, it appears that at last we are going to have the public debate some of us have been seeking for years.

I once asked in question time whether the prime minister was aware that immigration levels were causing concern because of the pressure they exert on "education, health and social services, housing and land prices and the consequent diminution in the quality of life that overcrowded cities have on our environment". I asked for a white paper on immigration to evaluate the costs and benefits of continued large-scale immigration. That was on June 10, 1970, and John Gorton's answer indicated he was none too pleased with my question. Neither was Labor's immigration spokesman Fred Daly. Having written and spoken about the issue for 40 years, I'm delighted a serious debate is about to begin.

My view then was that Australia couldn't have an immigration policy without first having a population policy. It hasn't changed. The then minister for immigration, Phil Lynch, understood what I was on about. He set up an inquiry under Wilfred Borrie, but when Borrie eventually reported in 1978, no mention was made of population numbers.

What surprises me is that Rudd has decided to support a massive increase without the matter being debated in public, the parliament, the party or the press. I am not alone in my concern. What advocates of big Australia haven't yet done is spelt out clearly the benefits from such a huge population increase. In the early 1990s our annual growth rate, including immigration as well as births and deaths, dropped below 1 per cent. It is now, thanks to more babies and more people living longer, almost 2 per cent.

With a population of 22 million, the deterioration in the quality of life in our cities is already obvious. Daily our media highlights the inadequacy of our schools, hospitals and transport system, housing and water shortages, and spiralling land prices. You don't need to be an urban planner, demographer or sociologist to see the problems. If the 35 million predicted by 2050 is correct, with Sydney and Melbourne rising to seven million each, we are courting disaster. Double the population and life in the cities will be intolerable.

No, no, say the big Australians, we can take millions more. We can but who will benefit? It is up to the big Australians to show how this will improve the quality of life for present and future generations of Australians.

In the immediate post-war period, Australia, having just fought a war of survival with the Japanese, recognised that we could not occupy or defend a vast island continent with six million people. It may seem xenophobic today but fear of being swamped by the yellow peril before, during and after World War II was real enough. Most of these fears have now abated and, thankfully, with the end of the White Australia policy, most Australians recognise that our security is no longer dependent on increased population. If it is, what numbers will be necessary to repel the three billion who live to our near north? .

The other reason given at the time was that a larger population would provide our manufacturers with the economies of scale. That may have had some validity then, but Australia's economy now depends more on mining, tourism and agriculture as well as financial and educational services rather than manufacturing.

The Prime Minister might also care to explain why the government is telling us we must reduce our carbon footprint while suggesting we should double the number of feet. We appear to be on two different planets. Some suggest that not to share our country with millions more immigrants is selfish and that we have the responsibility to help other countries to lighten their population load. Excuse me? What about helping them with population control?

Why has it taken so long for this debate to take place? One reason is that the ethnic lobby brands anyone who questions immigration as racist. That won't work with the type of people who are now entering the debate. People of the calibre of Dick Smith, Bob Carr and, if I may say so, yours truly can't be so labelled.

More and more Australians are speaking out on this issue and they will not be silenced out of fear of being blackguarded by those afraid to seriously debate the issue.

The pundits suggest the federal election will be fought on the economy, climate change, health care and education. To that we can add population and immigration. It's the big sleeper. Rudd and Tony Abbott take note. It will be a debate not about who comes to this country but how many.

SOURCE





1 February, 2010

Ten facts conveniently brushed over by the global warming fanatics

The following article appeared in a Left-leaning major Australian newspaper -- replying in part to some dishonest smears against Viscount Monckton elsewhere

1. The pin-up species of global warming, the polar bear, is increasing in number, not decreasing.

2. The US President, Barack Obama, supports building nuclear power plants. Last week, in his State of the Union address, he said: To create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.

3. The Copenhagen climate conference descended into farce. The low point of the gridlock and posturing at Copenhagen came with the appearance by the socialist dictator of Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez, whose anti-capitalist diatribe drew a cheering ovation from thousands of left-wing ideologues.

4. The reputation of the chief United Nations scientist on global warming is in disrepair. Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is being investigated for financial irregularities, conflicts of interest and scientific distortion. He has already admitted publishing false data.

5. The supposed scientific consensus of the IPCC has been challenged by numerous distinguished scientists.

6. The politicisation of science leads to a heavy price being paid in poor countries. After Western environmentalists succeeded in banning or suppressing the use of the pesticide DDT, the rate of death by malaria rose into the millions. Some scholars estimate the death toll at 20 million or more, most of them children.

7. The biofuels industry has exacerbated world hunger. Diverting huge amounts of grain crops (as distinct from sugar cane) to biofuels has contributed to a rise in world food prices, felt acutely in the poorest nations.

8. The Kyoto Protocol has proved meaningless. Global carbon emissions are significantly higher today than they were when the Kyoto Protocol was introduced.

9. The United Nations global carbon emissions reduction target is a massively costly mirage.

10. Kevin Rudd's political bluff on emissions trading has been exposed. The Prime Minister intimated he would go to the people in an early election if his carbon emissions trading legislation was rejected. He won't. The electorate has shifted.

None of these anti-commandments question the salient negative link between humanity and the environment: that we are an omnivorous, rapacious species which has done enormous damage to the world's environment. Nor do they question the warming of the planet.

What they do question is the morphing of science with ideology, the most pernicious byproduct of the global warming debate. All these anti-commandments were brought into focus this past week by the visit of the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, better known as Lord Christopher Monckton, journalist by trade, mathematician by training, provocateur by inclination.

Last Wednesday a conference room at the Sheraton on the Park was filled to overflowing, all 800 seats sold with a standing-room only crowd at the back, to see the Sydney public appearance of Monckton, a former science adviser to Margaret Thatcher. At the end of his presentation he received a sustained standing ovation.

Monckton is the embodiment of English aristocratic eccentricity. His presentations are a combination of stand-up comedy, evangelical preaching and fierce debating. Almost every argument he makes can be contested, but given the enormity of the multi-trillion-dollars that governments expect taxpayers to expend on combating global warming, the process needs to be subject to brutal interrogation, scrutiny and scepticism. And Monckton was brutal, especially about the media, referring to all this bed-wetting stuff on the ABC and the BBC.

There has also been a monumental political failure surrounding the global warming debate. Those who would have to pay for most of the massive government expenditures proposed, the taxpayers of the West, are beginning to go into open revolt at the prospect.

Last week the Herald reported that Monckton told a large lie while in Sydney. On Tuesday it reported: He said with a straight face on the Alan Jones radio program that he had been awarded the Nobel, a claim Jones did not question. The Herald repeated the accusation on Thursday. It was repeated a third time in a commentary in Saturday's Herald.

In 2007 the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the former US vice-president Al Gore. The prize committee, in citing its selection of the IPCC, said: Through the IPCC … thousands of scientists and officials from over 100 countries have collaborated to achieve greater certainty as to the scale of [global] warming. Thousands of people were thus collectively and anonymously part of the prize process.

So what lie did Monckton tell about the prize? Despite the gravity of the accusation, the Herald never published the offending remark. Here, for the record, is what he actually said:

Monckton: I found out on the day of publication of the 2007 [IPCC report] that they'd multiplied, by 10, the observed contribution to sea-level rise of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet. By 10! I got in touch with them and said, 'You will correct this.' And two days later, furtively, on the website, no publicity, they simply relabelled, recalculated and corrected the table they'd got wrong.

Alan Jones: But this report won a Nobel Prize!

Monckton: Yes. Exactly. And I am also a Nobel Prize winner because I made a correction. I'm part of the process that got the Nobel Prize. Do I deserve it? No. Do they deserve it? No. The thing is a joke.

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Training fails to prepare new doctors

An increased emphasis on "social" education has left less time for teaching such basics as anatomy. Many medical schools also now have a bias against very bright students in the name of "equality"

MEDICAL students are emerging from the nation's universities feeling inadequately prepared to deal with crucial tasks such as calculating safe drug doses and writing prescriptions.

In a challenge to Kevin Rudd's twin promise to improve university education and doctor shortages, a government study has also revealed that medical supervisors feel the abilities of hospital interns fall short of their expectations. The study reveals just 36 per cent of junior doctors think they have been adequately or well-prepared to do wound management. And only 29 per cent of final-year medical students feel they have been adequately prepared to calculate accurate drug doses.

The landmark review of the nation's medical education system was finalised 19 months ago but released only on Friday. Medical leaders warn that the extra influx of students since the Education Department commissioned the research has made the failings it describes even worse.

News of the concerns about medical education comes before today's release of a new Intergenerational Report warning that the nation's ageing population will impose extreme pressure on the health system, including the medical workforce. It also comes as The Australian has learned a Rudd government program aimed at addressing the drastic shortage of nurses in the nation's aged-care facilities has failed, attracting just 138 nurses in two years, against a target of 400.

In the past decade, the quality of medical training has come under increasing scrutiny, particularly since chronic doctor shortages have sparked an increase in medical school intakes and the creation of medical schools in regional universities. In 2007, The Australian revealed that almost three out of four medical students said they were taught too little anatomy during their medical degree, while more than a third questioned their own competence in the workings of the human body.

Such findings led the Howard government to commission the Department of Education, Science and Training to do a two-year study, conducted between 2005 and 2007, to find out how best to train the nation's doctors. The report found medical students feared for their skills in a number of key areas, including knowledge of basic sciences, while hospitals increasingly struggled to make time for effective teaching in the face of packed waiting rooms.

Only 48 per cent of final-year students and 64 per cent of junior doctors thought they were adequately or well prepared to write prescriptions. Interpreting X-rays was a concern for 69 per cent and 77 per cent respectively. And just 44 per cent of medical students and 48 per cent of junior doctors felt they had been properly trained to insert a tube through the nose and down the throat of a patient.

Health Minister Nicola Roxon refused to comment on the detail of the report late yesterday. Instead, she blamed it on Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, a health minister in the Howard government. "Tony Abbott failed to plan for the health workforce needs of Australia and even capped the number of people allowed to train as GPs - a cap that this government has lifted," Ms Roxon said.

The medical community warned that the situation had deteriorated since the report was completed. Australian Medical Association president Andrew Pesce said more needed to be done to properly fund medical training. "Nationally, there will be 2920 domestic graduates from medical schools by 2012, and over 500 international graduates - many of whom will want to stay in Australia," Dr Pesce said. "This will swamp the existing number of intern places - with only 2030 currently available across the country."

The executive director of surgical affairs for the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, John Quinn, said the report was "a missed opportunity" to demand decisive action. Dr Quinn said the RACS was particularly disappointed, given it had been "vociferous about the dwindling and now inadequate teaching of anatomy" in all medical schools. "This would seem to be a failure to recognise the problem, and to propose some solutions to a problem that has been well-identified previously," Dr Quinn said.

Associate Professor Paul McKenzie, the president of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia, said the report was a "disappointment" for failing to recommend improvements to undergraduate science training.

SOURCE




Australia's useless navy

With more useless but very expensive ships coming. Rudd's aim of building more ships here shows an utter inability to learn. He wants to build a new design of submarine here even though the previous attempt to do that has been an abject failure and left us with ZERO operational submarines

We are, as the torturous lyrics of our national anthem remind us, a nation girt by sea, a condition that ensures that we rely heavily for our continued existence on ships. One wonders, then, why the Royal Australian Navy and the contractors that supply it have such an appalling record in delivering naval vessels that go anywhere near performing the tasks required of them to defend our island continent.

The performance of the locally built Collins-class submarines has been a scandal since the first was launched in 1996. The fleet has suffered an endless litany of mechanical, electrical and computer malfunctions, which has meant it has never been able to carry out the national defence tasks for which it was designed. The boats were too noisy, the combat systems didn't work, the torpedoes didn't fit and they were not cheap, having to date cost $10 billion. According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, some of them only received fully functioning combat systems last year.

When HMAS Farncomb limped into port last week after its generator failed, it meant that only the oldest, HMAS Collins, was fit to put to sea and then only for training purposes – and this from the fleet that was supposed to provide Australia's front line of defence. There are also concerns that the Swedish-supplied Hedemora diesel engines may have to be replaced, an enormous task that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

The problems surrounding these intended monuments to Australian technical achievement were all but fatally underlined in February 2003 when a hose failed on HMAS Dechaineux while it was submerged. With 12,000 litres of water flooding the hull, it came within seconds of being lost with all 55 hands.

In May 1998, four sailors died in a horrific engine room fire aboard HMAS Westralia. An inquiry found the fire was caused by the non-standard flexible fuel lines fitted.

In August 2006, four sailors aboard the patrol boat HMAS Maitland were gassed with hydrogen sulphide.

One, Chief Petty Officer Kurt MacKenzie, has launched legal action for compensation, claiming the boats, which were never intended for the RAN but were a commercial design adapted to military use, were rushed into service.

Last week, with much fanfare, the RAN accepted four upgraded frigates into service. They are a welcome addition to the nation's maritime defence ability but were delivered five years late and hugely over budget. The fleet's supply ship HMAS Success does not meet the International Maritime Organisation's requirements for oil tankers to have double hulls. As a result, the Defence Department is seeking a waiver of this requirement from the international body.

In March 2008, the navy got rid of its Seasprite helicopters for $40 million, which may sound like a good deal until you appreciate that it paid $1.4 billion for them and that they were withdrawn from service shortly after being introduced because they were too dangerous to fly and had hopeless combat systems.

Why did we blow more than a billion dollars on junk? Well might you ask, for the decision to scrap them, taken seven years after they were supposed to start flying, ended one of the greatest debacles in the disaster-strewn history of Australian military purchases. The navy is at present flying Sea Hawk helicopters, which Defence Minister Senator John Faulkner has admitted are "increasingly difficult to support". Faulkner has also revealed that the fleet's mine hunters have "obsolescence issues" and that three of its six landing craft would soon have to be withdrawn from service.

Against this background, the Government has declared that it wants to acquire a new fleet of 12 submarines, with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd talking up the likelihood that these will be a uniquely Australian design. The other option is to buy a proven, off-the-shelf European model.

The political advantages of designing them and building them in Australia are obvious, although even the Defence Materiel and Science Minister Greg Combet has admitted that building the submarines ourselves would be "at the margins of our present scientific and technological capability" and the most complex project ever attempted here. Worryingly, Combet also added a political message, saying it would contribute to the modernisation of the Australian manufacturing industry.

But when the flag waving has ceased and the cheering faded, will we be left with a $36 billion fleet of Made in Australia vessels that are incapable of defending the country? The experience of the Collins-class vessels suggests that if political expedience triumphs over common sense, as invariably happens in this country, our coastline may be left unguarded. The Collins subs have never been called upon to fire a shot in anger. It would be a brave soul who would suggest that their replacements will enjoy the same good fortune.

SOURCE




Catholic schools teach Catholicism! How shocking!

Why send your kid to a Catholic school if that's a problem? I sent my son to a Catholic school despite my Protestant background and he enjoyed his religion lessons greatly -- and got high marks in them. Should I have expected anything else?

CATHOLIC schools are forcing Year 12 students to sit a TEE religion subject that will count towards their university entrance score. Outraged parents are taking their children out of Catholic schools because they believe the now mandatory Religion and Life subject will create an unfair workload on students. Students already studying courses like physics and chemistry will have an extra three-hour exam to cram for. And non-religious students will be forced to rigorously study Catholic values if they wish to get into university.

The Sunday Times understands that the idea to make all Catholic school students sit a religion exam came from Archbishop Barry Hickey. Catholic Education Office of WA director Ron Dullard conceded the decision had upset some parents. "Initially, there was some concern," he said. "I don't think the parents totally understood the implications that it actually does count towards their (child's) TEE and university entrance - and the fact that, irrespective of whether they were doing the exam, they still had to devote that amount of time as part of the policy of their Catholic education obligation to religion anyway."

One southern suburbs parent told The Sunday Times they had pulled their son out of a Catholic school. "My son didn't want the added pressure of juggling his religion exam studies with subjects like physics and chemistry," she said.

Mr Dullard said the mandatory religion exams should be a benefit for students. "It should give them an advantage, particularly if they've been doing RE (religious education) for 12 years in a Catholic school," he said. "I think the students will be better prepared for RE than any other of the new courses of study."

The subject Religion and Life was designed to be non-denominational by the Curriculum Council so that students from every school could study it. Curriculum Council chief executive David Wood said Catholic students would answer questions from the perspective of their faith. "The course is set up so that kids can draw on their knowledge and experiences in whatever faith they're in to respond to the questions," Mr Wood said.

SOURCE




Push for a Human Rights Act fading

The first big Australian political story of the year has raised surprisingly little attention. This is likely to change when the civil liberties lobby realises that the Rudd Government appears to have junked the human rights agenda.

Last Wednesday, The Australian Financial Review reported an interview with the Attorney-General, Robert McClelland. There was considerable media focus on his comment that the Rudd Government, if re-elected, would consider a referendum on the republic, the recognition of indigenous Australians, local government and co-operative federalism.

The interest faded when the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, said Kevin Rudd had made it clear "there are no present plans to have a referendum" on the republic.

Gillard said the Government was focused on immediate challenges and mentioned lifting educational standards. Fair enough. But if the republic is a lower-order issue to education, then education reform should take precedence over a human rights act.

This was the part of the McClelland interview that was essentially overlooked. He said it was the Government's philosophy that "the enhancement of human rights should be done in a way that as far as possible unites a community rather than causes further division".

If this is the case then a human rights act seems doomed. Writing in the Herald last February, the human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, QC, maintained that at the 2020 Summit "a thousand articulate members of the community came down in favour of … a charter of rights". Not so. This issue was only discussed in any detail at the summit's constitution, rights and responsibilities sub-stream, which was chaired by the legal academic Helen Irving.

There was majority support among sub-stream delegates for a charter of rights but also strong minority opposition. Following the summit, McClelland established the National Human Rights Consultation, chaired by the lawyer Father Frank Brennan, with three other members. He erred in not including someone who opposed a charter of rights. Irving would have been an ideal appointment.

The group released a report in September. Its most controversial recommendations turn on the proposal that Australia should adopt a human rights act and that the High Court should be empowered to declare a Commonwealth law to be incompatible with it. The Brennan report says that this recommendation may prove impractical. Brennan told The Weekend Australian in September: "My own view is that I think this provision is not going to be workable."

Little wonder McClelland is wary. In its foreword, the Brennan report concedes the Coalition is opposed to a human rights act and the Labor Party is divided on the issue. Two of the most articulate opponents are the former NSW premier Bob Carr, and the NSW Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos.

Then there is the new Liberal Party leader, Tony Abbott. As McClelland well knows, Abbott is capable of running a very effective campaign against a charter presented as giving more power to unelected judges and bureaucrats at the expense of the elected representatives of the people. Abbott's case would be strengthened by the fact that, on this issue, his views are close to those of Carr and Hatzistergos.

The Brennan report revealed that a majority of Australians believe human rights are adequately protected now. Outside such advocacy groups as GetUp! and Amnesty, there is little call for a charter. The majority of submissions came from these organisations while most of those opposing came from the Australian Christian Lobby.

In the lead-up to this year's federal election, Rudd and his colleagues do not need an argument with Christian groups - including the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, who has expressed concern that the human rights lobby is intent on constraining religious freedom. As McClelland has indicated, the Rudd Government does not want to preside over a divisive debate on this issue.

Nor is there reason to. Irving is correct in arguing that the Australian rights record is no worse, and in many cases is better, than in countries which have a bill of rights. Such recognition is missing from the Brennan report. The tone of Australia Day suggests that most Australians are happy with their lot. It seems that McClelland has come to a similar conclusion.

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Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.


For overseas readers: The "ALP" is the Australian Labor Party -- Australia's major Leftist party. The "Liberal" party is Australia's major conservative political party.


Again for overseas readers: Like the USA, Germany and India, Australia has State governments as well as the Federal government. So it may be useful to know the usual abbreviations for the Australian States: QLD (Queensland), NSW (New South Wales), WA (Western Australia), VIC (Victoria), TAS (Tasmania), SA (South Australia).


For American readers: A "pensioner" is a retired person living on Social Security


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?


On all my blogs, I express my view of what is important primarily by the readings that I select for posting. I do however on occasions add personal comments in italicized form at the beginning of an article.


I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!


I am an army man. Although my service in the Australian army was chiefly noted for its un-notability, I DID join voluntarily in the Vietnam era, I DID reach the rank of Sergeant, and I DID volunteer for a posting in Vietnam. So I think I may be forgiven for saying something that most army men think but which most don't say because they think it is too obvious: The profession of arms is the noblest profession of all because it is the only profession where you offer to lay down your life in performing your duties. Our men fought so that people could say and think what they like but I myself always treat military men with great respect -- respect which in my view is simply their due.


The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody. And I have NO investments in oil companies, mining companies or "Big Pharma"


UPDATE: Despite my (statistical) aversion to mining stocks, I have recently bought a few shares in BHP -- the world's biggest miner, I gather. I run the grave risk of becoming a speaker of famous last words for saying this but I suspect that BHP is now so big as to be largely immune from the risks that plague most mining companies. I also know of no issue affecting BHP where my writings would have any relevance. The Left seem to have a visceral hatred of miners. I have never quite figured out why.


Although I have been an atheist for all my adult life, I have no hesitation in saying that the single book which has influenced me most is the New Testament. And my Scripture blog will show that I know whereof I speak.