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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14 May, 2008

BUDGET 2008

Australia's new centre-Left government has just brought down its first budget. Below are comments from a conservative and a left-leaning viewpoint. For a Leftist government to bring down a surplus budget (i.e. they plan to spend LESS than they raise in taxes) is rather remarkable but it is customary in Australia. The budget is quite mainstream with just a few Leftist flourishes

Budget 2008: mildly encouraging

Comment from a free-market economist below:

"The prices of food and oil are rocketing, so why are we complaining?” This is the question of the day, courtesy of pollster Gary Morgan. Morgan has a point. Australia’s principal exports include coal, natural gas and foods, not to mention iron ore and congealed electricity in the form of aluminium. Australia has the mother of all booms. Inflation is “only” 4 or 5 per cent, government coffers are overflowing with money and we can afford all sorts of experiments in helping battlers, building infrastructure, increasing spending on health and education. The clear risk is that the “mild tightening” that sums up this budget will not take enough pressure off the Reserve Bank and that interest rates will need to rise further yet.

Morgan, like Henry, is concerned that the resource boom with Australia’s current Industrial relations (IR) system is likely to encourage a surge of wage costs. The budget assumes slower growth of employment and increased workforce participation, hence greater unemployment. In “real” terms (i.e. if accurately measured) this problem will be far larger than officially estimated, especially if wage hikes increase. This will create a real problem for the Rudd government.

Like Henry, Morgan thinks governments are inefficient and government departments do not encourage productivity growth.

We’d both like to pay more tax (from higher incomes), but at a lower rate. As Art Laffer showed, that is what happens when tax rates are cut. There are mild cuts for all but those on the highest incomes - keeping the pre-election promise - and this will have mild encouraging effects on labour supply.

Last night’s budget was sold in advance as being “tough”. It is certainly tougher than the later Howard-Costello budgets, but not their first budget. Nor is it as tough as Keating’s Banana Republic budget. Henry applauds the means testing of certain benefits. Wayne Swan told Kerry O’Brien that a principal earner or family income of $150,000 was a “reasonable” cut off point for some benefits. Politically that may be the case, but one cannot reasonably say a family with such an income are battlers who deserve help from taxpayers.

Incidentally, real tax reform - which abolished lots of tax allowances - should exempt many more people than at present from lodging returns, saving transaction and compliance costs.

This budget is mildly encouraging. The risk is that the continued resource boom blows it out of the water, leaving the Reserve Bank to gather up the pieces.

Source

A surplus budget

Comment from a Left-leaning journalist with an interest in economics

THIS budget is meant to be read two ways, because it tries to have it both ways. It is a change-of-government budget in the most mundane sense of the term, because its main transaction for 2008-09 is $5.7 billion in new revenue measures and spending cuts to pay for $5.3 billion in election promises. No prizes for originality here, unless you count the absence of broken promises as something new.

What is different about this budget is the surplus. It won't go into Peter Costello's Future Fund because that fund is full. Instead, it will be divided three ways, between infrastructure, health and education investments. How and when the money will be spent will be up to the Government. This is a piggy bank like no other.

Wayne Swan has $40 billion set aside for these three policy areas. It is the sum of just two surpluses-2007-08 and 2008-09. There will be more top-ups before the next election. The Treasurer hasn't said yet what he will do with his initial war chest of $40 billion, but he has reserved the right to spend the capital as well as the fund earnings. This is where the real budget story lies, in Labor's flexibility to spend up on infrastructure for the next election and beyond.

Mr Swan is the first treasurer in history with no commonwealth debt to cover. There is no borrowing to pay off, or public service super liability to meet. Just a surplus that has to be returned to voters at some point. This is, indeed, a revolution. Labor has the luxury of thinking long-term because the budget it inherited from the Coalition allows it to.

The budget cuts are not as grand as they seem. The simplest way to unpack the numbers is to see where the budget would have been if Labor wanted to break every one of its election promises apart from the tax cuts. The figure is a surplus $19.7 billion for 2008-09, which, incidentally, is a surplus that would have met Kevin Rudd's January target of 1.5 per cent of gross domestic product.

But Labor implemented every promise because it could. The bill for staying sweet with voters was $5.3 billion in 2008-09. This was offset by $5.7 billion in new savings. A further $1.6 billion in savings had already been flagged at the last election, bringing the total cuts to $7.3 billion. Now subtract the savings of $7.3 billion from the promises of $5.3 billion and you have a $2 billion addition to the surplus, to $21.7 billion. If this looks like small beer, it is. The real budget headline was the $40 billion that Labor has set aside for itself.

Source




Black rapists of young black girl 'should be jailed'

Multiculturalists really gets themselves twisted into a knot over cases like this: Should they protect black children or black criminals? So far the criminals are winning. That everyone (black and white) should be equal before the law is just a silly old fuddy-duddy idea, of course

QUEENSLAND'S Solicitor-General has called for jail sentences ranging from one to eight years for nine males who were not sent to prison after they pleaded guilty to raping a 10-year-old girl at Aurukun, on Cape York, in 2006. The appeal against the sentence, which began in Queensland's Court of Appeal yesterday, was launched by Attorney-General Kerry Shine after the case was revealed in The Australian last year. Cairns District Court judge Sarah Bradley gave suspended sentences to three men, aged 17, 18 and 25 at the time of the rapes, and ordered that six juveniles, aged between 13 and 15, be placed on probation orders with no convictions recorded.

Mr Shine had previously described the sentences as "manifestly inadequate". Solicitor-General Walter Sofronoff, for the Attorney-General, yesterday argued there had been five "evident errors of law" in the sentencing. He said there were legal precedents that an adult who sexually assaulted a child and a juvenile who raped a 10-year-old should be imprisoned. Mr Sofronoff argued that two of the adult offenders, aged 25 and 18 at the time of the rape, should be jailed for eight years, with a parole eligibility date to be set. He said the third adult, aged 17, should be jailed for seven to eight years. He argued that the six juveniles should receive detention sentences of between one and three years.

Mr Sofronoff said Judge Bradley had not given reasons for handing down non-custodial sentences to the males and had treated all the offenders equally, despite differences in age and criminal history. He said Judge Bradley had failed to take into account the principle of general deterrence, and had placed too much emphasis on Aurukun's social dysfunction as a reason for the offenders' lack of moral standards. It was the Aurukun community's right to "have a sentence that truly deters this offence". "Members of even a dysfunctional society -- if that is what it is -- require and deserve the protection of law," Mr Sofronoff told the court.

He asked the bench -- which comprised Chief Justice Paul de Jersey, Court of Appeal president Margaret McMurdo and Justice Patrick Keane -- to choose a sentence that would assert a "fundamental standard of behaviour in Aurukun".

But Ken Fleming, senior counsel representing the offenders, told the court that his clients should not be imprisoned or detained and said the appeal should be dismissed. Mr Fleming said while the law said a child under the age of 12 was incapable of giving consent, "the complainant had sex with all (of the offenders) without objection". He suggested the "lack of objection" could influence the sentence of the offenders. There was an "uncomfortable tension that it was sex without objection and was actively encouraged" by the victim, he said.

But Chief Justice de Jersey said he had "great difficulty" in accepting that consent or lack of objection from the victim could mitigate the sentence. The suggestion from prosecutor Steve Carter that the girl had given consent to sex in a "non-legal sense" was "nonsense" and an "irrelevant consideration", Chief Justice de Jersey said.

Mr Fleming said there had been flaws in the case from the beginning. He said prosecutor Steve Carter did not ask for custodial sentences. He said the arrangements were made by telephone, with the judge in Cairns and the accused in Aurukun. Mr Fleming said the accused should not have been included in the one indictment, but conceded that while the prosecutor had suggested this, the defence had agreed to it.

Source




Tough solutions 'ineffective' for Blacks

Nice to see proof of effectiveness being demanded. The truth, of course, is that NOTHING works. It's all been tried before. But only conservatives are capable of saying that there are some problems that governments cannot solve

THERE is no proof that "tough love" solutions, including quarantining welfare payments, are effective means of halting dysfunctional behaviour in indigenous communities, according to two leading Aboriginal academics. The challenge - from high-profile University of Technology Sydney law professor Larissa Behrendt and UTS research fellow Nicole Watson - came yesterday as the Rudd Government prepared to reveal controversial plans for a national welfare card, which would enable a percentage of a family's welfare payments be tied to necessities such as food.

The new electronic ID card, which has been slammed by the Australian Council of Social Service, is to be issued to Aboriginals in selected Northern Territory communities from July, but could be rolled out Australia-wide.

Professor Behrendt and Ms Watson said yesterday that the "most crucial but neglected question of all" was the issue of proof: "Where is the proof that punitive sanctions are an effective remedy for social dysfunction?" The pair listed a litany of concerns about the new Queensland Family Responsibilities Commission, which, not unlike the Rudd Government proposal, can order, among other things, some or all of a person's welfare payments to be managed by issuing Centrelink with a notice. From July, the commission is to be trialled in Aurukun, Hope Vale, Mossman Gorge and Coen.

Premier Anna Bligh has admitted the approach - the idea of the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership which is headed by Noel Pearson - is "a bold experiment - a world first". Professor Behrendt said it was a concern that decisions of the commission - which is to have closed hearings - could not be appealed, except on questions of law. The process also paved the way for a loss of control over personal information, with the commission able to access private information from a range of government agencies.

Professor Behrendt also queried the commission's exemption from the provisions of the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act. Other legal and Aboriginal advocates have also raised concerns about the commission breaching legal and human rights. ACOSS president Lin Hatfield-Dodds told ABC radio the $17 million being spent on the national ID card scheme would be better invested in services for families in need. [That response from president hyphen was predictable: "More jobs for social workers" is the translation]

Source




The glories of public transport in Australia's biggest city

Another reason why most people will stick to their cars

I heard him before I saw him - a young man with hands on his ears standing still amid the churning, lurching chaos that is platform one at Town Hall station. "Can you please just shut up. Christ. Just shut up." It turned out I was not the only one being driven mad by the lecturing, hectoring voice on the platform speakers, the latest horror to confront commuters.

Town Hall at peak hour is a dirty, dangerously overcrowded, stifling hot environment that looks and feels like an accident waiting to happen. But now, in what is presumably an effort to give the impression that something is being done, the captive commuters squashed on the platforms are lectured on safety, crowding, and train-travel etiquette by some insufferable Big Brother.

"Can that man sitting on the steps please move," the invisible voice booms. Then louder. "That man on the steps who is blocking the way. Please move." Then, infuriated: "You, that man in the brown overcoat, there's no reason to block the steps. You are holding up people who want to use the stairs." Finally, the tired commuter who has been held up to us all as the cause of our mutual subterranean unhappiness, realises he has been made the scapegoat. The woes of Town Hall station are all his fault. He slinks off to join the other miserable but upright commuters.

It does not stop there. "The all-stations train to Bankstown is now at Circular Quay . the train should be here in about two minutes. So just be patient," the voice booms. We know that. It says so on the board. "Can passengers please stay behind the yellow line while the train approaches." I would gladly do so if a three-person deep crowd was not exploding behind me.

"Those people crowding the train doors - you are a danger to yourselves as well as to others." No, the real danger here is that nothing has been done to upgrade this station to cater for today's crowds. But on it goes. The voice is relentless, monotonous and narky. "We all want to get home, and pushing and shoving won't make things happen more quickly."

We don't know what's good for us, is the message, and CityRail is going to make sure we understand. If there was any real concern about overcrowding at Town Hall station, built in 1916, then new exits would be created. It can take an eternity in peak hour just to get on the escalator from the bowels of the station. A fire down there would be . well, it's not worth thinking about.

If there was any concern about the risk of commuters falling from platforms the station would be redesigned so those waiting were not forced on top of one another. And if there was any thought at all about commuter comfort there would be more than just token seating (I, too, have had to sit on the stairs - when eight months' pregnant) and a real attempt to fix the stifling conditions.

In 2005, when RailCorp announced a multi-million-dollar plan to upgrade Town Hall, the tender package warned that the station was a serious danger to the public. Last month the Herald revealed that a report by Parsons Brinckerhoff found the station "cannot currently be fully evacuated in the morning and evening peaks within times stipulated by [the fire safety standard]".

RailCorp said a widening of the main concourse and ticket barrier expansion had improved access, but the projected commuter growth remained unaccounted for. Within eight years 168,000 people would pass through the station each day, up from about 140,000 now. By 2021 there will be 178,000.

For more than 10 years I have used the station to get to work, but it is only this year that have had to do so in peak hour. In that time I have had trouble breathing in sauna-like conditions; had to tiptoe around pools of blood and been caught on overcrowded trains where people were forced to travel to the next stop while jammed helplessly against the doors. Many times I have thought how easy it would be to fall off the narrow platforms, or to be accidentally pushed off. Just one person losing their footing would do it or - perhaps more likely - just one person losing their mind.

Source





13 May, 2008

PUBLIC MEDICINE MAYHEM

Three current articles below

Labor government to expand inferior healthcare

Sound crazy? It is. But that's the sort of destructiveness you regularly get when Leftist ideology takes charge. The Feds are going to spend more money on Australia's chaotic public hospitals in a bid to provide more staff per patient and cut waiting lists. Great! But they are ALSO attacking private health insurance -- thus sending more people into the public system and negating the effect of the extra funding for that system. You have to be a Leftist to be that moronic.

LABOR will shower public hospitals with cash in today's budget, adding to a $1billion boost it gave state governments in March, while facing allegations it is pursuing an ideologically driven vendetta against the private health sector. The Government yesterday accused the Howard government of neglecting public hospitals and promised that today's budget, the first Labor economic blueprint in 13 years, would restore the balance in health funding. But it also conceded one of its budget measures would trigger a reduction in the number of people with private health insurance, thereby placing more pressure on the public system.

The developments came as Kevin Rudd told a meeting of Labor MPs to expect "a good Labor budget", while Wayne Swan renewed his warnings that "tough decisions" could upset some citizens in a budget widely tipped to attack high-income earners.

As MPs began returning to Canberra for today's resumption of parliament, much of the political debate centred on Labor's plan to lift the threshold at which people face an extra surcharge for not having private health insurance, raising it from $50,000 to $100,000 for singles and from $100,000 to $150,000 for families. The Australian Health Insurance Association warned the move could prompt up to 400,000 people to dump their insurance and take their health needs to the public sector, already burdened by long waiting lists and inadequate resources.

Despite warnings this would put more pressure on public hospitals, Ms Roxon brushed aside the concerns. She advised health funds to make their products more attractive to consumers and said she would make no apologies for directing more resources into the public sector. Ms Roxon said the surcharge, introduced a decade ago to force higher-income earners to take out insurance, had become a "cruel hoax" on battlers because it had not been indexed. An income of $51,000 a year was no longer a high income, she said, and battlers were being unfairly exposed. "It's gradually hurt more and more people. We don't think that's fair and we're correcting that," Ms Roxon told Sydney radio station 2UE. "We're not going to keep working families under pressure where they get stuck either with the tax or taking out private health insurance when we know that the increasingly tight family budget just makes that a hopeless choice for many, many families."

Ms Roxon would not reveal government forecasts of how many people would dump their insurance and stressed the Government would continue to pay people with private health insurance a 30 per cent rebate, while vowing extra Labor funding for the public sector would enable it to meet increasing needs. "Unfortunately, the previous government neglected the public sector," she said. "I am very confident that the Rudd Labor Government, by investing more in the public hospital system and continuing to strongly support the private health sector, will get the balance right without putting unnecessary pressure on working families."

The weekend announcement of the change sent the shares of Australia's only listed private health insurer, NIB Holdings, plummeting. They finished down 16.11 per cent at 75.5c. If the same fall were applied to Australia's largest health insurer, the publicly owned Medibank Private, the Government would have stripped more than $300million in a single day off the value of its $2billion asset.

While the minister said yesterday that private health funds should have expected the surcharge would over time be indexed, Opposition health spokesman Joe Hockey said the move would hammer the private sector and lead to higher insurance premiums. "Either it's incompetence or it's ideological, and it seems to be ideological because it's very targeted," Mr Hockey told The Australian last night. "It seems to be targeted at private health providers. The impact on private health providers will be dramatic."

Earlier, Australian Private Health Insurance Association chief executive Michael Armitage said the change was being made for "socialist government philosophical reasons".

Source

From Medicare to mediocre

By Tony Abbott, Opposition spokesman

The Rudd Government is trumpeting that it has saved 2.4 million people from paying a Medicare surcharge. In fact, only 465,000 people paid the surcharge and each one of them could have avoided it by taking out private health insurance. If up to one million people now give up their private cover, as experts predict they will, Kevin Rudd will be directly responsible for a massive blow-out in public hospital waiting lists.

Sick people already wait for hours in public hospital emergency departments, despite the big increase in bulk-billing since 2003. Older people still wait months for elective surgery, despite a 16 per cent real increase in federal funding for state-run public hospitals under the present healthcare agreements. People tempted to thank Rudd for a tax cut won't be so grateful when they wait even longer for a hospital bed.

The Medicare surcharge is designed to ensure that people with higher incomes make a greater contribution to health costs. Fewer people covered by the surcharge means less money invested in the health system. At present, a family on $100,000 a year takes out private health insurance or pays an extra $1000 to Medicare. Most families in this situation have private insurance, which means that they don't compete with poorer people for elective surgery in public hospitals or can contribute to public hospital revenue by electing to be treated as private patients. Under the Rudd Government's announced changes, these families will have much less incentive to be privately insured. Many will drop out, especially because they also face higher grocery and petrol prices and higher interest rates since the Government's election.

Health analyst Andrew Goodsall says the initial effect of the Government's changes could be that 400,000 people drop out of private health insurance. Because the dropouts will mostly be younger and less costly to treat, Goodsall expects a disproportionate drop in profitability, perhaps a 10 per cent hike in premiums, and one million people ultimately losing private health cover. As a result, not only will more people be totally reliant on overstretched public hospitals but there could be a cascading effect on the viability of the private health system, which has been painstakingly restored since 1996.

After reaching nearly 70 per cent in the early 1980s, due to Hawke government policy changes, private health cover had dropped to just 30 per cent of the population by the mid-'90s. Then the Howard government introduced the Medicare surcharge for higher income earners without insurance, lifetime health cover to encourage younger people to join health funds, and the Medicare rebate to make health insurance premiums 30 per cent cheaper. Together, these policies increased private health coverage from six million to more than nine million people (including one million people earning less than $20,000 a year). Partly as a result, nearly 60 per cent of all surgery is now performed in private hospitals.

If even a small proportion of the 2.9 million episodes of private hospital treatment every year went public, there would be a substantial strain on public hospitals already struggling to cope.

In "economic conservative" mode before the election, Kevin Rudd and Health Minister Nicola Roxon were at pains to promise their full support for the private health sector. On November 20 last year, to "allay concerns" about Labor's historical bias against private health insurance, Rudd wrote to the Australian Health Insurance Association pledging that "Labor will maintain the Medicare levy surcharge".

Typically, Rudd has deliberately created a false impression without technically telling a lie. The surcharge has been maintained, but it has been altered in ways that fundamentally change its impact. Plainly, Rudd intends to rely on word games to justify junking other seemingly rock-solid commitments such as not means-testing the baby bonus. This is likely to turn out to be the 2008 version of core and non-core promises (only without the justification of an unexpected budget black hole) and to have an equal effect on the Government's standing.

Despite the Prime Minister's pose as "beyond Left and Right", there's already an old-fashioned feel to this budget. There's been much ado about minor changes that will "hit the rich" even though, in the case of the extra luxury car tax, they're likely to drive up prices for everyone. After the strain of having to appear economically responsible, ministers are enjoying playing Robin Hood but haven't yet realised that it's hard to hit the rich without hitting the poor.

Still, like the Labor premiers, Rudd has certainly learned the value of news management. Labor's spin about Medicare savings was front page news in at least four metropolitan newspapers while the reality that money was being taken out of the health system is now "old news", relegated to the back of the book.

Source

State minister accused of waiting list blowout

Below is the silly little airhead responsible for the healthcare of most people in NSW



The number of patients waiting for surgery at NSW hospitals has climbed to nearly 59,000, or about 55 extra people each week since Reba Meagher became Health Minister just over a year ago, the Opposition says. "Under Reba Meagher's watch, there are now more people waiting for surgery in NSW than at any other time during the last three years," the Opposition health spokeswoman, Jillian Skinner, said yesterday. The waiting list would increase further if the Federal Government doubled the Medicare levy surcharge threshold, which applied to taxpayers who did not have private health insurance, because at least 140,000 patients would flood the NSW public system, she said.

Ms Skinner called on the State Government to ensure NSW received more funding for its hospitals to cope with the expected rise in demand. Already overstretched doctors and nurses would come under more pressure from 140,000 extra patients.

Ms Meagher said the numbers waiting for surgery would "naturally rise as the population grows and ages, and the demand for medical services increases". The Opposition had "missed the point", she said, citing a drop in how long patients waited for surgery from an average of 3.6 months in June 2005 to 2.8 months in March this year.

She said the number of patients waiting more than a year for elective surgery had dropped from more than 10,000 to 255 in March and those waiting more than 30 days for urgent surgery had decreased from more than 5000 in 2005 to 102. "What matters is that people who need elective surgery have their procedure within the clinically recommended time frame, and that is what is happening," she said.

The Opposition says the hospital waiting list dropped from 58,461 in March 2006 to 51,779 in December 2006, the last reported figures before the state election. The figure then jumped to 55,972 in March last year, and was 58,839 a year later, it says. The Federal Government announced in January it would spend $150 million on cutting elective surgery waiting lists, of which NSW would receive $43.3 million.

Source




Backdown on school 'league tables'

School secrecy prevails. Parents must not be told how bad a government school is

National literacy and numeracy testing of Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 school students begins for the first time today but frustration looms for parents who want to use the test results to compare individual school performance. Despite the Rudd Government declaring it was vital that Australians knew how well the education system was performing in providing literacy and numeracy skills, state education bureaucrats have vowed to stop the outcomes of the tests being released on a school-by-school basis. Individual schools will still have to report their results, but not until more than a year after the tests are taken.

The Queensland Studies Authority says it will keep secret results that would identify school performance on the tests. The authority also has reminded school principals that student assessment information it collects is exempted from release under Freedom of Information laws. It has warned schools that "access to these reports should be limited to those who have a legitimate reason to do so". Instead, the published data is likely to only compare the performance of the states as well as males and females and indigenous and non-indigenous students.

Parents will get reports on the performance of their child in the tests and schools will receive student, class and school reports. But, under current rules, parents wanting to know how their school fared in the tests this week may have to wait until June 30 next year to access the information.

The tests, hailed as the first truly national assessment of children's literacy and numeracy skills, will be spread over today, tomorrow and Thursday. It is the first time Year 9 students have sat national literacy and numeracy tests and also the first time all students will sit the single national test. Education authorities across the country decided on May dates for the testing because it was early enough in the year for the results to help diagnose learning problems or issues.

Parents will receive reports showing how their child has performed on a scale of achievement using bands, allowing the child's progress in numeracy and literacy to be tracked throughout their schooling. Education Minister Julia Gillard said parents would not just know how their child was performing against a national benchmark but whether he or she was in a low achievement band or a high achievement band. However, Ms Gillard yesterday ducked questions about how the performance of individual schools would be reported. "At this stage what parents are going to get is their own report card," she said in a radio interview. "We are talking to state and territory governments about the best use of this information. Obviously it can be used by government to work out who needs additional assistance."

State Education Minister Rod Welford said there would be little change from previous testing arrangements. He said parents should reassure their children that the tests include material that they would have covered in the classroom. "The real focus of the assessment program is to look at how students are performing and where they may need help so we can then look at our teaching and curriculum planning," he said.

Source





12 May, 2008

A "cure" for public hospital chaos?

A senior doctor at one of Queensland's big hospitals wants the public to be told daily of the number of patients admitted to emergency wards. He said the alarming statistics might make people more careful. The doctor, who has worked for 25 years in public hospitals, revealed a slice of the chaotic life in a typical hospital emergency department in a heartfelt "I will be your doctor" open letter to The Sunday Mail last weekend. His insightful words about sickness, accidents, drunkenness, overdoses, abuse, miracles and death touched hundreds of thousands of Queenslanders and prompted scores of readers to write in with their support for our overworked frontline medicos and nurses.

But the doctor also warned Queenslanders that "things are not good" with the state's health system. In a follow-up letter, the doctor - who must remain anonymous to protect his government job - said there were five things he would like to see happen now to help start rectifying problems at our public hospital emergency wards. He wrote:

* I would like the media to report daily emergency department capacity in the same way as water levels in our dams are regularly reported. This information is on the Queensland Health website but I believe it is in the public interest for the figures to be more widely publicised. If people were aware of the backlogs, they might drive a lot more carefully.

* The financial incentive to access "free" medical care at public hospitals instead of via a GP and community-based facilities needs to be removed. A good first step would be for politicians to bring health together under one umbrella, preferably controlled by the Commonwealth.

* Queensland Health needs to provide alternative access to hospital-based medical services. People will continue to come to emergency wards, either by choice or on the advice of their GP. True emergencies should be seen in a properly equipped emergency department. Hospitals need to provide a practical and timely alternative for non-emergencies.

* We in emergency departments need to reconsider the way we do business. We are about to receive a flood of new medical graduates, part of the solution offered after the Patel affair. New models of care are needed to maximise their learning opportunities, provide adequate supervision and still deal with the increasing number of patients.

* End-of-life issues need to be openly examined. The taboo and secrecy surrounding death has prevented us looking at the way we treat people in the last year of their life. It is a shame the end is so often medicalised beyond dignity.

After last Sunday's hard-hitting open letter, the doctor acknowledged that his words were likely to "ruffle some feathers" with government and health authorities. "I do hope something comes of it," he said. His comments came as the March quarter figures revealed an 11 per cent jump on the same period last year in the number of people attending emergency departments in public hospitals.

Queensland Health Minister Stephen Robertson has called on the Federal Government to fund a scheme allowing GPs to treat people in public hospital emergency departments. Mr Robertson said the primary-care shake-up would cost millions of dollars, but said it was vital to ease pressure in the ER.

Source




Public hospital closures to stretch waiting lists

QUEENSLAND Health's decision to shutdown one of the state's biggest cardiac surgery units in Townsville and to stop cataract surgery in Hervey Bay has aggravated a waiting list blowout that has worsened in the past three years, doctors said yesterday. The Courier-Mail reported at the weekend that elective surgery waiting lists have blown out by 15 per cent and lists to see specialists by 50 per cent in the past 1000 days since the Government promised to fix the health system.

Don Kane, the president of Salaried Doctors Queensland, said closing the Townsville cardiac surgery unit because of infighting among staff lengthened waiting lists by at least 200 patients a year. Queensland Health estimated the unit was doing 400 procedures a year. "What happened there was a failure of management," Mr Kane said. "The situation could have been fixed up in a short period of time. Closing the unit was totally unnecessary." Since its closure in November, Queensland Health has flown dozens of patients to Brisbane for heart surgery.

A spokesman for Health Minister Stephen Robertson said the unit was closed to protect the public. "Dysfunctional interpersonal relationships between key staff threatened the safe, sustainable operation of the service," he said. "This hard decision followed several ongoing attempts by local hospital management to rectify the situation." The spokesman said Queensland Health was in final stages of negotiations with an experienced surgeon and hoped to reopen the surgery "very soon." However Mr Kane predicted it would take up to a year before the unit reopened.

In Bundaberg, optometrist Ross Fisher criticised Queensland Health for "ditching" 48 elderly patients waiting for cataract surgery at Hervey Bay hospital. The patients, who had been waiting an average of two years for the surgery, faced starting over on new waiting lists. "They certainly ditched them. They were taken off the list and told they would need to get a referral to start again on another," he said.

One of them, John Kennedy, 76, said he was told he would have to wait another 18 months beyond the year he spent waiting for a slot at Hervey Bay. "I don't know whether I'm on a list or not. I'm in limbo. I'm in the dark," he said. Queensland Health categorises cataract surgery as non-urgent elective surgery.

The minister's spokesman said he was unable to provide details about the Hervey Bay cases. "We understand the frustration of some patients who do wait longer than desirable for their surgery," he said. "Ophthalmology in particular is affected by chronic workforce shortages right around the country."

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Climate change will boost farm output in Australia (and elsewhere)

A bit of logic for a change. That CO2 is a potent plant fertiliser and that a warmer climate would mean more rain overall are basic facts that Greenies never mention. And a dry continent like Australia could certainly make good use of more rain!

AUSTRALIAN agricultural output will double over the next 40 years, with climate change predicted to increase, rather than hinder, the level of production.

A recent spate of reports forecasting the decline of Australian agriculture because of climate change have greatly exaggerated, and even completely misreported the threat of global warming, according to senior rural industry figures. In a report published by the Australian Farm Institute, executive director Mick Keogh says agricultural output is projected to improve strongly through to 2050, with a growing global population and increased economic wealth boosting demand for Australian produce. If the sector adapts even modestly, production would increase rather than decrease as a result of climate change, the report says.

Predictions of a 20 per cent drop in farm production by mid-century were cited by Kevin Rudd and Agriculture Minister Tony Burke as justification for Australia's signing of the Kyoto Protocol. In fact, Mr Keogh says, if global warming does occur, some areas such as southeast Queensland will receive more rain, and as a result will greatly benefit. Recent research has shown increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere lifts plant production by up to 30 per cent in a phenomenon known as carbon fertilisation.

Mr Keogh, a well-respected industry figure, said much of the media reporting on the recent ABARE report Climate Change: Impacts On Australian Agriculture, was so misleading it risked eroding industry confidence in public research agencies. "The reporting claimed that agriculture would be absolutely devastated, when that is not what the research showed at all," he said. "For a start the media consistently misreported the research results as a future reduction in agricultural output, rather than a slowing of future rates of growth in output."

He said the ABARE report chose a series of highly unlikely worst-case climate change scenarios and then projected them over a long period of time. ABARE also used the assumption that climate change would slow economic growth globally, thereby decreasing the demand for food. "With increasing world population this is highly unlikely," Mr Keogh said.

Also unlikely was the assumption that farmers would not adapt. "In many situations it appears as if an increase in temperature, certainly over the next few decades, will increase rather than decrease productivity," he said. "As well, open field studies are returning increases in plant productivity of about 15 per cent with increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Levels up to 30 per cent have been returned in laboratory studies."

Charles Burke, a fourth-generation cattle farmer at Lake Somerset, north of Brisbane, said most farmers were sceptical of the claims surrounding climate change and believed they were instead dealing with climate variability. After the recent dry, he hoped the Australian Farm Institute was right in its predictions southeast Queensland would benefit from more rainfall. "No one has their head in their sand, but farmers want to move forward armed with the right information," he said. "The experts can't agree. Many farmers aren't convinced. We have to have the right information and the right tools. We need to make sure the information is correct."

Chief executive for the National Farmers Federation Ben Fargher said his members too had been concerned about the negative reporting of the industry's future. "We are very well placed to grow businesses into the future," he said.

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Exporting STONE to China!

One would think that stone would not be hard to find in China but business is business -- and Helidon stone does look good



A HELIDON quarry that produced sandstone for some of Brisbane's oldest buildings is now helping to build a modern China. Australian Sandstone Industries is shipping container loads of sandstone to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hainan Island for shopping centre and tourist resort projects. Blocks of up to 22 tonnes are sent over each month in 500-tonne consignments and then cut to meet local needs.

And demand is growing, according to the company's general manager Patrick Ng, who said Chinese developers recognised Helidon sandstone as the world's best. "The colours cannot be found anywhere else and because the stone is not as porous it produces the finest surface," Mr Ng said. "There are other good Australian sandstones but none as good as Helidon's." Mr Ng said that while the company was publicly listed, its major shareholders were Chinese. "As a result, 90 per cent of what we quarry is exported with the remainder being offered on the domestic market," he said. "There is increasing Chinese interest and there is a huge market potential there."

Chinese company L'Sea Group had recently placed a $1 million order for 2500 tonnes for its real estate projects and since 2003 ASI had exported product worth more than $13 million.

While Queensland Trade Minister John Mickel recently hailed the quarry as a Smart State business, sandstone has been excavated from the ASI site for more than a century by former owners. The quarry provided sandstone for Queensland's former Treasury building, now the Conrad Treasury Casino, and its material was used in the construction of the University of Queensland at St Lucia, in Brisbane's west.

Sandstone from several quarries in the Helidon hills to the east of Toowoomba on the Darling Downs has also been used in Toowoomba, Ipswich and Warwick. The stone, formed 200 million years ago, is also one of the main materials used in Brisbane's St John's Anglican Cathedral, which is now nearing completion.

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11 May, 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Catholic schools join same-sex lockout

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

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

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

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

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Independent senators to flex muscles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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10 May, 2008

Seven year hospital wait

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



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

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

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

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

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

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Surgery blowouts hit reform agenda

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Australia in the grip of a baby boom

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

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

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

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

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No change so far to freedom from information practices

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

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

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

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The Rudd vision

This could easily be the agenda of a conservative government

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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9 May, 2008

Do-gooders reject controlled spending for blacks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Old document used in land rights push



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

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

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

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Dogs not racist



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

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

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Federal district passes civil unions law for homosexuals

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

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

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

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

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8 May, 2008

Rudd tougher on asylum seekers than Howard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Blessed are the sceptics



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The expected union mayhem is getting underway

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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"Healthy lifestyle" absurdities

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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7 May, 2008

Treasury slams Labor's workplace plans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Freedom of the press? Who cares about that?

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

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

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

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

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Hospital bathroom birth 'cover-up'

The notorious Royal North Shore Hospital again

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

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

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

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

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NSW electricity privatization

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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6 May, 2008

MEDICAL MYSTERY

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Young Aussies 'losing' male role models

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Amazing waste of medical time in public hospitals

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

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

The team from the university's Health Informatics Research and Evaluation Unit observed 19 doctors at four wards at a 400-bed teaching hospital in Sydney. Publishing the results of the study in the Medical Journal of Australia, Prof Westbrook said