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31 May, 2006

Australian welfare system bankrolls terrorist suspects

Post lifted from Libertarian.org

Thanks to Tim Blair, we learn the heart warming news that the benefits of multicultural diversity have not been lost on Centrelink case officers

AUSTRALIA'S 22 terror suspects and their families receive more than $1 million a year in taxpayer-funded welfare and legal aid.

And simply because the men were locked up, their families received a social security pay rise of as much as $1700 a year. One of the jailed Melbourne men, Abdul Nacer Benbrika -- leader of a radical group of Islamists -- has been in Australia for 10 years and has never had a job.

Mr Benbrika was among 13 Melbourne men charged with belonging to a terrorist organisation.
Of Algerian descent, he has a Lebanese-born wife and seven children.

This is a smashing victory for tolerance; my innards are positively glowing as we speak. Why should any sovereign country be allowed put its own interests before the well-being of unemployable jihadists who breed like vermin?

Under Centrelink rules, she is entitled to almost $50,000 a year in welfare while her husband is in prison, awaiting trial.

Ahmed Raad, another Melbourne suspect, has a child and his wife is entitled to about $21,500 a year, as are the wives of Ezzit Raad and Abdullah Merhi.

The wife of another suspect, Hany Taha, who has three children, is entitled to up to $30,000 a year.

The fact that worthless scum such as Benbrika and his confederates are allowed to receive so much as a dime from the taxpayer, let alone being considered even remotely applicable as candidates for residency, is a calculated insult to all productive citizens of this country.

Not only is our welfare system - estimated to cost a record $91 billion this year according to treasury documents - an utter joke, our immigration policies are nothing short of a train wreck. What this amounts to is a conscious policy of reverse eugenics. The stupider and less useful to society you are, the more the government pays you to breed. And the more talented and fruitful you are, the more cash you must fork out (which could be better spent passing on your genes to a worthy cause) to facilitate morons to rear an underclass of idiots.

In God's name, what self-respecting civilisation runs such insane, suicidal policies? You would think our government, hell-bent on punishing virtue and rewarding pathology, was controlled by a Chinese fifth column (speaking of the Chinese - you will freeze in hell before they ever copy our abominable social policies), so dedicated it is to ruining whatever future this country might otherwise have enjoyed as an independent, sovereign, entity.

And the connection between the immigration of unassimilable aliens and the welfare state has never been more plain. As long as Australia remains a country with virtually unlimited voting franchise, the awful truth is that importing people with sub-average talents will lead directly to bigger government - the foreign mendicants clearly have every incentive to vote en masse for whichever electoral coalition is most dedicated to mulcting the economically productive while continuing to import large numbers of ne'er-do-wells.



Australia to the rescue yet again



East Timor, The Solomons and now a second time in Indonesia. Strange that i can remember no offers of help from abroad for our own cyclone disaster in north Queensland. But our local North Queenslanders helped themselves pretty well anyway

The first of a team of Australian disaster and medical experts will arrive in Indonesia today to begin work in the earthquake-ravaged city of Yogyakarta. More than 5400 people were killed, many thousands more injured and as many as 200,000 left homeless when the 6.3 magnitude quake struck on Saturday. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who today described the situation as "incredibly severe", said the Government had committed a large contingent of experts to help. "What we are doing is we have sent a seven-person AusAID team that will be in place in Yogyakarta today to establish a support base for co-ordination, logistics and the medical support presence, and we are sending a health team in there of 27 medical and surgical personnel," he told ABC Radio. "There will be surgeons, anaesthetists, operating staff, disaster medicine specialists and so on."

Australia is one of many nations to dispatch aid for the tens of thousands of earthquake victims as the United Nations issued an urgent call for field hospitals, medical supplies and tents. UN emergency relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland, who helped oversee the tsunami relief in Indonesia's Aceh province, said yesterday the effort should be quicker in reaching quake victims and rebuilding on the country's main Java island. "This time I think it's going to be easier because Java is not as remote as Aceh," he said. "We are now able to help in a matter of hours after an earthquake strikes," Mr Egeland said. "We are better co-ordinated now than ever before."

But as survivors spent a third night in the open in pelting rain and the injured spilled out of overcrowded hospitals, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called for better co-ordination. "We have to improve co-ordination, both between the government and the regions, from one region and another, and co-ordination with foreign parties and non-governmental organisations," he said yesterday in Yogyakarta, the main city in the disaster zone.

Up to 25,000 houses were reported damaged and 4000 of them were destroyed, the UN humanitarian co-ordination office (OCHA) said. The UN Children's Fund (Unicef) estimated 100,000 people may be homeless. Volunteers and foreign rescue teams yesterday started distributing emergency rations, clean drinking water, tents and hygiene kits and the UN set up a co-ordination centre at Yogyakarta airport to organise the flow of help. "Our priorities are very much in health, hygiene and water," Unicef spokesman John Budd said.

Elisabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for OCHA, which co-ordinated the Geneva meeting, said the Red Cross was ready to deliver 10,000 tents, but that more would be needed. "The most urgent needs to be delivered within three days are three field hospitals, with a capacity of 100 beds each, medical supplies mostly for orthopaedic treatment, generators, tents and shelter items," she said.

International agencies have maintained a heavy presence in Indonesia since the December 2004 quake and tsunami left 168,000 dead in Aceh province. That relief effort was sharply criticised after inappropriate supplies were flown in and bottlenecks hampered delivery. Throughout yesterday desperate victims stood along the sides of roads, holding up pails and boxes to beg for money and waving signs asking for mercy. Many had written on their T-shirts: "Help Me." Some people expressed anger that relief was not coming more quickly. The Government declared a three-month state of emergency in the zone, where wooden beams from collapsed dwellings stuck up like toothpicks, and broken ceiling tiles and bricks littered the ground.

More here



The "race card" gets an airing in Australia

A motel manager rents out a room to two people -- one black and one white -- but backs off when four people turn up to occupy the room. That's racism?

A Sunshine Coast motel is at the centre of a race row after being accused of refusing to allow a black couple who had booked accommodation to stay the night. Beenleigh couple Trevor Johnson and Colleen Malone, both 28, have lodged a complaint with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission claiming the motel refused to honour their booking because of their race. The couple, who are of Aboriginal and Pacific Islander descent, claim the motel manager told them: "I don't have to put up with people like you."

Ms Malone said the experience had demoralised them and cost them their dignity in front of their friends, who they had been visiting. "I felt so small. I know it was because I was dark," Mr Johnson said. Ms Malone said she was with a white girlfriend when she went into the motel to book a room in Mr Johnson's name. The motel manager, who cannot be named, accepted a $110 deposit.

But when Ms Malone was joined by Mr Johnson and her friend's partner, the four were refused entry to the room. Mr Johnson claims the manager threatened to phone the police if they did not leave and refused to refund their deposit. "I said to her I was going to call the police, instead. They were dumbfounded when they arrived," he said. "The police advised us she wasn't going to give our money back. We advised her we were going to take her to court."

Ms Malone said they had since been offered $1000 by the manager to "go away" but they refused the money because what they really wanted was an apology. Mr Johnson said he had contacted a lawyer and intended to pursue the matter.

In a letter to the commission, the manager confirmed she had accepted a booking for the couple but claimed she had asked only "the extra people" to leave. "At no stage did I ask all to leave, and as the four chose to leave, that is the decision they made," she said.

"I did not see any reason to refund money as most nights of the year are busy with us, and particularly weekends." The manager said she and her husband had been in the industry as owners and managers for 16 years and could not have survived with "any discriminatory inclination". She said she was offended by the accusations.

The above article appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on May 28, 2006



IN BRIEF

Smart army man trumps scare-mongering media



An Australian military commander has tried to ensure truth does not become a casualty of conflict in East Timor, but embarrassed a TV network in the process. Australian commander in East Timor Brigadier Michael Slater appeared this morning in a live cross from Dili to the Nine Network's Today show, with helmeted and heavily armed Australian soldiers standing behind him. He was pressed by Today host Jessica Rowe about whether Dili really was as safe as the Australian military claimed, given the presence of armed soldiers at his shoulder. Pausing briefly, Brig Slater replied: "Jessica I feel quite safe, yes, but not because I've got these armed soldiers behind me that were put there by your stage manager here to make it look good. "I don't need these guys here. "It is not safe on the streets, as it is back home in Sydney or Brisbane - no it's not, if it was we wouldn't be here. But things are getting better every day."

Rowe apologised, saying she didn't realise the guards had been placed specifically for the interview. But Rowe ran into more trouble when she persisted with her line of questioning, and referred to footage of looting and violence. Brig Slater told her the pictures were a "couple of days old". TV rival the Seven Network gleefully circulated grabs of the interview this morning, enjoying an element of revenge after Nine's taunting over its exclusive interview with the Beaconsfield mine survivors.

Source



Corruption at Telstra

French technology giant Alcatel has admitted that it made a "strategic error" in keeping prices for its internet equipment high, costing Telstra hundred of millions of dollars. Less than a week after a leaked Telstra document claimed it had been overcharged, Alcatel's Australia/New Zealand chief Hilary Mine said the company failed to bring prices down, in line with the global market, for a 1999 contract. Under Telstra's Data Mode of Operation (DMO) project, Alcatel was handed the contract, worth as much as $1 billion, to supply DSL equipment, which turns Telstra copper wires into high-speed data connections. By 2003 Telstra, fed up with Alcatel's prices, named NEC as its new DSL provider, and last year, Ericsson was named as a third supplier....

Last week, an internal Telstra document outlining 15 years of problems with Alcatel was tabled at a Senate hearing. The document was prepared by senior Telstra executives concerned that Alcatel had been handed the whole of a $3.4 billion deal to build a residential fibre and DSL network. Industry sources said Alcatel's pricing was up to 40 per cent higher than its rivals. Telstra's chairman Donald McGauchie last week defended the shortened tender process introduced by chief executive Sol Trujillo, which some insiders have described as secretive and hasty....

Alcatel was recently handed a deal worth an undisclosed sum to provide computer-based "soft switches", despite Telstra's previous management deciding to give that work to rival Lucent Technologies after a long testing process. Telstra is in the process of choosing a new vendor for an upgrade to its long-distance optical networks, and has been discussing the project with Alcatel, according to insiders. Senior networks executive Bill Felix is believed to have raised concerns about Alcatel's capability in the area before he left abruptly last week. "With fixed-line projects, it doesn't matter what the question is - the answer is Alcatel," a source familiar with Telstra's network projects said yesterday....

More here



Nobel winner urges more tax cuts



When one of the world's most respected economists meets Federal Treasurer Peter Costello tomorrow he says he will advocate more income tax cuts for workers. US-based economist Professor Edward C. Prescott, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2004, said he would put the case for the cuts to Mr Costello. "The US has room for more tax cuts too," Professor Prescott said today, after delivering a speech at the University of New South Wales. "When you move to a savings rather than a tax and transfer system, a pay-as-you-go type system, you reduce government expenditure by those responsibilities," he said. "The gain from moving to that is it doesn't distort the ... time allocated between market and non-market activities and time is the most precious commodity."

Professor Prescott, who is the W.P. Carey Professor at Arizona State University and the senior monetary adviser for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, said cutting tax increased productivity in the labour market by providing an incentive to work. "Europe, with its tax and transfer system to finance retirement and health, is throwing away 25 per cent of its output," he said. "The Europeans only work about 70 per cent of the Australians or the Chileans or the New Zealanders or the Japanese. Why? They have high tax rates."

More here



Unbelievable police bureaucracy

Tasmania Police is set to break the record for project delays, with a digital radio network first put to tender in 1995 unlikely to be delivered before 2008. Moves to replace the litigation-plagued Tasmanian Mobile Radio Network have been hit by delays, forcing police to continue using the old analogue network. Angry officers working on the analogue system say radio dropouts and outdated technology are putting public safety as risk.

The Police Association has warned that the quality on the analogue network is poor, but the service has admitted that a network to replace one dumped in 2004 after officers complained of poor coverage, will not go to tender until later this year, making it unlikely to be delivered next year as promised. "We've been told it will be February 2007, so we'd be pretty cranky if it was 2008," Police Association president Sergeant Randolph Wierenga said. Deputy Commissioner Jack Johnston, who said last year that he expected to go to tender in August 2005, now says specifications will be available some time this year.....

More here



Another ID card fizzler

The Medicare smartcard launched in Tasmania two years ago has been quietly scrapped, a Senate estimates hearing has been told. More than $4.5 million was spent on developing the card, which featured a microchip with far greater data capacity than the magnetic strips on current Medicare cards. Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott launched the smartcard in Launceston in 2004 as part of the now stalled HealthConnect electronic patient record program. It is understood only 1 per cent of eligible Tasmanians expressed interest in registering for the card.

Labor Party Queensland Senator Claire Moore said news that the program had ended was a surprise. "We were informed by Human Services officials that the Tasmanian trial had ended as of last Thursday, and that the lessons from it would flow into the wider access card project," Ms Moore said. "I'm wondering when they would have got around to telling us if we hadn't asked the question."

Since the smartcard was developed, Medicare Australia has become part of the Human Services mega-department, which is planning its own multiple-agency card. A spokeswoman for Human Services Minister Joe Hockey said no final decision had been made on the card, but the Tasmanian trial was being reassessed in light of Government approval for the access card. "We're trying to work out how to manage the transition," she said. "We don't want people to come in and register for the Medicare smartcard and then have to get a new one when the access card is up and running. "We may be in a position to announce what's happening later in the week."

More here



The East Timor Crisis explained

Mark Aarons explains. Mark is the son of Australia's long time Communist party boss Laurie Aarons. Mark took over the party when Laurie died but subsequently dissolved the party. He is in a rare position to know the inner workings of East Timor's Marxist politics. Disclosure: Mark and I once had girlfriends who were sisters



The crisis in East Timor is a dangerous watershed for the world's youngest nation. Although distressing in its violence and bloodshed, Timorese democracy can survive. But the country's leadership must take stock of the upheaval's causes and remove the stultifying control of political, civic and economic life by Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri's dominant faction within Fretilin, which won 57 per cent of the vote at the country's first election. The crisis also affects supporters of the Timor's independence struggle over the past three decades. Sections of the Australian Left, which was active (with other Australians) in promoting the cause of independence, need to do some serious stocktaking if they are to assist Timor in the long term.

There needs to be recognition that Alkatiri and some of his supporters have a poor record when it comes to democracy. Since its inception in 1974, Fretilin has been a broad front representing social democratic, Marxist and nationalist tendencies. Founding member and current Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta was a social democrat, while others adopted a fundamentalist Marxist platform.

Indonesia's brutal offensives of 1977-78 eliminated the internal leadership, leaving Marxist-inclined leaders such as Alkatiri competing for domination of the exile community with international spokesman Ramos-Horta. Inside the country, Fretilin reasserted its adherence to Marxism under its new leader and current Timorese President, Xanana Gusmao. But during the 1980s Gusmao distanced himself from Marxism and eventually left Fretilin to head a broad, nationalist front that linked his guerillas with the Catholic Church, student organisations and the civilian underground. Fundamentalists remained in Fretilin's leadership, notably among the exiles in the former Portuguese African colonies. Alkatiri's Mozambican cell was the most significant of these.

This history is important in understanding today's crisis. Few would dispute that three figures led Timor's independence struggle. First was Gusmao, leader of the guerillas, whose years inside an Indonesian jail gave him Mandela-like status as the embodiment of Timor's aspiration for nationhood. Then there was Ramos-Horta, whose indefatigable diplomacy over two decades kept Timor on the international community's agenda and won him the Nobel Peace Prize. Finally, there was the co-winner of that prize, Bishop Belo (and the Catholic Church generally), whose support for the struggle was crucial.

By contrast, Alkatiri's name was virtually unknown. Outside the international solidarity groups and diplomats who met him in Ramos-Horta's shadow at international forums, he was neither known nor, more crucially, understood. Alkatiri's main work in exile was to move among Timorese refugees, organising Fretilin cells and giving ideological direction in preparation for running the country. Alkatiri has held power for almost five years, during which time stories of nepotism, corruption and authoritarianism have been too persistent to be lightly dismissed. The struggling public service seems to have been stacked with Alkatiri loyalists. Merit and ability have not been the main criteria for job selection. This has undermined professionalism, politicised the civil service and sown the seeds of resentment, disaffection and now revolt.

Alkatiri's shortcomings do not end there. Authoritarianism, of an eerily Stalinist kind, has too often been the Government's response to dissent. The means used by Alkatiri to ensure his recent re-election as Fretilin leader illustrate the point. By replacing a secret ballot with a show of hands, he not only thwarted his challenger, but actually undermined democracy in order to proclaim his own "democratic" victory.

The malaise in governance and the endemic abuses of power are also personified by Interior Minister Rogerio Lobato, brother of resistance hero Nicolau Lobato who was killed by the Indonesians in 1978. I knew Rogerio in 1976 as a swaggering Fretilin commander. He helped me obtain tens of thousands of dollars in Mozambique to keep an illegal radio connection operating with East Timor, which I smuggled into Australia, risking a lengthy prison term.

A few years later, Rogerio was jailed in Angola for smuggling diamonds, not to assist his country's struggle but to enrich himself. Lobato's appointment to a sensitive post in Alkatiri's Government was an important warning sign. The recent allegation in UN cables that he spends much of his time managing his own business affairs is consistent with his criminal activities in Angola. Yet he was put in charge of the country's security apparatus. Little wonder that elements of the forces within Lobato's circle have been heavily involved in the violence.

Since independence, many Australians on the political Left have uncritically supported Alkatiri's Government. I have been dismayed by the fierce, and utterly misconceived, criticisms of Gusmao and Ramos-Horta and the blindness towards Alkatiri's manifest shortcomings. Some have simply denounced Gusmao and Ramos-Horta because they abandoned Fretilin, while others are resentful about Gusmao's challenges to Alkatiri's dominance of political and civic society.

Nor should we heed the voices of the political Right which is now smugly claiming that Fretilin is irredeemably corrupt and violent. We should not despair about Timor's prospects to become a viable, independent nation. Yes, Timor is dominated by Fretilin, which along with other political forces committed crimes in the Indonesian-instigated 1975 civil war. This has been honestly admitted by Fretilin, but some Fretilin leaders are certainly behind the mismanagement and violent criminal behaviour that have caused and been featured in the current crisis.

But these pale in comparison with the mass crimes of Indonesia's illegal occupation. East Timor overcame this and has the capacity to overcome the present troubles. There are many competent and democratically inclined Timorese (especially within Fretilin) who can lead the nation towards stability and democracy.

The country's future now depends on Gusmao and Ramos-Horta continuing in senior roles. East Timor's needs must come before Gusmao's desire to retire next year or Ramos-Horta's bid to shift to the UN. Without these two giants, Timor risks ongoing dependence on the international community. Gusmao has a particular responsibility. He is the one figure who can unite the warring factions from the western and eastern ends of his country.

The governing Timorese elite needs to do some hard thinking about its next steps. Above all, Alkatiri and his supporters should drop their conspiracy theories about Gusmao's "attempted coup d'etat" and admit their own mistakes and shortcomings. A failure to support a new direction by the dominant Fretilin faction would threaten the entire independence struggle and leave their country open to the possibility of effectively becoming an Australian client state.

Source



30 May, 2006

Queensland kids defy "junk food" ban

This is the junk food rush -- the early-morning and lunchtime fast food fix that makes a mockery of new healthy eating laws at school canteens. As these pictures show, students are lining up before class and during their lunch breaks to feast on fatty fast foods.

Parents say the queues are getting longer as students openly rebel against the healthy menus forced on school tuckshops. ``I saw these kids walking back with bottles of Coke and hot chips. Their parents have dropped them off, giving them lunch money for the tuckshop and now they probably don't have enough to buy it because they bought junk,'' a Gold Coast mother told The Sunday Mail.

Defiant students say the State Government's ban on the sale of junk food in tuckshops will not change their eating habits. ``The attitude is `Who cares?' A lot of people will still go down to Woolies and Maccas and get their stuff there,'' a student said.

Leading nutritionist Michael Georgalli predicted more students would rebel against the Healthy Choices program as it was rolled out across the state. He warned the ban on junk foods would ``fuel the obesity epidemic'' instead of helping students adopt healthier eating habits. ``The process of restriction has been shown to encourage the uptake of the very behaviours that one is attempting to avoid in children,'' he said. Research produced for the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found restricting children's access to certain foods may ``actually promote the very behaviour its use is intended to reduce''. Mr Georgalli said the banning of junk foods at tuckshops could also lead to serious safety concerns. ``These restrictions can lead to children leaving the school grounds and crossing dangerous roads,'' he said.

Confectionery manufacturers argue the ``prohibitionist stance'' on so-called treat foods will fail. They support children having access to all foods so they learn good nutrition from making responsible choices. ``From our point of view, we believe there should be the sale of good nutritious food in canteens and that confectionery is a treat food which shouldn't be seen as a form of meal replacement,'' Confectionary Manufacturers of Australasia chief executive officer David Greenwood said. He said the move to control what food was eaten by students might work at primary schools but not at high schools. ``While this may appear to be a good idea on the surface, it is unlikely to control the eating of older students,'' Mr Greenwood said. ``High school students often have access to their own funds and can purchase foods outside of school grounds. ``Some may even purchase treat foods and then sell them to other students, depriving the canteen and the school of funds.''

The changes to tuckshop menus have also sparked reports of canteen workers resigning in protest. Staff have also been upset by the more labour-intensive preparation of food and greater spoilage required to meet the new rules. Queensland Association of School Tuckshops project officer Chris Ogden confirmed that ``early on there were some complaints''. ``If some have left, to be honest, it's probably better that they did. You're a tuckshop convenor because you care about children's health,'' Ms Ogden said. ``If you're not prepared to make the changes then maybe you're better off looking for alternate employment.''

The above article appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on May 28, 2006



Teachers in line of fire over boycott of postmodern rubbish

The West Australian Government has threatened to empty entire high school departments of rebellious teachers who are refusing to implement its new-age gradeless curriculum. The State School Teachers Union yesterday made good its threat to boycott the 17 new subjects in a range of government high schools next year, issuing a directive to faculties to treat the new courses as voluntary. The union representing private school teachers pledged to do the same, creating a dilemma for the Carpenter Government as it attempts to roll out the controversial new courses in all high schools next year.

Acting Premier Eric Ripper yesterday warned teachers that he expected them to "do their job" and teach the new "outcomes-based education" courses as per government orders. If they did not, he said, they could be forced to teach lower years than Years 11 and 12 where the new courses are due to be introduced. Education Minister and former teacher Ljiljanna Ravlich has attempted to keep a low profile as the curriculum crisis engulfs the Government and was again unavailable for comment yesterday. But Mr Ripper, who is Ms Ravlich's long-time partner and also a former teacher, rose to her defence. "Outcomes-based education is the way of the future," he said. "The Government expects teachers to do their job." He then issued a threat to mutinous teachers, saying that if any were uncomfortable with the new courses for years 11 and 12, there would be "plenty of spots in years 8 and 9" for them to teach.

Opposition education spokesman Peter Collier, a former high school teacher, said Ms Ravlich was out of touch and the Premier should step in. "The only resolution is to delay the implementation of all 17 courses until the endemic problems are resolved and then you have full implementation by 2008," Mr Collier said.

Under the new curriculum, all subjects are equal, meaning a top performance in cooking and dance could help a student into a university law degree, ahead of those who studied physics and chemistry. Supporters say the courses are more inclusive and recognise a wider range of achievement. Critics such as the teacher lobby group People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes claim the courses lack substance and say that assessing students against eight new "levels" of achievement is subjective and not as accurate as giving them grades or percentages.

The State School Teachers Union's directive yesterday means high school departments that are not ready will continue teaching the present curriculum next year. Entire departments at private schools are also expected to boycott the new subjects, according to the Independent Education Union of Western Australia. Its state secretary Theresa Howe said there were "system-wide" concerns about the courses. The architect of the new courses, the state Curriculum Council, was last night reeling from the news that its planned rollout was in jeopardy. Acting chief executive David Axworthy said the council needed time to discuss the implications of the union's directive.

Source



Amazing: No crime for MPs to tell lies in Left-ruled Queensland

Politicians and bureaucrats in Queensland no longer face the prospect of criminal prosecution for lying to parliamentary committees after the Beattie Government yesterday afforded them immunity. Following the Gordon Nuttall case last year, in which the former health minister was investigated by police and the Crime and Misconduct Commission, Labor used its numbers in state parliament to amend the criminal code to ensure any similar cases were dealt with by politicians alone.

After a fiery debate in parliament, Coalition MPs voted against the move, which Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg said "legalises MPs lying". But Attorney-General Linda Lavarch said the amendments "brought Queensland parliamentary contempt laws into line with laws in the United Kingdom and other Australian parliaments". She said the amendments would protect the supremacy of the Queensland parliament, where members could speak without the risk of being sued or prosecuted.

Ms Lavarch accused the Opposition of conducting a disgraceful campaign "to mislead the public that somehow the change would allow MPs to mislead the community".

Last year, the CMC found Mr Nuttall had given a misleading answer to the budget estimates committee over his knowledge of problems with overseas-trained doctors. While he had already been dumped as health minister and eventually quit cabinet altogether, the CMC left parliament to decide whether he should be prosecuted by police or his peers. The Government and Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson rejected the call for a criminal prosecution and the amendments now remove that option, with the parliament left to impose any sanctions of MPs who mislead or deliberately tell lies.

Outside parliament, Mr Springborg said Labor wanted to give its ministers protection "so that they can lie to these committees with no criminal sanction if they do so". "It's all aimed at preventing the Opposition and the people of Queensland from getting the truth about what this Government is doing," he said. The changes to the criminal code, which had been in place since the 1890s, would end accountability in the Queensland parliament. Queensland did not have an upper house to review legislation and this made it different from parliaments in Britain and other Australian states.

Source



Dumb but Leftist: Your future doctor

Medical schools are giving students coveted university training places based on "personality assessments" that include asking for their views on the Iraq war and gay marriage. Less academically gifted students are leapfrogging those with better marks by signing up for coaching programs that school them in handling the interview questions - fuelling critics' claims that the personality tests are skewing the selection process for the nation's future doctors away from the best and brightest.

Some interviewees have been asked to debate the rights and wrongs of providing in-vitro fertilisation services to gay people. Other questions include what applicants' parents do for a living and whether they went to a private school.

Some senior doctors are now accusing universities of attempting to "socially engineer" medical school intakes by giving preference to candidates who reflect the interviewers' views, allegedly often left-wing. The interviews - usually conducted by a panel comprising members of the public as well as doctors - often ask applicants to talk about their earliest memories, or discuss their biggest disappointment in life and how they coped with it. The process is supposed to identify "well-rounded personalities" that some claim will make better doctors.

Greg Deacon, president of the Australian Society of Anesthetists, described the situation as "absolutely appalling" and said he had been "speaking to a number of people who have been upset" at the way the interview process at a number of universities - including the University of NSW and Newcastle University - has been conducted. "Questions that are being asked, and that should never be asked, are questions such as 'What does your father do?', 'What does your mother do?', 'Where do you live?' and 'What school did you go to?'," Dr Deacon said. "If you went to a private school, or your father is a doctor, you are simply not going to be selected. The justification is the personal biases of those doing the interviews - they are trying to engineer the selection of medical undergraduates to further their own desires." He said he knew of one student whose HSC results put her in the state's top 40. "She was asked these questions," he said. "Because her father was a specialist doctor and went to private school, she didn't get in. It's hard to comprehend."

Dr Deacon said students' views on Iraq or gay marriage had "nothing to do with ability to be a doctor", and the risk was that interviewers would frown on candidates whose views clashed with their own. But these latest claims are rejected by the heads of Australia's 17 medical schools, which are already under pressure over assertions that the teaching of sciences, including anatomy and pathology, has been cut back to dangerous levels. The medical schools say interviewers are trained to judge an applicant's ability to reason and argue intelligently, not the position they take. But at least one university is scrapping the interview process after finding no evidence that the students selected by panels performed any better during the course.

And experts who assess personalities have cast doubts on the validity of the interviews. A NSW forensic psychiatrist, Julian Parmegiani, does personality assessments in situations such as parole applications and court-ordered psychiatric evaluations. He writes in the latest issue of NSW Doctor, the magazine of the NSW Australian Medical Association, that the interviews "will not identify altruistic, kind and empathetic doctors" but merely the students best able to divine what interviewers wanted to hear. "Successful students might be just a tad more psychopathic, manipulative and intent on recouping their investments," Dr Parmegiani writes.

Source



NSW Premier opposes homosexual indoctrination

Daycare centres should not be used to teach children about gay and lesbian relationships, says Premier Morris Iemma. His comments come after a report claimed a Tempe childcare centre uses books that feature characters from same-sex parent families. The Learn to Include books include titles such as The Rainbow Cubby House, which is about a young girl and her two mothers who build a cubby house in their backyard with a little boy and his two fathers.

Federal MP for Sydney Tanya Plibersek is quoted on the Learn to Include website as saying: "I know that the kids who are reading these books might just start life with the wonderful gift of growing up without homophobic prejudice. That's great for those individual kids and it's wonderful for our whole community too."

But Mr Iemma said children as young as two-years-old are being inappropriately drawn into a gay rights debate. "Kids should be allowed to be kids and daycare centres should not be a battleground for gender politics. I do not personally believe it appropriate for two-year-olds to be dragged into the gay rights debate." Parents who want such issues taught to their children should do so at home, not at daycare centres, he said. "If parents feel particularly strongly about educating children on these issues there is plenty of scope for them to do so at home where they run no risk of offending other parents who may old opposing views and who may not be able to find childcare elsewhere."

Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby co-convenor, David Scamell, said the Learn to Include books simply teach children about acceptance and tolerance. "Children are not being taught about sex education, but rather that some kids had two mums, some have two dads, and that's OK." "It's unfortunate that the Daily Telegraph has wanted to jump on a bandwagon to beat up a story and it is unfortunate that it's been joined by the Premier's Department this morning," Mr Scamell said. "[They] need to actually have a look at the educational material being taught at [the daycare centre] to realise that this actually quite a basic lesson ... they're quite important concepts but then they are not ones that go beyond the level of a five- or six-year-old."

A number of parents had chosen to send their children to the childcare centre because of the types of lessons that are taught there, he said. "Given where the childcare centre is, it is highly likely that a number of children would come from same-sex families. If these lessons are not taught, then those children will continue to feel as though their family is not valued or accepted." He said the the front-page of the Daily Telegraph "is probably the best reason why we actually need to have these lessons in school."

Marrickville Mayor Sam Byrne said the Premier's comments were an example of the "hysteria'' that had erupted over the use of the Learn to Include books at the council's seven day care centres. "It's not a gay rights debate. It's not sex education. It's about inclusion and about having material that reflects the diversity of our community,'' Mr Byrne said. "If the Premier, or anybody else out there, thinks that there are not families out there with two mums or there are not families out there with disabilities [or] from different backgrounds, then they are mad. They are crazy. They need to get out and get amongst the people again.''

Source



29 May, 2006

Your regulators will protect you: Yet another botch from Queensland Health

A cosmetic surgeon who quit Victoria after botching seven operations has been disciplined in Queensland over another surgery bungle. Gold Coast-based Graydon Ronald Van Houten was found guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct over an operation to remove a cyst from the ear of Browns Plains retiree Bob Martin in August 2001. The wound failed to heal and specialists had to remove part of Mr Martin's ear after a routine check-up three months later showed the cyst was a carcinoma.

The incident has raised concerns about how Dr Van Houten was allowed to practise in Queensland despite the adverse findings against him in Victoria. Mr Martin, 64, reached an out-of-court settlement with Dr Van Houten which prevented him from naming the surgeon. But searches of public documents, which name Dr Van Houten, reveal The Medical Board of Queensland in January ruled the 60-year-old not be allowed to perform various skin procedures until he completed courses on skin cancer practice.

Mr Martin said the ordeal had devastated him. "When I walk into shopping centres now people point at me say, 'Look at that man, he has only half an ear.' People are always saying, 'What happened to you?' " Mr Martin said. He said the compensation amounted to "chicken feed" after his legal and hospital bills were paid.

In its findings, the panel noted the Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria in October 2002 had found Dr Van Houten had engaged in unprofessional conduct of a serious nature in the treatment of four patients and unprofessional conduct not of a serious nature in the treatment of three other patients. He escaped suspension because he had moved to Queensland and his Victorian registration had lapsed.

Mr Martin's lawyer Bruce Simmonds said the Queensland panel, despite being aware of the Victorian cases, had imposed little punishment on the doctor apart from requiring him to undergo some training. "I understand he is offering the same types of services here which led to the complaints in Victoria," Mr Simmonds said.

Marilyn Van Houten, a practice manager at her husband's surgery, defended him. "He has no problems that he isn't working through. He's addressed the issues at hand," she said. "Why aren't the newspapers supporting doctors . . . we're not talking about Dr Patel here." The Medical Board of Queensland said recent changes in legislation had led to improved checks on interstate doctors and a public register being established where patients could check doctors' records.

Source



Federal Health Minister Abbott blasts Queensland hospital ban on Bible

Queensland Health are much better at political correctness than they are at medical correctness

Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott has accused Queensland hospital bosses of "losing the plot" after they banned the Bible from bedsides. An outraged Mr Abbott launched his scathing attack, following a Sunday Mail report which revealed the religious books had been removed amid fears of offending non-Christians. Mr Abbott said the Federal Government was giving $9 billion to Queensland to run public hospitals efficiently - not to ban the Bible.

The Royal Brisbane and Princess Alexandra hospitals are among those in the firing line. Staff said the Bibles had been removed because they were no longer in keeping with the "multicultural approach to chaplaincy", while some claimed the books were a source of infection. Mr Abbott told Federal Parliament: "This is not an infection control measure, it is a thought control measure - it is political correctness gone crazy. "I say to public hospital administrators: Stop worrying about offending people and start running public hospitals properly, and give people Bibles at a time when they probably most want to see them."

Gideons International, which distributes the Bibles, has offered to supply hospitals with hardcover copies which could be wiped to reduce infection fears, but health bosses have rejected the offer. This week they denied that Bibles had been banned from bedsides. "Bibles are available in all hospitals, either at the bedside or on request," Queensland Health Director-General Uschi Schreiber said.

More here



Churches successfully defend religious education

She is the woman behind an emerging force in Queensland politics, with access to thousands of Christian followers throughout the state and a formidable record of bending government policy to her agenda. From an office in Springwood, Logan City, Carolyn Cormack led a campaign that in less than a month saw the State Government back down on proposed changes to religious education in schools. With access to more than 3000 churches, from mainstream to charismatic organisations, the Australian Christian Lobby's Queensland chief of staff encouraged parishioners to protest against the changes. In less than a week, more than 9000 signatures were recorded on a petition and dozens of letters were sent to local members throughout the state. Weeks later the proposals were shelved.

Mrs Cormack is loath to boast about the group's success, politely thanking Premier Peter Beattie for his "common sense". But she is determined the Christian voice will be heard at the next state election. Issues such as gay marriage and same-sex adoption would be fought vigorously by the group and they want to see Bibles near every hospital bed. For the first time, the ACL is planning to create a score card on the State Government's performance to hand out to Christian voters before the 2007 election.

Premier Peter Beattie was wise to heed the power of the religious lobby, Griffith University politics and public policy lecturer Paul Williams said. "They are not a flash-in-the-pan type force, and their impact will be more widespread than single-issue groups," Dr Williams said. He said the influence of the religious lobby could mean the difference in several seats, especially outside Brisbane.

In August, ACL will host its state conference to focus on how to make the most of the influence of the Christian vote at the next election. And when campaigning starts, the group will seek to organise forums for candidates to meet with Christians ahead of the poll. It is a move Dr Williams describes as a return to old-fashioned politics with candidates having to engage with lobby group members and explain where they stand on issues. Mrs Cormack said the group was open minded and would offer no special favours for Family First candidates.

Source



Sick priorities of a so-called justice system

A woman who escaped the clutches of a mentally ill killer was blocked from finding out if he had been set free. Natalie Schindler, 24, is living in fear that he will one day track her down and harm her. But health authorities told her they were more concerned about protecting their patient than passing on details of his whereabouts to her.

"I am disgusted ... they would not tell me anything ... they said they had to protect him," Ms Schindler said. "I got quite emotional. I told them I was sick of this system which protects killers."

The Queensland woman contacted the Mental Health Review Tribunal after reading an exclusive report in The Sunday Mail last week about a mentally ill killer given day release. The man was hospitalised after he was declared to be of unsound mind and never faced a criminal court for the horrific crime.

Ms Schindler, who got out of the man's car and discovered later that he had killed her teenage girlfriend, had concerns that it could be the same man now back in the community. She said she rang the tribunal immediately but, a senior official would not give her details of the offender's movements, even after confirming she had been closely connected to the case. "They said their first priority was to protect the patient., not his victims, she said.

Ms Schindler said that in 2002 she had made a submission to the tribunal about the on-going custody of the killer. She had not put her name on the register of interested parties because she did not want repeated reminders of that terrifying day. However, she believed that because of her close link to the case she should have been advised automatically by the tribunal if the killer was to be released. "People have a right to know ... is it really good enough that the tribunal is satisfied that he will not harm himself or others? "Is the tribunal going to watch over him every minute of every day ... and if he kills again. will they take responsibility?"

Details emerged this week that five Queensland killers sent to secure hospitals after being found meutally unfit to stand trial had been returned to the community. Mental Health Review Tribunal president Barry Thomas said the tribunal was "well aware of its responsibility to make sure there was not an unacceptable risk to community safety".

The above article appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on May 28, 2006



The price of politically correct silence about Australian blacks

As the national soul-searching about the plight of remote Aboriginal Australia mounts and the curtains of censorship are pushed back, shocked voices can be heard wondering how we reached this point and what the blueprint for a constructive future may be. But one looks in vain for a precise, coherent road map from the federal Government, which has abolished the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, only to find it has no one left to blame for the disaster unfolding in central and northern Australia. This deep policy uncertainty dawns even as the consequences of decades of underfunding become more evident and the demographic explosion in remote Australia places ever sharper pressures on strained social services.

The laws and measures enacted to change the landscape have fallen short. A generation's worth of land rights in the Northern Territory has failed to revolutionise the outlying indigenous communities: little has changed in the Aboriginal ghetto townships across the scrub or desert, which remain underdeveloped and largely excluded from the national economy. Native title has proved to be a glacial triumph of legal processes, while indigenous self-determination is a fantasy of desperate contradictions.

The bitter truth is lying in the street, for those with open eyes to see and with access to remote Australia's well-guarded shadow world: many of our indigenous fellow citizens are trapped in a cycle of violence, economic dependency, ill-health, and sexual and substance abuse. Bizarre pathologies proliferate, although unheard of until now outside dark science-fiction dystopias. Attempts at genuine reform, which might endanger the present system's beneficiaries, are quickly snuffed out.

The vital key to this system has long been a culture of secrecy about the real conditions, buttressed by silences and by double standards. It is a secrecy, a strategy of euphemism, that covers the private world, the economic and the social space. These secrets are kept, and the minimising lies and evasions peddled, by white and Aborigine, by politicians and bureaucrats, by administrators and their subjects. Thus a pervasive silence is maintained by public servants and community workers, who have long since abandoned their reformist dreams and know they will be sacked at once by their Aboriginal "employers" if they speak out about any of the linked syndromes of the bush: violence, drug and grog-running, sexual abuse and predation, the failure of educational institutions, the constant, corrupting effects of welfare and haphazard work-for-the-dole schemes.

Secrecy is at also at the Aboriginal heart of dysfunctional communities: battered women and abused children do not dare to speak out; senior indigenous leaders are obliged to shield and protect their relations; mothers persuade their daughters-in-law to keep a code of silence about the sufferings that husbands inflict.

Superimposed on top of this local discretion is the elegant muffling filter of the legal system: police cannot gather evidence from victims who fear to testify, while magistrates often pass light sentences in order to spare offenders the pain of incarceration far from their land.

These different forms of silence and half-truth, which all reinforce each other, have long combined to make an accurate description of the state of things in remote Aboriginal Australia almost impossible. Hence the vital importance of the past two weeks of candour and tight media focus. This climate of truth-telling, virtually forced on the Australian political and intellectual class by the revelations of the Alice Springs crown prosecutor about infant abuse, has led to an outpouring of dark testimony that only hints at the broad, continent-wide pattern.

But there is a need for the newly precise and merciless depiction of the world of remote Australia to go further. Three critical elements in the interlock of silence have not yet been given due public attention, and progress towards a sustainable life in the Aboriginal centre and north depends on frank acknowledgment of these shaping factors.

First, there is a temptation to blame the indigenous perpetrators of violence in isolation from the enabling class of welfare and service delivery bureaucrats around them. The manifest incompetence of many of the administrators of remote Aboriginal Australia needs to be exposed and a form of proper accountability designed. Many of the more troubled communities can only attract poor-quality white staff, who could barely hold down a job in the cities.

The corrupt shopkeeper, the drug-running mechanic, the carpetbagging itinerant dress-seller: these are all stock figures in the Western Desert and the Kimberley. There is a storekeeper in the north well known for illegal kava supply in return for child sex, and there are tight family cabals of non-Aboriginal administrative staff in the centre who run communities as private empires. The case for a highly trained cadre of remote area civil servants and for volunteer specialist teams, organised on disaster relief lines, seems unassailable.

The systematic nature of the violence in many Aboriginal communities is still not grasped by outsiders, nor can the conspiracy of crushed silence and fear that accompanies it be well gauged. Shame and terror keep women, girl and boy victims from speaking out. Consider the views of one of the most respected council clerks in remote Australia, speaking this week of the tide of sex crimes in his community: "There's no control and no responsibility. It's a beautiful system designed by the Aboriginal men to protect the Aboriginal men. They've got the white people sorted out: if you even mention anything, you're fired instantly and will never get another job in the Aboriginal industry again. They will continue to get away with it until the courts get serious, and even then no one will step forward to testify; it's like a death sentence. There's no way in a million years anyone is going to go public on all this."

But one can guess at what's happening in the shadows all across the continent. In one community in the Tanami Desert, the women have now banned their sons from going out into the bush with senior men for protracted initiation camps; the reasons, dear reader, can be left to your imagination. And in a small north Kimberley community, there have been six child suicides in the past year. So grave has the problem of sexual violence become that young Kimberley women often measure the extent of their man's affection by the number of beatings they receive, and calibrate the love in their world by the bruises on their skin.

A glance around a remote community or town camp is enough to tell the tale: women sport a baffling array of bandages and splints, while the drone of the flying doctor plane, swooping in for another emergency evacuation, is a regular sound on balmy evenings in the far desert. Police detachments are the natural first counter to these concealed undercurrents of violence: but without realistic deterrence through heavy sentencing, even a police post in every community and outstation will not be enough to guarantee the safety of the remote population.

Most important, in this realm of secrets, free access is the key to truth. Many of the horrors now spread across remote Australia grew in the darkness of the permit system. There are vast swaths of Aboriginal land that go unvisited by the normal array of travelling callers, let alone by journalists; and there is a striking correlation between the levels of violence in a community and the tightness of its closure.

Without any doubt, the most bizarre and horrific corner of central Australia is the grandly named Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, a scatter of outstations and run-down communities torn apart by petrol-sniffing and overseen by a purpose-built little white capital with nice, neat homes. The South Australian Opposition spokesman for Aboriginal affairs, Mitch Williams, this week called for the APY Lands to be thrown open to the public, and at once received a strict dressing-down from the local Land Council general manager, Ken Newman: "Basically, it's private property."

Permits for press visits to this bleak world are scarcely ever forthcoming, while white staff members are forbidden from speaking freely to the media. Who, then, can lay out the weird facts of life on the lands: the plague-like curse of petrol-sniffing, the drug dealing networks, the obesity and the malnutrition, the peculiar messianic cults that sweep through like storm-season cloud-fronts?

Permits have long since been the chosen instrument of power and self-aggrandisement for the white gatekeepers of the remote world, who relish the control the system gives them. The substantial desert settlement of Yuendumu is in the grip of Warlpiri Media, an organisation that will only admit journalists into its territory if they are safely guided and their stories are check-censored before publication or broadcast. No wonder, then, that a frank appraisal of Yuendumu's endless economic and social travails has yet to appear.

Access control limits knowledge, dovetails elegantly with the culture of secret-keeping, and allows for blatant manipulation of the media. But as with all empires of unreason, the permit system is falling apart under the weight of its own illogic. This week the community of Wadeye (Port Keats), anarchic home to 3000 Aboriginal people, refused The Australian a permit on the same day it hosted "safer" media visitors to inspect damaged housing. And suddenly the truth was out: the permit system is today being used not to protect sensitive cultural sites and practices, but to manage and control the news in a crude and blatant fashion.

There is a direct link between the gang warfare tearing apart Wadeye and the lack of in-depth media coverage: this Aboriginal township has been the showpiece of a vast, failed governmental social experiment over the past three years, and that systematic failure has largely gone unreported because it suits the local council staff and their federal and territory masters to keep it under wraps, and keep out unwelcome media eyes.

New federal Aboriginal Affairs Minister Mal Brough will hold a high-profile national summit on indigenous community violence next month. But it is the culture of secrecy that lies behind, and underpins, the violence. The summit will be much more than a meeting of concerned officials. It will be a test of Australia's moral temper and our willingness to stop the tide of illicit violence disfiguring the remote world. Sometimes the truth is painful; its denial is worse.

Source



28 May, 2006

IN BRIEF

Goldmine for lawyers ends in Victoria

Reforms outlawing many personal injury claims in Victoria have led to a huge drop in the number of court cases. Figures from the County Court show public liability lawsuits dropped from 1734 in the year before the reforms to 84 last year. The drop in all causes of action for personal injuries was from 5418 to 801.

Now the Law Institute of Victoria has called for the laws to be wound back because they had stopped injured Victorians from gaining proper compensation. LIV vice-president Geoff Provis said many injured people could not meet the State Government's test for compensation of 5 per cent physical impairment or 10 per cent psychiatric impairment. "Whether intended or unintended these reforms have simply gone too far and Victorians with genuine injuries are being denied access to fair compensation," Mr Provis said. He said the tort law reforms were introduced in 2003 in response to a perceived insurance crisis.

The Bracks Government rushed through changes to medical and public liability laws to curb the soaring cost of medical indemnity and public liability insurance.

Source



Illegal fishing fine too lenient: court



The Federal Government has welcomed a court ruling that substantial fines should be handed to foreigners found illegally fishing in Australian waters. The ruling by the South Australian Supreme Court sets a precedent for fines issued to future illegal fishers and comes after an Adelaide magistrate last month caused outrage by fining three Indonesian fishermen just $5 each. Fisheries Minister Eric Abetz said the ruling vindicated his decision to ask the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions to appeal the $5 fines. "The $5 fine now sets no precedent," Senator Abetz said. "(Supreme Court) Chief Justice (John Doyle) has clearly indicated that this was wrong, and has indicated to magistrates in South Australia that the appropriate fine for offences of this kind was one of at least $4,000."

Adelaide Magistrate Andrew Cannon last month fined the captains of three Indonesian fishing boats $5 each, reasoning they deserved a more lenient penalty because their boats had either been seized or destroyed and they did not have the financial capacity to pay a large fine. The maximum fine for illegally fishing in Australian waters is $27,500.

Chief Justice Doyle said Dr Cannon should have imposed a more substantial fine, adding that almost 200 illegal fishers had appeared in court during the past year and a consistent approach to sentencing was needed. "The magistrate thought that a substantial fine was an exercise in tokenism, because it was unlikely that it would be paid," he said. "But to take that approach is to accept that capacity to pay is the decisive consideration, which in my opinion it cannot be. "I consider that a substantial fine was called for, even after making allowance for the loss of the vessel and the period of (time spent by the fishermen in immigration) detention. "I would have imposed a fine of not less than $4,000 on each count, amounting to a total of not less than $8,000 to be paid by each defendant."

Source



One of Australia's disgusting public broadcasters finally bends to reality

The B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) welcomes the decision by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) to recognise Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah as terrorist organisations. The ADC's Executive Officer, Mr Manny Waks, says "While it is difficult to understand what has taken so long for the ABC to arrive at this obvious conclusion, we must nonetheless congratulate the ABC on this decision."

Four years ago the ABC's international chief, Mr John Tulloh, prohibited ABC journalists from referring to these groups as terrorist organisations.

The ADC acknowledged the work of Senator Santoro and more recently by Senators Ronaldson and Fierravanti-Wells in pursuing this matter. For three years the ABC executives have been intensely questioned by the Senators. "They have shown great persistence and determination," Mr Waks said. Mr Waks also said that "the ADC supports Senator Ronaldson's hope that SBS would come to similar conclusion to the ABC and concede that Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah are indeed terrorist organisations."

Source



Sydney: 'Gay-friendly' child care slammed

Little kids being harassed over sexuality -- out of the public purse

A council-run childcare centre is teaching toddlers that gay, lesbian and "transgender" parents are normal in a bid to "challenge the perception" of young children about sexuality. The Tillman Park Children's Centre in Tempe - which receives council and government funding - has devised the gay-friendly curriculum for children aged six weeks to six years. Marrickville Mayor Sam Byrne said the centre had "successfully adopted several strategies to encompass lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and inter-sex issues". These included ensuring images were reflective of "diverse families" and "actively affirming the identity of lesbian and gay families". He said the centre challenged "children's perception of what is 'normal' gender and sexual identity".

The centre uses controversial Learn to Include books, which feature Jed and his Dads and The Rainbow Cubby House. Mr Byrne applauded staff and families at the centre for "broadening the minds of our future generation". "At Marrickville we believe in offering children and families an inclusive program based on social justice," he told The Saturday Daily Telegraph. "These are reflected through an open environment where alternative perspectives, values, beliefs, lifestyles and people's identities are respected and accepted."

The Daily Telegraph last year revealed the books - produced by a non-profit program run by the Gay and Lesbian Counselling Service of NSW - were funded by the Attorney-Generals Department, which provided $33,000 over two years. The Saturday Daily Telegraph can reveal the Learn to Include books are also being used in private childcare centres across the state. Child Care New South Wales president Lyn Connolly said there was no book list for centres to draw from, but in order for centres to meet "high quality" they relied on a variety of resources, including the Learn to Include books.

Marika Kontellis, whose three-year-old daughter Jasmin attends the centre, said although she was in a heterosexual relationship she had no issue with the material being taught. She said she could understand how some families might find the topics confronting or uncomfortable "but for us it is important to know that families come in different shapes and sizes and that's okay and that's good". "Every day the kids are being told that it is okay that you are black, it is okay that you are gay, it's okay that families don't all look the same," Ms Kontellis said. [I guess all families are the same then?]

National Party Leader Andrew Stoner - who last year forced former premier Bob Carr to investigate the use of the books in public schools - said yesterday he was opposed to children being "brainwashed by a political correct agenda". "It's just crazy. Children that young have no concept of these issues of sexuality," he said. "Whether it is heterosexual sex or homosexual sex, it is the choice for parents to talk about it with their children - not for an institution to start some political correct campaign."

Psychologist Lorraine Corne said yesterday it is essential the concept of gay and lesbians was introduced to young children in a proper way. "You would introduce the concept like you would introduce the concept of sex," she said. "It would be done at a level that they understand. It could be as simple as some people have a father and a mother and some people have two mothers and some have two fathers. "It would have to be put in a very simplistic way otherwise it is beyond their comprehension and it would go above their heads," Ms Corne said.

Source



Nowhere for her to give birth

What happens when you rely on the great god "Gubmint" and their wonderful "planning": An interstate trip to give birth!

A critical bed shortage has led to a pregnant mother expecting twins having to travel to Canberra Hospital yesterday because of a gridlock in infant intensive care wards. A rush of multiple births - including triplets at Nepean Hospital - put pressure on an over-burdened system. The woman was flown by air ambulance to Canberra early yesterday morning. High occupancy rates in maternity and neo-natal wards across Sydney caused a serious shortage across the state.

A spokesman for ACT Health confirmed they received a NSW patient early yesterday, and said interstate transfers were "routine". "A pregnant woman was transported to the Canberra Hospital from Sydney because there were no neo-natal beds available elsewhere in Sydney," he said.

A NSW Health spokeswoman said there was a shortage in both maternity and intensive care cots across the state. "From time to time we do need to transfer patients and their babies to specialist services outside of Sydney," she said. "When the patient and her children are stable, they will be offered transfer back to Sydney."

A lack of specialist nurses is aggravating the situation, prompting one Sydney hospital on Thursday night to call in off-duty nurses. "This is a recurrent problem, it happens all the time," one specialist told The Saturday Daily Telegraph. There are currently more than 140 positions vacant in NSW in this specialist nursing field, causing major problems in all hospitals with neonatal intensive care units. "This is a highly specialised area and these babies need one on one care 24-7," an expert said. "There is not enough nurses to match the beds."

The fact women are having children later in life means there are more premature babies than ever before and technology can keep a premature infant alive at 23 weeks. About 2 per cent of all babies born in NSW are treated in one of the state's nine specialist units. There are 125 intensive care cots across NSW and the ACT. Survival rates for babies admitted to neonatal intensive care units have risen from 87 per cent in 1997 to 92 per cent in 2005.

Opposition health spokeswoman Jillian Skinner said it was an outrage a woman was made to travel during a stressful and vulnerable time.

Source



Few of the English can now write good English

People who can string a sentence together grammatically could be forgiven for feeling like old fogeys, reports Kevin Donnelly



The British wartime prime minister Winston Churchill is considered one of the 20th century's greatest political orators. An important reason why Churchill was able to communicate so effectively was because, when at school, he was taught how to write. As observed in his autobiography: "I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence, which is a noble thing." Judging by a British report on undergraduate writing skills by the Royal Literary Fund, it would appear the ability to structure an essay and to master the basics of syntax and grammar are things of the past.

The report, Writing Matters, outlines the observations of about 130 professional writers who worked on a one-to-one basis with undergraduates in 71 universities. The writers conclude that considerable numbers of students, even at some of Britain's leading tertiary institutions, arrive at university without the skills necessary to make the most of their education. "In many cases, the problems occur at a basic level: poor vocabulary, inaccurate phrasing, bad syntax, incorrect punctuation [and] an inability to form well-structured sentences," the British report notes. The report also states that many students are incapable of sustaining a consistent and coherent argument in prose.

Falling standards and dumbed-down English are not restricted to Britain. Last year's report, Remedial or Rhetorical English?, in which academics at the Australian Defence Force Academy tested the writing skills of about 600 undergraduates, also discovered significant weaknesses. "Written work was characterised by common grammatical errors and knowledge gaps, an inability to select stylistic devices to express relationships between ideas and purpose, and difficulties in producing complex written texts while demonstrating control over generic structure," Fiona Mueller, one of the authors of the ADFA report, says.

Baden Eunson, from the English department at Monash University, also notes that many undergraduates have gone through six years of secondary school without learning the fundamentals of English: "I teach professional writing at Monash University and I have to spend far too much of my scarce curriculum time cramming the basics into my students."

Concerns about poor writing skills, especially basics such as spelling, punctuation and grammar, are not restricted to undergraduates. Beatrice Booth, the president of Commerce Queensland (the state chamber of commerce), has publicly criticised literacy standards and was recently quoted as saying, "We have a plethora of people who can't spell, comprehend what they are reading or write a proper sentence."

Notwithstanding the evidence, some argue that there is no crisis and that approaches to teaching English, especially literacy, are beyond reproach. The children's author Mem Fox, based on Australia's strong performance in the Program for International Student Assessment, a test of 15-year-old students in literacy, mathematics and science, argues: "We don't have a literacy problem. We have a very high literacy rate. We are absolutely sensational in this country. "So we always come either second after Finland, or third after Canada, or fourth after New Zealand. But we are always in the top four, always."

What Fox ignores is that the PISA test did not correct or penalise students for mistakes in spelling and grammar, and that if students had been corrected, many would have failed. "Errors in spelling and grammar were not penalised in PISA; if they had been, probably all countries' achievement levels would have gone down, but there is no doubt that Australia's would have," one Australian researcher says. "It was the exception rather than the rule in Australia to find a student response that was written in well-constructed sentences, with no spelling or grammatical error."

The Australian Association for the Teaching of English also argues that concerns about falling standards are a media beat-up and that present approaches to English teaching, such as whole language, critical literacy and postmodern theory, are not the reason many students leave school unable to write a grammatically correct, fluent and well-structured essay. The AATE is also wrong. Much of the focus on teaching literacy in schools is on so-called critical literacy, where students are taught to analyse texts in terms of power relationships from a range of theoretical perspectives, including Marxist, feminist, postcolonial, postmodern, class and race. As noted by Eunson, when comparing today's syllabuses and examination papers with those of the 1960s, the reality is that more traditional approaches, including precis, discussing definitions and word meanings, and analysing comprehension passages grammatically, have long since disappeared.

At the primary school level, judged by curriculum documents, the prevailing approach, with the exception of NSW, belittles the more structured phonics model of teaching reading in favour of whole language. Teacher training is also a concern, evidenced by a 2001-02 national survey of 680 beginning teachers that found only "half of the new graduates indicated that they felt prepared to teach spelling and phonics".

That teacher training has suffered is understandable. Those in charge of Australia's schools of education, the Australian Council of Deans of Education, in New Learning: A Charter for Australian Education, argue that the basics, represented by the three Rs, are obsolete, old fashioned and irrelevant. The deans argue in favour of the new basics: "Nor is literacy a matter of correct usage [the word and sentence-bound rules of spelling and grammar]. Rather, it is a way of communicating. "Indeed, the new communications environment is one in which the old rules of literacy need to be supplemented. Although spelling remains important, it is now something for spell-checking programs, and email messages do not have to be grammatical in a formal sense."

This ignores the ability to use language that does not happen intuitively or by accident and that spell-checking cannot differentiate between whether and weather or their and there. Not only do students have to be taught and regularly practise the rules of grammar and correct composition, they must be given the technical vocabulary that will free them to more consciously control what it is they wish to write.

Source



27 May, 2006

Great! "Ethnic" law to be scrapped

Sharia hopes zapped

The Howard Government has widened its plan to remove legal recognition of Aboriginal customary law in criminal sentencing to include the cultural beliefs of all ethnic minorities. The extension of the plan beyond Aboriginal tribal law is understood to have been triggered by concerns that a law directed only at indigenous offenders could be in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act. Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock last night said no one convicted of a crime in Australia should be able to plead their cultural practices and beliefs as mitigating factors in their sentencing. "We are not a nation of tribes," he said. "There should be one law for all Australians. Our expectation is that when people come and settle in Australia they are under an obligation to accept the law and the principles that go with it."

The Government's move came after Northern Territory Opposition Leader Jodeen Carney asked Mr Ruddock last week to check if planned restrictions on Aboriginal customary law being used as a mitigating factor when sentencing violent offenders would breach the Racial Discrimination Act. Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough this week said he would put a proposal to scrap consideration of cultural law in serious crimes to state and territory governments at a national summit. He said customary law had been "used as a curtain that people are hiding behind". The minister's remarks followed a national outcry after a 55-year-old Aboriginal elder was sentenced to a month's jail for having anal sex with a 14-year-old girl promised to him as a wife.

Territory Chief Justice Brian Martin, who sentenced the man, admitted this week he had made a mistake by placing too much emphasis on the man's belief that under tribal law he had the right to teach the girl to obey him. Ms Carney urged the Government to change the Racial Discrimination Act if it considered restrictions on customary law would amount to a breach. Mr Ruddock is understood to have sought legal advice on the possibility of changing the Racial Discrimination Act, but his preference is to extend the exclusion to all minority groups in the community.

The scheme drew qualified support yesterday from Islamic civil rights leader Waleed Kadous but was condemned as impractical by the legal profession. "I don't think any member of the community should expect any special privileges because of their cultural background," said Mr Kadous, co-convenor of the Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advisory Network. "Speaking for the Muslim community, we understand we are not entitled to any special privileges in the courts - nor should we be," he said. Judges should always have some discretion to consider a person's circumstances "but our cultural background should have no major impact on how we are sentenced", Mr Kadous said.

However, Law Council of Australia president John North said the Government's plan was "totally impractical". "An important part of the sentencing process, apart from retribution and revenge, is to look carefully at the subjective features of each individual before the court," Mr North said. "Those characteristics may involve cultural or what can be termed customary law matters, and this has long been held by the High Court to be a proper exercise in the use of sentencing discretion. "To try and legislate across the board to remove this discretion would, in our view, prove impossible."

Mr Ruddock said Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough would be urging the states to change their sentencing laws to fall into line with the Government's plan. While he believed the plan would not cause a breach of the Racial Discrimination Act, he indicated that the commonwealth would be prepared to change federal laws - including the Racial Discrimination Act - to achieve its goal.

Source



NUTS INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE QUEENSLAND PARLIAMENT

Two reports below about another crime-loving Leftist government. The inital report about this matter was carried on this blog on 24th.

Released 'insane killers' named in Qld parliament

The Queensland Opposition has continued its campaign of naming mentally ill killers who have been released into the community. After focussing on two cases this week, the Opposition named another two in Parliament this morning. Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg has asked the Health Minister to confirm that one killer has been released after less than five years in treatment. "Can you also confirm this insane killer actually rang the victim's mother while detained at The Park in 2002," he said. "And isn't it also true that the Mental Health Tribunal has now told the victim's mother that they have no further business with her or her family and refuse to provide any details as to where her son's killer is?" The Minister says he will look into it.

Meanwhile, the mother of a woman killed by a mentally ill man says she is baffled by Queensland's mental health and criminal justice system. Her daughter was sexually assaulted, strangled and dumped by the killer, who was on parole at the time. The woman, who cannot be named, says she was advised not to attend hearings at the Mental Health Tribunal and warned not to discuss the case or name the man. "It was a strange system that we didn't understand anything about," she said. "There is an Act that covers the killer from being named or talked about and could create a two year jail sentence for myself or my husband if we talk about it."

Source



Buck-passing over killer

State Government ministers are sticking by claims they had no knowledge of the release of a mentally ill killer into the community. Despite it being revealed yesterday that Attorney-General Linda Lavarch's officers attended a Mental Health Tribunal hearing on March 17, when the man was given limited day release, she and the Premier said they knew nothing until last week.

The Opposition this week used parliamentary privilege to name the man as Claude John Gabriel, who killed a teenager in 1998 and was the subject of a manhunt in 2001 when he absconded from authorities. Gabriel has been on day release 12 times since March but that has now been cancelled. Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg yesterday named another mentally ill killer in Parliament as he continued to attack the Government's failure to protect the community. Mr Springborg named Ross Farrah, who killed his girlfriend Christine Nash and has been accused of threatening another woman recently while on leave. "This Premier and this Government has absolutely no compassion. . . no understanding of the pain it is inflicting on these victims and their families," he said.

Health Minister Stephen Robertson told Parliament officers from the Attorney-General's department had opposed Gabriel's release. "It was the decision of the independent tribunal not to accept that submission," he said. However, Ms Lavarch said she was unaware of the case until last Friday, a day before the option to appeal the tribunal's decision expired. Premier Peter Beattie defended the Attorney-General, saying it would have been "grossly improper" for her to inform Cabinet of the release. "The Attorney-General makes a number of decisions where there is no consultation with Cabinet and no consultation with me," he said. Mr Beattie blamed Queensland Health experts, saying it was their responsibility to inform the Government. He said the secrecy under which the Mental Health Tribunal operated was being fairly questioned and the Government would consider "lifting the veil".

Source



Nuclear power 'viable, economical'

Nuclear power makes economic sense for Australia and is viable even without government support. Science Minister Julie Bishop said a report commissioned by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation showed that a nuclear power station would be competitive with a newly built coal-fired station. "It found there are significant health risks associated with coal energy production but minimal risks with nuclear power," Ms Bishop said. The report suggested two ways that construction of a nuclear power plant could be funded, which were similar to models in operation in the US. "Overall, the report is positive about the economic basis for establishing a nuclear power industry in Australia."

It is understood the report, due to be handed to the Government today, considers public and private funding models and finds that when environmental costs are taken into account, the economics of nuclear power make more sense. It has also emerged that had plans for a nuclear power station at Jervis Bay in NSW been acted on in the 1970s, it would today be producing the world's cheapest electricity.

"It's time we did get down to a really detailed examination of what are nuclear power's prospects in Australia," said Keith Alder, the last general manager of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission. Mr Alder said he hoped the renewed nuclear debate would focus on Australia developing a uranium enrichment industry. "Whether we want to remain a quarry for the rest of the world or whether we establish a full industry in Australia and (export) the processed product: enrichment should take priority at this stage over whether or not we now look into nuclear power," he said. It was "crazy" that Australia held 40 per cent of the world's uranium "but we don't have any industry that processes it". And with fast-growing nations such as China and India going for nuclear power, it was time for Australia to act. "In 50 years it's going to be a bigger industry than coal," Mr Alder said. "We should be thinking about our role."

Attempts to develop an enrichment industry had got as far as negotiating a deal with an international consortium but were killed by the election of the Hawke government in 1983. "I think it's one of the greatest tragedies in Australian industrial history," he said. "It could have been the start of an enormous enterprise, very profitable in jobs and money."

Source



HO HUM! MORE DEFENCE EQUIPMENT BUNGLES

Two articles below on a never-ending story

Our useless $1b arsenal

Is defence procurement ever anything but a disaster?

About $1 billion worth of Australian Defence Force bombs, missiles, mortars and bullets - almost half the entire stock - cannot be used and up to a third of stock is beyond repair and will never be fired, a report has found. Government auditors say a lot of military munitions lack the required technical data to allow for "adequate safety and suitability" assessments. If that is correct, then stocks of munitions could be stored in unsafe conditions and, in some cases, close to populated areas. The situation is critical in some areas, particularly the army which does not have enough of some vital munitions.

Defence reacted swiftly to the report, saying the correct figure for the "non-repairable" amount was only $200 million. Another $500 million worth was being repaired or held in reserve and $320 million worth was in the purchasing pipeline. "It is not impacting on training or operations overseas," a Defence spokesman said.

The latest defence report from the Australian National Audit Office paints a grim picture of defective ammunition. "The existence of explosive ordnance without a complete safety and suitability for service assessment increases the risk in handling inherently dangerous material," the report says. It also forecast budget blow-outs when it came to buying shells for the new Abrams main battle tank and missiles for the army's short-range air defence system. The auditors found the Defence Material Organisation was in such a rush to spend the money it did not bother with technical data before the contract was let. And they accused the DMO of paying out 100 per cent of a contract without any milestones being achieved.

The director-general of DMO's guided weapons and explosives ordnance branch, Commodore Peter Law, said all munitions were accounted for and safely stored. He slammed the auditors for being too negative and said many of the issues raised in the report were raised by DMO and were being fixed. Opposition defence industry spokesman Mark Bishop said the audit report shows that defence was unable to negotiate in the best interest of taxpayers.

Source (Report of May 17, 2006)



Defence directed by rank amateurs

A comment below by Terry Sweetman that appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on May 21, 2006. Terry canvasses the problem well but is a bit vague on solutions. Privatization of personal equipment procurement would be a start. Anything would be better than the pot-luck that quartermasters hand out



It's a shame that Chief of Defence Angus Houston has been embarrassed by the Kovco cockup. He deserves better, if for no other reason than his principled stand during the children overboard saga. It's tough that Defence Minister Brendan Nelson has been angered by the serial idiocy revealed, although his own muddled contribution disqualifies him from much sympathy.

However, they really don't matter a damn. What does matter is the continuing culture of institutionalised stupidity that governs the lives - and, possibly, the deaths - of thousandsofyoung servicemen and women and their families. The emergence of a popular hero such as Peter Cosgrove sometimes tends to obscure the fact that our armed forces are managerial disaster areas. Loyal, unquestioning servants of government, as brave as lions in the field, cold and deadly professionals in battle, our service people are administrative asses and gilded dopes.

Too many of those on whom we lavish first-class educations, generous salaries and conditions, respect, and unbounded trust are shown to be fools, dolts or knaves. The broadening of our officer catchment from boarding school prats and scions of the squattocracy to a more inclusive and representative recruitment strata doesn't seem to have achieved much except give us fewer hyphenated names. Higher education standards don't seem to have saved our soldiers, sailors and airpersons from the soul-destroying nitpickery of regulation regurgitators and quartermaster tyrants.

After the trimming and streamlining of the Defence public service, somebody seems to have thrown out the wrong trash can and kept the rubbish. Too harsh? Tell me of any other institution that with a record of mismanagement, waste, bullying and thuggery, moral cowardice, character misjudgment, and out-and-out stupidity could go so long without a political scandal and a royal commission. Cast your mind back over a litany of scandal and ineptitude right back to the Voyager sinking and subsequent shameful process of inquiry and coverup.

Any outraged Blimps reaching for their pens might pause and think about bastardisation that just about reaches back to federation, bullying that has led to ruination and suicide, sexual exploitation that has had the same result, homophobic thuggery, standover tactics, cowardly evasions of responsibility, anti-malarial potions that drive people wacky, and a wink-wink, nudge-nudge attitude to racism.

Those who would skulk behind a barricade of so-called professionalism, might like to mull over the record of hideous waste, project mismanagement, ambitious overreach, poor decision-making and general bad leadership. (How could $1 billion in munitions rust away while our forces are starved of live-firing exercises?)

Those who might parade the comradeship and mateship of the forces might put their ear to the ground occasionally and listen to the murmurs of discontent. Instead of listening to the top-level codswallop they are normally fed, politicians should talk to some of the rankers who have to put up with a hurry-up-and-wait culture that doesn't seem to have changed since officers danced away the eve of Waterloo.

They should ask Diggers [soldiers] about the hoops they have to jump through to get or replace boots and combat vests and all the other paraphernalia the forces generously hand out to visiting politicians. They should talk to servicemen who were sent off to Baghdad with armoured vests that were minus the vital Kevlar plates they should talk to soldiers who feed on stories about mates being charged for gear lost or damaged in battle, they should talk to wives who have discovered their loved ones "lost" on active service because of bureaucratic bungling.

And, I guess, they should listen to Shelley Kovco, who has lost a husband, had to share her private grief with all Australia, suffered the indignity of having his body misplaced, and the double indignity of the promised report being left in an airport like an umbrella on a bus.

If confidential reports are left in public computer terminals, are top secret plans discussed on public telephones? OK, accidents happen but not with the monotonous regularity of the calamities that shame our military. So what's the outcome of this week's idiocy? More inquiries, a managerial reviews and a lot of piety. We've heard it all before. It's about time a few heads started to roll.



26 May, 2006

Australians now objectively better off than ever before

Spending power may have increased by $9000 for every man, woman and child over the past decade, but the Government statistician has ducked the curly question of whether Australians are generally better off. A snapshot of the nation by the Bureau of Statistics found that Australia has become wealthier, healthier and more educated over the past 10 years, but the environment has suffered, crime rates are slightly higher and the indigenous population continues to seriously lag.

After examining economic, social and environmental indicators, the bureau's Measures of Australia's Progress report concluded that there was no single answer to the all-important question: "Has life in our country got better or worse?" "It does not always follow that improving, particularly, living conditions will make a person happier or more satisfied, as people place different importance on the different aspects of their lives," the bureau said.

In terms of money, at least, Australia is powering ahead. Over the past decade, real disposable income per capita has been growing steadily at an annual average rate of 3 per cent, reaching more than $35,000 per person last financial year, compared to about $26,000 in 1994-95. The spoils of economic growth over the past decade also appear to have been reasonably evenly shared. The bureau said the average weekly income of low-income earners leapt 22 per cent to $300 over the nine years to 2004, while weekly incomes for high earners increased 19.3 per cent to $1027.

Despite the huge wealth gains, most studies indicate that satisfaction levels have barely changed over the past 50 years. Bernard Salt, a commentator on consumer, cultural and demographic trends, said he believed economic prosperity had delivered increased feelings of satisfaction and well-being, despite the cliche that money does not buy happiness. "Economic prosperity really does account for - not all - but a substantial part of our happiness and wellbeing," Mr Salt said. "I think the Australian public is feeling rich, fat, happy and complacent and I think this is why the Coalition was voted in so confidently at the last election."

Australians are also living longer. Boys born in 2004 can expect to live three years longer than boys born in 1994, while girls can expect to live two years longer. Despite the rise in life expectancy, the proportion of people classified as overweight or obese has in the past decade leapt from 52 per cent to 62 per cent for men and from 37 per cent to 45 per cent for women. For indigenous Australians, however, the average life span is about 17 years lower.

The environment also appears to be suffering. Over the past 10 years, the number of bird and mammal species listed as extinct or endangered rose by 41 per cent to 169, with Australia's waterways deteriorating rapidly. Australia also has the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the world. Shadow treasurer Wayne Swan said that despite 15 years of growth, many families were still finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet.

Source



EDUCATION DISASTER IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Nutty music-education honcho

A "postmodern" ignoramus is trying to destroy music education

A drama teacher who does not play a musical instrument and believes turntables and computers are musical instruments is the co-ordinator of Western Australia's new music course. State Curriculum Council arts framework officer Christine Adams said yesterday that music-producing machines such as turntables and computers were equal to the piano or violin. "Sales of turntables are way outstripping sales of guitars," Ms Adams said. "In this course, the status of all instruments is equal and the turntable is one of them."

But the course for Years 11 and 12 students, revealed in The Australian yesterday, was condemned by one of Australia's leading music educators and conductors, Richard Gill, who described it as "educational double-speak and claptrap". "It could just as easily be the curriculum for cooking as music," said Mr Gill, a former dean of the West Australian Conservatorium of Music. To describe turntables and computers as musical instruments was "totally meaningless", he said. "A computer is a computer and a turntable is a turntable. One of the points of education is to make the distinction."

Ms Adams, who learned the flute in high school in the 1970s, has spent the past three years working on the new music course and described it as more inclusive than the old course, which was "very Western-focused". "For example, if there is a student from India who wants to play the tabla, they can - and they couldn't do that in the old course," she said. Ms Adams said the new course placed an appropriate emphasis on theory. Students are required to write about politics, racism and other aspects of society that influence music in one of four subject areas called Music in Society, worth 25 per cent of the total mark. "It's really important to know the political and cultural background to music," she said. "It makes it a really, really rich experience."

But Mr Gill, who has received an OAM for his services to music and is recognised around the world for developing young musicians, said the course attempted to teach students how to respond to music, which was impossible. "Reaction to music is a personal and subjective thing - you can't teach it," he said. "The teaching of music should be about music itself. We learn to understand music by making music, by writing music, by performing music." Mr Gill said the first four sentences of the new music course, to be introduced next year, were rubbish. "By all means define music, but don't tell tell us the role it plays - that's up to us to determine. You can't teach the emotion of music. It's personal."

The course introduction starts: "Music plays an important part in the life of people the world over. It brings people together through a natural form of communication by providing a means of expressing ideas and emotions. "It combines words, sounds and movements which enhance the meaning of life in world cultures. Music has unique aspects which give expression to human experiences and understandings that cross cultural and societal boundaries."

Mr Gill challenged this. "Who says? Where's the evidence for that? How do you teach that? What are the ideas communicated in I Still Call Australia Home, which is in the course, or the ideas nominated in a Beethoven symphony?" Mr Gill said the course read like "a generic curriculum to which the word music is applied from time to time". The course also requires students to study ethical and health and safety issues of music, and asserts that "audiences construct meaning from music according to their own values, attitudes and ideological positions".

The course has been condemned by music teachers in Western Australia, who say students are no longer required to play an instrument and that the course downgrades the importance of reading music. State Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich said yesterday she was unaware students in the new course could pass without playing a musical instrument. "That's news to me," she said. But Ms Ravlich was not prepared to label this as unacceptable until she verified the position at a meeting with the Curriculum Council in the next day or two.

Source



Dum-dum-dum down: WA's new music curriculum hits all the wrong notes

An editorial from "the Australian" newspaper puts the music madness into perspective. It is education generally that is being destroyed in Western Australia

Music education is the latest casualty of Western Australia's misguided foray into the world of outcomes-based education. The state's new music curriculum will no longer require students to learn to play an instrument, and rap songs backed by downloaded music will be considered perfectly acceptable come exam time. Long-time music teachers are aghast at a plan that threatens to make Western Australia "a laughing stock". But as The Australian reports today, those involved with the new course admit that all instruments will be treated equally - even turntables and computers - and complain about the Western focus of the old curriculum. As with so much of outcomes-based education - which has become so controversial in Western Australia that the federal Government has threatened to withhold billions of dollars in funding if introduction of the new curriculum is not delayed - music lessons will now be more concerned with theory and sociology than actual skills.

Sadly for the state's students, music is not the only area to suffer under outcomes-based theory, which seeks to turn every subject into a subset of sociology. Under the proposed new curriculum, physics students will be asked to debate the ethics of airbags, while chemistry students will discuss the cosmetics industry. English students will not be required to read a book, spell, or demonstrate their ability to write continuous prose. Needless to say, failure is not an option under the new curriculum: in a system where everyone is allowed to achieve at their own pace, it is impossible not to pass. This will translate into terrible wake-up calls for many students whom outcomes-based education will allow to coast by, on the rationale that they are being prepared for the "real world". The fact is, the state's new curriculum does anything but. Musicians who can't play instruments, engineers who can't get complex maths problems right and just about anyone who can't string a sentence of correct, standard English together will find the job market a cruel place indeed. At the rate Western Australia is going, its music students will be lucky if they graduate knowing how to play anything more than an iPod.

Source



Awkward nuclear facts for the Left

They have probably never heard of pebble-bed technology before

New-generation nuclear reactors could be built safely anywhere in Australia because they did not pose a risk of meltdown and did not necessarily require water for cooling, according to Parliament's only doctor of physics, Dennis Jensen. The Opposition yesterday challenged the Government to rule out likely sites for reactors, but Dr Jensen, a West Australian Liberal, said later there were "all sorts of places", including in the desert. So-called generation IV reactors were gas-cooled and it was "physically impossible for them to melt down", said Dr Jensen, who is a former defence scientist and who has a doctorate in high-temperature ceramics.

As the new reactors did not require the large quantities of water for cooling needed by conventional reactors, they did not have to be on the coast, as speculated by critics this week. "The new technology allows you far more flexibility in location," Dr Jensen said. "Labor, by attempting to define potential sites for a nuclear reactor, are hoping to generate fear among people who live nearby." One version of the generation IV reactors was being developed in South Africa with support from China, he said, and the technology was attracting interest from Britain, the US and other countries. The reactors were cheaper to build than current versions and Dr Jensen said their generating costs were likely to be about the same as coal-fired stations.

In Parliament, the Treasurer and acting Prime Minister, Peter Costello, yesterday declined to answer an Opposition question about whether the Government would rule out possible sites, such as NSW's Northern Rivers region. The Opposition Leader, Kim Beazley, asked where the Government would find a place to dispose of high-level nuclear waste given it had not been able to find a place for low-level waste. National security was also a worry, he said. "Nations tend to regard those developing nuclear power for the purposes of power generation as retaining options for weaponising it, and that would be a very bad signal to send to this region," Mr Beazley said. [How dreadful!]

But the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, accused Mr Beazley of being a "charlatan", given the numerous Asian countries already with or planning to get nuclear power, including Japan, Vietnam and Thailand.

In Dublin, two days after accusing Mr Beazley of being unable to take a position on nuclear power, the Prime Minister, John Howard, accused him of hypocrisy for opposing it. Mr Howard said Mr Beazley's reaffirmation on Tuesday that Labor opposed nuclear power in Australia did not make sense. It was inconsistent to support uranium exports to other countries for nuclear power, but not be prepared to embrace it in Australia, Mr Howard said. "If nuclear power is unsafe, unacceptable . you shouldn't export any uranium to any other countries," he said. "I'm . in awe of [Mr Beazley's] hypocrisy on the issue."

Source



Australian straight talking does some good

Millionaire Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull says childless, 58-year-old lesbian poets and science teachers are not exactly the Budget's target audience. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister made the remark in a searing email to librarian and part-time poet Pam Brown less than an hour after she emailed him at 7.45am (AEST) yesterday. Ms Brown, from the wealthy Sydney suburb of Rose Bay, was in a frosty mood herself, complaining in her missive that the AWB kickbacks affair had underlined "what kind of mendacious, arrogant smartarses are actually IN the current Government".

Mr Turnbull replied: "Gosh, Pam, you are in a bad mood this morning. Now, you are correct that the budget did not target childless, 58-year-old lesbian poets and science teachers; but you are better off nonetheless. "First, you will have benefited from the tax cuts: everybody did. Second, you will shortly benefit mightily from the changes to superannuation tax. "Third, there is $559 million in extra funding, mostly capital works, for universities, also a massive increase in spending on medical research, not to speak of a further expansion of the reading assistance voucher program (as an author and librarian I assume you are in favour of more people learning to read)."

The email that prompted Mr Turnbull to return fire had included Ms Brown's suggestion that the Liberal MP "rack off with your ridiculous gloating about water and pathetic acts of 'I'm catching the bus"'. "I am a 58-year-old lesbian with no children," she wrote. "There is NOTHING in the Liberal Government's budget for me and yet I pay taxes, catch public transport, save water, pick up rubbish from the upper-middle-class streets where I live. I only drive my tiny 12-year-old Daihatsu Charade when I need to pick up things I can't carry. "I am probably a kind of model citizen."

It's not the first time a member of the Howard Government has hit back at an angry constituent. Former health minister Michael Wooldridge dismissed a voter as a "nitwit loser" in 1999 and later branded the same man "a puffed-up little Pom with a permed hairdo". Paul Harley-Green, 71, had sent a fax advising Dr Wooldridge to "Keep away from my letterbox in future, fart-face."

Despite Ms Brown's sign-off - "I'm voting Green" - Mr Turnbull said yesterday that he hoped she might reconsider. "When people write me grumpy emails I make a point of replying with a great courtesy and a little humour. The next email comes back and says, 'You're not such a bad bloke'."

Indeed, a rapprochement appeared close. She may have described Mr Turnbull as "filthy rich" and constantly prancing around his electorate with his dogs, but Ms Brown said the MP was also "articulate and well-educated" and voters might warm to him as a future prime minister.

Source



25 May, 2006

Queensland: School holy war ends

Plans to widen religious education in state schools have been dumped after the Beattie Government bowed to pressure from conservative Christian groups. The backflip followed growing concerns among Labor backbenchers that the Government would face electoral opposition from some Christian churches and right-wing community groups if a wider range of beliefs were permitted to be taught in schools. But humanists and representatives of some minority religions said the current rules were discriminatory and vowed to continue their fight for equal access.

Premier Peter Beattie and Education Minister Rod Welford yesterday announced the Government had shelved the plan but did not rule out similar changes in the future. Mr Welford stood by his earlier claims that some groups had misunderstood the intention of the laws and said the Government would not have allowed cults or witchcraft to be taught. "It was never intended on our part that there would be any adverse effect on the availability of Christian religious instructions in schools," he said. "Clearly there was concerns about the potential access of other groups. "The appropriate course of action is not to proceed with the amendments at this time."

Under the current system, state school students attend religious classes unless their parents ask for them to be exempt. Those classes are taught by a range of Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist groups. The proposed changes would have allowed a wider range of beliefs to be taught in schools with the consent of parents and Education Queensland.

There were also concerns the changes would have required students to "opt-in" to study religion. Humanists had been celebrating the proposed reforms and planned to immediately apply for access to schools once they were passed. Humanist Society of Queensland president Zelda Bailey yesterday said she was "bitterly disappointed" over the decision but hopeful the Government would reconsider. "If we live in a democracy, non-religious people should have the same rights as religious people," she said. "It's discriminatory not to include non-religious people." ....

Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop said the backdown showed the Commonwealth would not tolerate the marginalisation of religious education in state schools. She had threatened to withdraw federal funding if the plan went ahead. "I am delighted to hear that commonsense has finally prevailed," she said. "This is responding to the concerns that I have raised, and concerns raised by parents and church groups." Ms Bishop said parents across Australia were asking for values to be taught in school. "(These) crazy notions were obviously dreamt up by some ideologue in an Education Department," she said.

More here



"Suspended sentences" to go in Victoria

Long overdue

Suspended sentences will be abolished for serious crimes in a major overhaul of Victoria's sentencing regime. Judges and magistrates will be ordered to cut the use of suspended sentences while sentencing changes are phased in over the next three years. Suspended sentences will be available only in exceptional circumstances for serious violent and sexual crimes during the transition period, and abolished altogether by 2009.

Attorney-General Rob Hulls is believed to be prepared to act immediately to introduce legislation abolishing the use of suspended sentences in serious cases. He previously opposed the abolition of suspended sentences. The Government is believed to have given support in principle to a Sentencing Advisory Council report Mr Hulls is due to release this morning. Council chairman Prof Arie Freiberg said last night the abolition of suspended sentences would create "real truth in sentencing", removing the fiction that people were being sentenced to jail when they were not. "It will mean more clarity, transparency and truthfulness," Prof Freiberg said.

New sentencing orders recommended by the council will involve the imposition of conditions, which the council believes will make them more credible and more effective than suspended sentences. Suspended sentences carry a conviction and a jail term that is fully or partly suspended for a period. But they involve no conditions of supervision, treatment or community work.

A public debate on suspended sentencing followed a Herald Sun report in April last year, which revealed almost a quarter of all those convicted of serious offences in Victoria were being freed on suspended sentences. In 2003-04, judges in the Supreme and County Courts fully suspended the sentences imposed on 531 offenders - 24 per cent of the total. The number of suspended sentences had risen 53 per cent in the previous two years. Offenders convicted of sexual assaults, robbery, extortion, drug trafficking and other serious assaults were among those who avoided jail. Another 4934 defendants in the state's magistrates' courts - six per cent of all guilty defendants - received a fully suspended term of imprisonment in 2003-04.

Prof Freiberg said there had been intense opposition to the proposed changes from the courts and the legal profession.