Australian Politics

Immigration debate 'set to flare again'

The debate about asylum seekers could flare again as Australia signals its doors are again open to people smugglers, former immigration minister Philip Ruddock says. Mr Ruddock, one of the key architects of the previous Howard government's hardline policy against asylum seekers, made the warning following an increase in boat activity in recent months. "I think we're about to see a very real and substantial debate about these issues in the Australian community again," he told reporters on Wednesday.

The federal government had relaxed measures aimed at effective border protection, he said. That was likely to send signals abroad that Australia was a more attractive destination for people smugglers, Mr Ruddock said.

People smugglers were corrupt, had little care for people's lives, and looked very closely at the opportunities that were open to them. "I'm sure that smugglers would be saying to people, `Look if we can get you into Australia, you'll be able to remain permanently, that's a very different outcome to what was in place."

Source

Complacency over wrongly dosed children at an Adelaide public hospital

Health officials and the State Government have again been forced to admit potentially harmful mistakes in the treatment of patients - this time involving children. Eleven children suffering cancer were overdosed with chemotherapy, a failure caused by human and computer error and perpetuated for at least three years. The fault was only picked up by a "nervous" new staff member who double checked a reading at the Women's and Children's Hospital.

The systematic failure is the second of its kind revealed this year, and comes amid doctors' claims that South Australia's health system is dangerously overburdened and understaffed.

The latest bungle, discovered in October, was only revealed yesterday, the day after State Parliament rose for the year, raising questions of a cover-up. Eleven of 72 patients treated at the WCH since 1998 received too much of the chemotherapy drug etoposide phosphate. The children were aged from one to 15 years, and the average overdose was 13.6 per cent. One child has since died from cancer and one family is yet to be contacted about the overdose.

'An independent review by Sydney Children's Hospital paediatric oncologist Associate Professor Marcus Vowels found that although it was "unlikely", it was an "open question" whether the overdose could increase the risk of secondary cancers.

In an incident earlier this year, 869 Royal Adelaide Hospital cancer patients were underdosed with radiotherapy, which could have cut five lives short. Staffing problems were found to be the main contributing factor to that calibration error. The latest mistake has prompted Opposition calls for State Health Minister John Hill to be sacked.

Etoposide phosphate is an alternative form of the more common etoposide. When it was first used at the WCH in 1998, a computer program adjusted the dosage to take into account the fact it was a slightly different drug. In 2005, manual adjustments were introduced as well, so the dose was adjusted twice, giving a higher-than-planned dose.

"Over the . . . years from 1998 (to) 2004, `corporate knowledge' in the Oncology Unit was lost, with three senior members of staff leaving senior roles," Professor Vowels reported. "Oncology staff continued using etoposide phosphate and dose calculations were made by the oncologists in the clinic, not being aware that a computer program was already performing this task."

WCH chief executive officer Gail Mondy said a "very novice staff member" who was "very nervous about the system" double checked the calculations at the end of October. Ms Mondy was notified on November 17 and an investigation began on November 25. SA Health chief executive officer Tony Sherbon said the error would have been discovered anyway "in due course", and the fact that it was discovered in a random check showed the system was working. He said the mistake was "a team error".

Cancer Voices SA executive Ashleigh Moore was one of the people who was underdosed at the RAH. He said the system must be fixed "so this never, never happens again". "You expect to get what your clinician has planned. You don't expect to get less or more than that," he said.

Opposition health spokeswoman Vickie Chapman said Mr Hill and Mr Sherbon should be sacked for covering up a major scandal. "It is disgraceful an investigation into the incorrect treatment of 11 children in a public hospital was conducted while the Parliament was sitting and the Government failed to inform South Australians," she said. "Children receiving incorrect treatment at the WCH is bad enough. "To then conceal the matter is unforgivable."

Mr Hill said that when he heard about the mistake two weeks ago, he ordered an investigation and review. He has now referred the matter to the SA Safety and Quality Council. "We have an excellent health care system in SA. It's one of the best in the world," he said. "We've seen two errors . . . one in relation to radiotherapy and one in relation to chemotherapy. They're not related in any way at all. "The only thing that makes them noticeable is that awareness of the errors occurred within a few months, but that demonstrates a system that is open about it. We've made no attempt to hide it." He said telling the public about the investigation before it was complete would have panicked many and "would have been an appalling thing to do".



Source

Airport security gaps leave Australians 'wide open'

REFUELLERS, baggage-handlers and other air-side workers at the nation's biggest and busiest airports are not being subjected to the same X-ray screening and explosives testing as airline passengers and even pilots.

The revelation of serious gaps in Australia's airport security come amid concerns that criminal record checks for airport workers do not include offences committed overseas. The loophole in the vetting procedures for air-side workers means foreign workers with criminal pasts may escape detection.

An investigation by The Australian has uncovered numerous problems that security experts warn are putting Australia's aviation industry at risk. One concerned Australian pilot has slammed the inconsistency of security priorities at airports, and the "gaping holes in the system that leave us wide open to a serious attack on an airliner". The pilot, who did not want to be named, said the variety of risks associated with the air-side worker population were much bigger than those involved in aircraft boarding. "Unlike people intending to fly on the aircraft being targeted, these personnel go home and would not die if they successfully planted a device in an airliner," the pilot said.

Counter-terrorism expert Nicholas O'Brien said there appeared to be a "significant gap in security" if workers with access to aircraft did not have to undertake the same X-ray and other screening measures as passengers and crew. "It is known that terrorists spend a considerable time researching possible targets," said Professor O'Brien, from Charles Sturt University's Australian Graduate School of Policing. "It is possible that terrorists have identified this gap in security and will recruit an airport worker with air-side access or obtain such jobs themselves. "Once in such a position, it would appear to be relatively easy to smuggle an explosive device on to a plane. The consequences of a successful attack would be horrendous."

The Howard government commissioned British expert John Wheeler to review airport security in 2005 after reports in The Australian exposed major breaches at Sydney airport. The inquiry by Sir John found policing at airports was often "inadequate and dysfunctional". Among his 17 recommendations were tougher screening of all staff who entered secure areas and tightening security vetting for the Aviation Security Identification Card.

Source

EDUCATION PROBLEMS

Three current articles below

Academic bias in Australia

This has been going on for a long time. When I was a university student I was an outspoken conservative and was well aware that I was as a result looked at askance by the academics. So I ended up in 1967 with only a lower second class honours degree. Yet the thesis for that degree was eventually published as an academic journal article and I had over 200 journal articles published in a writing career of only 20 years -- something that would put me in the top 1% of academics. The degree I got therefore clearly was not an accurate testimony to my ability.

'Like the characters Winston Smith and Julia in George Orwell's classic anti-totalitarian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, students with non-Left views need to learn to outwardly conform to inwardly remain free." This is how a high school tutor, Mark Lopez, describes the plight of Australian students in his submission to the Senate inquiry into academic freedom, which is due to table its report today. In 18 years tutoring English and the humanities, Lopez has seen a "subtle, unstated pressure for students to ideologically conform if they want to succeed academically".

He said the "beliefs of the politically correct, which are seen by them as so noble and emancipating, especially when . touted by radical students in the 1960s" have become a "means for compromising the intellectual freedom of the young in the 21st century".

Many academics have derided the Senate inquiry, begun in June by the Victorian Liberal Senator Mitch Fifield, as a "witch-hunt", an exercise in "mud-slinging", the dying throes of the Howard regime and a "McCarthyist" attempt to curtail the freedom of academics. The National Tertiary Education Union was typical in its submission asserting that bias does not exist.

But the submissions - some anonymous - tell a different story and paint a chilling portrait of an often unconscious academic bias in schools and universities, and of students too intimidated to say or write what they think. Joshua Koonin, a third-year law student, told the inquiry: "I have .consistently felt intimidated that if I express views other than those [of my] tutors and lecturers . my marks will suffer." He told of readings on "the immorality of the United States . with no countervailing position" and a lecturer who said, "nobody in Australia supports John Howard and his crimes".

Professor Brian Martin, of the University of Wollongong and vice-president of Whistleblowers Australia, who researches the suppression of dissent and is hardly what you would describe as a conservative, was among the most powerful witnesses to the inquiry. He told a public hearing in Sydney in October that students have become "strategic" at working the biases of their teachers. "For someone like me, teaching social science, I actually would like the students to be speaking out much more, disagreeing with me . But they are afraid . They are trying to find out what the lecturers are looking for because then they will give it to them. These are strategic students . They want to get good marks, so they are trying to figure out what their lecturers want. That is a far bigger problem, in my mind, than the bias that may exist."

Together, the submissions form a story of an academic world plagued by what the James Cook University academic Merv Bendle described in a public hearing in Canberra as an "intellectual monoculture". "In another age this could be a fascist, far right intellectual monoculture and it would do just as much damage to our society as a left-wing or far left intellectual monoculture. It is not so much the politics of the thing; it is the fact that it is an intellectual monoculture, that it is one voice being heard over and over again unrelentingly."

The inquiry split early along party lines, with a minority report due to be released today by Coalition senators, who are expected to recommend reform of ideologically driven university education faculties, as well as a "charter of academic freedoms".

While the concerns of Young Liberals, who inspired the inquiry with their "Make Education Fair" campaign, are expected to be dismissed in today's Senate majority report as an "undergraduate exercise", the federal president, Noel McCoy, said yesterday the inquiry had established the existence of "a radical orthodoxy which pervades the development of university courses and school curriculums, stifles debate and prevents genuine balance or diversity of opinions". McCoy reserves special scorn for university education faculties, which he says are crucial to the "long march through the institutions", which the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci said was necessary for socialism to take hold.

The inquiry discussed the problem of education being used as a tool for social change rather than to impart skills. One result is that Monash University has just announced remedial English courses for students who arrive "functionally illiterate" after 12 years of school.

And committee member, Liberal Senator Brett Mason, complained about a Brisbane high school he visited in which Mao Zedong was displayed as a "freedom fighter" alongside George Washington and Mahatma Gandhi.

Gideon Rozner, president of the University of Melbourne's Liberal Club, told the inquiry about a course on "contemporary ideologies", comprising 12 lectures, 11 "dedicated to different variations of socialism". The solitary lecture about liberalism and conservatism had as its compulsory reading an article from the left-wing Monthly magazine titled "Young Liberals in the chocolate factory". "The entire liberal or conservative tradition [was] summed up by that article . When students enrol in a contemporary ideology subject and finish it not knowing any of the works of Adam Smith or John Stuart Mill or Milton Friedman or any of the great thinkers of our time, that is a significant quality issue."

A month after Rozner's testimony, on November 4, the inquiry committee received a letter from a "disappointed" University of Melbourne vice-chancellor Glyn Davis, who defended the subject. But he said it was to be replaced next year with a "broader introduction to political ideas subject [with readings from such] liberal authors such as John Stuart Mill and Milton Friedman". Chalk up a victory to the Young Liberals, even if no one will ever admit it.

Source

Google generation doesn't need to know facts?

What an addle-headed and destructive Leftist moron! If kids don't have a solid base of knowledge to start with they cannot make good judgments about what is nonsense and what is not. You have got to have that basic grounding. And calling it "rote" or "memorizing" is just abuse

School children no longer need to memorise facts and figures because everything they need is just a mouse click away, an internet educator says. It would be better to teach children to think creatively so they could interpret and apply knowledge they gained online, said Don Tapscott, author of the bestselling book Wikinomics and a champion of the "net generation".

"Teachers are no longer the fountain of knowledge; the internet is," Mr Tapscott told Times Online. "Kids should learn about history to understand the world and why things are the way they are. But they don't need to know all the dates. It is enough that they know about the Battle of Hastings, without having to memorise that it was in 1066. They can look that up and position it in history with a click on Google," he said.

But Mr Tapscott said he was not rejecting education. The ability to learn new things was more important than ever "in a world where you have to process new information at lightning speed," he said. "Children are going to have to reinvent their knowledge base multiple times. So for them memorising facts and figures is a waste of time."

Mr Tapscott, who coined the term "the net generation", based his observations in his latest book, Grown Up Digital, on a study of nearly 8000 people in 12 countries born between 1978 and 1994. He said the prevailing education model was designed for the industrial age. "This might have been good for the mass production economy, but it doesn't deliver for the challenges of the digital economy, or for the `net gen' mind," he said.

He suggested the brains of young people worked differently from those of their parents and said "digital immersion", in which children may be texting while surfing the internet and listening to their MP3 player, could help them to develop critical thinking skills.

Brighton College headmaster Richard Cairns told Times Online that a core level of knowledge was essential: "It's important that children learn facts. If you have no store of knowledge in your head to draw from, you cannot easily engage in discussions or make informed decisions."

Source

Federal education boss has the right ideas but can she deliver?

It was telling that on the Monday morning after the weekend Council of Australian Governments meeting, ABC local radio in Sydney excitedly declared it day one in the education revolution. For ABC broadcaster Deborah Cameron, the revolution was about computers. Was this the Great Leap Forward? she asked rhetorically. Cameron should have googled, if only to remind herself that Mao Zedong's program led to the deaths of many millions of Chinese. Historical quibbles aside, for the next few minutes Cameron and NSW Education Minister Verity Firth applauded the coming revolution for delivering a laptop to every high school student in years nine to 12.

Completely off their inner-city Mao-focused radar is the real revolution cautiously started by Julia Gillard at the weekend. Far more important than the underfunded election gimmick of computers that still excites the ABC is Gillard's grassroots change to education. There was no coincidence to the visit to our shores in the lead-up to COAG by New York City education chancellor Joel Klein. In Sydney late last week, he told me, with a cheeky smile, that he enjoyed being described by 2GB radio broadcaster Alan Jones as Julia's pin-up boy. And it's not hard to understand why Gillard is enamoured with Klein, who has run the largest public school system in the US - more than 1400 schools - for the past six years.

His bold reforms have challenged the status quo, lifting the prospects of thousands of children. Based on accountability, transparency and leadership, Klein's system tests literacy and numeracy, and tracks the progress of students in every school and the outcomes delivered by every teacher. Critics who complain that Klein's reforms teach students to master mindless tests miss the point, he says. Every mark of progress students earn in the tests increases their probability of graduating. And lifting the outcomes of students stuck in the tail of educational disadvantage is Klein's driving focus. Importantly, parents can access all the information on the New York City education department's website. Schools are awarded a grade for student progress, from A to D or F forfail. The D and F schools face restructure or closure unless they improve. Principals and parents are surveyed regularly. That, too, is all public.

As Klein said, transparency means the public becomes your ally in reform, "so that parents can raise hell" about schools that are failing their children. Added to that powerful cocktail of transparency and accountability is competition from small, independent charter schools.

Parents with students at failing schools have the option to move their children to other schools. Underperforming schools stop taking students for granted. "We wanted to be the Silicon Valley for charter schools," Klein told The Australian, so he recruited the great charter school leaders to NYC. People such as Dacia Toll, who is the director and co-founder of the Amistad Academy, came to NYC to open schools that unapologetically use student performance as a factor in student, principal and teacher evaluation.

When Klein took up his post, disadvantaged students had little choice. There were 16 charter schools. There are now more than 100, all in high-poverty areas such as Harlem and central Brooklyn, educating the most disadvantaged black and Hispanic students in NYC.

Klein told me about meeting a child in kindergarten at Excellence Academy, a red-bricked charter school in an impoverished part of Brooklyn. The boy told Klein he was in a University of Pennsylvania program. "Hang on, you're in kindergarten," Klein said to the boy. "What do you mean?" "I'm on my way to college. It's never too young to think about that," replied the little boy.

Klein's key concern is the inequitable distribution of high-quality teachers. So he also encouraged quality school leadership by raising $US70million from the private sector to train what he calls "get-up-and-go, tackle the problem" leaders who, in turn, would attract motivated teachers to their cause. Leaders such as Marc Sternberg, who graduated near the top of his class at Princeton and went on to business and education degrees at Harvard. When, at 29, Sternberg returned to New York, Klein appointed him principal of a small school where every child is black or Latino.

Klein copped the usual criticism about appointing a young guy. Longevity is the key to being a good school principal, said the critics. When Sternberg joined Bronx Lab School in 2004, it had graduation rates of about 35 per cent. Now the graduation rate is 94 per cent. "That's the power of leadership," says Klein. He has also introduced a trial into 200 high-poverty schools of bonuses for teachers where student progress improves, and greater freedom for principals to achieve better outcomes.

At COAG on Saturday, Gillard dipped her toe in the water of a Klein-inspired education revolution by scoring agreement with the states to publish data about the relative performance of schools. The commonwealth can then identify struggling schools and inject further resources into them. "What Labor has never used before is full transparency," Gillard said. Klein said that "once this genie (of transparency) is out of the bottle, it's very hard to put it back in".

But if Gillard is serious about reforming education and confronting the tail of education underachievement, she will need to do more. The model of rewards and penalties that she has previously ruled out will, ultimately, need to be on the table. Handing out money to disadvantaged schools cannot be the end game if student outcomes do not improve. Closing down consistently failing schools, encouraging competition and providing incentives to schools that achieve have proven to be critical reforms in NYC.

Klein's bold agenda is to position education of the most disadvantaged as the civil rights issue of the 21st century. If Gillard can do the same, she will, in the process, position herself as a true leader and Kevin Rudd's natural successor. Sometimes the best reforms are done from within. For all the bluster about reforming education, none of the Coalition education ministers, including most recently Julie Bishop, could win over teachers unions to this cause. Gillard, from the Labor Party's Left faction, is uniquely placed to woo her power base to see the sense of reforms they have long opposed.

For now, unions are mouthing the same old nonsensical objections driven by their vested interests. And Gillard can expect much more feral and misguided criticism. But if, as Klein has done, she can build on the present moves towards transparency with tougher reforms in the future aimed at greater accountability, she will deliver a real education revolution. And she will have earned the thanks of those who count: parents and students, especially those most disadvantaged among us who deserve a quality education. Stirring the pot - and delivering real outcomes - is, as Klein would say, the power of leadership.

Source
Mr Hill, Mr Sherbon, and Ms Mondy said no parents should be concerned, but if anyone wanted further information they should phone the WCH Chemotherapy Info Line on 8161 6180.

Hate-filled and dishonest Leftist film about Australia accepted uncritically as truth overseas

Baz Luhrmann's first big mistake was to get so full of himself that he called his movie "Australia". Worse, he then added titles to the beginning and end of his $180 million spectacular to tell viewers his take on our history was historically accurate. And so a movie that is a huge grab-bag of cliches - a collation of gaudy images pecked from deserted movie sets by an insatiable bowerbird - isn't just bad storytelling. It's also an exercise in bad faith - a movie allegedly about Australia, defining Australia, that's shot by a man who actually doesn't understand the country, and doesn't like it, either.

And that lazy contempt is precisely what American critics, for instance, have picked up on. What's more, fooled by Luhrmann into thinking they really are seeing Australia as we are, they've assumed as true that we're as heart-rotten as he shows. Hear it from the New York Observer: "Wow, who knew Australia was so racist?" Or from Cleveland's Plain Dealer: "Luhrmann . . . examines the rampant racism of his then-segregated country . . ." Or from Variety: "(T)o a significant extent, the film is also a mea culpa, in a vast popular-entertainment format, for the cruel racial policies once imposed by the Australian government . . ." Or from Entertainment Weekly: "Australia incorporates real history into its fiction. For decades, mixed-race children were forcibly taken from their families and trained in church- and government-sanctioned schools to become servants in white households . . ."

If Luhrmann had simply stuck to making the camp songless musical fantasy that parts of this film clearly are - a kind of Priscilla-Queen-Of-The-Desert-Goes-Droving mock epic - he might have given us the next great Australian film we've prayed for. But discipline is precisely what he lacks most. He's filmed instead parts of several movies-united stylistically only by his manic urge to grab the shiniest cliches and polish them to a cheap brilliance.

Australia starts with a story of a cliched young English aristocrat, played by Nicole Kidman, who flies to the Northern Territory on the eve of World War II to rescue the cattle station left by her dead husband. She finds she can save her Faraway Downs only if she droves her herd to Darwin with a ragtag bunch of helpers to break an evil cattle king's monopoly on supplying meat to the army. It's a nice, if familiar, premise which offers lots of scope for comic turns by Hugh Jackman as the cliched rough-nut Drover who falls for the English rose; Jack Thompson as the cliched educated drunk who smashes his last bottle of booze to come good; Bryan Brown as the cliched villain complete with six-gun; Yuen Wah as the cliched jabbering Chinese cook driving the chuck wagon; and David Ngoombujarra as the cliched black Tonto to Jackman's Lone Ranger. And, naturally, all the Aborigines are nice, and some are even magic.

Indeed, nothing at all is too cliched for Luhrmann - whether it's the old cattle-stampede-towards-a-cliff, or the embarrassingly awkward death scene poor Thompson must perform of the trampled alkie, a hero at last, blood trickling from his mouth as he tries to stammer his last, broken words.

Some cliches are too shiny for Luhrmann to use once, so Jackman emerges not just from swirls of dust, but from swirls of smoke and mist, too. The cliche of the English stuffed blouse is just as irresistible, so Kidman not only says "shoo" to cows she's trying to herd, but "my condolences" to a grieving Aboriginal boy. We even see dusty drovers spilling out of their Darwin pub to dance for joy at seeing rain. As drovers do. Ahem, Baz. I grew up in Darwin, which is in fact a tropical city. If we'd danced every time it rained in the wet season, we'd never sit down.

All this could yet have been pulled together into a highly stylised comedy-drama, not just exploiting cliches but positively romping in them. But there's a big snag: when the heroes' great drove to Darwin finally ends amid cheering crowds and blaring orchestra, the film is still not even half-way through its nearly three hours. And it's around this point that Luhrmann and his three co-writers must have looked at each other and said, "Oops, what do we do next?" Good question - and for the next hour and a half, it's clear they never really agreed on an answer.

Drama or comedy? Do we kill off Drover? Do we have him making happy families with his English love? Should we leave in the bit where Kidman's character is reported dead, for reasons we've forgotten? Or shall we just make it up as we go along? Which they did. The soundtrack is one giveaway of this confusion, veering wildly from Bach to Rolf Harris and his wobble board; from sturdy stockman singing Waltzing Matilda (as they also do) to sobbing violins suddenly announcing it's crying time. Indeed, it's reported that Luhrmann even changed the ending in the editing suite at the last minute, which surprises me. I wouldn't have thought it possible he had one even worse.

But one thing Luhrmann did decide was to pack away that Priscilla-style camp that had made some of the first half bearable and to switch to serious-or as serious as he could without putting a fold in Kidman's forehead. The film now becomes not just a drama somehow involving the 1942 bombing of Darwin by Japan, but a roar against the racism it had only mumbled against before. But, typically, the racism Luhrmann attacks is a racism of cliches, and is illustrated with yet more cliches, each more fact-free than the last.

So Drover complains, for instance, that he lost his first wife to TB because hospitals didn't treat Aborigines-when in fact Darwin hospital did treat them, even if three small nurse-run private bush hospitals had not. Missions also treated Aborigines, and one pregnant nurse, a Mrs Taylor, even died of illness while working with tribes in Groote Eylandt in 1934. But Luhrmann shows no such sympathetic officials. Instead, almost every white character from the NT administrator's wife down, other than our two heroes, is portrayed as a racist.

A recurring injustice Luhrmann keeps harping on is that "boongs" were banned from pubs. In one of Jackman's most emotional scenes, Drover finally forces a bartender to give his Aboriginal friend a drink - his biggest victory against racism. Nowhere is it acknowledged - as anyone can read in the reports then of the Northern Territory administrator - that serving Aborigines was forbidden because the booze and opium were devastating a people only just learning to deal with white society and Asian traders.

Luhrmann, in particular, should know this ban was driven not by racism but deep concern for Aboriginal welfare. After all, Australia stars the great Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil, whose career and marriage have almost been ruined by his own drinking. And alcohol is now once again banned in many Aboriginal communities in the NT, and not because we're racist.

These two great flaws of Australia - the cliched images and Luhrmann's cliched history - combine to produce what is undoubtedly the movie's most malevolent scene. Most of the second half of Australia centres on Nullah, a part-Aboriginal boy that Kidman's character "adopts" but who is stolen from her by corrupt police acting under a "stolen generations" law that a mission official smugly explains is used to breed out Aborigines. (So why steal Nullah from a white parent? It's one more bit of the plot that makes no sense, like having soldiers pulling out of bombed Darwin, a city they must actually defend.)

And here's that scene: as Nullah, played by the magnetic and beautiful Brandon Walters, is marched down Darwin's docks with other "stolen" boys to be shipped to the Garden Point home on Melville Island, a sneering white boy holding a kangaroo (yes!) abuses him: "Creamy, didn't your mother want you?" A racist white kid holding a kangaroo in a film called Australia-could there be anything more us? To add to the white crime against Nullah, the Japanese army is sweeping towards Australia and he and the other "stolen" boys are being sent to an island that one character notes "will be the first place the Japs hit". White women and children are being evacuated from Darwin in the background, but here the Aboriginal boys are being sent to their deaths. To grind in his point, Luhrmann has the Japanese bombing not just the children's home at Melville Island (which they didn't) but invading it.

Our shame is complete. This is the racist Australia that reviewers overseas-and even here-have accepted as not just a movie, but the shameful truth of our past. But now note a few historical truths that Luhrmann overwrites to tell his story of white infamy.

First, a Federal Court test case found no evidence children in the NT were ever stolen just because they were black, and no one has yet identified 10 anywhere who were stolen because they were Aboriginal and not because they needed help. Indeed, Colin Macleod, a NT patrol officer and later Victorian magistrate, wrote in his memoirs that the children sent to Garden Point were half-castes who'd often been rejected by full-bloods, and needed protection from "real danger and abject misery". For instance, he wrote, "Brother Pye of the Catholic mission at Garden Point once saw a six-year-old part-coloured boy speared by a full-blooded Aboriginal, almost as a joke, just because the boy was a `yella-fella' . . . "Half-caste kids would now and again turn up at missions with spear marks and signs of horrific beatings. "Babies were occasionally abandoned and young children left to fend for themselves."

Father John Leary, who also served at Garden Point, said in 2000 of the children he'd helped: "Some few of them, I believe, were `stolen', most were there for some good reason, some sent by parents or parent for education . . ." It's this "white" education, incidentally, that Luhrmann shows Nullah wisely rejecting, returning instead with Gulpilil to his tribe. How did he ever learn English? Thank heavens Brandon Walters, who plays him, didn't do the same, or Luhrmann wouldn't have his star.

But what of Luhrmann's story that Aboriginal children were knowingly sent into danger at Melville Island? Luhrmann needed only to ask some of the Aborigines at the Darwin premiere of his own film to learn that children were not sent to the island as the Japanese drew near, but sent from it. He could have asked, for instance, Ilene Neville, who told AAP she was seven when she was evacuated from Garden Point and brought to Darwin, where she witnessed the bombing.

Magdalen McNamara, an Our Lady of the Sacred Heart nun famous in the NT, recalls picking up 30 Garden Point girls on the day after the bombing of Darwin who'd already been evacuated to Pine Creek, far to the south. She brought them to South Australia, where they spent the war, while other Aboriginal children from the Top End were sent to safety as far away as Sydney, where they went to local state schools.

This is the real history of Australia - there's racism, yes, but more commonly there are people struggling, however imperfectly, to do their best, some bringing care and protection to Aborigines at great personal sacrifice. That's the real Australia, and how sad that Luhrmann has sold the world his Australia instead - a ghastly cliche of the demons we never were.

Source

NSW public hospitals are full, better head to Queensland

And Queensland is pretty bad -- as shown by the fact that it was only a private hospital that could take the patient

A woman critically injured in a car crash had to be flown to Queensland for treatment as not one NSW hospital could treat her. Georgie Batterson endured a 400km helicopter flight to Southport on the Gold Coast for emergency surgery after Saturday's crash on the Pacific Highway near Kempsey. She was refused admission to every hospital in Sydney and Newcastle as the entire NSW hospital system was on "code red", meaning no space could be found for her.

The 56-year-old Kempsey woman's shocking story emerged as her husband Ian, also injured in the accident, finally tracked down where his wife had been taken. Mrs Batterson is now in an induced coma in a private hospital on the Gold Coast - with broken ribs, a collapsed lung, broken pelvis, broken leg and a shattered ankle.

The Daily Telegraph can reveal that a trauma doctor with the Westpac Rescue helicopter spent two hours on Saturday night calling hospitals in Sydney as well as Newcastle's John Hunter "begging" them to take her as she lay strapped to a trolley, critically injured and crying in pain. He was told not one of the 400 intensive care beds in NSW was free. It was then that rescue helicopter pilots made the decision to fly Mrs Batterson to Queensland.

Mr Batterson yesterday told The Daily Telegraph he was traumatised by what his wife had to endure. "As far as nurses and emergency staff at Kempsey, they were perfect . . . absolutely 150 per cent," he said. "There is something seriously wrong when you can't get treated in your home state. The pilot was desperately asking them where he was going. The trauma bloke said, 'Bugger it, we'll go to Queensland'."

NSW Nationals leader Andrew Stoner said the Battersons' story was a "disgrace". "This State Government has become so dysfunctional it can't meet its basic responsibilities," he said.

Source

Muslims say protests over planned school are "hurtful"

Maybe they should stop preaching hate against Israel and the West, then. I think Mr Trad should send his complaint to the Ayalollahs of Iran or the Wahhabist mullahs of Saudi Arabia -- which is where the problem originates

PROTESTERS fighting to stop an Islamic school opening at Carrara on the Gold Coast have been accused of linking young students to terrorism. A board member of the planned school slammed the protesters as "un-Australian". "It's not only upsetting, it's deeply hurtful," school board trustee Keyser Trad said. "To make associations between primary school-aged children and terrorists is just hard to even comprehend. "I've never seen this kind of thing in Australia. It's causing a deep wound in our hearts."

Almost 200 protesters gathered outside the Gold Coast City Council chambers on Monday to demonstrate their objection to the planned Carrara school, with placards, Australian flags, chants and a sound system booming out Aussie rock anthems. Some of the protesters claim the school would foster segregation, or even potential terrorists, comments that angered Mr Trad and disappointed some local councillors.

Mr Trad, who also serves on the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia, said religion should not be a reason for protesting against the school. "The kids who would go to this school and their parents are normal, everyday people who just happen to be Muslim," he said.

The council's planning committee chairman, Cr Ted Shepherd, deplored aspects of Monday's protest. "I was a little bit disappointed with some of the behaviour," he said. "I don't think people should take to that tone of demonstration over what is really a town planning issue."

Some opponents of the school have expressed concerns over issues such as traffic and parking but Mr Trad said the school was following all council recommendations. "Everything that the council has asked, we have done it signed, sealed and delivered."

Today is the last day for residents to make submissions to the council about the proposal. If approved, the school is unlikely to open until at least the middle of next year.

Source

Global warming kills possum?



More Greenie attention-seeking lies. If the possum was on way to extinction anyway, how do we know that warming made any difference? They cite hot weather in 2005 but there was no global warming in 2005. Any extra heat at that time would be due to other, more local, weather influences

SCIENTISTS say a white possum native to Queensland's Daintree forest has become the first mammal to become extinct due to man-made global warming. The Courier-Mail reports the white lemuroid possum, a rare creature found only above 1000m in the mountain forests of far north Queensland, has not been seen for three years. Experts fear climate change is to blame for the disappearance of the highly vulnerable species thanks to a temperature rise of up to 0.8C.

Researchers will mount a last-ditch expedition early next year deep into the untouched "cloud forests" of the Carbine range near Mt Lewis, three hours north of Cairns, in search of the tiny tree-dweller, dubbed the "Dodo of the Daintree".

Scientists believe some frog, bug and insects species have also been killed off by climate change. But this would be the first known loss of a mammal and the most significant since the extinction of the Dodo and the Tasmanian Tiger. "It is not looking good," researcher Steve Williams said. "If they have died out it would be first example of something that has gone extinct purely because of global warming." [Fact-free assertion]

Professor Williams, director of the Centre for Tropical Biodiversity and Climate Change at James Cook University, said the white lemuroid possum had been identified as highly vulnerable five years ago. "It only takes four or five hours of temperatures above 30C to kill this highly vulnerable species," he said. "They live off the moisture in the trees in the cooler, high-altitude cloud forests and, under extreme heat, they are unable to maintain their body temperature." He said record high temperatures in the summer of 2005 could have caused a massive die-off.

"Prior to 2005 we were seeing a lemuroid every 45 minutes of spotlighting at one main site at Mt Lewis," Professor Williams said. "But, in three years, in more than 20 hours of intensive spotlighting, none has been sighted."

Reef and Rainforest Research Centre chief executive Sheridan Morris said the "eyes of the world" would be on next year's the expedition to find the little creature. "If it has died out it will be devastating," Ms Morris said. "It is a big one, and a big one to bang the drum over. "It is equally as shocking as losing an iconic marine species like a whale or the dugong."

Source. And Andrew Bolt gives the lies a detailed debunking.

Victorian police force awash with convicted cops

ONE hundred and sixty-eight serving members of Victoria Police have criminal convictions, it was revealed last night. They have been convicted of offences including serious assaults, trafficking and possession of drugs, theft, perverting the course of justice and misconduct in public office. Another 42 serving police have been cautioned or entered a diversion program over less serious offences. A Victoria Police spokeswoman said the figures did not include police found guilty of serious traffic offences.

The shock figures were provided to the Herald Sun in response to an inquiry made two months ago. Their release comes as new laws making it easier to sack police are to be debated in Parliament this week. The changes to the Police Regulations Act will strengthen the dismissal process for matters of not only criminal behaviour but misconduct, persistent poor performance and loss of confidence by the Chief Commissioner.

Assistant Commissioner Luke Cornelius, head of the force's Ethical Standards Department, said last night the criminal offence figures confirmed the force was getting better at catching and convicting members who did the wrong thing. "The community can take some comfort from the fact that we are getting better at catching our own and holding those who do the wrong thing accountable," he said. "We're also becoming more effective in holding them accountable in court."

Mr Cornelius said that in recent years the conviction rate for police charged with criminal offences had risen from just over 40 per cent to almost 80 per cent. "This is a powerful message to the very small percentage of our members who do the wrong thing - that they will get caught and they will be convicted," he said.

Mr Cornelius said 16 of the 168 police who had either pleaded guilty or been found guilty of criminal offences had committed serious assaults. He said 49 were guilty of theft and the other 103 included drug offences, administration of justice offences, offensive behaviour, soliciting for prostitution and being found in a common gaming house. Mr Cornelius said there had been no incidents of Victorian police drink-driving on duty in a police vehicle in three years.

Source

ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG mocks the unwarranted raid by Kevin Rudd on the money saved up by the previous conservative government

Australia May Ease Immigration Detention, Stop Charging Fees

Potential illegals are going to love this

Australia should limit the time asylum seekers can be held in detention to 90 days before they are considered for visas, hold detainees for a maximum of one year and stop charging them fees to recoup expenses, a parliamentary committee said.

Security and identity checks should be done within 90 days and detainees would only be kept beyond one year if they present an "unacceptable risk to the community," the parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Migration said. The government should stop charging asylum seekers A$125.40 ($80) a day for the cost of their detention and cancel all existing debts, some of which exceed A$100,000, according to the committee's report. "The impacts of prolonged immigration detention and failures in administration have been too high," committee chairman Michael Danby said today in an e-mailed statement. The committee also recommends regular health checks.

Australia in 2001 adopted a hard-line stance on asylum seekers, using the Navy to turn away Indonesian fishing boats as they traveled across the Timor Sea laden with about 2,200 refugees. That came ahead of a national election, when John Howard's Liberal-National coalition won a third term. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Labor Party ousted the coalition in November 2007.

Immigration Minister Chris Evans, who will consider the report, in July said detention centers would only be used as a "last resort" for the "shortest practical time." Evans said a detainee would be reviewed every three months and no children would be kept in centers. Australia was holding 279 people in immigration detention as of Nov. 7, according to today's statement. Charging detainees for costs was found to be "harsh and without a reasonable rationale," deputy committee chairman Danna Vale said in the statement.

Source

Federal Parliament closes its ears to climate facts

Note what Labor does when Liberal MP Dennis Jensen tries to table evidence in Parliament that directly contradicts the global warming hype:

Leave NOT granted.

Jensen's wider point - that the regional models of global warming touted by the CSIRO are useless - have been confirmed by other studies. No doubt that's something else Parliament will refuse to hear.

Source

Stupid Leftist attack on job-creating businesses

Shades of FDR and the Great Depression!

Kevin Rudd declares war on unemployment but then shoots the labour market in the foot by imposing more rules and penalties on employment-generating businesses. But it's OK. Ruddy reckons handing an extra $15.1 billion to the states for health, education and other stuff will create 133,000 jobs.

Historically, Australia's industrial relations has been based on expedience rather than genuinely evidence-based policy. Evidence tends to be backfill, as suggested by the September 15 decision of the NSW Remuneration Tribunal to give judges a 4.3per cent pay rise. Comparative wage justice - or "relativities" for NSW judges - had to keep up with the 4.3 per cent pay rise awarded to federal judges. But the tribunal also said it took "economic indicators" into account. The economic reference was unfortunate because September 15 was the day the global financial crisis exploded, threatening to plunge the world economy into recession....

Yet the NSW commission was merely obeying instructions from its institutional DNA. And Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard makes no apologies for replicating those same genetic instincts - originating with the 1907 Harvester decision, comparative wage justice, fair wages and so on - in the Government's "Forward with Fairness" industrial relations machinery.

While following through on the devastating political campaign against John Howard's Work Choices, the new system is designed to reinstate the institutional legitimacy of the industrial tribunals, the arcane award structure and the trade unions (which of course finance the Labor Party). The tribunals and the awards will be "modernised" and the unions won't rule the roost like before. And business lobby groups have been brought into the tent so they can't say they haven't been consulted. But there's little acknowledgment of the benefit of maintaining maximum labour market flexibility to help the economy get through the threatened recession and to then facilitate a productivity-led recovery.

The urgent priority should be to minimise the looming increase in unemployment, which is likely to show up in the New Year when the labour-intensive retail industry starts retrenching its mostly low-paid workers. Some retail workers may gladly trade off some employment costs to keep their jobs. And the Government could help by compensating them through the tax-transfer system, such as with a so-called negative income tax. But this policy option is foreign to the present exercise as it focuses on maximising jobs rather than on restoring traditional institutional power over the wage contract.

A week ago, the OECD's twice-yearly Economic Outlook forecast that Australia's unemployment rate would rise from 4.3 per cent to more than 6 per cent. Its sole supply-side recommendation was to "preserve labour-market flexibility". That same day, Gillard was doing the exact opposite as she unveiled the Government's Fair Work Bill. She justified the abolition of statutory individual employment agreements by arguing that they had stripped away working conditions.

Yet Labor could have retained the flexibility of individual employment contracts while requiring them to incorporate minimum conditions. Individual contracts - yes, Australian Workplace Agreements - were developing with few problems for close to a decade before Howard's Work Choices removed the "no-disadvantage test". Their real crime is that they undermine the collectivist framework of the tribunals, the award structure and the unions.

To backfill this, Gillard argued: "Collective bargaining at the enterprise level is good for employees; it's good for employers; it's good for productivity; it's good for the national economy."

The shift to enterprise-based collective bargaining as an alternative to industry-wide bargaining was good for the economy in the 1990s. So was the further flexibility subsequently provided by individual contracts. But the evidence that productivity will be boosted by making it unlawful for businesses to negotiate directly with their individual employees is as thin as the evidence that a buoyant economy now justifies lifting the minimum wage floor.

Source

Andrew Bolt's comment on the above matters:

Gerard Henderson is astonished that the Rudd Government could draw up new laws in this climate that it admits may make bosses less keen to hire workers:

What insanity is this? Protecting conditions by killing jobs.

Source

Islamic College protest in Queensland

PROTESTERS swarmed on the Gold Coast City Council headquarters in Queensland to vent their anger over a planned Muslim school yesterday as rock anthems blared from loudspeakers. Almost 200 residents turned out for the demonstration, draped in Australian flags and shouting pro-Aussie slogans while Australian rock classics such as Land Down Under and Great Southern Land boomed across the parkland.

The Australian International Islamic College, planned for Carrara, has raised the ire of residents who fear it will lead to the local Muslim population withdrawing from the rest of the community.

A rally last week attracted about 400 people, while people turned out yesterday carrying placards bearing slogans such as "no Muslim school, hell no" and "integration, not segregation". Residents' spokesman Tony Doherty said Muslim schools did not encourage multiculturalism. "It's segregation, not integration," he said. 'They're not trying to integrate into the rest of society. "Since we have started protesting against this our churches have been covered in hate-filled graffiti."

He denied it was hypocritical to oppose Muslim and not Christian schools. "Catholics aren't a different culture," he said. "They are the same as us."

Some residents say they are opposed to the school more because of parking issues rather than religious grounds. Mayor Ron Clarke has publicly said he would support the school as long as it satisfies the council's planning criteria. The council will not make any decision on the future of the school until next year. If approved, the school is unlikely to open until at least the middle of next year.

Source

Man faces child porn charges over phone photos

The insane photography phobia marches on: How are pictures of children playing outdors in a perfectly normal way "pornography"?

A man caught taking mobile phone photographs of young children paddling in water at Sydney's Darling Harbour faces child pornography charges. Police were called to the popular tourist spot when onlookers saw the man pointing his mobile phone at a group of 15 young children, aged two to 12 years old, yesterday afternoon.

The 40-year-old, of no fixed abode, was arrested by police, who later found a number of photographs and videos of young children on his phone. He has been charged with possessing child pornography, and was refused bail to appear in Central Local Court today.

Source

University education still beyond the reach of many (?)

The great unmentionable is not mentioned below. As Charles Murray and others have shown long ago, poorer people tend to have lower IQs. So that alone will mean that fewer get to university -- and there's not much you can do about it. My parents were poor and I paid my own way through university, when there was a lot less help available than there is now. Why cannot the "deprived" soul mentioned below do the same? It's just spoilt people whining. There is absolutely no reason why the young woman cannot take a government HECS loan at least

Wealthy students remain about three times more likely to go to university than those from poorer backgrounds, despite more than 15 years of government policy to widen access to tertiary education. While the causes are complex, going back to poverty, family attitudes, aspiration and disadvantaged schooling, data shows that an expensive private school remains the best way to maximise the exam results needed to get into the top universities.

As thousands of school leavers sweat on their exam results, the federal Government is facing a huge challenge to boost the participation of the economically disadvantaged at a time when the Government's capacity to effect change has been hit by the financial crisis punching a hole in future tax revenues.

Adrienne Moore, 18, wants to study biology and genetics and is hopeful she has got into Deakin University in Geelong. But her mother, Christine Richardson, 49, worries how she is going to afford it. "I sit up in bed every night and have that knife turning, wondering how I am going to do it," Ms Richardson told The Weekend Australian. A mother of six who was plunged into bankruptcy and poverty by a marriage break-up and is now battling breast cancer, Ms Richardson has already had to say no to the university ambitions of her three elder children. One of those is now unemployed when a degree is likely to have kept him in work.

Ms Richardson, whose disability pension doesn't cover her rent, is relying on Learning-For-Life scholarships and student mentoring from the Smith Family to try to give Adrienne and her younger brother and sister the opportunities she couldn't give her elder children. "It (university) was just one of those things that couldn't be done. I just couldn't have done any more than I did to keep the family afloat, and I regret that to this day."

Living in Hoppers Crossing in Melbourne's lower-income outer west, Adrienne got through school without a computer and by borrowing books and scientific calculators from her teachers. Earlier this year she couldn't afford to go into Melbourne to attend special exam information sessions that her friends went to. "That was stressful ... but what can you do about it?" she said.

Despite the Dawkins reforms of 1989 creating a mass university system and the introduction of income contingent loans, students from the bottom 25per cent of postcodes ranked according to wealth and education make up only 15per cent of university admissions. In contrast, the wealthiest 25per cent claim a disproportionate 37per cent of places. While the numbers of low-socio-economic students getting into university grew to 43,383 last year from 36,150 10 years ago, there has been little progress in denting their chronic underrepresentation.

Promoting access is set to be central to recommendations from Canberra's Bradley review of higher education that will be released next month. Universities are likely to be given more incentives to widen access at a time when more and more vice-chancellors are also looking to base this access beyond narrow statewide exam results to take into account background and broader achievements.

"Through no one's fault, the universities are complicit with schools and the state Government in running secondary school education tests that necessarily disadvantage sections of the population," La Trobe University vice-chancellor Paul Johnson told The Weekend Australian. Macquarie University vice-chancellor Steven Schwartz has said: 'Unless we believe that students from low-income families lack the ability or the motivation for university-level study, the absence of talented students from our campuses represents not only a loss to them but also to society".

Source

Australia squibs on climate promise

Reality is slowly encroaching

The Rudd Government has reneged on a commitment to present its 2020 target to cut greenhouse gases to UN climate talks that start today. The back-pedalling comes amid wrangling in cabinet over how far to go with curbing emissions. The Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, yesterday defended the decision not to announce the target before she left for the talks in the Polish city of Poznan. She refused to comment on whether cabinet was divided over the target, which is expected to fall significantly below the level called for by European ministers, climate scientists and environmentalists who will attend the talks. "It is the case that we said we would release the targets in December and we had indicated before Poznan," she said. But she said it was important to postpone the announcement until she released the final version of the Government's carbon pollution reduction scheme on December 15 - after she returned from Poland.

Until late last week Senator Wong repeatedly said the range of emissions cuts for the 2020 target would be set before she went to Poznan. "The intention is to announce, as I have said, our midterm target range prior to the Poznan negotiations. And that's the terms, the timetable, the Government's working on," she said on October 2.

Under intense lobbying from business and on the advice of senior officials, the Government is discussing setting a range of targets to cut greenhouse emissions by 2020. The target is now expected to be cuts between 5 per cent and 15 per cent of emissions, based on 2000 levels. This is significantly below the cuts of 25 to 40 per cent being called for by the European Union and climate scientists. The European environment ministers argue that developed countries such as Australia must agree to the higher cuts if they want to secure a new global agreement that will avoid dangerous climate change.

At last year's UN climate talks in Bali, all developed countries that had signed the Kyoto Protocol, including Australia, agreed to cuts between 25 and 40 per cent. China, India and Brazil, the fastest growing greenhouse gas polluters, argue that they will not make commitments to slow their emissions if developed countries fail to agree to this level of cuts. By delaying the announcement of Australia's 2020 target, Senator Wong will avoid intense international criticism of Australia from European negotiators and environment groups if cabinet sets a weaker 2020 target range.

"It's a disappointment," said John Connor, chief executive of the Climate Institute, who has been lobbying the Government for the more ambitious 2020 target. But he said he believed the Government was still discussing higher emissions cuts of 25 per cent. "It's still alive. We're working as hard as we can to keep it alive", he told the Herald, but he described business's lobbying against a 25 per cent target as "nothing short of brutal".

The chief executive of the environment group WWF, Greg Bourne, said Senator Wong would "be laughed out of Poznan" if she announced at the UN talks that Australia's 2020 target was between 5 and 15 per cent. Asked if she was avoiding making the announcement in Poland because of the international criticism, Senator Wong said: "I am not going to comment on a hypothetical." The head of the Australian Conservation Council, Don Henry, said Australia needed to cut its emissions by at least a third by 2020 if it wanted to be a credible player at the UN talks.

While Europe has already promised cuts of 20 per cent, Senator Wong said few countries had yet announced firm targets for their cuts and many would not be completed until the final round of talks next year in Copenhagen. The scale of the energy revolution being proposed by Europe has some business leaders in Australia deeply concerned.

Source

Crackdown in NSW on unnecessary lawsuits

Should be more of it

New New South Wales laws cracking down on vexatious litigants, who victimise or embarrass others through unnecessary law suits, have come into effect. NSW Attorney-General John Hatzistergos said some litigants had brought more than 100 court cases each, costing opponents millions in legal fees and clogging up the court system. Such cases were a drain on court resources, and the new legislation, coming into force today, would weed such litigants out of the system, he said.

"From today, anybody who frequently and persistently takes legal action without reasonable grounds or for improper purposes can be declared a vexatious litigant," Mr Hatzistergos said. "Our new laws aim to stamp out this practice and will give judges the power to banish anyone declared a vexatious litigant from their courtrooms."

The new law would make it easier for the attorney-general, the solicitor-general or the registrar of the court to declare someone a problem litigant to stop such abuse. Victims of such lawsuits would be able to apply to have someone declared a vexatious litigant, Mr Hatzistergos said. "We have introduced these measures not only to free up the justice system, but to protect the good citizens of this state," he said.

Source

How to put smart people off teaching

Putting young, inexperienced teachers into sink schools is a sure way to cause them to think of another career. Some of them last only weeks in such a situation. You would think an education boss would know that but when you are a Leftist, you don't need facts. Sounding good is all that matters

Top teaching graduates will be offered extra money to fill difficult jobs and work at "challenging" state schools. State Education Minister Rod Welford will today unveil what he describes as an innovative plan to get elite teachers into tough classroom roles. Mr Welford told The Sunday Mail the graduates would be offered incentives in the form of scholarships to work in specialist subject areas, difficult schools or remote locations.

The minister said he was alarmed at the number of teachers quitting after just four or five years on the job. [So he wants them to quit even faster??] "Recruiting and retaining top teachers is the key to ensuring all Queensland students can access the best possible education, no matter where they live," Mr Welford said.

Mr Welford, who will quit politics after 20 years at the 2009 state election, said there was a shortage of teachers in manual arts and maths B and C. Bonded scholarships would be offered to high-calibre final year undergraduate students to teach in subjects where shortages had been identified. Queensland Health had introduced a similar program for doctors, a bonded medical scholarship to work in areas of "priority service" for six years after graduating from Griffith University.

Mr Welford said other positions that were difficult to fill included schools in areas of socio-economic disadvantage and in rural and remote locations. "Increasingly we need to recognise that to attract the right talent we need to have incentives and we need to apply our most talented people to the most challenging jobs," he said.

The minister said the State Government would also implement a sister program with universities to provide graduates with initial teaching experience in the location of their choice. "This would be followed by a placement in a difficult-to-staff location with a guaranteed return to their preferred location after an agreed time. "Boomerang transfers will also be offered, with staff supported to undertake short-term placements in challenging locations with a guaranteed return to their preferred location on completion."

Queensland Teachers Union president Steve Ryan supported the plan but said the teachers must be fully qualified before taking the demanding roles. "We accept that there is a need for a variety of ways in which we can attract teachers to the profession . . . the best way is to make sure they are getting the right salaries," Mr Ryan said. The Government plans to introduce the scheme for 2009.

Source

Media Bias in Australia

The ABC's partisan preferences are not limited to Australian politics

The taxpayer-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) occupies a position in Australia similar to that enjoyed by the BBC in the United Kingdom. The ABC runs two free-to-air national television channels, four national radio networks, nine metropolitan radio stations in major cities, 51 radio stations across rural and regional Australia and a range of Internet and subscription services. No Australian commercial network approaches the ABC in terms of reach and, arguably, influence. It is well-funded, amply staffed and under more or less constant criticism for projecting a left-wing take on just about every aspect of Australian life that it touches.

Grahame Morris, a chief of staff to former conservative Prime Minister John Howard, once described the national broadcaster as, "our enemies talking to our friends." The recently retired presenter of ABC TV's national gardening show was a former member of the Communist Party. The ABC, you see, takes no chances. Even when you were invited to tiptoe through the tulips, the ABC provided an ideologically reliable guide.

Obviously, the political and cultural disposition of the national broadcaster, as it sucks up taxpayer dollars, is an important and legitimate area of public debate. The left does not see it that way. Conservative criticism of the national broadcaster's political and cultural perspectives is usually brushed off by the ABC and its friends as an attack on the "independence" of its journalists, producers and managers.

But an obligation to provide balance and diversity of opinion is enshrined in the ABC's charter; and the corporation's editorial policies and style guide set out rules for news and current affairs journalists in an attempt to ensure that the obligation is met.

The ABC's partisan preferences are not limited to Australian politics. Consider this comment in the lead up to the 2004 U.S. presidential election from Red Symons, the presenter of one of its prime time radio programs:

The Australian chapter of Democrats Abroad would have been chuffed to know that.

There are broadcasting codes that can be used to try to hold the ABC accountable to its charter. The process is far from satisfactory because, in the first instance, the ABC itself is the arbiter of complaints made about it. So between 2005 and 2008 the Howard Government attempted to use the Senate Estimates Committee process to take the problem of political bias straight to the corporation's managing director.

Over the three-year period, the Government tabled more than 1,000 examples of ABC journalists violating the organization's editorial guidelines and style guide?its rule books for providing fair and balanced reporting. The examples were extracted from a very small part of the network's output?the program transcripts that the ABC makes available online?and thus represented only a very small percentage of the total network programming. Unquestionably, a complete analysis of ABC output would have yielded thousands more.

A particularly egregious example of ABC mischief had occurred in February 2003 when Prime Minister Howard visited then Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri in the lead up to the war with Iraq. In a meeting with Mr. Howard, the president of the world's largest Muslim nation gave an undertaking that her Government would explain to the Indonesian public that a war on Iraq would not be regarded as a war on Islam.

However, ABC News, broadcast across Australia and beamed into Asia, that evening reported, "Well, there's support for Iraq tonight from the world's largest Muslim nation. Indonesia claims a war on Iraq would be a war on Islam." The ABC was forced to run a correction the next day, but the damage to the national interest had been done.

The Howard Government's efforts to modify the behavior of the ABC resulted in a number of smoke-and-mirrors efforts to address the issue of bias in its current affairs broadcasting. However, one year ago, the 11-year-old centre-right Liberal-National coalition of John Howard was defeated in a federal election by the centre-left Australian Labor Party (ALP) led by Kevin Rudd.

On election night, the ABC's TV anchor and network icon Kerry O'Brien, on air live from the national tally room, declared that there had been a big swing "to the ABC" in Bennelong, the electorate of Prime Minister John Howard. The gaffe, if O'Brien's comment had, indeed, been unintended, provided an eloquent metaphor for the symbiotic relationship between the ABC and the ALP. Maxine McKew, the ALP candidate who went on to win Bennelong from the prime minister, had been a 30-year veteran journalist and presenter at the ABC. She left the network at the end of 2006, laughing off suggestions that she intended to stand as a Labor candidate in the federal election.

Two months out of the ABC, McKew joined the office of Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd; and one month after that she announced her intention to contest Bennelong for the ALP.

Kerry O'Brien, the election night anchor, presents a 30-minute national current affairs program four nights a week on ABC TV. In the 1970s, O'Brien himself was on the staff of a Labor Party leader. On Sunday mornings, ABC TV presents "Insiders," a national review of the week in politics anchored by Barrie Cassidy. In the 1980s, Cassidy served as press secretary to Labor Party Prime Minister Bob Hawke. ABC Radio National has Phillip Adams, another former member of the Communist Party, covering politics and current affairs for about seven hours a week. One of his regular guests is Bruce Shapiro, contributing editor to The Nation.

The gratitude of one Labor prime minister for the election-time efforts of the ABC is recorded in the Cabinet diary of a former minister: "The ABC deserves a decent go because it has done well by the ALP in the last two elections," Labor's Paul Keating said in 1992.

The Rudd Labor Government has promised to restore a staff member to the ABC board of directors, a position that was abolished by the Howard Government. It has also said it will depoliticize the ABC board; which really means it will stack it with its own ideological allies and friends. The ABC, after almost 12 years of confrontation with a conservative foe, once again has in Canberra a government that many of its foot-soldiers are happy to believe in.

Source

Tasmanian public hospital waiting lists continue to grow

It's a problem in the public hospital systems of all Australian States -- though NSW and Queensland seem to be the worst

The waiting list for elective surgery in Tasmania increased by almost 10 per cent in the three months to the end of September, compared with the same period last year. New figures from the Health and Human Services Department show that at the end of last September, the number of patients waiting for elective surgery was 8,600. That's a jump of 9.9 per cent from the end of September 2007, when about 7,800 people were waiting.

The department's Progress Chart, which has just been released, says the waiting list will continue to grow because of Tasmania's ageing population and increasing rates of chronic disease.

Other figures show the number of women screened for breast cancer in the September quarter dropped by 9 per cent, compared to the same quarter in 2006.

The number of adults getting dental treatment increased by 15 per cent.

Source

Rule-breaking pet-owner outraged at enforcement of the rules

She obviously thinks she is special and can pick and choose what rules she obeys. But town planning is an inherently arrogant profession, from what I see. That allowing her to break the rules would make the rules unenforceable generally is obviously too much for her tiny mind to comprehend. She should study Kant. It sounds like she hasn't got a bloke, either. No wonder

A defenceless pooch has been forced out of a plush apartment complex, home to some of Melbourne's most elite residents, after a costly legal dogfight. Owner Natalie Gray has criticised "pet-hating" neighbours at the Domain Park complex in South Yarra who filed a civil complaint at the Melbourne Magistrates Court to get rid of Princess, her seven-year-old papillon. "They are pet haters, it's outrageous," she said. "I think they lack compassion. It's really sad they are being so unreasonable."

Accountant Colin Tatterson, a director at Pitcher Partners, is on the board behind the anti-pets campaign. Another resident at the Domain Rd apartment block, which overlooks the Royal Botanical Gardens, is former governor general Sir Ninian Stephen - but he said he did not mind pets as long as they were quiet.

It is understood at least $50,000 was spent on the 10-month stoush. The dispute was resolved late last week after Ms Gray agreed not to take Princess into the building. She was unable to afford to continue the legal battle.

Ms Gray, 47, says she can't understand why there has been such a fuss over her pet. She said her dog didn't bark, would never leave a mess and was so well behaved she was welcomed at Mass by the nuns at the Carmelite Monastery in Kew. Ms Gray said Princess lived at her mother's house in Kew and visited overnight only about 20 times a year, often on Thursdays when they watched dog detective television show Inspector Rex. Ms Gray, a town planner, also accused some residents in the block of spying on her.

But under the rules of the Domain Park's resident-controlled management company, no pets are allowed, not even budgies or goldfish. And that's not the only rule - prams and bicycles must enter the building through the car park, not the lobby, and "soiled" running shoes are not welcome either. Even buying into the building is difficult. Prospective owners must prove they are of good character in an interview with the company board before they are allowed to buy an apartment.

Michael Trumble, solicitor for Domain Park management, said his client was pleased with the outcome. Some residents had bought into the building at 193 Domain Rd because of the no-pets rule, he said.

Source

The flow of "Boat people" has resumed

Kevvy's new softer policy was noticed immediately. A problem that Howard solved is back again

Indonesian and Australian police have stopped 14 boats laden with asylum seekers from travelling to Australia this year, including at least three in the past six weeks, as people-smuggling activity accelerates across the archipelago. Four boats have made it to Australian waters. On Thursday, one of them, with 12 Sri Lankans aboard, became the first boat in two years to reach the mainland, near Shark Bay in Western Australia. Government sources said the arrivals, who were being transferred to Christmas Island, would have access to Australian law should they claim asylum.

The previously undisclosed figures on people-smuggling disruption, confirmed by Australian Federal Police, highlight the success of the joint operation combating human trafficking. But the data also points to a spike in asylum seekers trying to come to Australia, a politically sensitive issue for the Rudd Government. This year, the Government softened its policy towards illegal immigrants and has allowed the navy - which intercepts boats - to stand down for two months over Christmas due to a manpower shortage.

"We have a lot of problems with this smuggling," Paulus Purwoko, deputy chief of criminal investigations at Indonesian National Police, told the Herald. He said the number of boat crossings to Australia had increased, particularly in recent months. "They transit first through Malaysia, then from Malaysia to Indonesia. We believe it is organised by a syndicate. "When they get to Indonesia, they try to make a deception to the Indonesian police. They throw away their passports. They get a UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] letter of recommendation or ID. Some of them have originals, the rest have fakes."

The Australian Federal Police has played a critical role in combating human trafficking by providing intelligence. But Mr Purwoko said it was difficult to keep tabs on smugglers due to Indonesia's long coastline and because the boats were leaving from different places each time. He expressed grave fears for the asylum seekers, saying the syndicates use the flimsiest of boats to save money, creating huge risks for their human cargo. The worst time to attempt the crossing is over summer, when the seas are roughest. It is also when the navy will be undertaking limited operations.

Indonesian police have made numerous arrests, including Afghan, Pakistani and Indonesian nationals. Many of the asylum seekers are from Afghanistan, reflecting the deteriorating security there and rise in persecution against ethnic minorities as the Taliban exerts more control. Others have come from Iraq, Somalia and Sri Lanka, all countries besieged by violence.

The Herald interviewed two Afghan asylum seekers this week in Jakarta. The men, who cannot be identified because it would jeopardise the safety of their families, said people-smuggling syndicates are paid up to $US12,000 a person. "They promise they will arrive in Australia or some other country like Britain," said one of the men. They said asylum seekers wanted to come to Australia because it was "safe".

Source

Global cooling fails to cool protagonists of global warming

Europe is shivering through an extreme cold snap. One of the coldest winters in the US in more than 100 years is toppling meteorological records by the dozen, and the Arctic ice is expanding. Even Australia has been experiencing unseasonable snow. But the stories about global warming have not stopped, not for a second.

In May last year, The Sydney Morning Herald breathlessly reported that climate change had reduced the Southern Ocean's ability to soak up carbon dioxide, claiming that as a result global warming would accelerate even faster than previously thought. The story was picked up and repeated in a number of different journals around the region. But this week the CSIRO suggested the exact opposite. "The new study suggests that Southern Ocean currents, and therefore the Southern Ocean's ability to soak up carbon dioxide, have not changed in recent decades," it said. This time the story got no coverage in the SMH, and was run on the ABC's website as evidence the Southern Ocean was adapting to climate change.

CSIRO oceanographer Stuart Rintoul, a co-author of the study, said it did not disprove global warming and he did not believe its lack of an alarmist tone was responsible for the poor coverage. But the story is being pointed out as an example of media bias on global warming. Critics argue that the ABC and the Fairfax media are the worst offenders.

ABC board member Keith Windschuttle said yesterday the national broadcaster was in breach of its charter to provide a diversity of views. "The ABC and the Fairfax press rarely provide an opportunity for global warming sceptics to put their view," Mr Windschuttle said. "The science is not settled. "We are seeing an increasing number of people with impeccable scientific backgrounds questioning part or whole of the story. I don't believe the ABC has been reflecting the genuine diversity of the debate. Under its own act, the ABC is required to produce a diversity of views."

Bob Carter of James Cook University, one of the world's best-known climate change sceptics, said there was no doubt Windschuttle was correct. "With very few exceptions, press reporters commenting on global warming are either ignorant of the science matters involved, or wilfully determined to propagate warming hysteria because that fits their personal world view, or are under editorial direction to focus the story around the alarmist headline grab -- and often all three," Professor Carter said.

National Climate Centre former head William Kininmonth said coverage of global warming had been hysterical and was getting worse, with a large public relations effort inundating the media with information from the alarmist side.

Source

Another stupid government computer cock-up

Frustrated Queensland police are turning a blind eye to crime to avoid time-consuming data entry on the force's new $100 million computer system. Queensland Police Union vice-president Ian Leavers said the system turned jobs that usually took an hour into several hours of angst. He said police were growing reluctant to make arrests following the latest phased roll-out of QPRIME, or Queensland Police Records Information Management Exchange. "They are reluctant to make arrests and they're showing a lot more discretion in the arrests they make because QPRIME is so convoluted to navigate," Mr Leavers said. He said minor street offences, some traffic offences and minor property matters were going unchallenged, but not serious offences.

However, Mr Leavers said there had been occasions where offenders were released rather than kept in custody because of the length of time it now took to prepare court summaries. "There was an occasion where two people were arrested on multiple charges. It took six detectives more than six hours to enter the details into QPRIME," he said. "It would have taken even longer to do the summary to go to court the next morning, so basically the suspects were released on bail, rather than kept in custody."

He said jobs could now take up to seven hours to process because of the amount of data entry involved. "It's difficult to navigate because it's not a matter of following steps in a logical manner. You go from A to G then back to A, then C, then H," he said. "It's a nightmare." At most stations at least one officer was responsible for carrying out "compliance checks" on the new system, which took about 90 per cent of their time, Mr Leavers said.

Supplied by a Canadian firm called Niche Technology, QPRIME was promoted to Queensland police as a one-stop database that would reduce the administrative burden for officers. Its implementation began in April 2006, replacing 230 other systems, many of them non-compatible. Mr Leavers said the Canadian police employed civilians to carry out data-entry, freeing up officers to catch criminals.

A Queensland Police Service spokesperson conceded the introduction of QPRIME had created a "challenge for individuals having to learn the new system". "However, the benefits of the QPRIME system into the future far outweigh short-term disaffection by some officers," the spokesperson said. "It is already showing its worth in assisting officers to solve significant crimes by allowing them to access information in a holistic manner."

Source

Workplace law reforms asking for trouble

Kevin Rudd shouts from the rooftops each day that the global financial crisis has changed the world, but the Prime Minister does not believe his own words. A bizarre fate has befallen Australia. At the precise time it faces a global crisis, a business downturn and rising unemployment, the Rudd Government is recasting workplace relations to increase trade union powers, inhibit employment and impose new costs on employers.

Normally this would defy any test of common sense. Indeed, it would seem the essence of irresponsibility. But it has instead won widespread applause, and its architect Julia Gillard has won almost universal acclaim as a political hero. It is as though Australia's workplace relations system exists in some interterrestrial immunity from the rest of the economic world.

The global crisis means everything has changed: the budget goes into deficit, fiscal stimulus replaces fiscal restraint, the Reserve Bank does a volte-face and begins to slash interest rates, and the Government guarantees deposits as Rudd declares the crisis is "sweeping across the world". But standing immovable is Labor's support for greater trade union power, more costly restrictions on employers, a greater role for the revamped industrial relations commission, an effective end to individual statutory contracts, a revival of arbitration, and a sharp weakening of direct employer and non-union employee bargaining.

The new workplace relations model introduced by Gillard is a significant step into the past. It does more than abolish the Howard government's Work Choices model; it goes beyond Work Choices to Howard's 1996 reforms and even further to Keating's 1993 reforms in reshaping the system. It is hard to imagine how its impact will be other than to weaken productivity and employment. The immediate economic impact should be small. But this is major institutional reform with a long fuse. It is designed to endure and, as the unions test the laws and refine their procedures, it will shift workplace relations a long way from their present moorings.

This bill constitutes a defining moment for the Rudd Government, a historic victory for the trade union movement, and Gillard's most important political legacy. Her skills in translating policy from the 2007 election into the Fair Work Bill are impressive. The Opposition under Malcolm Turnbull is cowed. It has no political option, as Turnbull signals, but to give passage to Gillard's bill. The Government has a mandate from the election. Gillard, via her exploitation of the hated Work Choices symbol, has guaranteed the bill's passage and, in the process, provided brilliant cover for the serious regression to workplace re-regulation and greater union powers that the bill implements.

It affirms that the 2007 election was a turning point for Australia. The combined impact of the Labor Government and the global crisis means that Australia is taking a different economic path, defined by a sharp lift in intervention and regulation, the new global trend. In her second-reading speech, Gillard endorsed the 1907 Harvester judgment that enshrined new protectionism and set Australia on its calamitous 20th-century path of wage welfarism at the cost of productivity. Indeed, the language Gillard used is the same as that of Alfred Deakin and Harvester case judge H.B. Higgins a century ago, with her dedication that "the ideal of fairness should lie at the centre of our national life" and, by implication, be enshrined in a regulated industrial system.

Consider the bill. It will have a substantial impact on the resources, retail and services sectors, but less so in manufacturing. First, the new commission, called Fair Work Australia, is more powerful and influential than the former Australian Industrial Relations Commission. The Freehills brief on the new bill says: "FWA will have a much more important role than is currently the case, particularly in setting and adjusting minimum wages, facilitating bargaining for enterprise agreements, the expanded unfair-dismissal jurisdiction and dispute resolution under modern awards and enterprise agreements."

This is what makes the bill so reactionary. It genuflects before the idea of a powerful umpire now made user-friendly, the umpire that the Keating and Howard reforms curtailed. It shows the Rudd Government's true character beneath its modernist disguise. Of course, building up FWA will be presented by the Government as an example of virtue and balance, as a responsible alternative to transferring power direct to the unions.

Second, the effect is to empower unions in enterprise agreements and severely limit genuine non-union agreements. A union needs only one member in a workplace to become a bargaining party. Freehills says: "In effect, this means that true non-union agreements are only possible, (1) in workplaces where there are no union members; or (2) where the union chooses not to be covered by an agreement." IR legal experts report that employers hoping to create non-union enterprise agreements, a cause absolutely fundamental to genuine enterprise bargaining, have only a remote hope.

Third, the new right-of-entry provisions for unions are extraordinary and unacceptable in a democracy. Freehills says that union right of entry to businesses "will be significantly broader". Unions will have right of entry to premises where they have no members, and they will be able to inspect the records of individuals who are non-members where this relates to a suspected contravention. In order to justify right of entry, unions will need only to show the business is engaged in an activity where employees are potential unionists. This has been stamped by cabinet in an insight into its real notion of individual rights.

Fourth, the bargaining process is rewritten to favour unions and to allow FWA to intervene more liberally. This is via the beautiful euphemism of "good faith bargaining" that must apply universally. Understand that these rules are highly prescriptive and instruct employers in detail on how they are to bargain and what information they are to provide. The task of FWA is to enforce these requirements. Freehills says this will result in "significant changes to the ways in which many employers bargain". In a situation where an employer commits multiple breaches of good faith bargaining, a union can seek and obtain from FWA compulsory arbitration of the agreement. In addition, FWA is entitled to decide (only a petition is needed) whether there is majority employee support for bargaining and then order an employer to bargain collectively.

Fifth, an entirely new bargaining system is created for low-paid workers, who are entitled to negotiate across an industry with multiple employers. Gillard says this can relate to child care, cleaning, security and community workers. The bill does not define a low-paid worker, leaving upward flexibility. This stream can be accessed only with FWA's approval, and the bill enables FWA to play a hands-on role. The bill does not allow industrial action across an industry but, critically, it does allow industry-wide arbitration. Freehills' brief says that "in certain circumstances where bargaining breaks down", parties can seek "an arbitrated workplace determination".

"This is the way the unions will move into the low-income workplaces," says Peter Anderson, director of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. "In effect, it will be pattern bargaining. The Government is opening new avenues to multi-employer bargaining with industry-wide arbitration that has not existed before."

Sixth, businesses will be more exposed to union demarcation disputes. Employers will no longer be able to bargain with one union in preference to another. Provided a union has a member in the workplace, the union can apply to be covered by the agreement. Freehills' brief says: "Any attempt to bargain with only one union may well mean that an employer is not bargaining in good faith and so could be subject to bargaining orders." This will become a test of the ACTU's authority to manage its member unions.

Seventh, as is well-known, Labor's aim is a workplace system devoid of individual statutory contracts. This realises a Labor-ACTU objective that originates with the Howard government's 1996 reforms that introduced such contracts. This campaign long predates Work Choices. Individual contracts, while not central to the system, operated for a decade before the 2007 election.

Labor's complaint has never been about unfair Australian Workplace Agreements. It has always been about the principle of AWAs that became law on Coalition-Democrat votes. There is no moral, political or economic case for outlawing the AWA principle. There is only one justification: to protect collective power. Labor and the trade union movement waged a brilliant campaign over three years in the name of fairness to bolster collective power. It is another Work Choices legacy.

The Rudd-Gillard new industrial system seems to have firm foundations. The business groups are divided. The Opposition is unwilling to fight. The 2007 election mandate is legitimate and irresistible. The new structure, however, will prove untenable and the struggle will be resumed at a later date. In the interim, the Government will be responsible for all the consequences of imposing on Australia at a time of unusual financial crisis a workplace relations system that means higher costs, a weaker labour market, a more interventionist umpire and a union movement with greater legal powers.

Source

An unusually "incorrect" entertainer

Rolf tells it like it is: Aborigines do very little to help themselves -- so why should we worry?



Rolf Harris regrets the racist verse on Aborigines in Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport, the song that made him famous in Britain and launched the wobbleboard on an unsuspecting music world.

In Melbourne yesterday to plug a book of illustrations of the same name, the singer and painter said he had tried to erase the lines "Let me Abos go loose" and "They're of no further use" from all recordings over the years, with limited success. "It was a mark of the times, done totally innocently with no realisation that you would offend at all . Just trying to create a fun song for a bunch of Aussies who were drinking themselves stupid on Swan Lager in London at the time," he said.

But half a century after penning the controversial lyrics, the London-based expatriate has not succumbed to political correctness. He blames traditional Aboriginal values for the dire living conditions in many indigenous communities. "The attitude is that in their original way of life they would really wreck the surrounding countryside that they lived in and they would leave all the garbage and they would go walkabout to the next place," he said. "The traditional attitude is still there and I wish there was a simple solution but I'm not certain."

He has strong views about some Aborigines lamenting the conditions of their communities. "You sit at home watching the television and you think to yourself, 'Get up off your arse and clean up the streets your bloody self' and 'Why would you expect somebody to come in and clean up your garbage which you've dumped everywhere?' But then you have to think to yourself that it's a different attitude to life."

Aboriginal children were never disciplined or expected to adhere to rules until adulthood, he said. "[Until] then they have a totally carefree life to do what they want and that quite often involves smashing everything that they have."

Source

An old-fashioned responsible father: Good to see

Boy, 5, made to walk two-and-a-half hours to school



A NORTHERN TERRITORY man has been making his five-year-old son walk two-and-a-half hours to school every day, after he was kicked off the school bus. When Jack Burt confessed that he'd been banned for five days for hitting the bus driver in the head with an apple core, dad Sam thought he should learn the hard way. He and Jack last week were getting up at 5.10am for the dusty 13km-hike from the Darwin rural area of Herbert, all the way to Humpty Doo. Mr Burt also took the wheels off Jack's bike so he couldn't be tempted to ride to school.

At the end of the old-fashioned punishment, Mr Burt, 38, took out a public notice in the Northern Territory News. "Jack Burt and his dad wish to thank all the kind people who stopped to offer them lifts in the past week," the ad read. "It's good to see a number of good people in the community. Jack hopes to be allowed back on the bus on Monday."

But in the battle of wills between tall and short, the smart money's on Jack. "Shame it didn't work," Mr Burt told the Northern Territory News. "He got back on the bus Monday, and within three stops he was in trouble again. I couldn't believe it. "I don't understand - he's good at school, he gets awards all the time."

However, a breakthrough might be in sight. When Jack this week said he didn't mind walking - because it made him strong for fighting - he was told if he started fighting he might have to walk home in the afternoons too. Jack's eyes got a little teary. He said he might not get home before dark. Mr Burt told him not to worry - they'd leave the key out for him.

Source

Leftist "national treasure" was a crook



The disgraced former Federal Court judge Marcus Einfeld has been stripped of his Queen's Counsel title after pleading guilty to making a false statement under oath and perverting the course of justice. Einfeld, 69, who has been battling prostate cancer for several months, falsely claimed in 2006 that a female friend was driving his silver Lexus in Mosman when he incurred a $77 speeding fine. The friend, however, had died before the offence.

But in a spectacular fall from grace, Einfeld finally pleaded guilty last month to knowingly making a false statement under oath in Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court on August 7, 2006. He also pleaded guilty to making a false statement in Sydney on August 23, 2006, with intent to pervert the course of justice

Einfeld, who had served a term as chairman of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, had been a Federal Court judge for 15 years. He had been appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia and proclaimed a National Treasure by the National Trust. His sentencing hearing has been set down for February 25.

More here

Student testing 'gets best results'

TESTING literacy and numeracy is vital to helping students complete high school and continue their education into adulthood, says the head of New York's education department, Joel Klein. In Australia at the invitation of the federal Government, Mr Klein yesterday dismissed concerns that publicly reporting test results between peer groups of schools meant students only mastered what was in the tests.

"What we've found is that kind of mastery is significant, and has the most significant impact on students' achievement," he told The Australian. "We're finding right now with student progress that you can seea direct correlation with likelihood of a student graduating and making it to post-secondary education." Mr Klein is a leading proponent of using tests to measure the improvement of students and school performance, and publicly reporting the results to share expertise and hold schools to account. Even among high-performing schools in New York, Mr Klein said lifting students' test scores by 0.2 points increased their chances of graduating by 15 points.

Punchbowl Boys High School principal Jihad Dib said increased literacy and numeracy testing had been a key part of a remarkable turnaround in student performance at his school. "We put literacy and numeracy in every activity and I always ask teachers where that component is," Mr Dib said.

During Mr Klein's week-long visit in Australia, sponsored by global financial firm UBS, he will promote the tools underpinning the accountability system adopted in in New York. He addressed a forum in Melbourne yesterday on leading transformational change in schools, will address the National Press Club in Canberra today, and tomorrow will speak at a corporate dinner hosted by UBS on strengthening the links between business and schools.

Mr Klein's visit comes ahead of a looming showdown between the commonwealth and states and territories at the meeting of the Council of Australian Governments on Saturday over the reporting of school performance.

Addressing the forum yesterday, Mr Klein was effusive in his praise for Education Minister Julia Gillard, and described her speech outlining the Government's commitment to transparency in schools as one of the "greatest" on education reform he had heard. "The level of courage in a public official isn't as rare as I sometimes thought," he said. He warned that any changes depended on political will.

Ms Gillard said yesterday the Government was still working on the final form of school reports, but she envisaged a paper report for parents on their child, and a website on schools. Ms Gillard made it clear the Government would not bow to pressure from the states and teaching unions over reporting school results. "We want a new era of transparency so that parents and taxpayers know what is happening in Australian schools," she said. "I want to see a system where parents can get full information about schools in their local community which (they) can compare with similar schools around the nation."

In her speech, Ms Gillard acknowledged concerns over reporting school results, saying publishing test performances "out of context can be misleading". But she said Australia had failed to grasp that it was not appropriate for information on students' learning to be held by schools and government but not made available to the community. "I absolutely reject the proposition that somehow I am smart enough to understand information and parents and community members are somehow too dumb," she said. Ms Gillard said boosting teacher quality was key to improving standards, especially at schools in disadvantaged areas that did not attract their share of good teachers.

Mr Klein received a mixed response from the 100-strong group of educators and policymakers at the Melbourne forum. While teachers generally supported boosting accountability and empowering parents, president of the Australian Secondary Principals Association Andrew Blair was concerned that tests for ranking schools were simplistic. Mr Blair said measurements of performance should cover multiple methodologies, beyond "raw grabs" of test data.

Mr Klein said multiple measurements risked covering up underperformance. "The more we have multiple measures the risk is we dilute the power of accountability," he said. "What matters isn't finding the perfect indicator, but settling on a consistent intelligent method of assessing outputs and tracking them."

Mr Klein trumpeted the importance of mathematics and literature, and defended tests as being effective in teaching higher order thinking beyond the test itself.

It was important to empower parents with information. "Don't believe for a second that when you provide them with the information and the transparency, that parents won't become the greatest advocates for their kids. Sure, it will make you uncomfortable to think your kid isn't in a great school, but it will make you much more uncomfortable not to know that."

In an interview with The Australian, Mr Klein said the key was to measure progress in groups of like schools, to give information to parents and identify the most effective teaching practices.

An analysis of middle schools in New York found that almost regardless of the level of achievement at which students started, students in 90per cent of schools lost ground in their results from year to year. But in 10 per cent of schools, student results improved. "We learn by studying that 10per cent and particularly wondering why students in one out of 10 schools are moving forward," he said. "We analyse different results from different teachers, and how some are getting steady progress of students, and use that information to support teachers and improve their work. That's the power of accountability systems; to shine a spotlight right on the best practice. There is no question about it."

Mr Klein said three basic tools of accountability underlined his system: a progress report measuring student improvement; a quality review of schools; and surveys of parents, students and teachers.

Source

The Kiwis are still coming

The number of Kiwis flooding into Australia has hit another record. Nearly 48,000 New Zealanders moved across the Tasman in the past 12 months. Statistics New Zealand has released figures showing 47,800 Kiwis came to live in Australia in the year to October. In the same period 13,200 people living in Australia emigrated to New Zealand, leaving a net loss to New Zealand of 34,600.

New Zealand's new Prime Minister John Key campaigned on a platform of trying to reverse the exodus of Kiwis to Australia.

In what may be an indication that global economic woes are hitting tourism, short-term visitor arrivals in NZ were down 3 per cent to 173,900 in October compared with a year earlier.

Source

ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG comments on the "achievements" of one year of Rudd.

Huge government transport bungle in Sydney

Even at a cost of billions of dollars, building just 19 kilometres of railway was too difficult for them. The contractor did as it was told but the things it was asked to do were half-baked. Governments should never attempt anything "innovative". You need close involvement for that -- not bureaucratic inertia and indifference

Serious defects have emerged in the $2.3 billion Epping to Chatswood Rail Line that could threaten its long-term reliability and have the potential to increase dramatically the cost of running the still unopened railway. A secret Government report, obtained by the Herald, has exposed thousands of flaws in the way the tracks have been fixed to 19 kilometres of concrete slabs. It details the widespread failure of the epoxy, which was often water-affected or contaminated with slurry, the use of incorrectly tensioned bolts and clips, and cracks in the sleepers.

The line was meant to open in 2006, but it has been repeatedly delayed. Full operation of the line was again deferred after revelations in the Herald last month that noise levels inside test trains were equivalent to a Boeing 737 coming in to land.

The latest report, commissioned by the State Government's rail-buil