Ramsey saw things as they were and walked a tightrope without a safety net
David Marr, smh
December 20, 2008
For a man who was absolutely right so often, Alan Ramsey could be magnificently wrong. Not weasel wrong in the political fashion he so deplored, but no wiggle room, up on the high wire without a net, entirely wrong. "Latham?" he asked himself on the morning of the 2004 poll. "I think he can get there."
He was rough on himself; he ran risks; and every time he came a cropper he picked his battered body up again and was back on the field next Saturday laying into the players, the ref, the crowd, the press, the linesman - everyone in sight down to the kid with the oranges at half-time.
This week is the last time Ramsey stakes out his familiar territory in the middle of the Saturday Herald. After 21 years, four prime ministers, eight federal elections and God knows how many hundreds of thousands of furious words, he's hanging up his columnist's hat.
Bad temper is hard to sustain. Mere rage isn't particularly attractive. In this trade we're schooled to keep our tempers and pretend detachment. Not Ramsey. And his readers loved him for breaking the rules. They loved his naked anger - and his subjects had little choice but to respect it - because Ramsey was one of the few in the Canberra press gallery who wrote from his heart.
So he was right passionately, wrong passionately and patronised at times by his hardboiled colleagues for taking a stand in their shifting world. He was a moralist - still is, of course, and will be to his dying day - and as an unflinching moralist he did the work over the last decade that mattered most to his readers: seeing John Howard for exactly who he was.
The old prime minister was not among the walking dead who came to Ramsey's farewell dinner at Old Parliament House a few weeks ago. What an extraordinary gathering. Ramsey, it seemed, had wandered into Madame Tussauds and offered the waxworks one last outing in the capital.
Andrew Peacock was looking trim, suspiciously trim. Bill Hayden had misplaced his equerry. Tony Eggleton represented the Pleistocene. Keating picked the eyes out of the room. Still busy. Max Walsh had the satisfied look of a man caught up in a financial catastrophe more appalling than any of the disasters he's spent his life predicting.
And Ramsey was king of them all for the night: subjects, sources, victims and colleagues. The breadth of his friendships on display was astonishing. One of the silliest men in parliament, Bill Heffernan, was in the same room as one of the sanest, John Faulkner. The senators had nothing to say to each other on this occasion, but each has spoken eloquently over the years through Ramsey.
In an age addicted to the grab, Ramsey never lost faith in the big speech. His head was full of Hansard. Yes, he quoted in slabs, but through great speeches he brought parliament and its arcane drama alive. And he did what commentators rarely do these days: he allowed his subjects their own voice. Not infrequently, they had the privilege of speaking from the grave.
As time went on, Ramsey lived with legions of the dead in his imagination. Perhaps because he had explored the territory too often himself, the border between this life and the next became rather hazy for him. He honoured the known and the unknown dead in his columns. History was alive in his analysis. One of Ramsey's signature lines is: "Nothing changes."
So the fact that he was out the back working frantically on his own speech that night - even while the video tribute was playing - surprised none of his many editors in the room. Ramsey is a chronic late filer. He is loved by his colleagues for this alone: that he is the worst of us, the one that's always last to finish.
If once or twice in the last couple of decades you weren't woken by the satisfying thump of the Herald on your doormat on Saturday morning, know that all the official excuses - the talk of paper breaks at the Chullora printing plant - were only ever a cover. Ramsey was to blame.
On the night of his farewell dinner he was coping with a late final version of an elegant speech of thanks to most of the people in the room. Ramsey was always a generous acknowledger of his debts. Perhaps it was the scribble over the typing read in dim light that led him to call Laura Tingle his "lovely wife Lorrie".
A coward would have surged forward at that point hoping to leave the gaffe behind. Ramsey paused deliberately. His face registered swiftly disbelief, despair, confusion and then, as the room erupted in ridicule, huge amusement at himself. Ramsey had done it again.
I never thought he got native title. Somehow refugees didn't engage his heart. These were quirks loyal readers like me bore for the satisfaction of finding Ramsey next week, say, spewing lava over the Howard government for its servility to Washington and neglect of the Guantanamo prisoner David Hicks.
Every election was Howard's last in Ramsey's mind. Then came 2007 and on the morning of the poll his readers found him at his scornful and triumphant best. Celebration calls for a slab of his own words. There is no one now, and no one coming along, who can write like this:
"The end of the line. Remember that heading in the Herald a few weeks back, after one of the opinion polls bumped up the Government's lousy standing a point or two? "Lazarus stirs", it said optimistically of John Howard. Wrong. It was just the flies moving.
"Yesterday, in the nation's Parliament, with hardly a politician to be seen anywhere, we got some election realism. Three rows of recycling bins, whacking big green ones with yellow lids. More than 300 of them.
"Where? In the basement corridor of the ministerial wing. The bins seemed a more apt commentary than all the desperate, last-minute Coalition windbaggery going on around the nation on what is about to descend on the Prime Minister after 33 years in public life and almost 12 years remaking Australia in his own miserable, disfigured image. They arrived two days ago and whoever they're for, 48 hours before a single vote is cast today, you felt somebody, somewhere, finally got it right.
"The end of the line."
It's said all political careers end unhappily. That's where journalists enjoy a distinct advantage over their raw material. Ramsey is not defeated. He's going simply because it's time. He will be missed.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Friday, December 19, 2008
US ENVOY: ZIMBABWE RUINED
Zimbabwe 'is ruined' says US envoy
Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980 [File: EPA]
From New Matilda, 19.12.2008
Zimbabwe has completely collapsed under Robert Mugabe, the president, and he should resign, the senior US envoy to Africa has said.
"We think that the person who has ruined the country ... that he needs to step down," Jendayi Frazer said on Friday.
Her comments came hours before Mugabe was due to address ruling Zanu-PF party delegates in a policy meeting.
"There is a complete collapse right now ... we're watching Zimbabwe become a failed state," she said.
"We need to act now, proactively, in Zimbabwe."
The US assistant secretary of state for African affairs gave the interview in South Africa, where she was meeting regional leaders to discuss what could be done to help Zimbabwe.
The 84-year-old president's party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change have been in deadlock over a power-sharing deal since September as the economic and humanitarian situation has deteriorated.More than 1,000 people have died in a cholera epidemic exacerbated by a devastated health care system and poor sanitation.Kgalema Motlanthe, South Africa's president, has said that he believed the proposed unity government was still the best way to resolve the situation and it should be formed quickly.
'Basically unbearable'Al Jazeera's Haru Mutasa, reporting from Bindura where the Zanu-PF conference was being held, said "things are basically unbearable" for the majority of people in Zimbabwe.
In video
Zimbabwe strife 'shakes troops' loyalty to Mugabe'
If you don't have the US dollar you can't buy basic products in the supermarkets ... the Zimbabwe currency is pretty much worthless," she said.
Mutasa said that Mugabe remained defiant despite the widespread international criticism.
"He is blaming the United Kingdom, he is blaming the United States, he is blaming Western nations for Zimbabwe's problems," she said.
Cholera crisis
More than 20,000 suspected cases of cholera have been reported in the impoverished nation since the epidemic began in August, according to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.
More than 1,100 people have died across the country with Harare, the capital, hardest hit with 224 people killed by the disease and more than 9,000 believed to be suffering it.
Nine out of Zimbabwe's 10 provinces have reported cases of cholera and the World Health Organisation has said the total number of cases could reach 60,000 unless the epidemic is stopped.
The British charity Oxfam has asked international donors for $6m to fight the epidemic.
'Grave crisis'
Oxfam said it was preparing to "substantially" scale-up its work in Zimbabwe, where it is providing food, water purification tables and soap to one million people."The rapid deterioration of the situation in Zimbabwe makes this an extremely grave humanitarian crisis which could deteriorate even further in 2009," Jane Cocking, Oxfam humanitarian director, said.
"While the international community battles for a political solution in the country, millions of Zimbabweans are going hungry."Mugabe has blamed the West for the cholera outbreak accusing Britain and the US of using "biological weapons".He has frequently attacked the West, including Britain, the former colonial ruler, accusing it of seeking to overthrow him and causing the the country's woes through sanctions.
Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980 [File: EPA]
From New Matilda, 19.12.2008
Zimbabwe has completely collapsed under Robert Mugabe, the president, and he should resign, the senior US envoy to Africa has said.
"We think that the person who has ruined the country ... that he needs to step down," Jendayi Frazer said on Friday.
Her comments came hours before Mugabe was due to address ruling Zanu-PF party delegates in a policy meeting.
"There is a complete collapse right now ... we're watching Zimbabwe become a failed state," she said.
"We need to act now, proactively, in Zimbabwe."
The US assistant secretary of state for African affairs gave the interview in South Africa, where she was meeting regional leaders to discuss what could be done to help Zimbabwe.
The 84-year-old president's party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change have been in deadlock over a power-sharing deal since September as the economic and humanitarian situation has deteriorated.More than 1,000 people have died in a cholera epidemic exacerbated by a devastated health care system and poor sanitation.Kgalema Motlanthe, South Africa's president, has said that he believed the proposed unity government was still the best way to resolve the situation and it should be formed quickly.
'Basically unbearable'Al Jazeera's Haru Mutasa, reporting from Bindura where the Zanu-PF conference was being held, said "things are basically unbearable" for the majority of people in Zimbabwe.
In video
Zimbabwe strife 'shakes troops' loyalty to Mugabe'
If you don't have the US dollar you can't buy basic products in the supermarkets ... the Zimbabwe currency is pretty much worthless," she said.
Mutasa said that Mugabe remained defiant despite the widespread international criticism.
"He is blaming the United Kingdom, he is blaming the United States, he is blaming Western nations for Zimbabwe's problems," she said.
Cholera crisis
More than 20,000 suspected cases of cholera have been reported in the impoverished nation since the epidemic began in August, according to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.
More than 1,100 people have died across the country with Harare, the capital, hardest hit with 224 people killed by the disease and more than 9,000 believed to be suffering it.
Nine out of Zimbabwe's 10 provinces have reported cases of cholera and the World Health Organisation has said the total number of cases could reach 60,000 unless the epidemic is stopped.
The British charity Oxfam has asked international donors for $6m to fight the epidemic.
'Grave crisis'
Oxfam said it was preparing to "substantially" scale-up its work in Zimbabwe, where it is providing food, water purification tables and soap to one million people."The rapid deterioration of the situation in Zimbabwe makes this an extremely grave humanitarian crisis which could deteriorate even further in 2009," Jane Cocking, Oxfam humanitarian director, said.
"While the international community battles for a political solution in the country, millions of Zimbabweans are going hungry."Mugabe has blamed the West for the cholera outbreak accusing Britain and the US of using "biological weapons".He has frequently attacked the West, including Britain, the former colonial ruler, accusing it of seeking to overthrow him and causing the the country's woes through sanctions.
XMAS ISLAND RE-OPENS
John Howard's detention centre to open
The Australian, 19.12.2008
IMMIGRATION officials have been forced to open the 800-bed, Howard-era detention centre on Christmas Island to accommodate a growing number of unauthorised boat arrivals intercepted in the past three months.
Immigration Minister Chris Evans yesterday gave permission for the Immigration Department to use the facility, which has been empty since completion this year.
The development followed signs Mr Evans will consider a push by refugee advocates to allow those in mandatory detention access to Australian courts in a bid to improve oversight of the system.
The decision to open Christmas Island comes after the arrival on Tuesday of a seventh vessel, intercepted by the Australian Navy 200km northeast of Darwin.
It brings to 164 the number of unauthorised boat arrivals intercepted by Australian authorities -- compared with last year's 148.
The boat's 37 passengers and crew -- believed to be a mix of Afghans and other Middle Eastern nationals -- will be the first immigration detainees housed at the $400 million facility built by the Howard government.
The 37 men are expected to arrive on Christmas Island this weekend.
A spokesman for the Immigration Department said they would be held at the North West Point facility for health, identity and security screening.
"Accommodation arrangements are determined by the numbers of arrivals as well as the need to separate groups for processing, public health management, gender, culture and other reasons," the spokesman said. "The Government's policy is to open the new facility when numbers and separation arrangements required it."
No women, children or families will be housed at the facility, the spokesman said.
The decision was condemned by refugee advocacy groups, who predicted the facility would have a damaging effect on the psychological health of detainees.
Pamela Curr of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre said she was very sad the Government had taken this step. "I've seen the detention prison and I know from past experience that places like that make people sick," Ms Curr told The Australian.
Yesterday, Senator Evans said the move was consistent with Labor policy. "The Rudd Government's policy is to accommodate small groups of unauthorised boat arrivals in the Phosphate Hill and Construction Camp facilities while they undergo health, security and identity checks," he said.
The move comes after Senator Evans told The Australian he envisaged Australia's detention principles "evolving" over time.
"There's a bit of a push for judicial review of the decision to detain," he said.
"I don't have a closed mind to that, if that makes the system more accountable."
Since coming to office last year, the Rudd Government has instituted a raft of changes to Australia's migration policy, as well as boosting the number of migrants.
In one of his first acts as minister, Senator Evans shut down the so-called Pacific Solution -- a series of offshore processing centres for unauthorised boat arrivals.
In May, the Government abolished the system of temporary-protection visas for refugees -- a move some have said has contributed to the recent spate of unauthorised arrivals, something the Rudd Government denies.
The Australian, 19.12.2008
IMMIGRATION officials have been forced to open the 800-bed, Howard-era detention centre on Christmas Island to accommodate a growing number of unauthorised boat arrivals intercepted in the past three months.
Immigration Minister Chris Evans yesterday gave permission for the Immigration Department to use the facility, which has been empty since completion this year.
The development followed signs Mr Evans will consider a push by refugee advocates to allow those in mandatory detention access to Australian courts in a bid to improve oversight of the system.
The decision to open Christmas Island comes after the arrival on Tuesday of a seventh vessel, intercepted by the Australian Navy 200km northeast of Darwin.
It brings to 164 the number of unauthorised boat arrivals intercepted by Australian authorities -- compared with last year's 148.
The boat's 37 passengers and crew -- believed to be a mix of Afghans and other Middle Eastern nationals -- will be the first immigration detainees housed at the $400 million facility built by the Howard government.
The 37 men are expected to arrive on Christmas Island this weekend.
A spokesman for the Immigration Department said they would be held at the North West Point facility for health, identity and security screening.
"Accommodation arrangements are determined by the numbers of arrivals as well as the need to separate groups for processing, public health management, gender, culture and other reasons," the spokesman said. "The Government's policy is to open the new facility when numbers and separation arrangements required it."
No women, children or families will be housed at the facility, the spokesman said.
The decision was condemned by refugee advocacy groups, who predicted the facility would have a damaging effect on the psychological health of detainees.
Pamela Curr of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre said she was very sad the Government had taken this step. "I've seen the detention prison and I know from past experience that places like that make people sick," Ms Curr told The Australian.
Yesterday, Senator Evans said the move was consistent with Labor policy. "The Rudd Government's policy is to accommodate small groups of unauthorised boat arrivals in the Phosphate Hill and Construction Camp facilities while they undergo health, security and identity checks," he said.
The move comes after Senator Evans told The Australian he envisaged Australia's detention principles "evolving" over time.
"There's a bit of a push for judicial review of the decision to detain," he said.
"I don't have a closed mind to that, if that makes the system more accountable."
Since coming to office last year, the Rudd Government has instituted a raft of changes to Australia's migration policy, as well as boosting the number of migrants.
In one of his first acts as minister, Senator Evans shut down the so-called Pacific Solution -- a series of offshore processing centres for unauthorised boat arrivals.
In May, the Government abolished the system of temporary-protection visas for refugees -- a move some have said has contributed to the recent spate of unauthorised arrivals, something the Rudd Government denies.
RNS REPLACED BY AINs
Red News Readers,
Heard Deborah Cameron talking about this on ABC 702 and my blood pressure started to rise and I started to growl! Rang ABC 702 and they put me on hold. While I was on hold listening over the phone, Deborah interviewed Richard Matthews from NSW Health, who said this was only about aged care facilities in the country. Bullshit!! That's what they said about EENs, and in five seconds flat they were everywhere in the system!! Matthews said of course nurses would be consulted. Then they interviewed Brett Holmes from the NSWNA who made it clear the NSW Health Memo had gone out without consultation with the union, and that he was concerned because many of these country hospitals are multi functional, they do maternity, paediatrics, minor surgery, road trauma, as well as aged care. Deborah Cameron let him have his say then introduced me - I thought they were going to cut me off for lack of time!
I said that NSW Health were obviously not listening to what Garling was telling them. While Matthews might claim that these AINs were supervised by RNs, increasingly in the system, the RNs were new grads replacing the older staff who were retiring, and that one of the biggest problems in the system now was retention of new grads, because of the pressure being placed on them. Brett agreed with me, how could he not!! I went on to ask what has happened to the money that Rudd gave to the health, education and welfare system? Is that all going to be spent on infrastructure, when they can even fund the operational functions that they have got? No answer from Brett or Deborah to that question.
Jenny Haines
Skilled nurses to be replaced by cheaper alternative
Louise Hall Health Reporter, smh
December 19, 2008
REGISTERED nurses will be replaced by cheaper, less-qualified nurses and unqualified assistants, in the latest round of cost cutting by the State Government.
The plan to substitute university-trained registered nurses with enrolled and trainee nurses contradicts a $1.2 million study commissioned by NSW Health last year, which found that increasing the proportion of less-qualified staff in hospitals caused a range of preventable complications and deaths.
Hospital managers have been ordered to save $32 million within four years by downgrading nursing cover at small and rural hospitals. The ratio of assistants-in-nursing will increase to 50 per cent of the combined registered and enrolled nurse numbers.
Assistants-in-nursing have no minimum level of education and are not regulated by any nursing body. Some are students and others have a TAFE certificate in aged care. Since 1993, registered nurses have been university trained.
NSW Health says the cuts are justified because many hospitals are, in effect, working as aged-care facilities due to a shortage of nursing home places.
But the lead author of the Glueing It Together study, Christine Duffield, said the plan flew "in the face of the evidence that shows the more RNs you have, the better the patient outcome".
The three-year study used data from 27 NSW hospitals and found that a higher proportion of registered nurses produced lower rates of bed sores, intestinal bleeding, sepsis, shock, pulmonary failure, pneumonia and death of patients from a hospital-acquired complication.
"In the mini-budget [the Government] said no frontline services will be cut, but nursing is a frontline service," said Professor Duffield, from the Centre for Health Services Management at the University of Technology, Sydney. "They're just doing it to save money."
Area health services have been identifying registered nurse positions that can be replaced since August, pre-empting the $32 million edict in the mini-budget last month.
A leaked memo shows Greater Southern Area Health Service will turn 53 full-time equivalent registered nurse positions into enrolled nurse roles, each saving about $20,000 a year in salary, for a total of $800,000 by June.
Karen Lenihan, the director of nursing and midwifery at Greater Southern, said most registered nurses would be lost through natural attrition, not redundancy. "It's not really about saving money; it's about being efficient."
But the president of the NSW Nurses Association, Brett Holmes, said the modelling used to devise the skill mix was "based on budget, not patient need". He had serious concerns about patient safety and nurses' workload.
Less qualified nurses did not have the training to deal with critical emergencies and trauma, such as car accidents, he said.
The Opposition health spokeswoman, Jillian Skinner, said the changes would put lives at risk.
Heard Deborah Cameron talking about this on ABC 702 and my blood pressure started to rise and I started to growl! Rang ABC 702 and they put me on hold. While I was on hold listening over the phone, Deborah interviewed Richard Matthews from NSW Health, who said this was only about aged care facilities in the country. Bullshit!! That's what they said about EENs, and in five seconds flat they were everywhere in the system!! Matthews said of course nurses would be consulted. Then they interviewed Brett Holmes from the NSWNA who made it clear the NSW Health Memo had gone out without consultation with the union, and that he was concerned because many of these country hospitals are multi functional, they do maternity, paediatrics, minor surgery, road trauma, as well as aged care. Deborah Cameron let him have his say then introduced me - I thought they were going to cut me off for lack of time!
I said that NSW Health were obviously not listening to what Garling was telling them. While Matthews might claim that these AINs were supervised by RNs, increasingly in the system, the RNs were new grads replacing the older staff who were retiring, and that one of the biggest problems in the system now was retention of new grads, because of the pressure being placed on them. Brett agreed with me, how could he not!! I went on to ask what has happened to the money that Rudd gave to the health, education and welfare system? Is that all going to be spent on infrastructure, when they can even fund the operational functions that they have got? No answer from Brett or Deborah to that question.
Jenny Haines
Skilled nurses to be replaced by cheaper alternative
Louise Hall Health Reporter, smh
December 19, 2008
REGISTERED nurses will be replaced by cheaper, less-qualified nurses and unqualified assistants, in the latest round of cost cutting by the State Government.
The plan to substitute university-trained registered nurses with enrolled and trainee nurses contradicts a $1.2 million study commissioned by NSW Health last year, which found that increasing the proportion of less-qualified staff in hospitals caused a range of preventable complications and deaths.
Hospital managers have been ordered to save $32 million within four years by downgrading nursing cover at small and rural hospitals. The ratio of assistants-in-nursing will increase to 50 per cent of the combined registered and enrolled nurse numbers.
Assistants-in-nursing have no minimum level of education and are not regulated by any nursing body. Some are students and others have a TAFE certificate in aged care. Since 1993, registered nurses have been university trained.
NSW Health says the cuts are justified because many hospitals are, in effect, working as aged-care facilities due to a shortage of nursing home places.
But the lead author of the Glueing It Together study, Christine Duffield, said the plan flew "in the face of the evidence that shows the more RNs you have, the better the patient outcome".
The three-year study used data from 27 NSW hospitals and found that a higher proportion of registered nurses produced lower rates of bed sores, intestinal bleeding, sepsis, shock, pulmonary failure, pneumonia and death of patients from a hospital-acquired complication.
"In the mini-budget [the Government] said no frontline services will be cut, but nursing is a frontline service," said Professor Duffield, from the Centre for Health Services Management at the University of Technology, Sydney. "They're just doing it to save money."
Area health services have been identifying registered nurse positions that can be replaced since August, pre-empting the $32 million edict in the mini-budget last month.
A leaked memo shows Greater Southern Area Health Service will turn 53 full-time equivalent registered nurse positions into enrolled nurse roles, each saving about $20,000 a year in salary, for a total of $800,000 by June.
Karen Lenihan, the director of nursing and midwifery at Greater Southern, said most registered nurses would be lost through natural attrition, not redundancy. "It's not really about saving money; it's about being efficient."
But the president of the NSW Nurses Association, Brett Holmes, said the modelling used to devise the skill mix was "based on budget, not patient need". He had serious concerns about patient safety and nurses' workload.
Less qualified nurses did not have the training to deal with critical emergencies and trauma, such as car accidents, he said.
The Opposition health spokeswoman, Jillian Skinner, said the changes would put lives at risk.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
AUSTRALIA STRENGTHENS SANCTIONS AGAINST ZIMBABWE
The Hon Stephen Smith MPAUSTRALIAN MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Media release
17 December 2008
Zimbabwe: Australia Strengthens Sanctions, Supports Cholera Response
Australia will strengthen its sanctions against the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe.
The strengthened sanctions are a clear signal that the Australian Government holds the brutal Mugabe regime and its closest supporters accountable for the tragedy occurring in Zimbabwe.
The Government has added 75 individuals and four companies to the list of regime members and supporters against whom financial and visa restrictions apply.
Australian sanctions are carefully targeted against the regime to avoid harming the Zimbabwean people.
At the same time, the Government is announcing further humanitarian assistance for the people of Zimbabwe.
The United Nations has reported more than 18,000 suspected cases of cholera in Zimbabwe, and 1,000 deaths. Cholera cases have also been confirmed in the neighbouring countries of Botswana, Mozambique and South Africa.
In response to the severe cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe, Australia will provide a further $1 million for assistance in emergency relief for the people of Zimbabwe.
Of this, $800,000 will go to the United Nations Children?s Fund (UNICEF) to help meet the immediate needs of women and children affected by the cholera epidemic. Australia?s funding will help provide safe drinking water, water treatment chemicals, hygiene kits and essential medicines.
The remaining $200,000 will be provided to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to support measures in border areas for mobile and vulnerable populations. This support will help prevent the cholera epidemic spreading further to neighbouring countries.
These latest contributions through UNICEF and the IOM are part of a larger commitment by Australia to help relieve the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe and brings Australia?s total humanitarian assistance to $21 million in 2008?09, making Australia the fifth largest humanitarian donor to Zimbabwe.
It follows $8 million in humanitarian aid announced on 25 November. This comprised $6 million in essential food aid through the World Food Programme (WFP) and $2 million to the UK?s Department for International Development?s (DFID?s) Protracted Relief Programme implemented through NGOs. This will help improve food security and improve access to clean water and sanitation.
The best solution for Zimbabwe would be for Mr Mugabe and his regime?s close supporters to stand down to allow Zimbabwe to rebuild its economy, society, and democracy.
Australia remains deeply concerned by the most recent wave of violations of human rights by the regime, including arrests and harassment of members of the opposition, and union and human rights activists.
Australia calls on the Zimbabwean authorities to respect fully the human rights of the Zimbabwean people, in this time of terrible hardship.
SEARCH FoundationLevel 3, Suite 3B, 110 Kippax St,SURRY HILLS NSW 2010AustraliaPh: 02 9211 4164; Fax: 02 9211 1407
www.search.org.au
ABN 63 050 096 976
promoting democracy, social justice and environmental sustainability
Media release
17 December 2008
Zimbabwe: Australia Strengthens Sanctions, Supports Cholera Response
Australia will strengthen its sanctions against the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe.
The strengthened sanctions are a clear signal that the Australian Government holds the brutal Mugabe regime and its closest supporters accountable for the tragedy occurring in Zimbabwe.
The Government has added 75 individuals and four companies to the list of regime members and supporters against whom financial and visa restrictions apply.
Australian sanctions are carefully targeted against the regime to avoid harming the Zimbabwean people.
At the same time, the Government is announcing further humanitarian assistance for the people of Zimbabwe.
The United Nations has reported more than 18,000 suspected cases of cholera in Zimbabwe, and 1,000 deaths. Cholera cases have also been confirmed in the neighbouring countries of Botswana, Mozambique and South Africa.
In response to the severe cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe, Australia will provide a further $1 million for assistance in emergency relief for the people of Zimbabwe.
Of this, $800,000 will go to the United Nations Children?s Fund (UNICEF) to help meet the immediate needs of women and children affected by the cholera epidemic. Australia?s funding will help provide safe drinking water, water treatment chemicals, hygiene kits and essential medicines.
The remaining $200,000 will be provided to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to support measures in border areas for mobile and vulnerable populations. This support will help prevent the cholera epidemic spreading further to neighbouring countries.
These latest contributions through UNICEF and the IOM are part of a larger commitment by Australia to help relieve the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe and brings Australia?s total humanitarian assistance to $21 million in 2008?09, making Australia the fifth largest humanitarian donor to Zimbabwe.
It follows $8 million in humanitarian aid announced on 25 November. This comprised $6 million in essential food aid through the World Food Programme (WFP) and $2 million to the UK?s Department for International Development?s (DFID?s) Protracted Relief Programme implemented through NGOs. This will help improve food security and improve access to clean water and sanitation.
The best solution for Zimbabwe would be for Mr Mugabe and his regime?s close supporters to stand down to allow Zimbabwe to rebuild its economy, society, and democracy.
Australia remains deeply concerned by the most recent wave of violations of human rights by the regime, including arrests and harassment of members of the opposition, and union and human rights activists.
Australia calls on the Zimbabwean authorities to respect fully the human rights of the Zimbabwean people, in this time of terrible hardship.
SEARCH FoundationLevel 3, Suite 3B, 110 Kippax St,SURRY HILLS NSW 2010AustraliaPh: 02 9211 4164; Fax: 02 9211 1407
www.search.org.au
ABN 63 050 096 976
promoting democracy, social justice and environmental sustainability
REFUGEE CHILDREN HIGH HSC ACHIEVERS
Erik Jensen, smh
December 18, 2008
AHMAD SULTANI spent the final year of high school studying under a quote from the Koran: "Make an attempt and I shall finish it," the print-out read, "God."
This week, the son of Afghan refugees found out how that attempt was finished. He was equal first in mathematics extension 1 and third in mathematics extension 2.
"It was seven in the morning on Sunday [when the Board of Studies telephoned]. I was a bit cranky until I found out what they were telling me," he said yesterday. "I wasn't expecting it but it was nice - probably one of the best feelings I've ever had."
Ahmad's was not the only success for refugees or their children in the past week.
In Victoria, Shaheen Hasmat was celebrating after being named dux of his high school and finishing with a tertiary entrance score of 99.8. Only five years earlier he was an Afghan refugee with almost no English.
In Cabramatta, in the room he shares with his younger brother, Vanno Tang was celebrating his HSC. He had a near-perfect score in the hardest two maths courses and topped NSW in Khmer.
"I didn't study much but in the last few days I did a lot," he said.
Three years earlier he had only a few sentences of English and was impressed by how different Australian desks were, compared to the benches at which he had worked in Cambodia. He said he was planning to study medicine.
"My family was very happy," Vanno said about his marks.
Parramatta High School, where Ahmad studied, is an average comprehensive school. About 15 per cent of students are refugees or the children of refugees. "Those who get here early enough show a lot of natural ability but also have a lot of determination," its principal, Peter McFarland, said of the refugee students.
December 18, 2008
AHMAD SULTANI spent the final year of high school studying under a quote from the Koran: "Make an attempt and I shall finish it," the print-out read, "God."
This week, the son of Afghan refugees found out how that attempt was finished. He was equal first in mathematics extension 1 and third in mathematics extension 2.
"It was seven in the morning on Sunday [when the Board of Studies telephoned]. I was a bit cranky until I found out what they were telling me," he said yesterday. "I wasn't expecting it but it was nice - probably one of the best feelings I've ever had."
Ahmad's was not the only success for refugees or their children in the past week.
In Victoria, Shaheen Hasmat was celebrating after being named dux of his high school and finishing with a tertiary entrance score of 99.8. Only five years earlier he was an Afghan refugee with almost no English.
In Cabramatta, in the room he shares with his younger brother, Vanno Tang was celebrating his HSC. He had a near-perfect score in the hardest two maths courses and topped NSW in Khmer.
"I didn't study much but in the last few days I did a lot," he said.
Three years earlier he had only a few sentences of English and was impressed by how different Australian desks were, compared to the benches at which he had worked in Cambodia. He said he was planning to study medicine.
"My family was very happy," Vanno said about his marks.
Parramatta High School, where Ahmad studied, is an average comprehensive school. About 15 per cent of students are refugees or the children of refugees. "Those who get here early enough show a lot of natural ability but also have a lot of determination," its principal, Peter McFarland, said of the refugee students.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
JOHN FAULKNER: CAPTAIN TRANSPARENCY
John Faulkner: Captain transparency
Wednesday, 17 December 2008
Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes in Crikey 17.12.08:
The 2010 election will be held under significantly stronger funding and disclosure requirements if John Faulkner has his way. Faulkner this morning released the Government’s long-awaited Electoral Reform Green Paper and declared that it was critical that reforms be in place prior to the next election.
The paper, prepared by a team of officials from Prime Minister and Cabinet, Finance and the Australian Electoral Commission, has been delayed from mid-year due to extensive consultations with State and Territory governments and their respective electoral authorities.
However, Faulkner stressed that there had been no discussions with any political parties so far, including the Labor Party. They would, he said, be consulted in the future and were welcome to make submissions on the Paper.
The Paper contains no recommendations but canvasses a number of fundamental reforms in electoral funding and disclosure, including:
Bans or caps on donations and external funding of political parties
Different regulation for different types of donors, such as corporation, NGOs and individuals
American-style links between public funding and restrictions on private funding
Greater rigour in disclosure, including relating to “associated entities” and third parties, and electronic reporting
Caps on, and disclosure of, election expenditure, and possibly expanding the definition of expenditure to activities not currently caught
The regulation of third party participants such as trade unions, and their expenditure on political activities
Greater financial transparency of political parties, including disclosure of their balance sheets and disclosure by branches and campaign committees
Expansion of the definition of “associated entities” controlled by political parties
Greater harmonisation of Commonwealth, State and Territory laws to reduce confusion
Faulkner stressed that while he had personal views on most of the Green Paper issues, the Government was looking for genuine consultation, including with the Coalition. However, he attacked Malcolm Turnbull for failing to explain why the Coalition had stymied reforms currently before Parliament to reduce disclosure thresholds and ban foreign donations. Those reforms should have already been in place, Faulkner said.
The Government is seeking submissions by late February and has also invited comments on what should be canvassed in a second Green Paper in 2009, relating to issues such as electoral enrolment.
In Faulkner’s view there are serious problems with the current framework that mean Australia is well behind international best practice and that there are growing questions about the integrity of governments and their decisions. “Accountability and transparency are crucial to integrity in government,” he said.
Any real change, however, will depend on Faulkner's capacity to convince the Greens, Nick Xenophon and Steve Fielding of the benefits of reform. The Coalition has so far shown no inclination to reverse any of the Howard Government’s assaults on funding disclosure and, under a cynical opportunist like Michael Ronaldson, who has carriage of the issue within the Opposition, there's unlikely to be any.
Wednesday, 17 December 2008
Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes in Crikey 17.12.08:
The 2010 election will be held under significantly stronger funding and disclosure requirements if John Faulkner has his way. Faulkner this morning released the Government’s long-awaited Electoral Reform Green Paper and declared that it was critical that reforms be in place prior to the next election.
The paper, prepared by a team of officials from Prime Minister and Cabinet, Finance and the Australian Electoral Commission, has been delayed from mid-year due to extensive consultations with State and Territory governments and their respective electoral authorities.
However, Faulkner stressed that there had been no discussions with any political parties so far, including the Labor Party. They would, he said, be consulted in the future and were welcome to make submissions on the Paper.
The Paper contains no recommendations but canvasses a number of fundamental reforms in electoral funding and disclosure, including:
Bans or caps on donations and external funding of political parties
Different regulation for different types of donors, such as corporation, NGOs and individuals
American-style links between public funding and restrictions on private funding
Greater rigour in disclosure, including relating to “associated entities” and third parties, and electronic reporting
Caps on, and disclosure of, election expenditure, and possibly expanding the definition of expenditure to activities not currently caught
The regulation of third party participants such as trade unions, and their expenditure on political activities
Greater financial transparency of political parties, including disclosure of their balance sheets and disclosure by branches and campaign committees
Expansion of the definition of “associated entities” controlled by political parties
Greater harmonisation of Commonwealth, State and Territory laws to reduce confusion
Faulkner stressed that while he had personal views on most of the Green Paper issues, the Government was looking for genuine consultation, including with the Coalition. However, he attacked Malcolm Turnbull for failing to explain why the Coalition had stymied reforms currently before Parliament to reduce disclosure thresholds and ban foreign donations. Those reforms should have already been in place, Faulkner said.
The Government is seeking submissions by late February and has also invited comments on what should be canvassed in a second Green Paper in 2009, relating to issues such as electoral enrolment.
In Faulkner’s view there are serious problems with the current framework that mean Australia is well behind international best practice and that there are growing questions about the integrity of governments and their decisions. “Accountability and transparency are crucial to integrity in government,” he said.
Any real change, however, will depend on Faulkner's capacity to convince the Greens, Nick Xenophon and Steve Fielding of the benefits of reform. The Coalition has so far shown no inclination to reverse any of the Howard Government’s assaults on funding disclosure and, under a cynical opportunist like Michael Ronaldson, who has carriage of the issue within the Opposition, there's unlikely to be any.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
LONGER WAIT FOR ELECTIVE SURGERY
Longer wait for elective surgery
Louise Hall Health Reporter, SMH
December 16, 2008
THE number of people waiting for elective surgery in NSW has increased by more than 4500 this year, despite $43.3 million in federal funds to cut waiting lists.
But the State Government withheld figures showing the 8 per cent year-on-year rise in patients waiting for non-urgent surgery when it made the latest quarterly hospital statistics public last month.
The Minister for Health, John Della Bosca, said: "Elective surgery waiting times have decreased substantially, with 91 per cent of patients treated within the recommended time frame of either 30, 90 or 365 days, up 4 per cent on the previous quarter."
However, the full data, made public this month after the Opposition health spokeswoman, Jillian Skinner, submitted a freedom of information request, shows the average waiting time has increased by 5 per cent, to more than 2½ months, since September last year.
It was the first time in 13 years of Labor Government that elective surgery waiting times and data on emergency department performance had not been made publicly available.
A total of 57,707 patients were waiting for booked surgery last September, compared with 53,176 12 months earlier. An additional 13,512 patients had been categorised as "not ready for care", for personal or medical reasons.
Mr Della Bosca said the state's ageing and growing population and more diagnostic testing for conditions such as breast and prostate cancer was the reason for the increasing caseload.
"So we have more people being detected with medical conditions and needing to undergo surgery - which means the overall list gets bigger which is to be expected," he said.
But Ms Skinner said the blow-out was caused by the Government's decision to slash surgeons' operating times, close operating theatres and cut funding for area health services in last month's mini-budget.
"Not only are more patients waiting, those on the list are waiting even longer and waiting lists will blow out even more following this summer's extended surgery shutdown," she said.
Mr Della Bosca said ensuring more people were seen within the recommended benchmarks was the critical factor, not the overall size of the list. Ninety-three per cent of category one patients were admitted for surgery within the recommended 30 days, up 2 per cent on September last year, and 96 per cent of category three patients were admitted within less than 12 months, which was steady, he said.
However, even with an 8 per cent improvement year-on-year, almost 20 per cent of category two patients were still not treated on time.
The situation in the Illawarra is expected to worsen next year, the Government having decided to end elective surgery at Bulli Hospital "in the medium term" despite opposition from doctors and the public. Mr Della Bosca said transferring Bulli's lists to Shellharbour and Wollongong hospitals "was good news for the people of the Illawarra".
The Federal Government announced in January that NSW would receive $43.3 million to cut elective surgery waiting lists. The money started flowing in March.
Louise Hall Health Reporter, SMH
December 16, 2008
THE number of people waiting for elective surgery in NSW has increased by more than 4500 this year, despite $43.3 million in federal funds to cut waiting lists.
But the State Government withheld figures showing the 8 per cent year-on-year rise in patients waiting for non-urgent surgery when it made the latest quarterly hospital statistics public last month.
The Minister for Health, John Della Bosca, said: "Elective surgery waiting times have decreased substantially, with 91 per cent of patients treated within the recommended time frame of either 30, 90 or 365 days, up 4 per cent on the previous quarter."
However, the full data, made public this month after the Opposition health spokeswoman, Jillian Skinner, submitted a freedom of information request, shows the average waiting time has increased by 5 per cent, to more than 2½ months, since September last year.
It was the first time in 13 years of Labor Government that elective surgery waiting times and data on emergency department performance had not been made publicly available.
A total of 57,707 patients were waiting for booked surgery last September, compared with 53,176 12 months earlier. An additional 13,512 patients had been categorised as "not ready for care", for personal or medical reasons.
Mr Della Bosca said the state's ageing and growing population and more diagnostic testing for conditions such as breast and prostate cancer was the reason for the increasing caseload.
"So we have more people being detected with medical conditions and needing to undergo surgery - which means the overall list gets bigger which is to be expected," he said.
But Ms Skinner said the blow-out was caused by the Government's decision to slash surgeons' operating times, close operating theatres and cut funding for area health services in last month's mini-budget.
"Not only are more patients waiting, those on the list are waiting even longer and waiting lists will blow out even more following this summer's extended surgery shutdown," she said.
Mr Della Bosca said ensuring more people were seen within the recommended benchmarks was the critical factor, not the overall size of the list. Ninety-three per cent of category one patients were admitted for surgery within the recommended 30 days, up 2 per cent on September last year, and 96 per cent of category three patients were admitted within less than 12 months, which was steady, he said.
However, even with an 8 per cent improvement year-on-year, almost 20 per cent of category two patients were still not treated on time.
The situation in the Illawarra is expected to worsen next year, the Government having decided to end elective surgery at Bulli Hospital "in the medium term" despite opposition from doctors and the public. Mr Della Bosca said transferring Bulli's lists to Shellharbour and Wollongong hospitals "was good news for the people of the Illawarra".
The Federal Government announced in January that NSW would receive $43.3 million to cut elective surgery waiting lists. The money started flowing in March.
JUSTICE BELL TO THE HIGH COURT
Yuko Narushima, smh
December 16, 2008
JUSTICE Virginia Margaret Bell has worn many hats in her life as an activist, television barrel girl and former ABC journalist. Soon she will don a judge's wig in the country's highest court as a replacement for the equally colourful and outspoken Justice Michael Kirby.
Yesterday the 57-year-old became only the fourth woman to be appointed as a justice of the High Court of Australia.
She will join two other women on the bench of seven on February 3, after Justice Kirby retires just shy of his 70th birthday.
The appointment was heralded yesterday as a red letter day for the legal profession, and was warmly received by black letter lawyers.
Announcing the appointment, the Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, said Justice Bell would bring a social conscience to the court. She was chosen from a pool of 40 for her expertise in criminal law, and not for any gender imbalance in the courts, he said. "Justice Bell will have a depth of experience from literally the grassroots of legal practice upwards," he said. "Justice
Virginia Bell is clearly an outstanding lawyer and will serve law and the Australian community with distinction."
The unmarried daughter of a navy man, Justice Bell was brought up with the notion of public service. Hers was to work as a lawyer.
She cut her teeth at the Redfern Legal Centre, developing skills at the coalface of the criminal justice system that would later distinguish her career.
She served as assistant counsel to the Wood royal commission into NSW Police corruption, was Public Defender for three years and worked part-time as a commissioner on the NSW Law Reform Commission.
She is known for her conventional adherence to the letter of the law but has a very strong sense of justice and a past in political activism.
In a 2001 litigation case involving a Channel Seven broadcast about flamboyant stockbroker Rene Rivkin, she found it was not defamatory to call someone gay, and should not go to a jury.
According to the president of the Law Society of NSW, Hugh Macken, it was Justice Bell's empathy for the underprivileged and understanding of how legislation affected ordinary people that defined her professional life.
"Justice Bell will bring enormous expertise to the High Court, particularly in the area of criminal law, an area she practised extensively both as a solicitor and barrister," he said.
But as well as that, she was a sociable woman, with a finely-tuned sense of humour, he said.
"She has a tremendous work ethic and perhaps it's a fact of life that judicial officers don't get to display their highly developed sense of humours on the bench as they ought," he said. "She's been a great advocate for women lawyers and has a highly developed sense of fun. She's always been legend for that."
A hint of that playfulness is reflected in her former work as president of the Australian Barrel Girls Association. Under the stage name Ginger de Winter, the lover of amateur theatre spun the barrel on television game shows dressed in a taffeta frock.
As a young woman, she was a leading figure in the prison reform movement in NSW and was part of a group, Women Behind Bars.
"It is a great day for Australia that such a talented woman and judge has been appointed to the High Court," said radio personality Julie McCrossin, who was part of that same group.
As an ABC journalist, Justice Bell hosted the television show Late Night Live.
The president of the NSW Bar Association, Anna Katzmann, said Justice Bell was a leading criminal barrister and an eminent jurist who had served on the NSW Supreme Court with distinction since 1999. "I have no doubt that she will serve the High Court, and the wider community with equal distinction."
The shadow attorney-general, George Brandis, thanked Justice Kirby for his 13 years of service and also congratulated Justice Bell on her appointment.
December 16, 2008
JUSTICE Virginia Margaret Bell has worn many hats in her life as an activist, television barrel girl and former ABC journalist. Soon she will don a judge's wig in the country's highest court as a replacement for the equally colourful and outspoken Justice Michael Kirby.
Yesterday the 57-year-old became only the fourth woman to be appointed as a justice of the High Court of Australia.
She will join two other women on the bench of seven on February 3, after Justice Kirby retires just shy of his 70th birthday.
The appointment was heralded yesterday as a red letter day for the legal profession, and was warmly received by black letter lawyers.
Announcing the appointment, the Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, said Justice Bell would bring a social conscience to the court. She was chosen from a pool of 40 for her expertise in criminal law, and not for any gender imbalance in the courts, he said. "Justice Bell will have a depth of experience from literally the grassroots of legal practice upwards," he said. "Justice
Virginia Bell is clearly an outstanding lawyer and will serve law and the Australian community with distinction."
The unmarried daughter of a navy man, Justice Bell was brought up with the notion of public service. Hers was to work as a lawyer.
She cut her teeth at the Redfern Legal Centre, developing skills at the coalface of the criminal justice system that would later distinguish her career.
She served as assistant counsel to the Wood royal commission into NSW Police corruption, was Public Defender for three years and worked part-time as a commissioner on the NSW Law Reform Commission.
She is known for her conventional adherence to the letter of the law but has a very strong sense of justice and a past in political activism.
In a 2001 litigation case involving a Channel Seven broadcast about flamboyant stockbroker Rene Rivkin, she found it was not defamatory to call someone gay, and should not go to a jury.
According to the president of the Law Society of NSW, Hugh Macken, it was Justice Bell's empathy for the underprivileged and understanding of how legislation affected ordinary people that defined her professional life.
"Justice Bell will bring enormous expertise to the High Court, particularly in the area of criminal law, an area she practised extensively both as a solicitor and barrister," he said.
But as well as that, she was a sociable woman, with a finely-tuned sense of humour, he said.
"She has a tremendous work ethic and perhaps it's a fact of life that judicial officers don't get to display their highly developed sense of humours on the bench as they ought," he said. "She's been a great advocate for women lawyers and has a highly developed sense of fun. She's always been legend for that."
A hint of that playfulness is reflected in her former work as president of the Australian Barrel Girls Association. Under the stage name Ginger de Winter, the lover of amateur theatre spun the barrel on television game shows dressed in a taffeta frock.
As a young woman, she was a leading figure in the prison reform movement in NSW and was part of a group, Women Behind Bars.
"It is a great day for Australia that such a talented woman and judge has been appointed to the High Court," said radio personality Julie McCrossin, who was part of that same group.
As an ABC journalist, Justice Bell hosted the television show Late Night Live.
The president of the NSW Bar Association, Anna Katzmann, said Justice Bell was a leading criminal barrister and an eminent jurist who had served on the NSW Supreme Court with distinction since 1999. "I have no doubt that she will serve the High Court, and the wider community with equal distinction."
The shadow attorney-general, George Brandis, thanked Justice Kirby for his 13 years of service and also congratulated Justice Bell on her appointment.
Monday, December 15, 2008
TRUCKIES AND DRIVERS UNDERPAID
A third of truckies, drivers underpaid
December 14, 2008 08:12pm
A FEDERAL Workplace Ombudsman audit of transport companies has found nearly a third have underpaid drivers and other workers.
The audit, which reviewed the books of 362 employers, identified 114 companies which had underpaid 120 truckies, bus drivers and other workers a total of $135,000.
They either used the wrong pay scale or underpaid them for weekend, overtime or public holiday work.
Ombudsman executive director Michael Campbell said inspectors expected the numbers to rise, with 100 audits still to be finalised.
Nearly $100,000 of the underpayments occurred in the short-distance freight industry in Queensland, he said.
Some 66 per cent of passenger transport businesses in Victoria were found to be non-compliant and so were 45 per cent of long-distance freight companies in regional NSW. In Queensland, 20 per cent of companies had underpaid workers, with 58 employers still to be audited.
"The road transport industry has a significant number of vulnerable workers including trainees and apprentices and this campaign will help ensure they receive their proper entitlements,'' said Mr Campbell.
Most breaches were inadvertent and were being rectified voluntarily by the companies, he said.
The Federal Workplace Ombudsman wrote to more than 9,000 transport industry businesses earlier this year to inform them of the audit campaign.
December 14, 2008 08:12pm
A FEDERAL Workplace Ombudsman audit of transport companies has found nearly a third have underpaid drivers and other workers.
The audit, which reviewed the books of 362 employers, identified 114 companies which had underpaid 120 truckies, bus drivers and other workers a total of $135,000.
They either used the wrong pay scale or underpaid them for weekend, overtime or public holiday work.
Ombudsman executive director Michael Campbell said inspectors expected the numbers to rise, with 100 audits still to be finalised.
Nearly $100,000 of the underpayments occurred in the short-distance freight industry in Queensland, he said.
Some 66 per cent of passenger transport businesses in Victoria were found to be non-compliant and so were 45 per cent of long-distance freight companies in regional NSW. In Queensland, 20 per cent of companies had underpaid workers, with 58 employers still to be audited.
"The road transport industry has a significant number of vulnerable workers including trainees and apprentices and this campaign will help ensure they receive their proper entitlements,'' said Mr Campbell.
Most breaches were inadvertent and were being rectified voluntarily by the companies, he said.
The Federal Workplace Ombudsman wrote to more than 9,000 transport industry businesses earlier this year to inform them of the audit campaign.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
BIZZARE ACCIDENTS AND DEATHS IN HOSPITALS
Bizarre accidents and deaths in hospitals
By Simon Benson, Daily Telegraph
December 10, 2008 12:00am
AT least 80 people have died in western Sydney hospitals over the past two years - many needlessly - according to secret reports obtained by The Daily Telegraph.
And hundreds more have died across the state in bizarre accidents, mis-diagnosis, delays in getting treatment or suicide whilst in care.
The reports, tabled in State Parliament last week, said the number of unexpected deaths and serious incidents had increased by 20 per cent since 2005 for the Western Sydney Area Health Service alone.
Some involved operations on the wrong patient or wrong body parts being operated on.
In one case, a 17 year-old girl was turned away five times from a hospital. She later died of an undiagnosed brain tumour.
The report said a major theme in unexpected deaths and serious incidents - listed in the reports as root cause analysis (RCAs) - was "delay in recognition and management of the patient."
"The major driver for this (20 per cent) increase in 17 RCAs, which resulted from procedures carried out on the wrong patients or body part, the majority of which occurred in imaging," a 2007 report from SWAHS said.
"In RCAs where the outcome was death, the management of the acutely deteriorating patient remained the major trigger for performing the RCA."
A second report for the Greater Western Area Health Service showed at least 30 deaths in some regional hospitals. Only two other area health services reported RCAs but did not include overall incident numbers.
The remaining four area health services refused to produce reports on the number of patients death or incidents, claiming they had no legal obligation to do so.
Opposition health spokeswoman Jillian Skinner said the number of preventable deaths across the state would now number in the hundreds.
"These secret reports reveal more than 120 deaths in hospitals across NSW in just two years," Ms Skinner said.
By Simon Benson, Daily Telegraph
December 10, 2008 12:00am
AT least 80 people have died in western Sydney hospitals over the past two years - many needlessly - according to secret reports obtained by The Daily Telegraph.
And hundreds more have died across the state in bizarre accidents, mis-diagnosis, delays in getting treatment or suicide whilst in care.
The reports, tabled in State Parliament last week, said the number of unexpected deaths and serious incidents had increased by 20 per cent since 2005 for the Western Sydney Area Health Service alone.
Some involved operations on the wrong patient or wrong body parts being operated on.
In one case, a 17 year-old girl was turned away five times from a hospital. She later died of an undiagnosed brain tumour.
The report said a major theme in unexpected deaths and serious incidents - listed in the reports as root cause analysis (RCAs) - was "delay in recognition and management of the patient."
"The major driver for this (20 per cent) increase in 17 RCAs, which resulted from procedures carried out on the wrong patients or body part, the majority of which occurred in imaging," a 2007 report from SWAHS said.
"In RCAs where the outcome was death, the management of the acutely deteriorating patient remained the major trigger for performing the RCA."
A second report for the Greater Western Area Health Service showed at least 30 deaths in some regional hospitals. Only two other area health services reported RCAs but did not include overall incident numbers.
The remaining four area health services refused to produce reports on the number of patients death or incidents, claiming they had no legal obligation to do so.
Opposition health spokeswoman Jillian Skinner said the number of preventable deaths across the state would now number in the hundreds.
"These secret reports reveal more than 120 deaths in hospitals across NSW in just two years," Ms Skinner said.
DOCTORS DOB IN COLLEAGUES
Red News Readers,
About time. Just about every doctor and nurse in NSW would know someone who needs to be more reflective about their practice but refuses to hear or see any feedback from their colleagues. But it is all about patient safety and standards of care, not doctors egos. However, this process of mandatory reporting will only succeed if it is not abused or misused.
Jenny Haines
Doctors dob in colleagues
By Clair Weaver, smh
December 14, 2008 12:00am
A RECORD number of NSW doctors are dobbing in dodgy colleagues in the wake of allegations concerning Bega doctor Graeme Reeves.
For the first time, fellow medics and employers are the biggest source of tip-offs to the NSW Medical Board about doctors who are unfit to practice.
The revelation comes six months after landmark legislation was introduced, legally forcing doctors to report colleagues suspected of serious misconduct. This includes sexual abuse, drug or alcohol intoxication and other potentially harmful behaviour.
Data in the NSW Medical Board's annual report reveals a 59 per cent rise in colleague notifications in 2007/08 compared with the previous year.
That means a doctor is now dobbing in a colleague every two weeks in NSW, compared with only every three weeks in 2006/07. The report states: ``It is pleasing to note that more notifications have been received from colleagues and treating practitioners, perhaps reflecting increasing familiarity and understanding of the board's processes.''
It comes as the Health Care Complaints Commission's (HCCC) annual report shows increases in inquiries and complaints made by members of the public last year.
The 8831 inquiries andthe 3128 complaints were mostly about treatment, communication, professional conduct and access.
``A significant part of this increase can be directly attributed to allegations about the deregistered doctor Graeme Reeves and complaints referred by the special inquiry into acute care in public hospitals in NSW,'' the HCCC report acknowledges.
Reeves faces a number of criminal charges including indecent assault and genital mutilation, allegedly committed against former patients.
There were also 92 notifications to the Board relating to unfit doctors over the past year, of which 27 were made by colleagues. Of the 71 impaired registrant panels convened in response to the reports, more than half related to doctors with psychiatric issues.
Another 30 per cent were medics addicted to drugs, 10 per cent related to alcoholism and seven per cent were about physical handicaps.
The board allows most impaired doctors to keep treating patients while participating in its health program, although 71.5 per cent agreed to have conditions imposed on their practice last year.
Drug-addicted and alcoholic doctors must receive treatment, take regular urine or blood tests and surrender powers to prescribe addic-tive drugs. Those doctorswho are mentally ill haveto see a psychiatrist and comply with treatment. The Board claims to get an extra 8000 working years from NSW doctors by keeping 90 per cent of health program participants in the community practising medicine.
Of 24 cases referred to the Medical Tribunal last year, seven related to inappropriate prescribing and four were about sexual misconduct.
Most complaints to the HCCC were about doctors and public hospitals, with treatment issues most common in gynaecology and emergency medicine.
The Medical Practice Act 2008 introduced a raft of changes to NSW's medical regulation system designed to boost scrutiny of dodgy doctors, improve transparency and give the boardextra powers. It was prompted by the case against Reeves, a former obstetrician and gynaecologist.
About time. Just about every doctor and nurse in NSW would know someone who needs to be more reflective about their practice but refuses to hear or see any feedback from their colleagues. But it is all about patient safety and standards of care, not doctors egos. However, this process of mandatory reporting will only succeed if it is not abused or misused.
Jenny Haines
Doctors dob in colleagues
By Clair Weaver, smh
December 14, 2008 12:00am
A RECORD number of NSW doctors are dobbing in dodgy colleagues in the wake of allegations concerning Bega doctor Graeme Reeves.
For the first time, fellow medics and employers are the biggest source of tip-offs to the NSW Medical Board about doctors who are unfit to practice.
The revelation comes six months after landmark legislation was introduced, legally forcing doctors to report colleagues suspected of serious misconduct. This includes sexual abuse, drug or alcohol intoxication and other potentially harmful behaviour.
Data in the NSW Medical Board's annual report reveals a 59 per cent rise in colleague notifications in 2007/08 compared with the previous year.
That means a doctor is now dobbing in a colleague every two weeks in NSW, compared with only every three weeks in 2006/07. The report states: ``It is pleasing to note that more notifications have been received from colleagues and treating practitioners, perhaps reflecting increasing familiarity and understanding of the board's processes.''
It comes as the Health Care Complaints Commission's (HCCC) annual report shows increases in inquiries and complaints made by members of the public last year.
The 8831 inquiries andthe 3128 complaints were mostly about treatment, communication, professional conduct and access.
``A significant part of this increase can be directly attributed to allegations about the deregistered doctor Graeme Reeves and complaints referred by the special inquiry into acute care in public hospitals in NSW,'' the HCCC report acknowledges.
Reeves faces a number of criminal charges including indecent assault and genital mutilation, allegedly committed against former patients.
There were also 92 notifications to the Board relating to unfit doctors over the past year, of which 27 were made by colleagues. Of the 71 impaired registrant panels convened in response to the reports, more than half related to doctors with psychiatric issues.
Another 30 per cent were medics addicted to drugs, 10 per cent related to alcoholism and seven per cent were about physical handicaps.
The board allows most impaired doctors to keep treating patients while participating in its health program, although 71.5 per cent agreed to have conditions imposed on their practice last year.
Drug-addicted and alcoholic doctors must receive treatment, take regular urine or blood tests and surrender powers to prescribe addic-tive drugs. Those doctorswho are mentally ill haveto see a psychiatrist and comply with treatment. The Board claims to get an extra 8000 working years from NSW doctors by keeping 90 per cent of health program participants in the community practising medicine.
Of 24 cases referred to the Medical Tribunal last year, seven related to inappropriate prescribing and four were about sexual misconduct.
Most complaints to the HCCC were about doctors and public hospitals, with treatment issues most common in gynaecology and emergency medicine.
The Medical Practice Act 2008 introduced a raft of changes to NSW's medical regulation system designed to boost scrutiny of dodgy doctors, improve transparency and give the boardextra powers. It was prompted by the case against Reeves, a former obstetrician and gynaecologist.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
AT LAST, MONEY FOR NSW
NSW big winner in $4.7b spend
Phillip Coorey and Brian Robins, smh
December 13, 2008
NSW is the chief beneficiary of a $4.7 billion federal spending package announced yesterday to boost road, rail and education infrastructure, as well as give business more than $1.6 billion in tax breaks to encourage investment during the economic downturn.
The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said the package - of which $2.5 billion was new money - was the curtain-raiser for what would be a "much more significant" package of infrastructure measures in the new year when the Government dips into its $12.6 billion Building Australia Fund. It would create 32,000 jobs and boost economic growth by between 0.25 percentage points and 0.5 percentage points.
Of the $4.7 billion, NSW will receive about $1.5 billion for road, rail and education projects, the largest of which will be an upgrade to the rail networks in the Hunter Valley.
Rail capacity to move coal and other commodities through the Hunter Valley will be doubled through six projects, with the aim of increasing coal to the port of Newcastle from 97 million tonnes a year to 200 million tonnes.
The upgrade would cost about $1 billion, with the Government to contribute $580 million and the Australian Rail Track Corporation to borrow the rest.
The Premier, Nathan Rees, said it was about time NSW was looked after and rejected suggestions it received special treatment because it needed it.
He figured that "probably a little more than half" of the estimated 32,000 jobs would be created in NSW.
Nationally, Mr Rudd dedicated $1.2 billion to rail projects, brought forward $711 million for road projects, including an extra $60 million to fix black spots, and promised $1.6 billion to universities and TAFEs.
The $1.6 billion for business tax breaks signalled that attempts to keep the economy out of recession were now focusing on stimulating the business sector.
The so-called investment allowance will provide an additional tax deduction of 10 per cent for investments in assets worth more than $10,000 and which would be operational by June 2010.
The $4.7 billion would be spent by 2011-12, with $1.5 billion spent this financial year.
Despite the budget being under severe threat, Mr Rudd said it would stay in surplus. The Government achieved this by funding the $1.2 billion in rail projects using equity injections into the government-owned Australian Rail Track Corporation.
This cash-for-equity swap avoids the spending coming off the bottom line.
The Opposition's infrastructure spokesman, Andrew Robb, welcomed the package because it consisted "almost entirely of road and rail projects that were initiated and supported by the former Coalition government".
"Mr Rudd is now funding his infrastructure plans from the Coalition's surplus and using it to fund Coalition projects."
The Infrastructure Minister, Anthony Albanese, said the rail component was "the largest single investment by the Commonwealth in rail since Federation".
The Government's expert body, Infrastructure Australia, signed off on a priority list of projects to be funded from the $12.6 billion Building Australia Fund. Projects will be unveiled after January and Mr Rees hosed down expectations NSW would receive the lion's share. "When the music stops … we have to be realistic about our level of expectation," he said.
Phillip Coorey and Brian Robins, smh
December 13, 2008
NSW is the chief beneficiary of a $4.7 billion federal spending package announced yesterday to boost road, rail and education infrastructure, as well as give business more than $1.6 billion in tax breaks to encourage investment during the economic downturn.
The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said the package - of which $2.5 billion was new money - was the curtain-raiser for what would be a "much more significant" package of infrastructure measures in the new year when the Government dips into its $12.6 billion Building Australia Fund. It would create 32,000 jobs and boost economic growth by between 0.25 percentage points and 0.5 percentage points.
Of the $4.7 billion, NSW will receive about $1.5 billion for road, rail and education projects, the largest of which will be an upgrade to the rail networks in the Hunter Valley.
Rail capacity to move coal and other commodities through the Hunter Valley will be doubled through six projects, with the aim of increasing coal to the port of Newcastle from 97 million tonnes a year to 200 million tonnes.
The upgrade would cost about $1 billion, with the Government to contribute $580 million and the Australian Rail Track Corporation to borrow the rest.
The Premier, Nathan Rees, said it was about time NSW was looked after and rejected suggestions it received special treatment because it needed it.
He figured that "probably a little more than half" of the estimated 32,000 jobs would be created in NSW.
Nationally, Mr Rudd dedicated $1.2 billion to rail projects, brought forward $711 million for road projects, including an extra $60 million to fix black spots, and promised $1.6 billion to universities and TAFEs.
The $1.6 billion for business tax breaks signalled that attempts to keep the economy out of recession were now focusing on stimulating the business sector.
The so-called investment allowance will provide an additional tax deduction of 10 per cent for investments in assets worth more than $10,000 and which would be operational by June 2010.
The $4.7 billion would be spent by 2011-12, with $1.5 billion spent this financial year.
Despite the budget being under severe threat, Mr Rudd said it would stay in surplus. The Government achieved this by funding the $1.2 billion in rail projects using equity injections into the government-owned Australian Rail Track Corporation.
This cash-for-equity swap avoids the spending coming off the bottom line.
The Opposition's infrastructure spokesman, Andrew Robb, welcomed the package because it consisted "almost entirely of road and rail projects that were initiated and supported by the former Coalition government".
"Mr Rudd is now funding his infrastructure plans from the Coalition's surplus and using it to fund Coalition projects."
The Infrastructure Minister, Anthony Albanese, said the rail component was "the largest single investment by the Commonwealth in rail since Federation".
The Government's expert body, Infrastructure Australia, signed off on a priority list of projects to be funded from the $12.6 billion Building Australia Fund. Projects will be unveiled after January and Mr Rees hosed down expectations NSW would receive the lion's share. "When the music stops … we have to be realistic about our level of expectation," he said.
Friday, December 12, 2008
DOUG CAMERON: CHANGES UNFAIR TO WORKERS
Changes unfair to workers: Cameron
Mark Davis Political Correspondent, smh
December 12, 2008
ON THE first day of Senate committee hearings on the Federal Government's contentious industrial relations legislation yesterday, Coalition senators might have been expected to gang up on the Fair Work Bill.
But as it turned out it was one of the Government's own - the former union firebrand Doug Cameron - who applied the blowtorch to the legislation drawn up by the Workplace Relations Minister, Julia Gillard.
Senator Cameron criticised the bill's ban on "pattern bargaining", where unions seek identical enterprise agreements across an industry, and the powers it gives the industrial tribunal to halt strikes that are damaging the economy.
He questioned how these restrictions could be reconciled with the bill's objectives of encouraging collective bargaining and with Australia's obligations under International Labor Organisation conventions on the right to strike.
"Is there any other country in the world where such restrictions on pattern bargaining apply?" Senator Cameron asked.
The officials took the question on notice.
From his experience, Senator Cameron said, "you can't help but have similar claims being made at the enterprise level because workers … are facing … similar economic circumstances".
"How do you then determine whether it is pattern bargaining or legitimate enterprise bargaining?"
The department's deputy secretary, John Kovacic, said it would be pattern bargaining if the union would not negotiate about the needs of individual workplaces.
Senator Cameron also questioned the fairness of excluding employees with less than six months' service at large employers and with less than 12 months at small employers from making unfair dismissal claims.
By contrast, Opposition senators were relatively subdued, although they did raise concerns about "right of entry" rules covering union access to workplaces.
The Liberal senator Gary Humphries opened the Opposition's questioning by saying: "As far as we're concerned, Work Choices is dead and provisions in the legislation which give it a decent burial won't have any argument from us."
The committee will report to the Senate in late February.
Mark Davis Political Correspondent, smh
December 12, 2008
ON THE first day of Senate committee hearings on the Federal Government's contentious industrial relations legislation yesterday, Coalition senators might have been expected to gang up on the Fair Work Bill.
But as it turned out it was one of the Government's own - the former union firebrand Doug Cameron - who applied the blowtorch to the legislation drawn up by the Workplace Relations Minister, Julia Gillard.
Senator Cameron criticised the bill's ban on "pattern bargaining", where unions seek identical enterprise agreements across an industry, and the powers it gives the industrial tribunal to halt strikes that are damaging the economy.
He questioned how these restrictions could be reconciled with the bill's objectives of encouraging collective bargaining and with Australia's obligations under International Labor Organisation conventions on the right to strike.
"Is there any other country in the world where such restrictions on pattern bargaining apply?" Senator Cameron asked.
The officials took the question on notice.
From his experience, Senator Cameron said, "you can't help but have similar claims being made at the enterprise level because workers … are facing … similar economic circumstances".
"How do you then determine whether it is pattern bargaining or legitimate enterprise bargaining?"
The department's deputy secretary, John Kovacic, said it would be pattern bargaining if the union would not negotiate about the needs of individual workplaces.
Senator Cameron also questioned the fairness of excluding employees with less than six months' service at large employers and with less than 12 months at small employers from making unfair dismissal claims.
By contrast, Opposition senators were relatively subdued, although they did raise concerns about "right of entry" rules covering union access to workplaces.
The Liberal senator Gary Humphries opened the Opposition's questioning by saying: "As far as we're concerned, Work Choices is dead and provisions in the legislation which give it a decent burial won't have any argument from us."
The committee will report to the Senate in late February.
THERE'S MONEY IN MUSHROOMS MATE!
Red News Readers
Makes you wonder what may be in the contracts for further privatisations and PPPs?
Jenny Haines
There's money in mushrooms, mate!
Chris Henning, smh
December 12, 2008
Scene: The Premier's office. Nathan Rees sits at a laminated chipboard desk. The phone rings.
NR: Yeah?
Michael Daley, Minister for Roads (tinny voice over phone): You're not going to like this boss.
NR (rolls eyes, disgusted): Tell me something I don't know. When did I last like anything around here?
Daley: The harbour tunnel's gonna cost us a billion dollars.
NR: The harbour tunnel? But that's like decades old.
Daley: Yeah, but the contract's still on foot, and people aren't driving through it as much as we promised they would. We're up for about $60 mill this year in compo to the operators.
A tour group enters, led by a woman holding a furled umbrella above her head as a banner.Tour leader: Now here we are at the climax of our tour. Before our final display, I just want to thank you for coming, and to remind you that all the tour fees you have paid will go to consolidated revenue (wan smile) to help get NSW back on its feet again.
NR (Glances up, waves to tourists with a forced grin. Then angry again.): Well can't the bloody RTA just put up some barriers somewhere, and shovel cars through it? If people want to go from Manly to Crows Nest, let 'em go via Woolloomooloo. That worked with the Cross City Tunnel didn't it?
Daley: No boss, actually it didn't. People moved interstate rather than use it, remember?
Tour leader: We're in the office of the Premier of NSW, Mr Nathan Rees. As you can see, Mr Rees is hard at work running NSW -
Daley: Actually I was gunna talk to you about the CCT. Tripodi reckons we should flog it. A mate of his wants it for a mushroom farm.
NR: How much?
Daley: Well, I haven't gone into it, but Joe reckons his mate could certainly go a couple of hundred thousand, no trouble. There's money in mushrooms, mate.
NR: Ma-ate! The thing's worth billions.
Daley (scoffing): Oh-hoh, no mate no. Not billions mate. No way. It's a dud, mate. Totally buggered. Except to mushrooms.
NR: Has Joe put you up to this?
Daley (protesting): Joe? Course not. Perish the thought.
Tour leader (Quiet voice): Now if you look carefully, you'll see Mr Rees has gone a bit pink. Very shortly, if we are lucky, I'm expecting the Premier to go off.
NR: Rrrrrrrrrh
Daley: Mate? Nathan? You there?
Tour leader: Mr Rees is reliable, and gives a good display. Earlier premiers did not go off as -
NR: RAAUURRRGHH! (He leaps onto his desk and jumps up and down, breaking it. Then picks up some wreckage and chases the tourists. The emergency sprinklers come on, amid much shrieking. Curtain.)
Makes you wonder what may be in the contracts for further privatisations and PPPs?
Jenny Haines
There's money in mushrooms, mate!
Chris Henning, smh
December 12, 2008
Scene: The Premier's office. Nathan Rees sits at a laminated chipboard desk. The phone rings.
NR: Yeah?
Michael Daley, Minister for Roads (tinny voice over phone): You're not going to like this boss.
NR (rolls eyes, disgusted): Tell me something I don't know. When did I last like anything around here?
Daley: The harbour tunnel's gonna cost us a billion dollars.
NR: The harbour tunnel? But that's like decades old.
Daley: Yeah, but the contract's still on foot, and people aren't driving through it as much as we promised they would. We're up for about $60 mill this year in compo to the operators.
A tour group enters, led by a woman holding a furled umbrella above her head as a banner.Tour leader: Now here we are at the climax of our tour. Before our final display, I just want to thank you for coming, and to remind you that all the tour fees you have paid will go to consolidated revenue (wan smile) to help get NSW back on its feet again.
NR (Glances up, waves to tourists with a forced grin. Then angry again.): Well can't the bloody RTA just put up some barriers somewhere, and shovel cars through it? If people want to go from Manly to Crows Nest, let 'em go via Woolloomooloo. That worked with the Cross City Tunnel didn't it?
Daley: No boss, actually it didn't. People moved interstate rather than use it, remember?
Tour leader: We're in the office of the Premier of NSW, Mr Nathan Rees. As you can see, Mr Rees is hard at work running NSW -
Daley: Actually I was gunna talk to you about the CCT. Tripodi reckons we should flog it. A mate of his wants it for a mushroom farm.
NR: How much?
Daley: Well, I haven't gone into it, but Joe reckons his mate could certainly go a couple of hundred thousand, no trouble. There's money in mushrooms, mate.
NR: Ma-ate! The thing's worth billions.
Daley (scoffing): Oh-hoh, no mate no. Not billions mate. No way. It's a dud, mate. Totally buggered. Except to mushrooms.
NR: Has Joe put you up to this?
Daley (protesting): Joe? Course not. Perish the thought.
Tour leader (Quiet voice): Now if you look carefully, you'll see Mr Rees has gone a bit pink. Very shortly, if we are lucky, I'm expecting the Premier to go off.
NR: Rrrrrrrrrh
Daley: Mate? Nathan? You there?
Tour leader: Mr Rees is reliable, and gives a good display. Earlier premiers did not go off as -
NR: RAAUURRRGHH! (He leaps onto his desk and jumps up and down, breaking it. Then picks up some wreckage and chases the tourists. The emergency sprinklers come on, amid much shrieking. Curtain.)
Thursday, December 11, 2008
JAILS JAMMED WITH MENTALLY ILL PRISONERS
Jails jammed with mentally ill prisoners
Julie Robotham, Medical Editor, smh
December 11, 2008
COURT diversion programs are keeping mentally ill people out of the criminal justice system, new state statistics show, but there is no evidence this has reduced the high proportion of prisoners living with severe depression, anxiety or psychosis.
John Basson, the statewide clinical director of forensic mental health within NSW Justice Health, said mental health nurses now worked regularly in 21 of the state's approximately 150 magistrates courts and screened 14,000 defendants a year for possible mental illness, including 2000 who underwent more detailed psychological evaluations with the nurse and sometimes a psychiatrist.
Of these 2000, about 1600 were "diverted from the criminal justice system into the mental health system", Dr Basson said. "They've come in the wrong door in our view. They were mentally ill, were feeling very disturbed and unhappy. They've had false perceptions and they've misbehaved and got themselves into court."
In the 400 cases where magistrates insisted on a custodial sentence, he said, "usually the reason is the seriousness of the crime". "The safety of the general public is a prime consideration. If we're diverting someone we have to divert them to a place where they will be safe, where their relatives and friends and the general public will be safe."
The statistics, to be published in Justice Health's annual report, illustrate the immensity of the task of tackling psychiatric problems in the justice system.
About 43 per cent of the constantly changing prisoner population has a mental illness, a 2005 study from the University of NSW found. Women and those on remand are even more likely to be affected.
But despite the growing scale of court diversion, there is still no proof that the proportion of mentally ill people in the state's jails is falling, or that the program - started in 2002 - has reduced crime rates.
Dr Basson said he was encouraged by evidence from Britain that suggested court diversion plus community treatment had reduced the number of homicides committed by people with psychiatric disorders. But comparable figures had not been collected for NSW.
Jane Sanders, the principal solicitor at Shopfront Youth Legal Centre in Darlinghurst, said she had seen an improvement in mental health awareness among those working in the criminal justice system. But sometimes magistrates were reluctant to make diversion orders because they feared the treatment would not be adequately enforced.
She said community mental health teams still appeared unwilling to take on people with the most intractable disorders and it was difficult to organise full psychiatric assessments for people who needed them most. She said despite the experience and skills of mental health nurses attached to courts, magistrates preferred reports from psychiatrists, because these gave a confirmed diagnosis.
Such assessments usually had to be arranged privately and cost up to $1000, she said. "[That] has to come out of the Legal Aid budget and that's a huge expense."
Ms Sanders suggested establishing an organisation apart from the Probation and Parole Service to make pre-sentencing psychiatric reports.
Julie Robotham, Medical Editor, smh
December 11, 2008
COURT diversion programs are keeping mentally ill people out of the criminal justice system, new state statistics show, but there is no evidence this has reduced the high proportion of prisoners living with severe depression, anxiety or psychosis.
John Basson, the statewide clinical director of forensic mental health within NSW Justice Health, said mental health nurses now worked regularly in 21 of the state's approximately 150 magistrates courts and screened 14,000 defendants a year for possible mental illness, including 2000 who underwent more detailed psychological evaluations with the nurse and sometimes a psychiatrist.
Of these 2000, about 1600 were "diverted from the criminal justice system into the mental health system", Dr Basson said. "They've come in the wrong door in our view. They were mentally ill, were feeling very disturbed and unhappy. They've had false perceptions and they've misbehaved and got themselves into court."
In the 400 cases where magistrates insisted on a custodial sentence, he said, "usually the reason is the seriousness of the crime". "The safety of the general public is a prime consideration. If we're diverting someone we have to divert them to a place where they will be safe, where their relatives and friends and the general public will be safe."
The statistics, to be published in Justice Health's annual report, illustrate the immensity of the task of tackling psychiatric problems in the justice system.
About 43 per cent of the constantly changing prisoner population has a mental illness, a 2005 study from the University of NSW found. Women and those on remand are even more likely to be affected.
But despite the growing scale of court diversion, there is still no proof that the proportion of mentally ill people in the state's jails is falling, or that the program - started in 2002 - has reduced crime rates.
Dr Basson said he was encouraged by evidence from Britain that suggested court diversion plus community treatment had reduced the number of homicides committed by people with psychiatric disorders. But comparable figures had not been collected for NSW.
Jane Sanders, the principal solicitor at Shopfront Youth Legal Centre in Darlinghurst, said she had seen an improvement in mental health awareness among those working in the criminal justice system. But sometimes magistrates were reluctant to make diversion orders because they feared the treatment would not be adequately enforced.
She said community mental health teams still appeared unwilling to take on people with the most intractable disorders and it was difficult to organise full psychiatric assessments for people who needed them most. She said despite the experience and skills of mental health nurses attached to courts, magistrates preferred reports from psychiatrists, because these gave a confirmed diagnosis.
Such assessments usually had to be arranged privately and cost up to $1000, she said. "[That] has to come out of the Legal Aid budget and that's a huge expense."
Ms Sanders suggested establishing an organisation apart from the Probation and Parole Service to make pre-sentencing psychiatric reports.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
WHAT GARLING DIDN'T MENTION
Tuesday, 9 December 2008
UNSW Director of the Centre for Clinical Governance Research Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite writes in Crikey 9.12.08:
Commissioner Peter Garling SC released his long-awaited report on the New South Wales health system last week, but has he created a platform for meaningful change?
It is quite obvious that Commissioner Garling's inquiry listened and synthesised well, and he has made many consequential, if mostly predictable, findings.
He says multi-disciplinary teams are key enablers of a superior health system, and deserve to be supported. The health system needs more accessible information and evidence to make better decisions. It should be characterised by greater levels of respect amongst stakeholders, and communication needs to be better. Patient safety and quality of care are vital, and this can happen if new generations of information technology are exploited and there is an improved, trained, motivated workforce.
There are redefined roles for paediatrics (an up-to-the-minute children's mega-hospital is to be designed and built over the next few years), emergency departments and clinicians. New agencies are needed as this kind of change, according to Garling, is beyond the NSW Health bureaucracy, which must steer rather than row, and transform itself into much more of a policy-initiator than reformer.
There is more hard-hitting analysis, too. Bullying is endemic, as is pressure to get the pesky data about waiting times and lists to be correct on paper, even if timeliness doesn't get delivered all–too-often in practice.
As you might expect in such a tome, there is a whole lot more detail, but if there is to be criticism levelled at this inquiry, it is about what's missing rather than what's there.
There is no mention of what for many commentators and health system participants is the elephant in the room: micro-management of parts of the health system like code reds in emergency departments, waiting times for surgery and issues of the moment from over-enthusiastic politicians and their staffers trying to keep health out of the news.
In fact, big "P" politics -- the kind that leads the health system to be fought over in a tug-of-war by the government and opposition and, when the government is weak, the government and the media -- doesn't seem to happen much if you read Garling closely.
There is little mention of little 'p' politics, too: the tensions inherent in having differing stakeholder interests, institutional rivalries and competing forces amongst service providers remain unacknowledged. Perhaps Commissioner Garling needed one or two political scientists on his team to complement all those lawyers.
Another piece of missing jigsaw is that, although there is to be an entire agency responsible for innovation in and enhancement of the system so that reform can take place and hold over time, and it is to report quarterly to the Minister for Health on progress, no blueprint is provided for how change is to be accomplished by this body. This may be a serious omission.
In my submission to him, I noted there had been many healthcare enquiries in NSW, other Australian states, and internationally, and our research showed that the real problem was not in formulating what should be done. Most of this is well known, although there can be innovative solutions at the margins.
The much harder task is how the reforms envisaged should occur, which is these days called, variously, 'systems change' and 'implementation science'. This is particularly challenging, and perhaps the main game.
No health system has figured out how to implement reforms effectively and certainly not quickly, no matter how well crafted the recommendations made meant to give this effect. Yet Garling's recommendations imply a timescale of months and a few years, rather than envisaging reform as generational change.
Commissioner Garling is receiving the expected criticism from the losers and support from the winners. Notwithstanding this, he absorbed much about the health system and its complexity, has steered a well-charted course, made few factual errors, and resisted the temptation to change the boundaries of the area health services as a "solution". For that, patients, clinicians, managers and policy makers in New South Wales should be grateful.
So will this report matter? One way to use all that expertise garnered by Peter Garling is to do something I don't think has ever happened in any inquiry we have researched. Why not put him in charge of implementing his own recommendations?
And while he is about it, Commissioner Garling can sort out those things about which his report is unnaturally silent.
Jeffrey Braithwaite is Professor in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine, Foundation Director of the Institute of Health Innovation, and Director of the Centre for Clinical Governance Research at University of New South Wales.
UNSW Director of the Centre for Clinical Governance Research Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite writes in Crikey 9.12.08:
Commissioner Peter Garling SC released his long-awaited report on the New South Wales health system last week, but has he created a platform for meaningful change?
It is quite obvious that Commissioner Garling's inquiry listened and synthesised well, and he has made many consequential, if mostly predictable, findings.
He says multi-disciplinary teams are key enablers of a superior health system, and deserve to be supported. The health system needs more accessible information and evidence to make better decisions. It should be characterised by greater levels of respect amongst stakeholders, and communication needs to be better. Patient safety and quality of care are vital, and this can happen if new generations of information technology are exploited and there is an improved, trained, motivated workforce.
There are redefined roles for paediatrics (an up-to-the-minute children's mega-hospital is to be designed and built over the next few years), emergency departments and clinicians. New agencies are needed as this kind of change, according to Garling, is beyond the NSW Health bureaucracy, which must steer rather than row, and transform itself into much more of a policy-initiator than reformer.
There is more hard-hitting analysis, too. Bullying is endemic, as is pressure to get the pesky data about waiting times and lists to be correct on paper, even if timeliness doesn't get delivered all–too-often in practice.
As you might expect in such a tome, there is a whole lot more detail, but if there is to be criticism levelled at this inquiry, it is about what's missing rather than what's there.
There is no mention of what for many commentators and health system participants is the elephant in the room: micro-management of parts of the health system like code reds in emergency departments, waiting times for surgery and issues of the moment from over-enthusiastic politicians and their staffers trying to keep health out of the news.
In fact, big "P" politics -- the kind that leads the health system to be fought over in a tug-of-war by the government and opposition and, when the government is weak, the government and the media -- doesn't seem to happen much if you read Garling closely.
There is little mention of little 'p' politics, too: the tensions inherent in having differing stakeholder interests, institutional rivalries and competing forces amongst service providers remain unacknowledged. Perhaps Commissioner Garling needed one or two political scientists on his team to complement all those lawyers.
Another piece of missing jigsaw is that, although there is to be an entire agency responsible for innovation in and enhancement of the system so that reform can take place and hold over time, and it is to report quarterly to the Minister for Health on progress, no blueprint is provided for how change is to be accomplished by this body. This may be a serious omission.
In my submission to him, I noted there had been many healthcare enquiries in NSW, other Australian states, and internationally, and our research showed that the real problem was not in formulating what should be done. Most of this is well known, although there can be innovative solutions at the margins.
The much harder task is how the reforms envisaged should occur, which is these days called, variously, 'systems change' and 'implementation science'. This is particularly challenging, and perhaps the main game.
No health system has figured out how to implement reforms effectively and certainly not quickly, no matter how well crafted the recommendations made meant to give this effect. Yet Garling's recommendations imply a timescale of months and a few years, rather than envisaging reform as generational change.
Commissioner Garling is receiving the expected criticism from the losers and support from the winners. Notwithstanding this, he absorbed much about the health system and its complexity, has steered a well-charted course, made few factual errors, and resisted the temptation to change the boundaries of the area health services as a "solution". For that, patients, clinicians, managers and policy makers in New South Wales should be grateful.
So will this report matter? One way to use all that expertise garnered by Peter Garling is to do something I don't think has ever happened in any inquiry we have researched. Why not put him in charge of implementing his own recommendations?
And while he is about it, Commissioner Garling can sort out those things about which his report is unnaturally silent.
Jeffrey Braithwaite is Professor in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine, Foundation Director of the Institute of Health Innovation, and Director of the Centre for Clinical Governance Research at University of New South Wales.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
OBAMA CONSULTS THE PEOPLE
Obama invites Americans 'into meetings'
December 7, 2008 - 11:22AM, smh
US president-elect Barack Obama has taken a cyber-step towards greater transparency and interactive government with a new feature on his official transition website called Seat at the Table.
The initiative launched on Saturday calls for the proceedings of meetings between the Obama transition team and outside organisations to be published on the transition website, Change.gov, and to allow members of the public to comment on them.
"In past transitions, meetings like this have been held behind closed doors," said John Podesta, co-chair of the transition team. "Not any more."
Podesta, in an email to supporters, said "the people and groups we're meeting with, the subjects of the meetings, and any documents shared in the meetings will now be made available on Change.gov.
"Most importantly, the American public can weigh in with comments or their own materials," Podesta added.
The Obama transition team also outlined the new initiative in a posting on the blog of Change.gov and in a clip on the video-sharing site YouTube.
"We look forward to benefiting from the many more voices that will now be a part of the decision-making process," Podesta said.
In a memo to members of the transition team, he said the initiative was an attempt to "ensure that we give the American people a 'seat at the table' and that we receive the benefit of their feedback."
Seat at the Table does not apply to meetings devoted to personnel matters, hiring recommendations or those concerning classified information.
When Change.gov was launched on November 6 following Obama's election victory it included an appeal to users to share their ideas by email.
But the site did not provide a public forum to display the submissions, prompting criticism from supporters wanting greater transparency and more public involvement.
Since then, the Obama transition team has taken a number of steps to follow through on his campaign pledge to increase public involvement in the political process.
Last month, it opened up a public forum for suggestions on Change.gov called Join the Discussion, inviting users to submit their views on health care, an issue Obama identified as a priority during his presidential campaign.
Obama is to be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States on January 20.
© 2008 AFP
December 7, 2008 - 11:22AM, smh
US president-elect Barack Obama has taken a cyber-step towards greater transparency and interactive government with a new feature on his official transition website called Seat at the Table.
The initiative launched on Saturday calls for the proceedings of meetings between the Obama transition team and outside organisations to be published on the transition website, Change.gov, and to allow members of the public to comment on them.
"In past transitions, meetings like this have been held behind closed doors," said John Podesta, co-chair of the transition team. "Not any more."
Podesta, in an email to supporters, said "the people and groups we're meeting with, the subjects of the meetings, and any documents shared in the meetings will now be made available on Change.gov.
"Most importantly, the American public can weigh in with comments or their own materials," Podesta added.
The Obama transition team also outlined the new initiative in a posting on the blog of Change.gov and in a clip on the video-sharing site YouTube.
"We look forward to benefiting from the many more voices that will now be a part of the decision-making process," Podesta said.
In a memo to members of the transition team, he said the initiative was an attempt to "ensure that we give the American people a 'seat at the table' and that we receive the benefit of their feedback."
Seat at the Table does not apply to meetings devoted to personnel matters, hiring recommendations or those concerning classified information.
When Change.gov was launched on November 6 following Obama's election victory it included an appeal to users to share their ideas by email.
But the site did not provide a public forum to display the submissions, prompting criticism from supporters wanting greater transparency and more public involvement.
Since then, the Obama transition team has taken a number of steps to follow through on his campaign pledge to increase public involvement in the political process.
Last month, it opened up a public forum for suggestions on Change.gov called Join the Discussion, inviting users to submit their views on health care, an issue Obama identified as a priority during his presidential campaign.
Obama is to be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States on January 20.
© 2008 AFP
Saturday, December 06, 2008
GARLING: COMPLAINTS TO HCCC
Red News Readers,
You have to feel sorry for these families caught up in the problems and complexities of the health system. They have the right as taxpayers to expect better from the hospital system and the HCCC. But there is some doubt whether the under-resourced HCCC can cope with the caseload that is now coming its way. There was a temporary increase in funding after Campbelltown Camden but now it is back to business as usual. If governments want the health system and the HCCC to do better, governments need to do better in supporting these services so they can do their job efficiently.
Jenny Haines
Garling inquiry sparks complaints against hospitals
By Kate Sikora, Daily Telegraph
December 05, 2008 12:00am
MORE than 200 complaints against hospitals and doctors will be investigated in the wake of the Garling inquiry into NSW's ailing health system. But some patients and families who fronted the inquiry fear their complaints will come to nothing.
Commissioner Peter Garling handed down the report from the Special Commission of Inquiry into acute care in NSW public hospitals last Thursday. The commission was convened after Sydney woman Jana Horska miscarried in a toilet at Royal North Shore Hospital.
In his report, Mr Garling referred to 213 complaints to the Health Care Complaints Commission for further investigation. However, widow Jacqui Day - whose husband died at Concord Hospital - has little faith in the HCCC providing justice.
"As far as I am concerned the HCCC is a sham," she said.
"To me they don't investigate, they don't press charges against doctors and they protect the doctors."
Emergency rooms facing closure
Mrs Day's husband Andy, a 45-year-old police detective inspector, was being treated for pneumonia but died when his oxygen tube came adrift for the second time in six hours.
After an inquiry behind closed doors, the HCCC found the hospital had provided below standard care to Mr Day, yet the treating doctor was only given counselling.
Like so many hundreds of families who felt they have been "blown off" by the HCCC, Ms Day gave evidence at the Garling inquiry, hoping for a second chance at justice.
"I am disappointed Mr Garling did not make more recommendations about the HCCC," she said.
You have to feel sorry for these families caught up in the problems and complexities of the health system. They have the right as taxpayers to expect better from the hospital system and the HCCC. But there is some doubt whether the under-resourced HCCC can cope with the caseload that is now coming its way. There was a temporary increase in funding after Campbelltown Camden but now it is back to business as usual. If governments want the health system and the HCCC to do better, governments need to do better in supporting these services so they can do their job efficiently.
Jenny Haines
Garling inquiry sparks complaints against hospitals
By Kate Sikora, Daily Telegraph
December 05, 2008 12:00am
MORE than 200 complaints against hospitals and doctors will be investigated in the wake of the Garling inquiry into NSW's ailing health system. But some patients and families who fronted the inquiry fear their complaints will come to nothing.
Commissioner Peter Garling handed down the report from the Special Commission of Inquiry into acute care in NSW public hospitals last Thursday. The commission was convened after Sydney woman Jana Horska miscarried in a toilet at Royal North Shore Hospital.
In his report, Mr Garling referred to 213 complaints to the Health Care Complaints Commission for further investigation. However, widow Jacqui Day - whose husband died at Concord Hospital - has little faith in the HCCC providing justice.
"As far as I am concerned the HCCC is a sham," she said.
"To me they don't investigate, they don't press charges against doctors and they protect the doctors."
Emergency rooms facing closure
Mrs Day's husband Andy, a 45-year-old police detective inspector, was being treated for pneumonia but died when his oxygen tube came adrift for the second time in six hours.
After an inquiry behind closed doors, the HCCC found the hospital had provided below standard care to Mr Day, yet the treating doctor was only given counselling.
Like so many hundreds of families who felt they have been "blown off" by the HCCC, Ms Day gave evidence at the Garling inquiry, hoping for a second chance at justice.
"I am disappointed Mr Garling did not make more recommendations about the HCCC," she said.
THE HANEEF CASE: CRASH THROUGH OR CRASH
December 6, 2008
The official verdict on the Haneef case is being kept under wraps until a London trial ends next week. David Marr reports on the British case and its repercussions in Australia. smh.
Tiger Tiger is a huge nightclub in London's West End that promises "something great for everyone. Style, comfort and a fantastic night out!" In the early hours of Friday, June 29, last year the place was packed with more than 500 young revellers when the club's head of security,
Tom Peek, noticed a puff of smoke "like a ball of candy floss" in a green Mercedes in the street.
He called the fire brigade. In the unlocked car that stank of petrol, fireman Andrew Shaw found gas cylinders, shrapnel, nails and two Nokia mobiles with trailling wires. "At that point it didn't take long for the penny to drop," said Shaw. "I just thought: it's a bomb."
Alerted by news of the Tiger Tiger bomb, staff of a London car pound took a closer look later that morning at a blue Mercedes towed away at dawn from a bus lane in the West End. It was also rigged as a bomb apparently positioned to slaughter patrons fleeing the nightclub blast. Both Mercedes had failed to explode because there wasn't enough oxygen in the cars to detonate the blasts.
The scare was not over. Next day, the first of the school holidays, Glasgow airport was crowded with families about to fly to sunnier parts of the world when a Jeep Cherokee rammed the entrance of the main terminal and burst into flames. Passengers fled but a few brave citizens helped police subdue two figures who leapt from the Jeep, their clothes blazing, punching, kicking and hurling petrol bombs which, again, failed to explode.
Rushed to hospital after the attack was an engineer from Bangalore, Kafeel Ahmed, 27, with third-degree burns to 90 per cent of his body. His companion Dr Bilal Abdullah, 29, a British-born Iraqi working at the nearby Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, was accused in the back of a police car of being a terrorist. "I am a terrorist, and you are not?" he replied. "That is my case in a nutshell. I am told I am a terrorist, but is your Government not a terrorist? Is your army not a terrorist?"
On a blackened laptop in the burnt-out Jeep, police found material linking the two men to the Tiger Tiger bombs. Further arrests followed swiftly, arrests that suggested a fresh horror in the recent history of political violence: a terrorist cell made up of doctors willing to kill on a huge scale. The accused "Doctors of Doom" made headlines around the world as the police took them into custody.
Dr Mohammed Asha, 28, a Jordanian neurologist working at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire, was stopped on the M6 motorway in Cheshire only hours after the Glasgow raid.
Later that night, Dr Sabeel Ahmed, 26, the brother of the incinerated engineer, was arrested in Liverpool. Two days later, the Australian Federal Police detained the Ahmeds' cousin, Dr Mohamed Haneef, 27, at Brisbane airport as he attempted to fly home to India.
The net had been thrown wide but when the trial of the plotters opened under tight security eight weeks ago in the London suburb of Woolwich, only two men were standing in the dock.
Kafeel Ahmed would be the ghost of the proceedings. He died of burns a month after setting himself alight in the airport raid. His brother Sabeel had been cleared of having any knowledge of the terrorist cell or its plans. Scotland Yard had accepted as genuine a message Kafeel sent his brother on the afternoon of the Glasgow raid, a message confessing his dedication to violent jihad: "This is the 'project' that I was working on for some time now … Every thing else was a lie! And I hope you can all forgive me for being such a good liar!! It was necessary."
Sabeel was already back in Bangalore, having served a brief sentence for failing to alert police to the jihad message. His cousin Dr Mohamed Haneef, late of the Queensland Gold Coast, was also back in India after prosecution authorities in Australia had decided - in the midst of a huge political uproar - that the trainee physician had not been assisting the terrorist cell when he gave an old SIM card to Sabeel in July 2006.
So the great doctors' plot had come down to this: Dr Bilal Abdullah of Paisley and Dr Mohammed Asha of Staffordshire charged with conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions.
"These men," said the prosecutor, Jonathan Laidlaw, QC, "were intent on committing murder on an indiscriminate and a wholesale scale." Both denied the charges.
The men met at Cambridge in the early, most violent years of the American occupation of Iraq. Asha was a gifted young Jordanian who had come to train as a neurologist at Addenbrooke's Hospital in 2003. Sometime over the next year he became the friend and mentor of Abdullah, the son of wealthy, pro-Western Iraqis forced by the war to flee to safety in Jordan.
Abdullah would tell the court that 19 of his relatives and friends had been killed in the war. "I had a major sense of guilt, living in safety while all my people are massacred."
But his response to the war was complex. He and Asha are Sunni Muslims. Abdullah would tell the jury he welcomed the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein but not the invaders' backing of the Shiites and the violence against Sunnis that followed.
He introduced Asha to Kafeel Ahmed, an Indian studying engineering in Britain who would be the incompetent bombmaker of the plot. The son of Indian doctors, Ahmed had been brought up in Saudi Arabia. By mid-2004 he was living above a prayer hall in Cambridge that called itself the Islamic Academy. By all accounts Ahmed was bearded, devout and reserved. "A strange guy," said Asha. "He rarely speaks."
Mohamed Haneef visited his cousin Kafeel twice in these years. Was this, Australian police wondered, evidence of links with a terrorist cell?
Haneef remembered meeting an Iraqi trainee doctor called Bilal in Cambridge at this time. They exchanged mobile phone numbers. Haneef borrowed money from Ahmed. Later, they met up in India.
Though British police seemed to think these links amounted to nothing much, Australian police remained suspicious.
The plot was certainly under way by late February last year. "Bro, inshallah, I think we are gonna start experiments sometime soon," Ahmed messaged Abdullah who had returned from a trip to Iraq. The doctor replied: "Oh cool". Their headquarters were a rented house in the Glasgow suburb of Houston where all blinds were drawn and neighbours heard noises "as if work was being undertaken".
Asha would give evidence he knew nothing of these preparations. "My life has always been hard work, family and entertainment. Religion came as a complementary element. It wasn't a dominant ideal at all. I used to watch at least two movies a week." But the Crown regarded him as the mastermind of the conspiracy, providing funds to the plotters and giving "spiritual and ideological guidance" to Abdullah every step of the way.
The British authorities believed this was not a home-grown operation. Laidlaw told the court that Asha was answerable to his "masters" in Iraq and that the plot they were preparing was "al-Qaeda-inspired".
Abdullah and Ahmed, armed with a video camera and satnav device, carried out a recce of London by tourist bus in May. It was too difficult to leave cars outside 10 Downing Street or Buckingham Palace. "We decided to leave the car in central London."
They planned to strike on June 27, the day Tony Blair was stepping down in favour of Gordon Brown. But Abdullah was too busy at the hospital "to finish all the shopping" and it was not until the next day that he and Ahmed drove the two Mercedes from Scotland.
In a side street off Edgware Road, Abdullah sloshed petrol mixed with engine oil over the duvet that covered the deadly load in his car. It was a little after midnight when he parked outside the Tiger Tiger. He spent several minutes struggling to open the cylinders. "People were passing by," he told the court. "I was worried about my safety. You can get arrested easily."
Abdullah insisted he was merely planting "fire devices" to frighten but not kill. "I wanted the public to have a taste of what the decisions of their democratically elected murderers did to my people," he told the court. "We intended … a device that would give the taste of fear. It will look professional, it was dangerous but, in reality, it is not. It's a device that will not kill people."
But Laidlaw told the court the accused wanted "to kill and nothing else".
As he headed in a pedal rickshaw to a rendezvous with Ahmed back at Edgware Road, he rang one of the mobiles to ignite the gas. But when he rang 15 minutes later and heard a dial tone, he knew he'd failed.
Both men rang the phones in the cars without success. They had left several clues behind in the cars. Abdullah said: "We were scared."
After sleeping for a few hours in a hotel in East London, they headed back to Scotland visiting Asha at the Stoke Royal Infirmary on their way north. The Crown alleged the three men held a strategy meeting at that point. Asha claimed they called merely to collect some documents.
Minutes after they left, Asha used a hospital computer to peruse news coverage of the London events.
Back in Glasgow, the two men loaded the Jeep Cherokee with gas cylinders, nails and screws and headed for the local airport. At some point before the Jeep crashed through the control barrier, Ahmed sent his brother directions to find and open his jihad message.
The Crown alleged they were now on a suicide mission and the Jeep was stuffed with evidence against the men so potent that it appears they never intended coming back. As well as videos of extremist propaganda, Abdullah's singed laptop contained a draft will that condemned Westerners "busy with alcoholic drinking and their intimate friends" and the foreign powers occupying Iraq. "Their soldiers kill young and old. They don't discriminate between men and women so why should we?"
When the Jeep burst into flames, Henry Lambie, a former fireman, grabbed a fire extinguisher and confronted Abdullah. "An Asian-looking chap came towards me and he was pointing at me, saying: 'Don't do that.' I thought, why don't I do this? He came closer, he was quite determined, he was coming at me. I thought he was going to have a go at me, so I hit him in the face with the jet of water."
Asha heard what had happened at the airport and began getting rid of documents. This was tricky: he felt he had to treat them with a certain respect because they contained the word Allah.
After failing to burn them in his barbecue - it was raining - he dumped them in a bin behind a local supermarket. Nevertheless, after arresting him that evening, police allege they found about 40 extremist documents on a laptop at his home.
By this time - too late to prevent the Glasgow raid - Dr Sabeel Ahmed had opened the jihad message. When the police pulled him over in Liverpool hours later, he did as the message requested: lied about his brother and knowledge of his brother's mission.
When police found the message itself some days later, they accepted it proved the brothers were not in the plot together. But Laidlaw told the court Sabeel Ahmed was charged because his information would have been of "considerable assistance" to the police as they hunted down the culprits.
The connection to Australia was made the day after the airport raid when call charge records revealed the brothers were using a SIM card registered in the name of a Mohamed Haneef. Late that afternoon, Scotland Yard asked the Australian Federal Police to help them find this man. He was arrested 18 hours later as he tried to fly out of Brisbane.
But it's now clear the British police were not particularly worried about this doctor on the far side of the world. According to records of the Australian Government's Counter-Terrorism Committee now released under FOI, the British were offering "non-threat" information about Haneef and not alleging he was involved in the bomb plots.
From the first, the AFP appears to have treated Haneef more seriously than their British counterparts did. They do so even now. Ask senior AFP sources how a card that revealed a link between the Ahmeds and their cousin could be of any use to terrorists, and they reply: Haneef may well have wanted the link known so that he could boast his services to jihad. They hold this view despite Haneef denying under interrogation any role in the bomb plots.
Australian police were equally unimpressed when the text of the jihad message reached them six days after Haneef's arrest. It was shown to neither the courts, the lawyers, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions nor the attorney-general, Philip Ruddock. To this day the leadership of the AFP's anti-terrorism command believes the message was fake: a clever cover for Sabeel that exonerates neither him nor his cousin Haneef.
By the time the AFP closed the Haneef case last August - after spending some $8 million and employing hundreds of investigators - the British trial was about to start. If there had been substance to the AFP's suspicions, Haneef would be standing in the Woolwich dock with Asha and Abdullah. In fact he was practising medicine at a clinic in the United Arab Emirates when Jonathan Laidlaw, QC, began his devastating prosecution.
Almost the only mention of the trial in the Australian media has been the reiterated claim of various officials that the report by the former NSW Supreme Court judge John Clarke into the handling of the Haneef case could not be released until the London trial was over and done with.
Defence counsel for Abdullah and Asha have finished their addresses. The jury is expected to retire next week. Then a redacted version of the Clarke report will be tabled. More of the truth about one of the great botched cases of our time will then be known.
The official verdict on the Haneef case is being kept under wraps until a London trial ends next week. David Marr reports on the British case and its repercussions in Australia. smh.
Tiger Tiger is a huge nightclub in London's West End that promises "something great for everyone. Style, comfort and a fantastic night out!" In the early hours of Friday, June 29, last year the place was packed with more than 500 young revellers when the club's head of security,
Tom Peek, noticed a puff of smoke "like a ball of candy floss" in a green Mercedes in the street.
He called the fire brigade. In the unlocked car that stank of petrol, fireman Andrew Shaw found gas cylinders, shrapnel, nails and two Nokia mobiles with trailling wires. "At that point it didn't take long for the penny to drop," said Shaw. "I just thought: it's a bomb."
Alerted by news of the Tiger Tiger bomb, staff of a London car pound took a closer look later that morning at a blue Mercedes towed away at dawn from a bus lane in the West End. It was also rigged as a bomb apparently positioned to slaughter patrons fleeing the nightclub blast. Both Mercedes had failed to explode because there wasn't enough oxygen in the cars to detonate the blasts.
The scare was not over. Next day, the first of the school holidays, Glasgow airport was crowded with families about to fly to sunnier parts of the world when a Jeep Cherokee rammed the entrance of the main terminal and burst into flames. Passengers fled but a few brave citizens helped police subdue two figures who leapt from the Jeep, their clothes blazing, punching, kicking and hurling petrol bombs which, again, failed to explode.
Rushed to hospital after the attack was an engineer from Bangalore, Kafeel Ahmed, 27, with third-degree burns to 90 per cent of his body. His companion Dr Bilal Abdullah, 29, a British-born Iraqi working at the nearby Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, was accused in the back of a police car of being a terrorist. "I am a terrorist, and you are not?" he replied. "That is my case in a nutshell. I am told I am a terrorist, but is your Government not a terrorist? Is your army not a terrorist?"
On a blackened laptop in the burnt-out Jeep, police found material linking the two men to the Tiger Tiger bombs. Further arrests followed swiftly, arrests that suggested a fresh horror in the recent history of political violence: a terrorist cell made up of doctors willing to kill on a huge scale. The accused "Doctors of Doom" made headlines around the world as the police took them into custody.
Dr Mohammed Asha, 28, a Jordanian neurologist working at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire, was stopped on the M6 motorway in Cheshire only hours after the Glasgow raid.
Later that night, Dr Sabeel Ahmed, 26, the brother of the incinerated engineer, was arrested in Liverpool. Two days later, the Australian Federal Police detained the Ahmeds' cousin, Dr Mohamed Haneef, 27, at Brisbane airport as he attempted to fly home to India.
The net had been thrown wide but when the trial of the plotters opened under tight security eight weeks ago in the London suburb of Woolwich, only two men were standing in the dock.
Kafeel Ahmed would be the ghost of the proceedings. He died of burns a month after setting himself alight in the airport raid. His brother Sabeel had been cleared of having any knowledge of the terrorist cell or its plans. Scotland Yard had accepted as genuine a message Kafeel sent his brother on the afternoon of the Glasgow raid, a message confessing his dedication to violent jihad: "This is the 'project' that I was working on for some time now … Every thing else was a lie! And I hope you can all forgive me for being such a good liar!! It was necessary."
Sabeel was already back in Bangalore, having served a brief sentence for failing to alert police to the jihad message. His cousin Dr Mohamed Haneef, late of the Queensland Gold Coast, was also back in India after prosecution authorities in Australia had decided - in the midst of a huge political uproar - that the trainee physician had not been assisting the terrorist cell when he gave an old SIM card to Sabeel in July 2006.
So the great doctors' plot had come down to this: Dr Bilal Abdullah of Paisley and Dr Mohammed Asha of Staffordshire charged with conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions.
"These men," said the prosecutor, Jonathan Laidlaw, QC, "were intent on committing murder on an indiscriminate and a wholesale scale." Both denied the charges.
The men met at Cambridge in the early, most violent years of the American occupation of Iraq. Asha was a gifted young Jordanian who had come to train as a neurologist at Addenbrooke's Hospital in 2003. Sometime over the next year he became the friend and mentor of Abdullah, the son of wealthy, pro-Western Iraqis forced by the war to flee to safety in Jordan.
Abdullah would tell the court that 19 of his relatives and friends had been killed in the war. "I had a major sense of guilt, living in safety while all my people are massacred."
But his response to the war was complex. He and Asha are Sunni Muslims. Abdullah would tell the jury he welcomed the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein but not the invaders' backing of the Shiites and the violence against Sunnis that followed.
He introduced Asha to Kafeel Ahmed, an Indian studying engineering in Britain who would be the incompetent bombmaker of the plot. The son of Indian doctors, Ahmed had been brought up in Saudi Arabia. By mid-2004 he was living above a prayer hall in Cambridge that called itself the Islamic Academy. By all accounts Ahmed was bearded, devout and reserved. "A strange guy," said Asha. "He rarely speaks."
Mohamed Haneef visited his cousin Kafeel twice in these years. Was this, Australian police wondered, evidence of links with a terrorist cell?
Haneef remembered meeting an Iraqi trainee doctor called Bilal in Cambridge at this time. They exchanged mobile phone numbers. Haneef borrowed money from Ahmed. Later, they met up in India.
Though British police seemed to think these links amounted to nothing much, Australian police remained suspicious.
The plot was certainly under way by late February last year. "Bro, inshallah, I think we are gonna start experiments sometime soon," Ahmed messaged Abdullah who had returned from a trip to Iraq. The doctor replied: "Oh cool". Their headquarters were a rented house in the Glasgow suburb of Houston where all blinds were drawn and neighbours heard noises "as if work was being undertaken".
Asha would give evidence he knew nothing of these preparations. "My life has always been hard work, family and entertainment. Religion came as a complementary element. It wasn't a dominant ideal at all. I used to watch at least two movies a week." But the Crown regarded him as the mastermind of the conspiracy, providing funds to the plotters and giving "spiritual and ideological guidance" to Abdullah every step of the way.
The British authorities believed this was not a home-grown operation. Laidlaw told the court that Asha was answerable to his "masters" in Iraq and that the plot they were preparing was "al-Qaeda-inspired".
Abdullah and Ahmed, armed with a video camera and satnav device, carried out a recce of London by tourist bus in May. It was too difficult to leave cars outside 10 Downing Street or Buckingham Palace. "We decided to leave the car in central London."
They planned to strike on June 27, the day Tony Blair was stepping down in favour of Gordon Brown. But Abdullah was too busy at the hospital "to finish all the shopping" and it was not until the next day that he and Ahmed drove the two Mercedes from Scotland.
In a side street off Edgware Road, Abdullah sloshed petrol mixed with engine oil over the duvet that covered the deadly load in his car. It was a little after midnight when he parked outside the Tiger Tiger. He spent several minutes struggling to open the cylinders. "People were passing by," he told the court. "I was worried about my safety. You can get arrested easily."
Abdullah insisted he was merely planting "fire devices" to frighten but not kill. "I wanted the public to have a taste of what the decisions of their democratically elected murderers did to my people," he told the court. "We intended … a device that would give the taste of fear. It will look professional, it was dangerous but, in reality, it is not. It's a device that will not kill people."
But Laidlaw told the court the accused wanted "to kill and nothing else".
As he headed in a pedal rickshaw to a rendezvous with Ahmed back at Edgware Road, he rang one of the mobiles to ignite the gas. But when he rang 15 minutes later and heard a dial tone, he knew he'd failed.
Both men rang the phones in the cars without success. They had left several clues behind in the cars. Abdullah said: "We were scared."
After sleeping for a few hours in a hotel in East London, they headed back to Scotland visiting Asha at the Stoke Royal Infirmary on their way north. The Crown alleged the three men held a strategy meeting at that point. Asha claimed they called merely to collect some documents.
Minutes after they left, Asha used a hospital computer to peruse news coverage of the London events.
Back in Glasgow, the two men loaded the Jeep Cherokee with gas cylinders, nails and screws and headed for the local airport. At some point before the Jeep crashed through the control barrier, Ahmed sent his brother directions to find and open his jihad message.
The Crown alleged they were now on a suicide mission and the Jeep was stuffed with evidence against the men so potent that it appears they never intended coming back. As well as videos of extremist propaganda, Abdullah's singed laptop contained a draft will that condemned Westerners "busy with alcoholic drinking and their intimate friends" and the foreign powers occupying Iraq. "Their soldiers kill young and old. They don't discriminate between men and women so why should we?"
When the Jeep burst into flames, Henry Lambie, a former fireman, grabbed a fire extinguisher and confronted Abdullah. "An Asian-looking chap came towards me and he was pointing at me, saying: 'Don't do that.' I thought, why don't I do this? He came closer, he was quite determined, he was coming at me. I thought he was going to have a go at me, so I hit him in the face with the jet of water."
Asha heard what had happened at the airport and began getting rid of documents. This was tricky: he felt he had to treat them with a certain respect because they contained the word Allah.
After failing to burn them in his barbecue - it was raining - he dumped them in a bin behind a local supermarket. Nevertheless, after arresting him that evening, police allege they found about 40 extremist documents on a laptop at his home.
By this time - too late to prevent the Glasgow raid - Dr Sabeel Ahmed had opened the jihad message. When the police pulled him over in Liverpool hours later, he did as the message requested: lied about his brother and knowledge of his brother's mission.
When police found the message itself some days later, they accepted it proved the brothers were not in the plot together. But Laidlaw told the court Sabeel Ahmed was charged because his information would have been of "considerable assistance" to the police as they hunted down the culprits.
The connection to Australia was made the day after the airport raid when call charge records revealed the brothers were using a SIM card registered in the name of a Mohamed Haneef. Late that afternoon, Scotland Yard asked the Australian Federal Police to help them find this man. He was arrested 18 hours later as he tried to fly out of Brisbane.
But it's now clear the British police were not particularly worried about this doctor on the far side of the world. According to records of the Australian Government's Counter-Terrorism Committee now released under FOI, the British were offering "non-threat" information about Haneef and not alleging he was involved in the bomb plots.
From the first, the AFP appears to have treated Haneef more seriously than their British counterparts did. They do so even now. Ask senior AFP sources how a card that revealed a link between the Ahmeds and their cousin could be of any use to terrorists, and they reply: Haneef may well have wanted the link known so that he could boast his services to jihad. They hold this view despite Haneef denying under interrogation any role in the bomb plots.
Australian police were equally unimpressed when the text of the jihad message reached them six days after Haneef's arrest. It was shown to neither the courts, the lawyers, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions nor the attorney-general, Philip Ruddock. To this day the leadership of the AFP's anti-terrorism command believes the message was fake: a clever cover for Sabeel that exonerates neither him nor his cousin Haneef.
By the time the AFP closed the Haneef case last August - after spending some $8 million and employing hundreds of investigators - the British trial was about to start. If there had been substance to the AFP's suspicions, Haneef would be standing in the Woolwich dock with Asha and Abdullah. In fact he was practising medicine at a clinic in the United Arab Emirates when Jonathan Laidlaw, QC, began his devastating prosecution.
Almost the only mention of the trial in the Australian media has been the reiterated claim of various officials that the report by the former NSW Supreme Court judge John Clarke into the handling of the Haneef case could not be released until the London trial was over and done with.
Defence counsel for Abdullah and Asha have finished their addresses. The jury is expected to retire next week. Then a redacted version of the Clarke report will be tabled. More of the truth about one of the great botched cases of our time will then be known.
LONE CHILDREN ASYLUM SEEKERS
Lone children found on people-smuggling boats
Tom Allard in Jakarta, SMH
December 6, 2008
UNACCOMPANIED children are increasingly turning up as asylum seekers on vessels attempting to cross from Indonesia to Australia, the Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, said yesterday.
People-smugglers charge up to $18,000 for the trip from the Middle East and Sri Lanka, meaning families can sometimes only afford to send one member.
"People have bought the eldest son a ticket," Senator Evans said.
This week, Indonesian police stopped a boat as it was about to depart from West Timor to Australia. Among the 13 asylum-seekers detained was a nine-year-old and two 17-year-olds.
Other boats that have made it to Australia have also included minors.
Senator Evans said people-smugglers were changing tactics to avoid detection by police. This included moving asylum seekers quickly from Indonesia onto a boat headed for Australia
"They are people who have been put, if you like, on a fast track through third countries like Malaysia, brought in quickly to Indonesia," he said.
"Some of them have only been on a beach for a couple of hours before they get on a boat."
Senator Evans praised Indonesian police after the arrest this week of Haj Sakih, an alleged people-smuggling ringleader detained on Wednesday night. He also said the Australian Federal
Police assisted in the operation to detain Sakih, which has been running for months and has snared several other members of the syndicate while preventing 15 boats from coming to Australia.
Five boats have made it, including one with 35 suspected asylum seekers that was intercepted in Australian waters on Tuesday.
Sakih will face immigration, fraud and deception charges and could be sentenced to up to seven years in prison. He was found with $US24,000 ($37,240) in his possession.
Sakih was initially identified as Iranian but the head of national security in the Indonesian police, Brigadier General Badrodin Haiti, said yesterday he was a Pakistani.
Police sources said many of those arrested in Indonesia, and others who remain at large, have been involved in people-smuggling for as long as 10 years ago, when the first big waves of boat people came to Australia.
The Opposition blames a relaxing of the Howard government's punitive immigration policy for the latest influx. But Senator Evans has pointed to the deteriorating security situation in countries such as Afghanistan.
Immigration officials acknowledge that criminal syndicates are exploiting the changes as a "marketing opportunity".
with AAP
Tom Allard in Jakarta, SMH
December 6, 2008
UNACCOMPANIED children are increasingly turning up as asylum seekers on vessels attempting to cross from Indonesia to Australia, the Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, said yesterday.
People-smugglers charge up to $18,000 for the trip from the Middle East and Sri Lanka, meaning families can sometimes only afford to send one member.
"People have bought the eldest son a ticket," Senator Evans said.
This week, Indonesian police stopped a boat as it was about to depart from West Timor to Australia. Among the 13 asylum-seekers detained was a nine-year-old and two 17-year-olds.
Other boats that have made it to Australia have also included minors.
Senator Evans said people-smugglers were changing tactics to avoid detection by police. This included moving asylum seekers quickly from Indonesia onto a boat headed for Australia
"They are people who have been put, if you like, on a fast track through third countries like Malaysia, brought in quickly to Indonesia," he said.
"Some of them have only been on a beach for a couple of hours before they get on a boat."
Senator Evans praised Indonesian police after the arrest this week of Haj Sakih, an alleged people-smuggling ringleader detained on Wednesday night. He also said the Australian Federal
Police assisted in the operation to detain Sakih, which has been running for months and has snared several other members of the syndicate while preventing 15 boats from coming to Australia.
Five boats have made it, including one with 35 suspected asylum seekers that was intercepted in Australian waters on Tuesday.
Sakih will face immigration, fraud and deception charges and could be sentenced to up to seven years in prison. He was found with $US24,000 ($37,240) in his possession.
Sakih was initially identified as Iranian but the head of national security in the Indonesian police, Brigadier General Badrodin Haiti, said yesterday he was a Pakistani.
Police sources said many of those arrested in Indonesia, and others who remain at large, have been involved in people-smuggling for as long as 10 years ago, when the first big waves of boat people came to Australia.
The Opposition blames a relaxing of the Howard government's punitive immigration policy for the latest influx. But Senator Evans has pointed to the deteriorating security situation in countries such as Afghanistan.
Immigration officials acknowledge that criminal syndicates are exploiting the changes as a "marketing opportunity".
with AAP
RESIGN MUGABE, NOW
Mugabe threatens poll if power-sharing fails
Godfrey Marawanyika in Harare, smh
December 6, 2008
Police open fire as soldiers turn on Mugabe
Zimbabwe humanitarian crisis 'critical'
Mugabe stalls as cholera spreads and talks break down
Carter's humanitarian visit to Zimbabwe rejected
Zimbabwe pleads for help as crisis bites
ZIMBABWE'S President, Robert Mugabe, brandished the threat of fresh elections in an attempt to force through a stalled power-sharing deal as the United States last night called for him to quit.
As a cholera epidemic in the crisis-wracked country worsened, a defiant Mr Mugabe lashed the opposition Movement for Democratic Change for refusing to join a unity government in which he would remain as president.
Neighbouring South Africa, meanwhile, said it was time to end "political point-scoring" while the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, said negotiations Mr Mugabe was having with the MDC were a sham and he should stand down.
In an address on Thursday night, Mr Mugabe showed he was in no mood to bow to MDC demands to hand over the key interior ministry, saying he would call early elections if the two sides could not work together. "We agreed to give them [the MDC] 13 ministries while we share the ministry of home affairs, but if the arrangement fails to work in the next one and a half to two years, then we would go for elections," Mr Mugabe was quoted as saying in The Herald, a government newspaper.
Zimbabwe has been in political limbo since elections in March when the opposition wrested control of parliament from Mr Mugabe's party, and the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, pushed Mr Mugabe into second place in a presidential poll. But Mr Tsvangirai pulled out of a run-off poll in June after dozens of his supporters were killed in attacks blamed on supporters of Mr Mugabe.
The two rivals signed an agreement in September to share power, but it has yet to be implemented after fierce disagreements over who should control key ministries.
Mr Tsvangirai says he wants to join a unity government but that Mr Mugabe must give up the interior ministry after keeping hold of the defence ministry.
In comments made to his ZANU-PF party's politburo and reported by The Herald, Mr Mugabe accused the MDC of trying to destroy the power-sharing agreement.
"The MDC should say no if they do not want to be part of the inclusive government," said Mr Mugabe, 84, who has ruled since independence in 1980.
While Mr Tsvangirai and Mr Mugabe were at loggerheads, the country has been steadily collapsing amid an inflation rate last put at 231 million per cent.
With the Government now unable to afford the chemicals needed to ensure a clean water supply, a cholera epidemic has swept across the country and even crossed the border into South Africa.
The United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its latest bulletin that the outbreak had now claimed 575 lives. The capital, Harare, is the worst-hit area, with 179 deaths and 6448 cases.
South Africa said it was sending a high-level delegation to Zimbabwe to assess how it could provide assistance. A Government spokesman said the crisis had reached such levels that "the time for political point-scoring is over".
Dr Rice said southern African states needed to maintain pressure on Mugabe to find a political solution. "It is well past time for Robert Mugabe to leave," she said. "I think that is now obvious."
Agence France-Presse
Godfrey Marawanyika in Harare, smh
December 6, 2008
Police open fire as soldiers turn on Mugabe
Zimbabwe humanitarian crisis 'critical'
Mugabe stalls as cholera spreads and talks break down
Carter's humanitarian visit to Zimbabwe rejected
Zimbabwe pleads for help as crisis bites
ZIMBABWE'S President, Robert Mugabe, brandished the threat of fresh elections in an attempt to force through a stalled power-sharing deal as the United States last night called for him to quit.
As a cholera epidemic in the crisis-wracked country worsened, a defiant Mr Mugabe lashed the opposition Movement for Democratic Change for refusing to join a unity government in which he would remain as president.
Neighbouring South Africa, meanwhile, said it was time to end "political point-scoring" while the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, said negotiations Mr Mugabe was having with the MDC were a sham and he should stand down.
In an address on Thursday night, Mr Mugabe showed he was in no mood to bow to MDC demands to hand over the key interior ministry, saying he would call early elections if the two sides could not work together. "We agreed to give them [the MDC] 13 ministries while we share the ministry of home affairs, but if the arrangement fails to work in the next one and a half to two years, then we would go for elections," Mr Mugabe was quoted as saying in The Herald, a government newspaper.
Zimbabwe has been in political limbo since elections in March when the opposition wrested control of parliament from Mr Mugabe's party, and the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, pushed Mr Mugabe into second place in a presidential poll. But Mr Tsvangirai pulled out of a run-off poll in June after dozens of his supporters were killed in attacks blamed on supporters of Mr Mugabe.
The two rivals signed an agreement in September to share power, but it has yet to be implemented after fierce disagreements over who should control key ministries.
Mr Tsvangirai says he wants to join a unity government but that Mr Mugabe must give up the interior ministry after keeping hold of the defence ministry.
In comments made to his ZANU-PF party's politburo and reported by The Herald, Mr Mugabe accused the MDC of trying to destroy the power-sharing agreement.
"The MDC should say no if they do not want to be part of the inclusive government," said Mr Mugabe, 84, who has ruled since independence in 1980.
While Mr Tsvangirai and Mr Mugabe were at loggerheads, the country has been steadily collapsing amid an inflation rate last put at 231 million per cent.
With the Government now unable to afford the chemicals needed to ensure a clean water supply, a cholera epidemic has swept across the country and even crossed the border into South Africa.
The United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its latest bulletin that the outbreak had now claimed 575 lives. The capital, Harare, is the worst-hit area, with 179 deaths and 6448 cases.
South Africa said it was sending a high-level delegation to Zimbabwe to assess how it could provide assistance. A Government spokesman said the crisis had reached such levels that "the time for political point-scoring is over".
Dr Rice said southern African states needed to maintain pressure on Mugabe to find a political solution. "It is well past time for Robert Mugabe to leave," she said. "I think that is now obvious."
Agence France-Presse
MANDAWUY YUNUPINGU
Songline fades for Treaty man Mandawuy Yunupingu
Natasha Robinson, The Australian,
December 06, 2008
TO millions of Australians, he was a guitar-wielding force of nature straight out of Arnhem Land, singing of a treaty in a tongue that seemed to pulse with the rhythm of an optimistic nation.
It was 1991, at the crest of the Aboriginal reconciliation movement, and Mandawuy Yunupingu was singing of the "truer Australia", where the citizenship of his Yolngu people was complete.
Now, as he lies under white blankets in the brightly lit, sterile Nightcliff Renal Unit in Darwin, Yunupingu is fighting a quieter battle.
The kidney disease that has plagued him for years has finally reached its end stage.
The gentle songman is no longer looking to Canberra to settle the colonial score. Three days a week, as his toxic blood is fed into a dialysis machine that spins and filters and sends it back cleansed, Yunupingu is thinking of his mother, and his father, the great Yolngu leader Mungurrawuy Yunupingu. "If my time comes, they will come and keep me," Yunupingu says. "And I'll come back next time. Come back to my people to live with them again."
For Yunupingu, a teacher and university graduate, and his equally famous brother, Galarrwuy, a veteran of tactical political warfare, decades of activism and community leadership have left both men drained. Born to the same mother (their father had 12 wives), they are two of the most important ceremonial leaders in Arnhem Land.
Both have lost their brittle faith in politicians, and turned their gazes inward, fearful at the splintering social fabric of northeast Arnhem Land, struggling to nourish and preserve the precarious languages and stories that make up their Yolngu culture.
Today, ministers and bureaucrats zip across the Northern Territory in a constant stream of charter jets, rolling out policy after policy, holding up the glittering dream of a safer, healthier and more prosperous future for remote-living people. Governments promise to stitch the great wounds left by dispossession, alcohol and passive welfarism; the wounds that governments call the "gap". Amid the trauma, the ritual sanctity of ceremony looms more important than ever in Arnhem Land.
Here, the "gap" is not a life-expectancy statistic. For Mandawuy, the voice behind one of Australia's most recognised songs, the 1991 international hit Treaty, a collaboration between Midnight Oil, Paul Kelly and Yolngu musicians, it means advanced renal failure at the age of 52. For Galarrwuy, it means losing loved ones, seemingly at random, to suicide.
And so the brothers turn their focus homeward. Galarrwuy, to his homeland of Dhanaya and his community of Gunyangara, or Ski Beach, where a bark hut has been set up in readiness for the young men, who will gather there to talk of suicide and how they might bolster their collective mental defence. "We've come to the closing of a chapter in politics, and it hasn't worked," Galarrwuy says in a profile published today in The Weekend Australian Magazine.
"I aim from now on to commit myself to my immediate family: that's what I can do - that's all I can do."
Mandawuy, a father of five daughters, looks not to the future but turns his mind to the past, mentally cataloguing his rich knowledge of Gumatj stories and dances that he races against time to pass down to his five grandsons.
"In the Yolngu world, education is to be able to sing the land, sing the people," Mandawuy says. "And dance. Dance all of those things. That is what I am trying to tell my grandsons about, and teach them my language so we can keep it alive. So that my grandsons can make the ends meet and be happy."
It is a late November day in Yirrkala in northeast Arnhem Land, a community of grassy hills surrounded by stringybark forest and the muddy aqua of the choppy northern Australian seas.
Mandawuy lies on a mattress on the back porch of his home, dreaming of caviar. Trips home are rare and lightning-quick. They must be made on one of the four days of the week he is free from the dialysis machine. The former rock star has been receiving haemodialysis for a year.
As he breathes in the briny air that blows up the hill from the Gulf of Carpentaria, Mandawuy talks of his love of the tropical build-up season. "This is the time of the season when men are carrying two spears, three or four spears, walking along the beach, standing waiting for the fish to come along," he says. "Those fish, they have the caviar inside. It's a delicacy for the Yolngu one. You can stand on the rock all day waiting for the fish to come."
With his wife, Yalmay, Mandawuy has been training for months to use a dialysis machine at home. He hopes he will have a machine in Yirrkala by Christmas.
"I keep thinking of that Pink Floyd song, 'welcome, my son, welcome to the machine'," he says, laughing.
The following week, back in the renal unit in Darwin, Mandawuy speaks of his childhood. Tom Djambayang Bakamana Yunupingu was born at a homeland near Yirrkala, by the river where stingrays breed, on September 17, 1956. His skin name was Gudjuk, which means hawk. His name was changed to Mandawuy in line with Yolngu custom when a community member with the same name died.
Mandawuy went to school at the Yirrkala Methodist mission; his father sent his sons to Sunday school and took Christianity to heart. The Yolngu loved the Christian parables, Mandawuy says. His favourite was David and Goliath, a story that seems appropriate given his struggles in life.
He is optimistic he may one day receive a kidney transplant. But he admits to being afraid of dying. "I am sad," he says. "I keep thinking, 'Why me? Why me?"'
In his rock star days, Mandawuy was a heavy drinker. During a relapse earlier this year, he stopped dialysis treatment and almost died. "I've finished drinking," he says now. "I've turned a new page." If a transplant is not forthcoming, Mandawuy seems resigned to the fact that he may die without having seen the longed-for settlement between white and black Australia.
"I'm still waiting for that treaty to come along, for my grandsons," he says. "Even if it's not there in the days that I am living, it might come in the days that I am not living. I know a treaty will change things, my grandsons will have a different view, a much more positive view, a luckier view. Luckier in that they feel part of Australia, you know.
"They don't have to fight to become recognised. I have had to fight to get Australians to recognise my past. I can't keep fighting for what is Australian."
Natasha Robinson, The Australian,
December 06, 2008
TO millions of Australians, he was a guitar-wielding force of nature straight out of Arnhem Land, singing of a treaty in a tongue that seemed to pulse with the rhythm of an optimistic nation.
It was 1991, at the crest of the Aboriginal reconciliation movement, and Mandawuy Yunupingu was singing of the "truer Australia", where the citizenship of his Yolngu people was complete.
Now, as he lies under white blankets in the brightly lit, sterile Nightcliff Renal Unit in Darwin, Yunupingu is fighting a quieter battle.
The kidney disease that has plagued him for years has finally reached its end stage.
The gentle songman is no longer looking to Canberra to settle the colonial score. Three days a week, as his toxic blood is fed into a dialysis machine that spins and filters and sends it back cleansed, Yunupingu is thinking of his mother, and his father, the great Yolngu leader Mungurrawuy Yunupingu. "If my time comes, they will come and keep me," Yunupingu says. "And I'll come back next time. Come back to my people to live with them again."
For Yunupingu, a teacher and university graduate, and his equally famous brother, Galarrwuy, a veteran of tactical political warfare, decades of activism and community leadership have left both men drained. Born to the same mother (their father had 12 wives), they are two of the most important ceremonial leaders in Arnhem Land.
Both have lost their brittle faith in politicians, and turned their gazes inward, fearful at the splintering social fabric of northeast Arnhem Land, struggling to nourish and preserve the precarious languages and stories that make up their Yolngu culture.
Today, ministers and bureaucrats zip across the Northern Territory in a constant stream of charter jets, rolling out policy after policy, holding up the glittering dream of a safer, healthier and more prosperous future for remote-living people. Governments promise to stitch the great wounds left by dispossession, alcohol and passive welfarism; the wounds that governments call the "gap". Amid the trauma, the ritual sanctity of ceremony looms more important than ever in Arnhem Land.
Here, the "gap" is not a life-expectancy statistic. For Mandawuy, the voice behind one of Australia's most recognised songs, the 1991 international hit Treaty, a collaboration between Midnight Oil, Paul Kelly and Yolngu musicians, it means advanced renal failure at the age of 52. For Galarrwuy, it means losing loved ones, seemingly at random, to suicide.
And so the brothers turn their focus homeward. Galarrwuy, to his homeland of Dhanaya and his community of Gunyangara, or Ski Beach, where a bark hut has been set up in readiness for the young men, who will gather there to talk of suicide and how they might bolster their collective mental defence. "We've come to the closing of a chapter in politics, and it hasn't worked," Galarrwuy says in a profile published today in The Weekend Australian Magazine.
"I aim from now on to commit myself to my immediate family: that's what I can do - that's all I can do."
Mandawuy, a father of five daughters, looks not to the future but turns his mind to the past, mentally cataloguing his rich knowledge of Gumatj stories and dances that he races against time to pass down to his five grandsons.
"In the Yolngu world, education is to be able to sing the land, sing the people," Mandawuy says. "And dance. Dance all of those things. That is what I am trying to tell my grandsons about, and teach them my language so we can keep it alive. So that my grandsons can make the ends meet and be happy."
It is a late November day in Yirrkala in northeast Arnhem Land, a community of grassy hills surrounded by stringybark forest and the muddy aqua of the choppy northern Australian seas.
Mandawuy lies on a mattress on the back porch of his home, dreaming of caviar. Trips home are rare and lightning-quick. They must be made on one of the four days of the week he is free from the dialysis machine. The former rock star has been receiving haemodialysis for a year.
As he breathes in the briny air that blows up the hill from the Gulf of Carpentaria, Mandawuy talks of his love of the tropical build-up season. "This is the time of the season when men are carrying two spears, three or four spears, walking along the beach, standing waiting for the fish to come along," he says. "Those fish, they have the caviar inside. It's a delicacy for the Yolngu one. You can stand on the rock all day waiting for the fish to come."
With his wife, Yalmay, Mandawuy has been training for months to use a dialysis machine at home. He hopes he will have a machine in Yirrkala by Christmas.
"I keep thinking of that Pink Floyd song, 'welcome, my son, welcome to the machine'," he says, laughing.
The following week, back in the renal unit in Darwin, Mandawuy speaks of his childhood. Tom Djambayang Bakamana Yunupingu was born at a homeland near Yirrkala, by the river where stingrays breed, on September 17, 1956. His skin name was Gudjuk, which means hawk. His name was changed to Mandawuy in line with Yolngu custom when a community member with the same name died.
Mandawuy went to school at the Yirrkala Methodist mission; his father sent his sons to Sunday school and took Christianity to heart. The Yolngu loved the Christian parables, Mandawuy says. His favourite was David and Goliath, a story that seems appropriate given his struggles in life.
He is optimistic he may one day receive a kidney transplant. But he admits to being afraid of dying. "I am sad," he says. "I keep thinking, 'Why me? Why me?"'
In his rock star days, Mandawuy was a heavy drinker. During a relapse earlier this year, he stopped dialysis treatment and almost died. "I've finished drinking," he says now. "I've turned a new page." If a transplant is not forthcoming, Mandawuy seems resigned to the fact that he may die without having seen the longed-for settlement between white and black Australia.
"I'm still waiting for that treaty to come along, for my grandsons," he says. "Even if it's not there in the days that I am living, it might come in the days that I am not living. I know a treaty will change things, my grandsons will have a different view, a much more positive view, a luckier view. Luckier in that they feel part of Australia, you know.
"They don't have to fight to become recognised. I have had to fight to get Australians to recognise my past. I can't keep fighting for what is Australian."
Friday, December 05, 2008
PEOPLE SMUGGLER ARRESTED
Boat people conspiracy smashed
Tom Allard Herald Correspondent in Jakarta
December 5, 2008
INDONESIAN police say they have smashed a people-smuggling ring and arrested the kingpin of the syndicate responsible for sending rickety vessels laden with asylum-seekers on the perilous journey to Australia.
Brigadier General Badrodin Haiti, director for national security at Indonesian police headquarters, told the Herald yesterday that the arrest of an Iranian, Haj Sakih, his accomplices and some Indonesians had smashed a big people-smuggling racket.
The syndicate had smuggled scores of asylum-seekers, most of them Middle Eastern, to Australia over the past three years.
"He is a big fish," Brigadier General Haiti said of Sakih. "His connection is with Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. He smuggled people to Australia several times, both successfully and unsuccessfully."
The Herald understands Sakih, who goes by several aliases and was arrested in Surabaya on Wednesday night with at least one other man, is responsible for most of the attempted boat crossings to Australia in recent times and had been chased across the archipelago for several months.
Five boats carrying 83 asylum-seekers have made it to Australian territory since September, but 15 have been stopped in Indonesia in an operation led by Indonesian police, with the assistance of Australian Federal Police.
Early yesterday police arrested another six Indonesians, confiscated a boat and detained 13 people from the Middle East in West Timor. Among the six Indonesians was another senior member of the people smuggling ring, named Kaharudin. West Timor is the Indonesian province closest to Australia.
Commissioner Okto Gerebu, a spokesman for West Timorese police, said the men had travelled by boat from Java and were preparing to set sail for Australia.
The sharp increase in people-smuggling activity in recent weeks - disclosed in the Herald on Saturday - is occurring just as the seas between Indonesia and Australia are becoming rough.
"The boats they are using are very poor," a senior police official involved in the operation said.
"They are not seaworthy, and the journey across is very dangerous."
The number of boat people trying to come to Australia is small compared with the thousands who attempted the journey in the late 1990s and early this decade.
The criminal networks have changed tactics, using smaller boats carrying fewer passengers to avoid detection. But the smaller boats are more likely to sink at sea.
More than 350 people died when a boat, known as SIEV X, sank on its way to Australia in late 2001.
The human cargo seduced by people smugglers pay up to $18,000 per person to be transported to Australia, usually from Afghanistan, Iraq or Pakistan.
While some bribe embassy officials for visas to Indonesia, the most common method is to bribe immigration officials at airports, either in Malaysia or in Indonesia.
This year the Federal Government relaxed aspects of Australia's policy towards asylum-seekers, provoking criticism from the Opposition that the changes were responsible for the rise in boat people.
"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,"' said the former Coalition immigration minister Philip Ruddock.
But the Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, said the increase in boat people reflected "push" factors - deteriorating security in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Amid the concerns about the unsafe passage of boats to Australia, the Chief of Navy, Vice-Admiral Russell Crane said the two-month stand-down of navy personnel over Christmas would not affect operations in northern Australian waters.
"We will meet all of our operational requirements."
Tom Allard Herald Correspondent in Jakarta
December 5, 2008
INDONESIAN police say they have smashed a people-smuggling ring and arrested the kingpin of the syndicate responsible for sending rickety vessels laden with asylum-seekers on the perilous journey to Australia.
Brigadier General Badrodin Haiti, director for national security at Indonesian police headquarters, told the Herald yesterday that the arrest of an Iranian, Haj Sakih, his accomplices and some Indonesians had smashed a big people-smuggling racket.
The syndicate had smuggled scores of asylum-seekers, most of them Middle Eastern, to Australia over the past three years.
"He is a big fish," Brigadier General Haiti said of Sakih. "His connection is with Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. He smuggled people to Australia several times, both successfully and unsuccessfully."
The Herald understands Sakih, who goes by several aliases and was arrested in Surabaya on Wednesday night with at least one other man, is responsible for most of the attempted boat crossings to Australia in recent times and had been chased across the archipelago for several months.
Five boats carrying 83 asylum-seekers have made it to Australian territory since September, but 15 have been stopped in Indonesia in an operation led by Indonesian police, with the assistance of Australian Federal Police.
Early yesterday police arrested another six Indonesians, confiscated a boat and detained 13 people from the Middle East in West Timor. Among the six Indonesians was another senior member of the people smuggling ring, named Kaharudin. West Timor is the Indonesian province closest to Australia.
Commissioner Okto Gerebu, a spokesman for West Timorese police, said the men had travelled by boat from Java and were preparing to set sail for Australia.
The sharp increase in people-smuggling activity in recent weeks - disclosed in the Herald on Saturday - is occurring just as the seas between Indonesia and Australia are becoming rough.
"The boats they are using are very poor," a senior police official involved in the operation said.
"They are not seaworthy, and the journey across is very dangerous."
The number of boat people trying to come to Australia is small compared with the thousands who attempted the journey in the late 1990s and early this decade.
The criminal networks have changed tactics, using smaller boats carrying fewer passengers to avoid detection. But the smaller boats are more likely to sink at sea.
More than 350 people died when a boat, known as SIEV X, sank on its way to Australia in late 2001.
The human cargo seduced by people smugglers pay up to $18,000 per person to be transported to Australia, usually from Afghanistan, Iraq or Pakistan.
While some bribe embassy officials for visas to Indonesia, the most common method is to bribe immigration officials at airports, either in Malaysia or in Indonesia.
This year the Federal Government relaxed aspects of Australia's policy towards asylum-seekers, provoking criticism from the Opposition that the changes were responsible for the rise in boat people.
"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,"' said the former Coalition immigration minister Philip Ruddock.
But the Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, said the increase in boat people reflected "push" factors - deteriorating security in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Amid the concerns about the unsafe passage of boats to Australia, the Chief of Navy, Vice-Admiral Russell Crane said the two-month stand-down of navy personnel over Christmas would not affect operations in northern Australian waters.
"We will meet all of our operational requirements."
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
VISA PROTEST:MAN TRIES TO SET HIMSELF ON FIRE
Visa protest: man tries to set himself on fire
December 3, 2008 - 8:18PM, Source: ABC
Federal Immigration Minister Chris Evans says the Government is trying to help a family involved in several protests around Parliament House.
A man jumped into the Lower House chamber earlier this week and today he tried to set himself alight in front of Parliament House.
Senator Evans says the man appears to be worried about his parents, who have been on bridging visas since they arrived in Australia in 1997.
The Senator says their application for aged parent visas is being considered and the Government recognises that the family is in Australia lawfully.
"They are holders of valid visas, they're not being considered for deportation, and this is not being considered since the former Minister intervened," he said.
"The department is working very closely with them, we've offered and tried to provide counselling and welfare support."
The man was not seriously injured and was taken to the Canberra Hospital.MP apology
A Federal MP has apologised for taking a photo the man while he was trying to set himself on fire today and then selling the image to a newspaper in exchange for a donation to charity.
The Labor member for the Queensland seat of Dawson, James Bidgood, has told parliament his actions were highly insensitive.
Mr Bidgood says he will be apologising to the man's family.
"This afternoon at an event I took photographs of a serious incident. I later passed those photographs to a news organisation in return for a donation to charity connected to disabilities," he said.
"My actions were highly insenistive and inappropriate and I am tonight writing a letter of apology to the family involved."
House of Representatives speaker Harry Jenkins is investigating Mr Bidgood's actions.
Opposition frontbencher Joe Hockey says it is a tasteless matter.
"The photo is of a man who had doused himself in petrol and threatened to set himself alight," he said.
"This incredibly disturbing image provided by the member of Parliament to the media outlet raises a number of very alarming issues."
December 3, 2008 - 8:18PM, Source: ABC
Federal Immigration Minister Chris Evans says the Government is trying to help a family involved in several protests around Parliament House.
A man jumped into the Lower House chamber earlier this week and today he tried to set himself alight in front of Parliament House.
Senator Evans says the man appears to be worried about his parents, who have been on bridging visas since they arrived in Australia in 1997.
The Senator says their application for aged parent visas is being considered and the Government recognises that the family is in Australia lawfully.
"They are holders of valid visas, they're not being considered for deportation, and this is not being considered since the former Minister intervened," he said.
"The department is working very closely with them, we've offered and tried to provide counselling and welfare support."
The man was not seriously injured and was taken to the Canberra Hospital.MP apology
A Federal MP has apologised for taking a photo the man while he was trying to set himself on fire today and then selling the image to a newspaper in exchange for a donation to charity.
The Labor member for the Queensland seat of Dawson, James Bidgood, has told parliament his actions were highly insensitive.
Mr Bidgood says he will be apologising to the man's family.
"This afternoon at an event I took photographs of a serious incident. I later passed those photographs to a news organisation in return for a donation to charity connected to disabilities," he said.
"My actions were highly insenistive and inappropriate and I am tonight writing a letter of apology to the family involved."
House of Representatives speaker Harry Jenkins is investigating Mr Bidgood's actions.
Opposition frontbencher Joe Hockey says it is a tasteless matter.
"The photo is of a man who had doused himself in petrol and threatened to set himself alight," he said.
"This incredibly disturbing image provided by the member of Parliament to the media outlet raises a number of very alarming issues."
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
COMMITTEE DISSENT: YEAR IN DETENTION EXCESSIVE
Year in detention 'excessive'
Yuko Narushima, smh
December 2, 2008
DISSENTERS have broken away from a parliamentary group investigating Australia's immigration detention policy, arguing for more dramatic change including legal rights for detainees and a one-month cap on detention.
Conservative Liberal senator Alan Eggleston joined party colleague Petro Georgiou and Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young in criticising the majority's 18 recommendations for not going far enough.
The unlikely splinter group wanted detainees to be granted immediate access to the courts. This would allow them to appeal for release when there were "no reasonable grounds that their detention is justified", a supplementary report prepared by the group said.
The lack of judicial review has meant that women and children had been held unreasonably, the report said.
The Government can detain people while immigration officials conduct health, security and identity checks. Beyond that, people deemed a risk to the community should only be held in detention for a maximum of a year, the committee majority said.
But the dissenting trio said a year in detention was "grossly excessive" and called for a limit of 30 days. Public servants should not have the "unfettered power to detain", they said, taking a swipe at the Department of Immigration and Citizenship's "chequered" history.
The refugee advocacy group, A Just Australia, said the main report was disappointing. It provided only a negligible step in the right direction, the national co-ordinator, Kate Gauthier, said.
"This inquiry has missed out on a vital opportunity to put the new detention values into practice.
We'd like to see the committee pay more than lip service to human rights."
The official report recommended all criteria by which detainees could be deemed a risk be published. It suggested health checks could be completed in five days and more than $20 million in debts owed by current and former detainees to the Government be waived by the Minister for Finance, Lindsay Tanner.
Last night the Minister for Immigration, Chris Evans, was standing by his policy. "The Rudd Government is committed to ensuring that health, security and identity checks are all completed before people are released into the community," he said. "The public is entitled to expect that only those persons who pose no danger to the community are able to live in the community while their visa status is resolved."
Yuko Narushima, smh
December 2, 2008
DISSENTERS have broken away from a parliamentary group investigating Australia's immigration detention policy, arguing for more dramatic change including legal rights for detainees and a one-month cap on detention.
Conservative Liberal senator Alan Eggleston joined party colleague Petro Georgiou and Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young in criticising the majority's 18 recommendations for not going far enough.
The unlikely splinter group wanted detainees to be granted immediate access to the courts. This would allow them to appeal for release when there were "no reasonable grounds that their detention is justified", a supplementary report prepared by the group said.
The lack of judicial review has meant that women and children had been held unreasonably, the report said.
The Government can detain people while immigration officials conduct health, security and identity checks. Beyond that, people deemed a risk to the community should only be held in detention for a maximum of a year, the committee majority said.
But the dissenting trio said a year in detention was "grossly excessive" and called for a limit of 30 days. Public servants should not have the "unfettered power to detain", they said, taking a swipe at the Department of Immigration and Citizenship's "chequered" history.
The refugee advocacy group, A Just Australia, said the main report was disappointing. It provided only a negligible step in the right direction, the national co-ordinator, Kate Gauthier, said.
"This inquiry has missed out on a vital opportunity to put the new detention values into practice.
We'd like to see the committee pay more than lip service to human rights."
The official report recommended all criteria by which detainees could be deemed a risk be published. It suggested health checks could be completed in five days and more than $20 million in debts owed by current and former detainees to the Government be waived by the Minister for Finance, Lindsay Tanner.
Last night the Minister for Immigration, Chris Evans, was standing by his policy. "The Rudd Government is committed to ensuring that health, security and identity checks are all completed before people are released into the community," he said. "The public is entitled to expect that only those persons who pose no danger to the community are able to live in the community while their visa status is resolved."
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