Red News Readers,
Can Australian workers pull together for the greater good, asks David Humphries today in the SMH. Correct me if I am wrong but Australian workers have been pulling together for the common good for more than 20 years now since the implementation of the Prices and Incomes Accordi, sacrificing pay increases and working conditions, working overtime, often forced, and missing out on family and social life in the interests of company or corporate profitability. It wasn’t the working people of this country that created this financial crisis. It seems to me that those who did create this crisis, the “financial entrepreneurs” shall we call them, in this country and overseas, were the ones who lacked any sense of the common good or the interests of the people. It’s a bit rich to now say to the workers of this country that due to the mistakes and stupidity of finance capitalism, you are the ones who bear the burden of consideration of the common good.
Jenny Haines
It's only just begun
January 24, 2009
After two decades without responsibility, can Australians pull together for the greater good?
David Humphries reports.
Latest related coverage:
From boom town to bust
Economists, it's been said, are always right; it's a question only of timing. This is not a gratuitous slap at practitioners of the dismal science but underscores the importance of reliable timeframes to economic forecasting. Knowing the property market or sharemarket will rise and fall does no one much good without knowing when.
When forecasters warned Australians that the economic slowdown, indeed the likelihood of recessionary downturn, would not ease until the second half of this calendar year, it was meant as a prediction of gloom. Instead, against the backdrop of a deepening global crisis scaring the wits out of the very technocrats and politicians trying to assuage our fears, the scenario of a recovery in the latter half of 2009 looks daily more a case of we should be so lucky.
"This is the big one, like the 1930s," says Percy Allan, a previously cautious economic commentator with a penchant for eschewing alarmism. "I just hope the monetary and fiscal authorities know what they're doing because so far there's little sign they do." Now an economic consultant, Allan headed the NSW Treasury for the Labor and Coalition governments and was Boral's finance director.
Kevin Rudd is not in denial. The Prime Minister is appealing to our better nature - for Australians to pull together in this hardship - a message that will struggle to resonate after a quarter of a century of Australians being encouraged to go it alone, of an ethos of everyone for themselves. More on that later.
Rudd wants it known that the "crisis is not of Australia's making" but "we must acknowledge things could even get worse". If Australia is buffeted by economic tumult that began elsewhere, it stands to reason its recovery will be constrained by prolonged global dystrophy.
That makes American research findings on the longevity of recessions even more depressing. In a paper presented this month to the American Economic Association in San Francisco, researchers - Harvard's Kenneth Rogoff and Maryland University's Carmen Reinhart - found downturns typically endure for seven years after severe banking crises. According to The Economist magazine, the research shows an individual's share of national output falls by more than 9 per cent and takes two years to reach bottom.
Unemployment increases by an average of 7 percentage points and falls for five years before recovery begins. If that follows here, the unemployment rate will indeed exceed the 11 per cent mark tipped by some economic commentators who are dismissed as alarmist.
House prices typically fall by 36 per cent and take five years to reach their nadir. Sharemarkets fall for more than three years and lose 56 per cent of value, and real government debt rises by an average of 86 per cent, not so much because of the costs of bailing out banks but because of falling tax revenue and Keynesian pump priming.
Princeton University's Alan Blinder said the long and deep recession had barely begun. The International Monetary Fund chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, said the economy might turn the corner in a year if recession-fighting policies are appropriate.
The thousands of shop assistants, miners, finance workers and others who have lost their jobs, or stand to lose them, might be wondering just how effective Australia's policy suite has been.
BHP Billiton announced this week it would shed 3400 Australian jobs (6000 worldwide), including 1800 at the $2 billion Ravensthorpe nickel mine in Western Australia because of falling commodity prices. The world's biggest miner didn't mention the billions of dollars of shareholder funds squandered in the ultimately abandoned pursuit of rival Rio Tinto, which is also getting rid of workers as demand for its raw materials diminishes. There will be layoffs at CSR, as well as the retailers Harvey Norman and David Jones. The list goes on and on.
Harvey Norman's principal, Gerry Harvey, welcomed December's $9 billion giveaway to families and pensioners and this week pronounced the retail stimulus effort a dud.
If the strategies of the Government and the Reserve Bank of spending the $21 billion surplus and cutting interest rates (a year ago the focus was on fighting inflation) are keeping wolves from the door, the savages are barking at the front gate. Why?
For many intersecting reasons, not least the revelation that we've done our dough punting on the resilience of a flagging Chinese boom to offset meltdowns elsewhere. And yet the capitalist world has embraced, almost unanimously, financial rescues by the Government - loans, guarantees, direct capital injections amounting to thousands of billions of taxpayer dollars.
The black hole's bottom has not been plumbed. The $US700 billion ($1070 billion) pumped into US banks and other financial institutions may yet spin out to more than $US2 trillion. Having committed billions to its own banking system, the Australian Government is working up a scheme to spare Australian businesses likely to be denied renewal of up to $75 billion in offshore loans due to expire within two years. In the meantime, many corporate borrowers live on lines of credit akin to credit cards.
Why such renewal of faith in government intervention in markets? Well, it sounds like common sense in a blackness where everyone is stumbling for answers to problems few understand. "We did not foresee the all-important cessation of interbank lending," says Horace Brock, head of the American economics firm Strategic Economic Decisions. Rather than "blaming greedy and incompetent people", Brock wrote in a December paper on the crisis that "the answer lies in what happened to traditional interbank lending".
Because banks survive by mutual benefit lending and borrowing within the banking circle, the unprecedented cessation of interbank lending last Australian winter and spring meant "banks everywhere were obliged to stop lending to a significant degree". Brock added: "As a result, the Main Streets of the world came to a halt … If we think of credit as the oxygen flowing to the lungs of Main Street, then we have witnessed the first outbreak of global emphysema."
So if banks won't prop each other up and keep money flowing because they know banks' balance sheets are putrid with toxic and immeasurable liabilities that stem from eroding asset values, reckless lending and dubious and unfathomable financial securities, taxpayers become an obvious port of call. Government injections start the ball rolling again, and economic activity begets economic activity. Right? Yes and no.
Much of the faith in Keynesian pump priming has its origins in Franklin Roosevelt's Depression New Deal in the mid-1930s. Suffice to say there is much argument today as to whether American economic recovery was under way before the New Deal was launched, and whether government intervention merely accelerated that comeback. Post hoc ergo propter hoc - after this therefore because of this.
There is another potential flaw. The more governments feel compelled to sink public billions into a floundering private sector, the higher the public anxiety about the depth of financial woes. Says Percy Allan: "There is a risk that the more desperate governments become at throwing money at the problem, the more alarmed the public becomes and so tightens its purse strings."
Get the paradox? With one of the highest levels of household indebtedness in the world - it doubled in 10 years to about 160 per cent of household annual disposable income - Australians are particularly vulnerable to the pain of unemployment and should pay down their debt, but the Government wants them to spend up to stimulate economic exchange. Nothing in economics goes quite how you want it to.
Gorging on the international credit binge of the past 30 years - encouraged in Australia by financial deregulation - were people and institutions incapable of repaying their debts. They were forced into selling assets at fire-sale prices when paying down debt began to avalanche in late 2007.
Lower interest rates, pump priming and bank guarantees are "all good Keynesian stuff", says Allan, but they failed to lift Japan from the doldrums after its asset bubble burst in 1990. Japan survived by exporting into a booming world. "Now that the music has stopped globally, Japan [the biggest buyer of Australian exports] is sinking into a deep recession."
Australia's response to private economy contraction throughout the world, says Rudd, is "to do everything humanly possible to fill that gap, to fill that space". In an address in Hobart on Thursday, the Prime Minister amplified his call for a new togetherness. "It will test governments, national and state. It will test our businesses, it will test our unions, it will test our communities, it will test our basic sense of solidarity.
"Our responsibility is to reach out and help," said Rudd, "at the level of government, at the level of community and at the level of being someone's neighbour."
Rudd's denunciation of unregulated global financial markets, of extreme capitalism, of market fundamentalism and of "extreme greed and excess" might strike a chord with audiences left wondering whether they'll be working in a month, or what happened to their retirement nest eggs. But he should forgive those scratching their heads over his call to lock arms, to dump the ethos of a generation and to embrace our neighbour. After all, many cannot remember when greed and selfishness weren't officially endorsed. And after 18 recession-free years, with all the assurances of unprecedented prosperity, how match-toughened is Australia for the bruising encounters ahead?
Baby boomers, says the historian Kay Saunders, were raised in postwar affluence, but family reminiscences were dominated by talk of Depression and war. "We at least know there were hard times," says Saunders, who heads the Brisbane Institute and was professor of Australian history at Queensland University. "Young people today have only a sense of entitlement, not of responsibility. The spoilt little pusses are into instant gratification. They have no sense of historical consequence. Teaching taught me they're also quite unsympathetic to past hardship; they're totally dissociated from it. Hardship will bewilder them."
Saunders challenges the conventional wisdom that Australians naturally draw together in hardship. "After 1942, Australia pulled together because the Japanese were at our door. But World War I was the greatest point of divide since the convict period - intensely ideologically, racially full of aggression and protest." Similarly, the Depression saw the rise of communism and right-wing activism and threat from the New Guard.
Hugh Mackay, the social commentator, argues that people naturally rally around each other in times of stress, and leaders thrive on hardship. "The four peaks of John Howard's popularity were Port Arthur, 9/11, the invasion of Iraq and Bali," says Mackay. "Human response doesn't require leadership but Rudd must be careful to avoid the appearance of soft options. People expect tough and effective interventions from government."
Michael Pusey, professor of sociology at the University of NSW, says the transition-to-hardship argument is built on the false proposition that Australians travelled comfortably for the past 20 years. To the contrary, says Pusey, the duration of working lives has been compressed, Australians work harder with less job security, pay more for housing and education and health, and are well aware that economic restructuring has diminished quality of life.
"Even during the boom, households have been running up the down escalator. We've been told for a generation there's no free lunch, to make your own opportunities, every person for themselves," says Pusey. "Social solidarity has been systematically undermined by economic restructuring and thrown everyone on to their own resources, to view others as competitors for scarce resources.
"And now Kevin Rudd poorly articulates a change of rhetoric. Ho hum."
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
NURSE INFIGHTING
Infighting leaves nurses in limbo
Author: Louise Hall, Health Reporter,
Date: 23/01/2009Words: 748Source: SMH
Publication: Sydney Morning HeraldSection: News and FeaturesPage: 3
INFIGHTING within the State Government has put thousands of nursing students in limbo as the departments of health and education argue over who should pay for nursing tuition.
NSW Health has decided to cut the popular Enrolled Nurse Education Program, which paid student nurses a salary and contracted TAFE NSW to provide the theory for the 12-month course.
But after the April 2009 intake, Health will no longer pay TAFE institutes to run classes for the 1200 trainees who go through the program each year.
The Department of Education and Training (DEET) has refused to provide training for free and has withdrawn all enrolled nursing certificate and diploma courses at TAFE NSW institutes.
While bureaucrats scramble, aspiring nurses are being told that public hospitals are no longer recruiting trainee enrolled nurses and they can expect to pay $15,000 in fees and perform 700 hours of unpaid clinical placements before they are qualified to work (see breakout).
The NSW Nurses' Association says the decision will exacerbate the severe nursing shortage, particularly for mature-age students, those with families and those who cannot afford to go to university.
The acting general secretary of the union, Judith Kiedja, said trainee enrolled nurses (TENs) were paid a salary of $34,197 and many used the qualification to put themselves through uni.
She said there is widespread concern among nurses that shifts filled by TENs will be left vacant, or filled by lesser-qualified assistants-in-nursing. "If the department listened to the Garling report, they would replace TENs with graduate registered nurses, which would give wards a better skill mix, but that's a more expensive option so the department won't go for that," she said.
NSW already faces a projected shortage of 12,000 nurses by 2010 as baby boomers, which make up about 20 per cent of the workforce, retire en masse.
The Opposition spokeswoman for health, Jillian Skinner, said the decision was baffling because the mini-budget had ordered hospitals to substitute university-trained registered nurses with enrolled and trainee nurses to save $32 million within four years.
"It makes no sense to cut nurse training and throw up barriers for prospective nursing students at a time when recruiting more nurses should be a priority," Mrs Skinner said.
A spokesman for the Health Minister, John Della Bosca, said axing the Enrolled Nurse Education Program would bring NSW into line with all other states and territories, who do not pay their enrolled nurses during training.
He said it was not ideal to shift the cost burden onto individual students but who should pay the students' fees was "the subject of lots of discussions between NSW Health and the education department".
A spokesman for DEET was unable to say if it would offer any enrolled nursing courses after April. He was also unable to say if TAFE nursing teachers would lose their jobs. "It's all under discussion with NSW Health."
Private colleges, including the College of Nursing in Burwood, are rushing to gain accreditation from the NSW Nurses and Midwives Board to fill the gap left by the confusion. Similar courses can cost up to $15,000 in other states.
Maryanne Crakers, from the National Enrolled Nurse Association, said most state and territory governments subsidised placements in the TAFE and private sector so "students usually only have to find $800 or $900".
"I can only assume the rationale in NSW is to save money," she said.
Willing, able and left waiting
NICOLE HICKMAN has dreamed of becoming a nurse since she broke her ankle in three places and spent weeks in hospital a few years ago.
Proposed changes to the way enrolled nurses are trained in NSW have left her in limbo. "I'm banging my head against the wall, I can't get a straight answer," she said yesterday.
The 21-year-old from Erina completed two introductory nursing assistant courses at TAFE NSW last year to give herself the best chance at securing a job as a trainee enrolled nurse in a public hospital this year.
But unlike applicants for more than 20 years before her, she was told not only will she not receive a wage, but no institute will offer the Certificate IV in Nursing (Enrolled Nurse) course after April.
"All I want is to become a nurse and care for people. Why are they making it so hard for young people these days?"
Career advisers at TAFE and NSW Health have told Ms Hickman enrolled nursing will be run through the private sector and she can expect about $10,000 in upfront fees.
She said she has no hope of finding that kind of money.
Author: Louise Hall, Health Reporter,
Date: 23/01/2009Words: 748Source: SMH
Publication: Sydney Morning HeraldSection: News and FeaturesPage: 3
INFIGHTING within the State Government has put thousands of nursing students in limbo as the departments of health and education argue over who should pay for nursing tuition.
NSW Health has decided to cut the popular Enrolled Nurse Education Program, which paid student nurses a salary and contracted TAFE NSW to provide the theory for the 12-month course.
But after the April 2009 intake, Health will no longer pay TAFE institutes to run classes for the 1200 trainees who go through the program each year.
The Department of Education and Training (DEET) has refused to provide training for free and has withdrawn all enrolled nursing certificate and diploma courses at TAFE NSW institutes.
While bureaucrats scramble, aspiring nurses are being told that public hospitals are no longer recruiting trainee enrolled nurses and they can expect to pay $15,000 in fees and perform 700 hours of unpaid clinical placements before they are qualified to work (see breakout).
The NSW Nurses' Association says the decision will exacerbate the severe nursing shortage, particularly for mature-age students, those with families and those who cannot afford to go to university.
The acting general secretary of the union, Judith Kiedja, said trainee enrolled nurses (TENs) were paid a salary of $34,197 and many used the qualification to put themselves through uni.
She said there is widespread concern among nurses that shifts filled by TENs will be left vacant, or filled by lesser-qualified assistants-in-nursing. "If the department listened to the Garling report, they would replace TENs with graduate registered nurses, which would give wards a better skill mix, but that's a more expensive option so the department won't go for that," she said.
NSW already faces a projected shortage of 12,000 nurses by 2010 as baby boomers, which make up about 20 per cent of the workforce, retire en masse.
The Opposition spokeswoman for health, Jillian Skinner, said the decision was baffling because the mini-budget had ordered hospitals to substitute university-trained registered nurses with enrolled and trainee nurses to save $32 million within four years.
"It makes no sense to cut nurse training and throw up barriers for prospective nursing students at a time when recruiting more nurses should be a priority," Mrs Skinner said.
A spokesman for the Health Minister, John Della Bosca, said axing the Enrolled Nurse Education Program would bring NSW into line with all other states and territories, who do not pay their enrolled nurses during training.
He said it was not ideal to shift the cost burden onto individual students but who should pay the students' fees was "the subject of lots of discussions between NSW Health and the education department".
A spokesman for DEET was unable to say if it would offer any enrolled nursing courses after April. He was also unable to say if TAFE nursing teachers would lose their jobs. "It's all under discussion with NSW Health."
Private colleges, including the College of Nursing in Burwood, are rushing to gain accreditation from the NSW Nurses and Midwives Board to fill the gap left by the confusion. Similar courses can cost up to $15,000 in other states.
Maryanne Crakers, from the National Enrolled Nurse Association, said most state and territory governments subsidised placements in the TAFE and private sector so "students usually only have to find $800 or $900".
"I can only assume the rationale in NSW is to save money," she said.
Willing, able and left waiting
NICOLE HICKMAN has dreamed of becoming a nurse since she broke her ankle in three places and spent weeks in hospital a few years ago.
Proposed changes to the way enrolled nurses are trained in NSW have left her in limbo. "I'm banging my head against the wall, I can't get a straight answer," she said yesterday.
The 21-year-old from Erina completed two introductory nursing assistant courses at TAFE NSW last year to give herself the best chance at securing a job as a trainee enrolled nurse in a public hospital this year.
But unlike applicants for more than 20 years before her, she was told not only will she not receive a wage, but no institute will offer the Certificate IV in Nursing (Enrolled Nurse) course after April.
"All I want is to become a nurse and care for people. Why are they making it so hard for young people these days?"
Career advisers at TAFE and NSW Health have told Ms Hickman enrolled nursing will be run through the private sector and she can expect about $10,000 in upfront fees.
She said she has no hope of finding that kind of money.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
NSW GOVT MAKES PEACE WITH TEACHERS
State makes peace with teachers
Anna Patty Education Editor, smh
January 22, 2009
THE State Government has shelved plans to give school principals greater powers to recruit staff of their choice, in a peace deal to resolve a long-running industrial dispute with the NSW Teachers Federation.
The Government has also backed down on a staff transfer policy it had wanted to phase out from next year.
The teacher union yesterday accepted a salary offer brokered by the NSW Industrial Commission, which provides a cumulative 12.48 per cent increase over three years for TAFE and school teachers.
In accepting the increase, which was 2.5 per cent below what they had sought, teachers traded off some conditions.
There has been a reduction in their sick-leave entitlements from 33 days to 15 days a year, and they can no longer use accumulated leave to top up workers compensation payments.
The Director-General of Education, Michael Coutts-Trotter, yesterday said it was "a decent pay rise for teachers and one that's affordable for taxpayers".
The Premier, Nathan Rees, had ordered government departments to negotiate trade-offs to pay for any wage increases for public servants exceeding 2.5 per cent a year.
The Government announced last year that it would phase out lower-priority "service transfers" for teachers from next year, providing school principals with more opportunities to hire teachers of their choice. Such transfers allow teachers to earn points towards gaining a position in more sought-after locations.
Under the new three-year staffing agreement, finalised yesterday, the Government will retain preliminary arrangements it introduced last April, which allow principals to alternate between advertising teacher vacancies and accepting a service transfer.
The president of the NSW Teachers Federation, Bob Lipscombe, said the staffing and salary agreements were a good outcome "especially in the current economic climate".
Anna Patty Education Editor, smh
January 22, 2009
THE State Government has shelved plans to give school principals greater powers to recruit staff of their choice, in a peace deal to resolve a long-running industrial dispute with the NSW Teachers Federation.
The Government has also backed down on a staff transfer policy it had wanted to phase out from next year.
The teacher union yesterday accepted a salary offer brokered by the NSW Industrial Commission, which provides a cumulative 12.48 per cent increase over three years for TAFE and school teachers.
In accepting the increase, which was 2.5 per cent below what they had sought, teachers traded off some conditions.
There has been a reduction in their sick-leave entitlements from 33 days to 15 days a year, and they can no longer use accumulated leave to top up workers compensation payments.
The Director-General of Education, Michael Coutts-Trotter, yesterday said it was "a decent pay rise for teachers and one that's affordable for taxpayers".
The Premier, Nathan Rees, had ordered government departments to negotiate trade-offs to pay for any wage increases for public servants exceeding 2.5 per cent a year.
The Government announced last year that it would phase out lower-priority "service transfers" for teachers from next year, providing school principals with more opportunities to hire teachers of their choice. Such transfers allow teachers to earn points towards gaining a position in more sought-after locations.
Under the new three-year staffing agreement, finalised yesterday, the Government will retain preliminary arrangements it introduced last April, which allow principals to alternate between advertising teacher vacancies and accepting a service transfer.
The president of the NSW Teachers Federation, Bob Lipscombe, said the staffing and salary agreements were a good outcome "especially in the current economic climate".
NSW GOVT MAKES PEACE WITH TEACHERS
State makes peace with teachers
Anna Patty Education Editor, smh
January 22, 2009
THE State Government has shelved plans to give school principals greater powers to recruit staff of their choice, in a peace deal to resolve a long-running industrial dispute with the NSW Teachers Federation.
The Government has also backed down on a staff transfer policy it had wanted to phase out from next year.
The teacher union yesterday accepted a salary offer brokered by the NSW Industrial Commission, which provides a cumulative 12.48 per cent increase over three years for TAFE and school teachers.
In accepting the increase, which was 2.5 per cent below what they had sought, teachers traded off some conditions.
There has been a reduction in their sick-leave entitlements from 33 days to 15 days a year, and they can no longer use accumulated leave to top up workers compensation payments.
The Director-General of Education, Michael Coutts-Trotter, yesterday said it was "a decent pay rise for teachers and one that's affordable for taxpayers".
The Premier, Nathan Rees, had ordered government departments to negotiate trade-offs to pay for any wage increases for public servants exceeding 2.5 per cent a year.
The Government announced last year that it would phase out lower-priority "service transfers" for teachers from next year, providing school principals with more opportunities to hire teachers of their choice. Such transfers allow teachers to earn points towards gaining a position in more sought-after locations.
Under the new three-year staffing agreement, finalised yesterday, the Government will retain preliminary arrangements it introduced last April, which allow principals to alternate between advertising teacher vacancies and accepting a service transfer.
The president of the NSW Teachers Federation, Bob Lipscombe, said the staffing and salary agreements were a good outcome "especially in the current economic climate".
Anna Patty Education Editor, smh
January 22, 2009
THE State Government has shelved plans to give school principals greater powers to recruit staff of their choice, in a peace deal to resolve a long-running industrial dispute with the NSW Teachers Federation.
The Government has also backed down on a staff transfer policy it had wanted to phase out from next year.
The teacher union yesterday accepted a salary offer brokered by the NSW Industrial Commission, which provides a cumulative 12.48 per cent increase over three years for TAFE and school teachers.
In accepting the increase, which was 2.5 per cent below what they had sought, teachers traded off some conditions.
There has been a reduction in their sick-leave entitlements from 33 days to 15 days a year, and they can no longer use accumulated leave to top up workers compensation payments.
The Director-General of Education, Michael Coutts-Trotter, yesterday said it was "a decent pay rise for teachers and one that's affordable for taxpayers".
The Premier, Nathan Rees, had ordered government departments to negotiate trade-offs to pay for any wage increases for public servants exceeding 2.5 per cent a year.
The Government announced last year that it would phase out lower-priority "service transfers" for teachers from next year, providing school principals with more opportunities to hire teachers of their choice. Such transfers allow teachers to earn points towards gaining a position in more sought-after locations.
Under the new three-year staffing agreement, finalised yesterday, the Government will retain preliminary arrangements it introduced last April, which allow principals to alternate between advertising teacher vacancies and accepting a service transfer.
The president of the NSW Teachers Federation, Bob Lipscombe, said the staffing and salary agreements were a good outcome "especially in the current economic climate".
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
OBAMA'S HEALTH CARE REFORM
Why health will be a headache for Obama
Dr Lesley Russell, of the Menzies Centre for Health Policy, writes in Crikey 20.01.09:
One of the many major challenges confronting President Barack Obama is reform of the US health care system.
Among industrialised nations, the US spends well over twice the per capita average on health care and soaring health costs are expected to reach 20 percent of Gross Domestic Product by 2015. High spending, however, has not translated into better health: Americans do not live as long as citizens of a number of other comparable countries, including Australia, and disparities are pervasive, with widespread differences in access to care based on insurance status, income, race, and ethnicity.
Most people currently get their health insurance through their employers, but government programs for the elderly, disabled, children, veterans and the poor account for over 45 percent of health care expenditures. The US government is the largest insurer in the nation -- an ironic fact given the substantial public opposition to national health insurance.
Over a third of the population is uninsured, unstably insured, or underinsured, and at any time some 16 percent of the population, or 47 million people, are without health insurance. Health insurance costs are rising faster than wages or inflation, and "medical causes" are cited by about half of those filing for bankruptcy.
As the economic crisis bites deeply, and more people lose their jobs and their health cover, health care issues will become even more crucial for American families. Health insurance expenses are the fastest growing cost component for employers who spend 11.3 percent of payroll on employees’ health care.
The three major motor car manufacturers, GM, Ford and Chrysler, have medical obligations of $US114 billion and in 2005 GM estimated that it spent more than $1,500 in employee medical expenses for each new car sold. If these companies go under, there will be major ramifications for health care with the health insurance for 2 million people tied to auto workers' jobs.
The divergent opinions of the US public on health care priorities and reforms, how these should be achieved and who should pay for them, offer ample ammunition for both reformers and their opponents. While presidential campaigns are ill-suited to the task of designing policy reforms, they represent critical periods for setting an incoming administration’s agenda.
President-elect Obama has moved quickly to out his Administration in place, and has nominated former Senator Tom Daschle as both the Secretary of Health and Human Services and head of health policy in the White House. At the same time, the Democrats in the Congress are undertaking preliminary work to assist the passage of legislation, hopefully learning from the problems encountered by the Clinton proposal in 1993-94.
The passage of President Obama’s health reform proposals will be facilitated by the surge of public support for reforms, and by the strong Democrat majorities in both houses of the Congress.
With at least four committees in the Congress having a role in the passage of this legislation, strong leadership from the White House and the ability to develop broad agreement by those in power on the critical details of reform will be essential.
Economic issues will be the primary focus of the new president’s first 100 days in office, but we can expect that Obama will begin the process of outlining his health care reform plans soon after he is inaugurated. While he is not required to give a State of the Union speech, we should expect such an address before the end of January, and his first budget is due in the middle of February.
In order to see timely progress on health care reforms, it will be essential for Obama to not hold the attainable goals of universal coverage and quality improvement hostage to the more unattainable goal of health cost control.
My full paper, Health Care Reform in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Campaign, is available here.
Lesley Russell is Menzies Foundation Fellow at the Menzies Centre for Health Policy University of Sydney/Australian National University and Research Associate, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney
Dr Lesley Russell, of the Menzies Centre for Health Policy, writes in Crikey 20.01.09:
One of the many major challenges confronting President Barack Obama is reform of the US health care system.
Among industrialised nations, the US spends well over twice the per capita average on health care and soaring health costs are expected to reach 20 percent of Gross Domestic Product by 2015. High spending, however, has not translated into better health: Americans do not live as long as citizens of a number of other comparable countries, including Australia, and disparities are pervasive, with widespread differences in access to care based on insurance status, income, race, and ethnicity.
Most people currently get their health insurance through their employers, but government programs for the elderly, disabled, children, veterans and the poor account for over 45 percent of health care expenditures. The US government is the largest insurer in the nation -- an ironic fact given the substantial public opposition to national health insurance.
Over a third of the population is uninsured, unstably insured, or underinsured, and at any time some 16 percent of the population, or 47 million people, are without health insurance. Health insurance costs are rising faster than wages or inflation, and "medical causes" are cited by about half of those filing for bankruptcy.
As the economic crisis bites deeply, and more people lose their jobs and their health cover, health care issues will become even more crucial for American families. Health insurance expenses are the fastest growing cost component for employers who spend 11.3 percent of payroll on employees’ health care.
The three major motor car manufacturers, GM, Ford and Chrysler, have medical obligations of $US114 billion and in 2005 GM estimated that it spent more than $1,500 in employee medical expenses for each new car sold. If these companies go under, there will be major ramifications for health care with the health insurance for 2 million people tied to auto workers' jobs.
The divergent opinions of the US public on health care priorities and reforms, how these should be achieved and who should pay for them, offer ample ammunition for both reformers and their opponents. While presidential campaigns are ill-suited to the task of designing policy reforms, they represent critical periods for setting an incoming administration’s agenda.
President-elect Obama has moved quickly to out his Administration in place, and has nominated former Senator Tom Daschle as both the Secretary of Health and Human Services and head of health policy in the White House. At the same time, the Democrats in the Congress are undertaking preliminary work to assist the passage of legislation, hopefully learning from the problems encountered by the Clinton proposal in 1993-94.
The passage of President Obama’s health reform proposals will be facilitated by the surge of public support for reforms, and by the strong Democrat majorities in both houses of the Congress.
With at least four committees in the Congress having a role in the passage of this legislation, strong leadership from the White House and the ability to develop broad agreement by those in power on the critical details of reform will be essential.
Economic issues will be the primary focus of the new president’s first 100 days in office, but we can expect that Obama will begin the process of outlining his health care reform plans soon after he is inaugurated. While he is not required to give a State of the Union speech, we should expect such an address before the end of January, and his first budget is due in the middle of February.
In order to see timely progress on health care reforms, it will be essential for Obama to not hold the attainable goals of universal coverage and quality improvement hostage to the more unattainable goal of health cost control.
My full paper, Health Care Reform in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Campaign, is available here.
Lesley Russell is Menzies Foundation Fellow at the Menzies Centre for Health Policy University of Sydney/Australian National University and Research Associate, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney
LABOR BREAKS DETENTION PROMISE
Labor breaks detention promise
http://www.theage.com.au/national/labor-breaks-detention-promise-20090119-7ku5.html
Jewel Topsfield, The Age.
January 20, 2009
CONTROVERSIAL prison operator G4S will have its contract to run Australia's immigration detention centres extended until at least July 31 despite Labor's pre-election promise that the public sector would manage the centres.
And detention centres will remain in private hands for several years after the Government confirmed it would proceed with the retendering process started by the Howard government.
In 2006 the former government announced it would not extend G4S's $300 million contract when it expired at the end of 2007, and all detention services would be retendered.Labor criticised the decision and said the contract with G4S (formerly GSL) should be terminated and the centres returned to government control so there was a clear line of responsibility back to the minister.
"This is the private company that has people coming in the doors with no mental health problems and going out as broken human beings," then Labor immigration spokesman Tony Burke said.
"There is one answer and one answer alone, and that is there have been enough breaches of this contract for the government to take action to terminate the privatisation of our detention centres. It was a bad idea from the start. It should not have taken place. It should not be continued."
The ALP's 2007 platform also stated that the public sector would manage the detention centres.
But The Age has learnt that G4S's contract has been extended until July 31, with the contract allowing for further extensions if necessary.
Immigration Minister Chris Evans said the retendering was well advanced when the Rudd Government came into office and the lack of alternative public-service providers would have required the current contract to be extended for at least two years anyway.
"After weighing up all the issues and costs, and giving detailed and serious consideration to the options available, the Government has determined the most prudent way forward is to finalise the current tender process," he said. The successful tenderer will be announced within six months.
Senator Evans said policy on managing detention centres would be reviewed at the end of the new contract."We will impose higher standards on the detention services contractors and the department will be monitoring the contract more closely than before," he said. "It is a question of the values that apply rather than who applies them."
When G4S began running detention centres in 2003, critics claimed it introduced a punitive regime, including solitary confinement.The company was fined $500,000 in 2005 after staff refused detainees food, water and access to a toilet on a seven-hour bus trip between the Maribyrnong and Baxter detention centres.
But in his annual report on detention centres, Human Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes said staff attitudes, services and activities in the centres had generally improved in the past few years.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/labor-breaks-detention-promise-20090119-7ku5.html
Jewel Topsfield, The Age.
January 20, 2009
CONTROVERSIAL prison operator G4S will have its contract to run Australia's immigration detention centres extended until at least July 31 despite Labor's pre-election promise that the public sector would manage the centres.
And detention centres will remain in private hands for several years after the Government confirmed it would proceed with the retendering process started by the Howard government.
In 2006 the former government announced it would not extend G4S's $300 million contract when it expired at the end of 2007, and all detention services would be retendered.Labor criticised the decision and said the contract with G4S (formerly GSL) should be terminated and the centres returned to government control so there was a clear line of responsibility back to the minister.
"This is the private company that has people coming in the doors with no mental health problems and going out as broken human beings," then Labor immigration spokesman Tony Burke said.
"There is one answer and one answer alone, and that is there have been enough breaches of this contract for the government to take action to terminate the privatisation of our detention centres. It was a bad idea from the start. It should not have taken place. It should not be continued."
The ALP's 2007 platform also stated that the public sector would manage the detention centres.
But The Age has learnt that G4S's contract has been extended until July 31, with the contract allowing for further extensions if necessary.
Immigration Minister Chris Evans said the retendering was well advanced when the Rudd Government came into office and the lack of alternative public-service providers would have required the current contract to be extended for at least two years anyway.
"After weighing up all the issues and costs, and giving detailed and serious consideration to the options available, the Government has determined the most prudent way forward is to finalise the current tender process," he said. The successful tenderer will be announced within six months.
Senator Evans said policy on managing detention centres would be reviewed at the end of the new contract."We will impose higher standards on the detention services contractors and the department will be monitoring the contract more closely than before," he said. "It is a question of the values that apply rather than who applies them."
When G4S began running detention centres in 2003, critics claimed it introduced a punitive regime, including solitary confinement.The company was fined $500,000 in 2005 after staff refused detainees food, water and access to a toilet on a seven-hour bus trip between the Maribyrnong and Baxter detention centres.
But in his annual report on detention centres, Human Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes said staff attitudes, services and activities in the centres had generally improved in the past few years.
Monday, January 19, 2009
AUSTRALIA IMPORTS FOOD FROM ZIMBABWE
Food, flowers imported from Zimbabwe
Author: Cynthia Banham, Diplomatic Editor, smh
Date: 17/01/2009
AUSTRALIA is importing fresh produce from Zimbabwe, a nation run by a man whose policies have caused almost half the population to go malnourished, leading the United Nations to warn the country is on the brink of a food emergency.
The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry has confirmed Australia imports snow peas from Zimbabwe "on a regular basis", as well as cut flowers. "Australia has imported cut flowers (mainly roses) and snow peas from Zimbabwe for at least 20 years," a department spokesman said.
The department admitted it does not know whether the items are produced by farms controlled by the President Robert Mugabe. "The question is irrelevant to [the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service's] responsibilities and authority," a spokeswoman said.
Many of the farms still operating in Zimbabwe since President Mugabe began his campaign to seize land from white farmers nine years ago are controlled by the dictator and members of his regime. But the Agriculture Department said it had no mechanisms to ensure imported goods were not profiting the regime.
"The question is irrelevant to AQIS's responsibilities and authority," the spokeswoman repeated. "AQIS is a border agency charged with managing pest and disease risks to Australia."
A spokeswoman for the Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, said "imports from Zimbabwe are not covered" by sanctions that have been in place against the Mugabe regime since 2002.
"To date, Australia and other like-minded countries have taken the view that general trade sanctions against Zimbabwe, as opposed to financial sanctions targeting the regime and its close supporters, would do more harm than good," she said.
The spokeswoman also said "imports of cut flowers and fresh vegetables from Zimbabwe have been very small in recent years".
Cut flower imports totalled $33,000 in 2007-08 while fresh vegetable imports totalled $20,000-25,000 at most over the past two financial years.
Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe is so advanced that the country will introduce a $100 trillion note, state media said yesterday. The new bill would have been worth about $450 at Thursday's exchange rate.
Author: Cynthia Banham, Diplomatic Editor, smh
Date: 17/01/2009
AUSTRALIA is importing fresh produce from Zimbabwe, a nation run by a man whose policies have caused almost half the population to go malnourished, leading the United Nations to warn the country is on the brink of a food emergency.
The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry has confirmed Australia imports snow peas from Zimbabwe "on a regular basis", as well as cut flowers. "Australia has imported cut flowers (mainly roses) and snow peas from Zimbabwe for at least 20 years," a department spokesman said.
The department admitted it does not know whether the items are produced by farms controlled by the President Robert Mugabe. "The question is irrelevant to [the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service's] responsibilities and authority," a spokeswoman said.
Many of the farms still operating in Zimbabwe since President Mugabe began his campaign to seize land from white farmers nine years ago are controlled by the dictator and members of his regime. But the Agriculture Department said it had no mechanisms to ensure imported goods were not profiting the regime.
"The question is irrelevant to AQIS's responsibilities and authority," the spokeswoman repeated. "AQIS is a border agency charged with managing pest and disease risks to Australia."
A spokeswoman for the Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, said "imports from Zimbabwe are not covered" by sanctions that have been in place against the Mugabe regime since 2002.
"To date, Australia and other like-minded countries have taken the view that general trade sanctions against Zimbabwe, as opposed to financial sanctions targeting the regime and its close supporters, would do more harm than good," she said.
The spokeswoman also said "imports of cut flowers and fresh vegetables from Zimbabwe have been very small in recent years".
Cut flower imports totalled $33,000 in 2007-08 while fresh vegetable imports totalled $20,000-25,000 at most over the past two financial years.
Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe is so advanced that the country will introduce a $100 trillion note, state media said yesterday. The new bill would have been worth about $450 at Thursday's exchange rate.
THE SECRECY OF MISCARRIAGE
Red News Readers,
Monica Dix is on to something. Miscarriage is often not spoken about even within families. It is kept private to the couple, sometimes just the woman herself. Some women see miscarriage as a sign of their failure as a woman and seem to fear being devalued within their family, or their community. But miscarriage is one of those things that happens, maybe for biological reasons. There is no need for shame, or fear, or secrecy. A mature society should be able offer women all the support that is offered at the time of any other death in a family, and that includes the staff of emergency departments and miscarrying women.
Jenny Haines
Time to end secrecy and face the anguish of miscarriage
Monica Dux, smh
January 19, 2009
Awoman miscarried in an emergency room toilet at Maitland Hospital earlier this month, reprising a similar episode at Royal North Shore Hospital in September 2007. Many newspaper reports included gruesome, visceral detail, such as the fact the woman found herself having to dispose of the foetus in the toilet.
The media outrage was predictable but there's another sense in which the reports were quite unusual. Reportage of these women's experiences represents a rare occasion when the brutal reality of miscarriage is publicly discussed.
Expectant women are often advised that they should not publicly reveal their pregnancy until they are past the 12-week mark. One reason given is the high chance of miscarriage in the first trimester. The assumption is that if you were to have a miscarriage, the last thing you'd want is for anyone to know about it. It is a misfortune which we are expected to keep to ourselves.
I recently suffered a miscarriage. I was deeply shaken by the physical process and by the intensity of my grief. But because I followed the accepted wisdom, very few people were aware I'd even been pregnant. And because the pregnancy was a secret, its loss was doubly hard to broach.
Yet, as word of my "secret" slowly spread through my social circle, I was stunned by the number of miscarriage stories women suddenly had to share, as if I'd been admitted to a secret society.
Some talked of long, excruciating waits before they could confirm the "failed pregnancy" diagnosis, others of their anguish as they passed a recognisable foetus. One acquaintance confided the disappointment of five lost pregnancies had been the biggest factor in the breakdown of her marriage. All the women spoke of how difficult it was to publicly express their grief, and of the silence that permeates the experience.
The Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health recently reported that, for every three women who have given birth by their early 30s, one has had a miscarriage. Yet despite its frequency, miscarriage is an almost invisible phenomenon. It seems our society is not geared towards grieving, or even acknowledging, the loss of an early pregnancy. As the American author Peggy Orenstein has observed, the English language doesn't even have a word for a lost foetus.
Women have always been expected to keep their biology discretely hidden in the messy "women's business" box. Menstruation is the archetypal example of this social discomfort, epitomised by the clinical blue fluid used in those often lampooned tampon advertisements.
Lost pregnancies are treated very much like menstruation - shameful, discomforting and best spoken of in euphemism. Yet when it comes to miscarriage, our collective desire for silence may have actually increased over the past two or three decades.
We live in an era in which women are supposed to have unprecedented control over their lives, including their bodies and their reproductive processes. As a result we are shadowed by the figure of the ideal women, who defies her biology by never ageing, who makes career and child-rearing look effortless.
This pressure to perform is particularly acute when it comes to pregnancy. The rise of IVF has encouraged the perception that women's bodies are things to be manipulated and controlled; if we fail to get pregnant, it's probably because we haven't tried hard enough. On this logic, a miscarriage is, perhaps, the ultimate failure of womanhood.
It seems that as we've (thankfully) gained more control over our fertility, we've become increasingly disconnected from the messy and sometimes emotionally devastating realities of pregnancy and its complications.
When the experience of miscarrying is so little spoken of, and even then only in hushed tones, it can be hard to define what you are grieving. Yet this is what most of the women I spoke to longed for above all: to make their grief concrete, to frame it in a way that legitimised it.
Without such a frame of social acknowledgment, women who miscarry are left to deal with their pain not only in silence but also in the confusion that comes from a loss that is unquantified.
The Royal North Shore incident triggered a ministerial directive that miscarrying women be taken directly to the maternity department and given appropriate care. This is an institutional move toward according miscarriage the weight it deserves. Our deeper cultural discomfort, and the social expectation of silence that still surrounds miscarriage, will be far harder to reform.
Monica Dux is the co-author of The Great Feminist Denial.
Monica Dix is on to something. Miscarriage is often not spoken about even within families. It is kept private to the couple, sometimes just the woman herself. Some women see miscarriage as a sign of their failure as a woman and seem to fear being devalued within their family, or their community. But miscarriage is one of those things that happens, maybe for biological reasons. There is no need for shame, or fear, or secrecy. A mature society should be able offer women all the support that is offered at the time of any other death in a family, and that includes the staff of emergency departments and miscarrying women.
Jenny Haines
Time to end secrecy and face the anguish of miscarriage
Monica Dux, smh
January 19, 2009
Awoman miscarried in an emergency room toilet at Maitland Hospital earlier this month, reprising a similar episode at Royal North Shore Hospital in September 2007. Many newspaper reports included gruesome, visceral detail, such as the fact the woman found herself having to dispose of the foetus in the toilet.
The media outrage was predictable but there's another sense in which the reports were quite unusual. Reportage of these women's experiences represents a rare occasion when the brutal reality of miscarriage is publicly discussed.
Expectant women are often advised that they should not publicly reveal their pregnancy until they are past the 12-week mark. One reason given is the high chance of miscarriage in the first trimester. The assumption is that if you were to have a miscarriage, the last thing you'd want is for anyone to know about it. It is a misfortune which we are expected to keep to ourselves.
I recently suffered a miscarriage. I was deeply shaken by the physical process and by the intensity of my grief. But because I followed the accepted wisdom, very few people were aware I'd even been pregnant. And because the pregnancy was a secret, its loss was doubly hard to broach.
Yet, as word of my "secret" slowly spread through my social circle, I was stunned by the number of miscarriage stories women suddenly had to share, as if I'd been admitted to a secret society.
Some talked of long, excruciating waits before they could confirm the "failed pregnancy" diagnosis, others of their anguish as they passed a recognisable foetus. One acquaintance confided the disappointment of five lost pregnancies had been the biggest factor in the breakdown of her marriage. All the women spoke of how difficult it was to publicly express their grief, and of the silence that permeates the experience.
The Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health recently reported that, for every three women who have given birth by their early 30s, one has had a miscarriage. Yet despite its frequency, miscarriage is an almost invisible phenomenon. It seems our society is not geared towards grieving, or even acknowledging, the loss of an early pregnancy. As the American author Peggy Orenstein has observed, the English language doesn't even have a word for a lost foetus.
Women have always been expected to keep their biology discretely hidden in the messy "women's business" box. Menstruation is the archetypal example of this social discomfort, epitomised by the clinical blue fluid used in those often lampooned tampon advertisements.
Lost pregnancies are treated very much like menstruation - shameful, discomforting and best spoken of in euphemism. Yet when it comes to miscarriage, our collective desire for silence may have actually increased over the past two or three decades.
We live in an era in which women are supposed to have unprecedented control over their lives, including their bodies and their reproductive processes. As a result we are shadowed by the figure of the ideal women, who defies her biology by never ageing, who makes career and child-rearing look effortless.
This pressure to perform is particularly acute when it comes to pregnancy. The rise of IVF has encouraged the perception that women's bodies are things to be manipulated and controlled; if we fail to get pregnant, it's probably because we haven't tried hard enough. On this logic, a miscarriage is, perhaps, the ultimate failure of womanhood.
It seems that as we've (thankfully) gained more control over our fertility, we've become increasingly disconnected from the messy and sometimes emotionally devastating realities of pregnancy and its complications.
When the experience of miscarrying is so little spoken of, and even then only in hushed tones, it can be hard to define what you are grieving. Yet this is what most of the women I spoke to longed for above all: to make their grief concrete, to frame it in a way that legitimised it.
Without such a frame of social acknowledgment, women who miscarry are left to deal with their pain not only in silence but also in the confusion that comes from a loss that is unquantified.
The Royal North Shore incident triggered a ministerial directive that miscarrying women be taken directly to the maternity department and given appropriate care. This is an institutional move toward according miscarriage the weight it deserves. Our deeper cultural discomfort, and the social expectation of silence that still surrounds miscarriage, will be far harder to reform.
Monica Dux is the co-author of The Great Feminist Denial.
EAST TIMORESE AT SEVERE RISK IN CHILDBIRTH
East Timorese at severe risk in childbirth
January 19, 2009, smh
WOMEN in East Timor are 380 times more likely to die in childbirth than women in Australia, says a report that highlights the huge discrepancies in maternal health care across the region.
The UNICEF 2009 State of the World's Children report shows one in 33 Laotian women, one in 35 East Timorese, one in 55 Papua New Guinean, one in 97 Indonesian and one in 100 Solomon Islands women will die in childbirth or from pregnancy-related complications, compared with one in 13,300 in Australia and one in 5900 in New Zealand.
"It's extraordinary in a country an hour to the north of Australia in this day and age, to have women bleeding to death in childbirth at such a high rate," said UNICEF Australia's chief executive, Carolyn Hardy.
Some basic interventions could fix the problem, Ms Hardy said, listing among them provision of skilled attendants for delivery, educating women and girls to know more about their health, and improving basic sanitation.
Connie Levett
January 19, 2009, smh
WOMEN in East Timor are 380 times more likely to die in childbirth than women in Australia, says a report that highlights the huge discrepancies in maternal health care across the region.
The UNICEF 2009 State of the World's Children report shows one in 33 Laotian women, one in 35 East Timorese, one in 55 Papua New Guinean, one in 97 Indonesian and one in 100 Solomon Islands women will die in childbirth or from pregnancy-related complications, compared with one in 13,300 in Australia and one in 5900 in New Zealand.
"It's extraordinary in a country an hour to the north of Australia in this day and age, to have women bleeding to death in childbirth at such a high rate," said UNICEF Australia's chief executive, Carolyn Hardy.
Some basic interventions could fix the problem, Ms Hardy said, listing among them provision of skilled attendants for delivery, educating women and girls to know more about their health, and improving basic sanitation.
Connie Levett
Sunday, January 18, 2009
VILLAWOOD TO BE KNOCKED DOWN
Yuko Narushima, smh
THE ageing and cramped Villawood detention centre will be knocked down, with a new facility to be built on Commonwealth land either close to the existing site or the airport.
The latter option is preferable because of the large number of people who are refused entry to Australia and are detained for one or two days before flying out of the country.
Funding for the new centre is expected in next year's Budget following a $1.1 million redevelopment study that is close to being finalised and believed to say the existing centre is no longer viable.
Villawood's maximum security zone, known as Stage 1, was attacked again last week in a report by the Human Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes.
Mr Innes said Villawood remained the most "prison-like" of all the detention centres on the mainland and should be demolished as a matter of urgency.
"It is shameful, not only that it remains standing but that people are still being detained there in its utterly miserable conditions.
"The buildings are ageing and dilapidated. The dormitory bedrooms are cramped and almost completely lacking in privacy. There is no grassy outdoor space for sports. The dining room and the visitors' facilities are both bleak and inhospitable."
Minister for Immigration Chris Evans last year described Villawood as "unacceptable" but is yet to act on conditions in the centre.
The Labor MP for the federal seat of Blaxland, Jason Clare, said a redevelopment of Villawood was essential and Stage 1 should be bulldozed. Possible new sites include Commonwealth land abutting the existing site, near the Villawood train station, or close to the airport to assist with the large load of turnaround cases.
Villawood was recently given $7 million to improve visitor facilities and detainee accommodation but refurbishment beyond that at the current site is unlikely.
Villawood began as a migrant hostel in the 1950s. At that time, it housed assisted migrants and people displaced by World War II, mostly from Europe and Britain. It is remembered for its corrugated iron Nissen huts, one of which remains on site today.
The national co-ordinator for advocacy group A Just Australia, Kate Gauthier, said Villawood should return to that community style of accommodation.
OBAMA RE-ENACTS LINCOLN'S TRAIN JOURNEY
January 18, 2009 - 11:45AM, smh
For the tens of thousands gathering to see President-elect Barack Obama at a pre-inaugural rally in Baltimore, the mood was buoyant despite a long wait in bitter cold.
"What cold?" said Nicole Harris, 32, smiling under her winter hat.
The African-American flight attendant showed up at 7.30am to make sure she got a front-row spot for Mr Obama's late afternoon rally in Baltimore, where his train will stop on its symbolic journey to Washington.
"From the first time I heard him speak I was so deeply moved. I just thought he was the person to help us move in the right direction," Ms Harris said.
"I've been electrified since then."
The queue to enter the event began forming before dawn. By early afternoon the line snaked up to 16 city blocks, with a carnival atmosphere keeping the crowd warm as they filed through tight security enforced by police and army reservists.
With temperatures well below freezing, chants for Mr Obama broke out among the diverse crowd filling up the War Memorial Plaza, decorated with huge American flags and red, white and blue banners. The chants were often accompanied by spontaneous calisthenics to fend off the cold.
"I'm starving, cold and my feet are numb," said Dyone Watson, 20. "But it's definitely worth it."
Even along the train route from Philadelphia to the capital, thousands of exuberant supporters gathered to cheer and wave the vintage railcar on its historic journey, carrying Mr Obama three days before he is sworn in as the first African-American president of the United States.
"It's just beautiful. It just makes me want to do more with my life," said Will Moore, 22, as he stood with his two-year-old niece.
"It's just a joy for everybody. It's about time that we needed change ... He [Mr Obama] is showing us we can do whatever we put our minds to. Just keep on trying, never give up."
"Everybody's very excited and seems to be enjoying themselves," said Walter Massey, 54, an elementary school teacher.
Mr Massey was first in line for the Baltimore rally, having showed up at 4.30am.
"I've got about 12 layers on," he joked, stamping his feet to keep warm.
Like others waiting in the cold, he said he had come to witness history.
"This is truly a historical moment. This was an opportunity to see him, be involved in it. It's probably the most historic thing that will happen in my lifetime," he said.
Mr Obama's victory in November had restored his faith in his compatriots, he said.
"I did not think America was mature enough to elect an African-American as president," said Mr Massey, who is white.
Authorities blocked off a whole section of the city centre for the rally, with buses parked across intersections amid a heavy police presence.
After the event in Baltimore, 57 kilometres from Washington, Mr Obama's train was due to make its way to the US capital.
While the train tour was meant to echo former president and Obama hero Abraham Lincoln's rail ride from the Civil War era, Mr Obama's stop in Baltimore at a rally in daylight marks a break with Lincoln's experience in 1861.
The threat of assassination forced Lincoln to slip through Baltimore at nightfall on his way to Washington, and his train made no stop in a city that at the time had strong Southern sympathies.
For many residents of what is now a predominantly African-American city, a chance to hear Mr Obama speak only days before his swearing-in was the event of a lifetime.
"I came to see history being made. I wanted to see our first African-American president, right here in Baltimore city," said Mrs Harris, 32, sitting on a portable chair with a blanket wrapped around her legs.
"It's just absolutely wonderful, really it is," she said.
With the economy in deep trouble, she said Mr Obama had his work cut out for him.
"It's going to be extremely hard for him. But he's not a man who's going to leave a task undone. I do believe change is going to come," she said.
"We've got to be patient. We've been patient all these years so we can be patient a little bit longer."
AFP
Friday, January 16, 2009
REFUGEES DROWN AT SEA
4 Afghan immigrants die after detention breakout
The Associated Press
Published: January 15, 2009
JAKARTA, Indonesia:
Four illegal Afghan immigrants drowned at sea and five others were missing after a brazen escape from a detention facility in eastern Indonesia, officials said Thursday.
The men were among 18 Afghan and Myanmarese nations who overpowered guards at the facility in Kupang on Wednesday, seriously injuring three. The escaped men then boarded a motorboat that capsized in a storm hours later, police spokesman Okto Riwu said.
Nine survivors were returned to custody and a search team scoured the choppy waters off Kupang for the missing, he said.
They were apparently trying to arrange a boat trip to Australia when they were detained in Kupang in December without proper identification. Indonesia has long been a transit point for people from poor, often conflict-ridden countries hoping to enter wealthy Australia.
In recent years, most migrants have come from Iraq or Afghanistan. They typically fly to Indonesia before continuing to Australia aboard cramped, barely seaworthy ships.
Indonesia's vast seas are treacherous, particularly during high tides in the tropical rainy season.
On Sunday, a ferry capsized off the west coast of Sulawesi and 230 people are missing and presumed dead.
The Associated Press
Published: January 15, 2009
JAKARTA, Indonesia:
Four illegal Afghan immigrants drowned at sea and five others were missing after a brazen escape from a detention facility in eastern Indonesia, officials said Thursday.
The men were among 18 Afghan and Myanmarese nations who overpowered guards at the facility in Kupang on Wednesday, seriously injuring three. The escaped men then boarded a motorboat that capsized in a storm hours later, police spokesman Okto Riwu said.
Nine survivors were returned to custody and a search team scoured the choppy waters off Kupang for the missing, he said.
They were apparently trying to arrange a boat trip to Australia when they were detained in Kupang in December without proper identification. Indonesia has long been a transit point for people from poor, often conflict-ridden countries hoping to enter wealthy Australia.
In recent years, most migrants have come from Iraq or Afghanistan. They typically fly to Indonesia before continuing to Australia aboard cramped, barely seaworthy ships.
Indonesia's vast seas are treacherous, particularly during high tides in the tropical rainy season.
On Sunday, a ferry capsized off the west coast of Sulawesi and 230 people are missing and presumed dead.
MISCARRIAGE NIGHTMARES
Woman's toilet miscarriage nightmares, Broken Hill Hospital
January 16, 2009 01:56pm, Daily Telegraph
A NSW woman is "having nightmares" after losing her baby in a hospital toilet when she was 23 weeks pregnant with twins, her husband says.
She is the latest in a string of women to reveal their harrowing stories of poor treatment while miscarrying at NSW public hospitals.
Michelle Corradini went to Broken Hill Base Hospital in the state's far west on December 17 when she discovered she was bleeding, said Dr Claire Blizard, chief executive of the Greater Western Area Health Service.
Once at the hospital's emergency department, she was categorised as a "priority three" patient in a range of between one and five, with one being unconscious.
She was seen in 20 minutes by a doctor, within the appropriate timeframe for her category, Dr Blizard said.
"Once it was confirmed that she was in fact miscarrying, the obstetrician was contacted and the obstetrician said, 'Get her round to the maternity unit'," she said.
"While the staff were waiting to transfer her to the maternity unit she went to the toilet and she delivered the first baby.
"She was transferred round to the maternity unit where she delivered the second baby on a bed, which was tragically stillborn as well," she added.
Ms Corradini's husband Andrew Corradini said his wife was left "absolutely devastated" by the incident.
"She's having nightmares," he told ABC Radio on Friday. "Basically, it's shattered me."
News of the tragedy comes just a week after at least three women complained about the care they received while miscarrying at Maitland Hospital in the Hunter Valley.
Lisa Watt, 39, said she was haunted "every day" after having to flush her baby down the emergency department toilet at Maitland on May 19 last year, because there was no bed available.
New protocols say women suspected of miscarrying should be transferred immediately to a maternity ward.
They were developed after a government inquiry into the case of Jana Horska, who miscarried in a toilet at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital in September 2007.
Mr Corradini said he felt let down by the health service.
"You go up to hospital thinking you're going to get the best of care and this happens," he said.
"The health minister said after the last time it happened, that they were going to bring protocols in and that it should never happen."
Dr Blizard said there was "very little" a hospital could do to stop a woman from miscarrying.
She said the health service had launched an investigation into the incident, according to normal procedures, with the results expected "within the next week or so".
The investigation, delayed due to key people being away over Christmas, would focus on how the patient was managed clinically as well as emotionally, she said.
She added that the hospital had "been maintaining contact with the family, offering them support".
January 16, 2009 01:56pm, Daily Telegraph
A NSW woman is "having nightmares" after losing her baby in a hospital toilet when she was 23 weeks pregnant with twins, her husband says.
She is the latest in a string of women to reveal their harrowing stories of poor treatment while miscarrying at NSW public hospitals.
Michelle Corradini went to Broken Hill Base Hospital in the state's far west on December 17 when she discovered she was bleeding, said Dr Claire Blizard, chief executive of the Greater Western Area Health Service.
Once at the hospital's emergency department, she was categorised as a "priority three" patient in a range of between one and five, with one being unconscious.
She was seen in 20 minutes by a doctor, within the appropriate timeframe for her category, Dr Blizard said.
"Once it was confirmed that she was in fact miscarrying, the obstetrician was contacted and the obstetrician said, 'Get her round to the maternity unit'," she said.
"While the staff were waiting to transfer her to the maternity unit she went to the toilet and she delivered the first baby.
"She was transferred round to the maternity unit where she delivered the second baby on a bed, which was tragically stillborn as well," she added.
Ms Corradini's husband Andrew Corradini said his wife was left "absolutely devastated" by the incident.
"She's having nightmares," he told ABC Radio on Friday. "Basically, it's shattered me."
News of the tragedy comes just a week after at least three women complained about the care they received while miscarrying at Maitland Hospital in the Hunter Valley.
Lisa Watt, 39, said she was haunted "every day" after having to flush her baby down the emergency department toilet at Maitland on May 19 last year, because there was no bed available.
New protocols say women suspected of miscarrying should be transferred immediately to a maternity ward.
They were developed after a government inquiry into the case of Jana Horska, who miscarried in a toilet at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital in September 2007.
Mr Corradini said he felt let down by the health service.
"You go up to hospital thinking you're going to get the best of care and this happens," he said.
"The health minister said after the last time it happened, that they were going to bring protocols in and that it should never happen."
Dr Blizard said there was "very little" a hospital could do to stop a woman from miscarrying.
She said the health service had launched an investigation into the incident, according to normal procedures, with the results expected "within the next week or so".
The investigation, delayed due to key people being away over Christmas, would focus on how the patient was managed clinically as well as emotionally, she said.
She added that the hospital had "been maintaining contact with the family, offering them support".
Thursday, January 15, 2009
NURSES TO STRIKE OVER JOB CUTS
Nurses to strike as at least 500 face the axe
By Kate Sikora, Daily Telegraph
January 15, 2009 12:00am
UP TO 500 nurses could lose their jobs as the State Government desperately tries to claw back $64 million in savings - despite spending almost the same amount on a recruitment drive.
Nurses have begun striking at hospitals around the state over the job cuts which will affect country hospitals such as Dubbo and Orange which are already struggling to provide services.
But health officials deny the cuts will affect bedside nurses.
The Daily Telegraph understands at least seven of the eight area health services plan on cutting nursing positions, but only one will publicly state how many jobs are to go.
How will this affect your community? Tell us below
Yesterday cash-strapped Greater Western Area Health Service confirmed 129 nursing positions will be slashed.
North Coast hospitals will also lose about the same number as management looks to shed 460 full-time equivalent positions, including cleaners and wardsmen, across the area.
NSW Nurses Association Judith Kaiedja said other hospitals would also axe nursing positions to rid themselves of debt.
"They claim it is not frontline staff but these positions are causal or agency staff," she said.
"They are nurses who are needed because someone is off sick, annual leave and maternity or we can't fill the positions.
"While I don't want to say it, the number could be 500 or even more. We know seven of the eight area health services have been told to cut their budgets."
The union believes there are about 1100 nursing vacancies, a number which has stayed static for the past two years as the Government desperately attempts to recruit more nurses. It will throw $43.6 million at recruiting and retaining nurses this financial year, a 5.2 per cent increase.
An ageing population also means NSW continues to lose about 10 per cent, or 4200, of its nurses each year. The Federal Government promised $81 million to train and recruit an extra 9250 nurses for Australia's hospital system, but the plan has so far failed.
The scheme included greater funding for nursing places at universities as well as bonuses of $6000 to attract 7750 nurses who had been out of the health workforce for more than a year.
Opposition health spokeswoman Jillian Skinner said the Government needed to come clean on how many nurses would lose their jobs. "The question Health Minister John Della Bosca must answer is how many other area health services across NSW will be sacking frontline nurses
By Kate Sikora, Daily Telegraph
January 15, 2009 12:00am
UP TO 500 nurses could lose their jobs as the State Government desperately tries to claw back $64 million in savings - despite spending almost the same amount on a recruitment drive.
Nurses have begun striking at hospitals around the state over the job cuts which will affect country hospitals such as Dubbo and Orange which are already struggling to provide services.
But health officials deny the cuts will affect bedside nurses.
The Daily Telegraph understands at least seven of the eight area health services plan on cutting nursing positions, but only one will publicly state how many jobs are to go.
How will this affect your community? Tell us below
Yesterday cash-strapped Greater Western Area Health Service confirmed 129 nursing positions will be slashed.
North Coast hospitals will also lose about the same number as management looks to shed 460 full-time equivalent positions, including cleaners and wardsmen, across the area.
NSW Nurses Association Judith Kaiedja said other hospitals would also axe nursing positions to rid themselves of debt.
"They claim it is not frontline staff but these positions are causal or agency staff," she said.
"They are nurses who are needed because someone is off sick, annual leave and maternity or we can't fill the positions.
"While I don't want to say it, the number could be 500 or even more. We know seven of the eight area health services have been told to cut their budgets."
The union believes there are about 1100 nursing vacancies, a number which has stayed static for the past two years as the Government desperately attempts to recruit more nurses. It will throw $43.6 million at recruiting and retaining nurses this financial year, a 5.2 per cent increase.
An ageing population also means NSW continues to lose about 10 per cent, or 4200, of its nurses each year. The Federal Government promised $81 million to train and recruit an extra 9250 nurses for Australia's hospital system, but the plan has so far failed.
The scheme included greater funding for nursing places at universities as well as bonuses of $6000 to attract 7750 nurses who had been out of the health workforce for more than a year.
Opposition health spokeswoman Jillian Skinner said the Government needed to come clean on how many nurses would lose their jobs. "The question Health Minister John Della Bosca must answer is how many other area health services across NSW will be sacking frontline nurses
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
ACTU: GOVT BROKE PROMISE TO DITCH WORKCHOICES
Govt broke election promise to ditch Work Choices - ACTU
14 January 2009 Content provided to you by AAP.
By Kate Hannon, National Political EditorCANBERRA, Jan 13 AAP - Labor has broken its election promise to ditch the Howard government's Work Choices industrial laws, the ACTU says.
The peak union body says restrictions on matters allowed in enterprise bargaining under proposed new industrial laws mean Labor's election promise to allow "free bargaining" has not been fulfilled.
The ACTU, which has been largely supportive of Labor's plans, also attacked the award modernisation process which it said could reduce wages and conditions, undermining the safety net.
The criticisms are contained in a 100-page submission, released on Tuesday, to the Senate inquiry into the government's proposed Fair Work Bill designed to replace Work Choices at the end of the year.
In the submission, the ACTU suggests more than 150 amendments to fix "flaws" in the bill now before the Senate.
The ACTU also described as "absurd" a right to request flexible working conditions, which could include extended parental leave, because the request could be denied by employers on "reasonable business grounds".
"This is absurd, and leaves employees worse off than they were under Work Choices," the submission said.
On the bargaining process, it said the proposed rules undermined a workers' fundamental right to representation.
Releasing the submission, ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence said it was "crunch time" for Labor to deliver on its election promise and he also challenged the Opposition to support the bill in the Senate.
"Working Australians who voted for change at the last election will be very disappointed if these flaws are not corrected by the Senate," Mr Lawrence said.
But Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard rejected the ACTU's concerns saying the Fair Work bill delivered on the government's policy released before the last election.
"The Government understands that not every side of the debate has got everything they wanted," a spokeswoman for Ms Gillard said."We believe that means our new laws have got the balance right.
"The Australian Retailers' Association also attacked the proposed new laws in its submission, also released on Tuesday, saying small business is ill-equipped to cope with the new industrial system.It said the new laws risked creating an environment which pays lip service to employers' rights.
"This proposed bill discriminates heavily against small business - the engine room of Australia's economy," the association says.
"The one size fits all approach to industrial relations is old world thinking and fails to take into account the needs of the modern workplace.
"The inquiry will hold public hearings in all capital cities except Darwin starting from January 27 and is due to report to the Senate on February 27.
© 2008 AAP Disclaimer
14 January 2009 Content provided to you by AAP.
By Kate Hannon, National Political EditorCANBERRA, Jan 13 AAP - Labor has broken its election promise to ditch the Howard government's Work Choices industrial laws, the ACTU says.
The peak union body says restrictions on matters allowed in enterprise bargaining under proposed new industrial laws mean Labor's election promise to allow "free bargaining" has not been fulfilled.
The ACTU, which has been largely supportive of Labor's plans, also attacked the award modernisation process which it said could reduce wages and conditions, undermining the safety net.
The criticisms are contained in a 100-page submission, released on Tuesday, to the Senate inquiry into the government's proposed Fair Work Bill designed to replace Work Choices at the end of the year.
In the submission, the ACTU suggests more than 150 amendments to fix "flaws" in the bill now before the Senate.
The ACTU also described as "absurd" a right to request flexible working conditions, which could include extended parental leave, because the request could be denied by employers on "reasonable business grounds".
"This is absurd, and leaves employees worse off than they were under Work Choices," the submission said.
On the bargaining process, it said the proposed rules undermined a workers' fundamental right to representation.
Releasing the submission, ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence said it was "crunch time" for Labor to deliver on its election promise and he also challenged the Opposition to support the bill in the Senate.
"Working Australians who voted for change at the last election will be very disappointed if these flaws are not corrected by the Senate," Mr Lawrence said.
But Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard rejected the ACTU's concerns saying the Fair Work bill delivered on the government's policy released before the last election.
"The Government understands that not every side of the debate has got everything they wanted," a spokeswoman for Ms Gillard said."We believe that means our new laws have got the balance right.
"The Australian Retailers' Association also attacked the proposed new laws in its submission, also released on Tuesday, saying small business is ill-equipped to cope with the new industrial system.It said the new laws risked creating an environment which pays lip service to employers' rights.
"This proposed bill discriminates heavily against small business - the engine room of Australia's economy," the association says.
"The one size fits all approach to industrial relations is old world thinking and fails to take into account the needs of the modern workplace.
"The inquiry will hold public hearings in all capital cities except Darwin starting from January 27 and is due to report to the Senate on February 27.
© 2008 AAP Disclaimer
REFUGEES IN MISERY
13 January 2009
New report highlights ongoing problems in immigration detention
Releasing the 2008 report on conditions in immigration detention today, Human Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes called on the government to translate its ‘new directions’ for Australia’s immigration detention system into policy, practice and legislative change as soon as possible.
“While it is true we have seen improvements in the way Australia treats immigration detainees, our report shows we are still seeing children being held in detention facilities, people being detained for prolonged and indefinite periods and dilapidated detention centres being used for accommodation,” said Mr Innes, “and now we also have the disturbing reality that the massive prison-like Christmas Island facility is open for business.”
Commissioner Innes said the major recommendations in the report include that:
* minimum standards for conditions and treatment of persons in immigration detention should be legislated
* the Migration Act should be amended so that immigration detention is the exception rather than the norm and the decision to detain a person is subject to prompt review by a court
* detention of people on Christmas Island should be ceased
* the recommendations of the national inquiry into children in immigration detention should be implemented by the government.
Mr Innes said he was particularly concerned that, while children are no longer held in immigration detention centres, they are held in other closed detention facilities on the mainland and Christmas Island.
“The time is now for the government to amend Australia’s immigration laws to ensure they comply with the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” Commissioner Innes said. “Detention of children in any type of immigration detention facility should only be used as an absolute last resort.”
Commissioner Innes said he also had serious concerns that, despite the end of the so-called ‘Pacific solution’, asylum seekers are still being detained and processed on the very remote Christmas Island – 2600 km from the nearest Australian capital city.
“The island’s isolation makes it difficult for external groups from the mainland to monitor what is going on there, and the island community is so small that detainees find it very hard to access basic services.”
Citing the dilapidated infrastructure at some of the mainland detention centres as particularly worrying, Mr Innes said the stage 1 section at Villawood was the worst of all. “We have repeatedly called for the demolition of Villawood stage 1,” Commissioner Innes said. “It is shameful, not only that it remains standing, but that people are still being detained there in its utterly miserable conditions.”
The 2008 Immigration detention report covers inspections of the immigration detention facilities around Australia, including Christmas Island, between June and September 2008. In addition to those listed above, the report contains a comprehensive set of recommendations about Australia’s immigration detention system.
A summary factsheet about the report is available at www.humanrights.gov.au/human_rights/immigration/sum_factsheet.html
The full report can be downloaded from www.humanrights.gov.au/human_rights/immigration/idc2008.html
From AAP
Treatment of asylum seekers no better under Rudd: report
Date: January 13 2009
ASYLUM seekers are still being held in miserable conditions despite the softening of immigration policy, a new report finds.
The Australian Human Rights Commission's annual report on detention found the Rudd Government has not made the changes to detention policy it announced last July. The report found asylum seekers, including children, continue to be held indefinitely.
The report also found that the prison-like environment, particularly at the Villawood facility, had not been improved.
One detainee was identified as being held for more than six years despite Labor's policy to detain people only as a last resort and for the minimum amount of time.
People being processed on Christmas Island do not have adequate access to basic services, the report says. And access to interpreters, translated documents, and recreational and educational activities at all detention centres is lacking.
Government policy says all detainees will have access to legal representation and the opportunity to appeal Immigration Department decisions.
The Human Rights Commissioner, Graeme Innes, said it was "shameful" that people continued to be held in "utterly miserable" conditions.
The report recommends closing the Christmas Island facility and legislation to set standards for the treatment of detainees.
It calls for the Migration Act to be amended so detention is the exception rather than the norm, and any decision to detain a person be subject to prompt review by a court.
The Immigration Department says it is working to address the concerns raised in the report but many improvements had been made.
AAP
Story Picture: http://tinyurl.com/9sgccr
http://tinyurl.com/9ufmj9
New report highlights ongoing problems in immigration detention
Releasing the 2008 report on conditions in immigration detention today, Human Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes called on the government to translate its ‘new directions’ for Australia’s immigration detention system into policy, practice and legislative change as soon as possible.
“While it is true we have seen improvements in the way Australia treats immigration detainees, our report shows we are still seeing children being held in detention facilities, people being detained for prolonged and indefinite periods and dilapidated detention centres being used for accommodation,” said Mr Innes, “and now we also have the disturbing reality that the massive prison-like Christmas Island facility is open for business.”
Commissioner Innes said the major recommendations in the report include that:
* minimum standards for conditions and treatment of persons in immigration detention should be legislated
* the Migration Act should be amended so that immigration detention is the exception rather than the norm and the decision to detain a person is subject to prompt review by a court
* detention of people on Christmas Island should be ceased
* the recommendations of the national inquiry into children in immigration detention should be implemented by the government.
Mr Innes said he was particularly concerned that, while children are no longer held in immigration detention centres, they are held in other closed detention facilities on the mainland and Christmas Island.
“The time is now for the government to amend Australia’s immigration laws to ensure they comply with the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” Commissioner Innes said. “Detention of children in any type of immigration detention facility should only be used as an absolute last resort.”
Commissioner Innes said he also had serious concerns that, despite the end of the so-called ‘Pacific solution’, asylum seekers are still being detained and processed on the very remote Christmas Island – 2600 km from the nearest Australian capital city.
“The island’s isolation makes it difficult for external groups from the mainland to monitor what is going on there, and the island community is so small that detainees find it very hard to access basic services.”
Citing the dilapidated infrastructure at some of the mainland detention centres as particularly worrying, Mr Innes said the stage 1 section at Villawood was the worst of all. “We have repeatedly called for the demolition of Villawood stage 1,” Commissioner Innes said. “It is shameful, not only that it remains standing, but that people are still being detained there in its utterly miserable conditions.”
The 2008 Immigration detention report covers inspections of the immigration detention facilities around Australia, including Christmas Island, between June and September 2008. In addition to those listed above, the report contains a comprehensive set of recommendations about Australia’s immigration detention system.
A summary factsheet about the report is available at www.humanrights.gov.au/human_rights/immigration/sum_factsheet.html
The full report can be downloaded from www.humanrights.gov.au/human_rights/immigration/idc2008.html
From AAP
Treatment of asylum seekers no better under Rudd: report
Date: January 13 2009
ASYLUM seekers are still being held in miserable conditions despite the softening of immigration policy, a new report finds.
The Australian Human Rights Commission's annual report on detention found the Rudd Government has not made the changes to detention policy it announced last July. The report found asylum seekers, including children, continue to be held indefinitely.
The report also found that the prison-like environment, particularly at the Villawood facility, had not been improved.
One detainee was identified as being held for more than six years despite Labor's policy to detain people only as a last resort and for the minimum amount of time.
People being processed on Christmas Island do not have adequate access to basic services, the report says. And access to interpreters, translated documents, and recreational and educational activities at all detention centres is lacking.
Government policy says all detainees will have access to legal representation and the opportunity to appeal Immigration Department decisions.
The Human Rights Commissioner, Graeme Innes, said it was "shameful" that people continued to be held in "utterly miserable" conditions.
The report recommends closing the Christmas Island facility and legislation to set standards for the treatment of detainees.
It calls for the Migration Act to be amended so detention is the exception rather than the norm, and any decision to detain a person be subject to prompt review by a court.
The Immigration Department says it is working to address the concerns raised in the report but many improvements had been made.
AAP
Story Picture: http://tinyurl.com/9sgccr
http://tinyurl.com/9ufmj9
Sunday, January 11, 2009
LISA'S AGONY: MISCARRIAGE EDICT IGNORED
Red News Readers,
Why are the public and the media surprised at the treatment of miscarrying women? We live in a world now where the economy matters more than society, where compliance with financial constraint matters more than compassion, where health care is delivered in cost units without consideration of human need. So when the stressed staff in emergency departments treat miscarrying women with a lack of compassion, there may be personal and professional issues involved for that staff member, but they are also complying with the policy imperatives of their employers and governments. Ministers and government departments can issue memos reminding staff of the need to be compassionate but it will take a lot more than a simple piece of paper to change behaviours.
Jenny Haines
Lisa's agony: Miscarriage edict ignored
Lisa Carty, Sun Herald.
January 11, 2009
Devastated ... Lisa Watt's three-month-old baby in its sac kept slipping through her fingers and no one at Maitland Hospital was available to help her retrieve it.
A WOMAN has told how she begged hospital staff to find her a bed before she miscarried her baby into a toilet.
In shock, a devastated Lisa Watt, 39, tried to retrieve the foetus before flushing it away.
Her case is one of at least four in which miscarrying women have complained of substandard care at Maitland Hospital, in the Hunter Valley.
Mrs Watt said the case of Jodie Whiteside, who miscarried into a hospital toilet on December 22, showed nothing had changed since she complained about the treatment before she delivered her fourth child, a 12-week-old foetus, in a hospital toilet on May 19.
"I wrote to the hospital three weeks after I lost my baby because I was very unhappy with the way it was handled," she said.
"The maternity unit rang me and told me it could have happened anywhere. I told her I knew that but I couldn't get over the fact that it had happened in the hospital."
Despite an edict that miscarrying women should be given a bed in the maternity unit - an edict issued after Jana Horska miscarried into a Royal North Shore Hospital emergency department toilet in 2007 - Mrs Watt was given only a chair.
"I told the doctor I could feel the baby was just going to gush out," she said.
"She apologised and said there were no beds. She told me to come back in three hours for a scan but I knew the baby was coming and I couldn't wait three hours.
"I went to the toilet and had the baby. He was perfectly formed. I could see him in the little sac. I was trying to get him out. I kept trying but he kept slipping off my hands. I was crying and saying: 'Stay on mummy's hands.'
"For a long time I blamed myself because I just flushed. There was no one there to help me."
After Mrs Watt sent a written complaint three weeks later, a senior hospital staff member phoned and told her the miscarriage could have "happened anywhere", she said.
"I said I could have dealt with it if it had happened anywhere but it didn't; it happened in their hospital. They might have thought it was just a miscarriage but I was losing my child. To me, it wasn't so impersonal as it was to them."
In another case, a woman who miscarried her first baby on December 6 - two weeks before Jodie Whiteside lost her baby - also sent a letter of complaint.
In a written response, Hunter Area emergency services director David Gleadhill said improvements had been made and more were planned.
He apologised, saying the emergency department was not a good place to have a miscarriage, adding that lack of funding meant the hospital's early pregnancy service only opened three mornings a week.
"We would like it to operate seven days a week and we will continue to lobby for this," Dr Gleadhill wrote. "Until that happens, patients attending hospital with a threatened miscarriage will continue to attend the emergency department and may, unfortunately, experience some of the issues encountered by you."
State Opposition health spokeswoman Jillian Skinner described the treatment of miscarrying women at Maitland Hospital as "scandalous".
"I have never been so outraged by a series of revelations as this," she said. "This Government is playing with these people's emotions by promising to fix the problems, then letting them down. Animals get better treatment at a vet."
Yesterday Health Minister John Della Bosca said it was "extremely disappointing that other women have had similar experiences at this hospital".
Guidelines issued after the Horska case had not been followed at Maitland, he said.
"I am very sorry those guidelines, which spell out that women and their families in these situations need to be treated with care and compassion, were not followed," Mr Della Bosca said.
"Clearly we need to reissue them and ensure frontline doctors and nurses understand them and are supported to implement them."
He said he would visit Maitland Hospital later this month
Why are the public and the media surprised at the treatment of miscarrying women? We live in a world now where the economy matters more than society, where compliance with financial constraint matters more than compassion, where health care is delivered in cost units without consideration of human need. So when the stressed staff in emergency departments treat miscarrying women with a lack of compassion, there may be personal and professional issues involved for that staff member, but they are also complying with the policy imperatives of their employers and governments. Ministers and government departments can issue memos reminding staff of the need to be compassionate but it will take a lot more than a simple piece of paper to change behaviours.
Jenny Haines
Lisa's agony: Miscarriage edict ignored
Lisa Carty, Sun Herald.
January 11, 2009
Devastated ... Lisa Watt's three-month-old baby in its sac kept slipping through her fingers and no one at Maitland Hospital was available to help her retrieve it.
A WOMAN has told how she begged hospital staff to find her a bed before she miscarried her baby into a toilet.
In shock, a devastated Lisa Watt, 39, tried to retrieve the foetus before flushing it away.
Her case is one of at least four in which miscarrying women have complained of substandard care at Maitland Hospital, in the Hunter Valley.
Mrs Watt said the case of Jodie Whiteside, who miscarried into a hospital toilet on December 22, showed nothing had changed since she complained about the treatment before she delivered her fourth child, a 12-week-old foetus, in a hospital toilet on May 19.
"I wrote to the hospital three weeks after I lost my baby because I was very unhappy with the way it was handled," she said.
"The maternity unit rang me and told me it could have happened anywhere. I told her I knew that but I couldn't get over the fact that it had happened in the hospital."
Despite an edict that miscarrying women should be given a bed in the maternity unit - an edict issued after Jana Horska miscarried into a Royal North Shore Hospital emergency department toilet in 2007 - Mrs Watt was given only a chair.
"I told the doctor I could feel the baby was just going to gush out," she said.
"She apologised and said there were no beds. She told me to come back in three hours for a scan but I knew the baby was coming and I couldn't wait three hours.
"I went to the toilet and had the baby. He was perfectly formed. I could see him in the little sac. I was trying to get him out. I kept trying but he kept slipping off my hands. I was crying and saying: 'Stay on mummy's hands.'
"For a long time I blamed myself because I just flushed. There was no one there to help me."
After Mrs Watt sent a written complaint three weeks later, a senior hospital staff member phoned and told her the miscarriage could have "happened anywhere", she said.
"I said I could have dealt with it if it had happened anywhere but it didn't; it happened in their hospital. They might have thought it was just a miscarriage but I was losing my child. To me, it wasn't so impersonal as it was to them."
In another case, a woman who miscarried her first baby on December 6 - two weeks before Jodie Whiteside lost her baby - also sent a letter of complaint.
In a written response, Hunter Area emergency services director David Gleadhill said improvements had been made and more were planned.
He apologised, saying the emergency department was not a good place to have a miscarriage, adding that lack of funding meant the hospital's early pregnancy service only opened three mornings a week.
"We would like it to operate seven days a week and we will continue to lobby for this," Dr Gleadhill wrote. "Until that happens, patients attending hospital with a threatened miscarriage will continue to attend the emergency department and may, unfortunately, experience some of the issues encountered by you."
State Opposition health spokeswoman Jillian Skinner described the treatment of miscarrying women at Maitland Hospital as "scandalous".
"I have never been so outraged by a series of revelations as this," she said. "This Government is playing with these people's emotions by promising to fix the problems, then letting them down. Animals get better treatment at a vet."
Yesterday Health Minister John Della Bosca said it was "extremely disappointing that other women have had similar experiences at this hospital".
Guidelines issued after the Horska case had not been followed at Maitland, he said.
"I am very sorry those guidelines, which spell out that women and their families in these situations need to be treated with care and compassion, were not followed," Mr Della Bosca said.
"Clearly we need to reissue them and ensure frontline doctors and nurses understand them and are supported to implement them."
He said he would visit Maitland Hospital later this month
Saturday, January 10, 2009
REPORTS OF ISRAELI MASSACRE
30 dead after Israel shells civilian safe-house: witnesses
The United Nations has cited witnesses saying Israeli forces moved about 110 Palestinians into a house, told them to stay inside, and later shelled it repeatedly, killing about 30 people.
The Israeli army said it had no knowledge of such an incident but was investigating.
The UN report said that "according to several testimonies, on January 4, Israeli foot soldiers evacuated approximately 110 Palestinians into a single-residence house in Zeitun (half of whom were children) warning them to stay indoors. Twenty-four hours later, Israeli forces shelled the home repeatedly, killing approximately 30."
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) called the events in the Gaza City neighbourhood "one of the gravest incidents since the beginning of operations" by Israeli forces in Gaza on December 27.
"Those who survived and were able walked two kilometres to Salah Ed Din road before being transported to hospital in civilian vehicles. Three children, the youngest of whom was five months old, died upon arrival at the hospital," OCHA said.
Israeli military spokeswoman Avital Leibovich said: "From initial checking, we don't have knowledge of this incident. We started an inquiry but we still don't know about it."
Rescuers from the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society were only able to reach the area on Wednesday after waiting four days for Israel to allow them safe passage.
The Israel B'Tselem human rights group quoted a resident giving details of the alleged incident over the telephone but stressed it was unable to independently verify the account.
Meysa Fawzi al Samuni, 19, said soldiers forced her and dozens of others to move into the warehouse-like home of another resident.
Two men who left the house to pick up a relative were struck by "a missile or a shell," she said.
"My husband went over to them to help, and then a shell or missile was fired onto the roof of the warehouse. Based on the intensity of the strike, I think it was a missile from an F-16," B'Tselem quoted Ms Samuni, the mother of a small baby, as saying.
"After the smoke and dust cleared a bit, I looked around and saw 20-30 people who were dead, and about 20 who were wounded."
She eventually managed to leave and find an ambulance. "As far as I know, the dead and wounded who were under the ruins are still there," she was quoted as saying.
Aid operations restricted
Israel insists it is doing all it can to avert civilian casualties and protect humanitarian operations but has faced mounting international criticism after dozens of people were killed when troops fired at a school, and at least one person died after an aid convoy was attacked.
The International Committee of the Red Cross is temporarily restricting its Gaza operations to the territory's main city after one person was lightly wounded when one of its vehicles escorting an ambulance convoy was hit, apparently by Israeli forces, an ICRC spokeswoman said.
UNRWA, the main UN agency in Gaza which provides food aid to half the territory's 1.5 million people, said it had suspended its operations after tank shells hit a UN-flagged humanitarian convoy on Thursday, killing at least one person.
On Tuesday, 43 people were killed when an Israeli strike hit an UNRWA school serving as an emergency shelter.
The UN Security Council late on Thursday adopted a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire leading to a "full withdrawal" of Israeli troops, and condemning "all violence and hostilities directed against civilians and all acts of terrorism."
Palestinian medics said that at least 782 Palestinians have been killed in the two-week offensive which Israel says targets the Hamas rulers of Gaza and aims at halting the daily volleys of rocket fire into Israel.
- AFP
© http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/09/2462821.htm?section=justin
Maqsood A K Alshams
Project Director
Asia Pacific Human Rights Institute
The United Nations has cited witnesses saying Israeli forces moved about 110 Palestinians into a house, told them to stay inside, and later shelled it repeatedly, killing about 30 people.
The Israeli army said it had no knowledge of such an incident but was investigating.
The UN report said that "according to several testimonies, on January 4, Israeli foot soldiers evacuated approximately 110 Palestinians into a single-residence house in Zeitun (half of whom were children) warning them to stay indoors. Twenty-four hours later, Israeli forces shelled the home repeatedly, killing approximately 30."
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) called the events in the Gaza City neighbourhood "one of the gravest incidents since the beginning of operations" by Israeli forces in Gaza on December 27.
"Those who survived and were able walked two kilometres to Salah Ed Din road before being transported to hospital in civilian vehicles. Three children, the youngest of whom was five months old, died upon arrival at the hospital," OCHA said.
Israeli military spokeswoman Avital Leibovich said: "From initial checking, we don't have knowledge of this incident. We started an inquiry but we still don't know about it."
Rescuers from the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society were only able to reach the area on Wednesday after waiting four days for Israel to allow them safe passage.
The Israel B'Tselem human rights group quoted a resident giving details of the alleged incident over the telephone but stressed it was unable to independently verify the account.
Meysa Fawzi al Samuni, 19, said soldiers forced her and dozens of others to move into the warehouse-like home of another resident.
Two men who left the house to pick up a relative were struck by "a missile or a shell," she said.
"My husband went over to them to help, and then a shell or missile was fired onto the roof of the warehouse. Based on the intensity of the strike, I think it was a missile from an F-16," B'Tselem quoted Ms Samuni, the mother of a small baby, as saying.
"After the smoke and dust cleared a bit, I looked around and saw 20-30 people who were dead, and about 20 who were wounded."
She eventually managed to leave and find an ambulance. "As far as I know, the dead and wounded who were under the ruins are still there," she was quoted as saying.
Aid operations restricted
Israel insists it is doing all it can to avert civilian casualties and protect humanitarian operations but has faced mounting international criticism after dozens of people were killed when troops fired at a school, and at least one person died after an aid convoy was attacked.
The International Committee of the Red Cross is temporarily restricting its Gaza operations to the territory's main city after one person was lightly wounded when one of its vehicles escorting an ambulance convoy was hit, apparently by Israeli forces, an ICRC spokeswoman said.
UNRWA, the main UN agency in Gaza which provides food aid to half the territory's 1.5 million people, said it had suspended its operations after tank shells hit a UN-flagged humanitarian convoy on Thursday, killing at least one person.
On Tuesday, 43 people were killed when an Israeli strike hit an UNRWA school serving as an emergency shelter.
The UN Security Council late on Thursday adopted a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire leading to a "full withdrawal" of Israeli troops, and condemning "all violence and hostilities directed against civilians and all acts of terrorism."
Palestinian medics said that at least 782 Palestinians have been killed in the two-week offensive which Israel says targets the Hamas rulers of Gaza and aims at halting the daily volleys of rocket fire into Israel.
- AFP
© http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/09/2462821.htm?section=justin
Maqsood A K Alshams
Project Director
Asia Pacific Human Rights Institute
CASUALTIES OF A SICK SYSTEM
Red News Readers,
This is what happens when clinicians are disempowered and the managerial budgetary imperative takes priority because managers are trying to please NSW Health first, and not thinking through the effect on standards of patient care. It happens all the time in the current health system and reflects wrong priorities. If the health system is to be managed by accountants and business managers, there has to be greater respect and credit given to the concerns of clinical staff. After all, it is all about standards of patient care and satisfaction, not the budget bottom line. Or am I just being old fashioned again?
Jenny Haines
Casualties of a sick system
Julie Robotham Medical Editor, smh
January 10, 2009
Latest related coverage
Bloodied woman sent to hospital toilet to miscarry
'She was as healthy as an ox' but the system let her down
A WESTMEAD Hospital scheme designed to slash costs and improve performance statistics by getting patients out of ambulances more quickly contributed to the deaths of two patients, who received sub-standard care in the emergency department, internal investigations claim.
Patients were placed on trolley beds in a corridor, under the care of a nurse and without supervision by a doctor or even basic resuscitation equipment, under the scheme, which continued for seven months after the first death and despite the written objections of the hospital's emergency chief.
Internal investigations into the deaths of a 64-year-old man in February 2007, and of 85-year-old Mary Redfern in October the same year, pointed to inherent dangers in the so-called Nurse Ambulance Release Team (NART) arrangements as significant contributors to both.
A report into the death of the man - admitted with a lung infection, low blood pressure and low oxygen levels - concluded, "the geographical location of NART beds and the absence of allocated [doctors] to the NART beds were a contributory factor".
It recommended the relocation of the release team to "a defined clinical space", with emergency equipment and medical supervision.
But the hospital's administration did not act on the advice until Mrs Redfern's death, which occurred after nurses missed the seriousness of her falling blood pressure. The hospital's investigation again blamed the release team initiative in part, concluding, "There is an inability to [recognise] critical illness … in the NART area."
Internal emails, seen by the Herald, show hospital management rejected a demand by the director of emergency medicine, Matthew Vukasovic, for the immediate cessation of the release team system six weeks before Mrs Redfern's death.
"I feel that the minimal advantages that are obtained from offloading patients on to a NART trolley are overshadowed by the patient safety issues," Dr Vukasovic wrote on September 12 to Maureen Berry, the director of clinical operations for a group of western Sydney hospitals including Westmead.
Ms Berry responded by forbidding Dr Vukasovic from ending the release team arrangements without her permission, saying this would inflate costs and off-stretcher times and would not ease crowding in the corridor - which she said would still be occupied by ambulance trolley teams.
The initiative was finally ended days after Mrs Redfern's death.
Under the scheme, patients arriving at a crowded emergency department could be transferred into the care of a registered nurse - typically a part-time or casual employee on an extra shift - who worked without formal supervision by a doctor, allowing the ambulance team to return to the road.
This replaced a more expensive measure in which ambulance paramedics, paid overtime rates, were based at the emergency department to offload ambulance patients.
An internal memo shows the hospital expected to save more than $200,000 a year by having nurses take charge of patients - half the $400,000 cost of ambulance officers managing the equivalent service.
According to a 2006 synopsis of the policy, written by hospital administrators when they entered it for a health-care industry award, the proportion of people waiting longer than 30 minutes to be off-loaded from an ambulance fell from 30 per cent to about 10 per cent - the NSW Health Department benchmark - immediately after its introduction.
In a written response to questions, a spokeswoman for Sydney West Area Health Service, which administers Westmead Hospital, said the initiative was intended as "a way of improving patient care by providing a better, safer and cheaper alternative [to hospital-based ambulance officers]".
Despite the damning conclusions of the internal reports, she said the two deaths were due to "multiple factors but not a direct result of the NART model of care".
This is what happens when clinicians are disempowered and the managerial budgetary imperative takes priority because managers are trying to please NSW Health first, and not thinking through the effect on standards of patient care. It happens all the time in the current health system and reflects wrong priorities. If the health system is to be managed by accountants and business managers, there has to be greater respect and credit given to the concerns of clinical staff. After all, it is all about standards of patient care and satisfaction, not the budget bottom line. Or am I just being old fashioned again?
Jenny Haines
Casualties of a sick system
Julie Robotham Medical Editor, smh
January 10, 2009
Latest related coverage
Bloodied woman sent to hospital toilet to miscarry
'She was as healthy as an ox' but the system let her down
A WESTMEAD Hospital scheme designed to slash costs and improve performance statistics by getting patients out of ambulances more quickly contributed to the deaths of two patients, who received sub-standard care in the emergency department, internal investigations claim.
Patients were placed on trolley beds in a corridor, under the care of a nurse and without supervision by a doctor or even basic resuscitation equipment, under the scheme, which continued for seven months after the first death and despite the written objections of the hospital's emergency chief.
Internal investigations into the deaths of a 64-year-old man in February 2007, and of 85-year-old Mary Redfern in October the same year, pointed to inherent dangers in the so-called Nurse Ambulance Release Team (NART) arrangements as significant contributors to both.
A report into the death of the man - admitted with a lung infection, low blood pressure and low oxygen levels - concluded, "the geographical location of NART beds and the absence of allocated [doctors] to the NART beds were a contributory factor".
It recommended the relocation of the release team to "a defined clinical space", with emergency equipment and medical supervision.
But the hospital's administration did not act on the advice until Mrs Redfern's death, which occurred after nurses missed the seriousness of her falling blood pressure. The hospital's investigation again blamed the release team initiative in part, concluding, "There is an inability to [recognise] critical illness … in the NART area."
Internal emails, seen by the Herald, show hospital management rejected a demand by the director of emergency medicine, Matthew Vukasovic, for the immediate cessation of the release team system six weeks before Mrs Redfern's death.
"I feel that the minimal advantages that are obtained from offloading patients on to a NART trolley are overshadowed by the patient safety issues," Dr Vukasovic wrote on September 12 to Maureen Berry, the director of clinical operations for a group of western Sydney hospitals including Westmead.
Ms Berry responded by forbidding Dr Vukasovic from ending the release team arrangements without her permission, saying this would inflate costs and off-stretcher times and would not ease crowding in the corridor - which she said would still be occupied by ambulance trolley teams.
The initiative was finally ended days after Mrs Redfern's death.
Under the scheme, patients arriving at a crowded emergency department could be transferred into the care of a registered nurse - typically a part-time or casual employee on an extra shift - who worked without formal supervision by a doctor, allowing the ambulance team to return to the road.
This replaced a more expensive measure in which ambulance paramedics, paid overtime rates, were based at the emergency department to offload ambulance patients.
An internal memo shows the hospital expected to save more than $200,000 a year by having nurses take charge of patients - half the $400,000 cost of ambulance officers managing the equivalent service.
According to a 2006 synopsis of the policy, written by hospital administrators when they entered it for a health-care industry award, the proportion of people waiting longer than 30 minutes to be off-loaded from an ambulance fell from 30 per cent to about 10 per cent - the NSW Health Department benchmark - immediately after its introduction.
In a written response to questions, a spokeswoman for Sydney West Area Health Service, which administers Westmead Hospital, said the initiative was intended as "a way of improving patient care by providing a better, safer and cheaper alternative [to hospital-based ambulance officers]".
Despite the damning conclusions of the internal reports, she said the two deaths were due to "multiple factors but not a direct result of the NART model of care".
Saturday, January 03, 2009
CAMPBELLTOWN AGAIN, AND AGAIN
John Haywood, son Johnny ask why mother, wife, Marie died
By Rhett Watson, State Political Reporter, Daily Telegraph
January 03, 2009 12:00am
JOHN Haywood will spend this morning in a church chapel watching a video of the life he shared with his wife of 25 years, Marie.
He and his 15-year-old son Johnny won't speak at her funeral - the only word they can think of at the moment is "why."
Why was she told she was well enough to leave Campbelltown Hospital despite having pneumonia she contracted in there.
"My wife went into Campbelltown Hospital two days before Christmas Day for a routine operation and now she is dead," Mr Haywood said yesterday.
"She wasn't going in there to die.
"They made her sick and they should have made her better. She was only 43."
Her death has sparked a full investigation into events leading to her death on Monday.
Mrs Haywood went into hospital to have fluid removed from her stomach; a minor operation done under local anaesthetic. By Christmas Day she was seriously ill with pneumonia as well but
Mr Haywood said a specialist, without actually seeing her, decided she was well enough to go home.
"One of the staff there told Marie's sister they didn't have a lot of staff on anyway and she'd probably get better care at home," Mr Haywood said. "She didn't want to go home because she knew was still too unwell."
By December 27 Mrs Haywood could not breathe and was rushed back to Campbelltown Hospital where she was immediately put in intensive care. She died on Monday.
Mr Haywood believes the State Government's penny-pinching in health contributed, in a large way, to her death.
"Most of the beds and rooms were closed off when we were in there," he said.
"We want to know whether it was the system that fell down or the people."
The hospital and state Government argue there was enough staff and would not say more as the matter was being investigated.
By Rhett Watson, State Political Reporter, Daily Telegraph
January 03, 2009 12:00am
JOHN Haywood will spend this morning in a church chapel watching a video of the life he shared with his wife of 25 years, Marie.
He and his 15-year-old son Johnny won't speak at her funeral - the only word they can think of at the moment is "why."
Why was she told she was well enough to leave Campbelltown Hospital despite having pneumonia she contracted in there.
"My wife went into Campbelltown Hospital two days before Christmas Day for a routine operation and now she is dead," Mr Haywood said yesterday.
"She wasn't going in there to die.
"They made her sick and they should have made her better. She was only 43."
Her death has sparked a full investigation into events leading to her death on Monday.
Mrs Haywood went into hospital to have fluid removed from her stomach; a minor operation done under local anaesthetic. By Christmas Day she was seriously ill with pneumonia as well but
Mr Haywood said a specialist, without actually seeing her, decided she was well enough to go home.
"One of the staff there told Marie's sister they didn't have a lot of staff on anyway and she'd probably get better care at home," Mr Haywood said. "She didn't want to go home because she knew was still too unwell."
By December 27 Mrs Haywood could not breathe and was rushed back to Campbelltown Hospital where she was immediately put in intensive care. She died on Monday.
Mr Haywood believes the State Government's penny-pinching in health contributed, in a large way, to her death.
"Most of the beds and rooms were closed off when we were in there," he said.
"We want to know whether it was the system that fell down or the people."
The hospital and state Government argue there was enough staff and would not say more as the matter was being investigated.
PUBLIC VS PRIVATE: THE PAINFUL TRUTH ABOUT CHILDBIRTH
January 3, 2009
Latest related coverage:
Aged-care companies boycott bed offer
Patient data could show medicines danger
Drugs do a vanishing act
There are wide discrepancies in rates of intervention for births, writes Julie Robotham, smh.
THERE was never any question in Leanne Ortika's mind that she would have an epidural for pain relief when she delivered her first child.
"I decided that from the moment I got pregnant," said Mrs Ortika, 28, whose daughter Abigail is now six months old. "I didn't want to feel any pain."
Luckily for her, she was in the right place. At Sutherland's Kareena Private Hospital, where Abigail was born, only 4 per cent of mothers do without pain relief - one of the lowest rates in NSW, but on a par with most other private hospitals - as doctors adhere to the powerful maxim of patient choice.
At Auburn Hospital, where a state high of 23 per cent of women have no pain relief, Entessar Chami felt her choices were respected, too.
A few puffs of nitrous oxide at the height of her labour got the 27-year-old through the swift birth on December 17 of Shadi, her second child, and she felt relieved and grateful.
Throughout her previous pregnancy, with daughter Layla, now two, a caesarean section had been a possibility because of a low-lying placenta that shifted just in time for a vaginal birth. Mrs Chami had been horrified by "the thought of them cutting my stomach open to deliver a baby when I could just push it out naturally".
A national review of birth services and the roles of doctors and midwives in bringing children into the world has highlighted wide discrepancies in rates of birth intervention across NSW, especially between the public and private systems.
Caesarean births reached 46 per cent at Kareena and exceeded 40 per cent at most other private hospitals, where women are usually assisted by the same private obstetrician they have been seeing throughout their pregnancy, according to 2005 figures - the most recent available.
Between one-quarter and one-third of women in most private hospitals have an episiotomy - a surgical cut to the vagina to widen it for delivery, compared with about 10 per cent in the public sector. Forceps or vacuum deliveries are about 15 per cent of all births in private hospitals, well above the 10 per cent state average.
And while differences in the age and health of pregnant women are behind some of the disparity, experts say this is not enough to explain it all. Even young, healthy women such as Mrs Ortika and Mrs Chami may have very different perspectives on how they wish to give birth, and their demands - and hospitals' willingness to accede to them - are at the heart of the issue.
Ted Weaver, the president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said having an epidural anaesthetic - more widely available in the private than the public system - increased the chance a woman would not be able to push out her baby independently.
If the drug blocked all sensation, so the woman had no urge to push, "there's a pretty high chance - more than 50 per cent - she'll end up with [a vacuum extraction or forceps delivery]", he said.
Then, if forceps were used, "most women would end up with an episiotomy", Dr Weaver said. It was not clear whether women knew about the link between these interventions.
But Dr Weaver said there was "also a cascade of non-intervention - the idea that you leave everything alone and it'll be all right. That model has many flaws in it. You can be criticised for not doing things, too."
In the college's submission to the maternity review, being undertaken by the Commonwealth Chief Nurse and Midwifery Officer, Rosemary Bryant, it said reasons for the high private caesarean rate included the older age of mothers with health insurance, and the lack of emergency caesarean facilities at many private hospitals, which may persuade doctors to schedule the surgery instead of waiting to see how the birth progresses. As well, it said, mothers who chose private care appeared less tolerant of any risk to the foetus.
But the submission conceded there were "particular practitioners in the private sector who have a caesarean section rates in excess of 60 per cent. [The college] views these rates with concern."
In an individual submission, David Ellwood, a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the Australian National University Medical School, said caesarean rates were, "inappropriately high" in the private sector, and he was concerned "that once we reach a rate of … 35 to 40 per cent we could reach a tipping point from which the rate will accelerate more rapidly".
Recent research showed caesareans increased risks to both mother and baby in a first pregnancy, and more so in subsequent pregnancies.
Andrew Zuschmann, who delivers babies at Kareena, said there was a high demand there for "maternal choice caesarean section" without medical need.
"I'm a strong advocate of patient choice," he said. "I see my job as a facilitator and provider of information. I think women in this area are highly educated and highly informed."
But despite this, said Dr Zuschmann, "nobody's asked me my personal caesarean section rate, ever."
Indra Wijetunga, director of clinical services at Kareena, declined to comment on the hospital's birth intervention rate, saying, "these are choices between patients and doctors".
Paul Mackey, the director of policy and research at the Australian Private Hospitals Association, said doctors worked as contractors in private hospitals, which typically did not set clinical policies, except to ensure doctors were appropriately qualified. But Mr Mackey said he hoped the maternity review would offer "greater understanding as to why there is this variance".
Fiona Hammond, Auburn Hospital's clinical midwifery specialist, said only women whose pregnancy was judged low-risk were attended there. But the low intervention rate was also attributable to practices within the unit. "We try to encourage labour in an upright position," she said, which helped it to progress faster.
"Midwives do lead the care and consult with obstetricians rather than being told what to do. We try not to invoke a sickness model around us. We try to encourage women that it is a normal part of life."
Latest related coverage:
Aged-care companies boycott bed offer
Patient data could show medicines danger
Drugs do a vanishing act
There are wide discrepancies in rates of intervention for births, writes Julie Robotham, smh.
THERE was never any question in Leanne Ortika's mind that she would have an epidural for pain relief when she delivered her first child.
"I decided that from the moment I got pregnant," said Mrs Ortika, 28, whose daughter Abigail is now six months old. "I didn't want to feel any pain."
Luckily for her, she was in the right place. At Sutherland's Kareena Private Hospital, where Abigail was born, only 4 per cent of mothers do without pain relief - one of the lowest rates in NSW, but on a par with most other private hospitals - as doctors adhere to the powerful maxim of patient choice.
At Auburn Hospital, where a state high of 23 per cent of women have no pain relief, Entessar Chami felt her choices were respected, too.
A few puffs of nitrous oxide at the height of her labour got the 27-year-old through the swift birth on December 17 of Shadi, her second child, and she felt relieved and grateful.
Throughout her previous pregnancy, with daughter Layla, now two, a caesarean section had been a possibility because of a low-lying placenta that shifted just in time for a vaginal birth. Mrs Chami had been horrified by "the thought of them cutting my stomach open to deliver a baby when I could just push it out naturally".
A national review of birth services and the roles of doctors and midwives in bringing children into the world has highlighted wide discrepancies in rates of birth intervention across NSW, especially between the public and private systems.
Caesarean births reached 46 per cent at Kareena and exceeded 40 per cent at most other private hospitals, where women are usually assisted by the same private obstetrician they have been seeing throughout their pregnancy, according to 2005 figures - the most recent available.
Between one-quarter and one-third of women in most private hospitals have an episiotomy - a surgical cut to the vagina to widen it for delivery, compared with about 10 per cent in the public sector. Forceps or vacuum deliveries are about 15 per cent of all births in private hospitals, well above the 10 per cent state average.
And while differences in the age and health of pregnant women are behind some of the disparity, experts say this is not enough to explain it all. Even young, healthy women such as Mrs Ortika and Mrs Chami may have very different perspectives on how they wish to give birth, and their demands - and hospitals' willingness to accede to them - are at the heart of the issue.
Ted Weaver, the president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said having an epidural anaesthetic - more widely available in the private than the public system - increased the chance a woman would not be able to push out her baby independently.
If the drug blocked all sensation, so the woman had no urge to push, "there's a pretty high chance - more than 50 per cent - she'll end up with [a vacuum extraction or forceps delivery]", he said.
Then, if forceps were used, "most women would end up with an episiotomy", Dr Weaver said. It was not clear whether women knew about the link between these interventions.
But Dr Weaver said there was "also a cascade of non-intervention - the idea that you leave everything alone and it'll be all right. That model has many flaws in it. You can be criticised for not doing things, too."
In the college's submission to the maternity review, being undertaken by the Commonwealth Chief Nurse and Midwifery Officer, Rosemary Bryant, it said reasons for the high private caesarean rate included the older age of mothers with health insurance, and the lack of emergency caesarean facilities at many private hospitals, which may persuade doctors to schedule the surgery instead of waiting to see how the birth progresses. As well, it said, mothers who chose private care appeared less tolerant of any risk to the foetus.
But the submission conceded there were "particular practitioners in the private sector who have a caesarean section rates in excess of 60 per cent. [The college] views these rates with concern."
In an individual submission, David Ellwood, a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the Australian National University Medical School, said caesarean rates were, "inappropriately high" in the private sector, and he was concerned "that once we reach a rate of … 35 to 40 per cent we could reach a tipping point from which the rate will accelerate more rapidly".
Recent research showed caesareans increased risks to both mother and baby in a first pregnancy, and more so in subsequent pregnancies.
Andrew Zuschmann, who delivers babies at Kareena, said there was a high demand there for "maternal choice caesarean section" without medical need.
"I'm a strong advocate of patient choice," he said. "I see my job as a facilitator and provider of information. I think women in this area are highly educated and highly informed."
But despite this, said Dr Zuschmann, "nobody's asked me my personal caesarean section rate, ever."
Indra Wijetunga, director of clinical services at Kareena, declined to comment on the hospital's birth intervention rate, saying, "these are choices between patients and doctors".
Paul Mackey, the director of policy and research at the Australian Private Hospitals Association, said doctors worked as contractors in private hospitals, which typically did not set clinical policies, except to ensure doctors were appropriately qualified. But Mr Mackey said he hoped the maternity review would offer "greater understanding as to why there is this variance".
Fiona Hammond, Auburn Hospital's clinical midwifery specialist, said only women whose pregnancy was judged low-risk were attended there. But the low intervention rate was also attributable to practices within the unit. "We try to encourage labour in an upright position," she said, which helped it to progress faster.
"Midwives do lead the care and consult with obstetricians rather than being told what to do. We try not to invoke a sickness model around us. We try to encourage women that it is a normal part of life."
Friday, January 02, 2009
CUBA: 50 YEARS OF REVOLUTION
Communist Cuba celebrates 50 years of Revolution
January 2, 2009 - 10:27AM, smh
Communist Cuba marked the 50th anniversary of its Revolution Thursday faced with an uncertain future, its iconic, ailing leader Fidel Castro withdrawn from power and the economy in dire straits.
President Raul Castro led official ceremonies in Santiago de Cuba, the city from where his brother Fidel proclaimed victory over US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 after 25 months of fighting in the Sierra Maestra mountains.
In an olive green army uniform, Raul, 77, -- who officially took over from 82-year-old Fidel last February -- received an ovation, along with other party leaders, from 3,000 guests at the start of Thursday evening's festivities.
Fidel, who has not appeared in public since undergoing major surgery almost two and a half years ago, sent a brief, signed greeting to the Cuban people in Granma, the communist party newspaper.
But his image dominated giant banners and billboards amid the somber celebrations, with the island hard hit by the economic crisis and the aftermath of three hurricanes this year that left some 10 billion US dollars in damage.
"Let's not kid ourselves by believing that from here on, it's all going to be easy. Maybe from here on, it's going to be more difficult," Raul Castro cautioned late Wednesday.
Despite hardships he blamed on 46-year-old US sanctions, the president stressed: "this hasn't been a failure, not even under these conditions. It has been a constant fight."
The celebrations coincide with recent moves by Cuba to broaden its international ties, and the presidents of China and Russia, Hu Jintao and Dmitry Medvedev respectively, sent congratulatory messages Thursday.
Leftist Latin American leaders heaped praise on Cuba's past half-century.
Oil-rich Venezuela, Cuba's main business partner, held a special ceremony to commemorate the anniversary.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called the Cuban Revolution "the mother of all the revolutions going on in Latin America and the Caribbean."
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega called the 50th anniversary a "landmark" in Latin American history and Bolivian President Evo Morales lauded the island and its people.
"Fifty years ago the Cuban people freed themselves from US rule. For that, Cuba, its people and its commanders are symbols of the liberation of the people of the world," Morales said.
After years of economic embargo and hardline US efforts to isolate the island, Havana now faces rare potential for change with US president-elect Barack Obama, who has voiced willingness to communicate unconditionally with world leaders.
Cuba's Revolution -- led by a 32-year-old Fidel Castro and legendary Argentine guerilla Ernesto "Che" Guevara -- took on Marxist overtones in May 1961, one month after the attempted invasion of the Bay of Pigs by CIA-backed Cuban exiles.
Former US president John F. Kennedy declared the embargo in February 1962, before the Soviet missile crisis, which took the world to the brink of nuclear war.
The two nations, separated by just 90 miles (145 kilometers) of water, have remained bitter political foes.
A White House spokesman in Texas Wednesday said Washington "will continue to seek freedom" for the people of Cuba.
But Obama, who takes power January 20, has promised to ease some rules limiting travel by and remittances from Cuban-Americans; Raul Castro repeatedly has said he is ready for talks without "carrot or stick" with Obama.
The Cuban president has also promised "structural reforms" -- a departure from his older brother and leading members of the communist old guard.
But the global economic crisis may impact the pledged changes, as the president signaled in July when he announced greater government control of revenues and tighter management of agriculture.
The Caribbean island is still officially in the Special Period in Peacetime, an extended period of economic crisis that began in 1991 after the collapse of its former main benefactor, the Soviet Union.
And life is tough for most of Cuba's 11.2 million people, who earn an average of 20 US dollars per month and survive tangled in a parallel economy.
"The Revolution has given us a lot. I'm communist but I wish there were changes in the economy, that's where the problem is," said 65-year-old Pedro at Thursday's celebrations.
"The situation is really bad. Salaries are not enough to live off. They've made a lot of mistakes," said Joel Romero, a 41-year-old who gave up his job as a health worker to rear pigs.
Branded US puppets by Havana, Cuban dissidents say there are 219 "political prisoners" on the island.
During his decades in power, Fidel Castro expropriated foreign companies, jailed political enemies and drove well over a million Cubans into exile.
But he also introduced historic reforms, including major education and health care access advances.
© 2009 AFPThis story is sourced direct from an overseas news agency as an additional service to readers. Spelling follows North American usage, along with foreign currency
January 2, 2009 - 10:27AM, smh
Communist Cuba marked the 50th anniversary of its Revolution Thursday faced with an uncertain future, its iconic, ailing leader Fidel Castro withdrawn from power and the economy in dire straits.
President Raul Castro led official ceremonies in Santiago de Cuba, the city from where his brother Fidel proclaimed victory over US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 after 25 months of fighting in the Sierra Maestra mountains.
In an olive green army uniform, Raul, 77, -- who officially took over from 82-year-old Fidel last February -- received an ovation, along with other party leaders, from 3,000 guests at the start of Thursday evening's festivities.
Fidel, who has not appeared in public since undergoing major surgery almost two and a half years ago, sent a brief, signed greeting to the Cuban people in Granma, the communist party newspaper.
But his image dominated giant banners and billboards amid the somber celebrations, with the island hard hit by the economic crisis and the aftermath of three hurricanes this year that left some 10 billion US dollars in damage.
"Let's not kid ourselves by believing that from here on, it's all going to be easy. Maybe from here on, it's going to be more difficult," Raul Castro cautioned late Wednesday.
Despite hardships he blamed on 46-year-old US sanctions, the president stressed: "this hasn't been a failure, not even under these conditions. It has been a constant fight."
The celebrations coincide with recent moves by Cuba to broaden its international ties, and the presidents of China and Russia, Hu Jintao and Dmitry Medvedev respectively, sent congratulatory messages Thursday.
Leftist Latin American leaders heaped praise on Cuba's past half-century.
Oil-rich Venezuela, Cuba's main business partner, held a special ceremony to commemorate the anniversary.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called the Cuban Revolution "the mother of all the revolutions going on in Latin America and the Caribbean."
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega called the 50th anniversary a "landmark" in Latin American history and Bolivian President Evo Morales lauded the island and its people.
"Fifty years ago the Cuban people freed themselves from US rule. For that, Cuba, its people and its commanders are symbols of the liberation of the people of the world," Morales said.
After years of economic embargo and hardline US efforts to isolate the island, Havana now faces rare potential for change with US president-elect Barack Obama, who has voiced willingness to communicate unconditionally with world leaders.
Cuba's Revolution -- led by a 32-year-old Fidel Castro and legendary Argentine guerilla Ernesto "Che" Guevara -- took on Marxist overtones in May 1961, one month after the attempted invasion of the Bay of Pigs by CIA-backed Cuban exiles.
Former US president John F. Kennedy declared the embargo in February 1962, before the Soviet missile crisis, which took the world to the brink of nuclear war.
The two nations, separated by just 90 miles (145 kilometers) of water, have remained bitter political foes.
A White House spokesman in Texas Wednesday said Washington "will continue to seek freedom" for the people of Cuba.
But Obama, who takes power January 20, has promised to ease some rules limiting travel by and remittances from Cuban-Americans; Raul Castro repeatedly has said he is ready for talks without "carrot or stick" with Obama.
The Cuban president has also promised "structural reforms" -- a departure from his older brother and leading members of the communist old guard.
But the global economic crisis may impact the pledged changes, as the president signaled in July when he announced greater government control of revenues and tighter management of agriculture.
The Caribbean island is still officially in the Special Period in Peacetime, an extended period of economic crisis that began in 1991 after the collapse of its former main benefactor, the Soviet Union.
And life is tough for most of Cuba's 11.2 million people, who earn an average of 20 US dollars per month and survive tangled in a parallel economy.
"The Revolution has given us a lot. I'm communist but I wish there were changes in the economy, that's where the problem is," said 65-year-old Pedro at Thursday's celebrations.
"The situation is really bad. Salaries are not enough to live off. They've made a lot of mistakes," said Joel Romero, a 41-year-old who gave up his job as a health worker to rear pigs.
Branded US puppets by Havana, Cuban dissidents say there are 219 "political prisoners" on the island.
During his decades in power, Fidel Castro expropriated foreign companies, jailed political enemies and drove well over a million Cubans into exile.
But he also introduced historic reforms, including major education and health care access advances.
© 2009 AFPThis story is sourced direct from an overseas news agency as an additional service to readers. Spelling follows North American usage, along with foreign currency
WAITING TIMES RISING
Red News Readers,
Thirty plus years experience as a nurse in the health system tells me that you have to look at causes behind the rising waiting times in emergency departments. Access block is the main problem, too few beds for too many people, too few staff, especially experienced staff, for the beds that are open. The NSW health system has been over-rationalised, and now there is an reluctance or an inability to open more beds.
But why are there too many people in emergency departments? I think it is because emergency departments are the most accessible and affordable portal into the health system. It is a very fortunate citizen these days who can find a GP who bulk bills. Medical specialist fees are skyrocketing. GPs often only open in daylight hours, and do not home visit, unless they have an after hours locum service, most of whom charge a fortune. There is almost nowhere else to go if you have a dental emergency after hours. There are many citizens who see emergency departments as the place to present with all sorts of health problems which could be dealt with by a GP, if they could get in to see a GP. I have heard of patients ringing GPs for a semi urgent matter and been told the waiting list is 4 weeks. So they present at emergency department. The problem is access to the health system, not just access to emergency departments.
Jenny Haines
Hospitals struggle with emergencies
Kate Benson Medical Reporter, smh
January 2, 2009
ALMOST one in three people are waiting more than eight hours in emergency departments for a bed, the highest in 18 months, but doctors say the true figures are much worse as hospitals struggle with a surge in the number of patients and a lack of staff, beds and funding.
NSW Health figures, released yesterday after the Opposition health spokeswoman, Jillian Skinner, submitted a freedom of information request, show that 29 per cent of people are waiting more than eight hours for a bed, known as access block, up from 19 per cent six months ago, but the figures failed to reveal that some patients could wait up to five days, the president of the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine, Sally McCarthy, said yesterday.
"A patient is only counted when they have been waiting for eight hours or more for a bed, but you can have people waiting for days and days in the emergency department," she said.
"There are plenty of cases where management will move a person out of the department when they have been waiting for 7½ hours to avoid them being counted as an access block statistic, while someone who has been waiting more than eight hours could be overlooked and left for days because they have already been counted anyway."
About 17 per cent of people who present with imminently life-threatening conditions (triage 2 category) are not being seen within the required 10 minutes and 32 per cent of those with potentially life-threatening conditions (category 3) are not being seen within the necessary 30 minutes, up from 15 per cent and 30 per cent 18 months ago. The number of patients not being seen on time in categories four and five remain the same.
There were 153,897 people seen in emergency departments between June and September, up from 137,117 in June 2007, with most of the increase in the middle and lower triage categories.
"Bed numbers have not changed in 10 years but we are seeing about 40 per cent more patients through our emergency departments," Dr McCarthy said.
"It is very bad for the proper functioning of any emergency department because once we have 10 per cent of patients not being moved out to a bed, it starts to create problems. We have no space to see new cases, ambulances are delayed, patients get poor treatment and it has been well documented that mortality rates go up."
Mrs Skinner said: "They are the worst emergency department figures I have seen in my 13 years in the job. No wonder the Government tried to hide them. The Garling inquiry was told that stressed ED staff need more doctors, experienced nurses and beds in wards but nothing has been done."
Thirty plus years experience as a nurse in the health system tells me that you have to look at causes behind the rising waiting times in emergency departments. Access block is the main problem, too few beds for too many people, too few staff, especially experienced staff, for the beds that are open. The NSW health system has been over-rationalised, and now there is an reluctance or an inability to open more beds.
But why are there too many people in emergency departments? I think it is because emergency departments are the most accessible and affordable portal into the health system. It is a very fortunate citizen these days who can find a GP who bulk bills. Medical specialist fees are skyrocketing. GPs often only open in daylight hours, and do not home visit, unless they have an after hours locum service, most of whom charge a fortune. There is almost nowhere else to go if you have a dental emergency after hours. There are many citizens who see emergency departments as the place to present with all sorts of health problems which could be dealt with by a GP, if they could get in to see a GP. I have heard of patients ringing GPs for a semi urgent matter and been told the waiting list is 4 weeks. So they present at emergency department. The problem is access to the health system, not just access to emergency departments.
Jenny Haines
Hospitals struggle with emergencies
Kate Benson Medical Reporter, smh
January 2, 2009
ALMOST one in three people are waiting more than eight hours in emergency departments for a bed, the highest in 18 months, but doctors say the true figures are much worse as hospitals struggle with a surge in the number of patients and a lack of staff, beds and funding.
NSW Health figures, released yesterday after the Opposition health spokeswoman, Jillian Skinner, submitted a freedom of information request, show that 29 per cent of people are waiting more than eight hours for a bed, known as access block, up from 19 per cent six months ago, but the figures failed to reveal that some patients could wait up to five days, the president of the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine, Sally McCarthy, said yesterday.
"A patient is only counted when they have been waiting for eight hours or more for a bed, but you can have people waiting for days and days in the emergency department," she said.
"There are plenty of cases where management will move a person out of the department when they have been waiting for 7½ hours to avoid them being counted as an access block statistic, while someone who has been waiting more than eight hours could be overlooked and left for days because they have already been counted anyway."
About 17 per cent of people who present with imminently life-threatening conditions (triage 2 category) are not being seen within the required 10 minutes and 32 per cent of those with potentially life-threatening conditions (category 3) are not being seen within the necessary 30 minutes, up from 15 per cent and 30 per cent 18 months ago. The number of patients not being seen on time in categories four and five remain the same.
There were 153,897 people seen in emergency departments between June and September, up from 137,117 in June 2007, with most of the increase in the middle and lower triage categories.
"Bed numbers have not changed in 10 years but we are seeing about 40 per cent more patients through our emergency departments," Dr McCarthy said.
"It is very bad for the proper functioning of any emergency department because once we have 10 per cent of patients not being moved out to a bed, it starts to create problems. We have no space to see new cases, ambulances are delayed, patients get poor treatment and it has been well documented that mortality rates go up."
Mrs Skinner said: "They are the worst emergency department figures I have seen in my 13 years in the job. No wonder the Government tried to hide them. The Garling inquiry was told that stressed ED staff need more doctors, experienced nurses and beds in wards but nothing has been done."
Thursday, January 01, 2009
AUSTRALIAN JEWISH STATEMENT ON GAZA
The following statement was issued by the Executive of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society on 30 December. A truncated version of it was published in the Sydney Morning Herald under Steve Brook’s name.
Many Israelis want their government to prevent the renewed and frightening rocket attacks from Gaza on Israeli southern towns. For various reasons, the government feels compelled to respond. This kind of scenario has played out many times in the past. Israel exacts an enormous price from the Palestinians in the blood of many innocent bystanders in exchange for the rocket attacks.
Unless international action prevents it, there will be a new cycle of violence. Israel has chosen a bloody and dangerous path, the outcome of which may well be to Israel's political and security detriment, just as happened two years ago with its incursion into Lebanon. There will be many innocent dead, but no resolution.
It has been so inevitable, and also so pointless. Israel has virtually imprisoned more than a million Palestinians in Gaza under conditions that have created immense deprivation and desperation. It refuses to negotiate with their leaders, although it did manage to get a ceasefire some six months ago, which was needlessly broken by Israel because of a tunnel.
We don't have a simple solution. The road back to sanity will be a long one. But every time Israel demonstrates its overwhelming military superiority, every time Israel pulls the noose around Gaza tighter, the problem becomes even more intractable. Long term, a resolution can only come through a readiness to talk, seeking a compromise that both sides can live with. Israel holds most of the cards. It can afford to be magnanimous to break the cycle of violence. Accepting a ceasefire by both sides would be a useful first step.
SMH
Bloody cost of Israel repeating past mistakes
Israelis want their government to take action against the rocket attacks from Gaza. But it is exacting an enormous price from the Palestinians in the blood of many innocent bystanders.
Unless international action prevents it, there will be a new cycle of violence. Israel has chosen a bloody and dangerous path, the outcome of which may well be to its political and security detriment, just as happened two years ago with its incursion into Lebanon.
It has been so inevitable, and so pointless. Israel has virtually imprisoned more than a million Palestinians in Gaza under conditions that have created immense deprivation and desperation. It refuses to negotiate with their leaders, although it did manage to get a ceasefire some six months ago, which was needlessly broken by Israel.
We don't have a simple solution. The road back to sanity will be a long one. But every time Israel demonstrates its overwhelming military superiority, every time Israel pulls the noose around Gaza tighter, the problem becomes even more intractable.
Steve Brook Australian Jewish Democratic Society, Melbourne
Many Israelis want their government to prevent the renewed and frightening rocket attacks from Gaza on Israeli southern towns. For various reasons, the government feels compelled to respond. This kind of scenario has played out many times in the past. Israel exacts an enormous price from the Palestinians in the blood of many innocent bystanders in exchange for the rocket attacks.
Unless international action prevents it, there will be a new cycle of violence. Israel has chosen a bloody and dangerous path, the outcome of which may well be to Israel's political and security detriment, just as happened two years ago with its incursion into Lebanon. There will be many innocent dead, but no resolution.
It has been so inevitable, and also so pointless. Israel has virtually imprisoned more than a million Palestinians in Gaza under conditions that have created immense deprivation and desperation. It refuses to negotiate with their leaders, although it did manage to get a ceasefire some six months ago, which was needlessly broken by Israel because of a tunnel.
We don't have a simple solution. The road back to sanity will be a long one. But every time Israel demonstrates its overwhelming military superiority, every time Israel pulls the noose around Gaza tighter, the problem becomes even more intractable. Long term, a resolution can only come through a readiness to talk, seeking a compromise that both sides can live with. Israel holds most of the cards. It can afford to be magnanimous to break the cycle of violence. Accepting a ceasefire by both sides would be a useful first step.
SMH
Bloody cost of Israel repeating past mistakes
Israelis want their government to take action against the rocket attacks from Gaza. But it is exacting an enormous price from the Palestinians in the blood of many innocent bystanders.
Unless international action prevents it, there will be a new cycle of violence. Israel has chosen a bloody and dangerous path, the outcome of which may well be to its political and security detriment, just as happened two years ago with its incursion into Lebanon.
It has been so inevitable, and so pointless. Israel has virtually imprisoned more than a million Palestinians in Gaza under conditions that have created immense deprivation and desperation. It refuses to negotiate with their leaders, although it did manage to get a ceasefire some six months ago, which was needlessly broken by Israel.
We don't have a simple solution. The road back to sanity will be a long one. But every time Israel demonstrates its overwhelming military superiority, every time Israel pulls the noose around Gaza tighter, the problem becomes even more intractable.
Steve Brook Australian Jewish Democratic Society, Melbourne
NO ANTIBIOTICS IN GAZA
No antibiotics to halt slow death as hospitals overwhelmed
Sudarsan Raghavan and Islam Abdel Kareem in Jerusalem, smh
January 1, 2009
Latest related coverage
Jason Koutsoukis:
Land invasion likely as French ceasefire bid stalls
Hamas ties with Egypt strained to breaking point
Lebanon war haunts US response to conflict
Other related coverage
Graduation joy turns to carnage
RAWIYA AYAD lay in a bed on the ground floor of Gaza City's Shifa Hospital, connected to a respirator. A bandage covered her head and dried blood was still on her face. Shrapnel from an Israeli air strike was embedded in her brain, poisoning her blood. She was in a coma.
The hospital had no antibiotics to prevent her slow death. There was a shortage of electricity, too. So if the generator malfunctioned, Ayad's respirator would shut down and she could be dead within two hours.
There were no skilled neurosurgeons. The eight-hour drive to get treatment in Egypt could kill her. Because of the cordon around the Gaza Strip, it was unclear whether she could make it to medical care in Israel.
"I have a feeling there's no way I can help her," Fawzi Nabulsia, 57, director of the intensive care unit, said.
Shifa Hospital has once again become the ground zero of both Palestinian suffering and hope.
The doctors there are accustomed to the violence in the region, having provided treatment through two intifadas, or uprisings against Israel. But nothing had prepared them for the chaos that began on Saturday when Israel launched its air offensive.
"I saw the first intifada and second intifada, but what I saw this time I have never seen in my life," Dr Nabulsia said.
"What we suffered in Shifa, entire countries could not bear. All the victims of Gaza, it seemed, came to this hospital." On Tuesday evening, Shifa Hospital officials said they had treated 73 women and 150 children for injuries during the preceding 24 hours. Nine women and 22 children had died, Hassan Khalaf, a doctor and senior official at the hospital, said.
For the past four days, humanitarian groups have been sounding the alarm about growing shortages of medicine, food and other necessities.
On Tuesday, Israel began to allow some shipments of humanitarian aid into the densely populated area of 1.5 million people. Some of the medicines reached Shifa, but doctors said they required more assistance.
"We are in a very dire situation," Dr Khalaf said. Ten minutes after Israel attacked on Saturday, scores of patients began to flood into Shifa.
Only three doctors were on duty, Ayman al-Sahabani recalled. "We were not prepared for a day like this."
In hours, the scores became hundreds. More doctors arrived. But still the surgeons and operating rooms were insufficient.
"Many people died while they were waiting to enter the operating rooms. Some died in the lobby of the hospital waiting to enter the reception area," Hussein Ashor, the hospital's director, said.
"There were not enough beds, so we pulled out the curtains and lay them on the ground, and we put patients on the curtains. The floor of the reception was covered with blood."
Some doctors performed operations in the hospital corridors, forced to use only local anaesthetic and unsterilised equipment, Hamid Rashid, an orthopaedic surgeon, said.
"It was like a natural disaster," he said. "I was looking at the faces of patients. I feared I would find among them one of my sons or relatives."
On Sunday men believed to be Hamas fighters grabbed a patient, accusing him of being an Israeli collaborator. The patient had been inside a prison that was hit by a missile. The gunmen shot him dead. "They took revenge," Dr Khalaf said.
The Washington Post
Sudarsan Raghavan and Islam Abdel Kareem in Jerusalem, smh
January 1, 2009
Latest related coverage
Jason Koutsoukis:
Land invasion likely as French ceasefire bid stalls
Hamas ties with Egypt strained to breaking point
Lebanon war haunts US response to conflict
Other related coverage
Graduation joy turns to carnage
RAWIYA AYAD lay in a bed on the ground floor of Gaza City's Shifa Hospital, connected to a respirator. A bandage covered her head and dried blood was still on her face. Shrapnel from an Israeli air strike was embedded in her brain, poisoning her blood. She was in a coma.
The hospital had no antibiotics to prevent her slow death. There was a shortage of electricity, too. So if the generator malfunctioned, Ayad's respirator would shut down and she could be dead within two hours.
There were no skilled neurosurgeons. The eight-hour drive to get treatment in Egypt could kill her. Because of the cordon around the Gaza Strip, it was unclear whether she could make it to medical care in Israel.
"I have a feeling there's no way I can help her," Fawzi Nabulsia, 57, director of the intensive care unit, said.
Shifa Hospital has once again become the ground zero of both Palestinian suffering and hope.
The doctors there are accustomed to the violence in the region, having provided treatment through two intifadas, or uprisings against Israel. But nothing had prepared them for the chaos that began on Saturday when Israel launched its air offensive.
"I saw the first intifada and second intifada, but what I saw this time I have never seen in my life," Dr Nabulsia said.
"What we suffered in Shifa, entire countries could not bear. All the victims of Gaza, it seemed, came to this hospital." On Tuesday evening, Shifa Hospital officials said they had treated 73 women and 150 children for injuries during the preceding 24 hours. Nine women and 22 children had died, Hassan Khalaf, a doctor and senior official at the hospital, said.
For the past four days, humanitarian groups have been sounding the alarm about growing shortages of medicine, food and other necessities.
On Tuesday, Israel began to allow some shipments of humanitarian aid into the densely populated area of 1.5 million people. Some of the medicines reached Shifa, but doctors said they required more assistance.
"We are in a very dire situation," Dr Khalaf said. Ten minutes after Israel attacked on Saturday, scores of patients began to flood into Shifa.
Only three doctors were on duty, Ayman al-Sahabani recalled. "We were not prepared for a day like this."
In hours, the scores became hundreds. More doctors arrived. But still the surgeons and operating rooms were insufficient.
"Many people died while they were waiting to enter the operating rooms. Some died in the lobby of the hospital waiting to enter the reception area," Hussein Ashor, the hospital's director, said.
"There were not enough beds, so we pulled out the curtains and lay them on the ground, and we put patients on the curtains. The floor of the reception was covered with blood."
Some doctors performed operations in the hospital corridors, forced to use only local anaesthetic and unsterilised equipment, Hamid Rashid, an orthopaedic surgeon, said.
"It was like a natural disaster," he said. "I was looking at the faces of patients. I feared I would find among them one of my sons or relatives."
On Sunday men believed to be Hamas fighters grabbed a patient, accusing him of being an Israeli collaborator. The patient had been inside a prison that was hit by a missile. The gunmen shot him dead. "They took revenge," Dr Khalaf said.
The Washington Post
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