What a racket!

In the story below, a guy who looks as pink-skinned as I am is somehow classed as black so gets half a million bucks of taxpayers' money because concerned child welfare authorities took him off his natural parents when he was a kid and placed him with white foster parents. How awful of them! These days they just let the abused black kids die, of course. ANYTHING is better than placing them with white families!

The guy below should be thankful for his pink skin in fact. In the old days the authorities didn't think there was much they could do for blacks. It was only half-caste children whom they thought had a chance and whom they therefore endeavoured to save. And even then it was only in some States that they even went that far. If there was any crime committed, it was that so FEW children were removed from abusive black families.

The "stolen generation" is just a myth concocted by Leftists. There was no "generation" removed from their parents -- just a few isolated and endangered individual childen. Note that the individual below is the FIRST to be judicially classified as "stolen". If there was a whole generation, where have all the rest of them been hiding all these years?



The first member of the stolen generation to be awarded damages by a court has asked for 50 years of interest on his $525,000 compensation. Aborigine Bruce Trevorrow was awarded the payout in August after a South Australian judge ruled the state falsely imprisoned him as a child and owed him a duty of care for pain and suffering. In the SA Civil Court yesterday, Julian Burnside, QC, for Mr Trevorrow, asked for the interest on the compensation be backdated to 1957 when Mr Trevorrow was taken as a child.

Mr Trevorrow was taken from his family in the Coorong in 1957, when he was 13 months old and was given under the authority of the Aborigines Protection Board to a woman, who later became his foster parent, without his natural parents' permission.

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So exactly when did Aussies have it better?

It may be of some relevance to note that in political history, the sentence "You never had it so good" is most often associated with Britain's Conservative "Supermac", who went on to win the subsequent election

JOHN Howard's biggest problem right now isn't that he's a liar. It's that he told the truth. And how Labor is now hammering the Prime Minister for it. Night after night I see ads starring a new Whingeing Wendy, whining how Howard once said "working families have never had it so good". "Really, Mr Howard?" she snarls with a voice like a bandsaw, just like the original Whingeing Wendy, designed by ad man John Singleton, who nagged Howard to defeat in his 1987 campaign against Bob Hawke. "How can you say that when my childcare and grocery prices are higher than ever?"

On she goes, yammering about her various bills, like someone astonished to find herself living in an age where you actually had to pay for stuff. We'll be seeing more of Whingeing Wendy and her bills, I'm sure, after today's announcement by the Reserve Bank board of another interest rate rise - the sixth since the last election. In fact, Wendy has been whingeing about them already: "And those interest rate rises, they've stretched us to the limit ... 'Never better off?' You've lost touch, Mr Howard."

Er, Wendy? Excuse me, dear, but it's actually you who's lost touch. By almost any measure you care to take, Australians in general are indeed better off than ever. In fact, the most astonishing thing about this election is that Howard is about to be junked despite an economic record he could bronze and hang in his study with pride. Take it from me, Howard can't believe it himself.

Check the stats. More people have jobs than ever before. Pensions are high. Wages have gone up and up. The place is booming. Your family home is now worth plenty. Tax cuts for the average wage earner have more than covered the rises in mortgage rates, which are still lower than what we had when Howard was first elected.

As for Whingeing Wendy's groceries, an analysis by CommSec's chief economist shows that more than two-thirds of a basket of 50 items typically bought from supermarkets have got more affordable over the past six years. Indeed, after-tax wages have risen twice as much as overall prices. We've got it not just made, but buttered on crumpet.

All of this is perfectly obvious to visitors. Simon Heffer, columnist for Britain's Daily Telegraph, dropped in last month to report on Australia and rhapsodised: "For an Englishman or anyone else coming here now, the place is humbling. "We really do see a people who have never had it so good. "Indeed, it is hard to name a nation in history that has ever had it so good as the Australians are having it now."

Or ask Australians returning from overseas, even from Scandinavian countries that our socialists long hailed as Nirvana. An acquaintance who has spent the past eight years living in Norway yesterday emailed to say he'd had enough, and was coming home to heaven. He listed the things that had left him cold among the fjords: "$12 beers, 25 per cent GST, $12 pack of cigs, $50 pizzas, world's worst taxes on cars and petrol, world's close-to-highest electricity prices." Whingeing Wendy would pop a valve.

Yet telling the truth about our good fortune has been a huge blunder by Howard, who has scrabbled since to assure voters they really are poor, sad, picked-on little battlers, who need lots of loving and as much free money as would choke Dick Pratt. The charitable reading of this phenomenon is that voters don't want their leaders to seem complacent, as if they've given us as much as they're ever going to give and will now put up their feet on the Kirribilli ottoman. With Howard already seeming like he's worn out his welcome, and worn through his agenda, his boast couldn't have sounded worse.

But the less charitable - and perhaps more accurate - explanation for our Whingeing Wendys is that many Australians like to praise themselves for their successes, but blame others, especially the Gummint, for their failings. In other words, they're whingers inclined to give politicians nothing more generous than the two fingers, and themselves nothing more harsh than a free pass.

A classic example of the species is Monash University ethicist Leslie Cannold, who this week wrote a column in The Age savaging the Howard Government for making her want to take her son out of a bad (Victorian-run) state school and into a private one she couldn't afford. "The rot comes from the way we fund our schools," she raged. "And it is making me so angry ... that I can hardly breathe. "(My son) can see how frustrated I am at my inability to give him the wonderful educational opportunities we both see dispensed like lollies all round us; how sad and guilty I feel that despite the fact that we are doing the best we can, our best isn't good enough..." And so on, like Whingeing Wendy's twin sister.

As it happens, the Howard Government has actually spent more than ever to make it possible for more parents - many poorer than Cannold - to send their children to private schools. And as it also happens, Cannold might well be able to afford to send her son to a private school, too, if she made the same sort of sacrifices I've seen other parents make. This is, after all, the same woman who only recently wrote a whole column confessing she spent money on botox injections, and would consider cosmetic surgery as well. But don't let nasty John Howard suggest Cannold might actually be doing pretty well to so indulge herself. That would just prove he was out of touch, wouldn't it?

That's sure what Labor leader Kevin Rudd argues, as he bids for the whingers' vote: "Mr Howard says working families have never been better off ... (but) my experience across the country is that working families have a radically different take." Clever politics, but since it's wrong to say working families have never had it so good, I have a question for Rudd: What year exactly did they have it better? No, I can't remember, either.

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Leftist power grab coming to Australia

ANY survey of Kevin Rudd's policies leads to an inescapable conclusion: that he wants a sustained increase in the executive power of the prime minister across the spectrum of government. Such an interpretation will be denied. It must be denied, since Labor says John Howard has assumed and abused too much executive power, implying that Labor will remedy such defects. But a tough-minded analysis of Rudd's proposals for office leads to different conclusions.

Remember the most important signal Rudd has sent about office is his plan to select the ministry as well as allocate the portfolios. "Let me be clear about this," Rudd said on September 27. "I'll be determining the composition of the Labor ministry should we be elected to form the next government of the country." This is a direct strike for greater prime ministerial power over the factions and the caucus. Rudd's bid for this power is unqualified and courageous. It sounds Whitlamesque in its "crash through or crash" intent. It is a break from tradition and reflects Rudd's distrust of factional influence. It is inconsistent with the caucus rules and requires caucus consent. Rudd has chosen to confirm only three ministers, Julia Gillard in industrial relations, Wayne Swan as treasurer and Lindsay Tanner in finance. The rest of the ministry is open.

If Rudd gets his way then he, not caucus, will select ministers and victory will surely guarantee he gets his way. Rumours abound about whether various shadow ministers will survive but nobody knows. It is a reminder that Rudd's campaign is presidential, that he owes few debts and that his plans for office are kept tight.

Beyond the claim to select the ministry, Rudd plans vast changes in the system of government. There is, however, one unifying theme: greater prime ministerial power. Consider three priority areas: security, climate change and federalism. Rudd's policy involves the creation of an office of national security within the PM's department. This would be headed by a new position in the Australian system: national security adviser. It is proof that Rudd intends to enhance one of Howard's innovations: the prime minister as national security chief.

The office of national security is probably a re-badging of the existing National Security Division within the PM's department. But the national security adviser is a new concept. It implies the creation of a second officer at secretary level within the department. The critical issue is whether this officer is just a bureaucratic co-ordinator (highly unlikely) or whether Rudd invests this post with policy-making authority. In this case the national security adviser reporting to Rudd would become a rival policy source to defence, foreign affairs and the chief of the defence force.

Note that Rudd plans to commission at once a new defence white paper, sweeping in conception, which deals with the region, militant Islam and WMD proliferation. Once this paper is received Rudd intends, among other things, to "write a more comprehensive national security statement". Such formalisation of a national security strategy has been resisted by Howard.

Such initiatives must be seen in context. Rudd would be the most security aware incoming PM since Malcolm Fraser in 1975. He will have in Robert McClelland as foreign minister and Joel Fitzgibbon as defence minister, deeply inexperienced incumbents. It will be a situation with a PM versed in security policy, equipped with an advisory apparatus that exceeds anything Howard built, and with novice ministers. At the same time Labor has long been pledged to create a department of homeland security, a vast cultural change to the public service and regulatory agencies.

The misgivings within the bureaucracy and the national security community are legion. The new department will include Labor's proposed coastguard, Customs, ASIO, Office of Transport Security, Australian Federal Police, emergency management, anti-money laundering and the Australian Crime Commission. Shadow minister Arch Bevis significantly likens this revolution to the Whitlam government's 1970s creation of a super defence department that incorporated the departments of army, navy, air force and supply. Last month Bevis said Labor would commission a counter-terrorism white paper to define a whole-of-government response and attacked the Howard Government for its rejection of the homeland security philosophy.

Now there are three things you need to know. This is an American concept. It is an American title. It is an American failure. The US Department of Homeland Security has been little short of a disaster. Howard would not touch the notion. For Australia, it will constitute a huge project in governance and there are many security experts in Canberra warning Labor to halt this innovation. They are in for a shock. Rudd is determined to establish the homeland security department.

Consider climate change. Rudd has announced that an office of climate change will be created within the PM's department, signalling his plan to lead on this issue domestically and internationally. Howard began this process but Rudd will command it. He will entrench a climate change policy window into the prime ministership. Rudd's first climate change priority is to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and this will be orchestrated at the level of prime minister. Having used climate change to define his modernist agenda, Rudd will make the post-2012 Kyoto negotiations into a central theme of his head of government diplomacy.

Don't think for one moment the environment minister will control this operation. The report by Ross Garnaut on a national emissions trading scheme was commissioned by Rudd and he will be the principal actor in decisions and implementation following the Garnaut report.

Consider Rudd's pledge to fix the federation. He has raised the greatest expectations about serious federal-state reform since Whitlam. The Council of Australian Governments will become far more important as an instrument of reform. Rudd will become the pivotal figure in this process, backed by his department and working with the premiers.

This list hardly scrapes the surface of Rudd's new agencies and statutory authorities. He will create a health and hospitals reform commission (within the first 100 days), a skills Australia authority, an infrastructure Australia authority and dozens of other statutory bodies, departments, offices, inquiries and new arrangements for industry. It raises the question: does Rudd want to govern the nation or just reorganise its government?

Here is the Rudd paradox. While an agent of me-tooism on many policies, Labor's structure of government agenda reveals an entirely different story. The public servants working on the transition plans can hardly believe their eyes. This Labor agenda means a deepening of the prime minister's powers and a reorganisation of government that is Whitlamesque in its scope and its obsession about process.

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Surge in medicine errors in major South Australian public hospital

The direction of change is almost invariably for the worse in Australia's public hospitals

HUNDREDS of medication errors have been recorded at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in the past year, hospital documents reveal. In a situation the state's peak medical body yesterday described as "devastating", it can be revealed 728 medication-related mistakes by doctors and nurses at Royal Adelaide Hospital were reported last financial year compared with 611 in 2005-06. Details of the 19 per cent increase in errors is in RAH safety and quality unit documents, obtained by The Advertiser under Freedom of Information laws.

The Patient Incidents - Medication Related reports show the most common errors are omissions, prescribing problems and overdoses. In 46 cases last financial year, the wrong medication was given and in 11 cases medication given to the wrong patients. During the first six months of this year, seven patients suffered "major permanent loss of function or permanent lessening of bodily function" as a result.

Central Northern Adelaide Health Service acute services executive director Kaye Challinger said there were no patient deaths recorded because of medication errors during the past two financial years. She said, in a written statement, the RAH regarded the incidents as "serious" and a "range of initiatives" had been put in place, including a new medication chart and pharmaceutical reforms. Incident reports are phoned through to a contact centre via a 1800 number.

But doctors, nurses and the State Opposition fear most incidents are going unreported. Australian Medical Association state president Dr Peter Ford said there was a lot of pressure, with hospitals running at more than 95 per cent occupancy. "This really is a scenario for mistakes to occur," he said. "It is a devastating finding."

Australian Nursing Federation state secretary Lee Thomas said the errors "reflected a workforce under pressure". Opposition Leader Martin Hamilton-Smith said the figures were "very alarming". "The statistics for all hospitals should now be made publicly available," he said. But Health Minister John Hill said medication errors affected just 0.37 per cent of the total number of patients treated at the hospital in 2006-07.

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