Saffin highlights problems with Maclean Hospital senior management staff cuts

On 3 June 2009 the Labor Member for Page, Janelle Saffin, stood in up the House of Representatives and spoke on behalf of the people of the Lower Clarence:

While Maclean District Hospital sits just outside my electorate of Page in Cowper, thousands of my constituents in the Lower Clarence rely on it. Many constituents hold real fears about the future of their hospital, particularly if the EO/DON is transferred to Grafton Base Hospital 45 kilometres away to become the DON for both Clarence Valley hospitals. Ordinarily such a centralisation proposal, obtained by the Daily Examiner newspaper, might make sense. However, coming at the same time as the North Coast Area Health Service is deleting a total of 400 positions from Tweed Heads to Port Macquarie for budgetary reasons, my constituents see this hospital management restructure as a body blow to their smaller hospital. The ladies of the Maclean Lower Clarence Hospital Auxiliary have written to me saying they cannot see how one director of nursing can be expected to provide fair management to two hospitals. Neither can I. They say:

This could well be a precursor to our hospital being downgraded even further and therefore jeopardising the level of service provided to our community, which continues to grow steadily, thus putting more pressure on the hospital and its staff.

While I understand the need for belt tightening in the context of responding to the global recession, I share the community concerns that the target of 400 positions will put too much pressure on front line health workers and potentially affect the quality and viability of hospital services. As a starting point, I am asking that the existing management arrangements for Maclean and Grafton hospitals remain in place and unchanged. I note in today's Northern Star, the newspaper at the other end of my electorate, that the editorial heading is 'Health system needs injection of sense'. I agree.

On a positive note I report that two of my major election commitments from 2007—redevelopment of Grafton Base Hospital's operating theatres and emergency department and the fast-tracking of Lismore Base Hospital's radiotherapy unit—are progressing well. At the end of budget week I returned to Grafton to see the North Coast Area Health Service Lodge a DA for three new operating theatres with the Clarence Valley Council. This was a milestone event for everyone who supports the hospital, particularly its Medical Staff Council Chair, Dr Allan Tyson; Grafton Community Health Committee Chair, Shirley Adams; Area Health Service Advisory Council member, Sandra Woods; and Clarence Valley Mayor, Councillor Richie Williamson. The council is expected to approve the planning application within weeks. The main building works tender will be let in September 2009. Construction is due to be completed in December 2010.

In this year's budget there was an announcement from Minister Roxon that the government would invest in a $560 million network of state-of-the-art regional cancer centres with associated accommodation centres. I am encouraging the Lismore district's medical fraternity and other community leaders to work with me to secure one of up to 10 such centres, enhancing the one that we have under development. We could have our PET scanner and accommodation service.

If you have not yet signed the petition to the NSW Minister for Health asking for reconsideration of these senior staff cuts, contact Jim Agnew on (02) 6646.1685 after 5pm each day for current locations of this petition.

You little ripper, Janelle!

According to The Far North Coaster the Labor Member for Page, Janelle Saffin has secured inclusion of horticultural wind damage losses in the Commonwealth-State flood assistance grants available to those affected by May 2009 NSW North Coast storms and flooding.
Again, Janelle shows she is worth the confidence voters showed in November 2007.

Turnbull admits he also threatened Packer

In a marvellous coincidence this piece in The Age surfaced on a day (when many are wondering about Coalition economic policy) Malcolm Turnbull was probably hoping for a change of subject; Packer made kill threat: Turnbull

"Kerry was, um; Kerry got a bit out of control at that time. He told me he'd kill me, yeah. I didn't think he was completely serious, but I didn't think he was entirely joking either. Look, he could be pretty scary.
"He did threaten to kill me. And I said to him: 'Well, you'd better make sure that your assassin gets me first because if he misses, you better know I won't miss you.' He could be a complete pig, you know. He could charm the birds out of the tree, but he could be a brute."

Notice anything? Why yes, Turnbull also verbally threatened the life of Kerry Packer.

A little further into the article Turnbull is quoted as saying; "I never make threats I don't carry out."

So who is the federal politician with the nastiest temper? Hmmmmm.............

A bit of cheek from North Coast Nationals Luke Hartsuyker concerning local flooding

Nationals Member for Cowper Luke Hartsuyker has been making a bit of noise about people in the Coffs Harbour area affected by flooding in March 2009 not receiving a one-off Disaster Recovery payment.

He states; "We all know Kevin Rudd's a Queenslander but we expect him to be even-handed when it comes to helping people in wake of a disaster.The message he's sending is clear - it's one law for Queenslander flood victims and one law for everyone else."

Leaving aside that Hartsuyker did little about trying to secure this payment at the time, there are many who think that he is being more than a little hypocritical in now offering to table a petition in Parliament on behalf of these residents.

As one Northern Rivers identity remarked to me earlier this week:
He is being a bit cheeky. In 2001 when the cyclone hit Innisfail the Howard Government scooped out the money to help victims but when flooding hit the Clarence, causing comparative damage, it offered nothing.
Nothing like double standards. **

Apparently the Member for Cowper (first elected November 2001) is not above cynically using waterlogged electors to try and score a political point now he's on the Opposition benches.
In government his party frankly didn't give a d*mn.

** Clarence Valley residents well remember when they were hit by a flood, a cyclonic-strength east coast low and another flood - all within the space of weeks in the first quarter of 2001.

Naturally talented photographers of Coffs Harbour

Images from nature by members of the Coffs Ex-Services Camera Club

More delightful photographs can be found on the camera club's website.

One of its members won Overall Top Image in the Interclub Photo Competition at the 33rd annual Northern Zone Photographic Convention last weekend.

Congratulations Margherita Standing.

Is Barnaby Joyce Bill Heffernan's 'love child'?

Listening to the Nationals Barnaby Joyce is a real treat these days.
With Bill Heffernan apparently depressed into near-silence by the Coalition's trouncing at the last federal election, there hasn't been a designated clown regularly performing on parliament's doorstep for over a year.
The new Joycean stream of consciousness turning up in Hansard and the media fits the bill nicely.

"It's like a madman giving you free beers at a pub - you'll drink them but you won't respect him."
"We have had the claim that Malcolm Turnbull is crab-walking on this. I can tell you that Mr Rudd makes Mr Turnbull look like Rudolph Nureyev."
"Don’t worry about your workers in the Illawarra and your workers in the Hunter Valley. No, don’t worry about them. You put on your Giorgio Armani suit and go and do the light fandango at a coffee shop near wherever you live,.."
"The guy's a psycho chook,'' ....."Who in their right mind gets onto a plane and because he doesn't get the right colour birdseed has a spack attack?''
It's an employment termination scheme.......it's an employment termination scheme. {repeat endlessly if you like the sound as much as Barnaby obviously does}
"You are going to have a piece of policy that comes direct from the manic monkey cafe of inner-suburbia nirvana-ville straight to you,"
"Don’t leave me out; I want to be in."

Leave you out? Never, Barnie!

The Australian Economy May 2009: Rudd grins, Turnbull glowers

Graphic: Thomson Reuters

This graph has to be the Liberal Party of Australia's worst nightmare. Not only does it allow the Rudd Government to successfully defend its economic policy to date, it also signals the likelihood of increasingly rebellious displays by its Coalition partner.

The Australian economy may not be out of danger yet, however it is far from the train wreck under Labor predicted by Malcolm Turnbull, Julie Bishop and Joe Hockey.

Monsanto can Twitter but it can't hide

Not long back I added MonsantoCo to my Twitter list.
It has been fascinating to watch the parallel universe in which its public relations employees live.

Equally fascinating is that this urge to tweet appears to follow on from its earlier advertising campaign which was apparently based around the concept of 'sustainability'.

One has to suspect that the campaign in print and radio was not the success Monsanto hoped for, hence the back-up.

Of course Monsanto & Co is not alone in pushing the GMO cause - its clones are out there doing their bit as well.

The Mid America Croplife Association apparently wrote to Michelle Obama trying to head that new White House vegetable garden off at the pass and, Croplife Australia is still plugging way.

Needless to say SourceWatch cites BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow Agrosciences, DuPont, FMC, Monsanto, Sumitomo and Syngenta as key funders for the Croplife group.

Such is Monsanto's chutzpah that through Croplife International (of which it is a member) the company attempted to hijack the U.N. sponsored International Day for Biological Diversity this month which had as its theme Invasive Alien Species.

Invasive alien species are plants, animals, pathogens and other organisms that are non-native to an ecosystem, and which may cause economic or environmental harm or adversely affect human health. In particular, they impact adversely upon biodiversity, including decline or elimination of native species - through competition, predation, or transmission of pathogens - and the disruption of local ecosystems and ecosystem functions.

If you believed Croplife, the international day was actually all about the pesticides/herbicides, genetically modified seed etc., supplied by its member companies.

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

Over at A Clarence Valley Protest the water wars continue....

Clarence River Gorge from Gilmore at Flickr

Former Clarence Valley shire councillor Terry Flanagan is one of those calling former National MP for Page Ian Causley to account in Clarence Valley pours scorn on Nationals has-been over past water policy.

Planning Minister Keneally please note that Clarence Valley's mayor has accidentally highlighted one of the many reasons West Yamba development is a dumb idea

Channel 10 State Focus on Sunday 31st May ran a telephone interview with Clarence Valley Mayor Cr. Richie Williamson in which he admitted that 6,500 people in Yamba were cut-off by flooding for almost seven days.

This is the same shire councillor who voted to send down to the NSW Minister for Planning a draft plan to put another 2,000 to 2,500 people in Yamba on flood-prone land.

Only one councillor, Margaret McKenna, held out against the well-heeled North Coast and Queensland developers driving this flawed development agenda.
The rest of Council only seeing floating visions of additional rate revenue and disregarding risk to life and property.

The question many in the Clarence Valley are asking; "Is Kristina Keneally also in the pocket of developers?"

Picture of Endeavour Street, Yamba in May 2009 from ABC North Coast.

Those media moguls ain't getting my readies!

Last week the Australian public broadcaster ABC via its online website told us that a couple of dozen media execs met in a Chicago hotel to "discuss ways newspapers can protect their internet content and in some cases, charge web surfers to read it".

Previously both ABC News online and free-to-air television had informed us that Rupert Murdoch had plans to make his online media a pay-for-view affair.

So why would I pay for (as an example) News Corp's The Australian 26-line puff piece on the technology Rupert wants us to buy so he can charge for online 'news'?

Ah yes, because Rupert wants me to! {falls about laughing hysterically}

Look who's a big user of the OpenAustralia website...

OpenAustralia did a bit of digging into its user profile and came up with a surprisingly large number of government PCs using its website.


It looks as though OpenAustralia is easier to use than Hansard records as it comes with the added feature of email alerts.
Perhaps MPs whose staffers use this website might consider whether a donation or two would be in order to keep this handy site going.

Truth in advertising missing from Turnbull's debt and deficit advertisement

Liberal Party advertisment May-June 2009

This week I saw a news clip on the teev showing Leader of the Opposition Malcolm Turnbull spruiking the former Howard Government's financial record and bagging the Rudd Government's level of public debt.
There was even a snippet from a coming Liberal Party advert on the subject.
"18 months ago we had no debt and cash at the bank."
And there's the rub - Mal was so foolish as to say that the Howard Government went out on zero debt.
How stupid does he think the average punter is?
Does he really think no-one was watching the growing current account deficit, outstanding Treasury bonds, level of government borrowing and interest payments before November 2007?
For heaven's sake - in 2006 total public sector gross foreign debt was 9.1% of GDP, in 2007 it was 7.7% of GDP and a big chunk of that was general government & Reserve Bank borrowing.
As for total gross national public debt.
Well, let's look at that graph again.







A history of public debt in Australia

See a 2006 0r 2007 zero there anyone?
The fact that Turnbull appears to be bragging about a lack of net public debt by 2006-2007 doesn't mean that there is absolutely no Commonwealth debt.
It simply means that government liabilities (mostly in the form of debt) were matched with financial assets which it could if needed sell-off to meet outstanding debt and interest obligations.
However, I suspect that with Costello as Treasurer these net figures became a trifle rubbery over time. Commonwealth unfunded superannuation liabilities and net claims were an ongoing problem in the final Costello budget.
As a millionaire ex-merchant banker, Turnbull can't pretend that he doesn't know that the Libs are trying to pull the wool over voter's eyes and he can't walk away from the fact that he is telling a political whopper in that first advert of a blatant disinformation campaign.
Who could honestly feel comfortable with the thought of this man's hands on the national helm?

"Over my dead body" - a reminder of the Northern Rivers water wars

The Daily Examiner letter to the editor posted at A Clarence Valley Protest on 28 May 2009:

It is on again.

Floods in the Clarence and droughts in the Murray bring out the ratbags.

On my walking and paddling trip down the Darling in 2007 I encountered a host of people, nearly everyone in fact, who wanted the Clarence River diverted inland.

In 2008 we had a Fellow of Engineers Australia advocating the same. Now in 2009 we have the Citizens Electoral Council issuing a press release about the desirability of the scheme and radio programs picking up on it.

We diverted the Snowy River inland destroying much of it, created severe salinity issues, took the sustainable dairying industries from the Northern Rivers to irrigated land in the
Murray basin, created huge wealth for some and drove many Victorians to suicide when the grand ideas fell over.

After 5,000 kilometres of dragging and paddling a kayak, with decades of engineering experience in the water industry, I have been humbled. I came to realise that a river is much more than we were taught at university. The link between ground water and surface water is inextricable. The effect of taking any water out of a river can be profound.

But people don't seem to get it. They think that we can carry on with even more arrogance. Look at what has been destroyed already by our attitude and still we do not learn.

There is one thing the people of the Darling understood. "You can divert the Clarence over my dead body," l told them.

They didn't like it but they understood.

There are plenty of us who will fight for the river but be warned, the issue will never die. We just have to be ready - always.

STEVE POSSELT

Grafton resident 1952-1969
Author of Cry Me a River

One of the lesser known international celebrations listed on a government website

From the South Australian Government Women's Information Service:

International Whores Day Invitation Friday 5th June

International Whores Day celebrates the birth of the sex worker rights movement in 1976 Lyons, France. In 2009, more than 30 years on, South Australian sex workers are still fighting against discrimination, criminalisation and victimisation. This year please join sex workers, other sex industry employees, health and welfare workers, supporters, friends and families, to show your support for sex workers in South Australia as we continue to fight for our human rights.

The Scarlet Alliance has details of events in SA, NSW, Vic and the ACT