Now it's K-K-Keneally the Art Critic

What is it with pollies? As soon as they get into positions of power or prominence the barely qualified little tossers decide that they are art critics come morals police.

Now we have NSW Premier Kristina K. Keneally telling us not to inhale as we pass one of the portraits entered into Archibald prize competition.

K-K-Keneally trills; "I don't think this was a painting we needed to see...."I certainly won't be going to view it."

Ms Keneally said she would be happy to view the rest of the paintings in the competition.

The NSW North Coast would be much better served if this premier turned her mind from moralising about art towards the very real parlous state of the Pacific Highway.

She still hasn't come north at the invitation of Northern Rivers mayors (or sent anyone in her stead) and as of last Friday, Ms Keneally had not officially replied to the invitation sent 28 days ago.

What a poor showing!

Lack of public facilities such as transport in rural and regional Oz

Last year the local community of ***** (name removed) buried young ****** (name removed).


***** hanged himself out of despair. Centrelink hounded him.

In order to pacify Centrelink ***** drove everywhere to find work, often in an unregistered vehicle as he had not the means to pay for registration.

Individuals like ***** end up driving, often without a licence, and more often in unregistered vehicles. The seeds of criminality begin this way, from despair.

Truth is, this is not an isolated incident.

Over to you Mr Rudd et al.

Source: Read this

And these are the people Rudd & Co intend to trust with access to a national database containing all your sensitive personal information?

It wasn't all that many years ago that a series of royal commissions and investigations revealed that Australian police officers were not above inappropriately accessing information about ordinary citizens and that in New South Wales a corrupt trade in personal information had occurred.

If you have ever lived in rural and regional Australia you will be aware that doctors gossip about their patients, and not just amongst themselves.

That even now public hospital computer access is not always secure.

Anyone who has read national newspapers over the last decade would be aware that at least 465 Centrelink employees were found to have accessed personal information about people on pensions and other welfare benefits, sometimes in exchange for money.

Now we are told that; More than 1,000 Medicare employees have been investigated for spying on customers' personal information over the past three years and at least 150 of those investigated were found to be plain spying on other people.

These health professionals and public servants are the very people Kevin Rudd and his Health Minister Nicola Roxon are going to entrust with our very personal health information (cross matched by name, address, date of birth, gender etc.) when they introduce the Medicare smart card/e-card and national health information database.

According to The Australian this week:

Last week, the Healthcare Identifiers Bill was referred to the Senate Community Affairs committee for an inquiry and report on "the significant changes" proposed by Ms Roxon by March 15.
Under the planned regime, Medicare will issue every Australian with a unique, 16-digit identity number, while more than 600,000 healthcare providers -- including pharmacists, psychologists and podiatrists -- will be given similarly unique identifiers to access patient numbers.
While the Medicare-operated service will not store clinical information along with the patient's number, name, address and date of birth, the HI number will be used to populate records held by a range of care providers, so that eventually all related files can be brought together at the point of care. But the unexpected news of snooping by Medicare staff has set off alarm bells.

That the Rudd Government's so-called reform of health information is suspect is nothing new, indeed public figures are to be given the opportunity to have their personal information hidden behind a false name because privacy risk is admitted.

In fact North Coast Voices has posted on problems with the Rudd-Roxon grand database plan before this.

It doesn't matter how many times the Prime Minister goes in front of the camera and tells the Australian electorate that he means well and can do better - this national health information database is one of his worst ideas after mandatory internet censorship and leaving those draconian sedition laws in place.

• Medicare privacy policy
• Medicare Australia 2009 Personal Information Digest
• Healthcare Indentifers Bill 2010 - exposure draft
• National E-Health Transition Authority

Footprints for Peace: women's walk for peace events on the NSW North Coast 20 March to 15 April 2010

The Women's Walk for Peace follows a route from Brisbane in Queensland to Sydney in New South Wales. The walk will be held from February to May 2010.

Stages of this walk pass through all major NSW North Coast towns and villages between 20 March to 15 April 2010.
If you wish to join a stage in your area go to Footprints for Peace Australia for details.