Has Clarence Valley Council brought a pup?

Two conflicting sides to the same story reported by newspapers from two different stables.

Clarence Valley Council’s new general manager Scott Greensill (left) defends himself in The Daily Examiner on 15^th December 2011:

“Scott Greensill said he had nothing to fear from a Supreme Court judgment handed down on Friday in a case involving his former employer, Singleton Council.

Mr Greensill said although the judgement went against the council there were no adverse findings against him.

"At the end of the day it is something that I've moved on from," he said.

"At all times I acted in good faith and on legal advice. I'm confident I handled the matter professionally."

Mr Greensill said the Singleton Council had a lot of "issues" and he was happy to have left them behind.”

Other side of the coin over at The Singleton Argus on 13th December 2011:

“Judge Schmidt’s findings were also critical of Mr Greensill, pointing out he “certainly acted inconsistently” with the council’s code of conduct by delegating “all responsibilities” in the Nichols matter to assets manager Gary Thomson yet continuing to still work on the case.
After his delegation, Mr Greensill twice sought and received advice from Mr McKelvey and wrote a memo for Mr Thomson which brought Mr Smith’s report on Cr Nichols to the full council.
While Mr Greensill, as general manager, may give advice or make recommendations to the council he did not have authority to direct councillors in the performance of their duties, Judge Schmidt accepted.
Mr Greensill could not forbid councillors from speaking with the Jones’, his advice could be rejected and did not bind councillors.”

As the full judgement is published in The Singleton Argus as Nichols v Singleton Council [2011] NSWSC 1517 Hearing Date(s): 22 August 2011, 23 August 2011, 24 August 2011 Decision Date: 9 December 2011 Jurisdiction: Common Law - Administrative Law Before: Schmidt J you can make up your own minds about Mr. Greensill’s role in the Singleton saga.

Pic from The Daily Examiner

“The Tribunal is conscious that the cost of the Parliament and of federal parliamentarians is borne by the taxpayer” ROFLOL

"The Tribunal is conscious that the cost of the Parliament and of federal parliamentarians is borne by the taxpayer", sez the so-called independent Remuneration Tribunal as it gives Australian federal politicians a free ride on the gravy train this week – with more pay increases to come by the looks of it.

According to Granny Herald; "Tribunal president John Conde told reporters in Sydney the prime minister's new salary would be $481,000 - up from $367,000."  Reading the actual report shows that in reality current senators and MPs are also giving up almost nothing to place their political snouts in this overflowing feed trough and future parliamentarians will lose very little - while if they get so much as an ego bruise during Question Time it is recommended that worker's compensation should be available to the wounded.

Here are some quotes:

"The Tribunal intends to determine parliamentary base salary of $185,000."

"The Tribunal has accepted electorate allowance as a business expense payment and intends to maintain it in its current form."

"The base electorate allowance is now $32,000 per annum, distributed to members and senators monthly…..

Members do not have to seek approval for how they expend the electorate allowance, nor do they have to acquit the expenditure of their allowance to the Chamber Departments which pay it."

"Manager of Opposition Business in the House of Representatives, at 27.5% additional salary;

 Shadow Cabinet minister, at 25.0% additional salary;

 Shadow minister outside shadow Cabinet, at 20.0% additional salary."

"The Tribunal recommends that overseas travel provisions for the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Opposition and Leaders of minor parties be enhanced."

"In preparing this recommendation I am mindful that Backbench Members of Parliament who are either a Chair or Deputy Chair of a substantive Committee of the Parliament, receive additional remuneration for the fulfilment of that obligation, that Officers of the Parliament also receive additional remuneration as do Ministers of the Crown and the Prime Minister.

This report has not focused on those allowances or the established relativities between a Backbench Member of Parliament and office holders within the Parliament, which I understand will be the subject of further enquiry by the Tribunal."

'Suse me – have to leave the room to chunder!

Telstra fails to inform bundled account customers in writing of major privacy breach

This is the full text of the only correspondence from Telstra and BigPond sent on 13 December 2011 to a ‘bundled account’ customer whose name, address, phone number and account password/s may have been amongst the hundreds of thousands potentially publicly available on the Internet for an unspecified period.

See any mention of the breach or of this customer’s possible vulnerability to hacking/identity theft and advice on how to protect their account?

No, I didn’t either.

As you're aware some of our online services were unavailable from late Friday 9th to late Saturday 10th December due to an earlier internal systems issue.

I want to sincerely apologise for any inconvenience you may have experienced this weekend because of the disruption.

Services are now back up again for the majority of our customers, and your BigPond services should be working as normal.

The decision to temporarily reduce access to these services was not taken lightly and I know that our actions resulted in a poor online experience for you and was a source of frustration.

So if you have any technical difficulties after logging into your BigPond email account please see our online help, visit us on CrowdSupport or just call us on 133 933. We’re here to help any time.

Once again, I apologise for the disruption to your service and thank you for your patience.

Best regards,

Peter Jamieson
Executive Director, Customer Service

Stirrup the bitch! Why the medical experience is still a feminist issue

Because women as a group are constantly being told “You’ve come a long way”  when compared with their grandmothers, it is easy to overlook the fact that misogyny and chauvinism are still slyly woven into much of the female experience in developed countries like Australia.

So it is often only cases such as this which draw any mention in the mainstream media of the fact that the medical experience is frequently one fraught with the risk of physical and/or psychological damage for many females.

The Northern Star Rogue obstetrician faces 15 counts of abuse, malpractice by Natasha Wallace 13 December 2011

She alleged he forcefully put his hand on her vagina

and said, ''Who is the boss now?''

Read the rest here

How far does Australian mainstream media masthead readership reach?

From the AUSTRALIAN NEWSPAPER HISTORY GROUP NEWSLETTER No 65 December 2011:

MASTHEAD READERSHIP: PRINT AND ONLINE COMBINED

Roy Morgan Research has released a new readership metric for newspapers, combining print and website audiences into one "masthead readership" number to meet demands from the publishers for data that quantifies their total reach (Australian, Media section, 14 November 2011, p.25). According to the latest Roy Morgan Single Source data (July 2010-June 2011), Melbourne's Herald Sun has the highest net masthead readership in Australia: nearly 2.7 million. This is 258,000 more readers than the Sydney Morning Herald (with a masthead readership of nearly 2.4 million), which is just ahead of Sydney's Daily Telegraph (with a masthead readership greater than 2.3m). Brisbane's Courier Mail ranks fourth with a masthead readership of over 1.84m, placing the Brisbane title just ahead of Melbourne's Age with its masthead readership of nearly 1.78m. Seventy-one per cent of the Australian's masthead readership read the printed version; the website, theaustralian.com.au, has a readership of 619,000 readers, which is more than 4.6 times the readership of national rival, the Australian Financial Review's website, afr.com. The Australian Financial Review's masthead readership appears to owe more to its printed version of the newspaper than its website. Eighty-two per cent of the Australian Financial Review's masthead readership read the printed version of this newspaper, but only 30,000 readers (or 5pc of its total masthead readership) read both the printed version and the website. Perhaps there is a connection between the existence of a paywall on afr.com, and that this newspaper brand has the lowest duplication of readers between its printed version and website. With a readership of 1,115,000, smh.com.au has the highest readership of all the Australian metro daily newspaper websites.

So you thought the Gillard Government had promised you would control your own e-Health database information?

You thought the Gillard Government had promised you would control your own personal, social and medical information included in the e-Health national database and whether this information was ever accessed by health professionals?

Well Brisbane GP Dr Steve Hambleton (left) is one of many who don’t think so and, who as Federal President of the Australian Medical Association set out to create the legal right to trawl for information without the consent or knowledge of the individual.

It is inevitable that this information (often anecdotally filtered through the biased eye of family members) will in many instances be included in the e-Health database and, because it is included in someone else's files there will be no right to insist inaccurate information is corrected or deleted.

Having worked in multidisciplinary teams in the past, I know that in certain areas of public health hard copy patient files often contain what can only be described as elements of  unsubstantiated gossip. There is no reason to believe that Dr. Hambleton's desire to trawl for information will be any better at sorting the wheat from the chaff. 

Dr. Hambleton’s application to the Privacy Commissioner.

The result…………………………

Legislative Instruments

Privacy Act 1988 - Part VI - Public Interest Determination No. 12 - Collection of Family, Social and Medical Histories This Determination permits a specific health service provider to collect third party health information from an individual (or a person 'responsible' for an individual) without the third party's consent, for inclusion in the individual's family, social or medical history.

Some or all of this item commenced

http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/F2011L02569

Privacy Act 1988 - Part VI - Public Interest Determination No. 12A - Collection of Family, Social and Medical Histories

This Determination gives general effect to Public Interest Determination No. 12 to permit health service providers to collect third party health information from an individual (or a person 'responsible' for an individual) without the third party's consent, for inclusion in the individual's family, social or medical history.

Some or all of this item commenced

http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/F2011L02573

Photograph found at Google Images