Looking for Mr. Good Stork

The Australian Federal Government’s My Hospitals website is up and running and I decided to see what is said about hospitals on the NSW North Coast.

With a bit of nudging the lists from the mid to far North Coast came up here and here. Then the fun began when linking to hospitals in the Clarence Valley.

According to the new website there were no births at Maclean District Hospital in the financial year 2008-09, which was to be expected as its maternity section was closed down years ago despite community protests.

Grafton Base Hospital had 478 births + <10 births in the same financial year. Again something to be expected as it is the only relatively large hospital in the area and it usually records births it the vicinity of four hundred or so.

Wondering how these figures compared with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) regional profile for the Clarence Valley local government area I went looking.

I found that birth numbers didn’t quite add up when one compares My Hospitals and ABS data, even when the former is operating on financial year dates and the latter on calendar year dates.

The ABS has 278 births recorded in Grafton Statistical Area for year ended 31 December 2008 and no births recorded for the Clarence Valley Local Government Area in the year ending 31 December 2009.

An official 2009 zero birth rate was taking things a bit too far, so who isn’t keeping accurate records? The ABS, local court houses, someone else? Or did bad weather blow The Stork off course?

Well Clarence Valley residents may actually in part be the culprits when it comes to accurate record keeping. Because it appears that Australians don’t always promptly register the births of those little bundles of joy.

Elsewhere on the ABS website it states:

Of the 295,700 births registered in Australia during 2009, 88% occurred in 2009. A further 9% occurred in 2008, and the remainder (3%) occurred in 2007 or earlier. It is expected that some births, particularly those that occur in November and December, may not be registered until the following year.

Now in New South Wales parents are responsible for registering the birth of their newborn within 60 days.
However, somewhere in Australia in 2009 (presumably including NSW) over 8,000 people probably turned up at the court house or registry office with a one and a half to three year-old child in tow and told the clerk that the toddler holding their hands actually existed. Others obviously went in after the Christmas and New Year’s Eve parties were over to inform the world that their family had grown.

How long will The Reject Shop last in Yamba?

Maud Up The Street tells me that yet another bargain store is trying its luck in Yamba Fair shopping centre. This must be at least the fourth such store which has parked itself in the same spot in the last ten or so years.
Maud reckons it’s losing customers already because it assumes that everyone coming through its door is a potential shoplifter – ‘let me look in your bag’ seems to be the mantra - and not a month into this store’s life media reports are also saying the whole chain is just not drawing a big enough crowd:
“THE worst Christmas "for a very long time" has seen The Reject Shop slash its profit forecast - and its shares savaged. Investors wiped more than 20 per cent off the low-end retailer's share price, while the shock profit warning sent shudders through the nation's retailers and weighed on the shares of other retailers.
Reject Shop chief executive Chris Bryce blamed the Reserve Bank of Australia's increase in interest rates in early November for a sudden drop in customers through its 195 shops.”

Very interesting Abib titbits......

This has not been Australian Senator Mark Arbib's week for positive media coverage. Abib is the current duty senator for the NSW North Coast seat of Lyne, which must - ahem - reassure the sitting federal member and his electorate.

• In recent months there have been media reports that Senator Arbib has been undermining Ms Gillard but Labor insiders deny this.
  
  
• Secret US embassy cables obtained by WikiLeaks and made available exclusively to The Age reveal that Senator Arbib, one of the architects of Kevin Rudd's removal as prime minister, has been in regular contact with US embassy officers.
  His candid comments have been incorporated into reports to Washington with repeated requests that his identity as a ''protected'' source be guarded.

• Mark Arbib: otherwise known as CIA Agent 007.
  Visitors to the senator's Wikipedia page this morning may have been surprised to learn his role as Minister for Social Housing and Homelessness, among other portfolios, had been usurped by some decidedly more colourful titles.
  CIA agent, US Mole, Traitor, and US Embassy Hero were listed below the right-wing Labor powerbroker's photograph on the popular online encyclopedia following revelations by WikiLeaks today that Mr Arbib was as a confidential contact of the United States embassy in Canberra.
  
  Which leads one to wonder - did then U.S. Ambassador to Australia Robert McCallum, who had such a negative opinion of the Australian prime minister in office, encourage Arbib to consider deposing Rudd?

TwitDef: Getting close to checkmate?

TwitDef continues in the Land of Oz and Mitchell appears to have lost his queen and be close to having his king in mate........

From Posetti’s legal rep to Mitchell’s legal rep on 9^th December 2010:

“We are instructed to act for Ms Julie Posetti in relation to the matters raised by your client, Mr Chris Mitchell, in your letter dated 29 November 2010 sent to our client on 1 December 2010.

Our client denies Mr Mitchell's assertion that she has defamed him.

The Twitter posts by our client about which your client complains were a fair and accurate summary of matters stated by Ms Wahlquist at the Journalism Education Association Conference on 25 November 2010. Whether or not the matters stated by Ms Wahlquist were right or wrong, they were matters that nevertheless related to a matter of public interest, namely, the conduct of journalism and the editorial policy of a major national newspaper in relation to climate change, being in itself a significant question of public interest, especially in the lead up to a Federal election. Our client in her Twitter posts gave a fair summary of the matters stated by Ms Wahlquist and clearly held out those posts as being reports of statements attributed to Ms Wahlquist and not our client's own views.

Your letter does not attempt to suggest that the Twitter posts were not a fair summary of what Ms Wahlquist said and, indeed, your client acknowledges that his initial conclusion that the posts did not reflect Ms Wahlquist's statements was a conclusion that he was misled into adopting. We note also that, while we appreciate that what is published in The Australian (of which your client serves as editor in chief) may not necessarily always reflect your client's own personal views and is not determinative of the position, it is nevertheless somewhat telling that the "Media diary" article titled “The Posetti tapes” appearing in the online version of The Australian on 30 November 2010 suggested that the "Tweets are a fair summary of what Wahlquist said".

As a fair report of proceedings of public concern (in particular, proceedings of a public meeting held in Australia related to a matter of public interest - see section 29(4)(l) of the Defamation Act 2005 (NSW) and its equivalents in other states), our client is entitled to the defence available under section 29(1) of the Defamation Act.

For similar reasons, our client is likely also entitled to a defence of common law qualified privilege.”

Copy of entire Posetti 9 December letter here in PDF

Copy of Mitchell 29 November letter here in PDF

Jonathan Holmes on the subject of TwitDef

Good news for the frail aged and carers in the NSW Northern Rivers region

Federal Member for Page Janelle Saffin’s media release on 9 December 2010 brings some good news for older residents in the Northern Rivers region and their families :

Older people in Page will benefit from a total of 80 new aged care places allocated across the electorate by the Australian Government.

Page MP Janelle Saffin said the new places allocated under the Aged Care Approvals Round for 2009-10 include 39 residential care places and 41 community packages for care in the home.

“The new allocations reflect the need for varied types of aged care in our local community.

“While there is a growing demand for residential places, there are also many people who prefer to remain in their own homes.

“The allocations are for 32 high care residential places, 7 low care residential places, and 41 community aged care packages,” Ms Saffin said.

Local providers receiving the new allocations:

Baptist Community Services Northern Rivers: 5 Community Aged Care Packages

Ex-Services Home Ballina; 32 Residential Places High Care

Southern Cross, St Catherine’s Villa, Grafton: 2 Residential Places Low Care

St Michael’s Apartments, Casino 5 Residential Places Low Care

Frank Whiddon Homes Grafton 13 Community Aged Care Packages

Frank Whiddon Homes Kyogle 13 Community Aged Care Packages

Uniting Care Yamba 10 Community Aged Care Packages

The Aged Care Approvals Round for 2009-10 for Page is worth an estimated $2.34 million.

In addition, the Australian Government will provide the aged care sector nationally with $147 million in zero interest loans to build 819 places, along with more than $41.6 million in capital grants.