Category: Politics

In an article in the Age, Andra Jackson sheets home the blame for the trials and tribulations of Cornelia Rau, AKA ?Anna Schmidt,? to the Queensland Police.

Queensland police say they were unable to identify her, even though she was listed as missing with NSW police. They handed her over to immigration authorities after she gave an alias of “Anna” and spoke some German, leading them to suspect she was “an illegal non-citizen”.

The words even though she was listed as missing with NSW police don’t really mean much if the woman is talking German, doesn’t give her name and is carrying no ID. It was most probably reasonable to take the action they did – hand her over to immigration. The words even though she was listed as missing with NSW police definitely don’t mean anything when the family hadn’t even submitted their missing persons report at the time of the Queensland police intervention. The Age’s timeline has her handed over to the police by the Aborigines at Coen in March and her family filing a missing person’s report with the NSW Police in August. (scroll down to the bottom of the page) So not only are the police guilty of thinking that someone who looks, talks and acts like an illegal non-citizen needs to be handed over to Immigration but they failed to check for a missing person’s file that hadn’t even been submitted. I’m of the opinion that the initial problem in this terrible case is the State Governments abrogation of their duty towards the care of mentally ill people. Mental institutions are politically incorrect in these enlightened days with the result that more and more of the insane or mentally disturbed are pushed into standard hospitals that can ill afford the bed space or time to give them proper treatment. ‘Send them back on the street’ say the bean counters and we end up with ‘Anna’ walking around Coen jabbering in German.

During her detention she was subjected to physical restraint in Brisbane prison. At Baxter she was isolated for a week and then locked in her room for 18 hours a day, despite exhibiting highly disturbed behaviour.

Says who? In another article in The Age Pamela Curr, co-ordinator of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre in Melbourne says;

…her (Anna’s)fate could befall Australia residents who could not confirm their identity, whether ill or not.

and she is most probably right. If you look foreign, speak only in a foreign tongue, can’t ID yourself and generally act ‘iffy’ then you will attract the attention of Immigration. That’s their job and if one is found acting like an illegal non-citizen then it is the job of police hand such people over to immigration for them to make an assessment. Pamela Curr and Andra Jackson are both supporters of illegal boat people and visa over-stayers who shop for the country with the best social security and consequently come here. Pamela, Andra and their kind will never forgive Howard for stopping the boat people cold in their tracks and look for every breech or supposed breech of their vision of how the country should be run as a means to attack the government. Beazley talks of compensation

Speaking on Channel Ten’s Meet The Press, Mr Beazley said Ms Rau could well have a compensation claim against the Immigration Department.

Good idea Kim. Start with the Manly Hospital and the NSW Health Department. The Democrats want a judicial enquiry and also demand a Senate enquiry. They will want that before June so it will be stacked with Labour, Democrats and Greens. They most probably see this as their last chance to embarrass the government. Not to be outdone the Refugee Action Coalition want a royal commission with Vanstone?s head on a plate as the centre-piece.

The NSW Refugee Action Coalition has called for a royal commission into Ms Rau’s detention and for Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone to resign “for allowing such a brutal episode to take place in one of her detention centres”.

Roll on the Conservative Senate majority. ‘Anna’s” case is regrettable but terms of reference for any enquiry needs to centre on how she slipped through the system in the first place. What was her path from Manly to Coen. How does a psychiatric patient in such a bad way as has been reported, escape in the first place. Coen is a bloody long way from Manly – did no one notice a deranged woman, unable to speak English wandering around? When she was in the Brisbane prison and ‘had to be restrained’ why wasn’t she subject to a full psychiatric assessment and treated accordingly. Kim Beasley might suggest the family sue Queensland Corrective services and Health Department as well as the NSW Health system. I feel sorry for the woman and wish her and her family well but I think point- scoring by the banshees of the left needs to be toned down so we can look at all aspects of the case – starting with the contributions of the NSW and Queensland Health and Corrective Services departments and then by tracing her path of troubles all the way from Manly Hospital to Baxter.

Ever felt so moved that a burning desire to send your Member or local Senator a message bubbles to the surface? As a service to my readers, and in fact for myself, often so moved, I have included contact lists for the Senate and the House of Reps on the left side bar. Go on, you know you always wanted to do it – send a message!

Might I suggest that the true cause of Mark Latham’s Pancreatitis is one of the knife wounds in his back actually damaged his pancreas. I’ve just heard that Julia Gillard is rushing back to Australia from her holidays in Vietnam. For a moment I wondered why I didn’t run into her as we were obviously in the country at the same time but then I didn’t spend any time at the local People’s Commissariat. Mark is quoted on the ABC as if there was no discussion about his leadership. (Somehow the word ‘leadership’ seems inadequate in this context but it’s all I can think of at the moment.) In the ‘leadership’ battle that Mark isn’t having and the rest of Australia is, I’m personally going for Julia Gillard. The further left the ALP venture, the further away they will be from the treasury benches. Go Jules. Darlene Taylor has some comments as well. A little irreverent but telling none the less. I read somewhere (can’t remember) that if Beasley got the nod now it would at least give him three years to practice his next ‘I’m sorry, we lost’ speech. I notice the left wing blogs, at least the ones I link to, are not interested in the ‘Leadership’ debate. Strange – it’s the lead on the last ABC newscast I heard. The blogs are too busy discussing terrorists getting out of goal, redefining torture as any words or body language used in the presence of a terrorist and US bashing.

Mark is on sick leave and nothing will change his mind. His doctor said he is to take it easy. 150,000 people die and the silence is deafening. Nothing. Bad call, Mark. Labour aplogist, University of Adelaide professor of surgery Guy Madden, explains why Mark may be keeping silent

…(he) said the pain that pancreatitis caused was “extremely severe” and “one of the more unpleasant pains” that patients might suffer. Morphine and pethidine were options for pain relief in such cases, he said, especially in severe cases. As pain reduced, he said, codeine preparations were often used that broke down in the body into compounds similar to morphine. “In large doses, it makes people less than sensible,” he said. “Many of the pain medications will make you less than functional – they make it difficult to be rational and sensible.”

I had a friend die of pancreatic cancer last year and he could talk right up to the eve of his death. He made sense and he was on morphine. Tim Blair reports Mark may be on holiday at Terrigal. Holiday…sick leave..all the same. If you getting ‘Leader of the Opposition’ type remuneration then the country can reasonably expect a comment from you on the Tsunami disaster. Even if sick and incapacitated it wouldn’t take much to gather some Labour stallwarts around his bed and whisper in their ears… ..Just say to the press that…I feel for the people in the disaster area, support the Government in what they are doing and…cough…cough… will visit the area when I’m better ( or when I get back from Terrigal)

Our cousins over the ditch in New Zealand long ago abrogated all responsibilities regarding defence as they swung Left in the 1980s. I have a lot of friends among their numbers but I no longer feel sorry for them. They have been voting in weirdos for some time now so they have only themselves to blame. PM Helen Clarke has been at the ASEAN meeting and has signed a non-aggression pact with the members. Whoopee. NZ is a threat to whom? As friend and fellow Brisbane blogger aptly points out in today’s Australian this is not really a big deal.

Surely, there can be nothing more illustrative of impotent posturing than the decision of the New Zealand Prime Minister to sign a non-aggression pact with ASEAN members? It’s a bit like a budgie signing a non-aggression pact with a cat.

‘Budgie’ Clark. I like it.

I missed it but apparently Justice Kirby ran for Parliament in the last elections and has been elected President. Either that or he has forgotten his role in society. I would have thought he was required to uphold the laws of the land and, when required, to test them. I can’t see how he can do this if he starts with a stated bias. In New Zealand he is quoted as saying he is prepared to curb Howard. I presume that means he now has a proven conflict of interest and must remove himself from adjudicating on all matters that come before the court that pertain to anything that hints of Conservatism.

HIGH Court judge Michael Kirby signaled last night that he was prepared to rein in the Howard Government’s enhanced mandate, saying the rights of minorities were at risk of being abused.

How long before Kirby’s seventieth birthday or can Howard just sack him when he has control of both houses Must be tempting. On the other hand it might be wise to leave him there so people have regular reminders of what might happen if they loose concentration and vote a Left Wing government into office. Nah. Sack the bastard.

Latham has every answer but the right ones. With Carmen of Amnesia sitting in the chair it was bound to happen. Scoresby freeway controversy…Sydney’s Orange Grove development…Tasmanian Government helped derail his forestry plan…we were a bit too principled…problems within his office. Carmen, with brilliant left wing rationale, suggests the answer is in contracts. Simply force all aspiring Labour politicians to sign a pledge to work their electorates by phone, cold calling, mail-outs and all will be solved. Carmen, one of the ALP’s problems is that you really think this is an answer.

As Labor’s national executive placed candidates on notice that they will have to perform or else, Mr Latham led a detailed discussion on the reasons behind the party’s lowest primary vote for more than 70 years

Mark, it’s no good telling candidates to perform or else. What you need are candidates who perform without being told. Once you say anything that ends with …or else you have lost the game plan. You are not leading. Candidates who understand what small business people go through in their day-to-day grind are sourced from the small business world. Not from Universities, Union rolls, Education departments or Law Offices. Barry Cohen touches on the subject in today?s Australian

A caucus made up of lawyers, teachers, public servants, former ministerial staffers, party officers and trade union officials who have rarely worked in the trade they represent is unlikely to understand or empathize with those who have invested their life savings, mortgaged their homes and worked six days a week to own their own business.

Another article underlines an allied problem. Militant unions need controlling

WHEN BlueScope Steel caught one of its train drivers doing chin-ups on the outside of a moving freight train it sacked him. The result? A stopwork meeting at its Port Kembla steelworks and more than $500,000 of molten iron poured on to the ground.

If you don’t see anything wrong with that statement then go talk to the ALP. You’re a monty to get pre-selection.

BlueScope chief executive Kirby Adams said yesterday the stopwork over the train driver was but one of 110 industrial disputes, which had cost the steel-maker 40,000 working hours in the past financial year

Barry Jones, the incoming ALP President is on record as saying the Party needs to turn more to the Left. If there is one apparent fact that came out of the last election it is that the opposite is true. Australia is a Centrist-right country and no amount of wailing over latte will ever change that. Throw the Left a bone occasionally but Labour will never get the keys to the treasury while they pander to the Left’s incessant caterwauling about their answer to a better world. Their world is humane and caring but has no road maps to get there and no hard economics to finance it.

David Hawker, the member for Wannon (Vic) has been elected Speaker of the House and moves up into the $200,000 bracket. He has been a member for 20 years, Deputy Speaker for six years and was recently re-elected with a massive primary vote of 57.6%

Victorian MP David Hawker today promised to be firm but fair after winning the coveted job of Speaker of the House of Representatives ahead of former minister Bronwyn Bishop.

Well he would, wouldn’t he?

The wheat farmer and grazier from rural Victoria beat Mrs Bishop 42 votes to 32 for the $200,000-a-year job of maintaining order in the lower house.

David Hawker has a personal website here and his government website is here

Tomorrow marks the anniversary of the end of two Australian tragedies. World War I and the Whitlam Government. I will commemorate one and celebrate the other. Watch the ‘Maintain the Rage’ losers tomorrow as they try again to deify Whitlam. 29 years ago at the subsequent general election Australia spoke loud and clear yet the luvvies still fondly remember Gough and his terrifying uncosted ideas that needed billions from the Arab world to impliment. A day to quietly thank the voter and the soldier.