Eleven inmates at South Australia's Baxter detention centre have said goodbye to their friends, believing they will die as a result of their hunger strike.

Refugee supporter Mira Wroblewski said today she had received a goodbye letter from a man she had known for the past two years.

"They've said they will hunger strike to death," Ms Wroblewski, from Rural Australians for Refugees, said.

"They didn't want to hunger strike.

"These are people that are very unmelodramatic people.

"But they feel like they've got no other option."

Ms Wroblewski said two men started their hunger strike last Tuesday, with 11 refusing food today.

The hunger strike is a last appeal by the detainees to be allowed to live in Australia and not returned to Sri Lanka, where they believe they face persecution.

Ms Wroblewski said the men were only drinking water during their strike, with temperatures at the South Australian detention centre reaching 42 degrees in recent days.

"The two that have been hunger striking for six days are now feeling really, really bad," she said.

"One is not able to walk.

"They've been told (by detention centre medical staff) that their blood sugar levels are really low and that they will be have to be hospitalised soon."

One detainee said the group would continue their action for as long as necessary.

"There's no plan, no time limit," the man told ABC radio.

"We have been locked up like animals for a long time and we are not criminal people.

"We want to live in Australia as free people. That is our reason for hunger strike."

(Source: news.com.au)

 

Quote of the Moment:

"Many business owners think accidents only happen to other people...they don't seem to realise that when they ignore OH&S [occupational health and safety] they're not only putting lives at risk, they're breaking the law."

Philip Bendeich, of SCAX Consulting, who provide specialist OH&S advice to businesses. Australian industry has one of the worst safety records in the Western world, with one in 12 employees suffering a work-related injury during their working life. Every year in Australia over 2000 people die from occupational illness, more than 400 people are killed by an accident at work, and over 170,000 people are injured because of their work.

 

Local people set fire to a police station and courthouse after a man died in police custody with four broken ribs and a punctured lung.

One of the mostly Aboriginal population of Palm Island in Queensland told a crowd of about 200 that "this is cold-blooded murder...I am not going to accept it and I know a lot of you other people won't".

The riot started after the release of a post-mortem examination of 36 year old Cameron Doomadgee.

The Queensland Police Union's acting President Denis Fitzpatrick said of the accused rioters that "these people deserve only one place to be - that is brought to justice and placed in prison." He did not express any similar opinions about anyone who might have harmed Mr Doomadgee.

(Source: TVNZ website, The Age)

 

Labor has refused to commit to its election policy of free hospital care for elderly patients, but is denying it has dumped the Medicare Gold policy.

After a six-hour caucus debate of its election policies yesterday, Labor issued a statement of policy principles which omitted reference to its election pledge to make free hospital care a priority for those aged over 75.

(Source: Sydney Morning Herald)

 

Workers in a Sydney call centre say they have been forced to collect loudly-coloured "pee-poles" from their boss's office every time they go to the toilet.

Members of the mostly female staff at the P&O Cruises call centre say that wehen they protested, they were banned from toilet breaks altogether.

(Source: Daily Telegraph)

 

Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson and Senator Sandy Macdonald have been accused of trying to bribe an independent MP to stand down.

Independent MP Tony Windsor claimed that "Mr Anderson and Senator Macdonald asked Mr McGuire what it would take to get me not to stand for re-election and indicated that there could be another career for me outside politics, such as a diplomatic post or trade appointment, if I didn't stand for the seat of New England."

(Source: The Australian, AAP)

 

A new study suggests that since March 2003, violence has become the leading cause of death for people in Iraq.

The study was carried out by a team of US and Iraqi researchers and published in the medical journal 'The Lancet'.

Most of the violent deaths were attributed to Western forces, generally by air strikes. Only a minority of people killed in these attacks were adult males.

(Source: New Scientist [UK])

 

A new survey shows that 'self-regulation' to stop cigarettes being sold to children is not working, with smoking rates for girls aged 12 to 15 increasing.

The three year survey by the NSW Health Department and the Cancer Council found that 22 percent of teenagers were buying cigarettes freely from shops, including supermarkets and petrol stations. A third of the child respondents said they had
never been asked to provide identification proving their age.

Anne Jones from Action on Smoking and Health said that "this survey shows 'self-regulation' isn't working...there will always be unscrupulous tobacco dealers who have a long track record of pitching their product to kids."

Ms Jones said that roughly forty thousand school children take up smoking every year. She said that governments should "put the health of children ahead of the vested interests of tobacco dealers."

(Source: The Guardian [Australia])

 

Quote of the Moment:

"In my judgment, this new paradigm [the 'war on terror'] renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

Alberto Gonzales, in memo to George Bush in 2002, arguing against the Geneva Convention, which forbids torturing prisoners. Mr Gonzales has recently become the US Attorney General. He is also said to believe that one benefit of declaring the Geneva Convention void is that it would prevent any US officials being charged with war crimes.

 

Australian soldiers have been accused of several incidents of racial abuse.

Soldiers have claimed that the armour was removed from a dark-skinned soldier's flak jacket while serving in East Timor, and that offensive messages were scrawled on non-white soldiers' equipment.

A photograph has recently appeared of soldiers at Lavarack barracks posing with Ku Klux Klan-style hoods. The photographer, Richard Fraley, defended their actions.

"It really and truly is nothing but a storm in a tea cup," Mr Fraley said. He added that the soldiers had been competing for who could take the best "fun photo".

Another group of soldiers at the same barracks was convicted of animal cruelty earlier this year, after torturing a litter of kittens to death.

(Source: The Age)

 

Doctors in public hospitals are allowing patients to bypass long waiting lists for surgery by paying for immediate operations in public hospitals.

Victoria's Health Services Commissioner Beth Wilson said that her office had "had complaints from people who had to borrow money from neighbours or friends in order to get their operations."

"They say they were in pain but the waiting list was so long they felt they really had no option."

Ms Wilson also said that her office had received a number of complaints from patients who were quoted the cost of surgery but then charged extra afterwards.

(Source: The Age)

 

Quote of the Moment:

"Since last January's ALP national conference in Sydney, when the party firmly rejected the initiatives of Labor For Refugees and adopted policies that pandered to the irrational and xenophobic fears in our community, I have continued that support [of the Labor Party], torn between a realisation that I share virtually nothing in common with the federal Labor leadership and on the other hand the absolute necessity to defeat Howard...

"The Labor people who have joined and worked for Labor For Refugees represent what is best in the party. They deserve so much better. In the moral vacuum that is now federal Labor they are an embarrassing paradox - people who have not lost the vision of a better world, who are appalled at Australia's involvement in the illegal, immoral and unwinnable war in Iraq (the ALP was weak on the war at the time and still is), the treatment of refugees and the failure to distribute equitably the gains made in the economy, yet they remain in a party that has moved so far to the right it no longer knows what it stands for.

"As a disillusioned Labor voter said to me as I handed him a how to vote card: 'You know what ALP stands for mate?' I said 'No'. He replied: 'It stands for Another Liberal Party'...

"Hawke and Keating crossed the centre to the right and destroyed whatever philosophical underpinnings Labor had with their 'reforms' of the Australian economy in the 1980s. Those 'reforms' inevitably led to a weakening of Labor's traditional ties, especially with its core constituents. Who does this party now represent? When the answer to that question is not immediately obvious, then any party has little choice but to turn to focus groups, to the media, to what is being said on talk-back radio, to 'expert' advisers, to influential groups, especially business whose values now dominate our society. The party must hear what people are saying. You then cut your cloth to those who will buy. Weathercocks.

"It is not surprising then that our leader in the recent election had nothing to say about the economy. It's Labor's sort of economy. They have no other model. Of course he was never going to speak about the two million Australians who live in poverty or the 800,000 Australian children in poverty. He had nothing to say about the 65% of Australians who earn less than $600 per week and the growing pressure on families where unpaid overtime has become the norm. He had nothing to say about the growth of casual work and the real levels of underemployment and unemployment.

"The Labor vision is now so narrow that our leader was never going to say anything about international inequalities, about the developing world with its debt and abysmal poverty. This is now a party that votes annually in favour of free trade over fair trade.

"There was not a word about the scandalous Labor acceptance of the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement. What can you say when your policy is the same as the government?

"Importantly, the ALP has failed to take up the challenge of defining the so-called 'war on terror'. The 'war on terror' is open-ended nonsense. The ALP has taken over the absurd notions of a fight between 'good' and 'evil'. We have allowed Howard to frighten Australians with these nonsensical notions. Howard and Bush's only solution is a fight to the death. This is no solution. We know that it is impossible to generalise about 'terror'. We know that at the heart of 'terror' is politics and real issues. We know that politics is about solving problems not waging crusades.

"The ALP is undemocratic and secretative. Members are work-horses who are trotted out around the streets during campaigns. New policies are developed by a small clique for campaigns. Sitting candidates learn of new policies when they are announced to the press..."

Kevin Peoples, ALP member and Secretary of Labor for Refugees in Victoria.

 

Waiting times for many surgical procedures in Victoria have jumped in the past five years, with hundreds of patients waiting in pain for more than a year.

In some surgical categories, more than half the public patients supposed to be treated before the 90-day Government target are still waiting.

The worst areas include shoulder/elbow surgery, hip and knee replacements, knee arthroscopy and hernia operations.

The longer waits come despite hospitals treating more people in a bid to control spiralling waiting lists.

Out of the 16 most common procedures in hospitals, waiting lists and waiting times for patients in pain have increased in 12.

For non-urgent cases, waits are much longer. The longest delay in the past financial year was for a patient whose varicose veins were treated after more than nine years.

also waited more than six years for surgical removal of lumps and foreign objects, gall bladder removal, a knee arthroscopy, hip replacement, removal of pins/screws and a hernia repair in the groin.

More than 2300 people waited for over a year for elective surgery in 2003-04, including 718 patients in pain who should ideally have been attended to within 90 days.

Health Minister Bronwyn Pike said hospitals postponed 'only' 14 per cent of operations, down from 21 per cent.

(Source: The Age)

 

Five times more people have died from car chases in New South Wales than have been killed by police shooting guns over the past decade. The death toll includes innocent bystanders.

The deaths of 54 people in New South Wales have been linked to pursuits over the past decade. Pursuits in NSW have caused more than 1800 car accidents, injured hundreds of people and resulted in millions of dollars in compensation and vehicle repairs over the past 10 years. Another 18 people have died in Queensland, and 35 in Victoria.

According to the NSW Police annual report, more than half of all pursuits last year were for traffic offences. Only 292 of the 2459 pursuits were for suspected criminal offences.

Allan Roberts, a former assistant commissioner of both the Victoria and Queensland police, said that "in all my 40 years I do not recall one incident, not one incident, where police have pursued someone who has just committed murder...it just doesn't happen. Most pursuits involve young people and relatively minor traffic offences."

The victims included a three-year-old girl, a 17-year-old boy killed after driving his parents to church, and a 24-year-old killed by a police car which was travelling on the wrong side of the road.

Nine of the 54 victims were passers-by, not involved in the pursuit. Two others were police officers.

The police have failed to answer questions about pursuits in seven separate inquiries under freedom of information laws. They have also cancelled interviews with reporters at the direction of senior officers.

At the time of three-year-old Tabatha Berg's death in January, senior police promised a review of pursuit policies. However, in the nine months following her death, the body established by police to review chases, the NSW Police Pursuit Management Committee, met only twice. It is meant to meet every month. According to a police spokeswoman, in that time, the committee had produced "no significant recommendations other than some procedural recommendations on internal policing issues."

Dr Paul Mazerolle, research director of Queensland's Crime and Misconduct Commission, stresses that most pursuits are for traffic offences. "There is no question that there is a strong belief among police that if they don't pursue that people will flout the law ... and we just don't think that this is consistent with the evidence." Paul Gibson of NSW Parliament's Staysafe Committee said that "there should be a general notice given to [police] that for a minor offence you don't risk people's lives."

(Source: Sydney Morning Herald)

 

The Queensland Liberal Party has refused to comment on the fact that it is under police investigation for possible fraud.

Police confirmed that the State Crime Operations Command are investigating the party.

It is believed to relate to the establishment of a new branch at Mount Morgan in central Queensland just prior to last month's federal election.

(Source: ABC News website)

 

The ALP has changed its policy of having Australian troops withdraw from Iraq by Christmas.

Labor's Foreign Affairs spokesman Phillip Rudd said Labor hopes the troops can return as soon as possible, and will pressure the government to reveal its exit strategy for Iraq.

(Source: Radio Australia website)

 

Quote of the Moment:

"Australia now has two mainstream parties of the right: the ALP in the centre right and the Liberal Party on the hard right...given a choice between two conservative parties, voters reasonably chose the real one."

ALP President Barry Jones.