The New South Wales government's laws related to World Youth Day were unconstitutional, the Federal Court has found.

The state Labor government's World Youth Day laws that would have made "annoying" Catholic pilgrims during the event a crime punishable by fines of up to $5500.

The same regulations banned the sale or distribution of a range of items, including condoms and stickers, without government approval.

The NSW Council for Civil Liberties (CCL), and a group who intended to protest the Pope's views on issues such as homosexuality, successfully challenged the government's regulations.

Melbourne protest organiser Jason Ball said the protest supported freedom of religion but also the need for the separation of church and state.

"We're frustrated by the taxpayer-funded nature of WYD, to the tune of $150 million", he said.

(Source: Green Left Weekly)

 

The 1000 Australian soldiers, sailors and air force personnel in and around Iraq will be there "for a long time to come", Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has said.

Mr Fitzgibbon said that on his recent visit to the United States he assured senior members of the Bush Administration that Australia remained committed to the Iraq "project".

That completes a comprehensive 'adjustment' of the ALP's policy on Iraq, from the impression created by Labor in opposition that Australia's role in Iraq was all but over.

(Source: The Age)

 

People in middle-income outer suburbs are generally paying more for housing than those in affluent inner-city suburbs, according to new research.

A report by AMP Financial Services shows that the increasing cost of housing is having the most impact in Melbourne's outer western and northern suburbs, and the outer western suburbs of Sydney.

The report, by the National Centre of Social and Economic Modelling, finds those on middle incomes are spending the highest proportion of their income on housing.

The report also found that people in the richest suburbs had the highest percentage growth in income.

People in Craigieburn, dominated by two-income working-class families in new homes, had only $492 a week per head after paying their mortgages. By contrast, people in the more affluent suburbs of Brighton, Toorak, Kew, Camberwell and Malvern had smaller housing bills, and almost twice as much left after they had paid them.

(Source: The Age)

 

The Catholic Church's most senior figure in Australia wrote a letter to a victim of sexual assault by a priest, falsely claiming that the priest had been exonerated, and that there had been no other allegations against him.

Cardinal George Pell, then Archbishop of Sydney, wrote to Anthony Jones, saying his claims of sexual assault by Father Terrence Goodall could not be substantiated and that there had been no other allegations of abuse by the priest.

An internal church investigation had found Mr Jones's complaint to be proven and recommended action be taken.

The church's internal investigator, Howard Murray, also upheld a complaint by a former altar boy that Father Goodall had abused him.

Cardinal Pell signed a letter accepting the former altar boy's complaint on the same day he wrote to Mr Jones.

(Source: ABC News website)

 

A union has donated $5000 to a local soccer club, whose players included the daughter of the union's general secretary.

The NSW Nurses' Association donated $5000 to the Hills District (Female) Football Club in north-west Sydney. One of the club's players is the daughter of union general secretary Brett Holmes.

The donation was not reported to the union's membership.

(Source: crikey.com.au)

 

Ten elderly people died at a nursing home in three weeks, but the deaths were not reported, according to police.

Police are expected to begin an investigation today into a report by the Health Department, which broke the news of 10 deaths at the Endeavour Nursing Home in Springwood.

"We have checked with the crime manager for the Blue Mountains Command and he has checked their records for the past month and there are no reported deaths to police from any nursing home...at Springwood," a police spokesman said.

A Health Department statement said 83 residents of the home were struck down with diarrhoea and other painful symptoms late last month.

Food poisoning was investigated as a cause but the NSW Food Authority ruled that out after inspecting the home.

The acting deputy chief health officer for NSW Health, Jeremy McAnulty, said the results from tests on a number of ill residents had found Clostridium perfringens, a bacterium that can cause food poisoning.

"Infection with this germ is characterised by sudden onset of diarrhoea of brief duration, often with stomach cramps, 10 to 12 hours after ingestion of contaminated food," he said in a statement.

"During the outbreak period 10 residents died from a variety of apparently unrelated conditions. Some of these had had mild diarrhoea."

Dr McAnulty said many of the death certificates gave the cause of death as pneumonia and other unrelated conditions.

Police said that it was incumbent on any medical practitioner treating patients at a nursing home to report a death, if there were any other deaths that might be related.

The NSW Combined Pensioners and Superannuants Association last night called for an investigation by the State Coroner.

The association's policy co-ordinator, Paul Versteege, said NSW Health and the federal Minister for Ageing needed to explain how it could be presumed that the 10 deaths had nothing to do with bacterial infection after bacteria was detected in residents after two gastroenteritis outbreaks.

(Source: Sydney Morning Herald)

 

Quote of the Moment:

"That's a timely reminder to those Labor Party forces opposing this [electricity privatisation]. The business community is usually swift with its reactions."

Chris Brown, head of the New South Wales Tourism and Transport Forum, reminds the Labor Party who's in charge here.

 

A culture of bullying and harassment in the New South Wales Ambulance Service is driving paramedics to the brink of suicide, according to a whistleblower.

South Coast ambulance officer Phil Roxburgh told a State government enquiry that "you raise concerns about bullying and harassment and then you get bullied and harassed."

"What scares me is that people who contact me...there are a lot of people out there who are on the edge."

"So many people who have come close to committing suicide."

Other paramedics have made confidential submissions claiming the service is dysfunctional and poorly managed.

"If you are in the boys club you will be looked after very well and if you are not, you are treated like an outcast," one ambulance officer said.

"I have been a victim and have tried to take my life as a way to escape the horrors of bullying."

Of the 150 submissions received, the majority relate to bullying and harassment of staff.

An internal ambulance survey tabled during the inquiry revealed 75 per cent of paramedics were unhappy with their jobs.

(Source: Daily Telegraph)

 

A Sydney solicitor says he was arrested, handcuffed and had his rib broken by police after offering legal assistance to a man being searched in public.

Kristian Bolwell said police manhandled him and broke his rib last week after he displayed his solicitor's identification card to a man being searched in a pub and asked if he wanted any help.

Mr Bolwell is a member of a group campaigning against NSW Government regulations that give police power to stop people from causing 'annoyance or inconvenience' to World Youth Day participants. The penalty is a fine of up to $5500.

The 36-year-old lawyer was dining at the Coopers Arms Hotel in Newtown about 9.30pm on Thursday when eight to 10 police entered the pub with a sniffer dog and began searching patrons, he said. After Mr Bolwell offered assistance to one of them, he said he had a "short conversation" with police, who then pushed him and pinned him face-down on the floor.

He was later charged with hindering police, resisting police in execution of duty and failure to obey a police direction.

A medical report from the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital on Saturday confirmed he had a fractured rib and moderate bruising on his left side.

The NSW Council for Civil Liberties has said it gets more complaints about police searches than any other issue. Last year, NSW Premier Morris Iemma extended powers legislated after the Cronulla riots, which mean police only need a suspicion of illegality before they can undertake an intrusive search.

(Source: The Age)

 

Interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay were partly copied from a study of techniques used by the Chinese government, which the US government described as torture and were known to produce false confessions.

Military trainers who came to Guantanamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of "coercive management techniques" for possible use on prisoners, including sleep deprivation, "prolonged constraint", and "exposure."

The chart was copied from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The chart was copied from the article "Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War." The only change made in the chart presented at Guantanamo was to drop its original title: "Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance."

The chart listed techniques including "Semi-Starvation," "Exploitation of Wounds," and "Filthy, Infested Surroundings," along with their effects: "Makes Victim Dependent on Interrogator," "Weakens Mental and Physical Ability to Resist," and "Reduces Prisoner to 'Animal Level' Concerns."

The techniques used on American prisoners by the Chinese government were the origin of the concept of 'brainwashing'.

(Source: New York Times)

 

Some schools in Aboriginal communities only have a qualified teacher two or three days a week, apparently due to deliberate policy.

The college on Elcho Island, in the Northern Territory, provides full-time teachers to several remote Aboriginal communities.

However the college has told their teachers to spend only five or six days a fortnight in the classroom. The school principal allegedly believes that doing more would "set a precedent."

In one such community, whose members say they're "trapped" by their lack of English, the children have spoken English vocabularies of roughly 50 words.

(Source: The Age)

 

The United States' policy on handling detainees was re-written by a group who believed that "due process is legal mumbo jumbo", according to a senior official.

A group of five lawyers, who called themselves the 'War Council', acted on the instructions of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. They drafted a series of legal opinions which claimed that the US had the right to ignore its own criminal law, and international agreements such as the Geneva Convention, when dealing with suspected members of the Taliban or Al-Qaeda.

Thomas Romig, a major general who was the Army's judge advocate general from 2001 to 2005, says that "as they viewed it, due process is legal mumbo jumbo."

"They wanted to get them, get the facts and convict them...If you're caught as a terrorist, you're presumed guilty and you have to prove you're innocent. It was crazy."

Civilian defense officials also told Romig that 'the time for law had passed'.

Donald J. Guter, formerly the Navy's judge advocate general, said that one of the group wanted a place "outside of the courts."

In 2006 President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act, which said Common Article Three of the Geneva Convention, which for example forbids torture of prisoners, did not apply to 'unlawful combatants'. The bill specifically said that "pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions" was acceptable.

It also said that no US court or judge could hear cases in which such detainees contest their incerceration.

The US Supreme Court has since struck down that section of the Act, as well as ruling that Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions is applicable to detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

(Source: McClatchy Newspapers [US])

 

American police officers have been shown to have lied under oath, trying to frame four men on drugs charges.

New York undercover police officers swore in court that they bought drugs from brothers Jose and Maximo Colon and two of their friends.

However surveillance video showed that the officers had no contact with the four men.

In the 6 months it took to clear the brothers' names, they lost their business and their savings.

Defense lawyers say the officers' actions were disturbing, but not uncommon.

"As defense attorneys you know it exists more often than government wants you to believe" said Brad Wolk.

(Source: wcbstv.com [US])