Unions have described a 3 per cent pay rise for politicians as a slap in the face for workers who took pay cuts to keep their jobs during the downturn and others effected by a freeze in the minimum wage.

The pay rise for federal MPs was awarded by the Remuneration Tribunal.

It amounts to an extra $75 a week for backbenchers, whose annual salary will rise to $131,040. The Prime Minister Mr Rudd will now be paid $340,704.

Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Jeff Lawrence described the pay rise as "a slap in the face for workers and unions who have voluntarily negotiated cuts to pay or hours of work to help companies get through the current economic downturn."

He added that workers on minimum award wages were recently denied a pay rise by the Fair Pay Commission.

(Source: The Age)

 

There are more British veterans in jail or on probation than there are serving in Afghanistan, according to new research.

The study by the probation officers' union Napo found an estimated 20,000 veterans in the criminal justice system, more than double the number of British troops currently in Afghanistan. 8,500 of these are in jail.

The snapshot survey of 90 probation case histories of convicted veterans shows a majority with chronic alcohol or drug problems, and nearly half suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or depression as a result of their wartime experiences on active service.

Those involved had served in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. They are most likely to have been convicted of a violent offence, particularly domestic violence.

In many cases the symptoms of depression or stress did not become apparent for many years and included persistent flashbacks and nightmares.

(Source: The Guardian [UK])

 

Vulnerable women in state-monitored care homes are reportedly being raped and are trading sex for cigarettes and money in cases that highlight years of neglect and inaction by the State Government, according to its own watchdog.

The Public Advocate, Colleen Pearce, says Victorians would feel ashamed if they visited some government-monitored private nursing homes.

"We have left vulnerable Victorians without support. It is a shameful situation" said Ms Pearce, who was appointed in 2007 to protect the rights of the disabled and vulnerable.

Ms Pearce said she had decided to speak out to highlight years of government inaction over reports from Office of the Public Advocate monitors about conditions facing mentally ill, disabled and elderly residents of state-supported accommodation.

She said there was particular concern about women in so-called supported residential services.

"When you have got women who need to get basic necessities, they will often provide sexual favours to get them and then feel really abused by that. It is not uncommon for us to hear about women either trading cigarettes for sex or else being raped."

Ms Pearce accused the Department of Human Services of failing to adequately monitor the treatment of supported accommodation residents, and of failing to prosecute facility owners who abused or neglected them.

She also said the Government's reforms of the care-home sector, which include new regulations and a $40.4 million five-year plan announced in 2006, were "piecemeal" and a "Band-Aid solution".

"It is not addressing the fundamental issue and that is that vulnerable people are in accommodation that often involves two people sharing a room, a lack of privacy and few or no activities for them."

"Many residents require physiotherapy, disability services, mental health intervention and speech therapy but there is no co-ordination with the majority of these services. So you have got a group of people unable to access the services they need."

(Source: The Age)

 

Quote of the Moment:

"I don't care what you fuckers think. You can get fucked. Don't you fucking understand?"

Kevin Rudd, in 'conversation' with Labor Party representatives.

 

A series of 'urgent' measures to improve Victoria's overwhelmed child protection service was largely ignored for two years by Victoria's state government.

In 2007 the government received 33 recommendations from a $1.2 million review of the state's child protection service. But the report was suppressed until last week, when the Opposition used its numbers in the upper house to force the Government to make it public.

The Boston Consulting Group report suggested a new model for child protection based on early and intensive interventions, which is being trialled.

But it also urged the Government to, within 12 months, improve workloads and conditions to reduce the acute loss of experienced staff. The report warned that staff turnover was so bad that 45 per cent of the state's child protection workers had less than a year's experience.

More than two years later, many of these recommendations are only now being implemented, some not at all. Premier John Brumby's $77 million announcement on Friday, which he described as Labor's third major reform of child protection, included many recommendations flagged in the 2007 report, such as providing extra support staff, a campaign to attract more workers, and more mentoring of junior case workers by experienced staff.

Mr Brumby's announcement came after a series of scandals highlighted gaps in a system that is supposed to protect the state's most vulnerable children. In August a two-year-old girl died after being bashed by her father. Last week the Ombudsman revealed that Department of Human Services workers had placed a child with a convicted sex offender and waited 17 days before investigating claims that two boys were living with a convicted child sex offender.

Community Services Minister Lisa Neville has previously admitted that 2000 Victorian children are waiting to be allocated their own case worker and some child protection workers are working up to 15 cases at a time. The Community and Public Sector Union says a cap of eight cases per worker should be introduced to reduce burn-out and mistakes.

Sources from within the service pointed out that even if the 101 extra front-line workers announced by Mr Brumby could hit the ground running with 10 cases each, they would not cover the 2000 children waiting for a case worker.

Meanwhile the union's assistant branch secretary, Jim Walton, said the recruitment drive would fail because entry-level child protection workers on $47,700 a year were paid $10,000 less than new teachers.

Child protection sources said many of the recommendations, such as more case support workers to visit families in need, and providing incentives to attract child protection workers back to the service, were ignored or implemented only in the trial of the new model based in the eastern suburbs.

(Source: The Age)

 

U.S. states whose residents have more conservative religious beliefs on average tend to have higher rates of teenagers giving birth, a new study suggests.

Researcher Joseph Strayhorn of Drexel University College of Medicine and University of Pittsburgh said "we conjecture that religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself."

(Source: MSNBC website)

 

An offender who beat a gay man so badly that he eventually died of his injuries, faces a maximum of 180 days in jail and a US$1,000 fine.

Robert Lee Hannah beat gay Maryland resident Tony Randolph Hunter while robbing him. He died in hospital 10 days later.

Hannah claimed that Hunter groped him.

Hannah was originally arrested on a voluntary manslaughter charge, but accepted a plea bargain of simple assault, a misdemeanor. He is currently free on bond awaiting sentencing.

(Source: Queerty website [US], Metro Weekly [US])

 

Quote of the Moment:

"American children living with married partners have a higher risk of seeing their parents break up than do Swedish children living with unmarried partners...

Americans who are very religious divorce less than the rest of us. But they divorce more than godless Europeans."

Andrew Cherlin, author of The Marriage-Go-Round.

 

The Victorian Electoral Commission has abandoned its investigation into whether the Labor Party broke the law by allegedly passing on enrolment information to a Brimbank councillor.

The state government this week sacked the Brimbank City Council after its monitor, Bill Scales, found the councillors were incapable of providing good governance.

Mr Scales also found the St Albans branch of the ALP was trying to exert undue influence on some councillors.

He was appointed to monitor the western Melbourne council after Ombudsman George Brouwer released a report which recommended the electoral commission investigate possible breaches of the Electoral Act by the ALP.

It was alleged that the ALP and the party's data manager, Sel Sanli, provided councillor Ken Capar with the names and details of voters in contravention of the act.

Both Mr Capar and Mr Sanli refused to be interviewed by the commission.

(Source: The Age)

 

The Obama administration supports extending three key provisions of the Patriot Act that are due to expire at the end of the year, the US Justice Department has announced.

The provisions include giving the government the ability to access business records and conduct roving wiretaps, as well as conduct surveillance on suspects with no known link to foreign governments or terrorist groups.

(Source: NPR website [US])

 

Women who regularly attend church are commonly the victims of sexual propositions from clergy, according to new American research.

The research by Baylor University's School of Social Work found that, of women who attend religious services at least once a month, 3.1 percent had received "sexual advances or propositions" from a religious leader.

More than two-thirds of the offenders were married to someone else at the time of the advance.

Carolyn Waterstradt, 42, a graduate student who lives in the Midwest, said she was coerced into a sexual relationship with a married minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for 18 months. He had been her pastor for a decade, she said, and told her the relationship was ordained by God.

Dr Diana Garland, the study's lead researcher, said that "we [assume] that if victims are adults that the relationship must be consensual."

"If it wasn't physical coercion, we miss the emotional and spiritual coercion...It's not an affair. It's an abuse of power. Regardless of who intended what, the religious leader is the one in the position of responsibility."

"Because many people are familiar with some of the high-profile cases of sexual misconduct, most people assume that it is just a matter of a few charismatic leaders preying on vulnerable followers."

"What this research tells us, however, is that clergy sexual misconduct with adults is a widespread problem in congregations of all sizes and occurs across denominations."

The study found that close to one in 10 respondents of both genders reported having known about clergy sexual misconduct occurring in a congregation they had attended.

(Source: Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Washington Post)

 

Overwork and "management by terror" have been blamed for a wave of suicides at a privatised European phone company.

More than 20 workers at France Telecom have taken their lives in the past 18 months.

On 14 July, a 52-year-old employee killed himself, leaving behind a note blaming "overwork" and "management by terror". He wrote that "I am committing suicide because of my work at France Telecom. That's the only reason."

In early August a 28-year-old worker was found dead in his garage. He had left a note that talked of his girlfriend, but also mentioned how he felt "helpless" and "angry" over issues at work.

On 29 August, a 53-year-old France Telecom technician and father of three killed himself in Lannion in Brittany. Colleagues and trade unionists blamed his death on difficulties surrounding his rank within the company and "infantile" management procedures.

Trade union representatives at the company have blamed restructuring cuts, extreme pressure, bullying and poor management methods - which, they say, have worsened since privatisation.

(Source: The Guardian [UK])

 

The outgoing head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has described the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran as 'hype'.

Egyptian Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBarardei said that the idea that Iran will soon have nuclear weapons "is an idea that isn't supported by the facts."

A recent IAEA report said that Iran had slowed production of enriched uranium.

(Source: MX, Wikipedia)

 

A private school allowed a convicted paedophile to attend its debutante ball.

Christian College Geelong allowed Gary John Riddle to attend the deb night with his wife Janine, a teacher at the college's junior school. Mr Riddle is also the brother of principal Daryl Riddle.

Riddle was sentenced to five years' jail in 2002 after being charged with 14 counts of indecent assault against nine girls aged eight to 16.

The school teaches pupils from kindergarten through to Year 12.

(Source: The Age, Christian College website)