Doctor and activist


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Author: Arthur Chesterfield-Evans

Vale Trevor Morling – the Passive Smoking Judgement of 1991, 10/6/20

Judge Trevor Morling has died at the age of 92.

He was the author of the famous ‘Morling Judgement’’’ which sent a shock around the world in 1991 as it stated that ‘passive smoking was potentially lethal’.

This has to be put in context if its significance is to be duly recognised.  The seminal article about smoking causing lung cancer had been written by Doll and Hill in the British Medical Journal in 1950, and many articles followed in the 1950s linking smoking to a great many diseases.

In 1961, the Royal College of physicians, concerned that the UK government had not done anything to curb smoking, commissioned their landmark report ‘Smoking and Health’ in 1962.  The US Surgeon-General did the same, resulting in a similar report in 1964.

The tobacco industry had to decide whether it would scale down its production, or tough it out and take the money.  It did secret research which confirmed that burning tobacco produced carcinogens and other harmful products which could not actually be removed.  There was a change of personnel and ethos.  Prior to 1950, tobacco was a legitimate product like anything else.  After the research was confirmed, the decision to keep selling and to deny the effects and hinder government action was the strategy that everyone working at the top of the tobacco industry had to accept.

Tobacco use was mainstream.  45% of all US adults smoked in 1954 (Statistica- Gallup) and consumption peaked in Australia in 1963.  People smoked everywhere. There were no smoke-free areas in bars, restaurants or anywhere else.  It was normal for house guests to light up and then ask ‘where is the ash tray?  The Tobacco industry was keen to maintain this situation and talked of the need for ‘courtesy and tolerance’ between smokers and non-smokers, which was code for ‘doing nothing political’.  Smokers all ‘chose to smoke’, which of course meant that they had voluntarily (and knowingly) assumed the risk and consequences of their behaviour.  The tobacco industry also gave money to political parties, just asking for a secret promise that there would be no legislation against them before the next election.  The medical industry were unaccustomed to this, and kept giving advice that was ignored, with a few significant voices such as Dr Nigel Gray of the Victorian Anti-Cancer Council and Dr Cotter Harvey of the Thoracic Society doing what advocacy they could. 

Non-Smokers Rights groups were the main driving force for change in the US in the 1960s and 1970s  arguing that people had a right not to breathe smoke.  The health charities, Cancer Councils, Heart Foundations were very keen to be non-political as their core business was raising research funds. Real activists soon discovered that their opponents were not the smokers, but the industry, who claimed that there was no proof that passive smoking was harmful, and that courtesy and consideration was all that was needed.  Their public stance was referred to as the ‘tightrope policy’.  They had to admit that many people believed that tobacco was harmful, as they had to contend that the smokers knew the risk that they were taking and hence could not sue them for deceiving them. But they also had to claim that they did not know that smoking was harmful, so that they were no liable for selling unsafe goods.  It was absurd, but it continued. 

The tobacco industry as well as being very politically active were the major advertiser, tobacco being second only to food.  This meant that the media were more reluctant to run stories that would affect their advertising revenue.  Outdoor advertising was also ubiquitous with over 50% of billboards being for tobacco, reminding people to smoke, and especially plastered all over convenience stores where cigarettes were sold.

In 1981 Prof Takeshi Hirayami published a seminal paper showing that non-smoking wives of smoking husbands got more cancer than wives of non-smokers (Br Med J (Clin Res Ed) 1981;282:183).  At last there was substantial medical evidence of the harm of passive smoking.

In Australia the medical groups had done quite good advocacy and in NSW a Transport Minister, Pat Hills, simply banned smoking on buses and trains in 1977, but pubs and clubs knew that smokers drank and gambled more than non-smokers, so they took the money from the tobacco industry and lobbied hard against smoke-free indoor air.  The restaurant industry followed them, somewhat lamely.

But a breakthrough came in 1979 when 3 activists, Bill Snow, Ric Bolzan and Geoff Coleman formed BUGA UP (Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions).  Coleman had studied political economy, and saw the issue as the tobacco industry killing people for money.  BUGA UP saw irresponsible and misleading advertising as the major vehicle for the promotion of products that had no intrinsic worth, tobacco being the leading example.  They wrote on billboards, changing the wordings in satiric and humorous ways, and signed their work, BUGA UP, which was an invitation for all to copy.  They also did street theatre, often concerned with disrupting tobacco promotion activities in supermarkets or malls.  This had an immense direct effect as the billboard posters were only being changed every 3 months and the leaflets and street theatre were amusing.  There was a lot of popular support as most people saw that smoking was harmful, and governments were too craven to act.  There was also a lot of publicity when Coleman and Neville Biffin were arrested in 1981 and charged with defacing a billboard.  They were convicted in 1982 and fined, but praised by the judge (Daily Telegraph 26/2/82) and given a light penalty, which sent a strong message.  It also sent a shot around the world by making all other tobacco activism seem moderate by comparison.  Australia’s activism was seen as more direct with a ‘Robin Hood’ flavour, but was also more conspicuous because it was against the ubiquitous tobacco billboards, and targeted the industry directly, rather than the more subtle and legalistic approach of the non-smokers’ right groups who had previously been the front line against the industry.  It might be noted that at the 5th World Conference on Smoking and Health  in 1983 there were no scheduled sessions on political action or advocacy, and the first meeting was convened by renowned Californian activist Prof Stan Glantz.  The presentation on BUGA UP had to be repeated as the room was not large enough for the people who had wanted to attend.  The medical system was becoming energised.

The tobacco industry was very demoralised by this.  They had set up a lobby group, pretentiously called the ‘Tobacco Institute.’  But this was re-energised by John Dollisson who was there from 1983-87. 

In 1983 the Western Australian lower house supported a private member’s bill by Dr Tom Dadour to ban tobacco sponsorship of sport, but an energetic campaign led by Dollisson and using sporting bodies who received money from tobacco, defeated this in the upper house (Musk, BMJ Vol 290 25/5/85). 

After his successful Industry fight against the WA Dadour bill, Dollisson’s feisty style set the tone for the tobacco struggles of the 1980s.  He was physically strong and in debate would cram a number of aggressive arguments into each sentence, such as,  ‘You are treating the smoking causes disease hypothesis as fact, then want to even say that passive smoking is harmful, and smoking is addictive and the advertising get the kids and then you want to tell people how to live their lives and trample on their rights and then you want the government to enforce a nanny state for you.’  (This is not a direct quote, but an example of how his speech was structured).  Assuming that he was interrupted at this point, as he would not stop if he were not, the tobacco control advocate would then be able to only answer one of the points already raised.  But Dollisson’s aggressive style eventually got him into trouble, with the Trade Practices Commission, prohibition of ‘misleading and deceptive conduct’ being used against one of his advocacy ads. Then the Australian Federation of Consumer Organisations bravely took him on.  The story is told by Stacey Carter (Tobacco Control- BMJ Issue 12 Suppl 3):

In July 1986 he [Dollisson as CEO of the Tobacco Institute (TIA)] placed an advertisement in the national press entitled “A message from those who do…to those who don’t”29 in which he claimed “there is little evidence and nothing which proves scientifically that cigarette smoke causes disease in non-smokers”.30 Early in 1987, Dollisson placed a “followup” ad for the TIA, as demanded by the Trade Practices Commission, which among other things stated that the TIA did not accept that their original advertisement was misleading.31 This action triggered a six year legal war between TIA and the Australian Federation of Consumer Organisations (AFCO), at substantial cost to the TIA.

On 7 February 1991 Justice Morling decided that the TIA “had engaged in conduct that was misleading or deceptive” and banned the TIA from speaking publicly on ETS.40,41 On appeal the injunction was lifted, but the court granted a declaration that the advertisement was misleading and deceptive contrary to the Act and the TIA were ordered to pay a large proportion of AFCO’s costs.

The ‘Morling Judgement’ as it was termed was the first time in the world that passive smoking had been held by a court to be harmful, and this rang around the world.

Dollisson left the Tobacco Institute and went to Philip Morris where he helped the campaign against the Victorian Government’s Tobacco Act of 1987, which raised the State tobacco tax and replaced tobacco sponsorship money as well as promoting health (which replaced tobacco advertising from the advertisers point of view) and also funded medical research.  The Victorian legislation, effectively paid off the tobacco industry’s bought acolytes, and the aggressive approach to advocacy by Dollisson in Australia was seen as backfiring. 

The decision also set the precedent for the test case Scholem v NSW Dept of Health, where a psychological counsellor successfully sued for workplace tobacco smoke exposure in May 1992.

Australia has been drifting in its tobacco control endeavours of late, but Trevor Morling will be remembered for his contribution, as well for the many other achievements cited below.

www.smh.com.au/national/chamberlain-royal-commission-judge-was-a-lawyer-s-lawyer-20201006-p562hk.html

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Domestic Violence Becomes a Workers Comp Issue 8/6/20

The NSW Supreme Court has held that the children of a worker killed at home by her mentally ill partner in a domestic violence incident can have compensation.

It is good that the issue of domestic violence gets publicity and that the children get compensation. But it raises the issue of whether employers are seriously able to assess the domestic situation of all employees and then whether they can ever hope to intervene in them.  Employers ran a long campaign not to have to pay for journey accidents, people injured on the way to work, on the basis that it was not a risk that they could control, yet which potentially might cause a big change in their insurance premiums and thus costs.  If we want our employers to be concentrating on making their businesses efficient and looking for hazards in the workplaces that they do control, it is slightly dubious public policy to have them sniffing around about employees’ home life.  This case is slightly unusual in that the employer was effectively a partnership bet ween the couple rather than having a distant employer, and the company had been deregistered which suggests some dysfunction  But the money accessed was Workers Compensation insurance and this will affect premiums and potentially other work situations.

It is true that a lot needs to be done about the discovery and action on domestic violence.  It is also true that mentally ill people need to live somewhere and that their carers are at risk.  Judges faced with people in dire need of help such as the children in this situation search for answers, and the Workers Compensation insurance scheme is a source of such funds. But the precedent set is not a good one.

The same principle applies when a baby gets into trouble at birth and has long-term adverse effects. If the obstetrician is found to have erred, there is a lot of money to give the unfortunate infant.  If he or she is not found to have erred, there is no money for the infant.  So now the premiums for obstetricians are very high and some retire in consequence.  4 Corners ran a show on this issue some time ago and it turned out that one doctor was responsible for about 60% of the problem births in Western Australia and had declined to speak to the show. Wow- go after him!  Who was he?  The Professor at the biggest teaching hospital of course.  Most of the difficult cases in the State were admitted under his name, and the staff of the hospital did their best with these cases. 

What is needed is a compensation system that is no fault.  Sometimes bad things happen.  Sometimes people make mistakes. Sometimes big mistakes have small consequences and sometimes little mistakes have big consequences.  With systems, it is not usually one person who makes a mistake, there are miscommunications, lack of clarity who was responsible, lack of availability of something or someone.  Accident causation theory is now an academic discipline, but the legal profession has not really caught up, let alone the political system.

A lot needs to be done about domestic violence, but I am not sure that making it a workers compensation issue will do anything more than push it into the public eye and help these children.  Employers and insurers will run a successful political campaign to change the law to exclude it.  I am not often on the side of Workers Compensation insurers, but a better solution has to be found.

www.smh.com.au/business/workplace/no-longer-a-private-matter-employer-held-responsible-for-family-violence-20200605-p54zy1.html

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The ‘Black Lives Matter’ Protest in Sydney 6/6/20

Prime Minister Scott Morrison was smugly distancing Australia from the riots in the USA over the George Floyd public murder, but voices were quick to point out that there had been 432 deaths in custody in Australia since 1991, despite Royal Commissions and their findings, which were not implemented.

The demonstration was planned as everyone here knows the COVID19 lockdown is gradually being eased as there are now few community-acquired cases in Australia.

But the Police applied to the Supreme Court and got them to declare the rally and march illegal under the COVID19 restrictions.  I had been going to miss the march on health grounds, but the Police rather than the public health authorities wanting it declared illegal made me want to attend.

As I have written before, Police intolerance of any sort of dissent was clearly brought home to me when I wore a sign that said, ‘Respect the Dead by working for Peace’  at the ANZAC service in Hyde Park in 2019, where the police sergeant said that he would arrest me if I did not move 50 metres away. 

John Howard initiated the needless Australian invasion of the Middle East against the wishes of 74% of the population who marched in 2004.  The creation of a terror threat due to that folly, the handling of that threat by increasing surveillance, decreasing civil liberties and increasing Police power without supervision is a trend of our time.  The other trend, the increase in social inequality has put pressure on Police, as the enforcers of the norms of a social system that excludes an increasing percentage of the population.

But the Police inability to handle mental illness or drunkenness and conflict has not been sufficient. There are too many deaths in custody, which principally affect Aboriginal people and too many Police shootings, which principally affect the mentally ill.

So I was not willing to sit at home because the Police did not want a demonstration that asked that they be called to account and change their ways.

Interestingly some of my son’s friends who are overseas students did not dare to go lest their visas be cancelled. 

The Supreme Court’s ban on the rally and march was overturned on appeal in the morning, but my opinion was that most people going to the 3pm event were unaware of this and, like myself had decided to go anyway. 

The city had prepared for the event by stopping the trams from Circular Quay, (could they have run from Central to Randwick?), and by the trains not stopping at Town Hall.  So we walked from Circular Quay and the demonstration went back almost the full length of the Queen Victoria building in George St.  It later went back further than this.  Protesters were socially distancing and about two thirds were wearing masks.  People were walking among the protesters issuing masks and hand sanitiser, and soon more than 90% were wearing masks.  There was a wide spread of ages and racial origins.

The protest speakers were on the Town Hall steps, but could not be heard at all for a fair percentage of the crowd as the PA system which is on the traffic lights was not in use by the speakers.   After about half an hour, at about 3.30pm the speeches stopped, and everyone assumed that the March would start. It did not.  It was not clear what was happening, whether the rally was allowed and the march not.  There was quite a lot of chanting of ‘Black Lives Matter’ and also activist shouting, ‘Too Many Coppers’ with the reply ‘Not enough Justice’.

There were Police amongst the protesters.  They did not look comfortable, and I noted Glock pistols in their holsters.  Glock pistols have no safety catches, so the only thing stopping them or someone else grabbing them was the flap and press stud on the top of the holsters. 

We kept thinking that we were about to march, as we went forward in little bursts. But looking a long way ahead we could see that the placards were not moving.  All that was happening was that the social distancing was being taken up. This and the chanting would have increased the infection danger somewhat, so one could only wonder at the reason for the delay.  The rally and march had been scheduled from 3pm to 5pm with a break at 4.32pm when we were all to kneel for 1 minute to remember the 432 people who had died. 

The March started a bit before 4pm and wound to Belmore Park near Central station with the stop and kneeling at 4.32pm an impressive moment.   Belmore Park was totally packed, with social distancing quite undermined, so we took a photo and left.  Apparently there were some minor scuffles between Police and people who stayed after 5pm.

It was interesting that the public, who have been very compliant and responsible throughout the COVID19 epidemic, were willing to defy the Supreme Court ban on the rally and march.  The large Police presence suggested that they were willing to suppress the event, but there were a very large number of protesters, 17,000 seems a reasonable estimate.  I do not think that the crowd would have tolerated not having the rally and not marching, so it might have escalated with lines of Police, riot shields, water cannon and tear gas.  Fortunately sense prevailed. 

It was a victory for the people in the sense that they stated in large numbers their attitude to Black Deaths in custody, and the limits to which they are willing to tolerate the Police, the government and the Supreme Court telling them what they may and may not do.  The relatively poor uptake of the COVID19 tracking app is a similar indicator of the trust of government. No, we do not want COVID19, but we do not trust the government either.

As I get older, I trust people more and government and institutions less, and work for the power to go to those who legitimately own it, the people.  This was a good day.  Hopefully no COVID19 cases will result.

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Electric Vehicles: How helpful are they for Climate Change?

5 June 2020

There are claims and counter claims for how much electric vehicles (EVs) improve the greenhouse gas situation. The production of batteries is quite energy-intensive, so a large battery car takes about twice as much energy to produce as a normal Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) car.

The ‘payback’ time for that extra energy is about 2 years based on the number of km an average (UK) driver does per year.

But the key variable is how the electricity is generated, both in making the battery and in running the car. If it is made in Asia with coal fired electricity to manufacture the car and then charged with coal powered electricity, there is very little benefit. If the battery is produced by renewable electricity and the car charged with renewable electricity, the savings are more than two thirds by 150,000km.

If you keep your old ICE car for 4 years, it will have produced about the same amount of greenhouse gas as it takes to produce a new electric car. Looked at it the other way, it takes 4 years for a new electric car to pay for itself from an emissions point of view as against paying just for the petrol of an existing ICE car.

www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-help-to-tackle-climate-change

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Electric Vehicles: How helpful are they for Climate Change? 5/6/20

There are claims and counter claims for how much electric vehicles (EVs) improve the greenhouse gas situation. The production of batteries is quite energy-intensive, so a large battery car takes about twice as much energy to produce as a normal Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) car.

The ‘payback’ time for that extra energy is about 2 years based on the number of km an average (UK) driver does per year.

But the key variable is how the electricity is generated, both in making the battery and in running the car. If it is made in Asia with coal fired electricity to manufacture the car and then charged with coal powered electricity, there is very little benefit. If the battery is produced by renewable electricity and the car charged with renewable electricity, the savings are more than two thirds by 150,000km.

If you keep your old ICE car for 4 years, it will have produced about the same amount of greenhouse gas as it takes to produce a new electric car. Looked at it the other way, it takes 4 years for a new electric car to pay for itself from an emissions point of view as against paying just for the petrol of an existing ICE car.

www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-help-to-tackle-climate-change

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Aboriginal Deaths in Custody are not far from the US situation. 5/6/20

Australians looking at the riots happening in the US may be tempted to feel smug that it does not happen here. The riots don’t, but there has been a long history of Aboriginal deaths in custody, seemingly unchanged by a number of Royal Commissions. This is long overdue to be addressed, and is the peak of the tendency to criminalise our social problems.

You might argue that the policeman who tripped a 16 year old to arrest him did so because the youth threatened to break his jaw, but you cannot argue with the many deaths and inquiries’ findings.

We need to put our own house in order.

www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jun/04/morrison-says-australia-should-not-import-black-lives-matter-protests-after-deaths-in-custody-rally?CMP=share_btn_fb

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Housing Stimulus: More Middle Class Welfare 5/6/20

Successive governments have used the building industry to pump up the economy on credit.  How so?  For decades the tax deduction on negatively geared real estate has made housing a favoured investment. It has been the no-brainer way to make money. You borrow to own a property, and as long as it is your, all the capital gain is yours.  So the lesser fraction that you own, the greater the percentage rise in your total assets.  And since you save on tax and gain rent, it is far better than shares or other assets. If you ask to borrow 90% to buy shares, no bank would lend you 90%. They would fall about laughing, and you would be taking a big risk.  If you wanted to borrow 90% of real estate, no problem- all perceived as low risk.  How come?  Because Australia’s private debt is rising and is now the highest in the world.  This little Ponzi scheme has a cost. We have the best houses, which are the most expensive relative to our incomes, and we have a huge national private debt, which means that we pay interest to foreign banks and have no money to develop and own our own country.  Like all Ponzi schemes, it is OK as long as you sell out before the bubble pops.  The older generation are doing this, cashing out as the younger generation takes up the huge loans that are now necessary.

The tax department got less money to create this mess, so public housing was not built, and there is a huge shortage of public housing.  Because prices are so high there is also a problem in affordable housing as wages in the real world have stagnated as globalisation allows jobs to go offshore to be done more cheaply by third world people.  The negative gearing thing amounts to middle class welfare, where those who had one house were able to buy more, and those that did not merely saw rents and prices rise.  Labor tried to address this and lost the election.

Now we have a recession, worsened by the COVID-19 crisis and the taxpayer has to step in, making more debt for the future.  So what projects to spend the money on?  More middle class welfare! Those who already have $150,000 to improve their house get another $25,000 from the future taxpayer, the young people of today.

It is merely another example of the Morrison government’s lack of commitment to a fair go for all. This could be a huge opportunity to build social housing to help those who have been left behind.  Is the excuse that the projects are not ‘shovel-ready’?  The government could pay for the huge outstanding renovations and repair bill on the public housing, which has been neglected for 30 years.  Surely these repair lists on yellowed paper could be found and actioned.

Morrison governs for his voters, not for the country as a whole. His policies increase inequality, which stores discord for the future.  This last effort will further the Matthew Effect, named after the biblical quote, ‘For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away’.

— Matthew 25:29, RSV.

www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jun/03/morrison-government-to-offer-25000-grants-to-help-build-and-renovate-homes

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Mental Illness and Stupidity 3/6/20

Quite early in my Parliamentary career I was approached and discovered 4 problems with mental health in NSW. A fellow medical student, now psychiatrist approached me and said that the system was far worse than formerly.

I had worked as an after hours call doctor in 1977 and 1983 and found that mental hospitals did not want patients sent to them, and would try to talk referring doctors out of sending them. At first they would say it was not in their catchment area, then that the patients were not really mentally ill and I did not actually know what I was talking about. Eventually I tired of this game, so I would call and tell them a brief history, my diagnosis and that the ambulance with or without police escort was on its way.

So when my psychiatrist friend said it was a lot worse I was surprised. She explained that Nick Greiner closed all the long-stay mental hospitals for a supposedly community-based service with supported accommodation, but the alternative was never funded, and the system had staggered on ever since.

Then I was in an inquiry into the rise in the NSW prison population and a government prison psychiatrist had found large numbers of mentally ill and developmentally delayed people falling foul of the law. He explained that if they became dysfunctional they could not pay for the electricity and rent so became homeless. They had no chance of getting through the complexities of Centrelink and getting money, so eventually they were caught shoplifting in order to eat and ended up in the Magistrate’s court, where, if he did not divert them, they went off to gaol. He had a pilot scheme in Sydney and ?Port Macquarie to divert them to supported accommodation at hugely reduced cost.

I went for a long weekend near Port Macquarie and met an older lady on the beach, who, hearing I was a politician said that this made me a cad and a bounder who was of no use in the major social problem which was mental health. Accustomed to this assumption about politicians, I remonstrated mildly, and she told me her story of her schizophrenic son, who had gone in and out of supported accommodation and prison for 30 years without getting much help.

Finally I want to a conference on homelessness where I met a community mental health nurse who described how after long weekends she would go to the parks and under the bridges to look for her homeless patients, to see if they were alive to take their medication. I asked that she write a summary in point form of the problems of NSW mental health. She did so, and her excellent report formed the terms of reference of the NSW Mental Health inquiry which I initiated. I asked Brian Pezutti to chair it. He was a Liberal, and had the credibility of having been an Assistant Health Minister. He was also a very thorough and meticulous anaesthetist, retiring at the next election, and keen to do something useful before he went.

The Labor government agreed to the Inquiry because I had the numbers in the upper house. The Inquiry came out in 2002 (NSW Health System Worst in Aust SMH 10/12/2002).

It resulted in a number of things. The budget the following year in NSW rose by $320 million, but mental health money was also quarantined so that it could not be siphoned off to fund Emergency Depts or ICUs further down the budget allocation tree. Most significantly it triggered a Democrat-initiated Federal Mental Health inquiry which put psychologists on Medicare and hugely increased the mental health workforce.

Needless to say, diversionary schemes were part of the recommendations, as without support, mentally ill and developmentally delayed people cannot do the functions that are needed to manage a life in society. There appeared to be some progress and the complaints from mental health workers for some time changed from, ‘we cannot afford staff’ to ‘we cannot fill our positions’.

As the time has passed, it seems that the situation has slipped back. The history of these inquiries is that there is a fuss, things improve for a while, then go back until another inquiry finds the same problems.

So I was discouraged to read that a program to divert mentally ill people from Gaol is to be axed, because some bean counter thinks it is too expensive. According to the Dept of Corrective Services it cost $181.85 per day to keep a prisoner in NSW gaols, which is $1,273 a week, or $66,375 a year. It is dubious that a support scheme could not be organised for less than this, but the idea that the only thing that matters is whether it saves money seems an appalling way to run society. Surely we should figure out what we want to do, workshop how to do it efficiently, and then work out how to fund it.

If a diversion plan is to be axed, let the NSW government tell us that there are good diversion schemes already working and prove it by having an independent body affirm that there is not an excess of mentally ill or developmentally delayed people in prisons. If such schemes existed, why was there this new one set up? There is a long history of ‘pilot schemes’ being set up to deal with a political problem, and then quietly dying when the political heat goes off.

www.smh.com.au/national/program-diverting-intellectually-impaired-people-from-nsw-prisons-faces-axe-20200527-p54wve.html

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East Timor Bugging Case goes ahead in Secret

31 May 2020 The absurd case of Witness K, who was an intelligence officer who blew the whistle on Australia’s bugging of the East Timorese Cabinet room during the negotiations over the border in the Timor Sea goes on. The bugging is now public knowledge. East Timor took legal action in The Hague against Australia […]

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NZ Environmental Law Disappoints

The Conversation has an article about how NZ rivers are degraded and a package to improve them has been disappointing as it did not take expert advice. The Conversation only takes articles from academics and the author admits he was one of the expert panel whose advice was ignored. He does not write of other […]

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