Mission & Justice

Nicolas Perpitch; 15/11/08

Almost two years since thousands of birds fell dead from the sky over Esperance, Mandy Waters wonders whether her son Kael will develop learning or behavioural problems from the lead dust he ingested while crawling around their home in the picturesque port town. The family lived beside the train line in the southern West Australian town early last year when toxic lead carbonate dust regularly blew into the air from passing carriages that had been loaded about 1000km north in Wiluna. The port authority has been charged, and Magellan Metals’ lead mine is in “care and maintenance” as a result of the scandal that left Kael, who is now 2 1/2, and more than 100 other children with potentially harmful levels of lead in their blood.

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Mark Davis; 12/11/08

Kevin Rudd;s pledge to “close the gap” between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians on a range of socio-economic indicators could take more than 100 years to achieve, say Australian National University researchers. Using census figures, researchers at the ANU’s Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research examined how trends in the welfare and living standards of Aboriginal Australians compared to the non-indigenous population. They found that if progress on closing the gap between the two populations continued at the rate of the past 35 years, it would take another 28 years for the Aboriginal unemployment rate to come into line with unemployment among non-Aboriginals. Lifting the share of Aborigines in the workforce to a level comparable with the rest of the population would take more than 100 years.

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Patricia Karvelas; 11/11/08

Nursing homes with 24-hour service will be built in two remote Aboriginal communities under a revamp of indigenous aged care services by the Rudd Government. Under the scheme, the first overnight aged care service will be built at Mutitjulu near Uluru, and a general works and equipment program will be initiated to raise standards. Minister for Ageing Justine Elliot said yesterday she had last month visited Mutitjulu, where female community elders expressed their concerns about the lack of an overnight aged care service.

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Amanda O’Brien; 11/11/08

The contamination scandal that caused dangerously high lead levels in West Australian children and killed thousands of native birds has been labelled one of the state’s worst environmental disasters, second only to the Wittenoom asbestos hazard. Premier Colin Barnett said that despite the seriousness of what had happened, the former Labor government had failed to conduct a proper clean-up and that some residents were still living with the impacts of the disaster almost two years later. Mr Barnett visited Esperance yesterday to meet affected families and said he hoped to have new measures in place within weeks to tackle their concerns.

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Patricia Karvelas; 11/11/08

Nursing homes with 24-hour service will be built in two remote Aboriginal communities under a revamp of indigenous aged care services by the Rudd Government. Under the scheme, the first overnight aged care service will be built at Mutitjulu near Uluru, and a general works and equipment program will be initiated to raise standards. Minister for Ageing Justine Elliot said yesterday she had last month visited Mutitjulu, where female community elders expressed their concerns about the lack of an overnight aged care service.

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Michael Mullins; 9/11/08 - is editor of Eureka Street.

Yesterday’s Sunday papers reported that a well regarded midwife recruited from the UK is being required to leave Australia because her child with Down syndrome is considered a burden on the taxpayer. The woman works at Perth’s Joondalup Hospital, where staff describe her as ‘one of the hospital’s best’. Her permanent residency application was rejected six years ago because the Federal Government saw her child as needing health or community services that would constitute a ’significant cost to the Australian community’. After a long succession of appeals, it is understood that the unnamed midwife has only weeks before she must leave Australia. The reporting of her case follows community outrage recently when German doctor Bernhard Moeller, who works in rural Victoria, was denied permanent residence because his son Lukas has Down syndrome.

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Leigh Dayton; 8/11/08

The upper limit of airborne lead allowed in the mining state of Queensland is now 10 times higher than permissible levels in the US since that nation’s environmental watchdog dramatically lowered the limit to protect the health of children and the environment. It was the first change to the US standard in 30 years. The revised standard - announced late last month by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) - has direct implications for Mt Isa Mines, cited last April as one of Australia’s most polluting businesses. According to the latest annual National Pollutant Inventory data, the Xstrata-owned operation pumped out more lead, sulphur dioxide, copper, zinc, cadmium and antimony than any other single operation in the nation in 2006-09. The Swiss mining giant also faces legal action after blood tests showed children in Mt Isa had unusually high levels of lead. The testing began in September 2006 after a report in The Australian raised concerns about the possibility of lead poisoning resulting from mining activities.

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Stephen Lunn & Pia Akerman; 5/11/08; (2 Items)

Refusing German doctor Bernhard Moeller’s application for permanent residence in Australia on the basis of the cost to the taxpayers of his son Lukas’s Down syndrome is “outrageous” and not in the spirit of international disability agreements, law expert Ron McCallum says. Professor McCallum, a former University of Sydney dean of law and an expert on industrial law, made his comments on the case from New York yesterday after being elected to a committee to oversee the new UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The appointment to a handpicked group of 12 worldwide makes the blind academic Australia’s only current representative on a UN treaty body. Australia ratified the convention in July, becoming one of the first Western nations to do so.

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Stephen Lunn; 4/11/08; (3 Items)

Federal Immigration Minister Chris Evans was warned four months ago that migrants were being denied permanent residency in Australia because a family member was disabled. Human Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes confirmed to The Australian yesterday that he had written to Senator Evans mid-year asking the Government to change the law to ensure immigration decisions did not discriminate against the disabled. Dr Innes’s letter was sent months before the case of Bernhard Moeller came to light last week. The German doctor, who is in Australia on a temporary visa and has practised as a specialist physician in rural Victoria for two years, was rejected for permanent residency by the Immigration Department because of the potential cost to the community of his 13-year-old son Lukas, who has Down syndrome.

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3/11/08

Doctors and Nurses of the Taiwan Health Center in Solomon Islands will be extending their medical service assistance to a rural hospital. The medical officers will be providing free professional and medical services to North Guadalcanal residents working in collaboration with the Good Samaritan Hospital located in the Guadalcanal plains every Wednesdays. The free medical service began on the 15th of October and has shown to have eased the shortage of medical manpower in the newly-established rural hospital.

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