An Australian news roundup

Parents banned from photographing their own kids!

Banning parents from taking photographs and videos at a NSW schools eisteddfod lacked common sense, NSW Premier Morris Iemma said.

The Coffs Harbour Eisteddfod has prohibited parents from taking photographs and videos of their children. The ban was sparked when a father at last year's event inadvertently videotaped children who were subject to child custody orders preventing them from being photographed. Organisers also were concerned images of the children could be used by pedophiles. This year, a professional photographer took images of the performers and they were distributed to parents.

But Mr Iemma said parents should be allowed to take photographs or videos of the children at school performances, to mark what he called "some of the most important days in a child's life". "Our child protection laws don't prohibit parents from taking photographs at school performances, or even videos," Mr Iemma said. "The prohibition is on those that would want to use them for pornography or engaging in child sexual abuse. "There's got to be some balance and common sense."

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Black child molesters' sentences increased -- slightly

Two Aborigines who sexually abused a seven-month-old baby and a two-year-old girl have had their sentences almost doubled. Northern Territory Chief Justice Brian Martin described the original jail terms imposed on the men as "so manifestly inadequate as to shock the public conscience". He had wanted to impose even harsher sentences on the two, whose crimes prompted a national debate on violence in Aboriginal communities, but had been prevented from doing so by the principle of double jeopardy. Both cases were raised last month by Alice Springs prosecutor Nanette Rogers as she detailed the high rate of violence and sexual assault in remote indigenous communities. She declined to comment yesterday.

Gerhardt Max Inkamala, 21, pleaded guilty to digitally penetrating a seven-month-old girl's vagina, causing injuries that required surgery, at Hermannsburg, north of Alice Springs, in late 2003. He was sentenced to five years in prison, with a non-parole period of four years. But following a prosecution appeal, three judges in the Court of Criminal Appeal yesterday increased that sentence to nine years in jail, with a non-parole period of seven years.

In the second case, Morgan Jabanardi Riley, 27, was originally sentenced to six years in jail and a non-parole period of four years and six months for sexually assaulting a two-year-old girl at Tennant Creek. Riley took the child into the bush and digitally penetrated her vagina and anus as she screamed in pain. The court increased that sentence yesterday to eight years' imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 6 1/2 years.

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Jobless rate hits record low

Australia's national jobless rate has fallen to the lowest monthly figure on record after an unexpected surge in employment growth. During the month of May the official figures show 56,000 additionally jobs were created, 47,000 of them in New South Wales. Despite there being more people looking for work, the jobless rate has dropped from 5.1 to 4.9 per cent, seasonally adjusted. All but 200 of the net new positions around Australia have been full-time. There has never been a lower monthly figure and it matches the quarterly rate registered in November 1976.

Prime Minister John Howard says there is no reason the figures cannot go even lower. "I start this news conference by declaring this day a wonderful day for the workers of Australia," he said. "For the first time since 1976 the unemployment rate in Australia has fallen below 5 per cent and this is a wonderful symbol of the success of the Government's economic policies."

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Pawns in the game of love



One of Australia's best female chess players is at the centre of a scandal in the normally sedate sport, apparently provoking a jealous clash between two grand masters on an Italian dance floor. Arianne Caoili, 19, was jiving with Armenian chess star Levon Aronian in a Turin nightclub when an English rival, Danny Gormally, performed an unorthodox and aggressive opening gambit.

Teammates at the World Chess Olympiad say Gormally moved in and sent the 23-year-old Armenian, a World Cup winner, sprawling across the floor of the nightclub. It's not known what happened to Caoili, Australia's No. 3, who is also ranked No. 7 on the World Chess Beauty Contest website, to which players apply to join....

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Another triumph of socialized medicine

A Queensland farmhand was forced to deliver his dead baby in a car beside the road after his wife - having her first child - was turned away from their local hospital and told to drive to another facility three hours away. An investigation has been ordered into why 34-week pregnant Sharon Walker, 35, was not provided with an ambulance for the 270km journey from Emerald to Rockhampton, in central Queensland, and why she was turned away when the hospital knew she was in labour. The examining doctor had warned her that it would probably be a breech birth because the baby had turned in the womb.


Two hours into the trip, the mother's waters broke and the baby's father, Steven Walker, had no option but to deliver the baby son he knew was dead. "Sharon was in pain and was pushing, and I was just there gripping this little baby tight and the thought came over me that this was my son I was pulling out," Mr Walker said yesterday. My panic was starting to rise. When I looked down and I was holding his foot, and he just looked like a really good little baby - it just gutted me. "But most of all I knew that I should not be there, that Sharon should not be going through this."

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Leave politics out of poetry: dean



He says "Theory" is old hat now anyway



High school English is being turned into a political science course with its emphasis on neo-Marxist and deconstructivist analysis of literature. Addressing the Lowy Institute for International Policy on links between Milton and the terrorist mind, the dean of humanities at Australian National University, Simon Haines, said English teachers felt the need to give poetry and literature "political roughage" to make it relevant to students. "Make it a literature course, not a disguised political science course," he urged....

Referring to reports in The Australian about a Year 11 English assignment asking students to examine Shakespeare's Othello from a feminist, Marxist or racial perspective, Dr Haines said teachers seemed to feel that poetry had to be wrapped in a political or theoretical package. "I'm never quite sure whether they think poetry is much too hard, obscure and unpalatable for the kiddies if it's not made relevant and tasty, or they're scared poetry is too soft and mushy and needs some hard political roughage to make it good for them -- to produce better outcomes, as they say in WA," he said. "There's nothing either soft or obscure about jealousy, or suspicion, or malignant scheming, which are the themes of Othello. "As we all know, these things are around us all the time; they're some of the most basic contours of life."

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(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and DISSECTING LEFTISM. My Home Page. Email me (John Ray) here.)

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