“Prime Minister Rudd and health minister Roxon have shown contempt for mental health professionals and a total lack of interest in those with mental health problems.”  Australian Democrats Victorian spokesperson for Mental Health David Scott Kane said today.

“Prof Mendoza – their appointment – and over 60 mental health organisations have tried to present a letter to Kevin Rudd with a suggested plan of action for mental health. The Prime Minister and his health minister have declined to receive it, a clear message the federal government isn’t listening on mental health.

“Psychiatrists have advised for decades that a key element in treating mental illness is acknowledging there is a problem.

“The Rudd government isn’t even prepared to take this basic step. They are in complete denial and have tried to play hide and seek with the advisor they appointed.”

Successive governments – federal and state – have failed the mentally ill, their families, their carers and the medical practitioners that support them.  They’ve failed in funding, in infrastructure and failed again by refusing to look at industry-suggested solutions to the daily problems the mentally ill face.

“The system is pale, sick, lost and in dire need of urgent assistance. The cure is for this government to face the crises.

Mental health is now the leading disability in Australia.  It is the foremost killer of those under 44.  Yet the Rudd Government ignores it, and now chooses to ignore the man they appointed to deliver the message to them.

“Kevin Rudd seems to think if he states something it will magically resolve itself.  Restating his commitment ‘to do more on mental health’ and that it’s ‘next cab off the rank’ seems to be about as committed as he was on supermarket pricing and climate change.  We should be grateful he didn’t use it as an opportunity to demonstrate his powerful command of expletives.

Professor Mendoza and the mental health organizations are offering possible solutions to the problems faced by the mentally ill.  Solutions to save lives.  Solutions to save families pain and reduce the soul-destroying frustrations of thousands of people treating and caring for the mentally ill.

“The mentally ill, their families and the mental health field are justifiably angry at the Rudd Government for continuing the cycle of systemic failure imposed on them by the current mental health policy – or lack thereof.  They should vote accordingly.

“Rather than save lives and advance this neglected field, the Rudd Government concerns itself with internal leadership navel gazing and bickering.  They have forgotten the reasons they were elected,” Mr. Kane concluded.

Media contact – David Scott Kane 040 434 1025

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The Avenue of Honour in Bacchus Marsh – the third largest of Victoria’s Great War Avenues of Honour – is threatened by road works. Planning Minister Justin Madden is about to approve the uprooting of eight magnificent elm trees planted to remind Bacchus Marsh residents of the sacrifices their sons and brothers made in World War One.

“In the afternoon of the 10th August 1918 a crowd of over 1000 people assembled to witness and participate in the planting ceremony. A bugle call was then sounded as the signal to commence the planting simultaneously. All two hundred and eighty one elms were planted within half an hour of the bugle call.” – The Express, 17th August 1918.

The trees are over ninety years old now, but the spilled blood they mourn is still fresh and the need to respect the fallen unchanged.

Our boys gave their lives.

The Avenue of Honour is a warning to us all of the folly of war, the cruelty of man and the need for eternal vigilance to defend our freedoms.

The Victorian Government has no plan to replant the trees or renew the memorial in a modern form.  They are just going to take away some more.

This government insults the integrity of the Bacchus Marsh community and the deep cultural significance of the Avenue.

I oppose the thoughtless and destructive Woolpack Road extension from Geelong-Bacchus Marsh Rd – for a truck route!

We cannot allow Premier Brumby and Minister Madden to diminish our proud Australian heritage.

Bacchus Marsh residents must be consulted on this issue and given the opportunity to come up with a more viable, honourable and respectful solution.

There are alternatives.

Mr Laurie Martin, a local and Vice President of the Didyabringyarodalong Angling Club, suggested diverting trucks to the other side of Bacchus Marsh to preserve and protect the Avenue of Honour.

Seems reasonable, Mr Madden.  Are you listening?

Peter Papachristoforos

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The amendments to the Summary Offences & Control of Weapons Act that enable police to strip-search citizens at will are deeply disturbing.

I share the deep repugnance of YACVIC, the Youth Affairs Council of Victoria, at the Brumby Labor Government’s bill. They are aghast and rightly so.

The legislation empowers police to search at will or ‘move on’ individuals who are likely to breach the peace or endanger the safety of others who haven’t otherwise desisted from an illegal act.

Can any of us take our freedoms so for granted that we let this slip idly by?

It’s one thing to give police proper authority to act and to trust their professionalism and training. They are magnificent at their job, but they remain police – not psychics.

Let’s be fair. We don’t want to impede their essential work, but a millennium of the Common Law is being overturned here:  surely they should form a reasonable suspicion first. This bill would no longer require it.

Should they really be empowered to stop someone, perhaps even a child, before they’ve formed a considered opinion of a person’s intent? The echoes of Police Union boss Greg Davies have scarcely faded on the presumption of guilt.

Before us is a Bill empowering police to search any individual – including children, for the legislation lists no age limit to these search powers.

What’s even more ghastly is that the state government sheepishly concedes the bill flies in the face of its own Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities”.

Well done to YACVIC for bringing our attention to this insidious weakening of our hard-earned civil rights, and shame on the government for its hypocrisy.

The YACVIC position can be viewed here.

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The moral zealots are working overtime in Canberra pushing to see the gay and lesbian same sex union laws buried yet again.

This couldn’t happen if the ACT had the same standing as the Australian States – the responsibility and right to make binding laws on behalf of its citizens.  The ACT and the Northern Territory risk a Federal veto on any legislation a majority of parliamentarians may pass.  It’s way past time the territories were given the same constitutional standing State governments – and voters – expect and enjoy.

This disparity between territories and states means those living in the ACT and NT do not participate in or receive the same democratic freedoms the rest of Australia takes for granted.  This must change.  It will take a referendum to do it too.  Surely this is a referendum that would command a majority of votes in a majority of states, one Australia would pass.  The people in the territories are Australians too, after all.

Gay And Lesbian Rights

Naturally it follows, once the territories are given the same respect  – and recognition and autonomy – as the states, we will see laws such as for gay and lesbian marriages in the ACT proclaimed, out of the hands of the moralising minority that somehow manage to populate the federal parliament.

We’d see it taken out of the hands of the conservative crusaders who claim to be christians (none of this newfangled compassion nonsense) shuffling around the corridors of parliament pushing one eyed, “our size fits all”, depraved, dishonest and dissolute doctrines.

I suggest to the gay and lesbian rights movement that to achieve their goals, autonomy for the territories would be the vehicle they need to accelerate their freedoms.  This is common ground for their community and the heterosexual majority

This is a broader set of rights.  At the end of the day, we all win.

Scott Kane

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The barometer and the thermometer are peaking out to red.  The forecast – FAIL.

Suburban Melbourne faces the first SEVERE fire weather warning on Thursday under the new system.  We follow the Weather Bureau’s predictions with our hearts in our mouths.

From Canberra, the news is even more serious.

EPIC FAIL!

• The Australian Greens are campaigning on Climate Change in the Higgins by-election while steadfastly refusing to negotiate with the Federal government in or out of the Senate chamber.
  Five (5) Australian Greens Senators in the Senate.  Five!
  Negotiation?  Discussion?  Nil, Nix, Nada, Zero, Zilch.
  What a waste of activist energy and tax payers money The Greens experiment is proving to be!

EPIC FAIL!

• The federal Labor government knows if they don’t get the Liberal/National Coalition on side their ETS bill will earn a “Catastrophic” forecast too.  The ETS faces the same future as PM Rudd’s Grocery Watch scheme.  Will we once again have politicians hiding behind “core” and “non core” election promises – as famously coined by John Howard?  “Not happy Jan!”

EPIC FAIL!

• The Liberal/National Coalition, currently undergoing the worst ignominy a conservative political party can endure – opposition – are  lurking in dark party corners with razor sharp knives for the ritual Seppuku of their leader Malcolm Turnbull.

EPIC FAIL!

• The Coalition opposition are flipping and flopping with contradictory statements of victory in respect of negotiating amendments to the ETS while simultaneously trying to torpedo it.

Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan has reportedly said:

“…the exclusion of agriculture from the ETS shows negotiations between the government and the opposition have been productive.”

He’s kidding right?  Has Heffernan  a future career as a stand up comic at the Melbourne Comedy Festival?  He must, because on the same day Senator Nick Minchin states:

“…the exclusion of agriculture alone would not be sufficient grounds for the coalition to back the ETS.”

“We’ll take significantly more concessions from the government before the coalition party room, I think, would be prepared to consider supporting this bill,” Senator Minchin told ABC Radio on Monday, adding that Labor needs to consider a “whole range” of other coalition amendments.”

A  “whole range of other coalition amendments”?  Reads like “Our way or the highway” to me.  This is not a process of negotiation – it is politcal castration being performed by an absurd and out-to-lunch far left (The Australian Greens) and a medley of Climate Change deniers within the Liberal/National Coalition.

EPIC FAIL!

• The Labor government’s Senator Wong meanwhile takes the fine art of saying nothing while implying new heights, when asked if the Federal government would be “willing to dump other sectors from the ETS to appease the coalition.”

“This is about getting majority support through the parliament for a piece of legislation that is in Australia’s national interest.”

Is that a yes, a maybe or are you just being contrite Senator?

EPIC FAIL!

And it’s not even Summer yet.

Scott Kane

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