Antipodean links

[erudito]

Oz has signed its biggest ever export deal: supplying coal to China. With lots of associated infrastructure.

But TAbb seems to be doing good things for the Coalition’s polling.

Farmer Peter Spencer has ended his hunger strike. It was about who owns property. Talking to Peter Spencer and what it was about.

The Brumby Government has decided to

Comments

[catsidhe]

With the Female Circumcision thing, I wonder if the wording of the piece has not been somewhat misinterpreted.

When the RWH says it sees 600-700 women per year who have experienced FGM, that means that of the thousands (tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands?) of women who use its services each years, 600-700 of them have been genitally mutilated. At some point. And it doesn't mention how many of them come back to be counted next year.

What it most certainly does not say is that there are 600-700 new cases of FGM each year in Melbourne alone.

Those two numbers are not amenable to comparison: the 600-700 pa of women who visit the RWH and have, at some point of their lives, suffered FGM, and the abominable, but unspecified number of children who suffer it in Australia.

Obviously, it should go without saying that even one case is an abomination. But I don't think it's quite as common as one might come away from that article believing.

Fair

[erudito]

Yes, that seems a reasonable interpretation of the evidence.

[korgmeister]

I reckon people are being way too harsh on Garrett here.

It's the shonky contractors who are to blame, not Garret. Making a scapegoat out of him is just going to whitewash over dodgy operators who refuse to follow safety standards.

It's a weird situation that makes me feel sorry for Peter Garrett, but it's managed to come about.

Bad implementation

[erudito]

Shonky contractors are a result of bad tendering and quality control which are signs of poor implementation.

If X is hiring out Y to do things for Z, then X has particular responsibility to ensure that things are done properly.

So, no, I do not have sympathy for PGarr. Particularly when poor tendering procedures seem to be a bit of a feature of this Government.

Re: Bad implementation

[korgmeister]

It's more the way he's been singled out. There's been way worse tendering goofs but for some reason Garret was in the wrong place at the wrong time.