Leader of both the Australian Liberal Party and Coalition Opposition, Tony Abbott, has announced his 'official unofficial' parental leave policy with an initial broad brush annual costing of over $3 billion per annum.

This is what Abbott told ABC TV Lateline:

TONY ABBOTT: Well, the total cost of this will be about $3.8 billion. About $1 billion will come from the baby bonus, $2.7 billion though I'm anticipating will come from a levy on the taxable incomes of larger businesses.

So what exactly does this mean at face value?
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Voluntary paid maternity leave: yes; compulsory paid maternity leave: over this Government’s dead body, frankly. It just won’t happen.

T Abbott 22 July 2002

Whoops. When Abbott was blocking the possibility of paid maternity leave in 2002, he was doing no more than articulating the interests of business. That used to be the role of the Liberal party – to articulate the needs of business in as popular a way as possible. To be frank, Abbott never used to be that good at it. He may have known what the needs of business were all right, but dressing it up to make it palatable was never his style. Gerard Henderson seems to think Abbott’s reputation for lousy people skills was a figment of left wing journalists’ collective imagination, but they didn’t dream up Abbott’s historically rotten poll ratings. Taking the side of big business so far as to attack someone dying from asbestos-related illness like Bernie Banton, was the sort of thing that drove them. Read more »

Aiming to follow up on his disastrous Q&A performance, Senator Steve Fielding elaborated on his views about asylum seeker policy this morning. At a doorstop interview he made an announcement about his “idea” for handling boat people. You can listen to the audio here (courtesy of 2UE’s Latika Bourke), but the essence of his reasoning seems to be:

• Boat people are jumping the queue;
• Each time we take a refugee who arrived by boat, we take one less person from overseas refugee camps;
• This is unfair to people at “the front of the queue” who have been waiting in camps for years; and
• We need to return the queue-jumpers to overseas camps and put them at “the back of the queue”.

There are all sorts of concerns one could raise with this, some of which were put to Fielding during the doorstop (e.g., cost, obligations under international law, etc.). Read more »

Anyone who has been following the fortunes of biotech companies associated with genetically modified seed will recall Monsanto & Co's oft repeated claim that it's really in the business of feeding the world and not the simple pursuit of profit.

Once more in 2010 this monopolisitic multinational's actions give lie to the PR spin, as it is discovered trying to assert royalty rights over Cefetra's imported animal feed product made from GMO Roundup-ready soybean and accusing this company and others of infringing its patent.
The ruling mentioned below appears to be an interim opinion with the court's final ruling expected sometime later in the year.
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In 2008, Australia had 161 boat people arrive.

In 2008, Australia had 4750 applications for asylum submitted.

In 2008, France, the UK and Italy combined had 96,870 applications for asylum submitted. Read more »

This is what the Federal Nats MP Luke Hartsuyker is saying in his first 2010 e-newsletter sent this week:
"Many tertiary students have started their 2010 studies uncertain about the entitlement to Independent Youth Allowance and Commonwealth scholarships."
Of course they have Luke - you and your mates voted to block passage of the government bill which would have established the guidelines and payment schedule for these entitlements!

Years ago, when I was the medical writer at the Sydney Morning Herald I undertook a short course that aimed to equip journalists with the basics of epidemiology. It was run by Professor Les Irwig, an epidemiologist at the University of Sydney, and his wife Judy Irwig, who were concerned about the way media reporting of health developments often misled the public.

I can still remember the sense of outrage that dawned as Les explained the dubious nature of the evidence base that then underpinned the widespread use of HRT as an agent for preventing heart disease in postmenopausal women.

This was back in the 1990s, and we now know how well founded his concerns were.

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Tests for toxins or pathogens generally rely on chemical reactions. But a team of researchers at Cornell University have created a sensor that detects the presence of chemicals based on the mechanical disruption of a nanoscale system. The device can instantly detect as little as a single molecule of a substance.

The nanomachine takes the general shape of a diving board, a form called a cantilever. At one end of the cantilever sits a nanoelectromechanical oscillator; at the other end, a laser. When the laser strikes the oscillator, the whole cantilever vibrates at a specific frequency. If a particle lands on the cantilever, the frequency changes in a predictable way, revealing the identity of the particle. Read more »

Lost near Fossil CreekTony Abbott has set back the issue of paid parental leave with his hasty, ill-considered and credibility-free outburst. He's also demonstrating the sort of hubris that classical rise-and-fall stories are made of.Abbott promised to consult with his parliamentary colleagues before making policy announcments. In springing this policy upon them, and his shadow cabinet, Abbott is