If you don't like your job, the other guy will gladly do it!

You want to know what I am sick of hearing? Today I officially got sick of hearing current ALP ministers sooking about Rudd expecting them to do their damned jobs! Take Roxon for example. She had to work on a weekend. He gave her a four day deadline.

Had they been in the political wilderness for so damned long that they didn't realise running an entire country is a hard bloody job?

You are paid very well, you get more perks than a celebrity in first class on a QANTAS jet, and you are in positions of great power. Now I hate to pull out the spiderman quotes, but with great power comes great responsibility.

I fully expect that the government of Australia is expected to think on its toes, research into the night and turn around policy on tight deadlines. After all, the GFC required a swift but measured response. You didn't see the "gang of four" sitting there whinging at the US that they need a bit more notice and some focus groups and shit. It happened they worked with it and they turned out the one response that is considered around the world the best response to such situations.

So you can do good things in a hurry on a deadline. Other people in other industries do it every single day.

Now I am not going to get into the details on the more disgusting vitriol that is essentially a clash in personalities, but the voters of Australia deserve a little better than to hear their elected officials chucking public tantrums because their boss expected them to do the job they were appointed to do. If Roxon did not want to work on Health issues with such dedication, then she should have, with respect to the people of Australia who put her in government, resigned her position in cabinet and let someone else work on the Health Portfolio that was more passionate about it.

That is what we want. That is why we vote for you. For you to work. It is not easy money, and complaining that it should be is insulting to the extreme.

Graphic Content Warning

Before this gets much further, I feel compelled to show my stance on the issue of animal welfare.

I have put my weight and support into fighting Animal Welfare atrocities happening on our own shores. One of which has only mustered half as many signatures after many many months of campaigning as the BanLiveExports campaign mustered in a little over 24 hours.

Puppy Factories are some of the most blatant abuses of animal rights executed on Australian shores. Bitches are bred back to back for their entire lives, welping litter after litter of puppies to be sold online and through major pet shops throughout Australia.

They are bred until they cannot breed anymore - sometimes that is when their uterus prolapses outside of their body - and then they are destroyed.

Animals that are saved from Puppy Factories are sometimes found to be suffering from horrible and large reproductive tumours.

Their lives are spent mass producing christmas gifts, which lets not kid ourselves, a large proportion of which are later abandoned at animal shelters.

They live in small, wet, dirty cages with feces covered newspaper, or on cold wet concrete floors eating maggot infested food.

Eye conditions are common.

Animal Liberation Victoria filmed this footage in 2010 in Victoria.

Here is some footage from NSW. And the RSPCA rescuing those same animals.

And yes, Puppy farms HAVE had media coverage.

On ABCs 7:30 Report and TEN's 7PM Project.

Perhaps we can spare some outrage for these poor dogs.

Don't burn it all up yet though. (Extreme content warning.)

There is still an animal welfare atrocity that happens on our shores, sanctioned by several Australian Governments, in plain sight of hundreds and thousands of spectators both in person and on television.

Bear witness to the final horrific and agonising moments of Sirrocean Storm and Crying Storm. Whose deaths were ultimately decided to be acceptable by the Victorian Government and Racing Victoria.

Who died so people could make money and be entertained.

Who died in Australia suffering horribly so people could make money and provide nothing.

Yes, Jumps racing has had a great deal of coverage on TV. TVN and SkyRacing are big racing stations. However in the media, you again can look at TEN's 7PM Project.

So yes. Rage and demand better conditions for Australian Cattle in Indonesian abattoirs, demand Meat and Livestock Australia fixes its mess and delivers on its promise to improve Indonesian abattoirs.

But spare some rage for the animals on our shores suffering at our hands. They need your help too.

The other side...

4Corners has stunned us all with their recent show, A Bloody Business.

It was always going to shock us to the core. I would like anyone who has seen it to think back on that episode and try to remember, did the vision of seeing the cow being stunned catch you off guard too? Did that make you think 'Oh crap'?

You know it did.

The whole industry of slaughtering animals for meat is confronting and hard. These animals are bred to die. Some people are not capable of dealing with this, others, such as myself, can live knowing this, and others still, such as children, live blissfully unaware of such truths. Perhaps some of the people from the second group try and squeeze into the third and pretend they don't know.

This is an extremely easy thing to do here in Australia. The primary interaction most Australians have with cows is on supermarket shelves.

We buy our milk and meat, bring it home, stick it in our freezer and eat at our leisure, content that it has been born, raised, farmed, slaughtered and packaged in accordance with strict health and animal welfare regulations, backed up and maintained by billions of dollars of equipment and research.

Indonesia is nothing like Australia in a lot more than just our animal welfare laws.

Watch the video again, and as hard as it is, I ask you to look at the whole picture now, not just the cow. (NO, I am not downplaying the significance of what the cow is going through)

Did you notice the personal safety equipment?

Do you know why the knives are different lengths?

Did you see the lighting?

Did you hear them laughing?

Did they answer the questions truthfully?

Did they answer questions at all?

Did you see if the workers roofs were as secure as the ones on the 5star feedlot?

Did they tell you how much these workers are paid?

Did you find out if any of them lost their lunch the first time they saw a cow slaughtered?

Did you find out how old they were that day?

Did it tell you how long these guys have worked in abattoirs?

Did you see how the meat was hung in the marketplace, uncovered and open to flies?

Did you see the people at all?

and finally - did you see the millions of dollars worth of equipment that Australian Farmers and Taxpayers paid for to improve the conditions of these slaughter houses? Because I didn't.

The welfare of the cows, the welfare of the workers, and the welfare of the people buying the meat are all suffering at these abattoirs.

Usually when something like this happens, there is always the same platitude that people will fall back on, and I could be fairly assured that the majority of people reading this right now are thinking it and waiting to get to the comment section to post it up.

"People aren't more important than cows".

I never once said they were.

But they are equally as important.

I am trying to stop this train at the station in the middle that everyone is steaming straight past.

On the one side, we have continued poor conditions for the animal lives. On the other side, we have millions of impoverished and hungry human lives who won't even be able to buy food with money.

There is a station in the middle.

That is the station where we reach out our hand to our neighbours and say "Hi, my name is Kevin, I am from Australia, and I am here to help".

Now we are not giving them these cows. They are buying them. Heck, we wouldn't be sending them if they weren't, and it is a multi million dollar industry - so don't think we can just shut down the exports and it won't affect Indonesian men, women and children that have never seen the inside of an Indonesian abattoir.

Sure, you may be able to look an Australian Cattle Farmer in the face and tell him to suck it up, but could you look into the eyes of a 6yo child who has just spent a day at work to earn $3 to help feed the family and tell them to suck it up?

Meat and Livestock Australia has been taking money from Australian farmers and using taxpayers grants to help address this situation. However when it is shown that their efforts are clearly inadequate, they point their collective fingers at Indonesian workers making $5 a day, working in dangerous, unsanitary conditions and say it is all their fault.

We gave them a metal box.

We trained them.

But it is their fault.

I would like for those women to have asked them WHY they did some of the stuff they did. They kept saying why in their videos - but no one actually asked these men that question.

Too busy vilifying them.

Knowing anything more about them might make them human. Might show people they are not actually evil. Just men with families who were trained to do a job.

But you can't have a good story without a villain.

PS: The length of the knife would be indicative of its age. As you sharpen a knife, you are wearing some of it away. The shorter, smaller knives have been sharpened and used for a very long time. Apparently no one there can afford to replace them, and no one here in MLA/LiveCorp cares to.

Responsibility and expectations.

I shall preface this post by admitting that my children are indeed vaccinated. When you read the remainder of this post, you may see why I choose to pursue vaccination to protect my babies. I would be vaccinated myself but contracted whooping cough during my last pregnancy and thus my current antibody immunity is better than can be provided by the acellular pertussis vaccine.

---------

Two month old babies are carrying almost all of the burden of preventing the spread of diseases.

Now their parents are taking the blame for the Australian Immunisation network for failing to take action on the actual cause of the serious and dangerous Whooping Cough epidemic on Australian shores.

So today in the paper a rather obnoxious sounding Doctor known as Rob Menzies has blamed the parents of the 8% of Unvaccinated children for the epidemic, referring to them as the "Chardonnay set and alternatives". Great way to get your point across by the way, Mr Menzies. Ad-hominem attacks are extremely unbecoming of trained professionals.

However his information is not only disgusting and arrogant, it is also completely wrong.

Certainly, Dr Menzies, that as the Deputy Director of the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance, you have noticed that only 11.3% of Australian adults are vaccinated for whooping cough? Surely?

You cannot be blaming the 350,000 unvaccinated babies when there is over 15.5 MILLION unvaccinated adults? Can you? Yes. that is 15,500,000 adults walking around with no protection from Whooping Cough sharing it around with all and sundry.

So now, Dr Menzies, with these figures very easy to source online from official AIHW reports, WHO Statistics and the ABS, what exactly is the NCIRS doing to have it's deputy director spouting such vile, judgemental and uneducated comments in the mainstream media?

Perhaps since we have the absolute worst epidemic of Whooping Cough in the developed world, and with this new and vital information, you can go back to your job and work on promoting adult vaccination to protect our children rather than attacking parents who ironically have the best Adult vaccination rate. Even better than health professionals such as yourself.

I do not expect you to swallow your pride, contact News Ltd and issue an apology and a retraction, but it would do all of Australia a really brilliant favour if you could contact them and properly attribute the cause of this epidemic and appeal to unvaccinated adults to go and get their Boostrix. You will save more lives that way, and not look quite so bad doing it.

Results are slow and in short supply, but satisfying

Anyone that actually has followed this blog or even got bored and read all the posts may remember my post which included a section on Facebook tribute pages.

I was reading the paper today ... no, wait, I was reading Facebook today and this popped up in my feed from QPS. A most definitely satisfying result!

THE first Queenslander charged over Facebook vandalism for plastering child pornography over sites set up to pay tribute to two slain schoolchildren has been jailed for three years.

The Brisbane District Court was told Bradley Paul Hampson, 29, posted offensive messages and photographs on Facebook "RIP tribute'' pages for a 12-year-old boy stabbed at a Brisbane school and a nine-year-old Bundaberg girl abducted and murdered in February last year.

Can't say much about the way you are...

Interesting story I read in the paper today. Brian McFaddon, of Westlife fame, released a new solo single, Just the way you are (Drunk at the bar), which was met with instant criticism as its lyrics seem to condone date rape. Todays story was him asking they pull the song due to the controversy.

So out of morbid curiosity I listened to the offending song, and while I could barely understand the verses at all, I can certainly see where the chorus has been taken (obviously for him) out of context. Yes, 'damage' and 'advantage' do rhyme, but by golly were they some unfortunate word choices!

But the bit of todays report that made me double take after listening to the song.

McFadden has insisted he wrote the song about long-time fiancee Delta Goodrem and how easily she gets tipsy.

"It's talking about my young lady who doesn't drink and when she has one glass of champagne she gets giddy and I think it's gorgeous," he said.

Delta, tweet us when you deck him.

Top that off that he adds "all messed up, no place to go, flirting at the dace floor, putting on a show". But he likes her anyway. Yeah, I would love it if my hubby felt that way, then told the whole world about it. But its okay because he gets to take me home, drunk as sh!t on one glass of champagne and do some 'damage' while 'taking advantage' of me being drunk.

Well I feel a whole lot better now.

You want to know the worst thing though?

It is possibly the most horrific attempt at a dance song I have ever heard, and I lived through Doop. Its hollow, tinny and just plain bad.

PS: iHubby is nothing like this tosser and is just as horrified at the implications of that song on Delta and Brian's relationship as most of the rest of the world is.

The Great Debate

This crazy shitstorm pitting grieving mum against grieving mum has been brewing on facebook and spilled out into parenting forums and blogs over the worldwidewebz.

Behind this is the friend of a grieving mother whose 23wk baby girl was left to die after her premature birth despite struggling for 2 hours to live.

Yes, I know it sounds emotionally charged when I put it in those words - but the simple fact is that it is emotionally charged and deserves that respect. Rachel Sorensen lost her baby. Her grief is real and does not deserve to be downplayed or glossed over by any other part of this debate.

Feeling as they do that Poppi should have been given the chance, her friend create a facebook event to gather names as a petition to take to policy makers to get the policy revised. That a parent can choose if their pre-24wk baby deserves a chance at life. They picked the age bracket of 20wks to 24wks. Their reasoning on this is all very sound.

At 20 weeks a baby born is a person. They are given a birth certificate and if necessary, a death certificate and a funeral. If they were born breathing and died later then a coroners report must done.

It was stated to Ms Sorensen when she delivered Poppi that they will not do anything for a baby born before 24wks.

While no baby born at 20 weeks has ever survived, it is very clear from this reasoning that there was no malicious intent in the dates chosen, and at the time, sound logical reasoning for these dates to be chosen.

The opposing group have continually asked that they change it to 22-24wks, and that if they did so, then they would go away. The even did just that, and needless to say, the opposing camp did not pick up stumps and leave. They continued to fight.

Now, as I pointed out, no child born at 20 wks gestation has survived. It has been noted by another woman in a forum linked from this group that 100% of babies born at 20wks gestation would have cerebral palsy. As none have survived to confirm this, we will have to dismiss this as 100% speculation, not fact.

It would also not be fair to say that this means there is a 0% chance of survival at 20wks. If you could liken the journey with a Micro-Prem to riding a roller coaster, then the 20wk gestation babies did not meet the height requirement. There is, just on the basis of this petition, a very real chance that the 100% loss rate is due entirely to the 0% intervention rate.

The next week of gestation has two documented survivors. However the opposing camp has argued that one is in fact a 23wk gestation baby on 'corrected dates'. I will give them this and we will stick to just one.

Of this one surviving baby, he at 18yo was suffering no disabilities at all, let alone any caused by his extreme prematurity.

So again the argument that babies born this early would suffer from horrible disabilities is a fallacy. Of all the surviving babies born at 21weeks gestation (based on the dates the opposing came wishes us to use), 100% are not disabled.

Again, that only one baby born at 21wks survived shows a low survival rate is an unsupported statement on the basis of the very low intervention rate.

As they support 22wks gestation and up, we do not need to cover these children.

As we go deeper into the debate, we have those that states that this rule would confound abortion law and strip away the rights of pregnant women. Then in a moment of breathtaking hypocrisy, they pull out the anti-abortionist catch phrase "Someone needs to speak for the baby".

Do I really need to continue with that one?

The next position was in my humble opinion, horrific. "It costs taxpayers to keep premature babies alive".

Yes, it also costs them to keep car accident victims alive, even when their outlook is grim.

No one should attach a price tag to someones life.

But lets get into the real part of the argument, and the reason why I cannot support their position.

"Someone needs to speak for the baby"

There are many facets to this point of the debate so I will try and take it slow on you.

One woman has contended that we would be creating children with disabilities and that they would have no quality of life and would rather be dead.

Some of the disabilities people have stated for premature babies are

• Cerebral Palsy
• Blindness
• Deafness
• Autism Spectrum Disorder
• ADD/ADHA

Because medical establishments do not actively seek to help babies born before 24wks, I can only go on what has been compiled for survivors 24wks and over. This data was collated between 1998 and 2001by NSW NICUS.

Three in ten babies born at 24wks will have one or more diabilities. So starting with 1000, we have 300 with disabilities. It goes on to say that two thirds of these babies will only have a mild disability and can go on to lead an independent and productive life. That means one third, 100 babies, will have a moderate or severe.

The graph below shows around 40% of 23wk babies suffering from moderate or severe. Grouping the two together means I cannot rightly say how many of them are severe, but as there is moderate as well - and I would have to believe the greater portion is moderate as the majority of babies are fine, then we can say that less premature babies suffer major afflictions such as Cerebral Palsy as we are being led to believe.

Bringing down the emotional backdrop of the debate a few notches we can now move onto what it is saying.

It is contended (paraphrasing here) that by attempting to save the life of the premature infant because the parents are "unable to say goodbye", we are creating disabled children.

My Step Daughter was born with Bilateral Retinoblastoma.

Retinoblastoma is a rapidly developing cancerous tumour of the retina. Bilateral means that in her case, both eyes had tumours.

When this discovery was made, she was 6 months old. The tumours had developed inutero and they were not treatable. The only option was enucleation - removal of her eyes. If they did not do this, the cancer would spread and would result in her death.

To save her life they were creating a disabled (blind) child.

This argument contends that my step daughter should have died at a young age from cancer.

In the stance that someone needs to speak for the baby, the truth is that there is someone speaking for children. Their parents. That is their right and theirs alone.

Imagine standing in a hospital emergency room. The doctor tells you that they can save your child, but s/he will lose their arm. Some random stranger walks up and says "Someone needs to speak for that child. S/he would not want to live without their arm. Don't save them". What would you do? You know for a fact you would tell them to back the hell off, it is not their child, it is your child and they have no right to make that decision.

Removing the decision to proceed or desist medical treatment for our own children is a dangerous and slippery slope. While you may think it is justifiable for a 21wk preterm baby, allowing that to happen could make it legally possible for a 10 year old child.

Informed decision making is a right enshrined by law. Whether it be informed consent for ourselves or for our children, you cannot pick and choose the parts you want us all to have. Once you start cherry picking parts out of it, you open the flood gates to remove it all under the premise that "Doctor knows best".

While I have neither pledged my support to the actual cause - for or against - of Poppi's rule, I will not sit idly by as anyone at all demands the removal of our rights to informed consent.

I have not been in a position of losing my old child, nor have I had a premature baby. So as much as people like to think, my reasonings on the actual situation of Poppi's rule are not 'clouded by emotion'. I do not believe though that a parent should accept that their child may have been 'collateral damage' to the cause when s/he could have survived and lived a full life.

I have however been in a position where I have said "No" to a doctor and he has proceeded anyway. I have clearly told two nurses "No" more than once, and had them attempt to hold me down and continue against my wishes.

I will not have my right to consent or refusal stripped away from me by a technicality.

As they say in the movies: Be careful what you wish for. You might just get it.