EDITORIAL : THE AUSTRALIAN, AUSTRALIA

Gove mining deal a landmark

BUT indigenous jobs and self-sufficiency will be the real test.
The Gove Peninsula has a very special place in the narrative of Aboriginal land rights. The people of this Arnhem Land community lost the first legal battle to establish native title rights. That was 40 years ago in the Milirrpum versus Nabalco case over land leased by the government for a bauxite mine. It was more than two decades later that native title rights were recognised across Australia as a result of the successful and now famous claim by Eddie Mabo in the Torres Strait islands.
But the agreement celebrated in Gove yesterday marks another significant development in the history of indigenous rights. The Gove Traditional Owners Agreement, between Rio Tinto and the Yolngu traditional owners, is a negotiated framework to turn land rights into a secure economic future for the indigenous community. The agreement is worth hundreds of millions of dollars over the next four decades but, importantly, it includes a focus on training and employment. The real test of its success will be the degree to which it fosters education, jobs and self-sufficiency for the indigenous community. Leaders such as Galarrwuy Yunigpingu deserve credit for negotiating the deal which is the culmination of a struggle that began in 1963 with a petition written on bark and taken to the federal parliament.


Health reform watered down

PATIENTS must wonder what happened to the takeover threat.
Almost four years after Kevin Rudd threatened a full federal takeover of hospitals if state governments failed to lift standards and cut waiting lists the desired improvements remain elusive. Despite a $300 million federal funding injection for elective surgery, the COAG Reform Council found that waiting times for surgery increased in 2009-10, with the median wait for a coronary artery bypass increasing from 14 to 15 days and the wait for knee surgery stretching from 156 to 180 days. On the positive side, the reduction in waiting times for emergency department care is welcome.
As opposition leader, Mr Rudd was right when he demanded an end to the "blame game" between Canberra and the states over health. But his promise that "the buck will stop with me" has faded into the mists of time, prompting concerns that Labor has watered down its reform plans too far. The glacial pace of the government's progress to date reflects the inefficiencies of federal-state relations, leaving much to be done until patients relying on the public hospital system begin to reap the benefits. While an administrative overhaul was essential to any major health reform, the weakness of what Labor has delivered so far is that it is largely "a win for bureaucrats" as Australian Medical Association president Steve Hambleton pointed out last week, with the number of beds per 1000 people "going down, not up" as hospitals failed to keep pace with population growth.
At least Labor's metrics-based approach promises to put patients' needs first, including the public naming of hospitals that under-perform. Such reform has taken a long time to materialise but is essential if the system is to be improved. Short of launching a full-scale takeover, Health Minister Nicola Roxon had no alternative but to be pragmatic and make major concessions to the states in order to establish a hospital watchdog. The proviso that the National Health Performance Authority will report underperforming hospitals to state health ministers and gives them 45 days to fix problems before hospitals are "named and shamed" might prove an incentive to drive improvements. It is a serious concern, however, that the AMA believes the new health watchdog is too weak and its data processes open to manipulation by states.
As the AMA suggests, the Auditor General should be given authority to audit the material provided by the states. Predictably, the states and public hospitals object to the power the Gillard government wants to hand to the Independent Pricing Authority that will set the efficient price the federal government will pay for hospital treatments and hold back 4 per cent of hospital funding if it is not satisfied with a state's implementation of health reforms. Such oversight, however, should promote efficiency and help secure better value for taxpayers' investment in healthcare. Nothing less will do at a time of budget stringencies, an ageing population and vast but costly advances in healthcare technology. As well as finalising hospital reforms, governments need to turn their attention to the nation's serious doctor shortage, which has left a quarter of Australians in remote and outer-regional areas waiting for longer than acceptable to see a GP, including people who need urgent appointments.
After four years of limited progress the performance of the hospital sector after Ms Roxon's reforms are enacted will prove their efficacy or otherwise.



Cruelty warnings ignored on live cattle export trade


EGYPT and Indonesia concerns should have alerted Minister.
On April Fool's Day this year, Federal Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig spoke to a gathering of Northern Territory cattlemen in Darwin. He reaffirmed the government's commitment to the $300 million-a-year live export industry, recounted his recent visit to Indonesia, shared the cattlemen's frustration that annual exports to Indonesia of half a million head of cattle might not be enough, and promised to keep an eye on the issue and lobby the Indonesian government for increased quotas. To his credit, the minister also spoke about animal welfare issues.
Crucially, he recognised that "more still needs to be done to achieve higher standards of animal welfare practices, particularly in importing countries". However, Senator Ludwig said he had asked the industry to review its progress on animal welfare issues in importing countries. In other words, he knew practices weren't good enough, but he handballed the matter to the industry to sort out.
So it is difficult to have sympathy for the minister now as he is caught, like a rabbit in the spotlight, trying to resolve this ugly mess. The public, rightly, has demanded action after the ABC Four Corners program broadcast sickening images of the cruel treatment of Australian cattle in Indonesia. First, Mr Ludwig introduced a moratorium on restraining boxes, then he imposed a ban on a dozen Indonesian abattoirs, including three that didn't process Australian cattle. Now he has slapped a blanket six-month ban on the Indonesian export trade while the government and the industry try to put a workable solution in place.
So the minister has cancelled up to $150m worth of exports to fix a problem he certainly knew about in April, and probably much earlier. The clear conclusion to be drawn here is that animals have suffered needlessly, and an export trade has been jeopardised, because both the industry and the government have failed adequately to tackle a problem they have known about for some time.
It is not as though this hasn't happened before. Live animal exports to Egypt were banned from 2006 to 2008 because of mistreatment. Just like this time, the cruelty was exposed through footage shot by animal rights activists and supplied to the media. Just like this time, the Howard government reacted to an understandable public outcry. The Egyptian trade resumed, under Mr Ludwig's Labor predecessor Tony Burke, only after the construction of new facilities and detailed government-to-government agreements. So you would think that people involved in every component of the live cattle trade would have been aware of the risks to livestock, and the onflowing risks to the industry, of sub-standard slaughterhouse practices in Indonesia. Mr Ludwig clearly should have done more to ensure standards were being improved.
It is true that Australia cannot control Indonesian abattoirs. But if we wanted to sustain a lucrative live cattle trade, the onus was on the industry, and the government, to put in place what Mr Ludwig now calls "supply chain assurances".
For now, the government has done the right thing stopping the trade altogether so that better practices can be put in place. But it should never have been allowed to come to this.