Tackler has “duty of care” argues AFL advocate Jeff Gleeson

But what left Tredrea particularly flabbergasted was the argument put forward by AFL advocate Jeff Gleeson, who argued Naitanui had a duty of care to consider the disparity in size between himself and Amon.

Nic Naitanui tackles Port Adelaide’s Karl Amon Photo: The Australian

Naitanui is 110kg and Amon is around 80kg, a point that Gleeson asked the Eagles star about in his testimony.

You can imagine flabbers being gasted in contact sporting circles everywhere. Consider the following photographs

Certainly not much duty of care being exercised in these circumstances.

Perhaps it’s time for a rethink.  Certainly, All Black hooker Dane Coles  appears to be fending off a much smaller opponent and should have been much more aware of the discrepancy in size and given his smaller opponent much more even chance of tackling him.

And there appeared to be two All Blacks, one of whom appear to be Kieran Read and the other Sam Whitelock who have a combined weight of probably around 230 kg. Two men of that size should never be allowed to tackle one-man. Duty of care and all that.

After 61 years of one-party rule, Mahathir Mohamad represents a change of government in Malaysia. This must redefine irony

The Age reports: Mahathir Mohamad has claimed an extraordinary victory in Malaysia’s 14th general election, opening the door for the first change of government in the 61 long years since the country’s independence from Britain.

After 61 years of one-party rule, Mahathir Mohamad represents a change of government in Malaysia. This must redefine irony

Even more ironic is that he represents the Opposition. He  says that he is going to form government with Anwar Ibrahim, a man who served in his previous government and who he had thrown into jail on trumped up sodomy charges, which will now be pardoned. After a brief period as Prime Minister, Mahathir says he will stand down  in favour of Anwar.

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

In effect, the change of government represents a return to the government that has governed Malaysia for last 60 years, headed by 91-year-old dictator, who ruled quite ruthlessly and effectively eliminated any political opposition. This is seen as a great step forward for Malaysia by political pundits.

However, Mahathir is only the Opposition leader and late last night vote counting had already  ground to a halt with the opposition leading the government.

There is plenty of time for the current Prime Minister Najib Razak to get up to the kind of chicanery that  was stock in trade when Mahathir was in power.

Expect some dirty dealing in KL over the next few days.

Commonwealth Bank’s lost 20 million bank account records “had most likely been disposed of”

That’s what the Commonwealth Bank’s acting head of retail banking, Angus Sullivan claimed on 7.30 last night.

To paraphrase the famous Mandy Rice Davies, one of the two hookers involved, along with Christine Keeler in the famous Profumo affair of the 1960s. That’s her on the left.

“Well he would say that, wouldn’t he?”

The Profumo affair was far more interesting than the Royal commission into the banking industry. It involved Russian spies, prostitutes (see above) politicians, an osteopath, the fall of the McMillan government and (apparently) Prince Philip.

But I digress.

“We’ve been unable to assure ourselves that the drives have been destroyed,” said Mr Sullivan.

But the bank never alerted its customers to the potentially-massive privacy breach and has only gone public after BuzzFeed News broke the story.

“When incidents like these are shared more broadly, they create risks in and of themselves,” he told AM.

So  it boils down to this:

The bank didn’t tell the 20 million account holders that it could not reassure them that their banking details had fallen into someone else’s hands because 20 million customers may have closed their accounts.

That is “the risk in and of itself”. A risk to the bank. Completely ignoring the risk to the customer  who up until now has been kept in the dark.

And, does the Commonwealth Bank know who the 20 million customers are?

Probably not.

Mr Sullivan reassures us that the accounts have not been used for ” malicious intent” … probably. But if someone has got hold of the accounts they could be being used to launder money.

Did you ever pause to think how the billions of dollars of illicit drug money gets out of the country? It is through bank accounts like the ones that have gone missing from the Commonwealth Bank. Usually they are from people have died and didn’t bother closing the accounts.  The bank puts the account details on a truck and ships them off to Fuji Xerox to be destroyed. But 20 million slipped through a crack, apparently. A treasure trove for organised crime.

Will the Commonwealth Bank ever be able to check 20 million accounts to make sure that billions of dollars have not being flushed out through the the banking system over the last decade.

Of course not?  They don’t know where they are.

Will they try to find them?

Of course not. Too hard, too expensive.

What should Commonwealth customers do. The bank is clearly not going to tell them if they are one of the 20 million account holders.

So what should happen. Here’s what.

Every Commonwealth Bank customer should close their accounts. One by one.

Let’s assume that every Commonwealth Bank customer has got five accounts. That means that the Commonwealth Bank will lose 4 million customers, very slowly but very surely.

Angus Sullivan and his fellow execs will experience a bit more than the “inconvenience and worry ” of 20 million account holders.

 

What’s going on with Robert Doyle and the sexual harassment charges?

It seems that as long as Robert Doyle refuses to front up to any investigations, no findings can be made in relations to the charges against him.  This appears to be taking a terrible toll on the women who are making the complaints.

Meanwhile, Doyle  has been taking time off to recover in hospital from the terrible strain all this is having on him.

The Age reports that “The woman whose sexual harassment allegations against former Lord Mayor Robert Doyle sparked an investigation says she is “gutted” it made no findings and is so disenchanted with the process that she would not report harassment again. Health Minister Jill Hennessy ordered the department to investigate the complaint. There were no findings because Mr Doyle was not well enough to participate.

ABC radio host Jon Faine said he had heard multiple reports from members of the public, and a member of ABC staff, that Mr Doyle had been regularly seen at a cafe in Albert Park.

Investigator Charles Scerri, QC, said he did not doubt the veracity of the most recent complainant [Carla], but in the absence of any response from Mr Doyle, could not reach any conclusions.

Mr Scerri said the alleged conduct varied in degrees of seriousness, and that some – particularly touching the complainant’s inner thigh – would constitute “serious misconduct of a sexual nature”.

So the question is: “When will Robert Doyle face his accusers?”

Update

The Health Department has asked former lord mayor Robert Doyle to attend an interview within 10 days to respond to sexual harassment allegations, or undertake an independent medical assessment.

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Federal Nation MP and Ophthalmologist Dr Andrew Laming says “teachers should not be marking or doing class preparation at home”

That’s right. He’s getting a lot of bad press at the moment. Being taken out of context et cetera. He also wants teachers to work a 38 hour week. And have four weeks annual leave a year.

 This is a picture of Andrew when he  appeared to threatened to set himself on fire in Parliament and became one of the few Coalition MPs that Speaker Bronwyn Bishop ejected from Parliament

Unfortunately, his comments indicate a very poor understanding of the realities of life in the classroom. Most teachers start teaching at 9am and finish at 3:30pm which accounts for 32.5 of the 38 hours. Under Dr Laming’s scheme, that leaves  just 5.5 hours per week for everything else, marking, student  consultation, parent meetings, staff meetings, sports coaching et cetera. Given that, under his scheme, there won’t be any work done at home, a lot of stuff is gonna be left undone

However, under the scheme we have freed up eight weeks of holiday time. That time can be usefully used for long-term planning but  this time is not much use for the day-to-day stuff which is the marking, student  consultation, parent meetings, staff meetings, sports coaching et cetera.

It is very easy for politicians, particularly ophthalmologists, who have spent very little time in the classroom to criticise the teaching profession.

Dr Laming needs to spend some time doing work experience in a classroom. My suggestion would be that he spends some time in the Special School  sector with special needs where there  of pupils who  have a range of special challenges  some of whom can become violent and often dangerous and pose a real physical threat to the teachers.

A six weeks  stint in this environment  would let him see what life is like outside the bubble and comfort of his taxpayer funded Canberra office.

Rather than spending his time doing this:

Dr Andrew Laming  billed the taxpayer $13,500 for business-class flights for his wife and daughters to join him on a trip to a remote indigenous community last year

A 38-hour week for teachers? Bring it on!

Andrew Laming should know teachers have it much tougher than MPs