A new letters page has been created at 2010

Letter to the Editor – Tail-gaters caught – 11.1.2010

 

691 offenders caught for tail-gating during 2009. That's a start. We hurtle our mortal human coil in steel machines at on average 60 kilometres per hour. There is nothing as unnerving as someone right up your bum. They take away necessary latitudes for safety.

I am all for speed cameras, red light cameras and speed limits. I am all for hefty fines for those that transgress. If we do not exceed speed limits, do not run red lights, and if we obey protocols and courtesies there will be very few accidents, and a lot of lives saved and less lasting trauma for relatives.

Fines are paid because the transgressor is greedy for time via speed. Relax and enjoy the drive and listen to music. Let us remember that one century ago the first motor vehicles travelled at speeds of 8mph, and people understood how much time was involved in the pursuit of getting from A to B. It's as if we are ungrateful that we can travel distances fifty times faster what people once did. We are greedy and this leads to the horrific carnage we continue to endure.

If you get caught speeding, running lights and driving recklessly well that's your bloody fault and the fact you have to pay a fine is not what you should have a problem with, rather you should have a problem with your actions and their implications. Anyway, the more tail-gaters caught the better, once again no-one should be right up someones bum.

Gerry Georgatos

 

 

Letter to the Editor – A bullet… - 11.1.2010

 

In the USA recently a little 3 year old boy died next to his mother while sitting in a church. Unbeknown to the mother and others who tried to save him, a bullet fired from 3 kilometres away hit him in the head. The bullet was discovered in his head at the hospital where he died.

At least half of the incarcerated in our jails have mental health issues. Acts of violence, rage, various 'criminality', chronic depression, psychotic episodes are the result of the unseen bullet in the head. The bullet was fired a long time ago and before many others have come into the picture. Not everyone dies of their wound however they suffer.

Most things do not happen without a reason. Childhood sexual health abuse, acute neglect and abandonment are such bullets, fired in a different time. It is one thing to expect people to manage their anger, however it is another thing to eliminate it altogether. Psycho-social counselling and psychotherapy are necessary to discover and understand the trauma that leads to anger, rage and violence and hence eliminate it. We need to fund and expand such services rather than medicate, alienate, punish and incarcerate people. If we do this we will better understand each other and have that better society. Let us remove the bullets.

 
Gerry Georgatos

 

 

 

Letter to the Editor – Anger – 9.1.2010

 

One blow striking someone to the head can lead to their death. This same blow will lead to someone's incarceration. Relatives, and especially the children, will live with the lasting effects.

Comparatively, reported threatening behaviour, assaults and domestic violence have gone up by almost 12,000. 28,604 reported in 2009 as compared to 16,734 in 2000.

What leads to this behaviour and all its horrific implications? How do we deal with it? Do we forever punish the transgressors and with harsher penalties? Do we demand of them to merely engage in the 'management' of their anger?

Obviously various forms of trauma, much of it high-end such as childhood sexual abuse, and high levels of betrayal of trust, abandonment by parents, have led to these behaviours and their ever increasing rise.

Yes, we should have an expectation for people to behave themselves, however it is a hard ask for many who have endured unjust grievous high end trauma. Rather than merely expect one to 'manage' their anger, which does not mean to eliminate it, we, as a society, should invest in the type of psycho-social counselling, psychotherapy and psychological services that assist people with anger issues, depression, extreme mood swings and anxiety to discover the trauma that has led to the anger, to completely understand this trauma and therefore eliminate the anger altogether, and hence return the natural rights of the person at stake to the pursuance of a quality life filled with positive identity notions and self-esteem. We must encourage the truth. We must all take responsibility. The victims are many. Without this approach everything will continue much the same.

Gerry Georgatos

 

 

 

 

Letter to the Editor - Sugar, Honey, Ice and Tea regarding such a thing as real university education - 5.1.2010

Former Curtin Chancellor Lance Twomey is publicly warning about the erosion of standards in university education and that far too many students are being allowed into universities who are not ready for university education.

Lance is correct, however while he was at Curtin enough was not done to ensure support mechanisms for these not-ready university students, nor did he stem the influx of such students while universities became increasingly under funded. Instead our universities export our low standard university education off shore. At Murdoch 29% of students are international or off-shore.

At ECU, Curtin and Murdoch you can enrol even if you have failed your TER units, and possibly enrol without any prior education. In such circumstances aptitude tests are imperative not only to ensure the success of the students however to also ensure the appropriate supports are in place for students who are not quite there however could be with a little bit of academic support.

I have just left the university sector after six years at Murdoch University. It is true that university education has degenerated into the worthless and many university degrees are not worth the paper they are printed on. Students are paying premium dollars for little real value. Governments can be blamed however the real fault lies with Vice Chancelleries that did not step up and protect high quality free-thinking identity forming education.

Universities did not open their doors to most Australians because they wanted to educate citizenry. They opportunistically pursued the maximising of revenue. From 2012 the Federal government will uncap the limit on places at universities and please believe me universities will just go for numbers (students) rather than quality of education. Gillard is wrong in presuming that without benchmarks and acquittal mechanisms that the standard of university will not be further eroded. Illiteracy is so high at our universities that it is unbelievable to fathom.

Please look at the fancy however disgraceful advertising by WA universities. At Murdoch University there are advertisements guaranteeing entry, and every alternative pathway is described. At Curtin they are asking people to contact them however low their TER mark and "let's talk". Curtin has vehicles with large rooftop signs driving around Perth. Murdoch, Curtin and ECU are relentless with their advertising campaigns, however are any of them demonstrating their standards and the benefits of a degree from their institution. No. University education has little value to the Australian national consciousness. Speaking up about it, as I have, lands you on the outer.

Gerry Georgatos

 

Letter to the Editor – A deeper look at Copenhagen – 4.1.2010

 

Copenhagen was not a failure as what transpired was what was expected. Copenhagen has achieved more education for the peoples of the world, heads of Governments came together to work towards protocols, though they remain a work in progress, and for the world at large to be put on notice that human activity has consequences upon the environment.

In real terms it is not the Governments of nations of our world that can comprehensively solve the effects of human activity upon the planet. They must individually monitor human activity and set limits in terms of economic underwriting. It is the corporations and business groups who must alter their practices.

Governments can ensure they do not consider tenders from those corporations which do not accord to the planet's needs. Governments can ensure they are not complicit in the pursuit of greed and excess by not doing business with such corporations or with Governments of our world that do not discourage the misuse of resources, the overuse of resources and who do not crack down on giant polluters.

For all those who think Copenhagen failed humanity they are mistaken, Copenhagen is a beginning. Copenhagen has ensured that the world is on notice. Would anyone prefer that the Copenhagen Conference did not happen? Ensuing conferences will step up expectations. They must.

For those that think climate change variability is not directly linked to human activity well what they cannot argue against is that they cannot unquestionably prove it is not linked and that therefore it is not a serious risk issue. What they can never argue against are the obvious facts that human activity does pollute our cities, skies and water ways and the consequent human ill-health and myriad of manifest diseases, the decimation of natural environments and the extinction of small and large life forms.

Copenhagen was actually a positive step, albeit a small one, in humanity's personal journey to saving the planet in the way many of us may want to know it.

Gerry Georgatos

 

 

 

Letter to the Editor – Homelessness – 4.1.2010

 

 

With my 9 year old daughter I've made a few early morning walks in Perth's CBD during the last few weeks and I have noticed that there are more homeless people sleeping on benches and doorsteps and on either bitumen or the grass. I have also noticed this increase in Fremantle.

Governments need to step up the pursuance to eliminate homelessness and outrageous abject poverty. Rudd made a promise, as did Hawke, however key focus has never been prescribed into substantive policy and underwritten by budgeted funding.

Homelessness in Australia is not at the presumed 100,000 rather at closer to half a million if we understand that people living in shared accommodation or drifting from room to room and hostels and the outdoors and having little or no income are people always in a precarious situation. They cannot be classified as having secured a home.

In WA we have 23,000 applications in pursuit of public housing, however the 70,000 on the waiting lists are essentially homeless, as they have no secured residence. This time next year the waiting list will grow to 100,000 people.

If policies do not exist that will remedy these endemic problems then they will only continue the runaway increase. If the Federal and State budgets do not include them then we are guaranteed increasing homelessness, abject poverty and all the negative implications for society that governments will only try to consequently address with harsher prison sentences and the further erosion of human worth.

Gerry Georgatos

 

 

Letter to the Editor – (Child) Prostitution – 4.1.2010

 

I have spent more than a decade bringing people out of the despair of prostitution and through alternative pathway opportunities into some form of secure life circumstances.

If any government believes a "Prostitution Bill" or laws to regulate prostitution will eliminate child prostitution they are crazy or lazy. If any government believes that any legislation will ensure "working rights" that can be represented in the Australian Industrial Relations Commission they are more than half-mad. If any government believes that legislation will ensure the elimination of psychological, emotional and physical violence then they are turning a blind eye. If any government believes that this "industry" does not exist without a nu

rtured dependence on drugs, as most people can only work as prostitutes only when high as a kite, then we have people in government who are criminally negligent and have not done the research.

Under-age and child prostitution is illegal however it is there and as the numbers of those in prostitution have increased because of the government's relaxing of their views and hence the ensuring of brothels and licentiousness in the suburbs, the under-age and child prostitutes have increased.

All models, including the Swedish model, are just white-washing. Prostitution, without criminalising the victims, should always be illegal. This will make establishments illegal, the illicit profiteering from others illegal, trafficking of people for such purposes illegal, and it will ensure less people, including the under-aged and children, are made vulnerable to the horrific life-long damage.

Gerry Georgatos

 

 

Letter to the Editor – Answering Child Protection Minister Robyn McSweeney – 3.1.2010

 

Child Protection Minister Robyn McSweeney in trying to improve the quality of lives, and ensure the basic rights, of children is treading on dangerous ground when arguing stricter policies and monitoring of presumably at-risk children.

Robyn is advocating for a dob-in policy by teachers and citizens who believe they have identified psychological and emotional abuses and neglect. There already exists such policy and opportunity, and to enhance these is to over involve society in the rearing of other people's children.

Yes, children should be cuddled and hugged at every opportunity however the Child Protection Agency, and the governments funding them, should focus in on key chronic problems that continue to remain without substantive remedy. Child sexual abuse should be their main focus. Only 1.6% of such reported abuse is successfully prosecuted. Such horrific abuse is under reported and it is estimated less than 10% of such abuse is reported to either Child Protection agencies and the Police's Sexual Abuse Units. We need to focus on encouraging reporting. We need to educate families.

Robyn will be much better off focusing in on child sexual health abuse, and the elimination of chronic domestic violence and distance herself and the CDP from a nanny state mentality with overt anti-libertarian and soul crushing powers that will include the need to assess assumptions of presumed neglect. We can survive these other types of perceived neglect, and grow stronger, however the virile damage from child sexual abuse is lasting and the precursor of intra-familial and inter-generational divisions and the other further abuses.

I have spent my years bringing people of out of destitution, despair and damage and I assure we must focus on key endemic problems and not widen the net and in so doing under resource the need to eliminate child sexual abuse.

Let us remember, that we are all human, and we must eliminate the risk of people being involved in the lives others where perceptual modification is highly probable. Let us remember that even the best intentioned and highly qualified people do make assumptions and generate factual inaccuracies, and let us remember we all harbour personal views and prejudices. Let us get key issues right before even considering other lesser issues. As with tobacco, alcohol and nutrition we can educate families towards the elimination of the lesser issues however we must intervene where able into child sexual abuse and stop it.

Gerry Georgatos

 

Letter to the Editor - Honour and Forgiving - 12.11.2009

Often I deeply reflect on the world at large, that is people, their words, actions, behaviours and for instance on the new year resolutions we make. Too often they are founded on misdirected self-interest and pecuniary gains. To often they arrive from who we think we want to be and how we want to be rather than who we are and what we are about. Our resolutions and pursuits signify whether we can achieve happiness and meaningfulness.

There is nothing more valuable in our self-interest than honour. Honour determines your character, your state of mind and therefore your happiness. Unavoidably, it contributes to the social consciousness.

I look at those in positions of great influence and with great capacities who could enable propriety and equitable social inclusion. I often live in what is described by many around me of me as naive hopes that we can understand one another, engage at all times, forgive, be patient, remedy and conciliate.

I am not unaware that most of society to varying degrees is underwritten by immoral and corrupt practices and is leveraged by nepotism. I am not unaware that there is huge unaccountability and 'transparency' is cynically opaque hidden behind the misuse of the law and its lawyers, and by the practices of the similarly underling like agents within organisations such as human resources, legal and governance, public relations, etc.

I am not unaware that lawyers do not act in the interests of equity, justice, remedy and conciliation and rather act only on the instructions of their 'clients'. This is very sad and the core of our flawed systems.

However, I believe that example is our only immortality, and even in the face of being punished or wronged, of being left out or ridiculed, and of being 'mobbed', one must reconcile conscience to actions. Our intentions must always be honourable. I'd rather be a martyr, with my conscience clean than a perpetrator of wrongs, even if such perpetration is by 'silence' and 'fence-sitting'. It is honourable to learn from wrongs. I look for any wrongs on my part and with my heart on my sleeve work towards admitting them.

As the year ends and another will unfold, life goes on and maybe people once again should consider what matters instead of worrying how much money they should make, how high up the corporate or social ladder they climb, how much more of what is vain and folly they should have.

Christmas churns over each year and I sit and reflect about people and the great divides.

It breaks my heart to see us live in divides, and it breaks my heart to see those who have the capacity to help others not to do so.

As every Christmas approaches I reflect on its messages. I love no one better than the Little Drummer Boy, he gave everything he had, and still had it to give again. I know of no greater story than that of the Little Drummer Boy.

It would be wonderful and beneficial if we find our resolutions in how we treat one another, in policies of inclusion, in genuine forgiveness, in speaking the truth, in allowing others to speak their truth, in conciliatory courtesies, in an ethos of caring, in working diligently in our jobs for the sake of one another, in making real time for our families and, where possible, our friends, in sincerely being there for people, and especially the vulnerable, in caring about the person we are before worrying about the wrapping.

If we resolve towards honourable intentions we will increasingly understand happiness and one another. Less people will slip through the cracks, less lives will be lost and the memories that forever haunt me of those lonely souls who took their lives may not have to be so for others if more of us rise in the helping of one another. If we rise, so as to truly help, change will happen much more expediently where it should happen - in the home and in society. Honour is everything, even when it seems in the eyes and minds of others to get you into trouble. I disagree that the 'road to hell' is paved with good intentions rather if there is such a road, it is paved with 'excuses'.

Some years ago, to a large audience I said, "If we do not change our ways, the ways do not change."

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - Parliamentarians lack skills to eliminate systemic racism - 3.11.2009

We are approaching Australia Day, 2010, the second anniversary of the death of the Wongi elder and statesperson, Mr Ward. Little has been advanced to address the systemic racism that led to his death and to finalise the 'compensation' to his people.

Recently, questions were raised in state parliament, the same old questions but no hardy pursuit of justice. The banal questions revolved in pursuit of the capacity for the termination of the contract by the private transport company involved in Mr Ward's death. The Attorney-General replied that there was no material breach of the contract. The contract states that a material breach requires two deaths in any one year, not one death!

A question was asked in parliament about the current negotiations to the existing contract between the Government and the private transport company. The Attorney-General responded that as it is a commercial contract with a private company that he is limited in terms of disclosures.

I am surprised at the lack of expertise of those in parliament. They failed to raise the significant fact that there has been a material breach, not specifically to the contract however in terms of duty of care where material breaches led to Mr Ward's death. The findings from the Coroner support this. Therefore this affects the contract! It also ensures that compensation should be paid to Mr Ward's family.

Furthermore, it is improper for Government, with its numerous statutes requiring public audit and transparency to presume that because they are dealing with a private company that the terms of reference are confidential.

I am a Committee member of the Deaths in Custody Watch WA and I am appalled at the weakness of questions, and their pursuit, in parliament. Those who do ask them should ensure they know the parliament's right to disclosure and ensure they ask the right questions such as the material breaches that led to the death of Mr Ward.

Furthermore, parliamentarians have the right to dissent in parliament and they can raise censure motions, even if the rest vote against them, to document their view, the impropriety of a contract that demands two deaths instead of one as a definition of material breach, why any deaths at all? For every death in custody there are thousands who are abused or maltreated.

These parliamentarians should raise censure motions, demand the tabling of contracts even if through sub committees and task forces, and at every opportunity when voting should call for 'division' as to ensure rather than party bloc voting that every parliamentarian has their name recorded for or against the vote.

Come on people, get with it, lets get somewhere, it's almost two years since Mr Ward's death, and deaths in custody and systemic racism continue. Get with your calling, the facts, the censure motions, and the calling for division, the recording of each individual's vote - now that's name and shame, isn't it?

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - ETS and CPRS truths - 3.11.2009

The ETS and CPRS in terms of what value are to Australians and our ecologically bound planet have been lost in the political pursuits of the will to power.

Laborites and Liberals, and the Greens too, need to will away power to the people and present to us their cases in terms of the ETS and CPRS.

The CPRS is an old rebadged scheme from the USA, from the nineteen seventies, that failed. Rudd wants us to reward polluters up to sixteen billion dollars. Some of the Liberals, such as Turnbull, wanted to make this twenty four billion dollars! We would be taking away crucial dollars, and underwriting, from the rest of Australia to support rapacious multinationals who are intentionally doing the wrong thing.

It's time the Greens and other moderates substantively invest in educating the rest of Australia and not just preach to the converted and ensure the failings of the Laborites and Liberals are exposed.

The ETS and CPRS are very poor frameworks and are not target specific in remedying the ecological and human disasters we are facing. A carbon target of reducing parts per million to 350 is still not sufficient, though a start. We need to get down to 280 ppm and soon. We need to radicalise industry in terms of emission targets and other safety procedures and this will NOT induce mass poverty. The billions that were being considered for rewarding multinational polluters should be invested in conversion, for businesses and residential Australia, to solar power and then we can start on wind, tidal, geothermal, etc. No more lies.

I am reminded of something I once said to a conference in terms of the fact that we require remedy, whether social or ecological, "If we do not change our ways, our ways do not change."

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - Getting Real about sustainability - 30.11.2009

Sustainability is a word often misunderstood and increasingly abused. Sustainability is about reflecting capacity, about understanding collective needs and the ability for their perpetual provision and ensuring there is no abuse (greed).

Town planners, developers and architects do not work with what is and is not essential in mind. Australians build the largest homes, over 200 square metres. The USA is the only other country in the world with an average above 200 square metres. During the 1950s the average Australian home was around 110 square metres. In Italy and the UK the current average is about 80 square metres.

I have travelled much of the world and I have seen towns where one could argue the approach to sustainable living, to equitable social inclusion. There is no such standard of living in our Australian cities.

We should start with the education, and then the regulation, for homes to require no more than 150 square metres. We've gone from 4 people in a 110 square metre home to 2 or 3 people on average in a 200 square metre home.

I have long argued that we should move away from the notion that we need to build garages into homes. Rather we could plant and grow trees that would provide a canopy type cover for your car. All this would be a real good start towards economic truths.

Gerry Georgatos

 

Letter to the Editor - I disagree that Murdoch University campus is the worst - It is good. 11.11.2009

Andrew Tillett, education reporter for the West Australian published the article (10.11.2009) "Murdoch Uni campus rated worst in WA". Murdoch was ranked by the National Union of Students, with the assistance of the Murdoch University Guild of Students, in the bottom nine universities in Australia that offer inadequate support for students.

The article focused on the presumption that campus culture is weak at Murdoch University and under supported by the Chancellery. In terms of arguing poor campus culture at Murdoch I find this survey quite harsh. Murdoch does have campus culture and as good as at least most of the other WA universities.

I have been one of Murdoch University's most outspoken critics, well that is of the Vice Chancellery. However, one must always be fair. Sport is at an all time high at Murdoch and we recently placed a record 14th out of 42 universities at the Australian University Games where 200 Murdoch student athletes attended. We now have inter social and inter faculty sports and a sport association that numbers 1,000 students.

Sport was a vision that I have framed at Murdoch and it consumes 10% of the student population. I introduced the Vice Chancellor's XI verse the Guild President's XI annual cricket match. Students Without Borders, the massive social justice and community development organisation, arose at Murdoch University in recent years, without funding, and students have the opportunity to participate in transformative experiences and they do.

It is unfair to expect the Chancellery to bring about clubs and societies, other than alongside the Guild, to support them where they can. It is up to students to generate clubs and societies, events and in principle the ongoing student experience.

The idea that Murdoch University has little campus culture is not true, and if it can be improved, it is up to the students. University students are adults and they cannot expect to have their arses wiped for them. The University provides a Sport and Recreation Centre, Tavern, coffee shops and certain facilities and hopefully more will be the on the way. Last year the ranking Murdoch received was worse so they've actually improved their ranking to be one level behind ECU's and Curtin's rankings. During 2006 they were highly ranked and that had to do with the stronger relationship and understandings we shared.

If the current low ranking is about campus culture being weak at Murdoch I personally disagree. If it is about other criteria, such as relationships between Vice Chancellery and the Guild, direct funding, who has a say in what, and any perceived acrimony and tensions well that's different. However Murdoch has its merits and it is a University that has given many people an opportunity at a tertiary education that other Universities have not.

Gerry Georgatos
(outgoing) Murdoch University Guild of Students General Manager

Letter to the Editor - Public Housing - 10

.11.2009

Public housing in WA is in crisis. October figures describe 22,728 people waiting for homes. That is a jump of 3,913 more than this time last year. However, the real figures are worse.

It is not 22,728 people who are waiting for public housing rather these are the applicant numbers. It is some 70,000 people who are waiting to be housed. This is a ten thousand jump on this time last year.

24,000 children are part of this waiting. There are now more homeless people and drifters in WA than at any time during the last ten years. Tragically, there are more families living out of cars and in crisis centres. Thus we have adults and youth at risk.

Public housing needs to be increased, however where governments have failed in the past is with the infrastructure surrounding them. Transport and community services need to be prioritised. Support services and counselling need to be budgeted for. Rents and housing affordability needs attention. The buy-in options need to happen and thus people score the opportunity to be house-proud and secure what should be a natural right, a home.

It is 70,000 people waiting for public housing not 23,000. If we do not leap to action then this time next year it will be 100,000 people on the waiting lists.

Gerry

Letter to the Editor - Politics is a calling - 3.11.2009

Alan Carpenter in his maiden speech to State Parliament (12.3.1997) described the inequalities and injustices of the remuneration of people for their labours. The then Willagee MP noted the appalling great divide within humanity as manufactured by sheer financial greed such as six figure salaries for those in presumably high-powered corporate positions.

Carpenter is quoted, "The low paid, the unemployed and the ordinary public see business leaders, the chief executives of public companies and corporations, paying themselves millions of dollars a year while thousands of ordinary working people with families to support are sacked."

Twelve years later Alan Carpenter, one of the more approachable and centrist politicians, walks off to a six figure salary and to new bosses on pay packets several times the size of his.

Carpenter represented the electorate of Willagee. 33% of Willagee is public housing. Almost half of the rest live in private rent. And of the rest, most are on less than $70,000 per year with thirty per cent of their disposable income tied to an almost life long mortgage.

Parliaments should be made up of politicians who have demonstrated a solid understanding of the quotients that manage the economy. Hence they will be able to deliver the equations that ensure distributive economic justice and health. Politicians cannot be human rights and social justice campaigners unless they live them. There is not one Australian that should earn, circa 2009, more than $150,000 per annum. We need high minimum and set maximum standards to ensure equitable living standards and rights.

People in public housing should have the opportunity to be able to buy-in, to accumulate equity, and with this will come the desire to be 'house-proud'. We need to regulate rents and exclude housing as a commodity, removing housing from overt market influences and the notion that we can accumulate property as a variable financial investment. There are other ways to wealth, housing should not be one of them, and rather should be a natural right for all. Poverty is always induced.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - As XMAS churns over - 20.10.2009

Often I deeply reflect on the world at large, that is people, their words, actions, behaviours and for instance on the new year resolutions we make. Too often they are founded on misdirected self-interest and pecuniary gains. Our resolutions and pursuits signify whether we can achieve happiness and meaningfulness.

There is nothing more valuable in our self-interest than honour. Honour determines your character, your state of mind and therefore your happiness. Unavoidably, it contributes to the social consciousness.

I look at those in positions of great influence and with great capacities who could enable propriety and equitable social inclusion. I often live in what is described by many around me of me as naive hopes that we can understand one another, engage at all times, forgive, be patient, remedy and conciliate.

I am not unaware that most of society to varying degrees is underwritten by corrupt practices and nepotism. I am not unaware that there is huge unaccountability and 'transparency' is opaque hidden behind the misuse of the law and its lawyers, and the underling like agents within organisations such as human resources, legal and governance, public relations, etc.

I am not unaware that lawyers do not act in the interests of equity, justice, remedy and conciliation and rather act only on the instructions of their 'clients'. This is very sad and the core of our flawed systems.

However, I believe that example is our only immortality, and even in the face of being punished or wronged, of being left out or ridiculed, and of being 'mobbed', one must reconcile conscience to actions. Our intentions must always be honourable. I'd rather be a martyr, with my conscience clean than a perpetrator of wrongs, even if such perpetration is by 'silence' and 'fence-sitting'.

As the year ends and another will unfold, life goes on and maybe people once again should consider what matters instead of worrying how much money they should make, how high up the corporate or social ladder they climb, how much more of what is vain and folly they should have.

Christmas churns over each year and I sit and reflect about people and the great divides.

It breaks my heart to see us live in divides, and it breaks my heart to see those who have the capacity to help others not to do so.

As every Christmas approaches I reflect on its messages. I love no one better than the Little Drummer Boy, he gave everything he had, and still had it to give again. I know of no greater story than that of the Little Drummer Boy.

It would be wonderful and beneficial if we find our resolutions in how we treat one another, in policies of inclusion, in forgiveness, in speaking the truth, in genuine courtesies, in an ethos of caring, in working diligently in our jobs for the sake of one another, in making real time for our families and, where possible, our friends, in sincerely being there for people, and especially the vulnerable, in caring about the person we are before worrying about the wrapping.

If we resolve towards honourable intentions we will understand happiness and one another. Less people will slip through the cracks, less lives will be lost and the memories that forever haunt me of those lonely souls who took their lives may not have to be so for others if more of us rise in the helping of one another. If we rise, so as to truly help, change will happen much more expediently where it should happen - in the home and in society. Honour is everything, even when it seems in the eyes and minds of others to get you into trouble.

GERRY GEORGATOS

Letter to the Editor - 15.10.2009

Countries such as Australia are struggling for solutions to the Asylum Seeker problems which are pervasively endemic throughout our world. Australia is seeking to strengthen border controls, coordinate the 'Pacific' solution, and negotiate haphazardly with the 'third' countries.

Australia, a large continent nation with 22 million Australians, is wary of a potential blow out to maybe 10,000 Asylum Seekers a year. Greece, one of the world's smallest countries, with 11 million citizens, a resources poor nation incapable of socially underwriting a larger population, let alone its current population, has 30,000 Asylum Seekers each year.

Greece is the point of entry country for many Asylum Seekers vying for a home somewhere in the rest of Europe. Iraqis, Afghanis, Kurds come into Greece through Turkey and into the Aegean islands, and from Africa through the Aegean arrive Somalis, Eritreans, Ethiopians, Sudanese and people of the Chad.

Under the Dublin Agreement, and Greece as part of the European Union, European countries can reject Asylum Seekers that have come through Greece and are sent back to Greece. Hence poverty, acrimony and racism are induced. Greece isn't coping and to the point, like other nations of our world, they are trying to turn back Asylum Seekers from arriving into Greece. Greece itself only accepted 0.5% of 25,000 Asylum Seeker applications during 2007!

The UNHCR may need to recommend an urgent bona fide world summit to remedy the problems in regards to Asylum Seekers. People are fleeing from persecution and unacceptable poverty. Humanity should have the right to generally migrate to wherever it would like to throughout our world. Freedom does not belong to any one people rather we as people are the property of freedom.

A world summit on the Asylum Seeker problems, if properly conducted, may not only achieve positive pathways, financial investments in the safe passage of people, financial investments in those third nations prepared to audit the legitimacy of the Asylum Seekers, it may through the course of such a summit in part, even if in small part, resolve some of the major domestic and international conflicts that have generated the need for people to flee persecution, discrimination, abject poverty and devastations.

We have coalesced as a humanity and have procured civilisation, the future will measure this generation in how it dealt with the Asylum Seekers just as we measure past generations - in Australia many of us refer to the Stolen Generations. May each nation, and its constituents, call upon the United Nations to convene such a world summit.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor – Nobel Peace Prize for what? - 12.10.2009

Barack Obama has won the Nobel Prize for Peace. His personal achievement of an African-American into the Oval Office reflects on pathways forward for African-Americans, and other cultures, exploited and abused for centuries in the Americas. Michelle Obama is a descendant of the horrific generations of slavery.

Obama's rise, on behalf of the exploited and abused, into the White House will easily remain his greatest contribution. I hope I am wrong and that he challenges this noteworthy achievement with others. However, Obama as the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace begs many questions.

What did he receive it for? Did he receive the Nobel Prize for Peace for breaking his promise to prioritise the closing of Guantanamo? Did he receive it for dropping the pursuit of justice in the addressing the promotion of torture, and its contravention to international conventions, at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo?

Did he receive this award as a person of peace for recently signing a record $106 billion dollars for warring in Afghanistan and Iraq? US invasions in these two countries have now cost millions of lives whereas whatever horrific problems prior the invasions, millions of lives were not being forever lost. Has Obama received the peace prize for all the waffle, and no real conciliation and remedies, with the Middle East questions? Or for the investment in further nuclear weaponry and research while claiming in speaks that he wants an end to nuclear weaponry?

Three sitting US Presidents have now won the Nobel Peace Prize, and the world is not a better place, maybe it is a better place for some in the USA and some multinational industry mates.

If Obama had withdrawn troops from Iraq, Afghanistan and dropped billions of US (petrochemical) dollars to rebuild infrastructure, apologised for the invasions and worked to contribute genuine peace in these countries then maybe he could have been considered for the peace prize. If Obama sent a message to the Pentagon and to the US Congress for them to stop covert terrorism in other countries then this would be something special. If Obama out loud acknowledged that Palestinians are living in apartheid and that this is evil and that Palestinians and Israelites must co-exist with indisputable full rights then this is worthy of applause.

These awards will remain as phoney baloney as most of the awards that some look up to, and which only protect and 'qualify' the rich and deflect from the truth, and which serve to entrench divides and hierachy and all that which is continuously truly wrong with our world.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor – Protecting the Beeliar Wetlands – 7.10.2009

My family has enjoyed the preserve of the Beeliar Wetlands for years and my daughter and I have been regulars to Bibra Lake reserve. Creating a six lane freeway between the Beeliar Wetlands of North Lake and Bibra Lake will end this preserve. It will end not just for our human witness however it will end for much of the 223 plant species, and the 123 native bird species will have to move on or accept peril.

Roe Swamp is a breeding place and habitat for wild swans and numerous water bird life. It will be decimated by the planned route.

The Carnaby's Black Cockatoo and the Peregrine Falcon are only two of many endangered species that will be further endangered.

The plan for Roe 8 was knocked up in 1963 by the Liberal Brand Government when land clearing was prioritised over the ecology of our habitats. The great mistake of urban planning is the failure to incorporate large tracts of various habitats into them and ensure a warranted synergy. Planting trees in estates and plumbing them with water features is not preserving our habitats let alone that without rate payer funded maintenance the mirage cannot be sustained.

It is a myth to presume that Roe 8 will serve Industry demands. Firstly, Governments, and its constituencies, should consider whether they really want a sustainable future, and in terms of this context what Industry and social planning we require. Secondly, the proposed Roe 8 extension is not a crucial feature that Industry will be the lesser or greater for.
 
The future of Perth has not been scrutinized holistically and rather 'developments' have unfolded. The issue of Kewdale freight down Leach Highway needs to be considered contextually within a greater Perth and south-western 'corridor' scenario and in terms of the next century.

Further more it is utter impropriety to have for instance Environmental Protection Acts (1986) and hence disregard them or circumvent certain protocols and indicators within them to achieve an outcome. Under Section 16(j) it is described that such construction (of Roe 8) will lead to ecological disaster of the preserves such as the Beeliar Wetlands.

Let us not forget the historical significance to the Nyungar peoples of the Beeliar Wetlands. They have listed at list seven sites of significance that will disappear if Roe 8 goes ahead. If we genuinely heritage list such preserves, whether of historical or ecological significance, hence we incorporate into our urban existence priceless habitats and an improved well being and synergy and we actually diminish the carbon footprint.

The nearby Murdoch University has some significant wetlands as part of its preserve. The university community is enriched by the ecological health, and our human witness.

Let us ensure that endangered birds such as the Spotless Crake continue their right to life. Let us ensure that migratory birds such as the Rainbow Bee-Eater visit during the summer months. We can achieve an appropriate synergy and unfold improved urban planning by actually adhering to the jurisdiction of the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (1999), abide by the Environmental Protection Acts (1986), by respecting the Register of the National Estate of the Australian Heritage Commission, acknowledging native title claims and adhering to the Aboriginal Heritage Act (1972).

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor – Child Sexual Abuse – 30.9.2009

Recently, I have become involved in contributing to the tackling of the huge problem of domestic violence. Part of any solution towards this would be to ensure the expedient preliminary hearing of domestic violence allegations before a magistrate, especially where there has been a physical assault.

This triage approach where courts can log the hearing order of criminal allegations by the police in terms of seriousness rather than by the initial lodgment of the allegation will assist in a more accurate record of evidence for such matters where they are excruciatingly delayed pending the assumptions of natural justice and procedural fairness are ensured. This approach assists the victim in securing safety, distance and the positive management of the emotional and psychological abuses associated with physical abuse.

Society has many huge issues to tackle which are usually disregarded or made unnecessarily difficult by societal judgments, societal denial, by generic rather than specific underwriting of the criminal justice system, and by family and extended family that coalesce behind silence and denial.

Sexual and child sexual child abuse are huge problems, immoral and criminal, within our society. The perpetrators are responsible for what they do, even if they have been victims to such abuse as children. They do have a consciousness and therefore the ability to reason.

Most sexual abuse goes unreported and only 1.6% of child sexual abuse is successfully criminally prosecuted. Hence we are failing those that need us. It is a myth to presume that strangers are the greatest offenders, and we pursue with venom in the press convicted paedophiles. However, more than 90% of child sexual abuse is intra-familial.

The Australian silence is no longer warranted and the criminal justice system needs improving. The abused should not be treated like whistle-blowers who risk dividing family, who take up the courts' time, and they don't need to be lumped with self-blame, dissociation from themselves, further low self esteem. They haven't done anything wrong. The wrong has been done to them and for too long. We need to encourage the truth.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor – Western Media fails truth test – 28.0.2009

During the eighties I was travelling our world almost  non-stop and I vividly remember the news of the Iranian airliner insanely shot down in 1988 by a US warship while in Iranian territorial waters. There were 290 dead, with 66 of them children. They have been 'forgotten' by the western media.

The commanding officer of the US warship was never brought to any form of bona fide account and he even received the 'Legion of Merit' from George Bush Snr. In December of 1988 a Pan Am flight, now known as the Lockerbie disaster, was blown up over Scotland with 270 dead. I've never forgotten it as I had recently travelled with Pan Am flights.

Libya and its 'dictator', Gaddafi, were accused of conspiring the bombing of Pan Am flight 103. False. The bomb had been insanely placed by a Palestinian group sponsored by the then Iranian government. I support Palestine's right to liberty however I detest these unwarranted murderous actions.

Libya and Gaddafi were set up and the western media knows this and yet it does very little to correct the facts. If we cannot rely on our media who can we rely on? At the time of the Pan Am bombing the US and the UK required certain relations with Iran in terms of support during the deteriorating relationship between the US and Iraq. Libya was a sole Arab supporter of Iraq and thus paid the penalty.

Recently, Libyan Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, one of the presumed Lockerbie bombers, was released from his Scottish jail. The western media has limited the dissemination of the truth of why he was released and allowed only for public outcries to be the core of the news.

Megrahi was not released because he is a dying person. Thousands have died in jail. If he was guilty of this horrific crime then that is where he should have remained. Megrahi was released because the authorities know he is an innocent person. They released him so he would not appeal his sentence and incarceration. His release was premised on the condition that he would not appeal his sentence. There are over 600 pages of evidence, previously suppressed, that prove his innocence and that of Libya's innocence.

Megrahi and Libya were the fall guys for 'diplomatic interests' between the US and Iran. How god damn evil is this? What sort of (in)humanity do we live in? What is worse is that the media we so desperately rely on has allowed for the discovery of the truth to be outstripped by the manifest of deceit.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor – As XMAS approaches... 23.9.2009

I often reflect on the world at large, that is people, their words, actions, behaviours and for instance on the new year resolutions we make. Too often they are founded on misdirected self-interest and pecuniary gains.

There is nothing more valuable in our self-interest than honour. Honour determines your character, your state of mind and therefore your happiness. Unavoidably, it contributes to the social consciousness.

I look at those in positions of great influence and capacity who could enable propriety and equitable social inclusion. I often live in what is described by many around me of me as naive hopes that we can understand one another, engage at all times, forgive, be patient, remedy and conciliate.

I am not unaware that most of society to varying degrees is underwritten by corrupt practices and nepotism. I am not unaware that there is huge unaccountability and 'transparency' is opaque hidden behind the misuse of the law and its lawyers.

I am not unaware that lawyers do not act in the interests of equity, justice, remedy and conciliation and rather act only on the instructions of their 'clients'. This is very sad and the core of our flawed systems.

However, I believe that example is our only immortality, and even in the face of being punished or wronged, of being left out or ridiculed one must reconcile conscience to actions. Our intentions must always be honourable.

As the year ends and another will unfold, life goes on and maybe people once again should consider what matters instead of worrying how much how much money they should make, how high up the corporate or social ladder they climb, how much more of what is vain and folly they should have.

Christmas churns over each year and I sit and reflect about people and the great divides.

It breaks my heart to see us live in divides, and it breaks my heart to see those who have the capacity to help others not to do so.

As every Christmas approaches I reflect on its messages. I love no one better than the Little Drummer Boy, he gave everything he had, and still had it to give again.

It would be wonderful and beneficial if we find our resolutions in how we treat one another, in policies of inclusion, in forgiveness, in speaking the truth, in genuine courtesies, in an ethos of caring, in working diligently in our jobs for the sake of one another, in making real time for our families and, where possible, our friends, in sincerely being there for people, and especially the vulnerable, in caring about the person we are before worrying about the wrapping.

If we resolve towards honourable intentions we will understand happiness and one another. Change will happen much more expediently where it should happen - in the home and in society. Honour is everything, even when it seems in the eyes and minds of others to get you into trouble.

GERRY GEORGATOS

Letter to the Editor – Privatisation – 20.9.2009

Mr Ward, an accomplished Aboriginal elder, died in the back of private prisoner transport van. During a four hour trip he was left lumped in the back of that van and was scorched to death in 55 degrees of heat.

Privatisation is proving a serious problem to Governments. Government run custodial and transport services are often in gross violation of international human rights however contracted privateers are often worse and they have been allowed to be less accountable.

20% of Australia's prison population are in 12 privatised prisons, and Australia in relation to the rest of the world has the highest proportion of its incarcerated souls in private prisons.

Privatised prisons, detention centres and prisoner transport have increased the social and human rights problems that we now face. Australia's human rights record has worsened and UN Special Investigators/Rapporteurs have noted to this to the UN Committees.

The privateers brought on to do the job that for instance State and Federal Governments should be doing through Corrective Services often cut costs to make money and this is often at the reduction of health, safety, living conditions and educative opportunties and programs for those in custody.

When this happens racism and disadvantage systemically increase as we must remember the facts that prisons for instance are made up of proportionately more Indigenous Australians than should be and that 20% of the Australian prison population have a 'mental illness'. When the bottom line is prioritised the substantive assistance required to support for instance the Indigenous, the disadvantaged, those with a 'mental illness' is not likely to happen and hence we ensure the 'hardening' and 'further illness' of these neglected souls and therefore we are complicit in their perpetuation within cycles of poverty and abuse and re-offending.

Mr Ward's death, Mr Pat's death, 99 Aboriginal deaths in custody between 1980 to 1989 alone, the fact that Aboriginals die in custody at 27 times the rate to non Aboriginal Australians, 339 mostly unimplemented recommendations from the 1991 Commonwealth Royal Commission in Deaths in Custody Report, the high incarceration and re-offending rates of Aboriginal Australians, and the widespread problems of Detention Centres during the last decade clearly demonstrate systemic racism exists and that privatisation has made things worse for these souls and Australian society.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor – Institutional Racism and Deaths in Custody – 17.9.2009

I am responding to letters to the editor in the West Australian, to Professor Gavin Mooney's views that the Northbridge curfew is racist (14/9) and Professor Bob Reece's disagreement (16/9) that the law as an instrument is racist.

Professor Reece is an eminent academic however I disagree that the law can be demarcated in such a way to absolve it of for instance from systemic racism.

I recently visited Casuarina Prison to talk to the incarcerated about education as a prospective opportunity. There are 680 souls incarcerated in Casuarina and almost 400 are Indigenous Australians.

I attended a petition hand over (5,000 signatures) today (16/9) at State Parliament from the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee asking for recommendations from the 1991 Commonwealth Deaths in Custody Royal Commission to be implemented as to improve the criminal justice system, prisoner transport and for our society, through government, to eliminate systemic and general racism.

Professor Reece is arguing a formal argument when he notes that the high incidence of Aboriginal offenses do not implicate the presumed blunt instrument of the law. Most Aboriginal offenders have a form and content of unenviable disadvantage and inter generational poverty. The criminal justice and judicial management systems may consider mitigation nevertheless they have an obligation into remedying on substantive equality levels the disadvantage these people have been hit with and therefore to oblige every other management system in society to develop, as Professor Mooney states, youth crime prevention programs and equitable social policies.

The criminal justice system is harsh on Aboriginal offenders and presumes they will re-offend in lieu of the lack of substantive policies and prevention programs while the same system is not as harsh on non Aboriginal offenders and white collar offenders who they presume are less likely to re-offend.

Professor Reece is correct that legal sanctions will not solve problems, rather society as a whole has to enable education, health, housing and equitably inclusive social policies to remedy inter generational problems. As long as we do not do this then every management system within society is complicit in systemic racism and obviously that includes the criminal justice system.

Mr Ward died in the back of a prisoner transport van, that had no air conditioning, in 55 degrees of heat, during a non stop four hour transport - he was not provided with water or considered by the drivers in that time. He never stood a chance. Would you let your puppy spend ten minutes on a hot day in your car in a car park? Would a non Indigenous person have been barreled into the back of a van like that? Would you say that Mr Ward was harshly treated? Would you say that this horrific negligence was contributed to by systemic racism? Would you say that everyone has an obligation, including the criminal justice system, to point out the reality and ensure something is done about it?

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor – A right to think – 14.9.2009

According to the Commonwealth Constitution members elected by their electorates are there to represent their constituents, not a political party. The political party machinery that we live entrapped by has devolved from this noble democratic intention.

It is disappointing to witness the major parties vote en bloc especially when we know that there are those within who do not necessarily support the party line. It is sadly beautiful to watch when someone votes in terms of merit alone, for instance with the Liberal's Judith Troeth crossing the floor, the only one from the Liberals to vote against the asylum seekers being hit for certain costs.

The Liberals have one thing right, that Labor has wrong, and that is that their 'politicians' can vote on an issue against the general party line and not be penalised for their conscience vote or conscientious objection or for their right to an opinion and their view of the world.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor – Disgraceful – 9.9.2009

I am disgusted by the disgraceful arguments our politicians use to justify not only their remuneration but the other benefits they dip into.

It is disgusting to know well paid politicians who will gain high profile and other life long favours by having been politicians are able to draw on funds to pay for mortgages, rentals, questionable travel and campaigning.

It is disgusting to witness the life long benefits availed to them, let alone the ridiculous pecuniary benefits availed to them during their tenures.

It is disgusting to witness them vote on benefits and remuneration that are obviously a conflict of interest. Anywhere else this would be argued as a corrupted process. Example is our only certain immortality.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor – Bullying – 8.9.2009

There have been quite a few news items about bullying in the workplace. I am a General Manager and I have ensured everything possible to eliminate it, such as Grievance handling training, awareness training, formal and substantive equality training and professional development of my colleagues (including myself).

CEOs, Presidents, General Managers should demonstrate these relevant early interventionist and interpersonal skills before undertaking their calling. If they don't have these we risk organisational cultures of pervasive negative behaviours.

Bullying comes in many forms, such as intimidation, threats, strings attached edicts, gag orders, censorship. Bullying manifests implications such as diminution and lack of acknowledgment of ones work. As a nation we sign up to all sorts of UN Conventions in terms of civil and political rights and in pursuing the elimination of discrimination in all its forms. Well, we have to do more than just sign up, we have to accord.

Conditions for Whistle-blowers are not yet conducive and the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2003 (WA) does not afford Complainants and Whistle-blowers the appropriate support and respect. In most organisations Arbiters and Investigators usually lack the appropriate training and support and hence Complainants are left stranded and sometimes both Complainants and Respondents are left without expedient and just procedural fairness.

I will stand up to bullies, especially those in positions of influence, because if I do not then we risk the coalescing of cultures of pervasive denigration and mobbing which enculturate themselves through other key personnel, and through the human resources, legal, governance and accounting sectors of an organisation. Please remember that bullies are weaklings, those who lack the honed skills to engage, conciliate and remedy, and ultimately, with toxicity, hide behind lawyers and further intimidate and threaten.

Please consider forgiving the bullies, even if they are CEOs, Presidents and upper management however please for your sake foremost and then for theirs do not let them get away with bullying. Two wrongs are not the answer. The pursuit of truth, as tough as the journey is, is our only sure happiness and meaningfulness. Our human rights language and social justice unfolding have come at the mortal cost of others, whom are only recognised long after they've gone. If enough rise, change may happen.


Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor – If you can, then do so – 4.9.2009

Someone wrote to me recently, "The poor don't need more book chapters, radio comments, academics flying miles to read out a paper.  The poor require access to education to start the very long and painful journey of agitating for employment."

There are many people who make a living by presuming they work on behalf of the poor and in pursuit of social justice. Many make quite some quid out of this. Many of them do very little in expediently addressing the problems that face our poor and the disadvantaged.

In my work I engage with the poor and the disadvantaged on a daily basis. During the last several years I have become much more outspoken, (civilly) confrontational and a challenge to those and their tenure who have the capacity to influence the social justice that the poor and the disadvantaged are crying out for.

Honourable intentions underwrite everything. Those that pursue a living, whether in part or whole, out of representing the poor and disadvantaged should consider their lot in part as a 'calling' rather than how to make a buck. The poor and the disadvantaged are rightfully asking for education and substantive support along the way to exit oppressive inter-generational cycles. I also believe that those who can make a difference need more education, the type that gives them real understandings rather than the surface level stuff where they just sprout rote-learned statistics and maxims.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - CONTAMINATION - 24.8.2009



Lead transport through Esperance was banned in 2007 when high levels of lead were found in people and in bird life. Now we have high levels of lead in the soil of the Northam to Fremantle freight route. City Councils during 2008 attempted to reject the transport of lead through their communities.

120 containers of lead will be transported from Wiluna through at least 22 Perth suburbs to Fremantle port. Magellan has a 21,000 tonne stock pile of lead carbonate concentrate that has been sitting at Wiluna for 2 years to be transported daily over the next six months and then more lead mining and processing will occur.

The only benefit that is being argued as the offset to this high risk transport and export of lead carbonate is that it may create 160 odd full time jobs. That's nothing! It does not matter how many emergency management plans they have in place the facts are that contamination occurred as late as 2008 in Esperance, and that the freight route to Fremantle port is already victim to high levels of contamination. The fact is that double-lined sealed bags in their bolt-locked containers are not sufficient to prevent contamination. We do not need a rail disaster or poor handling of the goods at the points of entry and exit to argue against the transport of such goods.

The reality is that no matter what measures nothing at this stage prevents the pervasive permeation of lead into the environment and people. Is this not reason enough to not proceed with this madness?

Magellan's arguments that more dangerous goods such as cyanide and pesticides transported from the Goldfields pose a greater risk are a world gone mad argument. Why transport cyanide, pesticides and lead carbonate at all when they not only pose a risk but actually do contaminate? It's not too late, yet.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor – The Student Levy – 18.8.2009

The Senate shall consider the proposed compulsory annual student fees, known as the Student Levy, to be disbursed to University Vice Chancelleries rather than Student Guilds for presumed spending on services such as sport. This proposed Student Levy arose out of the pursuit to address the impacts of the introduction of Voluntary Student Unionism on Student Associations.

The Liberals and the non-Green Independents do not support the full rights and professional development of Student Associations. They do not support the vibrancy of lively freedom of speech and diverse campus culture. Hence Labor's pursuit to address the impacts of VSU upon Student Associations has been hijacked by an agenda that now argues that such monies will not be directed to Student Associations and rather the students' monies through this levy can be used to address the impacts of the introduction of VSU upon services such as sport and other mainstream campus culture.

This compulsory annual $250 levy, when it does not support student bodies and all they have to offer, is utter impropriety let alone immoral.

Universities have been dying as bastions of identity forming education in terms of critical free speech, socially equitable contributions to the national consciousness, as an active institution actuating political and social comment. Universities have increasingly devolved into something that do not resemble what universities were once intended for. Student Associations, to note the least, are not desired by the very autocratically corporate like Vice Chancelleries and their Public Relations departments that sickly manage 'universities'. Student Associations are being quickly killed off. This student levy will ensure even more leverage to unscrupulous and nescient Vice Chancelleries to enable the elimination of what Student Associations are supposed to be about, just like they did with tertiary education.

It is ironic that the Liberals, Barnaby Joyce and Stephen Fielding for all the wrong reasons may be responsible for not letting this Bill get up. Labor, and the Greens with their support, have got it all wrong in proposing this horrific Bill. They are living in lala land if they think Vice Chancelleries will unequivocally do the right thing in terms of diverse campus culture, Student Associations and freedom of speech. Have a good look at Murdoch University and the thin skins of its University management and their horrific attempts at censorship at this University. No wonder some do not want a Human Rights Act or Charter!

Universities and students are better off without the Student Levy unless it were to be directed to Student Associations.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor – Magellan Metals – 17.8.2009

Magellan Metals has been allowed to resume lead exports from its Wiluna mine through the port of Fremantle. The State Government failed to enable a robust study in acquitting this horrific decision.

Environment Minister Donna Faragher said that she had approved several health, hygiene and environmental management and monitoring and emergency response plans the company had prepared under stringent environmental conditions she had set last February. The management plans deployed are built upon the risk of human error and contamination and the clean up processes involved. We needed to be assured that contamination is not a risk issue, obviously it is!

There are no guarantees, only assurances, that the lead will be safely transported at all times. There are critical key risks at the points of loading and unloading, let alone the journey transport.

The Minister said the health and safety of the Western Australian community was the top priority of the Liberal-National Government. If this was true lead would not be transported through 22 Perth suburbs, and our dependency on it diminished in terms of its toxic effects period.

“Importantly, all transport of lead concentrate will cease should Magellan's lead be detected in the environment along the transport route,” Faragher said in her media release. Oh my God! They want the worst to happen before we will even consider common sense.

Mrs Faragher said Magellan had also provided an unconditional and irrevocable bank guarantee of $5 million as bond to cover costs associated with any clean-up required in the event of a spill of lead along the transport route. Is it a risk issue or not? Who cares about any financial guarantee once the good health of human beings is lost?

Mrs Faragher continued, “It remains my very clear expectation that Magellan will not only meet the conditions but exceed them. Any transgression will be dealt with swiftly.” I'd like to see how unwarranted ailing health will be dealt with swiftly.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor – Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme – 14.8.2009

The ALP claim we need to address climate change variations. Nevertheless they attempted to vote in through the Senate a carbon pollution reduction scheme that essentially paid 16 billion dollars to polluters. What sort of malevolent logic is this?

If the ALP thinks this is what Australians want and they are prepared for a double dissolution in attempt to achieve madness then the gods are crazy. If the ALP are serious about pollution then why will they not vote in the 20% Renewable Energy Target Bill? The Greens and even the Liberals will support this.

What hope have we to address climate change when they will not meet designated targets. Pollution is an obvious inextricable contributor to climate change. I can only shake my head at the so-called skeptics. 54 scientists authored 'Chapter 9, Causes' in the Intergovernmental Panel Report on Climate Change.

In 2007 the ALP came on to change the world. They've changed nothing. Approved uranium mines. They only look okay because the Liberals were so draconian. The Greens need to grow to make a difference, but they need inspirational leaders who will take on the worst of the world.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor (to the Fremantle Herald only) – Time to step down – 7.8.2009

The papers have been writing about the threat of pending industrial action sanctioned by NTEU and CPSU members of Murdoch University staff. Finally, after a year long struggle to get nowhere with university management the staff have voted for some about time confrontation.

The Vice Chancellor is on $800,000 having received pay rises each of the last six years, from 7.4% to 32% per annum. The staff have been told for quite some time now that they should hold the fort in the interests of the university. They are also asked to volunteer time to put together a number of university events, such as Open Day. Where is the respect for their hard work, high performance and service?

A Deputy Vice Chancellor recently admitted to me, in front of a long serving Professor, that the university can afford to increase pays by 8%. He defended his aversion to the pay increases with the argument that if they met this they couldn't spend on introducing new services and infrastructure. So in his mind, though our Vice Chancellery is one of the highest paid in terms of total staff payload in the country, bricks and mortar come before people. The Murdoch staff are currently the lowest paid staff out of all the five WA universities.

The first thing I did in my job as the General Manager of the Murdoch University student guild was to reclassify all my colleagues to an appropriate remuneration.

The Herald (8.8.09) quotes our Vice Chancellor, "If Murdoch University is to remain true to its guiding principles, we need to manage our financial position in a successful and more sustainable way." I argue that if Murdoch University is to remain true to its guiding principles that the Vice Chancellor should resign and take with him some of his overpaid management team. It's not only the fact that they're overpaid, but also their disregard of other people's working rights, and the fact that Murdoch management has been caught out in the disgraceful and unbelievable act of CENSORSHIP. Enough.

Gerry Georgatos
Murdoch University Guild General Manager, former University Senator,
Coordinator of Students Without Borders, and Reclaimyoureducation

Letter to the Editor – Honour Is Propriety – 6.4.2009

The ALP is talking up climate change as a risk issue and the moral crisis of our time. It is a crisis in happening.

Then why not meet the real targets and allay the risk issue period and create that better world? At the ALP Conference Mr Rudd noted that Labor has only had 3 decades at the helm whilst the coalition have had seven decades. It is more important to do what you can when there rather than fight to hang on for as long as you can. Honour is propriety.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor – Domestic Violence – 6.8.2009

Domestic violence is both a cowardly and a serious offence. Domestic violence, where there has been aggravated assault must be expedited in terms of being dealt with by the law before the court.

I visit jails to encourage the incarcerated out of the traps of various inter generational cycles and into positive pathways. I have realised that most of our incarcerated are in jail for relatively minor offences.

Our courts are backlogged. They deal with offenders on a sequential basis. Domestic violence can entrap victims in psychological and emotional abuse, and continue to lay the victim at the mercy of the perpetrator.

We are advocating that the court system undertake a triage approach to presiding over criminal allegations. For instance domestic violence must be expedited through the courts. With domestic violence, especially where there are physical injuries, the allegations should be brought before the court within weeks. A specialist invited by the court to provide comment on the physical injuries.

There are no excuses for domestic violence and in terms of mitigation, remedy, conciliation and remorse these should be the latter part of the process rather than the preface or delaying mechanism to domestic violence being heard by the courts. If we refine the law in such a way we support the victim's right to natural justice and procedural fairness, the clear message is articulated that domestic violence is inexcusable, and the judicial system respects the dignity and future well being of the victim.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor – The reality – 4.8.2009

Brian Tennant (4/8), in the West Australian, has laid onus of responsibility on Indigenous parents for their community's alleged negative behaviours. Brian replied to Marianne Mackay's (24/7) letter where Marianne noted that her people are misunderstood and simply not provided for in formal terms.

Marianne is correct. Brian's comments are generalisations and disappoint me. For two centuries our Indigenous brothers and sisters, the First Nation peoples, were denied even the most formal rights in accumulating health, education and infrastructure. Hence they still endure harshly from this cruel disadvantage.

State and Federal Governments are obliged to ensure they do close the gaps. This will require prioritised infrastructure spending in remote, rural, semi rural and metropolitan regions. Consider the south west of WA alone, where 32,000 Nyungars reside. Most do not have access, in terms of affordability, to the full suite of health care let alone alternative health care and remedies. Imagine the realities of remote Australia for our Indigenous brothers and sisters.

Brian believes that Indigenous community leadership is lacking. I argue against this. There is incredible and inspirational leadership within many communities, and fantastic parenting amongst the many problems and hardships. The reality is that Indigenous communities and peoples have numerous hurdles that the rest of do not have. Till only relatively recently they have been denied the right to accumulate infrastructure. Unless the governments step in with the 'spend' changes shall not occur overnight.

What must stop immediately is the laying of blame on Aboriginal parents for the plight they all endure. This allows for systemic racism and other ignorances. It is a fact, no matter the colour of our skin, right throughout this world, and I have travelled heavily, that the poor and deprived are inter generationally disadvantaged.

Do not lay blame and cast aspersions, rather substantively ensure their right to infrastructure, primary and and secondary health, education and justice. When this happens our Indigenous brothers and sisters will finally become one with the rest of us.


Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - They are good parents - 4.8.2009

Brian Tennant (4/8), in the West Australian, has laid onus of responsibility on Indigenous parents for their community's alleged negative behaviours. Brian replied to Marianne Mackay's (24/7) letter where Marianne noted that her people are misunderstood and simply not provided for in formal terms.

Marianne is correct. Brian's comments are generalisations and disappoint me. For two centuries our Indigenous brothers and sisters, the First Nation peoples, were denied even the most formal rights in accumulating health, education and infrastructure. Hence they still endure harshly from this cruel disadvantage.

State and Federal Governments are obliged to ensure they do close the gaps. This will require prioritised infrastructure spending in remote, rural, semi rural and metropolitan regions. Consider the south west of WA alone, where 32,000 Nyungars reside. Most do not have access, in terms of affordability, to the full suite of health care let alone alternative health care and remedies. Imagine the realities of remote Australia for our Indigenous brothers and sisters.

Brian believes that Indigenous community leadership is lacking. I argue against this. There is incredible and inspirational leadership within many communities, and fantastic parenting amongst the many problems and hardships. The reality is that Indigenous communities and peoples have numerous hurdles that the rest of do not have. Till only relatively recently they have been denied the right to accumulate infrastructure. Unless the governments step in with the 'spend' changes shall not occur overnight.

What must stop immediately is the laying of blame on Aboriginal parents for the plight they all endure. This allows for systemic racism and other ignorances. It is a fact, no matter the colour of our skin, right throughout this world, and I have travelled heavily, that the poor and deprived are inter generationally disadvantaged.

Do not lay blame and cast aspersions, rather substantively ensure their right to infrastructure, primary and and secondary health, education and justice. When this happens our Indigenous brothers and sisters will finally become one with the rest of us.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to Editor - 8.7.2009 - LIFE, MICHAEL JACKSON, CHAD, THE INCARCERATED, LOVE

Humans can be creatures separately of the heart or of the mind but it is great when heart and mind come together.

I've mulled over many thoughts when hearing of Michael Jackson's death at 50 years. It's sad but in a country like Chad, where I have been, most regions have an average life span of 50.

It is sad to see the outpouring of love for Michael after he passed away. If he had known some of it during his life some things may have been different for him. It is sad to reflect on all the people of our world that we do not assist while the much smaller proportion of our humanity consumes and decimates 9/10th of the world's resources and production.

The other day I was at Casuarina Prison, where more than 50% of the incarcerated are of our First Nation peoples. I and a friend, Australia's first Indigenous Chiropractor, spoke to the incarcerated of positive pathways, hope and that we will support them. It is sad that enought of us do not expediently work to close the gap between non Indigenous and Indigenous Australians. It is sad there are not enough prisoner partner programs with education providers.

Michael was in many ways an activist who challenged boundaries and in many ways paved an appreciation of all people by people who once racially distinguished people. Michael sang of love, of us helping one another, of us caring about our children's children, of us feeding the world.

Often we need to think and act from the heart. It is the heart that must nourish the mind.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 15.6.2009 - WAITING FOR DEATHS IN CUSTODY

There is another Public Rally this Saturday for justice and human rights in lieu of Mr Ward's death in the back of a disgusting truck that would fail every test for the transport of non-nutritious processed food let alone as a transport for a human being. The truck didn't kill him, attitudes and the bias of racism killed him.

My great concern is that we more often than not cry out, and almost in vain, when only a death occurs. The media only notices when someone dies and often only because of the outcries around these deaths.

An Aboriginal person died. Why are there proportionately more Aboriginal people dying in custody? Why are we not finding out why proportionately more Aboriginal people are being incarcerated? My God, in this state they are being incarcerated at 17 times the rate than the rest of us Australians.

Why are Aboriginal people charged with more small offenses than non-Aboriginal people? Why are they up for more disorderly charges than the rest of us? It's about time that even the WA Police have to be asked to account for allegations they formally lay against Aboriginal people, especially the ones that the rest of us aren't charged with? The Deaths in Custody Watch Committee may consider a stronger focus on such preventative understandings and pressure otherwise nonchalant State Governments and the incumbent Opposition into addressing these.

Australia has a racist history, one of the worst in the colonial and post colonial world, and it has not liberated itself from its racist underpinnings. Many are trying to achieve this but we have to be honest about this country's racism and not hostile to looking at ourselves.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 3.6.2009 - CHALLENGE FROM GERRY GEORGATOS TO TANGNEY'S FEDERAL MEMBER

In last week's Melville Times' Letters to the Editor we had a contributor noting to us his concerns that the Liberals are possibly considering opening up the supposed Liberal safe federal seat of Tangney to the preselection process. The contributor considered this as unfair to the serving member, Dennis Jensen.

The political management of Australia is at the mercy of party politics. This is unfortunate as inherently it conflicts with the Constitution. The Commonwealth's Constitution describes members as elected by their constituency to represent the views of the constituency to Parliament. It is an admirable participatory and democratic intention.

Unfortunately, the growth of political parties, slowly from the 1890s and then quickly after Federation have seen the circumvention of the Constitution's intentions for members to represent their constituency's majority views to Parliament in decision making processes.

The contributor noted to us, the readers, that Dennis Jensen has been an admirable member for Tangney and underwrites it with his view of Dennis as a family person. I do not agree. I would have preferred to have read of his achievements and representations on behalf of the Tangney constituency and of his impact in terms of these contributions in the Parliamentary decision making processes.

Through the local papers, two years ago I challenged Dennis Jensen to a discussion concerning his views on the then reduction of the Jobs, Education and Training Child Care subsidies and how it affected single parent university students. Dennis did not respond.

Dennis argued through the media only the views of the then Howard Federal Government. Dennis was factually incorrect. I was part of a campaign that in most part was responsible for the reinstatement of the JET Child Care subsidies for single parent university students. Mal Brough wrote to me and I continued the discussion. John Howard and Mal Brough reinstated it for one year. I argued that it should be reinstated for the duration of a university education. The Rudd government has further extended it. The campaign continues.

I do not believe Dennis represents the views of the constituency, though he has been elected by the constituency. I am willing to have a private and public discussion with Dennis on 'his' views on a nuclear Australia, on his views on the Roe8, on lead transported to Fremantle, on issues relating to the Beeliar Wetlands, on JET, on Murdoch University and on any number of issues that concern Tangney.

Gerry Georgatos, former 5 1/2 year resident of Kardinya

Letter to the Editor - 27.5.2009 - HOW MANY DO NOT MAKE IT?

In my work in tertiary education, in various roles,I witness much of what is good and bad and reflective of our world. Wherever possible I try to assist. These last few months I have noticed the increasing struggles of those that are disadvantaged, and how their numbers and their problems are increasing.

Everyone should be assisted but not everyone is assisted. Many of us, those in positions of capacity do not exert our every opportunity to help those that we could have helped. Some of us are minimalists, some of us just do not have the necessary professional development and coping mechanisms.

Often I remember those that never made it, those that took their lives. I remember a bubbly 26 year old who took her life one cold night by hanging herself from a tree near her home. In the week leading up I had bought two beautiful paintings from her to help her out with 'money'. She used that money to buy the drugs to sedate herself when she took her life. She had been the victim of inter generational sexual abuse; family.

I remember a twenty eight year old with heaps of academic and other life potential, who could not cope with induced poverty, abandonment and the high end abuses by others throughout her life. She had fallen into prostitution. One dank night she gave up and hung herself in her bedroom.

I remember a conversation with a troubled senior academic I knew here and there, who had completed his PhD only relatively recently. His son had taken his life, not being able to cope with the expectations of a seemingly cruelly detached society. Troubled by the despondency of this academic, days later I learned he took his own life.

Through my own work as the General Manager of a Student Guild, and the founder and head of Students Without Borders, now with 12,000 student members, I have worked to initiate programs and opportunities to predominately assist the disadvantaged and where possible to improve the helping skills, on formal and substantive levels, of those in senior positions. The disadvantaged outnumber the advantaged.

I have often believed that if each of us could make a little difference each day to others then the world will improve. How do we go about ensuring this? I do believe in compulsory education, that is of a transformative service learning nature, such as some volunteer work in make a difference programs or community work. I also believe that this education should also have a theory component to complement the practical component. I achieve the practical component for students with Students Without Borders.

At Murdoch University I tabled a proposal during 2008, which in part got up, for the introduction of compulsory Indigenous education as a component of all undergraduate studies. It begins from 2010, an Australia first.

Remembering those that could not overcome life's, or rather inhumanity's, cruelties, and who could not find the assistance that they may have needed I continue to wonder what it is that it will take to make the world a better place, to ensure that most of us are in a position to help each other and to understand how to go about this helping.

Compassion. Compulsory education in compassion for all students, even if only one hour a week, at primary, high school and tertiary level. We focus all our dialogue on excessive self interest economics which induce disadvantage and do not spend anywhere near enough time on values; social, cultural, communitarian. Philosophy should underwrite economics and not economics, as we know it, underwriting our philosophy.

If compassion could be taught in all school and tertiary education then maybe we would work in the interests of each other rather than only our own, maybe we would be there for those that need us, maybe there would be less arguments, less judgments, less crime, less violence, less wars and less people taking their lives because no one cares enough.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor (& newspaper short article in some papers) - 10.4.2009 - THE ROAD TO HELL

The ways we have gone about trying to address, and in reality merely recycle, the 'global financial crisis' are crazy. The Czech President said it best in terms of the 'stimulus packages'; that they are the 'road to hell'.

Let us remember that four/sixths of the world are always in crisis, in poverty, a poverty imposed by us who are now whelmed by this so-called financial crisis. Let us understand that half the world has no idea of what this financial crisis is about and that half the world has not been touched by it. Most of our global citizenry do not own a home, have no savings, have nothing to do with banks and financial institutions. They are perennially disregarded.

The 'global financial crisis' is a 'global "credit" crisis'. This "credit" is not one of merely advanced payments to people with an alleged capacity to pay them off with interest over a long period of time. This "credit" crisis is one of fabricated valuations, such as through property, capital equity, debentures, shares and other stock and about what people are worth in the workplace. It is about goods and services intentionally over valued in the ugly pursuit of greed.

CEOs and Boards of Directors should be held responsible for their greed and their complicit silence in the pursuance of greed. This greed has become a culture of pervasive intrusion into the 'western world's organisational culture of 'big' and 'small' businesses and entrepreneurship. Goods and services are inflated beyond their real value, and thus at some point, as has happened again and again, we enter financial recessions, depressions and other associated crises. Borrowings cannot be met in order to meet the continuum of irresponsibly valued equity and commodities. When values crash borrowings are complexified by the drop of false values to realer values. Corruption is responsible for false valuations.

The stimulus packages serve no other purpose than to recycle the over inflated valuations that have kept us in trouble. The stimulus packages are short term measures to distract humanity into a false sense but they cannot fix the endemic problems. Impossible. In only less than one century our economic system through this credit and valuation crisis, which deny equitable policies of social inclusion, has endured a baker's dozen recessions and crises. These management failures have demonstrated that our economic understandings are misplaced and unachievable. We are heading into hell.

Obama and Rudd do not know what they're doing, other than supporting desperate bids by the IMF, the Reserve Banks, and the multinationals to prop up the toxic economics that serve only the ugly interests of the very few.

It is disgraceful that people are being set up for failure. People are being enticed into buying homes with 14K to 21K first home buyers grants. Most are buying them at 400K. Will they be worth 500K in five years, accommodating CPI and repayment schedules? What if property prices crash to their real values, then the mortgagee is in trouble, ala the homebuyers crisis in the USA?

Should people be mortgaging for their first home, paying up to 50% of their income in repayments, for say a 380K mortgage that by the time it is repaid in say 23 years will have cost them close to a million dollars at today's rates alone? What if unemployment rises, and wages stagnate but CPI and bank lending interest rates rise, how will the mortgagee cope and what will be their quality of life, in this one off life that we have?

And what in heaven's sake are the banks and financial institutions doing in exploiting further credit card and personal loan lending to people?

So what are the real purposes of the stimulus packages throughout our 'westernised world'? To set up through the en masse misery of the people the selfish hopes of the onced cashed up over valued multinational enterprises? It is a disgusting comment by Rudd to declare that the economy may be doing well because the stimulus package improved last December's revenue for instance for Coles and Woolworths! This is not how a good economy works, by no means.

Senator Bob Brown of the Greens, in a token gesture at our Senate, was correct when he argued we should reign in executive management's remuneration. It is powerfully indicative of what is wrong with our economic systemology. He is correct in terms of minimum and maximum remuneration, standards, behaviours and practices. This is good economics. It is about responsible valuation and budgeting. No one person is worth a thousand times more than another and no bona fide economic structure can afford this ugly avarice and only through ugly exploitation can it sustain this greed for an extended period.

Who will rise to the occasion and bring justice and method to the economic order of things? Those who will rise to exact change must first understand the underwriting to systemically good economics. We have been failed by our politicians, who don't seem to have a real clue, and who fail to appropriately regulate and audit multinationals and big business, and by our Unions, and I am a Union member, who thuggishly argue the member's interest only rather than good practices and who make little positive difference in economic management other than to improve remuneration practices and working conditions, and our media who does not investigate the problem itself but focuses on the effects.

Rather than trap more people into misery we have to bite the economic bullet. We have to revalue property to real values, and revalue all capital equity and goods and services. They have to be affordable to everyone in order to ensure a sound management system devoid of financial collapses and radically shifting GDP, CPI and all forms of inflation. These horrific sways and troughs ruin people's lives and perpetually exclude the poor, let alone induce poverty.

Australia is heading to economic disaster. Germany and Japan are in deep recession and doing it tough. Maybe they'll pull out quicker into a more sedate economic order for a while but Australia will linger into real recession long after some of the other countries pull out into a recycled economic steadiness, then boom and then the repeated collapse. In the end, the collapses can only go on for so long. So many have occurred in only a short time, and a century is a very short period. As we are, we are not sustainable.

Marx, and I am not Marxist, in Das Kapital was correct about the collapse of this excessive capitalism. It is not sustainable if it is not founded in affordability, in equity, in real valuations and in appropriate remuneration. Yes, we have to recost the values of property, and yes many will lose values they presumed they once had. The banks and financial institutions must be reshaped to accommodate these revaluations. We have to better understand investment including debentures and other stock and value them accordingly and have them regulated, and yes we have to ensure appropriate minimum and maximum standards in remuneration and expenditure practices. We have to limit enterprises to a reflection of their capacity so as not to stress the economic potential of the enterprise especially in terms of job security.

By going down the way of economic truths not only will life improve for more people in western countries but also in the presumably developing, and thus far excluded, nations of the world, who harbour four/sixths of acute and chronic poverty. Economic truths, if applied, will benefit everyone.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor = 20.3.2009 - MANDATORY SENTENCING

Are people out their minds or just sheer ignorant? The injuries to Constable Butcher are horrific. The fact that the McLeods may be hot heads and alleged to have a history of think later and physically react first behaviours appear probable. Drunkenness is no excuse whatsoever.

The target specific complaints before the Court were deliberated over six weeks by a jury with a magistrate to assist in expertly guidance. Are some of mainstream media irresponsible with their headlines and reporting framework? Are the alleged 'masses' generically cynical of our judicial systems. Yes, the justice system does fail many people, especially those who cannot afford it, but in the end we have to improve it through the rule of law.

Mandatory sentencing without any form recourse to mitigation in terms of the facts is obscene. We cannot argue for a Charter of Human Rights and mandatory sentencing in the same breath.

Everyone must be accountable for their actions, including the police, no one is beyond the law. Corruption in WA is high, mostly because of its historical underwriting, and we should not help corruption along by enabling sectors, even if they are our public servants, to be beyond the law. This is not the intention of any real democracy.

On an international measure, Australia has one of the better police forces, comparatively less corruption in its ranks, because the police, and all public servants, are accountable to the rule of law.

Refine the rules of law, expand them and people's recourse to them but do not make anyone, whether they are public servants, government ministers and corporate giants free of the rule of law, free of accounting for their actions. No one but God should have a god-complex.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 16.3.2009 - WA BURNT IN CORRUPTION

Letter to the Editor - 11.3.2009 - LEAD CARBONATE

Lead carbonate should not be transported through to Fremantle Port.

The stronger safety standards that Magellan espouses it will undertake validate the well known fact that lead has thus far been shipped with high risk safety standards. The vacuuming process around the double lined bags is not fool-proof and cannot be. No vacuuming can ensure this.

The contaminant absorption of lead is in good part through the skin and through inhalation.

The container itself would have to be in the very least vacuum sealed, nevertheless it would still not be seal proof because of loading, unloading and handling issues at non vacuum sealed points of entry and exit passages. The double lined bags are also insufficient and do not absolve the high risk of human error.

Contamination can be both an acute and chronic outcome. The vehicles transporting and railroading the lead are an issue in themselves. To drive loads of lead carbonate through more than twenty suburbs and past numerous schools, let alone thousands of residences and scores of shopping villages is social irresponsibility and disregard.

What the lead carbonate is designated for is in itself a major question. It is also false for anyone to state that Fremantle is the only viable point of exit in Australia for such dangerous exports.

Do you have to live disasters to learn lessons?


Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 1.3.2009 - THE SENATE INQUIRY INTO THE STUDENT LEVY

Letter to the Editor - 27.2.2009 - OUR MORAL COMPASS

Letter to the Editor - 28.2.2008 - THE MORAL COMPASS

Letter to the Editor - 23.2.2009 - PETER GARRETT AND PAUL WATSON

Peter Garrett must have difficulty sleeping at nights. Even if Peter is joyed at being a politician and a minister after a calling in public life that had him promote his passions through lyrics, and step up into the faces of politicians while he argued the saving of the earth from the needless decimation of its resources, Peter cannot possibly reconcile his former demonstration of himself to the current portrayal.

Paul Watson, Master of the Steve Irwin, and protector of whales, is a person who demonstrates sincere conscience. He is not radical but rather legitimate, and Paul reconciles his conscience to his actions. Paul derides Greenpeace for radically moving away from its founding principles and its brand. Ultimately, how people carry themselves through life depends on their maturity. Peter is actually immature, and did not have the maturity to buffer himself from the pressures placed upon him from those around him. The weak are immature, and this immaturity is a lacking or flaw in their identity formation.

The mature stand up for that which they believe, and only alter the view when genuinely educated otherwise. The immature coalesce their views to radical compromises only in order to fit in with those around them. Sadly Peter Garrett has done so much damage to himself, to politics, to society. In the end he fell to his knees rather than stand on his feet, and I will remember this as so because yes he did radically approve the expansion of a Uranium Mine. Paul Watson is out there saving whales, and there is no compromising him on the issue.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 14.2.2009 - EQUITY

Letter to the Editor - 30.1.2009 - CORRUPTION AND THE CCC

Letter to the Editor - 30.1.2009 - RECLAIMING ROCKINGHAM UNIVERSITY FOR ROCKINGHAM & KWINANA

Murdoch University's Rockingham campus is not what it used to be. Opened only 14 years ago a series of executive decisions have the campus struggling for survival let alone striving for any form of vibrancy.

Rockingham campus offered a cache of full university degrees, and an alternative pathway entrance program, the award winning UNIFOCUS, which ensured anything up to 1,200 students from the Rockingham and Kwinana districts.

During the last several years, one full degree after another has been pulled. It was not due to student numbers falling but rather whether these degrees could serve the South Street campus' interests, especially in creating synergy with other existing or prospective degrees. Of course the decisions were predominately financial.

The University should not pull degrees when there are students who will attend. At its Mandurah campus in second semester of 2005 they attempted to close the newly established program of Life Sciences, after marketing through the media the extensive relationships they presumed to have built in order to support the program. Students enrolled in this program, and some even relocated to the area, with some buying homes in near by Yunderup and Harvey. When they cut the program, I stepped in on behalf of the affected students and ensured as best I could their rights and entitlements.

Mandurah has a successful Nursing program, and Rockingham, thanks to pressure from people within the University, and the vision of Dean Andrew Taggart, is giving Primary Education and Early Childhood Learning a shot. Nevertheless, the only University education available to the Peel region and the Rockingham and Kwinana districts cannot be nursing and teaching.

I have met with most of the Rockingham staff and ex-staff and most want to serve the needs, that they have experienced and recognised, of the demographic. They want the University to re-instate a cache of full degrees, to support Rockingham campus from the University's consolidated 24 million profit for 2008, and invest in some resources, activities and services at the campus.

The Full Degrees for Rockingham campaign is underway, and to this day we understand that student numbers dropped at Rockingham only as each degree was pulled from Rockingham. Further to this, the staff of Rockingham have noted that the former alternative pathway program, UNIFOCUS, a 9 week program being replaced by the 12 week ONTRACK program has been disastrous for them. They believe that ONTRACK is stricter with point of entry criteria and assessments than the UNIFOCUS program, and that the programs should serve, yes to sift, but to empower students to be sufficiently ready for point of entry readiness for a university education, rather than cut them off before they've been supported towards an opportunity.

Faculty Dean of Arts and Education Andrew Taggart is doing a great job in taking Primary Education to Rockingham. Deb Hamblin, the Campus Librarian and Rockingham Councillor, Barry Down, Chair in Education, and lecturers Christine Glass, Elizabeth Moore, and Jane Pearce do a great job in supporting what little is left of Rockingham campus in light of the more vibrant days and investments that were once shared and were their witness.     

The University promised a Rockingham Taskforce to be led by its Deputy Vice Chancellors. This Taskforce may have never met, and is now no longer. The hopes of Rockingham campus now rest with the Full Degrees for Rockingham campaign, and stalwarts like Andrew Taggart, Barry Down and Deb Hamblin. We need our local politicians and the Rockingham Council, who I know first-hand do care, to step up to Murdoch and question their care-factor for the Rockingham and Kwinana districts.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 20.1.2009 - SHAME

Because of its isolation Perth is in many ways very different to its eastern seaboard counterparts. It is a beautiful city, and has many strong community features that bring people together. It is also a city built on shame.

WA is behind the times in terms of legislation especially in the unfolding of human rights, in terms of equity and equal opportunity, in both formal and substantive equality accords. Victoria (2006) and the ACT (2004) have Human Rights Acts.

On a per capita basis Perth is the Australian city with the most millionaires. Many of the families that made their money in this town and state made it with a no holds barred attitude, with disregard for the land, for the worker, for the future. The town tied itself up in a culture of self interest and of the making of money at any cost. What we now call nepotism and moral corruption was their normative. Their children carry on this legacy.

Charles Court in relation to the Aboriginal community, once said, "We're not interested in sacred sites, we're only interested in money." During the fifties, sixties, seventies and eigthies when many made their easy money, they made it at the expense of principles, equity, scrutiny and justice.

Much of the powerbase in Perth was built in the ways in part described in movies such as Chinatown and LA Confidential. It wasn't achieved through academic brains, but rather through a steely mental brute force of crass nepotism and excessive self interest. The children of these families are who run this community known as Perth and WA. It will take a few generations to hopefully see out this grip they have over this state, which holds WA back from catching up with other parts of the world who are trying to understand rights issues, equality, justice.

This history of Perth and WA explains to outsiders why the State Governments appear slow to act on obvious legislation, why the many are harsh on the First Nation peoples and the poor, why the unions are disregarded, why workforces are exploited, and why the universities of Perth have so little to offer progressive movements, identity forming education, independent thinking and freedom of speech.


Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 16.1.2009 - FREMANTLE

I picked up the Fremantle Herald and for a while I couldn't get past the front page's article about Patricia and Nicky Guidice. It was poignantly beautiful. I read it twice and have kept it.

Patricia Guidici is a great parent and her description of Fremantle over a fifty year period as an interactive caring community is what I hope we never lose.

For all the talk about sustainable communities through high density living and vibrant hot spots, in the end community needs to be allowed through open plan living where we can interact with one another and enable the ethos of caring the Guidicis shared with the Fremantle community. Small homes, small vegetable gardens, solar power, low rise living with walking, cycling and public transport. The ethos of caring suffers in high density living attendant with its stresses and deprivations.

The Guidicis and the Fremantle Patricia describes, in which I lived for quite some while when I first got to WA in mid 1994, and of which I experienced in part in the ways Patricia describes, is the type of community living that keeps us healthy, and informed and interested in one another, and makes life meaningful and honest.


Gerry Georgatos
former Fremantle resident, and avid reader of the Herald

Letter to the Editor - 14.1.2009 - MATURE AGE STUDENTS

The West's Bethany Hiatt reported a rise in mature-aged student applicants desperate for a qualification and the ability to improve or change their life circumstances especially in light of the increasing global financial crisis.

It is fantastic, and can be empowering, for people to be given the opportunity of a tertiary education. Unfortunately, though applications and the intake of mature age students are increasing, the support services and number of staff are decreasing.

It is not appropriate for universities to consider applicants in order to maximise their financial margins while they are cutting services and support staff to them at the same time. They must prioritise appropriate funding to ensure these students' retention rates, good academic performance, a quality education and competitive completion periods.

More than 40% of students at Murdoch University are deemed mature-age. Many have equity and disability issues, and they require the appropriate support, counselling and academic mentoring. The staff left to do these are under enormous pressures and working beyond the call of duty.

I came back to university as a mature-age student, and I work full time at Murdoch University. My witness is one of increasing disappointment in terms of the funding towards ideally and effectively supporting mature-age students. Bricks and mortar funding should not come before serving the interests of our citizenry.

I know from first-hand witness, and in supporting many mature-age students in an increasingly harsh tertiary environment, their struggles, their life circumstances, and their pain when they feel they have been set up for failure. Many are not coping. Some have gone on to great things. The opportunity to improve qualifications or get one should not be wasted.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 8.1.2009 - PALESTINIAN DEATH TOLL

As of 9am (WST), 8.1.2009 since the Israeli bombardment and invasion of the Gaza and other Palestinian territories, one in every 2000 resident Palestinians has been killed, and one in every 500 Palestinians has been seriously injured. This is not the way to peace.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 7.1.2009 - BAN PROSTITUTION IN ALL ITS FORMS

Gerry Georgatos


Letter to the Editor - 5.1.2009 - ISRAEL AND PALESTINE

On Sunday 4th I attended a rally organised by the Friends of Palestine. The rally was in the CBD and I estimate there were at least 700.

It was very emotional listening to the speakers, most of them informed Palestinian academics and citizens. You cannot deny the more than 60 years of torment that the dispossessed and incarcerated Palestinians have lived.

I will never forget the tears of young and old Palestinians who have comparatively little animosity to Israel but rather a cry for their right to be considered as citizens of the world, and with a country in which to rest their bones.

The facts are that Palestine has had more than 80% of its territories quickly subsumed or seized during the last sixty years. 1.5 million Palestinians are incarcerated in some of the world's largest squatter camps and compounds, fragmented from one another. They have been denied even the most basic rights, and are without appropriate equitable international human rights and tenable support that Palestine should be entitled to.

Where is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in relation to Palestine? Of what worth are all the International Conventions when they are flouted? Why is the world's mainstream media often myopic?

Palestinians are physically incarcerated but they are also spiritually and intellectually diminished in the mainstream western media, the strings attached media owned by western multinational interests.

Palestinians have had their historical, cultural and intellectual identities torn to shreds by much of the world's media. Their identity has been made a liability. They are depicted as barbaric and heathen when these are not true. They are just as charitable, giving, hospitable and intelligent as the next person, and this while in a ghetto like existence.

The problems between Palestine and Israel are not religious, are not cultural, are not about any desire to hurt Israel and Judaism, rather they are merely about the land, purely territorial. Israel should exist, and eventually co-exist with Palestine, share borders like the USA and Canada, or Australia and New Zealand, but Israel cannot continually seize every last vestige of Palestine and essentially commit gradual genocide or barbarically cage the Palestinians. Prior to the twentieth century Israelis lived throughout Palestine without any serious concerns for two millenia, and people were people, no problems.

The only solution is a mutually agreed disbursement of territories, and hence to agree to respect international borders.

A healthy and vibrant Palestine, and a diplomatic neighbourly Israel can both enrich the Middle East. This will then allow for a happier Lebanon, a more open Syria, and an enchanting Jordan. The hate will go, once justice is equitably enabled.

Gerry Georgatos


Letter to the Editor - 1.1.2009 - LEHMAN'S

Letter to the Editor - 24.12.2008 - HONOURABLE INTENTIONS

Letter to the Editor - 21.12.2008 - HUMAN WORTH

I've read where the Department of Health as part of an 'efficiency' drive has made redundant their 'tea ladies'.

Many organisations to maximise margins and some to buffer for the future are going hard on expenditure. They bandy around language such as 'efficiency' and that they need to ensure 'core service delivery'.

It is one thing to move into robotics, artificial intelligence and converged systems and another thing to continually claim that payroll cuts are the way to financial saves.

Unfortunately, a culture of laziness has seeped into major institutions. This culture is adrift from equity and good policies and future planning in terms of the quality of core services. They've given way to slash and burn saves. This includes minimising remuneration to the majority of the workforce and eroding their conditions and rights.

Those at the helm ensure they are so highly paid it is ironically cruel. I know of CEOs in major public institutions on close to a million per annum for the comparative very little they do, and most of what they do are submissions and delegation. These CEOs have add ons such as personal cooks, butlers and drivers. Government and major societal public institutions must ensure their directors are not overpaid, and not allowed to flout personal benefits that cost us the support staff that do ensure quality core services. The argument that we need to pay for expertise with pay packets that would make Neil Fong blush is rubbish. No one works that hard, or is that expert, that they deserve that much more than others.

The problem is that we entrust in Boards of Directors rather than in Annual General Meetings to oversee our major institutions. The problem is that these Boards are made up for the most part by the wealthy, the conservative, and therefore in part a social circle, and they are more concerned with their titles and protocols. You can't have people invested with power making decisions about their stations, and the structures that surround them. Self interest usually wins out and crushes justice and equity. AGMs are more likely to ensure equitable and just remuneration and therefore employ more people to ensure the support required for quality core services. We will need less 'branding' and 'marketing' when something is bona fide quality. Word gets around.

Boards without Annual General Meetings, and Boards without the election of their members through these AGMs, are the types of Boards that do not pay sufficient detail to the organisation's services and creeds. They are the types of Boards that delivered the Stolen Generations, because they are so caught up in protecting the echelon that they move backwards and at best at a crawl.


Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 19.12.2008 - FREEDOM OF SPEECH

Freedom of speech should not be overwhelmed by imposts such as codes of conduct. Freedom of speech is one thing and conduct is altogether something different. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines the right to expression and comment.

I work on a University campus and when I witness freedom of speech cut down then we have major societal problems when our identity forming bastions are managed in these immature ways.

Australia, unlike most other Western countries, has not included freedom of speech in its Constitution but Australia is a signatory and ratifier of many UN conventions which require her to allow for this freedom.

WA, as I have discovered in my 14 years here, is behind the times in terms of the unfolding human rights language that its eastern seaboard counterparts are moving along with. Victoria (2006) and the ACT (2004) even have Human Rights Acts.

Our five WA universities must lead the way in ensuring freedom of comment, this willing away of power towards engagement, as to improve the consciousness of this State and hence its institutions and their accordance to the intentions of laws and policies of inclusion.

We cannot move equitably and justly forward, and address endemic problems, without freedom of speech. When this assumption of freedom of speech is threatened in any way at a University then all society is at high risk.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 9.12.2008 - XMAS

Through my work and other commitments I see the best and worst of society (people). The best stirs hope for the worst that singes my soul. I spend my work days trying to find ways to help those who slip through the management systems of our societies.

I am the General Manager of the Student Association at Murdoch University. I spend my days working outside my position description to find ways to help students stay in education, to change their lives. I also head Students Without Borders, 10,000 students strong, and I founded SWB a couple of years ago to assist students to help other students and now whole communities. We have global social reach.

SWB was recently recognised at the WA Government Community Service Industry Awards where we were multiple finalists and award winners.

The world can't just change with flushes of monies and infrastructure but rather with an ethos of caring.

The attributes I want to see instilled in our university graduates are those that make us aware of one another and the desire to engage and make a difference for those that need us.

I see XMAS churn over each year and I sit and reflect about people and the great divides. It breaks my heart to see us live in divides, and it breaks my heart to see those who have the capacity to help others not to do so.

What do we need to have, to own, to be in order to realise that it is enough? What education do we need before we realise we can actually help others, give them a break, be there for them? What do we need before we just understand the other?

I am a strong advocate for those less fortunate, and for propriety in general, and I step on many toes, of those in expensive shoes, nevertheless I do realise that in the end we need to educate one another, the haves and the have nots.

We need to come together, maybe we are, maybe the unfolding human rights language will ensure this in a time long after us. I wish justice was a sprint rather than a marathon.

On my office wall hang two paintings, two of the most beautiful pieces, which I bought to help out a young struggling student, who only two weeks later took her life because the impacts of society, the pressures were too much for someone with very little and alone.

It's XMAS and maybe we could reflect on the idea of what XMAS means and carry this meaning each day of our lives. I love no one better than the Little Drummer Boy, he gave everything he had, and still had it to give again.


Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 5.12.2008 - TEACHER DISPUTE SETTLED

The WA Teachers pay dispute has been settled. Great. It must be embarrassing for Labor that the Liberals were able to achieve this.

Who must not be forgotten are the academics and general staff in tertiary education. WA has some of the lowest paid academics of Australia's 40 universities. I am the General Manager of the Murdoch University Student Association, and though I am not speaking for them, as their Manager, one of my first objectives, and which I achieved, was to review pay structures and reclassify most staff, my colleagues, as to remunerate appropriately. Every organisation must appropriately pay its people and then afford the load it has capacity for.

Unfortunately, Murdoch University academics and general staff are the lowest paid of the five Universities in WA, the boom state, and one of the lowest in the country. Yet we have one of the most highly remunerated Vice Chancelleries, with the highest paid Vice Chancellor in WA, and one of the highest in the country. Maybe Colin Barnett's Government can step in and help sort out not only Murdoch's remuneration problems but the remuneration of the academics and supporting staff of the entire tertiary education sector in WA.

Poor remuneration leads to many risk issues, such as low morale, the fatigue factor, poaching of staff and to poor teaching which of course leads to poor education. Tertiary education has lost its identity forming onus and is far too focused on business like demands and pummeling out cheap degrees. One step forward is to remunerate everyone appropriately and equitably. Then we can work on the next steps.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 27.11.2008 - MURDOCH UNIVERSITY TENSIONS

In reference to the articles by Jill Rowbotham (in the Higher Education) describing the ill-feeling by the Vice Chancellery of Murdoch University towards the Murdoch Guild of Students I would like to note the following.

I am the full time General Manager of the Murdoch Guild while also a postgraduate student at two universities. The Guild of Students has asked a series of questions about the remuneration of our Vice Chancellor, the 4th highest paid Vice Chancellor in Australia, of one of the smaller universities, of a university not in any of the world's top 500 hundred rankings. I am a member of the University's Academic Council and during a Council meeting I formally dissented in the Vice Chancellery because I do not understand why Murdoch has the lowest paid academics and staff out of the 5 WA universities, and who are one of the lowest paid in the country. I do not know if the Vice Chancellor's performance objectives translate to the university indicators. I should be allowed to ask questions and comment. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines this, that is the right to freedom of speech and comment. No code of conduct can override this.

It is disappointing for me to see the differences between the Vice Chancellery and the Guild degenerate into a spat, into tit for tat. The Vice Chancellery should be exampling exemplary inclusive behaviour to its students.

The Vice Chancellery is distracting from the issues. They are now commenting negatively about the Guild. What are the Vice Chancellery's arguments? That the Guild is speaking out about issues at Murdoch, that they published a cross-institutional advertisement for a summer unit at another University, which other Universities likewise published? And now we have the Guild attacked in terms of its financial management when it is has, so far, survived in VSU. These concerns are the very least.

Unlike the Vice Chancellery, the Guild has not commented in a national newspaper about the competencies of any member of the University, or described the University's financial position prior to its annual report. The Guild has made no personal attacks.

Let us return to the issues; the original questions, those that have triggered the Vice Chancellery's defensiveness. These concerns are being raised not only by the Guild, but also by the NTEU, the CPSU, senior staff, and general academics.

Murdoch University described a major financial deficit from 2010 if it didn't reshape. With reshaping comes academic detail impact. We have the lowest paid academic and general staff in WA, in the boom state. We have one of the highest paid Vice Chancellors. We have huge dissent at Murdoch. And now the Guild has been handed a letter from its Chancellor, who with his Vice Chancellor, have not met the Guild this year. This letter described the Chancellor's concerns about the Guild's questions.

The Murdoch Guild is not responsible for agitating the significant dissent at Murdoch. It is ludicrous to believe this.

The Guild receives no significant core or direct funding from its university. The only funding that can be claimed by the university, is that which I personally organised two years ago with the Vice Chancellor, and that is indirect funding to help develop sport, which we have. The Guild for the most part subsidises sport, and we have achieved record levels and results with sport. This is not about who does what but that the funding for sport is target specific to a holistic Murdoch interest, it is not funding to the Guild. One of the two personnel employed by this funding works exclusively for Sport, ultimately under my direction, but he does not provide any service to the Guild!

I commend Terry, the Chancellor in his reply to The Australian where he notes it was not his intention in the letter to the Guild President for the withdrawal of any funding, which I dispute exists, that it shall be as a result of student activism, or rather freedom of speech.

I note Terry has suggested that any potential future funding may be through other student groups such as the Sport Council. Yes, the Sport Council is 800 students strong. Who created the Sport Council? The Guild did! Terry is wrong to presume that the Guild is not the largest Student Association at Murdoch. It is. 88% of students are members, with 24% as paying members, and the Guild represents all students, without exception.

The Guild takes exception to Terry's comments, which we did not know about, that a former employee of the Guild now working for the University complained about the Guild's governance and management practices. We are disappointed by this and consider it defamatory and biased. This is presumably one former employee out of 35 permanent colleagues who thrive on a high morale at the Guild in a tight financial environment. We have up to 150 people working at the Guild in any one year. It was mischievous of the University to suggest this to The Australian. If I counted every senior academic that complains about the governance and management practices of the University we'd be here all day.
 
The Guild, as is the Vice Chancellery, as everyone has, is entitled to the right to ask questions. This is its mandate. Student Associations are Government functions as prescribed by the Public Universities Act and defined by the Solicitor-General. They are the student balance and check to best practice. Freedom of speech is prescribed in the UDHR (1948) and is the intention of our Commonwealth Constitution, it cannot be overwhelmed by subjective interpretations of any Code of Conduct.

We all have the right to conscientious objection. I fulfilled this entitlement in our Academic Council when I formally noted my dissent in the Vice Chancellery. This is democracy, and it must be role modelled by the management within our bastions of identity forming education, which are our universities.

Gag orders are not permissible. They are immoral and not conducive to social cohesion and policies of inclusion. They are anathema to our unfolding human rights langauge. All forms of coercion are not only immoral, they are illegal.

Vice Chancelleries must learn that they need to allow for the professional development of their student organisations, and this applies as a right to the whole of the university community. Vice Chancelleries must have the interpersonal skills to allow for latitude and at all times be prepared for civility and encourage consultation and resolution.

I have never in all my life witnessed the type of behaviours by certain university administrators in certain universities in any other domain, and I've been out there for 25 years. 

Lets return to the real questions and to how to go about addressing them without taking it out on the Guild of Students, on young students.

Lastly, nothing is ever irreparable, we are only human beings, here only for a short while. We can always move forward together and get our houses in order.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 19.11.2008 - THE FACTS AT MURDOCH UNIVERSITY

In reference to the front page article by Jill Rowbotham (in the Higher Education) describing the ill-feeling by the Vice Chancellery of Murdoch University towards the Murdoch Guild of Students I would like to note the following.

I am the full time General Manager of the Murdoch Guild while also a postgraduate student at two universities. The Guild of Students has asked a series of questions about the remuneration of our Vice Chancellor, the 4th highest paid Vice Chancellor in Australia, of one of the smaller universities, of a university not in any of the world's top 500 hundred rankings. I am a member of the University's Academic Council and during a Council meeting I formally dissented in the Vice Chancellery because I do not understand why Murdoch has the lowest paid academics and staff out of the 5 WA universities, and who are one of the lowest paid in the country. I do not know if the Vice Chancellor's performance objectives translate to the university indicators.

Murdoch is not a wealthy university. Murdoch is in the middle of its most significant reshaping to date, where significant staff will leave as a result of organisational change management. Murdoch Guild, along with the Murdoch NTEU, CPSU, Murdoch staff and regional campus staff have been asking questions. The Murdoch Guild is not responsible for agitating the significant dissent at Murdoch. It is ludicrous to believe this.

The Guild receives no significant core or direct funding from its university. The only funding that can be claimed by the university, is that which I personally organised two years ago with the Vice Chancellor, and that is indirect funding to help develop sport, which we have. The Guild for the most part subsidises sport, and we have achieved record levels and results with sport. This is not about who does what but that the funding for sport is target specific to a holistic Murdoch interest, it is not funding to the Guild.

The Guild, as is the Vice Chancellery, as everyone has, is entitled to the right to ask questions. This is its mandate. Student Associations are Government functions as prescribed by the Public Universities Act and defined by the Solicitor-General. They are the student balance and check to best practice. Further more, freedom of speech is prescribed in the UDHR (1948) and is the intention of our Commonwealth Constitution, it cannot be overwhelmed by subjective interpretations of any Code of Conduct.

We all have the right to conscientious objection. I fulfilled this entitlement in our Academic Council when I noted my dissent. This is democracy, and it must be role modelled by the management within our bastions of identity forming education, which are our universities.

Gag orders are not permissible. They are immoral and not conducive to social cohesion and policies of inclusion. They are anathema to our unfolding human rights langauge. All forms of coercion are not only immoral, they are illegal.

Vice Chancelleries must learn that they need to allow for the professional development of their student organisations, and this applies as a right to the whole of the university community. Vice Chancelleries must have the interpersonal skills to allow for latitude and at all times be prepared for civility and encourage consultation and resolution.

I have never in all my life witnessed the type of behaviours by certain university administrators in certain universities in any other domain, and I've been out there for 25 years. 

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 18.11.2008 - GOOD POLICY

Letter to the Editor - 10.11.2008 - UNIVERSITIES NOT ABOUT EDUCATION

Tertiary education has never been in a worse state than it is now. It is great that one in every twenty three Australians are enrolled in university education. There are 40 universities on this continent. Presumably this should lead to a much more socially aware and cohesive national consciousness. This depends on the nature of the tertiary education.

Unfortunately, as tertiary education is being tied to merely innovation and industry, vice chancelleries are paying very little attention to the humanities; that which once was the sole purpose of our identity forming tertiary education. The humanities are dying, and I am arguing it is time to reclaim our education.

Student Associations and the Humanities are the substance to any character setting at tertiary institutions. In order to disguise their failures as bastions of identity forming education vice chancelleries are bent on an agenda to rid themselves of student associations and the value laden humanities.

There are many who despise the conduct of vice chancelleries, their overtly highly paid bureaucracy disproportionate and not in line with total staff payload, and with their lack of collegiality and lack of policies of inclusion, their often clear lack of understanding and lack of professional development in equity issues, formal and substantive equality and in all forms of anti-discrimination.

Some of the worst practices of poor expenditure, and poor governance, that I have ever seen have been in and by vice chancelleries and chancelleries. By the same token, as with student associations, I would never consider that vice chancelleries should not exist. The solutions to improving vice chancelleries, as with student associations, are in reporting mechanisms, in target specific funding and their acquittal, in collegiality and professional development practices.

Nevertheless, if we halved vice chancellors' remuneration by half to say $400K per annum only, and likewise with the rest of vice chancellery, and if we halved the numbers of marketing, public relations and branding merchants on our campuses we could then afford to pay appropriately our underpaid academics and general staff. We could then afford to provide Humanities as underwriting to all tertiary education, and they could then afford to not go out of our way to silence and kill off student associations, and freedom of speech.

Education is not a knowledge industry as the business minded try to assume, and fail with, it is about critical thinking.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 3.11.2008 - THE PEOPLE AS THE PULSE

I read the papers to sense the pulse of the people, and to draw from their feelings their understandings towards the social and political ills and questions that plague us. We move forward on the social and political ills at disturbing various degrees of pace. Why? Why are we not moving in a headlong rush for social reforms?

I have been in Western Australia for 14 years, born and bred in the east, and having lived overseas. I have found Western Australia a beautiful home, the birthplace of my daughter, and I may even finish laying my bones to rest here, who knows?

Nevertheless, I have found some of WA difficult to describe; its conservatism, elitism and archaic protocols and underwriting as cruelly frustrating. It is also a close knit fraternity of the wealthy and their sycophants, and they rule in WA, something that is not the case, to the same extent, in other places I have lived.

Western Australia is certainly behind the times comparatively with its eastern State counterparts in terms of formal and substantive equality. Formal equality is the provision of opportunity to all and substantive equality is the treating of some people differently in order to treat them the same and to end cycles of abuse.

I have found many of this State's institutions and identity forming bastions, which include some of its universities, slow to heed the full accord of substantive equality and anti-racial discrimination. In my work as a General Manager of a Student Association and the Coordinator of the 10,000 strong Students Without Borders, I have found myself banging my head against walls when trying to move forward simple things like substantive equality and anti-racial discrimination where institutions in the east and elsewhere moved forward many, many years ago.

I am exasperated when I find I am trying to educate the leaders of certain institutions with maxims that unfolded articulate language decades ago! Others agree with me but hide their exasperation as to not rock the boat. If we do not rock the boat what should be a sprint becomes a marathon, and hence many people slip through the system while we complete this needless gruelling marathon.

I sit on Committees, of which some frustrate me; other than they are managed to protect the 'brand' of the 'product', they clearly demonstrate to me how and why in previous generations we allowed for instance for the 'Stolen Generation', for extenuating class divisions (which still occur), etc.

I advocate that members appointed to administrate major Boards and our institutions should have prior knowledge in the unfolding human rights language, in formal and substantive equality, in equity issues, in policies of inclusion, in the understanding of one another, that is if we care to have an 'ethos of caring' and a desire to move expeditiously out of some of this State's clinging to a Stone-Age-like past.

I have often said and written that I will not point the finger, but yes, in order that the sprint does not become a marathon, I will step up and be more outspoken. We all need to.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 1.1.2008 - HAPPY NEW YEAR

Letter to the Editor - 30.12.2007 - THE PRIME MINISTER PROMISED

Connie Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 30.12.2007 - A REAL HISTORY

Australia, like many countries, hides its real history and its real identity. Australia is still very much a racist country: many are trying to overwhelm the biases and prejudices that 200 years of ultra racism and knife edge division have pervaded into our national identity.

We will not sufficiently change, and hence address existing problems, till we realise our own history. Australia, a minion of the British colonialist empire and its trading companies, continued the human rights abuses of the British and Irish souls incarcerated long after they were not supposed to happen.

Australia, used to building its impression by a cruel disregard of others, by the harshest exploitation of people continued this long after slavery was outlawed by Great Britian's parliament. While continuing Apartheid in Australia by incarcerating the Aboriginal peoples to squalid segregation or by exploiting them through domestication while rewarded by the indignity of a strict curfew, Australia hijacked tens of thousands of 'Kanakas' from the South Pacific. It was enforced human trafficking and slavery. This is just a byline in some text books but it went on till the end of the 19th century.

This is a country that allowed for a White Australia Policy, whose parliamentarians fought for white skinned immigrants only when they needed them for the labour market. This is a country with an irrational fear of migrants, that has continued to this very day, but what do you expect from a country that paralleled South Africa's Apartheid all the bloody way?

It is not just the insanity of kow-towing to a Bush led USA military and economic power that has Australia in its current racist policies and doctrines: which allowed for the SIEVX disaster, for TAMPA, for detention centres, for off shore incarceration of bona fide refugees, for Australia's reluctance to address properly immigration and Indigenous issues and crises. Australia will only benefit holistically and progressively when its schools and universities teach whole and truthful accounts, not in bylines, but in detail to its students of our past. Hence we will grow as people, embrace one another and be capable of great and wonderful things such as understanding and equality.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 30.12.2007 - STATUES

Eight tenths of what WA produces it exports. It does not need to export nine tenths of the eight tenths. Its only reason for this is to continue the long term bubble economy, which may spawn other economies once it subsides. From the point of view of the economy in terms of reasonably high paying jobs and high job employment availability the success of the economy in the mid term is assured. Charles Court, Lang Hancock and others have assured this with their at the time vision.

Nevertheless, the expansion of the economy by the decimation of the state's resources and environment, the building of interim towns that become ghost towns or centres of high unemployment, the increasing pollution and the rise of inflation that always surges at some point when there is profiteering are not worth it.

The reality is that people like Court and Hancock were visionary in limited paradigms within their knowledge corridors. The real effects of the economic boom are negative non-fixed inflation, massive infrastructure needs and their updating, the transience of humanity to accommodate the needs of the transnational companies and the federal treasury's demands for cash surpluses, property prices wildly out of control, the eventual float of the Australian dollar on the international market which made it contingent on further factors, the increasing demands on humanity to work harder, longer and more focused in order to manage the increasing cost of living, and for the haves to invest in property and exploit the have nots who are still and always will be more than the half the population, as half the population lives in rent.

There is no glory in gloating about economic expansion into minerals, gas, oil throughout the state and hence taking humanity away from community and the pursuit of happiness into dislocation and imposts and the myriad of stresses that have manifest a myriad of ill health, physical and mental. It will be a sad day when the Federal Government finally does go uranium mining all the way, exports it for no good reason other than sheer profiteering, and then claims success on the premise of state and federal treasury surpluses and through statistics relating to job availability and real wages.

The real visionaries in societies that claim fundaments such as equality and peace are those people and politicians that generate more human rights, policies of inclusion and sobriety in the pursuit of wants and pleasures for the ensuing generation. Some of our politicians have actually left legacies where they have provided for less rights for all people in general than their predecessors. We need honesty for there to be hope.

Statues should only go up for people like William Wilberforce.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 26.12.2007 - POOR ANIMALS

Letter to the Editor - 26.12.2007 - HAPPY NEW YEAR

Letter to the Editor - 24.12.2007 - GETTING SERIOUS

How do we go about the best possible society, the best possible world to live in?

An integral domain to this pursuit is education. Generally, a minimum of 13 years are spent in education. For many, as they venture into higher education, this becomes, and can exceed, 20 years.

This period is formative and the implications are powerful, and obviously with global social reach.

In this letter to the editor I'll focus on higher education. Australian universities are in crisis. The quality of their education is exponentially decreasing. The focus of engaging and improving society as a whole has shifted to exploitation, to get rich quick schemes, to the notion that a degree maybe a license to make money.

Universities are losing their value as bastions of community. The problems of a lack of commonwealth funding and lack of seriously audited standards are only part. The real problems are the mindsets of the cultures taking over the administration of universities. Universities are being corporatised. They are being run as business models rather than just well managed. Their governing boards are increasingly numbered by business types, marketing types, property gurus who have no or a very limited academic background and university experience.

It's not that they don't mean well it's that they don't understand anything other than their corporate experiences which are about winning is everything, that balance sheets are everything, about being corporate blades, that the means justifies the end whatever that end maybe.

The problem is compounded by the fact that their experience in or from the corporate sector is not working on university campuses. They do not understand that students, academics and education are not some market place goods and services, or some property investment. Universities have been about standards, quality, about society, about diversity, about knowledge, they are non-market place, they are about identity formation. Students and academics know this and are increasingly disillusioned. Hence the poor standings and poor returns for the corporate hierarchy that is overwhelming universities. It is a disaster and society is suffering. It will only get worse because they are ignorant of the fact they are responsible for generating these failures and incredibly in turn blame the academics as poor business managers!

Chancellors and Vice Chancellors have followed the trend and presume themselves as corporate CEOs and CFOs. They are abysmally failing their bastions and the community. And they are becoming hostile and paranoid, demanding silence and subservience, hiring flak catchers and spin doctors, to compensate and hide their inadequacies. In the end, like all corporate heads they'll threaten litigation: the great escape from accountability.

We need the commonwealth government to better understand higher education. We need the education ministries and auditor generals to scrutiny patterns and directions in these institutions. We need governing bodies of universties to ensure appropriate appointees and internal nominations, and that every single one is scrutinied by the state government. We need to ensure these governing bodies are monitored to ensure they fulfil their obligations. We need institutions to be transparent and accountable at every turn. We need the media to seriously debate the quality of higher education till it genuinely improves. Even though higher education is under funded it still consumes a lot of tax dollars. We need people to start caring more about what we are doing in and to this world and not to run scared or think it's too hard to change things for the better.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 24.12.2007 - HUMANITY

We are possibly entering a generational cycle of hoping for greater humanity. The decades of the 80s and 90s where greed was good, building small moral circles of concern and nation building by parochially flying the flag sky high are being slightly challenged.

The inhumanity of the last two decades that culminated in corporate models, hopefully increasingly archaiac, where an inner circle ruled hierarchically and clandestine are being challenged by hopes that humaneness is possibly a way forward.

The human rights language is increasing its vocabulary but we cannot clearly see if it will overwhelm the historical and contemporary violence of other languages. The human rights language is not just about the rights of the individual but also about caring for one another, about the well being of society and our habitats.

During the last two decades humanity, with its increasing capacities, has been very cruel to human beings and very cruel to the planet. It obviously still continues, look at how we decimate the earth's resources, poison the skies and waters, and how we incarcerate and murder one another and the endless policies of exclusion and divisiveness we mandate.

Nevertheless, we are now recycling another generation where we are possibly probing the idea that we need to treat human beings with humaneness and dignity and the planet with respect. The question is once again where will we go with this hope and will we 'capitalise' a positive unfolding from it.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 14.12.2007 - THE EDUCATION REVOLUTION

It's noble for the new commonwealth government to ensure that students have what is these days pen and paper, that is computers.

The education revolution will be facilitated but not transformed by this provision of basic tools. Computers are instruments and, to some extent, learning tools.

Education, at primary, secondary and higher levels, needs proficiency in literacy and numeracy.

I tutored mathematics for many years and achieved exceptional, transformative results because I focused on numeracy. If you can read you shall be a good writer, if you can draw you should be able to paint, if you can do your algorithms, without the aid of a calculator, you will be able to do most maths. Your esteem grows, your concepts and notions and capacity to think and resolve develop and expand, not just linear but exponentially.

Schools cannot escape rote learning, by having done this for so long it has been a disaster. Rote learning is integral to ensuring concepts and notions develop. Without vocabulary language weakly represents what people would have liked to have been capable of putting into words.

The education revolution needs to resource literacy, numeracy, other basic skills and to further resource the support functions that develop these. An educated Australia will rise from its people when its people can proficiently read, write, spell and count and hence confidence and esteem. For now education in this country, at primary, secondary and especially in higher education, and I work within a university campus, is in crisis, at an all time low.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 8.11.2007 - HOPE

Letter to the Editor - 8.11.2007 - PROSTITUTION

Letter to the Editor - 14.10.2007 - FALSE CLAIMS

Tangney Liberal Dennis Jensen disputes claims that single parents studying at a university have not been adversely affected by the Howard Governments July 1 2006 child subsidy changes. During wide sweeping Centrelink and Welfare cuts Howard cut the Jobs, Education and Training (JET) child subsidies for single parents studying at a university level.

If single parents, of which 86% are women, wish to better themselves and their children's lives by studying for a university education they have to fork out up to $110 a week themselves from usually very limited incomes.

Murdoch University Guild, Students Without Borders and Murdoch students Peta Miller and Rebekah Ozanne have collectively campaigned for one year in trying to address this nightmare.  As a direct result of our campaigning, and recognising it is an election year, Minister Mal Brough and Prime Minister John Howard partly conceded to the Murdoch Guild's campaign. They re-instated JET subsidies for university students but for only up to 12 months.

We are arguing JET subsidies should be for the duration of a university program.

Dennis Jensen is claiming that single parent university students are not worse off. What is further damaging is like a parrot he is regurgitating the Liberal Party spin that single parent students are actually better off. Jensen is claiming that when you combine other payments and allowances that the single parents are actually financially better off. I can state here and now THIS IS FALSE.

I challenge Dennis Jensen to come to my office at Murdoch University which falls in his constituency and sit with me and prove the Liberal Party's claims in terms of increased financial benefit. I am sure that this will not be possible and further I am sure that I will evidence that single parents are markedly worse off, dropping out of education, and that the poverty cycle and its traps continue.

Who are the losers when politicians choose to be mere hacks for their caucuses and their parties? Who? The constituents, the faithful, the poor, the voiceless, the children, everyone.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 19.9.2007 - PROSTITUTION, SELLING HUMAN MISERY

I believe myself a pacifist who works from the premise of reaching out to all and allowing outcomes to unfold. I've written some 60 odd published letters to editors during the last couple of years for no other purpose than dissemination. At some point discussion ends.

When it comes to the b.s. about the proposed new brothel laws where local councils shall be responsible for brothel and escort agency planning approvals, well this is just sick.

I am so sick and tired of hearing that prostitution as we know it in the OECD countries needs to be legalised. Bullshit. What we are claiming here is some warped right to ensure that human misery is ensured, promoted and increased.

For more than a decade I have worked on the side in bringing people out of dire poverty, cycles of abuse, destitution and prostitution into education, higher education and other opportunities. It is hard work because people can be very seriously damaged. Trying to help people from the high end of trauma is not easy and not always possible.

I have brought out scores of human beings exploited by prostitution into higher education and the work to keep them surviving is ongoing.

These gutless or ignorant fools in local, state and federal government who will not do the right thing and wipe away the notion that prostitution is a legitimate enterprise should resign. They have the police moving on street walkers into jails and then to brothels.

I can first hand assure you that 99% of all human beings that I have met trapped in prostitution because of exploited vulnerabilities and society's faults do not want to be doing what they are doing. It would not be their first, second, third choice but a desperate one or one by various forms of coercion.

On this occasion, our politicians are idiots and they continue to have blood on their hands. Brothels are run by people with damaged morals, by people who no longer believe in people and society. If this legislation is advanced then like elsewhere in Australia and other OECD countries brothels will proportionately increase. Vulnerable human beings will be searched for to fill these deathly dungeons and their spirits pretty much crushed for the rest of their being.

McGinty reckons this legislation can 'regulate brothels'. Yeah right... just like tobacco and junk food merchants supposedly are! It is only some bullshit advocacy groups that are vociferously supporting this nightmare, but they are fronts for the so-called sex industry.

Even though I am a pacifist and I am sure I shall be rebuked by some, I shall not apologise for the violence of my comments, because I have witnessed first hand the damaged and they have cried long in my arms.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 8.9.2007 - ROCKET SCIENCE

The latest British study as published recently has just 'ascertained' that sugary foods and drinks cause young kids to go 'hyper'. Ah hunh... Der!...

The 'rocket scientists' get funding to state usually decades after what the rest of the population knows; cancer from cigarettes, illnesses from the chemicals and additives in foods, liver and brain damage from alcoholism, motor neurone damage from boxing, the list is long.

Why not pay some people to tinker a few brain cells together so they can find out why governments allow for the licensing of these wholesalers of slavish attitudes to self destruction?

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 8.9.2007 - POVERTY INDEXES

Many people, especially from within the working and middle classes and up have been hoodwinked for too long that poverty is on the decrease because the cream of the crop have been experiencing the gross domestic product measured presumed economic boom.

This so-called economic boom, one driven on by unwarranted consumption and the decimation of the earth's resources, has never hidden from myself the increasing poverty.

WA exports 8/10ths of what it produces, therefore it produces 80% more than the wildest dreams of its own populace's consumption. The Federal Government can't wait to fill the treasury coffers with the blood money from uranium exports. This mindset is what fabricates our so called gdp measure and presumes a nation's affluency.

The latest poverty indexes, domestic and from the United Nations, establish what people like myself already know and experience. Bona fide poverty is increasing in terms of the numbers experiencing it, in terms of the proportion of population and tragically in terms of its crippling severity and inescapability.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 28.8.2007 - WHAT ABOUT THOSE AT 80%

Finally, there are stats depicting rent and mortgage stress. It is defined as over 30 per cent of gross income. Well, I can tell you there are people with 70 and 80 per cent of their income paid in rent. There are university students paying 80 per cent of their gross income for rent or shared accommodation. I can assure you they are going without nutritious food, basic needs, without doctors and dentists. The rents near universities are exploitive. For students to live further away from the rental surges is only marginal relief that is undermined by the rising transport costs, in fuel and public charges. There is no end.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 7.8.2007 - CAMPAIGNING FOR CHANGE

Single parent students from the Rockingham and Murdoch University campuses have been campaigning for the Federal Government to re-instate the Jobs, Education and Training child care subsidies for the duration of their university programs. They have been campaigning for one year.

I'd like to confirm the impact the lack of substantial JET child care subsidies are having upon single parent students hoping for a university education. Single parent students are dropping out of university education and are continuing in the poverty trap, in lowly paid jobs or on minimal welfare. The food on the dinner table lacks the desired nutritional quality. Support resources to ensure a good education for children are not affordable.

In addition to the rising cost of living, rent surges and housing prices, with the rising cost of education, the lack of substantial and appropriate child care subsidies for single parents hoping for a university education ensures abject poverty, depression and other stresses and deprivations.

The child care subsidies would ensure parents can complete a university education in good time, with a greater unit load per semester ensuring that the education is not spread over something like a decade. The subsidies would ensure several more hours of study time or working hours. These children will grow up in better educated families, with even more supportive parents, with nutritious food on the table and more resources for a better future.

It is illogical to only provide a maximum 12 months where a university program is thereabouts between 3 to 6 years.

I see poverty on an everyday basis. I am the Manager of my Student Guild and we work beyond the call of any duty to keep students, and usually the most disadvantaged, in higher education. We do everything we can to financially and psychologically support students. I can assure you that we have hundreds of students who are affected by JET as it stands. Our Perth campus students have provided many testimonials to this effect. I have been to our Rockingham and Peel campuses where students are dropping out of education because of the lack of being able to afford child care. The northern most Perth university, Edith Cowan (Joondalup, and Mt Lawley) has contacted me to inform me of the plight of single parent students who are struggling to cope with the increasing cost of living and the nightmarish lack of JET support.

I believe I can speak on behalf of students in Western Australia and confirm the effect of single parents in higher education as a result of JET's 12 month limitation. Our Guild is one of the more successful and subscribed to Guilds in the country, last year we received 70,000 student emails and over 1,000 student appointments. We can confirm student poverty and that it is increasing in its volume and severity. We recognise the effects of the increasing student poverty that we run soup kitchens, recycling programs, hamper drives, donate computers (we donated 7,000 last year and 3,000 this year), emergency grants, etc... Relaxing JET would be an incredible, and warranted, positive gesture.

Everyone I have spoken to, whether Greens Senators, whether Labor Senators and Ministers, all agree and publicly support JET for university students for the duration of their university programs. We need to extend every opportunity to our fellow humanity and through JET there is the incredible capacity for this.

We need the Commonwealth Government to reconsider its views on the issue. The campaign succeeded in the Government adding university education to what it considers a 12 month scheme. We are arguing it needs to return to the way it was prior to July 1st of 2006 and that the whole university program is recognised. The letter writing, the forums and the march towards a national rally are continuing till a policy of inclusion is achieved in terms of the rights of single parents and university education and the rights of everyone to a better future.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 16.7.2007 - TERTIARY EDUCATION IN DECLINE

My heart is breaking at the witness of that which surrounds me. Nevertheless, I believe in hope and relentlessly work towards desired outcomes.

I work in the Higher Education Sector. I am the Manager of a Student Guild, I am an elected member of my University's peak boards and I continue my personal and professional development as a postgraduate student at two Universities.

In my travels across this vast continent, through my work, I have been to or come into contact with most of our Universities.

Universities struggle with the concept of good management practices. Universities are struggling to stay in what they consider 'business' by configuring themselves as producers of goods and services in a market economy rather than as bastions of identity forming educators and cultures of intra and inter community learning.

Universities are  poorly managed by persons who have wrangled their way into chancelleries who do not have the appropriate academic planning backgrounds.

The National Governance Protocol guideliness are clear evidence of the high prostitution of the higher education sector. The NGPs are the Liberal Commonwealth's attempt to ensure Universities are for the cream of the crop, for those from privileged backgrounds, for those who can afford an education. The NGPs desire viable enterprises where balance sheets will minimise the need for Commonwealth funding.

The NGPs are a strings attached funding document provided by the Government to Universities. Many Universities, not all, are acceding to these guidelines because they believe they cannot cope or expand without the additional Commonwealth funding. The NGPs insist on the corporatisation of the peak boards of Universities. They prefer smaller boards with mostly external Senators, and incline towards the elimination of all student representation. It is the internal Senators that have the most to provide to the boards, are the best positioned as checks and balances in the system, and have the highest care factor for the quality of education.

Universities that have acceded to the NGPs for the strings attached funding have disgraced themselves. There is no justifiable defense. They have destroyed the professional development of their students and staff. They are decimating policies of social inclusion. They are anathema to everything they presumably stand for. Autocracy is not the way. It is fact that the strings attached funding is their primary reason, some have this tabled in their 'minutes'. Yes, there are also biased political ideologues and other prejudices.

Some Universities are still moving towards furthering the corporatisation factor and continuing the high brow prostitution of their boards and purpose. They are kow towing towards minimum sized peak boards, external Senators only, to appointing their members, to nominations, creating a nominations sub committee from within their peak boards rather than appreciating the greater check of democratic elections.

The argument of some Universities is that they prefer wealthy and well connected Senators with property and business backgrounds so they can tap into them as cash cows for University endowments. This is disgraceful. The whole purpose of Universities as a culture of education and learning is being swept away.

I accuse Universities of poor and weak management. I accuse Universities of losing sight of what they're about. I accuse Universities Australia of failing its duties and that, like many University Vice Chancellors and their Senates, they should en masse resign. I allege madness and insanity in the Liberal's NGPs and likewise in much of the kow towing higher education sector. If Universities exampled appropriate stances this example would be the best education to our students, to society. Example is our only immortality.

Gerry Georgatos

Letter to the Editor - 14.7.2007 - TERTIARY EDUCATION DYING

 

 

The Australian's Highered section has been focusing on the offshore learning program disasters of some Australian Universities. The following has been publishedbut I feel it important that it reaches all Australians. Education and society are at stake.It is no startling revelation to discover poor costing and mismanagement at the University level. It is nostartling revelation to discover poor quality education as the byproduct.   

 

For more than two decades the management and the quality of university education have been fast diminishing. It is one thing to provide access to education, to ensure equity and the pursuit of a just and civil society and another thing to provide low quality programs in disguise as education.   

 

The quality of university graduates is increasingly diminishing in the pursuit of weakly managing university budgets by margins alone. The Commonwealth Grants Scheme and Indexation Creep cannot be blamed. Yes,strings attached Federal Government funding is a problem but in the endit is the University Administrators who are at fault in both their academic planning and business management.   

 

In my own short time in the University sector, since 2003, I have increasingly discovered in Universities across our great continent that the Administrators who finish up in Chancelleries and Senior Executive Management groups may have years behind them as academics or corporate professionals but they are not experts in the fields they have stepped into. They do not understand case management of programs and increasingly are losing sight that their product is actually education, and that its quality is the most important driver in the market place and in termsof improving society.   

 

The increasing diminution of academic quality in educative terms is biting  Universities in the bum. They spend more time in packaging and branding than in focusing on quality and integrity. This is part of the problem towards another byproduct, increasingly low student retention rates.   

 

Many offshore programs are a disgrace and would not be acceptable as onshore programs nevertheless they are sold in pursuit of cheap revenue and as feeder programs. Students have been outrageously cheated of their time and funds. The poor quality of university education is anendemic problem onshore and not just offshore. We are exporting increasingly low quality education. Naturally it is well packaged and branded. That's where it ends.    I have my reservations about the audits to AUQA, the Australian Universities Quality Agency. AUQA are there to recommend and advise and to rate the quality and managementof education. In the end AUQA accepts data compiled by Universities themselves,information that is managed,and interviews selected stakeholders. To my mind, the checks and balances are weak. AUQA needs to rigorously increase its scrutiny in order to not be part of the problem.    

 

Another problem are the Federal Government's National Governance Protocols and their pursuance of compliance by the Universities' peak Boards. The Feds, even if well meaning, are ensuring that the wrong people are on a University's peak Board. People who do not have experience in quality education and whose care factor is not the same as those who are internal (higher education). I'll leave theNGPs for another time.   

 

The quality of University education is worsening, somethinghas to be done soon for the sake of the quality of societyand for the quality of our national consciousness. For now I would argue that many of our Vice Chancellors and their hacks need to resign, too many people areslipping through the cracks, society is suffering. Universities need to stop prostituting the higher educationsector by kow towing to the Liberal Party Commonwealth and appointing external non academics with low knowledge and care factors for the University. I am on a University Senate, I am internal, and I care.

 

Gerry Georgatos

 

 

 

 

Letter to the Editor - 30.6.2007 - TO FORGIVE

Letter to the Editor - 29.6.2007 - POLITICS IS A CALLING


As I get to know more and more politicians in my general getting about with my work and through other journeys I am increasingly disappointed when I realise how many politicians and public servants have been assisted in their positioning by their relationships.

Far too many politicians and keynote public servants have pre existing noteworthy relations through blood or through marriage.

Far too many of society's institutions have people in their key positions who are related to people in Government. It stinks of nepotism. I cannot separate the accent of caucuses and lobbying. It is of serious concern.

I cannot believe that the high proportion of related individuals have been achieved on 'merit' alone. We all know of the 'preferred applicant'. There should be rigorous scrutiny in the selection process, more transparency and audit and more rigorous declarations of interests that include familial and other strong relationships.

This should happen not only in the management systems of government and the public service but also in any domain where the fabric of society is dependant on. The lack of rigour in ensuring the integrity of our management systems is a major problem. Plato was so concerned about nepotism and its consequences that he described the Guardians, individuals separated from temptations.

At least let us consider ensuring integrity for our local, state and federal governments and the public service.

Gerry Georgatos



Letter to the Editor - 29.6.2007 - DIMINISHING WITH EXCUSES






Letter to the Editor - 20.6.2007 - PUBLIC RELATIONS SPEAK

During the last two years I've written some thereabouts 50 published letters to the editor(s). Why? Because we need to increasingly communicate with another in this increasingly harsh social environment. Increasing pressures and expectations are increasing stress and deprivation. Increasing numbers of citizens are slipping through the faults in our systems.

I am the Manager of a Guild of Students, and though my views do not represent the Guild, I see more and more troubled humanity. In the increasing harsh user pays system it is becoming simpler for human beings to screw up and be vulnerable.

My concern is that in an increasingly management speak world determined by balance sheets, in the increasing corporatisation of institutions, and with a Federal Government bent on society's institutions managing themselves in order to minimise Commonwealth funding the vulnerable and disadvantaged will not only continue to miss out but also increase proportionately. Poverty is induced.

When the Higher Education sector is prostituted by corporatisation, by strings attached funding, by the loss of its ethos of caring and critical scholarship then we're in trouble. Higher Education is transforming itself into an employers' market only and a high demand market of upfront payers.

In the last two weeks I have fought for one human being not to be evicted by HomesWest, and they are doing their best, another two to afford their stay in education, another one to maintain their Centrelink sponsored education, a single parent screwed by the JET changes, one who is 'at risk', and two others I have organised counselling for.
More students are coming to us struggling to cope with rental increases. Food hamper drives are run by us, and soup kitchens, to assist.

At the same time we are arguing for the continuation of equity and support programs that provide the opportunity for the most vulnerable in society to have a shot at higher education and be empowered. These programs are at risk under the harsh guidelines of a Federal Government corporatised Higher Education Sector.

I keep on writing letters to the editor(s), regularly write to our State and Federal representatives, speak at every opportunity in order to communicate this unnecessary and unwarranted increasing poverty. The voice of concern needs to increase in order that we can ensure positive changes, policies of inclusion.

Gerry Georgatos




Letter to the Editor - 8.6.2007 - IS HIGH DENSITY SUSTAINABLE?


Sustainability experts are arguing that 'density' is now the way to build up shires such as Fremantle. This is all part of good urban and commercial districts policy planning. It keeps hotspots viable and minimises extensive infrastructure spread over vast tracts of land.

The reality is this isn't sustainability it is a compromise. Sustainability gurus have been arguing density for quite a while in order to diminish consumption in terms of infrastructure and emissions from travelling over longer distances.
In high density areas there is more walking and there is less dependence on private and public transport. In real terms high density living does not go anywhere near to meeting sustainable emission targets and other goals required for this planet to survive.

In the end sustainability gurus are configurating to what appears an immovable capitalism but are not solving the increasing problem.

The problem is consumption. We are conditioned indefatigueable consumers. Our consumption of goods and services are decimating the earth's resources and the byproducts are destroying humankind and the planet. To not realise this is to be either an outrageous liar or delusional. Nine tenths of what the world fabricates and mass produces are not required and are more than half the problem. Lets start by eradicating this unnecessary consumption rather than thumping humankind into high density ghettos and the attendant stresses and deprivations.

At the very least lets be honest about the truth.

Gerry Georgatos




Letter to the Editor - 31.5.2007 - JUST CLOSE THE GAP


Labor's plan of $260 million over four years to address the Indigenous Health crisis will not close the 17 to 20 year gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a generation as they ludicrously claim.

With this paltry and token contribution the gap will continue to increase.

Indigenous Australians were considered flora and fauna and did not have the right to vote till only 40 years ago.

They have not had 230 years of history in the accumulation of health infrastructure as the rest of our population has had.

The Health Budget is 40 billion and Indigenous Australians who are at least 3% of our population receive only 1% of the Health budget. Independent economic groups have assessed the need for at least a further 450 million per year to one billion per year for the next ten years to ensure the closing of the gap within twenty five years.

That this inequity continues is disgraceful and outrageous. Both the Laborites and Liberalites are continuing to deny Indigenous Australians social inclusion and empowerment by shortchanging them when budgets come around, and by doing so continue systemic and outright racism.

Gerry Georgatos




Letter to the Editor - 7.4.2007 - CLIMATE CHANGE

Gerry Georgatos




Letter to the Editor - 23.3.2007 - WE SHOULD NOT HAVE TO BEG FOR OUR RIGHTS

I spend my days fighting for the rights of others. Rights are a premium basic for successful and equitable co-existence.

I am the Manager of a Student Guild, though my views don't necessarily represent the views of the Guild. I am the Director of Students Without Borders, an experiential student program. Both organisations argue for policies of inclusion, for the maximisation of rights within our communities.

I have been part of a number of organisations and workplaces and it's always disappointing to find myself arguing for rights especially within organisations who make it their business to argue for the rights of others whether through a development agenda or through advocacy.

Many rights issue based organisations have gone backwards during the last two decades. Instead of arguing for the best working conditions and a balanced and sustainable environment we now have negotiations premised on outcomes, output and the needs of the organisation. This is not human and environment friendly.

The more Unions I mix with the more disappointed I am becoming. Some are merely negotiating a voice and to compromise towards this they will often compromise the workers and their rights. Many Unions have been caught up in the conservatism that we are engulfed in. Many also merely represent the concerns of their members only, their revenue base.

No organisation or enterprise should thrive off what they can exact from their workers. Rights are a basic whether you are a member of a Union or not. Every enterprise should reflect its capacity after provision for their workers has been met. This will lead to a just and equitable society.

The left and the right ideologues are dead, we live in societies increasingly determined by what makes money and what doesn't and how to minimise expenditure and maximise revenue.

I do not forget the 5/6ths of our humanity that on an everyday basis are struggling for their very lives. Yet what hope do their descendants have when we can't get our acts together in environments that have appropriated 9/10ths of the world's resources. We must lead the way, role model rights in order that we can argue for the rights of all people wherever on our planet.

People should not have to beg or fight for their rights.

Gerry Georgatos




Letter to the Editor - 11.3.2007 - INTELLECTUAL BANKRUPTCY





Letter to the Editor - 1.1.2007 - McCARTHYISM




Letter to the Editor - 29.12.2006 - IGNORANT TO 700,000 PEOPLE




Letter to the Editor - 4.12.2006 - POVERTY

 

 

Letter to the Editor - 9.12.2005 - GUILDS PLAY VITAL ROLE

 

The debate on university guilds lacks balance, fair comment and perspective.

 

Most guilds do not spend their student contributions on political campaigns.

 

These types of campaigns, as limited as they are, are achieved by natural or social capital.

 

The financial capital is reserved for services to students. These services help people get to access education, improve academic performance and inform people of their rights.

 

The Murdoch University Guild of Students delivers more than 80 services to students, from sports to catering to academic.

 

By the nature of the special agency that a guild is, we do some services better than the university because of the university's many constraints and multiple focuses.

 

Dr Brendan Nelson's corporatisation of Australian education is, to say the least, bizarre - and it will pressure people into not considering education as an option.

 

People have an aversion to debt and he is pushing for an increasingly costly education. Education is a way out of poverty and cycles of abuse for many people and the Government is diminishing this opportunity.

 

Mr Nelson's plan for students across Australia to vote for a VSU or USU is sheer desperation. In both plans, guilds do not get funding.

 

Guilds are complex and not the simple institutions as portrayed in the media.

 

Many institutions in our society have a tenuous hold with the media. Mr Nelson is hoping that because of the corporate world's grip on the media he can abuse this advantage to scare students to vote for VSU.

 

Gerry Georgatos, Murdoch Unviersity Guild President

 

 

 

Letter to the Editor - 20.9.2005 - GUILDS ARE ESSENTIAL

 

 

Re: Cheryl Worsely's letter "Guilds irrelevant to postgraduates" (Community, September 13).

 

Firstly, Cheryl described me as worthy of a politician when she commented on my comment that only 12 students chose not to direct their fees to the guild.

 

The fact is, the student and amenities fee, for the time being, is compulsory. The university redirects the fee to the guild so we can administer services, mostly on a volunteer basis.

 

Every student has the right to have this compulsory fee redirected into other university services.

 

Cheryl is wrong to assume guilds are irrelevant to postgraduates. I'm 43, and many of our guild are mature-age students, and there is a mix of undergraduates, graduates and postgraduates.

 

Cheryl, for a mature-age postgraduate to describe us as a social club and political playground is unfair. In my 10 months, 350 computers have been donated to students in need, 160 students have been run through tutoring programs, 150 through free software workshops, student trips enabled, sports and activities introduced.

 

Guilds should be transparent and accountable but ultimately they are about maintaining and improving retention rates, and sustaining and improving atmosphere and culture on campus.

 

We employ an education and welfare officer, run university services, run the tavern, the sports and recreation centre, coffee shops, the convenience centre, fund scholarships and subsidies, support 42 clubs and societies, 80 services and so on.

 

Our guild is not in debt, and we spend nothing on political campaigns from the student dollar. Less than one percent of our budget can be construed as political and that is our membership fee to the National Union of Students.

 

Gerry Georgatos, Education Vice President 2005, Murdoch University Guild of Students