Labor's Green Loon supporters and their Anti Immunisation DEATH WISH

Immunisation debate splits communities

Jane Hansen 
The Sunday Telegraph 
May 12, 2013 12:00AM

IT'S A tale of two country towns. Both are set in rolling green hills, both have populations of a few thousand and each has a unique position on the state's immunisation table.

Bargo, in the southern highlands, has the highest immunisation rate at 100 per cent, according to the National Health Performance Review.

Mullumbimby, on the far north coast, has a level of just 46 per cent, giving it the lowest rate in the state.

With every child in the 4000-strong community of Bargo immunised against potential killers such as measles, chickenpox and whooping cough, the worst affliction a child is likely to suffer is the common cold.

Bargo's GP, Dr Tim Rankin, said the town's immunisation compliance was so high because his staff tracked down those parents who had forgotten or postponed scheduled shots for their kids.

"The credit goes to my staff, we chase them down and keep harassing them until they come in," Dr Rankin said.

"We've had some adults with whooping cough, but no child and no measles since 1985," he said.

Carolyn McCorkell, who runs the Bargo Child Care Centre, said: "We don't get outbreaks of childhood disease - no whooping cough, not chickenpox - the kids get an occasional cold, but nothing major."

Katrina Lindley, who is raising her children Jayden, 4, and Tenille, 7, in Bargo, said she is proud the town is so vigilant in battling childhood diseases.

"It's a great thing we have such a high immunisation rate because it makes the younger kids safer, those who are too young to be immunised," Mrs Lindley, 39, said.

"It's just responsible parenting, you have to protect your children, and the effects of immunisation far outweigh the risk."

But in Mullumbimby, with a population of 3000, the unvaccinated children actually outnumber those who have been immunised and the issue divides the community.

The same whooping cough outbreak that Bargo escaped claimed the lives of four-week-old Dana McCaffery, who died in 2009, and nine-week-old Kailis Smith, who died in 2011. Both babies lived near Mullumbimby.

The town recorded an infection rate four times the state average at the beginning of the epidemic in 2008-09.

Local parents said there was a lot of fear and pressure around the issue of immunisation, and the town's homeopath said his professional association had forbidden him to speak on the issue because it was too "controversial".

Dani Ilic's daughter Remy was born in the middle of the 2009 whooping cough epidemic and the death of Dana McCaffery changed her mind on immunisation.

"We just didn't think it was worth going through that epidemic if it could be bypassed by immunisation," she said, adding she is in the minority among her friends.

Sheia Kironn is a mother of two and she not only refuses vaccinations for her children, but she has never used antibiotics on them either.

"I never use pharmaceuticals, we use Chinese herbal medicine," Ms Kironn said, adding she was not surprised her town had fewer vaccinated children than unvaccinated.

"I don't know anyone who vaccinates their kids and most people who don't vaccinate are well educated," she said.

Jacob Johnson, 27, said his parents chose not to immunise him, so he made the same decision for his two-year-old daughter Nimawai.

"I wasn't vaccinated and I've done my own research and come to the conclusion it's not necessary. A strong immune system is a priority," he said. "We do homeopathic vaccination and my friends who vaccinate, their kids are always sick."

He disagreed it was an irresponsible decision.

"I don't think it's irresponsible, I think everyone has the right to their own choice," Mr Johnson said.

Mother-of-three Sam Leader vaccinates her children and said the issue divided the town.

"There is a lot of scaremongering but I believe in science and the evidence," Ms Leader, a writer, said.

Jade Coy only partially vaccinated her children Aziah, 3, and Sascha, seven months, and refused to give them the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine out of fear.

"I went online and read blogs and my brother-in-law swears the vaccination gave his daughter autism," Ms Coy said.

The now-debunked link between autism and vaccination is much publicised by the local anti-vaccination group, the AVN, but the research done 15 years ago by Andrew Wakefield was deemed scientific fraud and withdrawn.

Not that long ago I saw the likes of Sheia Kironn and her fellow Earth Mothers  in a supermarket at Byron Bay.Under Arm,Leg and Pubic  hair a plenty, protruding from the various orifices .ie singlets and cut down shorts minus bras and underpants.
With their spawn following through the isles shoplifting at will,defying observers with stares and tilts of their malformed "alien heads" mouths resplendent with what passes for teeth,arms and legs I had never seen before,followed by a barrage of gibberish, dispersed with assorted profanities and waving arms and gesticulations to ward off / intimidate those, oh so conservative shoppers,that get in the way of the Labor Green Loon Progressives as they and their spawn rampage through society.
I would NEVER pay money, (or suggest that any one else do so) or visit Byron Bay again as long as I live, based on my last experience there it's an over rated Drug Stuffed Piss Heads Dump. Yes a few good photo ops, drive In drive out, don't pay through the arse to stay there stay any where BUT there.

The Brave New World of Byron Bay,Mullumbimby,Lismore was established and funded  by via Social Security payments,the "It's Time" Whitlam Socialist Labor Loon Government of the Seventies, funded by taxpayers as a means to enshrine Hippy Crystal Gazing Green Drug Worshipping Lunacy as a norm of Australian Society.

So many Australian children were drawn into the Australian Council of Trade Unions FUNDED Australian Labor Party's "Hippy Drug Stuffed Utopia" and suffered the obvious consequences of the ALP's and their Union financiers done deal.

Some years later I did not laugh or take pleasure when the then Australian PM and former leader of the Australian Council of Trade Unions Bob Hawk,was reduced to tears as he described to the Australian media his OWN Daughters dance with his own ideologies manifestations of "Hippydum" and her HEROIN ADDICTION.

Labor's PM Hawk did not ever apologise,or publicly CRY for, the hundreds,thousands of OTHER Australians children,his holy, pious "Progressive" Australian Labor Party,funded by the Australian Council of Trade Unions, policies that facilitated the life ending addictions or instantaneous DEATHS  from their ANYTHING goes, all beliefs actions behaviours are equal and without consequence ...........so long as you vote for PM Hawks Left... after all what's more important than that?

Marxiist's now demanding even more money to "fix" the problems they have created in our schools ------The Gonski illusion

The Gonski illusion

Miranda Devine –
Daily Telegraph
Tuesday, April 02, 2013 (7:52pm)

THE most despicable thing about the “I give a Gonski” ads on TV is their dishonest use of a young boy struggling to read. This struggle is a tragedy going on in our classrooms every day.

As many as 30 per cent of Australian children leave school functionally illiterate. Children of normal intelligence can’t read because their teachers have not been taught the most effective way to teach them - which is systematic, explicit phonics instruction, linking the letters in our alphabet to sounds.

If these children are unlucky enough to come from a home where their parents can’t overcome the schooling deficit, they are doomed to illiteracy and consigned to the margins.

The militant left-wing Australian Education Union that pays for the ads offers a self-serving lie for a solution. It pretends that more money will magically fix the problems.

“If public schools don’t get urgent funding more of our kids will get left behind,” intones the narrator, exhorting parents to “give a gonski”.

The noun in that catchphrase refers to businessman David Gonski, whose report into school funding has become a magic wand of mythical proportions. It recommended the federal government spend $6.5 billion a year extra on smaller classes and more specialist 
teachers.

Julia Gillard, who wants to be known as the “education prime minister”, will finalise funding with the states on April 19, at the Council of Australian Governments meeting, trying to create the illusion of Gonski billions, despite the fact the government is broke.

But the fact is that more money does not equal better education. It’s how you spend the money that counts.

Australia increased spending on schools by more than 40 per cent last decade and the results are a disgrace . The reading skills of our Year 4 students are the worst of every English-speaking country tested in the first Progress in 

International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) last year of 325,000 students. One quarter of our students couldn’t even manage to read at the basic minimum standard for their age group.

These are children whose entire school life has been under the Labor government, which promised an education revolution and instead provided some overpriced school halls and laptop computers.

The revolution needed is not in bricks and silicon chips. What’s needed is the destruction of the progressive education ideology that has held sway at teacher training institutions for more than 40 years.

The man who you might genetically design for that brutal job is Christopher Pyne, who is likely to become the federal minister for education after the next election, if the polls are any indication. Unlike most of his predecessors, Pyne is unlikely to be bullied or 
hoodwinked by the education establishment into accepting its most destructive intellectual fads.

For Pyne, 45, the reading wars - between phonics advocates and whole language devotees - is deeply personal.

His father, Dr Remington Pyne, was an eye surgeon who took a special interest in dyslexia when Christopher’s oldest brother was diagnosed with reading problems - and helped found SPELD, a non-profit group to help people with learning difficulties.

Pyne also has four children of his own at school in Adelaide, from kindergarten to Year 7. His 12-year-old twins, Eleanor and Barnaby, are dyslexic , and he says his life experience has “given me a particular insight into education”.

He says Gonski has been a “distraction from the real debate which is the quality of education (which is) determined by the quality of teachers, parental engagement, a robust curriculum and decisions being made as locally as possible by principals and leadership teams”.

On teacher quality he says: “We need to recognise that teacher training in the last 10 or 20 years not been what the market tells us we need… There’s been a battle in education departments and universities since the 1970s about the direction of education, and one side has been winning.”

That winner is, “the progressive side that rejects traditional teaching methods and a traditional curriculum. Student-centred learning is part of that and an acceptance of lowest common denominator outcomes, a specific rejection of excellence and a view schools are not about knowledge but about skills, which I think is poisonous. Students have to be about knowledge first and skills second”.

“This is a very hard row to hoe in Australia because most educators today have been trained in this progressive approach to education and nobody wants to disagree.”

As a model for the rest of the country, he points to Western Australia, where the Barnett government has given schools the option to take control of their budgets. Principals now have the power to choose the best teachers and spend their money the way that suits 
students.

“This is anathema to anyone who wants central control of education ... my intention, should I be fortunate enough to become education minister, will be to radically alter the way we think about education in Australia, to place competition, the individual and 
self-reliance at the centre of our education system,” he says.

To do any good, Pyne will have to nuke the progressive education establishment. But if anyone has the courage and cunning to win that war, it’s him.

UPDATE: In comments, below, teacher-librarian Sandra claims that “at no time have I ever come across a teacher who has not included phonics as part of their Reading program in any Primary school in which I have taught.”

This is one of the most insidious developments of the so-called reading wars - the incorporation of incidental phonics as a sop to shut up the critics. It has led well-meaning teachers down the wrong path.

The evidence-based research on reading shows that “including” some token phonics instruction in what is essentially a whole language program is not optimal. What is needed, as found by the National inquiry into the teaching of literacy ,chaired by the eminent late Professor Ken Rowe, is: “[early] systematic, direct and explicit phonics instruction so that children master the essential alphabetic code-breaking skills required for foundational reading proficiency.” Systematic. Direct. Explicit. Not incidental.

(I was a member of the inquiry committee.)

Miranda Devine 
Wed 03 Apr 13 (02:21pm)