Why are so many surprised that Doctors can be terrorists? Why are people so surprised that some imported professionals, like the recent Dr Death in Bundaberg, can be so substandard, to say the least.

The current awareness that not all professional people have Australia's best interest in mind is no surprise to most of us. Employing immigrants in positions that really should be held by Australian trained professionals is a well-known need for responsible care, higher standards and empathy with those of us using the services.

This is now a crisis for Australia. We have an urgent shortage of Nurses, Police, Teachers particularly in Maths and Sciences, Academic Staff and Doctors.

It is time for many more scholarships, lower HECS fees and more places for Australians using training and Universities for our national interest rather than an export industry. Generation Y is not as keen to be University trained. They know that this is only for the rich and ,therefore, a waste of money in a "loop of HECS and accumulated debt".

Time to seriously reassess training and recruiting our professionals as a matter of urgency.

Mr Costello, investment in foreign bank accounts for a "future fund" in higher education is a stupid idea when the crisis is more immedeate and on a "chalk face" level! Tax payers money is invested to foreign banks, telephone companies and therefore given to foreign interests.

University placements are given to foreign students, and professional jobs are given to foreign trained staff.

When will the Australian Government invest in Australia?

Training and recruiting to higher standards IS an investment in Australia!

stf, stop moaning about the government- they are doing what's best for them. if oz were a democracy, you and like minded citizens could use citizen initiative to compel education for ozzie children. but it's not a democracy, and you're not a citizen.

it's a sheep station, you're a sheep, and all your baaing amounts to nothing. if you're not willing to change things, maybe you should pretend you like what's happening. it's less embarrassing.

CLOSE THE LAW SCHOOLS AND DIRECT THE RESOURCES TO SCIENCE, MEDICINE AND ENGINEERING. LAWYERS ARE HELL BENT ON LITIGATING THE HELL OUT OF THE REST OF US; THEY OFFER NOTHING IN RETURN.
EVERYONE WINS:
1) LOWER PUBLIC LIABILITY INSURANCE RATES.
2) LOWER HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL CHARGES AS MEDICAL MAL-PRACTICE INSURANCE WILL DIMINISH.
3) THE NEED TO BRING IN MAIL ORDER MEDICAL PROFFESSIONALS WITH ALL KINDS OF RELIGEOUS AND EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE WILL ALSO DIMINISH

How true, DEMOS and SILLE.

To go further, we should only allow White immigrants and deport all those who refuse to conform to our way of life, with special treatment for those 'clerics' who spout their messages of hate for the West. Make the wearing of masks and veils illegal.

There is a great pool of White Rhodesians and South Africans who would gladly populate our country areas. Invite them in, we've let them down too much in the past with posturing against apartheid etc., while doing SFA about Mugabe.

DEMOS that is the most nialistic response I think I've had

Lawyers merely provide a means to litigating the hell out of each other - its ordinary people who want to litigate. Simply shutting law schools is going to be of little use. The silliest one I heard recently was an accountant found guilty (well came to an out of court settlement in the end) because he had advised a client on buying a business, then the client through his own poor management skills went broke. Problem isnt the lawyers, its the laws, and all the idiots not prepared to take responsibility for their own short-comings.

But yes, we do appear to have a crisis in a number of areas, the main one being health. Why are the scores for entry to medicine still up at 99 (from 100), when students that score 80-90 are still quite capable of managing the learning content of a medical degree. At the very least the entrance scores should be dropped for country students, with the proviso that they must work in country areas once qualified. Also we need to note that HECS fees for medicine are the highest bracket (same as law subjects) - this needs to be addressed to make it more economically appealing. Yes doctors eventually make quite good money, but takes them some years to get to that point, and they bloody awful hours to do it.

We have ourselves to blame for these shortages. Australians are only too happy to bleat about elites, universities and taxpayer funded tertiary education. They complain bitterly about having to foot the bill for what they believe is the university student lifestyle - all political protests and toga parties.

They resent seeing their money spent on what they believe are academics in ivory towers with no understanding of the real world. They've quite happily sat by and watched the rug being pulled out from under public education which feeds potential doctors and so on into the tertiary sytem, which in turn would have supplied us with the experts we now don't have.

COUNTRY GAL
Have you heard of the recent court case in the US where a judge is seeking several million dollars in damages from a dry cleaner? He left his suit for cleaning and his trousers were lost.

Lawyers lead the charge in litigation and are very willing to cater to the greedy or vengeful. One of their more socially destructive activities is the “no win no fee” invitation. Have you ever wondered where the playground equipment has gone from public parks?

I wonder, Country Gal, if there should be more scholarships in Country Universities for Medical GP's, Nurses and Teachers even Police. These are not flamboyant skills or academic indulgence for the sake of it. Universities like the Charles Sturt, Central QLD, Southern Cross and the one in the NT. (Pardon my ignorance).

I notice that the University of Melbourne and QUT are sponsoring this. If any of those are reading this, do you agree that medical and educational campuses from your Universities could be funded and subsidised by the Federal Government to expand to the the bush?

Australian Universities subsidise the administration of campuses off shore, for example UNSW in Singapore and other Asian countries. This is purely for export and business.

Law is a selfish beast as a profession, and it has better financial returns and rewards than medicine, nursing or teaching. Their University fees are often lower than for medicine. This is not a good incentive to encourage more into medicine.

The other part of Law: training the actual Police, who are on the "beat": tend to be overworked and underpaid. The Police Station in Adelaide this week damaged by school kids in holidays demonstrates that we have police shortages in every state of Australia.

So we need more scholarships and less HECS fees in medicine, nursing and teaching, especially in the bush. I guess I should include policing.

Is this better than always having to import professionals from overseas when we are not absolutely sure about their standards, and lately, their agendas are for living in Australia?

Tell me that I am not moaning. This is constructive thinking on how we could be doing things better.

Saintfletcher
I feel you are on to something constructive here. The waiving of HEC’s for students of engineering, medicine and nursing will help. The lowering of entrance levels to medicine for country students as suggested by Country Gal is also very positive.

saintfletcher, one of the problems with expanding medicine to country uni's is mostly lack of exposure to a teaching hospital. This is being addressed by Sydney uni in conjunction with UNE and the base hospital at Tamworth. I believe Charles Sturt are now offering a pre-med degree. Some of these unis also offer good pharmacy degrees, with discounted entrance requirements for country students - my sister benefited from this at Charles Sturt. Mind you, they only discounted by 5 points which is not very significant. The HECS cost on medical topics (required for pharmacy) is the top bracket, and pharmacy is a 4 year degree, not 3 years like many. Medicine is even longer.

As far as law goes, I see people's points. I deal with many lawyers on a very regular basis, and for the most part I see people that are genuinely trying to help their clients. Most of what I see is non-litigation type work - conveyancing, loan and mortgage agreements for business, lease contracts, estate planning (wills, testamentary trusts), business succession planning and the like. Law can be financially rewarding, particularly at the top levels, but I guess I make my judgement on what I see in the country, and I can comment on this given that I am an accountant with both doctors and lawyers as clients! For the most part, doctors make more than lawyers, although they work longer hours to do so, with the added inconvenience of night calls to the emergency room. I dont envy doctors their job nor do I think they are paid too much for what they do.