Time-wasting at work costs $87b a year

Bludgers, who make up just 5 per cent of the workforce, account for more than 20 per cent of time wasted across the day, a report has found. Picture: Thinkstock
  Source: The Advertiser

AUSTRALIANS are getting more productive in the workplace but time-wasting still costs organisations $87 billion a year, a new report claims.

The average amount of time wasted in the workplace has fallen by 4 per cent since October 2011, the Ernst & Young Australian Productivity Pulse report found.

That may not sound like much, but it's not a bad boost considering Australian workplaces have been operating in a declining productivity environment for about 10 years, Ernst & Young managing partner Neil Plumridge says.

"We're producing more from the same amount of hours worked than 12 months ago," Mr Plumridge said.

"An extra 15 minutes of productive time every day at work can mean a great deal for individuals as well as the organisations they work for."

Four out of five Australian workers surveyed took productivity very seriously and were making a real effort to work "smarter" to get more out of the day.

But bludgers, who make up just 5 per cent of the workforce, account for more than 20 per cent of time wasted across the day, the report found.

Unnecessary meetings, unimportant emails and the use of social media at work were the biggest time-killers, costing businesses big dollars in lost wages.

Tasmania was ranked the most productive state, and healthcare and social workers the most gung-ho employees.

NSW was the least productive state, with finance and insurance workers the least time-efficient.

West Australians, motivated by job security, clocked the longest hours, while their South Australian counterparts clocked the least.

The findings were based on a survey of more than 2100 employees across seven industries in both the public and private sectors.

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Google must pay defamed man $200k

The judge rejected Google's claim that it was not a publisher. Source: AFP

A MELBOURNE man has been awarded a $200,000 payout after Google linked his photograph to one of Australia's most notorious underworld figures.

In what is believed to be an Australian legal first, a Victorian Supreme Court jury found the search engine defamed the man by publishing his image alongside a picture of Tony Mokbel and linking his name to stories about an unsolved murder.

The man, a former music promoter and prominent member of Melbourne's Yugoslav community, claimed the results of a Google search of his name implied he was a figure so prominent in the criminal underworld that his rivals hired a hitman to kill him.

He claimed the search results placed him "in the same league as Tony Mokbel, an alleged murderer and a drug trafficker, and Dennis Tanner, an alleged murderer".

In his judgment, Justice Barry Beach said the man was "entitled to an award of damages that vindicates him" and that $200,000 was the appropriate amount.

In a statement released today, a Google spokesperson said search results were a reflection of the content and information available on the internet.

"The sites in Google's search results are controlled by those sites' webmasters, not by Google," he said.

The man was previously awarded $225,000 after successfully suing Yahoo for defamation.

He survived being shot in the back in a St Albans restaurant by an unknown gunman in June 2004.

He was dining with his elderly mother when shot. The gunman fled after his pistol jammed on its second shot.

Justice Beach rejected Google's argument that it was not a publisher, which may have broad implications for Google and other search engines.

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Emirates' mid-air engine explosion

Passengers have told of a loud bang on an Emirates A380 that was forced to turn back to Sydney Airport.

People wait at Sydney airport. Picture: Steve Harris Source: The Daily Telegraph

DISTRESSED passengers told how they survived a mid-air emergency last night when an Emirates A380's engine exploded at 10,000 feet and forced it to turn back for an emergency landing.

About 20 minutes after leaving Sydney, Emirates flight EK413 experienced an "engine fault'' en route to Dubai.

"I saw a flash,'' John Fothergill, 49, from Auckland, said. "I thought it could have been lightening but then we saw flames come out of the engine. The whole interior of the A380 lit up.

"You'd have to say there were two or three metre flames. (The) explosion shook the plane, there was a bigger judder.''

The grounded plane. Picture: Steve Harris Source: The Daily Telegraph

Emirates flight attendants responded by moving straight to the windows that faced out to the engine.

They observed the damaged and asked the passengers what they had seen.

Mr Fothergill's wife, Dr Amal Aburawi, questioned how the Emirates staff reacted and said, "The staff panicked more than the passengers.''

She said: "Everyone was running left and right (with) no one knowing what's happened.''

"I was in the same incident in 1988 when I was travelling on Alitalia, (so) it was (a) flash back to what happened (there). It was exactly the same (but) the way it was being handled on Alitalia was so organised and calmer than what's happened tonight.''

People waiting at Sydney airport. Picture: Steve Harris Source: The Daily Telegraph

Dr Aburawi furthermore criticised Emirate's flight attendants for not properly informing some non-English speaking passengers of the incident.

"I'm a frequent flyer on Emirates,'' she said. "Usually its Arabic announcement following the English, (but) this time no one mentioned anything in Arabic and there (were) many Arabic passengers, many of them old ladies.

"I held (an Emirates flight attendant) by the hand and said, 'Can you ask someone to do the announcement in Arabic because there are Arabic people who will not understand what's happening with this panic situation'.

"(She said she would) send Arabic speaking staff to tell them and calm them down. (But) I checked with them when we landed and no one spoke to them. They don't know why we landed back in Sydney.

"This is where I feel angry, I feel angry for the way non-English speaking passengers faced this situation.

"Emirates should be well trained in this.

"I hope Emirates will get some lessons out of this.''

Emirates said an "engine fault'' was to blame for the incident.

People waiting at Sydney airport. Picture: Steve Harris Source: The Daily Telegraph

The pilot contacted ground crew at Sydney Airport and a decision was made to dump fuel and turn the plane around.

Emirates said, "Passengers are being re-booked on alternative flights (and) Emirates apologises for any inconvenience caused to its customers.''

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Pure hell: Church play vilifies gays, abortions

An abortion doctor being tormented by death, in a scene from the production. Picture: Pottershouse.com.au Source: news.com.au

• Pentecostal Christian church hosts "Escape From Hell" night
• Audience members furious at vilification of gays, abortions
• "They had the doctor who performed the abortion shackled in chains with a slit throat"

A CHURCH Halloween play has come under fire for vilifying homosexuals, drug users, women who have abortions and the doctors who perform them.

BJ Pringle, a 26-year-old insurance investigator from Winnellie, NT, went to the Saturday performance put on at the Potters House church in Casuarina, not realising until arriving that it was a church because the ads didn't mention it, reports the NT News.

"(The event) was extremely offensive to both me and my friends," he said.

"After, the film said homosexuals were taking over the world, and the world better prepare," Mr Pringle said.

He said violent scenes were acted out for a woman who had an abortion and a doctor who performed it.

"They had the doctor who performed the abortion shackled in chains with a slit throat," Mr Pringle said.

"Death was dragging him around the room (saying) his life would pay for the many lives he'd taken."

Potters House is a Pentecostal Christian church.

The $5 a head "haunted house tour" was called "Escape from Hell" on the flyers, which gave a mobile number and a street address but made no mention of the church.

It was held from Wednesday to Saturday nights last week.

Potters House Pastor Neil Prosser refused to comment on the nature of the performance, but said the advertising had carried a M15+ rating.

Read more at The NT News

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Aussie must stay in Bulgarian jail

Bulgarian police officers escort Australian Jock Palfreeman as he arrives for his trial at Sofia City Court on January 19, 2011. AFP PHOTO / NIKOLAY DOYCHINOV Source: The Daily Telegraph

AN Australian man imprisoned in Bulgaria claims he's being "held for ransom" after Bulgarian authorities rejected a federal government request for him to complete his sentence in Australia.

Jock Palfreeman, 25, was found guilty of "murder with hooliganism" after fatally stabbing Bulgarian law student Andrei Monov, 20, in the capital Sofia in December 2007.

In 2009 a Bulgarian court ordered Palfreeman to pay the equivalent of $A252,000 in compensation to his victims and their families.

Palfreeman has told Australian journalists visiting him in Sofia Central Prison the Bulgarian government has officially denied an Australian government request to transfer him to an Australian prison.

"Essentially I'm being held for ransom," he said.

"If family and friends pay (the money) then I can transfer to Australia legally."

Palfreeman was convicted of the murder despite allegations crucial CCTV footage and witnesses went missing, and forensic evidence suggesting the fatal blow did not come from Palfreeman's knife.

Friends of the dead man who witnessed the incident also contradicted their original police statements during court testimonies.

Palfreeman's father, Simon Palfreeman, says the debt has been accruing at around 15 to 20 per cent a year - and is now about $A600,000.

"At this stage we would do whatever we could to get Jock back because I think the longer he stays there, the harder it will be to get him out," he said.

Director of human rights group the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, Dr Krassimir Kanev, says Jock's best option is to pay the money.

"Compared to prisons that I have seen in former Soviet Union ... such as Armenia, Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, I would think the Bulgarian prisons are worse even compared to those."

Palfreeman was 15 days into a hunger strike when Australian journalists were allowed into the small cell he shares with up to eight men.

"(In Bulgaria, foreigners) are legally eligible for everything but they don't give it to us. Foreigners are not given parole," he said.

"The Bulgarian groups are treated one way, then the foreigners are treated differently and then from the foreigners I'm treated even worse.

"I'm like the scum of the scum."

The parents of the murdered man have previously said Palfreeman was a danger to society who deserved a life sentence without parole.

A spokesman for the Department of foreign Affairs and Trade said the Australian government would not assist the Palfreeman family with the debt.

A spokesman for the Attorney-General's department could not elaborate on the status of transfer negotiations "due to the confidential nature of transfer applications".

The Bulgarian Ministry of Justice have not responded to a request for comment.

Palfreeman lost his final Bulgarian appeal in 2011 but has since lodged an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights.

While it is expected to take up to five years to make a ruling, Palfreeman says he is working to set up Bulgaria's first ever Prisoners' Union.

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Thousands of kids among homeless

Homeless hunker down for the night in Sydney. Picture: Nicholas Welsh Source: The Daily Telegraph

MORE than 17,000 children aged under 12 are among the 105,237 people currently homeless in Australia as the national homeless rate rises.

Nationally the number of homeless rose 17 per cent from 89,728 in 2006 to 105,237 in 2011 after dropping 5.9 per cent between 2001 and 2006.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the increase in homelessness "resulted from the rise in the number of people living in severely crowded dwellings, up from 31,531 in 2006 to 41,390 in 2011''.

Australian Greens housing spokesperson, Senator Scott Ludlam, said the figures reinforced the fact Australia has been in the grip of a housing crisis for years.

"We need to see a commitment to at least doubling funding for homelessness services and accommodation in the new National Affordable Housing Agreement which is being negotiated this year,'' he said.

"The 2008 White paper on homelessness aimed to halve homelessness by 2020, but four years on there are 250,000 people on the waiting list for social housing.''

Senator Ludlam was concerned by the number of homeless children identified in the new data released today. Figures show 17,845 of all homeless were under the age of 12, rising from 15,715 in 2006.

"Many of the thousands of Australians sleeping rough are younger than 18. They need a roof over their heads and they need hope for the future.''

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Brown asks PM to help with Rwanda ban

Bob Brown was told on Sunday his visa, granted in late October, had been cancelled due to "contradictory messages" in his application. Picture: file Source: Herald Sun

FORMER Australian Greens leader Bob Brown has asked Prime Minister Julia Gillard to try and get a ban on him travelling to Rwanda lifted so he can visit the country's Green party.

Dr Brown was due to fly to Africa on Monday to speak at Rwanda's Democratic Green Party conference, but was told on Sunday his visa, granted in late October, had been cancelled due to "contradictory messages" in his application.

He says it is further evidence the government of Rwandan President Paul Kagame is restricting democracy and crushing political opposition.

"It says a lot about the Kagame government and its very determined efforts not to allow democracy in terms of having free and open political parties function in the country," Dr Brown told AAP.

"The government doesn't really want me in the country as a person who comes from a functioning democracy."

Ms Gillard met president Kagame in October when they co-chaired a meeting of the Millennium Development Goals Advocates Group at the United Nations.

Dr Brown urged Ms Gillard to speak with president Kagame on his behalf, while Greens leader Christine Milne has already called on Foreign Minister Bob Carr to intervene as well.

The former Tasmanian senator also said claims online that he had visited Rwanda in the past were "demonstrably wrong".

He says the ban is intriguing, considering he's so insignificant in the scheme of Rwandan politics.

"I wasn't going to tell the government what to do. I was going there to support the Greens in what they want to do and learn more about Rwanda," he said.

"I am, after all, rather insignificant in Rwanda, so why did he bother? Why block me?"

The former Tasmanian senator was planning to support the Rwandan Greens, which were banned from the country's 2010 election, while leader Frank Habineza was arrested and went into exile in Sweden in 2009 after a party meeting was violently broken up by men wielding sticks.

The party's deputy leader was later found dead, nearly decapitated, while death threats were made against Habineza.

Australia supported Rwanda's inclusion into the Commonwealth in 2009, despite a report months earlier by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative which expressed deep reservations over the country's human rights record and urged Rwanda to tackle a lack of political and press freedom.

"It does raise questions about how effective the Commonwealth is going to be in insisting at least the basic tenets of democracy, that opposition parties are allowed to exist," Dr Brown said.

"This is a test for the Commonwealth, whether President Kagame is going to be taken on.

"The binding heritage of the Commonwealth is democracy and it's being tested.

"It's important the Commonwealth governments, including the Gillard government, are saying to Rwanda 'we're watching you closely and we want to see opposition parties prosper as they are in our countries'."

Although Kagame has been praised for leading Rwanda through nearly two decades of peace and strengthening the country's economy since the ethnic genocide of the mid-1990s, he's also been accused of crushing opposition.

Human Rights Watch said last month's eight-year jail sentence handed to opposition leader Victoire Ingabire for treason and genocide denial "illustrates the Rwandan government's unwillingness to tolerate criticism and to accept the role of opposition parties in a democratic society."

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Labor MPs support abuse commission

Julia Gillard faces growing calls to announce a royal commission into child sex abuse within the Catholic Church.

FEDERAL Labor backbenchers have joined independent MPs and the Greens to call on Prime Minister Julia Gillard to establish a royal commission into child sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

The calls, from Greens leader Christine Milne, Independents Tony Windsor, Nick Xenophon and Craig Thompson, come amid calls from the Prime Minister's own backbench to support a Royal Commission.

There are already state based commissions into sex abuse within the clergy currently underway in New South Wales and Victoria.

A Royal Commission would give investigators national and expansive powers to expose any alleged cover ups.

A victims group will today present to the Victorian government inquiry a list of 18 convicted peadophile priests who were moved from parish to parish or further away, where they continued offending.

The 18 include some of the most notorious peadophiles, such as Gerald Ridsdale, Edward Dowlan, Michael Glennon and the socialite priest Vincent Kiss, as well as many who barely caught public attention.

Mr Windsor said he would write to the Prime Minister, expressing his concerns about the "enormous number" of people affected by the allegations of abuse.

"They feel as though the system is letting them down," he told ABC radio.

"My advice to the prime minister and others ... is it is probably better to deal with this sooner rather than later."

Mr Windsor said the allegations had created an odour over the Catholic Church.

He is concerned about recent allegations, especially from a senior NSW police detective, about a cover-up inside the church.

The MP dismissed as "pathetic'' a decision by NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell to limit a special commission of inquiry to examine the police investigations of paedophile priests in the Hunter Valley.

"It almost makes a mockery of the people who have suffered," he said.

Any inquiry into the allegations needed to be national,'' Mr Windsor said.

"Blind Freddy can see that."

But the Premier was quick to defend his inquiry saying it would have all the powers of a royal commission and include allegations of a cover-up.

Federal Independent Senator Nick Xenophon wants any national commission to examine all religious abuse.

"This is not about singling out any particular church," he told ABC TV.

"It's about doing the right thing by victims."

Senator Xenophon today criticised Australia's most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, for claiming sexual abuse by church members is historic.

He said Cardinal Pell was wrong to consign the epidemic of abuse to history.

Cardinal Pell told News Limited on the weekend that abuse and subsequent cover-ups were largely historic and not part of a systemic failing within the church.

But Senator Xenophon says victims are still suffering today and a royal commission is the best way to help them heal by uncovering the truth.

Senator Xenophon believes a commission could complete its work in one to two years.

If the Gillard government didn't act, independent MPs and senators would move a private members bill early in 2013 to establish a commission, he said.

Federal cabinet minister Craig Emerson said Ms Gillard had yet to discuss the issue with her colleagues.

"She wants to review the work that is going on already and also review the evidence and the issue more generally," Dr Emerson told ABC radio.

But federal Labor backbencher Doug Cameron insists a royal commission is needed.

"This (abuse) is a stain on Australian society," he told ABC TV today.

"The federal government needs to have a look at this and we need to take a national overview on these issues."

Cardinal Pell on the weekend said the church was being unfairly targeted due to "anti-Catholic prejudice".

However, Senator Cameron said if the church was confident abuse was no longer occurring "they should have nothing to fear from a royal commission".

The outspoken MP said the commission should focus on the Catholic Church because that's where the "major problem" was.

"If it had been any other organisation in the country ... there'd have been a royal commission a long time ago," Senator Cameron said, adding the church was extremely powerful and politically influential.

Fellow government backbencher Nick Champion wants a wider national examination.

"It should be a broad royal commission that looks into any Australian institution that had care of children and where these allegations have been made," he told Sky News.

Opposition frontbencher David Johnston said the revelations of child abuse were damaging the reputation of the Catholic Church.

"This has been an absolute blot on the landscape in terms of people's faith and trust in the church," Senator Johnston said.

But he was circumspect about the merits of a national royal commission.

"Remember, royal commissions are very expensive and people have to be cross-examined in giving their evidence," he said.

"The victims are often the last consideration in this, and I am concerned we put them through a court process that aggravates the situation."

Federal Opposition frontbencher Mitch Fifield agrees that "it's important to make sure that no one denomination is targeted".

He told Sky News the Opposition would look at any proposal put forward by Ms Gillard.

Australian Greens leader Christine Milne said the coercive powers of a royal commission would look at the systemic failure of the church.

"And that is what people want," she told ABC radio.

"There is no doubt that cover-up occurred and the key thing was to protect the church at all costs rather than have the embarrassment and the humiliation of this coming out."

Senator Milne said she would discuss the matter with Ms Gillard when parliament resumes later in November.

Ms Gillard is expected to comment on the possibility of a Royal Commission later today.

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