News

11 July 2010

FIVE to 10 per cent of people who are hospitalised will pick up an infection, and some can be life-threatening. The last thing you want when you go into hospital is to get sicker. But infections are the most common complication of surgery in Australia, costing the health system millions of dollars, not to mention the pain and suffering of the patients who pick up the offending bugs. Some won’t need any medication, others will need antibiotics and find themselves in hospital for longer and some will die. In December, the Productivity Commission reported an estimated 180,000 cases of hospital-acquired infections in Australia each year, occupying almost two million bed days. By Sharon Labi From: The Sunday Telegraph

7 August 2011

LEADING medics have won their battle to name and shame NSW hospitals that are killing up to 13 patients a month due to poor hygiene. Offending hospitals will now be published on the federal government's Myhospital website, after health ministers agreed to it on Friday. Infectious diseases medics, alarmed by the death rates, had been pushing for the move in a bid to reduce the number of infections. According to NSW Health infections data, an average of 45 patients a month acquire a preventable staphylococcus aurous bloodstream infection in NSW hospitals and a quarter of them will not survive the infection. Last year 545 patients contracted the infection of which 136 would have died as a result. The Sunday Telegraph's investigation revealed seven major NSW hospitals fail infection rate benchmarks. The findings come the same week as the federal government announced a $16 billion overhaul of the nation's hospitals.

3 May 2010

The graffiti was going up on Sydney walls as fast as the Premier and about 1000 volunteers could scrub it off.

As Kristina Keneally removed graffiti in her Pagewood electorate, she announced anyone convicted of vandalism could also find themselves cleaning walls to pay off the fine.

Under the new clean-up orders program, courts will be able to insist that ''suitable'' graffiti vandals pay off their penalties by cleaning up graffiti at a rate of $30 an hour, the NSW Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos, said.

Defacing property with graffiti attracts a fine of up to $2200 or 12 months imprisonment or, from today, up to 73 hours of scrubbing.

''Making vandals do the costly and tedious work of cleaning off graffiti is a way to drive home the message that their behaviour is unacceptable,'' Ms Keneally said.

The announcement was made in conjunction with Keep Australia Beautiful's Graffiti Action Day yesterday, during which graffiti was cleaned up across the city.

Meanwhile, over at Foveaux Street, Surry Hills, pro-graffiti activists were holding their own ''Keep Australia Colourful'' day, painting new legal graffiti artworks in protest.

Putting the finishing touches on a piece emblazoned with the slogan "they keep painting, we keep painting" graffiti artist "Numskull", 30, said tough graffiti policies did not work.

"They keep getting rid of our stuff and we keep doing it again. It's a pointless process," he said.

Fellow artist "Beastman", 30, said punishing graffiti artists encouraged more people to do it because they liked taking risks.

He said the government should create more spaces for legal graffiti and give young people who tag - write basic names or signatures - the chance to develop their artistic skills.

"If you encourage more legal spaces it increases the quality of the work because kids can spend all day and improve their technique," he said. "[The government is] never going to make it go away so they should try to make it better".

Cameron McAuliffe, a fellow at the centre for cultural research at the University of Western Sydney, said he helped organise ''Keep Australia Colourful'' because he was concerned the state government's campaigns against graffiti were criminalising people who did legitimate work.

"Many people who do graffiti in Sydney do legal work, commissioned work and even do corporate work," he said.

The government says graffiti costs the NSW economy and taxpayers more than $100 million a year.

AMY CORDEROY AND LISSA CHRISTOPHER

May 3, 2010

27 April 2010

MELBOURNE Council has admitted painting over a piece of CBD street art by world-famous stencil guru Banksy.

A council anti-graffiti crew painted over the city’s last remaining work by the enigmatic British artist.

The image of a rat descending in a parachute adorned the wall of an old council building behind the Forum in Hosier Lane.

Council chief executive Kathy Alexander this afternoon confirmed the council had mistakenly ordered an external contractor to paint over the work.

“The removal of the rat stencil was not an error on the cleaners’ behalf as they were acting under instruction to clean all unapproved areas and were not made aware of the significance of the artwork,” Ms Alexander said.

She said cleaning contractors had been instructed to clean the wall as part of their regular street cleaning schedule following “amenity issues” raised by residents to councillors. There were a number of graffiti tags near the rat stencil.

The council would now rush through retrospective permits for to protect other “famous or significant artworks” in the city, she said.

“It is very unfortunate that that this Banksy artwork has now been removed,” she said.

Vandals created a public outcry in 2008 when they poured paint over another iconic Banksy stencil depicting an old-fashioned diver wearing a trenchcoat on the corner of Swanston St and Flinders Lane.

In that same year, another Banksy artwork stencilled onto a London wall sold for $472,528.

“In hindsight, we should have acted sooner to formally approve and protect all known Banksy works,” Ms Alexander said.

Melbourne Council has introduced a permit system that can give building owners permission to display graffiti works.

But Ms Alexander said the rat stencil was not on one of five legal street art sites in Hosier Lane.

“It was by exception that the rat stencil had been allowed to remain in Hosier Lane on an unapproved site,” she said.

“We allowed it to stay there because we were aware it was believed to be Banksy’s work.

“As the street art capital of Australia, we are aware of the popularity of Banksy’s works and have made exceptions to preserve them in the past.”

Hugh Thorne, of Hosier Lane cocktail bar Misty Place, said it was a shame the laneway had lost the little known work by the famous artist.

“The council is trying to clean up all of the tagging in the city and they’re trying to differentiate between tagging and street art and I guess in this case they just couldn’t,” Mr Thorne said.

“At the end of the day, if they really want to get an art restorer in and spend thousands of dollars they could bring it back.”

27 APR 10 @ 02:10PM BY HAMISH HEARD

11 January 2011

More of Perth's young graffiti vandals will have to wipe out their work under an extended clean-up program.

WA Police Minister Rob Johnson announced the move on Monday, saying pilot schemes in the suburbs of Joondalup and Victoria Park had cleaned up 430 sites.

He said the new Juvenile Clean-up Referral Program would be rolled out across the city and urged local governments and businesses to identify graffiti-vandalised properties for clean-up.

"Graffiti vandalism is a crime that costs the Western Australian community millions of dollars each year to clean up," the minister said.

"It doesn't just damage public and private property - it also damages the community's sense of safety and security."

Mr Johnson said last year's trial involved about 80 juveniles cleaning an average of seven sites each, which made them aware of the difficulty and removal costs associated with graffiti vandalism.

The program connected offenders with trade-based professionals, providing them with skills that might lead to future career options away from a life of crime, he said.

The program will involve juvenile offenders who have been referred to the Department of Corrective Services' juvenile justice teams.

Mr Johnson said the WA Police had appointed 14 dedicated graffiti inquiry officers across the city to catch offenders.

The government has also doubled penalties for graffiti offences with offenders now facing up to two years in jail or a $24,000 fine.

12 July 2011

Breid Composite Creations is an Australian based manufacturing company with a simple goal; to provide cost affective, vandal resistant bathroom products to the market place that are unrivalled and desperately long over due.

Breid's product line of SupaTuff fibreglass toilet pans not only have the aesthetically pleasing appearance of porcelain,and the impact resistance and strength of stainless steel, we can also customise our product with minimal extra cost for the more adventurous or area specific application .eg. with the inclusion of colours,patterns,embossed logos etc.

Breid's Supatuff pans have begun to make a strong contribution Australia wide over the past two years particularly with coastal developments and councils, we here at Breid aim to change the mind set that there are only two options available, and that the third option now presents a great mix of practicality and creative potential.

Breid has also had great success recently running trials of an anti graffiti coating form the UK called easy-on to help make cleaning our product easier and safer for those involved.

easy-on boasts an exceptional hardness rating,hospital grade hygiene properties and although we use an Australian standards approved fire retardant resin the easy-on clear coating gives it an added barrier against vandals with a 0 fire rating.

But the most impressive outcome of the trials was the finish it provided to our pans, easy-on really brought out the colour and gloss and made an obvious difference in the appearance.

Thank you to Urbane Hygiene for creating this product and Ray Nott of environmental coatings for all your help below is some more information about our product and a link to our website.

The SupaTuff range of pans starts at under $1000 +gst making them a very viable option for people in the high vandalism areas. Our product has been designed by plumbers with practicality in mind, we have the minimum sized throat so more foreign objects are stopped and easily removed before entering the sewer system and causing costly blockages.

We offer 4 models, a standard enclosed waste S-trap pan, a back to the wall P-trap pan (which can be converted to an S-trap) and disabled models for each.

Breid Composite Creations SupaTuff pan has now proven itself as another tool in the fight against vandalism. The SupaTuff is a Watermark and WELS approved product which is now available as a standard S- or P-trap, wall-facing S- or P-trap and disabled models are also available!

If you have a problem with vandalism in your facilities and would like to know how the SupaTuff will perform please check out our video below, take a minute to visit our website www.breid.com.au or contact me personally on 0408262722.

James Reid

Breid Composite Creations

11 November 2010

An Australian man learned the hard way not to urinate on a transformer when he was electrocuted and almost died. The unnamed man, a Gold Coast graffiti vandal, ended up with severe burns on almost half his body after he and three associates snuck into the Coomera railway power station. At some point he received a potentially lethal shock of 22,000 volts that has left him hospitalised for the foreseeable future. Ignoring signs reading ‘Danger: High Voltage’, the vandals cut through wire fences and scaled the transformer in the rain around midnight on 15 October. While he was horribly injured, the current may have partially bypassed his body due to his rain-soaked clothes, The Courier-Mail reports. His companions told ambulance workers the man was injured when he urinated on the transformer. But police believe the urination story is a coverup for the true intention – graffiti. They believe he snuck into the power station with the intent to tag it with the word ‘Wino’. As he climbed the transformer to tag it, they believe he bumped into a highly-charged ‘bush head’ and was thrown to the concrete down below. Services on the Gold Coast line shut down for most of October 17 due to the transformer damage and the cost to taxpayers for the incident ran well into hundreds of thousands of dollars, a source told the Courier-Mail. Despite the cost, the man’s injuries are so severe that police are not rushing to press charges.

16 May 2011

Cans of spray paint were found near the body of a 20-year-old graffiti artist who was struck and killed by a subway in Brooklyn early Monday, police said. The man, whose name wasn’t immediately released, was hit by a Manhattan-bound D train at the 59th St. station. Transit officials said the motorman tried to stop the train just after 5 a.m., but couldn’t bring it to a halt in time. Police withheld the man’s name pending notification of his family. He was found in a tunnel. It wasn’t immediately clear if the man had already vandalized the interior of the tunnel or was about to tag it. Service was stalled during the early part of the morning rush. Trains were diverted to the N line.

11 July 2010

FIVE to 10 per cent of people who are hospitalised will pick up an infection, and some can be life-threatening. The last thing you want when you go into hospital is to get sicker. But infections are the most common complication of surgery in Australia, costing the health system millions of dollars, not to mention the pain and suffering of the patients who pick up the offending bugs. Some won’t need any medication, others will need antibiotics and find themselves in hospital for longer and some will die. In December, the Productivity Commission reported an estimated 180,000 cases of hospital-acquired infections in Australia each year, occupying almost two million bed days. By Sharon Labi From: The Sunday Telegraph

7 August 2011

LEADING medics have won their battle to name and shame NSW hospitals that are killing up to 13 patients a month due to poor hygiene. Offending hospitals will now be published on the federal government's Myhospital website, after health ministers agreed to it on Friday. Infectious diseases medics, alarmed by the death rates, had been pushing for the move in a bid to reduce the number of infections. According to NSW Health infections data, an average of 45 patients a month acquire a preventable staphylococcus aurous bloodstream infection in NSW hospitals and a quarter of them will not survive the infection. Last year 545 patients contracted the infection of which 136 would have died as a result. The Sunday Telegraph's investigation revealed seven major NSW hospitals fail infection rate benchmarks. The findings come the same week as the federal government announced a $16 billion overhaul of the nation's hospitals.