The Global Mail And Sheltered Workshop

OPEN Organic Sesame!

The incantation worked, Monica Attard's portal finally opened and allowed The Professor to slip in and find .... why leftists love Malcolm Turnbull, the scourge of air conditioning, why Occupisants need to make more noise, and how Bob's little boy, Eric Ellis, is eating Europe. (Ellis deserves a nice jaunt, by the way. He must be exhausted after churning out the sophistries needed to elevate Wayne Swan's reputation with a 32-quid tin plate and the title of the World's Hottest Treasurer.)

This is revolutionary stuff. Brave, courageous, daring to go where only the Phage, Silly, The Conversation, SBS, The Drum, Q&A, Lateline, New Matilda, Lavatorius Pronto, Crikey and poor Margo have gone before.

But all those promises of investigative journalism? Well they may still need a bit of work if this article about a naughty nurse (sadly, not the sort the Professor prefers for a good blanket bath) is any indication -- especially the bit about how no records are available to warn potential employers of deficiencies in the carer's bedside manner. The story required the efforts of five writers, who very early on in their expose have this to say:

Today, though, a check of Australia's national register of health practitioners makes no mention of [naughty nurse] Jones's disciplinary record. Indeed, it says he has no reprimands or other limitations on his registration. Set up by Australian state and territory governments at a cost of $20 million to taxpayers, the online register is billed as a one-stop-shop for employers, professionals and the public to look up reliable and complete information about the registrations of their doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists and a range of other health workers.

Now the Professor is no investigative journalist, just a Bunyip who has learned to call up Google's home page. As it seemed remarkable that a nurse who kicks geriatrics would not be listed on the register of shame, it seemed worth having a little look to determine if the Global Mail was on its game.

The first stop was here, where another link conducts the curious to here. Clicking on the "databases" tab brings up this page, where entering "jones" in the search field obtains lists of rulings and judgments by medical regulators in various states. A further click on Item #10 secures this page of results, the first three of which are quite detailed accounts of Nurse Jones' misbehaviour.

Total time to find and open those three .pdfs: 4 minutes and 47 seconds by the Billabong's stopwatch. This included several brief interruptions when the cat attempted to occupy the keyboard.

Now it is true that the business of finding those records could be a bit more streamlined, but one imagines any hospital administrator examining Jones' CV and performing a pre-employment background check would be familiar with where to go and which tabs to click. Yet five investigative journalists -- quality, advertising-averse investigative journalists, no less -- leave Global Mail readers with the impression that Nurse Jones' record of shame cannot be found.

When Monica Attard can snatch a spare moment, she needs to ring up Graeme Wood, her site's patron, and beg for more funds to hire additional legions of investigative journalists. If she can recruit enough, like those massed monkeys with typewriters who are said to be capable of reproducing the works of Shakespeare, one of them might stumble upon the secret world of Google.