One in four Oz parents believe its fine to let kids drink before legal age

October 9th, 2009 MELBOURNE - US school children found it difficult to understand Australian Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard's accent, who is on a visit to the country to discuss green jobs and education. Gillard revealed that she had spoken to kids in a couple of schools but they were so dumbfounded by her thick Aussie accent that they enquired if English was spoken Down Under.

September 14th, 2009 MELBOURNE - A senior member of the Liberal Party of Australia is drawing plans to protect kids from pornography, saying parents who expose their children to explicit material should face criminal charges. Scott Morrison is pushing for changes to the law Down Under after a child protection case surfaced in his Sydney electorate, where a father views blue movies and web videos in front of his kid aged under five.

September 10th, 2009 MELBOURNE - A senior member of the Liberal Party of Australia has warned against children's exposure to pornography at home, saying viewing of the restricted material is as dangerous as guns for kids. Scott Morrison suggested that laws should be introduced Down Under forbidding parents from letting their kids watch the explicit content.

September 6th, 2009 MELBOURNE - In a shocking revelation, poor parents in an impoverished western Sydney suburb are feeding their young children cannabis to "keep them quiet", a children's charity has disclosed. Counsellors at the Mount Druitt branch of the renowned Ted Noffs Foundation say parents see the practice as an easy alternative to soften their unruly kids.ews.com.au quoted clinical psychologist Michael Kirton as saying: "We are seeing six-year-olds being given bongs by their families to keep them quiet, stop them crying, or put them to sleep.

August 18th, 2009 MELBOURNE - Kids are better at distinguishing other children's faces than adults, scientists have found. According to Tirta Susilo, of the psychology department at the Australian National University in Canberra, and his colleagues, kids had stronger holistic processing, which is how the brain recognises faces, for other kids than the adults did.

August 12th, 2009 MELBOURNE - A new survey has revealed that watching YouTube videos, looking up "sex", socialising and searching for search engines are the popular activities children perform on the Internet. The survey conducted by computer security firm Symantec listed the Top 100 searches using the company's tracking service OnlineFamily.Norton, which monitor's children's and teenager's internet use.

July 15th, 2009 MELBOURNE - Television continues to invade the lives of Australian kids, according to a new survey.early 94 per cent of the children, aged between three and 17, watched in excess of one hour of TV a day, which increases to two hours for those over the age of eight. The data compiled by the Australian Communications and Media Authority showed that although interest in other mediums, such as DVDs, videos and computers, both rose and fell depending on age, kids continued to watch TV at the same participation rates.

June 22nd, 2009 MELBOURNE - Parents will soon be able to "keep an eye" on their kids' mobiles phones, thanks to technology already in use by American cops. Parents can receive alerts in the form of SMS and email every time their child gets a call from an "unapproved" number.

May 31st, 2009 MELBOURNE - A man was charged with drink driving and taken into custody after cops found him sleeping behind the wheel while his car was in gear with a running engine. The 48-year-old Lewiston man was found snoozing on the side of the Salisbury Highway at Mawson Lakes in Adelaide's northern suburbs just before 4.30am.

May 10th, 2009 MELBOURNE - The Queensland Police Service is shunning widely enforced "dry" workplace rules by permitting alcohol to be consumed and stored at many stations across the state, an investigation by The Sunday Mail has found. Official QPS policy permits after-hours drinking at official functions at police stations - with some stipulations, according to Assistant Commissioner Ross Barnett.

May 1st, 2009 MELBOURNE - Channel 9's blackout of tonight's Grand Final replay in Melbourne has angered Storm fans, especially after it was revealed that its delayed broadcast is strewn with erotic advertisements for the sex industry. While the semi-pornographic commercials are designed to arouse late-night audiences, they've proved a turn-off for league-loving parents in Melbourne who won't allow their children to watch such explicit images.

April 25th, 2009 MELBOURNE - Australian teenage girls are skolling straight vodka in a new form of the spin-the-bottle game to get drunk quickly. Girls, as young as 15, are also trying to be at par with men as they take part in the straight drinking, that landed almost 1700 kids in NSW hospitals for alcohol poisoning last year.

April 7th, 2009 MELBOURNE - Outraged parents are demanding withdrawal of a sex education website endorsing abortion and giving pre-teens information about sexual pleasure. The controversial site, thehormonefactory.com, has been approved as a student resource for Queensland Year 7 classes.

April 6th, 2009 MELBOURNE - While parents worry over the link between cell-phone and cancer, mobiles are making their way into the hands of kids as young as nine, according to a study. The prevalence of mobiles among kids came to the fore at the time when the independence of Australia's peak mobile phone research group was being questioned.

March 12th, 2009 MELBOURNE - The key to exam success in kids lies in a glass of water, says a new study. According to the latest research carried out in Britain, children who have a drink of water before sitting tests fare up to a third better.