Latest news with #Switzer
Sydney Morning Herald
3 days ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Think tank accused of ‘retaliatory action' after staffer complaint about high-profile director
An influential Australian think tank has been accused of taking retaliatory action against an employee who made a sexual harassment complaint against its high-profile former executive director, Tom Switzer, after she refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement over the incident. Emilie Dye, who until recently worked as a marketing and research analyst at the right-leaning Centre for Independent Studies, has lodged applications with the Fair Work Commission alleging Switzer rubbed her leg, told her she had a 'great arse' and described himself as 'a very sexual guy' on a night out. In response to detailed questions from this masthead, Switzer 'categorically denied' the allegations and said he had 'already decided' to quit as the head of the think tank before Dye's complaint. 'Following an intensive and debilitating time of being diagnosed with cancer and enduring chemotherapy, I had already decided to relinquish my post and had advised a number of people within the organisation of my intent,' he said. Fair Work applications allege both that Switzer sexually harassed Dye, and that the think tank engaged in 'retaliatory' action against her after she refused to sign a confidentiality agreement over the incident. This masthead does not suggest the allegations against Switzer are true, just that they have been lodged with both the CIS and the Fair Work Commission. They are yet to be formally investigated. The Fair Work applications follow a detailed internal complaint lodged with the CIS the night after the alleged incident at Alfie's Steakhouse in Sydney's CBD in March. The complaint prompted an apology from CIS chairman Nicholas Moore, and Switzer resigned as executive director less than a month later.
The Age
3 days ago
- The Age
Think tank accused of ‘retaliatory action' after staffer complaint about high-profile director
An influential Australian think tank has been accused of taking retaliatory action against an employee who made a sexual harassment complaint against its high-profile former executive director, Tom Switzer, after she refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement over the incident. Emilie Dye, who until recently worked as a marketing and research analyst at the right-leaning Centre for Independent Studies, has lodged applications with the Fair Work Commission alleging Switzer rubbed her leg, told her she had a 'great arse' and described himself as 'a very sexual guy' on a night out. In response to detailed questions from this masthead, Switzer 'categorically denied' the allegations and said he had 'already decided' to quit as the head of the think tank before Dye's complaint. 'Following an intensive and debilitating time of being diagnosed with cancer and enduring chemotherapy, I had already decided to relinquish my post and had advised a number of people within the organisation of my intent,' he said. Fair Work applications allege both that Switzer sexually harassed Dye, and that the think tank engaged in 'retaliatory' action against her after she refused to sign a confidentiality agreement over the incident. This masthead does not suggest the allegations against Switzer are true, just that they have been lodged with both the CIS and the Fair Work Commission. They are yet to be formally investigated. The Fair Work applications follow a detailed internal complaint lodged with the CIS the night after the alleged incident at Alfie's Steakhouse in Sydney's CBD in March. The complaint prompted an apology from CIS chairman Nicholas Moore, and Switzer resigned as executive director less than a month later.
Sky News AU
4 days ago
- Politics
- Sky News AU
Hamas wants to ‘wipe Israel off the face of the Earth'
Centre for Independent Studies' Tom Switzer discusses the government split in Palestine between Gaza and the West Bank as global leaders rush to recognise a Palestinian state. 'The problem with a Palestinian state in 2025 is Gaza and the West Bank are led by different governments who have different objectives,' Mr Switzer told Sky News host Chris Kenny. 'Not least the recognition of Israel. Hamas is an Islamist organisation that wants to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth.'
Toronto Sun
31-07-2025
- Health
- Toronto Sun
Some Ontario hospitals offering hefty incentives for locums amid doctor shortage
Travelling physicians fill roles on a temporary basis, often as a way to prevent emergency department closures Published Jul 31, 2025 • 5 minute read Physician Dannica Switzer is shown in this handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Handout As a travelling physician in northern Ontario, Dannica Switzer is acutely aware of the health-care crisis in underserved communities. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. 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Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account 'It's sad to see how much worse things can get,' said Switzer, who works as a locum, filling roles on a temporary basis in rural or remote areas. Switzer has been in high demand since returning to locum work after quitting her family practice in Wawa, Ont., due to burnout more than two years ago. Rural and northern Ontario hospitals are competing to recruit locums by offering hefty financial incentives amid a severe shortage of doctors that has plagued the health-care system. The hospitals are vying for doctors from a relatively small pool of locums, often as a way to prevent emergency department closures that have become more common in recent years. 'But the reality is that most people are booked,' Switzer said in a recent interview. 'And even if you really want to go help that town out to prevent the closure, you can't because you're already working somewhere else.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Hospitals' fierce competition for locum recruitment has triggered concerns about equitable access to health care, with some doctors and experts saying it leaves smaller communities and hospitals vulnerable because they may not have the financial resources needed to entice physicians. While funding mainly comes from provincial programs, some hospitals top up the pay for locum shifts by tapping into their operating budgets or money that's available due to vacant staff positions. But Mike Cotterill, a physician in Wawa and one of Switzer's former colleagues, said that approach is not ideal. 'If you top up with X dollars, then the next town down the road will top up with X plus, you know, X plus Y,' he said in an interview. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'So, it's a competition that is bad for hospitals and bad for towns. It really shouldn't have to happen.' He said the Lady Dunn Health Centre, where he works, has so far avoided having to top up the pay for locums and its 'excellent' recruiter has been able to ensure a steady supply of such physicians. But that's not the case at some other hospitals. Timmins and District Hospital is currently offering up to $18,500 for hospitalist medicine locums to work there for one week in August, according to an ad posted on the hospital's social media page. The North Bay Regional Health Centre pays up to $2,700 per eight-hour shift for emergency medicine locums, according to its website. Manitoulin Health Centre's Little Current site offers $250 per hour to physicians who take ER shifts in July and August. The hospital receives around $160 per hour from the Health Ministry for night and weekend shifts and tops up that amount so it can stay 'competitive,' using funds from unfilled positions at the hospital, said lead physician Anne McDonald. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The generous pay, flexible scheduling and less administrative work that comes with being a locum may impede some hospitals' recruitment and retention of full-time doctors, some experts say. The financial incentives for locums, which can also include accommodation, flights, car rentals and other expenses, are unaffordable in the long run, they add. The goal should be to make permanent positions more appealing so that doctors stay in communities, Switzer said. 'We cannot recruit our way out of a retention crisis,' she said. Still, doctors agree that locums play a vital role in rural and northern areas of the province. 'We absolutely need the locum and the local program,' said Dr. Anjali Oberai, who works in Wawa alongside Cotterill, her husband. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'We need to support locums but if the support is such that it de-incentivizes working and living in community, yeah, then we have a problem.' Oberai and Cotterill worked for nearly two years as locum doctors to take advantage of the lifestyle before settling down in Wawa in 1998. But 'the locum landscape was quite different back then,' Oberai said. They worked mainly during the summer, covering for doctors who were on vacation or other short-term leaves. But locums are now often used to fill vacant positions, and they've helped Wawa keep its hospital and primary care centre operational during a worsening physician shortage in the community in recent years. McDonald, the lead doctor at Manitoulin Health Centre's Little Current site, said rural doctors are under a lot of pressure, taking care of patients who are often their neighbours, friends or relatives due to physician shortages. Some cannot handle that workload and become locums instead. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'I really think the locum lifestyle is less about the money exactly and more about the lack of burden of ongoing responsibilities that weighs physicians down,' McDonald said. There are more than 350 physician vacancies in northern communities, according to the Ontario Medical Association. That shortage might get even worse as nearly half of the doctors there are expected to retire in the next five years. The association always advocates for a system that encourages doctors to provide reliable and continuous care at a specific location, OMA president Zainab Abdurrahman said. But the doctor shortage is so acute that locums have become an essential part of the system. 'It's not that having a locum means you're not hiring and you're not actively trying to recruit,' she said. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Some new medical school graduates want to take time to explore their options as the financial cost and administrative burden of setting up a practice holds them back, she said, while others want to become locums to help underserved communities. While financial incentives offered by some hospitals do lead to inequities, they are just a symptom of a larger issue, Abdurrahman said. 'The utilization of these kind of extra incentives is really a reflection of the desperation in the health-care system,' she said. 'People are making choices to be competitive because they're feeling the constraint.' The Health Ministry says its Rural Emergency Medicine Coverage Investment Fund, which replaced the Temporary Locum Program in April, is helping hospitals improve access to emergency care throughout the year by offering them the flexibility to hire locums and improve their capacity to recruit permanent doctors. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. That commitment came out of negotiations between the government and the OMA for a new Physician Services Agreement. Ministry spokesperson Ema Popovic also pointed to the province's investments aimed at connecting every Ontarian with a primary care provider by 2029, and efforts to add hundreds of seats in medical schools. Many doctors say that other incentives, such as improving access to education, more vacation time and less administrative paperwork, are also needed to recruit and retain full-time physicians. For Switzer, being a locum gives her more control over her schedule but that comes with a cost. 'I have a house, I'm not at it. I have a garden. I'm not there … I miss a lot of moments with my family,' she said. Toronto & GTA Celebrity Canada Canada Sunshine Girls
USA Today
20-07-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Oklahoma Sooners among The Athletic's top 5 football programs since 2000
It was December of 1998 when new Oklahoma Sooners athletic director Joe Castiglione and the program introduced former Florida defensive coordinator Bob Stoops as the next head football coach at OU. Stoops replaced John Blake, who'd led the program through three rough years before being fired by Castiglione following the 1998 season. However, Stoops was really the hopeful replacement for the legendary Barry Switzer, who had resigned after the 1988 season. There were ten dark years in Norman, as the program shuffled through head coaches Gary Gibbs, Howard Schnellenberger, and Blake from 1989 to 1998, losing an unacceptable number of games in the process and fading from the national spotlight. None of those coaches was a suitable heir to Switzer, who had been OU's head coach from 1973 to 1988 and won three national championships. Switzer had been at OU since 1966, serving as the offensive coordinator before his promotion to head coach. Castiglione and the Sooners believed they had their next successful head coach in Stoops, and they were more than right. What has followed is 26 years where Oklahoma has been back in the spotlight, typically among the nation's elite teams from 1999 to 2021. Although Stoops retired after the 2016 season, the success he set in motion has positioned OU at the forefront of the sport. The Athletic took on the daunting task of ranking the best college football programs of the 21st century last week, and obviously, the Sooners were very high on the list. Oklahoma was ranked third, falling behind only Alabama and Ohio State. Though the list doesn't include Stoops' first year at the helm, it includes the rest of his head coaching career, and that of Lincoln Riley and Brent Venables. Stoops led the Sooners to the first national championship of the 21st century, with a perfect season in 2000. The year concluded with a win over Florida State in the title game, giving Oklahoma a total of seven national championships. Although Oklahoma hasn't won it all since then, it has been among the top-performing programs in America over the last quarter-century. The Sooners have played for three more national titles and made four trips to the four-team College Football Playoff. The program won four Heisman Trophies and had four other players finish as finalists for the award. OU won 14 conference championships, and a bevy of All-Americans put the Sooners as a no-doubt top-five program since 2000. The standard was set in Norman well before Stoops arrived. Coaches such as Bennie Owen, Bud Wilkinson, Chuck Fairbanks, and Switzer defined what it meant to win in college football and at OU. However, after one of the worst decades of Oklahoma Football in the 90s, it was Stoops who quickly showed that he and the program could meet that standard again. Oklahoma Football is still feeling the effects of his excellence over a quarter of a century later. Yes, the program has had some tough times lately. The handoff from Stoops to Riley looked so good for so many years, but the program was quietly slipping under Riley's watch. When he bolted to Southern California, Venables was hired to take the reins. It's been a rough go under Venables at times, with the only two losing seasons since the Blake era happening under his watch. But Venables had no easy task taking over for Riley, and he's doing his best to get the program back to its Stoops-era winning ways. He has the defense ready to contend, but the offense took a hit in 2024 with a bevy of injuries limiting the team's potential. But Venables and his staff have positioned themselves to be much better in 2025. It's a big year for Venables and a big year for this program in 2025. Though the straits aren't as dire as they were when Stoops took over in 1999, Oklahoma's backs are against the wall this season. However, the blueprint is there for the fourth-year head coach, who leads a program that has defied the odds plenty of times before, and is clearly one of the elite programs in all of college football. Contact/Follow us @SoonersWire on X, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Oklahoma news, notes, and opinions. You can also follow Aaron on X @Aaron_Gelvin.
