jiraportlet and section tags create excessive whitespace

We have recently upgraded from an older version of confluence (2.5.4) to Jira Studio 2.2 (Confluence 3.1.2).

I have a key support page that uses the jiraportlet macro surrounded by column and section tags. I also have several sections on this page.

At the end of each section a large amount of whitespace is displayed which makes using this page tedious. I have tried several edits to find workarounds to this issue but cannot seem to avoid the whitespace.

Screenshot conf_ss1.jpg shows the start of the page. Screenshot conf_ss2.jpg shows the whitespace between the first section of the page and the second section. I have six sections overall, so the page is quite long now.

This issue did not occur in our old version of confluence (2.5.4).

Typical code snippet looks like this:

New Issues

{section} {column:width=50%} {jiraportlet:url=http://shinetech.jira.com/secure/RunPortlet.jspa?portletKey=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.portlets:searchrequest&filterid=10805&numofentries=20&showdescription=false&os_username=?&os_password=?}{column} {column} {jiraportlet:url=http://shinetech.jira.com/secure/RunPortlet.jspa?portletKey=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.portlets:searchrequest&filterid=10804&numofentries=20&showdescription=false&os_username=?&os_password=?}{column}{section}