This document is part of an archive of postings by John Ray on Australian Politics, a blog hosted by Blogspot who are in turn owned by Google. The index to the archive is available here or here. Indexes to my other blogs can be located here or here. Archives do accompany my original postings but, given the animus towards conservative writing on Google and other internet institutions, their permanence is uncertain. These alternative archives help ensure a more permanent record of what I have written
This is a backup copy of the original blog
31 October, 2022
Queensland title deeds no longer valid
This should be a big issue before the election especially in Queensland as it affects ALL property owners but hasn’t got any media coverage and not sure if other states have or will do the same.
Queenslanders can no longer prove property ownership using a Land Title certificate, even if they have one.
All land title certificates were cancelled by the by a new section (215 ) that was inserted into The Land, Explosives and Other Legislation amendment Act 2019 Queensland which not makes Land title Certificates legally void.
The new Section 215 in the Land Title Act 1994 states:
Certification of title cease to be instruments:
(1) On the commencement, a certificate of title-
a) Ceases to be an instrument under this Act; and
b) Ceases to be evidence, conclusive or otherwise, of the indefeasible title for the lot for which it was issued.
See:
https://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/view/html/asmade/act-2019-007#sec.247
The amendment takes all the evidential power away from landowners and gives it to the state.
The state could alter your records, illegally, or a hacker could and you have not way of proving ownership unless your ownership rights were reinstated by a Court.
This amendment allows the State to prevent you from selling or buying property unless you comply with additional terms related to digital identify certification.
The Amendment was passed in Parliament on 06 April 2022.
<i>Via email from dw0@protonmail.com</i>
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Netball Australia rescued by the Victorian taxpayer
The deal was announced on Monday morning by Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and Netball Australia CEO Kelly Ryan.
“Victoria is a proud sporting state and we are delighted to announce a new partnership with Visit Victoria,” Ryan said.
“The partnership will guarantee Victorians the opportunity to experience more netball across the next five years.
“This investment will benefit all levels of netball – from our pathway system to the Suncorp Super Netball League and the Origin Australian Diamonds.”
The $15 million partnership will run over four and a half years.
The Diamonds will wear Victorian branding on their kit for home and away fixtures and all staff will take part in tourism campaigns for the state.
It was also confirmed that the 2023 Grand Final will be played in Victoria as part of the agreement.
“We are really thrilled today to be able to announce a four and a half year sponsorship deal where Visit Victoria will become a significant sponsor for the Australian Diamonds netball team,” Andrews said.
“This is a coup for our state. This is all about supporting netball.”
Mr Andrews said other states and private companies were competing for the deal, with Victoria putting forward a “very competitive” bid.
The Premier stood by the $15m deal, despite Victoria’s mid-financial-year update revealing the state is on course to record a $9.7b deficit in 2022-23.
“Netball boasts the highest level of participation among young women (of) any sport in Australia – and as one of the nation’s most popular national teams, the Diamonds are an inspiration for women and girls across all levels of sport.
“We’ve already supported netball very, very strongly. We know how important that is. And to be able to have the world’s very best netball team wearing our logo projecting all that we offer to the world and to the rest of our country is absolutely fantastic.
“From a grassroots level all the way through to attracting more and more visitors to our state tourism is such an important part of the Victorian economy.
“(It is) great for jobs, great for investment, and obviously fantastic for netball and female participation.
“It is unique, it’s absolutely fantastic and a really big win for Victorian jobs and our tourism sector.”
The news comes just over a week after a player revolt forced Rinehart to revoke her sponsorship of the team.
It is understood that players were uncomfortable with the company’s links to the abhorrent, racist views expressed by Rinehart’s father and Hancock Prospecting’s founder Lang Hancock.
Members of the Australian side refused to wear the new sponsor’s logo on their uniforms in the series against England.
“Reports of a protest on the part of the players, on environmental grounds and a split within the playing group are incorrect,” the players’ statement read. “The singular issue of concern to the players was one of support for our only Indigenous team member.”
The Victorian lifeline will be welcome relief to Netball Australia after Ryan last week alluded to financial issues soaring if Hancock’s decision prompted others to walk away.
https://www.couriermail.com.au/sport/netball/netball-australia-secure-new-15m-partnership-deal-with-visit-victoria-as-grand-final-city-named/news-story/60ad644355e3eb4d6a8934bc3662cdff
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Superannuation delusions: Future retirees risk being shortchanged by politically correct fund management
In an interview with Company Director, the Australian Institute of Company Directors’ magazine, Dr Don Russell, chair of AustralianSuper, says, ‘Being able to influence companies in their decisions around board governance, climate risk and disclosures, are all mechanisms we see as improving investment returns.’
‘We’re heavily engaged in that because we think it lowers the risk associated with everything we’re invested in.’
Well, with 2.5 million accounts, a quarter of a trillion dollars under management and $650 million a month in new contributions, no one can doubt this fund has clout. Nor that much of that clout, whatever the investment returns, comes from increasing payments from the same companies Dr Russell seeks to influence. Having started at three per cent of workers’ salaries, these are soon to rise to twelve per cent.
As a principal adviser to former prime minister Paul Keating, Dr Russell helped design the compulsory scheme. No doubt he and Mr Keating knew what an enduring gift it would be to their friends in the trade union movement. And what a gift it has proven to be!
In three decades it has enabled a handful of unions and employer associations, with no capital backing, to account for around 30 per cent of Australia’s $3.1 trillion superannuation assets, earning some $30 billion a year in fees. This firepower has greatly leveraged organised labour’s capacity to influence boardrooms through shareholder activism.
Unions also benefit from sponsorships and advertising deals which aim to encourage workers to join their funds. According to the Financial Services Royal Commission, while not itemised, these inducements totalled more than $30 million in the five years to 2019. Unions are also believed to receive fees of around $14 million a year, paid nominally to its appointed directors.
Former union apparatchik and current federal assistant treasurer, Stephen Jones, ignores calls for improvements in reporting standards. He believes annual aggregate disclosures of political donations and, payments to trade unions and industry bodies is sufficient.
Unsurprisingly, the cosy relationship between industry funds, trade unions and government, leads to suspicions of personal indulgences and cover-ups. No matter the truth, this cartel exerts an unhealthy influence on capital allocations.
And while union nominees on fund boards have responsibility for a substantial slice of workers’ life savings, they remain relatively unknown. After all, workers see superannuation contributions as a tax paying for something they will receive in the remote future and this detachment means fund executives on multimillion-dollar salaries and performance bonuses are rarely held to account.
The absence of transparency and accountability seems inconsistent with many of the ESG governance principles espoused by Dr Russell. Nevertheless, this doesn’t preclude AustralianSuper from closely monitoring external managers to ensure they adhere to its strict protocols. Indeed, rather than exert indirect control, AustralianSuper has already brought management of half its assets in-house.
Dr Russell believes this strict ESG approach enhances the equity portfolio’s performance. ‘We’ve built concentrated portfolios and developed skills and capabilities to understand a whole range of Australian businesses,’ he says, ‘Part of that understanding is based around an understanding of how these companies deal with climate risk and other ESG matters.’
On climate, AustralianSuper is committed across its portfolio to net-zero emissions by 2050. But what does this mean? According to consultancy McKinsey, ‘trillions of dollars need to be spent every year for almost three decades to hit net zero targets’. Is AustralianSuper’s commitment open-ended? Has it considered the long-tail risks to its members’ savings from constant capital misallocation? Have AustralianSuper and its likeminded peers forgotten the old Wall Street adage, ‘When all the experts and forecasts agree – something else is going to happen’?
Already, too many alarmist climate predictions, advertised as based on authoritative modelling, have proven false. It is surely only a matter of time before the public weighs the crippling economic and social costs of environmental policies against environmental progress. Retirees will begin to question who gave the mandate for superannuation assets to be so heavily weighted in essentially moral crusades. What about eggs and baskets and a case for compensation?
By inserting themselves into boardrooms, industry funds and their friends in government have blurred the line between management and ownership. They are getting in the way of what Milton Friedman argued was the ‘one and, only one, social responsibility of business, to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it… engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud’.
Despite Dr Russell’s claims of inherent ESG out-performance, several studies have questioned any causal link, saying it can be explained by other factors. For example, technology and asset-light companies are often among broader market leaders in ESG ratings because they have a relatively low carbon footprint. These tend to merit higher ESG scores and, through weight of buying, initially achieve a self-fulfilling out-performance. But, as the director of one fund declared, ‘There is no ESG alpha,’ or, sustained outsize market return.
Nevertheless, Dr Russell and many of his powerful peers, insist on micro-managing the companies they invest in. The boards in turn obey, spending valuable board and management time on unproductive navel gazing and redirecting investments into ‘safe’ assets. Innovation is shunned.
Strikingly, net zero 2050 and, ESG more generally, seem to be peculiarly Western preoccupations. China is not so obsessed. Rather, it is massively boosting coal production to keep electricity supplies reliable, prices low and manufactured products internationally competitive. Chinese leaders remain clear-eyed and are thoroughly practised in the art of climate-change arbitrage. BMW’s decision to move manufacture of Minis to China highlights Beijing’s wisdom.
This is not to argue against prudent governance. But it is to warn that a cartel, comprised of big government, ideologically driven investors and obedient businesses, is concentrating risk based on what may yet prove to be a popular delusion. Future retirees would have good reason to feel betrayed.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/super-delusions/
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No longer a British nation?
30 October, 2022
Mayor leads push to bring back Queenslander-style homes in flood-prone regions
Traditional Queensland timber homes are very prestigious in Brisbane. I live in one. Vast sums are being spent by their owners to renovate them. Building new ones is a problem, however. They were built when timber was cheap. It is no longer. New ones would cost a bomb
Homes on stumps – such as the traditional Queenslander-style house – would be built in place of concrete-slab developments under a push from local government to boost flood resilience.
28 October, 2022
Cheap renewables, rising power bills?
James Macpherson
I cannot work out which is more incredible – the claims this government makes, or the fact that this government expects Australians to believe their claims.
Labor continually promises to reduce cost of living while increasing the cost of living.
Their strategy to lower prices is to increase prices.
If I could afford to laugh, I would.
Renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy, the Prime Minister chants zombie-like, as prices rise in direct proportion to his use of renewable energy.
I swear, every time he utters the words ‘renewable energy’, my power bill goes up.
Australians are caught in a kind of twilight zone where we are continually told to expect cheaper power while continually told to expect more expensive power.
Oh, but don’t worry, you’ll still get that promised $275 cut to your power bill. It’s just that your power bill will have gone up by a couple of thousand dollars before Labor cut it by a couple of hundred dollars.
The Prime Minister will then claim, with a straight face, that he has saved us money. And my teenage son worries that he is the one struggling with math!
This is a government that believes it can keep global temperatures in check when it can’t even keep a $275 promise to struggling families in the suburbs.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers explained today that the delay in providing the promised cut was due to a flaw in the modelling. ‘That model was done in 2021, and it referred to an outcome in 2025,’ he said.
But don’t worry, the government’s modelling about how taxing cow farts will stop the warming of the planet and the rising of the oceans is totally legit!
This Labor government insists that renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy, or at least it will be, just as soon as they spend another $10 billion of your money here, and another $10 billion there.
How much will it cost taxpayers to end up with cheap power? The answer is always the same. Just a little bit more.
If you believe the government’s obsession with intermittent energy will deliver cheap power, you have the one prerequisite necessary to do energy minister Chris Bowen’s job – wishful thinking.
Expect him to provide a unicorn with your next power bill.
The perverse obsession of BHP with environmental correctnes
It’s known as ‘The Big Australian’, but is BHP really just the ‘Lucky Company’; the corporate version of Donald Horne’s 1964 book describing Australia as ‘a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck’?
BHP has been rescued from its China-prompted iron ore doldrums by soaring prices for fossil fuels due to the Ukraine war’s energy crisis, with the hated coal providing the largest slice of BHP’s 2021-22 record profit. This is despite its woke board’s faithful adherence, in both word and deed, to the anti-CO2 dogma that has exacerbated this Western-world crisis (while authoritarian states like Russia and China wallow in mounting emissions) by the premature shut-down of power stations, the blocking of investment in base-load energy and the construction of bureaucratic and legal obstacles to fossil fuel developments.
BHP’s enthusiastic embrace of the gospel according to Saint Greta has led it, among many other errors, to what the Australian Financial Review last week classified as ‘the worst deal of the year’ where, in order to demonstrate its climate purity, it sold its interest in a coal mine in Columbia for what the AFR describes as ‘virtually nothing’ to Glencore – which this year expects to collect earnings from it of about $US4 billion. As London’s Investors’ Chronicle, with traditional under-statement, noted: ‘Recent deals mean that BHP has not fully enjoyed the bull market for coal’, observing that it also got rid of its 80 per cent stake in BMC, the joint Queensland venture with Mitsui, whose full-year earnings approached $US2 billion. At this rate, it will not take long for the Indonesian-controlled purchaser, Stanmore Resources to pay off, out of earnings, the modest $1.8 billion it cost.
In the same climate cause, BHP tried desperately for years to get rid of its NSW energy coal mines, but, in the absence of adequate bids, was forced to keep them open. The result has been a welcome boost to BHP group earnings in the 2021-22 financial year of a record $2 billion as the average prices received of $US217 a tonne provided a huge profit over costs of only $US71. Principles are one thing; money in the bank is another. So not only will BHP retain these energy coal assets until their licences expire in 2026, relevant approvals are being sought to extend their life to 2030.
On top of all this fiscal self-harm (and unsuccessful attempts at it) BHP also took the major anti-fossil-fuel step of ridding itself of its oil and gas assets in a $41 billion deal with Woodside that saw their ownership effectively transferred from BHP to entitled BHP shareholders via the gift of Woodside shares. In keeping with BHP’s past form, its former assets participated in a record profit as Woodside’s doubling of production from the acquisition of BHP’s assets and a doubling of LNG prices enabled revenue for 2022’s September quarter to soar by 272 per cent to $9.3 billion.
But these ‘lost’ revenues do not involve any destruction of shareholders’ funds as did BHP’s last major deal, the onshore US oil and gas shale venture into which it ploughed upwards of $50 billion since acquisition in 2011 before selling out for $15 billion four years ago. BHP’s previous big US investment, in copper, was also a financial disaster. That is why ‘caution’ is the key word when BHP, now flush with funds, is in acquisition mode. It has just made a rejected $8.4 billion bid for OZ Minerals in its search to expand its interests in the commodities set to benefit from a low-carbon future, like copper and lithium.
Unsurprisingly, and despite BHP’s disposal of much of its fossil-fuel assets, there are concerns about BHP’s status in ESG portfolios as long as coal remains its major single earner. And despite BHP’s continual obsequious observance of climate purity, the true believers are unimpressed by BHP’s bountiful returns from coal, with the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility critical not only of BHP’s current coal profits but also its progressing of a number of new coal mines and expansions in its Queensland joint venture with Mitsubishi, ‘including pursuit of a staggering 90-year licence for the Blackwater South mine’.
Whether these will proceed is far from certain. Even though CEO Mike Henry told investment analysts last month that while he sees ‘lots of opportunity yet to be unlocked in the coal business,… BHP will not be deploying any major capital into the Queensland coal business in the face of the recent royalty changes [by the Queensland government] and the way they were gone about….We are building a range of options…Queensland is not going to be at the front of the queue’.
The ACCR also questions BHP’s ‘good faith with regard to the urgent need to decarbonise the steel sector’, following BHP’s stated view that, despite the push for hydrogen processing, ‘blast furnace iron making, which depends on coke made from metallurgical coal, is unlikely to be displaced at scale by emergent technologies this half century’.
Nevertheless, the metallurgical-grade coal export industry faces a difficult and uncertain period ahead, with international economic and political problems. In addition, BHP claims ‘The regulatory environment has become less conducive to long-life capital investment in Queensland coal’ (the world’s premier source) even though ‘the advantages of highest quality coking coals with respect to greenhouse gas emissions will be increasingly apparent as carbon pricing becomes more pervasive’.
So what sort of company will the Big Australian become if it does replace its financially rewarding coal with any of its range of options? Potash in Canada is its current big-ticket punt. Bloomberg speculated earlier this year that, after sitting dormant for more than a decade (presumably waiting for burnt fingers to heal) BHP is positioning itself for a return to large-scale mergers and acquisitions.
But rather than mining the market in a search for financial jewels, how about looking at upgrading its bulk commodities into products – and transforming the Lucky Company into the Clever one. With ESG now more important than profit to BHP, why not?
Just when you thought energy plans couldn’t get any worse ... Dan Andrews horns in
Judith Sloan
Last week I wrote about the tipping point that the National Electricity Market is facing. Beset by the early withdrawal of coal-fired plants, which still supply between 60 and 70 per cent of all the required electrons, there is a very real danger that the system will collapse without the required firming/dispatchable capacity. The best-case scenario is much higher prices and intermittent blackouts and brownouts, hardship for many consumers and the closure of energy-intensive businesses.
But I clearly spoke too soon because the announcements of Victorian Premier, Dan Andrews, in full election campaigning mode, made the dangers both more imminent and more serious. In his infinite wisdom – pause here for predictable chuckle – he has decided that he wants to recreate the state-owned State Electricity Commission which was broken up and sold off over 30 years ago, for seriously big bucks.
Now at the time, the SECV was a typical bloated bureaucracy whose operations included electricity generation, transmission and distribution, and retailing. Subject to frequent industrial action by the highly unionised workforce, it’s not clear that its demise was lamented by anyone with an interest in the delivery of efficient and affordable electricity in Victoria. Electricity prices fell significantly after the sale.
Towards the end of its existence, the SECV engaged in, or was forced to engage in, some dodgy dealings with the Cain/Kirner Labor government, including the raising of debt finance that was really just intended to cover the government’s daily expense needs. Those were the days.
But now Dan the Man has other ideas. He wants to resurrect the SECV, with the state government as majority owner and the other 49 per cent held by private interests. The intention is for the Victorian government to hand over $1 billion initially to the new organisation – which is peanuts, by the way, in this context. Mind you, given the heavy indebtedness of the Victorian government at the moment (over $160 billion), even another billion is a stretch.
As for the private partners, Dan has specified industry super funds as his preferred team mates. Evidently they have a social conscience and he thinks they will be interested in investing in renewable energy as well as delivering lower prices for Victorian consumers. Former federal treasurer, Wayne Swan – remember him, probably best to forget – who is now the ‘independent’ chair of one of the largest industry super funds, Cbus, was quick out of the blocks to endorse the idea.
But here’s the thing: superannuation funds are legally bound by a sole purpose test to maximise the retirement incomes of their members. There is nothing about having a social conscience, whatever that means. The very idea that a national industry super fund like Cbus would be interested in delivering lower electricity prices to Victorian consumers at the expense of investment returns should be quickly dismissed by all fund trustees.
This is yet another example of superannuation being used as a plaything by Labor governments. Albo and his team were initially very keen on the idea of industry super funds investing in social housing until it was pointed out to them that social housing involves below-market rents and is bound to make very low returns. It is interesting to note in this context that Homes Victoria, which manages Victoria’s social – once called public – housing stock, is completely broke and, by rights, should be declared insolvent.
Now apart from the thought-bubble of resurrecting the SECV, Dan thinks he’s on to a popular electoral pitch by upping the emissions-reduction targets of his state. He wants to legislate a cut of between 75 and 80 per cent by 2035 (from 2005) involving 95 per cent of electricity being generated in Victoria from renewable energy. And for good measure, the net-zero target will be brought forward to 2045.
You might think this is totally insane, but we must assume that the focus groups are telling his massive media department that this sort of ‘aggressive action against climate change’ still resonates with voters, particularly those in seats that might otherwise fall to the Greens or Teals. And while there have been some rises in electricity prices, they are small beer compared with what is to come.
Needless to say, all of Victoria’s coal-fired power plants will be closed by 2035, including the relatively new Long Yang A and Loy Yang B plants. In point of fact, these brown-coal-fired plants could prove extremely useful economically because brown coal is not a traded commodity and their principal input price is not affected by international events.
An economically rational option would be to keep them going and to buy offsets to accommodate them within an emissions-reduction framework. But ‘economically rational’ and ‘the Andrews’ government’, including the bungling energy minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, cannot be put into the one sentence.
Indeed, one of the most blatantly hypocritical decisions taken by any government has been the secret financial deal that the Victorian government has entered into with Energy Australia to pay the company to keep the brown-coal-fired Yallourn plant going until at least 2028. It is impossible to find out any details of the contract and the sum of monies involved. The suspicion is that the costs are being borne by taxpayers rather than electricity consumers.
When it came to the option of creating a capacity market for the broader NEM – the Yallourn deal is just a special capacity mechanism, after all – Victoria was loudest in its opposition, vetoing the use of any fossil fuels. At this stage, there is no prospect of a broader capacity market being introduced.
The hugely indebted Victorian government is also throwing money at the Marinus interconnector with Tasmania, notwithstanding the abundance of private investment money for regulated assets. It is also keen to rush the VNI-West Kerang link to New South Wales. Without being able to access electricity in greater licks from other states, even Andrews knows that Victoria is stuffed if his plans go ahead.
But just like you can’t hurry love, it’s impossible to hurry these large transmission projects, in part because of local objections and the need to obtain easements, but also because of shortages of materials and workers. Of course, Dan will be gone by the time the shit really hits the fan, probably chairing some industry super fund and meeting up with his wealthy mates.
The real tragedy however is the complete inability of the Victorian opposition to land a glove on him in the meantime.
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The inconvenient truth about electric cars
Prices are going UP, not down -- largely because battery prices are going up too
Rising battery costs are pushing up the price of electric vehicles, dampening hopes that they could close the gap to petrol vehicles by the turn of the decade.
Experts had tipped that EVs would cost the same as their petrol equivalents by 2030 as battery production scales up and economies of scale kick in.
But rising raw material prices are driving up the cost of batteries, and most EV makers have hiked up prices in the past year.
This week, Hyundai’s luxury offshoot Genesis, launched its GV70 large electric SUV at a higher price than originally predicted. In May, the brand said the EV would be priced between $105,000 and $115,000 plus on-road costs, but that has blown out to $127,800, or about $138,500 drive-away.
The brand is not alone in hiking prices.
Tesla increased the price of its Model Y SUV by $3000 to $72,300 (before on-road costs) within days of launching it in June, while rivals the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6 have also had multiple price rises in the past few months.
The Kia EV6, which launched at the beginning of this year, has risen from $67,990 (before on-road costs) to $72,590 in October for the cheapest model.
Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 Techniq AWD variant cost $75,900 (before on-road costs) early this year before jumping $1600 in August and increasing a further $2000 in October. The October price rise coincided with an increase in the size of battery, driving range and motor power.
An industry executive said further price rises were likely because the increase in raw materials costs hadn’t yet flowed through.
Despite the price rises, Aussies are lining up to get their hands on the machines and waiting times extend well into next year.
Australia isn’t the only market afflicted with high EV prices. A recent report by automotive research experts, JATO, showed EV prices had risen sharply in Europe and the US in recent years.
The average price of an EV in the first half of this year was €55,821 in Europe ($A87,412) and €63,864 ($A100,000) in the US – up from €48,942 ($A76,403) and €53,038 ($82,797) in 2015.
The average retail price for an electric car in Europe is 27 per cent more than a petrol vehicle, while in the US it is 43 per cent more.
Car makers say the cost of raw materials is the cause.
Ford has raised the price of its F-Series electric pick-up twice since August. The cheapest model is now $US12,000 ($18,810) more expensive, while the Mustang EV costs up to $US8000 ($12,510) more. Ford blamed “ongoing supply-chain constraints, rising material costs and other market factors” for the price hikes.
The world’s largest electric vehicle battery maker, China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., reported a big surge in the price of its batteries.
A report in financial outlet Barron’s put the price per kWh of batteries at about $160, up from $150 earlier this year and $120 in 2021.
One of the major causes is the price of lithium, which is up 200 per cent in the past 12 months. The cost of the basket of materials that go into a battery is up about 62 per cent for the year.
Renault Group chief executive Luca de Meo told reporters at the Paris motor show last week that he didn’t believe electric and petrol cars would achieve price parity anytime soon.
He told Automotive News the industry had expected the price of batteries to drop to $100 a kWh three years ago.
He said raw materials made up 80 per cent of the battery cost, making it hard for carmakers to reduce costs.
He told Automotive News the company could come up with better battery chemistry and better power electronics, “but these gains would be erased when the price of cobalt doubles in just six months.”
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27 October, 2022
Another white "Aborigine" stirring up controversy
Blue eyes and all. This is just attention-seeking. Her aboriginality is essentially nil so she is not campaigning for anything that affects her personally.
The issue she is jumping onto is not totally unreasonable. The whole statue removal lark has the justification that we should separate ourselves from the values espoused by the person portrayed. And perhaps we should in the unlikely event that we are aware of it. But it is also removing us from our own history. History is not changed so lightly. We do well to remember it.
Most people's lives have good and bad in them. And the statues concerned could well be seen as a message about how unfortunate were the values of our comunal past. To add a plaque to statues telling of both the worthy deeds of the person plus the deplored ideas of their time would be a balanced approach to any issue involved. It would certainly be more constructive and potentially useful as education
An indigenous marriage celebrant wants a 'racist' statue of Australia's first prime minister removed from a regional town's waterfront because it is 'offensive'.
Arlene Mehan is behind a push to have Sir Edmund Barton's statue uninstalled from Port Macquarie's waterfront Town Green Park.
Although Ms Mehan has pushed to have it taken down for several years, not everyone agrees and the statue's exit isn't assured.
It was only put up in 2001 as the focus of a local project about Barton.
His statue is the latest monument to a significant historical figure to be earmarked for removal in recent years because of past 'racist' actions.
Barton, prime minister from 1901 to 1903, is widely accepted to have been a key architect of the White Australia policy.
He also said publicly that he believed white people were superior and there was no such thing as 'racial equality'. '[Other] races are, in comparison with white races – I think no-one wants convincing of this fact – unequal and inferior,' Barton once famously said.
Ms Mehan claims the presence of the monument in the park is confronting for local indigenous people. 'It is offensive to glorify this man who represents racist ideologies on this sacred site. 'Edmund Barton was explicitly racist,' she said.
Town Green was a burial ground for the local Birpai Indigenous people before colonisation.
Other options aside from removal have been proposed to the local Port Macquarie-Hastings council, including placing an educational signage explaining more about Barton's views.
If the statue is removed it could be placed outside the Port Macquarie Local Court as Barton became a High Court judge after his term as prime minister.
Ms Mehan gathered 4,383 signatures in a petition to have Barton's statue removed in 2020 and presented it to the Port Macquarie-Hastings council.
She also campaigned against a statue of the fifth governor of NSW, Lachlan Macquarie, whom the town is named after.
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Long-term Greenie journalist Graham Readfearn is still looking at the world through one-eye
He does his best below to make a case against the use of coal but mainly does so by quoting fellow Greenies. The blithe mention of "storage" as an alternative to burning coal is amusing. What storage? Snowy 2 is not yet up and may nevrer be, Qeeensland's pumped storage is pie in the sky and would be so expensive that it will remain there, and the available battery storage is tiny and short-lived relative to demand.
And there is some very stretched reasoning below. Look at the statement "I’m not aware of any time where we have had a blackout because renewable energy hasn’t supplied sufficient electricity.”
It's a true statement. But why? Because every time we were on the brink of a blackout because of failing wind and solar, coal and gas generators have stepped into makeup the shortfall. Lose those generators and the blackouts will be extensive and long
In Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, columnist Erin Molan turned the caps lock on to declare “WE NEED COAL”. It’s tempting to respond with “NO WE DON’T” and leave it at that. But there are certain expectations from a fact-checking column.
Molan argued clean and renewable alternatives to fossil fuels with the “infrastructure in place” to support them did not currently exist. Let’s test that.
Alison Reeve, an energy and climate expert at the Grattan Institute, said in the electricity market “coal has been doing two things”. “Providing electrons and system stability. The renewables can substitute the electrons and we can use other things – like storage and demand management – to find system stability. “So you only need coal to the extent that you don’t have those other things lined up yet.”
She said while there were legitimate concerns about the pace that storage and other measures were being added, “that’s not a case for keeping coal”.
The Australian Energy Market Operator’s blueprint for the expected future of the electricity market – a plan released after consulting more than 15,000 analysts and stakeholders – also disagrees with Molan. That plan includes several scenarios for the future, but the one Aemo says experts think is most likely sees 60% of coal generating capacity gone by 2030. Why?
“Competition, climate change and operational pressures will intensify [for coal] with the ever-increasing penetration of firmed renewable generation,” the plan says.
Oh yes, climate change. Burning coal is the biggest single contributor to the climate emergency.
Since Aemo’s blueprint was released in late June, both the Queensland and Victoria state governments have announced major energy plans mapping the exit route for coal that are broadly in line with Aemo’s plans.
Neither state sees a future in burning coal, with the polluting fuel practically gone in both states by 2035.
Coalmining is also responsible for about one fifth of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions from methane, according to official figures. The actual number, according to data from the International Energy Agency, could be double that.
As the Albanese government this week signed a global pledge to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030, mining more coal will make those targets – nonbinding, but geopolitically significant – harder to reach.
Molan claimed in her column there was “ample evidence in recent years of times and occasions when renewables just haven’t been able to supply our energy needs”, but didn’t actually offer any evidence.
This is a strange interpretation of how the electricity market works. Reeve was puzzled. “It’s a mixed system and you will always have the generation you need to meet the demand. “The percentage provided by renewables fluctuates, but I’m not aware of any time where we have had a blackout because renewable energy hasn’t supplied sufficient electricity.”
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UN’s tortured thinking on human rights defies credibility
A question for the many holiday-makers who have driven past Queanbeyan courthouse on their way to the NSW South Coast: have you ever had cause to believe unspeakable crimes against humanity were being committed inside? Representatives of the United Nations, specifically those on the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT), seem to think so.
Last week these dedicated bureaucrats and their entourage, having made the arduous journey from overseas, turned up there unannounced insisting on their “right” to conduct a snap inspection of the court cells, much to the bemusement of NSW Corrective Service officials. Regrettably, they were not welcomed in a manner befitting a holder of high office. Suffice to say the four subcommittee members – who hail from the human rights utopias of Maldives, Poland, Croatia, and Georgia – are now familiar with the expression “Go to buggery”.
Why they came here in the first place is a mystery. Admittedly, the courthouse in question is a drab looking building, but we are not talking your Lubyanka-like edifice. Its officials are not known for hanging prisoners by their thumbs for days on end. And the streets of Queanbeyan are not strewn with wailing women and children holding up photos of missing husbands and fathers.
UN inspectors fared no better in Sydney last Sunday when they demanded entry to the Mary Wade Correctional Centre in Lidcombe and the Silverwater Correctional Complex. As the relevant department later explained, all such visits required prior written authorisation. And heaven forbid, they make no exceptions for UN officials.
This additional impertinence proved too much to bear. “Despite its continued efforts to engage the authorities for the resolution of the problems, the SPT continued to be obstructed in the exercise of its mandate,” the UN said in a statement this week. “[Its] members felt that their 12-day visit, which began on 16 October … had been compromised to such an extent that they had no other option but to suspend it.” Prior to departing the country, subcommittee officials threatened “grave” consequences for the NSW government.
I agree, starting with the prison officers who thwarted the inspections. A bonus week’s paid holiday for each of them, a commendation on their personnel files, a couple of slabs perhaps?
Predictably some, including Human Rights Commissioner Lorraine Finlay, are upset the subcommittee has left in a huff. “What compliance with OPCAT [Optional Protocol for the Convention Against Torture and Inhuman Treatment] actually represents for NSW and other Australian governments is an opportunity for all of us to feel more secure about how we protect the human rights of detainees by agreeing to greater oversight and accountability in our detention regimes,” she said.
But I doubt many Australians would feel distressed or less secure at the prospect of the UN not conferring tickety-boo status on our detention centres. This is the same organisation which boasts among the members of its Human Rights Council the nations of China, Cuba, Venezuela, Qatar, and Pakistan. It has no credibility.
And you must wonder why Australia is the subcommittee’s priority. Its website lists the countries it has visited since OPCAT’s inception in 2002. They include Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and Italy. All good and well but there are some notable absences. If the subcommittee is hellbent on uncovering examples of torture, then surely it would have assessed the detention centres of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan.
We know the answer. Given a choice, these human rights poohbahs opt for junkets to Western countries as opposed to travelling to a third world dung heap. I am seriously considering sending this mob my resume. As for my choice of assignment, I have in mind detention centres in the South of France, particularly the Bordeaux region. Did I mention I have similar concerns about those in the Azores?
It is farcical. Take for example these excerpts from their assessments. New Zealand: “The Subcommittee noted with concern the low nutritional value of the meals provided in the prisons it visited. Breakfast and lunch were monotonous, the latter invariably … comprising three thin white bread sandwiches and a piece of fruit.” United Kingdom: “The Subcommittee is concerned at the overrepresentation of the ethnic minorities in the criminal justice system.”
There was almost a tone of disappointment when it noted following a visit to Switzerland in 2019 that none of the detainees spoken to had alleged mistreatment by police. Nonetheless it made mention of their “harsh conditions during transport, including handcuffs that were too tight”. Yes, its members are paid lucrative wages to produce these trivialities. And you thought the travelling circus was a thing of the past.
Do not expect the Albanese government to stand up to these panjandrums. Already Attorney-General Mark Drefyus has hit out at the NSW government for its treatment of the subcommittee. Likewise, Finlay has called for the federal and state governments to invite the delegation to return.
If they really are serious about finding instances of torture in this country, let’s give them a few suggestions. To begin with, no more interminable so-called Welcome to Country ceremonies. Never again should we have to hear Prime Minister Anthony Albanese tells us he is the son of a single mother who grew up in a housing commission dwelling. And few things are as mind-numbing as waiting for someone from Qantas to answer the phone.
But you know what is the ultimate torture? Knowing that we handed over US$60m to the UN this year alone.
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Chilling reality of Labor's green dream: Bills soar by 56% as $20 BILLION is spent on a 'renewables friendly' electricity grid and $46M for a UN energy conference - while Albo hands millions to extremists who dream of driving Australia into energy poverty
Despite constant claims renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels the billions being poured into greening Australia's power and hosting UN climate talkfests appears to be only driving up the price of electricity.
Labor went into the May election with a promise of slashing electricity bills by $275 a year, a pledge that was meant to be delivered by its commitment to renewables.
However, Tuesday's Budget instead predicted a staggering 56 per cent hike in prices in the next year on top of the already ballooning bills.
But at the same time the Albanese government announced they will funnel $10 million into climate activist groups the Environmental Defenders Office and Environmental Justice Australia.
When asked about this in parliament on Wednesday Prime Minister Anthony Albanese repeated the mantra of his government. 'The cheapest form of new energy in this country is renewables,' he said.
On budget night Treasurer Jim Chalmers told the ABC that despite him not being able to predict when prices would come down the $25 billion being spent on various climate change measures would help. 'Renewable energy isn't just cleaner energy, it's cheaper energy as well,' Chalmers said.
North Queensland Nationals Senator Matt Canavan, who is a strong proponent of mining and fossil fuel, strongly disagreed with both the Prime Minister and Treasurer. 'Power prices are going up because we are investing too much in renewable energy that is not on all the time,' Senator Canavan told Daily Mail Australia on Wednesday. 'Australia has been building more solar and wind per person than any country in the world.'
A particular Budget item that Senator Canavan latched onto was the almost $50 million the Albanese government has committed to 'restoring Australia's reputation'.
The centerpiece of this measure will be hosting UN-overseen conference in partnership with Pacific island nations to build clean energy partnerships and agreements .
'Labor can't help you with your power bills but they are going to spend $46 million of your money to host a UN climate conference,' Senator Canavan tweeted on Tuesday night.
He expanded on this in a response to Daily Mail Australia.
'Instead of spending money on helping rich people attend a climate talkfest, the Australian Government should be using our coal, gas and uranium to make more power and bring down living costs for struggling Australian families,' he said.
'The Government is wasting our money by funding more jobs for climate bureaucrats.'
The budget contains a mind-boggling multitude of green projects, subsidies and new government agencies to bring about the Albanese government's commitment of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
There is even $8.1 million to improve the energy efficiency of seaweed farmers.
However, by far the biggest sum, $20 billion, will be for rewiring the nation's grid to make it more renewable energy friendly.
On top of this $275 million will be spent on getting more electric cars on the road while $224 million will toward the community batteries that will store power from household solar panels.
Re-establishing 'international climate leadership' will cost $296 million, of which $200 million will go to help Indonesia with green projects.
A new agency, the national health sustainability and climate unit, will inform Australia's 'health response' to climate change.
The green bureaucracy will also be beefed up by the injection of a further $194 million, with $102 million to restore the Climate Change Authority and $64 million to rebuild Treasury's climate modelling capability.
Senator Canavan delivered a scathing assessment of what the new public servants would achieve.
'Power prices won't be lowered from a desk in Canberra, they can only be lowered by building more generators across our nation,' he said.
The Environmental Defenders Office have campaigned to block laws aimed at stopping disruptive climate protests, such as the protests that halted coal loading at Sydney's Port Botany earlier this year.
Environmental Justice Australia lobbies against new coal and gas projects and organised a group of children and teens to claim Australia's lack of action on climate change violated their human rights to the United Nations.
To support his claim that renewables are cheaper Mr Albanese cited agreement from the Business Council of Australia, the Australian industry group, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry as well as the National Farmers' Federation.
However, this has not been backed up by players in the electricity market. Major energy retailers told a conference in October that replacing coal and gas with renewable energy is the major reason power prices are sky-rocketing.
'Next year, using the current market prices, tariffs are going up a minimum 35 per cent,' Alinta chief executive Jeff Dimery said at the Sydney event. 'It's horrendous, it's unpalatable. We don't want energy consumers getting their power bills and setting fire to them.'
In September reports by sector watchdogs the Energy Security Board and the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) both pointed at switching to renewables as a major reason power price surges.
Dr Chalmers pointed to 'inflationary pressures' for the power price increase but electricity bills have been outstripping inflation by as much as 8 per cent.
The war in Ukraine is often pointed to as major contributor to worldwide inflation but Australia is energy sufficient in coal and gas and an exporter of those things, although international prices can influence the domestic price.
Coal prices are surging but this reflects a turning away from renewables in many countries.
With the Ukraine war threatening its gas supplies Germany has began bringing around 20 of its coal power plants back online.
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26 October, 2022
Budget 2022: Treasurer Jim Chalmers warns of deep spending cuts, more taxes
Amid all the talk, the grim reality is obvious. The government continues to spend up big and there will be no halt to to the rise in cost of living. Given the spending committments that the government treated as baked-in, no other budget was possible.
The government will continue to print money to cover its excess spending so more inflation is coming. Australians are in for a grim trot. Only people who get their savings out of money (e.g. buy company shares) are going to have any hope of protecting them. Only a big cut in government spending could have stopped the rise in cost of living -- but that was never on the cards
The Treasurer laid the ground for deeper cuts in the future but provided no additional cost of living support for struggling households other than existing policies offering cheaper childcare and medicines that won’t begin until next year.
Delivering Labor’s first budget since 2013, Dr Chalmers told The Australian it was yet to be determined how the government would tackle the structural deficit but signalled there would be a combination of new taxes and spending cuts.
“We’ve always seen this as the first of three or four budgets this term,” Dr Chalmers said.
“We set that up deliberately. We’re putting the foundations down. There’s an element of conditioning people to understand that we’ve had budgets for a really long time now where there hasn’t been a savings effort.
“There hasn’t been an effort to return commodity-fuelled revenue upgrades. We’ve made a good start because we’ve done something different in those revenue upgrades; we’ve done something different on savings. That’s a good start.”
The budget papers paint a pessimistic debt and deficit picture over the decade, with $11bn in higher deficits expected in 2024-25 and 2025-26. As a proportion of GDP, the deficit is worse in 2032-33 than the current financial year. Treasury also warns the nation risks falling into recession should key budget assumptions prove too optimistic, with growth slumping to just 0.75 per cent next financial year if inflation peaks one percentage point higher in December or the global downturn is more severe.
Treasury warned of a double whammy effect, noting the downside scenarios for both growth and unemployment from higher inflation at home “would be greater if these risks occurred simultaneously with global risks”.
Treasury expects sharp spikes from 2026-27 in the cost of the ballooning NDIS and servicing debt, which will peak in mid-2026 at $1.16 trillion or 43.1 per cent of GDP.
In a shock for households and businesses, retail electricity prices will increase by an average of 20 per cent nationally in late 2022 and a further 30 per cent in 2023-24. Domestic wholesale gas prices will remain more than double their average prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with retail gas prices increasing by up to 20 per cent in both 2022-23 and 2023-24.
The budget said electricity and gas prices were expected to directly contribute 0.75 per cent and one percentage point to inflation in 2022–23 and 2023–24 respectively.
Dr Chalmers said the government would take action in the market to keep prices lower.
“Any responsible government facing these sort of price hikes needs to consider a broader suite of regulatory intervention than they might have considered in times gone by,” he said.
Peter Dutton said millions of Australians would pay the price for a “big-taxing, big-spending” budget. The Business Council of Australia, Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Australian Industry Group said more must be done to drive economic growth and tackle structural spending pressures.
Rental costs will jump “considerably” in the next two years and fuel inflation amid stronger population growth and limited housing stock. A new housing accord between governments, investors and industry announced by Dr Chalmers on Tuesday, backed with an initial $350m pledge, has an ambition of building “one million new, well-located homes over five years from 2024”.
Dr Chalmers said the accord must be driven by the market, despite concerns that cashed-up superannuation funds will struggle to deliver investment returns for members.
Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, whose pre-budget audit slashed $22bn from Coalition-era programs which were redirected to fund Labor policies, told The Australian the trajectory of budget pressures were “keeping her up”.
Senator Gallagher’s audit sets up a fight with Nationals and regional Liberal MPs after the budget canned dozens of Coalition projects and grants programs and redirected a chunk of $6.5bn in infrastructure savings to climate change projects.
In his first budget speech, Dr Chalmers told parliament that 92 per cent of the $132.5bn in upgraded tax receipts over the next four years had been banked.
But the budget sugar hit, which cut the 2022-23 deficit by $41bn to $36.9bn, is expected to unravel ahead of the 2025 federal election as unemployment and inflation spike and wages and economic growth stagnate.
Compared with the pre-election fiscal outlook, Labor’s policy decisions have added $9.7bn to the budget bottom line. Treasury projects tax-to-GDP levels of 24.1 per cent by 2032-33, which ends the Coalition-era policy of maintaining taxes within a 23.9 per cent tax-to-GDP cap.
Dr Chalmers painted a grim outlook for Australians who “know there are hard days to come and hard decisions to accompany them”, as Russia’s war in Ukraine, China’s slowdown, higher interest rates and inflation bite. He released a “five-point plan for cost-of-living relief” amid growing political pressure on Labor to deliver on their promises to slash $275 from electricity bills by 2025 and lift wages.
The $5.4bn changes to childcare subsidies start from July next year, cheaper medicines from January and the full paid parental leave scheme from 2026. Labor’s five-point plan also includes “more affordable housing and getting wages moving again”.
In his speech, Dr Chalmers lamented that real wages were lower now than 10 years ago.
“Wages are growing faster now than they were before the election, but that welcome news is tempered by rising electricity prices and grocery bills eating into pay packets,” he said.
“When that inflation moderates, real wages are expected to start growing again in 2024.
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Confidence through censorship: The (medical) Ministry of Truth
On Wednesday, October 12, the Queensland Labor government – with support from the LNP opposition – passed a dystopian and dangerous bill.
The Health Practitioner Regulation National Law and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 refocuses the guiding principles of medicine to prioritise public confidence over public health and safety. It allows bureaucrats to name and shame doctors, a move which the AMA described as ‘incoherent zealotry’.
This bill, if passed by other jurisdictions in Australia, will essentially legislate national medical censorship as a means to ensure public confidence in government health services.
Adherence to the Good Medical Practice code of conduct means that advocating for patients (which is our primary concern) is being overridden by external demands to comply with public health messaging. Our code of conduct is predicated on The Hippocratic Oath, the Declaration of Geneva, and the International Code of Ethics which outlines our dedication to serving humanity: To first do no harm, making our patients our primary consideration.
Political-based medicine has now replaced evidence-based medicine.
History has proven that unquestioning compliance to government directives is dangerous. In 1947, the World Medical Association agreements were formed in the aftermath of the second world war due to the gross systematic human rights abuses which took place under enforced national laws. Tragically, the political currents in Australia appear to be heading towards bureaucratic medical compliance enforced through regulatory threats, soon to be legislative threats.
In 2015, the federal government passed The Australian Border Force Act 2015 which made doctors who advocated for their refugee patients liable to face up to two years imprisonment. Doctors for Refugees challenged this law in the High Court a year later. A major basis for their argument, according to their submission to the Medical Board’s 2018 Code of Conduct review, was that the Code doctors had sworn to uphold and advocate for the rights of their patients could not be overridden by the vagaries of domestic laws.
The government eventually backed down on this law and had that problematic section repealed.
Interestingly, their submission was in response to the Medical Board attempting to insert into the medical code the concerning phrase ‘doctors must comply with relevant laws’. The response to the word comply was fierce as the idea that the medical code of conduct could enforce compliance to political decree was antithetical to what doctors had sworn to uphold.
With the arrival of Covid came the bureaucratic decree through the March 9, 2021 joint statement by AHPRA and the National Boards that made undermining public confidence in the government’s Covid public health messaging equivalent to professional misconduct. Questioning ‘the message’ is now subject to investigation and disciplinary action, including immediate suspension of registration.
Letters received by practitioners who have questioned the government response to Covid are chilling in their implication. After being suspended by National Boards under the immediate action clauses for allegedly being a threat to public health and safety, they are accused of the crime of non-compliance. They are deemed a threat because they failed to comply with public health orders, undermined the Board’s position on the promotion of Covid vaccination, and undermined public confidence because their medical expert opinion contravened government health authorities.
In summary, health professionals are not permitted to question the ‘secret health advice’ without losing their registration to practise.
Consider that in response to Covid, our health bureaucracy overturned the medical industry’s well-researched 2019 pandemic preparedness plans – doing almost the total opposite of what was recommended by health professionals. Interestingly, Dr Rochelle Walensky, Director of the CDC, told employees recently: ‘To be frank, we are responsible for some pretty dramatic, pretty public mistakes from testing, to data, to communications.’
In December 2020, the FDA outlined, ‘At this time, data is not available to make a determination about how long the vaccine will provide protection, nor is there evidence that the vaccine prevents transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from person to person.’ Our health bureaucrats, regulatory agencies, and politicians mandated provisionally approved vaccines by telling the population repeatedly that they stopped transmission and people were selfish granny killers if they didn’t get jabbed.
We, as health professionals, are not allowed to question government statements on transmission without losing our registration to practise.
On September 2021, a delegate of the Secretary of the Department of Health rescheduled ivermectin, in effect banning it for use as an off-label treatment option for Covid stating ‘subsection 52E(1) of the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989, in particular paragraph (f), which empowers the Secretary to act on any other matters that the Secretary considers necessary to protect public health’.
Ivermectin is one of the World Health Organisation’s list of essential medicines. It was fully approved by the TGA and found to be very safe according to their own 2013 Australian Public Assessment Report for Ivermectin. Two of the reasons the TGA gave for denying Australians access to a drug that showed great promise in the treatment and prevention of Covid-19 was that it was all of a sudden unsafe and its availability might dissuade people from getting vaccinated. Behaviour modification was undertaken, with the TGA appearing to act in partnership with other government nudge units to promote vaccination.
We as health professionals are not permitted to advocate for ivermectin without losing our registration to practice.
In July 2021, as Australians were being mandated through coercive techniques to get vaccinated with poorly tested provisionally approved gene-based vaccines that our Health bureaucrats and politicians repeatedly told us had been proven safe and effective, the TGA was amending the Therapeutic Goods Regulation Act to further reduce the safety and efficacy requirements for any medicine that is for the treatment or prevention of Covid. Not only do manufacturers have six years to provide the government with safety and efficacy data on these provisionally approved jabs, they also no longer have to demonstrate they could provide a greater benefit than other available medicines or that the medicine is likely to provide a major therapeutic advance.
We, as health professionals, are not allowed to question the safety and efficacy without losing our registration to practise.
Recently, the TGA has granted provisional approval to Moderna for the active immunisation and prevention of Covid in high-risk babies and young children. The report concluded the vaccinations had low levels of protective efficacy against infection, they didn’t know how long any efficacy lasted, and while the (Advisory Committee on Vaccines) recommended the provisional approval to children at high risk they noted high-risk children were excluded from the study. Across the world, pandemic policy and guidelines vary. Denmark is no longer recommending vaccination for people under 50, Norway no one under 65, but our regulatory body is expanding approvals to 6-month to 4-year-olds.
We, as health professionals, are not allowed to question this approval without losing our registration to practise.
Whenever governments want to enact laws to suppress free expression, censor and punish dissenters through threats to careers and livelihood, to control public perception as a means of creating confidence through enforced public ignorance, it is time to ask some serious questions.
If this bill passes nationally and the government becomes the single authority on all health advice, then unquestioning compliance becomes the new accepted standard of good medical practice. That is the end of medicine and the death of science. George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth has arrived. Public confidence in politicians and their bureaucrats should never come at the expense of people’s right to full, free, and unhindered access to scientific evidence and emerging data.
The Australian Medical Professionals Society is dedicated to fighting for medical free speech for the safety of those we swore to protect, our patients. Prioritising public confidence in government through censorship has led to what Professor Bhattacharya has said is the single biggest public health mistake in human history. With Dr Aseem Malhotra, a British Cardiologist, recently describing the mandates as ‘perhaps the greatest miscarriage of medical science we will witness in our lifetime’. We must stop medical censorship and allow doctors to be doctors. This bill is dangerous to the future of medicine and the health of our nation.
Energy cost a big issue
Calls for a national energy summit to address soaring energy costs are increasing after the budget predicted consumer prices would soar by 56 per cent.
Joel Gibson from the consumer network OneBigSwitch said the energy price crisis should now be the government’s top priority if Australia was to avoid similar scenes to the UK, where 40 retailers had gone bust and price caps had doubled.
“The budget was an opportunity to address the biggest cost of living crisis we face right now - energy bills - but the government has elected to kick the can down the road,” Mr Gibson said.
“We now need a national summit to deal with this issue. Business as usual won’t cut it. If we don’t ring the bell now, we’ll have millions of Aussies who can’t afford to turn the lights on.”
While the NGO sector generally welcomed Budget measures in areas such as child care, aged care and housing, there were strong concerns about the day-to-day cost of living increases. Besides the predictions of soaring energy prices, the Budget also pointed to likely increases in the cost of food and vegetables because of October floods in eastern Australia.
Mission Australia’s CEO Sharon Callister said: “As cost of living and housing pressures go through the roof, people who rely on income support are unable to pay for many of the essentials of life.”
Opposition Treasury spokesperson Angus Taylor slammed the government over rising cost of living pressures.
“The Budget confirms that electricity and gas prices are expected to rise sharply over the next two years. Treasury has assumed retail electricity prices will increase by 50 per cent. Retail gas prices are up some 40 per cent in 2022 and 2023,” he said.
“Despite Labor’s pre-election promise to reduce your power prices by $275 a year, their own budget papers contradict this claim, and the Government has no plan to address rising prices.”
The price hike amounts to a 56 per cent rise over two years due to the increase compounding each year.
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‘Over-designed’ government megaprojects are bad for environment and taxpayers
NSW megaprojects are being over-engineered with tonnes of unnecessary, costly materials driving up the price and carbon footprint of the multibillion-dollar builds, Infrastructure Minister Rob Stokes has warned.
Stokes said NSW would fail to reach its goal of a net zero economy by 2050 without addressing overservicing in its $110-billion infrastructure pipeline, where concrete and steel are being superfluously added to projects.
Carbon emissions from construction material – including concrete and steel – are estimated to represent up to 10 per cent of Australia’s carbon output. A new report produced by Stokes and Infrastructure NSW has flagged including those emissions in the business cases of future projects.
“We want things to be robust and well-built, but that shouldn’t mean just throwing more concrete and steel into our bridges, roads and railways,” Stokes told the Herald.
“There is an irony here. Because we’ve got very conservative design standards we’re actually putting more concrete and steel into roads and bridges and railways than anyone else in the world.”
Stokes pointed to the recent construction of the multibillion-dollar Metro rail lines as an example of a project that could have used less material without impacting design integrity.
“I think there is a general awareness that we have been very conservative and over-designed some of our station boxes on Metro lines,” he said.
The government is spending tens of billions of dollars on the Metro, which will connect the CBD to the west and south-west of the city, as well as a line to service the new Western Sydney Airport when it opens in 2026. The projects have been hampered by cost blowouts.
Station boxes are excavated for underground platforms, concourses and facilities, while major developments are often installed above them.
Infrastructure funding cuts leave NSW behind Victoria, Queensland
Stokes said a “compliance culture” in NSW had led to an intense focus on mitigating risk and liability in both the government and private sectors.
“I think every engineer that touches a project on the way through … just wants to ensure that their responsibility is entirely mitigated by throwing a bit of extra concrete and steel at it,” he said.
“The sum total of all these little decisions where people are just effectively covering their back means that we’re paying way over the odds, and also contributing toward global climate emissions because of our innate design conservatism, so we need to challenge that.”
The senior minister, who will retire from politics at the next state election, said that more thoughtfully designing the state’s largest projects would cut emissions, save time and taxpayer cash.
“We should be very proud of the fact that we are designing very, very robust structures, but the question we need to ask is, ‘Are we over designing them?’. There’s a cost imperative to that for the taxpayer,” he said.
“But there’s also a climate imperative because every bit of extra design constraint that adds to the bulk of a structure is making it more carbon intensive.”
The Infrastructure NSW discussion paper, set to be released this week, recommends a whole of government approach to measuring emissions in infrastructure.
The Decarbonising Infrastructure Delivery report says multibillion-dollar investment decisions were being made without any understanding of carbon mitigation or management over the life of the asset. It warns that could result in potentially higher costs to retrofit projects to achieve net-zero in the future.
The report also recommends maximising the use of recycled material in building.
The United Kingdom, including the Glasgow Airport Investment Area, and Europe are cited as examples of governments including the carbon impact of projects when weighing up their benefits and cost.
The NSW government earlier this year warned it would need to push back some of its mammoth infrastructure pipeline amid rising construction costs and limited workforce.
The government paper follows a report produced by Infrastructure Partnerships Australia which earlier this year called for ambitious, lower-carbon outcome requirements in major projects.
Stokes said future state governments would need to rethink the way they approached big projects, and instead start by questioning whether they should even go ahead at all.
“One of the very best ways we can decarbonise infrastructure is actually asking whether we need such an expensive megaproject design intervention in the first place. Maybe there are other ways to achieve the same objective,” he said.
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25 October, 2022
Anthony Albanese's government announces plan to build one million homes to make housing more affordable for Australians
This is about all he can do to help. The big blockages to house building are State and local governments. And Albo will have a hard job getting new construction past them. He really needs legislation to take their permitting powers away but there would be an uproar about that.
I am afraid this will end up like a 2017 scheme in NZ under the Ardern government. Only a small fraction of the 100,000 houses promised were actually built. Leftist governments are great on promises
Building one million new homes will be the target of a Labor plan to bring together governments, the construction industry and super funds to boost investment in affordable housing.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers will confirm details surrounding the plan when he delivers his first budget on Tuesday night.
The federal government has already pledged $10billion to its Housing Australia Future Fund, which it says will deliver 30,000 social and affordable homes in the next five years.
Dr Chalmers said reaching the one million homes target would tackle one of the biggest challenges facing the nation and its economy.
'As I go around Australia speaking with local communities, employers and workers, one of the big challenges we have in our economy is we've got these jobs and opportunities being created, but it's becoming harder and harder to live near where those job opportunities are,' he told ABC Radio.
'I've been working really closely and really hard with superannuation and other investors … with the building and construction industry, and with the union movement, to see what we can do to shift the needle on affordable housing.'
Dr Chalmers said he would unveil the timing for achieving the target in Tuesday's budget.
His comments come as figures released ahead of the budget show the bottom line will look rosier than expected.
The deficit for 2022/23 is forecast to hit $36.9billion, less than half the $78billion forecast in the March budget delivered by the coalition government.
High commodity prices and strong employment are anticipated to keep propping up the public purse, although this boost to revenue is expected to start slowing down after two years.
But Dr Chalmers said the $548billion to be spent on health and aged care across the next four years was one of the huge pressures on Australia's budget.
He said he hoped Labor's renewed focus on health would drive down soaring GP wait times.
'We want to take pressure off emergency departments, we want to strengthen Medicare, we want to fix the crisis in aged care,' he said.
'Those are very clear priorities … we've got a lot of spending pressures on the budget but we need to invest in people's health, a healthy community gives us the best chance of a strong economy.'
The budget, to be delivered in parliament by Dr Chalmers at 7.30pm AEDT, will also flag new measures of 'wellbeing' and outline a package of support for women.
Alongside aged care and health, disability services and defence are expected to be the biggest areas of spending.
Opposition finance spokeswoman Jane Hume warned the government against producing a high-taxing, high-spending budget.
'The coalition left the budget in a good space … unemployment was really low, tax receipts were up and that's a good thing and fed into the budget bottom line,' she told Nine's Today program.
'Now we want to see a plan to bring inflation back into line to that two-to-three per cent range so the RBA doesn't have to do all the heavy lifting … it will take everything for Labor not to fall into their usual trap, which could be disastrous for Australians.'
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Australia’s dumbed-down schools are going nowhere
Over the last month, there have been yet another two initiatives designed, supposedly, to improve the performance of Australian schools, raise standards and ensure greater equity. The first is an interim report by the Productivity Commission evaluating the 2018 National School Reform Agreement.
The NSRA is signed by Commonwealth, state, and territory governments and details strategies designed to ‘lift student outcomes across Australian schools’ by implementing a range of policies including a unique student identifier, reviewing senior secondary pathways, and strengthening the initial teacher education accreditation system.
The second initiative involves establishing a panel to review the effectiveness of teacher training established by the Commonwealth Minister for Education Jason Clare and chaired by the ex-ABC Managing Director Mark Scott.
While applauded as the panacea to achieve excellence and equity both initiatives are destined to join a long list of reviews and reports beginning in the early 1970s that have proven counterproductive and worthless in strengthening Australia’s education system.
Since the Karmel Report in 1973 and Victoria’s Blackburn Report in 1985, there have been over 20 reviews and reports at all levels of government designed to strengthen schools, improve teacher effectiveness, and raise standards.
Among the plethora commissioned are the Keating government’s National Statements and Profiles (1992), the NSW’s review of the Higher School Certificate (1995), a national inquiry into literacy teaching (2005), the Gonski Review of School funding (2011), the Review of the National Curriculum (2014), the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence (2017), and a review of the NSW curriculum (2020).
In addition to the eight state and territory education departments and curriculum bodies, in yet another attempt to improve Australia’s substandard educational performance, the Commonwealth government has also established the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (2005) and the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (2008).
The dismal results of the last 50 years of reviews, reports, and government policies are obvious to all. Australia has slipped down the rankings as measured by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS) tests.
Apprentices start work with substandard literacy and numeracy skills, universities have dumbed-down first-year courses, and too many students leave after 12 years of schooling culturally illiterate and morally adrift.
If those responsible for Australia’s education system were in charge of a business they would have been sacked or gone broke. Instead, like the old industrial relations club, those responsible for the current malaise are reappointed to peak positions and given yet another chance to prove their ineptitude
What’s to be done? While the Greens Party, the Australian Education Union, and sympathetic academics argue what is needed in increased investment over the last 20 to 30 years proves spending more is simply throwing good money after bad.
It’s also useless to establish yet another committee made up of bureaucrats and education department, teacher union, and subject association representatives who have minimal, if any, experience as practising teachers.
Until there are significant structural changes schools will continue to underperform, students will continue to suffer, and the nation’s cultural capital and productivity rates will continue to decline.
The first step is to realise there is no magic bullet and one-off reviews and reports focusing on a single issue like the curriculum, teacher training, how teachers are rewarded, and classroom pedagogy will achieve nothing.
What determines school effectiveness and student achievement depends on a number of complex, interrelated factors that have to be addressed as a whole and at the same time.
Secondly, schools need to be freed from provider capture and what Michael Gove did when the British Secretary of State for Education derided as the ‘blog’. Schools need greater autonomy and flexibility and less bureaucratic red tape and interference from on high.
The curriculum is overcrowded while the superficial and criteria-based diagnostic assessment and reporting regime forces teachers to spend weeks writing voluminous descriptive reports. This is ineffective and takes energy away from teaching.
It should not surprise, proven by research by Australia’s Gary Marks and overseas academics including Ludger Woessmann and Eric Hanushek, giving schools greater autonomy and flexibility allows non-government schools to outperform government schools.
The cutting edge of reform overseas involves charter schools in America, city academies and free schools in England plus charter schools in India. Such is their popularity in disadvantaged communities, enrolments are oversubscribed.
For far too long Australia’s education system has fallen victim to progressive, new-age fads including open classrooms, process and inquiry-based learning, student agency, teachers as facilitators, and a curriculum driven by neo-Marxist inspired Woke ideology.
Schools have also been infected with the soft bigotry of low expectations where disadvantaged students are expected to always underperform. It’s time to stop experimenting with unproven fads and ensure all schools embrace rigorous standards and high expectations.
We live in a Nanny State
It doesn’t matter whether you are discussing the UK, Australia, some European country, or any other country. Whenever the state has started to dictate social, economic, and commercial behaviour – serious problems have followed. These usually include loss of freedom, loss of living standards, higher costs, and dislocation of social cohesion.
The nanny state certainly does initiate many changes, often by regulation rather than legislation. It is the bureaucrats who introduce changes, changes which are often not welcome by society in general and frequently by those who are unjustly penalised by regulations that favour some, usually big business, to the detriment of a larger number, usually small business and consumers.
The politicians do, of course, try to implement their nanny state controls. The overreach seen in the Covid pandemic is a perfect example. Politicians of all persuasions introduced draconian laws and regulations, supposedly to keep us safe, but actually to control what we – the general populace – could do, when we could do it, and for how long. They even went so far as to dictate what we should inject into our bodies on pain of being excluded from our freedoms in society and our ability to work.
We see it still in the energy problems which we are now experiencing. The world has plenty of recent examples of government decisions that are adversely impacting on energy supply and cost. There is no shortage of energy and there could be a way to transition to a lower carbon dioxide emitting power generation system, but our nanny state knows best and despite all the evidence to the contrary they are pushing ahead, full bore, to have coal-fired power stations shut down and renewables built. There is no coherent plan for the transition, mainly because the federal government doesn’t actually own any power generation or distribution assets and doesn’t understand the economics of the energy system. In fact, they don’t seem to understand the basics of economics. When you make something essential scarce – the price will rise and those who are least able to afford the cost will bear the brunt of the disruptions.
The nanny state is pushing the unproven climate warming due to the burning of carbon fuels, and destroying not only our low-cost energy but our competitiveness in the world. It doesn’t, and probably cannot, state what the targets are in measurable numbers, how these targets were determined, how they are measured, and where we are in achieving those targets. Even worse, they do not consider what is happening in the world, the large uncontrolled emitters, the piddling effect on either increasing or decreasing our carbon dioxide emissions on the world’s atmospheric carbon dioxide.
If you wish to consider other areas just think of safety. Many safety procedures actually do little to improve safety, they just add cost. Safety is best managed by explaining the issues to the people doing the work, providing them with the necessary tools and equipment, and then getting out of the way. Not all situations are identical and the experienced person directly involved can often make the best decision. Consider our disruptive method of roadside working with our peers overseas.
We can also look at housing standards. These are often designed to suit a worst-case situation, increasing costs with no benefit to most. They rarely constitute best building practice for heating, cooling, site conditions, suitable materials, latest technology etc. Or the restriction of certain work to licensed practitioners, practitioners who frequently ignore the regulations, who may not have maintained their knowledge of the latest technologies, and who are given carte blanche to charge high prices for simple work which can be performed by any number of other people with the necessary knowledge and skills. Trade skills and regulations can be learned by anyone.
There are some areas in which the state could and should be involved because private enterprise may have difficulty in providing the service at a price that is affordable to all. These include major infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, transportation systems, sewage collection and treatment, water supply, energy supply, and communications. That doesn’t mean that the state has to own or operate the service, they just have to make sure, in some way, that it is available to everyone at a standard price.
No, the nanny state has not shown that it knows best. It hasn’t even shown that it properly understands. The state should set the basic standards and then the enterprise of people will deliver, at both the best price and a suitable quality. The people will adjust their society to suit the prevailing conditions and the nanny state should just follow suit with the appropriate legislation. That is the correct order of things.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/the-nanny-state/ ?
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The cult of absolutism
How often have you been told that balance is essential? Balanced opinion, balanced diet, and everything in moderation. Well, think again, because the new cult of absolutism won’t stand for it.
Do you want to discuss inequality? It must be zero. Do you want to debate harm from Covid? Must be zero. Gender inequities? Zero. Emissions? That would be Net Zero… When you subscribe to these absolutes there is no room for compromise or tolerance. The end justifies the means. Every single time. Zero deviation. Zero discussion. Zero empathy.
This new world order is infecting every part of our lives, right down to the functioning of our critical energy systems. From the politicians creating policy, to the boardrooms complying, right through to the bureaucrats enforcing it – our electricity system is undergoing a zero-logic makeover.
Take Queensland’s glossy ‘brochure’ announcement that spending $62 billion (more likely double that) to close some of the lowest-cost electricity generators on the planet will save consumers $150 per year by 2032. Ironically, Queensland residents were recently treated to a ‘cost of living rebate’ worth $175. Zero relief for businesses though, with state-owned hydro generators setting the wholesale price more than any other.
New South Wales Deputy Leader Matt Kean believes wind and solar generators should have zero exposure to low wholesale prices. He’s designed a scheme ensuring these ‘cheap new generators’ can opt into a guaranteed minimum wholesale price, thus avoiding the black hole in the market he created.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews must believe he can duck down to Coles and fill the trolley with Duracells because his government recently announced the world’s largest battery storage target. Andrews hopes this will create over 12,000 jobs, but there are zero cars parked in neighbouring South Australia’s infamous, and now ‘not-so-big’, battery.
If you are looking for regulators, politicians, or the media to provide a cost-benefit analysis, a detailed plan, or even a robust debate on these matters, your expectations are exceeding their capabilities. Nobody can even produce the napkins on which these plans have been hatched. You should have zero confidence in any statement originating from politicians on the electricity system, and unfortunately this applies to bureaucrats and agencies managing the system ‘in the best interests of the consumer’. Those behind these schemes display zero interest in the consumer, except as a means to an end.
A recent example is Daniel Westerman, head of AEMO (Australian Energy Market Operator), in an interview with Angela Macdonald-Smith. As the ‘market operator’ AMEO receives offers for electricity generation in time, money, and volume; tells every generator what to generate and when; and calculates how much each generator gets paid. Macdonald-Smith offers zero challenge when Westerman frets:
‘The events of the winter really have reinforced the need for Australia to continue to urgently invest in the transition towards firmed renewables with efficiently delivered transmission.’
Westerman’s zero-care for consumers is matched only by his opinions on areas for which he bears no responsibility, as MacDonald-Smith writes:
‘Westerman highlighted the need for action in four areas in particular; building low-cost renewable generation; putting in place sufficient firming generation to support peak demand when renewable generation is low; getting transmission built efficiently and in as timely a fashion as possible; and improving the stability of the grid and equipping it to deal with a high penetration of renewable energy.’
This is the same guy who pretty much on his first day of the job declared we’d be dealing with a 100 per cent renewable grid for 30-minute periods by 2025.
Thus, the tally of zeros increases because there are zero other countries in this predicament. One might consider Germany and California to be on the way. The cold 2022 European winter, without Russian gas, will prompt some changes; but more temperate California is losing people and businesses fast.
What conclusions can be drawn if we continue down this path of absolutes?
There will be zero baseload generators, at least those owned by Origin, AGL, and the Queensland taxpayer. Gas and batteries are hoped to fill the 20,000 MW gap when it’s not windy or sunny – that’s the current plan.
Zero renewable developments will be knocked back – the state and federal targets are too large and the timeframes too short for any dallying with environmental assessments, community engagement, or feasibility studies. Our federal Environment Minister decreed, godlike, that she will allow zero extinctions. Hopefully, she will be faced with many difficult decisions.
There will be zero accountability at the top end when power bills remain high. When regular people are subject to rationing, big industries pack up and disappear, or food suppliers continuously edge up prices, those in charge will just say ‘it’s the cheapest new generation, build more’.
And sadly, zero care for people freezing in winter.
How long can this flawed reasoning persist? Perhaps a better question – why is the reasoning so flawed to begin with? I believe the key lies in the personal values of those in authority. If you value people, their wellbeing, and opinions, you display care. Care’s neighbours are empathy, compromise and goodwill. Conversely, a lack of care exposes limited appreciation for others. Without care you are only a stone’s throw from cruelty.
This cult of absolutism and zero worshipping demands tyranny. Fight back, use care.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/10/the-cult-of-absolutism/ ?
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24 October, 2022
The problem of politics in sport again
This was raised but never settled decades ago, with boycotts of the Springboks in the Joh Bjelke Petersen era.
I can see some reasons why the political opinions of sports people should be respected but this latest episode is absurd. Why is the political views not of the person but of that person's FATHER critical?
There is a basic judicial principle that a person is responsible for their own actions only, not for the actions of others -- even when the "other" is an ancestor. So it is simply unjust to hold Gina Rinehart responsible for something her father said in 1985. Yet so doing was what lost the Netballers their sponsorship. Their loss of their sponsorship was simple justice and a proper response to political fanaticism
There has been a tsunami of support for Gina Rinehart’s decision to walk away from her $15m sponsorship deal with Netball Australia. Rightly, outrage has been directed at players spurning an exceedingly generous and altruistic deal for reasons that range from the businesswoman’s own political views to offensive remarks made by her father 50 years ago.
Australians have clearly had a gutful of overpaid but under-informed sportspeople who think their personal opinions on matters outside their areas of expertise are worth inflicting on sport.
Sky News host Cory Bernardi says Australia’s sport is becoming controlled by “woke whingers” and “public… displays of virtuous hypocrisy”. “You’ve seen a bit on Sky News this week about sporting cancel culture, only this time it’s not the punters cancelling sports, it’s the players,” Mr Bernardi said. More
If only Woodside would likewise demand the Fremantle Dockers either stand up proudly for their sponsor or stop taking its money.
It’s high time too that Cricket Australia told the hitherto sainted Pat Cummins to put a sock in his criticism of Alinta Energy, the company that pays at least part of his enormous salary. Ricky Ponting was brave to point out the political posturing of older, richer players hurts young players who have not had the luxury of sponsorship deals that pay for big lifestyles replete with first-class flights and shiny four-wheel-drive cars. There is no doubt politics and sport cannot be completely divorced but it is tiresome to watch everything from netball to footy being subjected to, and damaged by, zealotry from undergraduate political activists dressed in green and gold.
It has now come to pass that every two-bob political opinion from every minor sport star not only deserves to be aired but indulged. Hypocrisy is no barrier. Jetsetting ex-footballers whose carbon footprint is surely only just less than Al Gore’s think they are entitled to chide Woodside for keeping the lights on in Western Australia and employing so many of their fellow West Australians. Woodside, whose activities are regulated to within an inch of its corporate life, and which pays a big chunk of the taxes Mark McGowan is now using to build everything from mental health facilities to desalination plants, is entitled to tell these sporting politicians to keep their personal political views out of sport.
Likewise, netballers are free to harbour whatever political views they wish, and indeed to act on their individual consciences. They can leave sport and enter politics if they are passionate about changing the world off the field. But for so long as they are on the field, and receive sponsorship money, the decent thing would be to say thank you to Rinehart for her generous deal.
Alas, good manners and gratitude are now apparently optional extras for our pampered players. No wonder so many Australians might be thrilled that Rinehart called their bluff.
Rinehart has been a terrific supporter of Australian sports from rowing and swimming to volleyball and synchronised swimming. And, of course, netball. Hancock also inked a deal with the Australian Olympic Committee to sponsor Australian teams at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics in 2026, as well as the Youth Olympics and Pacific Games. Dismal results at the London Olympics led many sponsors to withdraw funding from Swimming Australia. After Rinehart stepped in with financial help, Australian swimmers in Tokyo produced best-ever performances.
Rinehart’s money goes directly to sports people so they can focus on their sport, rather than try to hold down a job and train too. During the Tokyo Olympics three-time Tokyo medallist Cate Campbell recognised the businesswoman’s contribution: “I don’t say this lightly, but Gina Rinehart saved swimming.”
The Hancock deal with Netball Australia would have provided a significant pay increase to players at a time when NA has millions of dollars of debt and the country faces a challenging economic outlook. The objections to Rinehart’s deal need to be understood against behind-the-scenes shenanigans by some players who apparently want NA to revisit a private equity deal rather than take money from Rinehart.
Diamonds players driving this fiasco have shown themselves to be both selfish and foolish. Imagine telling those who care for children afflicted with cancer to refuse $2m donated by the Hancock Group to the WA Telethon this past weekend. In total, mining companies donated millions more to the same terrific fundraiser, as did the WA government, using mining royalties.
Now it is over to NA to hold out the begging bowl in search of suitably woke corporate sponsors who will both indulge every political thought bubble an individual player has and keep paying the bills when those thought bubbles insult or injure the sponsor. Or will taxpayers be forced to foot the bill for the misdirected political activism of their players?
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Australia's collapsing electricity system
Climate catastrophists are very keen to talk about tipping points. So let me steal their thunder and talk about the tipping point of the National Electricity Market (NEM) that connects five states and the ACT.
We were given a preview of the potential for collapse earlier this year when the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) suspended the market and took control as a last resort. Don’t think for a minute that this exercise was costless. There was an ex-post settling up with the companies ordered to provide power, adding several hundred million dollars to the escalating electricity bill that is then divvied up between households and businesses.
It’s worth pointing out here the ineptitude of AEMO. Most of us thought its leadership couldn’t get any worse than the now replaced American lawyer, Audrey Zibelman. (She left to join Google). But the current chief executive, Daniel Westerman, is even more committed to decarbonisation than Audrey, who at least placed a great deal of store on keeping the lights on.
Note here that there is a very small pool of potential candidates for this job – virtually all of them are big supporters of renewable energy. Because the states effectively own the NEM, they decide who gets the job. In other words, any reservation that the Coalition minister, Angus Taylor, might have had about this appointment would have made little difference.
The totally unbelievable modelling that AEMO puts out – see the latest Integrated System Plan – is a classic case of garbage in-garbage out. The assumptions ensure that there is no problem with the electricity grid quickly transforming to being almost totally reliant on renewable energy. In particular, heroic (and convenient) guesses are made about the average capacity factors of wind and solar – much higher than actual data from overseas – as well as the likelihood of lengthy periods in which wind and solar won’t work at all.
But when it comes to grid management, it’s not just about averages but also about catering for the tails of distributions – unlikely events but with potentially serious consequences. A grid cannot be deemed robust unless it is able to provide reliable power in these circumstances.
The alternative approach that AEMO uses is to hope these unusual events won’t occur but, in any case, some new affordable technology will miraculously emerge that should eliminate any problems. The more cautious approach to ensure continuous power is to insist that firming capacity is available on a 1:1 ratio – that is, enough firming capacity to fully stand in place of renewable energy for potentially lengthy periods. Needless to say, this redundancy makes the system very expensive, which is one of the reasons why higher electricity prices are inevitable.
Absent a capacity mechanism – the states won’t agree – and the ongoing early exit of 24/7 coal-fired plants, the NEM is becoming extraordinarily fragile. Where once it was extremely uncommon for AEMO to intervene in the daily operations of the grid, it is now a frequent occurrence. Further pressure will be felt with the closure of the Liddell coal-fired plant next year – at its peak, it had a capacity of 2000 megawatts.
Just three years later, the coal-fired and largest power plant in Australia, Origin Energy’s Eraring plant, is expected to close. Its current capacity is close to 3000 MW and supplies a quarter of New South Wales’ electricity demand. (It’s likely that the NSW government will have to step in to ensure that this plant continues to operate, in a deal akin to the secret arrangement that the Victorian government has with Energy Australia in respect of the Yallourn plant.)
The extremely badly run AGL Energy, egged on by major shareholder, Mike Cannon-Brookes (who holds just over 11 per cent of the registry), has announced that it will shut its coal-fired plant in Victoria – Loy Yang A – ten years earlier than expected, in 2035. This plant has a capacity of over 2000 MW, which is 30 per cent of Victoria’s demand. Not only is this plant relatively new but it also runs off brown coal for which there is no export potential. What this means is that a relatively low-cost input is guaranteed for this plant.
The broader point to be made is that the hastened exit of coal from the NEM – I haven’t mentioned that Queensland expects to be out of coal-fired generation by 2035 – should be ringing serious alarm bells right now. But if anything, the federal Climate Change and Energy Minister, Chris Bowen, seems to regard these developments as good news. After all, he keeps telling us about the importance of emissions reduction and the government’s legislated targets.
What he seems to be blissfully unaware of is the sheer impossibility of replacing coal-fired generation with alternative affordable and reliable sources within the necessary timeframe – if ever. He talks about the need for 10,000 additional kilometres of transmission lines. But given the need to obtain necessary easements (often in the face of strenuous local objections) and the shortage of workers and materials, that ain’t going to happen any time soon.
Even the rollout of renewable energy projects, including the growing popularity of the much more expensive offshore wind turbines, is likely to be slow notwithstanding the substantial subsidies that are on offer.
The decision by the states to essentially go their own ways by devising their own energy plans is further undermining any integrity the planning of the NEM may have had. It’s easy to see that, in the event of blackouts and power rationing, it will be each state for itself, with interconnectors possibly disabled.
The chief executive of one of the big energy operators, Alinta Energy, has belled the cat on what is going to happen with electricity prices. After rising by around 25 per cent this year, the expectation is that they will rise a further 35 per cent next year – figures endorsed by the Australian Energy Regulator. He points out that a coal-fired plant that cost his company $1 billion will need $8 billion in replacement expenditure on renewable installations and the necessary supports.
Of course, we can kiss goodbye to the $275 cut to the annual household electricity bill promised by our ‘I stand by the modelling’ Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. But that loss may prove small beer in the future scheme of things.
Tasmania's Catholic Archbishop Julian Porteous defends Bible reading at a school graduation
Opposition to a planned biblical reading about marriage at a girls' school graduation mass shows society is becoming "increasingly hostile to Christian beliefs", according to Tasmania's Catholic archbishop
Hobart Catholic school St Mary's College made headlines last week when concerns were raised about the chosen reading for its graduation mass — Ephesians 5: 21-23 — which includes:
"Wives should regard their husbands as they regard the Lord, since as Christ is head of the Church and saves the whole body, so is a husband the head of his wife; and as the Church submits to Christ, so should wives submit to their husbands, in everything."
After concern among staff, students and parents, and backlash on social media, Archbishop Julian Porteous agreed to change the reading, and provided an alternative.
The section of Ephesians 5 is the reading for the day, but, being an ordinary weekday, those choosing the readings have freedom to choose something else.
Questions were also asked about whether a reading about marriage was the best choice for an occasion that is celebrating academic achievement.
In his homily during Sunday's mass at the Guilford Young Chapel in Hobart, Archbishop Porteous said it was "not unusual for the teaching of sacred scripture to be at variance with the attitudes and ethos of our age".
"We now find ourselves as Catholics, as Christians, being criticised and persecuted because we believe what the scriptures teach and we desire to live by its imperatives, even when they are at variance with the ethos of our times," he said.
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Teenagers will now be forced to study MATHS for their HSC exams after years of the often subject dreaded by many being optional
It's an important subject dreaded by thousands of students, but mathematics is soon to be a compulsory in the Higher School Certificate across New South Wales.
New senior syllabuses coming into effect in 2025 mean all Year 11 and Year 12 students must study maths from the following year.
The change means all students currently in Year 8 or younger will have to study maths to pass their HSC including sitting maths exams.
To prepare students for HSC level maths, the schools will reform maths courses between Year 7 and Year 10.
NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said the change is happening to improve school leavers' career hopes. 'Maths helps develop skills for life, providing students with fundamental skills in problem-solving, analysis and reasoning that are essential no matter what career they choose,' she said.
She said it is her 'vision' that every child has the maths skills they need in life, echoing what then-Premier Gladys Berejiklian said in 2019.
Maths has long been optional for senior students in NSW. In 2001 HSC students in Australia's most populous state had to choose either maths or science.
In 2019 the NSW Curriculum Review was released signalling a change. That year Ms Mitchell announced maths would be reintroduced as a compulsory subject in Years 11 and 12. But she stopped short of saying it would be a mandatory subject for the HSC. It will be in four years time.
There was increasing concern about the impact of declining numeracy amongst high school graduates because of waning interest in the subject.
The worry was school-leavers were beginning to display worsening skills in basic life functions such as budgeting, calculating shopping costs and account-keeping.
'Whether you are a carpenter or a software engineer, maths is a companion for life, we want to make sure that the new curriculum provides a level of maths concepts that will help every NSW student succeed in life after school,' Ms Mitchell said.
In 2019 nearly a quarter of NSW students opted against studying maths in their HSC
23 October, 2022
The Australian Labor party and the Jews
Antisemitism is ingrained in the Left generally. Even Karl Marx despised Jews
This week came the announcement in the Australian newspaper, after a bungle on the DFAT website was exposed, that ‘Foreign Minister Penny Wong has reversed the former government’s recognition of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel instead of Tel Aviv
Antisemitism has plagued the modern Left for the last few decades. Part of the reason Jew-hatred is so entrenched within various Labour (and Greens) parties is that their fundamental leftist ideological beliefs blind them to the reality of their own ingrained prejudices, many of which were imbibed in the neo-Marxist halls of universities and in the sweaty basements of undergraduate political clubs.
In the modern socialist view of the world, one is either a dark-skinned indigenous victim of imperialist occupation or an illegitimate pale-skinned coloniser of land that doesn’t belong to you. The ultimate irony is that Jews – persecuted and murdered for over a thousand years by fair-skinned European anti-semites for their dark, swarthy looks and semitic features – have somehow washed up in the ‘white’ column in the modern era. Whereas any other ‘tribe’ with such a long and proud connection to and reverence for their own lands would be regarded as the rightful ‘indigenous First Nation’ of the Holy Lands, the perversity of the modern Left is to deny Jews their own heritage whilst promulgating the idea that another ‘tribe’ actually owns their land. And so it came to pass that Israel and the Jews are now viewed by the Left as illegitimate occupiers of their own birthright; a glorious birthright that extends back over three thousand years and is one of the cornerstones of Western civilisation.
Thus, ‘West Jerusalem’, never before disputed, is now declared by Labor’s mandarins to not be Jewish at all – or words to that effect – but instead the plaything of globalist outfits like the United Nations and the EU. Tel Aviv, a thriving, fun town for sure, but a modern one with no deep historical roots of note to the ancient Jewish kingdom, will suffice for the embassy gig as far as Wong and co. are concerned.
The reaction from around the world has been swift. The Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid tweeted, ‘We can only hope that the Australian government manages other matters more seriously and professionally,’ before adding, ‘Jerusalem is the eternal and united capital of Israel and nothing will ever change that.’
Perhaps Ms Wong, born in Malaysia, was confusing that nation’s overt antipathy to Israel with Australian priorities. Who knows? Whatever the case, the sheer arrogance of Labor’s Foreign Minister in presuming that she can unilaterally determine another nation’s capital city against their own wishes is breath-taking. Imagine the Chinese telling us that they didn’t recognise Canberra and were instead moving their embassy to Uluru.
This magazine and its editor have long warned Australian Jewry to beware of the fake hand of friendship offered by the Labor party. By accusing Mr Morrison of recognising Jerusalem (the insertion of ‘West’ was a typically cowardly piece of political nonsense from the Liberal party bedwetters) solely for the purpose of currying favour in electorates with a high Jewish vote shows again not only the arrogance but the condescension of Labor to Israelis and Jews, believing them to be a collective that can so easily be bought off. It is also worth pointing out that all those seats in fact went to the Teals, who themselves have a fairly questionable history when it comes to anti-semitic comments, so not exactly a credible analysis.
It was also Penny Wong who recently and disgracefully reversed the $10 million of Aussie taxpayer cuts to UNRWA; funds believed by some to be financing Palestinian pay-for-slay programs. (A cause originally championed by this magazine and successfully pursued by Dr David Adler and others in the Australian parliament.)
It was former prime minister Tony Abbott and then President Donald Trump, and most recently British PM Liz Truss, who showed their support for Israel by recognising Jerusalem as the eternal capital. Mr Trump is also responsible for bringing peace to parts of the Middle East in the form of the Abraham Accords.
Meanwhile, it was the British Labour party that was forced to turf out former leader (and good friend of Anthony Albanese) Jeremy Corbyn over allegations concerning anti-semitism.
By their works shall ye know them.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/10/labor-and-the-jews/ ?
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There was no basis for Covid passports and Covid vaccine mandates
The admission Dutch conservative member of the European Parliament, Rob Roos, dragged out of Pfizer representative Janine Small has thrown the vaccine passport and vaccine mandate narrative into disarray. It dismantled the lie that we should be taking – specifically – Covid vaccines to protect others.
Roos switched to English when asking his controversial question, which helped the answer turn viral on social media where it was viewed at least 20 million times in the days that followed.
‘…and I will speak in English so there are no misunderstandings. Was the Pfizer Covid vaccine tested on stopping the transmission of the virus before it entered the market? If not, please, say it clearly. If ‘yes’ are you willing to share the data with this committee? And I really want straight answer, ‘yes or no’ and I’m looking forward to it.’
‘No,’ was Small’s reply, followed by a little laugh – as if it were some kind of joke. ‘We had to really move at the speed of science.’ A comment that was shortly followed by the statement, ‘We had to do everything “at risk”.’
‘The speed of science… Honestly,’ said Rowan Dean, on The World According to Rowan Dean, which airs Tuesday-Thursday at 9pm on Sky News Australia.
He spoke with Rob Roos last night.
‘I was thrilled when you asked that question in English. You knew how important that question was. I remember, you started in Dutch and then went, “Hang on, I’m going to ask this question in English…!” Well done, and thank you so much. What led you to asking that particular question?’
‘Since the implementation of the Covid vaccines I’ve been searching for the answer to this question,’ replied Rob Roos. ‘I also asked it of AstraZeneca and Moderna because it’s important. Millions of people were placed outside society because of Covid passports. People lost their jobs and it was all based on that the vaccine would stop transmission, otherwise there would be no point in excluding unvaccinated people from society. If the vaccine doesn’t stop transmission, then vaccinated people spread the virus too. So, I found this to be an incredibly important question.’
‘Rob, you’re right, it is the single most important question because certainly here in Australia we had some of the worst lockdowns, we had this vicious persecution of unvaccinated people, we had our state premiers going on television and saying they wouldn’t be in the same room as the unvaccinated. It was this endless repetition of “this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated”. We had health authorities – health bureaucrats – telling the public that they were going to make life incredibly difficult for you if you weren’t vaccinated. This was persecution, I don’t know if it was the same in Europe, but it certainly happened here in Australia. You got that critical answer that they hadn’t even tested if it would stop transmission. Were you surprised by the answer? What’s it been like since you exposed this scandal?’
‘Well, I wasn’t that surprised,’ admitted Roos, ‘because the answer was as I suspected. We have all seen the daily practice during the Omicron variant but our governments keep telling the story – the fiction – that vaccination was necessary to protect others. But I was surprised about the honesty with which the Pfizer representative responded because the implications are massive. This means that there was no basis for Covid passports and Covid vaccine mandates.’
‘What has been the result in the European Parliament? It was the executive [from Pfizer] who turned up and spoke but it was the CEO who was invited. The CEO declined to come on to your interrogation and questioning… Maybe the executive wasn’t even aware of what dynamite she was exposing by giving the answer she gave?’ added Dean. ‘Are we going to see governments backing down and apologising for these vaccine passports? What’s been the response?’
‘There has been a massive response to the video. Worldwide people are angry because their governments lied to them. Austrians were denied access to their dying parents, for example. People all over the world – not only Europe. I also think a lot of people are now starting to see the government’s response for what it was. They have abused their power, maybe [they were] even tyrannical. They only cared about pushing vaccinations. There was no respect for people’s body autonomy and integrity. So, on the one hand, the response has been overwhelmingly positive, massively so. At the same time, I have been attacked by establishment media who claimed I spread “fake news”. But, when they attack me they don’t attack my actual argument, they attack a strawman. I am not claiming Pfizer lied, I am claiming our governments lied because they based their narrative on the idea that you do this for others and that vaccination stops transmission for which there was no evidence. And all fact-checkers have to admit that the government messaging was plain wrong and government policies undermined fundamental rights in an unprecedented way – a way which we thought would never be possible in a liberal democracy. But it was. And that’s shocking, because it tells us a lot about the state of our fundamental rights.’
‘You’ve used a phrase that I’ve been using a lot over the past few months, the abuse of power,’ replied Rowan Dean. ‘And, for me, that is what the absolute pivot of this is all about. I agree with you. We’ve seen a lot of people coming out and saying, “Oh… well, they never claimed that they had tested for transmission therefore there’s nothing in this story.” It’s complete rubbish. As you have put your finger on, the point is that our politicians led us to believe, in fact, they insisted at every level. Whether it was Anthony Fauci in the States or our own politicians here in Australia – at every level our health bureaucrats insisted that the vaccines prevented transmission and this was the rationale for mandatory vaccination which, in this country – and in other places – many people lost their jobs. Many people are still out of work. Many people had their lives turned upside down and destroyed because they insisted to us that it did stop transmission. This isn’t a problem with Pfizer, as you say, Rob, this is absolutely about the abuse of power by politicians who are either too stupid, or too lazy, or too corrupt to actually check out the facts and were prepared to abuse their power. What happens next?’
‘That’s a very good question. What should happen, in my opinion, is that politicians are held accountable. The people who were responsible for these policies should resign if they are still in office. This has been the most damaging violation of fundamental rights in decades. Its impact is lasting. Small businesses are still going bankrupt because of high inflation after they were already weakened by Covid lockdowns. Young people are still more often depressed and lost out on valuable life experience – our society suffers from an obesity epidemic – and this was not because of some force of nature, it was because politicians decided to enact these policies. Those who did should resign and this violation of fundamental human rights should never happen again.’
As Rowan Dean says, Rob Roos belongs in the history books for what he has done exposing the lies of our government officials during the pandemic years.
The fact-checkers can complain all they like that Pfizer never said or implied that their tests would prevent transmission. This is the excuse official fact-checkers use to call ‘fake news’ on Rob Roos. Are outfits such as Politifact so dense (or disingenuous?) that they don’t realise they are debating the wrong fact? Let’s have a ‘fact-check’ on the claims of politicians, such as President Joe Biden. As Rob Roos correctly states, it was the lies of government and the lies of health officials drafting policy, that matter. And they certainly lied.
The writing crisis in Australian schools
A review of 10 million NAPLAN year 3-9 writing results and more than 350 persuasive writing samples by the government-funded Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) has found students’ writing declined significantly in every key skill area but spelling over seven years to 2018.
“We do have a serious decline, and it’s worse for our older students,” said the head of AERO, Jenny Donovan, who called for the core skill of writing to be given greater emphasis in the nation’s schools. “It’s a big drop and [writing] is a really basic expectation.”
Claire Wyatt-Smith, an Australian Catholic University professor who was a key contributor to the NSW Education Standards Authority’s review of writing in schools, said an emphasis on reading had taken the focus off writing in Australian schools.
“Writing is of at least equal need and greater urgency,” she said. “The teaching of writing is perhaps the biggest equity issue we face. We can use the word illiterate. They finish school and are unable to have the proficiency in writing they need for workplace engagement.”
The national findings echo those of a major review in NSW, which also found teachers lacked confidence in teaching writing, were not given the training and resources they needed, and spent too little classroom time focusing on it, particularly in high school.
Writing is key to success at school because students who struggle to express their thoughts clearly on the page cannot demonstrate their knowledge. Research has shown that writing ability in year 9 is a strong indicator of success in year 12, when many subjects require essays.
Donovan said clear written expression was also essential to life after school. “Everybody is going to need to write a job application,” she said. “They’ll have to question a traffic fine, or make a case for why their rental bond should be returned.”
AERO’s analysis found the decline was particularly noticeable among high-performing students.
In 2011, more than 20 per cent of year 9 students achieved five or six out of possible six marks in sentence structure, which meant they could write sentences that varied in length and complexity. By 2018, that proportion had fallen to just eight per cent.
Writing standards
Forty-five percent of students in Year 7 can score a 3 out of a possible 6, meaning they can correctly write most simple and compound sentences, and some complex sentences. In year 9, more than a third of students are still only able to write at the same basic level.
Only a quarter of year 9 students used apostrophes, commas and colons correctly most of the time. Most were at the level of a competent year 3 student as defined by curriculum documents, which meant they could use capital letters at the beginning of sentences and full stops at the end.
The many students who are below the standard assumed in the curriculum are likely to find lessons and assessments too hard. This is a particular problem in year 9, although students in years 5 and 7 are also achieving at a lower level than curriculum expectations.
“Students are a long way short of where the syllabus and curriculum anticipates they should be in their learning,” said Donovan.
“When teachers are using the syllabus or curriculum to guide them, rather than the knowledge of where their students are up to, they’ll miss the mark. They’ll be teaching at a point where the students are not ready for learning. “There’s no reason why a year 9 teacher will know what’s in a year 3 syllabus document. That’s a big gap to straddle.”
Donovan has made writing a priority for AERO, which was founded to help schools use effective teaching approaches, and has developed resources that teachers can use in their classroom. “The good news part is we also understand what to do about it,” she said.
NSW has also become the first jurisdiction to make writing a key focus of its new syllabuses.
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An idea for getting the unemployed to give something back
Four problems, which are related but which can be solved
Australia currently has – among many others – four problems, which are related but which can be solved. The four problems are a skills shortage, a failing education system, youth unemployment, and under-manning in the ADF.
In early September, a Jobs and Skills Summit was held in Canberra. To address skills shortages, Prime Minister Albanese pledged an extra $1 billion for 180,000 fee-free TAFE places in 2023 and $100m over four years for 10,000 new ‘energy apprentices’. Politicians see money – other people’s money – as the solution to every problem. However, money will not solve our skills shortages while the second problem – a failing education system – exists.
At June 30, 2020, 266,600 young Australians were undertaking apprenticeships. In 2019, 384,400 undergraduates commenced degree courses. However, just under half of apprentices fail to complete their apprenticeships, and around half who study teaching also fail to complete. With these failure rates, of Albanese’s 190,000 free TAFE places and energy apprenticeships only half will finish – yet another half a billion dollars down the drain.
The Jobs Summit was told that drop-outs occur, ‘in part because young people are not really prepared for the process’ – the process simply being education and training – and ‘lack of foundational skills’ among potential workers are a real barrier to employment. Worse, the Business Council of Australia’s CEO, Jennifer Westacott told the summit ‘they simply don’t have the basic skills of reading, writing, spelling, numeracy and digital’.
Self-evidently, our education system is a problem. According to the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), in 2018 20 per cent of Australian students had reading levels ‘too low to enable them to participate effectively and productively in life’, an eight per cent increase since 2003. By 2030, nearly 25 per cent of our students will fall into this dismal and abysmal category.
Australia’s unemployment rate is now 3.5 per cent, but our third problem is youth employment at 7.03 per cent. The number of unemployed in June 2022 was 494,000, of whom 77,000 are in the youth cohort (ages 15 – 24). In May 2022 there were 480,000 job vacancies – approximately one job for every person unemployed.
However, instead of having almost zero unemployment as one might expect, the jobs are not being filled. And, of the 77,000 unemployed youth, the majority are highly likely to be unemployable, destined never to escape the insidious cycle of welfare dependency.
The fourth problem is under-manning in the ADF and Australia’s Reserve Forces. Vice Admiral Mark Hammond, the new Chief of Navy, said that the RAN submarine force will have to expand from its current 850 sailors to about 2,500 to crew our new nuclear submarines, and thousands more will be needed to crew new surface ships. These highly-skilled jobs cannot be filled if half our tertiary students fail to complete their studies and training, and if 25 per cent of secondary school leavers are incapable of undertaking further study and training.
A potential answer to this problem is to have Australia’s unemployed youth – those on welfare – engage in military training for a year. A pilot program of 5,000 trainees (from the 77,000 unemployed youth cohort) across the six states would require around 500 staff for a year. These could come from Australia’s reserve forces, from retired regular ADF personnel, and from other appropriate retired personnel who would like to work. This program should not be a burden on the already undermanned – and overworked – ADF. Salary costs could be around $50 million for the year. Accommodation should be tented, to reduce costs and to allow easy establishment of training camps in specific locations. The establishment of inexpensive and temporary catering, shower, and latrine facilities are not beyond the capabilities of army engineers. Total costs of the training could be around $100 million a year. Small change for our hitherto shamelessly profligate governments.
The purpose of the training is change – change to lifestyles, outlook, thinking, and to the lack of basic skills of the young unemployed. Under current conditions they have no prospects of any meaningful employment, no prospects of a fulfilling life, and no prospects of contributing to Australia.
Twelve months of full-time military recruit training will qualify participants as fully-trained soldiers i.e. ready to and capable of joining a regular military unit. Note that this is not national service. Furthermore, those who do complete the training will not be compelled to serve in the ADF regular forces. Their commitment to full-time ADF service will end on the completion of their full-time recruit training of twelve months.
Any who are unwilling to commit to and complete the training period will not be compelled to do so. However, those who refuse to engage in this training will no longer receive any unemployment or other welfare benefits.
Apart from the military training, the program should comprise education in basic and higher skills in reading, writing, numeracy, and digital – those that are now lacking. Essential elements of the program should include discipline, physical fitness, sport, and adventure training. The experience should be enjoyable, educational, and productive for the majority, if not all who undertake the training. It must be a positive life-changing experience. At the end of the training, all participants should be job-ready, and ready to participate effectively and productively in life.
After the initial recruit training is completed, the program could be expanded for those who have demonstrated an interest and a commitment to include trade and vocational training in the widest possible range of traditional and new (digital) trades and skills. Leadership and management training – developing initiative and self-reliance – now being sold by vocational colleges at a high cost, can also be delivered to those demonstrating interest and commitment via promotion courses.
Instead of looking for reasons why this cannot be done, let’s make it happen. As Nike said – just do it!
Australia currently has – among many others – four problems, which are related but which can be solved. The four problems are a skills shortage, a failing education system, youth unemployment, and under-manning in the ADF.
In early September, a Jobs and Skills Summit was held in Canberra. To address skills shortages, Prime Minister Albanese pledged an extra $1 billion for 180,000 fee-free TAFE places in 2023 and $100m over four years for 10,000 new ‘energy apprentices’. Politicians see money – other people’s money – as the solution to every problem. However, money will not solve our skills shortages while the second problem – a failing education system – exists.
At June 30, 2020, 266,600 young Australians were undertaking apprenticeships. In 2019, 384,400 undergraduates commenced degree courses. However, just under half of apprentices fail to complete their apprenticeships, and around half who study teaching also fail to complete. With these failure rates, of Albanese’s 190,000 free TAFE places and energy apprenticeships only half will finish – yet another half a billion dollars down the drain.
The Jobs Summit was told that drop-outs occur, ‘in part because young people are not really prepared for the process’ – the process simply being education and training – and ‘lack of foundational skills’ among potential workers are a real barrier to employment. Worse, the Business Council of Australia’s CEO, Jennifer Westacott told the summit ‘they simply don’t have the basic skills of reading, writing, spelling, numeracy and digital’.
Self-evidently, our education system is a problem. According to the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), in 2018 20 per cent of Australian students had reading levels ‘too low to enable them to participate effectively and productively in life’, an eight per cent increase since 2003. By 2030, nearly 25 per cent of our students will fall into this dismal and abysmal category.
Australia’s unemployment rate is now 3.5 per cent, but our third problem is youth employment at 7.03 per cent. The number of unemployed in June 2022 was 494,000, of whom 77,000 are in the youth cohort (ages 15 – 24). In May 2022 there were 480,000 job vacancies – approximately one job for every person unemployed.
However, instead of having almost zero unemployment as one might expect, the jobs are not being filled. And, of the 77,000 unemployed youth, the majority are highly likely to be unemployable, destined never to escape the insidious cycle of welfare dependency.
The fourth problem is under-manning in the ADF and Australia’s Reserve Forces. Vice Admiral Mark Hammond, the new Chief of Navy, said that the RAN submarine force will have to expand from its current 850 sailors to about 2,500 to crew our new nuclear submarines, and thousands more will be needed to crew new surface ships. These highly-skilled jobs cannot be filled if half our tertiary students fail to complete their studies and training, and if 25 per cent of secondary school leavers are incapable of undertaking further study and training.
A potential answer to this problem is to have Australia’s unemployed youth – those on welfare – engage in military training for a year. A pilot program of 5,000 trainees (from the 77,000 unemployed youth cohort) across the six states would require around 500 staff for a year. These could come from Australia’s reserve forces, from retired regular ADF personnel, and from other appropriate retired personnel who would like to work. This program should not be a burden on the already undermanned – and overworked – ADF. Salary costs could be around $50 million for the year. Accommodation should be tented, to reduce costs and to allow easy establishment of training camps in specific locations. The establishment of inexpensive and temporary catering, shower, and latrine facilities are not beyond the capabilities of army engineers. Total costs of the training could be around $100 million a year. Small change for our hitherto shamelessly profligate governments.
The purpose of the training is change – change to lifestyles, outlook, thinking, and to the lack of basic skills of the young unemployed. Under current conditions they have no prospects of any meaningful employment, no prospects of a fulfilling life, and no prospects of contributing to Australia.
Twelve months of full-time military recruit training will qualify participants as fully-trained soldiers i.e. ready to and capable of joining a regular military unit. Note that this is not national service. Furthermore, those who do complete the training will not be compelled to serve in the ADF regular forces. Their commitment to full-time ADF service will end on the completion of their full-time recruit training of twelve months.
Any who are unwilling to commit to and complete the training period will not be compelled to do so. However, those who refuse to engage in this training will no longer receive any unemployment or other welfare benefits.
Apart from the military training, the program should comprise education in basic and higher skills in reading, writing, numeracy, and digital – those that are now lacking. Essential elements of the program should include discipline, physical fitness, sport, and adventure training. The experience should be enjoyable, educational, and productive for the majority, if not all who undertake the training. It must be a positive life-changing experience. At the end of the training, all participants should be job-ready, and ready to participate effectively and productively in life.
After the initial recruit training is completed, the program could be expanded for those who have demonstrated an interest and a commitment to include trade and vocational training in the widest possible range of traditional and new (digital) trades and skills. Leadership and management training – developing initiative and self-reliance – now being sold by vocational colleges at a high cost, can also be delivered to those demonstrating interest and commitment via promotion courses.
Instead of looking for reasons why this cannot be done, let’s make it happen. As Nike said – just do it!
21 October, 2022
Government-owned electricity generation: What could possibly go wrong?
Dan is going to close all the coal-fired power stations. Not a single word about what will happen on windless nights and overcast days
A re-elected Andrews government will take back control of the state’s electricity grid and effectively end coal-fired power generation in Victoria in little more than a decade through a renewable energy target of 95 per cent by 2035.
Ahead of the November state election, Premier Daniel Andrews announced the new policy on Thursday, prompting warnings from energy experts that returning electricity generation to state hands could increase power prices, expose taxpayers to massive fiscal risk, and even make the government’s renewable energy targets harder to reach.
The plan was condemned by energy generators as a “back to the future” announcement and “retrograde step”, but was backed by the Electrical Trades Union as a “fantastic development” for Victoria.
It follows a joint Albanese-Andrews government “rewiring the nation” announcement earlier this week – which aims to fast-track Victorian renewable energy zones and offshore wind development – and the launch earlier this month of the NSW electricity infrastructure road map. And last month, Queensland Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced a $62bn energy plan, which includes a renewable energy target of 80 per cent by 2035.
Mr Andrews claimed his policy would “deliver cheaper power bills and lower greenhouse gas emissions” in a state that is currently dependent on coal for 60 per cent of its power. He also took aim at the Kennett Liberal government for selling off the SEC amid Victoria’s post-Cain-Kirner Labor government recession in the 1990s.
“The Liberals sold off public power assets to private, for-profit companies. They sold off Victoria’s essential services and sent much of the profits offshore – with the generators alone making $23bn in profits at our collective expense,” the Premier said.
The plan to revive the SEC would give Victorian taxpayers a 51 per cent stake in the commission and its wind and solar projects, at an initial cost of $1bn.
Mr Andrews said industry superannuation funds were the government’s preferred investment partners for the remaining 49 per cent.
“Unreliable, privatised coal will be replaced by clean, government-owned, renewable energy,” the Premier said.
“We’ve already taken soundings from the super industry and to say they are excited is an understatement.”
A new SEC office will be established in the Latrobe Valley town of Morwell, in Victoria’s east.
Labor is facing electoral challenges from the Greens in at least three inner city seats, and is targeting the seat of Morwell, following the retirement of independent former Nationals MP Russell Northe.
Mr Andrews announced new renewable energy targets of 65 per cent by 2030 and 95 per cent by 2035, bringing forward the government’s net-zero emissions target by five years, to 2045.
He also estimated the initiatives would increase gross state product by about $9.5bn and support 59,000 jobs through to 2035.
The Andrews government says the new SEC will be responsible for generating 4.5 gigawatts of renewable power – the equivalent replacement capacity of Loy Yang A, Victoria’s largest power station, which is being closed by AGL in 2035, a decade earlier than previously planned.
The owner of the Loy Yang B coal plant, Alinta, said its staff were shocked by Thursday’s announcement, given the generator had been due to remain open until 2047, but will now be forced to close 12 years earlier.
Alinta chief executive Jeff Dimery said the company had taken “strong steps” to prepare for the transition to renewable energy, “but we need to understand more about how the government intends to manage the cost of the expedited transition, protect communities and workers, and support us to invest in the replacement generation required to keep the lights on in the state.
“Our immediate priority and focus will be supporting our employees at Loy Yang B who will be understandably shocked by this announcement,” Mr Dimery said.
Grattan Institute energy program director Tony Wood said the announcement, with recent statements by the federal government, Queensland and NSW, demonstrated a renewed push by state and federal governments to “renationalise” the power sector.
Mr Wood argued governments had effectively made a call that markets could not be trusted to deliver an increasingly volatile transition from coal power to clean energy.
“We just have arrived at a position where the ministers whose governments contributed to the problem have concluded that the markets cannot deliver what they want, someone has to take control and it should be them. They are probably right,” he said.
“That means that the risks now sit with governments and some combination of taxpayers and consumers.
“I suspect that, despite the claims that this will all reduce power bills, the most likely casualty will be cost – although delivering the targets might be a close second.”
Green Energy Markets analyst Tristan Edis said he suspected the policy would be “good politics as voters with rose-tinted glasses experience large hikes in their power bills, warning that state-owned power companies “can be incredibly ruthless, profit-oriented operators”.
“Some have been big blockers of emission-reduction policies. They have regularly exploited their market power (with) network charges higher than needed (because they’re) used to raising state government revenue. (They) ain’t saints,” Mr Edis tweeted.
Australian Energy Council chief Sarah McNamara said the move was a “back to the future” announcement and “retrograde step” which would damage market and investor confidence.
“The surprise announcement contains little detail but looks likely to chill private investment and see Victorian taxpayers carry the lion’s share of risk around new generation,” Ms McNamara said.
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‘Reverse racism’: Fury as iconic Mount Warning hike closed forever
This was done under Leftist influence. The Left just love racial discrimination. Hitler put them off it for a while but it has roared back in the guise of Critical Race Theory in America.
Mount Warning national park is Crown land, the property of the Australian people as a whole. Giving control of it to some of the descendants of people who once lived there is a bureaucratic decision, not a constitutional reality. There is no obstacle to removing the exclusivity of use.
When will the Left learn that racial discrimination is obnoxious?
The decision to permanently close the iconic Mount Warning hike has prompted furious backlash and claims of ‘reverse racism
It’s been labelled Australia’s “next Uluru” and the decision to permanently close the famous Wollumbin/Mount Warning hiking trail has drawn widespread backlash.
The Tweed Valley tourism Mecca and its 1100m-high peak is the first place in the country to catch the day’s sunrise.
However those picturesque views and challenging hours-long hike are a thing of the past for visitors after the NSW government revealed on Thursday it would permanently close the attraction and even ban images promoting the famous mountain.
The site will be handed back to its Aboriginal custodians.
Representatives from the Wollumbin Consultative Group, which represents a range of Aboriginal groups and families with a connection to the site, say public access is not “culturally appropriate or safe”.
Despite already being closed since 2020, largely due to the Covid pandemic, the future of the Wollumbin/Mount Warning hiking trail remains a polarising issue.
Couriermail.com.au readers were torn over the future of the site, with 93 per cent voting they opposed its permanent closure, labelling it ‘reverse racism’ and a backwards steps toward inclusion.
Here is what both sides of the debate said:
Vanessa Alia said it’s time to respect the traditional owners of the land. “Heaven forfend we should actually respect anything about the culture of the people whose land we stole … because we’re a bunch of toddlers who think we’re entitled to anything and everything,” she wrote on Facebook.
Monica Dixon added: “I climbed Wollumbin many years ago. I didn’t know the cultural significance of the site. I’m glad that I know now, and I wouldn’t do it again.”
While agreeing with the handover, David Layt questioned if it could still remain open. “It is cultural land & should be with the indigenous custodians. But would be great if we can come to an understanding so all can enjoy.”
Tanique Brim used history in her case. “People forget before colonisation, we had a lore! And many sacred areas aboriginal people can’t go to unless approved by elders. just because it’s beautiful, you don’t need to be there! We are spiritual people who have the right to close any sacred area, it’s been like that since dreamtime. Government tried to erase our lands, language and culture.”
James S. Doyle wrote: “Anyone actually from the Tweed valley understands very well why its closed. It’s been completely over run by half wits from the city.
Before everyone gets all opinionated speak to some of the rescue staff who were having to go up there every night of the week at 3am and rescue fitness camp people who got into “trouble”. Not to mention the trashing it has got with garbage.”
THE CASE AGAINST CLOSURE
Phillip Di Bella led the charge of those arguing that the closure would drive a wedge between communities.
“Totally disgusting and further building divide amongst all Australians! Woke taken to another level and unfortunately it won’t be the end!!!!”
Trish Jenkin agreed: “We are one. What utter rubbish. This is all division. We the white Australian has lost all rights to everything my Father fought for in WW2 and this is only the start. Australia Day and Anzac Day next. Watch this space.”
However Teresa said keeping it open would be the best way to produce a positive outcome: “Respect, yes. Close, no. By having it open, there are more opportunities to celebrate indigenous culture. I am pretty sure First Nations people climbed it for thousands of years.”
Brendan John backed her up.
“Surely keeping it open would allow visitors to become aware of the cultural significance closing it ensures the story is never told. Seems to defeat the purpose.”
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Labor told not to waste its golden chance to tackle Australia’s housing crunch
The Feds can do only so much. The big blockage to new housing developments is local councils
Labor has a “golden opportunity” to tackle the country’s housing crisis in its first budget next week, but risks wasting it by focusing on only one half of the equation.
Urban Taskforce Australia said the government’s election commitments on affordability were primarily targeted at incentives for buyers and more social housing.
“While welcome, this does not address the underlying issue – that housing supply in Australia has fallen well behind demand and urgent reforms on the supply side are needed to improve housing outcomes for more households,” the group’s boss Tom Forrest said.
Ahead of Treasurer Jim Chalmers delivering his maiden budget on Tuesday, Mr Forrest called for him to take “pro-active steps to boost private market housing supply”.
Current measures will only see demand increase while doing little if anything to address supply shortages, he said.
“Boosting demand with packages to assist those on low incomes alone is nothing but an offer of fools’ gold if housing supply is not significantly increased. It actually pushes up the price of new homes.”
A sustained lack of supply will increase demand for social and affordable housing, placing even the lower end of the housing market out of reach for many, he warned.
“So, while social and affordable housing is clearly necessary, given the current state of the market, greater focus needs to be applied to fixing the cause of the problem and not just the symptoms.
“The cause is the lack of supply and its failure to meet the demand for homes. The symptoms are rising home prices, declining affordability, increasing rents, and increased demand for social housing, resulting in increasing homelessness and poverty.
“It is time governments treated the cause.”
Sydney’s housing market is the most expensive and competitive in the country, whether someone is looking to buy or rent.
The New South Wales capital is also the “economic engine room of the nation”, Mr Forrest said, making the supply of affordable homes for key workers a critical issue.
But projections by the Department of Planning and Environment show a little over 150,000 new homes will be built in the next five years.
That’s well below the 40,000 per year – or 200,000 over five years – that the NSW Housing Strategy predicts will be required.
The latest data shows that supply constraints are getting worse. In the 12 months to June, new housing supply fell to just 24,641.
“That’s 28.7% below the prior five-year average, which in itself saw the housing supply crisis emerge,” Mr Forrest said.
“This means we are almost certainly heading for the DPE’s ‘low growth’ scenario for Greater Sydney, which predicts that only 143,475 new homes will be produced between 2021-26.”
That would leave a shortfall of more than 60,000 required dwellings, putting significant pressure on prices.
Tuesday’s budget is expected to focus on funding measures for Labor’s election commitments.
This includes the Help to Buy shared equity scheme for 10,000 people a year, the Regional First Home Buyer Support Scheme for 10,000 eligible participants a year, and the Housing Australia Future Fund to build 30,000 new social and affordable homes in five years.
Delivering on those promises as quickly as possible is a “sensible” approach of the government, Mr Forrest said. “But there is an urgent need for focus on supply-side stimulus.”
Urban Taskforce Australia has released a five-point plan to drastically improve the housing supply across the country:
It includes the immediate reform of tax constraints on the emerging build-to-rent sector, including GST tax credits that currently aren’t available for five years.
The plan also calls for increased incentives for superannuation funds to put their enormous investment potential behind affordable and key worker housing.
Local councils should also be rewarded for overachieving in housing supply by linking infrastructure grants to performance targets.
Mr Forrest said the government should also expand the use of low-interest bonds via the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation for the delivery of private sector housing supply projects.
And finally, the states that increase the flexibility of planning systems to fast-track high-yield housing supply developments should receive financial rewards. Conversely, those who don’t should be penalised.
Build-to-rent offers an opportunity to drastically increase housing supply. Picture: LIV Newstead in Brisbane/Mirvac
“Supporting those who are struggling is in the DNA of the ALP,” Mr Forrest said. “But offering demand side assistance can only work if the supply side is also addressed.”
The Commonwealth holds most of the big levers when it comes to addressing housing supply, he said.
“Labor’s first federal budget in almost a decade is a golden opportunity to signal to state governments, [councils], and the private sector that it is prepared to be part of a collaborative solution.”
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New coal mine approved
The Department of Regional Development, Manufacturing and Water has granted New Acland Coal its water licence, clearing the way for the mine to reopen and for New Hope Group to start hiring hundreds of staff.
The decision comes about a month after it was granted a mining lease.
The water licence comes with 35 strict conditions, including that NAC offsets underground water impacted by mining activities by surrendering equivalent water entitlements.
It must also monitor the impacts on aquifers and groundwater users, implement an underground water monitoring program to track any impacts that may occur and publish the volume of underground water taken.
New Acland Coal general manager Dave O’Dwyer said the mood at the site was ecstatic. “It is great news,” he said. “When the head office rang me up this afternoon I was a bit taken aback,” he said.
Mr O’Dywer said the team had some environmental processes to move through before he could hire new staff. ‘We are hoping within a few months we’ll be moving dirt,” he said
“We have worked so hard to get this far and there has been huge support from the community and through our expressions of interest portal.
About 800 people have put their hand up to work at the mine, with the vast majority coming from the Darling Downs.
All the water used at the site will be trucked in from the Wetalla Waste Water Treatment Plant in Cranley.
The water licence governs the incidental interaction with groundwater.
Mr O’Dwyer said while he expected the licence would be approved, he didn’t think it would happen so soon.
“We have had some interaction with the department talking about some things but we didn’t expect it to happen so quickly,” he said.
“We wanted to be sure the department went through its due diligence and we are really happy it has worked through that process and come forward with an answer for us.”
In December 2021, Queensland’s Land Court recommended the granting of the mining leases and issuing of a draft amended Environmental Authority for the Stage 3 development, subject to certain conditions being met.
Earlier this year NAC was granted a mining lease for Stage 3, which will see operations run for at least 10 years and employ an estimated 600 workers during construction and 400 during operation. It also means the area of mined land will roughly double.
The final approval comes after a 15-year battle between the mine’s owner New Hope Group and a collection Oakey farmers and residents.
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20 October, 2022
Mum-of-two exposes Australia's dire housing crisis as she details her horrific plight couch-surfing with a newborn for TWO years
She became pregnant during that time so it would appear that the man was useless. She should clearly have been more careful about getting her legs up. Her problem is clearly bad decisions, not housing
A young mother with a four-week-old baby and a seven-year-old daughter has been forced to couch surf for nearly two years amid Queensland's social housing crisis.
Amie Rabinski said her older daughter was finding it hard to adapt to their new living situation and that it was stressful not having her own home.
'She misses everything. She misses her toys, she misses her clothes, she misses her own room. We haven't had that for nearly two years,' she told the Today Show.
The Logan mother said she had been deprived of enjoying her second pregnancy because the process of finding permanent accommodation had been so draining.
'Throughout the whole pregnancy I definitely felt deprived. You know, I didn't have much time to really enjoy it,' the mother-of-two said. 'There was a lot to the pregnancy that I didn't really like.'
Host Ally Langdon asked Amie if she felt okay.
'Yeah, I'm fine, mentally, but it is very draining and explaining it to a seven-year-old child is not easy. They don't understand much at that age.'
Aimee McVeigh, the CEO of Queensland's Council of Social Service, said the housing crisis affecting tens of thousands of Queenslanders was an 'unacceptable situation'.
'It is a wet day in Brisbane and we are expecting a really wet weekend and yet tens of thousands of families are waking up in tents, in cars, and in hotel rooms getting ready for work, getting ready to go to school, and you're right Amie, it is impossible to explain this to children,' she said.
The number of Queenslanders on the state's social housing register has ballooned to 46,000 - a rise of 78 per cent in the last four years.
The state government this week announced an additional $1billion would be invested in the state's social housing fund.
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New economic research has finally demolished the popular notion that the 23.3 per cent gender pay gap is primarily driven by employers paying women less for doing the same job as men
While sexism still impacts some private-sector professional salaries, the real issue is that men dominate highly paid sectors such as mining, while women take most of the low-paid jobs, such as in aged and child care.
And the research argues the pay gap could be cut by one third to 15.6 per cent if we could shift to a 40:40:20 gender concentration of workers – 40 per cent women, 40 per cent men and 20 per cent any gender – across all industries and occupations.
The Gender Equity Insights 2022 report from Curtin University’s specialist unit, the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, and the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, offers detailed evidence of how the composition of the workforce generates pay gaps.
Centre director Alan Duncan said it was the first time the centre was able to use postcodes of workplaces to get more accurate state and territory comparisons.
“This is quite a clear articulation of the different contributors to overall numbers that we often see discussed in debates around gender pay gaps,” Professor Duncan said.
“The debate is often dominated by the extent of what are commonly termed like-for-like pay gaps, and by that we mean that men and women are paid differently for performing the same role in the same organisation.”
Salary differences for the same occupations still existed, he said, but the bigger problem was that wages in some industries were much lower than in others and that women were concentrated in relatively low-paying sectors.
He said that even with a 40:40:20 split “there’s another two-thirds of the pay gap that remains to be explained”. Some was attributable to like-for-like salary differences, and some because the journey to a 50:50 split had some way to go.
“I think it’s important to understand all sides of the issue,” he said. “This shouldn’t come as a surprise – it’s something that’s been discussed for some time. But we’ve sought to really get some clarity and precision on it.”
Professor Duncan said it was important to question why some sectors were poorly paid and whether women’s contributions were adequately remunerated.
“It is important, I think, to reflect on whether or not we are rewarding the value of an aged care or a childcare worker or somebody in our health system in the manner that we should,” he said.
His team used the new WGEA location data to compare pay metrics, gender pay gaps and organisational practices across Australia. It found that in most states and territories, the main driver of the gap was the gender imbalance in industries, and this was especially so in Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory. Resource-rich WA was the worst in the nation at 32.1 per cent, but the gap would halve to 16.5 per cent under the 40:40:20 rule. Under that ratio, the gap in the NT would reduce by two thirds, from 25.3 per cent to 8.3 per cent; NSW and Victoria would see gender pay gaps fall by 7.4 and 6.5 percentage points; and Queensland by a larger margin of 8.8 percentage points, from 22.5 per cent down to 13.7 per cent.
It also found that for people working in major cities, the gender pay gap in base remuneration is about 19 per cent. However, the gender pay gap rises steadily to 28.2 per cent for those working in remote areas, and to 29.3 per cent for workers in very remote parts of the country,
The report said Australia needed more men in healthcare and social assistance, and education and training, and more women in construction, mining, manufacturing, information services, transport and wholesale.
“There also needs to be an increase in the share of women in leadership positions, technicians and trades workers and operators and drivers,” it said.
WGEA director Mary Wooldridge said Australia had one of the most highly gender-segregated industrial structures in the developed world.
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The truth about Australia's Covid lockdowns is FINALLY exposed: Damning report slams school closures and politically-driven decisions - 'it was WRONG'
An independent review into Australia's Covid response has slammed politically driven health orders and the excessive use of lockdowns - finding they ultimately failed to protect the nation's most vulnerable people,.
The 97-page review, led by former secretary to the prime minister's office Peter Shergold, urged federal and state governments to learn from their mistakes and overhaul their processes in order to restore trust.
The report, funded by the Paul Ramsay Foundation, John and Myriam Wylie Foundation and Andrew Forrest's Minderoo Foundation, found the country's school closures were also a failure.
'It was wrong to close entire school systems, particularly once new information indicated that schools were not high-transmission environments,' the review said.
'For children and parents [particularly women], we failed to get the balance right between protecting health and imposing long-term costs on education, mental health, the economy and workforce outcomes.
'Rules were too often formulated and enforced in ways that lacked fairness and compassion. Such overreach undermined public trust and confidence in the institutions that are vital to effective crisis response.'
The review carried out over a six month period involved more than 350 confidential submissions and consultations from health experts, economists, public servants, business and community groups.
It consisted of more than 160 submissions, 3,000 hours of research and policy and data analysis.
The review concluded various lockdowns and shutting of borders should have been used as a 'last resort'.
'Too many of Australia's lockdowns and border closures were the result of policy failures in quarantine, contact tracing, testing, disease surveillance and communicating effectively the need for preventive measures like mask wearing and social distancing,' the review stated.
'Lockdowns, especially when targeted at a particular location, brought a deep sense of inequity among those who were most restricted. Lockdowns, overall, created a universal feeling that the pandemic was being policed rather than managed.
'As with lockdowns, border closures – particularly between states and territories – should be used sparingly and only in extreme situations. They should be applied with greater empathy and flexibility.'
The review noted despite the pandemic affecting everyone, 'its burden was not shared equally'.
DAMNING QUOTES FROM COVID REPORT
'It was wrong to close entire school systems, particularly once new information indicated that schools were not high-transmission environments.'
'Rules were too often formulated and enforced in ways that lacked fairness and compassion. Such overreach undermined public trust and confidence in the institutions that are vital to effective crisis response.'
'Lockdowns, especially when targeted at a particular location, brought a deep sense of inequity among those who were most restricted. Lockdowns, overall, created a universal feeling that the pandemic was being policed rather than managed.
It stated that the failure to plan adequately for the 'differing impact of Covid' meant the disease 'spread faster and more widely'.
The review also noted while Australia had early success in limiting infection rates and deaths, in comparison to other countries, this success 'started to falter in 2021'.
'Cases and deaths have risen even further during 2022, dramatically reversing our early competitive advantage,' the review notes.
'As of September 30, 2022, Australia has recorded 378,617 cases per million people in 2022. 'The latest available official data shows that by May 2022 excess deaths in Australia had spiked to almost 359 per million people in 2022.'
The document also said the 'absence of transparency' in the expert health advice 'helped mask political calculations'.
'Political calculation was never far from the surface of COVID-19 decisions,' the review stated.
'It is neither realistic nor desirable to remove politics from decision-making in an accountable democracy. 'But the absence of transparency in the expert advice going to leaders helped mask political calculations.
'It was difficult to gauge the trade-offs that were being considered between health and economic outcomes. It made it easier for leaders to be selective in the 'expert advice' they followed.'
The paper went on to explain the damning effect overreach had on the confidence of Australian citizens.
'Such overreach undermined public trust and confidence in the institutions that are vital to effective crisis response,' it read.
'Many Australians came to feel that they were being protected by being policed. These actions could have been avoided if we had built fairness into our planning decisions and introduced compassion into their implementation.'
The review recommended six measures to be implemented in order to avoid the same mistakes being repeated in another health crisis.
These included; establishing an independent, data-driven Australian Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, clearly defining national cabinet roles and responsibilities in a crisis, publicly releasing modelling used in government decision-making, regular pandemic scenario testing and the sharing and linking of data between jurisdictions.
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Mining is the key to getting Australia's cost of living down
Through taxes on it, it gives the government real money to spend -- instead of having to print it
With Australia in desperate need of economic golden eggs as we struggle with a massive debt burden and face a possible world recession, they’re trying harder than ever to kill the goose that is laying them. The huge $50 billion slash in the 2021-22 budget deficit, cutting it by two-thirds from $80 billion to $32 billion, largely resulted from record company tax collections of $126 billion.
These were driven up by our highest-ever resources and energy exports of $421 billion, led by the condemned-to-death fossil fuels of coal, oil and LNG which together made up almost half the total. And in the current 2022-23 financial year, the golden eggs will be even richer as resources and energy exports are officially forecast to reach even higher to $450 billion as coal export revenues surge to $120 billion to exceed iron ore.
But governmental net-zero targets, investment bans by woke climate-catastrophe-obsessed boards of directors and super funds, a court system happy to be the plaything of climate-activist lawfare that has made Australia the world’s most litigious developed nation for mining projects, have all combined to bring the campaign against fossil fuels – and thereby against Australia’s historic dependence on reliable cheap energy and status as an exporter – to a serious tipping point.
Unless there is a truce in this war against fossil fuels, the current financial year will be the last time they will be capable of coming so significantly to our economic rescue. Already, next year’s official forecasts of an expected decline in the Ukraine war’s high commodity prices, of a Western world economic slowdown and for its rush to renewables (as self-destructive emissions targets are imposed), are together likely to result in a cut in our fossil fuel export revenue by almost a quarter in 2023-24. This, along with Australia’s deliberate official obstructionism to fossil fuel investment, particularly in coal, will all combine to kill off this economic lifeline whose current significance has been deliberately downplayed by those seeking environmental purity.
So while this year’s forecast iron ore exports at $119 billion takes the headlines, the fossil fuels of metallurgical coal at $58 billion, thermal coal at $62 billion, natural gas at $90 billion and oil at $15 billion are together officially forecast to be almost twice as big as iron ore’s export earnings this financial year and to make up, at $225 billion, half of Australia’s total minerals and resources export revenue. While, on their own, coal exports are earning more than iron ore, so effective has the campaign been against coal that not even the organisation that is supposed to represent it, the Minerals Council of Australia, was prepared to acknowledge coal’s primary role when it issued a press release last week welcoming the latest official resources and energy forecasts by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, ‘as a strong reminder of the of the economic benefits delivered by the mining industry’.
In noting the forecast that Australia’s resource and energy export earnings will reach a record $450 billion in the current financial year , the MCA correctly asserted that, ‘Australia is only in a position to take advantage of these [high international] prices due to increased production across a range of commodities. In the last decade, over $250 billion of investment in new mines, processing equipment and infrastructure has resulted in Australia’s bauxite mining increasing 41 per cent, iron ore production increasing 84 per cent and lithium output rising nearly 400 per cent’.
Not a word about the biggest single revenue earner, coal, which became the mineral that MCA pretends does not exist ever since an emissions-obsessed BHP threatened to quit the MCA if it continued to lobby for coal; note the absence of coal in MCA press releases in recent years.
But when MCA campaigns against pressure for rises in mining taxes and royalties, as it has this month, by boasting of mining’s record $43 billion contribution made to the Australian economy in 2020-21 (with 2021-22 sure to be even considerably larger), coal’s existence is re-discovered and its multi-billion-dollar share is included – without acknowledgement. And by asserting that the effective tax rate on Australian mining investment is already high relative to many jurisdictions in other mining countries, it reminds governments that while Australia needs to attract more investment in mining (but you must not mention coal!) in order to benefit from growing international demand, there is strong competition for investment from other mining countries.
However, at least coal has proselytisers on a state basis. As Stephen Galilee, CEO of the NSW Minerals Council pointedly told me, ‘Some people want to ignore the fact that our coal sector even exists This is despite coal continuing to be NSW’s most valuable export commodity, worth around $22.6 billion in exports, and delivering a record $4 billion in royalties to the NSW government this year alone’.
But what of the future, given the high demand for NSW coal that Galilee claims is some of the highest quality available anywhere in the world, producing more energy with less emissions than coal from elsewhere? ‘There are currently 17 potential coal-mining proposals in the planning and development pipeline in NSW representing a further $4.6 billion investment.’ But nearly all are proposals to expand or extend operational lives of NSW’s forty existing coal mines; greenfield projects face too many hurdles.
The same goes for Queensland, where my old parliamentary colleague Ian Macfarlane who runs the Queensland Resources Council, said the latest official forecasts ‘reinforce the significance of the resources industry to the budget bottom line. Coal exports underpin both the Australian and Queensland governments’ budgets’. But Macfarlane warned that governments, particularly Queensland’s, ‘can’t take future investment and future returns from coal exports for granted’ and that the Queensland government’s decision to hike up coal royalty taxes to the highest rates in the world has resulted in ‘large mining investors already rethinking their investments in Queensland’.
Is it time someone brought another lump of coal into parliament to remind MPs of its economic significance?
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/business-robbery-etc-102/ ?
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19 October, 2022
$8.8bn blowout in NDIS budget
This Julia Gillard invention is an absurdity. "Disability" is a very loose term. I am in some ways disabled by my degree of autism. Do I qualify for government support of some kind?
At the very least, eligibility to the scheme should be based on visible physical disability only. Others should be expected to cope with the aid of the payments that all unemployed people get
Bill Shorten sees the problem, which is good coming from him, but his solution -- to pass the buck to other levels of government -- has zero chance of being taken up
Australia’s “disability safety net” has blown out by $8.8bn and needs a reset to remain sustainable for future generations of people with disability, NDIS Minister Bill Shorten says.
Mr Shorten has brought forward by a year a planned review of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, saying the scheme, now forecast to cost taxpayers $50bn a year by 2025-26, needs “to be better than it is”.
“For too many people the scheme has developed into a source of stress and anxiety,” he said.
“We want it to do what it’s meant to do – to provide choice and control for people with disability. (We) want to make sure that our national disability safety net is strong and responsive, generous and reasonable.”
Mr Shorten said next week’s federal budget would reveal “an increase in projected costs over the next four years of $8.8bn” compared to the Coalition’s budget handed down just seven months ago, blaming poor management by the previous government.
The first Chalmers budget will show the cost of the NDIS is forecast to be $50.3bn in 2025-26, compared with $44.5bn in the last Frydenberg budget.
Mr Shorten called out waste, inefficiency and fraud as driving up NDIS costs, but also noted other levels of government had retreated from offering support and services to people with disability, leaving them to try to scramble their way on to the scheme.
“What we need is to have more support for people with disabilities outside the scheme. We need to make sure our school system is more responsive to kids with learning needs,” he said.
“We need to make sure that (in) community mental health … there are supports for people who wouldn‘t be eligible for the scheme.”
But he didn’t accept the NDIS’s own financial sustainability report, which forecast costs to reach almost $60bn by 2030.
“I’m sceptical about some of the out-year forecasts,” Mr Shorten said. “I don’t necessarily sign up to every 10-year number. I think that is more science-fiction and art than it is science and evidence.”
He said it was important to restore community trust in the NDIS, and the new review would investigate its design, operation, workforce and overall sustainability, including costs.
“I absolutely want to see this scheme be sustainable, I absolutely want to see what we can do to moderate the growth cost trajectory.
“(And) I absolutely want to minimise rent-seeking by people who are seeking to take money from the NDIS, which the taxpayer wants to get to people with disability.”
The NDIS currently provides support to 530,000 people with a permanent disability, ranging from physical to neurological and psychosocial.
The NDIS projects there could be more than 850,000 participants by 2030.
The independent review will be co-chaired by longtime disability advocate Bruce Bonyhady, the inaugural NDIS chair, and Lisa Paul, a distinguished bureaucrat. Professor Bonyhady said there were “important issues to address in order to ensure the scheme can be … the best disability system in the world”.
He said the review was taking place at a critical juncture, and warned about the focus on costs.
“There’s far too much talk about the costs of the scheme,” Professor Bonyhady said. “It needs to be balanced with a discussion about the benefits, and there’s no doubt there are many examples of the scheme transforming peoples’ lives.
“It’s essential this review is owned by the disability community and in particular people with disability and their families.”
Disability groups and unions welcomed the review being brought forward, but the federal opposition said Mr Shorten was now caught in a difficult position on scheme sustainability.
“Bill Shorten promised plans would not go backwards under his watch, but questions are now being raised over the NDIS’s future funding, so let’s see if Labor’s actions meet its promises around the scheme’s framework and viability,” opposition NDIS spokesman Michael Sukkar said.
People With Disability Australia president Samantha Connor said the disability community was “looking forward to seeing the application of a rights-based lens to the NDIS, an increased focus on choice and control for people with disability, and renewed efforts to make sure that people with disability are truly the authors of our own lives”.
Australian Services Union NSW secretary Angus McFarland said the review “should mean frontline workers are now that much closer to being properly valued”.
“Right now we just don’t have the conditions, the job security or the salaries to attract – or retain – a sufficient number of disability workers to the sector.”
A final report will be delivered by the end of October next year.
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Let’s get uni students face-to-face again – for their mental health
A couple of weeks ago, I asked a university colleague if she had an unusual number of students experiencing psychological distress. “Yes,” she replied. “I have lots of students like that.” I told her that I had never had so many students dealing with mental health issues. We looked at each other in silence not knowing what to say.
I already knew that Australian university students suffered significant rates of anxiety and depression. When I wrote a column on higher education for The Age, I’d report on research about students’ mental health. One study that stood out, published in Australian Psychologist, showed university students had higher levels of psychological distress than the general population.
I also knew from studies that financial stress and working long hours affected students’ mental health. I can reel off other predicators for psychological distress, too. At the moment, none of these predicators seem to worry my colleagues and I more than the enduring effects of COVID-19 lockdowns on students.
Now it seems that our hunch that the COVID pandemic has had a negative psychological impact on students is correct. A new Monash University study, led by PhD candidate David Tuck, concludes that more tertiary education students experienced higher levels of psychological distress during the pandemic.
“More tertiary education students experienced severe distress during the COVID-19 pandemic than adults in the general population, as well as before the pandemic,” the Monash researchers say in their study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
It is one of the first Australian studies to investigate the level of psychological distress among tertiary students during the COVID pandemic. The research shows almost 71 per cent of the more than 1000 students surveyed displayed elevated levels of psychological distress during the pandemic between September 2020 and February 2021. Twenty-three per cent of the sample reported extreme levels of distress.
Another worrying finding is that students who had already been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, PTSD or other mental disorders before COVID had significantly higher levels of distress than students who did not have a previous diagnosis of a mental health disorder.
And it is the younger students and those studying undergraduate degrees that have higher levels of distress than older and postgraduate students. It’s understandable why this would be the case. It can be tricky for students to make the leap from high school to university, and this year’s first-years have done much of their final years of high school online at home during COVID lockdowns. The students had to readjust to being in classrooms and then acclimatise to university life.
So, what can universities do to help students?
They certainly can do more to help students feel they belong to their campus. One way to achieve this is to make more classes face-to-face. I have been shocked at how many undergraduate subjects, particularly in the humanities, are still being taught online. This semester students told me they chose my unit because it has a face-to-face tutorial. One student said that she “just wanted to see other students”.
Imagine, for a moment, the pressure placed on my first-year students last semester when they had a mix of online and face-to-face classes and had to try to navigate them on one day. I had students doing online classes in the morning and then racing to university to attend their face-to-face tutorial. Or some would try to do their online classes in the library whispering their answers during a Zoom discussion.
Universities justify the increase in the number of online classes by saying they are giving students a choice. But what about the pedagogical reasoning, particularly after students have spent so much time isolated at home during lockdowns? Previous Australian studies have suggested that online learning is not always appropriate for undergraduates because they are unaccustomed to the university style of learning. Besides university is more than the academic work. Campuses are where students can make lifelong friends.
I’m also unsure what the pedagogical reasons are for having pre-recorded lectures, which began during the lockdowns. Yes, students can listen to them any time, but from what academics tell me, many don’t watch them because the lectures are not engaging. You can’t ask questions in real time and hear the student responses.
University bosses need to think less about how to make cuts to teaching resources and examine the evidence about the best teaching methods for students in this COVID age. They could also speak to David Tuck and his colleagues, who have published material on how tertiary students can be helped during this period of COVID. They emphasise that positive social interactions in tertiary settings are vital to helping students.
In the International Journal of Stress Management, the researchers concluded that “engaging in enjoyable and personally meaningful activities, focusing attention on the present moment, exercise, positive social interactions, humour, and acceptance in difficult circumstances have the largest effects on improving resilience in tertiary education students”.
I’m sensitive to what my students are going through. But that’s not enough. Universities need to step up more to support and reduce stress among students. Then my colleague and I may not be staring at each other in silence wondering what will happen to our students going through psychological distress in this age of COVID.
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Chilling warning that Australian aged care sector at risk after huge losses
Government mandates and their attendant bureaucracy are probably a large part of the costs involved. Regulations always grow. They never recede. And they are rarely imposed together with any cost-benefit analysis of them
The industry in Australia is at serious risk of financial collapse after a new report revealed that two out of three nursing homes operated at a serious loss in 2020-21, with warnings an emergency injection of funds from the federal government is needed.
Analysis of more than 1300 residential aged care homes across Australia showed the desperate situation the sector is facing with each home suffering a loss of $14.67 a bed a day, a huge jump compared to the previous financial year where losses sat at $8.43.
The figures were even more alarming considering the former government paid an extra $10 a bed a day last year in a package worth around $800 million for the sector.
But the report from specialist accounting firm StewartBrown said the financial situation had “deteriorated” due to a number of reasons including staff pay jumping by an extra 1.75 per cent to 3.5 per cent, inflation skyrocketing to 6.1 per cent and an increase in superannuation payments to employees.
It also revealed that 67 per cent of nursing homes made an operating loss in the year to June 2022, a significant jump on the 58 per cent in 2020-21.
“The residential aged-care segment has sustained significant aggregate operating losses for the last five years totalling an estimated $3.8 billion, with $1.4 billion being the FY22 forecast,” it noted.
“These losses have eroded equity and capital growth, which has caused a considerable decline in investment into the sector.”
Its a stark downfall for the industry where providers were making $2.11 a bed a day in 2018-19, only for losses to rack up to $14.67 a bed a day.
“It is the opinion of StewartBrown that after five years of significant aggregate operating losses in the residential aged care sector, structural funding reforms including increased and appropriate care recipient co-contribution are essential, the report said.
“However, to avoid closure of homes and reduced service delivery, especially in regional locations, an emergency funding package also needs to be considered in the short term to ensure current viability and allow for the necessary funding reforms to be properly implemented.”
This would include the aged not only paying for the accommodation, but for living essentials as well such as such as food, utilities, cleaning and laundry.
However, it added where the consumer did not have the financial means to further contribute this must not in any respect disadvantage them.
“A safety net must be enshrined within aged care, as with other areas of health care and social services,” the report urged.
With the Labor government set to deliver its first budget next week, Treasurer Jim Chalmers had already flagged that aged care was one of the biggest cost pressures for it.
Funding for the sector will increase from $29.8 billion in 2022-23 to $52.5 billion in 2032-33.
There are around 245,000 Australians who live in an aged-care facility annually but with an ageing population this is expected to rise dramatically in coming years
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Informed consent and vaccine side-effects in Australia
Australia’s medical Code of Conduct, the statutory rules for medical practitioners, defines informed consent as ‘a person’s voluntary decision about medical care that is made with knowledge and understanding of the benefits and risks involved’.
In addition, the Australian Immunisation Handbook states: ‘For consent to be legally valid … it must be given voluntarily in the absence of undue pressure, coercion, or manipulation … and it can only be given after the potential risks and benefits of the relevant vaccine, the risks of not having it, and any alternative options have been explained to the person.’
Think back to the last time you gave consent for a medical procedure or, dare I say it, a vaccination. Were you taken through this process?
There’s more. What happens to consent if you’re involved in a clinical trial?
Former barrister, Julian Gillespie, explains:
‘There is a portion towards the end of the medical Code of Conduct, which … clearly addresses if you are a medical practitioner and you are involved in a clinical or experimental trial … then there’s all these further procedures and protocols that must be satisfied.’
Surely that would only apply in the circumstances of an experimental trial, wouldn’t it?
As it happens, that’s what we’ve been doing for the past couple of years. ‘We heard it out of former health minister, Greg Hunt’s lips, and several others,’ Gillespie says. ‘It’s well acknowledged that these Covid vaccines have only been provisionally approved and are still subject to clinical trials.’
Julian Gillespie LLB, BJuris, is co-author, with Peter Fam LLB, of a recently published bombshell legal opinion casting doubt on the legal basis of AHPRA’s March 9, 2021 ‘gag order’.
The opinion was issued with a letter stating:
‘Contingent to a joint statement received from AHPRA and the National Boards on 9 March 2021, Australian Health Professionals … were essentially forbidden from publicly questioning the science underlying the emerging Covid injectables, let alone questioning any government messaging urging Australians to be vaccinated, because these products were deemed “safe and effective”.
‘The effect of this unilateral action … inserted AHPRA and the National Boards between the Clinician and their Patient, which resulted in a serious failure of evidenced-based information being shared by Health Professionals with patients … for the purpose of their providing legally acceptable Informed Consent to receiving Covid injectables.
‘This failure in Informed Consent has likely resulted in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Australians agreeing to the administration of Covid injectables, where they would not have so agreed or consented had they been provided with all the available evidenced-based information… including that they expose a recipient to a real and significant risk of death, injury, or illness.’
What does this mean?
Essentially, the legal opinion posits that it was illegal for AHPRA and the National Boards to even produce the position statement. Health Professionals were always required to first observe their Codes of Conduct irrespective of the various coercive and threatening statements made in the March statement.
But wait, there’s more.
It also appears the public officers responsible for that statement are now legally exposed:
‘As the harm to Covid vaccine victims was foreseeable, in terms of these still remaining experimental gene-based therapies, these vaccine victims … can sue the public offices of AHPRA and the National Boards in their personal capacity,’ says Gillespie.
It doesn’t stop there. There may be further liability available to health practitioners who administered the vaccines in breach of their Codes of Conduct. Gillespie adds, ‘Should those health practitioners subsequently be sued by their patients … then those health practitioners may, in turn, be able to sue the public officers of AHPRA and the National Boards for coercing and threatening them to ignore their Codes of Conduct. Such illegal action would be the tort of misfeasance in public office.’
I’ll just let that all sink in.
The legal opinion was sent to all medical associations and colleges, nearly 70 of them, all Australia’s politicians, state, federal, and territory, and medical professional insurers.
Oh, and it was also sent to over 300 of Australia’s top personal injury and medical negligence lawyers.
No one’s missing out on this one.
The legal opinion was helpfully accompanied by a 107-page report reviewing the evidence and adverse event data for Covid vaccines. It’s an alarming read.
But wait – there’s (even) more.
Proposed changes to Health Practitioner National Law, due to be debated in the Queensland Parliament on October 11, 2022, are set to give AHPRA even more power to interfere with the doctor/patient relationship.
These proposed amendments have medical organisations extremely concerned including the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, the Australian Medical Association, the Australian Medical Network (AMN), and the Australian Medical Professionals Society.
If passed, ‘Doctors will no longer be able to express their opinion or use their experience, training, and education if their opinion goes against what the health bureaucrats say is in the best interests of public confidence in safety,’ says AMN.
And the changes won’t stop in Queensland. The amended National Law will then be rolled out to other jurisdictions. All Australians should be concerned.
The Australian Medical Professional Society says, ‘Health regulation is not being used to protect the public from legitimate professional misconduct but is being used to silence Health Professionals from questioning government policy as a matter of routine.’
If the legislation comes to pass, it begs the question: when a patient goes to visit their doctor how will they know if they are receiving the doctor’s professional opinion or the government’s latest edict?
The March 9, 2021 joint position statement has given Australia a taste of what might come if we don’t stand up to this obscene imposition by regulators in the consultation room.
In the words of ‘Dr Frank Mercy’ – an Australian doctor who writes under a pseudonym for fear of reprisal – ‘This is our Stalingrad. Defeat here will open the field to unlimited human resources for oppressive forces that can never be turned back. We must oppose this with all our resolve.’
Floods to push up food prices and worsen deficit, says Jim Chalmers
Imagine if we had built dams instead of desalination plants, we could have mitigated impacts of flooding (a land of flooding rains after all) and had more water resources to assist in food production
Australians have been warned to brace for another hit to the cost of living as the floods devastating parts of Victoria and NSW drive up food prices, and require billions of dollars to be spent on assistance to those affected, Treasurer Jim Chalmers has warned.
Due to the floods that have hit some of the east coast’s major food production regions, and caused extensive property damage, the forecast deficit for this year is likely to be worse and inflation possibly higher, Dr Chalmers suggested.
“We need to brace ourselves for the impact of these natural disasters on the cost of living,” he said.
“We’re talking here about some of the best growing and producing country in Australia, and it has been seriously impacted – whether it’s the destruction of crops, or the inability to access some of these farmlands, whether it’s livestock and other consequences.
“Australians do need to brace for a cost-of-living impact from these floods. These are likely to push up the cost of living when Australians are already under the pump. It will also have obvious consequences for the budget.”
The treasurer’s office said it was too early to estimate the inflationary and budgetary impact of the floods.
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18 October, 2022
Teachers turning to YouTube and Facebook to source lesson material, damning new report says
I am not at all sure I am on-board with the idea of government-provided lesson plans for teachers. It would certainly help if experienced teachers passed on their usual lesson plans to newbie teachers but having the government do that would reduced the already limited diversity in what is taught. It could make a lesson into not much more than a video.
There is a better option: The teacher could know her subject matter so well that no preparation is needed. The teacher could just look at the curriculum and talk about it. It's what I did as a teacher of High School economics. I just talked about what I found interesting or exciting about economic issues. That generated real student interest and my students did very well at exam time.
So subject knowledge should get heavy emphasis in teacher training. I had not one minute of teacher training but I have an almost missionary zeal to communicate the realities of economics
Teachers are relying on YouTube, Facebook and Pinterest to source classroom materials in a “lesson lottery’’ for students that will prompt a national review of curriculum planning.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said he would raise the Grattan Institute’s alarming findings of “rudderless teachers’’ at his next meeting with state and territory ministers in December.
He said teachers were working unnecessarily hard because they often had to plan lessons from scratch. “If we get this right, this has the potential to really reduce the workload on teachers,’’ he told The Australian.
“I am keen to talk to teachers about the findings in this report, as well as ACARA (the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority) and my state and territory colleagues when we meet in December.’’
The Grattan Institute survey of 1915 teachers and 328 principals across Australia reveals that half are interpreting the curriculum on their own to devise assignments and set lesson plans.
YouTube is twice as popular as education department websites for sourcing teaching material, with two-thirds of teachers accessing YouTube at least once a fortnight, compared to 31 per cent using government websites.
Half the teachers buy lesson plans from Teachers Pay Teachers – an online marketplace with more than 16,000 assignments, assessments and lesson plans for sale.
One in four teachers uses Facebook, one in five uses Pinterest, 12 per cent use Instagram and 5 per cent use Twitter to source assignments and lesson plans.
In contrast, one in five teachers used professional teacher association websites and 17 per cent used the Khan Academy website for inspiration.
Only 15 per cent of teachers have access to a common bank of high-quality curriculum materials for all their classes, the survey found.
A third of teachers have no access to common material for any of their subjects.
“High-quality curriculum materials are hard to find,’’ the Grattan Institute report states. “The internet is awash with options, but not a lot of detail about quality.’’
The survey found that a typical teacher spent six hours a week sourcing and creating materials – and one in four teachers spent more than 10 hours a week planning lessons.
“Teachers are struggling with the curriculum planning load,’’ lead author and Grattan Institute education program director Jordana Hunter said on Sunday.
“Teachers tell us they often plan alone from scratch, searching social media to try to find lesson materials. This creates Australia’s lesson lottery – it undermines student learning and adds to the workload of our overstretched teachers.’’
The Grattan Institute estimates teachers would save three hours a week by sharing curriculum materials – adding up to 20 million teacher hours every year.
It found that a high school teacher with four subjects would need to spend 2000 hours to develop curriculum materials for all their classes if they had to start from scratch.
Ninety per cent of teachers surveyed agreed that sharing high-quality instructional materials would free up time to evaluate and respond to individual student learning needs.
“Great teaching requires classroom instruction based on well-designed, knowledge-rich and carefully sequenced lessons that build student knowledge and skills over time,’’ Dr Hunter said.
“Without a whole-school approach to curriculum planning, which carefully sequences learning of key knowledge and skills across subjects and year levels, even the hardest-working teachers will struggle to give their students the best education.’’
The Grattan Institute wants governments and the Catholic and independent education sectors to invest in high-quality, comprehensive curriculum materials, and make them available to all schools to adapt and use, if they choose.
“These materials should be quality-assured by an independent body,’’ the report states.
NSW has already announced it will build a library of syllabus materials for use in schools, while the Victorian government recommends a whole-school approach to curriculum planning to avoid repetition or gaps in learning.
Queensland’s Education Department provides lessons and assessment tasks through its Curriculum into the Classroom, or C2C, program.
The Grattan Institute survey found that only one-third of teachers agreed government-provided instructional materials were of high quality, with half saying the resources were hard to find.
Dr Hunter said teachers in disadvantaged schools were only half as likely to have access to a common bank of curriculum materials as teachers in wealthier schools. “Many teachers and students get a losing ticket in the lesson lottery,’’ she said.
“The Australian curriculum and its state variants provide high-level direction only, leaving vast gaps for teachers to fill in.
“For too long, governments have underestimated the subject-matter knowledge, curriculum expertise and time required to bring the curriculum to life in the classroom.’’
The Grattan Institute criticises individualised curriculum planning as “hugely inefficient’’.
“In reality, teachers are struggling to fit the hours required into their working week,’’ the report says. “The current system wastes time and results in lost learning.
“Every school and teacher should have access to comprehensive curriculum materials that they can choose to use and adapt as required.
“As an immediate priority, governments should consider buying high-quality materials from overseas, and adapting them to the Australian context.’’
The Grattan Institute report notes that students can leap ahead in learning by one or two months a year when teachers use carefully sequenced, high-quality curriculum materials.
“Materials need to be specific about what knowledge students are expected to learn,’’ the report says. “(They) should include targeted assessments that enable teachers to accurately assess student learning of particular concepts, content and skills taught.’’
Half the high school teachers surveyed were teaching a subject for the first time, and 15 per cent of primary school teachers were taking on a new year level.
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Australian government betting nation's economic future on renewable energy delusion
You don’t have to be a climate sceptic to conclude that the government’s energy policy is bonkers. You just have to listen to the Energy Minister’s words. Last week, Chris Bowen outlined the challenge of meeting Labor’s 2030 emissions reduction target to a conference in Sydney. Reducing emissions by 43 per cent will require the installation of 40 seven-megawatt wind turbines every month from now until 2030, each one as tall as the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It will require more than 22,000 500-watt solar panels to be installed every day for the next eight years, 2.4 for every man, woman and child in total. New solar farms would cover an area dozens of times larger than the Melbourne CBD.
All this supposes we can buy the things in the first place. Polysilicon wafers are in short supply and 95 per cent come from China.
Let’s not even get started on the pink batts question. The rooftop solar installation business is plagued with the same shonky operators that turn up like wasps to a barbecue when subsidised, government mega-projects are announced.
Last month, the Clean Energy Regulator started investigations against a Perth company accused of fraudulently claiming $1.5m in solar panel installation rebates. NSW Fire and Rescue attended 151 solar panel fires in 2020-21, up from 56 in the previous year, faulty isolation switches being the main cause.
Jeff Dimery, the head of Alinta who has had somewhat more experience in the energy game than Bowen, says we’re on course for an energy transition “train wreck”.
“I personally don’t believe we can achieve the transition based on what we’re seeing to date,” Dimery told the AFR last week. “I think we’re headed for failure.”
Anthony Albanese was elected on a promise to cut household energy bills by $275 in his first term. A survey by Compass Polling last month found 70 per cent of Australians don’t believe him. Last week Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb told a parliamentary committee household energy bills had risen by $300 since April.
Dimery predicts energy costs will rise by at least 35 per cent in 2023. Jim Chalmers says energy is the most “problematic aspect of our inflation problem over the course of the next six or nine months”.
Yet Bowen stood as steady as the legless Black Knight in a Monty Python movie last week, refusing to budge. He told the conference that “getting more renewables in the system will mean lower power prices”. He added: “I don’t think that should be such a controversial statement in Australia in 2022.”
Bowen is betting the future of the economy on his counterintuitive assumption that a transition from hydrocarbons to solar, wind and batteries will bring the cost of energy down.
In every country that has gone down this path, the very opposite has occurred. Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, energy prices had risen between 60 per cent and 100 per cent in Britain and Germany since renewable investment began at the start of the century. In Australia, energy prices fell for 60 years until the start of the renewable era. Now they’re rising.
Bowen hasn’t said when the correlation between rising investment in weather-dependent zero-carbon energy and rising prices will start to reverse. He does, however, stand by the modelling he commissioned in opposition, which predicts that the average household energy bill will fall by $385 once we reach the magic 82 per cent renewables share in the energy grid in eight years’ time.
Rising electricity prices aren’t all bad news, according to Guardian Australia, which reported last week that sales of household solar arrays were through the roof. To illustrate what good news this supposedly is, the Guardian claimed rooftop solar supplied almost three-quarters of WA’s total energy demand on the weekend before last. Confirmation-biased reporting like this demands a little fact checking.
The Australian Energy Market Operator’s records show rooftop solar supplied 71 per cent of demand in WA at 12.30pm on Saturday, October 8. Between 6pm Saturday and 6am on Sunday, however, rooftop solar was supplying 0 per cent. During that period three-quarters of the power was supplied by coal and gas.
The answer to this little hiccup, as every Guardian Australia reader knows, is to install batteries, which, as every Guardian reader also knows, are getting cheaper by the minute.
The cost is falling so fast that electric cars and vans will be cheaper to buy than petrol or diesel vehicles by 2027, the newspaper reported in May last year. In February this year, however, economic reality reared its ugly head. “Gone ballistic” read the Guardian’s headline. “Lithium price rockets nearly 500% in a year amid electric vehicle rush.”
The cost of installing a Tesla Powerwall, a domestic energy storage unit the size of a fridge, has risen from less than $10,000 in 2017 to about $19,000 today.
None of this should surprise. Improved technology and manufacturing efficiency gains were only going to push battery prices downwards for so long. The International Energy Agency has analysed the cost of moving from a fuel-intensive energy system to a material-intensive one. Far from eliminating hydrocarbons, the IEA forecasts, the demand for minerals such as lithium, graphite, nickel, copper and rare earths will rise by 4200 per cent, 2500 per cent, 1900 per cent and 700 per cent respectively by 2040.
If nothing else destroys the delusion that renewable energy offers nothing but healing kindness to a desiccated planet, the rapacious hunger for minerals surely must. In an influential recent paper for the Manhattan Institute, Mark P. Mills predicts that meeting the world’s transition goals will require dozens of new mines for each of a dozen classes of minerals, each at the scale of some of the biggest mines in the world today and each requiring tens of billions of dollars of investment.
“The lessons of the recent decade make it clear that SWB (solar, wind, batteries) technologies cannot be surged in times of need, are neither inherently ‘clean’ nor even independent of hydrocarbons, and are not cheap,” Mills writes.
Having set Australia’s 2030 and 2050 emissions targets in stone, it falls on Bowen and Anthony Albanese to produce plan B. Assuming, of course, they have one.
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Private all-boys school has encouraged teachers to use gender neutral language instead of the terms 'boy' or 'young man'.
Principal Deborah Frizza of St Bede's College in Menton, in Melbourne's southeast, said in a letter to staff this week that the school was looking to change the language it uses following updated Victoria Child Safe Standards.
'Can I ask that we start to use gender neutral language in our communications where possible?' the letter read, reports The Herald Sun. 'I know it can be challenging when communicating with the parents of senior students and calling them 'children', so if anyone has a better gender neutral term than this, please let me know.
'The use of the term 'student' rather than 'young man' or 'boy' can easily be made. I'm yet to find an alternative for 'Beda Boy' (graduated students), and given the history of this term, we would need to think carefully on any changes here.'
Following some backlash in the media, the college confirmed that 'at no stage' were teachers instructed not to use the gender-specific terms at all.
'There are, and will continue to be, boys, young men and 'Beda Boys' within our College community,' a statement from the school on Monday read. 'At the forefront of our minds is, and will remain, the inclusion of all students at St Bede's College.'
Victoria's updated Child Safety Standards say schools must: 'Pay particular attention to the needs of children and young people with disability, children and young people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, those who are unable to live at home, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex children and young people'.
School campuses across the country are increasingly sparking debate as they make changes to become more inclusive.
Northlakes High School on the NSW Central Coast was recently accused of 'going woke' when they installed 'He/They' and 'She/They' signage of their toilet block.
In South Australia schools must allow transgender students to use the bathroom they feel comfortable with or provide them a private bathroom.
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Federal anti-corruption body will have no limits on its power to punish the innocent
The process can become the punishment
David Flint
Acting against corruption should obviously be just and efficient. This basic consideration should not be abandoned in parliament’s unseemly rush to ram through the National Anti-Corruption Commission bills before their long summer break.
While the NACC will never be a court, its powers will limit matters surely implied in the Constitution just as freedom of political communication is. These include the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial.
Following the NSW ICAC disaster, the NACC will enjoy the power to impose, through public hearings punishment so serious that it has too often ruined the lives of the innocent, a breach of the constitutional separation of powers.
The name ICAC came from Hong Kong. This was in those halcyon days under the rule of law when the colony was a magnet not only for those escaping the brutal communist dictatorship, but also those from elsewhere who chose to live where government was benign and limited.
As Australia’s leading legal commentator, Chris Merritt, reminded me during an interview for the new media platform ADHTV, the HK model was a quality specialist unit efficiently investigating and prosecuting relevant breaches of criminal law. This remains a simple and ideal model.
While the Greiner government imported the name, it foolishly thought it could improve on the model. Its first innocent victim was Greiner, the first of three premiers..
Such is the wisdom of the NSW parliament, that when the High Court subsequently exposed the fundamental ‘errors’ of ICAC in its totally unjustified persecution of the leading barrister Margaret Cunneen, legislation was rushed through to validate the errors. Then another premier fell to the monster.
If this is typical of the quality of judgment of our ruling political class, it should not be surprising that the Albanese government has chosen too much of the NSW model for NACC.
Despite virtuous commissioners and counsel, the ICAC head was to boast to neophyte barristers that, without such tedious limitations as the laws of evidence, examining any witness that got into its clutches was ‘fun’, akin to ‘pulling wings off butterflies’.
Meanwhile, to the delight of scandal-mongers in the media, ICAC took on the trappings of a court, and imposed parallel systems of public opproprium and of punishment.
The centrepiece is the ‘walk of shame’ along Castlereagh Street where the innocent are paraded as if they are in tumbrils during the Reign of Terror. A similar process in South Australia led to suicide with parliament sensibly halting a process more suited to the Maoist Cultural Revolution.
While agencies like ICAC have no authority to convict and pass sentence, Margaret Cunneen warns they have developed a means of condemning those who should be presumed innocent, imposing punishment ‘which in many cases is far worse’, even using this to justify their existence.
Coopting the media into the role of punisher, she warned this had been embraced in some quarters with ‘a relish that could easily be confused with malice.’
Just as the police never use and cannot use public hearings, neither should the NACC. This is just not part of our Anglo-American legal tradition.
The Americans had long clung to this in even colonial times. Today corruption investigations do not involve public hearings by ICAC equivalents. They are heard by constitutionally prescribed grand juries meeting in private. Their only public words are two at the conclusion when they either authorise or refuse a public trial before a judge and a (petit) jury of 12. They are the endorsement on the bill of indictment either as a ‘true bill’ or ‘no bill’.
There is another matter which requires reconsideration. One of the weaknesses of ICAC is that its model is grossly inefficient. Evidence taken is inadmissible in court and there can be long delays in a matter being taken up by the DPP and going to a real court. With the NACC, it seems inadmissibility will be restricted to evidence which involves self-incrimination. To overcome any delay the NACC should be restricted to truly serious corruption – that is corruption which if proven would constitute a criminal offence.
The legislators should pay serious attention to a requirement proposed by Chris Merritt. This is that once the NACC concludes that it is likely that a crime has been committed, a brief of evidence should be sent to the DPP without any public comment or finding.
Finally, as to just what the NACC will examine, corrupt conduct is unwisely not to be limited to crime. As Chris Merritt points out, the pages of the legislation defining what is corrupt conduct recalls what is known as a Henry VIII clause, an unacceptable power to amend or repeal an act of parliament by regulation.
The NACC should not be tied up in the endless and wasteful distraction of trying to decide what is corrupt. That is for Parliament to define as a crime.
Acton defined the cause of corruption as power which tends to corrupt, with absolute power corrupting absolutely. This is corruption and it should be illegal.
If the political class wish to restore their credibility, they must concede that the gross and, as demonstrated here, totally unjustified abuse of executive power at all levels during the pandemic costing taxpayers billions and imposing vast suffering must never happen again. This requires not only a royal commission by a bench of eminent judges, but also urgent, immediate legislation to make serious misfeasance in public office a crime.
This would mean that where such misfeasance occurs, as it did so flagrantly in the live cattle ban case, not only would taxpayers have to pay vast damages for ministers acting deliberately or recklessly beyond power, but the politicians involved should also face a criminal trial for such corruption.
17 October, 2022
The three-part test Australians could be forced to take to prove they are Aboriginal
How rapidly things can change! Andrrew Bolt was successfully prosecuted for saying this stuff. But the change may not be as great as it seems. The verdict in Bolt's case was from far-Left Jewish judge Mordecai Bromberg. As a Jew, Bromberg should have excused himself from a case about racism. His feelings were understandable but feelings are not judicial
Indigenous leaders say employers, schools, universities and housing authorities need to make Australians take a three-part test to prove whether they are Aboriginal or not.
The call comes amid a massive 25 per cent increase in Australians who identify as indigenous over the past five years, and follows the University of Sydney and NSW TAFEs tightening requirements for students who describe themselves as having a First Nations background.
Nathan Moran, the chief executive of the Sydney-based Metropolitan Aboriginal Land Council, told Daily Mail Australia that people have been abusing the system for at least 25 years - which he described as open fraud.
Mr Moran called on organisations to adopt the Commonwealth's three-part identity test to deter Australians from falsely identifying as indigenous.
Of the 'frauds' he believes are self-identifying as indigenous, Mr Moran said: 'It makes me sick to my stomach.
'The sad and unfortunate reality is that people have used self-identification to receive jobs, housing and scholarships they're not entitled to which are meant for the indigenous.
'The indigenous birth rates don't match up with the population increase.'
The three-part test for proving Aboriginality
An Aboriginal person (includes Torres Strait Islanders) means a person who:
1.Is a member of the Aboriginal race of Australia
2.Identifies as such an Aboriginal person
3. Is accepted by the Aboriginal community as an Aboriginal person
Mr Moran called on organisations and government authorities to enforce the three-part test rather than relying on statutory declarations - pieces of paper where they legally swear they are indigenous.
The test requires Australians to identify as an Aboriginal person, be able to prove they are a member of the race, and be accepted by the Aboriginal community.
A person can prove they are accepted by an Aboriginal community by providing a letter from their local Aboriginal Land Council or a registered Aboriginal community organisation.
Mr Moran said it's time to 'end the statutory declaration and apply the laws they're compelled to enforce'. 'They have a right to ask individuals who identify as Aboriginal for confirmation of that claim and who they received that confirmation from,' he said.
The Metropolitan Aboriginal Land Council recently complained to the Independent Commission Against Corruption about the number of students at the University of Sydney identifying as indigenous using statutory declarations.
The university has since announced plans to revamp its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Status Policy by getting rid of stat decs, as Mr Moran said.
Students will have to supply a 'letter of identity' and complete the Commonwealth three-part identity test.
Students will also be asked to confirm their identity either by a letter from their land council or a sealed letter signed by a delegate of the Aboriginal Medical Service or the Aboriginal Legal Service. TAFE NSW is also now developing a Confirmation of Aboriginality Policy following similar concerns.
Mr Moran isn't the only Aboriginal land council leader raising concerns about the recent Census data. Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania chairman Michael Mansell recently claimed 'poor white people' were falsely identifying as indigenous in a move he called 'identity seeking'.
'The people who are ticking the box to say they are Aboriginal, their demographic is poor white people who pretty much are disenfranchised,' Mr Mansell said.
'They don't attribute any value to their identity as a poor white person in Tasmania, so they are searching to attach themselves to something that has greater value and I think many of those people believe that's in being Aboriginal.'
However not everyone agrees.
University of Sydney's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research director Professor Jakelin Troy claimed the latest Census data showing increased numbers of indigenous people represents the 'real' demographics of the nation.
'Freedom of self identification and self expression is a basic human right. Interfering in the efforts of invaded & colonised peoples to assert identity is just continuing invasion & colonisation,' she tweeted.
Professor Troy has expressed concerns about the crackdown argued self-identification was accepted at many international research institutions.
'It's a response to a push from some parts of Aboriginal Australia, but not all of us,' she told the Sydney Morning Herald.
'I personally think universities shouldn't really be dictating to Aboriginal people about identity. I don't think anyone should be.'
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Stage-three tax cuts could be Anthony Albanese’s political demise
Peter Gleeson
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is being played, and is in danger of being a one-term wonder if he folds on the stage-three tax cuts.
If he junks the stage-three tax cuts he will be seen as a liar and a cheat and the Australian public will judge him harshly on such a barefaced deception.
If he keeps them, he will be branded as fiscally reckless by his own faction, the left, the union movement and the Greens.
Nobody ever said it would be easy for Albanese as global fiscal headwinds and the reality of a fanciful commitment to zero emissions by 2045 hit home.
This game of cat and mouse he and Treasurer Jim Chalmers are playing with the stage-three tax cuts is as much about Mr Albanese’s long-term future as any issue he will face between now and the next election.
They may put it on hold at the upcoming budget – kick it down the road for a year or so – but rest assured, if Mr Chalmers has his way, they’re about to put a balaclava on and rob you blind.
And who will get the blame? The Prime Minister.
A tax backflip also puts into question the need for election campaigns.
Why go through the agonising, painful charade of a six-week election campaign when leaders can pledge a significant policy – one that influences the way people vote – only to then turn around and abandon it.
Such a policy backflip would render politics in this country a farce. It would render the Prime Minister wholly untrustworthy. His campaign pledges during the next election would be nebulous, and not believable.
We know all politicians lie. It’s in their DNA. It’s how they roll. But this is a whopper that will hurt every Australian at a time of almost unprecedented fiscal challenge.
It demonstrates that, during the blowtorch environment of an election campaign, leaders will say and do anything to win.
My sense is that Labor never fully committed to the stage-three cuts, which provide income tax relief for 90 per cent of Aussie workers, but particularly aids higher-income earners, those on $120,000 to $200,000 a year.
Their flawed attack on aspiration is being fuelled by the angry Left-faction Marxists, those bludgers in life who believe they are owed a living.
The Labor Party is not a party for the worker any more but a flaccid, impotent shadow of its former self, obsessed with climate change.
It has become the poster boy of the unimpressive, teaming up with the Greens, teals, unions, Nine Newspapers and the ABC to suppress innovation and enterprise.
These people don’t actually like what Australia represents, a nation of people who believe in a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.
The fact is that the abolition of the stage-three tax cuts will sabotage the pay packets of mostly doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, economists, tradies, senior nurses and teachers, police and ambos, who spent three to seven years at university learning their craft.
After living in less than ideal conditions during their university days, slogging it out to get a degree, they are then forced to do the hard yards to work their way up the totem pole, until they start to earn reasonable dough.
Once they become experienced and pretty good at what they are doing, they are then given more responsibility, taking on extra roles where a 40-hour week is just a memory.
For their troubles, they pay a taxation rate that is among the highest in the OECD, trailing slightly behind the Scandinavian countries.
And right now, with mortgage rates accelerating as fast as we’ve seen in 25 years, inflation out of control, wages growth stagnant, and the country in the grip of a housing crisis, the federal Labor Party want to snuff out any light at the end of the tunnel.
It’s 2024. Goodness, who knows how bad the economy will be then?
At least the Opposition will be able to remind voters on how Albanese broke his key 2022 election promise, as people sit down to eat spam instead of steak.
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Australia moves to protect AUKUS pact as minister warns ‘time is running out’
Australia has launched a diplomatic charm offensive to rip up American red tape that could undermine the AUKUS pact by limiting our access to high-tech weapons.
Domestic rules for defence manufacturers will also be overhauled, with Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy warning critical innovations are stranded in a “valley of death” in Australia even as “time is running out” to strengthen our military.
“We are no longer in a benign peacetime circumstance,” he said.
“You think about World War II about the speed of producing arms – we’re in a similar situation now and we need to speed it up.”
Mr Conroy used high-level talks in Washington DC last week to push US government and military chiefs to break down “stubborn barriers” to sharing defence technology.
Strict export controls mean Australia is already limited from maintaining and repairing American-made hardware including guided weapons.
Bill Greenwalt, a former top US defence official, warned earlier this year that such regulations could similarly hamper co-operation on hypersonics and electronic warfare under AUKUS, leaving the pact “dead in the water” without changes.
Speaking at the G’Day USA defence industry dialogue last week, Australia’s US ambassador Arthur Sinodinos said these were “wicked problems” but he hoped AUKUS would be the “Trojan horse to actually bust through some of those barriers”.
He said he was working with congressional leaders who were “showing more flexibility than I expected” on legislative changes.
Mr Conroy said he understood the need for restrictions on sharing the “crown jewels” of America’s industrial complex, but that Australia could not afford regulatory delays.
“On defence industrial collaboration, there is a unity of will to deliver that … and that is driven by the deteriorating strategic circumstances that we’re all facing,” he said.
British Vice Admiral Martin Connell, the Navy’s second highest-ranking officer, also recently called for the US to make changes so that AUKUS was not hampered.
“Otherwise these collaborations are going to be very seriously retarded when we can’t really afford them to be so,” he said.
United States Studies Centre research fellow Tom Corben said American regulations were more likely to affect co-operation on commercially available defence hardware, with cleaner mechanisms in place to share top-secret information on nuclear submarines.
In an interview, Mr Conroy also said it was unacceptable Australian companies found it was “easier for them to do business with the Pentagon than it is with Australia”.
He has ordered a departmental review of domestic red tape to ensure the government was “getting bang for buck” from its $3bn investment in advanced defence research.
“We have to pick winners … Our strategic circumstances and the fact that we do have limited resources means we can’t do everything,” Mr Conroy said.
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Western Australia introduces new consent lessons for students
Doubtful if this is appropriate for the early years. Better for High School students only
School students in Western Australia will be given updated lessons on consent and healthy relationships.
The curriculum change aims to equip students with "age-appropriate knowledge and skills" in a bid to reduce sexual violence, the WA government said.
Pre-primary to Year 10 students will benefit, Education and Training Minister Sue Ellery and Women's Interests Minister Simone McGurk said.
Ellery said such lessons are currently taught "ad hoc" in Western Australian schools but students have said they want a clear way to respond to real-life situations.
"These changes are designed to equip students and their families with age-appropriate knowledge and skills to understand the concept of consent and what healthy, respectful relationships look like in everyday settings and real-life scenarios," she said.
The "age-appropriate and progressive lessons" in WA will start before primary school.
Topics for the youngest children will include "keeping safe" and "saying no".
McGurk said she was proud of the move. "Evidence shows that early education is a powerful tool in reducing sexual violence which we know can have lifelong consequences," she said.
The Department of Education said it will support public school teachers to implement the new content.
A draft version of the new consent curriculum has been published by the School Curriculum and Standards Authority and is open for comment.
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16 October, 2022
North Stradbroke Island racial segregation claims
It is the literal line in the sand literally dividing one of Stradbroke Island’s most beloved campgrounds over allegations of racial segregation limiting access to non-Indigenous visitors.
The Blakesleys Slip area, about 10km south of Dunwich on North Stradbroke (or Minjerribah in the local Indigenous language), has been a popular camping and fishing spot for decades, but new rules from Queensland Parks and Wildlife have angered many, including a stipulation part of the site should now be reserved for exclusive use of the Quandamooka people.
Some, including former local federal MP Andrew Laming, have called the move reverse racism, while Queensland Parks and Wildlife says it is about protecting and managing the site for everyone.
Blakesley’s Slip, formed by shifting sands during sand mining in the area about 40 years ago, has been a popular – albeit unofficial, camping spot for years, but attempts to regulate overnight visitation to the area have raised tensions.
While many have accepted the introduction of camping fees and a formal booking system limiting numbers, some feel a move to divide the area into two distinct sections – one for general campers and one for the exclusive use of Quandamooka traditional owners – has crossed the line.
Luke Seaborne, a local resident who has been camping and fishing at the popular spot for 30 years, has launched a petition calling on supporters to challenge the changes.
“They’re literally drawing a line in the sand and saying who can or can’t go where,” he said. “I think we can all respect each other and learn from each other, but what they’re doing here is just plain divisive.”
The area is jointly managed by QPWS and the Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation, which was awarded native title rights over parts of the island several years ago.
Straddie’s shift away from sandmining towards eco-tourism in recent years has caused increasing friction on the laid-back island.
In a statement, a QPWS spokesperson said the new rules provided “an opportunity for all Queenslanders, including the Quandamooka People, to immerse themselves in this unique natural and cultural setting”.
“As the native title owners of the land, the Quandamooka People are entitled to set aside areas for the Quandamooka community to be on Country to camp with their families and engage with their culture,” the statement said.
But Dr Laming, a passionate advocate for the island, said the moves went too far. “Of course they should be entitled to engage with their culture, but not by segregating it from everyone else,” he said. “If we’re really serious about reconciliation, why wouldn’t you share the site and camp together?
“It reeks of reverse racism.”
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Renewable fantasies in Queensland
There are numerous intelligent ways to respond to the risk of climate change. Setting heroic and enormously costly state-based targets is not one of them.
The Queensland government’s ten-year Queensland Energy and Jobs Plan has essentially set three targets: a 30 per cent reduction in emissions compared to 2005 levels by 2030; 70 per cent renewable electricity generation by 2032; and net-zero emissions by 2050.
Currently, Queensland’s renewables generation share is 21 per cent, with coal providing 60 per cent of Queensland’s electricity generation requirements and gas 10 per cent.
Queensland would need to further reduce its carbon emissions from 160 million tonnes to 138 million tonnes per year in 2030 to meet its emissions target. In a signal that it will fail, the Palaszczuk government has pushed the date out by two years to 2032. It lifted the renewables target to 70 per cent to cover up its irresponsible timeline.
This plan is doomed, and it will be very costly.
For starters, much of the successful reduction in emissions already achieved since 2005 has been due to lower rates of primary forest clearing – a gain which cannot be repeated.
Queensland’s growing population, expected to reach six million in 2029, will make it difficult to reduce emissions from the transport sector. It will take decades to completely switch to battery-powered vehicles. Besides, every battery-powered car on the road has been built thanks to mining and minerals processing emissions and, unless the Tesla is kept in the garage, will require mostly coal and gas-fired electricity for the next decade at least.
While the cost of solar generation has fallen, the true cost of electricity generation also includes the cost of guaranteeing supply. As coal and gas-fired generators shut down over the next two decades the cost of that supply guarantee will rise enormously because of the high fixed costs of baseload alternatives.
The current fixed capital cost of 4th generation SMR nuclear reactors is high relative to coal, but nuclear, which enjoys a capacity factor of 95 per cent, only needs to be cost competitive against similarly costly (but less reliable) baseload alternatives in hydro-electric dams and large-scale batteries.
Palaszczuk’s $62 billion hydro-electric dam proposal reminds us of the Snowy 2.0 cost blowout and will very likely again prove world-renowned Professor Brent Flyvbjerg’s adage that megaprojects are always ‘over budget, over time, over and over again’. At full employment, nation-building fantasies can very quickly turn into skills shortages, wage inflation and cost blowouts.
Setting aside the infeasibility of achieving a fair dinkum net-zero target by 2050, there are lower-cost paths and timeframes to tackle the risks of climate change. To the extent that climate change is an existential threat to civilisation – which remains an open question – the policies to mitigate or adapt to its impacts should be global. States should not be in the business of setting their own targets. Australia’s electricity generation sector is a single national market. State targets will increase the overall economic cost of meeting those targets.
As the Productivity Commission pointed out more than a decade ago, the heavy lifting should be done by the jurisdictions best able to mitigate their emissions, and who bear the lowest cost of mitigation, within the framework of an overall global emissions reduction target that balances long-term economic, social and environmental goals.
How did we get into this pickle?
First came the language. Renewables are not ‘renewable’ as the technology – solar panels, turbines and batteries – are made from physically limited resources such as rare earths, more limited than coal, gas and oil which, for all practical purposes, are unlimited.
Because of this legerdemain of language, Queensland is facing two black holes. When the coal-fired power stations shut down and when the first generation of renewable technology needs renewing.
Second, the assertion that renewables are the cheapest form of energy is not true. Industry subsidies, targets and regulations dramatically tilt the playing field. Thermal coal and gas are not subsidised and, in fact, are penalised via higher capital costs to account for regulatory risk. Forcing Queensland industry onto renewables too quickly will put at risk what remains of its export- oriented heavy industry. The net result will be an economy that is even more dependent on China for manufactured goods.
Third, switching to renewables cannot possibly permanently lower Australia’s current 3.5 per cent unemployment rate. In the long run, switching to renewables too quickly will simply raise costs and lower incomes and living standards for all Australians.
Fourth, to maintain confidence in, and continual public funding to, the renewables lobby there has been silence on the near-term technological feasibility of renewables as the primary source of power generation. The Australian Electricity Market Operator says it is ‘working with industry to engineer a power system capable of running at 100 per cent instantaneous penetration of renewable energy.’ In time (and at what cost) to meet Palaszczuk’s new targets?
Finally, there is the fantastic assumption that regional communities will cop this ‘once-in-a-century transformation’. It’s worth keeping in mind that 85,000 Queenslanders work in the mining industry today, more than at the peak of the mining boom a decade ago. When will the AWU and CFMEU tell its members? When will ‘Lock the Gate’ come out against environment-destroying solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries, and vastly more complex poles and wire electricity distribution systems?
Are Olympic green credentials worth the economic harm to Queensland people, especially in the farming and mining communities across regional Queensland? Now that most of big business and the universities have rolled over, unwilling to critically debate the merits of these state-based targets, is there an opposition left in the country prepared to question the costs and benefits of this latest ‘urgent’ government-mandated project?
The modern-day Fascists are on the Left
In his essay, Politics and the English Language, George Orwell wrote, ‘The word fascism has now no meaning.’
Last weekend, I experienced this firsthand. I was attending my first CPAC Conference. After lunch, I stepped outside to get some fresh air. When I heard chanting and screeching, curiosity got the better of me and I went to investigate.
I saw a small group of pale people shouting about ‘fighting the right’ and ‘smashing fascism’. I quickly determined that these skinny, carefully masked-up youngsters posed no danger. They weren’t going to be fighting anyone, not without eating some red meat at least.
But their words struck me as odd, particularly since I was attending CPAC as part of a delegation from the Australian Jewish Association. As the grandson of Holocaust survivors, who experienced first-hand what fascism is, I am hyper-vigilant about its dangers.
It got me thinking, where was this fascism they were protesting so vigorously?
I thought back to the talks I had just listened to that morning. Surely, they didn’t take issue with the all-Indigenous panel talking about why so many Indigenous people oppose the divisive Aboriginal ‘Voice’.
Did these activists think that Zion Lights, the climate advocate of Indian origin, was a fascist? Was it Michael Shellenberger, who ran as a Democrat candidate for California Governor that was getting them so worked up?
As I was thinking back to the diverse group of speakers I had listened to earlier that morning, something dawned on me. The protesters chanting about racism, while attempting to smash the windows and storm the convention centre, were almost exclusively white. While inside we listened to Nigerian and Japanese people share their points of view, outside, the gathered crowd was monolithic. The most diversity I saw was a girl with purple hair.
Ironically, it was on the t-shirts of the rent-a-crowd that one could find support for another historical injustice. Many of them unashamedly wore Marxism shirts. Perhaps they were unaware that the movement they were promoting has caused more deaths than even the Nazis.
It’s easy to laugh them off, but these far-left radicals represent something sinister. Whilst inside the conference, I hadn’t witnessed anything even close to fascism. These protesters, in trying to shut down free speech, were exhibiting aspects of it.
These zealots are just emulating their leaders on the left who call anything they don’t like, ‘fascist’. If you’ve read the news recently, you may have noticed, that instead of celebrating the election of Italy’s first-ever female Prime Minister, mainstream media labelled her a ‘fascist’. They do this because she refuses to bow down to Woke norms and proudly supports traditional values. Giorgia Meloni is in good company. Donald Trump, the most pro-Jewish president in US history, was also wrongly labelled a fascist and an antisemite.
As a rule of thumb, it’s likely that those being slandered with terms like racist or fascist provide a much better example than those doing the labelling, who are often themselves spewing hatred.
Much like the word racism, fascism has lost all meaning. Far-leftists have even attempted to label the Australian Jewish Association as fascist for representing common-sense values shared by the majority of Australia’s Jewish community.
By labelling everything they disagree with as fascist and racist, leftists devalue truly horrific historical events. This is part of a wider trend of misappropriation. In recent years, the word ‘apartheid’ has been co-opted by extremists to slander the Jewish state. In the process, they diminish the horrors experienced in South Africa.
Dialogue and the exchange of ideas are hallmarks of Australia’s open society. In order to preserve what our ancestors so successfully built here, we must learn to disagree with others without labelling everything and everyone as fascist, racist, or Nazi.
Coal and gas are still Australia's economic saviours
With Australia in desperate need of economic golden eggs as we struggle with a massive debt burden and face a possible world recession, they’re trying harder than ever to kill the goose that is laying them. The huge $50 billion slash in the 2021-22 budget deficit, cutting it by two-thirds from $80 billion to $32 billion, largely resulted from record company tax collections of $126 billion. These were driven up by our highest-ever resources and energy exports of $421 billion, led by the condemned-to-death fossil fuels of coal, oil and LNG which together made up almost half the total. And in the current 2022-23 financial year, the golden eggs will be even richer as resources and energy exports are officially forecast to reach even higher to $450 billion as coal export revenues surge to $120 billion to exceed iron ore.
But governmental net-zero targets, investment bans by woke climate-catastrophe-obsessed boards of directors and super funds, a court system happy to be the plaything of climate-activist lawfare that has made Australia the world’s most litigious developed nation for mining projects, have all combined to bring the campaign against fossil fuels – and thereby against Australia’s historic dependence on reliable cheap energy and status as an exporter – to a serious tipping point.
Unless there is a truce in this war against fossil fuels, the current financial year will be the last time they will be capable of coming so significantly to our economic rescue. Already, next year’s official forecasts of an expected decline in the Ukraine war’s high commodity prices, of a Western world economic slowdown and for its rush to renewables (as self-destructive emissions targets are imposed), are together likely to result in a cut in our fossil fuel export revenue by almost a quarter in 2023-24. This, along with Australia’s deliberate official obstructionism to fossil fuel investment, particularly in coal, will all combine to kill off this economic lifeline whose current significance has been deliberately downplayed by those seeking environmental purity.
So while this year’s forecast iron ore exports at $119 billion takes the headlines, the fossil fuels of metallurgical coal at $58 billion, thermal coal at $62 billion, natural gas at $90 billion and oil at $15 billion are together officially forecast to be almost twice as big as iron ore’s export earnings this financial year and to make up, at $225 billion, half of Australia’s total minerals and resources export revenue. While, on their own, coal exports are earning more than iron ore, so effective has the campaign been against coal that not even the organisation that is supposed to represent it, the Minerals Council of Australia, was prepared to acknowledge coal’s primary role when it issued a press release last week welcoming the latest official resources and energy forecasts by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, ‘as a strong reminder of the of the economic benefits delivered by the mining industry’.
In noting the forecast that Australia’s resource and energy export earnings will reach a record $450 billion in the current financial year , the MCA correctly asserted that, ‘Australia is only in a position to take advantage of these [high international] prices due to increased production across a range of commodities. In the last decade, over $250 billion of investment in new mines, processing equipment and infrastructure has resulted in Australia’s bauxite mining increasing 41 per cent, iron ore production increasing 84 per cent and lithium output rising nearly 400 per cent’.
Not a word about the biggest single revenue earner, coal, which became the mineral that MCA pretends does not exist ever since an emissions-obsessed BHP threatened to quit the MCA if it continued to lobby for coal; note the absence of coal in MCA press releases in recent years.
But when MCA campaigns against pressure for rises in mining taxes and royalties, as it has this month, by boasting of mining’s record $43 billion contribution made to the Australian economy in 2020-21 (with 2021-22 sure to be even considerably larger), coal’s existence is re-discovered and its multi-billion-dollar share is included – without acknowledgement. And by asserting that the effective tax rate on Australian mining investment is already high relative to many jurisdictions in other mining countries, it reminds governments that while Australia needs to attract more investment in mining (but you must not mention coal!) in order to benefit from growing international demand, there is strong competition for investment from other mining countries.
However, at least coal has proselytisers on a state basis. As Stephen Galilee, CEO of the NSW Minerals Council pointedly told me, ‘Some people want to ignore the fact that our coal sector even exists This is despite coal continuing to be NSW’s most valuable export commodity, worth around $22.6 billion in exports, and delivering a record $4 billion in royalties to the NSW government this year alone’.
But what of the future, given the high demand for NSW coal that Galilee claims is some of the highest quality available anywhere in the world, producing more energy with less emissions than coal from elsewhere? ‘There are currently 17 potential coal-mining proposals in the planning and development pipeline in NSW representing a further $4.6 billion investment.’ But nearly all are proposals to expand or extend operational lives of NSW’s forty existing coal mines; greenfield projects face too many hurdles.
The same goes for Queensland, where my old parliamentary colleague Ian Macfarlane who runs the Queensland Resources Council, said the latest official forecasts ‘reinforce the significance of the resources industry to the budget bottom line. Coal exports underpin both the Australian and Queensland governments’ budgets’. But Macfarlane warned that governments, particularly Queensland’s, ‘can’t take future investment and future returns from coal exports for granted’ and that the Queensland government’s decision to hike up coal royalty taxes to the highest rates in the world has resulted in ‘large mining investors already rethinking their investments in Queensland’.
Is it time someone brought another lump of coal into parliament to remind MPs of its economic significance?
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/business-robbery-etc-102/ ?
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14 October, 2022
University of Adelaide joins six Australian institutions in Times Higher Education top 100
I have impressive pieces of paper from two of the universities listed below, plus I taught at a third. On a per head basis, Australian universities do very well. Consider that there are 300 million Americans and only 25 million Australians. Australia produces roughly twice as many top universities per head as the USA does. It's not a small difference
Australia now has seven universities in the world’s top 100 as ranked by Times Higher Education with the University of Adelaide joining the elite group. The University of Melbourne remains Australia’s most highly ranked institution, slipping to 34th this year from 33rd last year.
Monash University is next at 44th place, after rising from 57th last year.
The University of Queensland (53rd), the University of Sydney (54th), the Australian National University (62nd) and UNSW (71st) also make the top 100, along with the University of Adelaide at 88th, up from 111th last year.
The University of Adelaide said its success in entering the world’s top 100 universities was a significant milestone for higher education in South Australia. “A top 100 university is only possible with top ranked staff. They should be proud of their achievements,” said UA vice-chancellor Peter Hoj.
Times Higher Education chief knowledge officer Phil Baty said Melbourne was the city with bragging rights. “It now boasts Australia’s number one and number two universities, with Monash University leapfrogging ahead of Brisbane’s University of Queensland and pushing it into third place,” he said.
Monash University vice-chancellor Margaret Gardner said the results were a landmark for her university. “This achievement will inspire exciting opportunities to access new research funding, build new partnerships and attract additional students,” she said.
University of Melbourne vice-chancellor Duncan Maskell said the rankings reflected the global standing of Australian universities highlighting their contribution during the pandemic and their value to society.
There are signs that US universities are trending downwards in the Times Higher Education ranking. The number of US universities in the top 100 continues to fall, from a peak of 43 in 2018 to 34 this year.
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Dangerous vaccines
More on the great unravelling of the Covid vaccine story
It’s Dreamtime down under as Australian politicians and the media, led by their health authorities, sleepwalk through 2022.
Last Saturday, Florida’s surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, released analysis showing that Covid-19 mRNA vaccines increased the risk of cardiac-related death by a staggering 84 per cent among men aged 18 to 39 within 28 days of injection. Ladapo had already recommended against Covid vaccination in children aged 5 to 17 in March. Now he has added children aged less than five and men aged 18 to 39, tweeting, ‘Florida will not be silent on the truth’.
Ladapo is not alone. In mid-September Denmark recommended against Covid shots for any healthy person under 50 years. A fortnight later, Norway recommended against the jabs for healthy people aged under 65. In the UK healthy children who turned five on or after 1 September will not be vaccinated until they turn 12 unless they live with someone with a weakened immune system.
Esteemed UK cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra, an erstwhile TV talking head in support of Covid vaccines has gone further. His peer-reviewed paper published a fortnight ago calls for their immediate suspension. ‘Until all the raw data on the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines have been independently analysed, any claims purporting that they confer a net benefit to humankind cannot be considered to be evidence based,’ he says.
On 16 September, an international group of scientists and doctors, led by French scientist Alexandra Henrion-Caude and American doctor Sally Priester issued a declaration of an international medical crisis due to diseases and death related to Covid vaccination. They pointed to high excess mortality in countries with high vaccination rates, ‘the large number of sudden deaths in previously healthy young people’, ‘the high incidence of miscarriages and perinatal deaths’, and the ‘large number of adverse side effects, including hospitalisations, permanent disabilitie, and deaths’.
Yet, it is as if none of this happened to the somnambulists running Australia. This week, Karen Andrews, the former minister for Home Affairs who cancelled Novak Djokovic’s visa twice ranted that he must not be allowed to compete in the next Australia Open just because ‘he’s a high-ranking tennis player with many millions of dollars’. ‘It shouldn’t be just one rule for (him) and a different rule for everyone else,’ she pontificated. Yet preventing Djokovic from entering applies a harsher rule to him than anyone else, since nobody has been required to be vaccinated to enter Australia since 6 July. And if Florida and the dissenting doctors are correct, Andrews should be apologising to Djokovic for trying to coerce him to get a vaccine that could have killed him.
Equally, if the dissenting doctors and scientists are right, it is also the ongoing mass Covid vaccination campaigns that underlie Australia’s shocking excess mortality which started rising in March 2021, just when the Covid vaccines started to be rolled out and is now running at 17 per cent. This year, there had been 13,524 excess deaths by 30 June of which less than 40 per cent (5,387) were due to Covid. What caused the deaths of the other 8,137 Australians? And why is it that Australian health officers who lamented every Covid death when there were only 905 in 2020 and 1,342 in 2021, have said nothing about excess mortality in 2022 which is ten times worse than Covid mortality in 2021?
Australian Medical Association president Professor Steve Robson described Australia’s excess mortality as a ‘worrying’ trend that mirrored countries such as the UK but said he couldn’t explain it adding, ‘there needs to be some research into why this is happening’. There has been none. Why not? Instead, Australia’s health authorities still recommend repeatedly jabbing everyone from the age of six months up intoning the mantra that the vaccines are ‘safe and effective’.
Yet that’s not what the NSW data, the most complete in Australia, shows. Vaccinated people in NSW are six times more likely to get Covid than the unvaccinated, 77 times more likely to be hospitalised, ten times more likely to end up in ICU, and 1.1 times more likely to die even though the people most likely to die of Covid – people in palliative care, severe illness, the frailest elderly – are often unvaccinated because they are so close to death.
NSW does not release the data it collects on the comorbidities of those who are hospitalised or die with or of Covid. If it did we could compare like with like and establish the risk of the virus to healthy or sick people in each age group, and the risks or benefits of vaccination to those same groups. Why don’t health authorities do this? Are they just woefully obtuse or do they fear that the results would reveal that the vaccine is neither safe nor effective?
Despite the incompleteness, the NSW statistics strongly suggest that the vaccine is increasing the risk of illness and death. This was a known danger. Are Australia’s health authorities actively monitoring for it? It seems not. Yet Dr. Fauci warned in May 2020 that there was a ‘possibility of negative consequences’ because ‘certain vaccines can actually enhance the negative effect of the infection’. This was true for a vaccine developed for respiratory syncytial virus which was never approved and a measles vaccine developed in the 1960s which was withdrawn.
Why are the Covid vaccines not being withdrawn, asks Dr Malhotra. He notes the swine flu vaccine developed in 1976 was withdrawn because of a 1 in 100,000 risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome and the rotavirus vaccine was withdrawn because of a 1 in 10,000 risk of bowel obstruction. He estimates the true prevalence of serious adverse events from Covid-19 mRNA vaccines is between 1 in 800 and 1 in 1,000.
What about excess mortality? The easiest way to establish whether vaccination is contributing would be to identify the vaccine status of all those who died since Covid immunisation commenced, together with their age and comorbidities. It’s not hard.
That’s what Florida, and presumably Denmark and Norway have done. But not Australia. Its leaders slumber on at the wheel as the nation careens towards a calamitous awakening.
The green investments that threaten Australia's future with their failures
Investments with essentially no return. A system of windmills and solar panrels has added nothing to the good electricity availablity that we already had: A vast investment that has done nothing to improve our lives
Productivity growth is the key to income growth – we can’t have the latter without the former. A matter that has troubled many economists in the Western world during recent decades is a slowdown in productivity growth.
Australia is typical. Multi-factor productivity – the overall return on labour and capital inputs combined – has been growing at only 0.3 per cent per year in recent years, while the more commonly understood, labour productivity, has also seen growth at only 0.9 per cent a year. These are half the levels seen in the 1990s.
That slowdown is less evident in many countries that are nowadays referred to as ‘developing’. Some such countries that had been lagging behind Western world living standards for centuries started to catch up once their governments stood back from directly controlling their economies and created the conditions for individuals to accumulate savings and to invest these with much reduced fears of expropriation.
First, beginning in the 1960s, we saw the so-called Asian Tigers – Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea – start to emerge as industrial powerhouses; these countries now have income levels that surpass those of most developed western economies. This was followed by phenomenal growth rates achieved by China; in more recent years we’ve seen India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and even some African countries starting to show high levels of economic growth.
In contrast to the liberalisation and lessening of investment constraints and regulations that powered those nations’ growths, most western economies have imposed increasing layers of regulation on investment opportunities. These measures have forced down investment returns through requiring additional spending on environmental, heritage, and social matters – including the preparation of lengthy reports – and lengthening the approval time required to operationalise an initial idea.
For Australia, the slowdown in per capita growth has taken place notwithstanding increases in investment. Per capita annual real capital expenditure is currently 50 per cent higher than in the late 1980s.
But much of the investment in recent years is simply in dead-weight assets like the many idle desalinisation plants that have been constructed around Australia, plants that owe nothing to commercial decisions.
For the rest, increasing red tape reduces the efficiency – the payoff – of nearly all investment. And using subsidies to force funds into particular venues can lead the investment to have a negative effect by destroying the productive capabilities of other investment. This can be seen with new investment in electricity, which dominate the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)category: ‘electricity gas, water, and waste services’. The category comprises about six per cent of Australia’s total new investment the bulk of which is for weather-dependent wind and solar and for the increased transmission, batteries, and pumped hydro necessary to support these generation sources.
This expenditure would not take place without subsidies either from government directly, or from regulatory measures that pass the costs of transmission and wind/solar onto consumers. In favouring these intrinsically high-cost forms of electricity, the subsidies force out of the market lower cost and more reliable forms, especially coal generators that comprise 60-70 per cent of supply. This has resulted in overall generation costs trebling and in measures to facilitate wind/solar that include replacing the present transmission system, valued at some $21 billion, with one at a cost that the government says will be $80 billion.
Regulations and direct subsidies to wind/solar have already forced the closure of coal generation capacity and the number of coal generating units in Australia is expected to be half their level of 10 years ago by 2025. On top of this is the Queensland Government’s radical plan to replace all its coal stations by wind/solar and two mythical pumped hydro schemes.
In measuring new capacity from investments, the ABS assumes its returns are constant and invariant to time, and ‘a change in the quantity of capital services delivered from any given capital asset is tantamount to a change in its productive capital stock’.
The sad fact is that certain investments, especially those taken for political purposes, yield no return at all and others are akin to investing in computer viruses that actually destroy value and cause considerable extra expenditures in attempts to offset the detrimental effects of the malware.
Subsidised expenditures in weather-dependent renewable facilities, rather than constituting investments, are parasitic outlays that destroy genuine income-producing assets.
Quarantine madness
Another part of the generally disastrous response by governments to the pandemic
The Premiers might want to consider balancing their budgets by setting up a petting zoo for their endangered White Covid Elephants. Members of the public could come and visit the hundreds of millions of dollars they cost to purchase and upkeep and ask questions of the zoo keepers like, ‘Why the hell did we build quarantine camps for a seasonal flu that was almost over?’ and ‘Was it necessary to fit convict electronic ankle bracelets to people in quarantine?’
There’s a time and a place for quarantine camps. Australia used to have several historic facilities back when we were a young, fragile country unable to deal with the introduction of the world’s serious illnesses.
The flow of migration was tiny and tightly controlled through a series of ports. Many died in those facilities to protect the nation in conditions close to a living hell and, unlike Covid’s ‘re-imagined’ notion of quarantine, you could not buy your way out of historic quarantine or use your position and privilege to get around the rules.
Quarantine was a practice started in earnest (as far as we can tell) in Venice in the 14th Century where ships were forced to anchor in the harbour to see if anything terrible happened to the passengers and crew. Quaranta giorni or ‘forty days’ is where we get ‘quarantine’ from.
It was a good solution for the time, but that world is gone.
Globalisation, mass migration, and the continuous flow of human beings into Australia via air and sea makes it impossible to sustain human-based quarantine – for anything – unless a full shutdown of the nation is enforced. It is an unsustainable proposition that would only work for a handful of diseases. Certainly, it was never credible to believe that a highly transmissible respiratory illness like Covid could be contained via quarantine.
Once Covid entered the general population, quarantine went from an absurd hope to a nonsense. Quarantine facilities are designed to keep a disease out of a nation. If that nation already has a domestic outbreak – quarantine is no longer viable. To enforce isolation orders on travellers after Covid escaped into the community was always ridiculous – one may even argue that every cent taken from civilians by government departments for their forced quarantine was theft.
To be clear, hotel quarantine and police-enforced self-isolation offered no long-term value.
Think about it this way, with tens of thousands of cases spreading out of control through the community, what difference does it make if you spend nearly $10,000 getting one traveller into the country ‘clean’? The answer is none. It is the same medical absurdity as America’s current vaccination orders for travellers. Vaccination for Covid has no discernible impact on transmission or prevention from infection. America has millions of active cases. Their medical red tape at the airport is nothing but petty politics from an embarrassed regime that cannot and will not admit it lied for two years.
Australia’s National Cabinet (which has wrapped itself in protective layers of secrecy) claims to be advised by leading experts in the medical field, and yet laymen worked out all the way back in late 2020 that Covid would become an endemic virus that could not be stopped by tyranny.
Why did the world slit its economic throat in pursuit of Covid eradication? Was it just so that Big Pharma CEOs could raise billions from a mandated vaccine? Was Covid being used as an excuse to expand political power and collapse Western systems of government into something that looks more like authoritarianism? Was it simple fear and incompetence from political leaders prepared to break every rule of civilisation to hang on to power, making promises about safety they had no right to make? Whatever it was, it had very little to do with healthcare. Maybe idiocy, but not health.
While Premiers probably wish they could ‘move on’ from Covid and pretend that they didn’t act like tin-pot dictators – there is still a question about what to do with their white elephant quarantine stations and health apps…
Queensland’s ‘Wellcamp’ (which sounds like an Orwell theme park) outside of Toowoomba was proudly opened in mid-February 2021 by Annastacia Palaszczuk. It was built to house those pesky unvaccinated international travellers, holding them in small prison cells. Why only unvaccinated travellers? Quarantine is predicated on the notion of locking diseases in with excessive force. It’s not a quarantine facility if half the infected travellers take an Uber straight into the centre of town. Nobody in the press challenged Palaszczuk on the distinction.
Deputy Premier Steven Miles made it quite clear that this was a holding cell for the unvaccinated, not a genuine quarantine station.
‘We anticipate an ongoing number of arrivals, particularly from countries where their vaccines aren’t recognised by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and therefore will be required to quarantine. As well as farmers, refugees from other countries who haven’t been able to access vaccinations.’
At some point, every person held at Wellcamp should sue the Queensland government for being held under false pretences. It cost a shocking $3,220 for a single adult, $4,130 for two adults, and $5,040 for two adults and two children. How can this be seen as anything other than a mean-spirited, state-issued fine on the unvaccinated?
There was no competitive tender for Wellcamp’s construction by the Wagner Corporation which cost $200 million along with $9 million to Compass Group and $7.67 million to Aspen Medical in service fees. It is owned by the company, not Queensland, and is being leased. Now, it sits empty with everyone admitting the facility has no use whatsoever. It was a political construction – nothing more – and those in government responsible should have the amount docked from their public service budget.
‘I don’t regret anything about it,’ said Miles. He should regret everything, especially his comment that segregating the unvaccinated was about ‘rewards’.
The situation is nearly identical in Victoria, where Daniel Andrews has his own white elephant exhibit. Victoria’s $580 million quarantine facility in Mickleham is the most expensive of all the albino zoo animals. It was built by the federal government (why did you do that, Scott Morrison?) and operated by the Victorian Labor government.
‘There is no doubt in my mind that we will look back on this decision by the Commonwealth and the state government to invest in a special purpose-built quarantine facility as one of the best decisions we’ve made,’ said Police Minister Lisa Neville.
Oh, really?
Matthew (Matt?) Guy chipped in, ‘It’s a shame it wasn’t in place maybe a year or so ago when it was needed most. But it’s an important piece of armoury to ensure there are no more lockdowns.’ ‘You can see it from the moon,’ Neville added.
Wonderful. A failure so large it is visible from space.
The hub is already closed. These are same governments that cry poor and insist they ‘just have to increase taxes’ to salvage the economy. How about they start paying back, with their salaries as forfeit, the hubris of their careers?
It was the Liberals who facilitated this Southern failure and the Liberals that shared the information required to create vaccine passports, so I don’t want to hear any more garbage from the party elite about how ‘Labor is so much worse’. You’re both atrocious. That’s why ‘you betrayed us!’ was screamed at those on stage during CPAC.
The Howard Springs quarantine facility in the Northern Territory copped well-deserved flak for essentially forcing remote communities to relocate into it. While arguably the most successful of the facilities (in that a significant number of people moved through its doors), it was still a failure of concept. At the end of the day, for all its ‘success’ it served no purpose and made no difference to our final destination as a nation.
With the fully-vaccinated flying into Australia riddled with Covid at the same time as the unvaccinated were being carted off to live in prison facilities, Australia and its leaders openly practised discrimination and segregation despite the science (and basic ethics) being against them. At no point have they apologised for this, or sought to amend the legislation that allowed these violations in basic decency.
As a nation, we wasted a fortune and learned nothing except that our Premiers and medical bureaucracy harbour an insatiable lust for cruelty and cretinism in equal measure. If this is the quality of ‘expert’ on offer, we’d be better off with the village idiot – or a stray cat. And yes, your money is still being used to feed the elephants.
13 October, 2022
Karl Stefanovic slams plans to introduce a smacking ban on kids in Australia
The claim that smacking/spanking has bad mental health outcomes is based on the old fallacy that correlation is causation. The bad mental health among some children who are smacked could be a CAUSE rather than the result of the smacking. Ill-behaved children are more likely to be smacked and mental health problems can cause bad behaviour. See here for an example of the research concerned
My father never laid a hand on me nor did I ever lay a hand on my son but both of us are quiet intellectual types not drawn to any kind of florid behaviour. But all children are not the same and some children do need pressure to observe boundaries. And smacking is a clear sign that a boundary has been transgressed.
Karl Stefanovic has furiously shot down plans to introduce a ban on Australian parents giving their kids a smack.
University of Melbourne Professor Sophie Havighurst supports the idea of making corporal punishment illegal, saying it 'has effects on children in a whole range of different ways'.
She referenced research from the Australian Child Maltreatment Study that found 61 per cent of young Aussies had been smacked at least four times in their life. 'We now know that that doubles their chances of anxiety and depression,' Prof Havighurst told The Today Show on Thursday morning.
But Stefanovic wasn't having any of it, saying there was no need for a law change. 'I don't want to see any more legislation around me as a parent, my head explodes,' he said.
'And the idea of parents being charged or going into court for smacking a child. I mean, come on, Sophie, give me a break, please.'
The professor said she wasn't seeking any consequences for those who use physical punishment on their children, but wanted the law to change. 'Any form of smacking or physical discipline has been found to have a negative effect on children,' she said.
Sixty-three countries around the world have made physical punishment against children illegal including Scotland, Sweden and Korea.
Prof Havighurst said the law change hadn't led to an increase in prosecution of parents who hit their kids in any of those countries. She said banning the behaviour would lead to a cultural and attitude change among Aussie parents.
The expert sympathised with Stefanovic's concerns parents would be charged for smacking their children, but said discussion around the topic was important. 'We all have times when we lose it ... but in New Zealand when they changed the law in 2007, they didn't get an increase in what you're fearful of,' she said.
'We don't want the government and police having more involvement in our family lives but we do know that law change can guide us to use other ways of parenting and that's really important.'
Australia's former deputy chief medical officer, Dr Nick Coatsworth also weighed in on the matter, saying the bottom line was that parents should not smack their kids - but that making the behaviour illegal wasn't necessary.
'My view is that governments should do their best to educate and make sure kids are safe,' he said. 'Criminalising aspects of parenting, even those aspects that are wrong, shouldn't be the direction the government should be going in, in my view.'
In Australia it's currently legal for parents to smack their kids but varying states have specific rules on the matter.
In NSW, the physical punishment should not be painful for more than a brief moment, and kids can't be hit on their heads or necks.
In Victoria, there is no legislation surrounding parents applying physical punishment to their kids while in various other states it must be considered 'reasonable under the circumstances'.
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Pronoun confusion
The word ‘they’ has two legitimate uses and one illegitimate use. The first proper and legitimate use is as the subjective case of the third person plural pronoun – that is, to refer to a bunch of people. The second is as a singular pronoun in cases where it is impossible to know the gender of the person referred to, for example: ‘If someone wins the lottery they should…’ In such cases, and only in such cases, it is proper to use ‘they’ just as ‘you’ has been employed for centuries – covering both singular and plural.
However, it is improper, illegitimate and totally appalling to use ‘they’ as a singular pronoun when the gender is known. This has been done, apparently, by Northlakes High School in NSW. At that school, the boys’ toilet has a sign saying ‘He/They’ and the girls’ toilet one saying ‘She/They.’ This is wrong on so many fronts it’s hard to know where to begin. For a start, toilets are not normally labelled with pronouns – they are labelled ‘mens’ (or ‘gents’) and ‘womens’ (or ‘ladies’). In a school context this becomes ‘boys’ and ‘girls’. Switching to a pronoun for labelling is nonsense.
Worse, the gender is known. Males go to boys’ toilets and females go to girls’ toilets – so the use of ‘they’ to be gender neutral is a bit of hard-left Marxist ideological madness. And third, this is dangerous. Mark Latham has pointed out that these lunatic woke signs may encourage boys to use the girls’ toilets – meaning little 12- and 13-year-old girls could find themselves in a toilet with perving 17- and 18-year-old boys. It is outrageous that a principal could assume the power to impose politically correct stupidity on a whole school (without – as it happens – telling parents or seeking their permission). Madness. Dangerous madness.
Methane emissions pledge a blow for farmers
Multiple sources close to discussions between the government and industry say an announcement to commit to the global methane pledge is imminent, possibly as early as next week.
They said the government was eager to head to next month’s UN COP27 climate change conference in Egypt with a solid commitment to meet the pledge, which the Morrison government rejected at COP26 in Glasgow last year.
The livestock sector, mainly due to the digestive functions of cattle and sheep, is responsible for about 48 per cent of the country’s methane emissions, which make up about 25 per cent of Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Tuesday flagged plans to tax from 2025 greenhouse gases produced by farm animals through burping and urinating, outraging producers. The industry’s main lobby group Federated Farmers warned the plan would “rip the guts out of small-town New Zealand’’.
Australia’s livestock sector, which aims to be carbon neutral by 2030, has argued against legislated methane targets and says it is voluntarily headed in that direction.
National Farmers Federation chief executive Tony Maher fired a warning shot last Friday amid concerns from farmers that Australia would sign up to the global methane pledge. He cited street protests by Dutch farmers over their government’s plan to tackle nitrogen emissions, which locals said would lead to a loss in livestock numbers and farm closures.
“We won’t support any outcome that would lead to a reduction in livestock numbers, and we’ve had assurances from government on that front,” Mr Maher said.
“Ultimately, punitive regulatory measures in isolation only serve to provide perverse and weaker outcomes for everyone, and we do not want to see farmers protesting because they were not adequately consulted prior to the announcements of schemes that challenge their very existence.”
Tougher methane emissions targets would also capture gas companies and landfill operators, with nearly 30 per cent of methane emissions coming from the extraction, distribution and combustion of fossil fuels and more than 10 per cent from waste management services. The European Union and Quad nations have linked their strategies to slash methane with fast-tracking lower emissions across the oil and gas sectors.
Research into methane-suppressing supplements has ramped up in recent years to tackle the problem, but farmers say they are not yet commercially viable.
The Australian understands growing pressure from the Biden administration and South Pacific nations for Australia to embrace stronger climate change action on the world stage has influenced the Albanese government’s global methane pledge position.
Ten South Pacific nations, including Fiji, PNG and Samoa, are among 122 nations who have signed the non-binding pledge. While China, India and Russia are not backing the target, Egypt, Oman, Qatar and Uzbekistan have recently committed.
A spokeswoman for Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen said the pledge was an “aspirational, global goal rather than a binding domestic target”, which was why so many countries had “joined the effort”.
Mr Bowen – who will lead Australia’s delegation at the COP27 Sharm El-Sheikh conference alongside Assistant Climate Change Minister Jenny McAllister — previously said that as the world’s 12th largest methane-emitting country “we want to see concrete plans to work with farmers”.
“The Australian government is currently consulting across resources and agricultural sectors about signing up to the global methane pledge,” the spokeswoman said.
“The government’s reforms to the safeguard mechanism mean that our largest emitters, many of which release methane, will be required to reduce their emissions – and the Safeguard Crediting Bill … will incentivise facilities that overachieve on their reductions”.
Mr Bowen’s spokeswoman said the $15bn National Reconstruction Fund would be used to help farmers adopt new livestock feed technologies. The government has committed $8m to fast-track commercialisation of seaweed as a low-emissions feed supplement.
Anthony Lee, the head of vertically integrated beef company Australian Country Choice, urged against binding legislation and said the government must support methane-reduction technology.
“There’s a lot of people in the industry, its allied agencies, in the industry RDCs (research and development corporations) and peak bodies, who are working on methane emission reduction,” Mr Lee said.
“There’s a few major projects that, if commercialised, will see significant reductions to these target levels and beyond.
“I don’t support legislation to limit emissions. What we need is government supporting and helping the industry to invest in technology. We need the government working with us, not taxing us.”
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More censorship in Australia
Big Tech companies are not at all hesitant about being openly biased in how they operate as publishers of online content.
This month the Institute of Public Affairs attempted to promote a research video featuring Senators James McGrath and Jacinta Price and leading intellectual Dr Anthony Dillon, explaining why establishing a voice in the constitution would permanently divide Australia by race.
When the IPA attempted to pay a fee to Facebook to promote this research to a wider audience it was rejected on the basis that it would breach Facebook’s policies about social issues, elections or politics.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, asserts that ‘any advertiser running ads about social issues, elections or politics’ must include a ‘paid for by’ disclaimer on these ‘ads’. How the research video discussing racial equality violated Facebook’s policies was never mentioned. The farce was at least acknowledged by Facebook when it removed its ban – only to reimpose it a few hours later.
Attempting to cover its tracks, Facebook leaked their version of events to the Guardian, which defended the censorship: ‘The IPA warriors might have saved their outrage for another day if they had just read the fine print. It was not the content of their ad that was the problem. Facebook’s rules require ads which have political content to carry a “disclaimer, disclosure, and ad labelling”’, they wrote. Except, three days later in a story published in the Australian Facebook again changed their version of events.
Facebook finally came clean and admitted they were wrong to have removed the ban on the promotion of the IPA’s video, although they wrongly continue to maintain that the content of the IPA’s video required a disclaimer to begin with. A Facebook spokeswoman said: ‘The ad was live for a short period of time in error, but was removed as soon as we realised it was missing the disclaimer.’
Facebook’s admission of error is significant, because if even Facebook cannot figure out how their vague rules work, how can they be trusted to control what people say in the digital public square? It also reinforces the perception of millions of Australians that Big Tech companies are putting their fingers on the scales on the likely forthcoming Voice referendum, which raises questions about the integrity of that referendum.
Behaviour like this from Facebook has been encouraged by governments. In recent years a consensus has emerged among political leaders that Big Tech companies should be given more power and responsibility to undermine freedom of speech online. Former Liberal federal minister for communications Paul Fletcher’s misinformation and disinformation laws, announced just before the May federal election, would have given regulators extraordinary new powers to force digital platforms to crack down on ‘harmful’ disinformation.
Similarly, the not so Conservative government in the UK is pressing ahead with its Online Safety bill, which will force digital platforms to censor ‘lawful but harmful’ content. New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has even likened online speech to ‘weapons of war’. In an address to the UN General Assembly, Ardern called on parties to take the ‘collective will’ to ‘bring us back to order’. One could be forgiven for thinking the type of order Ardern has in mind is one in which mainstream voters aren’t allowed to disagree with her government.
What happened to the IPA’s research video is an exemplar of what is one of the most significant challenges to freedom in our time. At a time when Australians are being asked to permanently enshrine race in the constitution, foreign-owned Big Tech mega corporations are asserting their power to control how that debate will be held, or if there will be a debate at all.
12 October, 2022
A hate-filled curriculum
It has not taken long for Prime Minister Albanese to weigh into the culture wars, even though the lefty progressive types insist that they are a figment of our imagination. Last week, our new PM sent up a rallying cry for what he termed as ‘fair dinkum’ history to be taught in Australian schools. By ‘fair dinkum’ he meant that children need to be taught about the atrocities committed by people of British descent upon indigenous people.
It is clear that the PM has not read the latest version of the national curriculum. If he had, he would have known that according to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority ‘Indigenous’ or ‘Aboriginal’ are now verboten because they are terms of oppression. We now must use ‘First Nations Australians’ or ‘Australia’s First Nations Peoples’. Keep up, Albo!
He would also know that the singular narrative currently taught to Australian children in the history syllabus is that Australia was founded on racism, and that the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 resulted in dispossession and genocide.
In Year 3, teachers will explain that ‘people have different points of view on some events that are commemorated and celebrated; for example, some First Nations Australians regard “Australia Day” as “Invasion Day”’. In Year 4, students will learn about the ‘effects of contact with other people on First Nations Australians and their Countries/Places following the arrival of the First Fleet and how this was viewed by First Nations Australians as an invasion’.
As part of a classroom activity, they will look at ‘paintings and accounts by individuals involved in exploration and colonisation to explore the impact that British colonisation had on the lives of First Nations Australians; for example, dispossession, dislocation and the loss of lives through frontier conflict, disease, and loss of food sources and medicines, the embrace of some colonial technologies…’.
In Year 9, they will study ‘the impact of colonisation by Europeans on First Nations Australians such as frontier warfare, massacres, removal from land, and relocation to “protectorates, reserves and missions”’. They will also investigate ‘the forcible removal of children from First Nations Australian families in the late 19th century and 20th century (leading to the Stolen Generations), including the motivations for the removal of children, the practices and laws that were in place, and experiences of separation.’
We are all for talking about the mistakes of the past. Nobody is suggesting that they should be ignored. No one is saying that there was no violence between white settlers and the indigenous populations. Quite the contrary. These are important aspects of the history of modern Australia that all children should know.
But this discussion has nothing to do ‘fair dinkum’ history, or even unfair dinkum history for that matter. What Australian children are being introduced to in the classroom is pure post-modernist theory, specifically post-colonial theory. They are being schooled in the ‘settler colonialism genocide’ paradigm which sprang from the febrile imagination of Australian historian Patrick Wolfe in the 1990s.
Wolfe famously declared that settler colonialism was a structure, not an event and that it was premised on the elimination rather than exploitation of the native population. According to Wolfe, how settler colonialism disrupted the indigenous relationship to land was a profoundly violent attack on their very being, which violence continues with every day of ‘occupation’.
Our education bureaucrats are motivated by the belief that European expansion was a capitalist and racist attempt to replace indigenous people with more productive non-indigenous populations, even at the cost of genocide.
Wolfe’s paradigm has been embedded into every single subject of the national curriculum, not just history, via the Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander Cultures and Histories cross-curriculum priority. The ‘organising ideas’ of this priority are worth reproducing in full. Namely, that:
First Nations communities of Australia maintain a deep connection to, and responsibility for, Country/Place and have holistic values and belief systems that are connected to the land, sea, sky and waterways.
The occupation and colonisation of Australia by the British, under the now overturned doctrine of terra nullius, were experienced by First Nations Australians as an invasion that denied their occupation of, and connection to, Country/Place.
The First Peoples of Australia are the Traditional Owners of Country/Place, protected in Australian Law by the Native Title Act 1993 which recognises pre-existing sovereignty, continuing systems of law and customs, and connection to Country/Place. This recognised legal right provides for economic sustainability and a voice into the development and management of Country/Place.
If Prime Minster Albanese was really concerned about truth-telling in history, he would make sure that the history syllabus desists from propagating historical inaccuracies, such as the mythical notion that the British were warmongering, genocidal invaders. He would make sure that the positive aspects of how modern Australian history came into being were taught to children. He would start explaining to young Australians why this country has been the safe haven for millions of people fleeing from all over the world.
But the Prime Minister is not interested in a true account of history, he is interested in spin and politics. The left wing of the Labor party, of which Albanese is a product, sees power in the division of society, which is why it so strongly believes in multiculturalism and in undermining unifying symbols such as the Crown, Australia Day and the parliament.
Right now, the Albanese government is committed to dividing Australians by race by way of creating a parallel system of representative government comprised of indigenous Australians to the exclusion of all other Australians. Albanese and the left-wing political parties will use education to continue to inflict guilt and shame upon the nation until such a time that their ideas are accepted as fait accompli.
False predictions fuel climate ‘consensus’
In its 2020 State of the Climate report the Bureau of Meteorology informs readers, ‘Observations, reconstructions and climate modelling paint a consistent picture of ongoing, long-term climate change interacting with underlying natural variability’. Such vague prognostications, even when technically correct, are essentially worthless. Surely for half a billion dollars a year taxpayers deserve better than that?
Specifically, the Bureau predicts ‘Further sea-level rises along with the likelihood of more frequent and severe bleaching events in coral reefs ….’ Really? Eighty per cent of Pacific islands and atolls are stable or growing and GPS satellite observations tell us the Australian continent is sinking. Moreover, a recent Australian Institute of Marine Science report finds that coral coverage on the northern and central parts of the Great Barrier Reef is at its highest level since monitoring began 36 years ago.
But then, grim forecasts are in the Bureau’s DNA. Its long-range forecaster, Andrew Watkins, predicted in November 2019 that, ‘Summer is looking hot for most of the country and dry for the east. The highest chances of it being drier than normal, unfortunately, are in those drought areas through central New South Wales, southern Queensland and eastern Victoria’.
A month on, the prophesy became, ‘February to April has roughly equal chances of being wetter or drier than average for most of Australia’. Take your pick. Two weeks later an extreme deluge hit south-east Queensland and northern NSW dumping up to 325mm in a few hours, triple the monthly rainfall.
Undaunted, and contrary to American forecasts, the Bureau declared ‘the 2021-2022 La Niña season is finally over.’ After three months it changed to, ‘will last through to 2023’. Who knows?
Lest Mother Nature should suggest cooler, wetter, the Bureau is there to enlighten us. Even if the 2022 winter seemed colder to some, those who shivered through it were reassured that the national mean temperature was still 0.36 degrees Celsius above the 1961 to 1990 average, which includes a decade of 0.20 degrees cooling.
And should people washed away by the east coast floods think this was wetter than normal, they get comfort from the knowledge that, ‘the nationally averaged rainfall data has not threatened any records’. It matters not that the national average for a continent the size of Australia is meaningless.
But, for the BoM, the medium is the message, so it is important to frame a narrative which aligns aberrant weather events to its catastrophic global warming thesis. By targeting policymakers and the public, it hopes to create a permanent feedback loop.
But it can be a tough gig keeping temperatures rising. It may mean remodelling the record three times in nine years and ensuring things are warmer than thermometer readings had previously measured. This is difficult when more reliable UAH satellite observations record a ten-year pause in Australian temperatures.
Respected scientist and long-time Bureau critic, Dr Jennifer Marohasy, despairs. She says, ‘I have shown repeatedly, including in peer-reviewed publications, that without scientific justification historical temperatures are dropped down, cooling the past. This has the effect of making the present appear hotter – it is a way of generating more global warming for the same weather.’
The public was alerted to these practices through the Climategate emails, and similarly in Australia the BoM’s lack of transparency, unscientific practices and appalling quality control were exposed. Weather-stations continue to be discovered in heat traps. Record low temperatures have been underreported or ‘lost’ and a much touted ‘hottest-ever’ day had to be quickly retracted when it was demonstrated it wasn’t.
It’s easy to dismiss these criticisms as carping. After all, Australia is a big place and weather forecasting is fraught. But surely the most benevolent analyst would conclude that global-warming politics, not science, predominantly drives people and culture at the BoM. Indeed, it is an active member of a global political consensus which is intent on weaponising the climate to achieve social change. Within this coven there is no room for agnostics or dissenters.
Finally, after decades of deceit and denial, mass delusion is colliding with reality. Months before winter’s onset, gas and electricity prices in Europe are ten times higher than usual. Fertiliser production is down 70 per cent and the metals sector faces an existential threat. Nationalisation beckons.
True, Russia is a significant contributor, but the real pain is self-inflicted and comes from irresponsible emissions-reduction policies which have exposed populations and economies to the mercies of Moscow and the weather with no Plan B.
Predictably the poor and infirm will pay the highest price. More people die of cold than heat and for many this winter it will mean choosing between already unaffordable heating and, skyrocketing food prices.
The perpetrators of this disaster will use it to demonstrate how, ‘Capitalism has run its course and must yield to environmental concerns’. Unsustainable growth has long been pushed by the Club of Rome and the climate collective as an existential threat and Malthusian authoritarians now largely control the agenda.
This is not conspiracy theory. A recently leaked IPCC report argues the current capitalist model must be discarded ‘to avoid exceeding planetary limits’. In other words, unless growth is abandoned, global warming will cause more frequent catastrophic weather events and millions more will die of heat and starvation.
Yet, despite rising emissions, the UN’s own World Food Program reports the planet is producing enough food to feed one and a half times the present population. The problems are storage and distribution. The anti-capitalists don’t explain how limiting economic growth and making energy unaffordable for refrigeration, transport and cooking, assist in delivering nutrition to the needy.
Well, ours is not to question. The anti-growth consensus knows best and is re-setting capitalism to become the ‘sharing economy’ of the future. In this utopia ‘you will own nothing and you will be happy’. What could possibly go wrong?
Who will defend the white Christian male?
Did you hear about the Muslim who got the sack because of his Islamic beliefs and the Indian who was similarly dismissed because he was a Hindu?
How about the Aborigine who was shown the door because of his traditional beliefs?
You didn’t because these events never occurred and if they had, there would have been shrieks of outrage while accusations of Islamophobia, racism and religious intolerance echoed around the nation and social media erupted in an explosion of condemnation.
If, however, you happen to be a white Christian male with conservative views that don’t align with the woke-Left view of the world and you have your employment terminated because of your religious beliefs, then sorry, mate.
Suck it up. It’s your fault for being a holy-roller and not running with the mob.
My late father once told me that when he was growing up in Brisbane in the 1930s and looking for work as an apprentice, it was not uncommon to see advertisements offering employment, which carried the qualification that “Catholics Need Not Apply”.
Bigotry was entrenched back then and thankfully we now live in a more enlightened age, one in which inclusiveness has become the mantra of the times. Sexual and gender preferences of every alphabetic combination are welcomed.
Corporations laud their inclusiveness and point proudly to their ongoing pursuit of gender balance and a multicultural workforce, but what happens when a white bloke gets the chop because he belongs to a particular Christian church?
Not much, as Andrew Thorburn discovered when he was forced to resign as chief executive of Essendon Football Club the day after he was appointed when the AFL club discovered that the church to which he belonged preached that homosexuality was a sin and was anti-abortion.
Professional football clubs, of course, are paragons of virtue unless you count the revelations of domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse and public affray in which their players so regularly feature.
I’ve no brief for Thorburn. He was forced to step down as head of the National Australia Bank after a royal commission blasted the bank for charging customers $650m in fees for which there was no service.
The issue, however, is not about the man’s business ethics, but about being a Christian in today’s society.
Former prime minister Scott Morrison was regularly lampooned because he openly practised his Christian faith, as was former PM Tony Abbott.
When Dominic Perrottet became NSW Premier, the focus was not of his qualifications for the role, but that he was a Catholic and had six and now seven children.
Had he been a Muslim with a large family, it would have gone unremarked. Rugby player Israel Folau suffered the wrath of the woke Left and paid a price for standing up for his beliefs.
Essendon thought Thorburn, a passionate and long-time supporter of the club, was the right person for the job, but then in a heartbeat, it didn’t. It folded at the first hint of faux outrage.
Thorburn’s church, the City on a Hill, is hardly the only one to have unfashionable views.
According to the Australian National Imans Council: “From the Islamic standpoint, homosexuality is a forbidden action; a major sin and anyone who partakes in it is considered a disobedient servant to Allah that will acquire His displeasure and disapproval.”
Does this mean that all those who have applauded the actions of Essendon, including, to his external disgrace, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, regard Muslims as unsuitable to hold responsible office?
Andrews is a professed Catholic and the Catholic Church is anti-abortion so how can he justify supporting Thorburn’s treatment?
The answer, of course, is that he is a politician with an election coming up and is trying to curry favour with Left-leaning inner-city electors.
The hypocrisy is staggering. Will Essendon now interview all its players and demand to know their views on abortion and homosexuality, tearing up the contracts of those whose beliefs do not coincide with what is believed to be acceptable?
You know the answer.
There’s an ugly undercurrent tugging at our society, one seeking to sweep away those who would stand up for their right to hold Christian beliefs. If we fail to fight against it, we do so at our peril.
Philosopher John Stuart Mill put it succinctly when he wrote: “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
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Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly downplayed long COVID while justifying end of isolation requirements, medical specialist says
A leading medical specialist and long COVID patients say the chief medical officer (CMO) downplayed the state of long COVID in Australia while justifying the end of national isolation requirements.
Steven Faux, who heads up a long COVID clinic at a Sydney hospital, called the comments "unusual" and akin to "pulling the sheet over your head".
During a press conference last month, when the October 14 mandatory isolation end date was announced, Paul Kelly said health authorities were still assessing the extent of long COVID in Australia. "We're not seeing a major picture of long COVID," he said.
"For the majority of Australians, we were not exposed to COVID before we had at least two vaccines.
"We know that the major risk factors for long COVID are having had infection before vaccination, being unvaccinated, having severe illness and having other types of COVID that were not Omicron."
Professor Faux, who co-directs the long COVID clinic at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, said Professor Kelly's comments did not accurately represent the patients who were presenting at his practice.
"Mostly we're seeing people who got [COVID-19] in December and that's the Omicron wave … and the majority we are seeing are vaccinated," Professor Faux said.
Long COVID still a risk
The rehabilitation and pain physician pointed to international research that showed those who were triple vaccinated and infected with Omicron had a long COVID rate of 5 per cent.
"That's not a major problem, unless you consider that over 10 million Australians have had COVID," he said.
"That's not insubstantial when you consider that the public health services are at maximum capacity."
The St Vincent's clinic has been inundated with hundreds of people seeking help, with some specialists booked out until the middle of next year.
"We've been getting phone calls from Victoria, the Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland about people wanting to come down and we've been sending them back," Professor Faux said.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Aged Care told the ABC that Professor Kelly's comments were based on research conducted overseas and stressed that people who were vaccinated were less likely to develop symptoms of long COVID.
"In addition, studies have shown that infection with the Omicron variant is less likely to lead to symptoms of long COVID than infection with the Delta variant."
Comments not based on data, say advocates
The CMO's comments have been met with sadness and anger by long COVID advocates, who say patients like them are not being seen or heard. "He has no data on which to base those claims," academic Pippa Yeoman said.
"He's making a political statement about how clever they were to close the borders and get everybody vaccinated and saying that means we will be different [to other countries]. If you make a claim, you need to be able to back it up."
Dr Yeoman is a member of the Australia Long Covid Community Facebook group, which has about 2,600 members.
The group has been collecting survey data on its members in a bid to present the information to an approaching parliamentary Inquiry into Long COVID and Repeated COVID Infections.
Members said their preliminary data analysis of almost 300 survey respondents showed that the vast majority were double vaccinated before developing long COVID and were infected during the Omicron wave.
There is no official national data on the number of people with long COVID in Australia and not every state has a dedicated long COVID clinic, making it difficult to quantify the number of people with the condition or the impact it has on their lives.
The Department of Health and Aged Care said analysis of health data had begun in order to help develop a national response to long COVID.
"The Department is also working with states and territories to better understand the prevalence of long COVID in Australia," it said.
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11 October, 2022
The Queensland government is clearly one of our very worst
It takes a woman to tear down another woman and Judith Sloan has risen well to that challenge below. She gets it pretty right but I think she should given more credit to Annastacia for unusually relaxed lockdowns during the pandemic. I was hardly bothered by them at all
We hang out a fair bit in Queensland. We bought a place over a decade ago and happily spend several months a year in the Sunshine State – that’s when we are allowed to.
We had been given an early glimpse of how bad the Queensland government was when we were buying the place. It was a legislated requirement to provide prospective buyers with an environmental assessment of the property for sale. (It had been the brainwave of the husband of Labor premier Anna Bligh who was a senior bureaucrat at the time.)
The form consisted of page after page of detailed questions that the property owner was expected to answer or attempt to answer. You see: ‘not applicable’ and ‘don’t know’ were acceptable answers. Quite a lot of forms we received had ‘don’t know’ to the question: is there a swimming pool on the property? Clearly many vendors were simply taking the piss. I should add that the real estate agents weren’t taking the government directive too seriously either.
Fast-forward a decade or so and it’s clear that the performance of the Queensland government has deteriorated further. I’m not talking here so much about its reaction to Covid – I’m pretty sure the wooden spoon goes to Victoria, with Western Australia not far behind.
Even so, it’s hard to erase the memories of those mindless observations of the then chief health officer, Jeanette Young – she is now Governor of Queensland!
Needless to say, there were various low points in Queensland during the times of Covid, including that memorable comment from the premier Annastacia Paluszczuk – now commonly referred to as Red Carpet Anna – that Queensland hospitals were for Queenslanders, thereby preventing some seriously sick people, including children, living in far north New South Wales from crossing the border.
And who can forget the bumbling, incoherent commentaries of the then health minister, Stephen Miles? On the basis of that performance, he is now deputy premier. (OK, I made that bit up; he is deputy premier because of some factional stitch-up.)
Of course, no one expected Red Carpet Anna to become premier; she was made the leader of the opposition as a sort of seat-holder at an Oscar’s ceremony because there were so few Labor parliamentarians after Campbell Newman stormed into office. But Newman managed to storm out of office just as quickly and the daughter of a former senior Labor politician and deal-maker got the top job because it would have looked tacky to remove her at that point.
To give you some examples of just how bad the Queensland government is, it’s hard to go past the current kerfuffle surrounding the government-run DNA laboratory. A part of Queensland Health, which is a disaster story in itself, at some point the ‘managers’ – I can’t call them real managers – decided that the cut-off point for testing should be double the international standard.
What this has meant is that baddies who might otherwise have been indicted because of forensic evidence were allowed to roam the streets because some ‘manager’ in Brisbane had decided that a new standard should apply which allowed the lab to get through the backlog and save money. Unsurprisingly, the first reaction of Red Carpet Anna was to cover it up, claiming there was nothing to see. Were it not for the dogged efforts of a journalist, this gross failing by a public agency would never have seen the light of day.
It’s also hard not to laugh at the Queensland government’s recent attempt to extend the land tax base for Queensland properties. The cunning minds at Queensland Treasury pondered how to extract more money from those well-heeled investors with properties in other states as well as in Queensland.
The Queensland treasurer, Cameron Dick – who is slightly more competent that his predecessor Jackie Trad – hoped to include the value of all investment properties for the purpose of calculating the land tax on Queensland properties. Sadly, NSW premier Dominic Perrottet refused to cooperate by releasing any details of investment property ownership in his state, which was a slight problem.
Of course, for anyone caught in this tax trap, an answer of ‘don’t know’ to the question about interstate properties could have done the trick. But in the end Red Carpet Anna was sufficiently embarrassed by the whole cack-handed exercise that she dropped the new tax.
Mind you, you wonder why the good folk at Treasury ever bothered given that the extension to the land tax arrangements was going to net a mere additional $20 million per year. Note here that the state has debt in excess of $100 billion, has more public sector workers per head of population than any other state and has a media department in the premier’s office whose staff wouldn’t fit in the newly constructed and unused (and paid for by Queensland taxpayers) quarantine facility in Toowoomba.
Then there’s the absolutely unconscionable proposal to amend Queensland’s industrial relations laws to exclude any competitors of registered trade unions. I guess it’s just a coincidence that currently registered unions happen to be affiliated, either directly or indirectly, to the Labor party and are also major financial contributors. (I’ve written about this before – it’s not too late. Queensland Speccie readers should contact their local member to express their outrage. The opposition has been slow to lodge its vehement objections.)
Aimed directly at the nimble and innovative Red Unions – their representation of nurses, in particular, has gone extremely well – the perverted (and completely self-serving) logic of the minister is that other unions can be established but they cannot represent their members industrially. Indeed, it will be an offence were they to attempt to do so under the amended legislation.
There is absolutely no doubt that the legislation is a violation of the ILO conventions on freedom of association and freedom to form associations, conventions which the Australian government has signed. But the Queensland government doesn’t care, claiming the amendment is needed to avoid ‘employers and employees being confused’. What, like being confused by choice at the supermarket?
Let’s face it, competition and choice are not the mantras of Red Carpet Anna who seems to prefer to spend her time with her new bariatric surgeon boyfriend attending gala events, often paid for by the Queensland taxpayer.
Perfect, she no doubt thinks.
‘Not having a big impact’: COVID drug fails to beat placebo in major trial
A COVID-19 medication that was thought to strongly reduce the risk of the illness becoming life-threatening and was bought in bulk by the federal government works no better than a placebo, preliminary findings from a major new study suggest.
Molnupiravir, sold in Australia under the brand name Lagevrio, disrupts the coronavirus’ ability to copy itself and was the first COVID-19 antiviral to win government subsidy here.
The medication is intended for people at high risk of serious illness – those aged over 50 who have risk factors, and the immunocompromised – after they test positive to COVID-19 but before they are sick enough to need a hospital. Australia was one of the most aggressive movers in securing access to molnupiravir, buying 300,000 courses in late 2021, before it was approved by medical regulator the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).
But some scientists have long been suspicious of strange results in the drug’s early trials. Data from the new trial has hardened their scepticism.
The University of Oxford’s PANORAMIC trial enrolled 25,783 people with COVID-19, half of whom got molnupiravir. After 28 days, 103 people given molnupiravir had died, compared with 96 in the second group.
“Clearly, it isn’t having a big impact,” said Professor Peter Wark, an expert on antivirals at the University of Newcastle. “I think we’d have to look very critically as to the cost-effectiveness of continuing in this sort of way.”
Governments keen to end COVID restrictions had leant on antivirals as a way out of the pandemic, Wark said. “A slower relaxation of restrictions probably would have had a bigger impact than relying heavily on these antivirals.”
Dr Kyle Sheldrick – a University of NSW researcher who co-authored a paper earlier this year on molnupiravir’s problems – is critical of the TGA’s approach. “I did not think it should have been approved before PANORAMIC,” he said “I certainly don’t think it should be now.”
The Health Department did not answer questions on how much it had spent on the drug, but the US paid about $US700 ($1099) a dose at the same time.
Australia’s National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce said it was reviewing the study and would probably soon update its recommendations, which endorse molnupiravir.
A spokesman for the drug’s sponsor Merck said PANORAMIC had focused on a low-risk group, and pointed to other studies showing the treatment was effective.
In April Merck predicted it would make $US5 billion to $US5.5 billion selling the drug this financial year.
In an effort to get more people using the drug, the Australian government widened eligibility in July and Merck launched an advertising campaign.
Due to uncertainties about the clinical trial evidence, molnupiravir remains unapproved by the European Union; France cancelled its order in December.
Merck’s spokesman argued the patients in PANORAMIC were relatively healthy, whereas in Australia, the drug is reserved for people with major risk factors. “Other recent real-world studies, including the Clalit study from Israel, have indicated that [molnupiravir] was associated with a significant reduction in hospitalisations and mortality due to COVID-19 in patients 65 years and above,” he said.
Initial uncertainties about molnupiravir stemmed from strange results in the original Merck trial that got the drug approved.
Merck’s trial recruited about 1500 patients and gave half the drug. Early results from the first half of patients tested were so positive – a halving of the chance of death – that the trial was stopped early so everyone could get the apparently life-saving treatment.
But when data from the remaining half of patients in the trial was published a month later, it told a different story. The second group had done far worse than the first. In fact, the data suggested molnupiravir did not improve their outcomes. Combined, the full trial suggested molnupiravir may not cut the risk of death.
“We think this is unprecedented. None of us had ever seen anything like this before,” said Sheldrick.
The strange results may have been caused by a new coronavirus variant emerging mid-trial, he said. Merck disputes that, and claims the early results were the key ones.
Wark said it was possible the drug was of less use in a highly vaccinated population faced with a milder variant such as Omicron.
Sheldrick said the PANORAMIC results suggested governments need to think differently about rushing to approve drugs with limited evidence – even in the middle of a pandemic.
A spokeswoman for the TGA said the drug remained provisionally approved for use. “It is noted that while, in the PANORAMIC trial, hospitalisation and death was not reduced by molnupiravir for adults under 65 years, the time to first self-reported recovery was six days shorter.”
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Albanese’s secret shock for the self-employed
The Albanese government is planning a secret shock for Australia’s self-employed people (18 per cent of the workforce). The ‘shock’ will be delivered under the guise of giving employee ‘rights’ to gig workers. Expect new laws early next year.
Such ‘rights’ are a fantasy and a con. They are (let me call them) ‘instruments of control’.
The government’s plan is to force people who are their own boss into a wage-slave environment. It’s a fundamental attack against the core ‘people’ base of Australia’s market economy. The outcome of this Labor government plan will be to strip self-employed people of their control of the money they earn when working.
The process will work like this.
If you are one of Australia’s 2.1 million self-employed people, you earn your income through commercial contracts. When you complete a job, you issue an invoice for a total amount and expect to be paid the full amount. That’s normal with any commercial contract. But the government has said it’s going to change that. You’ll be paid less.
Albanese says he’s going to give you holiday pay ‘entitlements’ for example. How will this work? Is it ‘free’ money? Assuredly not!
If you issue an invoice for, say, $100, your client will have to deduct money for holiday pay (say, $10) and only pay you $90. Your client will have to hold on to the $10 and only pay this to you when you take ‘holidays’. But you say, ‘I don’t want the $10 deducted. I want my full $100. I’ll manage my own holidays, thanks!’ Bad luck. Prime Minster Albanese says that’s what’s to happen. Get this. Albanese says that it’s your ‘right’ to have the $10 taken away from you!
But some people will say, ‘No, you’ll still get your $100 plus you’ll get an extra $10 for holiday pay!’ That’s where the con fantasy happens. Anyone who is their own boss knows that’s not what happens. They know that their client will turn around and say, ‘Ah, if I have to pay you $10 holiday pay, I’m not going to enter a contract for $100, I’m only going to offer $90.’ That’s the way the world works. People will adjust prices. People are not dumb.
The really dumb thing is that this is exactly what happens with employees. Say a full-time employee earns $1,000 a week. They are ‘entitled’ to 4 weeks’ holiday a year. That is $4,000 when they don’t work but are still employed. The truth is that the employee is really earning $1,083 a week for the 48 weeks they actually do work. In other words, the employer holds back $83 a week for holiday pay. The reason this is done is so that the employer can control when the employee takes holidays. That is, holiday pay is really a form of control.
This is how employment works. Money is denied to employees so that the employer can managerially control the worker.
This is not how self-employment works. When you are self-employed, you decide when you take holidays. Your client doesn’t control you. You manage your own money. Your client doesn’t manage or control your money. This is called business. This is called the economy. This is called being your own boss. But the Albanese government intends to stop this.
Yes, we know that the government says that the new ‘rights’ laws will only apply to gig workers. Let’s look at that.
The government accepts that gig workers are self-employed. There are about 11.9 million Australian workers. 7 per cent (around 830,000) have done gig work in any year. But only 0.19 per cent of the total workforce (around 22,500) have earned their full-time income from gig work. In other words, around 807,000 people do gig as ‘odd job’-type work in addition to (say) their full-time job.
Here are some practical questions for Albanese and his anti-self-employed promoters. Gig workers work on commercial contracts. An Uber driver, for example, might accept a fare that will pay the driver (say) $20. When the driver drops off their passenger they know they will get paid $20. But how will Albanese’s new ‘rights’ laws work?
Will the government force Uber to pay the driver an extra $1 for holiday pay? But wait. Will Uber have to hold on to the $1 until the driver takes a holiday? Who will decide when the driver takes a holiday – Uber or the driver? How will this work? What if the driver works for different ride-share companies? Will every company have to hold on to the extra $1s per ride? Will the driver have to collect ‘holiday pay’ from all the ride-share companies and, if so, how? Will Albanese set up a massive new government department to manage all this?
But there’s more. Is this ‘free money’ for the driver? Will Uber have to pay the $1 from its massive profits? Hold on! Uber has made non-stop losses since starting in 2009. What if Uber goes broke? It could happen! Alternatively, would Uber charge the customer/passenger the extra $1, so the passenger pays and not Uber? Or will Uber not pay the driver $20 and only pay the driver $19? Any of these things could happen. What does the Albanese government say?
These are questions that apply across the massive diversity of gig-type work, not just ride-share. And similar questions apply to the 22,500 self-employed people who do gig work as their main/only source of income. What then of the other 807,000 Australians who only do gig work to top up their incomes? How will the government answer the foregoing questions for these people? What a mess!!!
The reality is that in taking ‘employee rights’ and trying to apply them to self-employed people the government is effectively destroying self-employment. The two – being an employee and being a self-employed person – are totally different.
You can’t turn an apple into an orange. You can’t turn a self-employed individual into an employee. Instead, what you can do is destroy the right of people to be self-employed. Inevitably this is the Albanese government’s agenda, whether they state it or not.
Indigenous leaders, Greens unite against the voice to parliament
Amusing. This ensures that the referendum will fail. Referenda in Australia succeed only if there is no significant opposition to them
Conservative Aboriginal leaders and Greens have held talks over their common opposition to a referendum on an Indigenous voice to parliament, as Anthony Albanese leans toward starving both the Yes and No campaigns of public funds.
A diverse range of Indigenous leaders and politicians is coalescing against the voice, demanding the government halt the referendum, or at least ensure public funding for an Aboriginal-led No campaign.
The Australian can reveal Indigenous businessman Warren Mundine met Greens senator Lidia Thorpe last Wednesday and discussed ramping up a No campaign, on the sidelines of wider talks with crossbench senators about Indigenous affairs.
The meeting – between Mr Mundine, a former federal Liberal Party candidate, and Senator Thorpe, who says a voice is not radical enough and a treaty between Indigenous Australians and the federal government is needed – was the first informal step to bringing conservatives and radicals in the Aboriginal community together to support a No campaign.
“These blokes (supporters of the voice) are better than Jesus Christ,” said a source who was at the meeting. “They have brought all these people with different politics together.”
Mr Mundine also plans a national talking tour with Country Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price in coming months to promote the No cause.
Veteran Aboriginal leaders across the country, including Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania chairman Michael Mansell and former North Queensland Yarrabah Aboriginal Shire mayor Percy Neal, are also rallying colleagues to help halt the referendum.
Mr Mansell is campaigning for designated Indigenous senators from each state as an alternative to the voice, while others such as Mr Neal want to move immediately to a broader treaty.
A spokeswoman for the federal Greens confirmed the meeting between Senator Thorpe and Mr Mundine took place, and did not deny they discussed their mutual opposition to the Albanese government’s referendum.
“As you would expect, Senator Thorpe meets with a range of First Nations stakeholders,” she said.
“Senator Thorpe and Greens leader Adam Bandt are currently working with the government to ensure all elements of the Uluru statement including truth, treaty and voice are delivered.”
Senator Thorpe has repeatedly attacked the voice referendum despite saying she does not oppose it in theory.
The Victorian Greens senator has called a referendum a waste of money and claimed that a campaign could be harmful to Aboriginal Australians.
Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney said the government was yet to make a decision on funding for the Yes and No campaigns. “It’s one of a number of issues that government will be consulting on … in the months ahead,” a spokesman said.
However, The Australian understands there is an influential view within government that it will not fund either campaign.
This would significantly advantage the “yes” camp, which corporate Australia is lining up to bankroll. “People have to make an informed decision on constitutional change and you can’t have an informed opinion if you’re only getting one side of the story,” Mr Mansell said. “They’ve given nothing to the Aboriginal voice that says ‘Hang on, we’ve got a different viewpoint and we want to raise some issues’.”
First Nations people, rather than the non-Indigenous, should receive any funding for the No case, given the subject matter, he said. “Those who wish to express themselves must have an opportunity to do so – most Aboriginal people are just completely shut out of this process. They don’t have the resources.”
This was backed by Mr Mundine. “I am sitting down and talking to people because we have got no money,” Mr Mundine said.
“We are up against a 50,000-tonne dragon. I think the general public will say ‘if they (Aboriginal people) are all split, why should we vote for it’. I predict the debate will get angrier as we get closer to this referendum because the voices of everyday working Aboriginal Australians have been totally snuffed out.”
Supporters of the voice are increasingly concerned opposition from such influential Indigenous figures threatens the Yes vote.
There is particular concern the Yes vote will struggle in Tasmania and Queensland, leaving it vulnerable to failure, given referendums require a national majority and a majority in at least four of the six states.
Mr Neal said like-minded Indigenous figures from across the country hoped to meet soon to plan a united approach to government to halt the referendum.
“We want to speak to government about where we’re going,” Mr Neal said. “There is still time. The Prime Minister has to seriously consider this. Now is the time to try to get something really good out of all this talk.”
If the referendum proceeded, he would reluctantly have to advocate a No vote. He believed the focus should be on treaty now.
“The Uluru Statement (from the Heart, which elevated voice as an initial step) was when we had a conservative government,” he said. “But now with Albanese there, we should all get together again and put that energy and money into seriously considering treaty.
“If (Mr) Albanese could show the same enthusiasm for treaty as for the voice to parliament, I think he’d be able to pull it off.
“Treaty is the only thing that everyone understands. People on the ground want something meaningful.”
He said he believed the cost of a voice would be better spent on improving the day-to-day lives of Indigenous communities.
At the 1999 republic referendum, the Howard government allocated equal funding to the two campaign committees. Campaigns by both sides in the 2017 same sex marriage plebiscite were also government-funded.
However, at the 1967 referendum (to count Aborigines in the census and allow federal laws for their betterment), only a Yes campaign was government-backed, given a lack of advocacy for a No vote.
Pauline Hanson is preparing to work on a No campaign alongside Mr Mundine and anyone else with shared concerns.
Her office said it was in ongoing discussions with Mr Mundine about a shared opposition to an Indigenous voice to parliament. “It has to be a collective effort. A divided No campaign will fail,” she said via a spokesman.
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10 October, 2022
One of Australia's most prestigious universities to crack down on students who claim to be Aboriginal without ANY proof
About time. Malcolm Smith has a graphic commentary on the matter. I put up a similar gallery in 2020
One of Australia's most prestigious universities has been praised for a crackdown on students 'rorting the system' by falsely claiming they are Indigenous or Torres Strait Islander.
The University of Sydney has drafted a new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Status Policy which means undergraduates can no longer simply sign a statutory declaration to prove they have a First Nations background.
Instead, the university may force students to supply a 'letter of identity' from a local Aboriginal Land Council and complete the Commonwealth Government's three-part identity test.
Radio 2GB host Ben Fordham praised the university for introducing the measures and called on others to follow suit.
'Other organisations should introduce stronger checks too, because what we're seeing is wrong and it's fraudulent,' he said.
The changes come after lobbying from Aboriginal land councils which allege there has been a significant increase in people applying for the benefits.
The latest Census results released in June 2021 found a 25 per cent increase in Australians identifying as Indigenous.
Indigenous groups said the way the current system is being abused is 'embarrassing'. 'It's open fraud. We say to academic students: can they pass a paper without citing a verified source?' Aboriginal Land Council CEO Nathan Moran told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Michael Mansell, Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania chairman, said poor white people were falsely identifying as Indigenous in a move he called 'identity seeking'. "They don't attribute any value to their identity as a poor white person in Tasmania, so they are searching to attach themselves to something that has greater value and I think many of those people believe that's in being Aboriginal,' he said following the release of the Census results.
Fordham said students abusing the system for places in courses or more affordable degrees was 'wrong and fraudulent'. 'They are attending schools, they're getting jobs and taking away opportunities from people who grew up Indigenous,' the 2GB host said.
'People are falsely identifying as Indigenous when they're not - there are Indigenous voices calling out a fraud, and we should be listening to them.
'Sydney Uni should be congratulated and other organisations should be following suit. Because it's wrong and it's fraudulent. Some of the so-called First Nations people receiving benefits are as genuine as a three dollar note.'
A spokesperson for Sydney University said its review was not motivated by fraudulently claimed scholarships, but the institution wanted to ensure its program was 'in line with current community expectations'.
'[The review] was initiated in response to multiple expressions of community concern, particularly in relation to the use of statutory declarations, rather than any specific concerns about fraud,' they said.
'We are seeking feedback and further input from members of our own and the broader community, representative organisations and other universities on this culturally significant matter.'
The university has an enrolment of 0.9 per cent Aboriginal or Torres Straight Islander students, which is below the national sector average of 1.72 per cent.
Students however believe the change in policy could result in at-need Indigenous people missing out on places because of the red tape around new enrolment.
'This new policy is likely to disproportionately affect Indigenous people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds,' a group of Indigenous students opposing the change said in a statement.
'In some circumstances students may come from abusive families, have been in foster care or for other reasons not be able to get family documentation to undergo the process that has been proposed.'
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Britain’s ‘strictest headmistress’ gets a nod in Australia
At the Michaela Community School near Wembley, in north-west London, there are no mobile phones, detentions are given for the slightest misdemeanour and a disused car park is the no-frills playground.
The high school is famed for being Britain’s strictest, and its headmistress, Katharine Birbalsingh, pulls no punches.“We have the same issues that you have in Australia: poor behaviour and poor learning outcomes, in particular for disadvantaged children,” she told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
Birbalsingh espouses traditional teaching and believes in military-style discipline: students walk the corridors in silence and get detentions for forgetting a pencil case, ruler or not turning in their homework. Times tables are taught by rote. Progressive education methods are shunned. Gratitude is practised and expectations are high.
“I’m not wandering up and down the corridors with whips and chains, obviously,” she says. “People say [discipline] is mean. I’d say what is mean is keeping a child illiterate and innumerate.”
Birbalsingh, who was recently appointed chair of the UK’s social mobility commission, was thrust into the spotlight after giving a speech at the 2010 Conservative Party conference where she warned the education system was “broken because it keeps poor children poor”. Four years later, after battling a barrage of detractors and critics, she opened the Michaela school in a dreary converted office block based in the disadvantaged borough of Brent.
The school’s explicit teaching methods, no-excuses behaviour policy and direct instruction style divide opinion. Tough-love behaviour systems (slouching in class is off-limits, toilet breaks are timed) has attracted controversy and critics.
However, it has also drawn praise from experts including Programme for International Student Assessment boss Andreas Schleicher who has described the school as creating “discipline created through structure, predictability and ownership. The children I met appeared happy and confident.” And its results place it well above average when compared to other similar schools, with graduates going off to universities including Oxford and the London School of Economics.
Birbalsingh, labelled Britain’s strictest headteacher, is firm that the school’s behaviour policies, including the silent corridor rule, minimise bullying and maximise teaching time.
“In schools with disadvantaged children sometimes you can find poor behaviour, and it can be constant disruption. As a disadvantaged child school is your one route out, your way of being able to be socially mobile. And if school lets you down, then that’s it.”
“We expect everyone to do their homework. If standards are lowered for certain children, who will inevitably be the disadvantaged children, then those children will never succeed.”
She rejects “progressive” teaching methods, where desks are grouped and students “lead the learning”. Teachers at Michaela have a single voice in the classroom and there is silence for reading, writing and practice.
“You have got to have lots of knowledge about something to think differently about it. When you teach children as a traditionalist you can still break up explanations and have a bit of turn to your partner work and class discussions.”
Tight rules around smartphones and social media are also critical, she says. At an education conference this year she told the audience: “If we genuinely want things to be fairer, and we want our disadvantaged children to be socially mobile, the best thing is getting them not to have a smartphone.”
Students are encouraged to hand over their mobile phones where they are put in a school safe for days, weeks or months.
Michaela, one of about 600 “free schools” in the UK, was singled out last month by NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet in a speech for the James Martin Institute as a school with a “rigorous culture of high expectations, high behavioural standards and back-to- basics teaching that [has] propelled disadvantaged students to extraordinary achievement. I want the same outcomes for our kids.”
“When students are held to reasonable standards of behaviour and respect – they perform better, and they are happier,” he said. It came after NSW announced a global recruitment search for a chief behaviour adviser, as schools across sectors battle worsening student conduct.
This month, Birbalsingh, who was a teacher for more than a decade in inner-London schools before starting Michaela, will appear at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney on a discussion about building world-class schools.
She emphasises that her school, next to the jubilee and metropolitan line (the train can be heard rattling loudly in the bare-bones schoolyard), looks “quite simple”.
“We’ve not covered the walls with lots of pictures and things. People don’t realise, when I was a younger teacher, I spent all of my time decorating. I use my fire engine red paint for the border around my bulletin board and would put up lovely dark blue paper with a golden border around it and I would pay myself to create big laminated sheets with instructions.
“I should have as my time planning better lessons... I shouldn’t have been spending my time on that. And sometimes we all spend our time on things that don’t have as much impact.”
Oliver Lovell, a Melbourne-based maths teacher who visited the school last month, said while it was hard to overstate the positive impact of Michaela’s instruction on disadvantaged students, there were potential costs when a particular educational approach is passionately pursued.
“Some have argued that highly structured instructional methods reduce learner independence which has negative impacts when the structure is removed at university and beyond. I’m glad that we have a diversity of schools, including Michaela, so that we can begin to gain clearer answers to these important questions.”
Lovell said one of the most striking aspects to the school was seeing how the lack of student disruptions “frees up teacher time”.
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Mobilise the church against Daniel Andrews!
Churches in Victoria must mobilise their congregations to vote Daniel Andrews out of office.
Sure the Liberals are hopeless, but at least they don’t hate Christians. The same cannot be said for the Andrews government.
Not only does the Victorian Labor government continually enact legislation that is an affront to Christian principles – whether on abortion, or euthanasia, or on LGBTQ+ issues – it does so with a snarkiness that conveys complete contempt for people of faith.
Contrary to lefty conspiracy theories about fundamentalist Christians conspiring to run the country, church leaders are loath to become involved in partisan politics. They fear doing so is a distraction from their core business of spreading the message of Jesus.
It’s true, Jesus commanded us to love our enemies. But he never said we should keep electing them to positions of power over us.
If Andrews’ hostility towards Christians is rewarded with re-election in November, it will only embolden his attacks on the church.
This week the Premier derided orthodox Christian teaching on human sexuality and sanctity of life as ‘appalling views’.
‘That kind of intolerance and hatred is just wrong,’ he said, joining a media pile-on to discredit Anglican Andrew Thorburn who had been appointed CEO of the Essendon Football Club.
Since when was it in the purview of a Premier to announce which existential views were acceptable, and which were not?
Who elected Daniel Andrews, god? He certainly governs like he is.
Last year, the Andrews government passed so-called conversion therapy laws which made it an offence for ministers to pray for a parishioner – even at their request – to resist homosexual urges.
Believe what you like about the morality or otherwise of homosexuality, when the state dictates what can and cannot talk to God about, it’s a sign that the state has not only invaded the church, but it is also drunk on the communion wine.
When a reporter asked this week if the resignation of Andrew Thorburn meant Christians could no longer take on public roles, Andrews snapped back:
‘No. They might want to think about whether they should be a bit more kind-hearted, a bit more inclusive.’
And then, addressing his faithful flock (by which I mean the media) he sermonised: ‘Aren’t we all God’s children?’
Oh please! Has a political leader ever invoked the name of God with less sincerity?
Okay, apart from Nancy Pelosi (the Democrat Speaker of the House once argued that it was her Christian faith that led her to support abortion).
If the media had stopped worshipping Andrews long enough to hold him to account, they would have asked if peaceful protesters shot with rubber bullets at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance were ‘God’s children’.
And what about the unvaccinated who were effectively banned from public life for two years. Were they ‘God’s children’? Or are God’s children only those with a government-issued vaccine certificate…
Essential workers were God’s children. Non-essential workers could go to hell.
After waxing lyrical about all God’s children – and having insisting he was ‘not here to be having a debate with faith leaders’ – the Pope, ahem, Premier took a moment to instruct Catholics on how to be Catholic.
‘I will just say this. I’m a Catholic. I send my kids to Catholic schools. My faith is important to me and guides me every day.’
Wait. What? Wasn’t Andrew Thorburn kicked out of AFL heaven for fear that his Christian faith would guide him as Essendon CEO?
Andrews continued: ‘Everyone should be treated equally. Everyone should be treated fairly and for me, that’s my Catholicism. That’s my faith.’
It is surely only a matter of time before Pope Francis summons Andrews to Rome to instruct clergy on the finer points of Christian doctrine.
It’s the vibe. It’s the Bible. It’s equality. It’s fairness. It’s the vibe and ah, no that’s it.
Andrews’ religion is a mile wide, and a half a millimetre deep.
So just to be clear, it wasn’t that Thorburn was wrong to be guided by religion, it’s just that Thorburn’s Christianity wasn’t the state-approved version as described by Chairman Dan and the Labor government.
We know that the Labor Party has a special fondness for China and we know that China has a special fondness for herding Christians into state-approved churches.
Christians know that Christians attend the underground ones, where there’s a bit more to their faith than the vibe coming from government headquarters.
I wonder if Andrew Thorburn feels like he was treated ‘equally’ and ‘fairly’. Daniel Andrews threw Thorburn to the lions. And now he’s trolling Christians. He needs to go before none of God’s children are free.
The Australian War Memorial represents ALL of Australia's ethnicities, singling out none
I couldn’t agree more with the need to provide a place to acknowledge the conflicts between the original inhabitants of this continent and those who settled here from elsewhere in the late 18th Century. But the Australian War Memorial is not that place, and it is wrong to make it a political football.
When I was a child, I wanted to wear my great-great uncle’s slouch hat to a fancy dress ball at school. My grandfather was livid – how dare I disrespect the uniform! I have that same slouch hat today. It, and my own slouch hat, are succumbing to the inevitable forces of time.
Yet the sanctity of military service was not lost on four generations of my family who wore the uniform. While in recent times, that very sanctity appears to be an anachronism; a remnant of a time gone by, a lesson well-learnt through death and destruction, supported by the faith that such an atrocity, like the Great War, will never happen again.
Challenges to the idea of what it is to be Australian have somewhat turned against the work of Dr Bean, that eminent historian who is largely responsible for creating the ANZAC legend and manifesting it as that sacred place we call the Australian War Memorial.
Why sacred? Stand under the dome next to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Look at the stained glass and mosaics. Read the values inscribed therein. This space touches all those who enter in the way an old soldier explained to me:
‘All soldiers believe in God. When caught in an ambush, they all pray.’
While the ideal society eludes humanity, Australia has it pretty good. This is in no small part due to the sacrifices of our soldiers.
Last week, I was in Seoul at a seminar about the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea. A Korean general said to me that he was most grateful for the sacrifice of 340 Australians who lost their lives while contributing to Korea’s freedom. He gestured to the skyline of Seoul’s magnificent development, humbly hoping that Korea’s peaceful democratic society was a worthy tribute to our digger’s sacrifice. It made me think deeply about those same sacrifices.
If you knew my paternal great-grandmother who worked in the munitions factory at St Marys (she was so happy when the Rising Sun badge was returned to the brim of the slouch hat) or sat a moment with Mrs Stewart (a second world war widow who lived nearby and once gave me a ‘shilling’ after she told me the story of her long-lost husband through her tears), you would know that war is blind.
It strikes all – regardless of social constructions – the devastation wreaks havoc on participants, victims, witnesses, and conscientious objectors alike. But you cannot always appease an aggressor. We can hope for a better world, but appeasement has never proven adequate. Sometimes you have to fight.
And fighting has its costs. The photographs of Mrs Stewart’s uniformed dead husband and brothers that adorned her mantel still haunt me to this day. I felt like Pip stumbling upon the wedding feast that never was. Mrs Stewart lost her life, back then, too.
But they were post-federation Australian soldiers. Not settlers. Not troopers. Not colonists. Australians. They were united in purpose.
When I met my maternal great-grandmother, we asked her where we’d come from. She said we were Cherokee Indian. Twenty years later, we learned that our maternal heritage is Kamilaroi. She had lived that lie to avoid being sent to the mission and carried it to her deathbed.
George, one of my grandfather’s mates who lived next door at the RSL veterans’ village in Cairns, was an Aboriginal digger and a veteran of New Guinea. He liked to paint. But he was an Australian digger through and through. (I daresay the antics he and my grandfather got up to provide sufficient empirical evidence to support that fact.)
And if you ever heard the glorious harmonies rise up when Charlie Company of 51FNQR let off steam, you’ll feel the generations of pride of the many Torres Strait Islanders like Sarpeye Josie who served to protect their home and continue to do so.
These are not stories about colonisers or the victims of colonisation. These are stories of Australians who served and continue to serve to protect their homeland. This spirit is what the Australian War Memorial commemorates.
Australians have experienced war and peace, prosperity and depression, recessions we had to have and circumstances we did not want. We have lived lies; we have faced up to truths. Or not – and there is plenty of scope for more truth-telling. But we should never forget that the Brisbane Line was a last-ditch attempt to protect these very privileges. That time is still in living memory for many among us.
We can criticise the government, we can criticise politicians, we can criticise our institutions. But such freedoms imply responsibilities to support that very liberty.
The problem stems from the habitual use of our individual freedoms to say whatever we like about politics as a safety valve, to let off steam. While doing so got us through the pandemic, in light of the changing nature of geopolitics, it has become a bad habit that we now take for granted and potentially to our own detriment.
The Australian War Memorial is a symbol of the social cohesion we so desperately need, rather than a battleground for the polarised community we appear to have become.
Our island home can only be breached if we open the gates from within.
The Australian War Memorial does not sanctify war. The lives of all Australians who served Australia make it holy. Not necessarily in a religious sense, but holy in that it honours the sacrifice given by those who believed in something more. Australians who believed in something more.
It is a mistake to allow one of the central symbols of Australia’s national identity to become embroiled in politics. I urge caution on all sides of politics should we neglect our duty by opening the gates and cutting off our nose to spite our face.
Let us learn from the past, let us embrace the good and the bad. Let us acknowledge colonial times and conflict appropriately, but somewhere else.
Let the sacrifice of the many First Nations diggers have their place in the history of this great federation where it rightfully belongs. Let the Australian War Memorial tell its stories. Let it tell the stories of my great-grandmothers, of Mrs Stewart, of George, of my old comrade-in-arms Sarpeye Josie, and all those who give up their freedoms so we may have ours.
And let all Australians hear them.
9 October, 2022
New bureaucratic burden for welfare housing
Evictions from welfare housing -- often due to extensive rental arrears -- normally require an extensive, costly and time-consuming bureaucratic process. Which costs the taxpayer a lot of money. So the W.A. government has been using a loophole that sidesteps that process. Do-gooders are trying to close that loophole. In the case below, it is almost certain that the Aborigine man was way behind with his rent
The West Australian government is being urged to stop evictions of public housing tenants without reason, or risk a deluge of litigation following an injunction being granted in the Federal Court.
After receiving a without grounds eviction notice in August, Noongar man John Abraham lodged a racial discrimination complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission.
In September, the Federal Court granted an injunction to his eviction until his AHRC complaint is heard.
The Tenancy Network, a group of community law firms, on Thursday urged Housing Minister John Carey to issue an immediate moratorium on the use of “without grounds” terminations of public housing tenancies.
It was signed by tenancy-focused lawyers from Circle Green Community Legal, Daydawn Advocacy Service, and SCALES community legal centre at Murdoch University.
They said since Abraham’s injunction was granted another elderly Aboriginal man was made homeless after he was evicted using the without grounds termination.
“This eviction was despite multiple written requests from the lawyers assisting him to the Housing Authority, to confirm that they would not action the eviction in light of the Federal Court injunction; requests which received no response from the Housing Authority,” it said.
They also warned the state was opening itself up to further litigation if it didn’t apply a statewide halt to its use, “to avoid further risk of eviction to homelessness, and excess litigation in other tenants lodging similar actions” with the AHRC and the Federal Court.
The lawyers said they did not want the Housing Authority, which sits within the Department of Communities, prevented from terminating tenancies where there were express reasons for doing so but urged the state to follow existing processes to evict tenants for breaches.
The department must apply to a magistrate to have a public housing tenancy terminated.
The magistrate must be satisfied there has been a breach of the tenancy agreement, and that the tenant has been given every opportunity to rectify the breach and has failed to do so.
However, Circle Green principal lawyer Alice Pennycott said magistrates considering without grounds terminations only needed to consider whether the request was issued correctly.
She said if the department had compelling reasons to terminate an agreement then it should follow existing processes.
A spokesman for Carey said the government would respond formally to Circle Green Community Legal “in due course”.
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How left-wing teachers have taken schools 'back to the Middle Ages', according to ex-PM Tony Abbott - and conservatives are 'too polite' to stop it
Left-wing teachers have taken Australian schools 'back to the Middle Ages' as dogma replaces learning and 'heretics' are hunted down, according to former prime minister Tony Abbott.
The radicalisation of education by the left was so 'pervasive' and 'destructive' the damage done would take generations to fix, the firebrand conservative said.
And he warned conservatives were not without blame in the rise of left-wing ideology - saying they were often too polite to call out the 'palpable nonsense' of activists.
Mr Abbott made the remarks on stage with fellow staunch conservative, former Liberal senator Amanda Stoker, at the right-wing CPAC convention in Sydney.
He said nowhere had 'the long march of the left through our institutions... been more pervasive and destructive than in our educational system'.
'It’s almost like we have gone back to Middle Ages where there is dogma - only it's not Christian dogma, it’s anything but Christian dogma - with modern day inquisitions hunting out modern day heretics (and) if not burning them at the stake at least cancelling them,' Mr Abbott told the October 1 conference.
Mr Abbott admitted he was out of step with the core beliefs of left-wing dogma. 'I don't like the climate cult, I don’t like the virus hysteria. I can't understand the gender fluidity push,' he said.
He warned that repairing the state of the schools would be a 'multi-generational' task that would require a cultural shift. 'It took us a long time to get into this deplorable position and I fear it's going to take a long time to get back to where we should be,' Mr Abbott said.
Mr Abbott called for more parental involvement in schools, greater attempts to attract the 'best and brightest' people to teaching and 'above all more academic rigour'.
He believed that education should be about the 'disinterested pursuit of truth'. 'There's got to be this insatiable curiosity, what more can we know? How better can we be,' he said.
Mr Abbott said he believed activists had taken advantage of the 'good manners' of people who knew their left-wing beliefs were 'palpable nonsense' but were too polite to say so.
'One of the things I often say is the majority that stays silent will not long remain the majority for very long,' he said. 'Good people have been too polite in the face of things that defy common sense. 'We can't let politeness stop us from expressing ourselves and contradicting in a polite and respectable way stuff which is palpable nonsense. 'Sometimes we have been unduly deferential. We have been remarkably shy of being the adults we should be.'
The former prime minister, who won office in 2013 but was deposed by Malcolm Turnbull in 2015 after a run of poor polls, also argued strongly against the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament, calling it 'discrimination'.
'Just because there may have been institutionalised discrimination in the past that’s no reason to institutionalise discrimination in the present and the future' Mr Abbott said to a round of applause from the CPAC crowd at Sydney's Darling Harbour.
The Albanese government has promised to hold a referendum on amending the constitution to create the special 'Voice' body, which would advise federal parliament on matters important to Indigenous Australians.
Mr Abbott argued the Voice to Parliament was being pushed with bullying tactics. 'We should never allow ourselves to be morally bullied into changing what works and if something doesn’t work let's fix it,' Mr Abbott said. 'What we shouldn’t do is forsake the important principles that made our country special and precious in an attempt to apologise for bad behaviour in the past.'
He said if Indigenous people weren't sufficiently represented in parliament they should be elected 'in the normal way'.
'Likewise the emissions obsession will eventually end when weather-dependent power can't keep the lights on. 'And the cultural self-loathing will stop when people have to choose between liberal democracy and its alternatives. 'That’s our task, to fight the good fight, to stay the course and keep the faith.'
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Australia’s baby drought: Call for return of Baby Bonus payment
Australia is in a baby drought, with a record-low birth rate threatening our future workforce and tax revenue – and leaving little support for the ageing population.
It’s prompting calls for a return of the “Baby Bonus” and significantly relaxed immigration policies.
Social analyst Mark McCrindle said the Baby Bonus payment – introduced in 2004 and worth between $3000 and $5437 – had been successful in helping to raise the Australian birthrate.
Mr McCrindle said he supported the reintroduction of a similar policy, which was offered to everyone who had a child, regardless of income or employment status. He said it was a large enough payment to help with family expenses but not so large that the government covered the cost of raising the child.
“The policies have moved more to child care assistance … and that has its benefits, but it’s more around getting parents back into labour force,” Mr McCrindle, founder of research company McCrindle, said.
“I think the cash is the most equal (policy) – people can make their choices based on their particular circumstance and world view. “Even if it went up to $10,000, it’s only token anyway compared to the costs of raising those kids.”
But the architect of the baby bonus – former treasurer Peter Costello – said the only way a similar payment would work today is if it came with strong messaging.
“I don’t think it was the payment itself that changed attitudes, it was the fact we talked about the problem and made people feel good about having more children,” Mr Costello, chair of sovereign wealth fund the Future Fund, said.
“(Twenty years ago) I said the best thing that could happen was if we could reverse the decline in fertility rate and I jokingly said ‘everyone should have one for mum, one for dad, one for country’ and for a while we arrested the birthrate and it actually ticked up.
“But then, in my view, we lost focus on the issue, and with various financial problems, it started to decline again. “It takes a long time to turn these things around.”
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australia had a total fertility rate of 1.58 births per woman in 2020 (294,369 babies).
This was down from 1.9 births per woman 30 years earlier, and down from 3.5 in 1961 at the height of the “baby boom”. In 1991, Census figures showed 7.5 per cent of the Australian population was aged 0 to 4.
Last year, this figure was down to just 5.8 per cent of the population, meaning about 440,000 fewer young children than if we had maintained that 7.5 per cent rate. That’s a 440,000-person hole in the future workforce – about the equivalent of the entire population of Malta.
But Australia cannot wait 20 or 30 years for population increases to flow through to the workforce. Demographer Simon Kuestenmacher said Australia was already running out of working-age people.
“If you look at the future population profile of Australia in 2030, you see there will be a massive lack of people aged 25 to 33,” Mr Kuestenmacher said. “The skill shortage is here to stay.”
He said the most cost-effective solution was to bring in skilled workers from overseas, but this was becoming more difficult as Australia was not the only country that needed more workers.
Mr Kuestenmacher suggested Australia follow the Canadian model and start “handing out citizenships to international students like candy”.
“You want future taxpayers in your country and international students are the best because they are educated to the level you require and they already have spent a couple of years in the country so are somewhat acclimatised,” he said.
“But what do we do? We make it very hard for them to acquire citizenship and to find jobs and make it a bureaucratic and expensive process.
“It’s not just mean but plain stupid.”
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Government to create new welfare card to phase out Howard-era Basics Card
Tens of thousands of Australians will be given a new welfare card to replace the much-maligned Basics Card, as the Albanese government moves to eliminate compulsory income management.
Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth has revealed that following the scrapping of the cashless debit card, welfare recipients will next year have access to a “new enhanced card”.
Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth says a “new enhanced card” will be made available for welfare recipients, but it will be voluntary.
New figures reveal that a third of the participants who had the opportunity to get off the cashless debit card did so in just four days last week.
The new card is expected to be simpler to use, available in many more stores and welfare recipients will only be placed on it voluntarily. It will also be managed by Services Australia, not a private company.
“It’s about offering certainty and choice,” Rishworth said. “We’re committed to a better Australia by leaving no one behind and holding no one back.”
The government’s move to scrap the cashless debit card – which quarantines up to 80 per cent of a person’s welfare payment onto a card that can’t be used to withdraw cash – was widely welcomed by the social services sector and many advocates for First Nations people.
But they have been calling on the government to also abolish the Basics Card, which usually quarantines 50 per cent of a welfare participant’s income, with many believing it is just as objectionable as the cashless debit card.
There are still 24,000 Australians on the Basics Card, which can only be used at stores that the government has approved and severely limits online purchases.
Rishworth said all welfare recipients who go on income management will have access to the new card from July 2023, while everyone previously on the cashless debit card will be able to go on the new card from March 6.
She said the future of the Basics Card would be determined by an 18-month consultation process, but other government sources who weren’t authorised to speak publicly confirmed that the government would phase it out.
The Basics Card was first given to First Nations people in remote communities under the Howard government’s 2007 Northern Territory intervention, but the former Labor government expanded it to a wider cohort of people in 2010.
Early data confirms that people have rushed to get off the cashless debit card at the first available opportunity. This is despite having until March next year to move off the card following the government passing legislation to abolish it last month.
Of the 12,302 who could move off the card from last Tuesday, 3813 have already transitioned off. This does not include people who were on the card in the Northern Territory and Cape York regions who will be transitioned off the card on March 6. People moving off the cashless debit card can now either move onto the Basics Card or to self-managed payments.
Rishworth said the government was “committed to voluntary income management and over the next 18 months we will be consulting widely with communities to determine what the future of income management looks like”. “All participants on income management with a Basics Card or the new card ... will receive client services provided by Services Australia rather than a private company,” she said.
“From community consultation, we know people want the support and experience modern technology provides.”
During the parliamentary inquiry into the abolishment of the cashless debit card, the Tangentyere Council Aboriginal Corporation raised concerns about people being transitioned back onto the Basics Card.
“The Basics Card is not a good alternative to the Cashless Debit Card and is in many respects more limited,” it said. “The Basics Card for example cannot be used to make online purchases of food or other essential services including purchases of credit for prepayment phones and prepayment electricity meters.”
The Traditional Credit Union said scrapping the Cashless Debit Card “gets rid of an instrument that has a name to it that we believe is actually a better instrument than the Basics Card”.
Edwina MacDonald, the acting chief executive for the Australian Council of Social Service, said that even with an improved Basics Card, mandatory income management “continues to discriminate against First Nations people and penalises people for being on a low income”. “Credible evidence shows that quarantining people’s income support payments does not lead to improved outcomes for individuals or their communities,” she said.
“Improved technology won’t address the deep flaws of compulsory income management. After 15 years, this failed policy must be abolished.”
Elise Klein, associate professor at the Australian National University, said there was no evidence that compulsory income management, including the Basics Card, had a positive effect in communities.
Klein also said a close eye needed to be kept on what the government meant by “voluntary”, saying people shouldn’t be given extra money to go on income management.
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7 October, 2022
Gillard 'cool anger' drove misogyny speech
Words uttered in anger are rarely wise and this is a good example of that. The speech so pissed off male voters that her party's popularity dropped like a stone. Seeing the disaster, her own party promptly booted her out of the top job. Feminists sometimes seem to forget that men have a vote too
Nearly a decade since Ms Gillard declared in Australian parliament she would not be lectured by then-opposition leader Tony Abbott on sexism and misogyny, she has reflected on the speech that attracted global attention.
The former Labor leader said her chief-of-staff Ben Hubbard asked if she was sure she wanted to respond to an opposition bid to remove then-lower house speaker Peter Slipper, who had sent sexist text messages about women's genitalia.
"I wandered over to the adviser's box and I said to the advisers there, 'I'm going to take this, I'm going to do the reply'," she told a 5000-strong crowd in Sydney on Wednesday night.
"And Ben said to me 'are you sure?'. Because normally I used to hold myself above the tactics of the opposition on any given day.
"Yes I am sure because I am sick of this s***."
Ms Gillard said for many years she felt the speech was her constant companion.
"Wherever I went it was walking with me alongside me," she said.
"But I've come to realise that it's not my companion, it's yours because it's become your anthem of defiance when you are subjected to a sexist slur."
The former prime minister was joined by an eclectic bunch of women who shared their impressions of the speech.
Others beamed in via video message, including New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
The latter said the response to misogynistic attacks on Australia's first female prime minister had reverberated around the chamber, parliament, the nation and the world.
"With such an economy of words Julia captured and channelled the indignities and obstacles so many women had faced their whole lives," Mr Albanese said.
"Julia spoke to every woman and for every woman who had been excluded and bullied and harassed or worse.
"Australian women recognised themselves in the speech. That's what made it so powerful and that is why it will endure."
Ms Gillard said the unplanned speech was fuelled by a cool anger. "I felt analytical. I knew precisely what I wanted to say," she said. "And I felt empowered, not embattled, not cowed. "And that is the spirit of the misogyny speech."
Ms Gillard believes that a decade after the October 9, 2012 speech, sexist and misogynist behaviour is not tolerated as much as it was during her prime ministership.
The former prime minister, who serves as chair of leading mental health awareness body, Beyond Blue, appeared on stage in Melbourne and Sydney over two nights.
Top doctor Nick Coatsworth issues blunt warning about children as young as five getting the Covid vaccine as he urges Australia to SCRAP jabs for kids: 'The benefit just isn't there'
Dr Nick Coatsworth has demanded a review of the Covid vaccine for children amid concerns they barely benefit from getting the jab, and are more likely to suffer rare side effects.
Australia's former deputy chief medical officer said the country should reconsider its stance on giving the dose to children above the age of five.
The UK has stopped offering the vaccine to healthy children who turned five after August, while Sweden no longer recommends it to teenagers aged 12 to 17.
In Denmark, since July no one under the age of 18 can get vaccinated against Covid, with health officials saying very small numbers of children get severely ill from the disease, and therefore vaccination isn't necessary.
It comes after recent studies showed younger people, and particularly adult males between 18 and 25, and are at higher risk of myocarditis - the inflammation of the heart, a rare side effect linked to some mRNA jabs such as Pfizer and Moderna.
Dr Coatsworth clarified he was still a strong supporter of the Covid vaccine but admitted parents should take caution when considering vaccinating their child.
But he reiterated that there has only been one death from the heart condition linked to the jab in Australia.
'If you're a healthy child or adolescent, the benefit of the Covid vaccine just isn't there,' Dr Coatsworth told 2GB on Friday. 'Covid itself isn't going to kill you in that age group'.
Dr Coatsworth's warning comes after studies from peer-reviewed journal The Lancet found higher than expected rates of myocarditis in younger people.
'Specifically in individuals younger than 35 years, with the highest risk among men aged 18–25 years after their second COVID-19 mRNA vaccine dose,' the study read. 'The data indicate that this adverse event primarily occurs within 1–7 days of vaccination.'
The Therapeutic Goods Administration released its Covid weekly safety report on Thursday showing teenagers were more likely to experience myocarditis than adults.
The rate for boys aged between 12 and 17 was the highest with 13.2 per 100,000 experiencing the side effect after the second dose.
The figure was drastically higher than the 18 to 29-year-old age group with 9.2 per 100,000 coming down with myocarditis.
The rate for women aged between 12 and 17 was slightly higher than the 18 to 29-year-old camp with 2.8 per 100,000 compared to 2.7 per 100,000.
'As far I'm aware, only a single death has been associated with myocarditis in Australia, that's after 63 million doses of the vaccine,' Dr Coatsworth said.
Dr Coatsworth said it was an 'open question' whether or not Australia followed the UK and Sweden and stopped recommending the vaccine for healthy children. The vaccine is still recommended for at-risk groups in the two overseas countries.
In the UK, children who turned five since August are still recommended to get the vaccine, as is everyone over the age of 11.
'Many, many parents have made that decision not to vaccinate their kids and that is a valid decision regardless of the recommendation,' he said.
'That is clearly a valid decision because two countries, you've seen, have made that decision with their professional immunisation body'.
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Nuclear pushback against Senate bill
The Greens sure hate nukes
Nuclear power in Australia would increase electricity costs, slow the transition to a low-carbon economy and introduce the potential for catastrophic accidents, a new Australian Conservation Foundation report says.
It comes a day after Coalition senators moved to introduce a Private Senators Bill to remove Australia's ban on nuclear energy, which has existed since 1998.
The bill says nuclear power is one of the safest forms of energy and will play a vital role in achieving the nation's emission targets moving forward.
The Nuclear for Climate Australia group has previously identified Liddell Power Station in Upper Hunter among a host of sites including Portland in Victoria, Lithgow, Gladstone, Rockhampton and Townsville that is says could form the backbone of a future nuclear-powered grid.
But the ACF report Wrong reaction: Why 'next-generation' nuclear is not a credible energy solution, argues that so-called 'next generation' nuclear power, which has been proposed for Australia, does not exist in the commercial world.
"Proponents of nuclear power in Australia are not calling for the deployment of existing nuclear reactor technology, which is known to be high cost and high risk. Instead, they promote 'next-generation' technology, which simply does not exist in the commercial world," ACF nuclear expert Dave Sweeney said.
"Existing nuclear power technology has been plagued by cost overruns and poor economic performance. Every independent economic assessment finds that electricity from small modular reactors would be even more expensive than power from large reactors.
"Small modular reactors have lower thermal efficiency than large reactors, which generally translates to higher fuel consumption and spent fuel volumes over the life of a reactor.
"Globally just two small modular reactors are understood to be in operation. One is in Russia and the other in China and in both cases the cost blowouts have been extensive."
The ACF report outlines several 'next-generation' nuclear projects that have been cancelled over the past decade.
It cites research from CSIRO and the national energy market operator showing renewables are the cheapest energy source in Australia, while nuclear would be the most expensive.
"We cannot afford to waste more time in transitioning to a low-carbon future. Nuclear is a dangerous distraction to effective climate action," Mr Sweeney said.
"Australia is blessed with amazing clean energy resources, good infrastructure and smart people. Our energy future is renewable, not radioactive."
The federal energy minister Chris Bowen recently said that nuclear power was the most expensive form of power Australia could invest in.
The government's low emissions technology adviser Alan Finkel said last month there was little need and "no social licence" to develop baseload nuclear technology in Australia.
More Aussies are socialising less in a post-pandemic world and going to extraordinary lengths to avoid it
A survey of 1000 customers who use the rideshare company Uber found that more than half were socialising less after the worst of the pandemic.
Almost half (48 per cent) of Aussies will walk down another aisle at the shops to avoid someone, with Gen Z the most likely to do this.
Half of that generation also admitted that they crossed the road or headed in another direction to steer clear of someone coming towards them.
More people are also lying about being sick to miss a social event, with two-fifths of people admitting to doing this.
One in four Aussies don’t know or can’t remember the last time they struck up a conversation with a stranger.
Technology is the main weapon people are using to avoid social interactions, with more than a quarter pretending to be on a phone call (28 per cent) or keeping headphones in without music playing (26 per cent) to appear busy.
Why are Aussies going to such lengths to avoid socialising?
Australian psychologist Emmanuella Murray said it was no surprise that people were feeling uneasy about socialising again.
“We have missed many opportunities to meet new people over the past year,” she said.
“We all feel a little uncomfortable socialising at times, though some of us are shyer than others.
“Whatever your needs, staying connected is important for our wellbeing and for most people, the trick to getting socially ‘unstuck’ is to start socialising again.”
The Uber research revealed that for those who admitted to socialising less, a third felt awkward and uneasy in social settings, a quarter felt it was too much effort and 42 per cent simply didn’t enjoy socialising as much as they used to.
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6 October, 2022
Concentrated solar thermal power touted as part of Queensland's clean energy future
LOL. What's old is new again. Solar thermal is an old idea that has often been tried but always disappoints. The best known example was the huge Ivanpah project (from 2013) in the Mojave desert.
You don't hear much about it now as it never functioned anywhere near its capacity and produced very expensive electricity. And there has NEVER been any return on the couple of billion spent constructing it.
The most amusing thing about it is that it used vast amounts of natural gas to get itself going in the morning and when it was cloudy. There was at one stage a proposal to reclassify it as a gas-powered power station because on many occasions more of its output came from burning gas than from its solar furnaces
The thing such plants are best at is chewing up subsidies from deluded governments
The most comparable previous project to the one described below was the Tonopah project in the Nevdada desert. In it, more than 10,000 mirrors were to focus the sun’s heat on a tower to produce steam and heat a tank containing molten salt that would generate power at night. However, the technology proved unreliable and expensive to build and operate.
Since it began operating in 2015, repeated leaks from its molten salt tank resulted in the power plant going off-line repeatedly. Unable to solve that and other problems at the facility, the power plant ceased all operations in April 2019.
Super-heated NaCl (salt) is a very hard substance to handle and that generates big costs and losses
An Australian company says its technology can help solve the problem of around-the-clock clean energy as Queensland gears up to become a renewable energy powerhouse.
A chronic issue for the most common renewable energy sources — such as solar panels and wind farms — is an inability to store power, which forces the national grid to rely on coal-fired power overnight.
Vast Solar has been developing new technology for concentrated solar thermal power, a renewable energy source that powers more than 7 per cent of the Spanish national grid, and in which China is heavily investing.
Chief executive Craig Wood said the company had been developing concentrated solar power (CSP) technology for 13 years and was ready to scale up its prototypes — manufactured and tested in Goodna, near Ipswich — to contribute to the national grid.
"It's a direct replacement for the overnight energy that is provided by coal-fired power stations," he said.
"And importantly the technology uses the same skill sets that are currently used in those thermal power stations, just in a renewable context."
The technology uses large mirrors, or heliostats, to beam sunlight into an array on a tall tower.
Molten sodium is then pumped through the array and heated to more than 500 degrees Celsius.
That heated sodium can then be stored and used to generate steam to spin a turbine and drive electricity into the national grid — or as a clean energy source for large industry.
CSIRO head of solar research Greg Wilson said the technology could be located alongside a traditional photovoltaic solar farm, with the grid using solar panel energy during the day and switching to stored power at night.
"After hours when the batteries are all flat, and people want to continue with their air conditioner, or large industry wants to continue to work, that 12 hours of storage that the CSP plant provides allows us to have 24-hour renewable energy," Dr Wilson said.
The CSIRO has been working with Vast Solar on developing and testing its newest research in the field.
Mr Wood said CSP was now cheaper than coal or gas and emitted almost no carbon dioxide when deployed in a full-scale facility.
Released last week, Queensland's $62 billion renewable transition plan makes no mention of CSP technology but emphasises the role of solar power in its seven-year plan.
Mr Wood said the plan was "hugely exciting" and one in which CSP could play a role, "allowing us to use existing transmission infrastructure while providing new jobs for power plant workers".
Energy Minister Mick de Brenni said in a statement there would be "ample opportunities" for industry to work with the state government on the plan, "including proposals like CSP".
Vast Solar is developing a 30-megawatt test plant in Port Augusta, in South Australia, to demonstrate to government and investors that the technology can effectively contribute to the national grid.
The project has $110 million in federal concessional funding and once it has the go-ahead, could be up and running in three years, with a life span of three decades.
"We're working on securing the grid connection for that project," Mr Wood said.
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My faith is not tolerated or permitted: Essendon boss Andrew Thorburn quits
Former banking boss Andrew Thorburn believes his “personal Christian faith is not tolerated or permitted in the public square” after his 30-hour stint as chief executive of the AFL’s Essendon football club came crashing down.
In a statement to The Australian, the former NAB CEO said he was forced to step down from Essendon because of his role as a church chairman. “I was being required to compromise beyond a level that my conscience allowed,” he said.
“People should be able to hold different views on complex personal and moral matters, and be able to live and work together, even with those differences, and always with respect. Behaviour is the key. This is an important part of a tolerant and diverse society.”
A day after he was appointed to run the club he supported since childhood, Mr Thorburn resigned after it emerged he was chairman of a church that preached views on homosexuality and abortion.
Essendon president Dave Barham said the club acted swiftly to review revelations that the City on a Hill church posted a 2013 sermon to its website that said acting on same-sex attraction was “a sin” and another likening abortion to concentration camps.
Mr Thorburn said: “Let me be clear – I love all people, and have always promoted and lived an inclusive, diverse, respectful and supportive workplace – where people are welcomed regardless of their culture, religious beliefs, and sexual orientation.”
He said within hours of his appointment on Monday, it became “clear that my Christian faith and my association with a church are unacceptable in our culture if you wish to hold a leadership position in society”.
“This grieves me greatly - though not just for myself, but for society overall. I believe we are poorer for the loss of our great freedoms of thought, conscience and belief that made for a truly diverse, just and respectful community.”
Mr Thorburn said he had been a Christian for 20 years and indicated he didn’t agree with all statements made by the church he runs.
“As it happens, I do sometimes disagree with things I hear in church - but I believe strongly in the right of people to say them, especially when taken in context,” he said.
“Reducing complex matters to a sentence is dangerous.
“Australia has a long tradition of diversity and religious freedom, and that must include preserving space for religious people to be able to express religious beliefs.”
Mr Barham said: “As soon as the comments relating to a 2013 sermon from a pastor at the City of the Hill church came to light this morning, we acted immediately to clarify the publicly espoused views on the organisation’s official website, which are in direct contradiction to our values as a club.
“The board made clear that despite these not being views that Andrew Thorburn has expressed personally and that were also made prior to him taking up his role as chairman, he could not continue to serve in his dual roles at the Essendon Football Club and as chairman of City on the Hill. I want to stress that neither the board nor Andrew was aware of the comments from the 2013 sermon until we read about them this morning.
“I also want to stress that this is not about vilifying anyone for their personal religious beliefs, but about a clear conflict of interest with an organisation whose views do not align at all with our values as a safe, inclusive, diverse and welcoming club for our staff, our players, our members, our fans, our partners and the wider community.” Earlier, Victorian Premier and Bombers supporter Daniel Andrews denounced the views as “absolutely appalling” but said he would renew his membership to the club next season.
“There are many reasons to be a disappointed Essendon supporter,” Mr Andrews said.
“I don’t want to make light of this but I don’t appoint the CEO of the Essendon footy club or the CEO of any footy club, that’s a matter for the board.”
The views expressed by the church “are absolutely appalling,” he said. “I don’t support that kind of intolerance, that kind of hatred, bigotry. It is just wrong. To dress that up as anything other than bigotry is just obviously false.”
Mr Thorburn said his faith had not previously led to any issues with his leading large and diverse companies.
“I understand that some of these views … are offensive to people and upset people, and I really respect that,” he told SEN Radio. “Firstly, my faith is a very personal thing. I think my faith has helped me become a better leader because at the centre of my faith is the belief you should create a community and care for people, and help people be safe and respect them as humans.
“Second is I’ve been a CEO for 13 years – this is my third CEO job. “I was CEO of a bank that had 5000 people, I was a CEO of a bank that had 35,000 people – now I’m going to a different organisation but in all those, there’s a diversity of people.”
Mr Thorburn said some of his views were different from his church. “Look at my actions, look at my words as a leader and the organisations I’ve created to enable safe, diverse, inclusive workplaces … that’s my record I want people to look at and have confidence in.”
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Australian Vaccinologist Opens Up mRNA Vaccine Safety Record in Systematic Literature & Date Review
What’s the real track record of the mRNA-based vaccines developed at a historic rate during the Operation Warp Speed initiative set up by previous President Donald Trump during the first year of the pandemic?
Significant claims were made with a near-selling-like fervor emanating from key federal government agencies in the United States and most other developed nations. The mainstream media overwhelmingly touts only the positive attributes of these products, which are countermeasures to a national declared emergency, America.
As challenges were introduced, from vaccine durability issues to the ongoing mutations---predicted by plenty of scientists who understand RNA viruses such as influenza or HIV/AIDS--the media seemingly presented ready-made talking points that positioned the products overwhelmingly positive. Afterall, billions of taxpayer funds were allocated into not only the early research, clinical development, and manufacturing of the vaccines, but also the heretofore not seen federally sponsored vaccination campaign which served as a marketing support for the primary companies of both Pfizer and Moderna.
Certainly, the products have helped soften the deadly, sharp edge of the COVID-19 pandemic, but what were the cost externalities as measured in human safety, loss productivity, and other costs to society with centralized government overreach of medical activity? Was the safety record claimed what manifested in reality? While the whole world now knows the mRNA vaccines, just like the flu vaccines, couldn’t control the pathogen’s spread in totality (however, there are cases where the vaccine has served to help control the pandemic), how effective are the vaccine products in the real world at controlling the pandemic?
How about staving off more serious disease and death in high-risk populations—the groups that most benefit from such products? An Australian scientist that leads a national and international reference laboratory for respiratory bacterial pathogens involving the identification, serotyping, genotyping, sequencing, and antimicrobial sensitivity testing for both veterinary and pharmaceutical clients, along with a colleague released a sharp critique of the COVID-19 vaccines.
Dr. Conny Turni and colleague Astrid Lefringhausen explore the above topics in “COVID-19 Vaccines—An Australian Review” published in the Journal of Clinical & Experimental Immunology.
No Lightweight Prose
With expertise in vaccines and topics such as antibiotic sensitivity for determining optimal sample sites for collecting pathogens as well as understanding the connections of different pathogens with disease, the development of animal infection models, and classification of bacteria and epidemiology of pathogens, Dr. Turni is no lightweight.
Profound Questions
Why have hundreds of millions worldwide needed to be vaccinated as many as four times within a twelve-month period? What are the effects of this ongoing countermeasure-driven medical endeavor on the human body? The clinical trial basis of the authorization was based only on a primary series of mRNA-based vaccines (two doses). Taking an Australian perspective, which TrialSite has followed, this demonstrates that double the number of persons died Down Under in the first three months of 2022 than all of 2020 and 2021 despite an already very high vaccination rate by the start of the year.
What were the promises and predictions from Australian authorities versus the actual facts on the ground? How about the safety and efficacy? Is there a substantial delta between what was promoted versus actuals? Just how safe, or unsafe are the countermeasures? What are the long-term side effects and how do these impact risk-benefit analyses?
Conducting a systematic literature and government data review, the authors establish the situation that merits investigation—the intensive push by the government for nearly everyone (including children as young as five and pregnant women) to get vaccinated. Yet, clinical research in all reality was ongoing. With a fourth booster dose administered in the elderly and other at-risk persons in just over a year from the first primary series, the long-term externalities as measured in human health cannot be known.
Crisis-driven Innovation
Vaccines often take many years to develop due to the difficulty associated with the development of this class of medical intervention—typically, a biological preparation that offers the human host active acquired immunity to a particular infectious pathogen. The vaccine usually contains an agent (like a weakened virus) that stimulates the human body’s immune system to not only recognize but also destroy the specific threat.
Vaccines are powerful medicinal interventions, and along with public health infrastructure breakthroughs over a century ago, helped transform developed economies. Some vaccines all but prevent the disease; they have served to control what were once horrific diseases such as polio. Others are used more as a therapeutic agent prophylactically to reduce the probability of the health threat such as with the influenza vaccine. While during the development and the authorization the COVID-19 vaccines were promoted like the former, in reality they perform like the latter scenario.
mRNA, developed over the last couple decades, introduced a new genetic way of inducing the human immune system’s ability to fight and overtake viruses. The onset of COVID-19 was the event fully exploited by the pharmaceutical industry and government research agencies to leverage public resources and assets to rapidly advance this promising technology. With COVID-19 came the intervention needed to achieve a faster, more economical, and adept way to produce vaccines. Done under national and global emergency, the countermeasures had to be safe and effective.
A Tenuous Foundation
First, in the “Initial Information” section of this literature review, Dr. Turni and Ms. Lefringhausen point out that the producers of the vaccines, government health agencies, and medical societies all declared that the “mRNA vaccines were supposed to remain at the injection site and be taken up by the lymphatic system.” This, and other basic premises represented a vital covenant with the public.
Yet according to the authors, “this assumption proved to be wrong.” They point to an autopsy of a person that unfortunately died as a result of the mRNA vaccination: “It was found that the vaccine disperses rapidly from the injection site and can be found in nearly all parts of the body.”
TrialSite has tracked numerous studies, mostly case series based on one death that evidence temporary wide distribution of the spike protein throughout the body for some short period of time.
The Australian literature review authors point out that although positioned to the contrary, the vaccine payload could cross both the blood-brain barrier and the blood-placenta barrier which is referenced in a European Medicines Agency assessment report targeting Moderna’s vaccine. They note, “mRNA could be detected in the brain following intramuscular administration at about 2% of the level found in plasma.” See the report on page 47: https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/documents/ assessment-report/spikevax-previously-covid-19-vaccine [1]moderna-epar-public-assessment-report_en.pdf (the EMA has taken the report down).
The authors also point to 2021, when Japanese researchers found “a disproportionately high mortality due to cerebral venous sinus thrombosis and intracranial hemorrhaging,” but this causal link couldn’t be proven. Yet authorities didn’t bother to do autopsies. Again, TrialSite has reported on many dozens of examples of post-vaccine injury studies mostly in the form of summaries of case series.
What about the claim “that the mRNA will degrade quickly?” While mRNA is supposed to break down within a few minutes to hours, writes the authors, the COVID-19 vaccines is “nucleoside-modified to reduce potential innate immune recognition, and it has been shown that production of the spike protein in some vaccines is kept up for an extraordinary long time.”
The Australians point to studies such as Röltgen et al, for examples showing that the mRNA vaccine may persist in the human body for up to 60 days. In fact, the 60 days was the endpoint so the duration could be longer. The authors declare, “It is thus unknown and impossible to define how much of the spike protein is actually produced in the vaccinated.” How about how much antigen is associated with each dose injection? Dr. Turni and Ms. Lefringhausen point out that:
“For a ‘so-called’ vaccine that is using the human body as the production facility, there is no possible quantification of antigen. This is highly variable and dependent on the amount and stability of nanoparticles in the injection, age, and fitness of the vaccinee, their immune status, and the injection technique—if a blood vessel is directly injected, the nanoparticles will travel in minutes to all major organs including the brain. It is therefore impossible to assess how much spike protein any individual vaccinee produces following an inoculation.”
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Domestic violence inquiry has exposed toxic culture in Queensland police force
For all the tea in China, I wouldn’t be a cop. Dealing with the dregs of society, going to work each day with the possibility of being killed, working shifts that affect sleep patterns … the list of drawbacks is endless.
But there’s a darker, more sinister side to being a police officer in Queensland – especially if you’re a woman.
The revelations emerging from a police inquiry into the service’s responses to domestic violence have exposed a deeper malaise.
This is a cohort of people who have lost their way. They’ve lost their identity. They are a police service lacking leadership, where the modern realisations of a safe workplace are colliding with the seedy traditions of yesteryear.
Reading the evidence is like watching an episode of Mad Men, where the misogynistic ways of men in the 1960s are laid bare. Women are merely seen as sex objects.
The Queensland police service is facing a cultural tsunami and the so-called Old Guard are being decapitated, one by one.
The question that the good folk of Queensland need to be asking today is – if certain male police officers treat their female counterparts in this oafish and belligerent way, what hope does the citizen in the street have against such poor behaviour?
If a cop has no regard for his colleagues, how does he handle law-abiding citizens?
When Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll took over the top job three years ago, she knew there would be difficult days.
Yet this inquiry is a long-running horror movie. The Commission of Inquiry has unearthed our worst fears. It has revealed a police service that has not kept pace with the morals and ethics required of a 21st century organisation.
The toxic culture and lack of manners among some of the mostly male officers is embarrassing, and deeply divisive.
It does nothing to instil confidence and it hurts those who treat the job seriously, and who behave responsibly. It seems for every good cop, there’s a bad cop.
Ms Carroll is dealing with a culture among the men towards female officers that has flourished and been entrenched for decades.
The cover-ups and lack of transparency and accountability are a damning indictment on a police service that has lost touch with reality.
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5 October, 2022
Sikh's bid for weapons act amendment rejected in Supreme Court
Sikhs are often in trouble over this. But it is part of their faith. Religious accomodations are extended to Muslims and Aborigines. Why not Sikhs?
The state government has dismissed a Supreme Court application which would allow knives to be carried into Queensland schools for “genuine religious purposes”.
Court documents have revealed the director of an Australian religious group had applied for the state’s weapons act be amended in the Queensland Supreme Court.
The application was made by Kamaljit Athwal, the director of the Sikh Nishkam Society of Australia, who said the weapons act prevented her and others from entering Queensland schools for educational purposes.
According to the court document, Ms Athwal is an initiated as an Amritdhari Sikh and has been the society’s director since 2010.
Initiated Sikhs are required at all times to wear or possess five mandatory “articles of faith” which include an undergarment, a small wooden comb, an iron band, have “un-cut” hair covered by a turban and a ceremonial sword.
The sword, known as a Kirpan, is made of steel or iron and is usually worn underneath clothing on a sling.
Ms Athwal argued in the court document that if a Sikh were to remove any of the articles of faith they must go refrain from eating or drinking for a period of time.
“That would extend to the removal of the Kirpan to enter school grounds,” the document read.
Ms Athwal said she and other initiated Sikhs had been excluded from school drop-offs and pick-ups, from attending assemblies, meeting teachers, attending school activities and conducting work on school groups.
Further, Ms Athwal contended her ability to vote at government elections at her local school had been deprived.
Under the weapons act, a person must not physically possess a knife in a public place or a school unless the person has a reasonable excuse.
Maximum penalties including one year’s imprisonment.
The state government acknowledged the difficulties initiated Sikhs faced however, on September 30 it dismissed the court application
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'I am being shamed for choosing to stay at home with my kids'
The government wants me in the paid workforce. I get it, the post-Covid economy is out of shape and we have a long way to go. Never mind my three children under four. The nation needs me and we have childcare centres these days so I really have no excuse. Childcare subsidies form Labor’s single biggest budget commitment. I guess it’s time I got a real job. Almost every time I turn on the telly, it’s there again, another story about getting more women “back to work”.
It’s puzzling because I thought I already was working.
I’m on call 24/7. You wouldn’t believe the clientele – so demanding and completely unreasonable at times. The youngest is now crawling so at any given time someone is hungry, busting, tired, crying or trying to get in the toilet or the fire or the bin.
There are many high points – a two-year-old’s emphatic rendition of Girl on Fire by Alicia Keys. Competitions doing burnouts on their bikes. Overhearing my son sounding out a word. I love it, but I have no doubt it really is hard work because of the mental and physical exhaustion I experience at the end of each day. And I know it’s essential work because it must be done – all else springs from foundational tasks of caring.
It’s just not the kind of work that counts, apparently.
Women have become great big dollar signs in the government’s bid to rebuild the economy, but I wonder about the true cost of both parents working longer hours. More childcare isn’t helping us balance care work with paid work, it simply enables us to replace care work with paid work.
I have serious reservations about using “workforce participation” as a measure of gender equality when the work I do doesn’t count. It’s a race I can never win.
Incentivising men to do more of the unpaid care work is the true equaliser, but instead we are intent on treating women as the problem. I don’t want gender equality if it is simply a process of erasing everything that is inherently female.
With another childcare rebate on the way in July, and childcare subsidies having almost doubled to $11 billion since my eldest was born in 2015, I get a definite sense that I’m not pulling my weight.
Not “participating”. The benefits of entering paid work again are not lost on me – I could contribute to my super and our increasing living costs. I’d feel part of the community and have better future job prospects. I might enjoy a sense of solidarity by joining the 67% of other parents who have children under the age of three in formalised care.
I’m just having some difficulty finding one of the “high quality” childcare facilities the government is always banging on about – 30% of the centres in my local area aren’t meeting the National Quality Standards for childcare.
Nationwide, 11.2 % of centres have applied for waivers to continue operating with a staff shortage. Two in three early childhood educators in Victoria are considering leaving their role because their work is woefully underpaid, starting at $20 an hour, and culturally undervalued. The sector expects to be short 40,000 staff next year. Staff turnover is through the roof. My closest centre is 40km away so I’d want to be on good coin because I will be chugging the diesel.
Something just doesn’t add up.
My return to paid work is incentivised by higher family benefits for dual-income families than single-income families in Australia, yet we don’t seem to have adequate systems in place for someone else to look after my kids while I engage in “paid” work. Am I not doing the government a favour by keeping my kids out of overwhelmed childcare centres until the situation improves?
Why isn’t access to a parental caregiver in the first three years being prioritised in any policy, particularly in the context of a childcare skills shortage and inconclusive research about the impacts of formalised care for children under three? This need not encroach on anybody’s ability to outsource childcare if they wish, it’s just about transparency and genuine choice.
The government already knows that family policy marginalises parents who choose to care for their own children full time and makes them feel like freaks of society, because they commissioned a research paper which drew these conclusions more than eight years ago. The paper, Parent-Only Care in Australia, examined the views of parents choosing not to outsource the care of their babies and young children amid an increasing trend of policies incentivising them to return to paid work.
La Trobe University researchers found the reasons parents gave for opting to assume full-time caregiving roles – bonding, being there for a very young child, emotional development, breastfeeding, and overwhelming concerns about the quality of childcare – were very much validated by the evidence. It found that not only was the political agenda tone-deaf to these concerns, but it actively targeted “women with young children, who have had lower than average rates of workforce participation”.
The paper argued the folly of such shortsighted economics by pointing out the long-term social and economic costs of poor-quality childcare. And yet the government has steamrolled on, either reluctant or unable to do anything about it. Probably a bit of both. It’s the “modernity paradox” on full display, a term coined by psychologist Daniel Keating and early childhood development expert Clyde Hertzman in 1999. The better we seem to get at wealth creation, the worse off our children seem to be. Limitations or quality constraints seem inevitable when carrying out child-rearing on an industrial scale.
Is this what we really want?
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Longer school day, master teachers could solve Australia's education productivity problem
Changing the length of the school day and employing master teachers are among the solutions the Productivity Commission has put forward to improve the performance of Australia's education system.
Australia is spending more than ever per student on education and yet national literacy and numeracy achievement is stagnating.
A new report by the Commission investigates why this problem exists and what can be done across the school and higher education system to solve it.
One in five Australians have low basic skills, impacting on their job opportunities, capacity to learn further skills and wages.
Productivity Commission deputy chair Dr Alex Robson said the while spending had grown, Australian students' results were not improving.
"One of the issues could be that the best practice is not becoming common practice," Dr Robson said.
"So diffusing what works and, just as importantly, what doesn't work in the classroom in different circumstances, that's one of the things we focus on."
The report said classroom teachers spend much of their working time on low-value administration tasks that could be reduced or reassigned to support staff.
Technology also has a role in relieving this burden and improving student outcomes but it needed to be introduced carefully.
"It's not a silver bullet... there's a digital divide where some schools have access to the technology and others don't, but then also in terms of how it's used and what's more effective in different circumstances," Dr Robson said.
An increase in the numbers of support staff and lower student-to-staff ratios don't appear to have had any impact on student results.
The report suggests improving consistency of professional development for teachers and employing master teachers to spread best practice teaching across schools.
It also suggests trialling more radical changes, such as extending the length of the school day or adopting the United Kingdom's model of academy schools to improve under-performing public schools.
"Maybe some of these more forward-looking ideas are possible solutions, but we're definitely not saying that that's the exact answer," Dr Robson said.
The report also suggests a HECS-style system for vocational education could reduce some of the up-front costs and disincentives for students to go down that path that could be more appropriate for their career ambitions compared to university.
The commission was highly critical of the changes to university course fees under the Coalition's job ready graduates reforms, stating that price signals for in-demand fields didn't work under the income-contingent loan system.
The commission is seeking feedback on the report by October 21 and will hold roundtable discussions.
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Coal is booming but you won’t hear about it at the ABC
Having seen the disastrous economic and social outcomes of Europe’s energy crisis, Australia, perversely, perhaps uniquely, is determined to inflict similar damage on itself. The decisions of the Queensland government, and AGL, to get rid of coal-generated electricity by 2035 will likely be, if implemented fully, disastrous.
I say “likely” because it’s possible that some great technology fix may show up in the meantime. But based on what we know of technology today, these moves mean much higher electricity prices and in time almost certainly unreliable supply and intermittent crises.
Nothing is certain, of course, least of all the future. But if as a nation we wanted to replicate the European mess, this is the way we’d go about it.
There are times in Australia when the plain truth is so unfashionable that almost no one speaks it. Here is one simple truth about Australia. We are a wealthy society – with first-class hospitals, affluent universities that can indulge their postmodern critical theory nuttiness, modern transport, modern if ineffective defence forces, a vast welfare system and everything else – for one reason: we make an enormous amount of money exporting commodities.
But the anti-fossil fuel sentiment has become so great that now there is a corporate wariness even about gas exploration and development. Yet we are completely dependent on coal and gas ourselves, as well as for export income. Incidentally, substituting gas for coal has been the main way many developed nations have actually reduced their greenhouse gas emissions.
However, remark this central fact which is never allowed into the debate. Coal is booming. That’s right. Coal is booming.
I am indebted to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute website for highlighting two recent international reports that make this clear, one from the International Energy Agency and one from BloombergNEF. No rhetoric or argument could be as powerful as the facts. So let me offer you a selection of facts from these reports.
Last year, global coal-fired electricity jumped a staggering 8.5 per cent, far in excess of the 5.6 per cent rise in total global power generation. Overall, never in human history has more electricity been generated by coal.
Yet how many times per day do we hear on the ABC that the world has turned away from coal? Whenever I’m on an ABC panel and point out that coal is booming, I cause the most terrible conniptions among my fellow panellists and ABC hosts. It’s as though I’ve committed a morally shocking crime of modern heresy speak. But there’s something else. Their view of climate change is religious but, while fervently religious, it’s also intellectually fragile, and if they admit certain unarguable facts, such as global coal use, the whole dogmatic structure underlying their world view threatens to collapse. Thus the moral panic in the reaction.
But I digress. Some more fun facts. The majority of countries pledged to phasing coal out altogether actually increased their coal-fired power production in 2021. Coal, in fact, accounted for the majority of the global net energy increase in 2021. It’s not only in Australia that climate change happy-talk bears only a glancing relationship with reality.
One of the special wrinkles in the Australian debate is the way we ignore Asia. Here are the 10 top countries, in order, for coal power expansion in 2021: China, India, Vietnam, South Africa, The Philippines, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Bulgaria, Japan. Eight out of 10 of those nations are in Asia. Economic growth is still centred much more in Asia than anywhere else. Power usage tracks economic growth, and coal use tracks overall power usage. Those basic equations haven’t changed.
When people talk airily about the world transitioning away from fossil fuels, what they are really describing, so far at least, is that Europe has cut fossil fuels a bit and is in crisis as a consequence, while the US has partly moved from coal to gas.
There’s a lot of renewable energy being installed as well, vast amounts in fact. If your story is only about the uptake of renewables you can produce an alternative set of facts that seem pretty impressive. But you can’t pretend that coal, gas and other fossil fuels have suffered absolute decline. In 2021 coal surged not only absolutely but also proportionally.
It’s also fair to remember that 2021 was a special case. The world economy was recovering from Covid, droughts produced shortages of hydro-electricity and Russia caused high gas prices in Europe. But every year is a special year. Not only that, the long-term trends do not suggest the world is ditching coal either. Indonesia relied on coal for 49 per cent of its power in 2012 and 61 per cent in 2021. The Philippines went from 39 per cent coal power in 2012 to 59 per cent in 2021. Indonesia and The Philippines are high-population, big-growth economies as far as the eye can see.
Of course they themselves are small fry compared with China and India, still the fastest-growing big economies in the world. Between them they accounted for 83 per cent of new coal power in 2021. According to Climate Action Tracker, China increased its greenhouse emissions by 11 per cent from 2015 to 2021. In the same period, the US, that world imperialist neoliberal terrible progenitor of every Western ill, which moreover was ruled for most of that time by Donald Trump, reduced its emissions by 6 per cent. Much of that was switching from coal to gas. Yet the Australian green-left demonises gas almost as wildly as it demonises coal.
Coal provided 64 per cent of China’s energy in 2021. Despite being told endlessly by wish-fulfilment-addicted government climate agencies that China is committed to action on greenhouse gases – I’ve often in ABC appearances encountered that amiable chimera, the China national carbon market – China is expanding coal massively.
The Wall Street Journal reports the Global Energy Monitor assessing that by July 2022 China had 258 separate coal-fired power stations, involving 515 individual units, proposed, permitted or under construction.
Further, the vast majority of zero-emissions energy the world does have is either nuclear or hydro. Chris Bowen scoffs at nuclear energy. He might want to let France’s Emmanuel Macron in on the joke. The French President won re-election promising 14 new nuclear power plants. France gets 70 per cent of its electricity from nuclear and is the world’s biggest electricity exporter. Nuclear is much more reliable than hydro. Sometimes it doesn’t rain, and some countries, like Australia, are topographically difficult for hydro.
Nationals senator Matt Canavan deserves praise for introducing a bill to remove the legal prohibition on nuclear energy in Australia. Our greenhouse emissions are down to about 1 per cent of the world’s total.
Bankrupting our economy won’t help the global climate. We should gradually reduce our emissions and replace high-emissions energy with lower-emissions sources such as gas, or zero-emissions sources such as nuclear. And before that, we should occasionally allow the facts to participate in the debate.
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4 October, 2022
Ugly truth behind dating apps revealed in key statistic
I am very sad to hear this. I have been using advertisements to find partners for most of my adult life and have had excellent results. I have had 4 marriages and some good long-term relationships out of it. And all four marriages ended amicably. So the system can work well. And just this year I have acquired a new partner via a dating site who is both smart and good-looking -- despite the fact that we are both now in our 70s
I think it is all up to the people involved. Men who are selfish will be nasty however they are encountered. The key is to approach with caution. Meet somewhere safe initially and learn as much as you can of the other person's background as soon as you can. Google can be a help there but old-fasioned reputational enquiries also have a place.
Milieu is important too. I always insist that a lady I take an interest in should like classical music. So I am moving in a very civilized milieu there. There are however many milieus and moving in an unsafe one must have its problems. I think there of women who date men with criminal records. No matter how good-looking and manly the man may be, he is high risk. So choose your milieu carefully. Low educational achievement is another red flag. The jails are full of poorly educated men
Most people who have used dating apps have also experienced some level of sexual violence via the increasingly popular medium, a new survey has revealed.
The study by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) released on Monday found three in every four respondents had been subjected to sexual violence through dating apps in the past five years.
The most common form of behaviour reported was sexual harassment, with abusive and threatening language and unsolicited sexual images also commonly experienced by those seeking love online.
In a troubling sign, the study also found sexual violence via dating apps was experienced far more frequently by LGBTIQ+ men and women compared to heterosexual participants.
Problems didn’t end when users of dating apps met face-to-face, with one in three survey respondents saying they experienced in-person sexual violence such as sexual assault or coercion, reproductive and sexual health related abuse and in-person image-based sexual abuse.
AIC deputy director Rick Brown said steps needed to be taken by dating app developers to improve user experience and safety. “The high levels of online and in-person DAFSV in this report demonstrate the need to embed safety by design principles in their development processes,” he said.
Despite the exponential explosion in popularity of dating apps over the past 10 years, few studies have been done exploring technology-facilitated sexual violence.
“This study aims to address these gaps in knowledge and provide valuable information that can assist in the development of policies and practices to prevent this kind of violence from occurring,” Dr Brown said.
Last year, dating app Bumble launched an initiative to provide free online trauma support to users who had experienced sexual assault or relationship abuse.
Earlier, the company also introduced an AI driven feature, which automatically identifies and blurs lewd images, leaving it at the recipient’s discretion if they want to view them.
A spokesperson from Bumble said they were saddened by the latest findings and that the company was taking steps to combat the specific types of abuse mentioned in the report.
“We hold everyone on Bumble accountable for their actions,” the spokesperson said.
“Any instance of violence, harassment or abuse is unacceptable to us and we do not hesitate to permanently remove perpetrators from our platform.
“We take our block and report tool very seriously, and have made it easy for our members to report any behaviour that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe to us so that we can take action.”
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Energy aspirations all well and good but unrealistic
Cheap electricity forever and cities filled with electric vehicles gliding silently along emission-free streets – the future has never looked brighter. This green-tinged nirvana is of course a target or more prosaically, an aspiration.
Aspirations are fine. You can aspire to lose weight, drink less and be nice to idiots but the likelihood of achieving any of these is dubious. This is not to say that they are unworthy, but that they are unrealistic.
Aspirations have been very much in vogue these past weeks as our leaders race to be the first to grasp the Holy Grail of environmental politics, net zero emissions!
The Queensland government put on an impressive burst of speed by lifting the state’s target from 70 per cent renewable energy generation by 2032 to 80 per cent by 2035. A quick reference to your mobile phone’s calculator will reveal that this is 13 years away.
Anyone who can confidently predict what our world will be like in 13 years’ time is possessed of powers more usually attributed to a higher being yet federal and state politicians, some of whom it could be easily argued are not the sharpest shovels in the shed, trot out these statistics with absolute certainty to what they hope is a gullible electorate.
To reinforce these incredulous flights of fancy, they rely on modelling, easily the most discredited science in the universe.
It doesn’t matter that, like your determination to achieve a sylph-like figure by Christmas, the target is unachievable because by 2032 or 2035 – pick a number, any number – the current crop of politicians will be long gone and enjoying second careers as overseas trade commissioners, foreign diplomats or resting their feet up on the boardroom tables of union-controlled super funds.
Queensland has embraced pumped hydro as its path to lowering emissions from electricity generation.
Energy Minister Mick de Brenni said that, after researching about 1000 sites, one west of Mackay had been found to be “simply the best”.
Within 24 hours of this revelation, it was revealed that “simply the best” was actually simply not quite the best and that simply put, the government was now looking for another site that could provide the massive areas of land required for water storage for the upper and lower dams without significantly damaging the environment, a site that could be connected to the grid to supply the power necessary to pump the water and transmit the power generated.
How much will this cost when they find simply the best placed to build it? The figure is $12bn, with the total cost of achieving that mirage-like figure of 80 per cent shimmering on the 2035 horizon, being $62bn.
Where will the money come from? Tricky one, that. The federal government and private infrastructure funds will be relied upon to bring this wondrous scheme to fruition. How much has been committed thus far? Not a cent.
It is worth noting that Snowy Hydro 2.0, the result of a Malcolm Turnbull thought bubble, was budgeted to cost $5.1bn. That now looks like blowing out by a further $2.1bn and is beset by problems.
Meanwhile, if you are leasing a servo, it might be good time to start looking for an exit strategy because, according to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s pre-election policies, by 2030, 89 per cent of new vehicle sales in Australia will be electric vehicles.
How did the Labor Party arrive at this incredibly precise figure? You guessed it – modelling. What percentage of new car sales were electric in Australia last year? Two per cent.
Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen has been talking about getting tough on vehicle emissions. I don’t envy him the task of telling the nation’s tradies that they’ll have to give up their treasured four-wheel-drive utes and buy something more environmentally friendly.
He might also get a less than warm reception from the caravanning community who will have to say goodbye to their Toyota Land Cruisers and Nissan Patrols and park their vans in the yard because electric vehicles are incapable of towing heavy loads over long distances.
There will come a time when electric vehicles will be practical in this vast country and when renewable power will replace that generated by fossil fuels but it will be determined by technological advances and not grandstanding politicians with both eyes fixed firmly, not on the well being of the next generation but the next election.
And that sylph-like figure by Christmas? Good luck with that.
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Flags on a bridge won’t change anything
Common sense scored a rare victory over tokenism and virtue signalling last week and we have Brisbane’s Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner to thank for it.
At issue was a move by the Labor councillor for Morningside Kara Cook to have two new flags flown atop the Story Bridge, joining the Australian and Queensland flags presently in place.
No discount on your rates notice for guessing that the flags in question were the Aboriginal flag and the Torres Strait Islander flag, with Ms Cook demanding Mr Schrinner “show leadership on this”.
“Reconciliation is something that should be a priority for our city, and this is one way we can stand with our First Nations communities,” she said.
Mr Schrinner replied that it would cost millions of dollars to install two new flagpoles and that the money could be better spent elsewhere.
Mick Gooda, co-chair of the Queensland Treaty Advancement Committee, was quick to offer a solution, saying the Brisbane City Council could take down one of the existing flags and replace it with an Aboriginal one, a move which would be part of what he called a “path to Treaty and truth telling in Brisbane”.
Here’s another truth, inconvenient though it might be. The Australian flag represents all Australians and the Queensland flag all Queenslanders regardless of their race, so why should either of them be removed in order to fly a flag which represents one particular racial group?
Commissioner for the Queensland Family and Child Commission and Gamilaraay Yinnar woman Natalie Lewis also weighed into the debate, saying if new flagpoles were to be installed, she wanted Indigenous businesses included in any works.
So the normal tendering process designed to give everyone a fair go and ensure the council got value for money would be cast aside and Indigenous businesses given preferential treatment, exclusion masquerading as inclusion.
Mr Schrinner is to be congratulated for having the courage to suffer the wrath of the Twitterati and for refusing to spend ratepayers’ money pandering to virtue signallers.
What a simple thing it is to demand the flying of a flag representing 3 per cent of the population and tell yourself how inclusive and “woke” you are.
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Dam operators face balancing act of flood and drought
The Lord Mayor is right. As far as possible, the Wivenhoe dam flood compartment should be kept empty
As the rain-soaked eastern seaboard stares down another summer of floods, the mayor of the nation’s most at-risk capital has demanded a review of dam management to enable pre-emptive water releases ahead of the forecast deluge.
Brisbane’s Adrian Schrinner said the level of the city’s flood shield and principal water supply, Wivenhoe Dam, must be lowered before the third successive La Nina event took hold.
But he said the danger extended to the entirety of Australia’s east coast, after meeting emergency service heads and other key players at a planning summit last week called by the state government.
“As that meeting heard, the warning about another unusually wet period over the next few months isn’t just for Brisbane, but the entire eastern seaboard,” Mr Schrinner told The Australian.
“Along with Brisbane, many of the populated areas along the east coast already have full dams and sodden soil ... the question I am asking, and will continue to ask, is whether state authorities should adapt their approach to dam management with these severe warnings. I still haven’t had a proper answer.”
More than 20,000 homes flooded over February and March when the Queensland capital received 80 per cent of its annual rainfall in six days and Brisbane River and feeder creeks erupted.
But Mr Schrinner said the coming summer was potentially more problematic because a wet winter had saturated catchments, leaving them unable to absorb further run-off.
As unseasonably cool and wet conditions blanketed the city, Wivenhoe Dam was on Sunday at 90.5 per cent of its notional 200 per cent capacity – counting both flood mitigation and water storage compartments.
Somerset Dam was 80 per cent full and Enoggera Reservoir in Brisbane at 100.6 per cent. All up, the South East Queensland water grid was at 87.9 per cent capacity.
Wivenhoe’s official operation manual, signed off by the Palaszczuk government, prevents dam engineers from making active releases when extreme rainfall is forecast by the Bureau of Meteorology. Instead, they are forced to wait until rain is on the ground before controlled releases can be ordered to free up space.
However, The Australian understands there is provision for the state-owned operator Seqwater to request that state Water Minister Glenn Butcher declare a temporary fully supply level authorise draw-downs at Wivenhoe, Somerset and North Pine dams.
Mr Schrinner said the government must review the manual to allow for more flexibility.
“If you look at how quickly the dams filled up earlier this year, it was remarkable, we have never seen anything like it and it shows what’s possible. They filled up far faster than they did in 2011,” he said, referring to a disaster that inundated thousands of homes in Brisbane and Ipswich, some of which flooded again this year.
“The dam operating manuals were developed out of 2011 and I'm not sure if they envisaged just how quickly the dams could fill.
“Obviously, we must take advice from the experts, there’s no doubt about that, but as situations change, manuals, operating procedures should also be questioned as well.”
Emergency releases from the bulging dam in 2011 were blamed for 80 per cent of the flooding.
While last summer’s flood was not pinned on the state-owned dam operator, releases kept the swollen Brisbane River topped up, prolonging the duration of the crisis. Mitigation releases did not begin until three days after the BOM warned of heavy rain.
Mr Schrinner noted that ahead of the last flood, South East Queensland was on the brink of drought, with Wivenhoe’s 2.08 million megalitre flood-storage compartment empty and the water grid below 60 per cent.
With “just a few days of rain” Wivenhoe was inundated with 2.2 million megalitres, four times the volume Sydney Harbour.
Such was the intensity of the rain across the South East that storm drains were overwhelmed, suburban creeks erupted into torrents and overland flows cascaded through homes not known to have previously gone under.
Water Minister Glenn Butcher said he would continue to take advice on dam management, balancing the priorities of water storage and flood mitigation.
“We know wet weather is forecast, but we don’t know when or where rain will fall. We take advice from the experts,” he said on Sunday. “Once water is released from a dam, we cannot get it back, so it is absolutely critical that we take expert advice from both Seqwater and department officials.”
Given Wivenhoe’s flood storage compartment was for now empty, any immediate releases would have to come from the region’s drinking water supply and if the anticipated rains did not fall over summer “then it’d be a different story”, Mr Butcher said in other recent comments.
Professor Hubert Chanson, a hydraulic engineering expert from the University of Queensland, said dam operators were engaged in a high-stakes balancing act, preparing for both drought and flood.
“Wivenhoe is essential for providing South East Queensland with water for long duration droughts, so early releases prior to any run-off in the catchment could increase the risk of southeast Queensland running out of water during a dry period,” Professor Chanson said. “While we have had a lot of rain between 2011 and now, what happens if we have a 40-year drought?”
Dam releases a few days before heavy rain was predicted could be considered, but it would be difficult given the unpredictability of weather forecasts, he said.
Mr Schrinner said the solution was to bolster Brisbane’s water security, so dam engineers could make releases from Wivenhoe without risking drinking supplies.
The state government is considering an independent report on its preparations and management of the floods handed to them by the state’s Inspector-General of Emergency Management in August.
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3 October, 2022
Nearly all of Australia's coral reefs are at risk of being wiped out in less than two decades
There is NO evidence given for this. It's just a Warmist claim, possibly based on models but that is guesswork, not evidence
The idea that warming is bad for corals is completely unscientific anyway. Barrier reef corals are most diverse in the Torres strait, which is the WARMEST part of the reef. Like most living things, corals LIKE warmth
SHOCKING evidence has been released claiming that nearly all of Australia's coral reefs are at risk of being wiped out in less than two decades.
The report by the World Resources Institute claims that by 2030, 90 per cent of Australia's reefs will suffer from the overwhelming effects of climate change like warmer seas and acidification.
It also outlines the threat to the rest of the world's coral reefs, with research suggesting that many could be obliterated by 2050 due to pollution, climate change and over-fishing.
The report encourages Australia not to waste any time in fighting the prediction, particularly because of the impact reef degredation will have on tourism and the economy.
Dr Clive Wilkinson, the United Nations sponsored Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network coordinator, urged Australia "to be part of the global solution to climate change, as our reefs will suffer like others around the world and this will threaten the $5 to $6 billion per year that the Great Barrier Reef means to the Australian economy."
"Australians have no right to be complacent as the vast majority of our reefs will be seriously threatened by rising sea temperatures and increasing acidification in less than 20 years," he said.
Today, 40 per cent of Australia's reefs are under pressure from rising sea temperatures and other threats linked to climate change.
However, 75 per cent of the reefs are in marine protected areas, which is a contributing factor to the improvement in fish numbers and reef resilience.
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On Lizard island, the reef is as good as scientists have ever seen it
I have reproduced below just a few factual bits from an article heavy with global warming prophecy. There is a feeble attempt to say that the thriving corals around the Lizard Island research station are not typical but no evidence is adduced to show that. It's just assertion.
Clearly, from the actual reports below, the various "bleaching" events have not significantly harmed the reef. The prophesied doom has not eventuated. The reef has been in existence for millions of years, surviving all sorts of weather events, so it has acquired the ability to bounce back from occasional harm
There’s a friendly atmosphere as researchers mingle at the station, often alongside large taps that run salt water into the fish tanks. The marine biologists talk about their research projects and plan when they’re next hitting the ocean. One of the best places to sink below the surface is North Point – about a 20-minute boat ride from the centre in rough wave conditions – where PhD candidate Matt Nicholson and Durham University Assistant Professor Dr Will Feeney are filming fish behaviour.
Between dives, the pair say the reef is as good as they have ever seen it. Five years ago, this area was severely impacted by mass coral bleaching and cyclone events. Now, it teems with wildlife: parrot fish with their distinct beak-like mouths nibble at bits of coral, schools of blue-green and yellow damsel fish dart around, while Feeney spots a group of six harlequin filefish fighting. They stand out among the other fish because of their aqua and orange spot colouring and long, snout-like faces. Not long ago, it would be rare for Feeney to have spotted any.
Another sign that the reef is recovering is the branching coral that appears every few metres or so. Its budding branches give scientists hope this patch of the reef is slowly recovering from the past six years which have been filled with four mass coral bleaching events since 2016 and tropical cyclones. The 2021 and 2022 summer was the first time the reef had bleached during a La Nina year.
The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) listed the outlook for the reef’s health as “very poor” in this year’s annual report, with the agency’s chief executive, Paul Hardisty, saying the increased frequency of mass coral bleaching events was “uncharted territory” for the reef following the fourth mass bleaching in seven years.
WWF Australia head of oceans Richard Leck said the recovery of the reef was patchy. In areas that had bounced back, including Lizard Island and the northern parts of the reef, recovery had predominately been of fast-growing coral which limits biodiversity. Some corals can take up to 100 years to grow and so as climate-induced events become more frequent, the diversity of the reef diminishes.
“This type of coral-dominated recovery is one that is highly susceptible to threats like coral bleaching and storm damage from cyclones. It is susceptible to Crown of Thorn starfish too.
However, he says the recovery in some parts of the reef should give people hope that the reef is resilient and that efforts to protect it are working. He adds that the government should also consider investing its next round of funding into limiting the environmental damage from pollution and sediment run-off from agriculture.
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Australian-Croatian TV presenter’s heartbroken response to Nazi salutes at Australia Cup
A bit of context might help here. The countries of the Balkans have been fought over many times. As a result, their people have tended to develop strong national loyalties.
In WWII the Balkans were divided in their loyalties. The Croatians sided with the Nazis and the Serbians with the Communists. So Croatians tend to remember that division and are not as negative about Nazism as are most others. So the "Nazi" salutes complained about below were in effect pro-Croatian salutes by young Croatians
Australian TV presenter Lucy Zeli? has called for lifetime bans and a mandatory educational course for those involved in the “devastating and embarrassing” scenes during the Australia Cup final.
A loud chorus of boos could be hear during the Welcome to Country and also throughout the playing of the national anthem on Saturday night.
When the game got underway the Network 10 broadcast captured fans in attendance appearing to be doing Nazi salutes.
Zeli?, who was a sports presenter for SBS until she left the network last year, took to Twitter to express her horror.
“I’m a proud Croatian. I was raised by two immigrants who lost friends and family in the war – my Aunty Tereža was tragically killed after stepping on a rogue mine right near her home,” she explained. “Our history is laced with much struggle, grief and loss but immense resilience.
“Growing up with an ethnic background, I knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of racism and was often told, ‘f*** of back to Croatia wog’. I was confused because Australia was my home and we were so, so proud of it.
“I was born in the 80s and was never raised to be a fascist, racist or antisemitic – it wasn’t an option. We knew what being treated differently because of your ethnicity, and losing loved ones in senseless war felt like.
“What happened at last night’s @AustraliaCup Final was shocking and simply devastating, and I didn’t want to believe it. It was the first time I felt embarrassed by the actions of my fellow countrymen and I wasn’t alone.”
The final was between Macarthur FC and Sydney United 58, which was formed as Sydney Croatia in 1958 by Croatian-Australians in the area and later renamed in the ’90s.
Zeli? said the fans’ behaviour was not a true representation of Croatians or the football club, but its reputation had been tarnished.
“ … many of them appeared to be teenagers who simply don’t know how deeply the ramifications of their actions run,” she said.
Zeli?, who is a mum of two, said she wanted those guilty to “face the full arm of the law” and also be required to take a “mandatory educational course on history”.
“Show them photographs from the Auschwitz concentration camps,” she said.
“Make them listen to countless stories from survivors so that they won’t pass on these indefensible beliefs to their children. Change, after all, comes from a place of acceptance and understanding and you cannot change what you don’t know.”
Other sports presenters also slammed the behaviour as an “embarrassment”.
The NSW Jewish Board of Deputies have called for “strong action”, including lifetime bans.
“These vile symbols and salutes have no place in modern Australian society,” CEO Darren Bark said in a statement provided to news.com.au.
“They represent the ultimate manifestation of evil – an evil which led to the murder of millions of innocent civilians during WWII, including six million Jews and thousands of Australian Diggers who lost their lives fighting against the Nazis during WWII.
“Reprehensible conduct such as this causes immense distress to the victims of Nazi crimes and their descendants, whilst undermining our cohesive multicultural society.
“The fact that the Welcome to Country and national anthem was also booed last night underlines the contempt these people have for Australia and our Diggers.”
Football Australia said “there is absolutely no place for anti-social behaviour in our game” and promised “strong and swift action” would be taken.
FA said it was working with NSW Police and holding discussions with Sydney United 58 FC about the behaviour of certain fans, “which could lead to both individual and club sanctions.”
On the night, eight people were evicted from the stadium.
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Aborigines are NOT "indigenous"
Prior to the threatened rewriting of the Australian constitution can we stop re-writing the English dictionary and the meanings of our words to suit the re-write of what being an Australian is?
Perhaps it is all part of the demise of our education system but no human is indigenous to Australia as Australia didn’t even come with a backstory of mammals let alone primates from which came the many iterations of the upright, bi-pedal, Homo species (Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis, Homo Heidelberg, etc) and, ultimately, us Homo sapiens. All of whom were indigenous to Africa.
The first out-of-Africa population movement of Homo sapiens started some 130,000 years ago and travelled up along the east coast of Africa, crossed what was then a land bridge over the Red Sea heading to Sri Lanka, India, Southeast Asia and to a land mass called Sahul. Sahul was Australia, with Papua New Guinea still attached, that had been the last land mass to fracture from the Antarctic continent of Pangaea and head north until it collided into south east Asia.
At this point the slowly migrating African indigenes could cross (sea levels were 150 metres lower than today) in tribal groups to what is now Papua New Guinea then into our gulf country or, via the island of Flores, further south onto the northern coast of what is West Australia. That journey from Africa took small hunter-gatherer groups multiple generations until first reaching what is now Australia some 45,000 years ago.
That remarkable journey makes these slow trekking, out-of-Africa indigenous hunter-gatherer tribes, the first human species to be introduced to the Australian land mass but it does not make them or their descendants indigenous to Australia. Aboriginal – yes, but indigenous – no.
Marsupials are indigenous to Australia but humans are not. So, can we rephrase the call to arms regarding the Voice and delete the ignorant attachment of the appellation ‘indigenous’.
That said I would like to recommend a song and two voices that say it all when it comes to the human migrations into Australia. The voices belong to the late, great Judith Durham and her co-singer Bruce Woodley and it is The Seekers song ‘I am Australian’ that says it all and, with lines such as ‘We are one but we are many and from all the lands on Earth we come’, it should be our anthem. If it were, the call to divide Australians into self-identification groups might fade to oblivion as we all take personal pride in wearing the name ‘Australian’. It would also be good to be able to ditch the current ‘land girt by sea’ anthem.
We are all mentioned in that Seekers song. From those of the Dream Time and dusty red soil plains, to sailors on tall ships and iron-chained convicts on prison ships, to the journey from convict to free man, to land clearers/settlers/farmers/bushies, to gold miners and those battlers during the Depression, to Aboriginal artists and legendary horsemen through to bushrangers and to a swagman Waltzing Matilda. They are all there as Australians who have left their past behind in identifying with and belonging to this large continent under one federal government.
Is that the problem for some? Do they seek separation of the Australian government into race-based legislatures and parliaments? What gain is there in dividing us by ‘indigenous’ ancestry claims that may not have significant DNA support? Anthropological research from universities ranging from Copenhagen to the US, UK and Australia now estimate that of those original aboriginal tribes there are only approximately 5,000 people left carrying that pure-blood African DNA. That they arrived in their various tribes over some 45,000+ years before Sahul separated from Malaysia and Australia separated from New Guinea is an amazing feat of human resilience and venture.
But, now, those identifying as aboriginal are – just like most of us – a mix-and-match batch of racial identities under the umbrella title of Homo sapiens (aka mankind). To identify as belonging to only one caste of your ancestry is appallingly disrespectful to all the other allelic influences on your DNA from other ancestry that make up who you are.
Much simpler, surely, to just be proud of being an Australian that comes with the right to vote for what you want and who you want to deliver this under the one flag. That is all the ‘voice’ we need.
2 October, 2022
Billions spent on housing affordability are making it worse: Productivity Commission
Eliminating legal barriers to home building and real estate investment generally is the only way to make adequate housing generally available. The basic problem is a shortage of housing and government regulations are the cause of that shortage
Federal folly is mentioned below but all levels of government are obstructive. Local governments, with their zoning regulations and reluctance to approve land subdivision, prevent new building and State governments do their best to discourage provision of rental accomodation by making life difficult for landlords
Sixteen billion dollars a year in government housing assistance could be better targeted, while nearly $3 billion spent helping first home buyers works against improving affordability, a Productivity Commission review has found.
Governments should commit to targets for new housing supply, improve Commonwealth Rent Assistance and address shortcomings in social housing, the review of the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement, released on Friday, recommended.
Productivity Commissioner Malcolm Roberts said the agreement, set up in 2018 to fund state and territory governments to improve access to housing, was ineffective.
“It does not foster collaboration between governments or hold governments to account,” Roberts said. “It is a funding contract, not a blueprint for reform.”
The report laid bare the housing affordability challenge for renters on low incomes who may not be in a position to buy a home, even with the help of government programs.
About two-thirds of low-income households spent more than 30 per cent of their income on rent in 2022. Another 20 per cent spend over half of their income on rent.
Many are left with little to spend on necessities, as about a fifth of low-income households have less than $250 left after paying their weekly rent.
Rates of rent stress are high for many recipients of Commonwealth Rent Assistance. More than eight in 10 households who receive rent assistance and either Austudy, Youth Allowance for students or JobSeeker are spending at least 30 per cent of their income on rent.
“Over the life of the NHHA, housing affordability has deteriorated for many people, especially people renting in the private market,” Roberts said. “The median low-income renter spends over a third (36 per cent) of their income on rent.”
Economists have long called for increased rent assistance, and the pressure is felt by homelessness services and social housing providers who are fielding more requests for help as rents rise.
The pandemic hit the property market, pushing up rents in regional areas when city dwellers made a tree or sea change, leaving local workers unable to find affordable rentals. New household formation has also increased rental demand in major cities.
Roberts said a new approach was needed to help those most in need into an affordable home.
“A two-track approach is needed to ease the pressure on low-income renters – the capacity for low-income renters to pay for housing needs to be improved and constraints on new housing supply need to be removed,” he said.
The $5.3 billion Commonwealth Rent Assistance program should be reviewed to improve its adequacy and targeting, the report found.
Fellow Productivity Commissioner Romlie Mokak said the safety net of homelessness services and social housing should be improved.
The report also called for a focus on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander housing.
“More support is needed for homelessness prevention and early intervention programs. As governments invest more in social housing, they should also test more flexible and timely ways to assist people,” Mokak said.
The report called on state and territory governments to commit to targets for new housing supply and accelerate planning reform.
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Youth crime surges in Qld as incompetence reigns in government
Deputy Premier Steven Miles has reassured the good people of Queensland that his government has spent loads of money on curbing youth crime.
Gee, I feel so much better, don’t you?
The impact of these vast sums – our taxes – is obvious when you look at the state of juvenile crime. It’s worse. Thanks for nothing, team Palaszczuk.
Following the latest tragedy – on Monday a 59-year-old man died after a crash involving an allegedly stolen car in Brisbane’s east – Miles attempted to spruik the government’s action on youth crime.
“We have seen consistent and significant investment into increasing our juvenile justice system and supporting our police,” he told a Tuesday press conference.
“The bulk of youth offenders do not reoffend so the system is effective with those offenders. “We will continue to take the advice of our police to address reoffending.”
I call BS on that.
In February last year Miles said he was seriously considering beefing up laws that deal with juveniles. Here we are, 20 months later, still waiting for the results of his earnest deliberations.
What Miles conveniently left out of his spin is that the 10 per cent of youth deemed chronic offenders commit one-third of all crimes recorded by the cohort.
The 2021 Youth Offending review by the Queensland Government Statistician’s Office also notes juveniles “average more offences during the year than their adult counterparts”. If Miles and his mob actually listened to frontline police, they’d know officers do not, in fact, feel supported by the justice system.
They feel constantly let down by weak court rulings which see them collaring the same kids over and over again.
The senseless death this week of Michael Warburton adds to a damning statistic that even this government – as intent it is on obfuscating the truth and avoiding scrutiny – can’t ignore.
In less than two years, five Queenslanders have died after being the victim of a crash involving juveniles in allegedly stolen vehicles. How many more lives must be lost?
Mr Warburton – a beloved husband and father described as “a rare gem of a bloke who was always there to help anyone” – joins Jennifer Board, Matthew Field, Kate Leadbetter and their unborn child as the state’s most recent fatal victims.
Two teens, aged 15 and 16, have been charged over the crash which caused Mr Warburton’s death, while two other 15-year-olds have been charged with unlawful use of a motor vehicle.
The alleged driver has also been charged with burglary, unlicensed driving and failure to remain at the scene of
a crash.
In February 2021 – pushed by public fury over the deaths of Matthew Field, Kate Leadbetter and their baby – the government promised to look into a “number of options”.
It set up a Youth Justice Taskforce (because we need more committees) and made absurd amendments to the relevant act.
These being that an offender who reoffends while on bail must “show cause” as to why they should get bail again; and that bail can be granted after seeking the support of a parent.
Presumably, these are the same hopeless parents to whom Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk referred after her over-hyped State of the State address on Wednesday.
She said parents needed to take more responsibility for their children. Don’t hold your breath.
The government also trialled, poorly, the use of GPS trackers on offenders aged 16 and over. The trial was meant to last for 12 months but didn’t, and only six kids were fitted with the devices.
When quizzed in May, Youth Justice Minister Leanne Linard refused to discuss the efficacy of the trial, instead throwing forward to an independent review being finalised by former police commissioner Bob Atkinson (who proposed the idea of trackers in 2018 but why rush?).
Well now that review is complete. However, in keeping with the Palaszczuk government’s pitiful record on transparency, it refuses to make it public. No guesses as to why.
Queenslanders are dying, their loved ones left traumatised, and our taxes are being frittered away by a bunch of incompetents while juvenile criminals have the last laugh.
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Controversial $6.5b Burrup fertiliser plant to get green light by the end of the year
A gas-fed fertiliser plant on the Burrup Peninsula opposed by campaigners for the preservation of ancient rock engravings will likely be fully financed and go ahead by the end of the year after the federal government lent $220 million towards construction costs.
The US$4.2 billion ($6.5 billion) Perdaman urea plant that will process gas from Woodside’s Scarborough project will receive the funds from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility that has already lent the WA government $255 million to improve port and water facilities for the project.
Perdaman chair Vikas Rambal said the project won federal support because it offered local manufacturing of a commodity vital for Australian farmers.
“In four to eight weeks we should get financing done,” he said, with project approval expected before the end of the year and production beginning four years later.
Construction will require 2500 workers at its peak in the Pilbara where labour supply is already tight and Woodside is expanding its nearby Pluto LNG plant, which will need a similar number of workers.
Financing is likely to be a mix of debt and equity investment for the project that is currently wholly owned by the Rambal family’s private company Perdaman.
Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Madeleine King said Australia currently imported around 2.4 million tonnes a year of urea for agricultural use.
“The Perdaman project will have the capacity to reduce imported volumes and secure local farmers’ access to fertiliser,” she said.
When asked if the financing had any conditions to supply to the local market NAIF chief executive Craig Doyle said he “anticipated that a material portion of the urea produced will go to the Australian market.”
Higher gas prices due to limited supply from Russia after its invasion of Ukraine have caused global fertiliser prices to rise significantly.
Urea provides 40 per cent of Australia’s fertiliser needs according to Incitec Pivot, which agreed to buy all the plant’s output for 20 years.
The ASX-listed fertiliser and explosive manufacturer in September told investors that the plant’s large-scale cost-competitive supply would allow it to target new markets in Australia and overseas.
The Burrup Peninsula, called Murujaga by traditional owners, is home to more than one million rock engravings that are up to 40,000 years old.
Perdaman’s plant is opposed by some traditional custodians who object to the relocation of rock art for construction and the plant’s emissions that would add to the industrial pollution in the area that some scientists conclude is damaging the art.
Two weeks ago environment minister Tanya Plibersek under section 10 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act appointed an independent consultant to determine if the Murujuga engravings were under threat.
Murujuga traditional custodian Raelene Cooper said the NAIF funding was a bailout from the federal government aimed to reassure investors who are spooked about supporting a project that will remove sacred Murujuga rock art over the objections of Elders.
“The government propping up this toxic project when they have just commissioned a full cultural heritage assessment of all industry on the Burrup,” she said.
“A government that claims to support an Indigenous Voice is still refusing to listen to First Nations communities on the front line of this crisis.”
Rambal said he was not worried about the Section 10 report as the Perdaman plant was environmentally friendly with the latest technology.
The plant will initially emit 650,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases a year.
The WA government has required a gradual reduction in emissions to zero by 2050
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The Australian legal system is not impartial
By backing in the worst extremes of climate hysteria, Australian courts – and our justice system in general – are increasingly in danger of losing their perceived legitimacy.
This week, many Australians would be shaking their heads at the New South Wales Local Court’s decision to dismiss charges against a climate protester charged with illegally blockading the Sydney Harbour Tunnel.
Blockade Australia activist Mali Cooper allegedly locked her head to her car’s steering wheel in June, while angry motorists yelled at her through her window and traffic backed up for several kilometres. According to Cooper’s lawyers, all charges have been dropped on the basis that she was found to be experiencing ‘climate change-induced anxiety’ that developed into flood-induced PTSD.
It is not the first time that Australian courts have invoked the so-called ‘climate emergency’. Perhaps the most high-profile finding we’ve seen recently is that of Federal Court Judge Mordecai Bromberg against then-Environment Minister Sussan Ley in relation to an application to extend the Vickery Coal Project in northern NSW.
Responding to an application by eight children to have the mining project scuttled, Bromberg held that Ley had a ‘duty of care owed to the children’ to prevent climate-related injury as a result of the mine’s approval. The decision was subsequently overturned.
As a more general theme, international and domestic courts may be seen as being increasingly open to second-guessing the decisions of elected leaders on the most tenuous of grounds, so long as ‘climate change’ is invoked. Following the recent passage of the Albanese government’s feted Climate Change Act, we can only expect the problem to get worse. With the government’s ‘ambitious’ carbon abatement targets enshrined in legislation for the first time, recalcitrant judges will have much greater scope to interfere with ministerial decisions in the name of ‘meeting our climate obligations’.
In contrast to the apparent sympathy towards the disruption by climate protesters, the judiciary has taken a much harder line on objectors to Australia’s heavy-handed management of Covid. While Mali Cooper has been acquitted after three months, Zoe Buhler spent two years in legal limbo following her arrest over a Facebook post promoting a peaceful anti-lockdown protest in Ballarat. Buhler’s charges were dropped as well, but in her case the unacceptably long wait for justice meant that the process itself felt like a punishment.
Out of the many legal challenges launched against the extraordinarily punitive measures imposed in the name of the coronavirus, few – if any – were upheld in court.
While some people may see the merit in interfering with a mining project that would amount to a tiny percentage of Australia’s tiny percentage of global greenhouse gas emissions, there is not a lot of judicial activism regarding the fundamental trashing of legal rights in the most egregious of ways during Covid.
The most nefarious element to a pattern of judgments across Australia is that our courts appear to be picking and choosing which protests are valid and which are not. And the phenomenon is not just happening in the courts, either. Consider the fact that Victoria Police, for example, took a knee at the ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests in Melbourne in 2020, but responded to anti-lockdown protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets. Both protests were ‘illegal’ under Covid regulations, yet only one was suppressed with bloody and brutal force.
If such obvious double standards continue, the faith of the public in our legal system will be badly damaged, perhaps irreparably. The role of judges is not to be popular, but they should at least be consistent.
Above all, our courts should protect the rule of law. At the very least, this requires them to be seen as being impartial, not at the mercy of political fads like climate change.
Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Australians will get to have their say on whether they want a republic, as the Albanese government makes plans to tour the nation to discuss the possible referendum.
Assistant Minister for the Republic Matt Thistlethwaite will be meeting with multicultural representatives in Townsville on Tuesday and speaking with Australians about their thoughts on splitting away from the monarchy.
He has previously emphasised that Australia is “no longer a British nation”.
Australia last voted against becoming a republic in 1999 after the majority said they wished to stay under British rule.
While the official listening tour doesn’t begin until early 2023, Mr Thistlethwaite’s office told NCA NewsWire the minister would be starting the conversation early by speaking with a multicultural support group in Townsville on Tuesday.
Representatives from the Indian community, the Townsville Islamic Society, the Central African Republic Association and members from the Ukrainian community are expected to share their thoughts on the referendum.
Speaking at a republic event in Melbourne on October 12, Mr Thistlethwaite said it was time for Australians to consider their options when it came to Australia being a republic.
“We are no longer a British nation,” Mr Thistlewaite said.
“We should reflect our unique culture, our unique identify by finally having one of our own as our head of state to represent who we are in modern day Australia.
“We are out of practice when it comes to constitutional reform and it is a long journey that we are now taking.
“The Australia of modern today is a very, very different nation. “We are a multicultural nation, either 50 per cent of Australians are either born overseas or have a parent overseas.
“We are a nation that is economically linked to the Asia-Pacific region.
“We get our security relationship through ANZUS Alliance with the United States and New Zealand.”
Speaking with the Sydney Morning Herald on October 30, Mr Thistlethwaite said he wanted to speak to people who were unsure which way they’d vote if a referendum was called in the future.
The government has flagged it will work towards launching a republic referendum should it win the next election.
“We’re on a journey to maturing and becoming independent,” Mr Thistlethwaite said.
“The first step is a Voice to Parliament … and the second is an Australian head of state. I’m doing the legwork and work behind the scenes to make sure that second step is a success.
“This consultation is part of that.
“I don’t want to hear from people who are republicans. I want to hear from Australians who are undecided or voted no in 1999, and I want to hear the reason they voted no and what arguments will help them get them across the line.”
Australian Monarchist League chairman Eric Abetz told ABC Newson Monday that the listening tour was a “con”.
“This is not a consultation, but a con to the Australian people,” the former Coalition senator said.
“What he’s doing is using Australian taxpayer resources to fund a three-year campaign to try to promote to the Australian people something they don’t want or need.
“The democracy that we have in Australia works exceptionally well. Indeed, in the democracy index of the world, of the top five democracies, four of them are constitutional monarchies. I think that speaks for itself as to how well constitutional monarchies operate.”
The Attorney-General’s Department is expected to run the consultation.
https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/royals/no-longer-a-british-nation-five-words-signal-major-change-in-australia/news-story/46a285cdfe45689edc4d50bc1d1a14aa
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30 October, 2022
Mayor leads push to bring back Queenslander-style homes in flood-prone regions
Traditional Queensland timber homes are very prestigious in Brisbane. I live in one. Vast sums are being spent by their owners to renovate them. Building new ones is a problem, however. They were built when timber was cheap. It is no longer. New ones would cost a bomb
Homes on stumps – such as the traditional Queenslander-style house – would be built in place of concrete-slab developments under a push from local government to boost flood resilience.
Townsville City Council – led by Mayor Jenny Hill – is calling for local governments to have more powers to block slab-on-ground developments in high-risk flood zones.
Fellow councils have backed the move, with a motion passing at a recent Local Government Association of Queensland conference calling for the state government to introduce law changes.
“When you looked at Townsville, in a lot of the older areas, people built on stilts,” Ms Hill said.
“And when we went through some of the flooded areas in 2019, a lot of people who were in highset homes that particularly hadn’t built in underneath were able to stay in place for the few days required until the water levels got down.”
Deputy Premier and Planning Minister Steven Miles said councils had existing powers to stop development in flood areas, but he was open to ideas on how to bolster them.
Ms Hill said the “Queenslander” home was a great example of what could be built instead of slabs – pointing out that they were constructed on stumps with water able to flow through. She also suggested building codes needed to change to ensure homes could be built in a certain way.
The motion that passed the LGAQ conference called on the state to make law changes to allow councils to prevent slab-on-ground developments in areas where “sufficiently detailed mapping” showed there was a high flood risk.
Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner said his council asked for proposed housing developments in flood-prone areas to be lifted as part of their planning rules.
“But I guess this particular LGAQ motion points out … there is very little prohibited development in Queensland,” Mr Schrinner said.
“By prohibiting certain types of things in the planning scheme, it gives councils more power when it comes to unacceptable development outcomes.
“People have, I think, over time, lost the reason why the ‘Queenslander’ house was the ‘Queenslander’ house. “It was designed for our climate, for our challenges, for flood-prone areas – and that’s why ‘Queenslanders’ were on stilts effectively, and not on a slab on the ground.”
Mr Miles said that local councils, through their planning schemes, were already able to set minimum floor levels or ensure that development did not occur in flood areas.
“That said, I’ll always consider feedback from councils and will ask my department to look at ways this can be streamlined,” Mr Miles said.
“We’re also working to make our communities more resilient to flooding.
“For example, following flooding across (the) southeast earlier this year, the $741m Resilient Homes Fund includes retrofitting or raising single-storey existing housing.
https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/mayor-leads-push-to-bring-back-queenslanderstyle-homes-in-floodprone-regions/news-story/75372dca4e9f09318cf05682e73b516f
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Petticoat tyrants running faculty recruitment in Australin universities
Males need not apply for many university teaching jobs
ANU is not alone with its women-only recruiting. Swarms of other universities are at it too. Australia’s 40-year legal progress towards equal opportunity for males and females is white-anted by these progressive academics (the same ones who aren’t sure who’s a woman in the first place). Their flimsy rationale is to level up the sex ratios in their fields.
Males need not apply for many university teaching jobs
ANU is not alone with its women-only recruiting. Swarms of other universities are at it too. Australia’s 40-year legal progress towards equal opportunity for males and females is white-anted by these progressive academics (the same ones who aren’t sure who’s a woman in the first place). Their flimsy rationale is to level up the sex ratios in their fields.
How successful are the women-only ads at hoovering up qualified women? Not very, apparently.
In November, the RMIT node [2] of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems provided feedback from its “women-only recruitment round”. This involved 13 women-only jobs and two “First Nations” slots (any gender). Maybe “First Nations” males in academia count as honorary females. Using the insane leftist jargon now blanketing academia, Chief Operations Officer Dr Mary Gray began by announcing how
“Patriarchy and racism are systems that exclude women, people of colour, and those living with disability from accessing the full benefits of the post-industrialised workforce.”
I feel sorry for Dr Gray because her centre rashly set a target of 40 per cent woman researchers by 2026 and now “we are being held accountable to this target by the Australian Research Council.”
Her recruitment exercise included beating away pathetic male optical physicists and engineers, many of whom — desperate for consideration — insisted on applying anyway. Qualified women hung back, needing strokes and reassurance, forcing the recruiters into what Dr Gray called “dozens and dozens of conversations.” In the end they got 311 applicants and filled a meagre five positions with women (37.5% of the advertised jobs). “We consider this an outstanding achievement, especially in the context of 2020!” she wrote, referring to covid issues.
Their attempt to fill an Aboriginal-only optics job at ANU was aborted as just too hard. I guess Aborigines with transformative meta-optical expertise aren’t all that thick on the ground, even in Canberra let alone Wadeye. Dr Gray says that on the challenge of recruiting women
"We appear to be in a position of an ugly compromise between delivering on our scientific objectives and building our diverse workforce. Globally there are enough women, with the right expertise to fill every single postdoctoral position in our Centre! However, Australia has been one of the world’s most locked-down countries globally and, in our disciplines, we are reliant on the international job market. Effectively, the pandemic has reduced the flow of new postdoctoral students and researchers into Australia to a trickle and competition is fierce to obtain women researchers.
The competition is excellent for women, which we applaud … In practice, we have struggled to stick to our gender target in 2021. We must keep proving that it doesn’t have to be research goals versus diversity goals. The big picture objectives of building a diverse workforce for research excellence and the creation of transformative technologies in meta-optics is paramount. Integrity, accountability, and taking steps forward to recruit more women when international travel resumes is a priority for 2022 and 2023."
All this women-only monopolisation might be lawful, but it doesn’t pass the pub test. The legislative loophole was designed, according to the Human Rights Commission, for helping groups “who face, or have faced, entrenched discrimination so they can have similar access to opportunities as others in the community.” ANU-wise, there aren’t a lot of women, women-identifiers and LGBTQIA+s with space-optic ambitions now sleeping rough in Petrie Plaza after being cruelly knocked back for space jobs. Probably young women just don’t care about space-optics, and gravitate instead to school-teaching, law, health careers or Virgilian poetics.
There’s no university push to encourage males into female-dominated sectors, let alone go the whole hog and offer male-only student admissions and male-only faculty positions. More on that aspect shortly.
You might be wondering how the female-only ads square with equal opportunity – considering that they give males zero opportunity. Well, all the various Acts have permitted exemptions or “special measures”, originally intended for women’s refuge staffers or corsetiers and the like. They were uncontroversial despite their broad wording.
For example, the Federal Sex Discrimination Act has a get-out clause (7D) saying an employer “may take special measures for the purpose of achieving substantive equality between men and women” and between, for example, “women who are breastfeeding and people who are not breastfeeding.” [Disclosure of interest: I am among the “people who are not breastfeeding”].
The Victorian Act equivalent, similarly, says (S12) “special measures” are “for the purpose of promoting or realising substantive equality for members of a group with a particular attribute.”
From 2015 the universities began using the loophole for their women-only ads. Initially, there were doubts in legal circles that they’d get away with it. Employers in Victoria invoking the “special measures” in effect got a letter of comfort from Victoria’s Equal (sic) Opportunity and Human [i.e. Female] Rights Commission as follows:
“A university may identify an inequality – that women are under-represented in its academic workforce within a particular faculty. The causes of the under-representation may include a lack of female candidates for positions, a lack of female academic staff to act as role models, unconscious bias in recruitment practices or other societal and organisational-specific factors.”
The Australian Human Rights Commission defined “identified positions” , e.g. for women only, as helping “people who experience disadvantage to access equal opportunity in employment.” In fact, a woman associate professor ensconced in a useless gender studies department suffers no disadvantage over not being in a STEM area. The women-only push is coming from employers who feel disadvantaged by having too many blokes around. No bragging rights there. The Victorian commission in a case study actually rules out a co-ed high school offering an academic scholarship for girls under 14, on the basis that such girls don’t have any disadvantage and the school is really just doing a marketing exercise to attract girl students.[3]
Note that the Victorian HR Commission has shown no interest that in Victoria in 2019, male students were only 24% in university school-education courses (27% nationally), 27% in health (26%), and 31% in “Society and Culture” (34%), according to data from the federal Department of Education. In the hot-button field of “natural and physical sciences”, women students are well represented nationally at 51%. Conversely, they’re slightly under-represented in management/commerce (46%) and architecture (41%), and greatly under-represented in IT (19%), and engineering (18%).
Overall, universities have become bastions for female students. For domestic (non-overseas) undergrad and post-grad students (total 1.086m in 2019), the ratio is 59% females to 41% males. Yet universities continue to cosset female students with “women’s centres” and other privileges not offered to males.
In pre-school teaching, males nationally comprise a near-invisible 2% versus females’ 98%, according to last year’s census.[4]
WA sports a mere 27 men pre-school teachers vs 3507 women; NSW and Victoria combined muster a mere 448 men pre-school teachers vs 16,768 women. Not much of that oh-so-necessary “diversity and inclusion” there. But imagine the clamour from feminists if a pre-school tried to correct these gross imbalances via “men-only” recruitment ads. Indeed, men seeking pre-school and primary teaching roles would have a valid case of discrimination, given the general unfounded fear that they might sexually abuse children. (Another reason they’re opting out is that the only other male employee is often just the gardener). In school teaching, the lack of male teachers is not only concerning but deteriorates annually. Overall, males have slipped in 50 years from 41.3% to barely 28%. ABS 2021 data show that male primary teachers were 20.2% in 2006, decreasing annually to a mere 18.0% last year. In secondary teaching, males have slipped from 43.4% in 2006 to 38.8% last year.
Universities advertising for women-only and gender-diverse-only positions will soon be the new normal. Move along, nothing to see here. You “cis males” can just suck it up. The petticoat tyrants are on the march!
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/the-universities/2022/10/take-your-xy-chromosomes-and-begone/
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Why an Australian woman does NOT want transgenders competing against biological females who are being 'sacrificed on the altar of woke'
Popular YouTube right-wing pundit Sydney Watson says allowing gender transitioned women who have gone through male puberty to compete in female sports is 'crazy'.
Popular YouTube right-wing pundit Sydney Watson says allowing gender transitioned women who have gone through male puberty to compete in female sports is 'crazy'.
The Melbourne-raised commentator, who has nearly 800,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel, said female athletes are being sacrificed 'on the altar of woke' by having to compete with biological men.
Ms Watson, who is visiting family in Australia but has lived in the US since 2019, says that she will calls a trans person by their preferred pronoun but won't pretend they are something they are not.
'I think it's pretty simple, I think there are two sexes male and female,' she told Daily Mail Australia. 'Are trans women women? No,' she said.
'There's an inescapable biological reality that I am not going to deny simply because it makes them feel better. 'We have understood that men and women are fundamentally different for hundreds and hundreds of years. 'They are different, we are different.
'The fact we deny this in order to appease a very, very small portion of the population and an even smaller proportion of the population who can afford it (to transition) is crazy.
The 29-year-old said she 'feels' for trans women who can't compete in their sport because 'they don't neatly fit into either category anymore' but that did not make them women.
'You have these biological men, who go through a male puberty and people will not admit this and I do not know why,' she said. 'It is so crazy to me.
'I realise it is an evolving topic and it is not easy to deal with but I don't think that sacrificing women on the altar of woke is the way to go.'
She pointed to the examples of trans New Zealand weight lifter Laurel Hubbard, who was the first Kiwi to win international weight-lifting competitions, and US trans swimmer Lia Thomas, who won a national college title in March.
'For these and other people to absolutely smash their female competitors it is just so regressive,' Ms Watson said.
'They think that's somehow being positive for women and then to post their names and say they are woman of athlete of the year - you're not a woman.'
Ms Watson said she had no issue with people transitioning and would use the pronouns that people requested or best fit their appearance.
'If you are adult and you are making your own choices and it doesn't affect me and I don't have to pay for it and you want me to call you a male or female, he or she, man or woman I will do that for you,' she said.
'But I am not going to say "hey guy, you can participate in female sports if you have gone through male puberty and transitioned after the fact".
'I am not going to say "hey you male, who is completely intact but now identifies as a woman, come into my changerooms".'
Ms Watson argued that such trans behaviour was actually 'the erasure of women'.
She also thinks that, paradoxically, gender preconceptions are being reinforced by the trans activists.
'In this quest to dismantle stereotypes the regressive left and the trans rights activist movement have actually enforced their stereotypes,' she said.
'So, if a girl like Tonka trucks, the colour blue, wears baseball caps and plays sports there is a cohort of parents who say "my kid is trans" rather than "hey, my kid really likes that stuff and I am just going to let her do it because it is what she likes".'
Ms Watson described herself as a utilitarian that wants 'things to make sense'.
'Let's say you have a transgender sports person who is devastated because they love their sport and they can't really play anymore because they have transitioned and they are on hormones it has shifted the game for them,' she said.
'I think we can have compassion for people who don't feel comfortable in their skin, however there is a bigger mental issue at play.
'What these (trans) advocates are advocating for is affecting kids, it's affecting women. it's putting women in danger in some cases it's harming others and I just think why do their interests supersede the rest of the population.'
Ms Watson said that it was important to keep trans issues in perspective.
'I think the fact that the transexual conversation dominates every area of life and we are expected to walk on eggshells around these people to me is not appropriate,' she said.
'The vast majority of the population does not participate in this and you can sympathise and have empathy but letting them dictate the way we live our lives the language that we use I don't think that is OK.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11334877/Sydney-Watson-decries-trans-women-female-sports-saying-biological-men.html
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Rogue insurers
She was in a bad way when I first spoke to her. “I’m frightened of everything”, she said, crying.
She was in a bad way when I first spoke to her. “I’m frightened of everything”, she said, crying.
Linda and her husband, Harry, are in their eighties. Two years ago a violent storm sent a huge tree crashing through the roof of their home. Luckily they were unhurt, yet their home was unliveable.
Thankfully, for years they’d diligently paid their home insurance. Even better, it was ‘replacement cover’, which entitled them to a new roof. Or at least it should have.
Instead, the insurance company offered the elderly pensioners a cash settlement. The first offer was for $80,000.
When they rejected it, the insurance company came back with $120,000. They still rejected it. You see, they didn’t want the money – they wanted the insurance company to fix their bloody roof! Yet when they rejected that offer, they were basically put on the bottom of the pile, and ignored.
A few months later Linda tragically lost Harry, the love of her life and her protector. And so for the past 18 months she’s been living alone in temporary accommodation.
“All I want is to move back into my home and feel like I’m around my husband”, she sobbed.
Now generally I like to approach my financial counselling work with a collaborative mindset. Yet this time, the sage advice of my mate Darren (an old chestnut farmer) was ringing in my ears:
“Look, everyone throws around some fertiliser, so you should be gentle most of the time. Yet every now and again you just need to pull out your pruning shears and cut off some nuts.”
So, with pruning shears in hand, I called up the insurance company and started negotiating. Hard.
When it went up the chain, they realised very quickly how badly they’d screwed this one up. And then we waited.
And then they came back with an offer. But this time it wasn’t $120,000 …
It was $370,000 (it turns out it was indeed a total structural write-off). Plus an extra $50,000 for being total jerks.
https://www.couriermail.com.au/business/victoria-business/scott-papes-advice-for-a-reader-tempted-to-pour-money-into-silver/news-story/1197370b15bcac3b6cc7be44dd61b228
28 October, 2022
Cheap renewables, rising power bills?
James Macpherson
I cannot work out which is more incredible – the claims this government makes, or the fact that this government expects Australians to believe their claims.
Labor continually promises to reduce cost of living while increasing the cost of living.
Their strategy to lower prices is to increase prices.
If I could afford to laugh, I would.
Renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy, the Prime Minister chants zombie-like, as prices rise in direct proportion to his use of renewable energy.
I swear, every time he utters the words ‘renewable energy’, my power bill goes up.
Australians are caught in a kind of twilight zone where we are continually told to expect cheaper power while continually told to expect more expensive power.
Oh, but don’t worry, you’ll still get that promised $275 cut to your power bill. It’s just that your power bill will have gone up by a couple of thousand dollars before Labor cut it by a couple of hundred dollars.
The Prime Minister will then claim, with a straight face, that he has saved us money. And my teenage son worries that he is the one struggling with math!
This is a government that believes it can keep global temperatures in check when it can’t even keep a $275 promise to struggling families in the suburbs.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers explained today that the delay in providing the promised cut was due to a flaw in the modelling. ‘That model was done in 2021, and it referred to an outcome in 2025,’ he said.
But don’t worry, the government’s modelling about how taxing cow farts will stop the warming of the planet and the rising of the oceans is totally legit!
This Labor government insists that renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy, or at least it will be, just as soon as they spend another $10 billion of your money here, and another $10 billion there.
How much will it cost taxpayers to end up with cheap power? The answer is always the same. Just a little bit more.
If you believe the government’s obsession with intermittent energy will deliver cheap power, you have the one prerequisite necessary to do energy minister Chris Bowen’s job – wishful thinking.
Expect him to provide a unicorn with your next power bill.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/10/cheap-renewables-rising-power-bills/
***************************************************The perverse obsession of BHP with environmental correctnes
It’s known as ‘The Big Australian’, but is BHP really just the ‘Lucky Company’; the corporate version of Donald Horne’s 1964 book describing Australia as ‘a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck’?
BHP has been rescued from its China-prompted iron ore doldrums by soaring prices for fossil fuels due to the Ukraine war’s energy crisis, with the hated coal providing the largest slice of BHP’s 2021-22 record profit. This is despite its woke board’s faithful adherence, in both word and deed, to the anti-CO2 dogma that has exacerbated this Western-world crisis (while authoritarian states like Russia and China wallow in mounting emissions) by the premature shut-down of power stations, the blocking of investment in base-load energy and the construction of bureaucratic and legal obstacles to fossil fuel developments.
BHP’s enthusiastic embrace of the gospel according to Saint Greta has led it, among many other errors, to what the Australian Financial Review last week classified as ‘the worst deal of the year’ where, in order to demonstrate its climate purity, it sold its interest in a coal mine in Columbia for what the AFR describes as ‘virtually nothing’ to Glencore – which this year expects to collect earnings from it of about $US4 billion. As London’s Investors’ Chronicle, with traditional under-statement, noted: ‘Recent deals mean that BHP has not fully enjoyed the bull market for coal’, observing that it also got rid of its 80 per cent stake in BMC, the joint Queensland venture with Mitsui, whose full-year earnings approached $US2 billion. At this rate, it will not take long for the Indonesian-controlled purchaser, Stanmore Resources to pay off, out of earnings, the modest $1.8 billion it cost.
In the same climate cause, BHP tried desperately for years to get rid of its NSW energy coal mines, but, in the absence of adequate bids, was forced to keep them open. The result has been a welcome boost to BHP group earnings in the 2021-22 financial year of a record $2 billion as the average prices received of $US217 a tonne provided a huge profit over costs of only $US71. Principles are one thing; money in the bank is another. So not only will BHP retain these energy coal assets until their licences expire in 2026, relevant approvals are being sought to extend their life to 2030.
On top of all this fiscal self-harm (and unsuccessful attempts at it) BHP also took the major anti-fossil-fuel step of ridding itself of its oil and gas assets in a $41 billion deal with Woodside that saw their ownership effectively transferred from BHP to entitled BHP shareholders via the gift of Woodside shares. In keeping with BHP’s past form, its former assets participated in a record profit as Woodside’s doubling of production from the acquisition of BHP’s assets and a doubling of LNG prices enabled revenue for 2022’s September quarter to soar by 272 per cent to $9.3 billion.
But these ‘lost’ revenues do not involve any destruction of shareholders’ funds as did BHP’s last major deal, the onshore US oil and gas shale venture into which it ploughed upwards of $50 billion since acquisition in 2011 before selling out for $15 billion four years ago. BHP’s previous big US investment, in copper, was also a financial disaster. That is why ‘caution’ is the key word when BHP, now flush with funds, is in acquisition mode. It has just made a rejected $8.4 billion bid for OZ Minerals in its search to expand its interests in the commodities set to benefit from a low-carbon future, like copper and lithium.
Unsurprisingly, and despite BHP’s disposal of much of its fossil-fuel assets, there are concerns about BHP’s status in ESG portfolios as long as coal remains its major single earner. And despite BHP’s continual obsequious observance of climate purity, the true believers are unimpressed by BHP’s bountiful returns from coal, with the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility critical not only of BHP’s current coal profits but also its progressing of a number of new coal mines and expansions in its Queensland joint venture with Mitsubishi, ‘including pursuit of a staggering 90-year licence for the Blackwater South mine’.
Whether these will proceed is far from certain. Even though CEO Mike Henry told investment analysts last month that while he sees ‘lots of opportunity yet to be unlocked in the coal business,… BHP will not be deploying any major capital into the Queensland coal business in the face of the recent royalty changes [by the Queensland government] and the way they were gone about….We are building a range of options…Queensland is not going to be at the front of the queue’.
The ACCR also questions BHP’s ‘good faith with regard to the urgent need to decarbonise the steel sector’, following BHP’s stated view that, despite the push for hydrogen processing, ‘blast furnace iron making, which depends on coke made from metallurgical coal, is unlikely to be displaced at scale by emergent technologies this half century’.
Nevertheless, the metallurgical-grade coal export industry faces a difficult and uncertain period ahead, with international economic and political problems. In addition, BHP claims ‘The regulatory environment has become less conducive to long-life capital investment in Queensland coal’ (the world’s premier source) even though ‘the advantages of highest quality coking coals with respect to greenhouse gas emissions will be increasingly apparent as carbon pricing becomes more pervasive’.
So what sort of company will the Big Australian become if it does replace its financially rewarding coal with any of its range of options? Potash in Canada is its current big-ticket punt. Bloomberg speculated earlier this year that, after sitting dormant for more than a decade (presumably waiting for burnt fingers to heal) BHP is positioning itself for a return to large-scale mergers and acquisitions.
But rather than mining the market in a search for financial jewels, how about looking at upgrading its bulk commodities into products – and transforming the Lucky Company into the Clever one. With ESG now more important than profit to BHP, why not?
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/business-robbery-etc-103/
*****************************************************Just when you thought energy plans couldn’t get any worse ... Dan Andrews horns in
Judith Sloan
Last week I wrote about the tipping point that the National Electricity Market is facing. Beset by the early withdrawal of coal-fired plants, which still supply between 60 and 70 per cent of all the required electrons, there is a very real danger that the system will collapse without the required firming/dispatchable capacity. The best-case scenario is much higher prices and intermittent blackouts and brownouts, hardship for many consumers and the closure of energy-intensive businesses.
But I clearly spoke too soon because the announcements of Victorian Premier, Dan Andrews, in full election campaigning mode, made the dangers both more imminent and more serious. In his infinite wisdom – pause here for predictable chuckle – he has decided that he wants to recreate the state-owned State Electricity Commission which was broken up and sold off over 30 years ago, for seriously big bucks.
Now at the time, the SECV was a typical bloated bureaucracy whose operations included electricity generation, transmission and distribution, and retailing. Subject to frequent industrial action by the highly unionised workforce, it’s not clear that its demise was lamented by anyone with an interest in the delivery of efficient and affordable electricity in Victoria. Electricity prices fell significantly after the sale.
Towards the end of its existence, the SECV engaged in, or was forced to engage in, some dodgy dealings with the Cain/Kirner Labor government, including the raising of debt finance that was really just intended to cover the government’s daily expense needs. Those were the days.
But now Dan the Man has other ideas. He wants to resurrect the SECV, with the state government as majority owner and the other 49 per cent held by private interests. The intention is for the Victorian government to hand over $1 billion initially to the new organisation – which is peanuts, by the way, in this context. Mind you, given the heavy indebtedness of the Victorian government at the moment (over $160 billion), even another billion is a stretch.
As for the private partners, Dan has specified industry super funds as his preferred team mates. Evidently they have a social conscience and he thinks they will be interested in investing in renewable energy as well as delivering lower prices for Victorian consumers. Former federal treasurer, Wayne Swan – remember him, probably best to forget – who is now the ‘independent’ chair of one of the largest industry super funds, Cbus, was quick out of the blocks to endorse the idea.
But here’s the thing: superannuation funds are legally bound by a sole purpose test to maximise the retirement incomes of their members. There is nothing about having a social conscience, whatever that means. The very idea that a national industry super fund like Cbus would be interested in delivering lower electricity prices to Victorian consumers at the expense of investment returns should be quickly dismissed by all fund trustees.
This is yet another example of superannuation being used as a plaything by Labor governments. Albo and his team were initially very keen on the idea of industry super funds investing in social housing until it was pointed out to them that social housing involves below-market rents and is bound to make very low returns. It is interesting to note in this context that Homes Victoria, which manages Victoria’s social – once called public – housing stock, is completely broke and, by rights, should be declared insolvent.
Now apart from the thought-bubble of resurrecting the SECV, Dan thinks he’s on to a popular electoral pitch by upping the emissions-reduction targets of his state. He wants to legislate a cut of between 75 and 80 per cent by 2035 (from 2005) involving 95 per cent of electricity being generated in Victoria from renewable energy. And for good measure, the net-zero target will be brought forward to 2045.
You might think this is totally insane, but we must assume that the focus groups are telling his massive media department that this sort of ‘aggressive action against climate change’ still resonates with voters, particularly those in seats that might otherwise fall to the Greens or Teals. And while there have been some rises in electricity prices, they are small beer compared with what is to come.
Needless to say, all of Victoria’s coal-fired power plants will be closed by 2035, including the relatively new Long Yang A and Loy Yang B plants. In point of fact, these brown-coal-fired plants could prove extremely useful economically because brown coal is not a traded commodity and their principal input price is not affected by international events.
An economically rational option would be to keep them going and to buy offsets to accommodate them within an emissions-reduction framework. But ‘economically rational’ and ‘the Andrews’ government’, including the bungling energy minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, cannot be put into the one sentence.
Indeed, one of the most blatantly hypocritical decisions taken by any government has been the secret financial deal that the Victorian government has entered into with Energy Australia to pay the company to keep the brown-coal-fired Yallourn plant going until at least 2028. It is impossible to find out any details of the contract and the sum of monies involved. The suspicion is that the costs are being borne by taxpayers rather than electricity consumers.
When it came to the option of creating a capacity market for the broader NEM – the Yallourn deal is just a special capacity mechanism, after all – Victoria was loudest in its opposition, vetoing the use of any fossil fuels. At this stage, there is no prospect of a broader capacity market being introduced.
The hugely indebted Victorian government is also throwing money at the Marinus interconnector with Tasmania, notwithstanding the abundance of private investment money for regulated assets. It is also keen to rush the VNI-West Kerang link to New South Wales. Without being able to access electricity in greater licks from other states, even Andrews knows that Victoria is stuffed if his plans go ahead.
But just like you can’t hurry love, it’s impossible to hurry these large transmission projects, in part because of local objections and the need to obtain easements, but also because of shortages of materials and workers. Of course, Dan will be gone by the time the shit really hits the fan, probably chairing some industry super fund and meeting up with his wealthy mates.
The real tragedy however is the complete inability of the Victorian opposition to land a glove on him in the meantime.
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https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/uh-oh-dan-intervenes/
******************************************************The inconvenient truth about electric cars
Prices are going UP, not down -- largely because battery prices are going up too
Rising battery costs are pushing up the price of electric vehicles, dampening hopes that they could close the gap to petrol vehicles by the turn of the decade.
Experts had tipped that EVs would cost the same as their petrol equivalents by 2030 as battery production scales up and economies of scale kick in.
But rising raw material prices are driving up the cost of batteries, and most EV makers have hiked up prices in the past year.
This week, Hyundai’s luxury offshoot Genesis, launched its GV70 large electric SUV at a higher price than originally predicted. In May, the brand said the EV would be priced between $105,000 and $115,000 plus on-road costs, but that has blown out to $127,800, or about $138,500 drive-away.
The brand is not alone in hiking prices.
Tesla increased the price of its Model Y SUV by $3000 to $72,300 (before on-road costs) within days of launching it in June, while rivals the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6 have also had multiple price rises in the past few months.
The Kia EV6, which launched at the beginning of this year, has risen from $67,990 (before on-road costs) to $72,590 in October for the cheapest model.
Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 Techniq AWD variant cost $75,900 (before on-road costs) early this year before jumping $1600 in August and increasing a further $2000 in October. The October price rise coincided with an increase in the size of battery, driving range and motor power.
An industry executive said further price rises were likely because the increase in raw materials costs hadn’t yet flowed through.
Despite the price rises, Aussies are lining up to get their hands on the machines and waiting times extend well into next year.
Australia isn’t the only market afflicted with high EV prices. A recent report by automotive research experts, JATO, showed EV prices had risen sharply in Europe and the US in recent years.
The average price of an EV in the first half of this year was €55,821 in Europe ($A87,412) and €63,864 ($A100,000) in the US – up from €48,942 ($A76,403) and €53,038 ($82,797) in 2015.
The average retail price for an electric car in Europe is 27 per cent more than a petrol vehicle, while in the US it is 43 per cent more.
Car makers say the cost of raw materials is the cause.
Ford has raised the price of its F-Series electric pick-up twice since August. The cheapest model is now $US12,000 ($18,810) more expensive, while the Mustang EV costs up to $US8000 ($12,510) more. Ford blamed “ongoing supply-chain constraints, rising material costs and other market factors” for the price hikes.
The world’s largest electric vehicle battery maker, China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., reported a big surge in the price of its batteries.
A report in financial outlet Barron’s put the price per kWh of batteries at about $160, up from $150 earlier this year and $120 in 2021.
One of the major causes is the price of lithium, which is up 200 per cent in the past 12 months. The cost of the basket of materials that go into a battery is up about 62 per cent for the year.
Renault Group chief executive Luca de Meo told reporters at the Paris motor show last week that he didn’t believe electric and petrol cars would achieve price parity anytime soon.
He told Automotive News the industry had expected the price of batteries to drop to $100 a kWh three years ago.
He said raw materials made up 80 per cent of the battery cost, making it hard for carmakers to reduce costs.
He told Automotive News the company could come up with better battery chemistry and better power electronics, “but these gains would be erased when the price of cobalt doubles in just six months.”
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27 October, 2022
Another white "Aborigine" stirring up controversy
Blue eyes and all. This is just attention-seeking. Her aboriginality is essentially nil so she is not campaigning for anything that affects her personally.
The issue she is jumping onto is not totally unreasonable. The whole statue removal lark has the justification that we should separate ourselves from the values espoused by the person portrayed. And perhaps we should in the unlikely event that we are aware of it. But it is also removing us from our own history. History is not changed so lightly. We do well to remember it.
Most people's lives have good and bad in them. And the statues concerned could well be seen as a message about how unfortunate were the values of our comunal past. To add a plaque to statues telling of both the worthy deeds of the person plus the deplored ideas of their time would be a balanced approach to any issue involved. It would certainly be more constructive and potentially useful as education
An indigenous marriage celebrant wants a 'racist' statue of Australia's first prime minister removed from a regional town's waterfront because it is 'offensive'.
Arlene Mehan is behind a push to have Sir Edmund Barton's statue uninstalled from Port Macquarie's waterfront Town Green Park.
Although Ms Mehan has pushed to have it taken down for several years, not everyone agrees and the statue's exit isn't assured.
It was only put up in 2001 as the focus of a local project about Barton.
His statue is the latest monument to a significant historical figure to be earmarked for removal in recent years because of past 'racist' actions.
Barton, prime minister from 1901 to 1903, is widely accepted to have been a key architect of the White Australia policy.
He also said publicly that he believed white people were superior and there was no such thing as 'racial equality'. '[Other] races are, in comparison with white races – I think no-one wants convincing of this fact – unequal and inferior,' Barton once famously said.
Ms Mehan claims the presence of the monument in the park is confronting for local indigenous people. 'It is offensive to glorify this man who represents racist ideologies on this sacred site. 'Edmund Barton was explicitly racist,' she said.
Town Green was a burial ground for the local Birpai Indigenous people before colonisation.
Other options aside from removal have been proposed to the local Port Macquarie-Hastings council, including placing an educational signage explaining more about Barton's views.
If the statue is removed it could be placed outside the Port Macquarie Local Court as Barton became a High Court judge after his term as prime minister.
Ms Mehan gathered 4,383 signatures in a petition to have Barton's statue removed in 2020 and presented it to the Port Macquarie-Hastings council.
She also campaigned against a statue of the fifth governor of NSW, Lachlan Macquarie, whom the town is named after.
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Long-term Greenie journalist Graham Readfearn is still looking at the world through one-eye
He does his best below to make a case against the use of coal but mainly does so by quoting fellow Greenies. The blithe mention of "storage" as an alternative to burning coal is amusing. What storage? Snowy 2 is not yet up and may nevrer be, Qeeensland's pumped storage is pie in the sky and would be so expensive that it will remain there, and the available battery storage is tiny and short-lived relative to demand.
And there is some very stretched reasoning below. Look at the statement "I’m not aware of any time where we have had a blackout because renewable energy hasn’t supplied sufficient electricity.”
It's a true statement. But why? Because every time we were on the brink of a blackout because of failing wind and solar, coal and gas generators have stepped into makeup the shortfall. Lose those generators and the blackouts will be extensive and long
In Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, columnist Erin Molan turned the caps lock on to declare “WE NEED COAL”. It’s tempting to respond with “NO WE DON’T” and leave it at that. But there are certain expectations from a fact-checking column.
Molan argued clean and renewable alternatives to fossil fuels with the “infrastructure in place” to support them did not currently exist. Let’s test that.
Alison Reeve, an energy and climate expert at the Grattan Institute, said in the electricity market “coal has been doing two things”. “Providing electrons and system stability. The renewables can substitute the electrons and we can use other things – like storage and demand management – to find system stability. “So you only need coal to the extent that you don’t have those other things lined up yet.”
She said while there were legitimate concerns about the pace that storage and other measures were being added, “that’s not a case for keeping coal”.
The Australian Energy Market Operator’s blueprint for the expected future of the electricity market – a plan released after consulting more than 15,000 analysts and stakeholders – also disagrees with Molan. That plan includes several scenarios for the future, but the one Aemo says experts think is most likely sees 60% of coal generating capacity gone by 2030. Why?
“Competition, climate change and operational pressures will intensify [for coal] with the ever-increasing penetration of firmed renewable generation,” the plan says.
Oh yes, climate change. Burning coal is the biggest single contributor to the climate emergency.
Since Aemo’s blueprint was released in late June, both the Queensland and Victoria state governments have announced major energy plans mapping the exit route for coal that are broadly in line with Aemo’s plans.
Neither state sees a future in burning coal, with the polluting fuel practically gone in both states by 2035.
Coalmining is also responsible for about one fifth of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions from methane, according to official figures. The actual number, according to data from the International Energy Agency, could be double that.
As the Albanese government this week signed a global pledge to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030, mining more coal will make those targets – nonbinding, but geopolitically significant – harder to reach.
Molan claimed in her column there was “ample evidence in recent years of times and occasions when renewables just haven’t been able to supply our energy needs”, but didn’t actually offer any evidence.
This is a strange interpretation of how the electricity market works. Reeve was puzzled. “It’s a mixed system and you will always have the generation you need to meet the demand. “The percentage provided by renewables fluctuates, but I’m not aware of any time where we have had a blackout because renewable energy hasn’t supplied sufficient electricity.”
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UN’s tortured thinking on human rights defies credibility
A question for the many holiday-makers who have driven past Queanbeyan courthouse on their way to the NSW South Coast: have you ever had cause to believe unspeakable crimes against humanity were being committed inside? Representatives of the United Nations, specifically those on the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT), seem to think so.
Last week these dedicated bureaucrats and their entourage, having made the arduous journey from overseas, turned up there unannounced insisting on their “right” to conduct a snap inspection of the court cells, much to the bemusement of NSW Corrective Service officials. Regrettably, they were not welcomed in a manner befitting a holder of high office. Suffice to say the four subcommittee members – who hail from the human rights utopias of Maldives, Poland, Croatia, and Georgia – are now familiar with the expression “Go to buggery”.
Why they came here in the first place is a mystery. Admittedly, the courthouse in question is a drab looking building, but we are not talking your Lubyanka-like edifice. Its officials are not known for hanging prisoners by their thumbs for days on end. And the streets of Queanbeyan are not strewn with wailing women and children holding up photos of missing husbands and fathers.
UN inspectors fared no better in Sydney last Sunday when they demanded entry to the Mary Wade Correctional Centre in Lidcombe and the Silverwater Correctional Complex. As the relevant department later explained, all such visits required prior written authorisation. And heaven forbid, they make no exceptions for UN officials.
This additional impertinence proved too much to bear. “Despite its continued efforts to engage the authorities for the resolution of the problems, the SPT continued to be obstructed in the exercise of its mandate,” the UN said in a statement this week. “[Its] members felt that their 12-day visit, which began on 16 October … had been compromised to such an extent that they had no other option but to suspend it.” Prior to departing the country, subcommittee officials threatened “grave” consequences for the NSW government.
I agree, starting with the prison officers who thwarted the inspections. A bonus week’s paid holiday for each of them, a commendation on their personnel files, a couple of slabs perhaps?
Predictably some, including Human Rights Commissioner Lorraine Finlay, are upset the subcommittee has left in a huff. “What compliance with OPCAT [Optional Protocol for the Convention Against Torture and Inhuman Treatment] actually represents for NSW and other Australian governments is an opportunity for all of us to feel more secure about how we protect the human rights of detainees by agreeing to greater oversight and accountability in our detention regimes,” she said.
But I doubt many Australians would feel distressed or less secure at the prospect of the UN not conferring tickety-boo status on our detention centres. This is the same organisation which boasts among the members of its Human Rights Council the nations of China, Cuba, Venezuela, Qatar, and Pakistan. It has no credibility.
And you must wonder why Australia is the subcommittee’s priority. Its website lists the countries it has visited since OPCAT’s inception in 2002. They include Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and Italy. All good and well but there are some notable absences. If the subcommittee is hellbent on uncovering examples of torture, then surely it would have assessed the detention centres of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan.
We know the answer. Given a choice, these human rights poohbahs opt for junkets to Western countries as opposed to travelling to a third world dung heap. I am seriously considering sending this mob my resume. As for my choice of assignment, I have in mind detention centres in the South of France, particularly the Bordeaux region. Did I mention I have similar concerns about those in the Azores?
It is farcical. Take for example these excerpts from their assessments. New Zealand: “The Subcommittee noted with concern the low nutritional value of the meals provided in the prisons it visited. Breakfast and lunch were monotonous, the latter invariably … comprising three thin white bread sandwiches and a piece of fruit.” United Kingdom: “The Subcommittee is concerned at the overrepresentation of the ethnic minorities in the criminal justice system.”
There was almost a tone of disappointment when it noted following a visit to Switzerland in 2019 that none of the detainees spoken to had alleged mistreatment by police. Nonetheless it made mention of their “harsh conditions during transport, including handcuffs that were too tight”. Yes, its members are paid lucrative wages to produce these trivialities. And you thought the travelling circus was a thing of the past.
Do not expect the Albanese government to stand up to these panjandrums. Already Attorney-General Mark Drefyus has hit out at the NSW government for its treatment of the subcommittee. Likewise, Finlay has called for the federal and state governments to invite the delegation to return.
If they really are serious about finding instances of torture in this country, let’s give them a few suggestions. To begin with, no more interminable so-called Welcome to Country ceremonies. Never again should we have to hear Prime Minister Anthony Albanese tells us he is the son of a single mother who grew up in a housing commission dwelling. And few things are as mind-numbing as waiting for someone from Qantas to answer the phone.
But you know what is the ultimate torture? Knowing that we handed over US$60m to the UN this year alone.
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Chilling reality of Labor's green dream: Bills soar by 56% as $20 BILLION is spent on a 'renewables friendly' electricity grid and $46M for a UN energy conference - while Albo hands millions to extremists who dream of driving Australia into energy poverty
Despite constant claims renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels the billions being poured into greening Australia's power and hosting UN climate talkfests appears to be only driving up the price of electricity.
Labor went into the May election with a promise of slashing electricity bills by $275 a year, a pledge that was meant to be delivered by its commitment to renewables.
However, Tuesday's Budget instead predicted a staggering 56 per cent hike in prices in the next year on top of the already ballooning bills.
But at the same time the Albanese government announced they will funnel $10 million into climate activist groups the Environmental Defenders Office and Environmental Justice Australia.
When asked about this in parliament on Wednesday Prime Minister Anthony Albanese repeated the mantra of his government. 'The cheapest form of new energy in this country is renewables,' he said.
On budget night Treasurer Jim Chalmers told the ABC that despite him not being able to predict when prices would come down the $25 billion being spent on various climate change measures would help. 'Renewable energy isn't just cleaner energy, it's cheaper energy as well,' Chalmers said.
North Queensland Nationals Senator Matt Canavan, who is a strong proponent of mining and fossil fuel, strongly disagreed with both the Prime Minister and Treasurer. 'Power prices are going up because we are investing too much in renewable energy that is not on all the time,' Senator Canavan told Daily Mail Australia on Wednesday. 'Australia has been building more solar and wind per person than any country in the world.'
A particular Budget item that Senator Canavan latched onto was the almost $50 million the Albanese government has committed to 'restoring Australia's reputation'.
The centerpiece of this measure will be hosting UN-overseen conference in partnership with Pacific island nations to build clean energy partnerships and agreements .
'Labor can't help you with your power bills but they are going to spend $46 million of your money to host a UN climate conference,' Senator Canavan tweeted on Tuesday night.
He expanded on this in a response to Daily Mail Australia.
'Instead of spending money on helping rich people attend a climate talkfest, the Australian Government should be using our coal, gas and uranium to make more power and bring down living costs for struggling Australian families,' he said.
'The Government is wasting our money by funding more jobs for climate bureaucrats.'
The budget contains a mind-boggling multitude of green projects, subsidies and new government agencies to bring about the Albanese government's commitment of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
There is even $8.1 million to improve the energy efficiency of seaweed farmers.
However, by far the biggest sum, $20 billion, will be for rewiring the nation's grid to make it more renewable energy friendly.
On top of this $275 million will be spent on getting more electric cars on the road while $224 million will toward the community batteries that will store power from household solar panels.
Re-establishing 'international climate leadership' will cost $296 million, of which $200 million will go to help Indonesia with green projects.
A new agency, the national health sustainability and climate unit, will inform Australia's 'health response' to climate change.
The green bureaucracy will also be beefed up by the injection of a further $194 million, with $102 million to restore the Climate Change Authority and $64 million to rebuild Treasury's climate modelling capability.
Senator Canavan delivered a scathing assessment of what the new public servants would achieve.
'Power prices won't be lowered from a desk in Canberra, they can only be lowered by building more generators across our nation,' he said.
The Environmental Defenders Office have campaigned to block laws aimed at stopping disruptive climate protests, such as the protests that halted coal loading at Sydney's Port Botany earlier this year.
Environmental Justice Australia lobbies against new coal and gas projects and organised a group of children and teens to claim Australia's lack of action on climate change violated their human rights to the United Nations.
To support his claim that renewables are cheaper Mr Albanese cited agreement from the Business Council of Australia, the Australian industry group, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry as well as the National Farmers' Federation.
However, this has not been backed up by players in the electricity market. Major energy retailers told a conference in October that replacing coal and gas with renewable energy is the major reason power prices are sky-rocketing.
'Next year, using the current market prices, tariffs are going up a minimum 35 per cent,' Alinta chief executive Jeff Dimery said at the Sydney event. 'It's horrendous, it's unpalatable. We don't want energy consumers getting their power bills and setting fire to them.'
In September reports by sector watchdogs the Energy Security Board and the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) both pointed at switching to renewables as a major reason power price surges.
Dr Chalmers pointed to 'inflationary pressures' for the power price increase but electricity bills have been outstripping inflation by as much as 8 per cent.
The war in Ukraine is often pointed to as major contributor to worldwide inflation but Australia is energy sufficient in coal and gas and an exporter of those things, although international prices can influence the domestic price.
Coal prices are surging but this reflects a turning away from renewables in many countries.
With the Ukraine war threatening its gas supplies Germany has began bringing around 20 of its coal power plants back online.
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26 October, 2022
Budget 2022: Treasurer Jim Chalmers warns of deep spending cuts, more taxes
Amid all the talk, the grim reality is obvious. The government continues to spend up big and there will be no halt to to the rise in cost of living. Given the spending committments that the government treated as baked-in, no other budget was possible.
The government will continue to print money to cover its excess spending so more inflation is coming. Australians are in for a grim trot. Only people who get their savings out of money (e.g. buy company shares) are going to have any hope of protecting them. Only a big cut in government spending could have stopped the rise in cost of living -- but that was never on the cards
The Treasurer laid the ground for deeper cuts in the future but provided no additional cost of living support for struggling households other than existing policies offering cheaper childcare and medicines that won’t begin until next year.
Delivering Labor’s first budget since 2013, Dr Chalmers told The Australian it was yet to be determined how the government would tackle the structural deficit but signalled there would be a combination of new taxes and spending cuts.
“We’ve always seen this as the first of three or four budgets this term,” Dr Chalmers said.
“We set that up deliberately. We’re putting the foundations down. There’s an element of conditioning people to understand that we’ve had budgets for a really long time now where there hasn’t been a savings effort.
“There hasn’t been an effort to return commodity-fuelled revenue upgrades. We’ve made a good start because we’ve done something different in those revenue upgrades; we’ve done something different on savings. That’s a good start.”
The budget papers paint a pessimistic debt and deficit picture over the decade, with $11bn in higher deficits expected in 2024-25 and 2025-26. As a proportion of GDP, the deficit is worse in 2032-33 than the current financial year. Treasury also warns the nation risks falling into recession should key budget assumptions prove too optimistic, with growth slumping to just 0.75 per cent next financial year if inflation peaks one percentage point higher in December or the global downturn is more severe.
Treasury warned of a double whammy effect, noting the downside scenarios for both growth and unemployment from higher inflation at home “would be greater if these risks occurred simultaneously with global risks”.
Treasury expects sharp spikes from 2026-27 in the cost of the ballooning NDIS and servicing debt, which will peak in mid-2026 at $1.16 trillion or 43.1 per cent of GDP.
In a shock for households and businesses, retail electricity prices will increase by an average of 20 per cent nationally in late 2022 and a further 30 per cent in 2023-24. Domestic wholesale gas prices will remain more than double their average prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with retail gas prices increasing by up to 20 per cent in both 2022-23 and 2023-24.
The budget said electricity and gas prices were expected to directly contribute 0.75 per cent and one percentage point to inflation in 2022–23 and 2023–24 respectively.
Dr Chalmers said the government would take action in the market to keep prices lower.
“Any responsible government facing these sort of price hikes needs to consider a broader suite of regulatory intervention than they might have considered in times gone by,” he said.
Peter Dutton said millions of Australians would pay the price for a “big-taxing, big-spending” budget. The Business Council of Australia, Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Australian Industry Group said more must be done to drive economic growth and tackle structural spending pressures.
Rental costs will jump “considerably” in the next two years and fuel inflation amid stronger population growth and limited housing stock. A new housing accord between governments, investors and industry announced by Dr Chalmers on Tuesday, backed with an initial $350m pledge, has an ambition of building “one million new, well-located homes over five years from 2024”.
Dr Chalmers said the accord must be driven by the market, despite concerns that cashed-up superannuation funds will struggle to deliver investment returns for members.
Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, whose pre-budget audit slashed $22bn from Coalition-era programs which were redirected to fund Labor policies, told The Australian the trajectory of budget pressures were “keeping her up”.
Senator Gallagher’s audit sets up a fight with Nationals and regional Liberal MPs after the budget canned dozens of Coalition projects and grants programs and redirected a chunk of $6.5bn in infrastructure savings to climate change projects.
In his first budget speech, Dr Chalmers told parliament that 92 per cent of the $132.5bn in upgraded tax receipts over the next four years had been banked.
But the budget sugar hit, which cut the 2022-23 deficit by $41bn to $36.9bn, is expected to unravel ahead of the 2025 federal election as unemployment and inflation spike and wages and economic growth stagnate.
Compared with the pre-election fiscal outlook, Labor’s policy decisions have added $9.7bn to the budget bottom line. Treasury projects tax-to-GDP levels of 24.1 per cent by 2032-33, which ends the Coalition-era policy of maintaining taxes within a 23.9 per cent tax-to-GDP cap.
Dr Chalmers painted a grim outlook for Australians who “know there are hard days to come and hard decisions to accompany them”, as Russia’s war in Ukraine, China’s slowdown, higher interest rates and inflation bite. He released a “five-point plan for cost-of-living relief” amid growing political pressure on Labor to deliver on their promises to slash $275 from electricity bills by 2025 and lift wages.
The $5.4bn changes to childcare subsidies start from July next year, cheaper medicines from January and the full paid parental leave scheme from 2026. Labor’s five-point plan also includes “more affordable housing and getting wages moving again”.
In his speech, Dr Chalmers lamented that real wages were lower now than 10 years ago.
“Wages are growing faster now than they were before the election, but that welcome news is tempered by rising electricity prices and grocery bills eating into pay packets,” he said.
“When that inflation moderates, real wages are expected to start growing again in 2024.
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Confidence through censorship: The (medical) Ministry of Truth
On Wednesday, October 12, the Queensland Labor government – with support from the LNP opposition – passed a dystopian and dangerous bill.
The Health Practitioner Regulation National Law and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 refocuses the guiding principles of medicine to prioritise public confidence over public health and safety. It allows bureaucrats to name and shame doctors, a move which the AMA described as ‘incoherent zealotry’.
This bill, if passed by other jurisdictions in Australia, will essentially legislate national medical censorship as a means to ensure public confidence in government health services.
Adherence to the Good Medical Practice code of conduct means that advocating for patients (which is our primary concern) is being overridden by external demands to comply with public health messaging. Our code of conduct is predicated on The Hippocratic Oath, the Declaration of Geneva, and the International Code of Ethics which outlines our dedication to serving humanity: To first do no harm, making our patients our primary consideration.
Political-based medicine has now replaced evidence-based medicine.
History has proven that unquestioning compliance to government directives is dangerous. In 1947, the World Medical Association agreements were formed in the aftermath of the second world war due to the gross systematic human rights abuses which took place under enforced national laws. Tragically, the political currents in Australia appear to be heading towards bureaucratic medical compliance enforced through regulatory threats, soon to be legislative threats.
In 2015, the federal government passed The Australian Border Force Act 2015 which made doctors who advocated for their refugee patients liable to face up to two years imprisonment. Doctors for Refugees challenged this law in the High Court a year later. A major basis for their argument, according to their submission to the Medical Board’s 2018 Code of Conduct review, was that the Code doctors had sworn to uphold and advocate for the rights of their patients could not be overridden by the vagaries of domestic laws.
The government eventually backed down on this law and had that problematic section repealed.
Interestingly, their submission was in response to the Medical Board attempting to insert into the medical code the concerning phrase ‘doctors must comply with relevant laws’. The response to the word comply was fierce as the idea that the medical code of conduct could enforce compliance to political decree was antithetical to what doctors had sworn to uphold.
With the arrival of Covid came the bureaucratic decree through the March 9, 2021 joint statement by AHPRA and the National Boards that made undermining public confidence in the government’s Covid public health messaging equivalent to professional misconduct. Questioning ‘the message’ is now subject to investigation and disciplinary action, including immediate suspension of registration.
Letters received by practitioners who have questioned the government response to Covid are chilling in their implication. After being suspended by National Boards under the immediate action clauses for allegedly being a threat to public health and safety, they are accused of the crime of non-compliance. They are deemed a threat because they failed to comply with public health orders, undermined the Board’s position on the promotion of Covid vaccination, and undermined public confidence because their medical expert opinion contravened government health authorities.
In summary, health professionals are not permitted to question the ‘secret health advice’ without losing their registration to practise.
Consider that in response to Covid, our health bureaucracy overturned the medical industry’s well-researched 2019 pandemic preparedness plans – doing almost the total opposite of what was recommended by health professionals. Interestingly, Dr Rochelle Walensky, Director of the CDC, told employees recently: ‘To be frank, we are responsible for some pretty dramatic, pretty public mistakes from testing, to data, to communications.’
In December 2020, the FDA outlined, ‘At this time, data is not available to make a determination about how long the vaccine will provide protection, nor is there evidence that the vaccine prevents transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from person to person.’ Our health bureaucrats, regulatory agencies, and politicians mandated provisionally approved vaccines by telling the population repeatedly that they stopped transmission and people were selfish granny killers if they didn’t get jabbed.
We, as health professionals, are not allowed to question government statements on transmission without losing our registration to practise.
On September 2021, a delegate of the Secretary of the Department of Health rescheduled ivermectin, in effect banning it for use as an off-label treatment option for Covid stating ‘subsection 52E(1) of the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989, in particular paragraph (f), which empowers the Secretary to act on any other matters that the Secretary considers necessary to protect public health’.
Ivermectin is one of the World Health Organisation’s list of essential medicines. It was fully approved by the TGA and found to be very safe according to their own 2013 Australian Public Assessment Report for Ivermectin. Two of the reasons the TGA gave for denying Australians access to a drug that showed great promise in the treatment and prevention of Covid-19 was that it was all of a sudden unsafe and its availability might dissuade people from getting vaccinated. Behaviour modification was undertaken, with the TGA appearing to act in partnership with other government nudge units to promote vaccination.
We as health professionals are not permitted to advocate for ivermectin without losing our registration to practice.
In July 2021, as Australians were being mandated through coercive techniques to get vaccinated with poorly tested provisionally approved gene-based vaccines that our Health bureaucrats and politicians repeatedly told us had been proven safe and effective, the TGA was amending the Therapeutic Goods Regulation Act to further reduce the safety and efficacy requirements for any medicine that is for the treatment or prevention of Covid. Not only do manufacturers have six years to provide the government with safety and efficacy data on these provisionally approved jabs, they also no longer have to demonstrate they could provide a greater benefit than other available medicines or that the medicine is likely to provide a major therapeutic advance.
We, as health professionals, are not allowed to question the safety and efficacy without losing our registration to practise.
Recently, the TGA has granted provisional approval to Moderna for the active immunisation and prevention of Covid in high-risk babies and young children. The report concluded the vaccinations had low levels of protective efficacy against infection, they didn’t know how long any efficacy lasted, and while the (Advisory Committee on Vaccines) recommended the provisional approval to children at high risk they noted high-risk children were excluded from the study. Across the world, pandemic policy and guidelines vary. Denmark is no longer recommending vaccination for people under 50, Norway no one under 65, but our regulatory body is expanding approvals to 6-month to 4-year-olds.
We, as health professionals, are not allowed to question this approval without losing our registration to practise.
Whenever governments want to enact laws to suppress free expression, censor and punish dissenters through threats to careers and livelihood, to control public perception as a means of creating confidence through enforced public ignorance, it is time to ask some serious questions.
If this bill passes nationally and the government becomes the single authority on all health advice, then unquestioning compliance becomes the new accepted standard of good medical practice. That is the end of medicine and the death of science. George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth has arrived. Public confidence in politicians and their bureaucrats should never come at the expense of people’s right to full, free, and unhindered access to scientific evidence and emerging data.
The Australian Medical Professionals Society is dedicated to fighting for medical free speech for the safety of those we swore to protect, our patients. Prioritising public confidence in government through censorship has led to what Professor Bhattacharya has said is the single biggest public health mistake in human history. With Dr Aseem Malhotra, a British Cardiologist, recently describing the mandates as ‘perhaps the greatest miscarriage of medical science we will witness in our lifetime’. We must stop medical censorship and allow doctors to be doctors. This bill is dangerous to the future of medicine and the health of our nation.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/confidence-through-censorship-the-medical-ministry-of-truth/
*********************************************Energy cost a big issue
Calls for a national energy summit to address soaring energy costs are increasing after the budget predicted consumer prices would soar by 56 per cent.
Joel Gibson from the consumer network OneBigSwitch said the energy price crisis should now be the government’s top priority if Australia was to avoid similar scenes to the UK, where 40 retailers had gone bust and price caps had doubled.
“The budget was an opportunity to address the biggest cost of living crisis we face right now - energy bills - but the government has elected to kick the can down the road,” Mr Gibson said.
“We now need a national summit to deal with this issue. Business as usual won’t cut it. If we don’t ring the bell now, we’ll have millions of Aussies who can’t afford to turn the lights on.”
While the NGO sector generally welcomed Budget measures in areas such as child care, aged care and housing, there were strong concerns about the day-to-day cost of living increases. Besides the predictions of soaring energy prices, the Budget also pointed to likely increases in the cost of food and vegetables because of October floods in eastern Australia.
Mission Australia’s CEO Sharon Callister said: “As cost of living and housing pressures go through the roof, people who rely on income support are unable to pay for many of the essentials of life.”
Opposition Treasury spokesperson Angus Taylor slammed the government over rising cost of living pressures.
“The Budget confirms that electricity and gas prices are expected to rise sharply over the next two years. Treasury has assumed retail electricity prices will increase by 50 per cent. Retail gas prices are up some 40 per cent in 2022 and 2023,” he said.
“Despite Labor’s pre-election promise to reduce your power prices by $275 a year, their own budget papers contradict this claim, and the Government has no plan to address rising prices.”
The price hike amounts to a 56 per cent rise over two years due to the increase compounding each year.
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‘Over-designed’ government megaprojects are bad for environment and taxpayers
NSW megaprojects are being over-engineered with tonnes of unnecessary, costly materials driving up the price and carbon footprint of the multibillion-dollar builds, Infrastructure Minister Rob Stokes has warned.
Stokes said NSW would fail to reach its goal of a net zero economy by 2050 without addressing overservicing in its $110-billion infrastructure pipeline, where concrete and steel are being superfluously added to projects.
Carbon emissions from construction material – including concrete and steel – are estimated to represent up to 10 per cent of Australia’s carbon output. A new report produced by Stokes and Infrastructure NSW has flagged including those emissions in the business cases of future projects.
“We want things to be robust and well-built, but that shouldn’t mean just throwing more concrete and steel into our bridges, roads and railways,” Stokes told the Herald.
“There is an irony here. Because we’ve got very conservative design standards we’re actually putting more concrete and steel into roads and bridges and railways than anyone else in the world.”
Stokes pointed to the recent construction of the multibillion-dollar Metro rail lines as an example of a project that could have used less material without impacting design integrity.
“I think there is a general awareness that we have been very conservative and over-designed some of our station boxes on Metro lines,” he said.
The government is spending tens of billions of dollars on the Metro, which will connect the CBD to the west and south-west of the city, as well as a line to service the new Western Sydney Airport when it opens in 2026. The projects have been hampered by cost blowouts.
Station boxes are excavated for underground platforms, concourses and facilities, while major developments are often installed above them.
Infrastructure funding cuts leave NSW behind Victoria, Queensland
Stokes said a “compliance culture” in NSW had led to an intense focus on mitigating risk and liability in both the government and private sectors.
“I think every engineer that touches a project on the way through … just wants to ensure that their responsibility is entirely mitigated by throwing a bit of extra concrete and steel at it,” he said.
“The sum total of all these little decisions where people are just effectively covering their back means that we’re paying way over the odds, and also contributing toward global climate emissions because of our innate design conservatism, so we need to challenge that.”
The senior minister, who will retire from politics at the next state election, said that more thoughtfully designing the state’s largest projects would cut emissions, save time and taxpayer cash.
“We should be very proud of the fact that we are designing very, very robust structures, but the question we need to ask is, ‘Are we over designing them?’. There’s a cost imperative to that for the taxpayer,” he said.
“But there’s also a climate imperative because every bit of extra design constraint that adds to the bulk of a structure is making it more carbon intensive.”
The Infrastructure NSW discussion paper, set to be released this week, recommends a whole of government approach to measuring emissions in infrastructure.
The Decarbonising Infrastructure Delivery report says multibillion-dollar investment decisions were being made without any understanding of carbon mitigation or management over the life of the asset. It warns that could result in potentially higher costs to retrofit projects to achieve net-zero in the future.
The report also recommends maximising the use of recycled material in building.
The United Kingdom, including the Glasgow Airport Investment Area, and Europe are cited as examples of governments including the carbon impact of projects when weighing up their benefits and cost.
The NSW government earlier this year warned it would need to push back some of its mammoth infrastructure pipeline amid rising construction costs and limited workforce.
The government paper follows a report produced by Infrastructure Partnerships Australia which earlier this year called for ambitious, lower-carbon outcome requirements in major projects.
Stokes said future state governments would need to rethink the way they approached big projects, and instead start by questioning whether they should even go ahead at all.
“One of the very best ways we can decarbonise infrastructure is actually asking whether we need such an expensive megaproject design intervention in the first place. Maybe there are other ways to achieve the same objective,” he said.
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25 October, 2022
Anthony Albanese's government announces plan to build one million homes to make housing more affordable for Australians
This is about all he can do to help. The big blockages to house building are State and local governments. And Albo will have a hard job getting new construction past them. He really needs legislation to take their permitting powers away but there would be an uproar about that.
I am afraid this will end up like a 2017 scheme in NZ under the Ardern government. Only a small fraction of the 100,000 houses promised were actually built. Leftist governments are great on promises
Building one million new homes will be the target of a Labor plan to bring together governments, the construction industry and super funds to boost investment in affordable housing.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers will confirm details surrounding the plan when he delivers his first budget on Tuesday night.
The federal government has already pledged $10billion to its Housing Australia Future Fund, which it says will deliver 30,000 social and affordable homes in the next five years.
Dr Chalmers said reaching the one million homes target would tackle one of the biggest challenges facing the nation and its economy.
'As I go around Australia speaking with local communities, employers and workers, one of the big challenges we have in our economy is we've got these jobs and opportunities being created, but it's becoming harder and harder to live near where those job opportunities are,' he told ABC Radio.
'I've been working really closely and really hard with superannuation and other investors … with the building and construction industry, and with the union movement, to see what we can do to shift the needle on affordable housing.'
Dr Chalmers said he would unveil the timing for achieving the target in Tuesday's budget.
His comments come as figures released ahead of the budget show the bottom line will look rosier than expected.
The deficit for 2022/23 is forecast to hit $36.9billion, less than half the $78billion forecast in the March budget delivered by the coalition government.
High commodity prices and strong employment are anticipated to keep propping up the public purse, although this boost to revenue is expected to start slowing down after two years.
But Dr Chalmers said the $548billion to be spent on health and aged care across the next four years was one of the huge pressures on Australia's budget.
He said he hoped Labor's renewed focus on health would drive down soaring GP wait times.
'We want to take pressure off emergency departments, we want to strengthen Medicare, we want to fix the crisis in aged care,' he said.
'Those are very clear priorities … we've got a lot of spending pressures on the budget but we need to invest in people's health, a healthy community gives us the best chance of a strong economy.'
The budget, to be delivered in parliament by Dr Chalmers at 7.30pm AEDT, will also flag new measures of 'wellbeing' and outline a package of support for women.
Alongside aged care and health, disability services and defence are expected to be the biggest areas of spending.
Opposition finance spokeswoman Jane Hume warned the government against producing a high-taxing, high-spending budget.
'The coalition left the budget in a good space … unemployment was really low, tax receipts were up and that's a good thing and fed into the budget bottom line,' she told Nine's Today program.
'Now we want to see a plan to bring inflation back into line to that two-to-three per cent range so the RBA doesn't have to do all the heavy lifting … it will take everything for Labor not to fall into their usual trap, which could be disastrous for Australians.'
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Australia’s dumbed-down schools are going nowhere
Over the last month, there have been yet another two initiatives designed, supposedly, to improve the performance of Australian schools, raise standards and ensure greater equity. The first is an interim report by the Productivity Commission evaluating the 2018 National School Reform Agreement.
The NSRA is signed by Commonwealth, state, and territory governments and details strategies designed to ‘lift student outcomes across Australian schools’ by implementing a range of policies including a unique student identifier, reviewing senior secondary pathways, and strengthening the initial teacher education accreditation system.
The second initiative involves establishing a panel to review the effectiveness of teacher training established by the Commonwealth Minister for Education Jason Clare and chaired by the ex-ABC Managing Director Mark Scott.
While applauded as the panacea to achieve excellence and equity both initiatives are destined to join a long list of reviews and reports beginning in the early 1970s that have proven counterproductive and worthless in strengthening Australia’s education system.
Since the Karmel Report in 1973 and Victoria’s Blackburn Report in 1985, there have been over 20 reviews and reports at all levels of government designed to strengthen schools, improve teacher effectiveness, and raise standards.
Among the plethora commissioned are the Keating government’s National Statements and Profiles (1992), the NSW’s review of the Higher School Certificate (1995), a national inquiry into literacy teaching (2005), the Gonski Review of School funding (2011), the Review of the National Curriculum (2014), the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence (2017), and a review of the NSW curriculum (2020).
In addition to the eight state and territory education departments and curriculum bodies, in yet another attempt to improve Australia’s substandard educational performance, the Commonwealth government has also established the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (2005) and the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (2008).
The dismal results of the last 50 years of reviews, reports, and government policies are obvious to all. Australia has slipped down the rankings as measured by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS) tests.
Apprentices start work with substandard literacy and numeracy skills, universities have dumbed-down first-year courses, and too many students leave after 12 years of schooling culturally illiterate and morally adrift.
If those responsible for Australia’s education system were in charge of a business they would have been sacked or gone broke. Instead, like the old industrial relations club, those responsible for the current malaise are reappointed to peak positions and given yet another chance to prove their ineptitude
What’s to be done? While the Greens Party, the Australian Education Union, and sympathetic academics argue what is needed in increased investment over the last 20 to 30 years proves spending more is simply throwing good money after bad.
It’s also useless to establish yet another committee made up of bureaucrats and education department, teacher union, and subject association representatives who have minimal, if any, experience as practising teachers.
Until there are significant structural changes schools will continue to underperform, students will continue to suffer, and the nation’s cultural capital and productivity rates will continue to decline.
The first step is to realise there is no magic bullet and one-off reviews and reports focusing on a single issue like the curriculum, teacher training, how teachers are rewarded, and classroom pedagogy will achieve nothing.
What determines school effectiveness and student achievement depends on a number of complex, interrelated factors that have to be addressed as a whole and at the same time.
Secondly, schools need to be freed from provider capture and what Michael Gove did when the British Secretary of State for Education derided as the ‘blog’. Schools need greater autonomy and flexibility and less bureaucratic red tape and interference from on high.
The curriculum is overcrowded while the superficial and criteria-based diagnostic assessment and reporting regime forces teachers to spend weeks writing voluminous descriptive reports. This is ineffective and takes energy away from teaching.
It should not surprise, proven by research by Australia’s Gary Marks and overseas academics including Ludger Woessmann and Eric Hanushek, giving schools greater autonomy and flexibility allows non-government schools to outperform government schools.
The cutting edge of reform overseas involves charter schools in America, city academies and free schools in England plus charter schools in India. Such is their popularity in disadvantaged communities, enrolments are oversubscribed.
For far too long Australia’s education system has fallen victim to progressive, new-age fads including open classrooms, process and inquiry-based learning, student agency, teachers as facilitators, and a curriculum driven by neo-Marxist inspired Woke ideology.
Schools have also been infected with the soft bigotry of low expectations where disadvantaged students are expected to always underperform. It’s time to stop experimenting with unproven fads and ensure all schools embrace rigorous standards and high expectations.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/10/australias-dumbed-down-schools-are-going-nowhere/
*****************************************************We live in a Nanny State
It doesn’t matter whether you are discussing the UK, Australia, some European country, or any other country. Whenever the state has started to dictate social, economic, and commercial behaviour – serious problems have followed. These usually include loss of freedom, loss of living standards, higher costs, and dislocation of social cohesion.
The nanny state certainly does initiate many changes, often by regulation rather than legislation. It is the bureaucrats who introduce changes, changes which are often not welcome by society in general and frequently by those who are unjustly penalised by regulations that favour some, usually big business, to the detriment of a larger number, usually small business and consumers.
The politicians do, of course, try to implement their nanny state controls. The overreach seen in the Covid pandemic is a perfect example. Politicians of all persuasions introduced draconian laws and regulations, supposedly to keep us safe, but actually to control what we – the general populace – could do, when we could do it, and for how long. They even went so far as to dictate what we should inject into our bodies on pain of being excluded from our freedoms in society and our ability to work.
We see it still in the energy problems which we are now experiencing. The world has plenty of recent examples of government decisions that are adversely impacting on energy supply and cost. There is no shortage of energy and there could be a way to transition to a lower carbon dioxide emitting power generation system, but our nanny state knows best and despite all the evidence to the contrary they are pushing ahead, full bore, to have coal-fired power stations shut down and renewables built. There is no coherent plan for the transition, mainly because the federal government doesn’t actually own any power generation or distribution assets and doesn’t understand the economics of the energy system. In fact, they don’t seem to understand the basics of economics. When you make something essential scarce – the price will rise and those who are least able to afford the cost will bear the brunt of the disruptions.
The nanny state is pushing the unproven climate warming due to the burning of carbon fuels, and destroying not only our low-cost energy but our competitiveness in the world. It doesn’t, and probably cannot, state what the targets are in measurable numbers, how these targets were determined, how they are measured, and where we are in achieving those targets. Even worse, they do not consider what is happening in the world, the large uncontrolled emitters, the piddling effect on either increasing or decreasing our carbon dioxide emissions on the world’s atmospheric carbon dioxide.
If you wish to consider other areas just think of safety. Many safety procedures actually do little to improve safety, they just add cost. Safety is best managed by explaining the issues to the people doing the work, providing them with the necessary tools and equipment, and then getting out of the way. Not all situations are identical and the experienced person directly involved can often make the best decision. Consider our disruptive method of roadside working with our peers overseas.
We can also look at housing standards. These are often designed to suit a worst-case situation, increasing costs with no benefit to most. They rarely constitute best building practice for heating, cooling, site conditions, suitable materials, latest technology etc. Or the restriction of certain work to licensed practitioners, practitioners who frequently ignore the regulations, who may not have maintained their knowledge of the latest technologies, and who are given carte blanche to charge high prices for simple work which can be performed by any number of other people with the necessary knowledge and skills. Trade skills and regulations can be learned by anyone.
There are some areas in which the state could and should be involved because private enterprise may have difficulty in providing the service at a price that is affordable to all. These include major infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, transportation systems, sewage collection and treatment, water supply, energy supply, and communications. That doesn’t mean that the state has to own or operate the service, they just have to make sure, in some way, that it is available to everyone at a standard price.
No, the nanny state has not shown that it knows best. It hasn’t even shown that it properly understands. The state should set the basic standards and then the enterprise of people will deliver, at both the best price and a suitable quality. The people will adjust their society to suit the prevailing conditions and the nanny state should just follow suit with the appropriate legislation. That is the correct order of things.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/the-nanny-state/ ?
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The cult of absolutism
How often have you been told that balance is essential? Balanced opinion, balanced diet, and everything in moderation. Well, think again, because the new cult of absolutism won’t stand for it.
Do you want to discuss inequality? It must be zero. Do you want to debate harm from Covid? Must be zero. Gender inequities? Zero. Emissions? That would be Net Zero… When you subscribe to these absolutes there is no room for compromise or tolerance. The end justifies the means. Every single time. Zero deviation. Zero discussion. Zero empathy.
This new world order is infecting every part of our lives, right down to the functioning of our critical energy systems. From the politicians creating policy, to the boardrooms complying, right through to the bureaucrats enforcing it – our electricity system is undergoing a zero-logic makeover.
Take Queensland’s glossy ‘brochure’ announcement that spending $62 billion (more likely double that) to close some of the lowest-cost electricity generators on the planet will save consumers $150 per year by 2032. Ironically, Queensland residents were recently treated to a ‘cost of living rebate’ worth $175. Zero relief for businesses though, with state-owned hydro generators setting the wholesale price more than any other.
New South Wales Deputy Leader Matt Kean believes wind and solar generators should have zero exposure to low wholesale prices. He’s designed a scheme ensuring these ‘cheap new generators’ can opt into a guaranteed minimum wholesale price, thus avoiding the black hole in the market he created.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews must believe he can duck down to Coles and fill the trolley with Duracells because his government recently announced the world’s largest battery storage target. Andrews hopes this will create over 12,000 jobs, but there are zero cars parked in neighbouring South Australia’s infamous, and now ‘not-so-big’, battery.
If you are looking for regulators, politicians, or the media to provide a cost-benefit analysis, a detailed plan, or even a robust debate on these matters, your expectations are exceeding their capabilities. Nobody can even produce the napkins on which these plans have been hatched. You should have zero confidence in any statement originating from politicians on the electricity system, and unfortunately this applies to bureaucrats and agencies managing the system ‘in the best interests of the consumer’. Those behind these schemes display zero interest in the consumer, except as a means to an end.
A recent example is Daniel Westerman, head of AEMO (Australian Energy Market Operator), in an interview with Angela Macdonald-Smith. As the ‘market operator’ AMEO receives offers for electricity generation in time, money, and volume; tells every generator what to generate and when; and calculates how much each generator gets paid. Macdonald-Smith offers zero challenge when Westerman frets:
‘The events of the winter really have reinforced the need for Australia to continue to urgently invest in the transition towards firmed renewables with efficiently delivered transmission.’
Westerman’s zero-care for consumers is matched only by his opinions on areas for which he bears no responsibility, as MacDonald-Smith writes:
‘Westerman highlighted the need for action in four areas in particular; building low-cost renewable generation; putting in place sufficient firming generation to support peak demand when renewable generation is low; getting transmission built efficiently and in as timely a fashion as possible; and improving the stability of the grid and equipping it to deal with a high penetration of renewable energy.’
This is the same guy who pretty much on his first day of the job declared we’d be dealing with a 100 per cent renewable grid for 30-minute periods by 2025.
Thus, the tally of zeros increases because there are zero other countries in this predicament. One might consider Germany and California to be on the way. The cold 2022 European winter, without Russian gas, will prompt some changes; but more temperate California is losing people and businesses fast.
What conclusions can be drawn if we continue down this path of absolutes?
There will be zero baseload generators, at least those owned by Origin, AGL, and the Queensland taxpayer. Gas and batteries are hoped to fill the 20,000 MW gap when it’s not windy or sunny – that’s the current plan.
Zero renewable developments will be knocked back – the state and federal targets are too large and the timeframes too short for any dallying with environmental assessments, community engagement, or feasibility studies. Our federal Environment Minister decreed, godlike, that she will allow zero extinctions. Hopefully, she will be faced with many difficult decisions.
There will be zero accountability at the top end when power bills remain high. When regular people are subject to rationing, big industries pack up and disappear, or food suppliers continuously edge up prices, those in charge will just say ‘it’s the cheapest new generation, build more’.
And sadly, zero care for people freezing in winter.
How long can this flawed reasoning persist? Perhaps a better question – why is the reasoning so flawed to begin with? I believe the key lies in the personal values of those in authority. If you value people, their wellbeing, and opinions, you display care. Care’s neighbours are empathy, compromise and goodwill. Conversely, a lack of care exposes limited appreciation for others. Without care you are only a stone’s throw from cruelty.
This cult of absolutism and zero worshipping demands tyranny. Fight back, use care.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/10/the-cult-of-absolutism/ ?
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24 October, 2022
The problem of politics in sport again
This was raised but never settled decades ago, with boycotts of the Springboks in the Joh Bjelke Petersen era.
I can see some reasons why the political opinions of sports people should be respected but this latest episode is absurd. Why is the political views not of the person but of that person's FATHER critical?
There is a basic judicial principle that a person is responsible for their own actions only, not for the actions of others -- even when the "other" is an ancestor. So it is simply unjust to hold Gina Rinehart responsible for something her father said in 1985. Yet so doing was what lost the Netballers their sponsorship. Their loss of their sponsorship was simple justice and a proper response to political fanaticism
There has been a tsunami of support for Gina Rinehart’s decision to walk away from her $15m sponsorship deal with Netball Australia. Rightly, outrage has been directed at players spurning an exceedingly generous and altruistic deal for reasons that range from the businesswoman’s own political views to offensive remarks made by her father 50 years ago.
Australians have clearly had a gutful of overpaid but under-informed sportspeople who think their personal opinions on matters outside their areas of expertise are worth inflicting on sport.
Sky News host Cory Bernardi says Australia’s sport is becoming controlled by “woke whingers” and “public… displays of virtuous hypocrisy”. “You’ve seen a bit on Sky News this week about sporting cancel culture, only this time it’s not the punters cancelling sports, it’s the players,” Mr Bernardi said. More
If only Woodside would likewise demand the Fremantle Dockers either stand up proudly for their sponsor or stop taking its money.
It’s high time too that Cricket Australia told the hitherto sainted Pat Cummins to put a sock in his criticism of Alinta Energy, the company that pays at least part of his enormous salary. Ricky Ponting was brave to point out the political posturing of older, richer players hurts young players who have not had the luxury of sponsorship deals that pay for big lifestyles replete with first-class flights and shiny four-wheel-drive cars. There is no doubt politics and sport cannot be completely divorced but it is tiresome to watch everything from netball to footy being subjected to, and damaged by, zealotry from undergraduate political activists dressed in green and gold.
It has now come to pass that every two-bob political opinion from every minor sport star not only deserves to be aired but indulged. Hypocrisy is no barrier. Jetsetting ex-footballers whose carbon footprint is surely only just less than Al Gore’s think they are entitled to chide Woodside for keeping the lights on in Western Australia and employing so many of their fellow West Australians. Woodside, whose activities are regulated to within an inch of its corporate life, and which pays a big chunk of the taxes Mark McGowan is now using to build everything from mental health facilities to desalination plants, is entitled to tell these sporting politicians to keep their personal political views out of sport.
Likewise, netballers are free to harbour whatever political views they wish, and indeed to act on their individual consciences. They can leave sport and enter politics if they are passionate about changing the world off the field. But for so long as they are on the field, and receive sponsorship money, the decent thing would be to say thank you to Rinehart for her generous deal.
Alas, good manners and gratitude are now apparently optional extras for our pampered players. No wonder so many Australians might be thrilled that Rinehart called their bluff.
Rinehart has been a terrific supporter of Australian sports from rowing and swimming to volleyball and synchronised swimming. And, of course, netball. Hancock also inked a deal with the Australian Olympic Committee to sponsor Australian teams at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics in 2026, as well as the Youth Olympics and Pacific Games. Dismal results at the London Olympics led many sponsors to withdraw funding from Swimming Australia. After Rinehart stepped in with financial help, Australian swimmers in Tokyo produced best-ever performances.
Rinehart’s money goes directly to sports people so they can focus on their sport, rather than try to hold down a job and train too. During the Tokyo Olympics three-time Tokyo medallist Cate Campbell recognised the businesswoman’s contribution: “I don’t say this lightly, but Gina Rinehart saved swimming.”
The Hancock deal with Netball Australia would have provided a significant pay increase to players at a time when NA has millions of dollars of debt and the country faces a challenging economic outlook. The objections to Rinehart’s deal need to be understood against behind-the-scenes shenanigans by some players who apparently want NA to revisit a private equity deal rather than take money from Rinehart.
Diamonds players driving this fiasco have shown themselves to be both selfish and foolish. Imagine telling those who care for children afflicted with cancer to refuse $2m donated by the Hancock Group to the WA Telethon this past weekend. In total, mining companies donated millions more to the same terrific fundraiser, as did the WA government, using mining royalties.
Now it is over to NA to hold out the begging bowl in search of suitably woke corporate sponsors who will both indulge every political thought bubble an individual player has and keep paying the bills when those thought bubbles insult or injure the sponsor. Or will taxpayers be forced to foot the bill for the misdirected political activism of their players?
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Australia's collapsing electricity system
Climate catastrophists are very keen to talk about tipping points. So let me steal their thunder and talk about the tipping point of the National Electricity Market (NEM) that connects five states and the ACT.
We were given a preview of the potential for collapse earlier this year when the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) suspended the market and took control as a last resort. Don’t think for a minute that this exercise was costless. There was an ex-post settling up with the companies ordered to provide power, adding several hundred million dollars to the escalating electricity bill that is then divvied up between households and businesses.
It’s worth pointing out here the ineptitude of AEMO. Most of us thought its leadership couldn’t get any worse than the now replaced American lawyer, Audrey Zibelman. (She left to join Google). But the current chief executive, Daniel Westerman, is even more committed to decarbonisation than Audrey, who at least placed a great deal of store on keeping the lights on.
Note here that there is a very small pool of potential candidates for this job – virtually all of them are big supporters of renewable energy. Because the states effectively own the NEM, they decide who gets the job. In other words, any reservation that the Coalition minister, Angus Taylor, might have had about this appointment would have made little difference.
The totally unbelievable modelling that AEMO puts out – see the latest Integrated System Plan – is a classic case of garbage in-garbage out. The assumptions ensure that there is no problem with the electricity grid quickly transforming to being almost totally reliant on renewable energy. In particular, heroic (and convenient) guesses are made about the average capacity factors of wind and solar – much higher than actual data from overseas – as well as the likelihood of lengthy periods in which wind and solar won’t work at all.
But when it comes to grid management, it’s not just about averages but also about catering for the tails of distributions – unlikely events but with potentially serious consequences. A grid cannot be deemed robust unless it is able to provide reliable power in these circumstances.
The alternative approach that AEMO uses is to hope these unusual events won’t occur but, in any case, some new affordable technology will miraculously emerge that should eliminate any problems. The more cautious approach to ensure continuous power is to insist that firming capacity is available on a 1:1 ratio – that is, enough firming capacity to fully stand in place of renewable energy for potentially lengthy periods. Needless to say, this redundancy makes the system very expensive, which is one of the reasons why higher electricity prices are inevitable.
Absent a capacity mechanism – the states won’t agree – and the ongoing early exit of 24/7 coal-fired plants, the NEM is becoming extraordinarily fragile. Where once it was extremely uncommon for AEMO to intervene in the daily operations of the grid, it is now a frequent occurrence. Further pressure will be felt with the closure of the Liddell coal-fired plant next year – at its peak, it had a capacity of 2000 megawatts.
Just three years later, the coal-fired and largest power plant in Australia, Origin Energy’s Eraring plant, is expected to close. Its current capacity is close to 3000 MW and supplies a quarter of New South Wales’ electricity demand. (It’s likely that the NSW government will have to step in to ensure that this plant continues to operate, in a deal akin to the secret arrangement that the Victorian government has with Energy Australia in respect of the Yallourn plant.)
The extremely badly run AGL Energy, egged on by major shareholder, Mike Cannon-Brookes (who holds just over 11 per cent of the registry), has announced that it will shut its coal-fired plant in Victoria – Loy Yang A – ten years earlier than expected, in 2035. This plant has a capacity of over 2000 MW, which is 30 per cent of Victoria’s demand. Not only is this plant relatively new but it also runs off brown coal for which there is no export potential. What this means is that a relatively low-cost input is guaranteed for this plant.
The broader point to be made is that the hastened exit of coal from the NEM – I haven’t mentioned that Queensland expects to be out of coal-fired generation by 2035 – should be ringing serious alarm bells right now. But if anything, the federal Climate Change and Energy Minister, Chris Bowen, seems to regard these developments as good news. After all, he keeps telling us about the importance of emissions reduction and the government’s legislated targets.
What he seems to be blissfully unaware of is the sheer impossibility of replacing coal-fired generation with alternative affordable and reliable sources within the necessary timeframe – if ever. He talks about the need for 10,000 additional kilometres of transmission lines. But given the need to obtain necessary easements (often in the face of strenuous local objections) and the shortage of workers and materials, that ain’t going to happen any time soon.
Even the rollout of renewable energy projects, including the growing popularity of the much more expensive offshore wind turbines, is likely to be slow notwithstanding the substantial subsidies that are on offer.
The decision by the states to essentially go their own ways by devising their own energy plans is further undermining any integrity the planning of the NEM may have had. It’s easy to see that, in the event of blackouts and power rationing, it will be each state for itself, with interconnectors possibly disabled.
The chief executive of one of the big energy operators, Alinta Energy, has belled the cat on what is going to happen with electricity prices. After rising by around 25 per cent this year, the expectation is that they will rise a further 35 per cent next year – figures endorsed by the Australian Energy Regulator. He points out that a coal-fired plant that cost his company $1 billion will need $8 billion in replacement expenditure on renewable installations and the necessary supports.
Of course, we can kiss goodbye to the $275 cut to the annual household electricity bill promised by our ‘I stand by the modelling’ Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. But that loss may prove small beer in the future scheme of things.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/a-real-tipping-point/
*****************************************************Tasmania's Catholic Archbishop Julian Porteous defends Bible reading at a school graduation
Opposition to a planned biblical reading about marriage at a girls' school graduation mass shows society is becoming "increasingly hostile to Christian beliefs", according to Tasmania's Catholic archbishop
Hobart Catholic school St Mary's College made headlines last week when concerns were raised about the chosen reading for its graduation mass — Ephesians 5: 21-23 — which includes:
"Wives should regard their husbands as they regard the Lord, since as Christ is head of the Church and saves the whole body, so is a husband the head of his wife; and as the Church submits to Christ, so should wives submit to their husbands, in everything."
After concern among staff, students and parents, and backlash on social media, Archbishop Julian Porteous agreed to change the reading, and provided an alternative.
The section of Ephesians 5 is the reading for the day, but, being an ordinary weekday, those choosing the readings have freedom to choose something else.
Questions were also asked about whether a reading about marriage was the best choice for an occasion that is celebrating academic achievement.
In his homily during Sunday's mass at the Guilford Young Chapel in Hobart, Archbishop Porteous said it was "not unusual for the teaching of sacred scripture to be at variance with the attitudes and ethos of our age".
"We now find ourselves as Catholics, as Christians, being criticised and persecuted because we believe what the scriptures teach and we desire to live by its imperatives, even when they are at variance with the ethos of our times," he said.
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Teenagers will now be forced to study MATHS for their HSC exams after years of the often subject dreaded by many being optional
It's an important subject dreaded by thousands of students, but mathematics is soon to be a compulsory in the Higher School Certificate across New South Wales.
New senior syllabuses coming into effect in 2025 mean all Year 11 and Year 12 students must study maths from the following year.
The change means all students currently in Year 8 or younger will have to study maths to pass their HSC including sitting maths exams.
To prepare students for HSC level maths, the schools will reform maths courses between Year 7 and Year 10.
NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said the change is happening to improve school leavers' career hopes. 'Maths helps develop skills for life, providing students with fundamental skills in problem-solving, analysis and reasoning that are essential no matter what career they choose,' she said.
She said it is her 'vision' that every child has the maths skills they need in life, echoing what then-Premier Gladys Berejiklian said in 2019.
Maths has long been optional for senior students in NSW. In 2001 HSC students in Australia's most populous state had to choose either maths or science.
In 2019 the NSW Curriculum Review was released signalling a change. That year Ms Mitchell announced maths would be reintroduced as a compulsory subject in Years 11 and 12. But she stopped short of saying it would be a mandatory subject for the HSC. It will be in four years time.
There was increasing concern about the impact of declining numeracy amongst high school graduates because of waning interest in the subject.
The worry was school-leavers were beginning to display worsening skills in basic life functions such as budgeting, calculating shopping costs and account-keeping.
'Whether you are a carpenter or a software engineer, maths is a companion for life, we want to make sure that the new curriculum provides a level of maths concepts that will help every NSW student succeed in life after school,' Ms Mitchell said.
In 2019 nearly a quarter of NSW students opted against studying maths in their HSC
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11326957/Maths-compulsory-HSC-subject-NSW-students.html
************************************23 October, 2022
The Australian Labor party and the Jews
Antisemitism is ingrained in the Left generally. Even Karl Marx despised Jews
This week came the announcement in the Australian newspaper, after a bungle on the DFAT website was exposed, that ‘Foreign Minister Penny Wong has reversed the former government’s recognition of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel instead of Tel Aviv
Antisemitism has plagued the modern Left for the last few decades. Part of the reason Jew-hatred is so entrenched within various Labour (and Greens) parties is that their fundamental leftist ideological beliefs blind them to the reality of their own ingrained prejudices, many of which were imbibed in the neo-Marxist halls of universities and in the sweaty basements of undergraduate political clubs.
In the modern socialist view of the world, one is either a dark-skinned indigenous victim of imperialist occupation or an illegitimate pale-skinned coloniser of land that doesn’t belong to you. The ultimate irony is that Jews – persecuted and murdered for over a thousand years by fair-skinned European anti-semites for their dark, swarthy looks and semitic features – have somehow washed up in the ‘white’ column in the modern era. Whereas any other ‘tribe’ with such a long and proud connection to and reverence for their own lands would be regarded as the rightful ‘indigenous First Nation’ of the Holy Lands, the perversity of the modern Left is to deny Jews their own heritage whilst promulgating the idea that another ‘tribe’ actually owns their land. And so it came to pass that Israel and the Jews are now viewed by the Left as illegitimate occupiers of their own birthright; a glorious birthright that extends back over three thousand years and is one of the cornerstones of Western civilisation.
Thus, ‘West Jerusalem’, never before disputed, is now declared by Labor’s mandarins to not be Jewish at all – or words to that effect – but instead the plaything of globalist outfits like the United Nations and the EU. Tel Aviv, a thriving, fun town for sure, but a modern one with no deep historical roots of note to the ancient Jewish kingdom, will suffice for the embassy gig as far as Wong and co. are concerned.
The reaction from around the world has been swift. The Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid tweeted, ‘We can only hope that the Australian government manages other matters more seriously and professionally,’ before adding, ‘Jerusalem is the eternal and united capital of Israel and nothing will ever change that.’
Perhaps Ms Wong, born in Malaysia, was confusing that nation’s overt antipathy to Israel with Australian priorities. Who knows? Whatever the case, the sheer arrogance of Labor’s Foreign Minister in presuming that she can unilaterally determine another nation’s capital city against their own wishes is breath-taking. Imagine the Chinese telling us that they didn’t recognise Canberra and were instead moving their embassy to Uluru.
This magazine and its editor have long warned Australian Jewry to beware of the fake hand of friendship offered by the Labor party. By accusing Mr Morrison of recognising Jerusalem (the insertion of ‘West’ was a typically cowardly piece of political nonsense from the Liberal party bedwetters) solely for the purpose of currying favour in electorates with a high Jewish vote shows again not only the arrogance but the condescension of Labor to Israelis and Jews, believing them to be a collective that can so easily be bought off. It is also worth pointing out that all those seats in fact went to the Teals, who themselves have a fairly questionable history when it comes to anti-semitic comments, so not exactly a credible analysis.
It was also Penny Wong who recently and disgracefully reversed the $10 million of Aussie taxpayer cuts to UNRWA; funds believed by some to be financing Palestinian pay-for-slay programs. (A cause originally championed by this magazine and successfully pursued by Dr David Adler and others in the Australian parliament.)
It was former prime minister Tony Abbott and then President Donald Trump, and most recently British PM Liz Truss, who showed their support for Israel by recognising Jerusalem as the eternal capital. Mr Trump is also responsible for bringing peace to parts of the Middle East in the form of the Abraham Accords.
Meanwhile, it was the British Labour party that was forced to turf out former leader (and good friend of Anthony Albanese) Jeremy Corbyn over allegations concerning anti-semitism.
By their works shall ye know them.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/10/labor-and-the-jews/ ?
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There was no basis for Covid passports and Covid vaccine mandates
The admission Dutch conservative member of the European Parliament, Rob Roos, dragged out of Pfizer representative Janine Small has thrown the vaccine passport and vaccine mandate narrative into disarray. It dismantled the lie that we should be taking – specifically – Covid vaccines to protect others.
Roos switched to English when asking his controversial question, which helped the answer turn viral on social media where it was viewed at least 20 million times in the days that followed.
‘…and I will speak in English so there are no misunderstandings. Was the Pfizer Covid vaccine tested on stopping the transmission of the virus before it entered the market? If not, please, say it clearly. If ‘yes’ are you willing to share the data with this committee? And I really want straight answer, ‘yes or no’ and I’m looking forward to it.’
‘No,’ was Small’s reply, followed by a little laugh – as if it were some kind of joke. ‘We had to really move at the speed of science.’ A comment that was shortly followed by the statement, ‘We had to do everything “at risk”.’
‘The speed of science… Honestly,’ said Rowan Dean, on The World According to Rowan Dean, which airs Tuesday-Thursday at 9pm on Sky News Australia.
He spoke with Rob Roos last night.
‘I was thrilled when you asked that question in English. You knew how important that question was. I remember, you started in Dutch and then went, “Hang on, I’m going to ask this question in English…!” Well done, and thank you so much. What led you to asking that particular question?’
‘Since the implementation of the Covid vaccines I’ve been searching for the answer to this question,’ replied Rob Roos. ‘I also asked it of AstraZeneca and Moderna because it’s important. Millions of people were placed outside society because of Covid passports. People lost their jobs and it was all based on that the vaccine would stop transmission, otherwise there would be no point in excluding unvaccinated people from society. If the vaccine doesn’t stop transmission, then vaccinated people spread the virus too. So, I found this to be an incredibly important question.’
‘Rob, you’re right, it is the single most important question because certainly here in Australia we had some of the worst lockdowns, we had this vicious persecution of unvaccinated people, we had our state premiers going on television and saying they wouldn’t be in the same room as the unvaccinated. It was this endless repetition of “this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated”. We had health authorities – health bureaucrats – telling the public that they were going to make life incredibly difficult for you if you weren’t vaccinated. This was persecution, I don’t know if it was the same in Europe, but it certainly happened here in Australia. You got that critical answer that they hadn’t even tested if it would stop transmission. Were you surprised by the answer? What’s it been like since you exposed this scandal?’
‘Well, I wasn’t that surprised,’ admitted Roos, ‘because the answer was as I suspected. We have all seen the daily practice during the Omicron variant but our governments keep telling the story – the fiction – that vaccination was necessary to protect others. But I was surprised about the honesty with which the Pfizer representative responded because the implications are massive. This means that there was no basis for Covid passports and Covid vaccine mandates.’
‘What has been the result in the European Parliament? It was the executive [from Pfizer] who turned up and spoke but it was the CEO who was invited. The CEO declined to come on to your interrogation and questioning… Maybe the executive wasn’t even aware of what dynamite she was exposing by giving the answer she gave?’ added Dean. ‘Are we going to see governments backing down and apologising for these vaccine passports? What’s been the response?’
‘There has been a massive response to the video. Worldwide people are angry because their governments lied to them. Austrians were denied access to their dying parents, for example. People all over the world – not only Europe. I also think a lot of people are now starting to see the government’s response for what it was. They have abused their power, maybe [they were] even tyrannical. They only cared about pushing vaccinations. There was no respect for people’s body autonomy and integrity. So, on the one hand, the response has been overwhelmingly positive, massively so. At the same time, I have been attacked by establishment media who claimed I spread “fake news”. But, when they attack me they don’t attack my actual argument, they attack a strawman. I am not claiming Pfizer lied, I am claiming our governments lied because they based their narrative on the idea that you do this for others and that vaccination stops transmission for which there was no evidence. And all fact-checkers have to admit that the government messaging was plain wrong and government policies undermined fundamental rights in an unprecedented way – a way which we thought would never be possible in a liberal democracy. But it was. And that’s shocking, because it tells us a lot about the state of our fundamental rights.’
‘You’ve used a phrase that I’ve been using a lot over the past few months, the abuse of power,’ replied Rowan Dean. ‘And, for me, that is what the absolute pivot of this is all about. I agree with you. We’ve seen a lot of people coming out and saying, “Oh… well, they never claimed that they had tested for transmission therefore there’s nothing in this story.” It’s complete rubbish. As you have put your finger on, the point is that our politicians led us to believe, in fact, they insisted at every level. Whether it was Anthony Fauci in the States or our own politicians here in Australia – at every level our health bureaucrats insisted that the vaccines prevented transmission and this was the rationale for mandatory vaccination which, in this country – and in other places – many people lost their jobs. Many people are still out of work. Many people had their lives turned upside down and destroyed because they insisted to us that it did stop transmission. This isn’t a problem with Pfizer, as you say, Rob, this is absolutely about the abuse of power by politicians who are either too stupid, or too lazy, or too corrupt to actually check out the facts and were prepared to abuse their power. What happens next?’
‘That’s a very good question. What should happen, in my opinion, is that politicians are held accountable. The people who were responsible for these policies should resign if they are still in office. This has been the most damaging violation of fundamental rights in decades. Its impact is lasting. Small businesses are still going bankrupt because of high inflation after they were already weakened by Covid lockdowns. Young people are still more often depressed and lost out on valuable life experience – our society suffers from an obesity epidemic – and this was not because of some force of nature, it was because politicians decided to enact these policies. Those who did should resign and this violation of fundamental human rights should never happen again.’
As Rowan Dean says, Rob Roos belongs in the history books for what he has done exposing the lies of our government officials during the pandemic years.
The fact-checkers can complain all they like that Pfizer never said or implied that their tests would prevent transmission. This is the excuse official fact-checkers use to call ‘fake news’ on Rob Roos. Are outfits such as Politifact so dense (or disingenuous?) that they don’t realise they are debating the wrong fact? Let’s have a ‘fact-check’ on the claims of politicians, such as President Joe Biden. As Rob Roos correctly states, it was the lies of government and the lies of health officials drafting policy, that matter. And they certainly lied.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/rob-roos-and-rowan-dean-on-the-abuse-of-rights/
*************************************************The writing crisis in Australian schools
A review of 10 million NAPLAN year 3-9 writing results and more than 350 persuasive writing samples by the government-funded Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) has found students’ writing declined significantly in every key skill area but spelling over seven years to 2018.
“We do have a serious decline, and it’s worse for our older students,” said the head of AERO, Jenny Donovan, who called for the core skill of writing to be given greater emphasis in the nation’s schools. “It’s a big drop and [writing] is a really basic expectation.”
Claire Wyatt-Smith, an Australian Catholic University professor who was a key contributor to the NSW Education Standards Authority’s review of writing in schools, said an emphasis on reading had taken the focus off writing in Australian schools.
“Writing is of at least equal need and greater urgency,” she said. “The teaching of writing is perhaps the biggest equity issue we face. We can use the word illiterate. They finish school and are unable to have the proficiency in writing they need for workplace engagement.”
The national findings echo those of a major review in NSW, which also found teachers lacked confidence in teaching writing, were not given the training and resources they needed, and spent too little classroom time focusing on it, particularly in high school.
Writing is key to success at school because students who struggle to express their thoughts clearly on the page cannot demonstrate their knowledge. Research has shown that writing ability in year 9 is a strong indicator of success in year 12, when many subjects require essays.
Donovan said clear written expression was also essential to life after school. “Everybody is going to need to write a job application,” she said. “They’ll have to question a traffic fine, or make a case for why their rental bond should be returned.”
AERO’s analysis found the decline was particularly noticeable among high-performing students.
In 2011, more than 20 per cent of year 9 students achieved five or six out of possible six marks in sentence structure, which meant they could write sentences that varied in length and complexity. By 2018, that proportion had fallen to just eight per cent.
Writing standards
Forty-five percent of students in Year 7 can score a 3 out of a possible 6, meaning they can correctly write most simple and compound sentences, and some complex sentences. In year 9, more than a third of students are still only able to write at the same basic level.
Only a quarter of year 9 students used apostrophes, commas and colons correctly most of the time. Most were at the level of a competent year 3 student as defined by curriculum documents, which meant they could use capital letters at the beginning of sentences and full stops at the end.
The many students who are below the standard assumed in the curriculum are likely to find lessons and assessments too hard. This is a particular problem in year 9, although students in years 5 and 7 are also achieving at a lower level than curriculum expectations.
“Students are a long way short of where the syllabus and curriculum anticipates they should be in their learning,” said Donovan.
“When teachers are using the syllabus or curriculum to guide them, rather than the knowledge of where their students are up to, they’ll miss the mark. They’ll be teaching at a point where the students are not ready for learning. “There’s no reason why a year 9 teacher will know what’s in a year 3 syllabus document. That’s a big gap to straddle.”
Donovan has made writing a priority for AERO, which was founded to help schools use effective teaching approaches, and has developed resources that teachers can use in their classroom. “The good news part is we also understand what to do about it,” she said.
NSW has also become the first jurisdiction to make writing a key focus of its new syllabuses.
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An idea for getting the unemployed to give something back
Four problems, which are related but which can be solved
Australia currently has – among many others – four problems, which are related but which can be solved. The four problems are a skills shortage, a failing education system, youth unemployment, and under-manning in the ADF.
In early September, a Jobs and Skills Summit was held in Canberra. To address skills shortages, Prime Minister Albanese pledged an extra $1 billion for 180,000 fee-free TAFE places in 2023 and $100m over four years for 10,000 new ‘energy apprentices’. Politicians see money – other people’s money – as the solution to every problem. However, money will not solve our skills shortages while the second problem – a failing education system – exists.
At June 30, 2020, 266,600 young Australians were undertaking apprenticeships. In 2019, 384,400 undergraduates commenced degree courses. However, just under half of apprentices fail to complete their apprenticeships, and around half who study teaching also fail to complete. With these failure rates, of Albanese’s 190,000 free TAFE places and energy apprenticeships only half will finish – yet another half a billion dollars down the drain.
The Jobs Summit was told that drop-outs occur, ‘in part because young people are not really prepared for the process’ – the process simply being education and training – and ‘lack of foundational skills’ among potential workers are a real barrier to employment. Worse, the Business Council of Australia’s CEO, Jennifer Westacott told the summit ‘they simply don’t have the basic skills of reading, writing, spelling, numeracy and digital’.
Self-evidently, our education system is a problem. According to the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), in 2018 20 per cent of Australian students had reading levels ‘too low to enable them to participate effectively and productively in life’, an eight per cent increase since 2003. By 2030, nearly 25 per cent of our students will fall into this dismal and abysmal category.
Australia’s unemployment rate is now 3.5 per cent, but our third problem is youth employment at 7.03 per cent. The number of unemployed in June 2022 was 494,000, of whom 77,000 are in the youth cohort (ages 15 – 24). In May 2022 there were 480,000 job vacancies – approximately one job for every person unemployed.
However, instead of having almost zero unemployment as one might expect, the jobs are not being filled. And, of the 77,000 unemployed youth, the majority are highly likely to be unemployable, destined never to escape the insidious cycle of welfare dependency.
The fourth problem is under-manning in the ADF and Australia’s Reserve Forces. Vice Admiral Mark Hammond, the new Chief of Navy, said that the RAN submarine force will have to expand from its current 850 sailors to about 2,500 to crew our new nuclear submarines, and thousands more will be needed to crew new surface ships. These highly-skilled jobs cannot be filled if half our tertiary students fail to complete their studies and training, and if 25 per cent of secondary school leavers are incapable of undertaking further study and training.
A potential answer to this problem is to have Australia’s unemployed youth – those on welfare – engage in military training for a year. A pilot program of 5,000 trainees (from the 77,000 unemployed youth cohort) across the six states would require around 500 staff for a year. These could come from Australia’s reserve forces, from retired regular ADF personnel, and from other appropriate retired personnel who would like to work. This program should not be a burden on the already undermanned – and overworked – ADF. Salary costs could be around $50 million for the year. Accommodation should be tented, to reduce costs and to allow easy establishment of training camps in specific locations. The establishment of inexpensive and temporary catering, shower, and latrine facilities are not beyond the capabilities of army engineers. Total costs of the training could be around $100 million a year. Small change for our hitherto shamelessly profligate governments.
The purpose of the training is change – change to lifestyles, outlook, thinking, and to the lack of basic skills of the young unemployed. Under current conditions they have no prospects of any meaningful employment, no prospects of a fulfilling life, and no prospects of contributing to Australia.
Twelve months of full-time military recruit training will qualify participants as fully-trained soldiers i.e. ready to and capable of joining a regular military unit. Note that this is not national service. Furthermore, those who do complete the training will not be compelled to serve in the ADF regular forces. Their commitment to full-time ADF service will end on the completion of their full-time recruit training of twelve months.
Any who are unwilling to commit to and complete the training period will not be compelled to do so. However, those who refuse to engage in this training will no longer receive any unemployment or other welfare benefits.
Apart from the military training, the program should comprise education in basic and higher skills in reading, writing, numeracy, and digital – those that are now lacking. Essential elements of the program should include discipline, physical fitness, sport, and adventure training. The experience should be enjoyable, educational, and productive for the majority, if not all who undertake the training. It must be a positive life-changing experience. At the end of the training, all participants should be job-ready, and ready to participate effectively and productively in life.
After the initial recruit training is completed, the program could be expanded for those who have demonstrated an interest and a commitment to include trade and vocational training in the widest possible range of traditional and new (digital) trades and skills. Leadership and management training – developing initiative and self-reliance – now being sold by vocational colleges at a high cost, can also be delivered to those demonstrating interest and commitment via promotion courses.
Instead of looking for reasons why this cannot be done, let’s make it happen. As Nike said – just do it!
Australia currently has – among many others – four problems, which are related but which can be solved. The four problems are a skills shortage, a failing education system, youth unemployment, and under-manning in the ADF.
In early September, a Jobs and Skills Summit was held in Canberra. To address skills shortages, Prime Minister Albanese pledged an extra $1 billion for 180,000 fee-free TAFE places in 2023 and $100m over four years for 10,000 new ‘energy apprentices’. Politicians see money – other people’s money – as the solution to every problem. However, money will not solve our skills shortages while the second problem – a failing education system – exists.
At June 30, 2020, 266,600 young Australians were undertaking apprenticeships. In 2019, 384,400 undergraduates commenced degree courses. However, just under half of apprentices fail to complete their apprenticeships, and around half who study teaching also fail to complete. With these failure rates, of Albanese’s 190,000 free TAFE places and energy apprenticeships only half will finish – yet another half a billion dollars down the drain.
The Jobs Summit was told that drop-outs occur, ‘in part because young people are not really prepared for the process’ – the process simply being education and training – and ‘lack of foundational skills’ among potential workers are a real barrier to employment. Worse, the Business Council of Australia’s CEO, Jennifer Westacott told the summit ‘they simply don’t have the basic skills of reading, writing, spelling, numeracy and digital’.
Self-evidently, our education system is a problem. According to the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), in 2018 20 per cent of Australian students had reading levels ‘too low to enable them to participate effectively and productively in life’, an eight per cent increase since 2003. By 2030, nearly 25 per cent of our students will fall into this dismal and abysmal category.
Australia’s unemployment rate is now 3.5 per cent, but our third problem is youth employment at 7.03 per cent. The number of unemployed in June 2022 was 494,000, of whom 77,000 are in the youth cohort (ages 15 – 24). In May 2022 there were 480,000 job vacancies – approximately one job for every person unemployed.
However, instead of having almost zero unemployment as one might expect, the jobs are not being filled. And, of the 77,000 unemployed youth, the majority are highly likely to be unemployable, destined never to escape the insidious cycle of welfare dependency.
The fourth problem is under-manning in the ADF and Australia’s Reserve Forces. Vice Admiral Mark Hammond, the new Chief of Navy, said that the RAN submarine force will have to expand from its current 850 sailors to about 2,500 to crew our new nuclear submarines, and thousands more will be needed to crew new surface ships. These highly-skilled jobs cannot be filled if half our tertiary students fail to complete their studies and training, and if 25 per cent of secondary school leavers are incapable of undertaking further study and training.
A potential answer to this problem is to have Australia’s unemployed youth – those on welfare – engage in military training for a year. A pilot program of 5,000 trainees (from the 77,000 unemployed youth cohort) across the six states would require around 500 staff for a year. These could come from Australia’s reserve forces, from retired regular ADF personnel, and from other appropriate retired personnel who would like to work. This program should not be a burden on the already undermanned – and overworked – ADF. Salary costs could be around $50 million for the year. Accommodation should be tented, to reduce costs and to allow easy establishment of training camps in specific locations. The establishment of inexpensive and temporary catering, shower, and latrine facilities are not beyond the capabilities of army engineers. Total costs of the training could be around $100 million a year. Small change for our hitherto shamelessly profligate governments.
The purpose of the training is change – change to lifestyles, outlook, thinking, and to the lack of basic skills of the young unemployed. Under current conditions they have no prospects of any meaningful employment, no prospects of a fulfilling life, and no prospects of contributing to Australia.
Twelve months of full-time military recruit training will qualify participants as fully-trained soldiers i.e. ready to and capable of joining a regular military unit. Note that this is not national service. Furthermore, those who do complete the training will not be compelled to serve in the ADF regular forces. Their commitment to full-time ADF service will end on the completion of their full-time recruit training of twelve months.
Any who are unwilling to commit to and complete the training period will not be compelled to do so. However, those who refuse to engage in this training will no longer receive any unemployment or other welfare benefits.
Apart from the military training, the program should comprise education in basic and higher skills in reading, writing, numeracy, and digital – those that are now lacking. Essential elements of the program should include discipline, physical fitness, sport, and adventure training. The experience should be enjoyable, educational, and productive for the majority, if not all who undertake the training. It must be a positive life-changing experience. At the end of the training, all participants should be job-ready, and ready to participate effectively and productively in life.
After the initial recruit training is completed, the program could be expanded for those who have demonstrated an interest and a commitment to include trade and vocational training in the widest possible range of traditional and new (digital) trades and skills. Leadership and management training – developing initiative and self-reliance – now being sold by vocational colleges at a high cost, can also be delivered to those demonstrating interest and commitment via promotion courses.
Instead of looking for reasons why this cannot be done, let’s make it happen. As Nike said – just do it!
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/from-youth-unemployment-and-welfare-to-the-adf/
************************************21 October, 2022
Government-owned electricity generation: What could possibly go wrong?
Dan is going to close all the coal-fired power stations. Not a single word about what will happen on windless nights and overcast days
A re-elected Andrews government will take back control of the state’s electricity grid and effectively end coal-fired power generation in Victoria in little more than a decade through a renewable energy target of 95 per cent by 2035.
Ahead of the November state election, Premier Daniel Andrews announced the new policy on Thursday, prompting warnings from energy experts that returning electricity generation to state hands could increase power prices, expose taxpayers to massive fiscal risk, and even make the government’s renewable energy targets harder to reach.
The plan was condemned by energy generators as a “back to the future” announcement and “retrograde step”, but was backed by the Electrical Trades Union as a “fantastic development” for Victoria.
It follows a joint Albanese-Andrews government “rewiring the nation” announcement earlier this week – which aims to fast-track Victorian renewable energy zones and offshore wind development – and the launch earlier this month of the NSW electricity infrastructure road map. And last month, Queensland Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced a $62bn energy plan, which includes a renewable energy target of 80 per cent by 2035.
Mr Andrews claimed his policy would “deliver cheaper power bills and lower greenhouse gas emissions” in a state that is currently dependent on coal for 60 per cent of its power. He also took aim at the Kennett Liberal government for selling off the SEC amid Victoria’s post-Cain-Kirner Labor government recession in the 1990s.
“The Liberals sold off public power assets to private, for-profit companies. They sold off Victoria’s essential services and sent much of the profits offshore – with the generators alone making $23bn in profits at our collective expense,” the Premier said.
The plan to revive the SEC would give Victorian taxpayers a 51 per cent stake in the commission and its wind and solar projects, at an initial cost of $1bn.
Mr Andrews said industry superannuation funds were the government’s preferred investment partners for the remaining 49 per cent.
“Unreliable, privatised coal will be replaced by clean, government-owned, renewable energy,” the Premier said.
“We’ve already taken soundings from the super industry and to say they are excited is an understatement.”
A new SEC office will be established in the Latrobe Valley town of Morwell, in Victoria’s east.
Labor is facing electoral challenges from the Greens in at least three inner city seats, and is targeting the seat of Morwell, following the retirement of independent former Nationals MP Russell Northe.
Mr Andrews announced new renewable energy targets of 65 per cent by 2030 and 95 per cent by 2035, bringing forward the government’s net-zero emissions target by five years, to 2045.
He also estimated the initiatives would increase gross state product by about $9.5bn and support 59,000 jobs through to 2035.
The Andrews government says the new SEC will be responsible for generating 4.5 gigawatts of renewable power – the equivalent replacement capacity of Loy Yang A, Victoria’s largest power station, which is being closed by AGL in 2035, a decade earlier than previously planned.
The owner of the Loy Yang B coal plant, Alinta, said its staff were shocked by Thursday’s announcement, given the generator had been due to remain open until 2047, but will now be forced to close 12 years earlier.
Alinta chief executive Jeff Dimery said the company had taken “strong steps” to prepare for the transition to renewable energy, “but we need to understand more about how the government intends to manage the cost of the expedited transition, protect communities and workers, and support us to invest in the replacement generation required to keep the lights on in the state.
“Our immediate priority and focus will be supporting our employees at Loy Yang B who will be understandably shocked by this announcement,” Mr Dimery said.
Grattan Institute energy program director Tony Wood said the announcement, with recent statements by the federal government, Queensland and NSW, demonstrated a renewed push by state and federal governments to “renationalise” the power sector.
Mr Wood argued governments had effectively made a call that markets could not be trusted to deliver an increasingly volatile transition from coal power to clean energy.
“We just have arrived at a position where the ministers whose governments contributed to the problem have concluded that the markets cannot deliver what they want, someone has to take control and it should be them. They are probably right,” he said.
“That means that the risks now sit with governments and some combination of taxpayers and consumers.
“I suspect that, despite the claims that this will all reduce power bills, the most likely casualty will be cost – although delivering the targets might be a close second.”
Green Energy Markets analyst Tristan Edis said he suspected the policy would be “good politics as voters with rose-tinted glasses experience large hikes in their power bills, warning that state-owned power companies “can be incredibly ruthless, profit-oriented operators”.
“Some have been big blockers of emission-reduction policies. They have regularly exploited their market power (with) network charges higher than needed (because they’re) used to raising state government revenue. (They) ain’t saints,” Mr Edis tweeted.
Australian Energy Council chief Sarah McNamara said the move was a “back to the future” announcement and “retrograde step” which would damage market and investor confidence.
“The surprise announcement contains little detail but looks likely to chill private investment and see Victorian taxpayers carry the lion’s share of risk around new generation,” Ms McNamara said.
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‘Reverse racism’: Fury as iconic Mount Warning hike closed forever
This was done under Leftist influence. The Left just love racial discrimination. Hitler put them off it for a while but it has roared back in the guise of Critical Race Theory in America.
Mount Warning national park is Crown land, the property of the Australian people as a whole. Giving control of it to some of the descendants of people who once lived there is a bureaucratic decision, not a constitutional reality. There is no obstacle to removing the exclusivity of use.
When will the Left learn that racial discrimination is obnoxious?
The decision to permanently close the iconic Mount Warning hike has prompted furious backlash and claims of ‘reverse racism
It’s been labelled Australia’s “next Uluru” and the decision to permanently close the famous Wollumbin/Mount Warning hiking trail has drawn widespread backlash.
The Tweed Valley tourism Mecca and its 1100m-high peak is the first place in the country to catch the day’s sunrise.
However those picturesque views and challenging hours-long hike are a thing of the past for visitors after the NSW government revealed on Thursday it would permanently close the attraction and even ban images promoting the famous mountain.
The site will be handed back to its Aboriginal custodians.
Representatives from the Wollumbin Consultative Group, which represents a range of Aboriginal groups and families with a connection to the site, say public access is not “culturally appropriate or safe”.
Despite already being closed since 2020, largely due to the Covid pandemic, the future of the Wollumbin/Mount Warning hiking trail remains a polarising issue.
Couriermail.com.au readers were torn over the future of the site, with 93 per cent voting they opposed its permanent closure, labelling it ‘reverse racism’ and a backwards steps toward inclusion.
Here is what both sides of the debate said:
Vanessa Alia said it’s time to respect the traditional owners of the land. “Heaven forfend we should actually respect anything about the culture of the people whose land we stole … because we’re a bunch of toddlers who think we’re entitled to anything and everything,” she wrote on Facebook.
Monica Dixon added: “I climbed Wollumbin many years ago. I didn’t know the cultural significance of the site. I’m glad that I know now, and I wouldn’t do it again.”
While agreeing with the handover, David Layt questioned if it could still remain open. “It is cultural land & should be with the indigenous custodians. But would be great if we can come to an understanding so all can enjoy.”
Tanique Brim used history in her case. “People forget before colonisation, we had a lore! And many sacred areas aboriginal people can’t go to unless approved by elders. just because it’s beautiful, you don’t need to be there! We are spiritual people who have the right to close any sacred area, it’s been like that since dreamtime. Government tried to erase our lands, language and culture.”
James S. Doyle wrote: “Anyone actually from the Tweed valley understands very well why its closed. It’s been completely over run by half wits from the city.
Before everyone gets all opinionated speak to some of the rescue staff who were having to go up there every night of the week at 3am and rescue fitness camp people who got into “trouble”. Not to mention the trashing it has got with garbage.”
THE CASE AGAINST CLOSURE
Phillip Di Bella led the charge of those arguing that the closure would drive a wedge between communities.
“Totally disgusting and further building divide amongst all Australians! Woke taken to another level and unfortunately it won’t be the end!!!!”
Trish Jenkin agreed: “We are one. What utter rubbish. This is all division. We the white Australian has lost all rights to everything my Father fought for in WW2 and this is only the start. Australia Day and Anzac Day next. Watch this space.”
However Teresa said keeping it open would be the best way to produce a positive outcome: “Respect, yes. Close, no. By having it open, there are more opportunities to celebrate indigenous culture. I am pretty sure First Nations people climbed it for thousands of years.”
Brendan John backed her up.
“Surely keeping it open would allow visitors to become aware of the cultural significance closing it ensures the story is never told. Seems to defeat the purpose.”
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Labor told not to waste its golden chance to tackle Australia’s housing crunch
The Feds can do only so much. The big blockage to new housing developments is local councils
Labor has a “golden opportunity” to tackle the country’s housing crisis in its first budget next week, but risks wasting it by focusing on only one half of the equation.
Urban Taskforce Australia said the government’s election commitments on affordability were primarily targeted at incentives for buyers and more social housing.
“While welcome, this does not address the underlying issue – that housing supply in Australia has fallen well behind demand and urgent reforms on the supply side are needed to improve housing outcomes for more households,” the group’s boss Tom Forrest said.
Ahead of Treasurer Jim Chalmers delivering his maiden budget on Tuesday, Mr Forrest called for him to take “pro-active steps to boost private market housing supply”.
Current measures will only see demand increase while doing little if anything to address supply shortages, he said.
“Boosting demand with packages to assist those on low incomes alone is nothing but an offer of fools’ gold if housing supply is not significantly increased. It actually pushes up the price of new homes.”
A sustained lack of supply will increase demand for social and affordable housing, placing even the lower end of the housing market out of reach for many, he warned.
“So, while social and affordable housing is clearly necessary, given the current state of the market, greater focus needs to be applied to fixing the cause of the problem and not just the symptoms.
“The cause is the lack of supply and its failure to meet the demand for homes. The symptoms are rising home prices, declining affordability, increasing rents, and increased demand for social housing, resulting in increasing homelessness and poverty.
“It is time governments treated the cause.”
Sydney’s housing market is the most expensive and competitive in the country, whether someone is looking to buy or rent.
The New South Wales capital is also the “economic engine room of the nation”, Mr Forrest said, making the supply of affordable homes for key workers a critical issue.
But projections by the Department of Planning and Environment show a little over 150,000 new homes will be built in the next five years.
That’s well below the 40,000 per year – or 200,000 over five years – that the NSW Housing Strategy predicts will be required.
The latest data shows that supply constraints are getting worse. In the 12 months to June, new housing supply fell to just 24,641.
“That’s 28.7% below the prior five-year average, which in itself saw the housing supply crisis emerge,” Mr Forrest said.
“This means we are almost certainly heading for the DPE’s ‘low growth’ scenario for Greater Sydney, which predicts that only 143,475 new homes will be produced between 2021-26.”
That would leave a shortfall of more than 60,000 required dwellings, putting significant pressure on prices.
Tuesday’s budget is expected to focus on funding measures for Labor’s election commitments.
This includes the Help to Buy shared equity scheme for 10,000 people a year, the Regional First Home Buyer Support Scheme for 10,000 eligible participants a year, and the Housing Australia Future Fund to build 30,000 new social and affordable homes in five years.
Delivering on those promises as quickly as possible is a “sensible” approach of the government, Mr Forrest said. “But there is an urgent need for focus on supply-side stimulus.”
Urban Taskforce Australia has released a five-point plan to drastically improve the housing supply across the country:
It includes the immediate reform of tax constraints on the emerging build-to-rent sector, including GST tax credits that currently aren’t available for five years.
The plan also calls for increased incentives for superannuation funds to put their enormous investment potential behind affordable and key worker housing.
Local councils should also be rewarded for overachieving in housing supply by linking infrastructure grants to performance targets.
Mr Forrest said the government should also expand the use of low-interest bonds via the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation for the delivery of private sector housing supply projects.
And finally, the states that increase the flexibility of planning systems to fast-track high-yield housing supply developments should receive financial rewards. Conversely, those who don’t should be penalised.
Build-to-rent offers an opportunity to drastically increase housing supply. Picture: LIV Newstead in Brisbane/Mirvac
“Supporting those who are struggling is in the DNA of the ALP,” Mr Forrest said. “But offering demand side assistance can only work if the supply side is also addressed.”
The Commonwealth holds most of the big levers when it comes to addressing housing supply, he said.
“Labor’s first federal budget in almost a decade is a golden opportunity to signal to state governments, [councils], and the private sector that it is prepared to be part of a collaborative solution.”
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New coal mine approved
The Department of Regional Development, Manufacturing and Water has granted New Acland Coal its water licence, clearing the way for the mine to reopen and for New Hope Group to start hiring hundreds of staff.
The decision comes about a month after it was granted a mining lease.
The water licence comes with 35 strict conditions, including that NAC offsets underground water impacted by mining activities by surrendering equivalent water entitlements.
It must also monitor the impacts on aquifers and groundwater users, implement an underground water monitoring program to track any impacts that may occur and publish the volume of underground water taken.
New Acland Coal general manager Dave O’Dwyer said the mood at the site was ecstatic. “It is great news,” he said. “When the head office rang me up this afternoon I was a bit taken aback,” he said.
Mr O’Dywer said the team had some environmental processes to move through before he could hire new staff. ‘We are hoping within a few months we’ll be moving dirt,” he said
“We have worked so hard to get this far and there has been huge support from the community and through our expressions of interest portal.
About 800 people have put their hand up to work at the mine, with the vast majority coming from the Darling Downs.
All the water used at the site will be trucked in from the Wetalla Waste Water Treatment Plant in Cranley.
The water licence governs the incidental interaction with groundwater.
Mr O’Dwyer said while he expected the licence would be approved, he didn’t think it would happen so soon.
“We have had some interaction with the department talking about some things but we didn’t expect it to happen so quickly,” he said.
“We wanted to be sure the department went through its due diligence and we are really happy it has worked through that process and come forward with an answer for us.”
In December 2021, Queensland’s Land Court recommended the granting of the mining leases and issuing of a draft amended Environmental Authority for the Stage 3 development, subject to certain conditions being met.
Earlier this year NAC was granted a mining lease for Stage 3, which will see operations run for at least 10 years and employ an estimated 600 workers during construction and 400 during operation. It also means the area of mined land will roughly double.
The final approval comes after a 15-year battle between the mine’s owner New Hope Group and a collection Oakey farmers and residents.
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20 October, 2022
Mum-of-two exposes Australia's dire housing crisis as she details her horrific plight couch-surfing with a newborn for TWO years
She became pregnant during that time so it would appear that the man was useless. She should clearly have been more careful about getting her legs up. Her problem is clearly bad decisions, not housing
A young mother with a four-week-old baby and a seven-year-old daughter has been forced to couch surf for nearly two years amid Queensland's social housing crisis.
Amie Rabinski said her older daughter was finding it hard to adapt to their new living situation and that it was stressful not having her own home.
'She misses everything. She misses her toys, she misses her clothes, she misses her own room. We haven't had that for nearly two years,' she told the Today Show.
The Logan mother said she had been deprived of enjoying her second pregnancy because the process of finding permanent accommodation had been so draining.
'Throughout the whole pregnancy I definitely felt deprived. You know, I didn't have much time to really enjoy it,' the mother-of-two said. 'There was a lot to the pregnancy that I didn't really like.'
Host Ally Langdon asked Amie if she felt okay.
'Yeah, I'm fine, mentally, but it is very draining and explaining it to a seven-year-old child is not easy. They don't understand much at that age.'
Aimee McVeigh, the CEO of Queensland's Council of Social Service, said the housing crisis affecting tens of thousands of Queenslanders was an 'unacceptable situation'.
'It is a wet day in Brisbane and we are expecting a really wet weekend and yet tens of thousands of families are waking up in tents, in cars, and in hotel rooms getting ready for work, getting ready to go to school, and you're right Amie, it is impossible to explain this to children,' she said.
The number of Queenslanders on the state's social housing register has ballooned to 46,000 - a rise of 78 per cent in the last four years.
The state government this week announced an additional $1billion would be invested in the state's social housing fund.
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New economic research has finally demolished the popular notion that the 23.3 per cent gender pay gap is primarily driven by employers paying women less for doing the same job as men
While sexism still impacts some private-sector professional salaries, the real issue is that men dominate highly paid sectors such as mining, while women take most of the low-paid jobs, such as in aged and child care.
And the research argues the pay gap could be cut by one third to 15.6 per cent if we could shift to a 40:40:20 gender concentration of workers – 40 per cent women, 40 per cent men and 20 per cent any gender – across all industries and occupations.
The Gender Equity Insights 2022 report from Curtin University’s specialist unit, the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, and the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, offers detailed evidence of how the composition of the workforce generates pay gaps.
Centre director Alan Duncan said it was the first time the centre was able to use postcodes of workplaces to get more accurate state and territory comparisons.
“This is quite a clear articulation of the different contributors to overall numbers that we often see discussed in debates around gender pay gaps,” Professor Duncan said.
“The debate is often dominated by the extent of what are commonly termed like-for-like pay gaps, and by that we mean that men and women are paid differently for performing the same role in the same organisation.”
Salary differences for the same occupations still existed, he said, but the bigger problem was that wages in some industries were much lower than in others and that women were concentrated in relatively low-paying sectors.
He said that even with a 40:40:20 split “there’s another two-thirds of the pay gap that remains to be explained”. Some was attributable to like-for-like salary differences, and some because the journey to a 50:50 split had some way to go.
“I think it’s important to understand all sides of the issue,” he said. “This shouldn’t come as a surprise – it’s something that’s been discussed for some time. But we’ve sought to really get some clarity and precision on it.”
Professor Duncan said it was important to question why some sectors were poorly paid and whether women’s contributions were adequately remunerated.
“It is important, I think, to reflect on whether or not we are rewarding the value of an aged care or a childcare worker or somebody in our health system in the manner that we should,” he said.
His team used the new WGEA location data to compare pay metrics, gender pay gaps and organisational practices across Australia. It found that in most states and territories, the main driver of the gap was the gender imbalance in industries, and this was especially so in Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory. Resource-rich WA was the worst in the nation at 32.1 per cent, but the gap would halve to 16.5 per cent under the 40:40:20 rule. Under that ratio, the gap in the NT would reduce by two thirds, from 25.3 per cent to 8.3 per cent; NSW and Victoria would see gender pay gaps fall by 7.4 and 6.5 percentage points; and Queensland by a larger margin of 8.8 percentage points, from 22.5 per cent down to 13.7 per cent.
It also found that for people working in major cities, the gender pay gap in base remuneration is about 19 per cent. However, the gender pay gap rises steadily to 28.2 per cent for those working in remote areas, and to 29.3 per cent for workers in very remote parts of the country,
The report said Australia needed more men in healthcare and social assistance, and education and training, and more women in construction, mining, manufacturing, information services, transport and wholesale.
“There also needs to be an increase in the share of women in leadership positions, technicians and trades workers and operators and drivers,” it said.
WGEA director Mary Wooldridge said Australia had one of the most highly gender-segregated industrial structures in the developed world.
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The truth about Australia's Covid lockdowns is FINALLY exposed: Damning report slams school closures and politically-driven decisions - 'it was WRONG'
An independent review into Australia's Covid response has slammed politically driven health orders and the excessive use of lockdowns - finding they ultimately failed to protect the nation's most vulnerable people,.
The 97-page review, led by former secretary to the prime minister's office Peter Shergold, urged federal and state governments to learn from their mistakes and overhaul their processes in order to restore trust.
The report, funded by the Paul Ramsay Foundation, John and Myriam Wylie Foundation and Andrew Forrest's Minderoo Foundation, found the country's school closures were also a failure.
'It was wrong to close entire school systems, particularly once new information indicated that schools were not high-transmission environments,' the review said.
'For children and parents [particularly women], we failed to get the balance right between protecting health and imposing long-term costs on education, mental health, the economy and workforce outcomes.
'Rules were too often formulated and enforced in ways that lacked fairness and compassion. Such overreach undermined public trust and confidence in the institutions that are vital to effective crisis response.'
The review carried out over a six month period involved more than 350 confidential submissions and consultations from health experts, economists, public servants, business and community groups.
It consisted of more than 160 submissions, 3,000 hours of research and policy and data analysis.
The review concluded various lockdowns and shutting of borders should have been used as a 'last resort'.
'Too many of Australia's lockdowns and border closures were the result of policy failures in quarantine, contact tracing, testing, disease surveillance and communicating effectively the need for preventive measures like mask wearing and social distancing,' the review stated.
'Lockdowns, especially when targeted at a particular location, brought a deep sense of inequity among those who were most restricted. Lockdowns, overall, created a universal feeling that the pandemic was being policed rather than managed.
'As with lockdowns, border closures – particularly between states and territories – should be used sparingly and only in extreme situations. They should be applied with greater empathy and flexibility.'
The review noted despite the pandemic affecting everyone, 'its burden was not shared equally'.
DAMNING QUOTES FROM COVID REPORT
'It was wrong to close entire school systems, particularly once new information indicated that schools were not high-transmission environments.'
'Rules were too often formulated and enforced in ways that lacked fairness and compassion. Such overreach undermined public trust and confidence in the institutions that are vital to effective crisis response.'
'Lockdowns, especially when targeted at a particular location, brought a deep sense of inequity among those who were most restricted. Lockdowns, overall, created a universal feeling that the pandemic was being policed rather than managed.
It stated that the failure to plan adequately for the 'differing impact of Covid' meant the disease 'spread faster and more widely'.
The review also noted while Australia had early success in limiting infection rates and deaths, in comparison to other countries, this success 'started to falter in 2021'.
'Cases and deaths have risen even further during 2022, dramatically reversing our early competitive advantage,' the review notes.
'As of September 30, 2022, Australia has recorded 378,617 cases per million people in 2022. 'The latest available official data shows that by May 2022 excess deaths in Australia had spiked to almost 359 per million people in 2022.'
The document also said the 'absence of transparency' in the expert health advice 'helped mask political calculations'.
'Political calculation was never far from the surface of COVID-19 decisions,' the review stated.
'It is neither realistic nor desirable to remove politics from decision-making in an accountable democracy. 'But the absence of transparency in the expert advice going to leaders helped mask political calculations.
'It was difficult to gauge the trade-offs that were being considered between health and economic outcomes. It made it easier for leaders to be selective in the 'expert advice' they followed.'
The paper went on to explain the damning effect overreach had on the confidence of Australian citizens.
'Such overreach undermined public trust and confidence in the institutions that are vital to effective crisis response,' it read.
'Many Australians came to feel that they were being protected by being policed. These actions could have been avoided if we had built fairness into our planning decisions and introduced compassion into their implementation.'
The review recommended six measures to be implemented in order to avoid the same mistakes being repeated in another health crisis.
These included; establishing an independent, data-driven Australian Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, clearly defining national cabinet roles and responsibilities in a crisis, publicly releasing modelling used in government decision-making, regular pandemic scenario testing and the sharing and linking of data between jurisdictions.
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Mining is the key to getting Australia's cost of living down
Through taxes on it, it gives the government real money to spend -- instead of having to print it
With Australia in desperate need of economic golden eggs as we struggle with a massive debt burden and face a possible world recession, they’re trying harder than ever to kill the goose that is laying them. The huge $50 billion slash in the 2021-22 budget deficit, cutting it by two-thirds from $80 billion to $32 billion, largely resulted from record company tax collections of $126 billion.
These were driven up by our highest-ever resources and energy exports of $421 billion, led by the condemned-to-death fossil fuels of coal, oil and LNG which together made up almost half the total. And in the current 2022-23 financial year, the golden eggs will be even richer as resources and energy exports are officially forecast to reach even higher to $450 billion as coal export revenues surge to $120 billion to exceed iron ore.
But governmental net-zero targets, investment bans by woke climate-catastrophe-obsessed boards of directors and super funds, a court system happy to be the plaything of climate-activist lawfare that has made Australia the world’s most litigious developed nation for mining projects, have all combined to bring the campaign against fossil fuels – and thereby against Australia’s historic dependence on reliable cheap energy and status as an exporter – to a serious tipping point.
Unless there is a truce in this war against fossil fuels, the current financial year will be the last time they will be capable of coming so significantly to our economic rescue. Already, next year’s official forecasts of an expected decline in the Ukraine war’s high commodity prices, of a Western world economic slowdown and for its rush to renewables (as self-destructive emissions targets are imposed), are together likely to result in a cut in our fossil fuel export revenue by almost a quarter in 2023-24. This, along with Australia’s deliberate official obstructionism to fossil fuel investment, particularly in coal, will all combine to kill off this economic lifeline whose current significance has been deliberately downplayed by those seeking environmental purity.
So while this year’s forecast iron ore exports at $119 billion takes the headlines, the fossil fuels of metallurgical coal at $58 billion, thermal coal at $62 billion, natural gas at $90 billion and oil at $15 billion are together officially forecast to be almost twice as big as iron ore’s export earnings this financial year and to make up, at $225 billion, half of Australia’s total minerals and resources export revenue. While, on their own, coal exports are earning more than iron ore, so effective has the campaign been against coal that not even the organisation that is supposed to represent it, the Minerals Council of Australia, was prepared to acknowledge coal’s primary role when it issued a press release last week welcoming the latest official resources and energy forecasts by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, ‘as a strong reminder of the of the economic benefits delivered by the mining industry’.
In noting the forecast that Australia’s resource and energy export earnings will reach a record $450 billion in the current financial year , the MCA correctly asserted that, ‘Australia is only in a position to take advantage of these [high international] prices due to increased production across a range of commodities. In the last decade, over $250 billion of investment in new mines, processing equipment and infrastructure has resulted in Australia’s bauxite mining increasing 41 per cent, iron ore production increasing 84 per cent and lithium output rising nearly 400 per cent’.
Not a word about the biggest single revenue earner, coal, which became the mineral that MCA pretends does not exist ever since an emissions-obsessed BHP threatened to quit the MCA if it continued to lobby for coal; note the absence of coal in MCA press releases in recent years.
But when MCA campaigns against pressure for rises in mining taxes and royalties, as it has this month, by boasting of mining’s record $43 billion contribution made to the Australian economy in 2020-21 (with 2021-22 sure to be even considerably larger), coal’s existence is re-discovered and its multi-billion-dollar share is included – without acknowledgement. And by asserting that the effective tax rate on Australian mining investment is already high relative to many jurisdictions in other mining countries, it reminds governments that while Australia needs to attract more investment in mining (but you must not mention coal!) in order to benefit from growing international demand, there is strong competition for investment from other mining countries.
However, at least coal has proselytisers on a state basis. As Stephen Galilee, CEO of the NSW Minerals Council pointedly told me, ‘Some people want to ignore the fact that our coal sector even exists This is despite coal continuing to be NSW’s most valuable export commodity, worth around $22.6 billion in exports, and delivering a record $4 billion in royalties to the NSW government this year alone’.
But what of the future, given the high demand for NSW coal that Galilee claims is some of the highest quality available anywhere in the world, producing more energy with less emissions than coal from elsewhere? ‘There are currently 17 potential coal-mining proposals in the planning and development pipeline in NSW representing a further $4.6 billion investment.’ But nearly all are proposals to expand or extend operational lives of NSW’s forty existing coal mines; greenfield projects face too many hurdles.
The same goes for Queensland, where my old parliamentary colleague Ian Macfarlane who runs the Queensland Resources Council, said the latest official forecasts ‘reinforce the significance of the resources industry to the budget bottom line. Coal exports underpin both the Australian and Queensland governments’ budgets’. But Macfarlane warned that governments, particularly Queensland’s, ‘can’t take future investment and future returns from coal exports for granted’ and that the Queensland government’s decision to hike up coal royalty taxes to the highest rates in the world has resulted in ‘large mining investors already rethinking their investments in Queensland’.
Is it time someone brought another lump of coal into parliament to remind MPs of its economic significance?
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/business-robbery-etc-102/ ?
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19 October, 2022
$8.8bn blowout in NDIS budget
This Julia Gillard invention is an absurdity. "Disability" is a very loose term. I am in some ways disabled by my degree of autism. Do I qualify for government support of some kind?
At the very least, eligibility to the scheme should be based on visible physical disability only. Others should be expected to cope with the aid of the payments that all unemployed people get
Bill Shorten sees the problem, which is good coming from him, but his solution -- to pass the buck to other levels of government -- has zero chance of being taken up
Australia’s “disability safety net” has blown out by $8.8bn and needs a reset to remain sustainable for future generations of people with disability, NDIS Minister Bill Shorten says.
Mr Shorten has brought forward by a year a planned review of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, saying the scheme, now forecast to cost taxpayers $50bn a year by 2025-26, needs “to be better than it is”.
“For too many people the scheme has developed into a source of stress and anxiety,” he said.
“We want it to do what it’s meant to do – to provide choice and control for people with disability. (We) want to make sure that our national disability safety net is strong and responsive, generous and reasonable.”
Mr Shorten said next week’s federal budget would reveal “an increase in projected costs over the next four years of $8.8bn” compared to the Coalition’s budget handed down just seven months ago, blaming poor management by the previous government.
The first Chalmers budget will show the cost of the NDIS is forecast to be $50.3bn in 2025-26, compared with $44.5bn in the last Frydenberg budget.
Mr Shorten called out waste, inefficiency and fraud as driving up NDIS costs, but also noted other levels of government had retreated from offering support and services to people with disability, leaving them to try to scramble their way on to the scheme.
“What we need is to have more support for people with disabilities outside the scheme. We need to make sure our school system is more responsive to kids with learning needs,” he said.
“We need to make sure that (in) community mental health … there are supports for people who wouldn‘t be eligible for the scheme.”
But he didn’t accept the NDIS’s own financial sustainability report, which forecast costs to reach almost $60bn by 2030.
“I’m sceptical about some of the out-year forecasts,” Mr Shorten said. “I don’t necessarily sign up to every 10-year number. I think that is more science-fiction and art than it is science and evidence.”
He said it was important to restore community trust in the NDIS, and the new review would investigate its design, operation, workforce and overall sustainability, including costs.
“I absolutely want to see this scheme be sustainable, I absolutely want to see what we can do to moderate the growth cost trajectory.
“(And) I absolutely want to minimise rent-seeking by people who are seeking to take money from the NDIS, which the taxpayer wants to get to people with disability.”
The NDIS currently provides support to 530,000 people with a permanent disability, ranging from physical to neurological and psychosocial.
The NDIS projects there could be more than 850,000 participants by 2030.
The independent review will be co-chaired by longtime disability advocate Bruce Bonyhady, the inaugural NDIS chair, and Lisa Paul, a distinguished bureaucrat. Professor Bonyhady said there were “important issues to address in order to ensure the scheme can be … the best disability system in the world”.
He said the review was taking place at a critical juncture, and warned about the focus on costs.
“There’s far too much talk about the costs of the scheme,” Professor Bonyhady said. “It needs to be balanced with a discussion about the benefits, and there’s no doubt there are many examples of the scheme transforming peoples’ lives.
“It’s essential this review is owned by the disability community and in particular people with disability and their families.”
Disability groups and unions welcomed the review being brought forward, but the federal opposition said Mr Shorten was now caught in a difficult position on scheme sustainability.
“Bill Shorten promised plans would not go backwards under his watch, but questions are now being raised over the NDIS’s future funding, so let’s see if Labor’s actions meet its promises around the scheme’s framework and viability,” opposition NDIS spokesman Michael Sukkar said.
People With Disability Australia president Samantha Connor said the disability community was “looking forward to seeing the application of a rights-based lens to the NDIS, an increased focus on choice and control for people with disability, and renewed efforts to make sure that people with disability are truly the authors of our own lives”.
Australian Services Union NSW secretary Angus McFarland said the review “should mean frontline workers are now that much closer to being properly valued”.
“Right now we just don’t have the conditions, the job security or the salaries to attract – or retain – a sufficient number of disability workers to the sector.”
A final report will be delivered by the end of October next year.
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Let’s get uni students face-to-face again – for their mental health
A couple of weeks ago, I asked a university colleague if she had an unusual number of students experiencing psychological distress. “Yes,” she replied. “I have lots of students like that.” I told her that I had never had so many students dealing with mental health issues. We looked at each other in silence not knowing what to say.
I already knew that Australian university students suffered significant rates of anxiety and depression. When I wrote a column on higher education for The Age, I’d report on research about students’ mental health. One study that stood out, published in Australian Psychologist, showed university students had higher levels of psychological distress than the general population.
I also knew from studies that financial stress and working long hours affected students’ mental health. I can reel off other predicators for psychological distress, too. At the moment, none of these predicators seem to worry my colleagues and I more than the enduring effects of COVID-19 lockdowns on students.
Now it seems that our hunch that the COVID pandemic has had a negative psychological impact on students is correct. A new Monash University study, led by PhD candidate David Tuck, concludes that more tertiary education students experienced higher levels of psychological distress during the pandemic.
“More tertiary education students experienced severe distress during the COVID-19 pandemic than adults in the general population, as well as before the pandemic,” the Monash researchers say in their study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
It is one of the first Australian studies to investigate the level of psychological distress among tertiary students during the COVID pandemic. The research shows almost 71 per cent of the more than 1000 students surveyed displayed elevated levels of psychological distress during the pandemic between September 2020 and February 2021. Twenty-three per cent of the sample reported extreme levels of distress.
Another worrying finding is that students who had already been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, PTSD or other mental disorders before COVID had significantly higher levels of distress than students who did not have a previous diagnosis of a mental health disorder.
And it is the younger students and those studying undergraduate degrees that have higher levels of distress than older and postgraduate students. It’s understandable why this would be the case. It can be tricky for students to make the leap from high school to university, and this year’s first-years have done much of their final years of high school online at home during COVID lockdowns. The students had to readjust to being in classrooms and then acclimatise to university life.
So, what can universities do to help students?
They certainly can do more to help students feel they belong to their campus. One way to achieve this is to make more classes face-to-face. I have been shocked at how many undergraduate subjects, particularly in the humanities, are still being taught online. This semester students told me they chose my unit because it has a face-to-face tutorial. One student said that she “just wanted to see other students”.
Imagine, for a moment, the pressure placed on my first-year students last semester when they had a mix of online and face-to-face classes and had to try to navigate them on one day. I had students doing online classes in the morning and then racing to university to attend their face-to-face tutorial. Or some would try to do their online classes in the library whispering their answers during a Zoom discussion.
Universities justify the increase in the number of online classes by saying they are giving students a choice. But what about the pedagogical reasoning, particularly after students have spent so much time isolated at home during lockdowns? Previous Australian studies have suggested that online learning is not always appropriate for undergraduates because they are unaccustomed to the university style of learning. Besides university is more than the academic work. Campuses are where students can make lifelong friends.
I’m also unsure what the pedagogical reasons are for having pre-recorded lectures, which began during the lockdowns. Yes, students can listen to them any time, but from what academics tell me, many don’t watch them because the lectures are not engaging. You can’t ask questions in real time and hear the student responses.
University bosses need to think less about how to make cuts to teaching resources and examine the evidence about the best teaching methods for students in this COVID age. They could also speak to David Tuck and his colleagues, who have published material on how tertiary students can be helped during this period of COVID. They emphasise that positive social interactions in tertiary settings are vital to helping students.
In the International Journal of Stress Management, the researchers concluded that “engaging in enjoyable and personally meaningful activities, focusing attention on the present moment, exercise, positive social interactions, humour, and acceptance in difficult circumstances have the largest effects on improving resilience in tertiary education students”.
I’m sensitive to what my students are going through. But that’s not enough. Universities need to step up more to support and reduce stress among students. Then my colleague and I may not be staring at each other in silence wondering what will happen to our students going through psychological distress in this age of COVID.
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Chilling warning that Australian aged care sector at risk after huge losses
Government mandates and their attendant bureaucracy are probably a large part of the costs involved. Regulations always grow. They never recede. And they are rarely imposed together with any cost-benefit analysis of them
The industry in Australia is at serious risk of financial collapse after a new report revealed that two out of three nursing homes operated at a serious loss in 2020-21, with warnings an emergency injection of funds from the federal government is needed.
Analysis of more than 1300 residential aged care homes across Australia showed the desperate situation the sector is facing with each home suffering a loss of $14.67 a bed a day, a huge jump compared to the previous financial year where losses sat at $8.43.
The figures were even more alarming considering the former government paid an extra $10 a bed a day last year in a package worth around $800 million for the sector.
But the report from specialist accounting firm StewartBrown said the financial situation had “deteriorated” due to a number of reasons including staff pay jumping by an extra 1.75 per cent to 3.5 per cent, inflation skyrocketing to 6.1 per cent and an increase in superannuation payments to employees.
It also revealed that 67 per cent of nursing homes made an operating loss in the year to June 2022, a significant jump on the 58 per cent in 2020-21.
“The residential aged-care segment has sustained significant aggregate operating losses for the last five years totalling an estimated $3.8 billion, with $1.4 billion being the FY22 forecast,” it noted.
“These losses have eroded equity and capital growth, which has caused a considerable decline in investment into the sector.”
Its a stark downfall for the industry where providers were making $2.11 a bed a day in 2018-19, only for losses to rack up to $14.67 a bed a day.
“It is the opinion of StewartBrown that after five years of significant aggregate operating losses in the residential aged care sector, structural funding reforms including increased and appropriate care recipient co-contribution are essential, the report said.
“However, to avoid closure of homes and reduced service delivery, especially in regional locations, an emergency funding package also needs to be considered in the short term to ensure current viability and allow for the necessary funding reforms to be properly implemented.”
This would include the aged not only paying for the accommodation, but for living essentials as well such as such as food, utilities, cleaning and laundry.
However, it added where the consumer did not have the financial means to further contribute this must not in any respect disadvantage them.
“A safety net must be enshrined within aged care, as with other areas of health care and social services,” the report urged.
With the Labor government set to deliver its first budget next week, Treasurer Jim Chalmers had already flagged that aged care was one of the biggest cost pressures for it.
Funding for the sector will increase from $29.8 billion in 2022-23 to $52.5 billion in 2032-33.
There are around 245,000 Australians who live in an aged-care facility annually but with an ageing population this is expected to rise dramatically in coming years
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Informed consent and vaccine side-effects in Australia
Australia’s medical Code of Conduct, the statutory rules for medical practitioners, defines informed consent as ‘a person’s voluntary decision about medical care that is made with knowledge and understanding of the benefits and risks involved’.
In addition, the Australian Immunisation Handbook states: ‘For consent to be legally valid … it must be given voluntarily in the absence of undue pressure, coercion, or manipulation … and it can only be given after the potential risks and benefits of the relevant vaccine, the risks of not having it, and any alternative options have been explained to the person.’
Think back to the last time you gave consent for a medical procedure or, dare I say it, a vaccination. Were you taken through this process?
There’s more. What happens to consent if you’re involved in a clinical trial?
Former barrister, Julian Gillespie, explains:
‘There is a portion towards the end of the medical Code of Conduct, which … clearly addresses if you are a medical practitioner and you are involved in a clinical or experimental trial … then there’s all these further procedures and protocols that must be satisfied.’
Surely that would only apply in the circumstances of an experimental trial, wouldn’t it?
As it happens, that’s what we’ve been doing for the past couple of years. ‘We heard it out of former health minister, Greg Hunt’s lips, and several others,’ Gillespie says. ‘It’s well acknowledged that these Covid vaccines have only been provisionally approved and are still subject to clinical trials.’
Julian Gillespie LLB, BJuris, is co-author, with Peter Fam LLB, of a recently published bombshell legal opinion casting doubt on the legal basis of AHPRA’s March 9, 2021 ‘gag order’.
The opinion was issued with a letter stating:
‘Contingent to a joint statement received from AHPRA and the National Boards on 9 March 2021, Australian Health Professionals … were essentially forbidden from publicly questioning the science underlying the emerging Covid injectables, let alone questioning any government messaging urging Australians to be vaccinated, because these products were deemed “safe and effective”.
‘The effect of this unilateral action … inserted AHPRA and the National Boards between the Clinician and their Patient, which resulted in a serious failure of evidenced-based information being shared by Health Professionals with patients … for the purpose of their providing legally acceptable Informed Consent to receiving Covid injectables.
‘This failure in Informed Consent has likely resulted in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Australians agreeing to the administration of Covid injectables, where they would not have so agreed or consented had they been provided with all the available evidenced-based information… including that they expose a recipient to a real and significant risk of death, injury, or illness.’
What does this mean?
Essentially, the legal opinion posits that it was illegal for AHPRA and the National Boards to even produce the position statement. Health Professionals were always required to first observe their Codes of Conduct irrespective of the various coercive and threatening statements made in the March statement.
But wait, there’s more.
It also appears the public officers responsible for that statement are now legally exposed:
‘As the harm to Covid vaccine victims was foreseeable, in terms of these still remaining experimental gene-based therapies, these vaccine victims … can sue the public offices of AHPRA and the National Boards in their personal capacity,’ says Gillespie.
It doesn’t stop there. There may be further liability available to health practitioners who administered the vaccines in breach of their Codes of Conduct. Gillespie adds, ‘Should those health practitioners subsequently be sued by their patients … then those health practitioners may, in turn, be able to sue the public officers of AHPRA and the National Boards for coercing and threatening them to ignore their Codes of Conduct. Such illegal action would be the tort of misfeasance in public office.’
I’ll just let that all sink in.
The legal opinion was sent to all medical associations and colleges, nearly 70 of them, all Australia’s politicians, state, federal, and territory, and medical professional insurers.
Oh, and it was also sent to over 300 of Australia’s top personal injury and medical negligence lawyers.
No one’s missing out on this one.
The legal opinion was helpfully accompanied by a 107-page report reviewing the evidence and adverse event data for Covid vaccines. It’s an alarming read.
But wait – there’s (even) more.
Proposed changes to Health Practitioner National Law, due to be debated in the Queensland Parliament on October 11, 2022, are set to give AHPRA even more power to interfere with the doctor/patient relationship.
These proposed amendments have medical organisations extremely concerned including the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, the Australian Medical Association, the Australian Medical Network (AMN), and the Australian Medical Professionals Society.
If passed, ‘Doctors will no longer be able to express their opinion or use their experience, training, and education if their opinion goes against what the health bureaucrats say is in the best interests of public confidence in safety,’ says AMN.
And the changes won’t stop in Queensland. The amended National Law will then be rolled out to other jurisdictions. All Australians should be concerned.
The Australian Medical Professional Society says, ‘Health regulation is not being used to protect the public from legitimate professional misconduct but is being used to silence Health Professionals from questioning government policy as a matter of routine.’
If the legislation comes to pass, it begs the question: when a patient goes to visit their doctor how will they know if they are receiving the doctor’s professional opinion or the government’s latest edict?
The March 9, 2021 joint position statement has given Australia a taste of what might come if we don’t stand up to this obscene imposition by regulators in the consultation room.
In the words of ‘Dr Frank Mercy’ – an Australian doctor who writes under a pseudonym for fear of reprisal – ‘This is our Stalingrad. Defeat here will open the field to unlimited human resources for oppressive forces that can never be turned back. We must oppose this with all our resolve.’
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/covid-consent-and-the-code-of-conduct/
***************************************************Floods to push up food prices and worsen deficit, says Jim Chalmers
Imagine if we had built dams instead of desalination plants, we could have mitigated impacts of flooding (a land of flooding rains after all) and had more water resources to assist in food production
Australians have been warned to brace for another hit to the cost of living as the floods devastating parts of Victoria and NSW drive up food prices, and require billions of dollars to be spent on assistance to those affected, Treasurer Jim Chalmers has warned.
Due to the floods that have hit some of the east coast’s major food production regions, and caused extensive property damage, the forecast deficit for this year is likely to be worse and inflation possibly higher, Dr Chalmers suggested.
“We need to brace ourselves for the impact of these natural disasters on the cost of living,” he said.
“We’re talking here about some of the best growing and producing country in Australia, and it has been seriously impacted – whether it’s the destruction of crops, or the inability to access some of these farmlands, whether it’s livestock and other consequences.
“Australians do need to brace for a cost-of-living impact from these floods. These are likely to push up the cost of living when Australians are already under the pump. It will also have obvious consequences for the budget.”
The treasurer’s office said it was too early to estimate the inflationary and budgetary impact of the floods.
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18 October, 2022
Teachers turning to YouTube and Facebook to source lesson material, damning new report says
I am not at all sure I am on-board with the idea of government-provided lesson plans for teachers. It would certainly help if experienced teachers passed on their usual lesson plans to newbie teachers but having the government do that would reduced the already limited diversity in what is taught. It could make a lesson into not much more than a video.
There is a better option: The teacher could know her subject matter so well that no preparation is needed. The teacher could just look at the curriculum and talk about it. It's what I did as a teacher of High School economics. I just talked about what I found interesting or exciting about economic issues. That generated real student interest and my students did very well at exam time.
So subject knowledge should get heavy emphasis in teacher training. I had not one minute of teacher training but I have an almost missionary zeal to communicate the realities of economics
Teachers are relying on YouTube, Facebook and Pinterest to source classroom materials in a “lesson lottery’’ for students that will prompt a national review of curriculum planning.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said he would raise the Grattan Institute’s alarming findings of “rudderless teachers’’ at his next meeting with state and territory ministers in December.
He said teachers were working unnecessarily hard because they often had to plan lessons from scratch. “If we get this right, this has the potential to really reduce the workload on teachers,’’ he told The Australian.
“I am keen to talk to teachers about the findings in this report, as well as ACARA (the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority) and my state and territory colleagues when we meet in December.’’
The Grattan Institute survey of 1915 teachers and 328 principals across Australia reveals that half are interpreting the curriculum on their own to devise assignments and set lesson plans.
YouTube is twice as popular as education department websites for sourcing teaching material, with two-thirds of teachers accessing YouTube at least once a fortnight, compared to 31 per cent using government websites.
Half the teachers buy lesson plans from Teachers Pay Teachers – an online marketplace with more than 16,000 assignments, assessments and lesson plans for sale.
One in four teachers uses Facebook, one in five uses Pinterest, 12 per cent use Instagram and 5 per cent use Twitter to source assignments and lesson plans.
In contrast, one in five teachers used professional teacher association websites and 17 per cent used the Khan Academy website for inspiration.
Only 15 per cent of teachers have access to a common bank of high-quality curriculum materials for all their classes, the survey found.
A third of teachers have no access to common material for any of their subjects.
“High-quality curriculum materials are hard to find,’’ the Grattan Institute report states. “The internet is awash with options, but not a lot of detail about quality.’’
The survey found that a typical teacher spent six hours a week sourcing and creating materials – and one in four teachers spent more than 10 hours a week planning lessons.
“Teachers are struggling with the curriculum planning load,’’ lead author and Grattan Institute education program director Jordana Hunter said on Sunday.
“Teachers tell us they often plan alone from scratch, searching social media to try to find lesson materials. This creates Australia’s lesson lottery – it undermines student learning and adds to the workload of our overstretched teachers.’’
The Grattan Institute estimates teachers would save three hours a week by sharing curriculum materials – adding up to 20 million teacher hours every year.
It found that a high school teacher with four subjects would need to spend 2000 hours to develop curriculum materials for all their classes if they had to start from scratch.
Ninety per cent of teachers surveyed agreed that sharing high-quality instructional materials would free up time to evaluate and respond to individual student learning needs.
“Great teaching requires classroom instruction based on well-designed, knowledge-rich and carefully sequenced lessons that build student knowledge and skills over time,’’ Dr Hunter said.
“Without a whole-school approach to curriculum planning, which carefully sequences learning of key knowledge and skills across subjects and year levels, even the hardest-working teachers will struggle to give their students the best education.’’
The Grattan Institute wants governments and the Catholic and independent education sectors to invest in high-quality, comprehensive curriculum materials, and make them available to all schools to adapt and use, if they choose.
“These materials should be quality-assured by an independent body,’’ the report states.
NSW has already announced it will build a library of syllabus materials for use in schools, while the Victorian government recommends a whole-school approach to curriculum planning to avoid repetition or gaps in learning.
Queensland’s Education Department provides lessons and assessment tasks through its Curriculum into the Classroom, or C2C, program.
The Grattan Institute survey found that only one-third of teachers agreed government-provided instructional materials were of high quality, with half saying the resources were hard to find.
Dr Hunter said teachers in disadvantaged schools were only half as likely to have access to a common bank of curriculum materials as teachers in wealthier schools. “Many teachers and students get a losing ticket in the lesson lottery,’’ she said.
“The Australian curriculum and its state variants provide high-level direction only, leaving vast gaps for teachers to fill in.
“For too long, governments have underestimated the subject-matter knowledge, curriculum expertise and time required to bring the curriculum to life in the classroom.’’
The Grattan Institute criticises individualised curriculum planning as “hugely inefficient’’.
“In reality, teachers are struggling to fit the hours required into their working week,’’ the report says. “The current system wastes time and results in lost learning.
“Every school and teacher should have access to comprehensive curriculum materials that they can choose to use and adapt as required.
“As an immediate priority, governments should consider buying high-quality materials from overseas, and adapting them to the Australian context.’’
The Grattan Institute report notes that students can leap ahead in learning by one or two months a year when teachers use carefully sequenced, high-quality curriculum materials.
“Materials need to be specific about what knowledge students are expected to learn,’’ the report says. “(They) should include targeted assessments that enable teachers to accurately assess student learning of particular concepts, content and skills taught.’’
Half the high school teachers surveyed were teaching a subject for the first time, and 15 per cent of primary school teachers were taking on a new year level.
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Australian government betting nation's economic future on renewable energy delusion
You don’t have to be a climate sceptic to conclude that the government’s energy policy is bonkers. You just have to listen to the Energy Minister’s words. Last week, Chris Bowen outlined the challenge of meeting Labor’s 2030 emissions reduction target to a conference in Sydney. Reducing emissions by 43 per cent will require the installation of 40 seven-megawatt wind turbines every month from now until 2030, each one as tall as the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It will require more than 22,000 500-watt solar panels to be installed every day for the next eight years, 2.4 for every man, woman and child in total. New solar farms would cover an area dozens of times larger than the Melbourne CBD.
All this supposes we can buy the things in the first place. Polysilicon wafers are in short supply and 95 per cent come from China.
Let’s not even get started on the pink batts question. The rooftop solar installation business is plagued with the same shonky operators that turn up like wasps to a barbecue when subsidised, government mega-projects are announced.
Last month, the Clean Energy Regulator started investigations against a Perth company accused of fraudulently claiming $1.5m in solar panel installation rebates. NSW Fire and Rescue attended 151 solar panel fires in 2020-21, up from 56 in the previous year, faulty isolation switches being the main cause.
Jeff Dimery, the head of Alinta who has had somewhat more experience in the energy game than Bowen, says we’re on course for an energy transition “train wreck”.
“I personally don’t believe we can achieve the transition based on what we’re seeing to date,” Dimery told the AFR last week. “I think we’re headed for failure.”
Anthony Albanese was elected on a promise to cut household energy bills by $275 in his first term. A survey by Compass Polling last month found 70 per cent of Australians don’t believe him. Last week Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb told a parliamentary committee household energy bills had risen by $300 since April.
Dimery predicts energy costs will rise by at least 35 per cent in 2023. Jim Chalmers says energy is the most “problematic aspect of our inflation problem over the course of the next six or nine months”.
Yet Bowen stood as steady as the legless Black Knight in a Monty Python movie last week, refusing to budge. He told the conference that “getting more renewables in the system will mean lower power prices”. He added: “I don’t think that should be such a controversial statement in Australia in 2022.”
Bowen is betting the future of the economy on his counterintuitive assumption that a transition from hydrocarbons to solar, wind and batteries will bring the cost of energy down.
In every country that has gone down this path, the very opposite has occurred. Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, energy prices had risen between 60 per cent and 100 per cent in Britain and Germany since renewable investment began at the start of the century. In Australia, energy prices fell for 60 years until the start of the renewable era. Now they’re rising.
Bowen hasn’t said when the correlation between rising investment in weather-dependent zero-carbon energy and rising prices will start to reverse. He does, however, stand by the modelling he commissioned in opposition, which predicts that the average household energy bill will fall by $385 once we reach the magic 82 per cent renewables share in the energy grid in eight years’ time.
Rising electricity prices aren’t all bad news, according to Guardian Australia, which reported last week that sales of household solar arrays were through the roof. To illustrate what good news this supposedly is, the Guardian claimed rooftop solar supplied almost three-quarters of WA’s total energy demand on the weekend before last. Confirmation-biased reporting like this demands a little fact checking.
The Australian Energy Market Operator’s records show rooftop solar supplied 71 per cent of demand in WA at 12.30pm on Saturday, October 8. Between 6pm Saturday and 6am on Sunday, however, rooftop solar was supplying 0 per cent. During that period three-quarters of the power was supplied by coal and gas.
The answer to this little hiccup, as every Guardian Australia reader knows, is to install batteries, which, as every Guardian reader also knows, are getting cheaper by the minute.
The cost is falling so fast that electric cars and vans will be cheaper to buy than petrol or diesel vehicles by 2027, the newspaper reported in May last year. In February this year, however, economic reality reared its ugly head. “Gone ballistic” read the Guardian’s headline. “Lithium price rockets nearly 500% in a year amid electric vehicle rush.”
The cost of installing a Tesla Powerwall, a domestic energy storage unit the size of a fridge, has risen from less than $10,000 in 2017 to about $19,000 today.
None of this should surprise. Improved technology and manufacturing efficiency gains were only going to push battery prices downwards for so long. The International Energy Agency has analysed the cost of moving from a fuel-intensive energy system to a material-intensive one. Far from eliminating hydrocarbons, the IEA forecasts, the demand for minerals such as lithium, graphite, nickel, copper and rare earths will rise by 4200 per cent, 2500 per cent, 1900 per cent and 700 per cent respectively by 2040.
If nothing else destroys the delusion that renewable energy offers nothing but healing kindness to a desiccated planet, the rapacious hunger for minerals surely must. In an influential recent paper for the Manhattan Institute, Mark P. Mills predicts that meeting the world’s transition goals will require dozens of new mines for each of a dozen classes of minerals, each at the scale of some of the biggest mines in the world today and each requiring tens of billions of dollars of investment.
“The lessons of the recent decade make it clear that SWB (solar, wind, batteries) technologies cannot be surged in times of need, are neither inherently ‘clean’ nor even independent of hydrocarbons, and are not cheap,” Mills writes.
Having set Australia’s 2030 and 2050 emissions targets in stone, it falls on Bowen and Anthony Albanese to produce plan B. Assuming, of course, they have one.
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Private all-boys school has encouraged teachers to use gender neutral language instead of the terms 'boy' or 'young man'.
Principal Deborah Frizza of St Bede's College in Menton, in Melbourne's southeast, said in a letter to staff this week that the school was looking to change the language it uses following updated Victoria Child Safe Standards.
'Can I ask that we start to use gender neutral language in our communications where possible?' the letter read, reports The Herald Sun. 'I know it can be challenging when communicating with the parents of senior students and calling them 'children', so if anyone has a better gender neutral term than this, please let me know.
'The use of the term 'student' rather than 'young man' or 'boy' can easily be made. I'm yet to find an alternative for 'Beda Boy' (graduated students), and given the history of this term, we would need to think carefully on any changes here.'
Following some backlash in the media, the college confirmed that 'at no stage' were teachers instructed not to use the gender-specific terms at all.
'There are, and will continue to be, boys, young men and 'Beda Boys' within our College community,' a statement from the school on Monday read. 'At the forefront of our minds is, and will remain, the inclusion of all students at St Bede's College.'
Victoria's updated Child Safety Standards say schools must: 'Pay particular attention to the needs of children and young people with disability, children and young people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, those who are unable to live at home, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex children and young people'.
School campuses across the country are increasingly sparking debate as they make changes to become more inclusive.
Northlakes High School on the NSW Central Coast was recently accused of 'going woke' when they installed 'He/They' and 'She/They' signage of their toilet block.
In South Australia schools must allow transgender students to use the bathroom they feel comfortable with or provide them a private bathroom.
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Federal anti-corruption body will have no limits on its power to punish the innocent
The process can become the punishment
David Flint
Acting against corruption should obviously be just and efficient. This basic consideration should not be abandoned in parliament’s unseemly rush to ram through the National Anti-Corruption Commission bills before their long summer break.
While the NACC will never be a court, its powers will limit matters surely implied in the Constitution just as freedom of political communication is. These include the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial.
Following the NSW ICAC disaster, the NACC will enjoy the power to impose, through public hearings punishment so serious that it has too often ruined the lives of the innocent, a breach of the constitutional separation of powers.
The name ICAC came from Hong Kong. This was in those halcyon days under the rule of law when the colony was a magnet not only for those escaping the brutal communist dictatorship, but also those from elsewhere who chose to live where government was benign and limited.
As Australia’s leading legal commentator, Chris Merritt, reminded me during an interview for the new media platform ADHTV, the HK model was a quality specialist unit efficiently investigating and prosecuting relevant breaches of criminal law. This remains a simple and ideal model.
While the Greiner government imported the name, it foolishly thought it could improve on the model. Its first innocent victim was Greiner, the first of three premiers..
Such is the wisdom of the NSW parliament, that when the High Court subsequently exposed the fundamental ‘errors’ of ICAC in its totally unjustified persecution of the leading barrister Margaret Cunneen, legislation was rushed through to validate the errors. Then another premier fell to the monster.
If this is typical of the quality of judgment of our ruling political class, it should not be surprising that the Albanese government has chosen too much of the NSW model for NACC.
Despite virtuous commissioners and counsel, the ICAC head was to boast to neophyte barristers that, without such tedious limitations as the laws of evidence, examining any witness that got into its clutches was ‘fun’, akin to ‘pulling wings off butterflies’.
Meanwhile, to the delight of scandal-mongers in the media, ICAC took on the trappings of a court, and imposed parallel systems of public opproprium and of punishment.
The centrepiece is the ‘walk of shame’ along Castlereagh Street where the innocent are paraded as if they are in tumbrils during the Reign of Terror. A similar process in South Australia led to suicide with parliament sensibly halting a process more suited to the Maoist Cultural Revolution.
While agencies like ICAC have no authority to convict and pass sentence, Margaret Cunneen warns they have developed a means of condemning those who should be presumed innocent, imposing punishment ‘which in many cases is far worse’, even using this to justify their existence.
Coopting the media into the role of punisher, she warned this had been embraced in some quarters with ‘a relish that could easily be confused with malice.’
Just as the police never use and cannot use public hearings, neither should the NACC. This is just not part of our Anglo-American legal tradition.
The Americans had long clung to this in even colonial times. Today corruption investigations do not involve public hearings by ICAC equivalents. They are heard by constitutionally prescribed grand juries meeting in private. Their only public words are two at the conclusion when they either authorise or refuse a public trial before a judge and a (petit) jury of 12. They are the endorsement on the bill of indictment either as a ‘true bill’ or ‘no bill’.
There is another matter which requires reconsideration. One of the weaknesses of ICAC is that its model is grossly inefficient. Evidence taken is inadmissible in court and there can be long delays in a matter being taken up by the DPP and going to a real court. With the NACC, it seems inadmissibility will be restricted to evidence which involves self-incrimination. To overcome any delay the NACC should be restricted to truly serious corruption – that is corruption which if proven would constitute a criminal offence.
The legislators should pay serious attention to a requirement proposed by Chris Merritt. This is that once the NACC concludes that it is likely that a crime has been committed, a brief of evidence should be sent to the DPP without any public comment or finding.
Finally, as to just what the NACC will examine, corrupt conduct is unwisely not to be limited to crime. As Chris Merritt points out, the pages of the legislation defining what is corrupt conduct recalls what is known as a Henry VIII clause, an unacceptable power to amend or repeal an act of parliament by regulation.
The NACC should not be tied up in the endless and wasteful distraction of trying to decide what is corrupt. That is for Parliament to define as a crime.
Acton defined the cause of corruption as power which tends to corrupt, with absolute power corrupting absolutely. This is corruption and it should be illegal.
If the political class wish to restore their credibility, they must concede that the gross and, as demonstrated here, totally unjustified abuse of executive power at all levels during the pandemic costing taxpayers billions and imposing vast suffering must never happen again. This requires not only a royal commission by a bench of eminent judges, but also urgent, immediate legislation to make serious misfeasance in public office a crime.
This would mean that where such misfeasance occurs, as it did so flagrantly in the live cattle ban case, not only would taxpayers have to pay vast damages for ministers acting deliberately or recklessly beyond power, but the politicians involved should also face a criminal trial for such corruption.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/pulling-the-wings-off-butterflies/
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The three-part test Australians could be forced to take to prove they are Aboriginal
How rapidly things can change! Andrrew Bolt was successfully prosecuted for saying this stuff. But the change may not be as great as it seems. The verdict in Bolt's case was from far-Left Jewish judge Mordecai Bromberg. As a Jew, Bromberg should have excused himself from a case about racism. His feelings were understandable but feelings are not judicial
Indigenous leaders say employers, schools, universities and housing authorities need to make Australians take a three-part test to prove whether they are Aboriginal or not.
The call comes amid a massive 25 per cent increase in Australians who identify as indigenous over the past five years, and follows the University of Sydney and NSW TAFEs tightening requirements for students who describe themselves as having a First Nations background.
Nathan Moran, the chief executive of the Sydney-based Metropolitan Aboriginal Land Council, told Daily Mail Australia that people have been abusing the system for at least 25 years - which he described as open fraud.
Mr Moran called on organisations to adopt the Commonwealth's three-part identity test to deter Australians from falsely identifying as indigenous.
Of the 'frauds' he believes are self-identifying as indigenous, Mr Moran said: 'It makes me sick to my stomach.
'The sad and unfortunate reality is that people have used self-identification to receive jobs, housing and scholarships they're not entitled to which are meant for the indigenous.
'The indigenous birth rates don't match up with the population increase.'
The three-part test for proving Aboriginality
An Aboriginal person (includes Torres Strait Islanders) means a person who:
1.Is a member of the Aboriginal race of Australia
2.Identifies as such an Aboriginal person
3. Is accepted by the Aboriginal community as an Aboriginal person
Mr Moran called on organisations and government authorities to enforce the three-part test rather than relying on statutory declarations - pieces of paper where they legally swear they are indigenous.
The test requires Australians to identify as an Aboriginal person, be able to prove they are a member of the race, and be accepted by the Aboriginal community.
A person can prove they are accepted by an Aboriginal community by providing a letter from their local Aboriginal Land Council or a registered Aboriginal community organisation.
Mr Moran said it's time to 'end the statutory declaration and apply the laws they're compelled to enforce'. 'They have a right to ask individuals who identify as Aboriginal for confirmation of that claim and who they received that confirmation from,' he said.
The Metropolitan Aboriginal Land Council recently complained to the Independent Commission Against Corruption about the number of students at the University of Sydney identifying as indigenous using statutory declarations.
The university has since announced plans to revamp its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Status Policy by getting rid of stat decs, as Mr Moran said.
Students will have to supply a 'letter of identity' and complete the Commonwealth three-part identity test.
Students will also be asked to confirm their identity either by a letter from their land council or a sealed letter signed by a delegate of the Aboriginal Medical Service or the Aboriginal Legal Service. TAFE NSW is also now developing a Confirmation of Aboriginality Policy following similar concerns.
Mr Moran isn't the only Aboriginal land council leader raising concerns about the recent Census data. Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania chairman Michael Mansell recently claimed 'poor white people' were falsely identifying as indigenous in a move he called 'identity seeking'.
'The people who are ticking the box to say they are Aboriginal, their demographic is poor white people who pretty much are disenfranchised,' Mr Mansell said.
'They don't attribute any value to their identity as a poor white person in Tasmania, so they are searching to attach themselves to something that has greater value and I think many of those people believe that's in being Aboriginal.'
However not everyone agrees.
University of Sydney's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research director Professor Jakelin Troy claimed the latest Census data showing increased numbers of indigenous people represents the 'real' demographics of the nation.
'Freedom of self identification and self expression is a basic human right. Interfering in the efforts of invaded & colonised peoples to assert identity is just continuing invasion & colonisation,' she tweeted.
Professor Troy has expressed concerns about the crackdown argued self-identification was accepted at many international research institutions.
'It's a response to a push from some parts of Aboriginal Australia, but not all of us,' she told the Sydney Morning Herald.
'I personally think universities shouldn't really be dictating to Aboriginal people about identity. I don't think anyone should be.'
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Stage-three tax cuts could be Anthony Albanese’s political demise
Peter Gleeson
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is being played, and is in danger of being a one-term wonder if he folds on the stage-three tax cuts.
If he junks the stage-three tax cuts he will be seen as a liar and a cheat and the Australian public will judge him harshly on such a barefaced deception.
If he keeps them, he will be branded as fiscally reckless by his own faction, the left, the union movement and the Greens.
Nobody ever said it would be easy for Albanese as global fiscal headwinds and the reality of a fanciful commitment to zero emissions by 2045 hit home.
This game of cat and mouse he and Treasurer Jim Chalmers are playing with the stage-three tax cuts is as much about Mr Albanese’s long-term future as any issue he will face between now and the next election.
They may put it on hold at the upcoming budget – kick it down the road for a year or so – but rest assured, if Mr Chalmers has his way, they’re about to put a balaclava on and rob you blind.
And who will get the blame? The Prime Minister.
A tax backflip also puts into question the need for election campaigns.
Why go through the agonising, painful charade of a six-week election campaign when leaders can pledge a significant policy – one that influences the way people vote – only to then turn around and abandon it.
Such a policy backflip would render politics in this country a farce. It would render the Prime Minister wholly untrustworthy. His campaign pledges during the next election would be nebulous, and not believable.
We know all politicians lie. It’s in their DNA. It’s how they roll. But this is a whopper that will hurt every Australian at a time of almost unprecedented fiscal challenge.
It demonstrates that, during the blowtorch environment of an election campaign, leaders will say and do anything to win.
My sense is that Labor never fully committed to the stage-three cuts, which provide income tax relief for 90 per cent of Aussie workers, but particularly aids higher-income earners, those on $120,000 to $200,000 a year.
Their flawed attack on aspiration is being fuelled by the angry Left-faction Marxists, those bludgers in life who believe they are owed a living.
The Labor Party is not a party for the worker any more but a flaccid, impotent shadow of its former self, obsessed with climate change.
It has become the poster boy of the unimpressive, teaming up with the Greens, teals, unions, Nine Newspapers and the ABC to suppress innovation and enterprise.
These people don’t actually like what Australia represents, a nation of people who believe in a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.
The fact is that the abolition of the stage-three tax cuts will sabotage the pay packets of mostly doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, economists, tradies, senior nurses and teachers, police and ambos, who spent three to seven years at university learning their craft.
After living in less than ideal conditions during their university days, slogging it out to get a degree, they are then forced to do the hard yards to work their way up the totem pole, until they start to earn reasonable dough.
Once they become experienced and pretty good at what they are doing, they are then given more responsibility, taking on extra roles where a 40-hour week is just a memory.
For their troubles, they pay a taxation rate that is among the highest in the OECD, trailing slightly behind the Scandinavian countries.
And right now, with mortgage rates accelerating as fast as we’ve seen in 25 years, inflation out of control, wages growth stagnant, and the country in the grip of a housing crisis, the federal Labor Party want to snuff out any light at the end of the tunnel.
It’s 2024. Goodness, who knows how bad the economy will be then?
At least the Opposition will be able to remind voters on how Albanese broke his key 2022 election promise, as people sit down to eat spam instead of steak.
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Australia moves to protect AUKUS pact as minister warns ‘time is running out’
Australia has launched a diplomatic charm offensive to rip up American red tape that could undermine the AUKUS pact by limiting our access to high-tech weapons.
Domestic rules for defence manufacturers will also be overhauled, with Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy warning critical innovations are stranded in a “valley of death” in Australia even as “time is running out” to strengthen our military.
“We are no longer in a benign peacetime circumstance,” he said.
“You think about World War II about the speed of producing arms – we’re in a similar situation now and we need to speed it up.”
Mr Conroy used high-level talks in Washington DC last week to push US government and military chiefs to break down “stubborn barriers” to sharing defence technology.
Strict export controls mean Australia is already limited from maintaining and repairing American-made hardware including guided weapons.
Bill Greenwalt, a former top US defence official, warned earlier this year that such regulations could similarly hamper co-operation on hypersonics and electronic warfare under AUKUS, leaving the pact “dead in the water” without changes.
Speaking at the G’Day USA defence industry dialogue last week, Australia’s US ambassador Arthur Sinodinos said these were “wicked problems” but he hoped AUKUS would be the “Trojan horse to actually bust through some of those barriers”.
He said he was working with congressional leaders who were “showing more flexibility than I expected” on legislative changes.
Mr Conroy said he understood the need for restrictions on sharing the “crown jewels” of America’s industrial complex, but that Australia could not afford regulatory delays.
“On defence industrial collaboration, there is a unity of will to deliver that … and that is driven by the deteriorating strategic circumstances that we’re all facing,” he said.
British Vice Admiral Martin Connell, the Navy’s second highest-ranking officer, also recently called for the US to make changes so that AUKUS was not hampered.
“Otherwise these collaborations are going to be very seriously retarded when we can’t really afford them to be so,” he said.
United States Studies Centre research fellow Tom Corben said American regulations were more likely to affect co-operation on commercially available defence hardware, with cleaner mechanisms in place to share top-secret information on nuclear submarines.
In an interview, Mr Conroy also said it was unacceptable Australian companies found it was “easier for them to do business with the Pentagon than it is with Australia”.
He has ordered a departmental review of domestic red tape to ensure the government was “getting bang for buck” from its $3bn investment in advanced defence research.
“We have to pick winners … Our strategic circumstances and the fact that we do have limited resources means we can’t do everything,” Mr Conroy said.
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Western Australia introduces new consent lessons for students
Doubtful if this is appropriate for the early years. Better for High School students only
School students in Western Australia will be given updated lessons on consent and healthy relationships.
The curriculum change aims to equip students with "age-appropriate knowledge and skills" in a bid to reduce sexual violence, the WA government said.
Pre-primary to Year 10 students will benefit, Education and Training Minister Sue Ellery and Women's Interests Minister Simone McGurk said.
Ellery said such lessons are currently taught "ad hoc" in Western Australian schools but students have said they want a clear way to respond to real-life situations.
"These changes are designed to equip students and their families with age-appropriate knowledge and skills to understand the concept of consent and what healthy, respectful relationships look like in everyday settings and real-life scenarios," she said.
The "age-appropriate and progressive lessons" in WA will start before primary school.
Topics for the youngest children will include "keeping safe" and "saying no".
McGurk said she was proud of the move. "Evidence shows that early education is a powerful tool in reducing sexual violence which we know can have lifelong consequences," she said.
The Department of Education said it will support public school teachers to implement the new content.
A draft version of the new consent curriculum has been published by the School Curriculum and Standards Authority and is open for comment.
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16 October, 2022
North Stradbroke Island racial segregation claims
It is the literal line in the sand literally dividing one of Stradbroke Island’s most beloved campgrounds over allegations of racial segregation limiting access to non-Indigenous visitors.
The Blakesleys Slip area, about 10km south of Dunwich on North Stradbroke (or Minjerribah in the local Indigenous language), has been a popular camping and fishing spot for decades, but new rules from Queensland Parks and Wildlife have angered many, including a stipulation part of the site should now be reserved for exclusive use of the Quandamooka people.
Some, including former local federal MP Andrew Laming, have called the move reverse racism, while Queensland Parks and Wildlife says it is about protecting and managing the site for everyone.
Blakesley’s Slip, formed by shifting sands during sand mining in the area about 40 years ago, has been a popular – albeit unofficial, camping spot for years, but attempts to regulate overnight visitation to the area have raised tensions.
While many have accepted the introduction of camping fees and a formal booking system limiting numbers, some feel a move to divide the area into two distinct sections – one for general campers and one for the exclusive use of Quandamooka traditional owners – has crossed the line.
Luke Seaborne, a local resident who has been camping and fishing at the popular spot for 30 years, has launched a petition calling on supporters to challenge the changes.
“They’re literally drawing a line in the sand and saying who can or can’t go where,” he said. “I think we can all respect each other and learn from each other, but what they’re doing here is just plain divisive.”
The area is jointly managed by QPWS and the Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation, which was awarded native title rights over parts of the island several years ago.
Straddie’s shift away from sandmining towards eco-tourism in recent years has caused increasing friction on the laid-back island.
In a statement, a QPWS spokesperson said the new rules provided “an opportunity for all Queenslanders, including the Quandamooka People, to immerse themselves in this unique natural and cultural setting”.
“As the native title owners of the land, the Quandamooka People are entitled to set aside areas for the Quandamooka community to be on Country to camp with their families and engage with their culture,” the statement said.
But Dr Laming, a passionate advocate for the island, said the moves went too far. “Of course they should be entitled to engage with their culture, but not by segregating it from everyone else,” he said. “If we’re really serious about reconciliation, why wouldn’t you share the site and camp together?
“It reeks of reverse racism.”
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Renewable fantasies in Queensland
There are numerous intelligent ways to respond to the risk of climate change. Setting heroic and enormously costly state-based targets is not one of them.
The Queensland government’s ten-year Queensland Energy and Jobs Plan has essentially set three targets: a 30 per cent reduction in emissions compared to 2005 levels by 2030; 70 per cent renewable electricity generation by 2032; and net-zero emissions by 2050.
Currently, Queensland’s renewables generation share is 21 per cent, with coal providing 60 per cent of Queensland’s electricity generation requirements and gas 10 per cent.
Queensland would need to further reduce its carbon emissions from 160 million tonnes to 138 million tonnes per year in 2030 to meet its emissions target. In a signal that it will fail, the Palaszczuk government has pushed the date out by two years to 2032. It lifted the renewables target to 70 per cent to cover up its irresponsible timeline.
This plan is doomed, and it will be very costly.
For starters, much of the successful reduction in emissions already achieved since 2005 has been due to lower rates of primary forest clearing – a gain which cannot be repeated.
Queensland’s growing population, expected to reach six million in 2029, will make it difficult to reduce emissions from the transport sector. It will take decades to completely switch to battery-powered vehicles. Besides, every battery-powered car on the road has been built thanks to mining and minerals processing emissions and, unless the Tesla is kept in the garage, will require mostly coal and gas-fired electricity for the next decade at least.
While the cost of solar generation has fallen, the true cost of electricity generation also includes the cost of guaranteeing supply. As coal and gas-fired generators shut down over the next two decades the cost of that supply guarantee will rise enormously because of the high fixed costs of baseload alternatives.
The current fixed capital cost of 4th generation SMR nuclear reactors is high relative to coal, but nuclear, which enjoys a capacity factor of 95 per cent, only needs to be cost competitive against similarly costly (but less reliable) baseload alternatives in hydro-electric dams and large-scale batteries.
Palaszczuk’s $62 billion hydro-electric dam proposal reminds us of the Snowy 2.0 cost blowout and will very likely again prove world-renowned Professor Brent Flyvbjerg’s adage that megaprojects are always ‘over budget, over time, over and over again’. At full employment, nation-building fantasies can very quickly turn into skills shortages, wage inflation and cost blowouts.
Setting aside the infeasibility of achieving a fair dinkum net-zero target by 2050, there are lower-cost paths and timeframes to tackle the risks of climate change. To the extent that climate change is an existential threat to civilisation – which remains an open question – the policies to mitigate or adapt to its impacts should be global. States should not be in the business of setting their own targets. Australia’s electricity generation sector is a single national market. State targets will increase the overall economic cost of meeting those targets.
As the Productivity Commission pointed out more than a decade ago, the heavy lifting should be done by the jurisdictions best able to mitigate their emissions, and who bear the lowest cost of mitigation, within the framework of an overall global emissions reduction target that balances long-term economic, social and environmental goals.
How did we get into this pickle?
First came the language. Renewables are not ‘renewable’ as the technology – solar panels, turbines and batteries – are made from physically limited resources such as rare earths, more limited than coal, gas and oil which, for all practical purposes, are unlimited.
Because of this legerdemain of language, Queensland is facing two black holes. When the coal-fired power stations shut down and when the first generation of renewable technology needs renewing.
Second, the assertion that renewables are the cheapest form of energy is not true. Industry subsidies, targets and regulations dramatically tilt the playing field. Thermal coal and gas are not subsidised and, in fact, are penalised via higher capital costs to account for regulatory risk. Forcing Queensland industry onto renewables too quickly will put at risk what remains of its export- oriented heavy industry. The net result will be an economy that is even more dependent on China for manufactured goods.
Third, switching to renewables cannot possibly permanently lower Australia’s current 3.5 per cent unemployment rate. In the long run, switching to renewables too quickly will simply raise costs and lower incomes and living standards for all Australians.
Fourth, to maintain confidence in, and continual public funding to, the renewables lobby there has been silence on the near-term technological feasibility of renewables as the primary source of power generation. The Australian Electricity Market Operator says it is ‘working with industry to engineer a power system capable of running at 100 per cent instantaneous penetration of renewable energy.’ In time (and at what cost) to meet Palaszczuk’s new targets?
Finally, there is the fantastic assumption that regional communities will cop this ‘once-in-a-century transformation’. It’s worth keeping in mind that 85,000 Queenslanders work in the mining industry today, more than at the peak of the mining boom a decade ago. When will the AWU and CFMEU tell its members? When will ‘Lock the Gate’ come out against environment-destroying solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries, and vastly more complex poles and wire electricity distribution systems?
Are Olympic green credentials worth the economic harm to Queensland people, especially in the farming and mining communities across regional Queensland? Now that most of big business and the universities have rolled over, unwilling to critically debate the merits of these state-based targets, is there an opposition left in the country prepared to question the costs and benefits of this latest ‘urgent’ government-mandated project?
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/queensland-renewable-one-day-not-feasible-the-next/
*******************************************************The modern-day Fascists are on the Left
In his essay, Politics and the English Language, George Orwell wrote, ‘The word fascism has now no meaning.’
Last weekend, I experienced this firsthand. I was attending my first CPAC Conference. After lunch, I stepped outside to get some fresh air. When I heard chanting and screeching, curiosity got the better of me and I went to investigate.
I saw a small group of pale people shouting about ‘fighting the right’ and ‘smashing fascism’. I quickly determined that these skinny, carefully masked-up youngsters posed no danger. They weren’t going to be fighting anyone, not without eating some red meat at least.
But their words struck me as odd, particularly since I was attending CPAC as part of a delegation from the Australian Jewish Association. As the grandson of Holocaust survivors, who experienced first-hand what fascism is, I am hyper-vigilant about its dangers.
It got me thinking, where was this fascism they were protesting so vigorously?
I thought back to the talks I had just listened to that morning. Surely, they didn’t take issue with the all-Indigenous panel talking about why so many Indigenous people oppose the divisive Aboriginal ‘Voice’.
Did these activists think that Zion Lights, the climate advocate of Indian origin, was a fascist? Was it Michael Shellenberger, who ran as a Democrat candidate for California Governor that was getting them so worked up?
As I was thinking back to the diverse group of speakers I had listened to earlier that morning, something dawned on me. The protesters chanting about racism, while attempting to smash the windows and storm the convention centre, were almost exclusively white. While inside we listened to Nigerian and Japanese people share their points of view, outside, the gathered crowd was monolithic. The most diversity I saw was a girl with purple hair.
Ironically, it was on the t-shirts of the rent-a-crowd that one could find support for another historical injustice. Many of them unashamedly wore Marxism shirts. Perhaps they were unaware that the movement they were promoting has caused more deaths than even the Nazis.
It’s easy to laugh them off, but these far-left radicals represent something sinister. Whilst inside the conference, I hadn’t witnessed anything even close to fascism. These protesters, in trying to shut down free speech, were exhibiting aspects of it.
These zealots are just emulating their leaders on the left who call anything they don’t like, ‘fascist’. If you’ve read the news recently, you may have noticed, that instead of celebrating the election of Italy’s first-ever female Prime Minister, mainstream media labelled her a ‘fascist’. They do this because she refuses to bow down to Woke norms and proudly supports traditional values. Giorgia Meloni is in good company. Donald Trump, the most pro-Jewish president in US history, was also wrongly labelled a fascist and an antisemite.
As a rule of thumb, it’s likely that those being slandered with terms like racist or fascist provide a much better example than those doing the labelling, who are often themselves spewing hatred.
Much like the word racism, fascism has lost all meaning. Far-leftists have even attempted to label the Australian Jewish Association as fascist for representing common-sense values shared by the majority of Australia’s Jewish community.
By labelling everything they disagree with as fascist and racist, leftists devalue truly horrific historical events. This is part of a wider trend of misappropriation. In recent years, the word ‘apartheid’ has been co-opted by extremists to slander the Jewish state. In the process, they diminish the horrors experienced in South Africa.
Dialogue and the exchange of ideas are hallmarks of Australia’s open society. In order to preserve what our ancestors so successfully built here, we must learn to disagree with others without labelling everything and everyone as fascist, racist, or Nazi.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/when-is-fascism-not-really-fascism/
********************************************************Coal and gas are still Australia's economic saviours
With Australia in desperate need of economic golden eggs as we struggle with a massive debt burden and face a possible world recession, they’re trying harder than ever to kill the goose that is laying them. The huge $50 billion slash in the 2021-22 budget deficit, cutting it by two-thirds from $80 billion to $32 billion, largely resulted from record company tax collections of $126 billion. These were driven up by our highest-ever resources and energy exports of $421 billion, led by the condemned-to-death fossil fuels of coal, oil and LNG which together made up almost half the total. And in the current 2022-23 financial year, the golden eggs will be even richer as resources and energy exports are officially forecast to reach even higher to $450 billion as coal export revenues surge to $120 billion to exceed iron ore.
But governmental net-zero targets, investment bans by woke climate-catastrophe-obsessed boards of directors and super funds, a court system happy to be the plaything of climate-activist lawfare that has made Australia the world’s most litigious developed nation for mining projects, have all combined to bring the campaign against fossil fuels – and thereby against Australia’s historic dependence on reliable cheap energy and status as an exporter – to a serious tipping point.
Unless there is a truce in this war against fossil fuels, the current financial year will be the last time they will be capable of coming so significantly to our economic rescue. Already, next year’s official forecasts of an expected decline in the Ukraine war’s high commodity prices, of a Western world economic slowdown and for its rush to renewables (as self-destructive emissions targets are imposed), are together likely to result in a cut in our fossil fuel export revenue by almost a quarter in 2023-24. This, along with Australia’s deliberate official obstructionism to fossil fuel investment, particularly in coal, will all combine to kill off this economic lifeline whose current significance has been deliberately downplayed by those seeking environmental purity.
So while this year’s forecast iron ore exports at $119 billion takes the headlines, the fossil fuels of metallurgical coal at $58 billion, thermal coal at $62 billion, natural gas at $90 billion and oil at $15 billion are together officially forecast to be almost twice as big as iron ore’s export earnings this financial year and to make up, at $225 billion, half of Australia’s total minerals and resources export revenue. While, on their own, coal exports are earning more than iron ore, so effective has the campaign been against coal that not even the organisation that is supposed to represent it, the Minerals Council of Australia, was prepared to acknowledge coal’s primary role when it issued a press release last week welcoming the latest official resources and energy forecasts by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, ‘as a strong reminder of the of the economic benefits delivered by the mining industry’.
In noting the forecast that Australia’s resource and energy export earnings will reach a record $450 billion in the current financial year , the MCA correctly asserted that, ‘Australia is only in a position to take advantage of these [high international] prices due to increased production across a range of commodities. In the last decade, over $250 billion of investment in new mines, processing equipment and infrastructure has resulted in Australia’s bauxite mining increasing 41 per cent, iron ore production increasing 84 per cent and lithium output rising nearly 400 per cent’.
Not a word about the biggest single revenue earner, coal, which became the mineral that MCA pretends does not exist ever since an emissions-obsessed BHP threatened to quit the MCA if it continued to lobby for coal; note the absence of coal in MCA press releases in recent years.
But when MCA campaigns against pressure for rises in mining taxes and royalties, as it has this month, by boasting of mining’s record $43 billion contribution made to the Australian economy in 2020-21 (with 2021-22 sure to be even considerably larger), coal’s existence is re-discovered and its multi-billion-dollar share is included – without acknowledgement. And by asserting that the effective tax rate on Australian mining investment is already high relative to many jurisdictions in other mining countries, it reminds governments that while Australia needs to attract more investment in mining (but you must not mention coal!) in order to benefit from growing international demand, there is strong competition for investment from other mining countries.
However, at least coal has proselytisers on a state basis. As Stephen Galilee, CEO of the NSW Minerals Council pointedly told me, ‘Some people want to ignore the fact that our coal sector even exists This is despite coal continuing to be NSW’s most valuable export commodity, worth around $22.6 billion in exports, and delivering a record $4 billion in royalties to the NSW government this year alone’.
But what of the future, given the high demand for NSW coal that Galilee claims is some of the highest quality available anywhere in the world, producing more energy with less emissions than coal from elsewhere? ‘There are currently 17 potential coal-mining proposals in the planning and development pipeline in NSW representing a further $4.6 billion investment.’ But nearly all are proposals to expand or extend operational lives of NSW’s forty existing coal mines; greenfield projects face too many hurdles.
The same goes for Queensland, where my old parliamentary colleague Ian Macfarlane who runs the Queensland Resources Council, said the latest official forecasts ‘reinforce the significance of the resources industry to the budget bottom line. Coal exports underpin both the Australian and Queensland governments’ budgets’. But Macfarlane warned that governments, particularly Queensland’s, ‘can’t take future investment and future returns from coal exports for granted’ and that the Queensland government’s decision to hike up coal royalty taxes to the highest rates in the world has resulted in ‘large mining investors already rethinking their investments in Queensland’.
Is it time someone brought another lump of coal into parliament to remind MPs of its economic significance?
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/business-robbery-etc-102/ ?
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14 October, 2022
University of Adelaide joins six Australian institutions in Times Higher Education top 100
I have impressive pieces of paper from two of the universities listed below, plus I taught at a third. On a per head basis, Australian universities do very well. Consider that there are 300 million Americans and only 25 million Australians. Australia produces roughly twice as many top universities per head as the USA does. It's not a small difference
Australia now has seven universities in the world’s top 100 as ranked by Times Higher Education with the University of Adelaide joining the elite group. The University of Melbourne remains Australia’s most highly ranked institution, slipping to 34th this year from 33rd last year.
Monash University is next at 44th place, after rising from 57th last year.
The University of Queensland (53rd), the University of Sydney (54th), the Australian National University (62nd) and UNSW (71st) also make the top 100, along with the University of Adelaide at 88th, up from 111th last year.
The University of Adelaide said its success in entering the world’s top 100 universities was a significant milestone for higher education in South Australia. “A top 100 university is only possible with top ranked staff. They should be proud of their achievements,” said UA vice-chancellor Peter Hoj.
Times Higher Education chief knowledge officer Phil Baty said Melbourne was the city with bragging rights. “It now boasts Australia’s number one and number two universities, with Monash University leapfrogging ahead of Brisbane’s University of Queensland and pushing it into third place,” he said.
Monash University vice-chancellor Margaret Gardner said the results were a landmark for her university. “This achievement will inspire exciting opportunities to access new research funding, build new partnerships and attract additional students,” she said.
University of Melbourne vice-chancellor Duncan Maskell said the rankings reflected the global standing of Australian universities highlighting their contribution during the pandemic and their value to society.
There are signs that US universities are trending downwards in the Times Higher Education ranking. The number of US universities in the top 100 continues to fall, from a peak of 43 in 2018 to 34 this year.
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Dangerous vaccines
More on the great unravelling of the Covid vaccine story
It’s Dreamtime down under as Australian politicians and the media, led by their health authorities, sleepwalk through 2022.
Last Saturday, Florida’s surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, released analysis showing that Covid-19 mRNA vaccines increased the risk of cardiac-related death by a staggering 84 per cent among men aged 18 to 39 within 28 days of injection. Ladapo had already recommended against Covid vaccination in children aged 5 to 17 in March. Now he has added children aged less than five and men aged 18 to 39, tweeting, ‘Florida will not be silent on the truth’.
Ladapo is not alone. In mid-September Denmark recommended against Covid shots for any healthy person under 50 years. A fortnight later, Norway recommended against the jabs for healthy people aged under 65. In the UK healthy children who turned five on or after 1 September will not be vaccinated until they turn 12 unless they live with someone with a weakened immune system.
Esteemed UK cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra, an erstwhile TV talking head in support of Covid vaccines has gone further. His peer-reviewed paper published a fortnight ago calls for their immediate suspension. ‘Until all the raw data on the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines have been independently analysed, any claims purporting that they confer a net benefit to humankind cannot be considered to be evidence based,’ he says.
On 16 September, an international group of scientists and doctors, led by French scientist Alexandra Henrion-Caude and American doctor Sally Priester issued a declaration of an international medical crisis due to diseases and death related to Covid vaccination. They pointed to high excess mortality in countries with high vaccination rates, ‘the large number of sudden deaths in previously healthy young people’, ‘the high incidence of miscarriages and perinatal deaths’, and the ‘large number of adverse side effects, including hospitalisations, permanent disabilitie, and deaths’.
Yet, it is as if none of this happened to the somnambulists running Australia. This week, Karen Andrews, the former minister for Home Affairs who cancelled Novak Djokovic’s visa twice ranted that he must not be allowed to compete in the next Australia Open just because ‘he’s a high-ranking tennis player with many millions of dollars’. ‘It shouldn’t be just one rule for (him) and a different rule for everyone else,’ she pontificated. Yet preventing Djokovic from entering applies a harsher rule to him than anyone else, since nobody has been required to be vaccinated to enter Australia since 6 July. And if Florida and the dissenting doctors are correct, Andrews should be apologising to Djokovic for trying to coerce him to get a vaccine that could have killed him.
Equally, if the dissenting doctors and scientists are right, it is also the ongoing mass Covid vaccination campaigns that underlie Australia’s shocking excess mortality which started rising in March 2021, just when the Covid vaccines started to be rolled out and is now running at 17 per cent. This year, there had been 13,524 excess deaths by 30 June of which less than 40 per cent (5,387) were due to Covid. What caused the deaths of the other 8,137 Australians? And why is it that Australian health officers who lamented every Covid death when there were only 905 in 2020 and 1,342 in 2021, have said nothing about excess mortality in 2022 which is ten times worse than Covid mortality in 2021?
Australian Medical Association president Professor Steve Robson described Australia’s excess mortality as a ‘worrying’ trend that mirrored countries such as the UK but said he couldn’t explain it adding, ‘there needs to be some research into why this is happening’. There has been none. Why not? Instead, Australia’s health authorities still recommend repeatedly jabbing everyone from the age of six months up intoning the mantra that the vaccines are ‘safe and effective’.
Yet that’s not what the NSW data, the most complete in Australia, shows. Vaccinated people in NSW are six times more likely to get Covid than the unvaccinated, 77 times more likely to be hospitalised, ten times more likely to end up in ICU, and 1.1 times more likely to die even though the people most likely to die of Covid – people in palliative care, severe illness, the frailest elderly – are often unvaccinated because they are so close to death.
NSW does not release the data it collects on the comorbidities of those who are hospitalised or die with or of Covid. If it did we could compare like with like and establish the risk of the virus to healthy or sick people in each age group, and the risks or benefits of vaccination to those same groups. Why don’t health authorities do this? Are they just woefully obtuse or do they fear that the results would reveal that the vaccine is neither safe nor effective?
Despite the incompleteness, the NSW statistics strongly suggest that the vaccine is increasing the risk of illness and death. This was a known danger. Are Australia’s health authorities actively monitoring for it? It seems not. Yet Dr. Fauci warned in May 2020 that there was a ‘possibility of negative consequences’ because ‘certain vaccines can actually enhance the negative effect of the infection’. This was true for a vaccine developed for respiratory syncytial virus which was never approved and a measles vaccine developed in the 1960s which was withdrawn.
Why are the Covid vaccines not being withdrawn, asks Dr Malhotra. He notes the swine flu vaccine developed in 1976 was withdrawn because of a 1 in 100,000 risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome and the rotavirus vaccine was withdrawn because of a 1 in 10,000 risk of bowel obstruction. He estimates the true prevalence of serious adverse events from Covid-19 mRNA vaccines is between 1 in 800 and 1 in 1,000.
What about excess mortality? The easiest way to establish whether vaccination is contributing would be to identify the vaccine status of all those who died since Covid immunisation commenced, together with their age and comorbidities. It’s not hard.
That’s what Florida, and presumably Denmark and Norway have done. But not Australia. Its leaders slumber on at the wheel as the nation careens towards a calamitous awakening.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/dangerous-dreamtime
************************************************The green investments that threaten Australia's future with their failures
Investments with essentially no return. A system of windmills and solar panrels has added nothing to the good electricity availablity that we already had: A vast investment that has done nothing to improve our lives
Productivity growth is the key to income growth – we can’t have the latter without the former. A matter that has troubled many economists in the Western world during recent decades is a slowdown in productivity growth.
Australia is typical. Multi-factor productivity – the overall return on labour and capital inputs combined – has been growing at only 0.3 per cent per year in recent years, while the more commonly understood, labour productivity, has also seen growth at only 0.9 per cent a year. These are half the levels seen in the 1990s.
That slowdown is less evident in many countries that are nowadays referred to as ‘developing’. Some such countries that had been lagging behind Western world living standards for centuries started to catch up once their governments stood back from directly controlling their economies and created the conditions for individuals to accumulate savings and to invest these with much reduced fears of expropriation.
First, beginning in the 1960s, we saw the so-called Asian Tigers – Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea – start to emerge as industrial powerhouses; these countries now have income levels that surpass those of most developed western economies. This was followed by phenomenal growth rates achieved by China; in more recent years we’ve seen India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and even some African countries starting to show high levels of economic growth.
In contrast to the liberalisation and lessening of investment constraints and regulations that powered those nations’ growths, most western economies have imposed increasing layers of regulation on investment opportunities. These measures have forced down investment returns through requiring additional spending on environmental, heritage, and social matters – including the preparation of lengthy reports – and lengthening the approval time required to operationalise an initial idea.
For Australia, the slowdown in per capita growth has taken place notwithstanding increases in investment. Per capita annual real capital expenditure is currently 50 per cent higher than in the late 1980s.
But much of the investment in recent years is simply in dead-weight assets like the many idle desalinisation plants that have been constructed around Australia, plants that owe nothing to commercial decisions.
For the rest, increasing red tape reduces the efficiency – the payoff – of nearly all investment. And using subsidies to force funds into particular venues can lead the investment to have a negative effect by destroying the productive capabilities of other investment. This can be seen with new investment in electricity, which dominate the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)category: ‘electricity gas, water, and waste services’. The category comprises about six per cent of Australia’s total new investment the bulk of which is for weather-dependent wind and solar and for the increased transmission, batteries, and pumped hydro necessary to support these generation sources.
This expenditure would not take place without subsidies either from government directly, or from regulatory measures that pass the costs of transmission and wind/solar onto consumers. In favouring these intrinsically high-cost forms of electricity, the subsidies force out of the market lower cost and more reliable forms, especially coal generators that comprise 60-70 per cent of supply. This has resulted in overall generation costs trebling and in measures to facilitate wind/solar that include replacing the present transmission system, valued at some $21 billion, with one at a cost that the government says will be $80 billion.
Regulations and direct subsidies to wind/solar have already forced the closure of coal generation capacity and the number of coal generating units in Australia is expected to be half their level of 10 years ago by 2025. On top of this is the Queensland Government’s radical plan to replace all its coal stations by wind/solar and two mythical pumped hydro schemes.
In measuring new capacity from investments, the ABS assumes its returns are constant and invariant to time, and ‘a change in the quantity of capital services delivered from any given capital asset is tantamount to a change in its productive capital stock’.
The sad fact is that certain investments, especially those taken for political purposes, yield no return at all and others are akin to investing in computer viruses that actually destroy value and cause considerable extra expenditures in attempts to offset the detrimental effects of the malware.
Subsidised expenditures in weather-dependent renewable facilities, rather than constituting investments, are parasitic outlays that destroy genuine income-producing assets.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/dead-weight-drowning-productivity/
***********************************************Quarantine madness
Another part of the generally disastrous response by governments to the pandemic
The Premiers might want to consider balancing their budgets by setting up a petting zoo for their endangered White Covid Elephants. Members of the public could come and visit the hundreds of millions of dollars they cost to purchase and upkeep and ask questions of the zoo keepers like, ‘Why the hell did we build quarantine camps for a seasonal flu that was almost over?’ and ‘Was it necessary to fit convict electronic ankle bracelets to people in quarantine?’
There’s a time and a place for quarantine camps. Australia used to have several historic facilities back when we were a young, fragile country unable to deal with the introduction of the world’s serious illnesses.
The flow of migration was tiny and tightly controlled through a series of ports. Many died in those facilities to protect the nation in conditions close to a living hell and, unlike Covid’s ‘re-imagined’ notion of quarantine, you could not buy your way out of historic quarantine or use your position and privilege to get around the rules.
Quarantine was a practice started in earnest (as far as we can tell) in Venice in the 14th Century where ships were forced to anchor in the harbour to see if anything terrible happened to the passengers and crew. Quaranta giorni or ‘forty days’ is where we get ‘quarantine’ from.
It was a good solution for the time, but that world is gone.
Globalisation, mass migration, and the continuous flow of human beings into Australia via air and sea makes it impossible to sustain human-based quarantine – for anything – unless a full shutdown of the nation is enforced. It is an unsustainable proposition that would only work for a handful of diseases. Certainly, it was never credible to believe that a highly transmissible respiratory illness like Covid could be contained via quarantine.
Once Covid entered the general population, quarantine went from an absurd hope to a nonsense. Quarantine facilities are designed to keep a disease out of a nation. If that nation already has a domestic outbreak – quarantine is no longer viable. To enforce isolation orders on travellers after Covid escaped into the community was always ridiculous – one may even argue that every cent taken from civilians by government departments for their forced quarantine was theft.
To be clear, hotel quarantine and police-enforced self-isolation offered no long-term value.
Think about it this way, with tens of thousands of cases spreading out of control through the community, what difference does it make if you spend nearly $10,000 getting one traveller into the country ‘clean’? The answer is none. It is the same medical absurdity as America’s current vaccination orders for travellers. Vaccination for Covid has no discernible impact on transmission or prevention from infection. America has millions of active cases. Their medical red tape at the airport is nothing but petty politics from an embarrassed regime that cannot and will not admit it lied for two years.
Australia’s National Cabinet (which has wrapped itself in protective layers of secrecy) claims to be advised by leading experts in the medical field, and yet laymen worked out all the way back in late 2020 that Covid would become an endemic virus that could not be stopped by tyranny.
Why did the world slit its economic throat in pursuit of Covid eradication? Was it just so that Big Pharma CEOs could raise billions from a mandated vaccine? Was Covid being used as an excuse to expand political power and collapse Western systems of government into something that looks more like authoritarianism? Was it simple fear and incompetence from political leaders prepared to break every rule of civilisation to hang on to power, making promises about safety they had no right to make? Whatever it was, it had very little to do with healthcare. Maybe idiocy, but not health.
While Premiers probably wish they could ‘move on’ from Covid and pretend that they didn’t act like tin-pot dictators – there is still a question about what to do with their white elephant quarantine stations and health apps…
Queensland’s ‘Wellcamp’ (which sounds like an Orwell theme park) outside of Toowoomba was proudly opened in mid-February 2021 by Annastacia Palaszczuk. It was built to house those pesky unvaccinated international travellers, holding them in small prison cells. Why only unvaccinated travellers? Quarantine is predicated on the notion of locking diseases in with excessive force. It’s not a quarantine facility if half the infected travellers take an Uber straight into the centre of town. Nobody in the press challenged Palaszczuk on the distinction.
Deputy Premier Steven Miles made it quite clear that this was a holding cell for the unvaccinated, not a genuine quarantine station.
‘We anticipate an ongoing number of arrivals, particularly from countries where their vaccines aren’t recognised by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and therefore will be required to quarantine. As well as farmers, refugees from other countries who haven’t been able to access vaccinations.’
At some point, every person held at Wellcamp should sue the Queensland government for being held under false pretences. It cost a shocking $3,220 for a single adult, $4,130 for two adults, and $5,040 for two adults and two children. How can this be seen as anything other than a mean-spirited, state-issued fine on the unvaccinated?
There was no competitive tender for Wellcamp’s construction by the Wagner Corporation which cost $200 million along with $9 million to Compass Group and $7.67 million to Aspen Medical in service fees. It is owned by the company, not Queensland, and is being leased. Now, it sits empty with everyone admitting the facility has no use whatsoever. It was a political construction – nothing more – and those in government responsible should have the amount docked from their public service budget.
‘I don’t regret anything about it,’ said Miles. He should regret everything, especially his comment that segregating the unvaccinated was about ‘rewards’.
The situation is nearly identical in Victoria, where Daniel Andrews has his own white elephant exhibit. Victoria’s $580 million quarantine facility in Mickleham is the most expensive of all the albino zoo animals. It was built by the federal government (why did you do that, Scott Morrison?) and operated by the Victorian Labor government.
‘There is no doubt in my mind that we will look back on this decision by the Commonwealth and the state government to invest in a special purpose-built quarantine facility as one of the best decisions we’ve made,’ said Police Minister Lisa Neville.
Oh, really?
Matthew (Matt?) Guy chipped in, ‘It’s a shame it wasn’t in place maybe a year or so ago when it was needed most. But it’s an important piece of armoury to ensure there are no more lockdowns.’ ‘You can see it from the moon,’ Neville added.
Wonderful. A failure so large it is visible from space.
The hub is already closed. These are same governments that cry poor and insist they ‘just have to increase taxes’ to salvage the economy. How about they start paying back, with their salaries as forfeit, the hubris of their careers?
It was the Liberals who facilitated this Southern failure and the Liberals that shared the information required to create vaccine passports, so I don’t want to hear any more garbage from the party elite about how ‘Labor is so much worse’. You’re both atrocious. That’s why ‘you betrayed us!’ was screamed at those on stage during CPAC.
The Howard Springs quarantine facility in the Northern Territory copped well-deserved flak for essentially forcing remote communities to relocate into it. While arguably the most successful of the facilities (in that a significant number of people moved through its doors), it was still a failure of concept. At the end of the day, for all its ‘success’ it served no purpose and made no difference to our final destination as a nation.
With the fully-vaccinated flying into Australia riddled with Covid at the same time as the unvaccinated were being carted off to live in prison facilities, Australia and its leaders openly practised discrimination and segregation despite the science (and basic ethics) being against them. At no point have they apologised for this, or sought to amend the legislation that allowed these violations in basic decency.
As a nation, we wasted a fortune and learned nothing except that our Premiers and medical bureaucracy harbour an insatiable lust for cruelty and cretinism in equal measure. If this is the quality of ‘expert’ on offer, we’d be better off with the village idiot – or a stray cat. And yes, your money is still being used to feed the elephants.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/australias-white-elephant-zoo
************************************13 October, 2022
Karl Stefanovic slams plans to introduce a smacking ban on kids in Australia
The claim that smacking/spanking has bad mental health outcomes is based on the old fallacy that correlation is causation. The bad mental health among some children who are smacked could be a CAUSE rather than the result of the smacking. Ill-behaved children are more likely to be smacked and mental health problems can cause bad behaviour. See here for an example of the research concerned
My father never laid a hand on me nor did I ever lay a hand on my son but both of us are quiet intellectual types not drawn to any kind of florid behaviour. But all children are not the same and some children do need pressure to observe boundaries. And smacking is a clear sign that a boundary has been transgressed.
Karl Stefanovic has furiously shot down plans to introduce a ban on Australian parents giving their kids a smack.
University of Melbourne Professor Sophie Havighurst supports the idea of making corporal punishment illegal, saying it 'has effects on children in a whole range of different ways'.
She referenced research from the Australian Child Maltreatment Study that found 61 per cent of young Aussies had been smacked at least four times in their life. 'We now know that that doubles their chances of anxiety and depression,' Prof Havighurst told The Today Show on Thursday morning.
But Stefanovic wasn't having any of it, saying there was no need for a law change. 'I don't want to see any more legislation around me as a parent, my head explodes,' he said.
'And the idea of parents being charged or going into court for smacking a child. I mean, come on, Sophie, give me a break, please.'
The professor said she wasn't seeking any consequences for those who use physical punishment on their children, but wanted the law to change. 'Any form of smacking or physical discipline has been found to have a negative effect on children,' she said.
Sixty-three countries around the world have made physical punishment against children illegal including Scotland, Sweden and Korea.
Prof Havighurst said the law change hadn't led to an increase in prosecution of parents who hit their kids in any of those countries. She said banning the behaviour would lead to a cultural and attitude change among Aussie parents.
The expert sympathised with Stefanovic's concerns parents would be charged for smacking their children, but said discussion around the topic was important. 'We all have times when we lose it ... but in New Zealand when they changed the law in 2007, they didn't get an increase in what you're fearful of,' she said.
'We don't want the government and police having more involvement in our family lives but we do know that law change can guide us to use other ways of parenting and that's really important.'
Australia's former deputy chief medical officer, Dr Nick Coatsworth also weighed in on the matter, saying the bottom line was that parents should not smack their kids - but that making the behaviour illegal wasn't necessary.
'My view is that governments should do their best to educate and make sure kids are safe,' he said. 'Criminalising aspects of parenting, even those aspects that are wrong, shouldn't be the direction the government should be going in, in my view.'
In Australia it's currently legal for parents to smack their kids but varying states have specific rules on the matter.
In NSW, the physical punishment should not be painful for more than a brief moment, and kids can't be hit on their heads or necks.
In Victoria, there is no legislation surrounding parents applying physical punishment to their kids while in various other states it must be considered 'reasonable under the circumstances'.
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Pronoun confusion
The word ‘they’ has two legitimate uses and one illegitimate use. The first proper and legitimate use is as the subjective case of the third person plural pronoun – that is, to refer to a bunch of people. The second is as a singular pronoun in cases where it is impossible to know the gender of the person referred to, for example: ‘If someone wins the lottery they should…’ In such cases, and only in such cases, it is proper to use ‘they’ just as ‘you’ has been employed for centuries – covering both singular and plural.
However, it is improper, illegitimate and totally appalling to use ‘they’ as a singular pronoun when the gender is known. This has been done, apparently, by Northlakes High School in NSW. At that school, the boys’ toilet has a sign saying ‘He/They’ and the girls’ toilet one saying ‘She/They.’ This is wrong on so many fronts it’s hard to know where to begin. For a start, toilets are not normally labelled with pronouns – they are labelled ‘mens’ (or ‘gents’) and ‘womens’ (or ‘ladies’). In a school context this becomes ‘boys’ and ‘girls’. Switching to a pronoun for labelling is nonsense.
Worse, the gender is known. Males go to boys’ toilets and females go to girls’ toilets – so the use of ‘they’ to be gender neutral is a bit of hard-left Marxist ideological madness. And third, this is dangerous. Mark Latham has pointed out that these lunatic woke signs may encourage boys to use the girls’ toilets – meaning little 12- and 13-year-old girls could find themselves in a toilet with perving 17- and 18-year-old boys. It is outrageous that a principal could assume the power to impose politically correct stupidity on a whole school (without – as it happens – telling parents or seeking their permission). Madness. Dangerous madness.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/language-31/
********************************************************Methane emissions pledge a blow for farmers
Multiple sources close to discussions between the government and industry say an announcement to commit to the global methane pledge is imminent, possibly as early as next week.
They said the government was eager to head to next month’s UN COP27 climate change conference in Egypt with a solid commitment to meet the pledge, which the Morrison government rejected at COP26 in Glasgow last year.
The livestock sector, mainly due to the digestive functions of cattle and sheep, is responsible for about 48 per cent of the country’s methane emissions, which make up about 25 per cent of Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Tuesday flagged plans to tax from 2025 greenhouse gases produced by farm animals through burping and urinating, outraging producers. The industry’s main lobby group Federated Farmers warned the plan would “rip the guts out of small-town New Zealand’’.
Australia’s livestock sector, which aims to be carbon neutral by 2030, has argued against legislated methane targets and says it is voluntarily headed in that direction.
National Farmers Federation chief executive Tony Maher fired a warning shot last Friday amid concerns from farmers that Australia would sign up to the global methane pledge. He cited street protests by Dutch farmers over their government’s plan to tackle nitrogen emissions, which locals said would lead to a loss in livestock numbers and farm closures.
“We won’t support any outcome that would lead to a reduction in livestock numbers, and we’ve had assurances from government on that front,” Mr Maher said.
“Ultimately, punitive regulatory measures in isolation only serve to provide perverse and weaker outcomes for everyone, and we do not want to see farmers protesting because they were not adequately consulted prior to the announcements of schemes that challenge their very existence.”
Tougher methane emissions targets would also capture gas companies and landfill operators, with nearly 30 per cent of methane emissions coming from the extraction, distribution and combustion of fossil fuels and more than 10 per cent from waste management services. The European Union and Quad nations have linked their strategies to slash methane with fast-tracking lower emissions across the oil and gas sectors.
Research into methane-suppressing supplements has ramped up in recent years to tackle the problem, but farmers say they are not yet commercially viable.
The Australian understands growing pressure from the Biden administration and South Pacific nations for Australia to embrace stronger climate change action on the world stage has influenced the Albanese government’s global methane pledge position.
Ten South Pacific nations, including Fiji, PNG and Samoa, are among 122 nations who have signed the non-binding pledge. While China, India and Russia are not backing the target, Egypt, Oman, Qatar and Uzbekistan have recently committed.
A spokeswoman for Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen said the pledge was an “aspirational, global goal rather than a binding domestic target”, which was why so many countries had “joined the effort”.
Mr Bowen – who will lead Australia’s delegation at the COP27 Sharm El-Sheikh conference alongside Assistant Climate Change Minister Jenny McAllister — previously said that as the world’s 12th largest methane-emitting country “we want to see concrete plans to work with farmers”.
“The Australian government is currently consulting across resources and agricultural sectors about signing up to the global methane pledge,” the spokeswoman said.
“The government’s reforms to the safeguard mechanism mean that our largest emitters, many of which release methane, will be required to reduce their emissions – and the Safeguard Crediting Bill … will incentivise facilities that overachieve on their reductions”.
Mr Bowen’s spokeswoman said the $15bn National Reconstruction Fund would be used to help farmers adopt new livestock feed technologies. The government has committed $8m to fast-track commercialisation of seaweed as a low-emissions feed supplement.
Anthony Lee, the head of vertically integrated beef company Australian Country Choice, urged against binding legislation and said the government must support methane-reduction technology.
“There’s a lot of people in the industry, its allied agencies, in the industry RDCs (research and development corporations) and peak bodies, who are working on methane emission reduction,” Mr Lee said.
“There’s a few major projects that, if commercialised, will see significant reductions to these target levels and beyond.
“I don’t support legislation to limit emissions. What we need is government supporting and helping the industry to invest in technology. We need the government working with us, not taxing us.”
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More censorship in Australia
Big Tech companies are not at all hesitant about being openly biased in how they operate as publishers of online content.
This month the Institute of Public Affairs attempted to promote a research video featuring Senators James McGrath and Jacinta Price and leading intellectual Dr Anthony Dillon, explaining why establishing a voice in the constitution would permanently divide Australia by race.
When the IPA attempted to pay a fee to Facebook to promote this research to a wider audience it was rejected on the basis that it would breach Facebook’s policies about social issues, elections or politics.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, asserts that ‘any advertiser running ads about social issues, elections or politics’ must include a ‘paid for by’ disclaimer on these ‘ads’. How the research video discussing racial equality violated Facebook’s policies was never mentioned. The farce was at least acknowledged by Facebook when it removed its ban – only to reimpose it a few hours later.
Attempting to cover its tracks, Facebook leaked their version of events to the Guardian, which defended the censorship: ‘The IPA warriors might have saved their outrage for another day if they had just read the fine print. It was not the content of their ad that was the problem. Facebook’s rules require ads which have political content to carry a “disclaimer, disclosure, and ad labelling”’, they wrote. Except, three days later in a story published in the Australian Facebook again changed their version of events.
Facebook finally came clean and admitted they were wrong to have removed the ban on the promotion of the IPA’s video, although they wrongly continue to maintain that the content of the IPA’s video required a disclaimer to begin with. A Facebook spokeswoman said: ‘The ad was live for a short period of time in error, but was removed as soon as we realised it was missing the disclaimer.’
Facebook’s admission of error is significant, because if even Facebook cannot figure out how their vague rules work, how can they be trusted to control what people say in the digital public square? It also reinforces the perception of millions of Australians that Big Tech companies are putting their fingers on the scales on the likely forthcoming Voice referendum, which raises questions about the integrity of that referendum.
Behaviour like this from Facebook has been encouraged by governments. In recent years a consensus has emerged among political leaders that Big Tech companies should be given more power and responsibility to undermine freedom of speech online. Former Liberal federal minister for communications Paul Fletcher’s misinformation and disinformation laws, announced just before the May federal election, would have given regulators extraordinary new powers to force digital platforms to crack down on ‘harmful’ disinformation.
Similarly, the not so Conservative government in the UK is pressing ahead with its Online Safety bill, which will force digital platforms to censor ‘lawful but harmful’ content. New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has even likened online speech to ‘weapons of war’. In an address to the UN General Assembly, Ardern called on parties to take the ‘collective will’ to ‘bring us back to order’. One could be forgiven for thinking the type of order Ardern has in mind is one in which mainstream voters aren’t allowed to disagree with her government.
What happened to the IPA’s research video is an exemplar of what is one of the most significant challenges to freedom in our time. At a time when Australians are being asked to permanently enshrine race in the constitution, foreign-owned Big Tech mega corporations are asserting their power to control how that debate will be held, or if there will be a debate at all.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/10/owning-science/
************************************12 October, 2022
A hate-filled curriculum
It has not taken long for Prime Minister Albanese to weigh into the culture wars, even though the lefty progressive types insist that they are a figment of our imagination. Last week, our new PM sent up a rallying cry for what he termed as ‘fair dinkum’ history to be taught in Australian schools. By ‘fair dinkum’ he meant that children need to be taught about the atrocities committed by people of British descent upon indigenous people.
It is clear that the PM has not read the latest version of the national curriculum. If he had, he would have known that according to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority ‘Indigenous’ or ‘Aboriginal’ are now verboten because they are terms of oppression. We now must use ‘First Nations Australians’ or ‘Australia’s First Nations Peoples’. Keep up, Albo!
He would also know that the singular narrative currently taught to Australian children in the history syllabus is that Australia was founded on racism, and that the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 resulted in dispossession and genocide.
In Year 3, teachers will explain that ‘people have different points of view on some events that are commemorated and celebrated; for example, some First Nations Australians regard “Australia Day” as “Invasion Day”’. In Year 4, students will learn about the ‘effects of contact with other people on First Nations Australians and their Countries/Places following the arrival of the First Fleet and how this was viewed by First Nations Australians as an invasion’.
As part of a classroom activity, they will look at ‘paintings and accounts by individuals involved in exploration and colonisation to explore the impact that British colonisation had on the lives of First Nations Australians; for example, dispossession, dislocation and the loss of lives through frontier conflict, disease, and loss of food sources and medicines, the embrace of some colonial technologies…’.
In Year 9, they will study ‘the impact of colonisation by Europeans on First Nations Australians such as frontier warfare, massacres, removal from land, and relocation to “protectorates, reserves and missions”’. They will also investigate ‘the forcible removal of children from First Nations Australian families in the late 19th century and 20th century (leading to the Stolen Generations), including the motivations for the removal of children, the practices and laws that were in place, and experiences of separation.’
We are all for talking about the mistakes of the past. Nobody is suggesting that they should be ignored. No one is saying that there was no violence between white settlers and the indigenous populations. Quite the contrary. These are important aspects of the history of modern Australia that all children should know.
But this discussion has nothing to do ‘fair dinkum’ history, or even unfair dinkum history for that matter. What Australian children are being introduced to in the classroom is pure post-modernist theory, specifically post-colonial theory. They are being schooled in the ‘settler colonialism genocide’ paradigm which sprang from the febrile imagination of Australian historian Patrick Wolfe in the 1990s.
Wolfe famously declared that settler colonialism was a structure, not an event and that it was premised on the elimination rather than exploitation of the native population. According to Wolfe, how settler colonialism disrupted the indigenous relationship to land was a profoundly violent attack on their very being, which violence continues with every day of ‘occupation’.
Our education bureaucrats are motivated by the belief that European expansion was a capitalist and racist attempt to replace indigenous people with more productive non-indigenous populations, even at the cost of genocide.
Wolfe’s paradigm has been embedded into every single subject of the national curriculum, not just history, via the Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander Cultures and Histories cross-curriculum priority. The ‘organising ideas’ of this priority are worth reproducing in full. Namely, that:
First Nations communities of Australia maintain a deep connection to, and responsibility for, Country/Place and have holistic values and belief systems that are connected to the land, sea, sky and waterways.
The occupation and colonisation of Australia by the British, under the now overturned doctrine of terra nullius, were experienced by First Nations Australians as an invasion that denied their occupation of, and connection to, Country/Place.
The First Peoples of Australia are the Traditional Owners of Country/Place, protected in Australian Law by the Native Title Act 1993 which recognises pre-existing sovereignty, continuing systems of law and customs, and connection to Country/Place. This recognised legal right provides for economic sustainability and a voice into the development and management of Country/Place.
If Prime Minster Albanese was really concerned about truth-telling in history, he would make sure that the history syllabus desists from propagating historical inaccuracies, such as the mythical notion that the British were warmongering, genocidal invaders. He would make sure that the positive aspects of how modern Australian history came into being were taught to children. He would start explaining to young Australians why this country has been the safe haven for millions of people fleeing from all over the world.
But the Prime Minister is not interested in a true account of history, he is interested in spin and politics. The left wing of the Labor party, of which Albanese is a product, sees power in the division of society, which is why it so strongly believes in multiculturalism and in undermining unifying symbols such as the Crown, Australia Day and the parliament.
Right now, the Albanese government is committed to dividing Australians by race by way of creating a parallel system of representative government comprised of indigenous Australians to the exclusion of all other Australians. Albanese and the left-wing political parties will use education to continue to inflict guilt and shame upon the nation until such a time that their ideas are accepted as fait accompli.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/unfair-dinkum-history/
***************************************************************False predictions fuel climate ‘consensus’
In its 2020 State of the Climate report the Bureau of Meteorology informs readers, ‘Observations, reconstructions and climate modelling paint a consistent picture of ongoing, long-term climate change interacting with underlying natural variability’. Such vague prognostications, even when technically correct, are essentially worthless. Surely for half a billion dollars a year taxpayers deserve better than that?
Specifically, the Bureau predicts ‘Further sea-level rises along with the likelihood of more frequent and severe bleaching events in coral reefs ….’ Really? Eighty per cent of Pacific islands and atolls are stable or growing and GPS satellite observations tell us the Australian continent is sinking. Moreover, a recent Australian Institute of Marine Science report finds that coral coverage on the northern and central parts of the Great Barrier Reef is at its highest level since monitoring began 36 years ago.
But then, grim forecasts are in the Bureau’s DNA. Its long-range forecaster, Andrew Watkins, predicted in November 2019 that, ‘Summer is looking hot for most of the country and dry for the east. The highest chances of it being drier than normal, unfortunately, are in those drought areas through central New South Wales, southern Queensland and eastern Victoria’.
A month on, the prophesy became, ‘February to April has roughly equal chances of being wetter or drier than average for most of Australia’. Take your pick. Two weeks later an extreme deluge hit south-east Queensland and northern NSW dumping up to 325mm in a few hours, triple the monthly rainfall.
Undaunted, and contrary to American forecasts, the Bureau declared ‘the 2021-2022 La Niña season is finally over.’ After three months it changed to, ‘will last through to 2023’. Who knows?
Lest Mother Nature should suggest cooler, wetter, the Bureau is there to enlighten us. Even if the 2022 winter seemed colder to some, those who shivered through it were reassured that the national mean temperature was still 0.36 degrees Celsius above the 1961 to 1990 average, which includes a decade of 0.20 degrees cooling.
And should people washed away by the east coast floods think this was wetter than normal, they get comfort from the knowledge that, ‘the nationally averaged rainfall data has not threatened any records’. It matters not that the national average for a continent the size of Australia is meaningless.
But, for the BoM, the medium is the message, so it is important to frame a narrative which aligns aberrant weather events to its catastrophic global warming thesis. By targeting policymakers and the public, it hopes to create a permanent feedback loop.
But it can be a tough gig keeping temperatures rising. It may mean remodelling the record three times in nine years and ensuring things are warmer than thermometer readings had previously measured. This is difficult when more reliable UAH satellite observations record a ten-year pause in Australian temperatures.
Respected scientist and long-time Bureau critic, Dr Jennifer Marohasy, despairs. She says, ‘I have shown repeatedly, including in peer-reviewed publications, that without scientific justification historical temperatures are dropped down, cooling the past. This has the effect of making the present appear hotter – it is a way of generating more global warming for the same weather.’
The public was alerted to these practices through the Climategate emails, and similarly in Australia the BoM’s lack of transparency, unscientific practices and appalling quality control were exposed. Weather-stations continue to be discovered in heat traps. Record low temperatures have been underreported or ‘lost’ and a much touted ‘hottest-ever’ day had to be quickly retracted when it was demonstrated it wasn’t.
It’s easy to dismiss these criticisms as carping. After all, Australia is a big place and weather forecasting is fraught. But surely the most benevolent analyst would conclude that global-warming politics, not science, predominantly drives people and culture at the BoM. Indeed, it is an active member of a global political consensus which is intent on weaponising the climate to achieve social change. Within this coven there is no room for agnostics or dissenters.
Finally, after decades of deceit and denial, mass delusion is colliding with reality. Months before winter’s onset, gas and electricity prices in Europe are ten times higher than usual. Fertiliser production is down 70 per cent and the metals sector faces an existential threat. Nationalisation beckons.
True, Russia is a significant contributor, but the real pain is self-inflicted and comes from irresponsible emissions-reduction policies which have exposed populations and economies to the mercies of Moscow and the weather with no Plan B.
Predictably the poor and infirm will pay the highest price. More people die of cold than heat and for many this winter it will mean choosing between already unaffordable heating and, skyrocketing food prices.
The perpetrators of this disaster will use it to demonstrate how, ‘Capitalism has run its course and must yield to environmental concerns’. Unsustainable growth has long been pushed by the Club of Rome and the climate collective as an existential threat and Malthusian authoritarians now largely control the agenda.
This is not conspiracy theory. A recently leaked IPCC report argues the current capitalist model must be discarded ‘to avoid exceeding planetary limits’. In other words, unless growth is abandoned, global warming will cause more frequent catastrophic weather events and millions more will die of heat and starvation.
Yet, despite rising emissions, the UN’s own World Food Program reports the planet is producing enough food to feed one and a half times the present population. The problems are storage and distribution. The anti-capitalists don’t explain how limiting economic growth and making energy unaffordable for refrigeration, transport and cooking, assist in delivering nutrition to the needy.
Well, ours is not to question. The anti-growth consensus knows best and is re-setting capitalism to become the ‘sharing economy’ of the future. In this utopia ‘you will own nothing and you will be happy’. What could possibly go wrong?
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/false-predictions-fuel-climate-consensus/
*****************************************************************Who will defend the white Christian male?
Did you hear about the Muslim who got the sack because of his Islamic beliefs and the Indian who was similarly dismissed because he was a Hindu?
How about the Aborigine who was shown the door because of his traditional beliefs?
You didn’t because these events never occurred and if they had, there would have been shrieks of outrage while accusations of Islamophobia, racism and religious intolerance echoed around the nation and social media erupted in an explosion of condemnation.
If, however, you happen to be a white Christian male with conservative views that don’t align with the woke-Left view of the world and you have your employment terminated because of your religious beliefs, then sorry, mate.
Suck it up. It’s your fault for being a holy-roller and not running with the mob.
My late father once told me that when he was growing up in Brisbane in the 1930s and looking for work as an apprentice, it was not uncommon to see advertisements offering employment, which carried the qualification that “Catholics Need Not Apply”.
Bigotry was entrenched back then and thankfully we now live in a more enlightened age, one in which inclusiveness has become the mantra of the times. Sexual and gender preferences of every alphabetic combination are welcomed.
Corporations laud their inclusiveness and point proudly to their ongoing pursuit of gender balance and a multicultural workforce, but what happens when a white bloke gets the chop because he belongs to a particular Christian church?
Not much, as Andrew Thorburn discovered when he was forced to resign as chief executive of Essendon Football Club the day after he was appointed when the AFL club discovered that the church to which he belonged preached that homosexuality was a sin and was anti-abortion.
Professional football clubs, of course, are paragons of virtue unless you count the revelations of domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse and public affray in which their players so regularly feature.
I’ve no brief for Thorburn. He was forced to step down as head of the National Australia Bank after a royal commission blasted the bank for charging customers $650m in fees for which there was no service.
The issue, however, is not about the man’s business ethics, but about being a Christian in today’s society.
Former prime minister Scott Morrison was regularly lampooned because he openly practised his Christian faith, as was former PM Tony Abbott.
When Dominic Perrottet became NSW Premier, the focus was not of his qualifications for the role, but that he was a Catholic and had six and now seven children.
Had he been a Muslim with a large family, it would have gone unremarked. Rugby player Israel Folau suffered the wrath of the woke Left and paid a price for standing up for his beliefs.
Essendon thought Thorburn, a passionate and long-time supporter of the club, was the right person for the job, but then in a heartbeat, it didn’t. It folded at the first hint of faux outrage.
Thorburn’s church, the City on a Hill, is hardly the only one to have unfashionable views.
According to the Australian National Imans Council: “From the Islamic standpoint, homosexuality is a forbidden action; a major sin and anyone who partakes in it is considered a disobedient servant to Allah that will acquire His displeasure and disapproval.”
Does this mean that all those who have applauded the actions of Essendon, including, to his external disgrace, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, regard Muslims as unsuitable to hold responsible office?
Andrews is a professed Catholic and the Catholic Church is anti-abortion so how can he justify supporting Thorburn’s treatment?
The answer, of course, is that he is a politician with an election coming up and is trying to curry favour with Left-leaning inner-city electors.
The hypocrisy is staggering. Will Essendon now interview all its players and demand to know their views on abortion and homosexuality, tearing up the contracts of those whose beliefs do not coincide with what is believed to be acceptable?
You know the answer.
There’s an ugly undercurrent tugging at our society, one seeking to sweep away those who would stand up for their right to hold Christian beliefs. If we fail to fight against it, we do so at our peril.
Philosopher John Stuart Mill put it succinctly when he wrote: “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
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Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly downplayed long COVID while justifying end of isolation requirements, medical specialist says
A leading medical specialist and long COVID patients say the chief medical officer (CMO) downplayed the state of long COVID in Australia while justifying the end of national isolation requirements.
Steven Faux, who heads up a long COVID clinic at a Sydney hospital, called the comments "unusual" and akin to "pulling the sheet over your head".
During a press conference last month, when the October 14 mandatory isolation end date was announced, Paul Kelly said health authorities were still assessing the extent of long COVID in Australia. "We're not seeing a major picture of long COVID," he said.
"For the majority of Australians, we were not exposed to COVID before we had at least two vaccines.
"We know that the major risk factors for long COVID are having had infection before vaccination, being unvaccinated, having severe illness and having other types of COVID that were not Omicron."
Professor Faux, who co-directs the long COVID clinic at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, said Professor Kelly's comments did not accurately represent the patients who were presenting at his practice.
"Mostly we're seeing people who got [COVID-19] in December and that's the Omicron wave … and the majority we are seeing are vaccinated," Professor Faux said.
Long COVID still a risk
The rehabilitation and pain physician pointed to international research that showed those who were triple vaccinated and infected with Omicron had a long COVID rate of 5 per cent.
"That's not a major problem, unless you consider that over 10 million Australians have had COVID," he said.
"That's not insubstantial when you consider that the public health services are at maximum capacity."
The St Vincent's clinic has been inundated with hundreds of people seeking help, with some specialists booked out until the middle of next year.
"We've been getting phone calls from Victoria, the Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland about people wanting to come down and we've been sending them back," Professor Faux said.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Aged Care told the ABC that Professor Kelly's comments were based on research conducted overseas and stressed that people who were vaccinated were less likely to develop symptoms of long COVID.
"In addition, studies have shown that infection with the Omicron variant is less likely to lead to symptoms of long COVID than infection with the Delta variant."
Comments not based on data, say advocates
The CMO's comments have been met with sadness and anger by long COVID advocates, who say patients like them are not being seen or heard. "He has no data on which to base those claims," academic Pippa Yeoman said.
"He's making a political statement about how clever they were to close the borders and get everybody vaccinated and saying that means we will be different [to other countries]. If you make a claim, you need to be able to back it up."
Dr Yeoman is a member of the Australia Long Covid Community Facebook group, which has about 2,600 members.
The group has been collecting survey data on its members in a bid to present the information to an approaching parliamentary Inquiry into Long COVID and Repeated COVID Infections.
Members said their preliminary data analysis of almost 300 survey respondents showed that the vast majority were double vaccinated before developing long COVID and were infected during the Omicron wave.
There is no official national data on the number of people with long COVID in Australia and not every state has a dedicated long COVID clinic, making it difficult to quantify the number of people with the condition or the impact it has on their lives.
The Department of Health and Aged Care said analysis of health data had begun in order to help develop a national response to long COVID.
"The Department is also working with states and territories to better understand the prevalence of long COVID in Australia," it said.
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11 October, 2022
The Queensland government is clearly one of our very worst
It takes a woman to tear down another woman and Judith Sloan has risen well to that challenge below. She gets it pretty right but I think she should given more credit to Annastacia for unusually relaxed lockdowns during the pandemic. I was hardly bothered by them at all
We hang out a fair bit in Queensland. We bought a place over a decade ago and happily spend several months a year in the Sunshine State – that’s when we are allowed to.
We had been given an early glimpse of how bad the Queensland government was when we were buying the place. It was a legislated requirement to provide prospective buyers with an environmental assessment of the property for sale. (It had been the brainwave of the husband of Labor premier Anna Bligh who was a senior bureaucrat at the time.)
The form consisted of page after page of detailed questions that the property owner was expected to answer or attempt to answer. You see: ‘not applicable’ and ‘don’t know’ were acceptable answers. Quite a lot of forms we received had ‘don’t know’ to the question: is there a swimming pool on the property? Clearly many vendors were simply taking the piss. I should add that the real estate agents weren’t taking the government directive too seriously either.
Fast-forward a decade or so and it’s clear that the performance of the Queensland government has deteriorated further. I’m not talking here so much about its reaction to Covid – I’m pretty sure the wooden spoon goes to Victoria, with Western Australia not far behind.
Even so, it’s hard to erase the memories of those mindless observations of the then chief health officer, Jeanette Young – she is now Governor of Queensland!
Needless to say, there were various low points in Queensland during the times of Covid, including that memorable comment from the premier Annastacia Paluszczuk – now commonly referred to as Red Carpet Anna – that Queensland hospitals were for Queenslanders, thereby preventing some seriously sick people, including children, living in far north New South Wales from crossing the border.
And who can forget the bumbling, incoherent commentaries of the then health minister, Stephen Miles? On the basis of that performance, he is now deputy premier. (OK, I made that bit up; he is deputy premier because of some factional stitch-up.)
Of course, no one expected Red Carpet Anna to become premier; she was made the leader of the opposition as a sort of seat-holder at an Oscar’s ceremony because there were so few Labor parliamentarians after Campbell Newman stormed into office. But Newman managed to storm out of office just as quickly and the daughter of a former senior Labor politician and deal-maker got the top job because it would have looked tacky to remove her at that point.
To give you some examples of just how bad the Queensland government is, it’s hard to go past the current kerfuffle surrounding the government-run DNA laboratory. A part of Queensland Health, which is a disaster story in itself, at some point the ‘managers’ – I can’t call them real managers – decided that the cut-off point for testing should be double the international standard.
What this has meant is that baddies who might otherwise have been indicted because of forensic evidence were allowed to roam the streets because some ‘manager’ in Brisbane had decided that a new standard should apply which allowed the lab to get through the backlog and save money. Unsurprisingly, the first reaction of Red Carpet Anna was to cover it up, claiming there was nothing to see. Were it not for the dogged efforts of a journalist, this gross failing by a public agency would never have seen the light of day.
It’s also hard not to laugh at the Queensland government’s recent attempt to extend the land tax base for Queensland properties. The cunning minds at Queensland Treasury pondered how to extract more money from those well-heeled investors with properties in other states as well as in Queensland.
The Queensland treasurer, Cameron Dick – who is slightly more competent that his predecessor Jackie Trad – hoped to include the value of all investment properties for the purpose of calculating the land tax on Queensland properties. Sadly, NSW premier Dominic Perrottet refused to cooperate by releasing any details of investment property ownership in his state, which was a slight problem.
Of course, for anyone caught in this tax trap, an answer of ‘don’t know’ to the question about interstate properties could have done the trick. But in the end Red Carpet Anna was sufficiently embarrassed by the whole cack-handed exercise that she dropped the new tax.
Mind you, you wonder why the good folk at Treasury ever bothered given that the extension to the land tax arrangements was going to net a mere additional $20 million per year. Note here that the state has debt in excess of $100 billion, has more public sector workers per head of population than any other state and has a media department in the premier’s office whose staff wouldn’t fit in the newly constructed and unused (and paid for by Queensland taxpayers) quarantine facility in Toowoomba.
Then there’s the absolutely unconscionable proposal to amend Queensland’s industrial relations laws to exclude any competitors of registered trade unions. I guess it’s just a coincidence that currently registered unions happen to be affiliated, either directly or indirectly, to the Labor party and are also major financial contributors. (I’ve written about this before – it’s not too late. Queensland Speccie readers should contact their local member to express their outrage. The opposition has been slow to lodge its vehement objections.)
Aimed directly at the nimble and innovative Red Unions – their representation of nurses, in particular, has gone extremely well – the perverted (and completely self-serving) logic of the minister is that other unions can be established but they cannot represent their members industrially. Indeed, it will be an offence were they to attempt to do so under the amended legislation.
There is absolutely no doubt that the legislation is a violation of the ILO conventions on freedom of association and freedom to form associations, conventions which the Australian government has signed. But the Queensland government doesn’t care, claiming the amendment is needed to avoid ‘employers and employees being confused’. What, like being confused by choice at the supermarket?
Let’s face it, competition and choice are not the mantras of Red Carpet Anna who seems to prefer to spend her time with her new bariatric surgeon boyfriend attending gala events, often paid for by the Queensland taxpayer.
Perfect, she no doubt thinks.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/red-carpet-anna-dazzles-in-incompetence/
******************************************************‘Not having a big impact’: COVID drug fails to beat placebo in major trial
A COVID-19 medication that was thought to strongly reduce the risk of the illness becoming life-threatening and was bought in bulk by the federal government works no better than a placebo, preliminary findings from a major new study suggest.
Molnupiravir, sold in Australia under the brand name Lagevrio, disrupts the coronavirus’ ability to copy itself and was the first COVID-19 antiviral to win government subsidy here.
The medication is intended for people at high risk of serious illness – those aged over 50 who have risk factors, and the immunocompromised – after they test positive to COVID-19 but before they are sick enough to need a hospital. Australia was one of the most aggressive movers in securing access to molnupiravir, buying 300,000 courses in late 2021, before it was approved by medical regulator the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).
But some scientists have long been suspicious of strange results in the drug’s early trials. Data from the new trial has hardened their scepticism.
The University of Oxford’s PANORAMIC trial enrolled 25,783 people with COVID-19, half of whom got molnupiravir. After 28 days, 103 people given molnupiravir had died, compared with 96 in the second group.
“Clearly, it isn’t having a big impact,” said Professor Peter Wark, an expert on antivirals at the University of Newcastle. “I think we’d have to look very critically as to the cost-effectiveness of continuing in this sort of way.”
Governments keen to end COVID restrictions had leant on antivirals as a way out of the pandemic, Wark said. “A slower relaxation of restrictions probably would have had a bigger impact than relying heavily on these antivirals.”
Dr Kyle Sheldrick – a University of NSW researcher who co-authored a paper earlier this year on molnupiravir’s problems – is critical of the TGA’s approach. “I did not think it should have been approved before PANORAMIC,” he said “I certainly don’t think it should be now.”
The Health Department did not answer questions on how much it had spent on the drug, but the US paid about $US700 ($1099) a dose at the same time.
Australia’s National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce said it was reviewing the study and would probably soon update its recommendations, which endorse molnupiravir.
A spokesman for the drug’s sponsor Merck said PANORAMIC had focused on a low-risk group, and pointed to other studies showing the treatment was effective.
In April Merck predicted it would make $US5 billion to $US5.5 billion selling the drug this financial year.
In an effort to get more people using the drug, the Australian government widened eligibility in July and Merck launched an advertising campaign.
Due to uncertainties about the clinical trial evidence, molnupiravir remains unapproved by the European Union; France cancelled its order in December.
Merck’s spokesman argued the patients in PANORAMIC were relatively healthy, whereas in Australia, the drug is reserved for people with major risk factors. “Other recent real-world studies, including the Clalit study from Israel, have indicated that [molnupiravir] was associated with a significant reduction in hospitalisations and mortality due to COVID-19 in patients 65 years and above,” he said.
Initial uncertainties about molnupiravir stemmed from strange results in the original Merck trial that got the drug approved.
Merck’s trial recruited about 1500 patients and gave half the drug. Early results from the first half of patients tested were so positive – a halving of the chance of death – that the trial was stopped early so everyone could get the apparently life-saving treatment.
But when data from the remaining half of patients in the trial was published a month later, it told a different story. The second group had done far worse than the first. In fact, the data suggested molnupiravir did not improve their outcomes. Combined, the full trial suggested molnupiravir may not cut the risk of death.
“We think this is unprecedented. None of us had ever seen anything like this before,” said Sheldrick.
The strange results may have been caused by a new coronavirus variant emerging mid-trial, he said. Merck disputes that, and claims the early results were the key ones.
Wark said it was possible the drug was of less use in a highly vaccinated population faced with a milder variant such as Omicron.
Sheldrick said the PANORAMIC results suggested governments need to think differently about rushing to approve drugs with limited evidence – even in the middle of a pandemic.
A spokeswoman for the TGA said the drug remained provisionally approved for use. “It is noted that while, in the PANORAMIC trial, hospitalisation and death was not reduced by molnupiravir for adults under 65 years, the time to first self-reported recovery was six days shorter.”
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Albanese’s secret shock for the self-employed
The Albanese government is planning a secret shock for Australia’s self-employed people (18 per cent of the workforce). The ‘shock’ will be delivered under the guise of giving employee ‘rights’ to gig workers. Expect new laws early next year.
Such ‘rights’ are a fantasy and a con. They are (let me call them) ‘instruments of control’.
The government’s plan is to force people who are their own boss into a wage-slave environment. It’s a fundamental attack against the core ‘people’ base of Australia’s market economy. The outcome of this Labor government plan will be to strip self-employed people of their control of the money they earn when working.
The process will work like this.
If you are one of Australia’s 2.1 million self-employed people, you earn your income through commercial contracts. When you complete a job, you issue an invoice for a total amount and expect to be paid the full amount. That’s normal with any commercial contract. But the government has said it’s going to change that. You’ll be paid less.
Albanese says he’s going to give you holiday pay ‘entitlements’ for example. How will this work? Is it ‘free’ money? Assuredly not!
If you issue an invoice for, say, $100, your client will have to deduct money for holiday pay (say, $10) and only pay you $90. Your client will have to hold on to the $10 and only pay this to you when you take ‘holidays’. But you say, ‘I don’t want the $10 deducted. I want my full $100. I’ll manage my own holidays, thanks!’ Bad luck. Prime Minster Albanese says that’s what’s to happen. Get this. Albanese says that it’s your ‘right’ to have the $10 taken away from you!
But some people will say, ‘No, you’ll still get your $100 plus you’ll get an extra $10 for holiday pay!’ That’s where the con fantasy happens. Anyone who is their own boss knows that’s not what happens. They know that their client will turn around and say, ‘Ah, if I have to pay you $10 holiday pay, I’m not going to enter a contract for $100, I’m only going to offer $90.’ That’s the way the world works. People will adjust prices. People are not dumb.
The really dumb thing is that this is exactly what happens with employees. Say a full-time employee earns $1,000 a week. They are ‘entitled’ to 4 weeks’ holiday a year. That is $4,000 when they don’t work but are still employed. The truth is that the employee is really earning $1,083 a week for the 48 weeks they actually do work. In other words, the employer holds back $83 a week for holiday pay. The reason this is done is so that the employer can control when the employee takes holidays. That is, holiday pay is really a form of control.
This is how employment works. Money is denied to employees so that the employer can managerially control the worker.
This is not how self-employment works. When you are self-employed, you decide when you take holidays. Your client doesn’t control you. You manage your own money. Your client doesn’t manage or control your money. This is called business. This is called the economy. This is called being your own boss. But the Albanese government intends to stop this.
Yes, we know that the government says that the new ‘rights’ laws will only apply to gig workers. Let’s look at that.
The government accepts that gig workers are self-employed. There are about 11.9 million Australian workers. 7 per cent (around 830,000) have done gig work in any year. But only 0.19 per cent of the total workforce (around 22,500) have earned their full-time income from gig work. In other words, around 807,000 people do gig as ‘odd job’-type work in addition to (say) their full-time job.
Here are some practical questions for Albanese and his anti-self-employed promoters. Gig workers work on commercial contracts. An Uber driver, for example, might accept a fare that will pay the driver (say) $20. When the driver drops off their passenger they know they will get paid $20. But how will Albanese’s new ‘rights’ laws work?
Will the government force Uber to pay the driver an extra $1 for holiday pay? But wait. Will Uber have to hold on to the $1 until the driver takes a holiday? Who will decide when the driver takes a holiday – Uber or the driver? How will this work? What if the driver works for different ride-share companies? Will every company have to hold on to the extra $1s per ride? Will the driver have to collect ‘holiday pay’ from all the ride-share companies and, if so, how? Will Albanese set up a massive new government department to manage all this?
But there’s more. Is this ‘free money’ for the driver? Will Uber have to pay the $1 from its massive profits? Hold on! Uber has made non-stop losses since starting in 2009. What if Uber goes broke? It could happen! Alternatively, would Uber charge the customer/passenger the extra $1, so the passenger pays and not Uber? Or will Uber not pay the driver $20 and only pay the driver $19? Any of these things could happen. What does the Albanese government say?
These are questions that apply across the massive diversity of gig-type work, not just ride-share. And similar questions apply to the 22,500 self-employed people who do gig work as their main/only source of income. What then of the other 807,000 Australians who only do gig work to top up their incomes? How will the government answer the foregoing questions for these people? What a mess!!!
The reality is that in taking ‘employee rights’ and trying to apply them to self-employed people the government is effectively destroying self-employment. The two – being an employee and being a self-employed person – are totally different.
You can’t turn an apple into an orange. You can’t turn a self-employed individual into an employee. Instead, what you can do is destroy the right of people to be self-employed. Inevitably this is the Albanese government’s agenda, whether they state it or not.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/10/albaneses-secret-shock-for-the-self-employed/
*****************************************************Indigenous leaders, Greens unite against the voice to parliament
Amusing. This ensures that the referendum will fail. Referenda in Australia succeed only if there is no significant opposition to them
Conservative Aboriginal leaders and Greens have held talks over their common opposition to a referendum on an Indigenous voice to parliament, as Anthony Albanese leans toward starving both the Yes and No campaigns of public funds.
A diverse range of Indigenous leaders and politicians is coalescing against the voice, demanding the government halt the referendum, or at least ensure public funding for an Aboriginal-led No campaign.
The Australian can reveal Indigenous businessman Warren Mundine met Greens senator Lidia Thorpe last Wednesday and discussed ramping up a No campaign, on the sidelines of wider talks with crossbench senators about Indigenous affairs.
The meeting – between Mr Mundine, a former federal Liberal Party candidate, and Senator Thorpe, who says a voice is not radical enough and a treaty between Indigenous Australians and the federal government is needed – was the first informal step to bringing conservatives and radicals in the Aboriginal community together to support a No campaign.
“These blokes (supporters of the voice) are better than Jesus Christ,” said a source who was at the meeting. “They have brought all these people with different politics together.”
Mr Mundine also plans a national talking tour with Country Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price in coming months to promote the No cause.
Veteran Aboriginal leaders across the country, including Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania chairman Michael Mansell and former North Queensland Yarrabah Aboriginal Shire mayor Percy Neal, are also rallying colleagues to help halt the referendum.
Mr Mansell is campaigning for designated Indigenous senators from each state as an alternative to the voice, while others such as Mr Neal want to move immediately to a broader treaty.
A spokeswoman for the federal Greens confirmed the meeting between Senator Thorpe and Mr Mundine took place, and did not deny they discussed their mutual opposition to the Albanese government’s referendum.
“As you would expect, Senator Thorpe meets with a range of First Nations stakeholders,” she said.
“Senator Thorpe and Greens leader Adam Bandt are currently working with the government to ensure all elements of the Uluru statement including truth, treaty and voice are delivered.”
Senator Thorpe has repeatedly attacked the voice referendum despite saying she does not oppose it in theory.
The Victorian Greens senator has called a referendum a waste of money and claimed that a campaign could be harmful to Aboriginal Australians.
Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney said the government was yet to make a decision on funding for the Yes and No campaigns. “It’s one of a number of issues that government will be consulting on … in the months ahead,” a spokesman said.
However, The Australian understands there is an influential view within government that it will not fund either campaign.
This would significantly advantage the “yes” camp, which corporate Australia is lining up to bankroll. “People have to make an informed decision on constitutional change and you can’t have an informed opinion if you’re only getting one side of the story,” Mr Mansell said. “They’ve given nothing to the Aboriginal voice that says ‘Hang on, we’ve got a different viewpoint and we want to raise some issues’.”
First Nations people, rather than the non-Indigenous, should receive any funding for the No case, given the subject matter, he said. “Those who wish to express themselves must have an opportunity to do so – most Aboriginal people are just completely shut out of this process. They don’t have the resources.”
This was backed by Mr Mundine. “I am sitting down and talking to people because we have got no money,” Mr Mundine said.
“We are up against a 50,000-tonne dragon. I think the general public will say ‘if they (Aboriginal people) are all split, why should we vote for it’. I predict the debate will get angrier as we get closer to this referendum because the voices of everyday working Aboriginal Australians have been totally snuffed out.”
Supporters of the voice are increasingly concerned opposition from such influential Indigenous figures threatens the Yes vote.
There is particular concern the Yes vote will struggle in Tasmania and Queensland, leaving it vulnerable to failure, given referendums require a national majority and a majority in at least four of the six states.
Mr Neal said like-minded Indigenous figures from across the country hoped to meet soon to plan a united approach to government to halt the referendum.
“We want to speak to government about where we’re going,” Mr Neal said. “There is still time. The Prime Minister has to seriously consider this. Now is the time to try to get something really good out of all this talk.”
If the referendum proceeded, he would reluctantly have to advocate a No vote. He believed the focus should be on treaty now.
“The Uluru Statement (from the Heart, which elevated voice as an initial step) was when we had a conservative government,” he said. “But now with Albanese there, we should all get together again and put that energy and money into seriously considering treaty.
“If (Mr) Albanese could show the same enthusiasm for treaty as for the voice to parliament, I think he’d be able to pull it off.
“Treaty is the only thing that everyone understands. People on the ground want something meaningful.”
He said he believed the cost of a voice would be better spent on improving the day-to-day lives of Indigenous communities.
At the 1999 republic referendum, the Howard government allocated equal funding to the two campaign committees. Campaigns by both sides in the 2017 same sex marriage plebiscite were also government-funded.
However, at the 1967 referendum (to count Aborigines in the census and allow federal laws for their betterment), only a Yes campaign was government-backed, given a lack of advocacy for a No vote.
Pauline Hanson is preparing to work on a No campaign alongside Mr Mundine and anyone else with shared concerns.
Her office said it was in ongoing discussions with Mr Mundine about a shared opposition to an Indigenous voice to parliament. “It has to be a collective effort. A divided No campaign will fail,” she said via a spokesman.
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10 October, 2022
One of Australia's most prestigious universities to crack down on students who claim to be Aboriginal without ANY proof
About time. Malcolm Smith has a graphic commentary on the matter. I put up a similar gallery in 2020
One of Australia's most prestigious universities has been praised for a crackdown on students 'rorting the system' by falsely claiming they are Indigenous or Torres Strait Islander.
The University of Sydney has drafted a new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Status Policy which means undergraduates can no longer simply sign a statutory declaration to prove they have a First Nations background.
Instead, the university may force students to supply a 'letter of identity' from a local Aboriginal Land Council and complete the Commonwealth Government's three-part identity test.
Radio 2GB host Ben Fordham praised the university for introducing the measures and called on others to follow suit.
'Other organisations should introduce stronger checks too, because what we're seeing is wrong and it's fraudulent,' he said.
The changes come after lobbying from Aboriginal land councils which allege there has been a significant increase in people applying for the benefits.
The latest Census results released in June 2021 found a 25 per cent increase in Australians identifying as Indigenous.
Indigenous groups said the way the current system is being abused is 'embarrassing'. 'It's open fraud. We say to academic students: can they pass a paper without citing a verified source?' Aboriginal Land Council CEO Nathan Moran told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Michael Mansell, Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania chairman, said poor white people were falsely identifying as Indigenous in a move he called 'identity seeking'. "They don't attribute any value to their identity as a poor white person in Tasmania, so they are searching to attach themselves to something that has greater value and I think many of those people believe that's in being Aboriginal,' he said following the release of the Census results.
Fordham said students abusing the system for places in courses or more affordable degrees was 'wrong and fraudulent'. 'They are attending schools, they're getting jobs and taking away opportunities from people who grew up Indigenous,' the 2GB host said.
'People are falsely identifying as Indigenous when they're not - there are Indigenous voices calling out a fraud, and we should be listening to them.
'Sydney Uni should be congratulated and other organisations should be following suit. Because it's wrong and it's fraudulent. Some of the so-called First Nations people receiving benefits are as genuine as a three dollar note.'
A spokesperson for Sydney University said its review was not motivated by fraudulently claimed scholarships, but the institution wanted to ensure its program was 'in line with current community expectations'.
'[The review] was initiated in response to multiple expressions of community concern, particularly in relation to the use of statutory declarations, rather than any specific concerns about fraud,' they said.
'We are seeking feedback and further input from members of our own and the broader community, representative organisations and other universities on this culturally significant matter.'
The university has an enrolment of 0.9 per cent Aboriginal or Torres Straight Islander students, which is below the national sector average of 1.72 per cent.
Students however believe the change in policy could result in at-need Indigenous people missing out on places because of the red tape around new enrolment.
'This new policy is likely to disproportionately affect Indigenous people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds,' a group of Indigenous students opposing the change said in a statement.
'In some circumstances students may come from abusive families, have been in foster care or for other reasons not be able to get family documentation to undergo the process that has been proposed.'
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Britain’s ‘strictest headmistress’ gets a nod in Australia
At the Michaela Community School near Wembley, in north-west London, there are no mobile phones, detentions are given for the slightest misdemeanour and a disused car park is the no-frills playground.
The high school is famed for being Britain’s strictest, and its headmistress, Katharine Birbalsingh, pulls no punches.“We have the same issues that you have in Australia: poor behaviour and poor learning outcomes, in particular for disadvantaged children,” she told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
Birbalsingh espouses traditional teaching and believes in military-style discipline: students walk the corridors in silence and get detentions for forgetting a pencil case, ruler or not turning in their homework. Times tables are taught by rote. Progressive education methods are shunned. Gratitude is practised and expectations are high.
“I’m not wandering up and down the corridors with whips and chains, obviously,” she says. “People say [discipline] is mean. I’d say what is mean is keeping a child illiterate and innumerate.”
Birbalsingh, who was recently appointed chair of the UK’s social mobility commission, was thrust into the spotlight after giving a speech at the 2010 Conservative Party conference where she warned the education system was “broken because it keeps poor children poor”. Four years later, after battling a barrage of detractors and critics, she opened the Michaela school in a dreary converted office block based in the disadvantaged borough of Brent.
The school’s explicit teaching methods, no-excuses behaviour policy and direct instruction style divide opinion. Tough-love behaviour systems (slouching in class is off-limits, toilet breaks are timed) has attracted controversy and critics.
However, it has also drawn praise from experts including Programme for International Student Assessment boss Andreas Schleicher who has described the school as creating “discipline created through structure, predictability and ownership. The children I met appeared happy and confident.” And its results place it well above average when compared to other similar schools, with graduates going off to universities including Oxford and the London School of Economics.
Birbalsingh, labelled Britain’s strictest headteacher, is firm that the school’s behaviour policies, including the silent corridor rule, minimise bullying and maximise teaching time.
“In schools with disadvantaged children sometimes you can find poor behaviour, and it can be constant disruption. As a disadvantaged child school is your one route out, your way of being able to be socially mobile. And if school lets you down, then that’s it.”
“We expect everyone to do their homework. If standards are lowered for certain children, who will inevitably be the disadvantaged children, then those children will never succeed.”
She rejects “progressive” teaching methods, where desks are grouped and students “lead the learning”. Teachers at Michaela have a single voice in the classroom and there is silence for reading, writing and practice.
“You have got to have lots of knowledge about something to think differently about it. When you teach children as a traditionalist you can still break up explanations and have a bit of turn to your partner work and class discussions.”
Tight rules around smartphones and social media are also critical, she says. At an education conference this year she told the audience: “If we genuinely want things to be fairer, and we want our disadvantaged children to be socially mobile, the best thing is getting them not to have a smartphone.”
Students are encouraged to hand over their mobile phones where they are put in a school safe for days, weeks or months.
Michaela, one of about 600 “free schools” in the UK, was singled out last month by NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet in a speech for the James Martin Institute as a school with a “rigorous culture of high expectations, high behavioural standards and back-to- basics teaching that [has] propelled disadvantaged students to extraordinary achievement. I want the same outcomes for our kids.”
“When students are held to reasonable standards of behaviour and respect – they perform better, and they are happier,” he said. It came after NSW announced a global recruitment search for a chief behaviour adviser, as schools across sectors battle worsening student conduct.
This month, Birbalsingh, who was a teacher for more than a decade in inner-London schools before starting Michaela, will appear at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney on a discussion about building world-class schools.
She emphasises that her school, next to the jubilee and metropolitan line (the train can be heard rattling loudly in the bare-bones schoolyard), looks “quite simple”.
“We’ve not covered the walls with lots of pictures and things. People don’t realise, when I was a younger teacher, I spent all of my time decorating. I use my fire engine red paint for the border around my bulletin board and would put up lovely dark blue paper with a golden border around it and I would pay myself to create big laminated sheets with instructions.
“I should have as my time planning better lessons... I shouldn’t have been spending my time on that. And sometimes we all spend our time on things that don’t have as much impact.”
Oliver Lovell, a Melbourne-based maths teacher who visited the school last month, said while it was hard to overstate the positive impact of Michaela’s instruction on disadvantaged students, there were potential costs when a particular educational approach is passionately pursued.
“Some have argued that highly structured instructional methods reduce learner independence which has negative impacts when the structure is removed at university and beyond. I’m glad that we have a diversity of schools, including Michaela, so that we can begin to gain clearer answers to these important questions.”
Lovell said one of the most striking aspects to the school was seeing how the lack of student disruptions “frees up teacher time”.
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Mobilise the church against Daniel Andrews!
Churches in Victoria must mobilise their congregations to vote Daniel Andrews out of office.
Sure the Liberals are hopeless, but at least they don’t hate Christians. The same cannot be said for the Andrews government.
Not only does the Victorian Labor government continually enact legislation that is an affront to Christian principles – whether on abortion, or euthanasia, or on LGBTQ+ issues – it does so with a snarkiness that conveys complete contempt for people of faith.
Contrary to lefty conspiracy theories about fundamentalist Christians conspiring to run the country, church leaders are loath to become involved in partisan politics. They fear doing so is a distraction from their core business of spreading the message of Jesus.
It’s true, Jesus commanded us to love our enemies. But he never said we should keep electing them to positions of power over us.
If Andrews’ hostility towards Christians is rewarded with re-election in November, it will only embolden his attacks on the church.
This week the Premier derided orthodox Christian teaching on human sexuality and sanctity of life as ‘appalling views’.
‘That kind of intolerance and hatred is just wrong,’ he said, joining a media pile-on to discredit Anglican Andrew Thorburn who had been appointed CEO of the Essendon Football Club.
Since when was it in the purview of a Premier to announce which existential views were acceptable, and which were not?
Who elected Daniel Andrews, god? He certainly governs like he is.
Last year, the Andrews government passed so-called conversion therapy laws which made it an offence for ministers to pray for a parishioner – even at their request – to resist homosexual urges.
Believe what you like about the morality or otherwise of homosexuality, when the state dictates what can and cannot talk to God about, it’s a sign that the state has not only invaded the church, but it is also drunk on the communion wine.
When a reporter asked this week if the resignation of Andrew Thorburn meant Christians could no longer take on public roles, Andrews snapped back:
‘No. They might want to think about whether they should be a bit more kind-hearted, a bit more inclusive.’
And then, addressing his faithful flock (by which I mean the media) he sermonised: ‘Aren’t we all God’s children?’
Oh please! Has a political leader ever invoked the name of God with less sincerity?
Okay, apart from Nancy Pelosi (the Democrat Speaker of the House once argued that it was her Christian faith that led her to support abortion).
If the media had stopped worshipping Andrews long enough to hold him to account, they would have asked if peaceful protesters shot with rubber bullets at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance were ‘God’s children’.
And what about the unvaccinated who were effectively banned from public life for two years. Were they ‘God’s children’? Or are God’s children only those with a government-issued vaccine certificate…
Essential workers were God’s children. Non-essential workers could go to hell.
After waxing lyrical about all God’s children – and having insisting he was ‘not here to be having a debate with faith leaders’ – the Pope, ahem, Premier took a moment to instruct Catholics on how to be Catholic.
‘I will just say this. I’m a Catholic. I send my kids to Catholic schools. My faith is important to me and guides me every day.’
Wait. What? Wasn’t Andrew Thorburn kicked out of AFL heaven for fear that his Christian faith would guide him as Essendon CEO?
Andrews continued: ‘Everyone should be treated equally. Everyone should be treated fairly and for me, that’s my Catholicism. That’s my faith.’
It is surely only a matter of time before Pope Francis summons Andrews to Rome to instruct clergy on the finer points of Christian doctrine.
It’s the vibe. It’s the Bible. It’s equality. It’s fairness. It’s the vibe and ah, no that’s it.
Andrews’ religion is a mile wide, and a half a millimetre deep.
So just to be clear, it wasn’t that Thorburn was wrong to be guided by religion, it’s just that Thorburn’s Christianity wasn’t the state-approved version as described by Chairman Dan and the Labor government.
We know that the Labor Party has a special fondness for China and we know that China has a special fondness for herding Christians into state-approved churches.
Christians know that Christians attend the underground ones, where there’s a bit more to their faith than the vibe coming from government headquarters.
I wonder if Andrew Thorburn feels like he was treated ‘equally’ and ‘fairly’. Daniel Andrews threw Thorburn to the lions. And now he’s trolling Christians. He needs to go before none of God’s children are free.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/mobilise-the-church-against-daniel-andrews/
************************************************The Australian War Memorial represents ALL of Australia's ethnicities, singling out none
I couldn’t agree more with the need to provide a place to acknowledge the conflicts between the original inhabitants of this continent and those who settled here from elsewhere in the late 18th Century. But the Australian War Memorial is not that place, and it is wrong to make it a political football.
When I was a child, I wanted to wear my great-great uncle’s slouch hat to a fancy dress ball at school. My grandfather was livid – how dare I disrespect the uniform! I have that same slouch hat today. It, and my own slouch hat, are succumbing to the inevitable forces of time.
Yet the sanctity of military service was not lost on four generations of my family who wore the uniform. While in recent times, that very sanctity appears to be an anachronism; a remnant of a time gone by, a lesson well-learnt through death and destruction, supported by the faith that such an atrocity, like the Great War, will never happen again.
Challenges to the idea of what it is to be Australian have somewhat turned against the work of Dr Bean, that eminent historian who is largely responsible for creating the ANZAC legend and manifesting it as that sacred place we call the Australian War Memorial.
Why sacred? Stand under the dome next to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Look at the stained glass and mosaics. Read the values inscribed therein. This space touches all those who enter in the way an old soldier explained to me:
‘All soldiers believe in God. When caught in an ambush, they all pray.’
While the ideal society eludes humanity, Australia has it pretty good. This is in no small part due to the sacrifices of our soldiers.
Last week, I was in Seoul at a seminar about the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea. A Korean general said to me that he was most grateful for the sacrifice of 340 Australians who lost their lives while contributing to Korea’s freedom. He gestured to the skyline of Seoul’s magnificent development, humbly hoping that Korea’s peaceful democratic society was a worthy tribute to our digger’s sacrifice. It made me think deeply about those same sacrifices.
If you knew my paternal great-grandmother who worked in the munitions factory at St Marys (she was so happy when the Rising Sun badge was returned to the brim of the slouch hat) or sat a moment with Mrs Stewart (a second world war widow who lived nearby and once gave me a ‘shilling’ after she told me the story of her long-lost husband through her tears), you would know that war is blind.
It strikes all – regardless of social constructions – the devastation wreaks havoc on participants, victims, witnesses, and conscientious objectors alike. But you cannot always appease an aggressor. We can hope for a better world, but appeasement has never proven adequate. Sometimes you have to fight.
And fighting has its costs. The photographs of Mrs Stewart’s uniformed dead husband and brothers that adorned her mantel still haunt me to this day. I felt like Pip stumbling upon the wedding feast that never was. Mrs Stewart lost her life, back then, too.
But they were post-federation Australian soldiers. Not settlers. Not troopers. Not colonists. Australians. They were united in purpose.
When I met my maternal great-grandmother, we asked her where we’d come from. She said we were Cherokee Indian. Twenty years later, we learned that our maternal heritage is Kamilaroi. She had lived that lie to avoid being sent to the mission and carried it to her deathbed.
George, one of my grandfather’s mates who lived next door at the RSL veterans’ village in Cairns, was an Aboriginal digger and a veteran of New Guinea. He liked to paint. But he was an Australian digger through and through. (I daresay the antics he and my grandfather got up to provide sufficient empirical evidence to support that fact.)
And if you ever heard the glorious harmonies rise up when Charlie Company of 51FNQR let off steam, you’ll feel the generations of pride of the many Torres Strait Islanders like Sarpeye Josie who served to protect their home and continue to do so.
These are not stories about colonisers or the victims of colonisation. These are stories of Australians who served and continue to serve to protect their homeland. This spirit is what the Australian War Memorial commemorates.
Australians have experienced war and peace, prosperity and depression, recessions we had to have and circumstances we did not want. We have lived lies; we have faced up to truths. Or not – and there is plenty of scope for more truth-telling. But we should never forget that the Brisbane Line was a last-ditch attempt to protect these very privileges. That time is still in living memory for many among us.
We can criticise the government, we can criticise politicians, we can criticise our institutions. But such freedoms imply responsibilities to support that very liberty.
The problem stems from the habitual use of our individual freedoms to say whatever we like about politics as a safety valve, to let off steam. While doing so got us through the pandemic, in light of the changing nature of geopolitics, it has become a bad habit that we now take for granted and potentially to our own detriment.
The Australian War Memorial is a symbol of the social cohesion we so desperately need, rather than a battleground for the polarised community we appear to have become.
Our island home can only be breached if we open the gates from within.
The Australian War Memorial does not sanctify war. The lives of all Australians who served Australia make it holy. Not necessarily in a religious sense, but holy in that it honours the sacrifice given by those who believed in something more. Australians who believed in something more.
It is a mistake to allow one of the central symbols of Australia’s national identity to become embroiled in politics. I urge caution on all sides of politics should we neglect our duty by opening the gates and cutting off our nose to spite our face.
Let us learn from the past, let us embrace the good and the bad. Let us acknowledge colonial times and conflict appropriately, but somewhere else.
Let the sacrifice of the many First Nations diggers have their place in the history of this great federation where it rightfully belongs. Let the Australian War Memorial tell its stories. Let it tell the stories of my great-grandmothers, of Mrs Stewart, of George, of my old comrade-in-arms Sarpeye Josie, and all those who give up their freedoms so we may have ours.
And let all Australians hear them.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/the-australian-war-memorial-is-not-a-political-football/
************************************9 October, 2022
New bureaucratic burden for welfare housing
Evictions from welfare housing -- often due to extensive rental arrears -- normally require an extensive, costly and time-consuming bureaucratic process. Which costs the taxpayer a lot of money. So the W.A. government has been using a loophole that sidesteps that process. Do-gooders are trying to close that loophole. In the case below, it is almost certain that the Aborigine man was way behind with his rent
The West Australian government is being urged to stop evictions of public housing tenants without reason, or risk a deluge of litigation following an injunction being granted in the Federal Court.
After receiving a without grounds eviction notice in August, Noongar man John Abraham lodged a racial discrimination complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission.
In September, the Federal Court granted an injunction to his eviction until his AHRC complaint is heard.
The Tenancy Network, a group of community law firms, on Thursday urged Housing Minister John Carey to issue an immediate moratorium on the use of “without grounds” terminations of public housing tenancies.
It was signed by tenancy-focused lawyers from Circle Green Community Legal, Daydawn Advocacy Service, and SCALES community legal centre at Murdoch University.
They said since Abraham’s injunction was granted another elderly Aboriginal man was made homeless after he was evicted using the without grounds termination.
“This eviction was despite multiple written requests from the lawyers assisting him to the Housing Authority, to confirm that they would not action the eviction in light of the Federal Court injunction; requests which received no response from the Housing Authority,” it said.
They also warned the state was opening itself up to further litigation if it didn’t apply a statewide halt to its use, “to avoid further risk of eviction to homelessness, and excess litigation in other tenants lodging similar actions” with the AHRC and the Federal Court.
The lawyers said they did not want the Housing Authority, which sits within the Department of Communities, prevented from terminating tenancies where there were express reasons for doing so but urged the state to follow existing processes to evict tenants for breaches.
The department must apply to a magistrate to have a public housing tenancy terminated.
The magistrate must be satisfied there has been a breach of the tenancy agreement, and that the tenant has been given every opportunity to rectify the breach and has failed to do so.
However, Circle Green principal lawyer Alice Pennycott said magistrates considering without grounds terminations only needed to consider whether the request was issued correctly.
She said if the department had compelling reasons to terminate an agreement then it should follow existing processes.
A spokesman for Carey said the government would respond formally to Circle Green Community Legal “in due course”.
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How left-wing teachers have taken schools 'back to the Middle Ages', according to ex-PM Tony Abbott - and conservatives are 'too polite' to stop it
Left-wing teachers have taken Australian schools 'back to the Middle Ages' as dogma replaces learning and 'heretics' are hunted down, according to former prime minister Tony Abbott.
The radicalisation of education by the left was so 'pervasive' and 'destructive' the damage done would take generations to fix, the firebrand conservative said.
And he warned conservatives were not without blame in the rise of left-wing ideology - saying they were often too polite to call out the 'palpable nonsense' of activists.
Mr Abbott made the remarks on stage with fellow staunch conservative, former Liberal senator Amanda Stoker, at the right-wing CPAC convention in Sydney.
He said nowhere had 'the long march of the left through our institutions... been more pervasive and destructive than in our educational system'.
'It’s almost like we have gone back to Middle Ages where there is dogma - only it's not Christian dogma, it’s anything but Christian dogma - with modern day inquisitions hunting out modern day heretics (and) if not burning them at the stake at least cancelling them,' Mr Abbott told the October 1 conference.
Mr Abbott admitted he was out of step with the core beliefs of left-wing dogma. 'I don't like the climate cult, I don’t like the virus hysteria. I can't understand the gender fluidity push,' he said.
He warned that repairing the state of the schools would be a 'multi-generational' task that would require a cultural shift. 'It took us a long time to get into this deplorable position and I fear it's going to take a long time to get back to where we should be,' Mr Abbott said.
Mr Abbott called for more parental involvement in schools, greater attempts to attract the 'best and brightest' people to teaching and 'above all more academic rigour'.
He believed that education should be about the 'disinterested pursuit of truth'. 'There's got to be this insatiable curiosity, what more can we know? How better can we be,' he said.
Mr Abbott said he believed activists had taken advantage of the 'good manners' of people who knew their left-wing beliefs were 'palpable nonsense' but were too polite to say so.
'One of the things I often say is the majority that stays silent will not long remain the majority for very long,' he said. 'Good people have been too polite in the face of things that defy common sense. 'We can't let politeness stop us from expressing ourselves and contradicting in a polite and respectable way stuff which is palpable nonsense. 'Sometimes we have been unduly deferential. We have been remarkably shy of being the adults we should be.'
The former prime minister, who won office in 2013 but was deposed by Malcolm Turnbull in 2015 after a run of poor polls, also argued strongly against the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament, calling it 'discrimination'.
'Just because there may have been institutionalised discrimination in the past that’s no reason to institutionalise discrimination in the present and the future' Mr Abbott said to a round of applause from the CPAC crowd at Sydney's Darling Harbour.
The Albanese government has promised to hold a referendum on amending the constitution to create the special 'Voice' body, which would advise federal parliament on matters important to Indigenous Australians.
Mr Abbott argued the Voice to Parliament was being pushed with bullying tactics. 'We should never allow ourselves to be morally bullied into changing what works and if something doesn’t work let's fix it,' Mr Abbott said. 'What we shouldn’t do is forsake the important principles that made our country special and precious in an attempt to apologise for bad behaviour in the past.'
He said if Indigenous people weren't sufficiently represented in parliament they should be elected 'in the normal way'.
'Likewise the emissions obsession will eventually end when weather-dependent power can't keep the lights on. 'And the cultural self-loathing will stop when people have to choose between liberal democracy and its alternatives. 'That’s our task, to fight the good fight, to stay the course and keep the faith.'
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Australia’s baby drought: Call for return of Baby Bonus payment
Australia is in a baby drought, with a record-low birth rate threatening our future workforce and tax revenue – and leaving little support for the ageing population.
It’s prompting calls for a return of the “Baby Bonus” and significantly relaxed immigration policies.
Social analyst Mark McCrindle said the Baby Bonus payment – introduced in 2004 and worth between $3000 and $5437 – had been successful in helping to raise the Australian birthrate.
Mr McCrindle said he supported the reintroduction of a similar policy, which was offered to everyone who had a child, regardless of income or employment status. He said it was a large enough payment to help with family expenses but not so large that the government covered the cost of raising the child.
“The policies have moved more to child care assistance … and that has its benefits, but it’s more around getting parents back into labour force,” Mr McCrindle, founder of research company McCrindle, said.
“I think the cash is the most equal (policy) – people can make their choices based on their particular circumstance and world view. “Even if it went up to $10,000, it’s only token anyway compared to the costs of raising those kids.”
But the architect of the baby bonus – former treasurer Peter Costello – said the only way a similar payment would work today is if it came with strong messaging.
“I don’t think it was the payment itself that changed attitudes, it was the fact we talked about the problem and made people feel good about having more children,” Mr Costello, chair of sovereign wealth fund the Future Fund, said.
“(Twenty years ago) I said the best thing that could happen was if we could reverse the decline in fertility rate and I jokingly said ‘everyone should have one for mum, one for dad, one for country’ and for a while we arrested the birthrate and it actually ticked up.
“But then, in my view, we lost focus on the issue, and with various financial problems, it started to decline again. “It takes a long time to turn these things around.”
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australia had a total fertility rate of 1.58 births per woman in 2020 (294,369 babies).
This was down from 1.9 births per woman 30 years earlier, and down from 3.5 in 1961 at the height of the “baby boom”. In 1991, Census figures showed 7.5 per cent of the Australian population was aged 0 to 4.
Last year, this figure was down to just 5.8 per cent of the population, meaning about 440,000 fewer young children than if we had maintained that 7.5 per cent rate. That’s a 440,000-person hole in the future workforce – about the equivalent of the entire population of Malta.
But Australia cannot wait 20 or 30 years for population increases to flow through to the workforce. Demographer Simon Kuestenmacher said Australia was already running out of working-age people.
“If you look at the future population profile of Australia in 2030, you see there will be a massive lack of people aged 25 to 33,” Mr Kuestenmacher said. “The skill shortage is here to stay.”
He said the most cost-effective solution was to bring in skilled workers from overseas, but this was becoming more difficult as Australia was not the only country that needed more workers.
Mr Kuestenmacher suggested Australia follow the Canadian model and start “handing out citizenships to international students like candy”.
“You want future taxpayers in your country and international students are the best because they are educated to the level you require and they already have spent a couple of years in the country so are somewhat acclimatised,” he said.
“But what do we do? We make it very hard for them to acquire citizenship and to find jobs and make it a bureaucratic and expensive process.
“It’s not just mean but plain stupid.”
****************************************************************
Government to create new welfare card to phase out Howard-era Basics Card
Tens of thousands of Australians will be given a new welfare card to replace the much-maligned Basics Card, as the Albanese government moves to eliminate compulsory income management.
Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth has revealed that following the scrapping of the cashless debit card, welfare recipients will next year have access to a “new enhanced card”.
Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth says a “new enhanced card” will be made available for welfare recipients, but it will be voluntary.
New figures reveal that a third of the participants who had the opportunity to get off the cashless debit card did so in just four days last week.
The new card is expected to be simpler to use, available in many more stores and welfare recipients will only be placed on it voluntarily. It will also be managed by Services Australia, not a private company.
“It’s about offering certainty and choice,” Rishworth said. “We’re committed to a better Australia by leaving no one behind and holding no one back.”
The government’s move to scrap the cashless debit card – which quarantines up to 80 per cent of a person’s welfare payment onto a card that can’t be used to withdraw cash – was widely welcomed by the social services sector and many advocates for First Nations people.
But they have been calling on the government to also abolish the Basics Card, which usually quarantines 50 per cent of a welfare participant’s income, with many believing it is just as objectionable as the cashless debit card.
There are still 24,000 Australians on the Basics Card, which can only be used at stores that the government has approved and severely limits online purchases.
Rishworth said all welfare recipients who go on income management will have access to the new card from July 2023, while everyone previously on the cashless debit card will be able to go on the new card from March 6.
She said the future of the Basics Card would be determined by an 18-month consultation process, but other government sources who weren’t authorised to speak publicly confirmed that the government would phase it out.
The Basics Card was first given to First Nations people in remote communities under the Howard government’s 2007 Northern Territory intervention, but the former Labor government expanded it to a wider cohort of people in 2010.
Early data confirms that people have rushed to get off the cashless debit card at the first available opportunity. This is despite having until March next year to move off the card following the government passing legislation to abolish it last month.
Of the 12,302 who could move off the card from last Tuesday, 3813 have already transitioned off. This does not include people who were on the card in the Northern Territory and Cape York regions who will be transitioned off the card on March 6. People moving off the cashless debit card can now either move onto the Basics Card or to self-managed payments.
Rishworth said the government was “committed to voluntary income management and over the next 18 months we will be consulting widely with communities to determine what the future of income management looks like”. “All participants on income management with a Basics Card or the new card ... will receive client services provided by Services Australia rather than a private company,” she said.
“From community consultation, we know people want the support and experience modern technology provides.”
During the parliamentary inquiry into the abolishment of the cashless debit card, the Tangentyere Council Aboriginal Corporation raised concerns about people being transitioned back onto the Basics Card.
“The Basics Card is not a good alternative to the Cashless Debit Card and is in many respects more limited,” it said. “The Basics Card for example cannot be used to make online purchases of food or other essential services including purchases of credit for prepayment phones and prepayment electricity meters.”
The Traditional Credit Union said scrapping the Cashless Debit Card “gets rid of an instrument that has a name to it that we believe is actually a better instrument than the Basics Card”.
Edwina MacDonald, the acting chief executive for the Australian Council of Social Service, said that even with an improved Basics Card, mandatory income management “continues to discriminate against First Nations people and penalises people for being on a low income”. “Credible evidence shows that quarantining people’s income support payments does not lead to improved outcomes for individuals or their communities,” she said.
“Improved technology won’t address the deep flaws of compulsory income management. After 15 years, this failed policy must be abolished.”
Elise Klein, associate professor at the Australian National University, said there was no evidence that compulsory income management, including the Basics Card, had a positive effect in communities.
Klein also said a close eye needed to be kept on what the government meant by “voluntary”, saying people shouldn’t be given extra money to go on income management.
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7 October, 2022
Gillard 'cool anger' drove misogyny speech
Words uttered in anger are rarely wise and this is a good example of that. The speech so pissed off male voters that her party's popularity dropped like a stone. Seeing the disaster, her own party promptly booted her out of the top job. Feminists sometimes seem to forget that men have a vote too
Nearly a decade since Ms Gillard declared in Australian parliament she would not be lectured by then-opposition leader Tony Abbott on sexism and misogyny, she has reflected on the speech that attracted global attention.
The former Labor leader said her chief-of-staff Ben Hubbard asked if she was sure she wanted to respond to an opposition bid to remove then-lower house speaker Peter Slipper, who had sent sexist text messages about women's genitalia.
"I wandered over to the adviser's box and I said to the advisers there, 'I'm going to take this, I'm going to do the reply'," she told a 5000-strong crowd in Sydney on Wednesday night.
"And Ben said to me 'are you sure?'. Because normally I used to hold myself above the tactics of the opposition on any given day.
"Yes I am sure because I am sick of this s***."
Ms Gillard said for many years she felt the speech was her constant companion.
"Wherever I went it was walking with me alongside me," she said.
"But I've come to realise that it's not my companion, it's yours because it's become your anthem of defiance when you are subjected to a sexist slur."
The former prime minister was joined by an eclectic bunch of women who shared their impressions of the speech.
Others beamed in via video message, including New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
The latter said the response to misogynistic attacks on Australia's first female prime minister had reverberated around the chamber, parliament, the nation and the world.
"With such an economy of words Julia captured and channelled the indignities and obstacles so many women had faced their whole lives," Mr Albanese said.
"Julia spoke to every woman and for every woman who had been excluded and bullied and harassed or worse.
"Australian women recognised themselves in the speech. That's what made it so powerful and that is why it will endure."
Ms Gillard said the unplanned speech was fuelled by a cool anger. "I felt analytical. I knew precisely what I wanted to say," she said. "And I felt empowered, not embattled, not cowed. "And that is the spirit of the misogyny speech."
Ms Gillard believes that a decade after the October 9, 2012 speech, sexist and misogynist behaviour is not tolerated as much as it was during her prime ministership.
The former prime minister, who serves as chair of leading mental health awareness body, Beyond Blue, appeared on stage in Melbourne and Sydney over two nights.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/gillard-cool-anger-drove-misogyny-163151168.html
*********************************************Top doctor Nick Coatsworth issues blunt warning about children as young as five getting the Covid vaccine as he urges Australia to SCRAP jabs for kids: 'The benefit just isn't there'
Dr Nick Coatsworth has demanded a review of the Covid vaccine for children amid concerns they barely benefit from getting the jab, and are more likely to suffer rare side effects.
Australia's former deputy chief medical officer said the country should reconsider its stance on giving the dose to children above the age of five.
The UK has stopped offering the vaccine to healthy children who turned five after August, while Sweden no longer recommends it to teenagers aged 12 to 17.
In Denmark, since July no one under the age of 18 can get vaccinated against Covid, with health officials saying very small numbers of children get severely ill from the disease, and therefore vaccination isn't necessary.
It comes after recent studies showed younger people, and particularly adult males between 18 and 25, and are at higher risk of myocarditis - the inflammation of the heart, a rare side effect linked to some mRNA jabs such as Pfizer and Moderna.
Dr Coatsworth clarified he was still a strong supporter of the Covid vaccine but admitted parents should take caution when considering vaccinating their child.
But he reiterated that there has only been one death from the heart condition linked to the jab in Australia.
'If you're a healthy child or adolescent, the benefit of the Covid vaccine just isn't there,' Dr Coatsworth told 2GB on Friday. 'Covid itself isn't going to kill you in that age group'.
Dr Coatsworth's warning comes after studies from peer-reviewed journal The Lancet found higher than expected rates of myocarditis in younger people.
'Specifically in individuals younger than 35 years, with the highest risk among men aged 18–25 years after their second COVID-19 mRNA vaccine dose,' the study read. 'The data indicate that this adverse event primarily occurs within 1–7 days of vaccination.'
The Therapeutic Goods Administration released its Covid weekly safety report on Thursday showing teenagers were more likely to experience myocarditis than adults.
The rate for boys aged between 12 and 17 was the highest with 13.2 per 100,000 experiencing the side effect after the second dose.
The figure was drastically higher than the 18 to 29-year-old age group with 9.2 per 100,000 coming down with myocarditis.
The rate for women aged between 12 and 17 was slightly higher than the 18 to 29-year-old camp with 2.8 per 100,000 compared to 2.7 per 100,000.
'As far I'm aware, only a single death has been associated with myocarditis in Australia, that's after 63 million doses of the vaccine,' Dr Coatsworth said.
Dr Coatsworth said it was an 'open question' whether or not Australia followed the UK and Sweden and stopped recommending the vaccine for healthy children. The vaccine is still recommended for at-risk groups in the two overseas countries.
In the UK, children who turned five since August are still recommended to get the vaccine, as is everyone over the age of 11.
'Many, many parents have made that decision not to vaccinate their kids and that is a valid decision regardless of the recommendation,' he said.
'That is clearly a valid decision because two countries, you've seen, have made that decision with their professional immunisation body'.
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Nuclear pushback against Senate bill
The Greens sure hate nukes
Nuclear power in Australia would increase electricity costs, slow the transition to a low-carbon economy and introduce the potential for catastrophic accidents, a new Australian Conservation Foundation report says.
It comes a day after Coalition senators moved to introduce a Private Senators Bill to remove Australia's ban on nuclear energy, which has existed since 1998.
The bill says nuclear power is one of the safest forms of energy and will play a vital role in achieving the nation's emission targets moving forward.
The Nuclear for Climate Australia group has previously identified Liddell Power Station in Upper Hunter among a host of sites including Portland in Victoria, Lithgow, Gladstone, Rockhampton and Townsville that is says could form the backbone of a future nuclear-powered grid.
But the ACF report Wrong reaction: Why 'next-generation' nuclear is not a credible energy solution, argues that so-called 'next generation' nuclear power, which has been proposed for Australia, does not exist in the commercial world.
"Proponents of nuclear power in Australia are not calling for the deployment of existing nuclear reactor technology, which is known to be high cost and high risk. Instead, they promote 'next-generation' technology, which simply does not exist in the commercial world," ACF nuclear expert Dave Sweeney said.
"Existing nuclear power technology has been plagued by cost overruns and poor economic performance. Every independent economic assessment finds that electricity from small modular reactors would be even more expensive than power from large reactors.
"Small modular reactors have lower thermal efficiency than large reactors, which generally translates to higher fuel consumption and spent fuel volumes over the life of a reactor.
"Globally just two small modular reactors are understood to be in operation. One is in Russia and the other in China and in both cases the cost blowouts have been extensive."
The ACF report outlines several 'next-generation' nuclear projects that have been cancelled over the past decade.
It cites research from CSIRO and the national energy market operator showing renewables are the cheapest energy source in Australia, while nuclear would be the most expensive.
"We cannot afford to waste more time in transitioning to a low-carbon future. Nuclear is a dangerous distraction to effective climate action," Mr Sweeney said.
"Australia is blessed with amazing clean energy resources, good infrastructure and smart people. Our energy future is renewable, not radioactive."
The federal energy minister Chris Bowen recently said that nuclear power was the most expensive form of power Australia could invest in.
The government's low emissions technology adviser Alan Finkel said last month there was little need and "no social licence" to develop baseload nuclear technology in Australia.
https://www.newcastleherald.com.au/story/7930267/nuclear-pushback-against-senate-bill/
********************************************************More Aussies are socialising less in a post-pandemic world and going to extraordinary lengths to avoid it
A survey of 1000 customers who use the rideshare company Uber found that more than half were socialising less after the worst of the pandemic.
Almost half (48 per cent) of Aussies will walk down another aisle at the shops to avoid someone, with Gen Z the most likely to do this.
Half of that generation also admitted that they crossed the road or headed in another direction to steer clear of someone coming towards them.
More people are also lying about being sick to miss a social event, with two-fifths of people admitting to doing this.
One in four Aussies don’t know or can’t remember the last time they struck up a conversation with a stranger.
Technology is the main weapon people are using to avoid social interactions, with more than a quarter pretending to be on a phone call (28 per cent) or keeping headphones in without music playing (26 per cent) to appear busy.
Why are Aussies going to such lengths to avoid socialising?
Australian psychologist Emmanuella Murray said it was no surprise that people were feeling uneasy about socialising again.
“We have missed many opportunities to meet new people over the past year,” she said.
“We all feel a little uncomfortable socialising at times, though some of us are shyer than others.
“Whatever your needs, staying connected is important for our wellbeing and for most people, the trick to getting socially ‘unstuck’ is to start socialising again.”
The Uber research revealed that for those who admitted to socialising less, a third felt awkward and uneasy in social settings, a quarter felt it was too much effort and 42 per cent simply didn’t enjoy socialising as much as they used to.
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6 October, 2022
Concentrated solar thermal power touted as part of Queensland's clean energy future
LOL. What's old is new again. Solar thermal is an old idea that has often been tried but always disappoints. The best known example was the huge Ivanpah project (from 2013) in the Mojave desert.
You don't hear much about it now as it never functioned anywhere near its capacity and produced very expensive electricity. And there has NEVER been any return on the couple of billion spent constructing it.
The most amusing thing about it is that it used vast amounts of natural gas to get itself going in the morning and when it was cloudy. There was at one stage a proposal to reclassify it as a gas-powered power station because on many occasions more of its output came from burning gas than from its solar furnaces
The thing such plants are best at is chewing up subsidies from deluded governments
The most comparable previous project to the one described below was the Tonopah project in the Nevdada desert. In it, more than 10,000 mirrors were to focus the sun’s heat on a tower to produce steam and heat a tank containing molten salt that would generate power at night. However, the technology proved unreliable and expensive to build and operate.
Since it began operating in 2015, repeated leaks from its molten salt tank resulted in the power plant going off-line repeatedly. Unable to solve that and other problems at the facility, the power plant ceased all operations in April 2019.
Super-heated NaCl (salt) is a very hard substance to handle and that generates big costs and losses
An Australian company says its technology can help solve the problem of around-the-clock clean energy as Queensland gears up to become a renewable energy powerhouse.
A chronic issue for the most common renewable energy sources — such as solar panels and wind farms — is an inability to store power, which forces the national grid to rely on coal-fired power overnight.
Vast Solar has been developing new technology for concentrated solar thermal power, a renewable energy source that powers more than 7 per cent of the Spanish national grid, and in which China is heavily investing.
Chief executive Craig Wood said the company had been developing concentrated solar power (CSP) technology for 13 years and was ready to scale up its prototypes — manufactured and tested in Goodna, near Ipswich — to contribute to the national grid.
"It's a direct replacement for the overnight energy that is provided by coal-fired power stations," he said.
"And importantly the technology uses the same skill sets that are currently used in those thermal power stations, just in a renewable context."
The technology uses large mirrors, or heliostats, to beam sunlight into an array on a tall tower.
Molten sodium is then pumped through the array and heated to more than 500 degrees Celsius.
That heated sodium can then be stored and used to generate steam to spin a turbine and drive electricity into the national grid — or as a clean energy source for large industry.
CSIRO head of solar research Greg Wilson said the technology could be located alongside a traditional photovoltaic solar farm, with the grid using solar panel energy during the day and switching to stored power at night.
"After hours when the batteries are all flat, and people want to continue with their air conditioner, or large industry wants to continue to work, that 12 hours of storage that the CSP plant provides allows us to have 24-hour renewable energy," Dr Wilson said.
The CSIRO has been working with Vast Solar on developing and testing its newest research in the field.
Mr Wood said CSP was now cheaper than coal or gas and emitted almost no carbon dioxide when deployed in a full-scale facility.
Released last week, Queensland's $62 billion renewable transition plan makes no mention of CSP technology but emphasises the role of solar power in its seven-year plan.
Mr Wood said the plan was "hugely exciting" and one in which CSP could play a role, "allowing us to use existing transmission infrastructure while providing new jobs for power plant workers".
Energy Minister Mick de Brenni said in a statement there would be "ample opportunities" for industry to work with the state government on the plan, "including proposals like CSP".
Vast Solar is developing a 30-megawatt test plant in Port Augusta, in South Australia, to demonstrate to government and investors that the technology can effectively contribute to the national grid.
The project has $110 million in federal concessional funding and once it has the go-ahead, could be up and running in three years, with a life span of three decades.
"We're working on securing the grid connection for that project," Mr Wood said.
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My faith is not tolerated or permitted: Essendon boss Andrew Thorburn quits
Former banking boss Andrew Thorburn believes his “personal Christian faith is not tolerated or permitted in the public square” after his 30-hour stint as chief executive of the AFL’s Essendon football club came crashing down.
In a statement to The Australian, the former NAB CEO said he was forced to step down from Essendon because of his role as a church chairman. “I was being required to compromise beyond a level that my conscience allowed,” he said.
“People should be able to hold different views on complex personal and moral matters, and be able to live and work together, even with those differences, and always with respect. Behaviour is the key. This is an important part of a tolerant and diverse society.”
A day after he was appointed to run the club he supported since childhood, Mr Thorburn resigned after it emerged he was chairman of a church that preached views on homosexuality and abortion.
Essendon president Dave Barham said the club acted swiftly to review revelations that the City on a Hill church posted a 2013 sermon to its website that said acting on same-sex attraction was “a sin” and another likening abortion to concentration camps.
Mr Thorburn said: “Let me be clear – I love all people, and have always promoted and lived an inclusive, diverse, respectful and supportive workplace – where people are welcomed regardless of their culture, religious beliefs, and sexual orientation.”
He said within hours of his appointment on Monday, it became “clear that my Christian faith and my association with a church are unacceptable in our culture if you wish to hold a leadership position in society”.
“This grieves me greatly - though not just for myself, but for society overall. I believe we are poorer for the loss of our great freedoms of thought, conscience and belief that made for a truly diverse, just and respectful community.”
Mr Thorburn said he had been a Christian for 20 years and indicated he didn’t agree with all statements made by the church he runs.
“As it happens, I do sometimes disagree with things I hear in church - but I believe strongly in the right of people to say them, especially when taken in context,” he said.
“Reducing complex matters to a sentence is dangerous.
“Australia has a long tradition of diversity and religious freedom, and that must include preserving space for religious people to be able to express religious beliefs.”
Mr Barham said: “As soon as the comments relating to a 2013 sermon from a pastor at the City of the Hill church came to light this morning, we acted immediately to clarify the publicly espoused views on the organisation’s official website, which are in direct contradiction to our values as a club.
“The board made clear that despite these not being views that Andrew Thorburn has expressed personally and that were also made prior to him taking up his role as chairman, he could not continue to serve in his dual roles at the Essendon Football Club and as chairman of City on the Hill. I want to stress that neither the board nor Andrew was aware of the comments from the 2013 sermon until we read about them this morning.
“I also want to stress that this is not about vilifying anyone for their personal religious beliefs, but about a clear conflict of interest with an organisation whose views do not align at all with our values as a safe, inclusive, diverse and welcoming club for our staff, our players, our members, our fans, our partners and the wider community.” Earlier, Victorian Premier and Bombers supporter Daniel Andrews denounced the views as “absolutely appalling” but said he would renew his membership to the club next season.
“There are many reasons to be a disappointed Essendon supporter,” Mr Andrews said.
“I don’t want to make light of this but I don’t appoint the CEO of the Essendon footy club or the CEO of any footy club, that’s a matter for the board.”
The views expressed by the church “are absolutely appalling,” he said. “I don’t support that kind of intolerance, that kind of hatred, bigotry. It is just wrong. To dress that up as anything other than bigotry is just obviously false.”
Mr Thorburn said his faith had not previously led to any issues with his leading large and diverse companies.
“I understand that some of these views … are offensive to people and upset people, and I really respect that,” he told SEN Radio. “Firstly, my faith is a very personal thing. I think my faith has helped me become a better leader because at the centre of my faith is the belief you should create a community and care for people, and help people be safe and respect them as humans.
“Second is I’ve been a CEO for 13 years – this is my third CEO job. “I was CEO of a bank that had 5000 people, I was a CEO of a bank that had 35,000 people – now I’m going to a different organisation but in all those, there’s a diversity of people.”
Mr Thorburn said some of his views were different from his church. “Look at my actions, look at my words as a leader and the organisations I’ve created to enable safe, diverse, inclusive workplaces … that’s my record I want people to look at and have confidence in.”
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Australian Vaccinologist Opens Up mRNA Vaccine Safety Record in Systematic Literature & Date Review
What’s the real track record of the mRNA-based vaccines developed at a historic rate during the Operation Warp Speed initiative set up by previous President Donald Trump during the first year of the pandemic?
Significant claims were made with a near-selling-like fervor emanating from key federal government agencies in the United States and most other developed nations. The mainstream media overwhelmingly touts only the positive attributes of these products, which are countermeasures to a national declared emergency, America.
As challenges were introduced, from vaccine durability issues to the ongoing mutations---predicted by plenty of scientists who understand RNA viruses such as influenza or HIV/AIDS--the media seemingly presented ready-made talking points that positioned the products overwhelmingly positive. Afterall, billions of taxpayer funds were allocated into not only the early research, clinical development, and manufacturing of the vaccines, but also the heretofore not seen federally sponsored vaccination campaign which served as a marketing support for the primary companies of both Pfizer and Moderna.
Certainly, the products have helped soften the deadly, sharp edge of the COVID-19 pandemic, but what were the cost externalities as measured in human safety, loss productivity, and other costs to society with centralized government overreach of medical activity? Was the safety record claimed what manifested in reality? While the whole world now knows the mRNA vaccines, just like the flu vaccines, couldn’t control the pathogen’s spread in totality (however, there are cases where the vaccine has served to help control the pandemic), how effective are the vaccine products in the real world at controlling the pandemic?
How about staving off more serious disease and death in high-risk populations—the groups that most benefit from such products? An Australian scientist that leads a national and international reference laboratory for respiratory bacterial pathogens involving the identification, serotyping, genotyping, sequencing, and antimicrobial sensitivity testing for both veterinary and pharmaceutical clients, along with a colleague released a sharp critique of the COVID-19 vaccines.
Dr. Conny Turni and colleague Astrid Lefringhausen explore the above topics in “COVID-19 Vaccines—An Australian Review” published in the Journal of Clinical & Experimental Immunology.
No Lightweight Prose
With expertise in vaccines and topics such as antibiotic sensitivity for determining optimal sample sites for collecting pathogens as well as understanding the connections of different pathogens with disease, the development of animal infection models, and classification of bacteria and epidemiology of pathogens, Dr. Turni is no lightweight.
Profound Questions
Why have hundreds of millions worldwide needed to be vaccinated as many as four times within a twelve-month period? What are the effects of this ongoing countermeasure-driven medical endeavor on the human body? The clinical trial basis of the authorization was based only on a primary series of mRNA-based vaccines (two doses). Taking an Australian perspective, which TrialSite has followed, this demonstrates that double the number of persons died Down Under in the first three months of 2022 than all of 2020 and 2021 despite an already very high vaccination rate by the start of the year.
What were the promises and predictions from Australian authorities versus the actual facts on the ground? How about the safety and efficacy? Is there a substantial delta between what was promoted versus actuals? Just how safe, or unsafe are the countermeasures? What are the long-term side effects and how do these impact risk-benefit analyses?
Conducting a systematic literature and government data review, the authors establish the situation that merits investigation—the intensive push by the government for nearly everyone (including children as young as five and pregnant women) to get vaccinated. Yet, clinical research in all reality was ongoing. With a fourth booster dose administered in the elderly and other at-risk persons in just over a year from the first primary series, the long-term externalities as measured in human health cannot be known.
Crisis-driven Innovation
Vaccines often take many years to develop due to the difficulty associated with the development of this class of medical intervention—typically, a biological preparation that offers the human host active acquired immunity to a particular infectious pathogen. The vaccine usually contains an agent (like a weakened virus) that stimulates the human body’s immune system to not only recognize but also destroy the specific threat.
Vaccines are powerful medicinal interventions, and along with public health infrastructure breakthroughs over a century ago, helped transform developed economies. Some vaccines all but prevent the disease; they have served to control what were once horrific diseases such as polio. Others are used more as a therapeutic agent prophylactically to reduce the probability of the health threat such as with the influenza vaccine. While during the development and the authorization the COVID-19 vaccines were promoted like the former, in reality they perform like the latter scenario.
mRNA, developed over the last couple decades, introduced a new genetic way of inducing the human immune system’s ability to fight and overtake viruses. The onset of COVID-19 was the event fully exploited by the pharmaceutical industry and government research agencies to leverage public resources and assets to rapidly advance this promising technology. With COVID-19 came the intervention needed to achieve a faster, more economical, and adept way to produce vaccines. Done under national and global emergency, the countermeasures had to be safe and effective.
A Tenuous Foundation
First, in the “Initial Information” section of this literature review, Dr. Turni and Ms. Lefringhausen point out that the producers of the vaccines, government health agencies, and medical societies all declared that the “mRNA vaccines were supposed to remain at the injection site and be taken up by the lymphatic system.” This, and other basic premises represented a vital covenant with the public.
Yet according to the authors, “this assumption proved to be wrong.” They point to an autopsy of a person that unfortunately died as a result of the mRNA vaccination: “It was found that the vaccine disperses rapidly from the injection site and can be found in nearly all parts of the body.”
TrialSite has tracked numerous studies, mostly case series based on one death that evidence temporary wide distribution of the spike protein throughout the body for some short period of time.
The Australian literature review authors point out that although positioned to the contrary, the vaccine payload could cross both the blood-brain barrier and the blood-placenta barrier which is referenced in a European Medicines Agency assessment report targeting Moderna’s vaccine. They note, “mRNA could be detected in the brain following intramuscular administration at about 2% of the level found in plasma.” See the report on page 47: https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/documents/ assessment-report/spikevax-previously-covid-19-vaccine [1]moderna-epar-public-assessment-report_en.pdf (the EMA has taken the report down).
The authors also point to 2021, when Japanese researchers found “a disproportionately high mortality due to cerebral venous sinus thrombosis and intracranial hemorrhaging,” but this causal link couldn’t be proven. Yet authorities didn’t bother to do autopsies. Again, TrialSite has reported on many dozens of examples of post-vaccine injury studies mostly in the form of summaries of case series.
What about the claim “that the mRNA will degrade quickly?” While mRNA is supposed to break down within a few minutes to hours, writes the authors, the COVID-19 vaccines is “nucleoside-modified to reduce potential innate immune recognition, and it has been shown that production of the spike protein in some vaccines is kept up for an extraordinary long time.”
The Australians point to studies such as Röltgen et al, for examples showing that the mRNA vaccine may persist in the human body for up to 60 days. In fact, the 60 days was the endpoint so the duration could be longer. The authors declare, “It is thus unknown and impossible to define how much of the spike protein is actually produced in the vaccinated.” How about how much antigen is associated with each dose injection? Dr. Turni and Ms. Lefringhausen point out that:
“For a ‘so-called’ vaccine that is using the human body as the production facility, there is no possible quantification of antigen. This is highly variable and dependent on the amount and stability of nanoparticles in the injection, age, and fitness of the vaccinee, their immune status, and the injection technique—if a blood vessel is directly injected, the nanoparticles will travel in minutes to all major organs including the brain. It is therefore impossible to assess how much spike protein any individual vaccinee produces following an inoculation.”
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Domestic violence inquiry has exposed toxic culture in Queensland police force
For all the tea in China, I wouldn’t be a cop. Dealing with the dregs of society, going to work each day with the possibility of being killed, working shifts that affect sleep patterns … the list of drawbacks is endless.
But there’s a darker, more sinister side to being a police officer in Queensland – especially if you’re a woman.
The revelations emerging from a police inquiry into the service’s responses to domestic violence have exposed a deeper malaise.
This is a cohort of people who have lost their way. They’ve lost their identity. They are a police service lacking leadership, where the modern realisations of a safe workplace are colliding with the seedy traditions of yesteryear.
Reading the evidence is like watching an episode of Mad Men, where the misogynistic ways of men in the 1960s are laid bare. Women are merely seen as sex objects.
The Queensland police service is facing a cultural tsunami and the so-called Old Guard are being decapitated, one by one.
The question that the good folk of Queensland need to be asking today is – if certain male police officers treat their female counterparts in this oafish and belligerent way, what hope does the citizen in the street have against such poor behaviour?
If a cop has no regard for his colleagues, how does he handle law-abiding citizens?
When Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll took over the top job three years ago, she knew there would be difficult days.
Yet this inquiry is a long-running horror movie. The Commission of Inquiry has unearthed our worst fears. It has revealed a police service that has not kept pace with the morals and ethics required of a 21st century organisation.
The toxic culture and lack of manners among some of the mostly male officers is embarrassing, and deeply divisive.
It does nothing to instil confidence and it hurts those who treat the job seriously, and who behave responsibly. It seems for every good cop, there’s a bad cop.
Ms Carroll is dealing with a culture among the men towards female officers that has flourished and been entrenched for decades.
The cover-ups and lack of transparency and accountability are a damning indictment on a police service that has lost touch with reality.
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5 October, 2022
Sikh's bid for weapons act amendment rejected in Supreme Court
Sikhs are often in trouble over this. But it is part of their faith. Religious accomodations are extended to Muslims and Aborigines. Why not Sikhs?
The state government has dismissed a Supreme Court application which would allow knives to be carried into Queensland schools for “genuine religious purposes”.
Court documents have revealed the director of an Australian religious group had applied for the state’s weapons act be amended in the Queensland Supreme Court.
The application was made by Kamaljit Athwal, the director of the Sikh Nishkam Society of Australia, who said the weapons act prevented her and others from entering Queensland schools for educational purposes.
According to the court document, Ms Athwal is an initiated as an Amritdhari Sikh and has been the society’s director since 2010.
Initiated Sikhs are required at all times to wear or possess five mandatory “articles of faith” which include an undergarment, a small wooden comb, an iron band, have “un-cut” hair covered by a turban and a ceremonial sword.
The sword, known as a Kirpan, is made of steel or iron and is usually worn underneath clothing on a sling.
Ms Athwal argued in the court document that if a Sikh were to remove any of the articles of faith they must go refrain from eating or drinking for a period of time.
“That would extend to the removal of the Kirpan to enter school grounds,” the document read.
Ms Athwal said she and other initiated Sikhs had been excluded from school drop-offs and pick-ups, from attending assemblies, meeting teachers, attending school activities and conducting work on school groups.
Further, Ms Athwal contended her ability to vote at government elections at her local school had been deprived.
Under the weapons act, a person must not physically possess a knife in a public place or a school unless the person has a reasonable excuse.
Maximum penalties including one year’s imprisonment.
The state government acknowledged the difficulties initiated Sikhs faced however, on September 30 it dismissed the court application
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'I am being shamed for choosing to stay at home with my kids'
The government wants me in the paid workforce. I get it, the post-Covid economy is out of shape and we have a long way to go. Never mind my three children under four. The nation needs me and we have childcare centres these days so I really have no excuse. Childcare subsidies form Labor’s single biggest budget commitment. I guess it’s time I got a real job. Almost every time I turn on the telly, it’s there again, another story about getting more women “back to work”.
It’s puzzling because I thought I already was working.
I’m on call 24/7. You wouldn’t believe the clientele – so demanding and completely unreasonable at times. The youngest is now crawling so at any given time someone is hungry, busting, tired, crying or trying to get in the toilet or the fire or the bin.
There are many high points – a two-year-old’s emphatic rendition of Girl on Fire by Alicia Keys. Competitions doing burnouts on their bikes. Overhearing my son sounding out a word. I love it, but I have no doubt it really is hard work because of the mental and physical exhaustion I experience at the end of each day. And I know it’s essential work because it must be done – all else springs from foundational tasks of caring.
It’s just not the kind of work that counts, apparently.
Women have become great big dollar signs in the government’s bid to rebuild the economy, but I wonder about the true cost of both parents working longer hours. More childcare isn’t helping us balance care work with paid work, it simply enables us to replace care work with paid work.
I have serious reservations about using “workforce participation” as a measure of gender equality when the work I do doesn’t count. It’s a race I can never win.
Incentivising men to do more of the unpaid care work is the true equaliser, but instead we are intent on treating women as the problem. I don’t want gender equality if it is simply a process of erasing everything that is inherently female.
With another childcare rebate on the way in July, and childcare subsidies having almost doubled to $11 billion since my eldest was born in 2015, I get a definite sense that I’m not pulling my weight.
Not “participating”. The benefits of entering paid work again are not lost on me – I could contribute to my super and our increasing living costs. I’d feel part of the community and have better future job prospects. I might enjoy a sense of solidarity by joining the 67% of other parents who have children under the age of three in formalised care.
I’m just having some difficulty finding one of the “high quality” childcare facilities the government is always banging on about – 30% of the centres in my local area aren’t meeting the National Quality Standards for childcare.
Nationwide, 11.2 % of centres have applied for waivers to continue operating with a staff shortage. Two in three early childhood educators in Victoria are considering leaving their role because their work is woefully underpaid, starting at $20 an hour, and culturally undervalued. The sector expects to be short 40,000 staff next year. Staff turnover is through the roof. My closest centre is 40km away so I’d want to be on good coin because I will be chugging the diesel.
Something just doesn’t add up.
My return to paid work is incentivised by higher family benefits for dual-income families than single-income families in Australia, yet we don’t seem to have adequate systems in place for someone else to look after my kids while I engage in “paid” work. Am I not doing the government a favour by keeping my kids out of overwhelmed childcare centres until the situation improves?
Why isn’t access to a parental caregiver in the first three years being prioritised in any policy, particularly in the context of a childcare skills shortage and inconclusive research about the impacts of formalised care for children under three? This need not encroach on anybody’s ability to outsource childcare if they wish, it’s just about transparency and genuine choice.
The government already knows that family policy marginalises parents who choose to care for their own children full time and makes them feel like freaks of society, because they commissioned a research paper which drew these conclusions more than eight years ago. The paper, Parent-Only Care in Australia, examined the views of parents choosing not to outsource the care of their babies and young children amid an increasing trend of policies incentivising them to return to paid work.
La Trobe University researchers found the reasons parents gave for opting to assume full-time caregiving roles – bonding, being there for a very young child, emotional development, breastfeeding, and overwhelming concerns about the quality of childcare – were very much validated by the evidence. It found that not only was the political agenda tone-deaf to these concerns, but it actively targeted “women with young children, who have had lower than average rates of workforce participation”.
The paper argued the folly of such shortsighted economics by pointing out the long-term social and economic costs of poor-quality childcare. And yet the government has steamrolled on, either reluctant or unable to do anything about it. Probably a bit of both. It’s the “modernity paradox” on full display, a term coined by psychologist Daniel Keating and early childhood development expert Clyde Hertzman in 1999. The better we seem to get at wealth creation, the worse off our children seem to be. Limitations or quality constraints seem inevitable when carrying out child-rearing on an industrial scale.
Is this what we really want?
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Longer school day, master teachers could solve Australia's education productivity problem
Changing the length of the school day and employing master teachers are among the solutions the Productivity Commission has put forward to improve the performance of Australia's education system.
Australia is spending more than ever per student on education and yet national literacy and numeracy achievement is stagnating.
A new report by the Commission investigates why this problem exists and what can be done across the school and higher education system to solve it.
One in five Australians have low basic skills, impacting on their job opportunities, capacity to learn further skills and wages.
Productivity Commission deputy chair Dr Alex Robson said the while spending had grown, Australian students' results were not improving.
"One of the issues could be that the best practice is not becoming common practice," Dr Robson said.
"So diffusing what works and, just as importantly, what doesn't work in the classroom in different circumstances, that's one of the things we focus on."
The report said classroom teachers spend much of their working time on low-value administration tasks that could be reduced or reassigned to support staff.
Technology also has a role in relieving this burden and improving student outcomes but it needed to be introduced carefully.
"It's not a silver bullet... there's a digital divide where some schools have access to the technology and others don't, but then also in terms of how it's used and what's more effective in different circumstances," Dr Robson said.
An increase in the numbers of support staff and lower student-to-staff ratios don't appear to have had any impact on student results.
The report suggests improving consistency of professional development for teachers and employing master teachers to spread best practice teaching across schools.
It also suggests trialling more radical changes, such as extending the length of the school day or adopting the United Kingdom's model of academy schools to improve under-performing public schools.
"Maybe some of these more forward-looking ideas are possible solutions, but we're definitely not saying that that's the exact answer," Dr Robson said.
The report also suggests a HECS-style system for vocational education could reduce some of the up-front costs and disincentives for students to go down that path that could be more appropriate for their career ambitions compared to university.
The commission was highly critical of the changes to university course fees under the Coalition's job ready graduates reforms, stating that price signals for in-demand fields didn't work under the income-contingent loan system.
The commission is seeking feedback on the report by October 21 and will hold roundtable discussions.
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Coal is booming but you won’t hear about it at the ABC
Having seen the disastrous economic and social outcomes of Europe’s energy crisis, Australia, perversely, perhaps uniquely, is determined to inflict similar damage on itself. The decisions of the Queensland government, and AGL, to get rid of coal-generated electricity by 2035 will likely be, if implemented fully, disastrous.
I say “likely” because it’s possible that some great technology fix may show up in the meantime. But based on what we know of technology today, these moves mean much higher electricity prices and in time almost certainly unreliable supply and intermittent crises.
Nothing is certain, of course, least of all the future. But if as a nation we wanted to replicate the European mess, this is the way we’d go about it.
There are times in Australia when the plain truth is so unfashionable that almost no one speaks it. Here is one simple truth about Australia. We are a wealthy society – with first-class hospitals, affluent universities that can indulge their postmodern critical theory nuttiness, modern transport, modern if ineffective defence forces, a vast welfare system and everything else – for one reason: we make an enormous amount of money exporting commodities.
But the anti-fossil fuel sentiment has become so great that now there is a corporate wariness even about gas exploration and development. Yet we are completely dependent on coal and gas ourselves, as well as for export income. Incidentally, substituting gas for coal has been the main way many developed nations have actually reduced their greenhouse gas emissions.
However, remark this central fact which is never allowed into the debate. Coal is booming. That’s right. Coal is booming.
I am indebted to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute website for highlighting two recent international reports that make this clear, one from the International Energy Agency and one from BloombergNEF. No rhetoric or argument could be as powerful as the facts. So let me offer you a selection of facts from these reports.
Last year, global coal-fired electricity jumped a staggering 8.5 per cent, far in excess of the 5.6 per cent rise in total global power generation. Overall, never in human history has more electricity been generated by coal.
Yet how many times per day do we hear on the ABC that the world has turned away from coal? Whenever I’m on an ABC panel and point out that coal is booming, I cause the most terrible conniptions among my fellow panellists and ABC hosts. It’s as though I’ve committed a morally shocking crime of modern heresy speak. But there’s something else. Their view of climate change is religious but, while fervently religious, it’s also intellectually fragile, and if they admit certain unarguable facts, such as global coal use, the whole dogmatic structure underlying their world view threatens to collapse. Thus the moral panic in the reaction.
But I digress. Some more fun facts. The majority of countries pledged to phasing coal out altogether actually increased their coal-fired power production in 2021. Coal, in fact, accounted for the majority of the global net energy increase in 2021. It’s not only in Australia that climate change happy-talk bears only a glancing relationship with reality.
One of the special wrinkles in the Australian debate is the way we ignore Asia. Here are the 10 top countries, in order, for coal power expansion in 2021: China, India, Vietnam, South Africa, The Philippines, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Bulgaria, Japan. Eight out of 10 of those nations are in Asia. Economic growth is still centred much more in Asia than anywhere else. Power usage tracks economic growth, and coal use tracks overall power usage. Those basic equations haven’t changed.
When people talk airily about the world transitioning away from fossil fuels, what they are really describing, so far at least, is that Europe has cut fossil fuels a bit and is in crisis as a consequence, while the US has partly moved from coal to gas.
There’s a lot of renewable energy being installed as well, vast amounts in fact. If your story is only about the uptake of renewables you can produce an alternative set of facts that seem pretty impressive. But you can’t pretend that coal, gas and other fossil fuels have suffered absolute decline. In 2021 coal surged not only absolutely but also proportionally.
It’s also fair to remember that 2021 was a special case. The world economy was recovering from Covid, droughts produced shortages of hydro-electricity and Russia caused high gas prices in Europe. But every year is a special year. Not only that, the long-term trends do not suggest the world is ditching coal either. Indonesia relied on coal for 49 per cent of its power in 2012 and 61 per cent in 2021. The Philippines went from 39 per cent coal power in 2012 to 59 per cent in 2021. Indonesia and The Philippines are high-population, big-growth economies as far as the eye can see.
Of course they themselves are small fry compared with China and India, still the fastest-growing big economies in the world. Between them they accounted for 83 per cent of new coal power in 2021. According to Climate Action Tracker, China increased its greenhouse emissions by 11 per cent from 2015 to 2021. In the same period, the US, that world imperialist neoliberal terrible progenitor of every Western ill, which moreover was ruled for most of that time by Donald Trump, reduced its emissions by 6 per cent. Much of that was switching from coal to gas. Yet the Australian green-left demonises gas almost as wildly as it demonises coal.
Coal provided 64 per cent of China’s energy in 2021. Despite being told endlessly by wish-fulfilment-addicted government climate agencies that China is committed to action on greenhouse gases – I’ve often in ABC appearances encountered that amiable chimera, the China national carbon market – China is expanding coal massively.
The Wall Street Journal reports the Global Energy Monitor assessing that by July 2022 China had 258 separate coal-fired power stations, involving 515 individual units, proposed, permitted or under construction.
Further, the vast majority of zero-emissions energy the world does have is either nuclear or hydro. Chris Bowen scoffs at nuclear energy. He might want to let France’s Emmanuel Macron in on the joke. The French President won re-election promising 14 new nuclear power plants. France gets 70 per cent of its electricity from nuclear and is the world’s biggest electricity exporter. Nuclear is much more reliable than hydro. Sometimes it doesn’t rain, and some countries, like Australia, are topographically difficult for hydro.
Nationals senator Matt Canavan deserves praise for introducing a bill to remove the legal prohibition on nuclear energy in Australia. Our greenhouse emissions are down to about 1 per cent of the world’s total.
Bankrupting our economy won’t help the global climate. We should gradually reduce our emissions and replace high-emissions energy with lower-emissions sources such as gas, or zero-emissions sources such as nuclear. And before that, we should occasionally allow the facts to participate in the debate.
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4 October, 2022
Ugly truth behind dating apps revealed in key statistic
I am very sad to hear this. I have been using advertisements to find partners for most of my adult life and have had excellent results. I have had 4 marriages and some good long-term relationships out of it. And all four marriages ended amicably. So the system can work well. And just this year I have acquired a new partner via a dating site who is both smart and good-looking -- despite the fact that we are both now in our 70s
I think it is all up to the people involved. Men who are selfish will be nasty however they are encountered. The key is to approach with caution. Meet somewhere safe initially and learn as much as you can of the other person's background as soon as you can. Google can be a help there but old-fasioned reputational enquiries also have a place.
Milieu is important too. I always insist that a lady I take an interest in should like classical music. So I am moving in a very civilized milieu there. There are however many milieus and moving in an unsafe one must have its problems. I think there of women who date men with criminal records. No matter how good-looking and manly the man may be, he is high risk. So choose your milieu carefully. Low educational achievement is another red flag. The jails are full of poorly educated men
Most people who have used dating apps have also experienced some level of sexual violence via the increasingly popular medium, a new survey has revealed.
The study by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) released on Monday found three in every four respondents had been subjected to sexual violence through dating apps in the past five years.
The most common form of behaviour reported was sexual harassment, with abusive and threatening language and unsolicited sexual images also commonly experienced by those seeking love online.
In a troubling sign, the study also found sexual violence via dating apps was experienced far more frequently by LGBTIQ+ men and women compared to heterosexual participants.
Problems didn’t end when users of dating apps met face-to-face, with one in three survey respondents saying they experienced in-person sexual violence such as sexual assault or coercion, reproductive and sexual health related abuse and in-person image-based sexual abuse.
AIC deputy director Rick Brown said steps needed to be taken by dating app developers to improve user experience and safety. “The high levels of online and in-person DAFSV in this report demonstrate the need to embed safety by design principles in their development processes,” he said.
Despite the exponential explosion in popularity of dating apps over the past 10 years, few studies have been done exploring technology-facilitated sexual violence.
“This study aims to address these gaps in knowledge and provide valuable information that can assist in the development of policies and practices to prevent this kind of violence from occurring,” Dr Brown said.
Last year, dating app Bumble launched an initiative to provide free online trauma support to users who had experienced sexual assault or relationship abuse.
Earlier, the company also introduced an AI driven feature, which automatically identifies and blurs lewd images, leaving it at the recipient’s discretion if they want to view them.
A spokesperson from Bumble said they were saddened by the latest findings and that the company was taking steps to combat the specific types of abuse mentioned in the report.
“We hold everyone on Bumble accountable for their actions,” the spokesperson said.
“Any instance of violence, harassment or abuse is unacceptable to us and we do not hesitate to permanently remove perpetrators from our platform.
“We take our block and report tool very seriously, and have made it easy for our members to report any behaviour that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe to us so that we can take action.”
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Energy aspirations all well and good but unrealistic
Cheap electricity forever and cities filled with electric vehicles gliding silently along emission-free streets – the future has never looked brighter. This green-tinged nirvana is of course a target or more prosaically, an aspiration.
Aspirations are fine. You can aspire to lose weight, drink less and be nice to idiots but the likelihood of achieving any of these is dubious. This is not to say that they are unworthy, but that they are unrealistic.
Aspirations have been very much in vogue these past weeks as our leaders race to be the first to grasp the Holy Grail of environmental politics, net zero emissions!
The Queensland government put on an impressive burst of speed by lifting the state’s target from 70 per cent renewable energy generation by 2032 to 80 per cent by 2035. A quick reference to your mobile phone’s calculator will reveal that this is 13 years away.
Anyone who can confidently predict what our world will be like in 13 years’ time is possessed of powers more usually attributed to a higher being yet federal and state politicians, some of whom it could be easily argued are not the sharpest shovels in the shed, trot out these statistics with absolute certainty to what they hope is a gullible electorate.
To reinforce these incredulous flights of fancy, they rely on modelling, easily the most discredited science in the universe.
It doesn’t matter that, like your determination to achieve a sylph-like figure by Christmas, the target is unachievable because by 2032 or 2035 – pick a number, any number – the current crop of politicians will be long gone and enjoying second careers as overseas trade commissioners, foreign diplomats or resting their feet up on the boardroom tables of union-controlled super funds.
Queensland has embraced pumped hydro as its path to lowering emissions from electricity generation.
Energy Minister Mick de Brenni said that, after researching about 1000 sites, one west of Mackay had been found to be “simply the best”.
Within 24 hours of this revelation, it was revealed that “simply the best” was actually simply not quite the best and that simply put, the government was now looking for another site that could provide the massive areas of land required for water storage for the upper and lower dams without significantly damaging the environment, a site that could be connected to the grid to supply the power necessary to pump the water and transmit the power generated.
How much will this cost when they find simply the best placed to build it? The figure is $12bn, with the total cost of achieving that mirage-like figure of 80 per cent shimmering on the 2035 horizon, being $62bn.
Where will the money come from? Tricky one, that. The federal government and private infrastructure funds will be relied upon to bring this wondrous scheme to fruition. How much has been committed thus far? Not a cent.
It is worth noting that Snowy Hydro 2.0, the result of a Malcolm Turnbull thought bubble, was budgeted to cost $5.1bn. That now looks like blowing out by a further $2.1bn and is beset by problems.
Meanwhile, if you are leasing a servo, it might be good time to start looking for an exit strategy because, according to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s pre-election policies, by 2030, 89 per cent of new vehicle sales in Australia will be electric vehicles.
How did the Labor Party arrive at this incredibly precise figure? You guessed it – modelling. What percentage of new car sales were electric in Australia last year? Two per cent.
Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen has been talking about getting tough on vehicle emissions. I don’t envy him the task of telling the nation’s tradies that they’ll have to give up their treasured four-wheel-drive utes and buy something more environmentally friendly.
He might also get a less than warm reception from the caravanning community who will have to say goodbye to their Toyota Land Cruisers and Nissan Patrols and park their vans in the yard because electric vehicles are incapable of towing heavy loads over long distances.
There will come a time when electric vehicles will be practical in this vast country and when renewable power will replace that generated by fossil fuels but it will be determined by technological advances and not grandstanding politicians with both eyes fixed firmly, not on the well being of the next generation but the next election.
And that sylph-like figure by Christmas? Good luck with that.
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Flags on a bridge won’t change anything
Common sense scored a rare victory over tokenism and virtue signalling last week and we have Brisbane’s Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner to thank for it.
At issue was a move by the Labor councillor for Morningside Kara Cook to have two new flags flown atop the Story Bridge, joining the Australian and Queensland flags presently in place.
No discount on your rates notice for guessing that the flags in question were the Aboriginal flag and the Torres Strait Islander flag, with Ms Cook demanding Mr Schrinner “show leadership on this”.
“Reconciliation is something that should be a priority for our city, and this is one way we can stand with our First Nations communities,” she said.
Mr Schrinner replied that it would cost millions of dollars to install two new flagpoles and that the money could be better spent elsewhere.
Mick Gooda, co-chair of the Queensland Treaty Advancement Committee, was quick to offer a solution, saying the Brisbane City Council could take down one of the existing flags and replace it with an Aboriginal one, a move which would be part of what he called a “path to Treaty and truth telling in Brisbane”.
Here’s another truth, inconvenient though it might be. The Australian flag represents all Australians and the Queensland flag all Queenslanders regardless of their race, so why should either of them be removed in order to fly a flag which represents one particular racial group?
Commissioner for the Queensland Family and Child Commission and Gamilaraay Yinnar woman Natalie Lewis also weighed into the debate, saying if new flagpoles were to be installed, she wanted Indigenous businesses included in any works.
So the normal tendering process designed to give everyone a fair go and ensure the council got value for money would be cast aside and Indigenous businesses given preferential treatment, exclusion masquerading as inclusion.
Mr Schrinner is to be congratulated for having the courage to suffer the wrath of the Twitterati and for refusing to spend ratepayers’ money pandering to virtue signallers.
What a simple thing it is to demand the flying of a flag representing 3 per cent of the population and tell yourself how inclusive and “woke” you are.
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Dam operators face balancing act of flood and drought
The Lord Mayor is right. As far as possible, the Wivenhoe dam flood compartment should be kept empty
As the rain-soaked eastern seaboard stares down another summer of floods, the mayor of the nation’s most at-risk capital has demanded a review of dam management to enable pre-emptive water releases ahead of the forecast deluge.
Brisbane’s Adrian Schrinner said the level of the city’s flood shield and principal water supply, Wivenhoe Dam, must be lowered before the third successive La Nina event took hold.
But he said the danger extended to the entirety of Australia’s east coast, after meeting emergency service heads and other key players at a planning summit last week called by the state government.
“As that meeting heard, the warning about another unusually wet period over the next few months isn’t just for Brisbane, but the entire eastern seaboard,” Mr Schrinner told The Australian.
“Along with Brisbane, many of the populated areas along the east coast already have full dams and sodden soil ... the question I am asking, and will continue to ask, is whether state authorities should adapt their approach to dam management with these severe warnings. I still haven’t had a proper answer.”
More than 20,000 homes flooded over February and March when the Queensland capital received 80 per cent of its annual rainfall in six days and Brisbane River and feeder creeks erupted.
But Mr Schrinner said the coming summer was potentially more problematic because a wet winter had saturated catchments, leaving them unable to absorb further run-off.
As unseasonably cool and wet conditions blanketed the city, Wivenhoe Dam was on Sunday at 90.5 per cent of its notional 200 per cent capacity – counting both flood mitigation and water storage compartments.
Somerset Dam was 80 per cent full and Enoggera Reservoir in Brisbane at 100.6 per cent. All up, the South East Queensland water grid was at 87.9 per cent capacity.
Wivenhoe’s official operation manual, signed off by the Palaszczuk government, prevents dam engineers from making active releases when extreme rainfall is forecast by the Bureau of Meteorology. Instead, they are forced to wait until rain is on the ground before controlled releases can be ordered to free up space.
However, The Australian understands there is provision for the state-owned operator Seqwater to request that state Water Minister Glenn Butcher declare a temporary fully supply level authorise draw-downs at Wivenhoe, Somerset and North Pine dams.
Mr Schrinner said the government must review the manual to allow for more flexibility.
“If you look at how quickly the dams filled up earlier this year, it was remarkable, we have never seen anything like it and it shows what’s possible. They filled up far faster than they did in 2011,” he said, referring to a disaster that inundated thousands of homes in Brisbane and Ipswich, some of which flooded again this year.
“The dam operating manuals were developed out of 2011 and I'm not sure if they envisaged just how quickly the dams could fill.
“Obviously, we must take advice from the experts, there’s no doubt about that, but as situations change, manuals, operating procedures should also be questioned as well.”
Emergency releases from the bulging dam in 2011 were blamed for 80 per cent of the flooding.
While last summer’s flood was not pinned on the state-owned dam operator, releases kept the swollen Brisbane River topped up, prolonging the duration of the crisis. Mitigation releases did not begin until three days after the BOM warned of heavy rain.
Mr Schrinner noted that ahead of the last flood, South East Queensland was on the brink of drought, with Wivenhoe’s 2.08 million megalitre flood-storage compartment empty and the water grid below 60 per cent.
With “just a few days of rain” Wivenhoe was inundated with 2.2 million megalitres, four times the volume Sydney Harbour.
Such was the intensity of the rain across the South East that storm drains were overwhelmed, suburban creeks erupted into torrents and overland flows cascaded through homes not known to have previously gone under.
Water Minister Glenn Butcher said he would continue to take advice on dam management, balancing the priorities of water storage and flood mitigation.
“We know wet weather is forecast, but we don’t know when or where rain will fall. We take advice from the experts,” he said on Sunday. “Once water is released from a dam, we cannot get it back, so it is absolutely critical that we take expert advice from both Seqwater and department officials.”
Given Wivenhoe’s flood storage compartment was for now empty, any immediate releases would have to come from the region’s drinking water supply and if the anticipated rains did not fall over summer “then it’d be a different story”, Mr Butcher said in other recent comments.
Professor Hubert Chanson, a hydraulic engineering expert from the University of Queensland, said dam operators were engaged in a high-stakes balancing act, preparing for both drought and flood.
“Wivenhoe is essential for providing South East Queensland with water for long duration droughts, so early releases prior to any run-off in the catchment could increase the risk of southeast Queensland running out of water during a dry period,” Professor Chanson said. “While we have had a lot of rain between 2011 and now, what happens if we have a 40-year drought?”
Dam releases a few days before heavy rain was predicted could be considered, but it would be difficult given the unpredictability of weather forecasts, he said.
Mr Schrinner said the solution was to bolster Brisbane’s water security, so dam engineers could make releases from Wivenhoe without risking drinking supplies.
The state government is considering an independent report on its preparations and management of the floods handed to them by the state’s Inspector-General of Emergency Management in August.
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3 October, 2022
Nearly all of Australia's coral reefs are at risk of being wiped out in less than two decades
There is NO evidence given for this. It's just a Warmist claim, possibly based on models but that is guesswork, not evidence
The idea that warming is bad for corals is completely unscientific anyway. Barrier reef corals are most diverse in the Torres strait, which is the WARMEST part of the reef. Like most living things, corals LIKE warmth
SHOCKING evidence has been released claiming that nearly all of Australia's coral reefs are at risk of being wiped out in less than two decades.
The report by the World Resources Institute claims that by 2030, 90 per cent of Australia's reefs will suffer from the overwhelming effects of climate change like warmer seas and acidification.
It also outlines the threat to the rest of the world's coral reefs, with research suggesting that many could be obliterated by 2050 due to pollution, climate change and over-fishing.
The report encourages Australia not to waste any time in fighting the prediction, particularly because of the impact reef degredation will have on tourism and the economy.
Dr Clive Wilkinson, the United Nations sponsored Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network coordinator, urged Australia "to be part of the global solution to climate change, as our reefs will suffer like others around the world and this will threaten the $5 to $6 billion per year that the Great Barrier Reef means to the Australian economy."
"Australians have no right to be complacent as the vast majority of our reefs will be seriously threatened by rising sea temperatures and increasing acidification in less than 20 years," he said.
Today, 40 per cent of Australia's reefs are under pressure from rising sea temperatures and other threats linked to climate change.
However, 75 per cent of the reefs are in marine protected areas, which is a contributing factor to the improvement in fish numbers and reef resilience.
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On Lizard island, the reef is as good as scientists have ever seen it
I have reproduced below just a few factual bits from an article heavy with global warming prophecy. There is a feeble attempt to say that the thriving corals around the Lizard Island research station are not typical but no evidence is adduced to show that. It's just assertion.
Clearly, from the actual reports below, the various "bleaching" events have not significantly harmed the reef. The prophesied doom has not eventuated. The reef has been in existence for millions of years, surviving all sorts of weather events, so it has acquired the ability to bounce back from occasional harm
There’s a friendly atmosphere as researchers mingle at the station, often alongside large taps that run salt water into the fish tanks. The marine biologists talk about their research projects and plan when they’re next hitting the ocean. One of the best places to sink below the surface is North Point – about a 20-minute boat ride from the centre in rough wave conditions – where PhD candidate Matt Nicholson and Durham University Assistant Professor Dr Will Feeney are filming fish behaviour.
Between dives, the pair say the reef is as good as they have ever seen it. Five years ago, this area was severely impacted by mass coral bleaching and cyclone events. Now, it teems with wildlife: parrot fish with their distinct beak-like mouths nibble at bits of coral, schools of blue-green and yellow damsel fish dart around, while Feeney spots a group of six harlequin filefish fighting. They stand out among the other fish because of their aqua and orange spot colouring and long, snout-like faces. Not long ago, it would be rare for Feeney to have spotted any.
Another sign that the reef is recovering is the branching coral that appears every few metres or so. Its budding branches give scientists hope this patch of the reef is slowly recovering from the past six years which have been filled with four mass coral bleaching events since 2016 and tropical cyclones. The 2021 and 2022 summer was the first time the reef had bleached during a La Nina year.
The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) listed the outlook for the reef’s health as “very poor” in this year’s annual report, with the agency’s chief executive, Paul Hardisty, saying the increased frequency of mass coral bleaching events was “uncharted territory” for the reef following the fourth mass bleaching in seven years.
WWF Australia head of oceans Richard Leck said the recovery of the reef was patchy. In areas that had bounced back, including Lizard Island and the northern parts of the reef, recovery had predominately been of fast-growing coral which limits biodiversity. Some corals can take up to 100 years to grow and so as climate-induced events become more frequent, the diversity of the reef diminishes.
“This type of coral-dominated recovery is one that is highly susceptible to threats like coral bleaching and storm damage from cyclones. It is susceptible to Crown of Thorn starfish too.
However, he says the recovery in some parts of the reef should give people hope that the reef is resilient and that efforts to protect it are working. He adds that the government should also consider investing its next round of funding into limiting the environmental damage from pollution and sediment run-off from agriculture.
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Australian-Croatian TV presenter’s heartbroken response to Nazi salutes at Australia Cup
A bit of context might help here. The countries of the Balkans have been fought over many times. As a result, their people have tended to develop strong national loyalties.
In WWII the Balkans were divided in their loyalties. The Croatians sided with the Nazis and the Serbians with the Communists. So Croatians tend to remember that division and are not as negative about Nazism as are most others. So the "Nazi" salutes complained about below were in effect pro-Croatian salutes by young Croatians
Australian TV presenter Lucy Zeli? has called for lifetime bans and a mandatory educational course for those involved in the “devastating and embarrassing” scenes during the Australia Cup final.
A loud chorus of boos could be hear during the Welcome to Country and also throughout the playing of the national anthem on Saturday night.
When the game got underway the Network 10 broadcast captured fans in attendance appearing to be doing Nazi salutes.
Zeli?, who was a sports presenter for SBS until she left the network last year, took to Twitter to express her horror.
“I’m a proud Croatian. I was raised by two immigrants who lost friends and family in the war – my Aunty Tereža was tragically killed after stepping on a rogue mine right near her home,” she explained. “Our history is laced with much struggle, grief and loss but immense resilience.
“Growing up with an ethnic background, I knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of racism and was often told, ‘f*** of back to Croatia wog’. I was confused because Australia was my home and we were so, so proud of it.
“I was born in the 80s and was never raised to be a fascist, racist or antisemitic – it wasn’t an option. We knew what being treated differently because of your ethnicity, and losing loved ones in senseless war felt like.
“What happened at last night’s @AustraliaCup Final was shocking and simply devastating, and I didn’t want to believe it. It was the first time I felt embarrassed by the actions of my fellow countrymen and I wasn’t alone.”
The final was between Macarthur FC and Sydney United 58, which was formed as Sydney Croatia in 1958 by Croatian-Australians in the area and later renamed in the ’90s.
Zeli? said the fans’ behaviour was not a true representation of Croatians or the football club, but its reputation had been tarnished.
“ … many of them appeared to be teenagers who simply don’t know how deeply the ramifications of their actions run,” she said.
Zeli?, who is a mum of two, said she wanted those guilty to “face the full arm of the law” and also be required to take a “mandatory educational course on history”.
“Show them photographs from the Auschwitz concentration camps,” she said.
“Make them listen to countless stories from survivors so that they won’t pass on these indefensible beliefs to their children. Change, after all, comes from a place of acceptance and understanding and you cannot change what you don’t know.”
Other sports presenters also slammed the behaviour as an “embarrassment”.
The NSW Jewish Board of Deputies have called for “strong action”, including lifetime bans.
“These vile symbols and salutes have no place in modern Australian society,” CEO Darren Bark said in a statement provided to news.com.au.
“They represent the ultimate manifestation of evil – an evil which led to the murder of millions of innocent civilians during WWII, including six million Jews and thousands of Australian Diggers who lost their lives fighting against the Nazis during WWII.
“Reprehensible conduct such as this causes immense distress to the victims of Nazi crimes and their descendants, whilst undermining our cohesive multicultural society.
“The fact that the Welcome to Country and national anthem was also booed last night underlines the contempt these people have for Australia and our Diggers.”
Football Australia said “there is absolutely no place for anti-social behaviour in our game” and promised “strong and swift action” would be taken.
FA said it was working with NSW Police and holding discussions with Sydney United 58 FC about the behaviour of certain fans, “which could lead to both individual and club sanctions.”
On the night, eight people were evicted from the stadium.
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Aborigines are NOT "indigenous"
Prior to the threatened rewriting of the Australian constitution can we stop re-writing the English dictionary and the meanings of our words to suit the re-write of what being an Australian is?
Perhaps it is all part of the demise of our education system but no human is indigenous to Australia as Australia didn’t even come with a backstory of mammals let alone primates from which came the many iterations of the upright, bi-pedal, Homo species (Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis, Homo Heidelberg, etc) and, ultimately, us Homo sapiens. All of whom were indigenous to Africa.
The first out-of-Africa population movement of Homo sapiens started some 130,000 years ago and travelled up along the east coast of Africa, crossed what was then a land bridge over the Red Sea heading to Sri Lanka, India, Southeast Asia and to a land mass called Sahul. Sahul was Australia, with Papua New Guinea still attached, that had been the last land mass to fracture from the Antarctic continent of Pangaea and head north until it collided into south east Asia.
At this point the slowly migrating African indigenes could cross (sea levels were 150 metres lower than today) in tribal groups to what is now Papua New Guinea then into our gulf country or, via the island of Flores, further south onto the northern coast of what is West Australia. That journey from Africa took small hunter-gatherer groups multiple generations until first reaching what is now Australia some 45,000 years ago.
That remarkable journey makes these slow trekking, out-of-Africa indigenous hunter-gatherer tribes, the first human species to be introduced to the Australian land mass but it does not make them or their descendants indigenous to Australia. Aboriginal – yes, but indigenous – no.
Marsupials are indigenous to Australia but humans are not. So, can we rephrase the call to arms regarding the Voice and delete the ignorant attachment of the appellation ‘indigenous’.
That said I would like to recommend a song and two voices that say it all when it comes to the human migrations into Australia. The voices belong to the late, great Judith Durham and her co-singer Bruce Woodley and it is The Seekers song ‘I am Australian’ that says it all and, with lines such as ‘We are one but we are many and from all the lands on Earth we come’, it should be our anthem. If it were, the call to divide Australians into self-identification groups might fade to oblivion as we all take personal pride in wearing the name ‘Australian’. It would also be good to be able to ditch the current ‘land girt by sea’ anthem.
We are all mentioned in that Seekers song. From those of the Dream Time and dusty red soil plains, to sailors on tall ships and iron-chained convicts on prison ships, to the journey from convict to free man, to land clearers/settlers/farmers/bushies, to gold miners and those battlers during the Depression, to Aboriginal artists and legendary horsemen through to bushrangers and to a swagman Waltzing Matilda. They are all there as Australians who have left their past behind in identifying with and belonging to this large continent under one federal government.
Is that the problem for some? Do they seek separation of the Australian government into race-based legislatures and parliaments? What gain is there in dividing us by ‘indigenous’ ancestry claims that may not have significant DNA support? Anthropological research from universities ranging from Copenhagen to the US, UK and Australia now estimate that of those original aboriginal tribes there are only approximately 5,000 people left carrying that pure-blood African DNA. That they arrived in their various tribes over some 45,000+ years before Sahul separated from Malaysia and Australia separated from New Guinea is an amazing feat of human resilience and venture.
But, now, those identifying as aboriginal are – just like most of us – a mix-and-match batch of racial identities under the umbrella title of Homo sapiens (aka mankind). To identify as belonging to only one caste of your ancestry is appallingly disrespectful to all the other allelic influences on your DNA from other ancestry that make up who you are.
Much simpler, surely, to just be proud of being an Australian that comes with the right to vote for what you want and who you want to deliver this under the one flag. That is all the ‘voice’ we need.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/aussie-life-89/?u
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Billions spent on housing affordability are making it worse: Productivity Commission
Eliminating legal barriers to home building and real estate investment generally is the only way to make adequate housing generally available. The basic problem is a shortage of housing and government regulations are the cause of that shortage
Federal folly is mentioned below but all levels of government are obstructive. Local governments, with their zoning regulations and reluctance to approve land subdivision, prevent new building and State governments do their best to discourage provision of rental accomodation by making life difficult for landlords
Sixteen billion dollars a year in government housing assistance could be better targeted, while nearly $3 billion spent helping first home buyers works against improving affordability, a Productivity Commission review has found.
Governments should commit to targets for new housing supply, improve Commonwealth Rent Assistance and address shortcomings in social housing, the review of the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement, released on Friday, recommended.
Productivity Commissioner Malcolm Roberts said the agreement, set up in 2018 to fund state and territory governments to improve access to housing, was ineffective.
“It does not foster collaboration between governments or hold governments to account,” Roberts said. “It is a funding contract, not a blueprint for reform.”
The report laid bare the housing affordability challenge for renters on low incomes who may not be in a position to buy a home, even with the help of government programs.
About two-thirds of low-income households spent more than 30 per cent of their income on rent in 2022. Another 20 per cent spend over half of their income on rent.
Many are left with little to spend on necessities, as about a fifth of low-income households have less than $250 left after paying their weekly rent.
Rates of rent stress are high for many recipients of Commonwealth Rent Assistance. More than eight in 10 households who receive rent assistance and either Austudy, Youth Allowance for students or JobSeeker are spending at least 30 per cent of their income on rent.
“Over the life of the NHHA, housing affordability has deteriorated for many people, especially people renting in the private market,” Roberts said. “The median low-income renter spends over a third (36 per cent) of their income on rent.”
Economists have long called for increased rent assistance, and the pressure is felt by homelessness services and social housing providers who are fielding more requests for help as rents rise.
The pandemic hit the property market, pushing up rents in regional areas when city dwellers made a tree or sea change, leaving local workers unable to find affordable rentals. New household formation has also increased rental demand in major cities.
Roberts said a new approach was needed to help those most in need into an affordable home.
“A two-track approach is needed to ease the pressure on low-income renters – the capacity for low-income renters to pay for housing needs to be improved and constraints on new housing supply need to be removed,” he said.
The $5.3 billion Commonwealth Rent Assistance program should be reviewed to improve its adequacy and targeting, the report found.
Fellow Productivity Commissioner Romlie Mokak said the safety net of homelessness services and social housing should be improved.
The report also called for a focus on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander housing.
“More support is needed for homelessness prevention and early intervention programs. As governments invest more in social housing, they should also test more flexible and timely ways to assist people,” Mokak said.
The report called on state and territory governments to commit to targets for new housing supply and accelerate planning reform.
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Youth crime surges in Qld as incompetence reigns in government
Deputy Premier Steven Miles has reassured the good people of Queensland that his government has spent loads of money on curbing youth crime.
Gee, I feel so much better, don’t you?
The impact of these vast sums – our taxes – is obvious when you look at the state of juvenile crime. It’s worse. Thanks for nothing, team Palaszczuk.
Following the latest tragedy – on Monday a 59-year-old man died after a crash involving an allegedly stolen car in Brisbane’s east – Miles attempted to spruik the government’s action on youth crime.
“We have seen consistent and significant investment into increasing our juvenile justice system and supporting our police,” he told a Tuesday press conference.
“The bulk of youth offenders do not reoffend so the system is effective with those offenders. “We will continue to take the advice of our police to address reoffending.”
I call BS on that.
In February last year Miles said he was seriously considering beefing up laws that deal with juveniles. Here we are, 20 months later, still waiting for the results of his earnest deliberations.
What Miles conveniently left out of his spin is that the 10 per cent of youth deemed chronic offenders commit one-third of all crimes recorded by the cohort.
The 2021 Youth Offending review by the Queensland Government Statistician’s Office also notes juveniles “average more offences during the year than their adult counterparts”. If Miles and his mob actually listened to frontline police, they’d know officers do not, in fact, feel supported by the justice system.
They feel constantly let down by weak court rulings which see them collaring the same kids over and over again.
The senseless death this week of Michael Warburton adds to a damning statistic that even this government – as intent it is on obfuscating the truth and avoiding scrutiny – can’t ignore.
In less than two years, five Queenslanders have died after being the victim of a crash involving juveniles in allegedly stolen vehicles. How many more lives must be lost?
Mr Warburton – a beloved husband and father described as “a rare gem of a bloke who was always there to help anyone” – joins Jennifer Board, Matthew Field, Kate Leadbetter and their unborn child as the state’s most recent fatal victims.
Two teens, aged 15 and 16, have been charged over the crash which caused Mr Warburton’s death, while two other 15-year-olds have been charged with unlawful use of a motor vehicle.
The alleged driver has also been charged with burglary, unlicensed driving and failure to remain at the scene of
a crash.
In February 2021 – pushed by public fury over the deaths of Matthew Field, Kate Leadbetter and their baby – the government promised to look into a “number of options”.
It set up a Youth Justice Taskforce (because we need more committees) and made absurd amendments to the relevant act.
These being that an offender who reoffends while on bail must “show cause” as to why they should get bail again; and that bail can be granted after seeking the support of a parent.
Presumably, these are the same hopeless parents to whom Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk referred after her over-hyped State of the State address on Wednesday.
She said parents needed to take more responsibility for their children. Don’t hold your breath.
The government also trialled, poorly, the use of GPS trackers on offenders aged 16 and over. The trial was meant to last for 12 months but didn’t, and only six kids were fitted with the devices.
When quizzed in May, Youth Justice Minister Leanne Linard refused to discuss the efficacy of the trial, instead throwing forward to an independent review being finalised by former police commissioner Bob Atkinson (who proposed the idea of trackers in 2018 but why rush?).
Well now that review is complete. However, in keeping with the Palaszczuk government’s pitiful record on transparency, it refuses to make it public. No guesses as to why.
Queenslanders are dying, their loved ones left traumatised, and our taxes are being frittered away by a bunch of incompetents while juvenile criminals have the last laugh.
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Controversial $6.5b Burrup fertiliser plant to get green light by the end of the year
A gas-fed fertiliser plant on the Burrup Peninsula opposed by campaigners for the preservation of ancient rock engravings will likely be fully financed and go ahead by the end of the year after the federal government lent $220 million towards construction costs.
The US$4.2 billion ($6.5 billion) Perdaman urea plant that will process gas from Woodside’s Scarborough project will receive the funds from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility that has already lent the WA government $255 million to improve port and water facilities for the project.
Perdaman chair Vikas Rambal said the project won federal support because it offered local manufacturing of a commodity vital for Australian farmers.
“In four to eight weeks we should get financing done,” he said, with project approval expected before the end of the year and production beginning four years later.
Construction will require 2500 workers at its peak in the Pilbara where labour supply is already tight and Woodside is expanding its nearby Pluto LNG plant, which will need a similar number of workers.
Financing is likely to be a mix of debt and equity investment for the project that is currently wholly owned by the Rambal family’s private company Perdaman.
Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Madeleine King said Australia currently imported around 2.4 million tonnes a year of urea for agricultural use.
“The Perdaman project will have the capacity to reduce imported volumes and secure local farmers’ access to fertiliser,” she said.
When asked if the financing had any conditions to supply to the local market NAIF chief executive Craig Doyle said he “anticipated that a material portion of the urea produced will go to the Australian market.”
Higher gas prices due to limited supply from Russia after its invasion of Ukraine have caused global fertiliser prices to rise significantly.
Urea provides 40 per cent of Australia’s fertiliser needs according to Incitec Pivot, which agreed to buy all the plant’s output for 20 years.
The ASX-listed fertiliser and explosive manufacturer in September told investors that the plant’s large-scale cost-competitive supply would allow it to target new markets in Australia and overseas.
The Burrup Peninsula, called Murujaga by traditional owners, is home to more than one million rock engravings that are up to 40,000 years old.
Perdaman’s plant is opposed by some traditional custodians who object to the relocation of rock art for construction and the plant’s emissions that would add to the industrial pollution in the area that some scientists conclude is damaging the art.
Two weeks ago environment minister Tanya Plibersek under section 10 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act appointed an independent consultant to determine if the Murujuga engravings were under threat.
Murujuga traditional custodian Raelene Cooper said the NAIF funding was a bailout from the federal government aimed to reassure investors who are spooked about supporting a project that will remove sacred Murujuga rock art over the objections of Elders.
“The government propping up this toxic project when they have just commissioned a full cultural heritage assessment of all industry on the Burrup,” she said.
“A government that claims to support an Indigenous Voice is still refusing to listen to First Nations communities on the front line of this crisis.”
Rambal said he was not worried about the Section 10 report as the Perdaman plant was environmentally friendly with the latest technology.
The plant will initially emit 650,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases a year.
The WA government has required a gradual reduction in emissions to zero by 2050
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The Australian legal system is not impartial
By backing in the worst extremes of climate hysteria, Australian courts – and our justice system in general – are increasingly in danger of losing their perceived legitimacy.
This week, many Australians would be shaking their heads at the New South Wales Local Court’s decision to dismiss charges against a climate protester charged with illegally blockading the Sydney Harbour Tunnel.
Blockade Australia activist Mali Cooper allegedly locked her head to her car’s steering wheel in June, while angry motorists yelled at her through her window and traffic backed up for several kilometres. According to Cooper’s lawyers, all charges have been dropped on the basis that she was found to be experiencing ‘climate change-induced anxiety’ that developed into flood-induced PTSD.
It is not the first time that Australian courts have invoked the so-called ‘climate emergency’. Perhaps the most high-profile finding we’ve seen recently is that of Federal Court Judge Mordecai Bromberg against then-Environment Minister Sussan Ley in relation to an application to extend the Vickery Coal Project in northern NSW.
Responding to an application by eight children to have the mining project scuttled, Bromberg held that Ley had a ‘duty of care owed to the children’ to prevent climate-related injury as a result of the mine’s approval. The decision was subsequently overturned.
As a more general theme, international and domestic courts may be seen as being increasingly open to second-guessing the decisions of elected leaders on the most tenuous of grounds, so long as ‘climate change’ is invoked. Following the recent passage of the Albanese government’s feted Climate Change Act, we can only expect the problem to get worse. With the government’s ‘ambitious’ carbon abatement targets enshrined in legislation for the first time, recalcitrant judges will have much greater scope to interfere with ministerial decisions in the name of ‘meeting our climate obligations’.
In contrast to the apparent sympathy towards the disruption by climate protesters, the judiciary has taken a much harder line on objectors to Australia’s heavy-handed management of Covid. While Mali Cooper has been acquitted after three months, Zoe Buhler spent two years in legal limbo following her arrest over a Facebook post promoting a peaceful anti-lockdown protest in Ballarat. Buhler’s charges were dropped as well, but in her case the unacceptably long wait for justice meant that the process itself felt like a punishment.
Out of the many legal challenges launched against the extraordinarily punitive measures imposed in the name of the coronavirus, few – if any – were upheld in court.
While some people may see the merit in interfering with a mining project that would amount to a tiny percentage of Australia’s tiny percentage of global greenhouse gas emissions, there is not a lot of judicial activism regarding the fundamental trashing of legal rights in the most egregious of ways during Covid.
The most nefarious element to a pattern of judgments across Australia is that our courts appear to be picking and choosing which protests are valid and which are not. And the phenomenon is not just happening in the courts, either. Consider the fact that Victoria Police, for example, took a knee at the ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests in Melbourne in 2020, but responded to anti-lockdown protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets. Both protests were ‘illegal’ under Covid regulations, yet only one was suppressed with bloody and brutal force.
If such obvious double standards continue, the faith of the public in our legal system will be badly damaged, perhaps irreparably. The role of judges is not to be popular, but they should at least be consistent.
Above all, our courts should protect the rule of law. At the very least, this requires them to be seen as being impartial, not at the mercy of political fads like climate change.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/09/climate-anxiety-is-free-to-disrupt/
************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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