R.G.Menzies above

This document is part of an archive of postings 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. My Home Page. My Recipes. My alternative Wikipedia. My Blogroll. Email me (John Ray) here. NOTE: The short comments that I have in the side column of the primary site for this blog are now given at the foot of this document.

Two of my ancestors were convicts so my family has been in Australia for a long time. As well as that, all four of my grandparents were born in the State where I was born and still live: Queensland. And I am even a member of the world's second-most condemned minority: WASPs (the most condemned is of course the Jews -- which may be why I tend to like Jews). So I think I am as Australian as you can get. I certainly feel that way. I like all things that are iconically Australian: meat pies, Vegemite, Henry Lawson etc. I particularly pride myself on my familiarity with the great Australian slanguage. I draw the line at Iced Vo-Vos and betting on the neddies, however. So if I cannot comment insightfully on Australian affairs, who could?

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31 July, 2019

There was no "welcome to country" at this weekend's WA Liberal conference, with the leader saying it's not meaningful to 'tick a box' to be politically correct

Just because Aborigines once lived in a place, why does it mean that we have to keep mentioning it?  It achieves nothing.  It is just Leftist virtue signalling that costs them nothing

It is also at much conflict with other claims of the Left, particularly when the speech concerned is some addled rave from an Aborigine, which it often is.  The Left like to claim that there was a great struggle of Aborigines against white settlement -- while in fact Aborigines mostly just faded away in the face of white encroachment.

So what we now see is a colonialist's fancy -- pretending that blacks "welcomed" whites to their land.  However you look at it, it is a gross distortion of the truth.  It in fact demeans Aborigines.  It makes them puppets for whites


West Australian opposition leader Liza Harvey has trotted out a "tired, lazy argument" in defending her party not starting its annual state conference with a welcome to country, Aboriginal Affairs Minister Ben Wyatt says.

Asked if it was a good look for the WA Liberal gathering on Saturday to omit the Indigenous ceremony, Ms Harvey replied: "It is what it is".

"I think the worst thing you can do is for the sake of political correctness, engage in welcome to countries that aren't meaningful," Ms Harvey told reporters on Sunday.

"Where it's appropriate, there are welcome to countries, for example the City of Stirling at their citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day," Ms Harvey said.

"It's fantastic - I'm a big fan of that but I don't think we should do these things just because you've got to tick a box.

"It needs to be meaningful and respectful."

Mr Wyatt, whose relative Ken Wyatt is pushing for constitutional recognition, was unimpressed. "A welcome is about a modern, inclusive, respectful society," he tweeted.

"Even Colin Barnett understood that, which is why the parliament amended the WA constitution to recognise Aboriginal traditional ownership."

SOURCE  






Central Australian date farmers determined to fight cheap imports as industry grows for sugar substitutes

This is the old, old story of Australian agriculture: We can grow huge quantities of almost everything -- but can we do it at a competitive price?  Mostly the answer is No

Spread out across the edge of the Simpson Desert is a date palm plantation, trees swaying in the breeze.

The Desert Fruit Farm near Alice Springs is the only commercial date operation in the Northern Territory, and one of only a handful in Australia.

The trees are a legacy of Afghan cameleers who arrived in the middle of the 1800s — the 'pilots of the desert' effectively helped set up Central Australia's vast interior, and to keep homesickness at bay brought a little bit of home with them, in the form of palm trees.

"Dates [were] first grown in the Hermannsburg Indigenous community, with the mission they had to be self-sufficient in their food," said Ben Wall, the manager of the Desert Fruit Farm.  "[They] grew dates by the Finke River, the oldest river in the world, and the first commercial farm was set up in the 1950s."

Mr Wall said it was a thoroughly modern trend that has made this date palm a desert gold mine; as more people seek out sugar-free alternatives to get their sweet fix, dates are in high demand.

The farm has about 10 varieties of date.

"Often a lot of people want them for processing dates like energy bars and doing things with hemp, so these are good because they are kind of dry," he said.

The cooperative has been running since 2014 on a farm established by the previous owner in the 1990s. Mr Wall manages the farm on behalf of investors, and is passionate about sustainable agriculture, particularly in Australia's arid zone.

Across 6 hectares, there are 700 mature female date trees, with about 20 male trees to pollinate them, he said.

But fickle in its fertility, date trees need to be hand-pollinated, with pollen from a male tree extracted and cut with powder to help transport it.

The farmers essentially have to do the job a bee would do with conventional plants.

"It generally takes about five years [to attain] first fruit, but then you don't want to farm until about eight to 10 years," Mr Wall said.     "Dates are like humans, they live to be the same age — 80 to 100 years — and are most productive when teenage to 30 years old.

["They're] fertile, yes, and then a gradual decline, very elegant decline just like us."

Harvesting is also onerous, as the dates have to be picked by hand one at a time.

This year the farm was up 300 per cent on the previous year's yield, with 2 tonnes sent to the Middle East and the rest sold domestically.

"There's a huge market for them, and we get calls all the time from the Middle East because we are in the southern hemisphere," Mr Wall said.

    "There are 2 billion Muslim people [for whom] dates are an important part of the culture, [so] we can sell anything we can grow, really."

Dates are grown in 40 different countries across 800,000 hectares, and Central Australia's arid zone is the perfect landscape and climate for growing them.

But despite that, the industry remains extremely small, with only a handful of operators across the country.

The Arid Zone Research Institute (AZRI) is working to change that, and holds the largest collection of date varieties in the southern hemisphere.

Its research will help inform farmers about the best varieties to grow to suit the climate and conditions, and will also offer pollination advice.

Stuart Smith from AZRI sees the Australian industry expanding in future years, particularly in the desert.     "Because of our isolation and dry atmosphere, we can produce a lot of crops without disease," he said.

"If you have adequate water well-allocated, and sustainably-allocated groundwater systems, which we have here in Central Australia, I think the arid zone is a good place for agriculture."

Further south, farmers are also having success.

Dave Reilly has 3,000 date palms on his family property Gurra Downs in the Riverland District in South Australia, where they have been growing dates for 20 years.

He's a big supporter of helping other growers get a foothold in the market, but there is competition he doesn't welcome from cheap imports.

Biosecurity Australia is currently considering allowing fresh dates to be imported from Africa and the Middle East, which has him and other growers worried.

"That will totally change dynamics," Mr Reilly said. "For example, we pay our staff $25 an hour, and we'll be competing with countries that pay a $USD1 an hour, so it's going to be very difficult to compete.

"Unfortunately that's what happens with free trade agreements; it doesn't benefit everyone, and our industry being relatively labour-intensive may well get beaten up by cheap imports."

Mr Reilly is hopeful that discerning consumers will continue to seek out locally-grown dates.

"Australian relies almost entirely on imported dates so the demand is there, there's curiosity surrounding the Australian-grown fruit, so we are benefiting a bit over the last 10 years, selling that into the area," Mr Reilly said.

"Dates are now being recognised for their health benefits … so we are getting a lot of interest from health food people.

    "Dates are sweet but also have a lot of nutrition so from a health food perspective dates are a wonderful substitute to sugar."

This ancient fruit could also be grown on Indigenous-run plantations, Mr Wall said. "There is a lot of potential to grow the industry, there are a few growers around Australia now just finding their feet, [so there is] potential for dates to be growing around each Indigenous community," he said.

"You can use low-quality water, salty water to grow food, and they create a shaded ecosystem to grow other food underneath it, so we are really hopeful the industry can grow from this little farm here."

SOURCE  






Household income plunging and poverty rising: How Australians were BETTER off during the global financial crisis - and experts say immigration is to blame

Australian households are earning less than they did during the global financial crisis a decade ago.

A survey of 17,500 people confirmed stagnant wages are even worse than first thought, with pay packets falling as immigration has surged.

Median household incomes, after tax, are now $542 less than they were during the GFC.

They have fallen from $80,637 in 2009 to $80,095 eight years later, new data from the Melbourne Institute's annual Household, Income and Labour Dynamics Australia (HILDA) study for 2019 showed.

Income growth has been patchy during the past decade, falling in the two years after the GFC, rising in 2012 and mainly stagnating after that.

During that time, Australia's population has surged from 21.2million in 2009 to 24million in 2017, before rising above the 25million milestone in August 2018.

The Grattan Institute think tank's chief executive John Daley has told economists with the Reserve Bank of Australia that low-skilled migrants were driving down wages.

'Many believe that Australian migration is highly skilled and has nothing to do with the underpayment of minimum wages,' he said in his April presentation, which was made public on Monday.

'That might have been true in the past, but it's less true now.'

Professor Daley said 59 per cent of temporary visa holders were in low-skilled jobs.

For student and working holiday visa holders, that number in low-skilled jobs rises to 75 per cent.

With one in five Australian workers on the minimum wage, Professor Daley said 'low-skilled' employment at or below the minimum wage was 'big enough to matter'.

Australia is home to one million temporary migrants, with 450,000 of them being on student visas with another 150,000 on working holiday visas. Then there are 250,000 temporary migrants in the 'other' visa category.

If all migrants worked, they would comprise four per cent of Australia's 13million workers.

When household incomes were adjusted for needs, the HILDA research found salary levels over five years had gone backwards in Adelaide, Perth and regional New South Wales but had risen in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

Poverty levels, defined as income that is half of the median, have also risen in recent years.

Financial hardship levels fell from 12.4 per cent to 9.6 per cent between 2007 and 2016 but rose again in 2017, to reach 10.4 per cent.

SOURCE  





One in five solar units ‘defective’

More than one in five rooftop solar installations on Australian homes were found to be substandard in 2018 amid a boom in the renewable energy source driven by cheaper costs and government rebates.

More than 20 per cent or 748 of the 3678 solar units inspected last year were found to be substandard, meaning defects were found such as incorrect wiring that could lead to “premature” equipment failure, Clean Energy Regulator data shows.

The government’s renewables regulator has been conducting random inspections of rooftop solar units across the nation since 2011, with the average number of substandard systems recorded at 17.7 per cent as of July 2018. Last year’s figure of 20.3 per cent marked a jump and was also a slight increase on the 19.8 per cent of systems labelled substandard in 2017.

The number of unsafe systems, defined as a possible safety hazard, also grew slightly with 80 out of 3678 solar units receiving the rating, equating to a rate of 2.2 per cent compared with 1.9 per cent in 2017. Common issues included water found in electrical components and products subject to recalls.

The growth of solar continues to accelerate in Australia with 2.15 million households now owning rooftop systems spurred by the falling cost of kit and subsidies at federal and state level.

The technology’s rampant growth is helping to reset the generation mix of the nation’s power grid while the growth of rooftop solar contributed to prices hitting zero across the entire national electricity market last Sunday, underlining new-found volatility for electricity generators in the market.

Growth in solar will continue over the next decade even as subsidies are retired, the regulator said.

“We continue to see growth in rooftop photovoltaic for households and businesses, even as the level of the support from subsidies under the Small-Scale Renewable Energy Scheme gradually decreases between now and when the scheme ends in 2030,” Clean Energy Regulator chairman David Parker said.

The number of accredited installers working in Australia and New Zealand surged by more than 1000 to 5922 by the end of 2018 with the Clean Energy Council taking action against 590 installers or roughly 10 per cent of the entire workforce, the report found.

New guidelines to improve safety and quality effective July 1 will cut the number of jobs an installer can sign off on to two from three while ongoing work with product manufacturers and safety regulators is being conducted to improve safety concerns.

In Victoria, the Andrews government’s solar subsidy was plunged into disarray this week with the staggered nature of the $2225 subsidy leading to a boom and bust cycle and forcing some businesses to the brink.

The $1.3 billion Solar Homes program — launched last year in the lead-up to the election — was designed to help 770,000 households invest in solar while creating 5500 new jobs and slashing carbon emissions.

However, the Smart Energy Council, which organised a mass protest on Thursday over the rollout of the scheme, yesterday urged those affected to meet with their local MPs to try and reset the system.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






30 July, 2019

Once they got a degree, disadvantaged and advantaged Australian students did roughy equally as well -- after a slow start

The report below uses what must be the latest euphemism for "disadvantaged"  -- "Equity".  So if you start out unequal, you are an "equity" person! The logic quite escapes me despite my many years of dealing with political correctness.  But you need to know that abuse of language to understand the report below.

They find that most people from an unpromising background (Aborigines and the disabled excepted) do roughly as well in jobs and income after they have graduated.  But that is only true if you look at the groups around seven years after graduation.  The "equity" students do catch up to the others but not initially.

The authors appear to think that the roughly equal long term outcomes for advantaged and disadvantaged students show that a university education is effective in overcoming inital disadvantages that people suffer. 

But it doesn't.  It simply shows that the selection criteria used to govern entry to university do a good job. You get into university on ability, regardless of your "equity" status.  Putting it another way, the "equity" students who get into university are a specially selected subset of the "equity" population, so how well they do does not reflect the prospects  "equity" people in general


Beyond graduation: long-term socioeconomic outcomes amongst equity students

Wojtek Tomaszewski et al.

Executive Summary

This report aimed to address significant gaps in scientific knowledge about the trajectories of post-graduation outcomes of students from equity groups by examining the following research questions:

Do equity graduates reap the benefits of university education to the same extent as non-equity graduates over the short and long run?

What are the differences in outcomes between graduates from different equity groups?

What are the specific outcome domains (e.g. labour market, social capital, wellbeing) where equity group graduates perform particularly well or particularly poorly?

To answer these research questions, the study utilised robust statistical methodologies to analyse high-quality, nationally representative longitudinal data from the ABS Census of Population and Housing (the Census) and the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. Both sets of analyses covered five population-based equity groups:

* low socioeconomic status (low SES)
* non-English-speaking background (NESB)
* residents in regional/remote areas
* Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (Indigenous)
* students with disability.

Analysis of the Census data focused on the labour market outcomes and provided robust evidence over a short to medium time period. The Census analyses were complemented by innovative analysis of the HILDA Survey, which enabled us to document long-term trajectories across a broader set of socioeconomic outcomes (for example, health, subjective wellbeing and social capital) that go beyond the standard labour market indicators investigated by previous studies in this area.

The analysis of the longitudinal Census data suggested that there exist relatively small but significant differences between graduates from some of the equity groups and their non-equity counterparts in relation to certain labour market outcomes.

Key findings from these analyses included:

a lower likelihood of low SES and NESB graduates to be in employment, to be employed in a managerial or professional occupation, and to have a high personal income if in full-time employment

a lower likelihood of graduates with disability to be employed.
These findings are consistent with the previous evidence from the limited body of other Australian studies in this area, while arguably offering more robust evidence being based on a high-quality and authoritative data source. Furthermore, while the Census analyses have a relatively short time horizon, covering up to five years post-graduation, this analysis went considerably beyond the four- to six-month after graduation horizon of the Graduate Outcomes Survey (GOS), which has been typically used to report employment outcomes for university graduates in Australia.

The HILDA analyses further extended the time horizon covered, capturing outcomes up to 15 years post-graduation. They also focused on a different set of outcomes, covering health and wellbeing indicators, as well as a set of subjective measures related to employment and financial circumstances. This makes it the first study in Australia to investigate such outcomes in relation to post-university outcomes of equity graduates.

Overall, the HILDA analyses suggested that for most of the outcomes investigated in this report, the trajectories of equity and non-equity graduates moved in similar directions, and at a comparable pace, after the attainment of undergraduate university qualifications. This resulted in lack of differences or a convergence in outcomes over a longer time horizon. However, while rarely statistically significant, there appeared to be some evidence that equity graduates generally reported inferior outcomes compared with non-equity graduates, at least in the first few years after graduation. This pattern appeared to be most pronounced for indicators related to subjective assessment of financial prosperity and job security but also social support.

Although the differences between equity and non-equity graduates were often not statistically significant, or converged over time, there were two notable exceptions to this pattern: students of an Indigenous background, and students with disability, both of which reported significantly inferior outcomes compared with their non-equity counterparts, particularly in terms of physical and mental health, and subjective wellbeing as captured by life satisfaction. While based on small samples, and arguably reflecting a broader underlying disadvantage for these two equity groups, these findings highlight that this kind of disadvantage is not easily alleviated through the completion of a university degree alone, but also requires a concerted policy effort within and beyond the higher education sector. For the other equity groups, the trajectories of equity and non-equity graduates appeared to converge over a longer-run so that any initial differences disappear after seven to eight years post-graduation. However, arguably more could be done to prevent this seven- or eight-year-long catch up and give an equal start to all university graduates, regardless of their background.

SOURCE  






How good is ScoMo? Popularity for the Coalition SURGES as PM enjoys post-election boost following tax cuts and help for drought-stricken farmers

Scott Morrison is squaring for a fight against union thugs as the Government's popularity surges ahead following the federal election.

The coalition's primary vote has increased 2.6 per cent since its May victory to 44 per cent, according to the post-election Newspoll published by The Australian.

Mr Morrison has also seen the best results for a prime minister since 2016, with approval ratings shooting beyond 50 per cent for the first time in four years.

The boost in popularity comes as the Government delivers on its tax-cut promise, which saw millions of Australians receive up to $1,080 in relief when they lodged their tax returns this year.

Mr Morrison's continued support for drought-stricken farmers has also been tipped as a key factor in the surge.

The Government now leads Labor 53 per cent to 47 per cent on a two-party preferred vote.

And with four sitting days left until the long winter break, the prime minister wants to pass laws making it easier to kick rogue officials out of the union movement.

Mr Morrison also wants more power to de-register misbehaving unions and put checks on union mergers.

He has seized on John Setka's refusal to step down from the Victorian construction union as apparent proof the crackdown is needed.

This may be enough to clinch crucial Senate crossbench support for his union-busting legislation but Labor claims the industrial relations laws expose the prime minister's deep-seated 'hatred' for unions in general.

The opposition will this week try to launch an inquiry into meetings between Energy Minister Angus Taylor and environmental officials about endangered grasslands.

Labor is pursuing the cabinet minister over his interest in a family company linked to an investigation into alleged illegal land clearing.

But Mr Taylor says his interests have been widely declared and has accused the opposition of waging a 'grubby smear campaign'.

The government has so far managed to fend off an investigation. But key crossbench senator Rex Patrick has flipped his position, and is now willing to back an inquiry.

Meanwhile, Mr Morrison heads Labor leader Anthony Albanese as preferred prime minister 48 per cent to 31 per cent, according to Newspoll, while Labor's primary vote remains largely unchanged at 33 per cent.

The findings come after many pollsters took a hiatus following the May election result which they failed to predict across the board.

SOURCE  





Labor smashes the Coalition over energy bills as figures show power prices have surged by 158% since 2015

They would have been even higher under Labor

Labor is going on the attack over climbing power prices, as it tries to maintain pressure on federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor.

Mr Taylor is already under fire over controversial meetings about endangered grasslands, and for suggesting the federal government had an open mind to nuclear power generation.

Now, Labor has seized on figures showing average wholesale power prices have increased by 158 per cent across the national energy market since 2015.

The opposition is renewing calls for Mr Taylor to exhume the National Energy Guarantee, which was supposed to save households $550 each year.

'Australian households and businesses have been punished by this divided government with rising power bills,' Labor's energy spokesman Mark Butler said on Monday.

'Angus Taylor's one KPI was to reduce power prices, but instead they have continued to go up, and up and up.'

Mr Taylor has steadfastly refused to revive the NEG, instead pursuing other initiatives aimed at reducing power costs.

Labor is also continuing to push for a formal inquiry into meetings between Mr Taylor and environmental officials about endangered grasslands.

The opposition is pursuing the cabinet minister over his interest in a family company, Jam Land Pty Ltd, linked to an investigation into alleged illegal land clearing.

Its pursuit centres on 2017 meetings with environment department officials and the office of then-environment minister Josh Frydenberg to discuss the grasslands' listing as endangered.

The meetings were held while investigations were under way into the alleged poisoning of 30 hectares that contained the grassland on a NSW property Jam Land Pty Ltd owned.

Labor is concerned is the minister didn't properly disclose his interest in the company, and wants to know whether he sought to influence the endangered status of the species.

SOURCE  






Bangladesh wants Australia's coal for new power stations

Bangladesh is urging Australia to take advantage of an "enormous opportunity" to export coal and liquefied natural gas to the developing country, which is experiencing surging demand for the fossil fuels.

The country of about 165 million people has a slew of coal-fired power stations coming online over the next five years and will be importing about 45 million tonnes of coal by 2025, worth a predicted $4 billion to $5 billion annually.

"There is enormous opportunity for export of Australian coal and LNG to Bangladesh given Bangladesh's sustained energy demand," the Bangladesh high commissioner to Australia, Sufiur Rahman, said on Monday. "If these are added to the traditional traded items, Bangladesh could emerge as a major trading partner of Australia soon."

Mr Rahman called for a greater policy focus from the Australian government on the export opportunity and stronger private sector relationships to facilitate the trade.

According to figures provided by the Bangladeshi high commission, about 40 million tonnes of the country's predicted demand in 2025 will be for thermal coal while 5 million will be coking coal, used in steel production.

Bangladesh currently sources the bulk of its coal from Indonesia, South Africa and India but Australia is seen as a supplier of a high-quality, efficient product.

The Bangladeshi market could present a valuable opportunity for the coal industry as exports to China falter. The Chinese government has been subjecting Australian coal to tighter import restrictions, with some analysts fearing political tensions between Beijing and Canberra are to blame.

Australia's coal exports were worth almost $70 billion in 2018-19, with Japan, China and South Korea the major destinations.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here










29 July 2019

Author John Marsden criticised over bullying comments

Author John Marsden is facing criticism for comments he’s made about bullying in the schools.

Marsden, best know as the author of the ‘Tomorrow’ book series, has been a teacher for several decades and runs two schools north of Melbourne.

The author has defended comments he made saying that bullying was just “feedback” from other children. Marsden said some “pure unadulterated bullying” does occur, most is prompted by what he called the “unlikeable behaviours” of the child who is being bullied.

Marsden says those experiencing bulling should first look at their own behaviours and see if they themselves are to blame. The educators advice to children is to “look at your own likeable and unlikeable behaviours and try to reduce the list of unlikeable behaviours and unlikeable values and unlikeable attitudes and over time that will probably have a significant effect”.

The author made the comments as he was promoting a new book he has written he Art of Growing Up which argues that the education system is trying to cover too many issues.

His comments have been condemned by bullying experts. Naomi Priest, an Australian National University Associate Professor, who researches the impact of racism and bullying on young people told the Sydney Morning Herald that Marsden’s take on bullying was “flawed”. “It is a very limited and flawed understanding of bullying to characterise it as just about an individual’s character traits that are unappealing,” Priest said.

Marsden dismissed research suggesting that children from non-anglo backgrounds were more likely to experience racism saying in his experience conflict occurred because children from some subcultures were not ‘westernised’ enough. The author drew upon his time teaching at Geelong Grammar in the 1980s.

“At Geelong Grammar they had quite a high percentage of students enrolling from Asian countries and their acceptance depended very much upon how Westernised they were,” Marsden said of his time at the school. “If they were able to speak English fluently and wear the clothes that Anglo kids wore and listened to the same kind of music, then they were fully accepted.

“There was absolutely no racism involved,” Marsden added. “But if they weren’t yet at that stage then there was a gulf between them… It didn’t necessarily result in bullying, although sometimes it did, but more often it was sort of a gap between the two subcultures.” Marsden denied his views were racist.

SOURCE  






Labor Party sings to the union tune

If you were in any doubt the Labor Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the trade unions, the events of the past parliamentary week would have dispelled your doubts.

ACTU president Michele O’Neil was camped out in Parliament House, available for continuous media commentary and effectively issuing instructions to obedient Labor parliamentarians.

Note that O’Neil is a career unionist who ran the completely inconsequential Textiles, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia, which is now part of the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union.

What is infuriating O’Neil and other union leaders is the Ensuring Integrity and Proper Use of Worker Benefits bills, which the government has introduced to the house. They are routinely ­described by parts of the media as “union busting”. Actually, these bills contain a series of sensible amendments that should become law as soon as possible.

Needless to say, Labor parliamentarians in general, and opposition industrial relations spokesman Tony Burke in particular, are toeing the union line by voicing their complete opposition to the bills.

When the name of John Setka of the CFMEU was mentioned this week, Burke batted the issue away by stating the new law would be prospective and so wouldn’t affect him. Mind you, this assumes that Setka decides to abide by the law in the future.

Burke then used the silly example of nurses undertaking unprotected industrial action over patient-staff ratios as the basis for the possible deregistration of the nurses union. Had he bothered to read the legislation, he would have learned the example he gave would not constitute the basis for deregistration by the Federal Court.

By way of background, both bills are amendments to the Fair Work Act. They can be traced back to the Heydon Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption’s final report, which was issued in 2015.

Consider first the Ensuring Integrity Bill. It introduces a public interest test for amalgamations of registered organisations. Had this been in place before the proposed merger of the CFMEU, the Maritime Union of Australia and the TCFUA, it is unlikely the merger would have been approved.

The bill also provides for the Federal Court to prohibit officials from holding office in certain circumstances or if they are otherwise not a “fit and proper person”. The decisions are all subject to ­appeal. There are also some new criminal offences that will lead to the automatic disqualification of officials.

Industrial Relations Minister, Christian Porter said “registered organisations (trade unions and employer associations) are there to look after their members’ interests. When that objective is lost it is important that our courts have the powers they need to impose ­appropriate sanctions.”

The trade unions’ objections to the Ensuring Integrity Bill have come thick and fast, including the supposed abuse of human rights laws, the possible violation of international labour conventions and the purported uneven treatment of companies that breach the Corporations Act relative to the provisions contained in this bill.

The big picture here is the regulation of registered trade unions (and employer associations) is a matter of public policy interest ­because they need to be held ­accountable to their members. The reality is this accountability is currently generally very weak.

Elections for the positions of union officials are often uncontested — the incumbents typically make it very difficult for rival candidates. And few sanctions for inappropriate behaviour by officials exist in practice. Union members often have only two choices: stay with the union and put up with bad behaviour, or resign.

The law makes it nigh impossible for rival trade unions to set up because of the “conveniently belong to” rule.

What this means in practice is there is effectively no competition in the market for union membership that might otherwise induce more responsive and better standards of behaviour by union officials.

When it comes to the Proper Use of Workers Benefits Bill, there is also a very clear case for major reform to ensure the income from funds that are specifically established to meet redundancy, long-service leave and other worker benefits accrue to the members (the workers) and not the sponsoring bodies, most typically a trade union and employer association.

The issue of worker entitlement funds was covered in the Heydon royal commission where it was noted these funds are particularly common in the construction industry.

There are several funds, including the Building Employees Redundancy Trust in Queensland; Incolink, which ­operates several redundancy and sick leave funds for construction workers in Victoria and Tasmania; and the Protect scheme, which operates a redundancy fund for electricians in Victoria.

Protect has been in the news ­recently because the trustees ­decided to return virtually all the capital ($30 million) to the Electrical Trades Union and the National Electrical and Communications Association. The ETU received the lion’s share of the distribution.

The trustees claimed the threat of the Proper Use of Workers Benefits Bill becoming law was sufficient reason to distribute the capital, pointing out the ETU and NECA had guaranteed that benefits to workers would be met.

The reality of most worker entitlement funds is that employers are effectively forced to pay into them on a basis specified in enterprise agreements, but the workers are entitled to receive in ­return only the money that is contributed on their behalf. The earnings of the funds are distributed to the sponsoring bodies, typically a trade union and employer body.

There are many problems associated with these funds, including the one noted above, but also that they are not subject to any mandatory disclosure. There is no requirement to disclose the commissions and other payments made to the sponsoring bodies. Workers are not even always made aware of their entitlements. There have been instances where entitlements have been denied to non-unionists.

What the Proper Use of Workers Benefits legislation seeks to do is ensure these worker entitlement funds are registered and are subject to proper standards of governance and disclosure.

It also will become illegal for employers to be forced to contribute to particular funds.

It is completely understandable why trade unions (and some employer bodies) might oppose these new laws. Not only are there no ­effective breaks on standards of behaviour, there is also a great deal of money flowing under the table by virtue of the monopoly position of these worker entitlement funds.

Recall here that trade unions and employer bodies are both tax-exempt.

Labor may decide it’s preferable to side with workers rather than protected union officials and vote for these bills.

But given the flow of funds from unions to the party — measured in many millions of dollars donated by the CFMEU — I won’t be holding my breath.

SOURCE  








Climate change protester is fined $61,000 after attaching herself to a barrel filled with concrete, shutting down a railway for hours

A climate change activist has been handed down a whopping $61,000 fine after attaching herself to a 500 kilogram oil drum, obstructing railway services for hours.

Brisbane protester Alice Wicks, 26, blocked all coal trains heading to the Port of Brisbane for five hours during a protest in Wynnum West on April 19.

The drum was weighed down with concrete, and she was pictured squatting next to it, her hand appearing to be inside. 

A banner behind her read: 'STAND in the way of EXTINCTION'.

Ms Wicks's actions temporarily shut down the railway line, and  after she was released from the barrel, she was rushed to hospital suffering hypothermia. 

On Monday, the Wynnum Magistrates Court ordered Ms Wicks to pay $61,000 to Queensland Rail after she pleaded guilty to the charges of trespass on a railway, obstructing a railway and obstructing police.

She was placed on a good behaviour bond, but the court found Queensland Rail was the victim of her actions and she has been ordered to pay the massive fine in compensation, The Courier Mail reported.

The activist has been protesting for the past three years, and works in the environmental sector.  'I took this action because I have exhausted all other avenues for demanding action on the climate crisis,' Ms Wicks was quoted in Greenleft Weekly.

'The permafrost has melted 70 years ahead of scientist's predictions. We need to act now.' 'It's clear that the state is cracking down on anyone who tries to shed light on this corrupt system', Wicks said.

SOURCE  






Franking credits explained yet again

They are NOT free gifts.  They are a refund of overpaid tax

JUDITH SLOAN

I thought I had written my last column on franking credits and the role of cash refunds. Let’s face it, the topic was a serious busted flush for Labor, and if the party had any sense it would reject all proposals to tweak the system.

But last week dear old Dick Smith popped up to demonstrate his extreme naivety when it comes to financial matters and franking credits, in particular.

Here’s what he said: “I found I was getting this ridiculous money from the government. That’s wrong, I said, I’m wealthy. My accountant said ‘That’s how it works, that’s what you have to do.’ I can’t stop it. I think it’s outrageous for wealthy people to be getting money from the government.”

Actually, Dick, you can stop it. All you need to do is withdraw all the funds from your gigantic self-managed superannuation fund, invest them in your own name in non-franked assets and pay tax at the top marginal rate of 45 per cent plus the 2 per cent Medicare levy.

If that floats your boat, you should just get on and do it.

Unsurprisingly, the lefties in the media lapped up Smith’s ignorant comments with the takeout that Labor must not abandon its “principled” decision to abolish cash refunds for franking credits.

The fact Smith wasn’t even aware that he had been receiving substantial cash refunds since 2001 was surely an indication that he wasn’t a reliable authority on which to base a story.

Let me explain.

There are a very small number of legacy self-managed superannuation funds around that are generally the result of the trustees successfully selling a business. On the basis of the figures that Smith presented, his fund has at least $30 million. But, overall, only 0.7 per cent of these funds have more than $10m.

In other words, they are exceptional.

But here’s the key: there will never be these large superannuation funds in the future because of the restrictions placed on both concessional and non-concessional contributions.

Indeed, even high-income individuals will be hard-pressed to reach the $1.6m transfer balance cap that was implemented in 2017.

In other words, Smith’s story is ancient history. And note here that his all-knowing accountant will have had to split the superannuation fund into two because of the cap requirement and the vast bulk of the fund is being levied with a tax of 15 per cent.

But the lefties will still maintain that paying cash refunds for franking credits is unsustainable, costing about $6 billion a year and projected to rise to $8bn. Actually, these figures are meaningless unless they are embedded in the projected value of all franking credits that are eligible for refunds, cash or tax.

Moreover, the fact the value of franking credits is expected to grow is the good news. After all, franking credits are the result of taxpaying (actually tax-withholding) companies paying dividends after making profits.

There is still a deep misunderstanding about how dividend imputation actually works. Using figures derived by actuary Tony Dillon — the figures relate to 2014-15, which are the latest available — there were $47.5bn of franking credits attached to company dividends.

Of these, $23.5bn were eligible for franking credits refunds, either cash or as tax offsets. The remaining amount did not attract refunds because the shares were held by foreign owners or companies. Most of the refunds took the form of tax offsets ($17.6bn) and the rest were distributed as cash.

Why Labor didn’t think that it was preferable to crimp the benefits of those receiving these tax offsets rather than those receiving cash refunds is anyone’s guess. With few exceptions — and Smith is one of them — the former group is much better off than those receiving cash refunds.

And what’s overlooked in the slanted media coverage, almost half of the cash refunds are paid to individual shareholders outside superannuation funds.

Labor’s decision to significantly increase the tax-free income tax threshold to $18,200 meant that even more investors were eligible for cash refunds.

But, say the boosters of eliminating the cash refunds for franking credits, Australia is alone in having this arrangement.

As Adrian Blundell-Wignall, a former director of the OECD, has noted, this would be because Australia is one of only five countries that have dividend imputation.

Moreover, only New Zealand has tax-exempt drawdowns from superannuation (similar to Australia) but New Zealand has never had compulsory superannuation. In other words, New Zealanders can plan to ensure the tax credits are used.

The truth is that Labor would be out of its mind to contemplate another version of a policy that tinkered with cash refunds for franking credits.

Putting a limit on annual amounts would create an unworkable distortion, with people on middle-level incomes disadvantaged relative to those on higher incomes who can make use of the tax offsets.

And let’s not forget the scale of the figures we are dealing with. More than half of members of self-managed superannuation funds receive an annual income of less than $60,000 and the median fund size — the vast major­ity has two members — is just under $700,000.

Taking away even $1500 a year in cash refunds would have been significant for those affected.

But in many ways Labor’s policy proposal went beyond money. It was an attack on people’s good intentions to work hard, to save and to be independent from the government in retirement. They had played by the rules but, all of a sudden, the rules were going to changed.

They were told they had been receiving unjustified “gifts”. Mind you, the cash refunds were not deemed to be unjustified “gifts” for age pensioners.

Labor continued to delude itself through the election campaign that its policy was sound because 92 per cent of individual taxpayers were unaffected. Bear in mind, this figure is dubious and ignores the family members of those affected.

But incensing 8 per cent of voters is a very strange way to go about winning an election.

My advice to Labor is to give this a wide berth next time even if its mates in the media recommend otherwise. I am also looking forward to the press release on the rearrangement of Smith’s financial affairs so his payment of tax can be maximised.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





28 July 2019

Why I was once fired from a State government bureaucracy

It has just occurred to me that I have never written anything about the time I was sacked from the NSW Public Service.  It has never been a secret.  It just didn't seem important in my scale of values.  But maybe there are some small lessons to learn from it.  Though it was over 50 years ago now.

When I had completed my B.A. degree with honours in psychology from the University of Qld. at the end of 1967, I decided I needed a change of scene from Brisbane so I moved South to Sydney.  Being Mr Frugality, I had a comfortable level of savings, no debts and a sky blue VW beetle -- so the transition was an unproblematic one.

I did however want a job.  So I went along to the Army recruiting office.  From my time in the CMF in Brisbane I was a fully qualified Sergeant in the Psychology corps so thought I might get work there.  They grabbed me.  An extra qualified hand was very welcome.  So within days of arriving I  was back in the Army! 

I was not however interested in an army career so I looked around for an alternative.  So I took the selection test for the NSW public service.  Taking tests is one of the few things I am good at so I got an immediate welcome.  One of the tests I did was a test of computer aptitude.  Bill Bailey was the man in charge of that so he called me in for a chat. He revealed that I had gone off the scale for the test. I had got every single item right.  Bill wanted to see who this freak was!  The reason I did well, however, was not very freakish.  I was by that time already an experienced FORTRAN programmer.  When I told Bill that he was greatly relieved.  It meant that his test had given the right answer after all

I was assigned to the Dept. of Technical Education as a graduate clerk.  Their graduate clerk program was however a typical bureaucratic bungle.  The only work they had for me was filing, something I had done years ago as a junior clerk in the Queensland Dept. of Public Works.  I was quite miffed at being given such dumb work so I refused to do it.  And it was all downhill from there.

Eventually I was transferred to Head office where they gave me some slightly more interesting work. I did what was asked but there was not much of it so I had a lot of spare time on my hands.  I was at the time enrolled with the M.A. program at the University of Sydney so I mostly used the spare time on academic work.  The managers apparently felt unable to do anything about that.

But one morning, just after I had handed in my Master's thesis at U Syd towards the end of the year, I unintentionally slept in and arrived at work late.  That was it!  They had me. Lateness was something they could act on.  So I was promptly fired that day.  There would have been access to an appeal but I didn't bother. I knew I was going on to other things next year.

So I went and saw Harry Beanham, whom I had worked for at one time in Brisbane.  Harry had been impressed with my work in Brisbane.  I sold lots of diehead chasers for him, if anybody knows what they are. Few do. Anyway Harry promptly put me to work preparing his stock for sale.  So in the space of less than a year I had got 3 jobs, none of which were advertised!

Lessons:  Don't be late in a bureaucracy and finding a job is easy if you have usable skills and qualifications -- JR.






Complaint lodged against judge who made 'offensive', 'discriminatory' comments to Aboriginal defendants

He was simply describing Aboriginal reality

A previously-reprimanded Northern Territory judge's comments to Indigenous defendants were "disparaging, discriminatory and offensive, insulting and humiliating to Indigenous Australians based solely on their race", the president of the Law Council of Australia has said.

Comments made by Alice Springs Judge Greg Borchers will now be the subject of a formal complaint.

Court transcripts from the past year show Judge Borchers — who was sanctioned in 2017 for "harsh" and "gratuitous" commentary and "inappropriate judicial conduct" — accusing one Aboriginal woman, who appeared before him after breaching a court order, of failing her children.

"Yesterday probably was pension day, so you got your money from the Government, abandoned your kids in that great Indigenous fashion of abrogating your parental responsibility to another member of your family, and went off and got drunk," the judge told her. "Got the money from the Government, straight down, buy grog, pour it down your throat."

He told another defendant's lawyer that "anthropologists" might one day study "what's called Indigenous laissez-faire parenting" to shed light on "why it is that people abandon their children on such a regular basis".

In another transcript from March, Judge Borchers told an Indigenous defendant who had "dragged" his partner "though the house by her hair" that he was "just like a primitive person".

The comments appeared in the media last week.

"There is no doubt that these comments are racist," said Arthur Moses SC, president of the Law Council of Australia. "These comments are racist because they are disparaging, discriminatory and offensive, insulting and humiliating to Indigenous Australians based solely on their race.

"Those type of comments are not appropriate for anybody to make, let alone a judicial officer within a courtroom. "Engaging in racist stereotypes or making racist remarks is not upholding the rule of law on behalf of the community, and no individual worthy of the name of a judge ought be making such remarks."

It is not the first time Judge Borchers's courtroom comments have caused controversy. Two years ago, an official complaint was lodged against him after he told a 13-year-old boy that he was "taking advantage" of his mother's murder.

The judge told that investigation into his conduct there was "no excuse" for some of his remarks, but spoke of the "unremitting process" of churning through matters involving violence and the abuse of children, with "no days off" and "no counselling".

He was subsequently sidelined from youth matters in Alice Springs.

Now, a week after the latest comments have been made public, another official complaint about the judge is being lodged by the NT Criminal Lawyers Association.

SOURCE  






Australian troops training Filipino forces to combat ISIS threat

Australian troops deployed to the Philippines say the threat of ISIS is now on Australia’s doorstep, as the terror group moves closer to home.

More than 100 Australian troops from the army, air force and navy are currently based in the southern Philippines, training local forces in combat techniques they learnt on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Their mission - known officially as Operation Augury - is not only to equip Filipino forces with new battle techniques, but to also help safeguard Australia’s own regional security.

“We just need to be ready and make sure we can counter it,” Group Captain John Young tells 60 Minutes reporter Liam Bartlett. “It may not be in Australia, but this part of the world is in our backyard… they’re our neighbours.”

Highly-skilled at fighting in the dense jungle, the Philippines military were caught off guard when ISIS forced them to the streets of the major urban city of Marawi.

ISIS seized Marawi City in the southern Philippines in May 2017 and claimed it as their East-Asia headquarters.

Marawi was once home to more than 200,000 people. Now, it is a ghost town. Homes and shopfronts have been bombed out, with all the cities infrastructure in ruins.

Though the siege ended in November 2017, the streets are still too dangerous for locals to return home with hundreds of unexploded bombs hidden in the rubble.

The Marawi city siege was the second time in five years that Islamic extremism brought mass bloodshed to the southern Philippines.

But the destruction and devastation is a reminder that ISIS is not a far-off threat for Australia - Marawi city is just three-hours flight time from Darwin.

60 Minutes reporter Liam Bartlett confronts the threat of the Islamic State head-on, in an astonishing interview with radicalised Islamic State recruits.

Initially lured to extremism by the promise of a wage and better life, the young ISIS recruits sitting across from the 60 Minutes cameras now believe the sickening ideology of those who recruited them.

In a shocking interview, 24-year-old Filipino ‘Sadam’ says he joined ISIS three years ago – and tells 60 Minutes he is ready to fight for Islamic State – both at home in the Philippines or across international waters. “We’re just doing what God told us to do,” Sadam says.

SOURCE  







The balls now in feminists’ court

If a penis is female, does it enjoy human rights? A Canadian trans woman, Jessica Yaniv, who retains intact her boy bits, believes she’s entitled to a Brazilian wax. Rejected by 16 beauticians in Vancouver, including migrant women working from home with children, Yaniv trotted off to a human rights tribunal. Some of the beauticians paid money to make her go away, some still face the prospect of being branded hateful transphobes and ordered to pay fines.

Ignored by most mainstream media, this has Twitter transfixed as the #WaxHerBalls case. British comedian Ricky Gervais tweeted: “It’s a sad state of affairs when a lady can’t have her hairy balls waxed.” All of which gives the impression it’s nothing more than the latest grotesquery of social media. But Gervais has detected a fundamental question of principle that Victoria’s politicians — and Anglophone elites generally — seem mostly oblivious to.

An Andrews government bill allows a self-declared trans man or woman to go back in time and alter the sex on their birth certificates, even if they’ve had no surgery, no treatment, no change at all, apart from a stated wish to make their debut with a new pronoun. The bill is back before parliament next month.

“It’s seen as the next civil rights issue — oh, now we have gay marriage, on to the next thing,” says Holly Lawford-Smith, a young University of Melbourne philosopher and lesbian writing a book on radical feminism.

But there are stirrings of civil war in what’s called the LGBTI community, and angry sniping over who qualifies for an entry pass to women’s sport, toilets, dorms, prisons and, yes, the waxing studio. For the Yaniv case is seen not as an aberration but a logical extension of pick-your-own-gender into the anti-discrimination apparatus. If blokes can become official sheilas in the blink of an eye, what happens to the rights, protections and political culture inspired by feminists and gay activism?

In Australian sport, where hormone controls can complicate things, an awkward debate has begun but it is more advanced in Britain. Brits have a well-organised lobby, Fair Play For Women, and this week The Guardian surprised readers with an even-handed piece by sport blogger Sean Ingle, who declared: “No longer can men tell women, such as Martina Navratilova, that when they stick up for a separate women’s sport category that they are ignorant or prejudiced.”

It’s a question not only of competition but also trust and vulnerability. Troubled by the Yaniv case, National Review writer David French has warned that a proposed Democratic change to US law might expose schoolgirls to so-called “female penises” in toilets and locker rooms. As well, he said, “the very act of objecting to the sight (of a penis) could itself be considered to create a hostile environment for the trans girl”.

Meanwhile, sex is turning philosophy into fight club. This month Australia’s thinkers had their annual talkfest at Wollongong University. Lawford-Smith was booked to argue the case for excluding “all male people, regardless of gender identity” from female-only or lesbian-only spaces. Activist academics tried to “deplatform” her and student agitators girded their loins for a demo under the banner “F..k off Holly Lawford-Smith”. Their Facebook post said she was “not welcome to spew her disgusting discriminatory and exclusionary hate speech at our university”. They ignored her nuanced arguments, dismissing her as a TERF or “trans-exclusionary radical feminist”.

The Australasian Association of Philosophy, the conference organiser, issued a statement acknowledging “serious concerns” about Lawford-Smith’s presentation. There followed a sprinkling of diversity-speak platitudes. No stated concern about the abuse and threats directed at Lawford-Smith, no defence of her academic freedom.

She felt “quite intimidated” going in to her talk, but the university had beefed up security and the protest was muted. Even so, this is not how philosophy is supposed to be. “It’s our bread-and-butter to really dig down into the details of things and have these really difficult conversations in a calm, dispassionate way,” Lawford-Smith says.

Like other “gender critical” feminists, she has been banished from Twitter. It’s supposedly “hateful conduct” to use pronouns in a way that tracks sex rather than gender identity. But this “progressive” platform allows #punchaterf as a trending hashtag, and trans activists can attack a TERF as a “c..t” or “bigoted piece of shit” with impunity. Anti-TERF tactics include campaigns to dislodge people from their jobs, smearing them as fascists, threatening harm to their families and, in one case, pissing on an academic’s office door. Nobody denies there are genuine cases of distress among trans people, and some gender-critical feminists may seem high-handed.

One Oxford don took to Twitter with the hashtag #transawaythegay, conjuring up a story that “Emmett wasn’t allowed to be a lesbian and had to wear skirts and makeup. But when he realised he was supposed to be a boy and started taking testosterone, his church accepted him. All better now!”

In March, activists successfully pressured 3:AM Magazine, a fearless online journal of radical philosophy, to pull an interview with Lawford-Smith because it touch­ed on the TERF war. Her remarks seem temperate: “My stance is that a person can’t change sex (not even with sex reassignment surgery), that ‘gender identity’ has no bearing on sex, and that with very few exceptions gender identity should have no bearing on a person’s sex-based rights.”

Things have got so unpleasant that 12 prominent philosophers from around the world, including Australia’s Peter Singer and Melbourne-based Cordelia Fine, felt moved this week to publish an open letter deploring the attempt to silence gender identity sceptics with “frequently cruel and abusive rhetoric”. The letter says: “Policymakers and citizens are currently confronting such metaphysical questions about sex and gender as What is a man? What is a lesbian? What makes someone female? Society at large is deliberating over the resolution of conflicting interests in contexts as varied as competitive sport, changing rooms, workplaces and prisons. These discussions are of great importance.”

This month Lawford-Smith interrupted the chorus of bland approval for Victoria’s law, which magically transforms the enduring truth of birth sex into the changeable wish of gender identity. In a Melbourne newspaper she wrote: “Despite the fact that this bill changes what it means to be a person of a particular sex in law, and despite the fact that sex is a protected attribute in both the Victorian Equal Opportunity Act and the Australian Sex Discrimination Act, the group that faces the most sex discrimination — namely female people — have not been consulted about the bill, and the implications of the bill on their legal protections, if any, have not been adequately acknowledged or explored.”

Might horrified fascination with Canada’s #WaxHerBalls case rouse our MPs to ask some hard questions? This week Vancouver-based writer Meghan Murphy (banned from Twitter) issued an “I told you so”. “(The Yaniv case) is precisely what feminists tried to warn politicians, the media, activists and the public would happen should we accept the notion that it is possible for men to ‘identify’ as female. How can we possibly protect women’s boundaries, spaces and rights if men can be women, regardless of their male biology? No woman should be bullied into touching a man’s penis against her will.”

Surprising things keep happening. Early this year at a free-market think tank in Washington, DC, radical feminists and political conservatives made common cause in a public debate on the trans conundrum. “Together they argued that sex was fundamentally biological and not socially constructed, and that there is a difference between women and trans women that needs to be respected,” reports gay conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan. Some may feel schadenfreude recalling the feminist track record of denouncing mainstream research on sex differences as a patriarchal plot. And the anti-trans argument built on biology is a delicate one for gay and lesbian identity.

The whole agonising affair is a reminder that abstruse ideas on campus can turn the world on its head. Without postmodernism and its reality-busting offshoots, who could ever have imagined a troublesome “female penis”?

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






26 July, 2019

Sydney University suspends aggressive protest organiser

Bettina Arndt

We have finally learnt that Maddy Ward, the key organiser of the Sydney University protest against me, has actually been given a one semester suspension from her studies next year for misconduct in relation to the protest. She has written about this for an online “progressive” journal, Overland.org, where she whines about left-wing students being targeted, having codes of conduct used against them by sinister “external figures and organisations”.

Back in June we discovered Ward had been charged with misconduct – she posted on Facebook that she was outraged that I had “weaponised” the bullying and harassment laws against her. Pretty funny, really, because it’s her tribe, the authoritarian left, which was responsible for persuading universities to regulate this type of behaviour.

So now it turns out she’s facing a real publishment, not just a slap on the wrist – mainly because she was subject to a previous suspended misconduct charge over her harassment of an anti-abortion group on campus, where she flashed her tits at the Christian protesters. Ward was also in trouble earlier this year for endorsing violence against Israeli soldiers in the form of a "martyred" female suicide bomber on the front page of the student magazine.

The Australian wrote about the decision today - https://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/arndt-student-protester-suspended/news-story/9ff49b49f46c7f180f9ca43b4da93a5f

The reporter, Rebecca Urban, noted that the University has previously declined to provide details of findings against individual students for privacy reasons, but Maddy Ward  told The Australian that she had been found guilty of breaching the student code of conduct by “unreasonably impeding access to a lecture theatre” and failing to treat members of the public with “respect, dignity, impartiality courtesy and sensitivity”.

The paper quotes Associate Professor Peter McCallum commenting on the decision: “Any findings made in this case are not in any way intended to discourage free speech or protest.”

Yet the fact that the University has imposed a suspension on Ward sends an important signal that expression of free speech does not include screaming students bullying and harassing audiences for campus events and preventing them from accessing the venue.

This serious action puts a lie to Vice Chancellor Michael Spence’s persistent claim that the protest was no big deal. If, as Spence has claimed many times, the fuss about the protest was simply a circus, why would his University derail the young activist’s studies for half a year?

Ms Ward said she would appeal against her suspension. “I know I’m controversial and have quite left-wing views, but there’s a real hypocrisy occurring,” she said. “I do worry about the impact on other students because the code of conduct is impeding on students’ freedom of speech in an invasive and punitive way.”








From protests to trigger warnings: the creeping threats to free speech at our universities

Leading American intellectual Jonathan Haidt says academic freedom at Australian universities is in a healthier state than in the United States but there are danger signs that warrant nationwide action.

Professor Haidt, a social psychologist based at New York University, has held meetings with Education Minister Dan Tehan and academics during a visit to Australia and found indications that free expression is in retreat on campuses, consistent with a global decline in the state of debate.

American intellectual Jonathan Haidt says Australian universities need to act to protect freedoms on campus.
American intellectual Jonathan Haidt says Australian universities need to act to protect freedoms on campus.CREDIT:ANDREW KELLY

American universities have been convulsed by arguments about free expression, with controversies surrounding the free speech of speakers on campus and the ability of academics and students to explore sensitive topics.

Professor Haidt, author of The Coddling of the American Mind, said his experiences in Australia led him to conclude "things are not as bad here but it's starting, so it's vital that your professors and administrators respond consistently to them" by putting safeguards in place.

There were some cases of politically "radical" students shutting down academics and pressure from other lecturers and university administrators.

"If everyone buckles and changes their language, then you will have what we have," he said.

He said protests against controversial speakers, including author Bettina Arndt, pointed to a problem.

"Everyone agrees that students have a right to protest but there is a clear, sharp line. The point at which any student interferes with the ability of another student to listen to another talk is a violation of core academic values," he said.

The violation should be treated as equal to plagiarism and punished accordingly, according to Professor Haidt.

He said rules and norms needed to be enshrined to protect pursuit of truth as a university's ultimate goal that must not be restricted.

Australia's universities are considering a model code to protect free speech and inquiry, proposed by High Court chief justice Robert French in a review commissioned by the Coalition government.

Professor Haidt backed the idea of a code but said the French model, while reasonable, contained "very large loopholes" that could still be deployed against controversial content. This included wording on a university's "duty to foster the wellbeing of staff and students".

Mr Tehan said his meeting with Professor Haidt was "thought-provoking" and the pair agreed it was important to promote a diversity of opinions in academia.

"One message I took away, is that Australia should look at what has happened at universities in the US and the UK and act now to prevent it happening here," Mr Tehan said.

As Australian institutions examine the strengthened protections, Professor Haidt said it was important for academic leaders to be "much more vocal from the moment students arrive on campus through to graduation, they must enforce those norms and punish people who violate those norms in a serious way".

He questioned the growing popularity of trigger warnings and safe spaces in academic environments.

He said there was no evidence that trigger warnings helped students with difficult content and a handful of studies suggested they had no positive effect.

"The way to get over a fear or phobia or PTSD is through repeated exposure to a stimulus in a physically safe environment and that's exactly what a classroom is," he said. "So I think there is no space on a university campus for content warnings."

He also said no classroom should ever be treated as a "safe space" because of the risk it would shut down candid discussion.

SOURCE  






Morrison is no Donald Trump or Boris Johnson

Where Trump was committed to upsetting the status quo, Morrison stood for stabilty against Labor's program of destruction

In its cover story on the crisis of conservatism The Economist excoriated right-wing leaders — with Donald Trump as demon-in-chief — and cast Scott Morrison as one of those reactionaries who exploit grievance and betray the true essence of conservative values.

Attacking leaders for their “repudiation” of conservatism, it branded them as “usurpers” who follow in Trump’s path and “are smashing one conservative tradition after another” in tactics designed “to stir up outrage and tribal loyalties”.

Morrison is traduced in the article. The magazine says conservatives should be pragmatic. It continues: “The new right is zealous, ideological and cavalier with the truth. Australia suffers droughts and reef-bleaching seas, but the right has just won an election there under a party whose leader addressed parliament holding a lump of coal like a holy relic.”

Indeed, Morrison is sandwiched in the article between Trump and Italy’s leader of the Northern League, Matteo Salvini, a nationalist and populist who warns about an Islamic caliphate engulfing Europe and who, the magazine reports, has encouraged the anti-vaccination movement in Italy.

Those familiar with the periodic bizarre views of The Economist about Australia may be unsurprised. What is missing in this report is the distinctive politics of each nation. The irony of Morrison’s inclusion as a wrecker of true conservatism is that far from being Trump’s political blood-brother, Morrison is the opposite.

His election success arose not because he followed Trump but because his conservatism, at nearly every point, defied or contrasted with Trump. Morrison will hardly advertise this before his Washington visit where Trump is rolling out the red carpet for him. Trump sees a connection between them, a useful but also a risky image for Morrison.

The President has compared Morrison’s “surprise” win with his own 2016 victory and the Brexit vote in Britain and, no doubt, Morrison’s visit will generate plenty of copy suggesting a Trump-Morrison concord of interests and shared conservative visions.

The real significance, however, of Morrison’s election in terms of global conservatism lies not in his populist duplication of Trump or European reactionaries or the Brexit vote but his adherence to a pragmatic conservatism far more geared to upholding traditions than destroying them. The Economist could not have been more wrong.

Trump, unlike Morrison, campaigned to dismantle the status quo, in his case the Washington establishment. He came as an outside agent to disrupt the system, repudiate internationalism and operate according to a new “America First” rule that meant protection, trade wars, nationalist exclusion and compromise of the US alliance system and global leadership, an agenda guaranteed to create trouble for Australia.

Morrison’s win, against this global backdrop, sent the message from Australia that pragmatic conservative traditionalism is not extinguished. The expected elevation of Boris Johnson as British PM — with his assumed affinity of sorts with Trump and his pledge to take Britain out of Europe — will highlight the different nature of Australian conservatism, contrary to The Economist’s simple-minded generalisations.

Morrison, of course, will not advertise such differences because his interest lies in the best relations possible with Trump and Johnson. But the facts are undeniable. While Trump and Johnson are agents of radical, often dangerous change, Morrison campaigned against dangerous and radical change from the Labor Party and won on this platform. Morrison presented himself as the leader offering trust, reliability and reassurance, hardly the diet of Trump and Johnson. Yet many politicians and media commentators are manifestly confused and cannot grasp what Morrison represents or what drives him.

In the latest Quarterly Essay, Erik Jensen reveals Bill Shorten’s confusion about Morrison. “I don’t know who the real Scott Morrison is sometimes,” Shorten conceded during the campaign. “Is he far right-wing? Is he not? I don’t know. I don’t know.” Shorten, like many commentators, is worried about Morrison’s religion. “I find him a bit hard to interpret,” Shorten said. “I know his Christianity — his Pentecostalism — is very important to him, so — I don’t know how much that is him.”

The progressives seem at a loss. Shorten’s remarks are incredible. If you don’t understand your opponent how can you defeat him? Yet Labor didn’t understand Morrison. For six months it kept running its big-end-of-town rhetorical attack after Morrison replaced Malcolm Turnbull when it was obvious this attack didn’t work against the “common man” Morrison.

The progressives cannot purge their belief that Morrison wants to play the politics of race, religion and security. This is part of their DNA — consider the hysterical claims made about him after the white supremacist Christchurch massacre. Climate change is another trigger. During the campaign a highly emotional Shorten went over the top denouncing Morrison as “a coal-wielding, climate-denying, cave-dweller”.

This reveals an emotional condition of frustrated righteousness that blinds its exponents. Shorten, after refusing to reveal the costs of his own climate change policy, branded his climate change opponents as “malicious and stupid”.

Labor’s problem is that Morrison had a superior and more accurate understanding of the Australian character. Progressives struggle to come to grips with this — it means admitting their view of the country was wrong. The instinctive reflex is denial and they search for a psychological explanation that excuses their failures and blames Morrison. There are several options — that Morrison is a religious freak or a milder version of Trump or too devoid of any vision to run the country efficiently.

Nowhere is this confusion greater than the critique that Morrison won on an unacceptably limited agenda, thereby overlooking the reality that if Morrison had run on a more ambitious agenda giving Labor a better target then he would have lost. After the chaos of previous years it would have been electoral suicide for Morrison to roll out a big reform agenda that his critics now profess to miss. Morrison was astute enough to recognise the obvious.

He ran on trust, reliability and economic delivery. In a fashion typical of John Howard or Robert Menzies, Morrison rejected Labor’s class warfare theme. He decided Australia wasn’t a broken polity, that unlike the US it didn’t have a busted middle class without health insurance or proper school education. He decided the public didn’t want sweeping changes or the vast agenda of taxes and spending offered by Labor.

“This is the thing Australians really baulk at,” Morrison said before polling day. With voter distrust of politicians at an all-time high, Morrison said the public’s attitude was Labor will “stuff it up and won’t deliver on what they promised”. Morrison’s calculation was that the “quiet Australians” had no stomach for grand plans or ambitious reforms — they just wanted economic delivery they could rely on.

Morrison corrected for the mistakes of his predecessors: Tony Abbott was too ideological; Turnbull could not appeal to conservative voters because he was not a conservative. Morrison is a social conservative elected against Peter Dutton by the Liberal Party moderates. The logic of this vote defines his politics — a traditional, pragmatic conservatism tinged with some liberal instincts, spurning ideological aggression but reflecting the Howard legacy of border protection and national security vigilance.

As Morrison said, he will seek to govern “from the middle” while his opponents will be desperate to deny any such successful strategy. Morrison’s model is apparent — restrain spending but back the compassion politics of the NDIS and mental health; support a religious discrimination act but not a religious freedom act; support constitutional recognition but not the voice to parliament.

The trick, of course, is whether he can maintain economic growth without a far more ambitious reform agenda.

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Global order, climate targets for newcomers

A crumbling global order and the fight against climate change are the key targets for Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott’s successors in parliament.

Wentworth Liberal MP Dave Sharma and Warringah independent Zali Steggall joined a host of other new MPs who gave their maiden speeches in parliament yesterday.

Mr Sharma, Australia’s former ambassador to Israel, warned that the decline of the US and the rise of China meant Australia needed a more independent foreign policy, even if it meant missing out on trade and market opportunities. “Our strategic holiday is over,” he told the house yesterday.

“Our neighbourhood is getting tougher; the certainties on which we’ve depended for decades are no longer so certain; and we will need to rely more on ourselves, and less on others, in safeguarding our freedoms and our independence.

“At times, we may need to pay an economic or political price — a trade opportunity forgone, a market missed, a bumpy period in diplomatic relations — in order to retain our freedom of action as an independent and sovereign nat­ion, or to stand up for values we support, or to uphold key principles in the current global order.”

The new MP for Wentworth echoed Mr Turnbull in calling for greater investment in technology start-ups and argued for more political stability safeguarded by four-year parliamentary terms.

“During my time as Australia’s ambassador to Israel, I dealt with only one Israeli prime minister, but I served four different Australian prime ministers,” he said.

Ms Steggall, who defeated Mr Abbott in the Sydney seat of Warringah on a platform of tackling climate change, said conservatives needed to lead on the environment and pointed to another conservative leader, former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. “In the 1980s, a conservative Thatcher government led the way in banning CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) in the atmosphere,” Ms Steggall said.

“Thatcher’s words to the UN General Assembly in 1989 are ­appropriate today: ‘We carry common burdens, face common problems and must respond with common action.’

“I urge this 46th parliament to be remembered for developing a comprehensive plan to decarbonise every polluting sector by 2050 and then putting it into action.”

Ms Steggall became emotional as she recalled her time in 1998 as a bronze medal-winning Winter Olympian.

“It was a long hard and often lonely road, with many sacrifices but ultimately so rewarding as I took Australia to the peak of alpine skiing,” she said. “I felt a huge sense of responsibility representing Australia … especially when carrying the Australian flag into the closing ceremony in Nagano.”

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





25 July, 2019

Devastated junior footy team has all their competition points stripped because they are TOO GOOD

This absurdity springs from the Leftist obsession with  equality.  But people are not equal and never will be.  It's grossly unjust that people are arbitrarily denied the fairly won fruits of their efforts. Australia is not the Soviet Union yet

It would be different if the competition was unfair.  That does happen. St. Joseph's college at Nudgee in Brisbane in 2010 tried to pull a fast one on those lines.  They recruited a substantial number of Polynesian students using scholarships.  Polynesians tend to be rather large.  They then fielded a Rugby football team that was mainly comprised of Polynesians, who were markedly larger than the Caucasian players from other schools. 

Such matches were swiftly stopped for the safety of the players in the other teams. Some teams refused to field with them at all. Another prominent Catholic college threatened to ban their students from playing Rugby altogether. So Nudgee's attempt to gain an unfair advantage just disrupted the fixtures and earned them scorn.


A junior football team has been stripped of its shot at a premiership because its players are too good.

The West Australian Football Commission has stripped South Coogee Junior Football Club's Year 10 A division team of all of its premiership points and given them a $500 good behaviour bond.

This was reportedly in reaction to five of the six A team players refused to move to a B division team, which has been struggling to win its league matches.

That means any team playing against the South Coogee A team in the remaining six games is automatically awarded a win - with a victory margin pre-set at 60 points.

The WAFC's attempt to even the competition has left players and parents devastated.

'It is just a shame because these are just young boys who want to play footy yet they are forced to face the politics that goes on behind the scenes, at such a young age,' a club source told WAtoday.

'And the WAFC and other officials wonder why so many are turning their back on footy to play other sports like soccer.

'The reality is, both teams will probably leave and not play next year because of all of this.'

The football team was split after South Fremantle junior competition director Mark Brookes moved a proposal to WAFC in February this year.

The permission was granted on the condition that both teams need to be competitive.

South Coogee's A division team was selected with those who wanted to advance to a higher level and the B division team had players 'who just wanted to play the game with their mates.'

Initially, the teams were supposed to play in A and C divisions, but South Coogee had to field its 'second' team in division B after another football club Willeton withdrew from division C.

The C division team was forced to play in the B division.

WAFC and officials from South Coogee Junior Football have been contacted for their comments.

SOURCE  





‘I’d do it again if I could’: Tourists’ defiant Uluru comments

It's our heritage too.  It's basically a public property so why are we discriminated against in favour of one small religious group?  It's a major tourist drawcard so the ban will be a big hit on the tourist industry

A sign sits at the base of Uluru, imploring visitors to reconsider scaling Australia’s most famous natural landmark — an act that is deeply offensive to traditional landowners.

And yet day after day Australian and international tourists walk past the sign and scale the iconic rock, eager to tick the experience off their bucket lists before a total climbing ban comes into effect on October 26, this year.

As the deadline grows closer the pace of visitors is increasing with many insisting it is their right to climb Uluru and urging others to do the same.

In a number of Facebook groups, including those where backpackers look for farm work, tourists and Australians comment that people need to “chill out” about the rock and encourage others to make the climb.

In one post, a German tourist posted a picture of herself standing at the top of Uluru and said, “I would do it again if I could”.

Another person in the group said “climbing it is fun” and described the view as “fantastic”.

A man from Sydney also encouraged people to climb, attaching a laughing emoji to the end of his comment. “Climb it like every other rock on the planet,” he said. “People need to chill the f**k out, it’s like they’ve all given birth to this rock.”

Another tourist said they didn’t “give a s**t”. “Have climbed it and definitely worth it. I dont give a s**t,” they wrote.

In the same group, an Aussie described climbing the sacred rock as a “birthright”. “Australians have a birthright to climb Uluru. Regardless see ya there in 2020, ” he said.

Uluru senior custodian Sammy Wilson told ABC’s 7.30program on Monday night that tourists were increasingly aware of the cultural significance of the area to the indigenous people. “I’ve noticed more and more people are coming on tours to learn from us Anangu (the traditional owners),” Mr Wilson said. “I enjoy people asking about and wanting to learn about our country.”

Yawuru woman Shannan Dodson, who works as an Indigenous affairs adviser for Media Diversity Australia and is on the committee for NAIDOC week, told news.com.au that Uluru should have the same significance as other sacred sites around the world.

“The issue around climbing Uluru is that it is a sacred place and at the end of the day, when you see how much the world rallied around the destruction of Notre Dame and how significant that is, people understand there are sacred places based around culture and religion,” she said.

“The fact you can’t then translate that to Uluru having the same significance is undermining. “For me, it feels like Western cultures and values are always elevated above other cultures and values. It’s saying Aboriginal cultures and values are less important. It’s just a thinking that we’re less than them and that our culture and values don’t matter.”

In November 2017, the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park Board started the countdown to when the climb would be closed permanently.

The date of October 26, 2019 was put forward — a significant day for the Anangu indigenous community because it was that day in 1985 that the government returned ownership of the land to the traditional owners.

But since setting the date, the number of people climbing Uluru has skyrocketed.

Before park management announced it was closing the climb, about 140 people were climbing Uluru each day.

Since then, the number has doubled and at times tripled to 300-500 daily visitors.

In early July, a photo taken at the base of Uluru went viral after it showed hordes of tourists snaking up the rock face.

The Anangu traditional land owners say tourists are leaving rubbish bins overflowing, illegally dumping human waste from caravans along the roadside, and have made Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park the “busiest they’ve seen it”.

“There’s cars parked for one kilometre on either side of the road leading up to the carpark at the base,” an unnamed photographer who supplied the photo to the ABC said.

Traditional landowners are devastated by the masses rushing to climb Uluru before the cut-off date and ignoring the fact the act is deeply offensive.

“It makes me sick looking at this photo at the disrespect and disregard shown for the traditional owners’ wishes,” a spokesperson from the Darug Custodian Aboriginal Corporation said.

“Not only do people climb it but they defecate, urinate and discard nappies and rubbish on it.

“I for one cannot wait for the climb to be permanently closed and our sacred lore, culture and traditions to be acknowledged and respected.”

At least 35 people have died while attempting to climb Uluru, and many others have been injured. From 2011 to 2015, the climb was closed 77 per cent of the time due to dangerous weather conditions or cultural reasons.

SOURCE  






'Bad science': Australian studies found to be unreliable, compromised

Hundreds of scientific research papers published by Australian scientists have been found to be unreliable or compromised, fuelling calls for a national science watchdog.

For the first time, a team of science writers behind Retraction Watch has put together a database of compromised scientific research in Australia.

Over the past two decades, 247 scientific research papers - some associated with the country's most reputable universities - have been found to be compromised.

The database reveals the scale of scientific misconduct in Australia, although senior scientists claim it is just the tip of the iceberg.

"The public should be concerned. Almost 250 [papers], that’s a number that many people would find unconscionably high," said Professor Simon Gandevia, deputy director of Neuroscience Research Australia. "The public should be aware the bulk of medical research in Australia is paid for by the taxpayer. You are paying for this."

Among the cases is a researcher at the University of New South Wales, who designed a drug to treat skin cancer that was trialled on humans. Although an investigation by the university made no findings of error, a research paper about the drug was retracted due to concerns about the accuracy of some of the scientific data behind it.

Five other papers, which the same scientist was involved in, have also been retracted, the last being voluntary.

In 2017, researchers at the University of Melbourne had to retract a study on a possible treatment for motor neurone disease after it was discovered the work made false claims based on inadvertently duplicated images. The research was severely compromised and the paper was withdrawn.

In May this year, research on wind turbines by scientists at the University of Tasmania was retracted from the Energy Science and Engineering journal due to issues with the peer review process - the independent scientific assessment of the study's accuracy.  "The retraction has been agreed ... due to evidence indicating the peer review of the paper was compromised," the journal said.

In 2016, a former University of Queensland professor pleaded guilty to 17 fraud-related charges relating to Parkinson's disease research.

The scale of the problem strengthens the case for the government to establish a "bad science" watchdog, Professor Gandevia said.

Countries, including the USA, have a government agency charged with investigating scientists.

Professor David Vaux, deputy director of the Melbourne-based Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, said he has seen dozens of cases of possible scientific misconduct.

"Researchers are under tremendous pressure, and falsifying data is the easy way out," he said. "In Australia, universities and institutes self regulate, so they’re able to cover it up, and they rarely resist this temptation. "When I raise this, I worry people will say you cannot trust scientists and that would be a disaster. There is a lot of good science.

"The problem is the Australian model of self regulation, which is a problem because of conflicts of interest. Australian researchers are no better or worse than those from other countries, but unlike other countries, Australia does not have a national office to handle these concerns."

Professor Vaux said it was extremely difficult to get a journal to retract a paper, and many more problematic papers go unretracted, meaning the 247 retractions were "just the tip of the iceberg".

Professor Gandevia and Professor Vaux have been campaigning to establish an Australian Office of Research Integrity – essentially a bad science watchdog, empowered to investigate academics. They took the proposal to Health Minister Greg Hunt 18 months ago, and believed he was supportive.

But the proposal has stalled, which the professors attribute to strong opposition from Universities Australia.

Catriona Jackson, chief executive of Universities Australia, strongly denied suggestions the institutions did not invite scrutiny, and pointed to a new Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research which has been put in place.

"We are not opposed to an office of research integrity, but note that a number of other mechanisms for monitoring research integrity and quality are in place," she said in a statement.

"Researchers must comply with [the] new code or face strong sanctions including repercussions for their employment at an institution, loss of public funding, and even the potential for criminal procedures in cases of very serious breaches."

The response to retractions from universities varies widely.

After being contacted by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald about scientific research papers which had been retracted, the University of New England and Griffith University both launched investigations.

The University of Tasmania said it "does not disclose details of matters concerning individual students or staff members".

The University of NSW said no findings of misconduct had been made against the professor with six retracted papers. "In each case and when considered together, where errors were identified by the panels, they were found to be unintentional and not affecting scientific conclusions in published papers," a spokeswoman said.

The University of Melbourne said it received a formal complaint about the paper that was later retracted, and conducted its own investigation. Disciplinary action was taken against the academics involved, a spokesman said.

SOURCE  








Wind farm bird kills ‘should be revealed’

Wind farms should be forced to detail eagle, bird and bat deaths and other environmental impacts on a public online register and face tougher controls on the use of independent experts, Aust­ralia’s Wind Farm Commissioner has said.

In response to concerns about the impact of wildlife, Commissioner Andrew Dyer said his recommendations for tougher noise monitoring controls should be extended to environmental harm.

Former Greens leader Bob Brown has objected to a wind farm development in Tasmania because of its visual impact and potential to kill eagles and shore birds. Other wind farm projects have killed many birds, particularly raptors.

A spokesman for Dr Brown said he did not wish to comment, and the office of federal Greens leader Richard Di Natale did not respond to questions.

Wind industry enthusiasts have said more birds are killed by tall buildings, cars and cats.

The use of independent ­experts to estimate the impact of wind farms on animals has been controversial, with accusations of poor data-handling and the ­deletion of nesting and sighting records.

Wind farm developments engage­ experts to estimate the ­potential impact on wildlife. Post-construction monitoring of existing wind farm developments has often shown that the impact on bird life has been worse than ­anticipated.

Despite strict guidelines on how bird and animal losses should be offset, critics argue that little has been done to force wind farm companies to act.

Mr Dyer said his recommend­ations for tougher reporting and reviews of noise issues should also apply to birds.

“Different independent experts should be used before and after projects are commissioned and findings should be properly audited,” he said.

In his latest annual report, the commissioner said the design and approval of a proposed wind farm relies heavily on third-party consultants to prepare a range of ­reports, including assessments ­related to noise, visual amenity, shadow flicker, aviation impact and various environmental ­assessments.

Many of the assessment ­reports rely on complex calculations or results from predictive computer modelling.

Once the wind farm is built, experts are often re-engaged to carry out post-construction ­assessments.

These assessment reports use data from the wind farm, but still rely on assumptions and modelling to analyse the collected data.

“It is very common practice that experts engaged to perform the design assessments and ­reports during the planning phase are the same experts engaged by the developer to perform the post-construction assessments,” Mr Dyer said.

“There is certainly scope for a much better separation between the experts used for the predictive assessments used in the design, versus the experts used for the post-construction assessments of a wind farm, along with the ­addition of audits of the expert­’s work.”

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here




24 July, 2019

Government could fund Peter Ridd’s fight against Greenie crooks at James Cook University

Quite aside from anything else the issue of legal costs is big  here.  JCU has already spent $630,00 on denying Dr Ridd justice and once they have to pay Ridd's legal costs that will rise to around one million.  And that is cheap compared to what a High Court appeal would cost.  But that is money that should have been used to fund research and teaching.  It is a fundamentally unjust use of taxpayer funds.  The government has a beef with JCU on those grounds alone.

And a High Court appeal would be sheer vindictiveness.  Once they have lost their case in a lower court, the prospect of a win in the High Court is dim.

The government should impose financial penalties if an appeal goes ahead.  It would be a misuse of funds that were allocated for research and teaching.  JCU will probably claim that the money comes out of administrative funds but if such funds were so flush the surplus could still have been diverted into a research grant, which would have been much more in keeping with the purposes of the university.

And what was Dr Ridd's offence, that has brought down so much rage on his head?  He made a cautious and scholarly comment about the validity of some measurements made by his colleagues.  The normal response to such an observation would be to go back and check the validity concerned.  That such a normal scholarly procedure was not folowed suggests that the measurements really were invalid and known to be invalid, implying that the damage to the Great Barrier Reef was  being exaggerated

In my own research career I was very careful about the validity of my measurements and reported it if a measure did not survive a validity check (e.g. here).  That's light years away from the practices at JCU so I congratulate Peter Ridd for raising the issue there


Attorney-General Christian Porter has told Coalition MPs that the Commonwealth could assist in supporting costs for sacked academic Peter Ridd to help him in his legal fight against James Cook University.

The Australian has been informed by multiple sources that Mr Porter left the door open for the Commonwealth to play a role in supporting Dr Ridd in today’s joint party room meeting and identified a scheme which could be used to assist the academic.

The internal discussion in the party room comes as JCU moves to appeal a Federal Court finding that the university’s sacking of the physics professor was unlawful, with several Coalition MPs voicing their concerns in today’s joint party room meeting at the appeal.

Sources told The Australian that Education Minister Dan Tehan told the joint party room meeting that he was concerned by the decision of JCU to appeal the April decision by judge Salvatore Vasta.

Dr Ridd is seeking financial compensation after he was sacked by JCU for publicly criticising the institution and one of its star scientists over claims about the impact of global warming on the Great Barrier Reef.

Liberal MPs told The Australian that Mr Tehan said that he planned to meet with the JCU Vice Chancellor to raise his concerns directly and that Mr Porter viewed the appeal as significant and argued that it had the potential to change the landscape of academic freedom in a fundamental way.

In the party room meeting, Victorian Senator James Paterson asked Mr Porter whether the Commonwealth could do anything to contribute to Dr Ridd’s costs for the appeal, with the Attorney-General giving a loose commitment to see whether there was scope for the federal government to play a role.

This was confirmed by multiple Liberal MPs in the meeting. The Australian has contacted Mr Porter’s office for comment.

The Australian was also told that several Coalition MPs spoke to the issue including Sydney based MP Craig Kelly who initiated the discussion by saying he was concerned at how much money JCU would spend on the appeal.

The Australian has also been informed that George Christensen also said that, while JCU was important to his electorate of Dawson, he was increasingly concerned at the developments in relation to Dr Ridd.

Liberal sources said that North Queensland MP Warren Entsch raised concerns about the impact of the legal dispute on tourism and attitudes towards the Great Barrier Reef.

The Australian was also informed that new Queensland Senator Paul Scarr also criticised the JCU press release on the judgment, describing it as outrageous.

In April, Justice Vasta ruled JCU had erred in its interpretation of a clause in its enterprise agreement and deprived Dr Ridd of his right to express his academic opinion. Within hours of the judgment being released in April, JCU published a statement on its website criticising the ruling.

A spokesman for the Attorney-General told The Australian that Mr Porter had undertaken “to get a brief from his department on whether these are matters relevant to the Commonwealth Public Interest and Test Cases Scheme.”

The spokesman said that this scheme provided “financial assistance for cases of public importance, that settle an uncertain area or question of Commonwealth law, or that resolve a question of Commonwealth law that affects the rights of a disadvantaged section of the public.”

“It is notable that there has been no application to this Scheme in relation to this matter,” he said.

SOURCE  






Victoria Police try to censor TV doco on Lawyer X

Victoria Police are trying to censor a television documentary detailing the story of “Lawyer X”, demanding early access to the ­series set to air tonight and claiming it could “obstruct” the royal commission into the matter.

The Australian can reveal that the Australian Federal Police also demanded details from Sky News late last week about its two-part documentary series exploring the alleged activities of barrister-turned-police-informant Nicola Gobbo and failures at the highest levels of law enforcement in ­Victoria.

Victoria Police contacted Sky News’s lawyers demanding access to the series after seeing “promotional videos” for Lawyer X: The Untold Story .

Police are also seeking access to a book, Lawyer X: The Scandalous Story of How Melbourne’s Gangland War Was Really Won, written by Herald Sun journalists Anthony Dowsley and Patrick Carlyon.

Sky News declined the Victoria Police request. It was then sent a lawyers’ letter on behalf of Victoria Police on July 18 warning the news network against airing the documentary. “Victoria Police is concerned that the contents of the documentary and book may potentially breach existing suppression orders and reveal information concerning human sources and protected witnesses, thereby increasing the risk of serious harm to individuals and their families,” the letter said.

It then claimed that the TV ­series, by journalist Peter Stefanovic, “may hinder or obstruct the proceedings of the royal commission in contravention of s49 of the Inquiries Act.”

“The documentary and book may also traverse, and therefore potentially prejudice, ongoing criminal investigations and matter that have been, or will be, the subject of closed hearings at the royal commission.”

Sky News chief executive Paul Whittaker confirmed yesterday that Victoria Police had contacted Sky a fortnight ago and requested to view the documentary series tapes in advance of tonight’s broadcast of the first episode in the two-part series.

Sky declined to co-operate.

Mr Whittaker said he believed the two-part documentary would play an important role in explaining the extraordinary series of events behind the complex saga that has “rightfully sparked a royal commission into the handling of police informants”.

“Victoria Police spent millions of dollars of state taxpayers’ funds to employ every legal and delaying tactic available all the way to the High Court trying to stop this shameful episode ever becoming public, and as embarrassing as it may be for certain elements of the senior police command, the whole truth must come out if public confidence is to be restored in the system,” Mr Whittaker said.

He confirmed that Victoria Police had written a warning letter to lawyers for Sky News and the Herald Sun last Thursday, on the day of an exclusive sneak peek of the documentary and Q&A session at Old Melbourne Gaol hosted by Stefanovic with Herald Sun journalists Dowsley and Carlyon. Mr Whittaker also confirmed that the AFP had contacted Sky News’s lawyers on Friday seeking information about the documentary series.

The letter on behalf of the police said that “given the impending broadcast of the documentary on 22 and 23 July, 2019, and the preview on 18 July, 2019, Victoria Police has contacted Sky News to request an advance copy of the documentary on the basis of these concerns. Sky News has declined this request.”

The documentary talks to Ms Gobbo’s former friends and ­associates, about her double life as a lawyer for the Melbourne underworld, including gangland boss Carl Williams, and as a ­registered informe­r for Victoria Police.

The Herald Sun was the first to reveal Ms Gobbo’s double life almost five years ago, and Dowsley and Carlyon­ have fought dozens of suppression orders forbidding publication of her identity as Lawyer­ X.

The steady stream of revel­ations rocked Victoria's justice system, and triggered a royal commission, which is looking into cases that may have been affected by Ms Gobbo’s conduct as a police informant between January 1995 and January 2009.

Ms Gobbo is expected to appea­r before the commission.

The demand comes amid increased focus on media freedom following AFP raids on the home of News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst and raids on ABC headquarters in Sydney.

The AFP media raids led to widespread condemnation by media organisations as well as a new parliamentary inquiry into press freedom in Australia.

Lawyer X: the untold story will air on Sky News tonight and tomorrow night at 8pm AEST and on Foxtel Encore on July 29

SOURCE  






Boatload of Sri Lankan asylum seekers headed for Australia is intercepted in the Indian Ocean - the third vessel to attempt the dangerous journey since the federal election

A boatload of Sri Lankan asylum-seekers headed for Australia has been intercepted in the Indian Ocean in what is the third incident since May. 

Australian Border Force agents seized the vessel, believed to be carrying 20 refugees, off Christmas Island on Sunday night.

The group was then taken ashore before being put on a flight back to Colombo on a government charter plane, The Australian reported. 

The incident marks the third time a group of refugees have attempted to reach Australia by sea since the federal election, bringing the total number of asylum seekers to 80.   

More than 40 had to be rescued after a boat began to sink in the Indian Ocean last month.

An Australian aerial patrol helped save 41 people on board, with the assistance of the Sri Lankan Navy.

The Department of Home Affairs confirmed the illegal immigrants were returned to Sri Lanka. 

The recurring attempts prompted Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton to meet with Sri Lankan leaders last month amid warnings more boats were on the way.

He said 'borders were being tested' because people smugglers were expecting a Labor victory and then-opposition leader Bill Shorten had 'walked away from Operation Sovereign Borders.'

'I want people smugglers and those that might be organising syndicates here in Australia to hear the message from me very clearly, that is that we do have a return arrangement with Sri Lanka and with other countries and people will be returned,' he said.

SOURCE  






Our carbon sacrifice is pointless

Imagine a librarian sitting in the corner of her library, wishing that her noisy library was quiet. But the only thing she does to make this happen is to be quiet herself.

There might be dozens of people scattered around the library, but she wouldn't try to work out where the noise was coming from. Nor would she ask the noisy patrons to keep it down, perhaps by persuading them of the benefits of a quiet library.

She would simply sit in her corner, quietly telling herself she was doing the right thing and setting a good example.

This recipe for frustration and failure is akin to Australia's approach to greenhouse gas emissions. While we sit in our corner of the world, promising ourselves to reduce our emissions over the decade ahead, the rest of the world increases theirs.

Even using the rosiest projections, just the increase in global emissions will be double Australia's total emissions in the decade ahead. So even if Australia disappeared – twice – global emissions would still rise.

It's as if the librarian sewed her lips together, yet still the noise in the library became deafening.

If we were genuinely concerned about global emissions, a good start would surely be to establish which countries are set to increase their emissions, particularly if those countries are already big emitters.

In Senate Estimates, I have been asking the bureaucrats in Canberra about the projected emissions of big emitters over the coming decade. Anyone who thinks climate change is our greatest moral challenge would have found the replies disappointing.

The bureaucrats didn't know. Many of the world's biggest emitters haven't bothered to advise the rest of the world how much their emissions are expected to rise over the coming decade. And it seems Australia has not only failed to seek an answer to this basic question but has also not made its own projections.

Others estimate that China, whose annual emissions in recent years were nearly 12 gigatonnes, might come close to doubling its emissions over the next decade. India, whose annual emissions have recently exceeded three gigatonnes, might double its emissions too. And countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, each with much bigger annual emissions than Australia's half a gigatonne, also fail to report their likely emission increases.

And it seems, at least from outward appearances, that our governments and bureaucrats don't care.

Pointless going it alone

It's as if our librarian won't even wander the aisles to see who the noisiest patrons are. Or perhaps she secretly thinks the patrons have a right to make as much noise as they want. Yet, if this is the case, the library is destined to be noisy and it is pointless for the librarian to take a vow of silence.

The greenhouse effect is a global phenomenon. We don't have big screens at our borders keeping Australia's emissions in and China or India's emissions out. Emissions from any one country swirl around the globe. If anything is to be done about the greenhouse effect, it has to involve the major emitters. It is quite pointless for Australia to reduce its emissions unless they do too.

It is farcical that Australia is engaged in an acrimonious debate about which side of politics is doing enough to combat climate change. Australia's commitments, no matter what anyone thinks of them, are quite pointless unless they are conditional on action by the world's big emitters. And of course, the big emitters are barely even aware of Australia's efforts, let alone influenced by them.

Nonetheless, the cost of implementing Australia's commitments is far from trivial. We have world-record electricity prices and a precarious supply situation as a result of policies discouraging new fossil-fuels-based generation. Thousands of jobs in energy-intensive industries are heading overseas and even more depend on whether we develop or expand coal mines.

And despite being opposed to a carbon tax, on Monday the Coalition government committed $2 billion of taxpayers' funds to paying emitters to emit less than some hypothetical benchmark. The money, naturally enough, will come from tax revenue.

Debating Australia's emissions policy while ignoring what is happening in the rest of the world is nonsensical. And it is made worse by the fact that our experts in Canberra, who recommend policy to the government, are barely even aware of what else is happening in the world.

SOURCE  






ScoMo to dine with Trump

US President Donald Trump will host Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his wife, Jenny, for an official visit and state dinner on September 20, the White House says.

“The visit will celebrate our two countries’ close friendship and shared history, and reaffirm our common vision for global peace, security, and prosperity,” the White House said in a statement.

Mr Morrison’s office confirmed the state dinner at the White House earlier this month.

At the time the Prime Minister said he would be honoured to represent Australia during the visit.

It will follow the two leaders’ meetings on the sidelines of the D-Day commemorations in the UK and the G20 summit earlier this year. Mr Trump’s invitation is the first by a US president to an Australian prime minister since president George W Bush hosted John Howard in 2006.

It’s only the second state dinner Mr Trump has held since he became President. The first was for France in April 2018.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






23 July, 2019

Adam Goodes documentary sparks breastbeating about race in Australia

Unmentioned below is that it is common for footballers to be booed by supporters of the opposing team.  It has been handed down from on high that such booing is "racist". But lots of white footballers have been heavily booed.  For one or two people race may have had something to do with it but the great majority of it was not racist.  Australia has in general remarkable racial harmony.  We even put up with Middle-Eastern Muslims.

Goodes was a crybaby.  And that REALLY wound up the spectators.  Showing weakness just invites further attack.  His onfield antics were rightly criticized as foolish.

What the wise-heads are ignoring is that Goodes was aggressive, confrontational and a whiner.  He has done a lot to make himself unpopular. He once did some sort of Aboriginal war dance on the football field, complete with an imaginary spear thrown in the direction of the opposing fans --  Not exactly the "mature discussion about the state of race relations in this country" that his Leftist supporters called for.

It got to the point that he just had to run onto the field to get booed.  He made himself an oppositional figure.


Adam Goodes’ documentary in which he addressed routine bullying and racism he faced in Australia while playing in the AFL sparked an outpouring of emotion and support for the former Sydney Swans star.

The Final Quarter aired on Channel 10 on Thursday night and showed the booing and abuse Goodes faced over the last three seasons of his career, eventually driving him into an early retirement.

After hosting a special late-night edition of The Project, Waleed Aly penned an opinion piece for The Sydney Morning Herald where he outlined the justification behind people’s booing of Goodes.

“Critics of Goodes loved to point out that there were more than 70 other Indigenous players in the AFL who weren’t getting booed at the time,” Aly wrote.

“That sort of thing is falsely offered as a defence against the charge of racism because it pretends racism can exist only if the prejudice in question applies to every single member of a race; that if something is not exclusively about skin colour, then race is not a factor at all. But that’s almost never how it works.

“More often, racism lives in the double standards that mean someone gets attacked in a way a white person never would, even if they were to behave in the same way.

“Racism doesn’t require a belief that there are no “good” blacks. In fact, it frequently relies on the “good”, precisely because it wants to identify the “bad” ones.”

After leading the discussion, he capped the night off by thanking those involved in making the film and asked a key question about where we go from here as a nation.

“It seems that what began as personal torment for Adam quickly became a national controversy,” he said.

“The question now really is whether it can become a productive national conversation. And the answer to that question rests with each of us.”

As part of the debate, he explained why there were no indigenous voices in the media representatives appearing on The Project — who discussed how the press handled the issue at the time.

“I deliberately didn’t have an indigenous voice, because I felt that we needed to reflect the media as it was, and that doesn’t include indigenous voices,” he said.

Journalist for The Australian Chip Le Grand told the show that one of the most “disturbing” aspects of the documentary is that it highlights how “a lot of us don’t seem to even know racism when we see it”.

He also said the AFL’s failure to step in and help Goodes was “such a failure of leadership”.

“They just needed someone to clearly stand up, and it was Gill McLachlan’s time, in that instance, to just say: ‘Look, yes, it is complicated but, clearly, race is a part of this, it’s a big part of this, it’s ugly and it has to stop’,” he said.

On Thursday morning on Studio 10, director and award-winning filmmaker, Ian Darling said he wanted “everyone to look at (the documentary) with open eyes and an open heart.”

“Just be prepared to think that maybe we didn’t get it right,” he said. “Literally, every single person I’ve shown it to — from Gill McLachlan at the AFL through to schoolkids — have said ‘Wow, I didn’t understand the extent of the booing’ or ‘I didn’t understand the enormity of the media conversation.’”

SOURCE  





Peter Dutton dismisses Jacinda Ardern's demands for Australia to stop deporting criminal New Zealanders

Most of the criminals concerned are Maori.  Nobody wants them

Jacinda Ardern has stepped up her criticism of Australia's policy to deport New Zealand criminals as "wrong" and "unjust", saying she will continue to push for change.

The New Zealand Prime Minister met with her Australian counterpart, Scott Morrison, in Melbourne on Friday morning, in their first face-to-face talks since the Coalition won the May election.

Top of the agenda for Ms Ardern was the ongoing concern about Australia deporting New Zealanders convicted of criminal offences, some of whom had spent most of their lives in Australia.

"If something's wrong and if something is not fair and is unjust, you don't let it go," she told NZ media after the meeting with Mr Morrison.

"I totally accept that it is within Australia's rights to deport those who engage in criminal activity in Australia. But there are some examples that will not make any sense to any fair-minded person."

Successive New Zealand governments have raised concern with the policy, after more than 1,500 Kiwi criminals were deported since the rules were tightened in 2014.

Ms Ardern repeated her warning that the issue was having a "corrosive" impact on the relationship between the two countries.

"I just think we can't take our friendship for granted, we can't take our closeness for granted. And if there is something that is causing concern for one side of a friendship, it should be raised. "I just ultimately think New Zealanders look at this policy and just think that's not … fair dinkum."

Speaking ahead of the meeting between Ms Ardern and Mr Morrison, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton insisted the policy would not change.

"We need to stand up for Australians," Mr Dutton told Channel Nine. "And the New Zealand Prime Minister is rightly doing that for her people.

"But where we've got Australian citizens who are falling victim in certain circumstances where people are sexually offending against children, for example, we've had a big push to try to deport those paedophiles."

Ms Ardern and Mr Morrison also discussed global trade and the development of the Pacific, along with ways to combat extremist material being shared on social media in the wake of the Christchurch massacre.

Another policy area where the Australian Government is unlikely to shift is New Zealand's ongoing offer to resettle refugees housed in offshore detention on Manus Island and Nauru.

Canberra has repeatedly knocked back the offer, suggesting it could provide asylum seekers with a "back door" into Australia, given the immigration regime between the two nations.

Ms Ardern said New Zealand's offer to resettle refugees housed in offshore detention was not raised in her discussion with Mr Morrison. "The offer has been made, it's acknowledged, it's known," she said. "And I don't think for a moment there's any question that Australia knows that offer still stands."

However, there is a sense among some in the Government the offer may be accepted once the existing resettlement deal with the United States is exhausted.

That agreement, made by Malcolm Turnbull and Barack Obama, angered Donald Trump. But US authorities have accepted some refugees under the arrangement.

SOURCE  






'Dark satanic mills': Tony Abbott continues his crusade against wind turbines

The former prime minister Tony Abbott has continued his crusade against wind turbines, labelling them the “dark satanic mills of the modern era”.

Abbott, who was dumped at the 18 May election as the member for Warringah, had previously questioned the health impacts of wind turbines, despite there being no “consistent evidence that wind farms cause adverse health effects”. He has also previously dismissed them as “ugly”, “noisy” and “visually awful”.

Abbott lost his Sydney seat to the independent MP Zali Steggall, who campaigned on taking action on climate change.

Asked by the Sydney radio 2GB host Alan Jones on Friday morning whether his successor had been “sticking them [wind turbines] up there” in his former electorate, Abbott replied there had been “a lot of wind, but not too much action”.

“And thank God,” he told Jones. “Because the last thing we want is what I regard as the dark satanic mills of the modern era spoiling our landscape.”

“Absolutely,” Jones said. “Absolutely.”

Abbott said he was comforted by the energy minister Angus Taylor’s pledge to keep Australia’s coal-fired power stations open.

“The great thing about Angus Taylor, Alan, is Angus wants to try and keep our existing coal-fired power stations like Liddell open, because we’ve got more and more wind and solar flooding into the system, and that is great when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, but it doesn’t always blow and it doesn’t always shine, but we still have to be able to flick the switch and have the lights come on,” Abbott said.

“That’s why keeping existing coal-fired power in the system is the vital first step in trying to avoid the disaster that will otherwise befall us, the de-industrialise disaster that will otherwise befall us.

“This is why the re-election of the Morrison government has been in some respects, I think we have dodged a bullet.”

Batteries were not mentioned as part of the conversation, but Jones did remark on “irrelevant” people interjecting into national debates who “exercised a lot of power” in regards to Steggall and the former Greens leader Bob Brown.

Abbott did not go into detail about his plans post-parliament in Friday’s interview. As a former prime minister, he automatically receives an annual pension of $296,000, $90,000 more than the backbencher salary he earned in his final years in parliament.

Steggall, who won the seat Abbott held for 25 years, has not proposed wind turbines for the Warringah electorate, but was named in some spoof petitions calling for wind farms along Manly beach.

Abbott declared in 2015 he wished the Howard government, of which he was a member, had never implemented the Renewable Energy Target. He then signed Australia up to the Paris agreement while prime minister but later campaigned for Australia’s withdrawal when he was returned to the backbench following a leadership coup.

SOURCE  





   
Attendance matters when it comes to student achievement

A new report from the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) reinforces the strong correlation between school attendance and student achievement, and highlights the importance of forming good attendance habits early.

The release of the Attendance Matters Spotlight report is also a reminder of how crucial it is to ensure students feel welcome, safe and supported at school, and encouraged to attend.

The evidence summary indicates that the overall school attendance picture in Australia is good, with year 1-10 students attending, on average, 92% of available school days in Australia – a rate comparable to other countries with high performing education systems.

Nevertheless, there remain areas of concern including that 25% of Australian school students attend less than 90% of school days, and that school attendance decreases as remoteness increases.  

The report also identifies that there remains a notable difference in attendance rates between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and non-Indigenous students. In 2018, the overall national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander attendance rate was 82.3% compared to 92.5% for non-Indigenous students. This shows that there is still much more work to do to lift attendance rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

Highlighting that ‘every day counts’ when it comes to attendance, the report reinforces the negative correlation between absence from school and achievement, which is cumulative and can affect academic outcomes in future years of schooling.

Given the importance of early learning experiences on academic and social achievement, the report identifies school attendance should be prioritised in the formative years, and that strategies for addressing chronic absenteeism must take a holistic approach.

The report also highlights the important role families, schools, policy makers and the community have to play in the complex task of addressing student absenteeism and enabling students to reach their potential in the classroom.

AITSL CEO Mark Grant said while the issues contributing to absenteeism are complex and challenging, it is important that systems, sectors and jurisdictions across Australia continue working together to ensure schools are welcoming places that students want to attend.

“I’m proud to release this report to provide a summary of evidence the teaching profession and decision makers across the education sector can use to reflect on their approach to the critical issue of ensuring Australian school students attend and truly engage with their learning,” Mr Grant said.

“The findings reinforce that there remain particular challenges to address when it comes to attendance and that understanding the relationship between attendance and achievement can help teachers, school leaders, parents, and school communities promote positive attendance habits and tailor early and individualised interventions, to address problematic absenteeism and lift outcomes for students.

“Policies and responses at the school level will be most effective if they simultaneously target factors both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the school gates, showing that we all have a part to play when it comes to school attendance.

“While there are many complex issues at play when it comes to school attendance, we shouldn’t shy away from the challenges. Clearly it is crucially important to involve families and communities in purposeful, authentic and ethical ways to provide students with every opportunity to reach their potential.”

Medianet Press Release: aapmedianet@aapmedianet.com.au

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here







22 July 2019

Another prominent Australian Greenie attacks windmills

Greens leader Richard Di Natale has backed his predecessor Bob Brown’s concerns about a proposed wind farm on Tasmania’s Robbins Island, saying it needs to be subject to a thorough planning process.

Dr Brown told The Australian this week the wind farm was comparable to the Franklin Dam, and yesterday condemned the company behind the proposal, UPC Renewables, as a “profit-seeking multinational”. He has shocked many with his objections after supporting earlier wind farm developments in the state.

Asked whether it was a sign of renewable energy’s success that it’s now embraced by corporations “big and profitable enough to offend the Greens”, Senator Di Natale told Insiders the substance of Dr Brown’s criticism was the impact of the project on the local environment.

“This is an area where you’ve got migratory bird species, many of them threatened, nesting shore birds, and that’s why it needs to be subject to a thorough planning process,” Senator Di Natale said.

“The reality is that the Greens are very strong supporters of renewable energy.

“We understand that coal is the central problem when it comes to climate change, that we have to transition away from coal to renewable energy.

“Under Bob, we had a big hand in establishing the Clean Energy Finance Corporation that has meant billions of dollars flowing into wind projects and solar projects, but even the strongest supporters of those projects wouldn’t say that every single site in the country is suitable site.

“You wouldn’t put offshore wind farms on the Great Barrier Reef or solar panels on the Opera House.”

Senator Di Natale said the details of the Robbins Island proposal weren’t yet clear.

“When there is a final proposal it will be subject to a whole bunch of planning laws,” he said.

‘We’re the real opposition’

Senator Di Natale also hit out at the Labor Party, condemning them from passing the Coalition’s suite of income tax cuts, arguing that the Labor Party has “decided that the best way to beat a terrible conservative government is by adopting their policies.”

“What we need is a real opposition in this country, and it’s very clear that the Greens are now the real opposition.

“It was the Labor Party, who, quite rightly in the lead-up to the election, talked about how important it was to improve the tax system, to deal with economic inequality.

“You had the deputy leader saying that it was a good thing that coal was coming to an end. “After the election, they’ve backed in the biggest tax cuts that we’ve seen. They’ve backed in the government’s flat tax, small government agenda.

“(Deputy leader) Richard Marles is out there saying that we should celebrate the coal industry. “You don’t beat the conservatives by adopting their policies.”

SOURCE  






Evidence will provide education solutions

It is the duty of the State to educate, and the right of the people to demand education (Edmund Barton, Prime Minister of Australia 1901-1903)

Australia’s first Prime Minister, the Honourable Edmund Barton, was an outstanding scholar, dux of Sydney Grammar School and a prize-winning graduate in classics at the University of Sydney. A passionate advocate of Federation, he told audiences that ‘For the first time in history, we have a nation for a continent and a continent for a nation.’ Barton supported the provision of free, compulsory education and believed that schooling should be ‘unsectarian’.

How might he view the state of education in the 21st century?

On the basis of official reports and public commentary, Barton might well observe that Australia’s youngest citizens could be better served. Surely he would marvel at the very low level of public confidence in education, relative to the extraordinarily high levels of taxpayer funding.

Today’s educational deficits are due to the absence of genuine national commitment and collaboration as well as the ongoing adoption of fads and trends in the hope of quick fixes.

A clever Australia — to channel the late former Prime Minister Bob Hawke — needs powerful nation-building philosophies and strategies. This is particularly true of education, a public good that transforms lives and societies like no other and whose success depends on the intellectual credibility and humanitarian aspirations of its champions.

Evidence of a national loss of confidence in education comes from those who defend Australia’s annual program of standardised tests for Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. However flawed NAPLAN may be, they argue, it must be retained because it constitutes the only objective mechanism for measuring student performance, monitoring teacher effectiveness and providing data to parents and schools.

Given the billions of taxpayer dollars spent on school education every year, it should be easy to point to steady improvements resulting from careful investment. While there are wonderful examples of achievement and innovation around Australia, the findings are largely negative, with descriptions such as ‘stagnant’, ‘declining’, ‘lacking in rigour’ and ‘inequitable’ appearing all too often.

Not only are Australian students underperforming in the national tests of literacy and numeracy, international assessments such as PISA reveal that our secondary school students are increasingly less academically competitive with their international counterparts. Employers and tertiary institutions are concerned about the poor knowledge and skills of school leavers, too many of whom need remedial support. Teacher morale is low, reflected in part by the continued high attrition rate of early-career educators.

Many factors contribute to a respected, high-performing system of education. Some, such as student motivation, parental involvement and socio-cultural understanding and support, are more external and can be hard to gauge and grow. Others are the business of school leaders and teachers, education authorities and professional bodies, such as setting consistently high academic standards and expectations of classroom behaviour and school culture, delivering high-quality instruction, designing useful, robust assessment tasks and reporting honestly and effectively on student performance.

Under Australia’s federal model of government, the states and territories carry constitutional responsibility for the education of all children. However, in recent decades, concerns about the direction and quality of schooling have brought changes in the national education infrastructure.
National collaboration was identified as one of the key strategies for achieving the educational goals articulated in the Melbourne Declaration; the ‘roadmap’ signed by all federal and state education ministers in 2008.

In addition to a national school funding model, Australia now has a national curriculum (the Australian Curriculum, completed in 2016), a national program of standardised testing (dominated by NAPLAN) and a national reporting instrument (My School), the last three managed by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). Another national body, the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), is responsible for the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers and Principals.

The limitations of federation are clear, however. For example, only five of the eight states and territories have adopted the Australian Curriculum in its original form, and even that applies only to students in Kindergarten to Year 10. The policies and practices applicable to students in Years 11 and 12 vary significantly across the country; there are no agreed national academic standards for school leavers and there is minimal alignment of approaches across primary and secondary levels, including teaching, assessment and reporting. It can be very difficult for students, parents, teachers and other stakeholders to grasp what success looks like at the various stages of Australian schooling.

Duplication of effort is a waste of time and money. A useful first step would be to undertake an independent, comprehensive national information audit – likely the first of its kind –to ascertain the nature, extent and effectiveness of expenditure, collaboration and innovation in Australian school education. This would provide a unique platform on which to identify successes as well as overlap, blockages and deficits. Most importantly, it would demonstrate cross-sectoral commitment to national goals.

This great country, with its small, dispersed population and limited taxpayer base, has its work cut out to design and deliver the best possible education for all young Australians. A common sense, evidence-based approach will provide the solutions to most challenges — and this should not cost the earth.

SOURCE  






Farmers line up for $750m in Murray-Darling compensation case

There can be no excuse for giving the farmers ZERO of the available river water

A landmark $750 million class ­action enters court next week with more than 500 drought-­ravaged irrigation farmers claiming financial damage from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s alleged water mismanagement.

The law suit, initiated only two months ago by farmer and rural activist Chris Brooks, has signed up more than half the estimated 1000 affected landholders after he ran a road show around local communities.

The suit seeks damages from the MDBA for allegedly draining the Menindee Lakes in NSW, and then diverting water into the ­Murray River downstream, breaking its banks, and allowing it to flow through forests to build up storages for South Australia.

It claims these practices resulted in inadequate reserves for NSW farmers, and led to the continuin­g zero water allocations for irrigation on the Murray.

“They flooded the forest for 141 days last year, doing untold envir­onmental damage, and wasted all of our water down an extremely high-flowing Murray River, which simply flowed out to sea, was lost in transmission or evapor­ated in the lower lakes, while we were allocated zero volume­ of water against our allocation,” Mr Brooks said.

A spokesman for the authority said “it’s the MDBA’s view that river operations were not mismanaged”.

Prominent barrister and former­ judge Ian Coleman SC will lead the farmers’ case, while the MDBA is represented by Scott Nixon SC and Catherine Gleeson.

The farmers and their lawyers are well advanced in negotiations with a litigation funder who will ­finance the case in exchange for a percentage of any payout forced upon the MDBA.

“He has given initial advice that he is happy with the inform­ation we have supplied, and it would appear from the evidence currently gathered that we have a reasonable case,” Mr Brooks said.

Apart from seeking financial remedy, the farmers believe the case before the NSW Supreme Court will provide public expos­ure of what they claim is a bias in government and the MDBA ­towards the left and green-leaning inclinations of urban voters rather than rural communities.

Jon Gatacre, the third generation to operate his family property near the NSW Riverina town of Deniliquin, has signed up with legal firm Aqua Law to join the case. He hoped it would “highlight a lot of issues and bring it to the public and expose how it’s all come to this point”. “I’ve been home for 20 years and very frustrated about the disregar­d for irrigators and farmers,” he said.

“Going through the millennium drought it was stark to see that the environmentalists were taking over a lot of our rights and our water, and even our land decisions. “The water being wasted down the river is disgraceful … these communities like Deniliquin just can’t last any longer.”

The original statement of claim involves only nine plaintiffs, and Aqua Law solicitor Tim Horne said he expected the first day of the case in Sydney on Wednesda­y would address how to ­introduce the hundreds of other farmers who want to join it.

Mr Brooks said the initial close of the sign-up list for farmers to join the case had been extended, due to expanding interest.

“We expect to have over 1000 individual growers representing an estimated 1300 landholdings that are entitled to approximately 750,000 megalitres of water in the NSW Murray by the time the class action is listed to begin, and this should represent a cash claim of almost $750 million,” he said.

SOURCE  






GetUp chiefs face complaint to parliamentary committee

GetUp chiefs could be hauled to parliament to explain their conduct during the election as Liberal MP Kevin Andrews plans to push a formal complaint against the left-wing activist network.

Mr Andrews’ move against GetUp in parliament comes as Liberal MP Nicolle Flint says she will do “everything in my power” to stop aggressive campaigns against MPs, which she says nearly led to a breakdown.

The former defence minister — who won his Melbourne seat of Menzies in May despite a strong campaign against him — will go to the joint standing committee of electoral matters over GetUp.

“I intend to make a submission to the Committee about the activities of GetUp and its affiliates,” he told The Australian today.

Mr Andrews told The Australian earlier today that he was falsely accused of supporting gay conversion therapy, a topic he has never even discussed, with GetUp withdrawing the claim only after he threatened legal action.

He was also targeted by a multicultural group called Colour Code, which shared the same ­address as GetUp, and distributed material in Mandarin to Chinese-Australian voters in his Melbourne electorate of Menzies labelling him a racist.

Ms Flint — who revealed to The Australian she was stalked during the election campaign and had her election material vandalised — told Sky News she wanted the aggressive campaigns to stop and to make GetUp’s funding more transparent.

“I want to do everything in my power to make sure this behaviour stops in Australia,” she said today.

“We’ve got to make sure people like me feel safe in my workplace … we’ve never seen this level of aggression, and a lot of it was abuse as well.

“We need to fully expose the tactics of GetUp and the unions and how they’ve worked with the Labor Party to run these hit campaigns against people like me.

“I don’t believe GetUp is subject to the same political funding reporting requirements that the unions or certainly political parties are. So where is the funding from?”

A spokesman for GetUp yesterday rejected responsibility for Ms Flint’s treatment, saying the group had written a tweet during the campaign condemning the attacks on her campaign office.

“GetUp condemns the sexist and cruel attacks Nicolle Flint and other women, such as Zali Steggall, faced during the election, as well as bullying from within the party.

“We specifically condemned the attacks on Ms Flint’s office at the time. There is no place for that in our politics,” it said.

“GetUp volunteers campaigned in Boothby to champion climate action, by singing alongside children’s entertainer Peter Combe, having heart-to-heart phone calls with their neighbours and volunteering on election day.

“We will continue to hold politicians to account on the issues that matter.”

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





21 July, 2019

"Digger"

The term "digger" in Australia is a word for an Australian soldier.  It is a respectful term, originating from an awareness of the hardships of the troops in trench warfare etc.  Our forces have often had to "dig in".

It is one of Australia's nicer customs that the term is frequently used to address frail and elderly men.  If you want or need to say something to a man who looks as if his life is pretty much over, you address him as "Digger" -- as in, "Do you need any help with that, digger?"

Use of the term implies an assumption that although the man may not be good for much now, he served his country honourably in his youth so still deserves respect for that.  It is a respectful form of address. 

Australia has been involved in lots of wars -- mostly as allies  of the Americans or the Brits -- so an assumption that an old man was involved in one of them will often not be astray. Nonetheless many of the men addressed as "digger" will not in fact have served in the armed forces --  but the term is used to convey that the man was once much more than he now is.  It is respect for the elderly generally.

I myself normally used the term in addressing elderly men but now  I find that I too am on occasions addressed that way if I get into some sort of a pickle.  At age 76, I am in fact pretty frail these days so I appreciate that respect and the eagerness to help that goes with it.

And I am even one of those who have some claim on the term.  I did reach the rank of sergeant during my time in the Australian army.






Climate change signals part of socialist plot

In his Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Charles Mackay describes how crowd psychology drove numerous “national delusions”, “peculiar follies” and “psychological delusions” in the 16th and 17th centuries. US financier Bernard Baruch recounted similar madness preceding the Wall Street crash of 1929.

Without wanting to appear disrespectful to Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore and her councillors, something about their declaration of a “climate emergency” suggests a similar psychological irrationality.

Their gullibility matches that of audiences at the UN climate conference in Poland and the Davos World Economic Forum who sat spellbound as 16-year-old Greta Thunberg lectured them on climate catastrophism.

Moore and her colleagues mindlessly chant slogans about how “climate change poses a serious risk to Sydneysiders” because “successive federal governments have shamefully presided over a climate disaster … Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have increased for four consecutive years. (The) federal government’s policies are simply not working.”

It’s true. Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are rising marginally. But per capita they are falling. Even if you believe CO2 influences global temperatures, at 1.3 per cent of global emissions and a 1 per cent growth rate, they are hardly a danger to the planet. Besides, Australia is on track to meet its Paris commitment. A recent study found the world overall has only a 5 per cent chance of reaching its goals.

Australian National Univer­sity research confirms our per capita renewables deployment rate is four to five times faster than in the EU, the US, Japan and China. Contrast this with a world that, for the first time since 2001, saw no year-on-year growth in renewable power capacity.

With Australia already leading the world, how much more is the government expected to do? How many more billions must taxpayers and industry pay?

Virtue signalling is one thing, but it is deceptive for the City of Sydney Council to claim that by next year it will use 100 per cent renewable energy. It surely must know that in NSW 80 per cent of electricity is coal-generated.

Still, Sydney, along with another 651 trendy green councils in 15 countries, is now eligible to attend a group hug where the collective can again remind governments to “adopt an emergency response to climate change and the broader ecological crisis”, as a campaign launched in left-wing stronghold New York City has just declared. It’s the first US city with more than a million residents to do so.

Democratic-controlled Los Angeles City Council flirted with the idea but simply passed a ­motion to set up a Climate Emergency Mobilisation Department.

Conspicuously, no Chinese city has had the urge, despite China’s “greenhouse” gas emissions growing at the fastest pace in seven years and outpacing the US and EU combined. No Indian city has either, despite faster emissions growth than any other major energy-consuming nation.

Meanwhile, Britain, France, Canada and Ireland have capitulated. Britain has introduced legislation to become CO2 neutral by 2050. It will mean a change to almost every aspect of life and carries an estimated cost of more than £1 trillion ($1.8 trillion). Ireland, having missed both domestic and EU emissions targets, is simply virtue signalling.

As financial and social costs accumulate, it is not surprising to find signs of mania fatigue.

Growing numbers of credible whistleblowers and respected climate scientists are calling into question the integrity of the science. Their claims that global warming theory is unproven and that data is “untrustworthy” and “falsified” are slowly entering mainstream consciousness.

Repeated catastrophic deadlines have proved false. Climate-change threats to food produc­tion proved unfounded. Between 2005 and 2016, there was a global decline of 15 per cent in undernourished people, despite the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declaring 2016 the hottest year on record.

And, inevitably, faith and reality are colliding. University of Colorado scientist Roger Pielke Jr calculates getting to net zero global CO2 emissions by 2050 “requires replacing one million tonnes of fossil fuel consumption every day, starting now”.

These impracticalities and increasing voter hostility mean governments representing more than half the world’s population can’t agree on a long-term net zero emissions target. Nor on a UN scientific report on the ­impact of a 1.5C rise in global temperatures. Perhaps most revealing of all is the growing realisation that climate change is not about science but politics.

Potsdam Institute director Ottmar Edenhofer confirms this: “One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy,” he warns. “This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy any more. We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.”

Former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres agrees: “The whole climate change process is a complete transformation of the economic structure of the world.”

This is orthodox Marxist, socialist ideology and the West is being bullied into parting with trillions of dollars for the privilege of surrendering to an authoritarian central government. When enough people grasp this, the climate change delusion bubble will burst. Perhaps this explains why desperate organisers of protests such as the Extinction Rebellion are now resorting to violence.

Meanwhile, like Wile E. Coyote, Moore and her global catastrophists are suspended over the cliff, leaving behind a trail of destruction. Sooner or later they will look down, leaving us to pick up the pieces.

SOURCE  






'Tell them to make their own Breakfast

Famous children's author John Marsden slams Aussie helicopter parents for doing 'irreparable damage' to their kids by telling them they're perfect


One of Australia's most prolific authors has spoken out against what he perceives as the 'disempowerment' and' impotence' of today's youth through damaging parenting.

John Marsden, most known for his Tomorrow When the War Began series, has written a non-fiction book entitled The Art of Growing Up where he shares some of the insight he from 30 years of writing for young adults.

Mr Marsden said the country is in the midst of an 'epidemic of damaging parenting' which will likely have long term ramifications.

He wrote the number of parents who don't just love their children but are 'in love with them' had reached 'critical levels'.

As a result Mr Marsden believes parents could be passing on their own narcissism.

'They minimise their child's transgressions, have no regard for those hurt by their child's narcissism … and blame others for their child's aberrant behaviour. They are doing irreparable damage to their kids,' Mr Marsden wrote. 

Mr Marsden, who has six stepsons of his own, told The Australian elaborated on his viewpoint and said he was keenly aware many parents would balk at his suggestion.

'I do think there's a need to be more direct in the way we talk to parents ­because parenthood has become this great untouchable area, this sacred topic, which you dare not criticise except in the most insincere ways,' he said. 

The major theme of Mr Marsden's argument was giving children more freedom and refraining from putting too much undue pressure on them from a young age.

He encourages parents to allow their children to explore their physical and intellectual world with more freedom and to allow them to make mistakes.

Mr Marsden wrote in his book saying no to children at least once a day could go a long way towards this goal.

His advice to parents early in the book is to be brutally honest and aware of the parenting techniques they use which are unhelpful to adolescents.  

To rethink their 'prejudices' and realise their children do not have to be perfect because no one alive is perfect.

A key piece of advice given to parents in the book is to simply set out the goal of helping their children live their lives to the fullest, including the joys and sorrows. 

PARENTING TIPS FROM THE ART OF GROWING

1) 'The first principle of good parenting is to be aware of the unhealthy ways we construct childhood and adolescence. Parents may need to rethink their prejudices. Their children may not be as perfect as they pretend to be, and their teenagers might be better than is generally acknowledged.'

2) 'We must give our children fear. It is a rich and immensely valuable experience to know fear. The only myths many modern parents want to offer children are Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. We are scared to give them the Bogeyman as well, not realising how nourishing the Bogeyman can be.’

3) 'We can reasonably assume that a parent who does not say ‘no’ at least once a day to their child is failing as a parent.'

4) 'Parents should strongly — even forcefully! — encourage teenagers to get paid jobs. They are, after all, members of a family, not business class passengers on a plane.'

5) 'People who feel angry or upset when they get a glimpse of children’s hatred or greed or sexuality or rage or dishonesty are overlooking the fact that the child is acting in the same way as every other human being in the history of the world.'

6) 'The only important academic skill needed by children is literacy. We must ensure that children have access to books with realistic characters, credible situations, authentic language and we must not shrink from showing life in all its many forms.'

7) 'It is worth teaching your children how to be interesting conversationalists. Face it, some kids, like some adults, are boring. Some are excruciatingly boring.’

8) 'Parenting means teaching children to get their own Weet-Bix.'

9) 'Every parent should wish for their child nothing more than ‘I want him or her to experience life to the fullest’. Every child should be able to exult in the 10,000 joys that life brings, and feel with full force the sadness of the 10,000 sorrows.'


SOURCE  






Half of Australian schoolkids can't name where bananas, bread and cheese come from - as Scott Morrison blames militant vegans for making students believe farming is wrong

And Australia is a major primary producing nation

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is baffled as to why almost half of Australian primary schoolkids can't name where bananas, bread and cheese come from - and think cotton comes from animals.

The father of two young daughters expressed his concern about Australia's potential future leaders to farmers at Dubbo, in the New South Wales central west.

Quoting an Australian Council for Educational Research study, he was perplexed as to why '75 per cent of grade six students believed cotton socks came from an animal and 45 per cent believed bananas, bread and cheese didn't come from farming'.

Mr Morrison suggested militant vegan activists were possibly to blame for 40 per cent of year 10 students believing farming was bad for the environment.

'Any wonder that we've now got activists storming farms,' he told the Daily Telegraph Bush Summit on Thursday.

'We have to bridge this divide and connect Australians once again with what's happening in our rural and regional communities and ensure there is an appropriate balance in what our kids are being taught in our schools and in our communities.'

Following a spate of farm invasions by animal rights activists, the Prime Minister has promised to tackle agricultural trespassing during the next sitting of Parliament.

'That legislation we'll deal with in the next fortnight,' Mr Morrison told Sydney radio 2GB broadcaster Alan Jones on Friday.

Mr Morrison also declared this week that 'our farmers are Australia's best environmentalists'.

Taxpayers from next year will be stumping up $10 million to fund city kid visits to farms.

'So that kids can understand what happens on farms, how things grow, and how that changes and supports their livelihoods and their daily lives,' Mr Morrison said.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here







19 July, 2019

The sinister suppression of the Freedom of Speech in China is  not too dissimilar to the restrictions of freedoms in Australia and New Zealand

Ron Owen

While Israel Folau explores legal avenues, the broader fight for freedom of religion and belief continues.

Supposedly, the new federal parliament is now in session and the government is promising religious freedom legislation. I will only believe that their intentions are honourable when not just 18 C of the Racial Discrimination Act is removed, but when all of this Act is removed, plus the all inclusive State Anti Discrimination Acts are removed.

These Acts do not just suppress the freedom of speech, they create public funded witch hunt inquisitions that use the power of the State to create legal precedents that nullify any safeguards that were put in these Acts to sell them to the dumbed down majority.

Just recently, a man described as the “UK’s Israel Folau” recently won a similar case, the British Justice system must not be as polluted as ours in Australia.

Christian student Felix Ngole was expelled from his social work course at Sheffield University for posting comments critical of homosexuality on Facebook.

After fighting a four-year legal battle, the UK Court of Appeal has ruled in favour of Ngole.

The decision, which overturned an earlier High Court ruling in the university’s favour, found that “the University adopted a position from the outset… which was untenable” and that the university “wrongly confused the expression of religious views with the notion of discrimination.”

The presiding judges pointed out that “The mere expression of views on theological grounds (e.g. that ‘homosexuality is a sin’) does not necessarily connote that the person expressing such views will discriminate on such grounds.”

Ngole’s comments were made in the course of a debate on Facebook over the jailing of US marriage registrar Kim Davis. Davis, you might recall, refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in Kentucky and was jailed briefly for contempt of court in 2015.

Our Australian courts have always taken the opposite view ‘that if any person could be offended, no matter how slightly then there is breach of the Act which has to be prosectured.

Senator Eric Abetz describes this sort of  discrimination correctly:

“In an exercise of Orwellian proportions, these sports stars were targeted for exclusion in the name of inclusion and discriminated against in the name of tolerance. You don’t have to agree with Izzy to agree with his right to express his religious views, or his wife’s right to back him.”

The Senator then outlined why the Folau precedent is a threat to our freedom.

“Today it’s Izzy’s religious views and his wife’s loyal support. Yesterday it was the Professor Ridd’s scientific views. Tomorrow it might be somebody’s political view. The next might be someone’s environmental view. This is a fight for freedom of speech which impacts us all. The government must, and I am confident will, respond to the expressions of the quiet Australians on 18 May and ensure our freedoms, which were bought with the highest of prices, are not sacrificed and squandered on the altar of political correctness.”

Any normal Australian who does not have the financial backing or profile of Andrew Bolt or Israel Folau stands no chance before government selected Tribunals, composed of one person.

Their selection is not based on their knowledge but on their opinion and in most of the Tribunals the Rule of law and the Rules of evidence do not apply. One Tribunal member in my case bragged from the bench that he could take his opinion on evidence presented from what he read in the morning papers and ignore whatever I presented in my defence.

We do not have a Constitutional Monarchy, or a Constitutional democracy when we cannot comment or we are prevented from reading comments from others, without the freedom ot interchange information we are no better off than the Chinese people, or the Hong Kong people, the difference in the degrees of suppression we are in is just academic debate.

One Law For All

We are either one nation with equal justice for all, or no justice for those without government support. Government now will support Muslins, homosexuals, and people with a darker skin colour, but won’t support Christians, firearm owners, and white skinned people. That is Discrimination in itself.

If we had a correct justice system we are all at liberty to take any offence of Libel or Defamation to the civil courts, if the government wanted to do something right for once they could easily make the Justice system more affordable. Instead, they increase court fees and work to keep the legal profession exclusive.

Without Justice we have nothing to fight for, we are just slaves and unfortunately very soon we are going to have to fight to exist in our troubled world.

SOURCE  






Australia’s growing dam crisis

Australia is a dry continent – that is a fact of geography and global climate.

However, per head of population, we have abundant fresh water resources in rivers, lakes, dams, soils and underground. But we do not conserve enough of it, and much of what is conserved is wasted by foolish policies.

Politicians welcome (and sometimes subsidise) population growth, migrants, refugees and tourists but they neglect or prevent water conservation. And green schemers and globalist politicians are deliberately turning occasional water shortages into an on-going crisis.

Our main problem is that enormous volumes of flood water flow into the sea during rain events while the same rivers run dry during droughts. Sensible people would moderate both floods and droughts with well-planned dams and weirs.

Australia’s rainfall is not well distributed – usually there is abundant water on the coastal side of the ranges, but the vast inland is largely dry land and desert.

More than 80 years ago, Dr John Bradfield, the great Australian engineer who designed the Sydney Harbour Bridge, could see what was needed – build dams to catch water on the rainy side and transfer it to the dry side, preferably generating some hydro power in the process. Water transfer could be achieved using tunnels and/or pipes-pumps assisted by syphon, wind or hydro energy. We have engineers and equipment able to drill huge traffic tunnels – let’s show similar skill in water management and transfer.

Once we had people with the determination and skills needed to create farsighted water projects like the Snowy Mountain Scheme, the Ord Scheme, the Gordon Dam, the Burdekin Dam and the Perth Kalgoorlie Water Pipeline. Those days are past.

Today we have far more people but we are not conserving more water. It is 30 years since we build a large dam in Australia. And we neglect or waste underground water resources.

Urban dwellers demand cheap, clean, abundant water for long showers, washing dishes and cars, public and private pools, verdant lawns, fountains, gardens, parks, golf courses and weekend retreats.

However, many of these same people tend to lead the vocal opposition to any proposal for a new dam. They criticise farmers who conserve water to grow our food and fibre, and promote high water prices in order to crush farm demand for it.

A sensible society would identify the best dam sites and have a long-term plan for acquiring and storing the land rights needed for them. We do the reverse. Decisions are postponed until the need is critical. Then landowners with vested interests, green busybodies and media stirrers manage to scare the politicians, and the water conservation proposal is killed.

Then the “No Dams” Mafia takes over, trying to sterilise the site for all future dams by quietly changing land-use and vegetation classifications.

Sydney shows how to create a water shortage such as the current one that caused the sudden weekend imposition of water restrictions. We need to remember the history of this crisis.

Back in 2002 the Carr Labor government killed the proposal to build the Welcome Reef dam on the Shoalhaven River near Braidwood. To ensure this proposal never arose again Premier Carr gazetted 100 new national parks between the Bega Valley and Nowra.

Green destroyers have also grossly mismanaged stored water by insisting on excessive and ill-timed “environmental” flows. This is a scheme where you build a dam to catch water and then try to manage the water as if the dam did not exist. It is very slow and expensive to get this lost water back from the sea using the Flannery desalination plants.

We have businessmen who can spend millions of dollars on election advertisements and casinos, and politicians who can contemplate spending billions of dollars on games and stadiums, but they can always find an academic to debunk expenditure on a new dam.

American pioneers learned from the beavers how to preserve the life blood of rivers by building weirs. Our stressed Darling River has such a low gradient that a string of weirs could preserve the river environment and sensibly ration available water supplies for fish, farmers and wildlife. And it has tributaries that could support dams.

However Greens and fellow travellers can be guaranteed to oppose every new dam or weir proposal. Judging from overseas trends, they will soon be suggesting that existing dams be destroyed. If they can find a rare frog or a native plant, or can invent a dreamtime story, any dam proposal can be delayed for decades.

It is time for real conservation – conserve our water.

SOURCE  






Stop Sarah Jane Parkinson getting early parole

Bettina Arndt

First some news about the Sarah Jane Parkinson case. You may remember that Parkinson was sent to prison in January for false rape allegations she made against Dan Jones. I made a video with Dan and Sixty Minutes did a whole programme on her outrageous attempt to destroy Dan and his family.

The latest development is that Parkinson has applied for early parole and has requested she is transferred to the NSW Parole Board for administration, which means she will be close to her boyfriend, the crooked NSW cop who helped with her vicious campaign.

At the time of the parole hearing on September 3 she will have served only 8 months of her two-year non-parole period. As a result of her lies, Dan spent four months in jail plus three months home arrest and the family spent over $300,000 on legal fees defending their son.

The ACT Department of Public Prosecution has written expressing concern about her parole application, noting she has a history of manipulating the system. But I hope many of you will help alert the public to what is happening here. Canberra people can help by writing to local newspapers, lobbying MPs, and ringing radio stations.

It’s worth trying to get the word out through social media. Perhaps also write to the ACT Attorney General, Gordon Ramsay - RAMSAY@act.gov.au – who claims publicly to be working with the Jones family regarding compensation for wrongful imprisonment but fails to respond to any of their correspondence.

The Jones family has legal help to pursue Dan’s case for compensation, but no decision has yet been made in relation to the ex-gratia payment from the ACT Government.

Via email from Bettina Arndt: Bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au






Federal, state ministers strike deal on building reforms

The Morrison government says it has thrashed out a deal with the states to introduce tougher regulation of the nation’s construction industry, paving the way for the possible resolution of a crisis in insurance coverage.

Industry Minister Karen Andrews said today the government had reached an agreement with her state counterparts to implement all 24 recommendations of the Shergold-Weir report on the state of the building industry.

The most critical recommendations of the report co-authored by the former top Howard government bureaucrat were to improve compliance with approved building materials, site documentation and rectify all buildings identified to have combustible cladding.

Ms Andrews confirmed an agreement had been reached prior to a meeting in Sydney with state building ministers.

Insurers, who have refused to renew indemnity policies for many building certifiers or significantly increases premiums because of a flood of claims, said they welcomed an agreement.

But their support would depend on the speed with which the agreement could take effect with all recommendations put in place.

States warned cladding their problem

Earlier Ms Andrews warned states not to shirk responsibility for fixing millions of dollars worth of flammable cladding and other defects, citing the billions in revenue they have received from the construction boom over the past decade.

The warning comes ahead of an emergency meeting of building ministers today in Sydney, as Ms Andrews ramps up her opposition to any push by states for the commonwealth to provide funding to fix buildings.

The ministers will also discuss the inability of construction certifiers to obtain insurance, following several cladding-fuelled fires in Melbourne apartment buildings and structural faults that have caused the evacuation of a number of buildings in Sydney.

On Tuesday, Victoria’s Andrews Labor government announced a $600 million cladding rectification package, but pressured the Morrison government to fund half of it.

Victorian Planning Minister Richard Wynne argued yesterday that it was “only fair” for the federal government to contribute $300m. His Coalition counterpart, Tim Smith, accused him of trying to absolve Victoria of responsibility after Mr Wynne unsuccessfully asked him to sign a bipartisan letter­ to Ms Andrews calling for a “nationally led” solution.

While Ms Andrews has indic­ated the federal government is happy to lead a process to ­harmonise state and territory building regulations, she said the states had the capacity to ensure the safety of their own buildings.

Victoria’s stamp duty revenue from property grew to more than $7 billion in the 2018-19 state budget, doubling over the past decade, with overall property taxes repres­enting approximately 17 per cent of total state revenue.

“States have been big beneficiaries of the building and construction boom over the past decade,” Ms Andrews told The Australian. “Now is not the time for them to shirk their responsibilities.”

But Labor’s industry spokesman Brendan O’Connor turned the accusation against the Mor­rison government, saying it had been “shirking responsibility” by refusing to provide funding for rectification works and failing to address the inability of building surveyors to obtain insurance.

“Each day the Morrison government fails to take leadership and respond to the building industry crisis, businesses are closing down, the safety and lives of Australians are put at risk,” Mr O’Connor said. “The regulatory and enforcement regime is broken, and leadership on this issue is needed to improve compliance with the national construction code and toughen up penalties.”

Ms Andrews said today’s meeting was a chance for the states and territories “to demonstrate once and for all that they are committed to working together to ensure a nationally consistent building sector”, and imple­menting the recommendations of the federal government-commissioned investigation into compli­ance and enforcement in the nation’s construction industry, completed last year by Peter Shergold­ and Bronwyn Weir.

“I will again offer to fund a taskforce that will work with the states and territories so they can implement the recommendations of the Building Confidence ­report,” Ms Andrews said.

The letter from Mr Wynne, circulated to Mr Smith last month and obtained by The Australian, says “state protections can only go so far”, calling for a “nationally led solution”. It asks the commonwealth to “help support those Australians caught up in this crisis through no fault of their own”.

“As representatives at a state and national level, we are all responsible for giving people more faith in the building system. Even more importantly, it’s up to us to help keep people safe,” it says.

Mr Smith told The Australian: “The letter is littered with political points trying to absolve the Andrew­s government of any responsibi­lity for a mess they’ve created, and I refused to sign it. “It was clearly designed as a political manoeuvre to wedge me and the federal government.”

Mr Smith said there was a role for the federal government in regul­ating the building industry nationally. “But the federal governme­nt’s role is not to bail out state governments, particularly this state Labor government here in Victoria,” he said.

He also warned that $600m would not be “nearly enough” to address the problem, citing an RMIT University estimate suggest­ing it would cost at least $2.6bn to fix flammable cladding in Victorian buildings alone.

Mr Wynne said flammable cladding was “an international issue that should be above polit­ical point-scoring”.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here








18 July, 2019

Why Sydney is a disaster: Mark Latham on everything that's wrong with Australia's biggest city - and its troubling future thanks to a booming population

The planners have been caught flat-footed by the huge and sudden growth of population from third-world countries, mostly Muslim

Sydney's planners suffer from a 'total lack of sense' and seem 'permanently asleep at the wheel' as the city goes through a massive population boom, Mark Latham has warned. 

In an exclusive interview, the newly elected New South Wales One Nation leader has given a scathing diagnosis of the biggest problem with Australia's largest city. 

The powerful crossbencher, 58, still lives in Sydney's south west near Camden with his wife and children and commutes to work by train. 

But Mr Latham described the area as 'population boom town' and painted a vivid picture of schools and local services already under immense strain.

That comes even as the Government plans to build a new city the size of Adelaide on Sydney's outskirts - without setting aside land for a single public hospital.

'I got involved with politics because of bad planning where I grew up ... and fifty years later you're having the same problems,' Mr Latham said.

'You have to wonder, are these people permanently asleep at the wheel? Because these are obvious, obvious problems that come from bad planning.' 

'You have to wonder, are these people permanently asleep at the wheel? Because these are obvious, obvious problems

Mr Latham's comments echo those of former premier Bob Carr, who predicted last March that a crowded and 'dystopian' future Sydney would lead to popular beaches like Bondi and Manly getting turnstiles and ticketing.

However, Mr Latham's remarks this week aren't just based on his imagination, but what he has already seen developing on the city's fringes. Particularly the State Government's plan to build an 'Aerotropolis' near the under-construction western Sydney airport, at Badgery's Creek.

The Government has said as many as 1.3 million people could end up living in the so-called Aerotropolis. But Mr Latham complained it hasn't even put aside a 'patch of dirt' for a public hospital.

The One Nation leader said he was pleasantly surprised by how receptive the Gladys Berejiklian government's top ministers had been to his ideas.

Mr Latham said it had been 'refreshingly straightforward' to argue a case and get things done with ministers.  'At least in state politics ministers say 'my door's always open, just wander around''.

'In Canberra, the idea you could've walked into a senior minister's office unannounced ... you'd have to make an appointment for a week or catch them in the corridors.'

Mr Latham is a crucial vote for the government on its crossbench, and he begrudgingly admits it may be one of the most powerful roles he has had.

'I think you're better off up front trying to persuade people that something else makes sense than coming with a sledgehammer up front'.

'The State Government says 'we're building a city the size of Adelaide',' Mr Latham said.  'Adelaide has four public hospitals and we're building a city with none.'

Meanwhile, he said, new suburbs on the city's south-western reaches, like Oran Park, are already struggling.  The local school, Oran Park Public, opened six years ago but already has 1500 students, double its capacity. It has a staggering 42 demountable buildings. 

'What, they think it's going to be a retirement home, Oran Park?' Mr Latham scoffed. 'No, there's young families moving in, they're going to have kids, going to school.

'So how do you end up with a school with 42 demountables, that even the dunnies are demountable? 'It's just a total lack of planning sense.' 

Meanwhile, Mr Latham said the new train station at Leppington, completed by the previous government, had just 900 car spaces when it needed almost four times as many.    

'People are parked up side streets and around the corner in the dark. It's a safety risk for women walking to their cars. 'It's an absolute traffic nightmare'.

And while the Government is planning a driverless metro line to the new airport, Mr Latham said the plan was flawed.

That new metro would force jetsetters to have to catch three different trains if they wanted to meet a connecting flight at Sydney's main airport. The Government's planned driverless metro runs from the airport to St Marys station, on Sydney's main suburban commuter line.  

'We all love St Marys, but it's not in the tourism books,' Mr Latham said.

'Then with your big bags you've got to change from a metro train to a heavy rail and again to go to the (airport at Mascot).'

Mr Latham said the previous Labor government had built a train line out to Leppington with an eye to extending it to the new airport.

That line already connects up with the international terminal - but the trains would have to be driven by people, not robots, like the metro.

'So why wouldn't you do a heavy rail? Because the Government has an aversion to heavy rail because they've got drivers and unions. 'Well, you can't plan an international airport in western Sydney around an industrial relations agenda.'

Despite his comprehensive list of issues with Sydney's planning, Mr Latham said he was otherwise settling in well to his new role as a NSW Upper House powerbroker.

Gladys Berejiklian's government doesn't have a majority in the chamber and Mr Latham and his One Nation colleague Rod Roberts, a former detective, have immense power in allowing - or blocking - legislation. They are two of an eleven-strong crossbench, including three Greens, two Animal Justice MPs and two Shooters, Fishers and Farmers.

State politics wags have said Mr Latham's arrival in the chamber has been like a 'first grader' playing against the 'reserve grade' state politicians. But Mr Latham said Ms Berejiklian's Coalition has managed to nurture their talent pool over the past three terms in government.

'I think the Berejiklian government has half a dozen ministers that would fit onto a federal front bench - they're quite talented and know their stuff.

'I think Labor's got a bigger problem with talent ... they're struggling to get a couple of openers out.'

SOURCE  





Climate change protesters have been arrested after another peak-hour demonstration caused traffic chaos in Brisbane’s CBD

Environmental activists have wreaked havoc in Brisbane’s CBD for the second time this week as climate change protesters took to busy inner-city streets this morning.

The demonstration was organised by the Extinction Rebellion group, a global organisation aiming to raise awareness of the world’s “sixth mass extinction” brought on by climate change.
The group staged similar action on Monday and last Thursday, with scores of activists blocking traffic in the Queensland capital.

The Courier Mail reports nine participants have already been arrested today, including two who allegedly glued themselves to the street.

The publication revealed some motorists had been “unleashing their frustration”, with some yelling “get a f***ing job”.

Seven protesters arrested on Monday were charged with various offences such as public nuisance, disobeying police move-on directions and impeding the flow of traffic.

They have been specifically targeting busy intersections, although police have warned they will be arrested if they refuse to move on when requested.

The protesters hope to raise awareness of environmental issues and are strongly against the controversial Adani coal mine.

But they have been widely criticised by many Australians who have slammed the commuter chaos caused by the action. “Ratbag alert! These left wing extremists are reportedly gluing themselves to major Brisbane streets. Enough is enough, Police should enforce the law and they should be punished in court,” LNP MP Deb Frecklington said in a tweet.

It proved controversial, with commentators attacking the “lazy opportunistic tweet” and arguing you “don’t have to be left wing to be against Adani”.

The protests have also angered ordinary Australians who hit out at the disruption caused during their busy early-morning commute.

Earlier this week, Queensland’s Labor premier Annastacia Palaszczuk warned the protest could lead to injury. “Everyone has a right to protest. But not to hinder people trying to earn a living. And some day someone will get hurt, and won’t get to a hospital in time and that’s simply unacceptable,” she posted on Twitter.

Posting below the call to action, one commenter branded protesters “morons” who will “never make a difference”.
However, despite the controversy, the worldwide Extinction Rebellion group is drawing increasing support for its cause.
According to Extinction Rebellion’s website, Rebellion Day “will see hundreds of nonviolent rebels orchestrate a shut down of the business as usual of central Brisbane.”

Adani declared earlier this month it was full steam ahead for its controversial mega coal mine in central Queensland after the State Government issued the final approval needed to begin construction.

SOURCE  





Anti-Israel Year 12 assessment task angers Jewish community

A sample exam paper for Year 12 students claimed as fact that ­Israel has persecuted Arabs by demolishing their homes ­because “they don’t follow the Jewish religion”.

The contents of the paper provided to Victorian schools has angered the Jewish community, which has criticised the “false” and “libellous’’ claim for potentially fuelling anti-Israel sentiments through the community.

The Australian Council for Health, Physical Education and Recreation last night agreed to recall all copies of the practice ­assessment task meant for Health and Human Development students, following a complaint from a prominent Jewish school in Melbourne.

The paper, part of the council’s 2019 package of school-­assessed coursework tasks, known as SACs, that are provided to schools for a fee, contains questions and answers, including one asking students to demonstrate how religious discrimination affects mental health and wellbeing.

According to the sample ­answer provided: “An example of an individual being persecuted for their religion could be the Arab families living in Israel who practise the Islam religion rather than the Jewish religion. Including unlawful demolition of homes and forced displacement and detainment of these families.” It claims that “when a person is discriminated against … it could push a person to become more dogmatic in following their ­religion, possibly leading to ­extremism”.

Mount Scopus Memorial College principal Rabbi James Kennard said he was “naturally disturbed” when the contents of the paper were brought to his ­attention and immediately lodged a complaint.

“I didn’t expect to find something very political, very biased and inaccurate in a Year 12 sample assessment paper,” Rabbi Kennard told The Australian. “It’s an utter falsehood. It creates a negative impression of Israel, which is actually a centre of ­religious tolerance … and the only democratic country in the Middle East.” He said it was a “libellous” to suggest “Israel is to blame for extremism”.

The council, a professional body representing health and physical education teachers, initially defended the document.

“We make sure that for the ­answers we provided, there would be evidence for them,” said professional learning manager Bernie Holland, adding SACs were written by four expert teachers and reviewed by two others.

Mr Holland said the subject matter dealt with in the unit ­required students to consider inequality and discrimination based on race, religion, sex, sexual orientation and gender identity, which could prove “controversial” at some schools. As a result, teachers were encouraged to cater sample questions to their own circumstances, he said.

However, it is understood that council chief executive Hilary Shelton contacted Rabbi Kennard last night to advise that “it was not anticipated nor intended that the example … would offend any individual or group”. She said the council had requested a recall of all issued copies of the sample SAC and reissued a new sample assessment addressing the key knowledge area.

However, Rabbi Kennard said he wasn’t concerned about only Jewish students. “I will be explaining to my students that this not something they should pay any attention to but I’m also concerned about students at other schools,” he said. “What is the effect on these students reading this stuff?”

Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler said it was absurd that the publishers elected to single out Israel, “a country where Arab citizens have full equal rights” to highlight ­religious discrimination.

“We should all be concerned that ACHPER have hijacked an important educational issue in the curriculum,” he said.

Mount Scopus student Ramona Chrapot, a “proud Jewish student”, said she was concerned that “innocent and unsuspecting” students were being misled. “It’s instilling in them something that just isn’t right,’’ she said.

SOURCE  






There could have been a real Aboriginal working class, but government cruelled the chance

Government "protection" is always an open invitation to corruption.  And when the "protected" group is very backward ...

It’s bad enough that they stole a decade’s worth of Hans Pearson’s hard-earned wages; worse for him and his family that for so long Australian governments at state and federal levels regarded it, quite literally, as business as usual.

The proud 80-year-old Aboriginal stockman finally saw justice done this week when the class action that bears his name as lead applicant, Pearson v Queensland, was settled out of court, with the state agreeing to pay $190 million in compensation for treating indigenous workers like “slaves”, in the words of one of their lawyers.

If you want to understand why the dispossession that flowed from European settlement still cuts raw for Australia’s first peoples, this saga opens a window into the grinding hurt, indignity and subjugation that was their lot under the law of the land.

We are not talking dusty colonial history here.

The acts of parliament that were used to plunder what should have been Pearson’s earnings for 10 years between 1953 and 1963, as he drove cattle from one end of Cape York to the other, remained in force in Queensland until 1972 and $10.8m in frozen proceeds of the “stolen wages” were still on the government’s books in 2008.

His celebrated nephew, Noel Pearson, the community leader and nationally ranked thinker who has championed welfare reform on the peninsula, insists there can be no true reconciliation between white and black Australia until there is “truth telling” about what happened on the frontier of settlement to Aborigines and islanders, and how the impact of this cascaded through subsequent generations.

“For me, it’s really the third part of the formula put forward at Uluru — the voice, treaty and truth,” he tells Inquirer, citing the 2017 road map to reconciliation now at the centre of an intensifying political row over whether indigenous people should speak to parliament through a representative body enshrined in the Constitution.

“And the truth is that Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders contributed to the development of the state … my father and Uncle Hans, they went out in pursuit of work in the post-war period and they never got rewarded with an equal footing with everybody else. That’s the truth.

“We have become mired in the welfare problem over the past 40 years because rather than offering us a place in the economy, the accommodation was reached that we were given a place in the welfare system. There was a fork in the road when the discrimination of the past could have led to a new era … where people who worked hard could have enjoyed the same opportunities as other Queenslanders had. “There could have been a real Aboriginal working class.”

Instead, a system hatched in the late 19th century to harness tribal labour for the emergent beef industry across the vast top end of Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia morphed into one to control and exploit the entire indigenous population when it was herded into missions, forerunners to the troubled remote communities of today.

Wages that were supposed to be paid to the state and held in trust were either pocketed by dishonest graziers and police or put to other use by the government.

When Canberra began to pay pensions and child endowment to Aboriginal and islander people, all too often the money never got past the state capital. It’s not as if the powers that be were blind to what was happening.

Consultant historian Ros Kidd, whose research on the stolen wages underpinned a 2016 Senate inquiry as well as the class action in Queensland run by Cairns solicitor John Bottoms, now set to be rolled out nationally by big-city firm Shine Lawyers, uncovered one government audit after another that called out the rorts. “For Aboriginal people, it was institutionalised poverty from the very first years of settlement that lasted to the late 1960s,” Kidd says.

Witness this scene described by the Cairns Argus in 1886, 10 years after the settlers belatedly arrived, a “kind of government function that certainly was not creditable to the authorities and should bring a blush of shame to the cheeks of every colonist”. A crowd of 150 tribal people is milling in the police paddock, where officers of the peace are busily tearing in half blankets to hand out. In the middle of this a telegram arrives from Brisbane. Hold on, there’s been a mistake! They should get a whole blanket each.

It was too much for the paper to stomach. “Astounding magnanimity,” the Argus noted sarcastically. “We have taken from the Queensland natives no less than 428,663,360 acres of land. Out of this vast and luxuriant area, about 10 million acres have been sold (for) six and a quarter million cash. Another 300 millions of acres have leased, from which the state derives an annual rental of £332,800. In return for this governments, past and present, give these black-skinned, patient, uncomplaining children of the soil one whole blue blanket per year, costing perhaps five shillings each. And yet we profess to call ourselves Christians.”

By Federation in 1901, Queensland had established a contract system for indigenous workers — covering pearlers in the Torres Strait, stockmen, labourers, female domestics — setting a notional minimum wage starting at five shillings, an eighth of the rate for whites. Notional, because enforcement was mainly left to the local “protector of natives”, typically a police sergeant.

After World War I, the state mandated that with the exception of “pocket money”, wages were to be paid into an “Aboriginal Provident Fund”, to hold the money in trust for the “relief of natives”.

Impressed by the Queensland scheme, WA set up similar arrangements, while the Northern Territory had a medical benefit fund and NSW withheld the pay of indigenous apprentices and some security entitlements.

Working the system, the Queensland government went on to establish a consolidated “Aboriginal Account” that would continue to operate in one form or another into the 1990s.

The trouble was, very little if any money ever ended up in the hands of those it was supposed to be benefit.

Like most of his contemporaries, Hans Pearson received only the sketchiest education before he was sent to work at 14 in Hope Vale, a one-time Lutheran mission outside Cooktown. But the woman he married in 1960, Anna May, a Palm Islander who was good with numbers, calculated that he was owed £7000 by 1963 — equivalent to $235,000 in today’s dollars. The couple had picked out a house in the picturesque sugar town of Innisfail and agreed a price with the seller.

But when he turned up to ask the local police sergeant for his cash, Pearson, who had never been paid in all the years he had worked, was cut a cheque for a risible £28. He couldn’t believe it.

“I said, ‘You’ve got to be joking’, but he wasn’t; he was dead serious. He told me, ‘that’s all you’ve got, mate. Off you go.’

“My missus had tears in her eyes,” Pearson remembers. “She said, ‘That can’t be right. You worked for 10 years.’ But that’s how it was … I know people who grew up on the cattle stations, worked there all their lives and came to Hope Vale with only their swags. No money, no nothing.”

He and Anna May never got to own a house. Widowed and alone — his wife died in 2009, two years after Bottoms took the case that now bears Pearson’s name — he lives in a housing commission rental in Townsville. As his nephew points out, the effect on the family has been lasting. “You know, he didn’t get to join that story of working, saving, putting a deposit down, owning your first home,” Noel Pearson says.

“It’s his great regret. Every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander was like him and his wife — hard workers, engaged in the mainstream economy in whatever form of work that was available. But because of this system of managing wages, they were robbed. It went on because it was sanctioned by the state.

“If they had got to own their own home back in the 1960s, then their nine children would have had a chance to get into home ownership; they would have the role model of that, but also the assistance. Once your parents have a home, they can also help you with a loan. And a virtuous cycle continues after that. He’s now got scores of grandchildren, scores and scores of great-grandchildren. His tribe is massive now.”

Queensland’s move to settle the class action sets a precedent for similar cases in the works in WA, where Shine Lawyers has ­already signed up 400 potential claimants, plus the Territory and NSW.

The clock is ticking. About two-thirds of the 10,000 anticipated beneficiaries in Queensland are deceased, with their allocations set to be paid to next of kin. The litigation covered a three-decade period from 1939 to 1972, when the so-called control system was finally dismantled.

Hans Pearson, reasonably enough, hopes Deputy Premier and Treasurer Jackie Trad will deliver on her promise to expedite the process. He’s thinking of his old mate Eddie Mabo, the lead applicant in the landmark 1992 High Court case that created native title, changing the law of the land. Poor Koiki — he didn’t live to see his life’s work vindicated.

“I did for my mates what Mabo did for all of us,” Pearson says, savouring his victory. “I’m 80 years of age and I know an old lady in Rockhampton who’s nearly 100 and she’s waiting, like me, for them to come through. I can tell you … they’d better hurry up, eh.”

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here




17 July, 2019

Greens exposed as Bob Brown baulks at turbines in his backyard

Environmental crusader Bob Brown has exposed a conspiracy of silence by the Greens and their supporters on the true cost and ­unintended consequences of ­renewable power.

Dr Brown yesterday stood by his comments slamming a proposed $1.6 billion Robbins Island wind farm in Tasmania’s northwest. The response from the Greens party and environment groups to Dr Brown’s outburst was as quiet as a wind rotor on a dead-calm day.

The Greens and Australian Conservation Foundation refused to criticise either Dr Brown or the project, slated to be one of the ­biggest wind farms in the world if it goes ahead.

In the past, federal Greens leader Richard Di Natale has likened investigating complaints about wind farms and noise to taking ­seriously alien abductions.

He refused to support the appointment of a wind farm commissioner to handle public com­plaints. His staff yesterday said he did not wish to comment on his former leader’s protest.

A spokesman for the ACF said “we don’t have a view” when asked about Dr Brown’s objections to the project. “We don’t know enough about it,” he said.

The ACF “can’t say definitely either way” if it had ever objected to a wind farm development.

Political adversaries criticised Dr Brown for displaying not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) hypocrisy in warning against the Robbins ­Island plan, but bird lovers who have been fighting wind farm ­developments across Australia for a decade would like the anti-­development, anti-coal powerhouse to extend his concerns beyond Tasmania. When Hamish Cumming tried to interest Dr Brown’s foundation in the plight of Victoria’s endangered brolgas, which he says are threatened by wind farms, he was ignored.

By publicly opposing the Robbins Island development, Dr Brown has unleashed a decade of pent-up frustrations of nature lovers who fear industrial-scale projects are transforming rural Australia for the worse.

Dr Brown yesterday defended his fight against the wind farm proposal, which he compared to the Franklin Dam. The Hong Kong-based UPC Renewables Robbins Island and Jim’s Plain Renewable Energy Parks project will be one of the world’s biggest renewable ­energy developments.

It will include up to 200 wind towers, each stretching 270m from the ground to rotor tip.

Electricity generated from the project will be exported to the mainland via a new interconnector as part of the “battery for the ­nation” project supported by the federal government.

To get to the interconnector, electricity from the wind and associated solar farms must travel through some of the most spectacular scenery in the region.

The project is also located in a significant area for raptors and ­migratory birds. UPC said it had been conducting eagle surveys, with white-bellied sea eagles and Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagles nesting on Robbins Island.

The company said there would be a 1km exclusion zone around each nest

Dr Brown shocked many with his public protests against the ­development because of its visual impacts and the threat the massive windmills pose to birdlife. “I’m a big supporter of renewable energy and energy efficiency but this massive wind farm goes too far,” he said. “It’s comparable to the Franklin Dam for hydro-energy … you have to look to the environmental, economic and social consequences of this wind farm.”

Dr Brown said as well as the environmental impacts, he was concerned profits from the project “will not go to Tasmanians, but to the multinational building it”.

Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor yesterday said: “This is a classic case of Greens’ hypocrisy. The Greens love nothing more than to lecture Australians about their preferred source of energy generation, but when it’s in Bob Brown’s backyard, wind farms are suddenly a bad idea.”

Tasmanian Liberal senator Eric Abetz ridiculed Dr Brown’s protests. “Consistency, integrity and facts are the three ingredients regularly missing from Bob Brown’s advocacy,” Senator Abetz said.

“And if he still believes in his slogan of ‘think globally, act locally’, the fact that the energy produced from the Robbins Island wind farm would be exported from Tasmania is irrelevant.”

SOURCE  






The Federal Court has dismissed action by Aborigines against a nuclear waste dump in SA

The Federal Court has dismissed a bid by a group of native title holders to influence and potentially block the construction of a nuclear waste dump on South Australia's Eyre Peninsula.

The Barngarla people had argued that a poll of residents planned by the Kimba District Council, to gauge local support for the dump, was unlawful because it excluded native title holders.

Two sites near the town have been short-listed as potential locations for a low-level radioactive waste storage facility, while a third is near the Flinders Ranges town of Hawker.

The federal government is yet to reveal its preferred location but following the court ruling said it was mindful of the need to reach a decision.

It has also vowed to continue to consult with all stakeholders as it thanked local communities for their patience.

The Barngarla had claimed their exclusion from the Kimba ballot was based on their Aboriginality and would impair their human rights or fundamental freedoms as native title owners.

But on Friday, Justice Richard White ruled that the council's actions did not contravene racial discrimination laws.

Justice White found the council had not excluded the Barngarla because of their Aboriginality but had reasonably restricted the ballot to members of the Kimba community who had the right to elect council members.

"An enlargement of the franchise for the purpose of the ballot would have required a number of subjective judgments about the extent of the enlargement and raised issues concerning the proper identification of those within the expanded franchise," the judge said.

The federal Department of Industry, Innovation and Science said it would study the judgment in detail before advising communities on the next steps in the selection process.

Jeff Baldock, who has nominated his Kimba farming property as one of the possible sites, welcomed the ruling and urged the government to move forward.

He said the project had good support in the local community and was a "once in a lifetime opportunity to secure Kimba's future."

Mr Baldock said the waste facility would potentially provide jobs and much-needed revenue for the region, which was beginning to lose businesses and services, for hundreds of years.

But the Greens said the court decision had sidelined traditional owners and called for an independent expert panel to take over selection of the waste site.

"The entire process has been badly botched from the start, with community concerns ignored and the Adnyamathanha and Barngarla people sidelined," South Australian Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said.

"South Australia is not going to just roll over and be the country's dumping ground. This plan would lock generations of South Australians to nuclear waste."

The Kimba council had been about to distribute ballot papers for a vote on the dump when the ballot was halted by a South Australian Supreme Court injunction last year.

The council said on Friday it would make a comprehensive statement on the court judgment in the coming days and would continue to liaise with the federal government on the conduct of the ballot.

SOURCE  






PM stands firm on constitutional recognition

Prime Minister Scott Morrison insists his position on constitutional recognition of Australia's indigenous people has not changed and hopes to make progress in a "good faith way".

But says he does not want to raise expectations of what can be achieved.

"I am a constitutional conservative on these issues, which should come as no surprise," he told reporters after addressing the state LNP convention in Queensland on Saturday.

"I am not going to raise peoples expectations on this, I am going to be very clear about where we are and provide a space, which we have done ... that can hopefully see this progress."

Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt committed to holding a referendum on constitutional recognition within the next three years this week. But he and the prime minister will not support a constitutionally enshrined indigenous voice to parliament, as proposed in the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Conservative Liberals and Nationals have also raised concerns an indigenous advisory body could become a "third chamber" of federal parliament, with one MP threatening to campaign on the "no" side of a referendum..

Liberal MP Trent Zimmerman concedes it is going to be hard to find the right model for constitutional recognition but it will be a process that does involve more consultation.

"What I'd encourage everyone to do is to sometimes `sit back and take a breath'," he told ABC television.

"What we don't need is a knee-jerk reaction to every proposal or proposition that comes along." He is also conscious of the tricky road that constitutional referendums have had in Australia.

"The majority of Australians - anyone under 40 - will never have seen a successful referendum passed in the country, which gives rise to a little bit of caution," he said.

Labor opposition frontbencher Amanda Rishworth says any discussion has got to start from the principle that Australia's first people got together and put forward the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

"We do have to respect that," she told ABC television.

"In saying that, I think we need to keep an open mind. We want to achieve this. And so we need to go forward with making sure that people aren't closing off to where we can get to with this."

Mr Morrison says he is focused on young indigenous people committing suicide in remote regional communities and making sure enough kids are turning up at school every day to get the education to set them up for the future.

"It's these very practical issues that are my top priority," he says.

Labor pushes on with indigenous `voice' proposal

Labor and key Aboriginal leaders have stared down Scott Morrison's rejection of a constitutionally enshrined "voice to parliament", declaring they would keep pushing the government to support the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Opposition indigenous Australians spokeswoman Linda Burney yesterday said it was "too early" to give up on a constitutionally -enshrined voice after The Australian reported the Prime Minister would veto a referendum on the proposal.

"I have (seen) what the Prime Minister has said and I have heard what a number of people in the -Coalition have said, but Labor's position is crystal clear. We -embrace the Uluru statement and I will continue to work in a collaborative bipartisan way -towards what the Uluru statement says," Ms Burney said.

"It doesn't take away for one minute - whether the Prime Minister has said what he has said or not - the collaborative nature of how I want to move forward.''

Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt on Wednesday committed himself to a referendum in this term of parliament on the recognition of indigenous Australians in the Constitution.

Mr Wyatt left the door open to the model of a constitutionally -enshrined voice but warned he would only proceed with a "pragmatic" model that would receive broad public support. He said yesterday that legislating a voice to parliament could be a "better way" than enshrining it in the Constitution. "If the voice fails in any referendum, then it is folly. We cannot do that, we have to look at practical solutions that realise better outcomes for our people,'' he told ABC radio.

Senior government sources said on Thursday that Mr Morrison was opposed to the voice proposal and it would not be part of the government's push for indigenous constitutional recognition.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton yesterday said the government did not support a "third chamber or a separate voice".

Three members of the Referendum Council - Noel Pearson, Patricia Anderson and Megan Davis - responded yesterday by declaring "there is nothing to fear from the voice".

"It is not a third chamber in parliament and would have no veto or legislative power. The legislation that establishes the body of the voice will be capable of change, so it is not about cementing into the Constitution a static body," they said in a statement.

"The details around the voice were purposely unfinished as it was always intended that they would be defined through a consultation process with the Australian people and it is through the government's commitment to a co-design process that this can be achieved."

The three indigenous leaders said the government's -com-mitment to a referendum was a "great step forward" in achiev--ing constitutional recognition.

Former Liberal indigenous -affairs minister Fred Chaney said the voice would be a "natural, -appropriate and measured" change to the Constitution. "Properly constructed, there will be little to worry about. The change to the Constitution will be but an authorising provision -empowering the federal government to establish the voice," he writes in The Weekend Australian.

SOURCE  






Labor refuses to rule out backflipping on law designed to make it easier to deport immigrant sex predators, paedophiles and violent thugs

A proposed law to give the government more discretionary powers to deport convicted rapists, killers, pedophiles and violent thugs may now be backed by Labor.

Labor Senator Kristina Keneally on Monday would not rule out supporting the Migration Amendment (Strengthening the Character Test) Bill, reintroduced after Parliament reconvened following the election.

The Bill gives the government the power to kick out any convicted criminals who are not citizens and whose crime carries a potential jail sentence of two years or more, regardless of time served.

On Monday, Labor's position shifted as Opposition home affairs spokeswoman Kristina Kenneally would not rule out supporting the new laws, which appears to be a reversal of Labor's previously reported stance

Under existing laws, the Department of Home Affairs must cancel visas when a non-citizen is jailed for at least a year.

Criminals already stripped of their visas under the current system include Apex gang member Isaac Gatkuoth, born in Sudan.

Bikies Danny Mousley, Alex Vella, Aaron Graham and Sonny Otene have also had their visas cancelled. 

Both police and the Government are concerned that violent offenders sentenced to penalties of less than a year in jail can avoid being kicked out of the country.

Police Federation of Australia chief executive Scott Weber said he was concerned that courts may impose lesser sentences on offenders to stop them being deported. 

'The judiciary should be putting adequate sentences on these offenders and should not be concerned about it going over the 12-month threshold,' Mr Weber told the Herald Sun.

Immigration Minister David Coleman said in October that the changes were aimed at criminals who pose a risk to the Australian community and would give the Government clear grounds to cancel a non-citizen's visa if they were convicted of violent and sexual offenses.

'The government will not tolerate criminal behaviour of noncitizens,' he told Parliament.

'This bill sends a clear and unequivocal message on behalf of the Australian community that entry or stay in Australia is a privilege granted only to those of good character.'

Labor opposed the legislation with MPs suggesting in February that they would reject the changes as the government already had the power to cancel visas on character grounds, the Herald Sun reported.

On Monday, Labor's position shifted as Opposition home affairs spokeswoman Kristina Kenneally would not rule out supporting the Bill, which has been sent to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and a report, which is due September 13.

'The Government has never put this legislation forward for a vote in the Parliament,' she told Daily Mail Australia.

'Along with the Government, we await the report in September at the conclusion of the committee's considerations.'

The Committee has already considered the legislation when it was first put before the Parliament last year.

In January it published a report recommending the legislation be passed despite concerns from advocacy groups, legal journal Lawyers Weekly reported.

As the Government has resubmitted the legislation to the Parliament it has also resubmitted it for review to the committee.

Daily Mail Australia asked Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton whether the discretionary nature of the new powers would weaken the provisions of the legislation, and was referred to Immigration Minister David Coleman.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





16 July, 2019

'I don't get it': Pauline Hanson says Australians SHOULD be able to climb Uluru - and compares the 'ridiculous' ban to shutting down Bondi Beach

Pauline Hanson has slammed the looming ban on climbing Uluru and compared shutting down the iconic rock to closing Bondi Beach.

The One Nation leader said the sacred rock should remain open for climbing because 'we've been climbing the Ayers Rock, or Uluru, for many years'.

'People have been climbing the rock all of these years and now all of a sudden they want to shut it down?,' Ms Hanson told Deb Knight on Channel Nine's Today.

'I really don't get it. And how are they going to pay back the Australian taxpayer?'

Uluru will be closed off to climbers in October after a decision was made to prevent future scaling of the sacred site. 

Senator Hanson said the upcoming closure of the climb was 'ridiculous', pointing out that it provided significant revenue to the local indigenous community.

'The Australian taxpayers put in millions, hundreds of millions of dollars into it and they're wanting another $27.5 million to upgrade the airport there for the resort,' she said.

'Now the resort has only returned $19 million to the taxpayers only just recently. It employs over 400 people there, 38 per cent are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

'The fact is, it's money-making. It's giving jobs to indigenous communities, and you've got thousands of tourists who go there every year and want to climb the rock.'

Senator Hanson said the ban was 'no different to coming out and saying, 'We're going to close down Bondi Beach because there are some people that have drowned'. How ridiculous is that?'

Radio host Steve Price supported Sentaor Hanson's stance and said he felt keeping the climb open would be more beneficial than closing it.

'We go on the outside of the Harbour Bridge, we dive the Barrier Reef,' he said.

'What we should be doing is assisting the local indigenous population to make this a growing tourism concern. We've seen, apparently, a huge spike in people that want to climb it since the announcement it's going to close in October.'

Mr Price said he saw no issue with keeping the climb open so long as it was 'well managed'.

Last week Senator Hanson wrote a letter to Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt saying she hoped the park managers would change their mind and keep the climb open, The Australian reported.

'My greatest fear is the closure of the climb will only lead to a gradual but significant decrease in tourist numbers to the national park that will cripple indigenous jobs and risk tourist number dropping in nearby towns, including Alice Springs,' she wrote.

'We're so quick to shut everything down these days due to cultural sensitivity and fear of hurting the environmental.

'We're becoming more and more of a nanny state every year and I think it's a crying shame for adventurous outdoorsy people who enjoy real-life experiences instead of simply watching National Geographic shows on TV.

In the 12 months to June 2019, more than 395,000 people visited the Uluru-Kata National Park, according to Parks Australia, about 20 percent more than the previous year.

Yet just 13 percent of those who visited also climbed the rock, the government agency said.

Tourism operators say that Australian and Japanese tourists most commonly seek to climb Uluru.

The Aboriginal connection to the site dates back tens of thousands of years and it has great spiritual and cultural significance to them.

'Since the hand back of Uluru and Kata Tjuta to traditional owners in 1985, visitors have been encouraged to develop an understanding and respect for Anangu and their culture,' a spokesperson for Parks Australia said.

'This is reflected in the 'please don't climb' message,' they added.

Lyndee Severin from Curtin Springs station and roadhouse, one of just a few camping venues within 100 kilometres of Uluru, said 'the vast majority of people are doing the right thing' but hundreds were setting up illegally by the side of the road or down a bush track.

'So we have some people that think that the rules don't apply to them,' she told AFP.  

SOURCE  






Australia's crap new submarines

The Collins boats never worked properly but the new French ones will be even more useless

Australia’s defence outlook is changing rapidly and new defence minister Linda Reynolds faces a daunting task.

She is being bombarded with material from defence officials defending what are increasingly obvious past mistakes or strategies in danger of becoming obsolete.

The submarine contract and the joint strike fighter (JSF) are at the top of the list with yet another defence expert warning over the weekend that technology change is endangering the $90 billion French submarine gamble.

The Australian submarine contract is vital for France and its president. Accordingly Reynolds was last week feted by President Emmanuel Macron at the historic French port of Cherbourg in Normandy, which was developed by Napoleon and was a key target in the D-Day invasion.

And the international political pressure is even more intense on the JSF front. There are many reasons why our prime minister is being invited to dine at the White House but one of them is to make doubly sure Australia does not follow Canada and turn its back on the JSF.

My readers are well aware of the JSF problems but at least our entrapment is part of the US alliance.

US defence is actually appalled at our incredible costly submarine gamble because it lessens our ability be an effective force in the Pacific and Indian oceans for the foreseeable future.

The ABC reports that former government defence adviser Derek Woolner and fellow researcher David Glynne Jones say that Australia’s objective to produce a “regionally superior” submarine is “now under challenge” and by the time the new submarine hits the water around 2034 “it’s going to be obsolete”.

Woolner says our submarine is to be built with a heavy metal main battery, as part of a process already initiated under a contract signed by France’s Naval Group company and MTU Friedrichshafen for diesel generator sets.

“A number of countries in the region are already proceeding to build boats around lithium-ion batteries that promise something like five to six times the submerged stealthy performance and a great deal more high-speed performance than you can get from a lead-acid battery submarine”, Woolner reveals.

I am not a submarine expert but I have never seen anything like the succession of alerts that surround our massive submarine contract.

They start with the delivery time---crucial to Australia’s defence.

In February 2015 then prime minister Tony Abbott said the new submarines would enter into service by the mid-2020s. A few months later Kevin Andrews, then defence minister, said it would be 2026-27. It’s now 2034 but it turns out that the Barracuda project in France is a disaster and is three or four years behind schedule so that will inevitably delay the Australian submarine closer to 2040. By 2034, let alone 2040, there will be a whole new generation of submarines. Abbott was right they had to start being operational in the mid 2020s.

But Australia was subject to a brilliant marketing campaign by the French.

The French tender for the Australian submarine was led by the then minister for defence, socialist Jean-Yves Le Drian (now foreign minister). Le Drian’s initial plan was to sell Australia France’s Barracuda nuclear submarine and to offer a link with the French nuclear industry, including fuel rod production, a nuclear energy reactor, and a desalinisation plant in Australia.

He soon discovered that this plan had no hope of being sold to the Australians, but out of that came a plan to use the much larger nuclear submarine hull with diesel electric rather than nuclear power and the pump-jet rather than propeller system. It had never been done before.

Le Drian concluded that the legendary head of the French naval industrial operation Hervé Guillou was the wrong person on push the deal through the Australian defence decision-making system. He appointed Marie-Pierre de Bailliencourt as effectively Guillou’s second in command.

The Marie-Pierre de Bailliencourt vision and selling was magnificent. Guillou’s Naval Group would deliver to Australia the opportunity for a unique partnership with the French to design and deliver a regionally superior submarine over which Australia would have the sovereign capacity to operate and sustain over its life. Not surprisingly she was dumped soon after the selling was done.

In April 2016, in announcing the contract, then Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was definitive and all 12 submarines would be built in Adelaide ---- that was the Marie-Pierre de Bailliencourt deal. But the French headquarters intended to build the first two in France and announced that 4000 people would be required in France.

Then came the cost. Australia originally announced that the $50 billion cost estimate was after adjusting for inflation. It was a shock figure and more than double the $20 billion firm tender from Germany.

Then last year defence dramatically lifted the cost to around $80 billion (probably because of building the first two submarines in Australia).

Then add $10 billion for the combat system, which is useful for a submarine, and we have a total cost of around $90 billion. Maintenance costs are likely to take it above $200 billion over the submarines’ life.

And as it happens it looks like the Adelaide facility can’t do all the work and defence wants part of it shifted. More cost.

But we have also hit a second technology problem. Hydraulics expert Aidan Morrison’s detailed research paper last year showed that the while the pump-jet system works well with nuclear submarines, at the slow pace required for diesel electric it fails.

After a long delay, defence countered by claiming that pump-jets could be efficient across the entire speed range. Morrison responded: “It is a bizarre, irrational claim with no basis whatsoever in physics. It is frankly bewildering that such a claim could be made, given how easily its falsehood can be established by even moderate research, or simple logic.”

We have just seen in the current trade war between China and the US how important a local supply chain is in defence. The supply chain is more important that the actual assembly. The supply chain has to be integrated into the design. There are few signs that is happening.

Indonesia is buying three South Korean submarines for $US500 million each

Maybe we will be lucky and after spending $90 billion we will have 12 better submarines in 20 or 30 years, but by that time the Indonesians will be buying 2040 technology and they will have had submarine superiority over Australia for two decades.

SOURCE  






Amazing:  Australias's leading Greenie is AGAINST a wind farm

He's now in his mid-70s.  Is the usual turn to conservatism with age getting him too?

Former Greens leader and veteran activist Bob Brown is campaigning to stop a $1.6 billion wind farm development in Tasmania because it will spoil the view and kill birds.

The proposed Robbins Island wind farm in Tasmania’s northwest will be one of the world’s biggest, with up to 200 towers measuring 270m high from ground to blade tip.

If it goes ahead, electricity from the Robbins Island project will be sent to the mainland via a new ­undersea cable to help make Tasmania a “battery for the nation”.

But in a letter to local media and on his foundation’s website, Dr Brown has slammed the project, which he said had echoes of earlier attempts to build skyscrapers in Hobart which were stopped by protests.

Despite the criticisms levelled at former prime minister Tony Abbott and treasurer Joe Hockey for describing wind turbines as “ugly”, Dr Brown said the Robbins Island plan was, visually, a step too far. “Mariners will see this hairbrush of tall towers from 50km out to sea and elevated landlubbers will see it, like it or not, from greater distances on land,” Dr Brown said. “Its eye-catchiness will divert from every coastal scene on the western Bass Strait coastline.”

Dr Brown, who fought against Queensland’s Adani coal mine, said the world needed renewable energy to replace fossil fuels, and fast, but the Robbins Island wind farm “is an aileron too far”.

He said the public had not been properly informed of the private deals, or public impacts or cost-benefit analyses (economic, social, cultural and environmental) of what would be one of the biggest wind farm projects on Earth. He said details of the arrangements between the Hammond family, which farmed wagyu beef and owned the land, and developer UPC Renewables were not known. “Tasmanians have a right to know much more about the Robbins Island development,” Dr Brown said. “It is a huge resource extraction venture which will be lighting up no Tasmanian homes.”

Dr Brown’s opposition is shared by some locals, including the Nietta Action Group, which is fighting both the wind farm and a transmission line.

Members of the Nietta Action Group told The Australian last month that natural values would be destroyed if the planned transmission line across Leven Canyon went ahead. Others have raised concerns about whether a walled causeway to the island, as part of the project, would interrupt tidal flows, damaging the vital sandflat ecosystems.

However, Anton Rohner, chief executive of UPC Renewables, and the Hammond wagyu beef farming family, last month told The Australian expert modelling suggested several bridge sections in the causeway would avoid ­adverse impacts.

“We are cattle people; we love the environment,” said Alex Hammond. “Part of our brand, which sells our beef around the world, is that we are in the cleanest, greenest area in the world.

“So we certainly don’t want to do anything to impact on that.” Dr Brown sparked anger in central Queensland during the election campaign when he led a convoy of anti-coal activists to coalmining towns in protest against the Adani coalmine. The intervention was credited by some pundits with driving voters away from Labor and to the ­Coalition in the May 18 election.

In his letter on the wind farm, Dr Brown wrote: “Besides the impact on the coastal scenery, wind turbines kill birds. Wedge-tailed eagle and white-bellied sea eagles nest and hunt on the island. Swift parrots and orange-bellied parrots traverse the island on their migrations.”

He listed the multiple species of international migratory, endangered and critically endangered shorebirds that used the wetlands for six months of the year. They included Australian fairy tern, fork-tailed swift, little tern, white-throated needletail, ruddy turnstone, sharp-tailed sandpiper, sanderling, red knot, curlew sandpiper, red-necked stint, great knot, double-banded plover, greater sand plover, lesser sand plover, Latham’s snipe, bar-tailed godwit, eastern curlew, whimbrel, golden plover, grey plover, grey-tailed tattler, common greenshank, terek sandpiper, hooded plover.

“For which of these species will the wind farm be the thousandth cut?” Dr Brown asked.

He said the transmission lines for the wind farm were planned to cut through wild and scenic Tasmania, including the northeast Tarkine forests, to link up with a new export cable beneath Bass Strait. “In the name of private ­enterprise, why not UPC build its own cable under the Strait from Robbins Island straight to wherever,” Dr Brown said.

UPC said the project was ­located close to the Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) proposed second interconnector between Tasmania and Victoria.

“Once built, it will complement the Prime Minister’s recently announced strategy for Tasmanian wind and hydro systems to act as southeast Australia’s renewable energy battery,” the company said. The project faces local and federal regulatory hurdles and unrest about the citing of both the Robbins Island wind farms and the transmission line. Dr Brown said Tasmania already had more than enough electricity to meet its own needs and UPC was a multinational corporation with projects in China, The Philippines and Indonesia.

“Beyond the indisputable environmental losses, what is the guaranteed money this giant venture is returning to the state of Tasmania as against UPC’s foreign stakeholders?’’ he asked.

SOURCE  






The Labor party's new identity-obsessed faith is not a winner

They have given up on the workers and the workers have given up on them

Labor is searching for answers to explain its long losing streak. Its internal review will likely produce standard frank and fearless advice about improving communication, democratising the party to engage the base, increasing membership, tapping into grassroots movements and closing the credibility gap. But the problems besetting Labor cannot be resolved by perception management. The party is floundering in no-man’s land.

Throughout the election campaign, former Labor leader Bill Shorten struggled to convince voters he could be trusted. He could win a debating point and led the party to poll favourably on some policy issues, but his lack of popular appeal persisted.

The credibility gap was more than political. Shorten could not master the narrative because Labor could not reconcile its origins as a party of the working class with the identity politics that has come to consume it.

The extent of the crisis engulfing Labor was revealed in Queensland last week. It has been a horror year for the state’s resources industry: six workers have died in mines and quarries. Despite the tragedies, the government’s mining safety committee did not meet for months. The reason? It did not have enough women to meet the Labor government’s gender target.

Premier Annastacia Palasz­czuk has been vocal in support of a 50 per cent gender equity target for boards by next year. Queensland’s Coal Mining Safety and Health Advisory Committee, tasked with providing advice to the minister, went missing in action during a critical period because it did not satisfy Labor’s gender agenda.

One might expect a degree of outrage that Labor appears to have put political correctness before basic human rights. Between the Labor Left’s war on mines and the Right’s PC elitism, all that’s left for workers is outdated class-war rhetoric.

Ironically, Palaszczuk once attributed Labor’s electoral defeats to the party losing its way. She thought the recovery of core principles, such as workers’ rights, would pave the way to redemption. Yet at a critical juncture her government failed to practise good governance to safeguard workers. Nothing quite captures the dire state of modern Labor like miners dying on the job while the party prioritises gender ideology.

But the Western left’s transition from a movement of workers’ rights and legal equality to a party of political correctness and affirmative action seems irreversible.

The decline in support for left-wing parties is partly attributable to the popular backlash against PC. One response has been to turn hard left. The discredited ideology of socialism is making a comeback.

Red chic is returning to campuses teeming with undergraduates born long after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Centre for Independent Studies commissioned research into the trend of youth lurching left. The survey of young Australians found 58 per cent of those born between 1980 and 1996 held a favourable opinion of socialism. University-educated millennials were particularly susceptible to seeing socialism through rose-coloured glasses: 63 per cent viewed it favourably.

Young people are turning a deeper shade of red in the US, too. A poll published by Axios this year found that American youth were more willing to embrace socialism than previous generations. Sixty-one per cent of people aged between 18 and 24 had a positive reaction to the word socialism. As observed in many polls, fond feelings for socialism tend to decrease as citizens mature. Overall, 39 per cent of Americans were “well-disposed toward socialism”.

The US Democrats are trying to spin gold from the revival of red chic. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a socialist-leaning Democrat who made this year’s Time 100 most influential people list. She has joined three other female Democrats — Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley — in pushing the barrow for open borders and divisive identity politics.

To understand where leading American socialists sit on the scale of sense and sensibility, consider recent comments made by Bernie Sanders. In an interview with Teen Vogue, he said: “As president, what I will do is not only help transform the energy system of this country away from fossil fuels but bring the entire planet together.” He has yet to provide a strategic plan for the glorious planetary unification.

The left’s experiment with socialism has taken a turn for the worse in Britain, where Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is dealing with fresh allegations of anti-Semitism from numerous former party officials. The BBC interviewed more than 20 former officials and uncovered up to 1000 allegations of anti-Semitism. Labour leaders have rejected the claims.

Corbyn has a long record of sympathising with Islamists and communism. The BBC revealed that his communications chief, Seamus Milne, “worked for a magazine produced by the Communist Party of Great Britain”.

Corbyn hired Andrew Murray for his campaign team. Murray was a Communist Party member who has publicly praised terrorists such as Joseph Stalin. After The Independent reported on Murray’s “Stalinist” sympathies, Corbyn said he was just “a democratic socialist and member of the Labour Party like me”. The British seem unconvinced about the supposedly harmless nature of Corbyn & co. A recent YouGov poll for The Times showed that only 18 per cent of respondents said they would vote Labour. It is the worst result since polling began.

Despite the failure of socialism as a political project, the ALP is set to hire an apparent Corbyn fancier as national secretary. Brad Norington reported in The Australian the other day that Paul Erickson is favoured to take the coveted role. Erickson has described Corbyn as “within the mainstream of post-war social democracy” and praised his politics.

Australians voted against Labor’s class-war rhetoric at the election. They rejected its weak position on national sovereignty and border security. They refused to vote for identity politics and social division. Whoever takes the role of rebuilding Labor will need all the skills of a master craftsman. It is unclear what foundations of the party still stand. All that remains is the ghost of class warfare and the sound of PC fury signifying nothing.

SOURCE  






How to become a philanthropist

JEFF KENNETT

The Australian’s recently published list of the country’s 250 richest people made for interesting reading.

Of course, financial success is only one measure of a fruitful life, and wealth alone will not secure good health and happiness, the two most important ingredients to a fulfilling life.

Australia will see an intergenerational wealth transfer of an estimated $2.4 trillion during the coming two decades. So what will those people with great wealth do with the fruits of their success?

Some are already generously supporting a range of good causes.

Alfred Felton, who died as a bachelor in 1904, left a considerable sum of £383,163 in his will that established the Felton Bequest.

After 115 years, the corpus has grown to almost $50 million, with half distributed between selected Victorian charitable organisations (particularly those benefiting women and children) and the other half to purchase works of art for donation to the National Gallery of Victoria.

Valued at more than $2 billion, his is the most valuable bequest to the arts in Australia. Alfred Felton lives forever.

For those with families, the question in this era of extraordinary wealth is how much do you need to leave children and grandchildren — $10m each, $50m, $100m?

For many, even after they have provided for their family, there will be substantial sums left that could ensure they also do great work long after their passing.

Many today are living well, as they deserve to, but what about altruistic pursuits such as tackling social problems and providing support to those who are vulnerable and in need, or supporting research and innovation?

It’s common for parents to want to help their children, but I would encourage readers to think about establishing a family charitable foundation as a way of creating a lasting legacy and involving family members in a common altruistic goal.

Giving by bequest in Australia remains low. In 2012 only 7.6 per cent of final wills had a direct charitable bequest, and charitable bequests accounted for only 2.7 per cent of the total value of estates.

Setting up a charitable foundation during your lifetime is a very satisfying pursuit and one I would encourage people to approach with strategic intent. By choosing one or two causes or organisations to support in a meaningful manner (rather than spreading your giving too thinly) you will improve the long-term social impact.

It also helps take the surprise factor out of a family’s decision to leave a portion of its wealth to charity.

And involving younger generations in a family foundation helps foster that culture of giving — down the track families are aware of the intentions of loved ones and understand what plans are in place for their parents’ or grandparents’ estates.

Through my role at Equity Trustees Ltd, a trustee company, I have seen first-hand that it is common for family members to challenge a will in which a charity has received a large bequest.

However, if someone has set up a charitable foundation during their lifetime and received a tax deduction for donations made to it, then the foundation does not form part of the estate — it’s a separate pool of funds whose income and capital can be used only for charitable purposes.

The number of philanthropic foundations is growing, along with a greater understanding about the charitable causes needing support.

There is also an increased sense among ageing baby boomers that they want to support these causes in a concerted, strategic manner. In the same way they have operated successful businesses or have been valued executives and managers, they want to direct their skills and experience towards their philanthropy and get actively involved.

There are two tax-effective ways to become an active philanthropist. The first is to set up a private ancillary fund. In this case the founders receive a tax deduction for the funds initially invested and any subsequent contributions, and they have a say in the investments and grants.

An option requiring less capital to seed is a sub-fund established under the umbrella of a public ancillary fund managed by a corporate trustee or community foundation that takes care of the administration and investments.

In the case of a public ancillary fund, the sub-fund generates income from its investments in a tax-free environment, with a minimum 4 per cent of the value of the fund distributed each year. The founders also can receive tax deductions for any additional donations into it.

So instead of making individual tax-deductible donations directly to charities and reducing your taxable income that way, you donate the same amount to your sub-fund and receive the same tax deduction while your fund generates income and capital growth in a tax-free environment.

I congratulate those who have been successful, and that success has resulted in great wealth. But with so much money in the hands of so many, I hope that some, like Felton, may make a decision to live forever.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





15 July, 2019

Pensioners with significant savings and investments look set to receive $804 compensation for unrealistic deeming rates

Some lucky Australians look set to get a cash boost of about $800 after the government caved to pressure to compensate them for plummeting interest rates.

Around one million people, including more than 600,000 pensioners, will receive up to $804 after the income they received from their savings took a massive drop due to recent cuts in rates.

The new plan will offset the damage done by the deeming rates applied to pensioners, which are used to estimate how much income they receive from their financial assets - and those rates have not fallen in step with interest rates.

The government was criticised because many saw the rates as a backdoor tax on retirees.

The current rates are at an extremely high 3.25 per cent for assets over $51,800 for singles and $86,200 for couples, and 1.75 per cent for assets underneath those levels, as reported by the Daily Telegraph.

The Morrison government proposes to cut the rates to 3 per cent and 1 per cent, which will give pensioners a lot more back for their financial investments.

Minister for Families and Social Services Anne Ruston said the cuts would benefit pensioners as well as up to 350,000 other people who receive income-tested payments, including veterans and those on disability pensions.

'It will mean more money in the pockets of older Australians,' Ms Ruston said.

The cuts are expected to cost $600million over the next four years.

SOURCE  






Human rights in China: Why Australia should keep out of it

My "unfeeling" view is that the Wiggers should change their barbaric religion.  It should be clear to them by now that Allah is not standing by them -- JR

Tom Switzer

The promotion of human rights is a noble cause, one not to be cynically dismissed. But acting on it – if one is concerned to be effective and not merely feel virtuous – is more complicated than many human rights activists recognise.

As former CIS senior fellow Owen Harries and I have argued, individuals and special interests are free to give absolute and unqualified priority, but governments are not. “For the activist, human rights are a cause. But when they are incorporated into a government’s foreign policy, they become an interest among many,” we argued in 2011. “Their claims have to be balanced against other interests, many of which have a compelling practical as well as moral importance: for example, peace, security, order, prosperity. The place human rights will place in the hierarchy of interests will vary according to the circumstances.”

I once again made these banal points on the ABC’s Q&A this week in response to a question about the Chinese Communist regime’s brutal treatment of the Uyghur population in north-west China. My panel colleagues – Labor Senator Penny Wong, Liberal Senator Scott Ryan and ANU defence intellectual Hugh White – agreed. However, Diana Sayed, formerly of Amnesty International, charged we were indifferent to the fate of Muslims. See video (54m 45s).

Never mind the many occasions in recent decades when the US and its allies put their men and women in harm’s way – from Kuwait and Somalia to Bosnia and Kosovo to Iraq and Afghanistan – to help people suffering from tyranny or famine who happened to be Muslims.

Moreover, what complicates human rights policy — what makes it not a simple act of consistency, but a complicated one of judgement and discrimination — is the variability of circumstance. It’s easier for Canberra, for instance, to take a more moralistic approach to Zimbabwe or Syria, states with which Australia has few trade links, than it is for us to be hard on China, our most important trade partner.

If we sacrificed our relationship with Beijing on behalf of the Uyghurs, we’d destroy our economy without having any positive impact on China.

SOURCE  






Pauline Hanson worried Muslim extremists could exploit religious freedom laws

Pauline Hanson has predicted new laws banning religious discrimination could be exploited by Muslim extremists to justify child brides, female genital mutilation and polygamy.

The One Nation leader has voiced her fears as Prime Minister Scott Morrison's government plans to introduce legislation making it illegal to discriminate against someone based on their religious beliefs.

'I am concerned that such a bill could be used by radical Islamic extremists as a shield to protect the worst aspects of their political ideology,' the Queensland senator told her 278,000 Facebook followers on Tuesday night.

'By forcing this through without scrutiny the government may be creating a pathway for extremists to practice polygamy, genital mutilation, or even under-aged marriage and this cannot be allowed to happen.

'We must always be on guard for the unintended consequences of good intentions.'

The Coalition last year flagged a new Religious Discrimination Act, following a review into faith freedom by former attorney-general Philip Ruddock.

Plans for a new Religious Freedom Commissioner were announced in December, five months before Rugby Australia sacked star Wallabies player Israel Folau for tweeting that 'drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolaters' needed to repent or face hell. 

Section 116 of the Constitution already bans the federal government from 'imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion'.

It also says there shall be 'no religious test' to hold a Commonwealth position. That aspect of the Constitution, however, doesn't cover private sector employment.

Senator Hanson accused the government of failing to properly explain the details of its proposed legislation. 'Many people, including myself, are concerned about the rights of Australians who practice a legitimate religious faith,' she said. 'But what do we do when a belief clashes with the laws and customs of our land?

'The government wants to force a bill through parliament they say is aimed at protecting religious freedom but have failed to give any details of the bill.'

The Labor Opposition is expected to back the government's religious discrimination legislation, after suffering at the May election strong swings against it across south-west Sydney, where a swathe of electorates voted against gay marriage in a 2017 postal vote survey.

Government MPs from the Liberal Party's right faction are reportedly pushing to strengthen religious discrimination laws.

Existing laws already allow religious schools to sack homosexual teachers for leading lifestyles that contravened church teaching.

Attorney-General Christian Porter last week held a workshop for Coalition MPs to explain the bill, with more sessions to follow for other backbenchers.

The draft laws are likely to come under scrutiny from a parliamentary committee, making it unlikely religious freedom protections will pass the Parliament until at least late this year.

Senate Hanson is opposed to Muslim immigration and in August 2017 wore a burqa into the Senate to demonstrate her case for banning full facial coverings in public.

SOURCE  






Plastic bag ban: Critics warn it isn’t helping Australia reduce waste

Coles and Woolworths say the bag ban diverted about 4.7 billion single-use plastic bags from landfill in 12 months, but a research study says the policy may be doing more harm than good.

University of Sydney economist Rebecca Taylor studied a similar policy in California to analyse the behaviour of consumers when it comes to bags and recycling.

She said the stores gave out less bags, but the shopper still needed something to put rubbish in at home or pick up dog poo with. “What I found was that sales of garbage bags actually skyrocketed after plastic grocery bags were banned,” Dr Taylor told the NPR podcast Planet Money.

According to her study, the purchase of small plastic bags jumped by 120 per cent.

Dr Taylor said consumers typically used the reusable bags for rubbish, which was problematic because they’re thicker than the single-use bags and take longer to break down in landfill.

“So about 30 per cent of the plastic that was eliminated by the ban comes back in the form of thicker garbage bags,” she told the podcast.

Speaking on Channel 7’s Sunrise, the economist cast doubt on the success of the environmental policy.

“If we don’t consider the thickness and the types of bags people substitute to, we could be substantially over-estimating the benefits of the policy,” Dr Taylor said.

Hazardous materials management expert Dr Trevor Thornton echoed the economist’s concerns. “Garbags are only used once,” he told Sunrise. “They generally have more plastic, they’re heavier, they’re often coloured so there’s chemicals and are often perfumed so there’s chemicals in them.

“Sometimes the cotton bags or the reusable bags are the ones that are causing more environmental concerns than the plastic ones. “We don’t get that sort of data from the supermarkets or the retailers to say what is actually happening.”

Aldi says its policy of never offering single-use bags has kept 40,000 tonnes of plastic from entering the environment, while nearly 5000 tonnes of plastic have been kept out of circulation from Woolworths alone since the supermarket plastic bag ban was introduced 12 months ago — equal to more than 780 African elephants.

Despite some controversial backflips and modifications to the environmental policy along the way, both major supermarkets have revealed its massive impact.

Woolworths has issued about three billion fewer plastic bags from its stores over the last year.

It says shoppers have embraced the new habit, with one in six transactions now including the purchase of a plastic bag, and that number is decreasing month-on-month.

Coles says the sustainable strategy has diverted 1.7 billion single-use bags from landfill, with data claiming seven in 10 of its consumers now remember to bring a reusable bag when they shop and a further two in 10 bringing them on more occasions than not.

Single-use plastic bags have been banned in South Australia, Queensland, the ACT and Western Australia, while Victoria is expected to follow in November.

Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci said consumers were quick to embrace the change despite vocal criticism from portions of the country. “We recognise change is never easy, particularly when it comes to something as habitual as grocery shopping,” he said. “Yet one year after we phased out single-use plastic bags, it’s clear Australians have formed new habits and embraced a vastly more sustainable way of shopping with reusable bags.”

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





14 July, 2019

We’re better off without a reform agenda

The Left always assume that change is desirable.  A great Australian showed that it is not

Certain commentators are getting themselves into a real lather about the supposed lack of agenda on the part of the re-elected Morrison government, particularly now the income tax changes have been passed.

Consider this bizarre bleat from the failed Labor candidate for Reid, Sam Crosby. “The Morrison government is a husk. It is completely devoid of ideas, intellect and integrity. Deep tribal fault lines run through it.” (Hint to Sam: you might consider a career as a comedian.)

Or this doozy from a “progressive” political journalist: “The vacancy of the Coalition’s agenda has been largely concealed from public view … in part because Labor over the last two terms in opposition styled itself as a government in exile”.

In a similar vein from another “progressive” political journalist (are they nearly all like this, you ask) is this line: “If you are a government elected unexpectedly and with no real agenda, it seems your only real option is to try to define yourself by what your opposition does, or doesn’t do.”

For them, the key question is: why can’t the government simply try to emulate Bob Hawke and implement reforms — a term subject to wide interpretation — across the board?

My advice to these incensed members of the fourth estate is just to calm down. For starters, frenetic activity by governments is almost always a bad rather than a good sign: think of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years. Many of the pieces of legislation that were passed with the assistance of the Greens have thrown up all sorts of problems as well as setting the scene for runaway, uncapped expenditure.

Second, let’s bear in mind Scott Morrison’s refreshing approach to governing. In the Prime Minister’s words: “People just want to be left alone to get on with their own lives and not be lectured to.”

We need to get used to the absence of a daily diet of politics and announcements, something that will come as a relief to many people, although not “progressive” journalists.

And third, in relation to the Hawke years, the reality is that Labor did not take an expansive agenda of reform to the 1983 election. Indeed, Labor won mainly because the public had twigged to the fact that prime minister Malcolm Fraser was a dud.

The Hawke-Keating agenda developed over time, picking off a lot of low-hanging fruit — floating the currency, lifting capital controls, dismantling tariffs, deregulating the financial system, freeing up the labour market — with the assistance of the opposition.

But there were hiccups. Hawke’s refusal to entertain the introduction of a consumption tax — later called the GST — is a case in point. In turn this led to treasurer Paul Keating and finance minister Peter Walsh taking an axe to a lot of government spending, removing many inefficiencies in the process.

Of course there are some longer-term structural challenges that the Morrison government must deal with.

But let me consider here the short-term economic situation, as this is the current context that is spurring many of the clarion calls for the government to “do something”. These calls often reference the recent inappropriate comments made by the governor of the Reserve Bank, telling the government to spend more on infrastructure, among other things.

(Just on the inappropriate conduct of the bank, it was also completely unacceptable for a middle-ranking official to give a speech in which the announcement was made that the bank had revised down its estimate of the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment from about 5 per cent to 4.5 per cent. This criticism was first levelled by University of NSW professor Richard Holden.)

While the economy is clearly sluggish, it’s hardly a disaster. By historical standards, unemployment is relatively low — a tad above 5 per cent — and the ratio of employment to the working-age population is close to a historical high. (It is at a historic high for women.)

The rate of underemployment — people wanting to work more hours — is about 8 per cent but this has been the case for several years. Again, my advice is for everyone to settle.

Here’s the thing: four things have happened that should make a difference in the short run. First, the income tax package has been passed, providing immediate tax relief to low and medium-income earners. Second, the RBA has reduced the cash rate by 50 basis points in the past two months.

Third, restrictions on lending imposed by the regulator have been loosened.

And finally, the re-election of the Coalition government means the threat of higher taxation on capital has been removed.

Given the pipeline of infrastructure projects that are embedded within the federal and state budgets, there are plenty of reasons to think that economic conditions will improve in the second half of the year, particularly given the ongoing contribution of the export sector and strong commodity prices.

The last thing anyone should wish for is the government going off half-cocked implementing dubious “economic stimulus” measures while blowing the budget projections that involve a return to surplus this financial year and beyond.

Moreover, for anyone who has completed an economics degree — yes, you may ask whether those “progressive” journalists learned anything — it is quite clear that fiscal stimulus measures in the context of an open economy are largely ineffective because of the offsetting impact on the exchange rate.

And this is before we even get to Ricardian equivalence, which is about consumers responding in adverse fashion to budget stimulatory measures because of the fear of the consequences of higher government debt down the track. In other words, if a government decides to stimulate the economy through debt-financed measures, there is a possibility that demand will not alter.

Finally, on the suggestion that even more money be spent on additional infrastructure in the short term, is it unclear whether there are really many sensible projects ready to go. Moreover, it is ­doubtful whether there is spare ­capacity in the related parts of the economy.

The bottom line is that when it comes to the government having an agenda, the problem is much more in the eyes of disappointed commentators than in reality. As we all know, slow and steady wins the race.

Yes, there are several longer-term structural challenges and non-economic issues that the government must deal with, but going about these undertakings methodically is the preferred ­option.

SOURCE  





New Religion, old hypocrisies

This is a parable about a new religion that has deep roots on the secular left side of politics. The starting principle for moderates and extremists alike is that those who challenge their moral code are not just wrong, they are immoral; nonbelievers have no legitimacy in the public square. And hence, why the new moral code is part of a new religion.

A fortnight ago, Andy Ngo was bashed by a mob of antifa protesters, who are best understood as extremists from the new religion. Ngo is a young Asian man, a journalist who is not part of the left-leaning media. He carried his new GoPro camera to report on antifa’s march through the streets of Portland, Oregon. Ngo has been reporting on stories that major US media outlets would rather ignore, including the activities of antifa. Their name suggests they are anti-fascists, but bashing a journalist is a common tool of fascists.

While Ngo was mobbed by thugs in masks, police stood back. He ended up in hospital, treated for head injuries including a sub­arachnoid haemorrhage. Film of the violent assault went viral. Yet news outlets went largely silent, eventually shamed into some cynical coverage.

Ngo is the gay son of Vietnamese immigrants, which is worth juxtaposing against antifa’s make-up and mission. A group of angry white millennials protesting against white supremacy violently assaulted a young Asian gay man. Make sense of that.

The lack of concern from major media outlets speaks to the hypocrisy of the left’s moral code. Imagine their rightful outrage if Trump supporters bashed a young left-leaning journo. The same media organisations that routinely pounce on Donald Trump for his media baiting at campaign rallies — think CNN, The New “Woke” Times and The Washington Post — seemed relaxed with antifa’s excuse that Ngo deserved it because he reported on antifa.

When some media outlets finally popped up, Ngo was painted as a troublemaker who deserved no sympathy. “Don’t worry about Ngo. He’s been discharged from hospital, with a big fat GoFundMe of around $160,000 and any number of armed, right-wing groups offering to act as ‘bodyguards’,” wrote one misguided, or malevolent, pundit in The Independent.

The same chap suggested that the far right wanted to treat the assault on Ngo as “their own (cut-price) Horst Wessel moment”. Wessel was a 22-year-old Nazi stormtrooper who was fatally shot by communists on January 14, 1930, his death becoming a rallying cause that propelled the Nazis to power.

Ngo is not a Nazi stormtrooper. He is a curious journalist who challenges modern cant working in a liberal democracy, like ours, that is increasingly imperilled by a new religion that seeks to punish nonconformists in various ways.

Over two thousand years ago, Christianity set down a moral code for people. Biblical stories tell of deadly sins and heavenly virtue, commandments guide us, there are offers of forgiveness and paths to redemption. There were also dark periods when those who questioned rising and rigid religious orthodoxy, and hypocrisy, were shut down. And non-­believers were persecuted.

Today, there is a new religion, with a new moral code enforced by a new sainted class that includes corporate leaders, government bureaucrats, those at the top of industry groups, university vice-chancellors and sporting bosses too. Like old established religions, the clerics of the new ­religion presume to hold a monopoly over morality. This new papal class also enforces a rigid ­orthodoxy similar to old established ­religions.

Those who stray from this new moral code do so at their own risk. There are public condemnations so fierce they aim to rewrite history. Think of those same-sex marriage activists who have not just attacked tennis player Margaret Court for her beliefs but consider her thought crimes so ­serious that the Margaret Court Arena must be renamed. According to Billie Jean King, Court’s Christian views justify trashing her record of 24 Grand Slam singles titles. Note that Court is not asking King to subscribe to her views. But King demands that Court change hers or lose her standing as a tennis legend. Only in degree is that different from historical cases of estab­lished religions persecuting heretics.

The new religion makes no room for nonconformists. Its followers want to shut down voices of dissent. Instead of changing the channel or reading a different newspaper, Richard Di Natale was caught during the last election saying that he wanted sections of Sky and News Corp shut down.

Proponents of the new religion search and punish people for tiny transgressions, confecting fake outrage. And they make no room for redemption or forgiveness. The orthodoxy is so powerful that conservatives are even sacking their own when faced with the shitstorm unleashed by disciples of the new religion. In Britain, Roger Scruton and Toby Young were both sacked from their quangos when the May government succumbed to social media outrage. Burning witches at the stake in a grassy field is an old variant of new witch-hunts on ­social media platforms.

It did not help that Young, a man with a passion for education, apologised unreservedly for comments he made during an earlier career as what he called a “journalistic provocateur”.

When you start from the same point — that dissidents are so morally depraved they must be stopped — only the consequences differ. Some adherents of the new religion chose to bash Ngo, while others demanded that Young be sacked.

It used to be the case that we rendered unto Caesar the things that were Caesar’s, and unto God the things that were God’s. The new moral code is so omnipresent it reaches on to sporting fields, into boardrooms, universities and ­bureaucracies.

The sacking of Israel Folau is bigger than a legal biff about a contract and a code of conduct. Folau was sacked for sinning against the new moral code. It is a totemic clash of religions, between old ones such as Christianity (but it could be Islam next) and the new religion promulgated by a new secular class that wants to stop a man from posting different moral judgments drawn from a centuries-old code of conduct called the Bible.

Some followers of the new religion have become blind to what is at stake. The ABC, for example, struggles to show much curiosity. Interviewed this week on Radio National about religious freedom, Barnaby Joyce mentioned the Folau saga. Presenter Hamish Macdonald interrupted, saying that Folau had been covered enough. Except it has barely been covered at all on the taxpayer-funded ABC.

Later, on Monday evening, a Q&A audience member raised the Folau matter. Host Tony Jones directed it to the openly gay panel member Penny Wong. No one else was asked for their views.

If the ABC is the media arm that spreads the new religion, Rugby Australia’s Raelene Castle has become its self-appointed priestess. During Folau’s code-of-conduct hearing, Castle seemed to suggest it was fine for Folau to post good bits from the Bible, but not bad bits. Was she presuming to sit in judgment of a book that is thousands of years old, with a few billion followers? Who is Castle to decide what individuals should decide for themselves?

People who presume to speak about moral issues for others, rather than just themselves, are found in droves in corporate Australia. A new class of corporate clerics presumes to speak for shareholders on everything from same-sex marriage to changing the Australian Constitution to preference one race of people with a special chamber of their own.

Corporate clerics are easily identified. They spend more time virtue-signalling about getting the right gender balance and exposing society’s unconscious bias than they do on issues that go to the core of their business: boring ­issues such as tax reform and industrial relations reform.

Alas, this hard work is handballed away by faux trust-seekers who would rather feel the warm glow that comes from standing in a room of like-minded corporate clerics signing up to social campaigns using other people’s money. And those quick to attack Qantas’s Alan Joyce should remember he is one of the few to ­advocate for social change and sound economic policy.

The reverence paid to diversity by corporate Australia mirrors the hypocrisy of Billie Jean King in sport. They make no room for political diversity. It’s another sign that the new moral code is religious in nature, because few ­religions, not old ones and not this new one, handle diversity of thought well.

A spokesman for the self-­appointed corporate virtue-signallers, former KPMG chairman Peter Nash, told this newspaper last week that companies needed to push social causes to rebuild trust with people.

Here’s my advice — and it’s free. Companies will rebuild real and lasting trust by treating customers fairly, respecting the diversity of shareholders whose money pays their generous wage, and advocating economic policies that allow companies, workers and our economy to flourish.

At universities too, bureaucrats use codes of conduct to enforce new moral codes using vaguely drafted commandments that you must not behave in an uncollegial manner.

At James Cook University, vice-chancellor Sandra Harding used the university’s code of conduct to remove physics professor Peter Ridd from his job. Ridd taught at JCU for decades. Students adored him. His sin was to challenge the quality of research by some JCU colleagues about the state of the Great Barrier Reef.

A university committed to the liberal education of its students, and finding the truth, would have been curious about Ridd’s work. Instead, JCU sacked him.

How is his removal different to heretics being removed by established ­religions?

When it comes to thou shall implement gender equality, the new religion has become irrational and fanatical. As The Australian reported this week, the Queensland Mines Minister could not seek expert advice from the Coal Mining Safety and Health Advisory Committee because the committee, lacking 50-50 gender representation, was forced to cancel meetings.

Meanwhile six workers died in Queensland mines and quarries in the past 12 months.

It’s early days. But this new religion and sections of its ruling class are already so corrupted with hypocrisy, it needs a reformation, a Martin Luther to post 95 theses exposing the equivalent of those old papal indulgences. Consider this Thesis # 1.

SOURCE  






Revealed: The bizarre plan to spend $400million of YOUR money on 'fake clouds' to save the Great Barrier Reef

It's most unlikely to happen but would be a disaster if it did.  That pesky sunlight makes plants grow.  So cutting it back would also cut bank plant growrth, leadingto crop failures. But it's crops that provide our food.  Good for our waistlines, I guess

A bizarre $400million tax-payer funded rescue plan to protect the Great Barrier Reef from being destroyed by climate change has been revealed.

The Great Barrier Reef Foundation is expected to publish a 113-page plan on Friday, which details how it plans to spend a $444million federal grant to save the reef.

Man-made clouds, mist and bio-degradable surface films were all revealed to be the 'best option' to fend off solar radiation and protect the Great Barrier Reef from climate change, The Courier Mail reported.

While coral replanting and seeding to restore lost cover has been considered, experts have argued the exercise is not only costly but also labour intensive. 

The foundation realised it needed to think outside of the box, so it partnered with a consortium of experts and devised the forward-thinking reef restoration plan.   

The report concluded the best option for reef-wide protection lies in large scale solar radiation management, which led it to considering the radical approaches.

'The concept of creating shade through clouds, mist, fog, or surface films assumes that decreased solar radiation protects corals from bleaching,' the report stated.

The GRBF report also found with the proper research and development effort, the goal of recovering the reef from the effects of climate change is possible.

The foundation drew emphasis to the hefty costs to replace heat-resistant coral in the reef, saying it would take as many as 700,000 divers working around the clock.

The report comes as the latest Australian Institute of Marine Science data found there has been a general decline in coral cover over the last five years.  

According to the latest AIMS report, crown-of-thorn starfish outbreaks, cyclones and coral bleaching events have been the most detrimental to the reef in recent years.

The AIM research also showed while healthy coral reefs had cover of up to 50 per cent, others areas were barren with sparse skeletons covered in turf algae.

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Hanson slams Aborigine recognition ceremonies

Meaningless Lerftist nonsense.  Every Australian already knows that there were Aborigines here before us.  We spend enough on welfare for them

Pauline Hanson has unleashed on commercial airlines in a bizarre radio rant, saying she was “gobsmacked” about a few simple words.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is set to veto all moves to enshrine an Indigenous 'voice to parliament' constitutionally.
Firebrand conservative politician Pauline Hanson has unleashed on commercial airlines that perform Welcome to Country mid-flight, as the debate over Indigenous recognition in the Constitution heats up.

The One Nation Party leader appeared on 2GB Radio in Sydney this morning to share her views on the push for a referendum to formally recognise Australia’s first peoples in the preamble to the Constitution.

Senator Hanson is not in favour of the proposition, which was put back on the agenda by Indigenous Affairs Minister Ken Wyatt on Wednesday.

In the 48 hours since, divisions have emerged in the Coalition, with a number of right-wing figures expressing their concerns.

On the long-running issue of constitutional recognition, Senator Hanson said she has long been “warning people … do not fall for it”.

“They are actually causing divisions,” she told 2GB.

“We are all Australians together. I don’t care if you are Indigenous or if you were born here or if you are actually a migrant, we are not 200 years in the past, we are now in the future. We are in the future generation.”

But it was her claim about encountering Welcome to Country speeches on two commercial airliners mid-flight that has raised eyebrows.

“I actually flew into Rockhampton today and into Townsville and prior to my landing they actually put across that we must acknowledge the Aboriginals as the traditional land owners of this land and it is basically Welcome to Country,” Senator Hanson said. “I was gobsmacked, absolutely gobsmacked.”

Acknowledgement of Country and Welcome to Country are two different things. The first acknowledges the traditional owners of lands, while a Welcome to Country is performed by an Indigenous Australian as a greeting to visitors to lands.

It’s unclear which Senator Hanson encountered.

Senator Hanson did not mention the airline by name and her office did not respond to requests for comment from news.com.au.

But Australia’s major airlines say they don’t typically acknowledge country or perform a Welcome to Country while in the air. Spokespeople for the major airlines said procedures surrounding mid-flight duties were fairly rigid.

Senator Hanson is likely to be a major figure in the No campaign camp should the constitutional recognition referendum take place.

Mr Wyatt said it was his hope a referendum could be held in this term of government and Prime Minister Scott Morrison has indicated his support.

Mr Morrison has also met with Labor leader Anthony Albanese to discuss a bipartisan approach to the issue.

But already, a number of Liberal politicians have spoken out, with Sydney MP Craig Kelly saying he would campaign against recognition.

Queensland Senator Amanda Stoker and her Victorian counterpart James Patterson have also expressed their doubts.

A furore over a so-called third chamber in parliament — stemming from the 2017 Uluru Statement, which called for an Indigenous voice in Canberra — has forced Mr Morrison to pledge that no such proposal would be included in the referendum.

Sky News host Chris Kenny has labelled the idea of 'a third chamber or an Indigenous veto' as 'a furphy, misleading and ...
Instead, the focus would be on inserting language acknowledging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the original inhabitants of Australia, although the proposed wording hasn’t been finalised.

The right-wing think tank the Institute for Public Affairs said any Indigenous voice to parliament was “a divisive ideology based on race” and that “race has no place in the Australian Constitution”.

In a speech to the National Press Club on Wednesday, Mr Wyatt conceded the steps towards a referendum would not be easily tread. But he invited all Australians to “walk with me”.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






12 July, 2019

The desperate lies of the Marine Conservation Society

The Marine Conservation Society is a Greenie Pressure group

What do you do when you NEED to show that the Great Barrier Reef is being damaged by global warming -- but it isn't?  You lie. That is what the MCS did when the latest report from The Australian Institute of Marine Science came out. The MCS published an hysterical article (see below) purporting to be based on that report under the heading: "Long term Reef Monitoring Report Waves Burning Red flag for our Reef"

Here is the abstract of the actual scientific report:

* Coral reefs are impacted by numerous disturbances including outbreaks of the corallivorous crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster c.f. solaris), tropical cyclones and coral bleaching.

* Over the last five years, these collective disturbances have caused declines in hard coral cover to moderate (10-30%) levels across much of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR).

*Reef condition was variable both within and among regions. Reefs in the Northern and Central GBR have sustained impacts from multiple severe disturbances including mass coral bleaching, cyclones and crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks.

* Reefs in the Southern GBR escaped major disturbances from 2009 until 2017, when a severe outbreak of crown-of-thorns starfish began that continued through to 2019.

* In response to these disturbances, average hard coral cover continued to decline in the Central and Southern GBR while stabilising in the Northern GBR in 2019.

* Hard coral cover on AIMS survey reefs in the Northern GBR increased slightly from 11% in 2017 to 14% in 2019, but remains close to the lowest levels recorded by the AIMS Long-Term Monitoring Program (LTMP) since 1985. This reflects the cumulative impacts of cyclones and two episodes of severe coral bleaching over the period 2014 to 2019. To date, recovery has been limited.

* Surveys in the Northern GBR in 2019 may overestimate regional hard coral cover; coral bleaching in 2016 caused the greatest mortality on inshore reefs, but few inshore reefs could be surveyed due to safety concerns.

* Reefs in the Central GBR sustained significant coral loss due to Severe Tropical Cyclone (STC) Debbie in 2017 and due to the continued southward spread of crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks. Average hard coral cover declined slightly, from 14% in 2018 to 12% in 2019.

* Reefs of the Capricorn-Bunker sector in the Southern GBR continued to recover in 2019 while many of the southern Swain reefs suffered large coral losses due to intense crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks. Overall, mean coral cover on reefs in the Southern GBR region continued to decline, albeit only slightly, from 25% in 2018 to 24% in 2019.

* Early indications from additional detailed surveys show that coral juveniles across the GBR occurred at densities favourable for recovery in the absence of further disturbances.

Notice the dog that didn't bark?  There's no mention of climate change or warmer oceans.  The reference to bleaching could be taken as referring to global warming but bleaching can in fact be caused by many things, including fluctuations of water levels.

And the final point is optimistic that the reef will recover if starfish outbreaks and cyclones give it a chance.  There is actually NOTHING in the scientific report to justify the desperate lies from the Marine Conservation Society below.  Pesky of me to read the actual report, isn't it?

There is a major difficulty in saying that the reef has deteriorated in the last few years due to global warming.  The satellites show that global temperatures have in fact FALLEN in the last few years.  So any reef decline is NOT due to global warming.  Something non-existent cannot have an effect


The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) has today released their latest coral monitoring report which waves a burning red flag for Australia's Great Barrier Reef. The latest update to their Long?Term Reef Monitoring Program - Annual Summary Report on Coral Reef Condition for 2018/19 shows coral decline on an unparalleled scale, due primarily to the impacts of climate change.

The report by the country's pre-eminent marine science agency shows that hard coral cover, the foundation of our beautiful Reef, has declined by a whopping 10-30% in the past five years.

It found that hard coral cover in the Northern Great Barrier Reef increased by 3% but notes that this may be an overestimation, as the 2016 coral bleaching caused the greatest mortality to inshore coral reefs, few of which could be surveyed due to safety concerns.

Coral reefs in the northern and central Great Barrier Reef have sustained impacts from `multiple severe disturbances, including mass coral bleaching, cyclones and crown of thorns starfish'.

"The data screams out from this report that climate change is clobbering our world heritage Reef," said Shani Tager, Great Barrier Reef spokeswoman from the Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS).

"Underwater heatwaves have caused mass coral bleaching. As sea temperatures rise ever upwards, our corals bleach, our cyclones become more extreme and crown of thorn starfish thrive from excess runoff along our coast.

"The Reef is still a dynamic, beautiful place, home to thousands of animals and supporting 64,000 tourism jobs, but it's in serious trouble and we need our Governments to act fast.

"Queensland and Australia are custodians of our beloved Great Barrier Reef, but this report reminds us yet again how out of touch our political leaders are on the urgent need for climate change action.

"Our government should be leading the world on clean, renewable energy. Instead they stagger on with plans to develop more coal mines like Adani and more coal fired power stations, subsidised by Australian taxpayers who have never been more concerned about climate change.

"Australia's top marine scientists are saying that climate change will make it harder for our Reef to recover from more frequent natural disasters and disturbances.

"This is a burning red flag for our Reef and our nation. Australians love our Great Barrier Reef and we must fight to protect its future."

SOURCE  






Arrogant climate change protesters hand out vegan biscuits to frustrated drivers stopped from getting to work (and on with their lives) by their peak-hour protest

Furious commuters on their way to work in Brisbane's CBD were met with huge peak-hour traffic delays as climate change activists held a peaceful protest. 

The Extinction Rebellion SEQ group held the demonstration in Brisbane on Thursday morning, demanding action on climate change and the Adani coal mine.

The group held up traffic as they stood on the road with signs and banners while frustrated commuters tried to make their way into the city.

Some activists tried to cheer up angered motorists by offering them vegan biscuits.

The group said protests would be taking place on Thursday, with around 40 activists on Elizabeth Street. 

Other demonstrations were also planned to take on other streets in the city between 7.30am and 10:30am.

'Respectful civil disobedience has been shown to be the most effective form of demanding change,' Extinction Rebellion spokesperson Sergeio told the ABC.

'We cause disruption to society in order to allow our population to consider the climate emergency and what they will do about it.'

Motorists were less than impressed with the planned protest, stepping out of their cars to hurl abuse or beeping their horns.

One motorist was heard shouting at police 'why don't you arrest them?', according to the Courier Mail.

'Why don't they just get a f***ing job?' questioned another fed-up commuter, only to be handed a vegan biscuit in response.

It is the third time this month that demonstrations like this have happened.

The activists described the disruption as a 'minor inconvenience' in comparison to what will happen when Queensland mine officially starts operating.

More disruption is expected for next week when more protests are planned.

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Pauline Hanson says she wants police to break up disruptive climate protests

Pauline Hanson says she wants police to break up protests and fine activists after climate change marchers caused traffic chaos on the streets of Brisbane today.

Angry drivers blared their horns at the 40-person group from Extinction Rebellion as they moved between and blocked four key intersections within the city for about 10 minutes at a time.

The small group met at Queens Park at 7.30am before moving down George St, blocking intersections at Elizabeth, Adelaide and Turbot streets.

Frustrated drivers were seen exiting their cars to see what the hold up was, showing their anger through blaring horns.

One protester, Tom Howell, said in a livestream on the Extinction Rebellion SEQ Facebook page that a little bit of inconvenience is necessary in the long run.

"We are going to keep doing this until our demands are met. Brisbane has to get used to this."

The One Nation leader accused police commanders of instructing their officers on the ground not to go near the protesters.

"It's not good enough, I think they should be stopped. Give them a fine," Senator Hanson told Sky News. "The police tend to step back from them. They tend to be told by their masters, the political side of the wing, to actually not intervene and not do anything about it.

"People are sick of these protesters who think they have control and think they can do whatever they want.

"It's not the police, they're being told by their superiors what to do."

Senator Hanson has joined the likes of Queensland Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington in condemning today's protests.

Ms Frecklington took to Twitter to call for stronger police action.

"Seriously, these people are becoming serial pests to Brisbane commuters. I have no problem with peaceful protest but this is deliberate disruption. Police should throw the book at them and send them the bill," she said.

Ms Frecklington tweeted: "The clowns are on the loose again. These serial pests need to stop disrupting Queensland commuters and protest in a park."

Queensland Police were unable to confirm to The Australian this morning whether any fines were given out or arrests were made.

SOURCE  






Rush to climb Uluru before it’s closed permanently

Climbing the rock is a popular tourist activity.  Closing it off is disgusting pandering to Aboriginal superstitions.  The government does not support other religious ideas.  Why this one?

Tourists travelling to climb Uluru have hit a “historic high” in anticipation of the climb being closed permanently in October.

Three months out from the closure, the tourist influx has sparked claims of trespassing, illegal dumping of rubbish, and disrespect in the rush to climb the rock.

Stephen Schwer CEO of Central Tourism Australia said there has been a massive influx of people in the run up to October 26, when the climb will be closed permanently.

“We are seeing a lot of forward booking for September school holidays so I have a feeling (the influx) will continue until the climb closed,” Mr Schwer told The Australian,

“There is a lot of domestic drive traveller coming for the express purpose of climbing the rock, and a lot of (accommodation) is booked up so we are urging people to plan ahead.”

CEO Voyages indigenous Tourism Australia Grant Hunt said the rush was causing a massive safety concern for those climbing the rock, as well and problems with people disrespecting the land they are travelling on.

“We are under a lot of pressure with the camping and caravanning sector, “ Mr Hunt said.

“Down the highway and on the Aboriginal Trust land … there are people who when they can’t get a booking they are finding themselves alternate locations which in most cases is trespassing and they do not have the same facilities so they are dumping their waste wherever they can,” Mr Hunt said.

“(There are) definitely safety concerns about the amount of people climbing — there are only finite resources and it is closing because it is not safe, I’m just crossing my fingers there isn’t a tragedy before October 26,” Mr Hunt said.

The Anangu traditional land owners and Alice Springs locals reportedly say visitors are leaving rubbish bins overflowing, and illegally dumping human waste on roadsides.

Uluru is sacred to indigenous Australians and the climb has always been discouraged by the park’s traditional owners, who deem it disrespectful due to the sacred nature of the area.

Some tourist operators have discouraged tourists climbing in recent times, both in respect of indigenous wishes and also because of safety factors.

SOURCE  






Aboriginal voice in parliament carries the same risks it did two years ago

It's sheer racism to give a huge privilege purely on racial grounds

The principle that all Australians should not be divided on the basis of their race or skin colour is a cornerstone of our freedoms and the rule of law. This clear principle — that race has no place in the Australian Constitution — is being ­undermined by a bipartisan campaign to divide Australians in our nation’s founding document by ­establishing a special body to represent indigenous Australia to be a “voice” to parliament on issues relevant to indigenous Australians.

Yesterday, Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt revealed in an address to the National Press Club that the federal government intended to “bring forward a consensus option” for an indigenous “voice” to be presented at a referendum during the present term of parliament.

This appears to be a different position than the Coalition offered voters before May’s federal election. The Prime Minister did not tell the so-called quiet Australians who elected the Coalition that he supported political and legal rights being accorded to Australians on the basis of their race.

While remaining committed to some form of constitutional recognition, the view of the Coalition was that which was expressed by former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who rejected the proposal for a voice in October 2017, saying “the government does not believe such an addition to our ­national representative institutions is either desirable or capable of winning in a referendum”.

The flaws of the proposals are the same as they were then. In practice, the voice could never be confined to issues solely affecting indigenous Australians. This is ­because all major policy issues, such as health, education and ­infrastructure, apply to all Australians regardless of their race. The voice also presents an unprecedented threat to our representative institutions. It is inevitable that a representative body for indigenous Australians would effectively practise a veto power over any policy passed by any Australian parliament. Rather than a formal veto power, the power of the body would be to shame parliaments into agreeing with its advice. The alternative is to oppose the indigenous voice. Conversely, an official, constitutionally enshrined voice that repre­sents one view might crowd out other views in the indigenous community.

The minister is seeking inspiration from the 1967 referendum, which he notes “was the result of tireless advocacy and an extraordinary momentum for change”. It is important to consider what the ­nature of that change was.

In 1967 almost 92 per cent of Australians agreed to “alter the Constitution so as to omit certain words relating to the People of the Aboriginal Race in any State and so that Aboriginals are to be counted in reckoning the Population”. In other words, Australians then overwhelmingly voted to remove references to race in the Constitution. Now both parties are asking Australians to put race back into the Constitution. This is not progress in indigenous affairs, it is a significant backwards step.

Wyatt criticised paternalist policies developed in Canberra. He said “even the most well-­intentioned modern policies and programs have still tended to take a top-down command-and-control approach”. But the solution to the problem he has correctly identified is fundamentally flawed.

Localism should be embraced, which would see communities — indigenous and non-indigenous — given the power to make their own decisions that are appropriate for them. This is a fundamental part of addressing the challenges in indigenous communities, but decentralisation does not require the abolition of the universality of the Australian Constitution.

Unfortunately, a significant problem in indigenous affairs today is the assumption that the types of policies that promote success and human flourishing are culturally contingent. The fundamental building blocks of a successful life — the dignity of work, safe neighbourhoods, stable families and economic opportunity — are the same regardless of one’s ­racial background. Constitutional change is not required to promote these building blocks. Instead, Australian governments should focus on practical outcomes for ­indigenous Australians, such as ensuring more children attend school and more economic opportunity reaches remote areas.

Any proposal to establish a ­special voice for some people and not others is illiberal and a violation of all principles of racial equality. The parliament, which is open to participation from all ­Australians, ­remains the best body to address these needs.

Even just challenging these ideas and asking Australians to divide themselves by race might divide Australia along those lines forever. If the referendum for an indigenous voice wins, Australia’s system of representative government will be up-ended. If the referendum fails, it will be a win for an industry that thrives on stoking ­resentment between segments of the Australian population.

In an age of identity politics, it is a test of the federal government to promote a vision of unity, not further division. If it were to consider ­establishing a voice to parliament, the Morrison government might fail this important test.

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Meet champion of the centre: Andrew Wilkie

Andrew Wilkie - Australia's first urban independent to exceed 50 per cent of the primary vote - is genuinely surprised at how many votes he has stolen from all political parties.

"Before this election, I couldn't see where my vote increase could come from; I could not fathom or see any place where there was a surplus to be had," says the independent for Hobart-based Clark, the once safe Labor seat he squeezed into on preferences in 2010.

Voters of all stripes thought differently, with further defections from all three main political parties seeing his primary vote - just 21.26 per cent nine years ago - climb to 50.05 per cent.

Clark is now less a safe seat than a personal political fiefdom. "I've taken about half the Green vote, almost half the Liberal vote and the majority of the Labor vote," says Wilkie, who believes voters have rewarded hard work and a commitment to integrity.

While he did not deliberately target disillusioned party voters, the former spook turned whistleblower turned MP says his success, which he attributes in part to disillusionment with the main parties, offers lessons for others.

"If any independent comes along and just tries to take votes from one party, they probably can't take enough to win the seat, but if you have got an independent who is broadly appealing, that's a different calculation," says the former Liberal Party member and twice Greens candidate.

At the 2007 election, the last before the retirement from politics of Duncan Kerr, the Labor MP who held the seat previously known as Denison for 23 years, Labor won 48.46 per cent of the primary votes. While Wilkie scraped in on preferences in 2010, he has increased support at each poll since. Labor's primary vote at this election fell further to only 20.22 per cent - less than half its pre-Wilkie level. The Liberal vote has almost halved in the same period, from 29.66 per cent in 2007 to 17.37 per cent last month, while the Greens vote has plummeted from 18.6 per cent in 2007 to 9.5 per cent.

Clark is often said to be divided politically and socially along a "flannelette curtain" of Creek Road, north of the city centre. Northward are battling suburbs, where Labor once triumphed, while south lies trendy inner-city suburbs of green-left types, as well as affluent areas where moderate Liberals do well at a state level.

Wilkie, who backed Julia Gillard to govern in the hung parliament of 2010, appears to have succeeded by focusing on issues close to these disparate groupings. Issues he raised during the election lead-up ranged from those of concern to traditional Labor votes - jobs, workers' rights and Centrelink failings - to green-left topics such as the Adani coalmine, live animal exports and the environment. Warnings against the Coalition flirting with Pauline Hanson or Clive Palmer would have appealed to Liberal moderates. "Some people call me a leftie; I call myself a centrist," he says.

His biggest danger may be his own success. Having made his seat so safe, the major parties may bypass it when rolling out the pork barrel. With no hung parliament, requiring government to curry favour with crossbenchers, voters could come to see Wilkie as a barrier to achieving federal funding.

He believes this is unfounded. "It's obviously harder to deliver when you are a safe seat but it's not impossible, particularly when you have a good working relationship with both sides of parliament. I have good access to the PM and all of his ministers. If this (seat) was held by an opposition backbencher, there would be zero for the electorate.

"If you're in the Labor or Liberal parties you're either in government or you're in opposition. But if you're a well-regarded independent in the middle you can have open channels of communication with both parties . Even if you're not in the balance of power, government still likes your imprimatur for controversial policies."

So far Scott Morrison has treated Wilkie and other crossbenchers well, maintaining extra staff provided to deal with past tight numbers in the house and keeping in contact. Wilkie, 58 in November, says this is a sign the government is acutely aware its majority could be lost in the event of a by-election or defection.

He plans to seek re-election in 2022. "Any hopes there might be in the dark corners of the Labor Party are dashed," he says. "I ain't going to give it back to them. They are going to have to come and take it off me."

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






11 July, 2019

Australia-first study highlights benefits of early education for school children now and later in life

It does no such thing.  It is just the latest propaganda effort by a lobby group to get governments to pay for the child-minding of little kids.  The "study" is not a survey or experiment of any kind.  It is an economic analysis of previously agreed facts about early childcare.  The economists who did the report headed it up with fierce warnings that it was done for the lobbyists only and should not be used by anyone else.  They knew its severe limitations

The overwhelming evidence on the subject is that early education confers no lasting benefit at all.  Let me quote just a small excerpt from someone who has surveyed the evidence on the question:

    "University studies are often quoted to support the perceived academic bene?ts of preschool. What is not often mentioned is that whilst these studies demonstrate preschool in a favourable light when compared with an impoverished home environment; preschool environments and results do not compare favourably with the average home environment.

    Even Professor Edward Zigler, credited as “the father of Head Start” a well-respected American preschool program admits “there is a large body of evidence that there is little to be gained by exposing middle class children to early education…(and) evidence that indicates early schooling is inappropriate for many four-year-olds, and that it may be harmful to their development.”

    So what about the long-term academic effects of preschool? The longitudinal studies, often quoted to argue an academic advantage provided by preschool for lower socio-economic groups, actually also show that this “advantage” disappears by grade three.

    If preschool were truly bene?cial in terms of giving children a head start, those places with some form of compulsory preschool should do demonstrably better academically. The evidence does not bear this out. The two states of America which have compulsory preschool, Georgia and Oklahoma, have the lowest results for fourth grade reading tests in the country."


Children who attend one year of early childhood education are more likely to achieve higher NAPLAN scores, which influences higher education outcomes and employment opportunities.

That’s the verdict from a new study into the economic impact of early childhood education, which highlights the academic and developmental benefits it gives to school children now and later in life.

The study, commissioned by The Front Project, and conducted by PwC, finds improved cognitive abilities that result from participating in early learning can be measured in later school achievement, educational attainment and employment.

The Front Project CEO, Jane Hunt said the findings highlighted the vitally important role early learning plays in the development of children in the short-term and in the longer-term.

“We all want our children to be more and have more than we had, and this report demonstrates that early learning is a vital part of making this possible,” Ms Hunt said.

“One year of quality early learning before school can hold the key to unlocking a wealth of opportunity for our young people as they develop and eventually enter the workforce.

“Finally, we have the research that shows that quality early learning is a key economic enabler that will allow our children to seize opportunities as the world of work becomes more complex.

“We know that 65 per cent of children today will do jobs that have not been invented yet, so the reality is that our children will need to learn how to learn – early education does this, and this research proves it.”

The landmark report finds that improved skills and abilities in children who attend early education was associated with improved NAPLAN results in Year 3.

Children with higher scores at Year 3 NAPLAN continue to do better all the way through to Year 9 NAPLAN, and then to high school graduation.

Ms Hunt said the data highlights the importance of quality early learning and the need for greater funding certainty from governments.

“This report emphasises the importance of governments committing to ongoing funding for the National Partnership Agreement,” Ms Hunt said.

“The report also highlights the need to address the variability of quality in early childhood education, particularly the quarter of services not yet meeting the National Quality Standard.

“As well as that, the report bolsters the argument quality early education should be expanded to children two years out from school.”

PwC Chief Economist Jeremy Thorpe said the research demonstrates the substantial impact early learning has on children’s development.

“Using the best available Australian and international research we were able to estimate the impact of early childhood education on early school achievement, and then the likely uplift in achievement at Year 3 and throughout the rest of their education,” Mr Thorpe said.

“The evidence suggests that if early childhood education puts students ahead at the start of primary school, the benefits will increase as they progress through the education system.”

Lisa Chung, Chair of The Front Project’s Board said the report reveals the enormous opportunities created later in life when we invest in the early years.

“Succeeding in future workplaces will require agile, lifelong learners, who are comfortable with continuous adaptation and a willingness to change industries or sectors,” Ms Chung said.

“It’s possible to train people in new information and contexts, but without teams who can learn and re-learn, innovation and efficiency suffer.”

Zac Hatzantonis, PwC's early childhood practice leader, added: “The report demonstrates that better investment in early childhood education will also help reduce escalating social welfare, health and justice costs.”

Via email. Media contact: Kate Hickey 0423 700 290

The full report: here





Whitewashing the truth of why men kill themselves

Relationship troubles, not mental health, lie behind the plague of male suicides, writes Bettina Arndt

Imagine the outcry if a man was appointed head of a leading domestic violence prevention organisation? So how come the federal government has just proudly announced a woman, Christine Morgan, as National Suicide Prevention Officer? This is just the latest move by a government determined to deny the fact that suicide is overwhelmingly a male problem, with six out of eight of our daily suicides taking the lives of men.

Amazingly the recently released National Suicide Prevention Implementation Plan is proudly “gender neutral”, failing to acknowledge that men not only dominate suicide statistics but offering no special programmes to address the unique causes of male suicide, which differ dramatically from those of women who end their own lives.

The alleged link to mental health problems is the most glaring mistake. “Around 80 per cent of people who die by suicide have a mental health issue,” declared ScoMo yesterday when announcing Morgan’s appointment. No, Prime Minister. That’s simply not true of men, the major group at risk. Australian research shows over half of all male suicides, 78 per cent of male farmer suicides and 83 per cent of suicides in older men were not predominantly associated with a mental health diagnosis – according to the Australian Institute of Suicide Research and Prevention and other related studies.

The government proudly declares they are working towards a zero suicide goal yet the PM lists as those most at risk, “veterans, Indigenous Australians and young people”. Not one word about the most vulnerable group – the ordinary men, particularly family men in their 30s and 40s losing their families.

That’s the elephant in the room that our governments are determined to ignore. There’s solid evidence that the major cause of suicide in this country is not mental health problems but rather the toll taken by family break-up, where fathers often face mighty battles trying to stay part of their children’s lives, up against a biased family law system which fails to enforce contact orders, and often facing false violence allegations which are now routinely used to gain advantage in family court battles. Research by the Australian Institute of Suicide Research and Prevention found that almost half of male suicides are linked with relationship issues, one in 20 are linked to child custody issues, one in 10 to pending legal matters. That’s the glaring gender difference – with male suicide three to four times more likely than female suicide to be linked to relationship break-up and child custody.

This evidence has been accumulating for years and no one wants to talk about it. Remember that lavish ABC series, Man Up, made by radio star Gus Worland? Hours of television focusing on the high male suicide rate, endlessly discussing why men won’t talk about their feelings – and barely a word about why men are killing themselves. Last year Worland’s new charity, Gotcha4Life, raised nearly half a million dollars to “save the lives of men suffering mental illness”, money to be spent mainly on programmes in schools teaching boys to express their feelings.

Whenever there’s a known link to female suicide, like post-partum depression, the money pours in to properly address the problem. Yet men struggling to deal with the devastating consequences of dealing with family break-up are given no support. Key organisations providing support for men in these circumstance – like Dads in Distress – face constant battles for funding.

Maybe it is time for the quiet Australians to speak out about this shocking whitewashing of the proper facts about suicide in this country. Contact your MP, ring radio stations, use social media posts to protest the government’s wrong-fisted handling of this important social issue. The six men dying each day in Australia deserve the truth to be told.

SOURCE  






#MeToo — it was always going to end in tears

Never have so-called progressives been more manifestly regressive than in the way the #MeToo movement undermines fundamental legal rights. To prove the point, the case of John Jarratt deserves a special mention as the contrast between the cool reason found in a courtroom and the conflation and outrage that drives #MeToo.

Last Friday, after two hours of deliberations, a jury found the Australian actor not guilty of raping a woman almost 40 years ago. The woman cannot be named for legal reasons, while Jarratt’s name has been plastered across the media. All along, Jarratt said it was consensual sex. It has been reported that the woman was contacted by journalist Tracey Spicer, who has led the #MeToo movement in Australia.

It was inevitable that this social media movement would spiral out of control. It is premised on one fatal flaw. We were told that women must be believed, a claim that heaves with bogus morality and defies reality. This is not even a debate about who lies more either, men or women. The fact some women lie too dismantles the claim that all women must be believed.

In January, Canberra woman Sarah Jane Parkinson was jailed for three years after staging a fake rape that sent her boyfriend to prison for four months until ­charges against him were dropped.

Last week, Cherie Renee Bolton from Arkansas pleaded guilty to trying to frame her husband as a pedophile by downloading child porn in his phone. Women lie.

This central flaw at the heart of #MeToo presumes to wave away legal rights and a legal system premised on the presumption of innocence. If #MeToo’s vocal advocates had warned of this inherent danger, counselled caution and called for due process, the movement may not have become a train wreck.

In a stark contrast to the wild courts of social media that tainted men across the world with unproven allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault, defined so loosely as to include bad jokes or even bad sex, the NSW District Court delivered a cool-headed, legally grounded response last Friday. The evidence was presented to court, tested by lawyers, and 12 objective people from the community decided the claim of rape was not proved beyond reasonable doubt.

Our legal system is not perfect. Innocent people have gone to prison; guilty people can escape punishment. But courts of law are a damn sight fairer than the social media hunting seasons kicked off by #MeToo.

While the Jarratt case is a win for reason, the #MeToo movement has settled in for more emotive trench warfare. Earlier this year, a Harvard law professor was hounded from his campus role after he joined Harvey Weinstein’s legal team. Some students protested, claiming “discomfort” that Ronald Sullivan was part of the legal team representing Weinstein, who faces charges of rape and other sexual misconduct.

Sullivan, along with his wife, Stephanie Robinson, were faculty deans at Harvard’s Winthrop House. Some demanded his resignation. The Association of Black Harvard Women put out a statement that said: “You failed us.” Sullivan and his wife are the first African-Americans to lead one of Harvard’s 12 residential colleges. They have done so for 10 years.

Sullivan, who has acted for victims of sexual assault and for those accused of murder, wrote to students, explaining that lawyers are not an extension of their clients. It is the duty of defence lawyers to represent those accused of crimes, no matter how reviled the defendant, he wrote. If society denies unpopular defendants basic rights of legal representation, it won’t be long before basic rights for all of us are lost.

In a portent of what was to come, Harvard administrators ordered a “climate review” into Winthrop. Then, in early May, university bosses told Sullivan and his wife their appointments would not be renewed. Writing about this debacle, Sullivan said “feelings alone should not drive university policy”. He noted that “administrators must help students dis­tinguish between feelings that have a rational basis and those that do not. In my case, Harvard missed an opportunity to help students do that.”

One female student, Danu AK Mudannayake, who led protests against Sullivan, described his removal as a “win” that would resonate beyond Harvard. Sadly, it is a win for emotion. As Evan Gerstmann wrote in Forbes, the basic tenets of justice mean “John Adams was no less patriotic because he defended the British soldiers accused of the Boston Mas­sacre. James Donovan, famously portrayed in the film Bridge of Spies, was not a communist sympathiser just because he represented an accused Soviet spy.”

Another young woman, Phoebe H. Suh, wrote in The Crimson, Harvard’s newspaper, that “the violent impact” of Sullivan acting for Weinstein is silence for her, as a survivor of sexual assault. Conjuring up violent impacts is not just irrational, it is dangerous to victims. A court of law is the place where victims are given a voice.

In a damning assessment of our age, it is bad enough that discomfort is used to stifle ideas that challenge young minds, to no-platform speakers who veer from the orthodoxy, to inhibit students from learning and thriving from free and robust discussions, to infantilise them, too, with safe spaces and trigger warnings. As Alan Dershowitz wrote recently, “feeling unsafe is the new mantra for McCarthyism”.

In a case of how culture seeps from one arena to another, discomfort is being used to dislodge fundamental legal principles. Harvard’s actions are not just a betrayal of liberal education, allowing feelings to trump inquiry and learning. Harvard, of all places, has also allowed feelings unshackled from reason to trump fundamental legal principles.

Where has reason gone? All men, sexual predators and murderers alike, are entitled to legal representation. We defend the guilty so that the innocent are defended too, because we cannot always know who is guilty and who is innocent. A court will test allegations, using evidence and cross-examination, and law that has developed over centuries, including a jury of our peers that decides guilt beyond reasonable doubt. All this because, as English jurist William Blackstone, said: “It is better that 10 guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”

The #MeToo movement inverts these fundamental legal principles. If all women must be believed, and some lie, it follows that innocent men will suffer.

Jarratt was more than entitled to say on Friday that no man should ever go through what he has endured. But at this point in the #MeToo cycle, it is worth praising a court system that settled this matter. What #MeToo promotes — public damnation minus basic legal principles and process — is far worse. To its eternal shame, Harvard has endorsed this travesty of justice.

SOURCE  







Big businesses play `moral arbiter of acceptable thinking' in Israel Folau case: senior researcher

Now his wife is under attack

Australian corporates had "really crossed the line" in the Israel Folau furore, shunning people for their religious beliefs while playing the "moral arbiter of socially acceptable thinking", according to Jeremy Sammut, a senior research fellow with the Centre for Independent Studies.

Dr Sammut's comments follow the censure of Folau's netball star wife Maria, by two key women's netball sponsors, ANZ and health insurance company HCF.

Both sponsors have reportedly told Netball Australia they were unhappy with Maria Folau's decision to repost a link to her husband's now defunct GoFundMe page.

HCF told Netball Australia there was an urgent need for "a strong, clear and well enforced social media policy and education amongst its players and staff".

HCF told Nine Media on Wednesday: "We appreciate the complexities of the Folau matter and acknowledge that views do differ in the community, however, we do not support Maria Folau's stance on this matter."

"There is no place in our society for discrimination of any kind, including on the basis of gender, religious belief, age, race or sexual orientation."

Dr Sammut said the extraordinary community backlash caused by GoFundMe's decision take down Folau's funding appeal page  demonstrated what a "tin ear" the big business had when it came to the feelings of ordinary Australians.

"It looks like the community thinks the big end of town has decided to mob up, endlessly posturing about their "right on" politics," he said.

"Corporates live in a corporate bubble and they have clearly crossed the line in relation to Folau. They are clearly getting into the business of social engineering, making decisions on behalf of the community about what views are socially unacceptable."

He said the Folau saga had been sparked by Rugby Australia and its major sponsor Qantas seeking to punish the former Wallaby for his fundamentalist Christian views while holding themselves out as a beacon of "progressive ideology and identity politics"

ANZ and HCF, he said, were now climbing on board to chastise Folau's wife, a star shooter with the Adelaide Thunderbirds, for supporting her husband.

"'I am amazed that HCF and ANZ have doubled down on the same approach given the negative backlash against GoFundMe's actions," he said.

`This is much more dangerous than just corporate virtue signalling. It amounts to an attack on fundamental freedoms in a democratic society, including religious freedom."

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






10 July, 2019

First our land, now our WATER: How China is the biggest buyer of Australia's most precious resource

This is a totally crap scare.  The Chinese are NOT picking the water up and taking it to China.  All the water concerned is used in Australia on Australian crops. The scare is being generated out of the fact that Chinese investors now own some Australian farms and some of those farms have water rights

It is in fact mainly about Cubbie Station, Australia's massive cotton grower, which is hugely beneficial to Australian trade.  The drought at one stage sent it broke and it was partly Chinese money that rescued it


Australia's water market should be more closely monitored after it emerged China is the largest foreign stakeholder, experts say.

The Federal Government in March revealed that 10.4 per cent of Australian water rights are owned by foreign individuals or companies.

Chinese investors own 732 gigalitres or 1.89 per cent of the water on the market - an amount more than Sydney Harbour which holds 500 gigalitres.

In close second, Americans own 720 gigalitres (1.86 per cent) while British buyers own 414 gigalitres or 1.1 per cent.

A string of investors from countries including Canada, France and Singapore own 0.5 per cent or less.

The figures were revealed in a new ATO register of foreign ownership which was set up to monitor who owns Australia's most precious natural resource.

But as China flexes its muscles on the global stage and seeks strategic influence across the world, experts say we must keep a close watch.

'A total of 10.4 per cent of our water being owned by foreigners is a significant amount,' Professor Quentin Grafton of the Australian National University told Daily Mail Australia. 'As such, it is important that Australians know who is using our water - it's a public resource and it's critically important to the country.

How does the water market work?

Government appointed bodies decide how much water from rivers can be given out each year. Once it is allocated, users can trade their water. There are two main types of water trade: temporary and permanent.

A temporary transfer is a transfer of water specifically for the irrigation season.

If one farmer does not have enough water for his crops, he can buy water from another.

A permanent transfer is the transfer of the water entitlement. The purchaser buys rights to a yearly allocation of water from a river and receives the allocation until they sell.

The Australian water market is not national but split into different sections within each state. The largest market is the Murray-Darling Basin in the south east.

Professor Grafton said foreign ownership of Australian water is not necessarily problematic.

'Investors are not allowed to export the water so it has to be used in Australia,' he said.

Asked if too much foreign ownership of water could be a problem, Professor Grafton said: 'We'll have to wait and see.'

But federal Agriculture Minister David Littleproud said there was nothing to worry about.

'At the moment, there's a small percentage of water owned by foreign interests and much of that is by one property - Cubbie Station,' he said.

The Cubbie Station is a massive Queensland cotton farm largely owned by a Chinese textiles company.

The station's water storage dams stretch for more than 28 kilometres along the Culgoa River in the Murray-Darling basin - and the station can use up to 500,000 megalitres per year.

SOURCE  






Surplus key to AAA credit rating: Frydenberg

Your credit rating determines how much interest you are charged.  Australia's remarkable top rating shows how confident the ratings agencies are in the policies of the Morrison government

Josh Frydenberg says Australia needs a budget surplus to maintain its AAA credit rating and to be prepared if an economic downturn hits.

The Treasurer today continued to defend the need for a budget surplus as “non-negotiable” as it was announced that more than 810,000 Australians have put in their tax returns in order to get their tax cuts.

Top credit rating agency Standard and Poor’s told The Australian Financial Review that Australia at needed to keep a surplus and address net debt to keep its rare top rating.

“We have heard today … S&P — Standard and Poor’s — who have said how important a surplus is to maintaining a AAA credit rating,” the Treasurer said in Melbourne today.

“The AAA rating is absolutely critical to Australia’s economic standing … a AAA credit rating affects the cost of borrowing. Australia is one of only 10 countries to have a AAA rating from the three major rating agencies.

“We’ll continue to ensure good economic management which has been praised by those credit rating agencies.”

Mr Frydenberg also pointed the importance of the surplus built up by John Howard and his treasurer Peter Costello in the late 1990s and early 2000s to avoid recession in 2008.

“It’s important to understand that if it wasn’t for the Howard-Costello government’s success in paying down Labor’s debt, Australia wouldn’t have had the flexibility to spend through that economic downturn when it hit in the GFC,” Mr Frydenberg said.

“What we need to do is pay down that debt, as appropriate and as we’re able to do. “We believe in that fundamental value that the next generation should not pick up the tab for the current generation.”

Labor’s treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers said today that more needed to be done to stimulate the economy. “We have stagnant wages ... the lowest economic growth since the Global Financial Crisis,” Dr Chalmers said in Brisbane. “This is a do-nothing treasurer.”

Mr Frydenberg, joined by Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar and Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan, said people who had filed their tax returns could receive their rebates of up to $1080 by the weekend.

SOURCE  






Disgusted: ABC angers farmers with water management report

The usual unbalanced reporting we expect from the Left

Australia’s farming lobby says it is “disgusted” by the ABC’s Four Corners program’s report into the Murray-Darling Basin plan which it labels “reckless” and “incredibly damaging” to the sector.

Four Corners reported last night that millions of dollars in Commonwealth funds had been handed out to irrigators under a scheme designed to help the environment and raised concerns over whether checks were being made into the grants given under the scheme were delivering their promised water savings.

Last night’s program has elicited an angry response from both the National Farmers’ Federation and Federal Water Resources Minister David Littleproud.

NFF president Fiona Simson said her organisation — the peak farmer’s body — said the report failed to mention that the majority of irrigation projects were carried out by smaller farms, not big corporations, and that 7000 gigalitres had been returned to the river system under the Murray-Darling Plan.

“The management of the Murray Darling Basin is an issue of immense national importance,” Ms Simson said. “Reckless and ill-informed reporting such as that aired last night, that picks and chooses facts, has the potential to be incredibly damaging for not only farmers, but communities and the environment.

“Not to mention doing a disservice to the intelligence of Australians, who expect informed and balanced reporting from what used to be one of our nation’s flagship investigative news programs.”

The ABC spoke to experts and former Murray-Darling Basin Authority officials who said the Murray-Darling Plan was now putting irrigators before the environment.

Four Corners reported that some of the beneficiaries of the scheme were partly foreign-owned corporations that had used the money to plant thirsty cotton and nut fields along the river system.

“That program was supposed to reduce the amount of water that was going to irrigation, when it’s actually increased the opportunities for irrigation … all subsidised by taxpayers,” former Murray-Darling Basin Authority director Maryanne Slattery told Four Corners.

“I think Australian taxpayers will be really shocked to find out that that money is actually going to foreign investors as well.”

Ms Simson said today that farmers had to return water to the environment in order to access an Murray-Darling infrastructure access scheme.

A spokesman for Mr Littleproud said the government had moved against speculators in the water market and had invested more than $60m in compliance.

The Coalition is proud to invest in water efficiency projects because they return water to the river system while protecting rural jobs and communities rather than decimating them as water buybacks do,” Mr Littleproud’s spokesman said.

“It is unfortunate Four Corners did not mention this crucial fact … The office of Minister Littleproud was not contacted for the Four Corners story.”

SOURCE  






Labor still dithering over policy and political strategy

Stuck between socialist dreams and winning elections

Richard Marles, Labor’s deputy leader, told me a fortnight ago that the party was going through a “grieving process”. It would take some time before fully comprehending the reasons behind its shock election defeat and settling on a policy and political strategy for the next few years.

Marles is right about the need for Labor to examine comprehensively why it failed to win key seats and suffered huge swings in many of its held seats, keeping many with only slim margins. But Labor cannot afford to remain in the doldrums for long. Its policy and political strategy during the past month has been a mess.

The Coalition racked up a major political win with the passage of its $158 billion tax cuts through the parliament. The government was able to negotiate the legislation through the Senate with the backing of four crossbenchers, sidelining One Nation and the Greens, and not needing Labor’s support.

Labor’s approach to the tax cuts could not have been more muddled. Leader Anthony Albanese and Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers argued strongly against supporting stages two and three of the tax cuts. They wanted to bring the second stage forward and defer the third stage. Labor Senate leader Penny Wong criticised the crossbenchers who backed the government’s tax cuts.

But, having argued against the tax cuts for months and proposing a series of changes to the package, Labor voted for it. Labor only did so because the government had struck a deal with the crossbench to see it legislated. By that stage, it didn’t matter what Labor did because the Coalition already had the numbers in the Senate.

It gets worse. Having opposed the tax cuts but voted for them, Labor is not ruling out going to the next election with a pledge to repeal the third stage. So Labor may promise to repeal a legislated tax cut. Is it serious? The Coalition will hang this around Labor’s neck like an albatross for the next three years.

Labor has had more positions on the Coalition’s tax package than there are in the Kama Sutra. Labor remains divided on the tax cuts. Some in the party wanted to oppose them because of their regressive design while others pragmatically wanted to accept that the government won a mandate for them and move on to other issues. Those who have argued for these positions in the shadow cabinet and partyroom have conceded that the handling of this issue has been a shambles. On that, at least, they are united.

It has exposed a deep fault-line about what Labor believes in and who it represents. For now, there are serious concerns within Labor’s senior ranks about tactics and strategy. Albanese was all over the shop on the tax cuts. It took weeks for Labor to settle on a final position and it did so only minutes before the pivotal vote. For all his faults, Bill Shorten ran a smarter show than Albanese.

Nevertheless, I applaud Albanese for having the guts to expel John Setka, the rogue militant Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union leader who has been convicted for harassing his wife, Emma Walters, in the most vile and menacing terms. Shorten would never have taken on the CFMEU.

But Albanese’s handling of Setka’s expulsion also has worried Labor MPs. Albanese made it clear Setka would be expelled, declaring himself to be judge, jury and executioner. But, at Setka’s request, Albanese delayed a meeting of Labor’s national executive to formally determine it. Setka now seeks an injunction in the Victorian Supreme Court. The saga goes on. If it is already decided, what was Albanese waiting for?

Labor has established a campaign review chaired by former South Australian premier Jay Weatherill and former federal minister Craig Emerson. There was opposition within the party to appointing Emerson, so a panel with first-rate campaign experience was also established. It comprises former party officials senator Anthony Chisholm, NSW MP John Graham and former West Australian assistant secretary Lenda Oshalem. Australian Services Union assistant secretary Linda White is also appointed.

Labor’s review of the 2016 election campaign was a farce. Individual chapters were written by a dozen or so people. It was not made available to party members. MPs had to go to the party’s national secretariat to read it under close supervision. There was no accountability against the recommendations. It was a waste of time.

Noah Carroll, Labor’s national secretary, has seen the writing on the wall and resigned. He was likely to have had support to stay. Labor’s campaign organisation was dysfunctional. Carroll was seen by many to be secretive and controlling, and failed to devise an effective strategy that inoculated the party against attacks on its policies. Yet he told senior Labor figures they had won the election.

Paul Erickson, Labor’s assistant secretary, is the frontrunner to succeed Carroll. (Albanese has told colleagues he would prefer former assistant secretary Nick Martin.) Erickson is a hard Left factional warrior who idolises British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Two years ago, he argued that Corbyn was “within the mainstream of postwar social democracy” and his radical agenda could be “just as effective here”. British Labour is rotting from the head down. It is attracting 18 per cent of the vote, the lowest in polling history. Corbyn is un­electable. If Australian Labor took Erickson’s advice and shifted further to the left using Corbyn as a role model, the party would confirm it has learned nothing since the election and would consign itself to more years in the political wilderness.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





9 July, 2019

Health care ‘apartheid’

Are we giving up on integrating Aborigines into Australian society?  How will they ever integrate if we keep giving reasons not to?

The proposal to launch Australia’s first Indigenous-only hospital raises a number of questions and is problematic on a number of levels.

Taxpayer support is being targeted for the idea, which is part of St Vincent’s Health Australia’s so-called ‘inclusive health program’ — which aims to ensure more Indigenous people receive all care needed to improve and maintain their health.

However, the need for a separate hospital does not seem to be supported by any hard evidence that Indigenous-specific/culturally appropriate health services would fix the appalling health disparity between the most disadvantaged Indigenous and other Australians.

In addition, the claim that this would help close the gap also doesn’t stack up against the reality that in remote communities — which have the worst health outcomes — people are already receiving Indigenous-specific care from Aboriginal Medical Services.

In reality, lack of access to all necessary care by disadvantaged Indigenous patients is highly likely to be driven by the same factors that account for lack of access by disadvantaged non-Indigenous patients.

Failure to seek treatment and/or comply with treatment regimes is often due to behavioural factors — ones that are also at the heart of people’s poor health status in general, especially in remote communities.

The idea of culturally appropriate care is a controversial one in the medical professions because the inclusion of such requirements in professional codes risks leaving the registration of doctors and nurses under threat from a subjective complaint that the care they delivered to an Indigenous patient was culturally inappropriate.

The fear is that when forced to practice under such obligations, many health professionals will be wary of treating Indigenous patients or working in Indigenous health.

This has important implications for the staffing of Indigenous-only facilitates, and for the quality of clinical care it may provide.

We should also be cautious about departing from the ‘universalist’ ethos that has long been at the core of the professional duties of doctors and nurses.

A version of this ethos has also been integral to the purpose of Catholic health services — and to the argument that these organisations deserve taxpayer-support to deliver public health services due in part to their special commitment to serving all the sick.

There is increasing pressure to withdraw public funding from Catholic health services over issues like abortion and euthanasia.

There is also a push to implement codes designed to ensure publically-funded services are ‘gender-sensitive’. The activist agenda here is to justify pushing faith-based providers out of the provision of such services on the basis that they are inherently LGTBI-unfriendly.

Giving credence to the argument that specific identity groups need their own culturally sensitive services will give credence and legitimacy to arguments that are fundamentally not in the best interest of Catholic health services.

All who wish to defend the principles of a free and civil society should defend public-funding to faith-based providers, as well as the rights of religious organisations and professionals on issues of conscience.

But when an organisation like St Vincent’s (which should know better) jumps on the progressive bandwagon and supports a divisive idea that is tantamount to health care ‘apartheid’, it is profoundly dispiriting — and makes it harder to will oneself to mount the cultural barricades in their defence.

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Feminist fanaticism: Mining health and safety committee in hiatus over ‘gender imbalance’

A Queensland government mine safety committee was forced into hiatus for nearly four months because it didn’t have the right “gender representation,” during a spate of six mining deaths in the state.

Queensland Mines Minister Anthony Lynham today confirmed the committee — which has representatives from the government mines inspectorate, the Queensland Resources Council, and relevant unions — would be re-established this week.

The committee has not met since March 20, but had to cancel its June meeting, The Australian understands.

“The committee has to be, certain representation has to be made in the committee, you have to make sure of gender representation is respected,” Dr Lynham said.

“Because of the significance of the appointments, that has been difficult, so the committee has been reestablished just recently.”

There have been six mining and quarry worker deaths in Queensland in the past 12 months, including four in the past six months. There have been two deaths since the mining safety committee last met in March. Most recently, a 27-year-old mine worker died at Baralaba in central Queensland on Sunday.

At his press conference this morning, Dr Lynham misspoke and said the committee had not sat at all this year. However, his office later clarified that the committee had met in March for two days.

Dr Lynham will meet with unions and the industry in Brisbane this afternoon, in light of the fatalities.

Liberal National Party Opposition leader Deb Frecklington called for a parliamentary investigation into mining safety in light of the recent deaths. Ms Frecklington said the disbanding of the mining safety advisory committee also needed to be probed.

“That needs to be investigated, along with reports the mines budget has been cut and why we have gone from two chief inspectors to one,” Ms Frecklington said.

“It’s crucial Queensland learns lessons from these tragedies to ensure our mines are safe.”

Queensland Resources Council boss Ian Macfarlane said the QRC had supplied its nominations for committee members, including two women, to the government six months ago.

“I’m not sure why that committee is not operating; we have asked that that committee start operating,” Mr Macfarlane said.

“We want to be doing everything we can … every committee makes a meaningful difference.”

Just hours after the fatality at Baralaba North, a man fell about 10 metres from a platform at Glencore’s Collinsville Coal Mine. Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Tania Constable extended her sincere sympathy to family, friends and colleagues of the Baralaba miner who died yesterday and the Collinsville miner injured this morning.

“Australia’s minerals industry’s number one value and commitment is the safety and health of the workforce, where everyone who goes to work in the industry returns home safely,’’ Ms Constable said. “The loss of life in Australian mining is unacceptable.’’

She said the minerals industry would work harder to become fatality and injury free.

“Clearly even greater effort is needed based on leadership, systems, people, culture and behaviour,’’ Ms Constable said.

CFMEU Queensland mining and energy president Steve Smyth has called for the mining industry to be shut down for at least 24 hours for a “major reset”.

“It means stopping every operation for a period of 24 hours, sitting down with your workers and engaging them around what’s going on with your mine site,” Mr Smyth said.

“I don’t know how many fatalities or major accidents we need to have before industry and the regulators take real action. It’s trending in a really, really concerning way.”

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Retirees rejoice: Government concedes deeming rates ‘too high’ after rate cut

More than half a million retirees could benefit from a review of how their aged pension is calculated after being hit by a further reduction in interest rates this week.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg confirmed on Saturday the federal government has accepted the argument that the deeming rate, which is used to work out a pensioner’s financial assets, is too high.

Deeming rates are used by government as a guide to assess how much income pension recipients are likely to receive from investments each year, rather than using each pensioner’s actual investment returns.

The pensioner deeming rate was last set in March 2015 when then-Treasurer Scott Morrison cut the rate back on amounts under $51,800 to 1.75 per cent (for singles) and for larger amounts to 3.25 per cent.

Since then, the Reserve Bank has cut the official cash rate five times, hitting a new record low of just one per cent after this week’s central bank board meeting.

Labor had said the deeming rate was “completely unfair” to pensioners and questioned why it had taken four years for it to change.

Advocates have been calling for deeming rates to be cut in line with record low interest rates announced by the Reserve Bank, with the Combined Pensioners and Superannuants Association (CPSA) arguing retirees receiving an age pension stood to lose up to $215 a year.

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Natural gas producers fear more regulation

Scott Morrison’s tax cuts deal with Centre Alliance has put the government on a collision course with the gas industry.

Australia’s petroleum and gas lobby this morning slammed Centre Alliance’s raft of gas reforms, which it claims to have secured in exchange for supporting the federal government’s full tax cuts bill.

The minor party today said it had secured changes to the gas pricing trigger, new transparency measures for the gas market and a long-term plan to boost domestic gas supply in order to pass the tax cuts package through the senate.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann confirmed today that the government had “talked through” gas reforms with Centre Alliance senators Rex Patrick and Stirling Griff, and announcements would be made in due course.

The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association today said there were no needs for any changes, and wanted more details from the government.

“APPEA needs to hear directly from the Government on the specifics of the proposed gas deal before commenting further,” an APPEA spokesman told The Australian.

“But we see no need for changes to the Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism (ADGSM) at this time.

“The ADGSM is up for a review in 2020 and the gas market transparency work will follow on from ACCC recommendations that were recently made public. “The Australian gas market is comprised of multiple gas suppliers competing to win local business.

“AEMO’s 2019 Gas Statement of Opportunities has confirmed that the gas market is well supplied until at least 2023.

“That why it is important that identified gas resources in NSW, Victoria and the NT are able to be developed as soon as possible.”

Centre Alliance says it has achieved changes to the Australian Domestic Gas Mechanism, new transparency measures for the gas market and long-term plans to ensure surplus domestic gas supply.

Senator Patrick says the gas reforms he has negotiated with the government will “cause lower electricity prices” but won’t say if he has a signed commitment for the policies.

“What we’ve done with the Government is negotiated a range of policy measures that they will announce over the next couple of months. And we have a very clear understanding of what those policies are. And we anticipate that they will have a positive effect for consumers on pricing.

“It’ll be good for consumers ... it might be bad for gas companies.”

The Finance Minister today declined to say the government has “horse-traded” with crossbench senators for their support for the full tax cuts package and said Scott Morrison has a long-term commitment to boosting domestic gas supply and bringing energy prices down.

“We’ve been prepared to engage in good faith with those senators about public policy issues that are important to them and they will be decided on their own merits and will be announced when we’re in a position to do so,” Senator Cormann told ABC radio.

“The government has a longstanding policy commitment to bring energy prices down. We have a longstanding policy commitment to boost the domestic supply of gas, in particular in the east coast electricity market.

“We’ve sat down in recent weeks with Centre Alliance, we’ve sat down with Senator Lambie. We’ve talked through these policy issues, we’ve talked through the measures the government has already announced, we’ve talked through the measures the government is developing at present.

“That is just normal parliamentary process engaging in good faith with elected members of parliament.”

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here









8 July, 2019

Australia and its coffee-powered economy

Below is one of many current tales of doom about the Australian economy.  I don't buy it.  The symptom of doom that I mostly see is the record number of empty shops in shopping centres.  They certainly tell of financial pain for the people who once ran the businesses there.  But is that bad for the economy as a whole? 

The usual explanation is that more people are buying online and thus fatally shaving the margins of physical retailers. But whether that is the cause or not, surely it tells of increased efficiency in the retailing sector.  We may be down from 100,000 coffee shops to 80,000 but no-one is going short of coffee.  The same demand is being served by fewer people using less real estate.  A situation that looks bad may in fact be good.

And our new government is very much pro-business so that almost certainly will cause an uptick in the new ventures that the writer below correctly says we need

The writer below is perfectly correct in saying our government sector is too big and our real estate prices are too high but those are chronic problems, nothing new.  We have lived with them for a long time now without too much harm to our living standards so I think we will continue to do so.


While visiting the US recently, I was pressed on what Australia excelled at. My answer: coffee. After suffering with Starbucks for months, I’d become keenly aware of the superior quality of our flat whites — much nicer and far cheaper.

I went on to explain the importance of iron ore and coalmining, the huge fees we charge Asian students for university education, and how financial services make up a bigger chunk of our economy than any other developed country.

And, with the highest paid political class in the world, Canberra is overflowing with talent, producing reports, inquiries and ministerial talking points with a finesse hitherto unseen.

It was a bit worrying I couldn’t venture much else. Amid all the excitement this week about tax cuts and back-to-back interest rate cuts to record lows, it’s easy to overlook our dependence on the housing market for confidence in our economy. It’s easy to forget about the near absence of structural reform — if you exclude huge new spending programs with questionable benefits such as the National Broadband Network and National Disability Insurance Scheme — for almost 20 years.

Britain, Germany, the US and Japan — the latter widely (if wrongly) seen as economically dysfunctional — have each enjoyed higher economic growth per person than Australia since 2010, according to recent analysis by Oxford Economics. Our uninterrupted growth across 28 years is built on rapid population increase. If the US let most of Mexico move to Texas, its economy would be a lot bigger too.

We’re slowly falling down the global living standards league table. You feel it already when you go to buy something abroad or shop online at home. Our currency has sunk in value despite our major exports fetching the highest prices they have in years.

Productivity growth, the ultimate linchpin of our living standards, has slowed as the economy ossifies. The rate of entry of new firms into the economy has fallen more than 20 per cent since the 2000s, the Treasury pointed out last month. Similarly, workers’ “switching rate” between jobs has declined 17 per cent, suggesting workers are less willing to take risks. Adjusted for population, the economy has been shrinking.

Meanwhile, debt continues to mount. Home sales, prices and credit growth boomed for years until 2017, but regulators and government did little to stop it, belatedly introducing some caps on interest-only and investor loans which were hastily withdrawn when prices started to fall. Indeed, in the wake of a royal commission into financial services that highlighted irresponsible conduct, the banking regulator yesterday ­watered down responsible lending rules in place since 2014.

The combination of lower mortgage rates and weaker lending rules will almost certainly revive house prices and loan growth in coming months. We’re coming for you, Switzerland, the only other country with as high a share of household debt to gross domestic product.

Higher house prices boost confidence for a while. Borrowing from the future flatters economic growth statistics today, but it’s mathematically impossible for credit to grow faster than incomes forever. The Reserve Bank can pull the interest rate lever only one or two more times before it too must start creating money out of thin air to buy up assets — quantitative easing — in a bid to hold down interest rates.

The prospects for politically difficult reform aren’t great. The government is hailing the partial return of bracket creep in five years, legislated this week, as a major reform. It’s even getting away with telling everyone income tax won’t exceed 30 per cent by then, when the Medicare levy (an income tax with no relationship whatsoever with health costs) means the marginal rate most people pay will drop from 34 per cent to 32 per cent. The tax system in 2024 will have the same structure and complexity it had in 2001, taxing wages ever more heavily while land and inherited wealth remain relatively untaxed.

The Productivity Commission’s “to do” lists have been ignored, along with umpteen other reports that gather dust in ministerial offices. It’s easier to look to the Reserve Bank to cut interest rates than cut wasteful public spending or induce competition among the oligopolies that siphon billions out of household income.

That might not be so bad if monetary policy were effective. The Reserve Bank’s latest series of interest rate cuts reflect the failure of central banks to return their ­financial systems to “normal”. Interest rates plummeted after the ­financial crisis and, despite the US Federal Reserve’s short-lived efforts to lift them, look set to settle near zero. They reflect an emerging crisis of confidence in central banks’ economic models, which assume (with precious little evidence) a strong link between interest rates and inflation on the one hand and between the unemployment rate and wage growth on the other, when the past decade’s experience points to none.

The Reserve Bank worries about losing its credibility if it fails to achieve its inflation target of between 2 and 3 per cent. Never mind surveys showing people think inflation is 4 per cent a year, while few would know the RBA has an inflation target. Most households would see cheaper goods and services prices as a good thing.

It’s not even clear inflation is so low. The price of gold reached a record high this week, after the Reserve Bank cut interest rates for the second time in as many months. An ounce of gold in Australian dollars ticked up to almost $2040 — 19 per cent higher than a year ago — after the cash rate dropped to a new record low of 1 per cent. Clearly, not everyone thinks inflation is low. The stockmarket is about to burst through its record high, set back in 2007.

Including house prices in the consumer price index would have produced an annual average inflation rate around 0.6 percentage points higher since 1998, according to recent analysis by Commonwealth Bank economist Gareth Aird. In keeping with global practice the CPI excludes the cost of servicing a mortgage and the land component of buying a home (which is the bulk of the ­purchase).

The jobless rate may not be as low as politicians say it is, either. Market researcher Roy Morgan puts the jobless rate at 9.2 per cent — almost double the official 5.2 per cent rate — by including people who want work but haven’t applied for a job in recent weeks. And it says the underemployment rate — people who’d like to work more hours — is 9.4 per cent. If almost a fifth of the labour force wants to work more but can’t, no wonder wage growth is weak.

It’s hard to see how we shake off ultra-low rates without a global agreement among central banks or a crisis that dislodges the “inflation targeting” paradigm that generated low rates in the first place. But the newly elected government, seemingly with a working majority in parliament, has no excuse for avoiding tougher reform decisions. Great weather and nice coffee won’t be enough if China catches cold.

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The elbowing out of Christianity in favour of the new religion of adoration for homosexuals

The loss of traditional vaues is often a loss of painfully acquired wisdom about ways to live

Unease is growing in Australia that something has changed for the worse in our live-and-let-live culture. The seismic shifts giving rise to this pervasive anxiety seem to have been coming in cumulative waves.

Free speech has given way to the drive to eliminate “hate speech”; bonds of trust have broken in commercial life — especially in our financial services sector; dying is becoming a medicalised event activated on ­demand by the individual, rather than the natural ending of life; and religion has become such a divisive issue that a new law is now being drafted to protect religious freedom.

Less than a generation ago, speakers with diverse political, ­social and religious views were ­invited to university campuses. But now, people with unacceptable views are “no-platformed” in order to protect the vulnerable.

Universities have compounded the problem by rejecting the traditional canon forming the foundation of Western civilisation and turning instead to what is often called “a coherence in pluralism and hybridity”.

Dissent from the prevailing new orthodoxies about gender and sexual orientation is virtually impossible without attracting opprobrium and venom — just ask Israel Folau.

All this has contributed to the sense that the common bonds of civility that help to build mutual trust in our society are under strain.

It provokes a persistent feeling among the more conservatively minded that the warp and weft of the cultural and social fabric have altered in discomfiting ways.

Defenders of such cultural change say the culture is not broken but simply responding to new sensitivities — just as it did in fixing behaviour that discriminated on the grounds of race or gender. However, many fear this cultural evolution has seen the weaponised assertion of rights as anti-discrimination laws are increasingly used to stifle the expression of conservative opinion rather than merely combat behaviour.

This tension at the heart of cultural shift is marked by two related features. The first is a move away from the communal — and with it, a diminishing civic readiness to live with difference — towards the individual, and a concomitant demand that threats posed by difference must be eradicated, so any behaviour deemed to harm individual dignity be proscribed by law. Scott Morrison’s proposed ­religious discrimination bill is one attempt to stem this tide and protect the freedom Australians need to have to live out their religion in both belief and practice.

The second feature of cultural shift is related to this emphasis on the sensitivities of the individual. As the priority of the communal, a notable feature of our social life in former generations, has given way to emphasising the primacy of the individual, so it has been accompanied by the eclipse of the moral language of virtue by the emotional language of values. And this evolution in our discourse is important because values language cannot successfully serve as a language of morals.

Virtues are objective moral norms that are both shared and personal. They are shared because there is general agreement about what a virtue such as justice is and what it represents; at the same time, virtues are personal because once an individual knows what, for example, the virtue of justice is, they can make a personal evaluation of about how they stand in relation to that particular virtue.

However, as morality became increasingly relativised and subjectified in the 20th century, the language of “virtues” — which ­asserts an important degree of ­objective authority based on a shared human nature and a shared conception of what common, ­social life entails — gave way to the language of “values” as a moral language.

Values, however, are simply emotional statements about personal beliefs, feelings or attitudes. They cannot be normative because it is impossible to erect any shared meaning on the foundation of something that is personal and subjective.

Reasoned thought, which draws upon agreed premises and the development of an argument grounded in formulated judgments, has given way to the exhibition of hurt feelings; and so we have come to the point where emotion, rather than reason, now serves as the basis on which claims against others are asserted.

Once values displace virtues, the idea of a shared morality soon loses any coherence or meaning — even in the face of authoritarian assertions that such a shared morality exists. When reason gives way to emotion, common standards of behaviour are quickly eroded, and the very language we use in civil and moral discourse begins to fragment — and soon enough it loses its meaning.

The fracturing of our culture can be accounted for, in large part, by the crisis of moral authority that confronts our society. The eclipse of virtue by values has led to a distorted view of morality that is no longer informed by principles of reason but by emotion. The communal norms of morality expressed by virtue have been displaced by a new primacy afforded to feelings.

However, while acknowledging the formative influence of religion on the development of Western moral thought, we ought not to pursue the restoration of any form of morality determined solely by the demands of theology or the institutions of religion — whether Christian, Muslim or Jewish. Liberal democracies need to be secular democracies.

But we ought to pursue a renewed understanding of culture as that which expresses a shared, common vision for our human and social flourishing — an understanding that is passed on in our traditions to future generations.

Human flourishing depends on the recognition and protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms — including the right to religious liberty, not as a subordinate right but as one right coexisting with other rights.

As such, the crisis of moral authority confronting our society must be addressed by, first of all, refusing to accept the equation of emotional claims with moral claims, and by calling for a reorientation from the personal to the communal.

The moral, social, and political health of our society — indeed, of our culture — depends on it

SOURCE  







Australia runs concentration camps? You can’t be serious, Tom

Thomas Keneally is a good novelist but is also a hysterical Leftist with no sense of proportion.  That illegal immigrants housed in Australia's detention centres can get a free ticket home just by asking for it he fails to mention.  The inmates at Auschwitz had no such opportunity.  Some differences do matter

Most Australians appreciate the cut and thrust of the domestic political debate. However, when talking to foreigners all of us have a responsibility to be as factual as possible and to avoid hyperbole.

Bestselling author and Booker Prize winner Thomas Keneally did not meet this standard when interviewed by Zeinab Badawi on the BBC World Service’s Hardtalk program on June 18. The writer spoke sensibly in refuting the claim of US-based commentator John Oliver that Australia is a ­racist country.

But earlier in the interview, ­Keneally threw the switch to alienation when discussing the issue of refugees and asylum-seekers. Whatever anyone thinks about the policy of successive governments on this issue, the fact is that Australia, on a per capita basis, is one of the most generous nations in the world when it comes to settling refugees.

Settling refugees means accepting them as individuals who qualify for the free health and education available to Australians — along with access to a generous welfare system. And, in turn, refugees become eligible for residential status and eventually full citizenship. Some of Australia’s most successful citizens came here as refugees. But you would not know this from watching or hearing the Hardtalk interview.

Keneally told Badawi that Australia has failed the test of “national honour and honesty” with respect to asylum-seekers. He went on to accuse Australian governments of lying but did not specifically identify the (alleged) lies to which he was referring.

Keneally told Hardtalk: “We began by arguing that to save Australia from terror we had to keep these people in permanent detention. So we have what can only be called concentration camps in Australia … in which people are punished psychologically for having the ambition for being Australians.”

This is simply misleading. Keneally is a social democrat and a supporter of mainstream Labor governments. He should know that detention for asylum-seekers entering Australian territory ­unlawfully was an initiative of Paul Keating’s Labor government in 1992. It had nothing to do with the threat of international terrorism, which became a concern some time later.

Also, the reference to concentration camps is grossly inaccurate in this instance. Since the end of World War II, this term has been associated with the camps constructed by the Nazi Germany ­regime in the late 1930s and early 40s. Some were forced labour facilities, others were death camps. No one willingly entered these institutions.

Contrary to ­Keneally’s claim, no one is punished for having the ambition to become an Australian. Tens of thousands with such an ambition enter Australia as immigrants every year, as do thousands of refugees. Detention was established to restore Australian control of Australian borders. This became increasingly necessary as individuals arriving by boat destroyed their personal papers on the ­advice of people-smugglers. This means that authorities have no way of assessing the character of individuals arriving on Australian shores.

Keneally told Badawi that Australia has adopted a policy of “punishing people, not the people- smugglers”. This overlooks the fact that the only way to stop the people-smuggling trade is to cut their customer base. The Coali­tion governments led by John Howard, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison understood this.

So did Labor’s Kevin Rudd ­during his second term as prime minister. During Rudd’s first time as prime minister and in the early years of his successor, Julia Gillard, about 50,000 unlawful ­arrivals came to Australian shores and an estimated 1200 drowned at sea. At this time, Australia’s ­immigration system was effect­ively contracted out to people-smugglers.

It’s rare indeed for a BBC ­journalist to criticise an interview from the right. But that’s what ­Badawi felt compelled to do. She pointed out to Keneally that while he ­referred to concentration camps, others described them as detention centres. And she added that “you can’t allow unfettered numbers of asylum-seekers to come in”.

Quite so. Keneally’s proposal is to use the money saved from closing existing detention centres on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island to set up centres in Indonesia designed to process asylum-seekers for settlement in Australia.

However, it is not clear why asylum-seekers who make it to Indonesia or a nearby nation should get preference when it comes to settlement in Australia. There are tens of millions seeking asylum — in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere. There is no reason why Australia should give preference to individuals with the money to make it to our northern shores ahead of those who, say, may have been in a UN camp somewhere in Africa for 15 years.

Refugees and asylum-seekers in offshore detention are now free to leave if they wish. They are in no sense incarcerated in a concentration camp. Moreover, the Coali­tion has been successful in resettling some of these men, women and children in the US.

The sensible approach to an ­almost intractable problem is to put a red flag up the front and ­operate a green flag out the back. In other words, it makes sense for Australia to adopt a hard line ­towards people-smugglers and those who engage them while slowly and quietly resettling those on Nauru and Manus Island. In ­effect, this has been Australia’s policy for years.

Such a process is not assisted by exaggerated statements made by prominent Australians to international media outlets. If, as Ken­eally states, the Australian gov­ern­ment is an institutional liar and committed to maintaining concentration camps to punish people, then it is reasonable to come to the view that a majority of Australians will prevail against such ­deceit and injustice.

They won’t — as recent election results have indicated — ­because the view put by Keneally to the BBC is flawed.

These are the facts. Australia is a generous ­recipient of refugees compared with most other democracies, ­including New Zealand. Moreover, the present asylum-seeker problem worldwide is so great that no government or international body can resolve it in the short term. Despite what Keneally told the BBC.

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South Australia to ban a range of single-use plastics under proposed legislation to be introduced to state parliament

Plastic cutlery, straws and drink stirrers will soon be a thing of the past in South Australia following its war on single-use plastics.

A taskforce will be established and draft legislation released for public discussion later this year as Environment Minister David Speirs acts on “overwhelming” public support for a ban.

It comes after he launched a discussion paper in January, gauging the publics interest on the matter.

According to the Adelaide Advertiser, almost 97 per cent of respondents to the paper replied that government action was needed to curb the amount of plastic littering the environment and waterways.

“SA is continuing to lead the nation and set the agenda in recyclables and waste management,” Mr Speirs told the publication.

It will be the first Australian state or territory to ban single-use plastic items, however no decision has been made yet on plastic bags, coffee cups and plastic takeaway containers.

“We led the way with our container-deposit scheme, we were ahead of the pack on plastic bag reform and now we will lead the country on single-use plastics,” Mr Speirs told the publication.

However, not everyone agrees with the Mr Speirs’ bold new move.

“This is so stupid! Have fun going back to the cave! How much energy will B wasted and expended on silverware … paper straws are archaic and get soggy … young, old and disabled will suffer!

So tired of this ineffective virtue signalling! I am buying more plastic straws and bags now!” a Twitter user vented in response to the ban.

“Plastic cutlery, plates & cups banned am all for it but recycled/washed straws. No thanks rather not use them at all,” added another.

Mr Speirs is hoping to introduce the new laws into state parliament by next year.

The state will later move to ban polystyrene cups and polystyrene takeaway containers.

According to the Adelaide Advertiser, the ACT Government has also released a discussion paper to gauge public support on banning items but is yet to take action.

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The miserable ghost has another big whine

Dumped former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has delivered an extraordinary outburst about the Liberal Party after being ousted from the country's top job.

Mr Turnbull, who was dropped in August last year, said members of the party's conservative right-wing faction 'essentially operate as terrorists'.

Speaking at a Friends of Wolper Jewish Hospital event on Thursday, Mr Turnbull touched on the moment he was ousted and claimed a 'group' are willing to throw the party into chaos, The Australian Jewish News reported.

'I'm not suggesting that they kill, but I'm being deadly serious here… they have regularly threatened to, and in fact, have been prepared to blow the government up,' he said.

Mr Turnbull said the conservative wing is one of the Liberal Party's 'fundamental problems'.

He recalled the events in the lead-up to the leadership spill in 2018 where he was overthrown as leader, and claimed Finance Minister Mathias Cormann had damaged the government.

Senator Cormann resigned and threw his support behind Peter Dutton during the leadership spill.

'The week went on and having so much treachery, so much destructiveness, the good thing was that I was able to ensure that Morrison was my successor and not Peter Dutton,' Mr Turnbull said.

He added that politics is a tough business, especially when your own blood is on the walls. 

The former leader also laid into his successor Prime Minister Scott Morrison's idea to move Australia's embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

The suggestion was floated on the eve of the by-election in Wentworth, which was held to replace Mr Turnbull.

Mr Turnbull said moving the embassy was a 'really dumb thing' and claimed the timing was calculated to win support, showing 'a patronising insensitivity' to the Australian Jewish community.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






7 July, 2019

Commuter chaos as militant climate change protesters shut down Sydney streets to protest the controversial Adani mine

Queensland already has massive coal mines.  Why is another one so different?  Is it racial prejudice against its Indian owner?  The claims of environmental damage are pure hysteria.  We already know well what actual threats to the environment come from coal mines and have had plenty of practice in preventing them

There is no unaddressed problem with the mine and both major parties at the Federal and State level have approved it.  So why is this small group of fantasists protesting?  It's just virtue signalling.  They are publicity hounds and want people to think how good and kind and wise they are.  The unfortunate Mr Adani has just been chosen as a symbolic target.  His brown skin probably helped single him out


Parts of Sydney have been shut down as demonstrators march through the streets in protest of the Adani mine.

Hundreds of activists have brandished placards as they walk along Bathurst Street in Town Hall. 'Coral not Coal,' one sign reads.

A child could also be seen amid the crowd waving a sign that read: 'Adani you have kids... think about our children.'

Parts of Brisbane have also been brought to a standstill with protests across the city kicking into high gear. Protesters could be heard chanting throughout Brisbane Square: 'Palaszczuk hear us say, we’ll fight Adani all the way.'

Organiser Catherine Robertson said the protest intended to put pressure on the Queensland Government. 'We're stopping the city again because we can't afford to let the Adani coal mine become a reality,' she said in a statement.

'The mine is going to destroy the Galilee Basin, lead to mass extinctions and push us to a point of no return on the climate.'

She said she was expecting a crowd of 2,000 people as they pressured the state government to 'rip up' contracts with the Indian mining company. 'We want to disrupt the city so the Labor government takes notice,' she said.

'Adani will result in the extinction of that entire part of the state.'

In anticipation of the protest public order and riot squad officers were deployed to parts of Sydney to prepare for the oncoming flood of protesters.

The protest on Friday follows a string of demonstrations held in Queensland in June. Five protesters glued themselves to a street while more than 700 marched through Brisbane Square on June 21. Only a few days earlier protesters glued themselves to a busy street and caused commuter chaos.

After eight years, the Adani coalmine was given its final environmental approval in early June.

Queensland's government said it had accepted a groundwater management plan for the Indian-owned Adani Carmichael mine -- the last major legal hurdle before construction can begin.

The vast open cut mine is slated to produce up to 60 million tonnes of coal a year, boosting Australia's already vast exports by around 20 percent.

Coupled with the construction of a railway link, it could open up a swathe of Queensland to further exploitation and new mining projects.

'If all the coal in the Galilee Basin is burnt it would produce 705 million tonnes of climate pollution each year, which is more than 1.3 times Australia's annual pollution from all sources, including cars, industry, energy and agriculture,' the Australian Conservation Foundation said.

While some locals are thankful for the jobs the mine promises to create, others have been opposed to the environmental impact of a new coal mine.

Adani originally promised to employ 10,000 news jobs, but this figure has since been cut back to just 1,500 with a potential 6,750 indirect jobs, Mining Monthly reported.

SOURCE  






Scott Morrison now has a clear run

The wreckers have all gone, leaving the way for a new united Liberal party

One week of parliament down, tax cuts passed and, for so many reasons, Scott Morrison is in pole position. The ghouls of the Liberal Party fled the house early, expecting an election defeat in May. Christopher Pyne has a new controversial gig, Julie Bishop is touting a chat-with-chicks TV show, Malcolm Turnbull is back in Point Piper spellchecking a book that does not end well — for him. Tony Abbott has gone, too. All were parties to unresolved internal spats and lingering resentments. And the Prime Minister is better off without them.

Adding to the early joy of the 46th parliament, the opposition is in disarray. It is led by a new leader historically wedded to the sort of left-wing politics that caused Labor’s most recent electoral rout.

This week’s contortions on tax by Anthony Albanese show a party still consumed with a class-war tax agenda. Labor’s Ed Husic claims that a budget surplus is a vanity exercise: if this is Labor’s stance on budget matters then the party remains fiscally and politically clueless.

The Senate is another blessing for the Coalition; a crossbench that is a damn sight healthier than before the election. Morrison’s agenda — set out by Governor-General David Hurley in his address to parliament on Tuesday, from tax and industrial relations to removing red tape and introducing new laws to protect religious freedom — stands a good chance. Provided the Coalition government can make the case for each reform.

Morrison is at the mercy of little else, except his own ambition and ability.

That the Prime Minister has clear air, while the Opposition Leader has Bill Shorten brooding like the ghost from Christmas past, is his biggest gift. Together with Josh Frydenberg and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, the leadership team can get on with the work of government rather than the tedious internal games that defined the 45th parliament.

On this front, miracles started mounting early for Morrison when Pyne, Bishop and Turnbull announced their departures. The behaviour of this trio before and after they left parliament proves why Morrison, and the country, is better off without them. Pyne was best known as a plotter of the dark arts of politics. Many of his colleagues will tell you privately that, after a quarter-century in Canberra, he has left behind few traces of signature policy convictions.

While many found Pyne funny and quick-witted, he wasn’t exact­ly trusted in his party. Pyne said the Liberal Party needed more women, only for his South Australian factional forces to try to oust hardworking, impressive Liberal MP Nicolle Flint. When Pyne announced he was leaving politics, his seat went to a man who worked for him. As senior Liberals told this newspaper, Pyne’s legacy was survival — not quite enough for a chapter in the history books of the Liberal Party.

That Pyne has left his defence portfolio to take a job with business advisers EY as a defence consultant hasn’t surprised many. It has raised questions about possible breaches of the ministerial code of standards, which state that for 18 months after they leave office former ministers “will not lobby, advocate or have business meetings with members of the government … on any matters on which they have had official dealings as minister”. It says ministers cannot “take personal advantage of information to which they have had access as a minister, where that information is not generally available to the public”.

Pyne denies there is a problem. And, to be sure, former politicians must be able to work post politics. But in return for a healthy annual payment from taxpayers after they leave, it is not too much to expect they meet ministerial standards. This may not concern the man who described himself “the fixer”. But neither is Pyne likely to be missed by the Liberal leadership team.

It is fair to say Bishop’s departure hasn’t left a dent in the Coali­tion government either. Her antics after leaving her portfolio as foreign minister tainted her time in politics. Cosying up to Julia Banks, a woman who deserted the party at the first whiff of political grapeshot, was always going to damage Bishop’s reputation. Warriors hang around for a fight. Bishop sided with a turncoat and other women giggling like girls who claimed, minus any evidence, that the Liberal Party treats women badly.

The truth is that some women treated the Liberal Party very poorly, Banks among them. But, mercifully, she has gone too.

In a tacky move, Bishop joined the Nine Network’s panel on election night and swung a giant red stiletto at a smiling photo of Abbott when he lost his seat after 25 years in parliament. All a bit of fun? No, it was nasty stuff.

Right then, many of us who once admired a professional Bishop lost all remaining respect for her. She seems to be chasing celebrity; think Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous, minus fabulous and funny.

Her tasteless election night judgment adds context to an unhappy legacy that includes Bishop winning just 11 votes in a leadership contest, and failing to have her chosen candidate replace her in the seat of Curtin.

Now, Bishop wants to front a chat show for chicks. Good on her. Better she take her new gender politics far away from the serious work that needs to happen in ­Canberra.

Bishop’s new gig, giving advice to Palladium, a beneficiary of her policy as foreign minister to privatise foreign aid, raises new questions about her judgment. Some say it warrants questions at an inquiry into breaches of ministerial standards.

The irony of two sworn enemies, Bishop and Pyne, being brought before a possible inquiry into whether breaches of ministerial standards occurred, has not been lost on many in the party.

Bishop’s nasty comments, describing Cormann as the “most disloyal man in politics”, have blown back on her, too.

When the deputy Liberal leader switched seamlessly from Abbott to Turnbull in 2015 she said it was “a very difficult time for the Liberal Party, a very difficult decision for us, and of course for me personally”. Was Bishop being disloyal to a prime minister under pressure? Or was it just political ­reality?

The rehash of last year’s Liberal leadership turmoil is a useful reminder that Pyne, Bishop and Turnbull had little clue about their partyroom. Their judgment calls were repudiated then, and the election outcome renders them irrelevant now.

The Finance Minister was one of the few adults in Turnbull’s leadership team, making tough calls in awful circumstances, picking up the pieces after Turnbull imploded. Cormann’s decisions were entirely vindicated by the election result. The other unsung champion from that period is Peter Dutton, without whom the ghouls would not have gone, and Morrison would not be Prime Minister today.

On that note, what is there left for Liberals to say about Turnbull? His leadership was a failed experiment. That Turnbull relied on political neophyte Craig Laundy for counsel is a telling insight into the state of his support. The former prime minister self-imploded in the most spectacular fashion.

Vengeance against, indeed destruction of, the party that rebuffed him consumed Turnbull on the way out and will likely get another airing in his book. Again, the most important thing for Morrison is that Turnbull, Pyne and Bishop have gone. That Abbott is no longer in parliament is not a bad thing for Morrison either. A former prime minister sitting on government benches, perhaps still indignant about his 2015 ousting, is not conducive to a united team.

That said, Abbott’s speech on election night will go down in Liberal history as the mark of a tough, decent man who fought valiantly to the end in the face of the most despicable campaign against him. But that is the past too.

The future looks bright for the Prime Minister if he harnesses it. The boon beyond Canberra is that quiet Australians have found their voice. They are willing the Prime Minister to be the Liberal Prime Minister the country has lacked since John Howard departed the political stage in 2007.

SOURCE  





Union-busting bill reintroduced to friendlier Senate

The Morrison government has reintroduced its union-busting bill which could be passed before the end of the year, giving it the power to deregister unions that break the law and ban officials such as construction union boss John Setka for misconduct.

Mr Setka's refusal to step down as leader of the Victoria CFMMEU, despite pressure from the ACTU and most affiliated unions after he pleaded guilty to harassing his wife through abusive text messages, have boosted the government's chances of getting the bill passed.

Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter cited the "appalling behaviour" by rogue sections of the union movement and officials since Parliament voted against the original 2017 bill as grounds for its reintroduction. He said the CFMMEU had repeatedly flouted workplace laws and clocked up more than $16 million in fines, while risking the delivery of goods and services infrastructure projects.

“The Morrison government makes no apologies for upholding the rule of law and cracking down on lawbreakers – particularly those who refuse to address longstanding and repeated law-breaking behaviour," he said.

“We have heard the new Labor leader Anthony Albanese and others within his party roundly condemn John Setka of the CFMMEU. Now it is time for Mr Albanese and Labor to prove they’re not all talk and back their words with action."

Labor and the Greens will oppose the legislation, which has been referred to a Senate committee due to report in October, meaning it would likely go to a vote in November.

The Parliament rejected the controversial Ensuring Integrity Bill in 2017, but the government is now confident it has a better chance of getting it across the line with the support of four out of six senate crossbenchers.

It is expected that Australian Conservatives' Cory Bernardi will support the bill. The two Centre Alliance senators are broadly supportive of tightening the regulation of union officials, but may seek amendments to ensure corporate leaders are also held to account. Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie's position is uncertain. The two One Nation senators are potential supporters.

The bill will introduce a new public interest test the Fair Work Commission could use to prevent future union mergers like the one between the maritime, construction, mining and footwear unions to form the CFMMEU.

The bill will also make it possible for the government or Registered Organisations Commission to cancel a union's registration on the basis of improper conduct, including repeated breaches of industrial laws and serious criminal offences.

It allows for the automatic disqualification of union officials charged with serious criminal offences that are punishable by five or more years in prison. This reflects a similar provision in the Corporations Act. Union officials will also face disqualification if they fail to take reasonable steps to stop their organisation from breaking the law.

The Corporations Act empowers the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC), not a minister, to disqualify company directors. Under the Ensuring Integrity Bill, the Registered Oganisations Commissioner, the minister and any person with a "sufficient interest" would have the power to apply to the Federal Court for the disqualification of a union official.

SOURCE  






Australian teacher education degrees should face scrutiny

People who have undergone teacher education degrees have been telling me for years that they are useless

Australian teachers are underprepared for the classroom compared to those in other countries, according to a recent global survey. The result indicates initial teacher education in Australia often isn’t up to scratch.

The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) asked teachers around the world how prepared they were after completing their teacher education degrees. And on almost every measure — including being prepared to teach specific subjects, teach mixed-ability classes, and manage the classroom — Australian teachers reported being less prepared than the OECD teacher average.

While we should not rely too much on international surveys (because teachers in different countries may answer questions differently due to varying expectations and backgrounds), the TALIS findings are consistent with existing research on Australian teacher education degrees. The evidence indicates new teachers aren’t adequately prepared to teach reading or manage student behaviour — aspects of teaching that could hardly be classified as optional extras.

This should certainly raise questions about the quality of content that taxpayer-funded universities are delivering to teacher education students. And it follows on from concerning news that almost 1 in 10 teacher education students fail a basic literacy and numeracy test, which has prompted calls to raise the standard of new teacher intakes.

The TALIS survey also asked teachers about what school spending priorities should be. Australian teachers were more likely than the OECD teacher average to prioritise reducing administrative burden by recruiting more support staff — suggesting red tape for teachers may have grown unreasonably, meaning less time can be spent on lesson preparation.

Interestingly, Australian teachers were less likely to think reducing class sizes or increasing teacher salaries should be prioritised than the OECD teacher average.

This goes to show there are many policies to improve the school system we should consider before we move to throwing even more taxpayer money at the problems. We should start by trying to improve teacher training.

SOURCE  






Religious freedom is remarkably unprotected in Australia

Regardless of what the courts eventually say about the sacking of Israel Folau, the real blame for the sportsman’s religious persecution does not rest with Rugby Australia, Alan Joyce and Qantas. It rests with generations of politicians who have allowed the manifestation of religious belief to be viewed as something shameful.

That is the effect of the network of anti-discrimination laws that has been put in place and supported by successive federal governments. It treats religious freedom as a form of discrimination that is only grudgingly recognised as an exception to the law.

It is therefore easy to understand how sports administrators and businessmen may have got the wrong idea: that the manifestation of religious belief is something vaguely grubby that is acceptable only if it is done behind closed doors, so nobody can take offence.

This is at odds with the structure of international human rights law where all rights are of equal importance and where public displays of religious belief are protected by treaties to which Australia is a party. Yet instead of giving positive protection to religious freedom, the inaction of parliament could be viewed as confirmation that in Australia religion is not that important.

By refusing that task, parliament has vacated the field and left it to others to draw their own conclusions about where the boundary should be drawn between religion and other conflicting rights.

In the Folau case, Rugby Australia was the first to step into the void, and it now looks as if the courts will determine whether this man’s rough and ready version of what is written in the Bible is so offen­sive that he should lose his job.

Rugby Australia terminated Folau’s $4 million contract after he said on social media that hell awaited “drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolaters” if they failed to repent.

Everyone has an interest in the outcome of this case. It raises the question of whether Australians can be required to sign away fundamental human rights in return for money — even a very large amount of money. The manifestation of religious belief is protected by international law.

This case may also give the courts an opportunity to rule on how far employers can go in determining what employees do and say outside the workplace.

It is already clear, however, that corporate Australia may need to reconsider the wisdom of taking a stance on social issues. If Folau wins against Rugby Australia, sponsors such as Alan Joyce’s Qantas may be required to chip in for the damages bill — if they are found to have encouraged any wrongdoing.

The effect on the airline’s reputation would not be insignificant.

If Folau does win — and the Morrison government pushes ahead with its promised religious discrimination act — some may consider this affair to have come to an end. Such a view would be misplaced. The fundamental error in the design of Australia’s human rights laws still needs to be fixed to drive home the reality that religious freedom is a fundamental right, not an exception to the law.

With luck, the fallout from this case eventually could put an end to this idiosyncratic treatment of religion.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights recognises freedom of thought, conscience and religion in article 18(1). It says everyone has the right to manifest their religion, belief, observance, practice and teaching. Article 18(2) says nobody shall be subject to coercion that would impair their freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of their choice.

The government’s planned legislation will help by giving statutory effect to article 26 of that treaty that says discrimination based on religion should be outlawed. But the significance of a federal religious discrimination act needs to be kept in perspective: religious discrimination is already unlawful in most states.

The real test is whether the government’s proposed scheme would have protected Catholic Archbishop of Hobart Julian Porteous against what happened to him four years ago.

Folau, unlike Porteous, has the benefit of provisions of the Fair Work Act that target religious discrimination in the workplace. What happened to the archbishop was not a workplace dispute.

In 2015, Porteous explained the Catholic doctrine of marriage in a widely distributed booklet. That prompted Martine Delaney, a transgender activist and Greens candidate, to complain that she felt offended.

Because he was an archbishop, Porteous thought he had a right under Australian law to explain his church’s teachings. Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Commission disagreed and found he had a case to answer.

The real problem with the Porteous case was that it was unresolved. It came to an end only after Delaney, in the face of widespread media attention, withdrew her complaint. That means there is still a risk that the public dissemination of Catholic doctrine in Tasmania could trigger a repeat of that affair.

And it looks as if a federal religious discrimination act would make no difference. “It would not solve all or even most of the problems with religious freedom in Australia at all,” University of Queensland dean of law Patrick Parkinson says.

“It is a minor reform that will fill a lacuna in federal law. The religious discrim­ination bill, as the government envisages it, will have no impact whatsoever on vilification law in the states — it is irrelevant to the Porteous case.

“All it will do is make it unlawful under federal law to discriminate against somebody because of their faith. The problem in Tasmania was that a state law was used against Archbishop Porteous on the basis of causing offence to somebody. That is a totally different matter that raises very significant issues about freedom of speech and freedom of religion,” says Parkinson, who is part of the Freedom for Faith lobby group.

Before Rugby Australia moved against Folau, Parkinson’s group had urged the Ruddock review of religious freedom to support a federal religious freedom act that would be far more robust than Morrison’s proposed scheme.

The Ruddock report did not go that far, preferring the more modest route that has been accepted by the government.

Parkinson, however, argues that a religious discrimination act would still allow Tasmania to take action against religious leaders over the public dissemination of doctrine that left people feeling offended. He sees this as a major weakness with the government’s plan. But he is also opposed to the radical option of a federal charter of rights that would empower the judiciary.

His preferred option is “a very targeted piece of legislation, focused around freedom of speech and freedom of religion”.

Its goal would be to prevent state laws from being applied in a way that would put Australia in breach of the nation’s international obligation to protect religious freedom.

This is how Parkinson’s group explained the concept in its submission to the Ruddock review: “It would be up to a court, interpreting and applying the state law, to determine whether its application so interfered with fundamental freedoms in any given situation that to the extent of the inconsistency with federal law it should be regarded as invalid, or alternatively, read down to avoid inconsistency.”

Parkinson makes the point that the federal government intervened 20 years ago to override Tasmania’s law criminalising homosexuality. “It is no more appropriate that Tasmanian law interferes with freedom of religion than when it criminalised homosexuality,” he says.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here








5 July, 2019

What a day for Scott Morrison!

He sees his tax cuts sail through parliament without a whimper from a Labor party that had opposed them tooth and nail right through the election and up to a day or two ago.  He has proved that he is a master politician.  He becomes unchallengeable within his party now.  His triumph over the robotic Bill Shorten was arguably a triumph of personality but this is a triumph of policy.

The future rate of 45% for top earners is a concern but will not hit many people.  It is also an economically sophisticad rate.  The recent British experience has shown that 45% is as high as you can go without significant backlash.  When Gordon Brown raised the top British rate to 50%, an exodus of the rich -- mainly to Switzerland -- began and total British tax receipts dropped.  After that, the top  rate was hastily dropped back to 45% and the exodus stopped


Scott Morrison’s $158 billion tax cut package has passed parliament after Labor backflipped and voted in favour of the entire plan.

The Senate passed the package with the support of 56 senators compared to nine Greens who voted against the proposal.

One Nation senators Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts abstained.

Scott Morrison declared more than 10 million Australians would receive immediate tax relief.

“Starting from next week, low and middle income earners with an income up to $126,000 will receive up to $1080, or $2160 for dual income couples, with the increased tax relief to apply from the 2018-19 income year,” the Prime Minister said in a joint statement with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann.

“The bill has also locked in the benefits of low and middle income tax relief by increasing the top threshold of the 19 cents in the dollar tax bracket from $41,000 to $45,000 and by increasing the low income tax offset from $645 to $700 in 2022-23.

“In combination with the legislated removal of the 37 per cent tax bracket in 2024-25, the government is delivering structural reform to the tax system by reducing the 32.5 cents in the dollar tax rate to 30 cents in the dollar.

“Together, these tax relief measures will create a flatter and better tax system that will improve incentives for hard-working Australians and ensure that 94 per cent of Australians will face a marginal tax rate no higher than 30 cents in the dollar in 2024-25.

“Once our plan is fully implemented, around 13.3 million taxpayers will pay lower taxes.”

SOURCE  






Morrison burns the Labor party

The Prime Minister has secured the four crossbench votes it needs to pass its $158 billion tax cut package in a deal that secures a key election promise

As at this morning, Labor is looking rudderless.

Despite the announcements from the two Centre Alliance Senators and Jacqui Lambie, Opposition Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers could only say that the ALP will be moving its amendments and if they are defeated, the shadow cabinet will form a final position on the entire package.

Labor has backed the first phase of the plan which will hand $1080 to low and middle income earners and called for the second tranche to be brought forward to stimulate the economy. It does not support legislating the third phase.

Its amendments will put this position to parliament, which has allowed Anthony Albanese to argue Labor is the only party backing tax cuts for all workers.

But these amendments will fail, the independents will back the government and Scott Morrison’s original package will pass.

The takeout will be that the government has delivered tax cuts with the help of crossbench Senators and Labor didn’t back it.

That’s game, set and match to the government on the first big political skirmish of the new parliament. You can bet Morrison will be hammering home this message this afternoon when he faces off against Albanese in the first Question Time since the election.

SOURCE  

Labor have subsequently decided to drop their opposition -- now that it would be pointless.  Nobody needs them now




Self-loathing activists have created a parallel university

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the noun “university” is derived from the Latin expression universitas magistrorum et scholarium, which roughly translated is a “community of teachers and scholars”. I am curious as to what is Latin for “a community of taxpayer-subsidised, freeloading, self-loathing activists bent on universities succumbing to primitivism,” as that would best describe where today’s tertiary institutions are headed.

Admittedly, the once great humanities departments have long been lost to academic charlatans, but this malaise has spread to the STEM faculties — you know, the ones that still impart information that is actually useful. Last week The Australian reported that science lecturers at the University of New South Wales have been told it was inappropriate to assert that indigenous people have been in Australia for 40,000 years.

The reason for this, lecturers were informed, is that assigning a date, irrespectively of how scholarly that estimation would be, “tends to lend support to migration theories and anthropological assumptions’’. Well yes. Much like the balcony railing on a high-rise building tends to lend support to the theory of gravity and metallurgical assumptions, I suppose.

Some indigenous people, the guidelines further specified, “see this sort of measurement and quantifying as inappropriate”. It would be cynical of course to suggest it more likely than not that indigenous people on the whole could not care less about this practice, and that the document was compiled by various well-remunerated diversity consultants whose primary aim was to justify their existence.

Sadly, this idiocy is not confined to the HR department. The UNSW science faculty research centre declared last year that indigenous people “arrived soon after 50,000 years ago, effectively forever, given that modern human populations only moved out of Africa 50,000 to 55,000 years ago”. Note to the person who wrote this: the planet is over 4.5 billion years old, and it is laughable to suggest that 50,000 years equates to “effectively forever”. To put things in perspective and based on the calendar of the earth being only one year old, Homo Sapiens emerged around 11.36pm on December 31.

As ludicrous as the UNSW mentality is, it provides fantastic opportunity for the budding entrepreneur. Imagine, for example, tendering for a university catering contract to feed, say, 5000 students for a year. You secure it by significantly undercutting your competitors. When the time comes to feed the mass of students, simply produce five loaves and two fish while you invoke Matthew 14:13-21 and declare yourself a doctrinaire Christian. How dare others deny the well-documented miracle and suggest this is insufficient to feed the multitude? This is blasphemy!

It gets even better. UNSW encourages lecturers to promote a court in “ethnoscience” and the “science of indigenous knowledge”, involving “traditional indigenous knowledge about the natural world, including astronomy, weather, medicine, geography and mathematics,” together with “ways in which indigenous knowledge can inform and benefit Western science”.

These are extraordinary claims, but this revisionism is part of a wider movement that claims many Western achievements should in fact be attributed to indigenous Australians. “Aborigines invented democracy”, wrote author and indigenous woman Melissa Lucashenko for Meanjin in 2015. “As a result, the many First Nations here were able to enjoy millennia of what Bunurong writer Bruce Pascoe has called ‘the Great Australian Peace’.”

That wasn’t quite the phrase that observers of the First Fleet used when they documented the appalling, widespread and brutal treatment of indigenous women by their menfolk. But to speak of that now is to invite criticism, even if you are an eminent Australian historian. Professor Geoffrey Blainey, wrote University of Newcastle professor John Maynard in 2015, “has been unable to let go of his fixation with the supposed violence of Aboriginal life”.

Students of indigenous history, at least those wishing to gain approval of their tutors, would be well-advised to ignore Blainey and instead quote from Pascoe’s best-selling book Dark Emu. Among Pascoe’s claims are that indigenous people cultivated crops, constructed villages, and designed complex dams. “Many academic experts also believe Dark Emu romanticises pre-contact indigenous society as an Eden of harmony and pacifism,” wrote Richard Guilliatt in The Weekend Australian in May, “when in fact it was often a brutally tough survivalist way of life. It’s a criticism most are reluctant to air publicly, given the sensitivity of contradicting a popular indigenous historian”.

In UNSW’s indigenous studies course outline, students are advised they will “learn about the history of colonial ‘scientific’ practices that disempowered indigenous people and led to environmental damage and unsustainable practices”. Presumably lecturers will avoid mentioning that more than 85 per cent of Australia’s mega fauna became extinct after the ancestors of indigenous people arrived in Australia. As Herald-Sun columnist Andrew Bolt noted when SBS reported those findings, the broadcaster conveniently omitted any references to the noun “Aboriginal” in that article, instead using terms such as “early Australians” and “early humans”.

In fairness to these institutions, they are following a worldwide trend. A few years ago I holidayed in Canada, a beautiful country with lovely people, aside from its insufferable prime minister, Justin Trudeau, whom I can only surmise entered politics because he was too flamboyant to continue working as a drama teacher.

While visiting a museum in Vancouver, I was bemused by the excessive curatorial tiptoeing in reference to Canadian native tribes, otherwise known as ‘First Nations’ peoples. A young museum guide of that demographic solemnly informed us that he possessed esoteric and magical skills that far science could never explain. Perhaps anticipating my question, he added he could not elaborate on or disclose this knowledge as it would be “dangerous” in the hands of an outsider. My fellow palefaces lapped it all up.

In November, the chair of Universities Australia and vice-chancellor of Monash University, professor Margaret Gardener, reacted indignantly to the federal government’s review into freedom of speech on campus. “Australian universities have been on the public record through the ages affirming our longstanding commitment to informed evidence-based discussion and vigorous debate,” she stated. Through the ages, maybe. Not the present. It was once heresy to dispute the church’s teachings that planets and stars orbited the earth. Now universities promote the philosophy that victimhood and primitivism are at the centre of our universe.

So what subjects can future students expect? My prediction is Gaslighting 101, which begins with unlearning the indoctrination of whiteness. Students will be taught to despise themselves and everything associated with Western Civilisation. By the end of this course students will be able to provide informed discourse on themes such as hegemony, imperialism, racism, disenfranchisement, and genocide. Pretty straightforward really. Recognise your unconscious bias, check your privilege and defer to those in the intersectionality hierarchy.

Then there’s Virtual Orchidectomy 203, which will explain why it is insufficient for male students to renounce their “toxic masculinity”, given there is no other kind. Students will explore theories such as whether ‘Sir’ Isaac Newton was in fact a trans-woman lesbian, and they will be subjected to bouts of abuse by guest lecturer Clementine Ford as she explains why feminism is a kinder and gentler philosophy. Required pre-course reading: ‘Tony Abbott’s women in white a symbol of what’s to come,’ Sydney Morning Herald, 2015, by Deakin University research fellow Dr Michelle Smith.

In Technocracy 203 students will learn why government by experts, particularly scientists, academics and human rights officials, is the leadership our society requires. Required pre-course listening: ABC Radio National podcast ‘The Minefield’, 2019 — otherwise known as Grandiloquence Central — where hosts Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens ask ‘Is democracy an impediment to addressing climate change?’

Religion of Peace 401 will take students through the many misunderstandings about Islam. As part of this students will be regularly bussed to Gosford Anglican Church to gaze at billboard messages as they recite Father Rod Bower’s platitudinous homilies concerning the burqa.

As for what universities choose to teach about indigenous history, perhaps they will take inspiration from the Uluru Statement from the Heart, released in 2017, which among other things called for a Makarrata Commission to oversee a process of truth-telling about Australia’s history and colonisation. Regrettably, I suspect this “truth-telling” will be more of a narrative reinforcement.

But if universities still have a problem acknowledging unpalatable facts about indigenous history or keeping the pseudo out of science, government should give them a simple message when their vice-chancellors demand taxpayer funding. Tell ‘em they’re Dreaming.

SOURCE  






Rock climbers outraged as scaling cliffs in world-famous national park is banned to 'protect indigenous culture'

There are fears one of Australia's most popular destinations for rock climbers could become a scale-free zone.

Climbers fear their enjoyment of Mount Arapiles is under threat after Parks Victoria recently imposed a ban on many routes in the Grampians National Park in the state's west to protect their rich Aboriginal cultural heritage.

The bans affect 30 per cent of climbing areas in Victoria's fourth biggest national park, which climbers claim was done without public consultation.

Thousands of climbers flock to the world renowned Mount Arapiles each year, with growing fears it could be one of the next to become off-limits.

Local John Fischer insisted climbers frequently interact with indigenous groups.

'Arapiles is the heart of trad­itional climbing in Australia,' Mr Fischer told The Australian. 'If we lose Natimuk, we lose the chance to connect to country, place and respect indig­enous culture.'

A Parks Victoria spokeswoman assured Daily Mail Australia that no-impact climbing is allowed on Mount Arapiles. 'Parks Victoria is not currently reviewing rock climbing in Mount Arapiles-Tooan State Park,' she said.

'Climbing is allowed in Mount Arapiles-Tooan State Park, as it is in around 100,000-hectares of Grampians National Park that is outside of Special Protection Areas.'

'We appreciate that there were rock climbers, tour groups and other park visitors who were not previously aware the Grampians National Park's Special Protection Areas.'

The spokeswoman acknowledged that climbers and tour operators have had to modify their activities in other areas of Grampians National Park.

'We do, however, have a responsibility – a legislated one ­– to protect and conserve the incredible natural and cultural values of Victoria's parks and reserves,' she told Daily Mail Australia. 'We intend to continue working with rock climbers, tour operators and other park users on how they can continue to enjoy the national park in a way that ensures it is protected as a national treasure.'

Penalties of up to $1.6 million apply to groups that fail to protect indig­enous heritage.

Parks Victoria announced on Friday that tour operators  that offer rock climbing and abseiling in affected areas in the Grampians National Park can continue undertaking activities in Barc Cliff, Back Wall and a section of Wall of Fools until September 30.

The extension allow operators to work with traditional owners to understand and protect the area's unique Aboriginal cultural heritage. Additional three-month extensions could be offered if strict conditions are adhered to.

'Summerday Valley is located in a Special Protection Area that excludes activities like rock climbing and abseiling, and Traditional Owners understand the pressure licensed tour operators might face while we work through the long-term future of the park, so we thank them for their consent,' Parks Victoria chief executive Matthew Jackson said in a statement.

'We continue to welcome all visitors into this precious part of the world, sharing the natural and cultural wonders that make this park so special.'

Grampians Climbing author Simon Carter accused Parks Victoria of pitting traditional owners and climbers against each other.'

'These bans are bewildering, they close some of the safest climbing in the state, they will ­seriously damage lifestyles, livelihoods and businesses,' he told The Australian.

'It's outrageous that Parks Victoria have not consulted climbers and involved them in the process here, instead parks have demonised climbers, and some at parks have maliciously misled the public about the impact that climbers have had.'

A Change.org petition calling for the climbing ban in the Grampians to be reversed has attracted almost 28,000 supporters so far. It compared the closure  of these sites to climbers similar to akin to surfers losing access to Bells Beach.

'Climbing in the Grampians/Gariwerd is globally significant, with climbers travelling from not only all over Australia but also from all across the world to visit and climb,' the petition states.

'We believe that genuine collaboration between climbers and land managers will allow any restrictions on climbing to be finely and intelligently targeted, without resorting to the blunt instrument of the blanket bans that will drastically impact climbers' access to areas and also have immediate and profound effects on local tourism.'

SOURCE  






The nuclear option for Australia has many attractions

Some excerpts from a very long-winded article below

A discussion paper prepared for the union-backed Industry Super Australia provides a blueprint for patient capital in the energy sector.

Superannuation is a natural fit for long-term infrastructure investment and has been a big supporter of renewable energy projects with mixed results.

The discussion paper seeks to strip away the ideological baggage to set out an over-the-horizon view of where Australia’s energy market may be heading.

While Australia has no plans to build nuclear plants, in 2016 the country joined the Generation IV International Forum, for which the Nuclear Energy Agency acts as technical secretariat.

Magwood’s talks with Australian authorities included the latest research and development on advanced nuclear systems.

Discussion thwarted

Nuclear energy is still controversial in Australia and has proved difficult for governments even to discuss.

Environment group Friends of the Earth continues to run an active anti-nuclear campaign team. It says Australia does not need nuclear power.

But after studying the evidence, Industry Super Australia chief economist Stephen Anthony has produced recommendations in his discussion paper that he says go against conventional wisdom and assumptions.

“No attempt is made to avoid this,” he says. “Our aim is to provide the best analysis possible. It is not to simply run with the herd.”

He says the inclusion of nuclear energy has caused some alarm but: “It does not mean we are pro-nuclear any more than not excluding solar means we are pro-solar.”

The conclusion, however, is that it is difficult to see Australia decarbonising its energy sector without the use of nuclear power.

Mainstream misleading

One of the themes of the discussion paper is that mainstream thinking on the energy market may be misleading in many areas.

It is often based on a partial analysis of the problem that ­ignores its economy-wide implication. The assessment of technologies is sometimes weak and based on time horizons that are too short.

Ultimately, there is the prospect that some wind and solar projects themselves may become stranded assets.

The problems of intermittency are at the heart of global concerns. Federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor is trying to address the issue with a reliability obligation for generators.

Magwood says there is a need for strategies that more accurately reflect the costs and attributes of renewables. “As it becomes clear that the amount of baseload supply needed in the future is not zero, each country will need to decide how it will meet its future electricity supply needs,” he says.

Expensive option

One criticism of nuclear is that it is expensive, but costs vary widely depending on where projects are being built. They can be as high as $US7bn ($10bn) per gigawatt in Europe and as low as $US2bn a giga­watt in China. At its most expensive, nuclear is double the cost of onshore wind.

But nuclear has advantages that intermittent sources of energy cannot provide.

And a recent OECD report assesses the levelised cost using a 3 per cent interest rate at $US100 per megawatt hour for commercial solar, $US70 per megawatt hour for onshore wind and $US50 a megawatt for nuclear.

The OECD says “a cost-effective low carbon system would probably consist of a sizeable share of variable renewable energy, and at least an equally sizeable share of dispatchable zero carbon technologies such as nuclear energy and hydro-electricity and a residual amount of gas-fired capacity to provide some added flexibility alongside storage, demand-side management and the expansion of interconnections.

“What nuclear energy and ­hydro-electricity, as the primary dispatchable low-carbon generation options, bring to the equation is the ability to produce at will large amounts of low-carbon power predictably according to the requirements of households and industry.

“For the right decisions to be made, these factors must be understood and addressed.”

For Australia, Anthony says the likely energy mix will include renewable technologies such as solar, wind, hydro and battery storage, with some pumped hydro and combined-cycle gas generation as a back-up.

But this is unlikely to be good enough for the long term.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





4 July 2019

The costs and benefits of a "clean" economy

The article excerpted below parades as a sober statistical analysis but is in fact just a religious tract.  It totals up all the costs of all the adverse events that are said to be due to global warming and accepts that cost figure without criticism or reservation. It thus shows that global warming would be very costly. 

But that is all dependant on the global warming theory being right.  If none of the costly events are due to increased atmospheric CO2 then reducing CO2 will not reduce the costly events listed and the whole analysis collapses.  The whole screed is simply a confession of faith in the magic power of CO2

It is no more informative than:

I believe in God, the father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

Amen.

  


Business leaders, politicians and policymakers have spent years asking if we were to cut emissions, how much would it cost in lost income or Gross National Product (GDP) in Australia? How much worse off would we be?

If countries around the globe also cut emissions how badly would Australia’s exports of coal and natural gas suffer?

While once framed purely as an environmental issue, the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia Guy Debelle noted earlier this year that the risks that climate change poses to the Australian economy are “ first order” and have knock-on implications for macroeconomic policy.

So using recent work by Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (MSSI) at the University of Melbourne, we have compared the cost of damages from climate change, with the cost of reducing emissions from the recent Climate Council Report for economic damages under current or continued increases in emissions.

We know that climate change can have potentially disastrous effects, and the list is long; pollution, heat stress and its impact on human health, falls in agricultural productivity and permanent losses in biodiversity. 

[Climate change could indeed have such effects but will it?  And would a reduction in atmospheric CO2 have any effect on it? We do not "know" any of that. We cannot make such assumptions.  They are prophecies, not facts]

As well as damage to environmental assets such as the Great Barrier Reef, sea level rise and resulting infrastructure damage, the increased likelihood of floods and bushfires, possible increased frequency and severity of tropical storms, and severe migration pressure from countries most affected by climate change are only part of the list.

But the relative costs of emissions reduction to avoid these damages, can be hard to measure in dollar terms, given our complex and uncertain future.

As a first step, we use a large dimensional global trade and climate model, an extension of other recent work, to determine the cost of meeting Australia’s minimum target of a 26 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030, compared to 2005.

We also assume that all other countries do reduce their emissions by more than double the current unconditional ‘Nationally Determined Contribution’ in the Paris Accord, or a 12 per cent reduction in emissions on average.

There are two major cost effects for Australia here; the cost of transition from fossil fuels to renewables, resulting in relative and variable price changes for energy, across all sectors, and the effect of falls in net exports of fossil fuels on national income.

For the 26 per cent target, we find only negligible effects on national income.

The total cost is only $A35.5 billion in the cumulative fall in GDP from now until 2030 in Australia – a measure much lower than previous other estimates, which range from more than $A82 billion to nearly $A300 billion, using the exact same target.

SOURCE  






Labor willing to work on religious freedom

Marvellous what an election defeat will do

Labor senator Kristina Keneally has confirmed the opposition is ready and willing to work with the government on new religious discrimination laws.

Labor has locked in firmly behind Scott Morrison's push for new religious freedom laws. The prime minister intends to make it unlawful to discriminate against people based on their religious beliefs. He is proposing to amend existing marriage, charities and anti-discrimination legislation to achieve this end.

A religious discrimination commissioner would also be appointed at the Australian Human Rights Commission.

"We are willing to have discussions with the government and work with the government on a religious discrimination and freedom act," Labor senator Kristina Keneally told ABC radio on Wednesday. "We are waiting to have those conversations. We do stand ready, though, to work with the government on this."

The new Religious Discrimination Act could be brought before parliament as early as July 22.

The prime minister has told coalition colleagues he wants to work "carefully" through the issue and consult Labor on the changes.

Government backbenchers will be given the chance to shape it through a series of workshops with the attorney-general, starting later this week.

"What the government are talking about is an issue that goes to protecting religion in an affirmative way as a freedom," Senator Keneally said. "That's a conversation we are having with them."

SOURCE  





Morrison’s to-do list defies the naysayers

Scott Morrison has answered his critics and defied the charge that he is a one-trick pony with little to offer beyond income tax cuts.

This was not only Labor’s claim throughout the election but ­remains a criticism now. Morrison stood and still stands for nothing, and has no message because he lacks an agenda. Apparently he won the election on a pledge to do nothing.

On May 19, the day after the election, The Conversation website reported: “It is not clear what the government’s agenda is ­beyond their tax plan.”

If it’s not clear it’s because people weren’t and still aren’t listening. Last week, Morrison delivered two speeches. The first was domestic, the second a sharp assessment of the regional strategic situation and what Australia’s foreign policy response will be to the threats and opportunities. Both outlined exactly what the government’s intentions were.

Governor-General David Hurley’s address to parliament yesterday outlined the Morrison government’s entire agenda in lengthy point form. Contrary to claims of emptiness, Morrison’s program is extensive and, perhaps more importantly, has an underlying principle guiding it.

As Morrison has said in the past: “People just want to be left alone to get on with their lives and not be lectured to.”

It should hardly be a surprise or an offence that income tax cuts took top billing in the election. If passed this week by the parliament, they alone would be the single biggest economic achievement of a government for a decade.

But Morrison has also outlined significant industrial relations ­reform, fixing the National Disability Insurance Scheme, constitutional recognition for indigenous Australia, reform of the public service, productivity-based deregulation, a $100 billion infrastructure package, housing policy changes and laws to protect religious freedoms.

On foreign policy, his strategic and economic intention is to project Australian soft power into the region while pursuing free-trade deals in Europe and elsewhere to broaden economic partnerships beyond the China-US nexus that still threatens to undermine growth.

The reason his critics continue to deny Morrison an agenda, and consequently a mandate, is ­because they wrongly confuse agenda with government activism.

Morrison’s view is that reform is pointless unless it is singularly designed to make people’s lives better or at least less encumbered by government. It is a view that says an agenda doesn’t have to be ideological to qualify.

Morrison has a substantial program ahead of him. However, he will want to approach it calmly and without fanfare. He won the election by, among other things, not scaring the horses.

In seeking to project the image of a prime minister with little interest in grandstanding, he claims to be interested only in being judged on outcomes. Success for Morrison will be measured when people look back and say it was a government that actually got quite a bit done. That starts tomorrow when the Senate will decide whether Morrison can begin to deliver on his agenda by passing the $158bn in income tax cuts — or not.

SOURCE  






Zali Steggall happy as an independent, for now

Independent MP Zali Steggall is not ruling out a switch to the Liberal Party before the next election but has expressed scepticism about the need for a religious discrimination act.

The Warringah MP, a former Olympic skier who defeated Tony Abbott in the blue-ribbon Sydney seat, said being an independent gave her freedom to speak about issues important to constituents.

When asked if she would rule out joining the government benches in this term of parliament, Ms Steggall said: “I am not going to be engaging in any of that conversation at this point. I’m not going to comment on it because no matter what I answer or what I say it will be interpreted one way or the other.

“At this point I will be true to the electorate and that is the basis of which I am here. “I feel strongly as an independent I have an opportunity to speak out on issues of which people in the party can’t.”

With the government set to push for a religious discrimination act later this year, Ms Steggall said she was yet to be convinced of the need for one. “I don’t accept there is a case for change yet. I am not convinced and so I will need to wait and see what is suggested,” Ms Steggall said.

Ms Steggall, who won a bronze medal at the 1998 Winter Olympics, said the Israel Folau case was an issue of contractual obligation rather than freedom of speech. “From the Rugby Australia’s point of view it is a contractual dispute,” she said.

“I think there is a responsibility when you are in the public profile over the impact of what you do and say will have on others, especially the vulnerable.”

She will push the government to take stronger action on climate change, declaring the Coalition could not hit its 26 per cent Paris target without the “appalling suggestion” of carrying over credits from the Kyoto Protocol. “Twenty-six per cent is not a strong enough target and I don’t think we are going to meet that,” she said.

Ms Steggall, who supports the government’s income tax package, will also push for a federal anti-corruption body and a tightening of political advertising regulations.

“Both sides of politics have a duty to restore faith in the political system,” she said. “There is a real necessity for tightening the political advertising regulations. I think we need a ‘minimum of truth’. The standards we apply in the business world, we should be able to accept from political parties.”

SOURCE  






Either stand with Folau now, or you're next

Israel Folau is one of the bravest men in Australia. While countless so called "conservatives", "libertarians" and even so-called men of faith have bowed, scraped and apologised before the leftist establishment whenever they demanded it Folau has stood tall.

Yet for some on the so-called "Right" this hasn't been enough. They whinge and bitch and whine about "contracts" and "private companies". Such grovelling worms need to understand one thing; if they can take down a multi-millionaire rugby player for repeating what has been Christian orthodoxy for two millennia there is absolutely nothing to stop them doing the same to you. If they can get a high profile sportsman fired, cut off his efforts to fund his own defence and even go after his wife for not condemning her husband what do you think they can do to you?

What Folau said about unrepentant homosexuality was considered common sense four decades ago and an acceptable opinion not long ago at all. His stated beliefs align with those held by the vast majority of the world's two billion plus Christians and Muslims. If they can make as high profile as him an unperson for saying something as commonplace as that what can they do to you? If the forces of darkness win this one and drag him down what on earth makes you think you won't be next?

You think that because you don't hold silly religious beliefs that the leftist thought police will pass you over? You think if you stay quiet enough and only say what you really think online or in private that you'll be safe? You think that if you scream along with the leftist crowd that they won't one day turn on you?

When they come after your job and you can't pay your mortgage or feed your family, when they put pressure on not only your friends but your wife and children to disown you or suffer the wrath of the baying leftist mob it won't matter if you threw Folau under the bus now. They'll still take everything they can from you, turn you out into the street and dance with joy if you get hit by a truck.

The Left isn't coming for Christians, they're not coming for "homophobes" or "racists" or "sexists". They're coming for everyone and everything that doesn't enthusiastically bow to their ever changing dogmas enthusiastically enough for their liking. They're coming for you and they won't rest until every independent thought you've ever had is beaten out of you, your spirit broken, your life in tatters and the shrivelled husk of what used to be your body is enthusiastically applauding.

Whether you like it or not Israel Folau is fighting for you. Remember these people have the pitchforks and torches out because a man most of them had probably never heard of said that a God they don't believe in declared in a book they've never read that unless they repent of a sin most of them haven't committed and none of them believe is wrong they will go to a place they don't even believe exists.

If you don't think they'll come after you for disagreeing with them on anything more substantive than that you're kidding yourself. And if you're still joining in the anti-Folau dogpile you should be ashamed.

Because after him they're coming for you.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here







3 July, 2019

Scott Morrison was asked about the Israel Folau case on ABC’s 7.30

When Leigh Sales put a hypothetical question to the PM, Scott Morrison refused to budge and be drawn into “extreme” examples.

Scott Morrison has weighed in on Israel Folau’s fight against Rugby Australia after being asked about the controversy during an interview on ABC’s 7.30 program last night.

After speaking about the religious freedom bill being put forward by the Liberal Party this year, Leigh Sales asked the prime minister for his view on Folau’s recent sacking following the comments he made about homosexuals on social media.

Despite the PM skirting around the question, Sales pushed the issue, asking if being a public figure made any difference to the type of views you can express.

“If a public figure said, for example, that Jews are going to hell, they would be rightly and roundly condemned for that,” Sales said.

“But if a public figure says gays are going to hell, it can be defended as religious freedom. Do you see any problem with that situation?”

But Mr Morrison said he would not let the debate around anti-discrimination legislation “derailed” by “extremes of examples” like Sales had put forward.

“Well, again, I mean, the issue is making sure you get the balance right in the legislation, which respects the same principle of anti-discrimination as applies to many other cases,” He replied.

“We already have anti-discrimination legislation which deals with these sensitivities in other areas, and that will apply also to religious faith.

“And what I would hope is that we can have a sensible and adult debate about this one - not one that is drawn to extremes of examples or things like that to try and derail debates, but one that actually keeps people together and honours the key principle.

“I mean, religious freedom is a core pillar of our society. And it’s not unreasonable. And I think there are many millions of Australians who would like to see that protected, and I intend to follow through on that commitment.”

Sales also asked the PM about the Folau case, where the Wallabies star is fighting his sacking by Rugby Australia over an Instagram post.

“Under the changes you introduce, would you like to see somebody like Israel Folau be able to make the remark he made and be safe from being sacked,” Sales asked.

Mr Morrison was very brief with his response, saying a balance needs to be struck between an employer’s expectation of their employees and how much say they should have over what they do in their personal lives.

“I think it’s important, ultimately, that employers have reasonable expectations of their employees, and that they don’t impinge on their areas of private practice and private belief or private activity,” Mr Morrison said.

“And there’s a balance that has to be struck in that, and our courts will always ultimately decide this based on the legislation that’s presented.”

He added that as the Folau case would likely be making its way through the court very soon he couldn’t really make any further comments.

Mr Morrison said there is currently a gap in the law when it comes to expressions of religious faith, and the new bill aims to close that gap.

“We’re looking at a religious Discrimination Act which I think which will provide more protections for people because of their religious faith and belief in the same way that people of whatever gender they have or sexuality or what nationality or ethnic background or the colour of their skin — they shouldn’t be discriminated against also,” he said.

SOURCE  






Why are school standards still falling?

Despite all the policy differences in the election, there was little to distinguish between the two major parties on the subject of increasing school funding. They only differ in the extent: the Coalition promised a large spending increase, and Labor promised an even larger one.

But neither of those promises were based on evidence.

Australia’s results on international tests have been declining over the past 10 years ¾ both in absolute terms and in comparison to other countries ¾ despite continually increased school funding.

According to the Productivity Commission, per-student funding increased in real terms (above inflation) between 2007-08 and 2016-17 by over 14 per cent.

While non-government schools received a larger percentage increase (though coming off a much lower base), government schools still received an 11 per cent per student increase.

It’s been argued this was actually only a very small increase for government schools, because if teacher wages growth is taken into account then schools on average don’t actually have much more discretionary spending.

But this notion — that extra school funding spent on higher teacher salaries doesn’t actually count as extra school funding — fails the common sense test.

The reality is funding has increased for government schools. Some state governments have chosen to spend the extra money on higher teacher salaries. We can argue about the merits of this, but the fact remains that much more is being spent on government schooling than 10 years ago.

And this highlights an important fact that often gets missed in the funding debate: the states have the responsibility of running the government school systems.

State spending on government schools increased by only 3 per cent across 10 years, while federal spending on government schools went up by a whopping 93 per cent (albeit compared to a far lower funding starting point). If people are concerned that government schools are underfunded, they should be blaming state governments, not the federal government.

In any case, the OECD has concluded there are diminishing marginal returns to school funding. In other words, beyond a certain point there is no clear relationship between school spending and student outcomes.

Australia already spends more per student as a dollar amount than the OECD average — and several top-performing countries like Finland and Japan — after adjusting for purchasing power parity (taking into account cost differences between countries). There is very little evidence that further funding increases in Australia would substantially boost results.

But school funding in Australia can definitely be better allocated. And that doesn’t mean the simplistic attitude of ‘let’s take money from greedy non-government schools and give it to poor government schools’. Money for disadvantaged students should be allocated on the basis of evidence, not on the basis of school sector.

We’re often told government schools are below their ‘funding target’, but this doesn’t mean much ¾ because the current target is arbitrary and unreasonably high.

For example, the criteria for being a disadvantaged student is so broad that the majority of all Australian school students are classified as ‘disadvantaged’ and attract extra school funding. This isn’t evidence-based, but it is hugely expensive ¾ and means funding for disadvantage isn’t efficiently allocated to the schools that need it most.

The new government should commit to reviewing the funding formula.

And there are many ways to improve Australia’s school system that don’t require significantly more taxpayer money. For example, ensuring university teacher education degrees pass on evidence-based content would be a cost-effective approach to improving teaching.

The focus of the education policy debate must shift from how much money is spent to how it is spent.

SOURCE  






'Young Australians don't want to get their hands dirty': The $80k-a-year tradie jobs that NO ONE will apply for - forcing employers to bring workers in from overseas

Australia has been swamped with job opportunities for tradies - but many of the positions have gone for months without any applicants.

Rod McInnes, who is a consultant for Maxima business development in Adelaide, said the manufacturing industry had been struggling because young people were more interested in sitting at a desk than doing 'dirty work'. 

Dairy Farmer Brian Dickson told the ABC he fears the worker shortage would lead to the end of the dairy farming industry in Australia. Turnover is high at farms in Western Victoria despite the $24/h wage because employees aren't willing to work long hours.  In 2018, it was reported a Queensland dairy farm was struggling to attract local interest in a job that paid $50,000 and came with free accommodation.

Jobs in fruit and vegetable picking were also are unpopular among Australian workers, as well as roles in meat processing.

Restaurants have also had to rely on foreign workers, who are said to be more stable. Research showed chef positions and restaurant managers were 'very difficult' to recruit.

Bakeries also reported difficulty hiring because workers are not keen on bakers' hours, which often means starting at 1am.

In 2013, Traffic management firm Australian Retro revealed 85 per cent of traffic controllers were Irish women.

Far North Queensland currently has more than 3,700 vacancies, including 800 automotive trade jobs, according to the ABC.

Larry Napoli, who runs a collision repair centre in South Australia, says most workers don't 'stick it out' because it's hard work.  He told Adelaide Now one local business had been trying to find a panel beater to fill a vacant position but even though the job can fetch an average $65,258 a year, no one wanted it.

Other positions that had failed to be filled were welders, carpenters and electricians - who earn about $80,000 a year on average. 

'A lot of the younger guys and girls aren't wanting to get their hands dirty because they're going into high tech careers or sitting at a desk,' he said.

The region has seen demand for boilermakers and welders increase due to a recent bump in structural steel work, however, the skills shortage has seen multiple companies go searching overseas to fill the positions.

Southern Cross Workforce director Mike Racher feared the problem would become worse as more young people looked to mining and defence in search of bigger pay packets.

'These days the youngsters are more interested in getting a job in the computer age. They don't want sparks going on around them or ducking their head in the bonnet of an engine,' he said.

The shortage has sparked calls for the state government to put a greater emphasis on getting young people onto the trades pathway.

Industry and Skills Minister David Pisoni said the government had been pushing to get more young people into  those roles.

'With recent reports of South Australian businesses struggling to fill jobs, we're very keen to promote the opportunities for young South Australians that an apprenticeship or traineeship can deliver.'

Last month, an ABC report revealed business owners and farmers have been left to rely on migrants to do unwanted jobs, as the number of job vacancies across regional Australia reaches 46,000.

West Victorian dairy farmer Brian Dickson said he feared the worker shortage would lead to the end of the dairy farming industry in Australia. Although the job pays $24 an hour, turnover is high because workers aren't willing to work the long hours.

Larry Napoli, who runs Carisbrook Collision Repair Centre in north of Adelaide, told the ABC he has struggled to find panel beaters for his business. 'A lot of them don't really stick it out because it's hard work and it's very complex,' he said. 

Meanwhile in Far North Queensland, there were more than 3,700 open automotive trade positions, and 1,000 vacancies, mostly in the medical field, in the Riverina in NSW.

The Federal government in turn has stepped into mitigate the issue by allowing farmers to seek out foreign workers.

Migrants are even offered permanent residency if they are willing to work in the region for three years.

SOURCE  







Bob Brown seeks $500,000 to train anti-Adani activists

Former Greens leader Bob Brown has launched a last-ditch effort to halt the planned Adani coal mine, rallying supporters to raise half a million dollars to purchase land to establish a base to train activists and plan protests against the mine.

Dr Brown, whose ‘Stop Adani’ anti-coal convoy through central Queensland during the election campaign has been credited with increasing a swing towards the Coalition, yesterday launched a crowdfunding page with a group, Friends of the Galilee Basin, to establish a “last line of defence” anti-Adani campaign headquarters in regional Queensland.

The target is to raise $500,000 to set up “a base for the campaign” at Binbee to “ensure that people can keep protecting country and put their bodies on the frontline”.

“Having a safe camp to train activists and plan protests is critical to getting thousands to the frontline.” the crowdfunding page states.

“Despite outcry from the scientific community, the Australian government has given the Adani Coal mine the final tick of approval.

“The good news is there are people on the frontline who are prepared to protect water, community and living systems to leave a safe planet for future generations.

“So far activists have helped to delay, disrupt and reduce the size of the Adani mega mine for over 5 years. Now is the time to come together and stop it for good.

“Mass civil disobedience is our last position to stop Adani in one of the biggest environmental battles in Australian history.” it said.

The campaign had raised $2,490 as of 8am this morning.

Queensland’s Environment Department gave the green light to Adani’s groundwater management plan last month, the final major approval needed for stage two of construction to begin on the controversial $2 billion.

Surveying and clearing work on the mine’s main site began on June 19.

Dr Brown gained notoriety when he led opposition against Tasmania’s Franklin Dam in the 1970s.

Many Coalition figures have stated the activist’s ‘Stop Adani’ convoy, which was heckled in when travelling through Queensland, helped the government’s election result in May.

Dr Brown has previously rejected those claims as “hogwash”.

SOURCE  

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





2 July, 2019

Masculinity under siege in schools, politics, online

Is there a crisis in masculinity? Based on an article by the American Jordan Black, “Masculinity in Menopause: The Emasculating Effects of Fatherlessness and Feminism”, the answer is yes.

Black highlights how, across the Western world, falling levels of testosterone and low sperm counts are contributing to significant changes in how masculinity is defined. Add the impact of so many boys raised without fathers and the global #MeToo movement that gives the impression that all men are inherently violent and misogynist, and it should not surprise that Black concludes: “We are not making men like we used to; in fact, we are not making them at all.”

The same is happening here, where similar forces are at work undermining masculinity and radically redefining what constitutes manhood. As Bettina Arndt says in her book #MenToo, men are unfairly demonised and attacked by radical feminists more intent on winning gender wars than peacefully coexisting.

Even to suggest men’s rights are being undermined is to incur the wrath of the sisterhood. Victorian Women’s Trust executive director Mary Crooks wrote this week in Nine’s The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald newspapers: “Men’s ‘rights’ are about treating women as inferior; objectifying them by denying them any personhood. Men’s ‘rights’ are about being able to stalk, harass or abuse women online, on the streets, in the home or at work.”

Another example of this fatwa against men is how every time a woman is attacked or murdered the response is to blame all men and to suggest that violence occurs only because society is patriarchal and misogynist.

After last month’s horrendous murder of Courtney Herron in a Melbourne park late at night, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said women travelling alone should be safe regardless of where they were or what the hour, and that crimes such as this were “most likely about the behaviour of men”.

Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Luke Cornelius mirrored the Premier’s views. He said: “This is about men’s behaviour. It’s not about women’s behaviour” — implying that, instead of the act being perpetrated by one demented evil soul, all men were implicated.

When detailing the death of masculinity, Black also says the US education system is guilty of “encouraging feminine behaviour for both genders”.

Feminist Camille Paglia makes the same point when she bemoans “the plight of physically active boys in a public school system dominated by female teachers”.

The Australian school system also disadvantages boys as a result of the feminisation of the curriculum. Research suggests boys, compared with girls, need greater structure and discipline to learn, especially in relation to learning to read, where the ­absence of a phonics and phonemic awareness approach puts them at risk.

Today’s approach to education is more about “care, share and grow”, where teachers facilitate and students self-direct, manage their own learning and where competition is shunned. It’s an approach that favours girls.

Not surprisingly, girls out­perform boys in reading as measured by the National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy, and achieve stronger Year 12 results as measured by the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank. It’s also true that material such as the gender-fluidity Safe Schools program and the Respectful Relationships program being implemented in Australia disadvantage boys, as both present a negative and biased view of masculinity and manhood.

The view of boys and men presented is one that implies masculinity is inherently violent against women and that Western societies such as ours are patriarchal ones in which women are ­oppressed and treated as second-class citizens.

Victoria’s Royal Commission into Family Violence reported that 25 per cent of family violence victims were men but the Respectful Relationships program implies it is only women who are at risk.

Students also are never told that such is the way the law now operates that men often are assumed to be the guilty party.

Another example of how the curriculum has been feminised is the way school programs present traditional male characteristics such as fortitude, courage, physical strength and mateship as negatives instead of being worthwhile.

Even worse, many schools ban physically active and risky playground activities and behaviour, and it’s not unusual for primary schools to ban boys wearing ­superhero costumes on the basis that play-acting reinforces ­negative and potentially violent behaviour.

More radical feminists go as far as saying traditional male qualities lead to what The Age journalist Anna Prytz describes as a “man box”, a situation where men are constrained because they mistakenly believe they should be “unemotional, hyper-sexual, physically tough, stoic and in ­control”.

Instead of accepting the feminist argument that the characteristics that typically define men are toxic, Black argues in favour of what he describes as “virtuous masculinity”. Paglia makes a similar point, arguing that feminists guilty of misandry should learn to respect and admire positive masculine qualities.

SOURCE  






Suburbs send a signal to corporate elites

The quiet Australians’ rejection of Labor’s “progressive” agenda has exposed the cultural divide between inner-city elites and ordinary people in the outer suburbs and regions who hold more traditional views.

What the election result also should do is burst the insider bubble surrounding so-called corporate social responsibility, which is leading companies to support progressive social causes publicly.

Many corporate elites — like many members of the political class — tend to live, work and socialise with like-minded elites and do not question self-reinforcing progressive agendas. However, issues that may be uncontroversial in Sydney’s Point Piper are not uncritically accepted in places such as Penrith and Picton.

This is why the increasing amount of virtue signalling being undertaken by companies is not only bad for business; as the Israel Folau case shows, it is also bad for the future of Australia as a civil society in which people with different views can work and play together. Unfortunately, there are few post-election signs Australian business is reconsidering the political meddling by major companies in social issues that have little, if any, connection to shareholders’ interests.

Instead, in recent weeks a slew of major companies has declared support for constitutional recognition of indigenous Australians. This renewed bout of corporate politicking was evidently pre-planned in anticipation of a Labor Party victory, which had pledged to fast-track a constitutional referendum on an indigenous voice to parliament.

The election result has not only exposed the political tin ear of the corporate sector. It also has exposed the contradiction at the heart of the CSR push being enthusiastically embraced at the highest levels of business.

The standard argument for CSR is that showing companies care about more than profit, and that they support the interests of broader groups of stakeholders in the community, is good for brands and reputations.

However — as last month’s federal election result should clearly indicate — in reality, corporate involvement in divisive social issues on which there is no community consensus can have negative brand consequences.

Companies — Qantas being the obvious example — risk acquiring reputations for “being political” and alienating the millions of Australians who don’t share so-called progressive views and values. The problem is that CSR has become an “industry” inside Australian business, with a vested interest in pushing companies to do more and more CSR.

The army of CSR managers and consultants employed in HR, “people and culture” and corporate affairs divisions has an activist mindset and is intent on transforming companies into political players campaigning for “systemic change” such as constitutional recognition.

The “industry” wants to make CSR a way for corporate elites to fundamentally politicise the role of companies by playing politics with shareholders’ money.

The way CSR politicking can damage company brands and be bad for business should encourage corporate leaders to take a more hard-headed approach.

The difficulty, however, is that those inside the corporate world who are not on board with progressive agendas can face professional repercussions that jeopardise career advancement.

This suggests that effectively countering the influence of the CSR industry that is institutionalised and gaining momentum across business may require changes to ground rules and frameworks used to govern how CSR decisions are made.

So now, in the wake of the election, might be an opportune time to push back against the CSR push by introducing a new principle — called the community pluralism principle — into the management of companies.

This would overtly counter the current approach to “social responsibility” by holding directors and chief executives accountable for making sure CSR activities don’t stray into meddling in contentious political issues and instead ensure that companies properly respect the pluralism — the different views and values — of the Australian community.

If this pluralism principle were inserted into company constitutions at the initiative of a new kind of anti-activism by a silent majority of shareholders fed up with the diversion of company resources into political activism, this would allow the quiet Australians to send a powerful, bubble-busting message about ending corporate political meddling.

Alerting corporate elites about the need to keep companies out of political issues also would be a positive development given the bigger issue at stake: the hyper-politicisation of society. This is the belief that all individuals and organisations — including companies — need to take a political stand by supporting progressive causes.

The implications for Australia’s future as a civil society have been spotlighted by Rugby Australia’s sacking of Folau for expressing his Christian faith in a way deemed to have violated a “diversity and inclusion” CSR agenda.

In a democratic country that respects the fundamental freedoms of all, companies — like sporting codes — should be places where citizens can overcome our political and other differences, and join together for good and truly inclusive purposes, be it playing games or producing wealth-generating goods and services.

The choice facing business is whether it divisively contributes to further fostering the hyper-politicisation of society in the name of CSR, and establishing (as Folau’s sacking demonstrates) de facto political tests of employment dressed up as a commitment to so-called diversity.

The alternative path — which is where the community pluralism principle leads — is for companies to remain part of a genuinely civil society. This means they must be sincerely inclusive by respecting the only kind of diversity that ultimately matters in a democracy: the diversity of political and religious opinion that is the foundation of a free society.

SOURCE  






Major student loan change comes into force TODAY as government tries to claw back $62BILLION in student debts by slugging low-paying workers

A new law change going into effect today will force more than 130,000 Australians to start paying off their student debts earlier.

Graduates earning $45,881 will have to start making payments towards their loans after the Higher Education Loan Program's repayment threshold was lowered from $51,957. 

This means those with the minimum salary will be paying one per cent of their taxable income on tuition fee repayments, which works out at a minimum of $459 a year.

Meanwhile, grads earning over $134,573 will have to pay ten per cent.  

The move has been supported by economists who deemed the law change necessary in order to tackle the nation's outstanding student debt which as of last year has risen to $62billion.

'It's become quite a serious budget problem,' University of Canberra economist Lewis told the Canberra Times.

'The system is already quite generous compared to say the US. That being said, a single person renting on their own or with kids will find it tough.'

ANU graduate Zoe Tulip said she is now concerned over whether or not she can secure a good job and pay off her debts.

'I took on this debt because I thought it was going to get me a better job but now it better be a great job,' she told the publication.

'There's less time to make myself secure.' 

When the deferred student loan program was introduced in 1989, under Labor prime minister Bob Hawke, graduates didn't start paying back their debt until they earned an average salary.

In today's money, graduates weren't paying off their loans until they earned more than $83,500.

Now those earning less than Australia's median salary - effectively putting them in the bottom half of workers - are repaying student loans.

The threshold was dramatically reduced in 1997, when John Howard was in his first term as Liberal prime minister.

Almost 2.7million Australians now have a student debt, which stands at an average of $20,000.

But Professor Bruce Chapman, who in 1988 designed Labor's original Higher Education Contribution Scheme, said asking graduates earning $46,000 a year to start paying off their student debt was fairer than demanding more subsidies from taxpayers.

'The only way you can keep the subsidies low is to have a relatively low threshold,' the economist and Australian National University academic told Daily Mail Australia earlier this month.

The former HECS program, now known as HELP, replaced a costly system known as free education, which Gough Whitlam's Labor government had introduced in 1974.

Professor Chapman had a message for left-wing student activists campaigning for the return of free education.

'I think the word ignorant comes to mind,' he said.

'The taxes being paid for it were coming from a percentage of people who didn't know where a university was.

'Basically, you're giving lifetime advantages at some taxpayer expense.'

Professor Chapman said those activist left-wing students also misunderstood Karl Marx, the German philosopher and revolutionary who founded the ideal of communism.

'If they were good socialists, they would read Karl Marx on this who basically said it is so unfair that the proletariat is, through their taxes, supporting the bourgeoisie,' he said. 'Karl's got it right.'

In an 1875 letter to a left-wing German political party, Marx argued free tertiary education for the rich was unequitable.

'If … higher education institutions are also "free", that only means in fact defraying the cost of education of the bourgeoisie from the general tax receipts,' he said in the Critique of the Gotha Program

SOURCE  






'I knew you'd win': Donald Trump praises Scott Morrison for 'tremendous' election win during talks between Australia and the US at the G20

Donald Trump introduced his daughter Ivanka to Prime Minister Scott Morrison at an exclusive dinner between US and Australian delegates ahead of the G20 summit in Japan. 

The President of the United States met with the Australian Prime Minister at Osaka's Imperial Hotel on Thursday, where Mr Trump congratulated him on the May 18 election win.

'He didn't surprise me but he surprised a lot of other people,' Mr Trump said at the opening of a working dinner with the prime minister.

'See, I knew him. See, I said you're going to do very well, and he did, he did that.

'They called it an upset but I don't call it an upset ... I want to congratulate you very much, it was a fantastic thing.'

The meeting with Mr Morrison was the first Mr Trump held upon his arrival in Osaka.

Delegates from Mr Trump's side included his daughter, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, National Security Advisor John Bolton and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.

Australians included Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, Trade Minister Simon Birmingham, Australian ambassador to the US Joe Hockey, and Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Martin Parkinson.

Senior Australian G20 official David Gruen and Mr Morrison's press chief Andrew Carswell were also in attendance.

Mr Morrison reiterated Australia's military friendship with the US.

'There's no better or stronger or deeper relationship than the United States and Australia. We've been together for a very long time – 100 years. Fighting together, working together, and [something] speak for themselves,' Mr Morrison said.

Mr Trump is also seeking other allies with his approach to Iran as he threatens military action against the Middle Eastern country.

The prime minister said he saw the working dinner as a chance to urge Mr Trump to stay engaged with Chinese president Xi Jinping to resolve the trade dispute casting a shadow over the global economy.

'It's going to be an important few days but there's no better or stronger or deeper relationship than the United States to Australia,' he told Mr Trump on Thursday night, foreshadowing their conversation.

Asked whether his 'America first' policies hurt allies like Australia in areas including trade, Mr Trump said the US had been very good to its allies.

'We work with our allies, we take care of our allies,' he told Mr Morrison and reporters.

'So we do work with ourselves and we look at ourselves I think more positively than ever before but we also look at our allies.

'And I think Australia's a good example. We worked together very closely just recently on a big trade situation, we had a little bit of a trade deal going and it worked out very well for both of us.'

Mr Morrison said earlier in the week Australia would not be a passive bystander as damage from the US-China trade tensions spread.

Mr Trump will also meet with Mr Xi in Osaka to discuss trade.

The White House has signalled it is in no hurry to solve the trade dispute with China and the president would use his meeting with Mr Xi 'to see where the Chinese side is since the talks last left off'.

While Mr Morrison was optimistic they could move things along, he cautioned it may take longer than the world watching on would like.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





1 July, 2019

Dumped from the Writer's Festival

Bettina Arndt

Writer's festivals have long been a joke in this country - well known as lovefests of ideologues preaching feminist and leftist claptrap to their rapt devotees. Even Germaine Greer found herself banned from a writer's festival last year for daring to challenge the party line on rape.

 Imagine my surprise when I received an invitation recently to appear at this year's Canberra Writer's Festival, to speak about my new book #MenToo. I happily agreed to take part in two panels, one on "Women, Men and the Whole Damn Thing" - supposedly on the consequences of #MeToo - and the other on women over 50.

Yesterday, Michaela Bolzan, the Artistic Director of the CWF wrote excitedly informing me of the "super" panel they'd put together for the first women/men panel:

* There's self-described "card-carrying feminist", our former Human Rights Commissioner, Gillian Triggs.
 * Domestic violence campaigner and journalist Jane Gilmore, known for her anti- male bile.
* LGBTIQ activist, advocate for Safe Schools, and former GetUp campaign director, Sally Rugg, currently embroiled in a campaign to take down rugby player Israel Folau for posting his religious views on social media.
* And writer David Leser whose virtue-signalling article (and forthcoming book) produced the title for this panel. "Why is it that men have killed, enslaved, scarred, diminished and silenced women of every age, race and class, on every continent, for so long?" Leser ponders. I advise you to read the rest and marvel at the stupidity and misandry of this man.

So that was the "super" panel now proposed to talk about women and men in the age of #MeToo. There was no longer any pretence of including balance in this proposed orgy of male-bashing - I was dropped from the panel and asked to moderate the session. Ditto the panel on women over 50, where I was asked to moderate a panel which included - wait for it - the dreaded Jane Caro, now notorious for her foul-mouthed election night tweet accusing "truculent turds" of sending Australia backwards by voting conservative. Her anti-male tirades are equally well known.

Unsurprisingly, I have pulled out of the event, pointing out I have no interest in being a punching bag for this line up of loonies and their followers. But it says a great deal about the huge waste of government funding supporting this divisive rubbish. The Canberra Writers Festival is supported by the ACT Government, ACT Libraries and ABC Radio Canberra plus there's an annual grant from ACT Labor of $125,000.  How about some of you lobbying these organisations to provide more balanced discussion at these events?

Via email






Nothing but downsides in demand-driven education

I have never been a fan of demand-driven university enrolment, a system that involves “qualified” students being guaranteed a subsidised place in higher education.

For years the universities called for its introduction — and why wouldn’t they? — while making reference to dodgy estimates of “unmet demand”, defined as those “qualified” students who were unable to secure a place at university.

You might ask why I put qualified in inverted commas. The reason is that what constitutes qualification for entry to univer­sity is a movable feast.

Some may think a very decent Year 12 score is the least that should be expected. But, these days, passing the final year as measured by an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank of over 50 is optional when it comes to getting into uni.

In my view, it is entirely appropriate for taxpayers to place limits on the amount of money that should be allocated to subsidise undergraduate students. In other words, the spending should be capped and adjusted only to accommodate predetermined factors such as population growth.

Obviously there are opportunity costs associated with spending more on higher education tuition subsidies (and, of course, all types of government spending).

The additional spending could be directed to other activities that yield higher social benefits or it could be returned to put-upon taxpayers.

In this context, higher education advocates will point to the evidence, which is not beyond dispute, that spending on universities generates high rates of return, with some estimates above $10 for every $1 spent.

But here’s the point: these estimates are for average returns, and what we are interested in, in the context of this discussion, are marginal returns — the additional benefits that flow from spending more money on undergraduate tuition subsidies.

It’s worth looking at the figures here. Between 2009 and 2017, the period during which demand-driven enrolment operated, the number of domestic bachelor degree students rose by about one-third. Government spending increased, in real terms, from $6.4 billion in 2009 to $9.3bn in 2017, an increase of 45 per cent.

The Productivity Commission recently has assessed the demand-driven system and has issued a mixed report card.

But reading through the analysis, it’s actually hard to see very many upsides, only downsides, particularly in the context of the amount of spending involved and the outcomes for the students themselves.

Some of the most important findings include the fact universities have accepted much less qualified students as a result of the new funding system.

The additional students who were accepted into the system had much lower levels of literacy and numeracy than the cohort as a whole and most of them had ATARs below 70. (And, as noted, some had ATARs below 50 and were accepted into teacher education courses!)

And here’s a very depressing but unsurprising finding: the additional students had much higher dropout rates than other students. According to the Productivity Commission, “by age 23 years, 21 per cent of the additional students had left university without receiving a qualification compared with 12 per cent of other students”.

Surely the appropriate response is “what a waste” and note that many of these young people will have collected some Higher Education Loan Program (the old HECS) debt in the meantime, to be paid off during their working lives or written off.

To be sure, there was some increase in the participation of “first in family” students whom the Productivity Commission deemed to be disadvantaged. But for young people living in rural and regional areas and young indigenous people, there was no change in their participation.

It’s worth considering what has been happening in the graduate ­labour market in response to the expansion in the number of ­subsidised undergraduate places.

In short, there has been a ­collapse in graduate salaries as well as a marked deterioration in the employment prospects of graduates.

Consider median graduate starting salaries. Before the introduction of the demand-driven enrolment, these salaries were about 80 per cent to 82 per cent of male average weekly earnings. They are now closer to 75 per cent.

And when we look at employment outcomes, we observe a sharp fall in the proportion of graduates securing full-time work — from about 85 per cent to 70 to 75 per cent. Note also that a higher proportion of graduates report that their degrees are largely irrelevant to their work.

It is also worth noting that the HELP loan book is valued at $46bn and is expected to grow to $53.2bn by 2022, an increase of more than 15 per cent. There is little doubt that a reasonable proportion of this debt — perhaps up to 20 per cent — eventually will be written off.

That the Coalition government decided to pull the plug on demand-driven enrolment was not entirely surprising, although the reasons for this, as well as the replacement arrangements, do not exude much confidence in terms of rational decision-making.

The refusal by the Senate to pass measures to reduce certain spending on higher education forced the government to use non-legislated means of achieving the same outcome while putting in place a complex deal for universities, pending a review in a few years.

The clear message that the Education Minister should be giving university administrators is that there will be no return to the open-ended and wasteful demand-driven enrolment.

The Productivity Commission concludes that “while universities will be the best option for many, ­viable alternatives in employment and vocational education and training will ensure more young people succeed”. This point was always obvious, notwithstanding the universities’ spiel about the need for problem-solving, cognitive skills in the future.

Given the content of the cour­ses into which many of these additional students were accepted and the dismal record on economy-wide productivity during the period in which the number of graduates has swelled, the jig is surely up on this line of argument.

SOURCE  






‘Harm' getting out of hand

No one likes to harm others. But today the call to ‘avoid harm’ is getting out of hand. And more often than not, begs the question.

Back in the nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill saw the of prevention of harm as setting the limit on the coercive power of the state when he wrote “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others” (On Liberty 1859). Mill was seeking to increase human freedom with his harm principle.

Today saying something is harmful is increasingly the one-stop shop to attempt to criticise and shut down, be it, for example, NAPLAN testing, the same-sex marriage plebiscite, the recent Vatican statement on gender, or much that goes on in schools and universities. The inflation of what is considered ‘harmful’ — however well intentioned — is having the effect of decreasing human freedom.

It is not a simple issue. On the one hand, there can be real harm, and our society is rightly far less blasé about many dangers than in the past. Think of such disparate areas as industrial safety and child abuse.

On the other hand, one of the reasons for the popularity of talking about harm is that it seems to provide a common ground and a simple test in a society otherwise lacking an agreed moral framework.

However, that is an illusion. What counts as harmful is rarely objective or straightforward, but depends on a wider, often unacknowledged, context. For example, not all distress or pain is harmful. Is it harmful to me to be told by you that I have cancer? Or that I should repent? That depends whether you are an oncologist. Or whether divine judgment is a real thing.

And it is so with many of the appeals to harm. They so easily beg the question by subtly importing hidden claims about human life and society as to be practically useless.

Saying something harmful is not the end, but the beginning of a conversation.

SOURCE  






University bans mention of how long Aborigines have been in Autralia

Science lecturers at the University of New South Wales have been told to stop telling students that Indigenous people's arrived in Australia 40,000 years ago.

In a letter sent to staff the lecturers were told that it is 'inappropriate' to teach dates and they should say Aboriginals have been here 'since the beginning of the Dreamings' because that is what indigenous people believe.

A set of classroom guidelines were circulated in the science faculty this month which alerted the scientists to the existing language advice, according to The Weekend Australian.

Aboriginal people are thought to have arrived in Australia via land bridges from the north about 50,000 years ago. 

It is generally accepted among scientists, however, that Indigenous people, like the rest of the world's human population, migrated from the African continent.

In 2018, a UNSW research centre in the science faculty said Indigenous Australians 'arrived soon after 50,000 years ago, effectively forever, given that modern human populations only moved out of ­Africa 50,000-55,000 years ago.'

The inclusivity language guidelines were approved by a working group involving dean Emma Johnston.

The guidelines say teaching a date for the arrival of Indigenous people 'tends to lend support to migration theories and anthropological assumptions.'

Many indigenous Australians see this sort of measurement as inappropriate the guidelines claim.

'The Aboriginal people I've worked with are enormously interested in the scientific evidence,' University of Wollongong ­archaeologist Richard Fullagar told the publication.

He did, however, also say that Aboriginal people he has worked with have sometimes told him that it is their cultural belief they have been here forever.

SOURCE  






Labor’s tax stance depends on crossbench: Gallagher

The Morrison government has demanded Labor stop its “verbal gymnastics” and support its flagship $158 billion personal income tax cuts plan, as opposition finance spokeswoman Katy Gallagher suggests her party will not finalise a position until it knows how the crossbench will vote.

In a messy interview on Sky News today, Senator Gallagher was unable to say if Labor’s caucus — which meets tomorrow — would formalise its position on the tax cuts legislation, due to be debated when federal parliament returns this week.

Trade Minister Simon Birmingham said Labor’s failure to support the Coalition’s full tax cut package would be a lasting “stain on the Labor Party”.

“Labor ought to come clear, come clean tomorrow and make sure they declare that ultimately they will pass this tax relief agenda because the failure to deliver tax relief for hardworking Australians will be a stain that will haunt Labor and Anthony Albanese all the way to the next election if they block this agenda,” Senator Birmingham said.

“I heard they might even wait to see what the position of the crossbench are until Labor makes up their mind about whether or not they’ll support our tax cuts. Well come on let’s be real. The Australian people may have decided that Labor weren’t fit for government but now they’re showing they’re not even fit to be the opposition.”

Senator Gallagher this morning conceded Australians earning $200,000 were not the “top end of town” but insists the parliament should reject the final stage of the government’s personal income tax cuts because they do not stimulate the economy now and are too generous for high-income earners.

Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg will this week try and ensure low and middle income earners quickly receive the $1080 tax cut they were promised in the April budget.

Senator Gallagher suggested Labor would wait to see what support the government received from the Senate crossbench before deciding how to vote on the full package.

“If and when the government is able to get a deal with the crossbench, and that’s not for certain at this point in time, we would have to take decisions based on what was happening at the time,” Senator Gallagher told Sky News.

“We have to be able to make decisions in the parliament as situations unfold, sometimes that doesn’t mean you can bring the whole caucus back together.

“Around stage three we’re worried on a couple of fronts. One is the affordability of it, can the budget actually afford this in four or five years’ time? We don’t know what will be happening. The situation has already changed from the election in terms of the economic outlook.

“We do wonder whether that allocation, it’s a huge part particularly of the second unlegislated lot of tax cuts, going to the highest income earners which would show they’re the group that are less likely to spend it in the economy.”

Asked if Australians earning $200,000 should be characterised as the “top end of town”, Senator Gallagher said: “No I don’t, I think a lot of my constituents would be earning incomes of that.

“Let’s have an argument around affordability of tax cuts in the near future, not the medium future, which is what we’re being asked to do.”

Australians earning more than $180,000 will receive less than a third of the Turnbull and Morrison governments’ $324.6 billion personal income tax cuts, according to Parliamentary Budget Office modelling.

Labor supports stage one of the plan to deliver the $1080 tax cuts and wants to speed up stage two to bring forward benefits for Australians earning more than $90,000 from 2022-23 to 2019-20.

It is unsuccessfully trying to convince the government to defer a decision on stage three, which from 2024-25 lowers the tax rate from 32.5 per cent to 30 per cent for Australians earning between $45,000 and $200,000, because it does not have “the same impact on the economy now”.

“It’s a lot of money where it’s not clear about how it’s going to be paid for and when you look at it in those individual years in 2024-25, that stage three is about $19bn a year,” Senator Gallagher said.

“That is a lot more than we pay for a whole range of services … (and) it certainly has no stimulatory effect on the budget … I don’t think the government is trying to explain it as a stimulus on the economy then (in five years), they’re talking about it as addressing bracket creep.”

Josh Frydenberg declared Senator Gallagher had confirmed “what we already about the Labor Party”.  “They are instinctively opposed to tax relief for hardworking Australians, even after the Australian people sent them an unequivocal message at the election,” the Treasurer said.

“Anthony Albanese should drop Bill Shorten’s losing strategy, cut his losses and stop denying the Australian people the tax cuts they voted for.”

Labor and the Greens are opposed to the entire package but the government is edging closer to a deal with the Senate crossbenchers.

The Coalition, which requires the backing of four out of six crossbenchers when it does not have the support of Labor or the Greens, has locked in South Australian senator Cory Bernardi’s vote and is set to have two votes from Centre Alliance but it will also need Jacqui Lambie’s support to legislate the package.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has repeatedly said she will oppose the full plan.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.





Most academics are lockstep Leftists so readers do sometimes doubt that I have the qualifications mentioned above. Photocopies of my academic and military certificates are however all viewable here


For overseas readers: The "ALP" is the Australian Labor Party -- Australia's major Leftist party. The "Liberal" party is Australia's major conservative political party.


In most Australian States there are two conservative political parties, the city-based Liberal party and the rural-based National party. But in Queensland those two parties are amalgamated as the LNP.


Again for overseas readers: Like the USA, Germany and India, Australia has State governments as well as the Federal government. So it may be useful to know the usual abbreviations for the Australian States: QLD (Queensland), NSW (New South Wales), WA (Western Australia), VIC (Victoria), TAS (Tasmania), SA (South Australia).


For American readers: A "pensioner" is a retired person living on Social Security


"Digger" is an honorific term for an Australian soldier


Another lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is an example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here


Another bit of Australian: Any bad writing or messy anything was once often described as being "like a pakapoo ticket". In origin this phrase refers to a ticket written with Chinese characters - and thus inscrutably confusing to Western eyes. These tickets were part of a Chinese gambling game called "pakapoo".


Two of my ancestors were convicts so my family has been in Australia for a long time. As well as that, all four of my grandparents were born in the State where I was born and still live: Queensland. And I am even a member of the world's second-most condemned minority: WASPs (the most condemned is of course the Jews -- which may be why I tend to like Jews). So I think I am as Australian as you can get. I certainly feel that way. I like all things that are iconically Australian: meat pies, Vegemite, Henry Lawson etc. I particularly pride myself on my familiarity with the great Australian slanguage. I draw the line at Iced Vo-Vos and betting on the neddies, however. So if I cannot comment insightfully on Australian affairs, who could?


On all my blogs, I express my view of what is important primarily by the readings that I select for posting. I do however on occasions add personal comments in italicized form at the beginning of an article.


I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!


I am an army man. Although my service in the Australian army was chiefly noted for its un-notability, I DID join voluntarily in the Vietnam era, I DID reach the rank of Sergeant, and I DID volunteer for a posting in Vietnam. So I think I may be forgiven for saying something that most army men think but which most don't say because they think it is too obvious: The profession of arms is the noblest profession of all because it is the only profession where you offer to lay down your life in performing your duties. Our men fought so that people could say and think what they like but I myself always treat military men with great respect -- respect which in my view is simply their due.


The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody. And I have NO investments in oil companies or mining companies


Although I have been an atheist for all my adult life, I have no hesitation in saying that the single book which has influenced me most is the New Testament. And my Scripture blog will show that I know whereof I speak.


The Rt. Rev. Phil Case (Moderator of the Presbyterian church in Queensland) is a Pharisee, a hypocrite, an abomination and a "whited sepulchre".


English-born Australian novellist, Patrick White was a great favourite in literary circles. He even won a Nobel prize. But I and many others I have spoken to find his novels very turgid and boring. Despite my interest in history, I could only get through about a third of his historical novel Voss before I gave up. So why has he been so popular in literary circles? Easy. He was a miserable old Leftist coot, and, incidentally, a homosexual. And literary people are mostly Leftists with similar levels of anger and alienation from mainstream society. They enjoy his jaundiced outlook, his dissatisfaction, rage and anger.


A delightful story about a great Australian conservative


Would you believe that there once was a politician whose nickname was "Honest"?

"Honest" Frank Nicklin M.M. was a war hero, a banana farmer and later the conservative Premier of my home State of Queensland in the '60s. He was even popular with the bureaucracy and gave the State a remarkably tranquil 10 years during his time in office. Sad that there are so few like him.


A great Australian wit exemplified



An Australian Mona Lisa (Nikki Gogan)


Bureaucracy: "One of the constant laments of doctors and nurses working with NSW Health is the incredible and increasing bureaucracy," she said. "It is completely obstructive to providing a service."


Revered Labour Party leader Gough Whitlam was a very erudite man so he cannot have been unaware of the similarities of his famous phrase “the Party, the platform, the people” with an earlier slogan: "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer". It's basically the same slogan in reverse order.


Australia's original inhabitants were a race of pygmies, some of whom survived into modern times in the mountainous regions of the Atherton tableland in far North Queensland. See also here. Below is a picture of one of them taken in 2007, when she was 105 years old and 3'7" tall




Julia Gillard, a failed feminist flop. She was given the job of Prime Minister of Australia but her feminist preaching was so unpopular that she was booted out of the job by her own Leftist party. Her signature "achievements" were the carbon tax and the mining tax, both of which were repealed by the next government.


The "White Australia Policy: "The Immigration Restriction Act was not about white supremacy, racism, or the belief that whites were higher up the evolutionary tree than the coloured races. Rather, it was designed to STOP the racist exploitation of non-whites (all of whom would have been illiterate peasants practicing religions and cultures anathema to progressive democracy) being conscripted into a life of semi-slavery in a coolie-worked plantation economy for the benefit of the absolute monarchs, hereditary aristocracy and the super-wealthy companies and share-holders of the northern hemisphere.


A great little kid



In November 2007, a four-year-old boy was found playing in a croc-infested Territory creek after sneaking off pig hunting alone with four dogs and a puppy. The toddler was found five-and-a-half hours after he set off from his parents' house playing in a creek with the puppy. Amazingly, Daniel Woditj also swam two creeks known to be inhabited by crocs during his adventurous romp. Mr Knight said that after walking for several kilometres, Daniel came to a creek and swam across it. Four of his dogs "bailed up" at the creek but the youngster continued on undaunted with his puppy to a second creek. Mr Knight said Daniel swam the second croc-infested creek and walked on for several more kilometres. "Captain is a hard bushman and Daniel is following in his footsteps. They breed them tough out bush."


A great Australian: His eminence George Pell. Pictured in devout company before his elevation to Rome





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DETAILS OF REGULARLY UPDATED BLOGS BY JOHN RAY:

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To be continued ....
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Dissecting Leftism -- Large font site
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