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This document is part of an archive of postings on Dissecting Leftism, 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.

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31 July, 2020

African women lived it up at a cocktail bar, Thai restaurant and NINE other venues after lying about flying into Queensland from Melbourne - and they may have sparked a major COVID-19 cluster

A coronavirus-infected teenager enjoyed trips to a cocktail bar and a Thai restaurant after returning to Queensland from Melbourne and lying about where she had been.

There are fears Olivia Winnie Muranga and Diana Lasu's extraordinary disregard for COVID-19 rules could spark a Victoria-style outbreak in Queensland, which recorded its first community transmission in two months on Wednesday.

The pair, both 19, arrived together in Brisbane from Melbourne via Sydney on July 21 and made false declarations on their border paperwork. They are expected to be fined $4,000 each.

A third woman who travelled with the women from the Victorian capital has already been fined and is awaiting her test results for coronavirus.

It is believed all three lived the high life around Brisbane for eight days, going to work, visiting restaurants and bars. 

A third woman who tested positive to coronavirus yesterday is believed to be the 22-year-old sister of one of the teenagers.

Ms Muranga went to work for two days at Parklands Christian College in Park Ridge, south of the city. She called in sick and went to see a doctor on Saturday who told her to get tested immediately.

She didn't do so until Monday.  Instead she continued to attend venues in Ipswich and Brisbane, including going to a Thai restaurant in Springfield on Sunday and a Southbank cocktail bar on Monday.

On Thursday Queensland's Deputy Police Commissioner Steve Gollschewski said the women are now involved in an ongoing police investigation. Authorities will probe how the women were able to travel from Melbourne to Brisbane despite the border closure, and whether they used fake names and contact details on their declaration passes.

Investigators will also probe whether the women were at party during their stay in Melbourne which was attended by about 20 people. The gathering was broken up by police, who issued fines totalling $30,000.

Ms Muranga is a cleaner at Parklands Christian College in Park Ridge. The school's principal Gary Cully confirmed a coronavirus-infected cleaner worked for three days last week.'The staff member was on site last week and then rang in sick and then that's when the trace program started,' Mr Cully told The Courier Mail.

'As far as I'm aware they were not symptomatic while they were onsite and then called in sick the following day and then the next week were tested.' 

Shopping centres, restaurants, a school, and a church they visited will shut while authorities scramble to conduct contact tracing.

The pair took flight VA863 from Melbourne to Sydney and flight VA977 from Sydney to Brisbane, 21 July

Scores of the women's contacts will be forced to isolate, and aged care facilities in the Metro South Health region will re-enter lockdown.

The incident prompted Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to announce all Sydneysiders will be banned from entering the state from Saturday. 'There will be a thorough police investigation here but now we have to act as a community and in the areas where the chief health officer says need to be closed, will be closed and I urge people in those areas when that list goes out later on today to please ensure that if you are feeling sick you must go and get tested,' she said.

Queensland residents returning will have to isolate in a hotel for 14 days at their own expense.

Queensland Chief Health Officer Dr Jeannette Young called the pair 'reckless' and said she was 'very disappointed'.

Health Minister Steven Miles said there was a large amount of contact tracing that needed to be done with the community as well. 'These young women have gone about their business within the communities that they live in and so there will be a large amount of contact tracing to be done, largely within it the Logan and Springfield areas, including shopping malls, restaurants and a church.'

The pair's entry into Queensland is the subject of a criminal investigation, with penalties for lying on your declaration form incurring fines of $4,003 or six months in jail.

There are now eight actives cases left in Queensland following three new cases on Wednesday.

SOURCE  






A report from more than 150 experts and affected community members has called on the government to punish climate change enablers

Climate skeptics would like to see this go to court.  The case would collapse like a house of cards when the full weight of scientific evidence about global warming was led

In a sobering study released this week, Australia was revealed to have lost nearly three billion animals due to the devastating Black Summer bushfires.

The fossil fuel industry has “pushed Australia into a new bushfire era” and should pay for the carnage inflicted from blazes and other disasters across the country, former emergency leaders, climate scientists and doctors have declared.

The Emergency Leaders for Climate Action (ELCA), a group of more than 150 experts and affected community members, have called on the Federal Government to impose a levy on those contributing to climate change.

As part of the 165 recommendations, the group wants a climate disaster fund set up to cover the massive costs associated with natural disasters.

The rising impact of global warming evidenced in the summer’s devastating and extensive bushfires has created the need to “fundamentally rethink how we prepare for and manage this growing threat”, former Fire and Rescue NSW Commissioner Greg Mullins said.

“This plan outlines practical steps that all levels of government can take right now to better protect communities,” he said, who is also a Climate Councillor.

“It’s important that the Federal Government takes these recommendations seriously and acts on them urgently. “First and foremost, the Federal Government must tackle the root cause of climate change by urgently phasing out fossil fuels to reach net zero emissions.”

The declaration comes ahead of the royal commission report into the destructive bushfire season which is due to be handed to government next month, which Mr Mullins hopes will include provisions for a climate response.

The cost of extreme weather events is growing towards a total annual bill of $39 billion by 2050, Deloitte Access Economics partner Nicki Hutley said, who also contributed to the report.

“Climate change, which is fuelling more severe extreme weather events and worsening bushfire danger, has serious economic consequences,” she said.

“Reducing emissions, building community resilience, and boosting emergency resourcing can help us avoid huge economic impacts and damage in the future, while creating clean new jobs right now.”

The report comes as the government faces increasing pressure to invest in a major green energy plan, with groups from across the political spectrum declaring an investment is imminent to help propel the economy out of the virus crisis.

Once the iconic divide between conservative and progressive politicians, activists and lobby groups say the need for action on climate change has reached a boiling point with evidence of environmental damage now being undeniable.

“The pressure is growing and the larger picture is a lot of the Coalition members, Liberals and Nationals, do support this transition and understand it ultimately will happen,” Coalition for Conservation chair Cristina Talacko told news.com.au.

“It’s not a question of debating the ideology behind climate anymore, we’ve gone totally past that, now it’s about what’s good for Australia, what’s going to give us resilience because we don’t want the droughts and the bushfires.”

Climate Council chief executive Amanda McKenzie said calls for a green energy policy overhaul is coming from most segments of the community but insists there are still hurdles within the party led by Scott Morrison, who once famously brandished a lump of coal during Question Time.

“There are a few dinosaurs in federal parliament but the amount of support that’s now coming from state governments, from business, and from industry will be irrepressible,” she told news.com.au.

SOURCE  







Firefighting tactics should change as climate warms, say fire chiefs

Blaming the fires on global warming is just propaganda.  Australia's biggest fires were many years ago. The important thing is to get a more effective response to the fires. And for that the measures called for below are a step in the right direction

Australian bushfire fighters should change tactics to focus on early detection and extinguishment of blazes rather than their containment as climate change has altered the nature of fires on the continent, an expert group has recommended.

Former Fire and Rescue NSW commissioner Greg Mullins said that in the hotter and drier conditions more common in Australia due to global warming, containment was more difficult or impossible at times – and on high-danger days, firefighters should seek to detect and put out fires as fast as possible.

The change in tactics would require increased funding by governments so bushfire authorities could use early-warning technologies including thermal-imaging drones and satellites and increase the number of highly trained airborne firefighting teams of the sort that defended the famous grove of ancient Wollemi Pines in the Blue Mountains.

Further, on such days, aircraft should be deployed as soon as fires are detected, said Mr Mullins.

A shortage of airborne firefighting equipment means they are often not deployed until firefighters on the ground have surveyed the fire, by which time it was often too late, Mr Mullins said.

He was commenting on the release of a report into the fires drafted after a summit of emergency, local government and community leaders, economists, academics and climate scientists earlier this year.

He called on the federal government to purchase new purpose-built firefighting aircraft such as the CL-415 Superscooper, an amphibious aircraft that can land on any large enough body of water and collect 6000 litres of water in 18 seconds. He noted that during the summer fires, many aircraft deployed on the NSW South Coast had to return to the RAAF base Richmond to refill.

The recommendations were among 165 developed during the summit hosted by the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action and the Climate Council earlier this year who gathered to develop plans for bushfire response, readiness and recovery in an era of increased fire danger.

Underscoring all the recommendations was a call for all governments, the private sector and community groups to work together to immediately reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"We are rapidly moving to a climate outside the range of human experience," says the summit's report Australia Bushfire and Climate Plan.

"This is driving an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme events and disasters including out-of-scale bushfires. Addressing greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas must therefore be the highest priority because changes in our climate are increasing the bushfire threat and reducing the effectiveness of current hazard reduction strategies."

The report has also called for improved co-ordination between firefighting authorities and the Australian Defence Force.

"Often you'll have the military saying to fire services, 'what do you need', but fire services have no idea what Defence has to offer," said Mr Mullins. Better co-ordination will be critical in fighting future fires, he said.

"You don't want soldiers fighting fires, they are not trained to do it. But they have huge capacity in engineering, in logistics. They have air bases and infrastructure. Every person they put in the field releases a firefighter to do their job."

The group also called for reforms to insurance practices in the face of increased disaster risks, and recommended that the federal government map extreme weather risks street by street across the country and identify areas where under- and non-insurance was placing recovery at risk.

It called for the establishment of a permanent independent insurance price monitor either with the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission or as a stand-alone entity.

The group also called for the creation of a national climate disaster fund to help preparation and recovery efforts to be funded by a levy on fossil fuel producers.

SOURCE  






Horticulture giants warn fruit and vegetable prices could rise due to labour shortage

Border closures really are a problem here

The horticulture industry has warned fruit and vegetable prices could rise up to 60 per cent and 127,900 jobs are at risk across the economy as the backpacker workforce faces being decimated due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In a new parliamentary submission, the industry says the loss of the foreign harvest workforce, which includes young people from Europe and South East Asia on working holiday maker visas, would cut Australia's GDP by $13 billion while slashing the value of the horticulture industry by $6.3 billion.

To address feared shortages in coming months the horticulture industry has called for a special one-off $1200 payment funded by the federal government to lure Australians from the cities to work on farms at harvest time.

The workforce concerns are outlined in a submission from the Australian Fresh Produce Alliance (AFPA) to federal Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Migration's "Inquiry into the Working Holiday Maker Program". The industry group consists of fresh food heavyweights including ASX-listed Costa Group and privately owned Perfection Fresh.

The working holiday maker program accounts for about 80 per cent of the harvest labour workforce, and the industry is concerned that COVID-19 border closures and restrictions could severely disrupt the number of backpackers able to work in Australia.

Tens of thousands of backpackers have left Australia this year and the industry fears this trend will continue.

Australian farmers need to continue to secure a workforce to harvest fruit and vegetables for Australian families.

Michael Rogers, CEO of Australian Fresh Produce Alliance
The Australian Fresh Produce Alliance has proposed the $1200 payment to harvest workers only be paid after they complete three months of work. The group has also called for a $1200 induction support payment for businesses who hire workers under this arrangement, also paid after three months.

"The AFPA has obtained data from member companies, other growers and labour hire companies that indicates from March 2020 to June 2020 these companies received 23,000 inquiries for work. Only 8 per cent of these inquiries were made by Australian citizens and permanent residents," the submission says.

The economic calculations about job losses and prices come from modelling by Deloitte Access Economics, commissioned by the Australian Fresh Produce Alliance. The 127,900 job loss estimate includes lost harvest worker roles, as well as the impact on other sectors from a dramatically smaller harvest including in transport, food manufacturing and retail.

The Australian Fresh Produce Alliance fears that without a backpacker labour force, fruit and vegetables would be left to wither and rot, or crops would not be planted because of labour force concerns.

Darren Gray explores how society sources its food, investigating how apples get from the orchard to your table.

It is also asking for the number of harvest workers coming to Australia via the Seasonal Worker Program and Pacific Labour Scheme increased from 12,000 to 15,000 per year.

"Australian farmers need to continue to secure a workforce to harvest fruit and vegetables for Australian families. And we have a current and very real challenge that we will have a shortage of workers," said the group's chief executive Michael Rogers.

Michael Simonetta, chief executive of fresh produce giant Perfection Fresh, said backpackers had been a vital horticulture industry workforce for years.

"Now it's absolutely critical to us and the horticulture industry to harvest the crops that we grow, to feed Australia and our neighbours to the north," he said.

Asked what would happen if working holiday maker harvest workers disappeared, Mr Simonetta said: "Our industry would be devastated. We wouldn't be able to pick all the crops that growers are labouring over and investing a lot of money in.

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, 2020

Ridd Case: IPA Welcomes Historic High Court Appeal

Ridd was fired for challenging Greenie lies about the Great Barrier Reef

The Institute of Public Affairs has welcomed the announcement that Dr Peter Ridd will appeal the judgement in the case of James Cook University (JCU) v Peter Ridd to the High Court of Australia. Dr Ridd is seeking to reverse the 2-1 decision of the Federal Court of Australia, which overturned the earlier decision in the Federal Circuit Court, which held that Dr Peter Ridd was unlawfully dismissed by JCU.

“This is an historic appeal. It will be the first time that the High Court has been asked to adjudicate on the meaning of intellectual freedom,” said Gideon Rozner, IPA Director of Policy.

“The fundamental issues of free speech at Australian universities, the future of academic debate and freedom of speech on climate change are all on the line in this historic High Court appeal.”

“This has been Australia’s David vs Goliath battle. Dr Peter Ridd on one side backed by the voluntary donations of thousands of ordinary Australians, and JCU on the other side who with taxpayer funds secured some of the most expensive legal representation in the country in Bret Walker SC to stifle the free speech of one of its own staff.”

Dr Peter Ridd, a professor of physics at JCU, was sacked by the university for misconduct for questioning in the IPA’s publication Climate Change: The Facts 2017 the quality climate change science surrounding the Great Barrier Reef, and for public statements made on the Jones & Co Sky News program.

Dr Peter Ridd today reopened his Go Fund Me page, appealing to thousands of mainstream Australians to once again support his historic fight for free speech on climate change.

“Peter Ridd’s fight is representative of every Australian who has been censored, cancelled or silenced,” said Mr Rozner. “Alarmingly, the decision of the Federal Court shows that contractual provisions guaranteeing intellectual freedom do not protect academics against censorship by university administrators. This is a point where the IPA and the NTEU are on a unity ticket.”

“James Cook University’s actions prove there is a crisis of free speech at Australian universities. Many academics are censured, but few are prepared to speak out and risk their career, particularly if faced with the prospect of legal battles and possible bankruptcy.

“The case has identified a culture of censorship when it comes to challenging claims surrounding climate change and the Great Barrier Reef. JCU to this date has never attempted to disprove claims made by Dr Ridd about the Great Barrier Reef,” said Mr Rozner.

SOURCE  






Ideological fervour must not trump good public policymaking response

Victoria's inability to contain the coronavirus outbreak brought on by hotel quarantine failures risks becoming NSW's problem too. There are indications that by the end of this week NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian may face some tough choices. The
question is, will she make a similar mistake to Victoria? By letting ideology restrict her options to contain the spread of the coronavirus. By not locking the state down in part or in full — swiftly enough.

The Victorian experience has been hampered by a centralised public health bureaucracy: old-fashioned, slow and unwieldy in response to a virus that rapidly takes hold. It's a sharp contrast to NSW, where the decentralised public health system is fit for purpose: able to rapidly deploy contact tracers and pop-up clinics in order to not lose control of the situation too quickly.

Contact tracing in Victoria has been ineffective and centrally organised. Pop-up clinics haven't opened up quickly enough. The state's Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton, sits too far down the health bureaucratic food chain —three rungs below the minister —to make decisions quickly enough to see action fluidly follow. Despite an impressive career, Sutton isn't a career public health clinician, in stark contrast to NSW CHO Kerry Chant. 

The centralised structure of public health in Victoria is a hallmark of how Dan Andrews likes to do business. The system 'has been years in the making, dating right back to the now Premier's time as the responsible minister during the Bracks government.

The harsh lockdown Andrews announced became his only option to try and regain the initiative against a virus that shows little mercy. However, because of the many system faults, Victoria is starting the fightback a long way behind. As of yesterday, there were 1583 cases still under investigation, which speaks to the poor contact tracing out of Victoria, not helped by the COVIDSafe app not working as effectively as promised, if, indeed, it's working at all. The six-week hard lockdown became a necessary evil for Victorians precisely because of the failures in Health Victoria's old-fashioned structures.

Polemicists on the right might like to mouth off about the hotel quarantine failures, which to be sure were the trigger for this disaster. But the magnitude of it has grown exponentially because of the structural failures outlined above. And those failures are
ideological — red meat for right-wing critics of Andrews.

The Liberal government in NSW now has its own ideological choice. Does it reject a lockdown because of its stated desire to keep the economy open, risking the spread of the virus getting out of control? Or does it recognise that even though a lockdown goes against the Liberal Party's mantra of opening the economy back up, in the long run, failure to contain this latest contagion will do more economic harm than a short (and perhaps limited) lockdown?

Andrews let his ideological preference for centralised power get the better of him, to the detriment of Victorians' health. For the same ideological reasons, he found re-embracing the lockdowns easier to stomach. The command-and-control nature of it suits his style. The economic cost of lockdowns are not front of mind.

Berejiklian can't let her ideological opposition to lockdowns be her undoing, especially when the decentralised public health structure in NSW has so comprehensively shown up the Victorian model. Like it or not, lockdowns for NSW might be the lesser of evils, for both health and economic outcomes. Sadly, the behaviour of some NSW residents has shown that if the virus becomes established, it may spread even more quickly than in Victoria.

The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee has been presented with modelling highlighting this. NSW still has a chance to contain the virus. It may even get lucky and tiptoe through unscathed, because of its decentralised structures. But if it doesn't, NSW will need to let good public policymaking guide its response, not the ideological fervour of the government of the day.

From "The Australian" of 22.7.20





Coronavirus: Hospital breakthrough removes the fear factor

A story of globally significant medical ingenuity has emerged from the rubble of Australia’s ­second coronavirus wave, as doctors and nurses use a local invention to better treat patients and protect staff.

Western Health and Melbourne University this year helped create a world-leading ventilation hood that is placed over victims, with the twin benefit of protecting staff and improving treatments.

Associate professor Forbes McGain has received the results of an initial study into the effectiveness of the hood, which is designed to contain the droplet spread of the coronavirus.

Dr McGain, who works for Western Health, said the study feedback from the first 20 patients had been “overwhelmingly positive”.

Many thousands of healthcare workers globally have been infected with COVID-19 while trying to save the lives of the sick and dying.

The ventilation hood separates medical staff from the patient without losing line of sight and contains the droplets.

For Dr McGain, an intensive care specialist at Melbourne’s Sunshine Hospital, the first obvious benefit is in the wellbeing of nurses and doctors. “The nurses in particular feel safe,” he said.

“That’s the most important thing for the hood. The nurses aren’t as worried nursing and caring for quite unwell patients.”

The hood, which effectively creates a bubble around the ­patient, also enables staff to provide less invasive therapies and improved interaction with those being treated.

Some 17 of the hoods are being used in Victoria as the medical world starts to struggle with the increasing load of the virus.

There is rising interest in the device from other hospitals and it has presented as a significant opportunity for local manufacturing and potential global exports.

The ventilation sucks air away from the patient but restricts the flow of droplets, with the hood acting as a barrier. It also enables other intensive care machines to function without compromising the safety of the staff.

The project was made possible with the support of Melbourne University’s School of Engineering, led by professor Jason Monty.

“We only have 17 of these hoods at the moment but more can be made,” Dr McGain said. “There is an opportunity for expansion with local manufacturing.”

There are 32 coronavirus inpatients at Sunshine Hospital with four in intensive care.

Western Health research nurse manager Sam Bates said the presence of the ventilation hoods was embraced by staff: “They are just so excited to see it.”

SOURCE  






NAPLAN, attendance and aspiration best indicators of HSC results

Researchers have developed a system that predicts students' final High School marks with more than 90 per cent accuracy using information such as their year 9 NAPLAN results, their HSC subject choice and their year 11 attendance.

The University of Newcastle academics say their findings raise questions about whether the final two years of school that are now devoted to HSC courses and exams with predictable results could be better spent on deeper learning and more focused career preparation.

But critics argue using NAPLAN to determine students' future would just shift Higher School Certificate stress from year 12 to year 9, and say the HSC is not just about ranking and testing students, but also giving them a strong education regardless of their social background.

A team led by Professor John Fischetti, pro vice-chancellor of the university's faculty of education, developed a system that analyses information about students, such as NAPLAN results, family background, aspiration and attendance, to estimate how they would fare in their HSC.

After feeding in the results from 10,000 students across 10 years in 14 subjects, Professor Fischetti found it could predict students' exact HSC mark in each subject with 93 per cent accuracy.

The researchers began with 41 different variables, but narrowed them down to the most influential 17, which included the amount of time students had spent in Australia, their school's demographic index, and whether the students chose HSC subjects that challenged them.

"We anticipated that [the most influential factor] would be their marks all the way through, their teacher marks, assigned marks," Professor Fischetti said. "But it actually turned out that the year 9 NAPLAN, your year 11 attendance, and your year 11 course selection were most influential. We factored in some demographic information, but those three became critical."

Professor Fischetti said the analysis showed the importance of students mastering literacy and numeracy, which is tested by NAPLAN. English language skills were also important, as was aspiration, shown by a willingness to choose subjects that challenged them.

"It puts the pressure on, that primary education really does cover on [literacy and numeracy]," he said. "If students leave primary school weak in them, they struggle to catch up. It doesn't mean it's impossible, but we found it's that 7 per cent [whose result cannot be predicted]."

Professor Fischetti argued the approach to the final two years of high school could be changed, to give students greater depth in their learning or focus on their passions, rather than study for an exam in which their results were predictable.

His comments come as a new, federally commissioned report on post-school pathways has recommended students curate a learning profile, focusing on non-scholastic skills as well as academic results, as a way of reducing focus on the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank, which is based on HSC results.

"[The HSC] is not wasted time, but we haven't taken advantage of it in the ways we could," he said. "Our exit outcome is a score on an exam, not the habits of learning."

However, Tom Alegounarias, a former chair of the NSW Education Standards Authority and president of its predecessor the Board of Studies, said educators had always been able to predict the likely outcomes of students.

"Some students achieve results that are not predicted, and that's an important part of a meritocratic process," he said. "Particularly for disadvantaged students, we should not be defining their prospects even in part as a function of their socio-economic background."

Greg Ashman, author of The Truth About Teaching, said year 9 NAPLAN assessments were not high-stakes tests at present. "As soon as they are used to determine university entrance, you'll have all the pressures of year 12, only three years earlier," he said. "It also seems unfair on students who may improve over those three years and it creates a licence for those who are so inclined to learn little in that time."

Professor Fischetti said students spent 10 years gathering the knowledge and skills they would need to do well in year 9 NAPLAN, so it would not involve the same pressure as a two-year, high-stakes HSC program.

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, 2020

Sydney Black Lives Matter protest organiser detained, protesters ordered to move on

A Black Lives Matter rally in Sydney's CBD was shut down before it even started, with police arresting and fining several protesters, including one of the organisers.

While the protest was scheduled to start at midday in The Domain, by noon protesters had left the area after being encouraged to disperse and issued with move-on orders.

Almost 1500 people had indicated on Facebook they would attend the rally, but only about 40 turned up.

Six were arrested, five of whom were issued with a $1000 penalty infringement notice for breaching public health orders.

One of those was co-organiser Paddy Gibson who was removed by police before midday after speaking to an officer. The officer had been telling protesters on a megaphone they were breaching the public health orders.

Protesters chanted, "Let him go, let him go," as Mr Gibson was being led away. He urged the crowd to disperse and not to come to his aid.

A woman, 25, was also arrested and issued a criminal infringement notice for offensive language.

The protest was organised by the family of David Dungay jnr, a Dunghutti man who died in custody in 2015 after he was held down by Corrective Services officers while gasping "I can't breathe".

Mr Dungay's nephew Paul Silva said he wanted to see the officers involved in his uncle's death stood down and the matter reinvestigated by Safework NSW.

He said police had shut down a table where protesters were handing out masks and hand sanitiser.  Mr Silva was issued with a move-on order and, as he was leaving the area, said: "NSW Police have told us we will be arrested."

Mr Gibson was released from police custody and issued a $1000 fine.

As he was leaving, Mr Gibson said he was "all right". "We tried to be as safe as we could today," he said. “We’ll continue our fight for justice. I don’t regret it at all."

Another man, who was also issued a $1000 fine, tore it up and said he would take the matter to court.

Several hundred police officers were at the rally, including the riot, dog and mounted police squads.

NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Mick Willing said while the force appreciated people's right to protest, it was not appropriate to do it in the midst of a pandemic.

"We understand that the issues in question here are significant and are sensitive to a lot of people. However, we must do what we can to ensure that the public in general are safe at this time," he said.

"We are not anti-protest, just don't do it in the middle of a pandemic. "Find another way to express your views, find another way to have your voice," he said.

Last week, police took court action seeking a prohibition order for the rally, which was granted on Sunday.

The prohibition order did not ban the rally, but left participants exposed to potential criminal sanction including for breaching public health orders.

While an appeal was lodged, it was later dismissed by the NSW Court of Appeal. Despite the outcome, protesters vowed the rally would go ahead.

Mr Dungay’s mother Leetona appeared at State Parliament with supporters just before 3pm to present a petition calling for the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions to consider laying criminal charges against the prison guards who restrained her son.

Almost 100,000 people have signed the petition. "It was a bit scary,” she said of the rally. "But we succeeded in showing them we aren't going to give up."

SOURCE  





Why the Black Lives Matter protest is dangerous

By immunologist John Dwyer

The vast majority of people infected with COVID-19 met the virus while in close physical proximity to an infectious individual for an extended period of time. Prolonged exposure not only results in a much greater chance of being infected; it makes it likely one will be infected by a lot of virus – "high viral load" – which will be a major factor in determining the clinical consequences.

This reality is not being given sufficient emphasis in our mitigation strategies.

As we attempt to tame this epidemic it is crucial that we not only practise social distancing but also focus on minimising occasions when we are close to fellow citizens for a prolonged period of time, a strategy we might call "social brevity".

Remember our local experience of one infected individual attending a wedding reception with 35 others, all of whom went home infected.

No matter how laudable the cause of yesterday’s planned Black Lives Matter protest in Sydney, it was ridiculous to even contemplate having a gathering which 1500 people had indicated on Facebook they would attend – even if wearing masks – to give voice (and potentially virus) to their shared concerns for a prolonged period.

While the organisers had pledged to divide into legal groups of no more than 20, how feasible might that have been? As it turned out, only 40 turned out for the rally, which was abandoned when its leader and others were arrested. But it shouldn't have come to that.

What irony that a protest about the need to save lives could be responsible for the loss of lives. It’s disturbing that after all these months of struggle to contain COVID infections, the organisers were defying a court order not to proceed.

As we have seen in Melbourne, a single carrier can set off a tidal wave of infections. Prolonged exposure to COVID carriers results in clusters of infection as we have seen in meat-packing plants, nursing homes, cramped housing estates and, increasingly notable, hospital settings.

More than 700 Australian health professionals caring for COVID patients have been infected. In the Italian crisis more than 100 previously healthy and often young doctors died as they were constantly exposed to huge numbers of infected individuals over many weeks.

Now, you might get infected making you way around a crowed supermarket. You might pick up COVID from a solid surface or meet it in air exhaled by a fellow shopper, but the risk is low. To avoid the greater risks, we have to extend our thinking to social brevity.

Religious services, choirs, funerals, parties, hotels where drinking while standing in groups is allowed, public transport and the normal daily routines in nursing homes all create dangerous opportunities for infection.

The data also highlight how important are opportunities to work at home. We need to pay special attention to the working conditions associated with "essential services". We have had clusters of infection on construction sites and in factories. Industry experts should be working with government health authorities to devise the best possible protective gear and arrangements for workers in such industries.

The recent outbreak of infections in Victoria clearly illustrates how quickly we can see a reassuringly low rate of new infections explode to produce so many new infections that our best efforts at contact tracing are unable to arrest the exponential increase in cases.

In NSW we are understandably nervous that our currently manageable numbers of new infections could suddenly accelerate.

While vaccine news features much optimism, the data is very preliminary and we are learning from numerous studies that natural infection may not be associated with any long-term immunity.

Too often we hear that COVID infections are only a problem for "oldies". Yet globally they are causing more and more serious clinical consequences for young people (very noticeable in Victoria at the moment), often resulting in chronic illness.

It was of some comfort that the Black Lives Matter protesters had pledged to wear masks, but that would have given them no guarantee. Numerous studies have been performed trying to quantify the value of mask wearing by the general population as a strategy for defeating COVID; the results are mixed. The controversies are well presented on the NSW Department of Health’s COVID website.

The wearing of masks by all citizens, as is currently required of Victorians, needs to be put into an evidence-based perspective. There is no doubt about the effectiveness of masks in reducing the likelihood that an infected individual will infect another.

Of course, individuals with respiratory symptoms should wear a mask as they seek testing and then self-isolate until the results are in. No-one with symptoms should be at large in the community and thinking that a mask will guarantee they are harmless.

The World Health Organisation and America’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention recommend the importance of mask wearing by all in situations such as Victoria’s. Certainly the same is true for the likes of Florida and Texas where 25 per cent of those tested are infected, but mask wearing will not provide the panacea that will terminate the COVID epidemic.

Stay-at-home orders will slow the infection rate but our need to "live" with this virus and restore our economy requires us to adapt our normal social interaction to the long-term epidemiological reality we face. That adaptation must address the need for "social brevity" for the foreseeable future.

SOURCE  





Irrigators warn Berejiklian that her minister is picking the environment over farmers

Irrigators have taken a complaint against NSW Environment and Energy Minister Matt Kean to the Premier, claiming the minister appears to be choosing environmental concerns over the interests of farmers and agriculture.

In a stunning broadside against the minister in a letter sent to Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Friday, NSW Irrigators' Council interim chief executive Claire Miller suggested the water and agriculture sectors were being treated as "part of the problem" by some wings of the government.

The letter comes after a tense meeting with irrigators on July 1, in which Mr Kean apparently stated he had been appointed by the Premier to represent his energy and environment stakeholders, and left early.

"We quickly got the impression Minister Kean was not much interested in engaging with us," Ms Miller wrote to the Premier.

"It was troubling to realise Minister Kean does not consider farmers to be among his stakeholders. This narrow view is divisive and perpetuates the false binary that pits environmental interests against farming, as if the two are mutually exclusive."

In a strong warning to the Premier, Ms Miller said the agriculture sector regarded itself as a critical player in the state’s COVID-19 economic recovery program.

"We see ourselves as part of the solution and trust we [will] not be treated as part of the problem in some quarters of government."

Ms Berejiklian declined to comment on Monday, and did not respond to a question on a claim made by irrigators that Mr Kean said she had instructed him to deal only with energy and environment sector stakeholders.

Mr Kean declined to comment on the tone of the meeting, but was forthright in what he said during the session: he wanted to see more done to look after the environment.

"In my view, farmers and industry have an important role to play in caring for our natural environment, including our rivers and waterways," he said. "But I also think that more needs to be done. That is what I communicated to the [Irrigators’ Council]."

In response to other questions regarding the objective of the meeting, he said: "I want to see a sustainable agriculture industry thriving in NSW and an environment that is in a better state than the way we inherited it."

The tension between the minister and the state’s farmers and irrigators comes at a delicate time for the Premier, who is increasingly having to mediate between MPs pushing for more ambitious environmental action while regional communities continue to reel from drought and bushfires.

Within his own portfolio, Mr Kean is pushing the accelerator on his own steep environmental ambitions — including a plan to double the koala population by 2050, announced on Sunday, and a commitment to renewable energy.

Meanwhile, regional MPs argue the government hasn't done enough to help rebuild regional and agricultural communities still suffering hardships from a nightmare summer.

"Hopefully he can remember that he's the minister for the whole of NSW and if he busts this relationship with farmers he'll be essentially hurting the environment," one unnamed backbencher said. "And I very much doubt he's been given the Premier's instruction to disregard farmers."

Another was more blunt, saying, "Kean has shown a complete disregard for the people putting food on our tables in a time of crisis."

SOURCE  






Modern Monetary Theory: ABC might like the idea, but it’s just printing money

For a man who had just announced the biggest deficit in the commonwealth Treasury’s history, Josh Frydenberg appeared to be getting off lightly.

Four minutes of ABC interview under his belt and just one interruption from Leigh Sales. It was hardly a light saute, let alone a grilling. At the mention of tax cuts, however, Sales cranked up the heat.

“But, Treasurer, on that point, sorry to cut you off there …”

“You’re not really sorry,” sighed Frydenberg. “But that’s okay.”

If the ABC were a local shire council, Sales would have been obliged to leave the room at that point, so great is her conflict of interest. So too would have the camera operator, and the bloke with the clipboard and the makeup woman, since all of them draw their wages from the public purse.

An $87bn deficit is not everything they would wish for, but at least it’s a start. A government focused on spending rather than saving might leave the ABC’s budget intact.

Sales, of course, is not foolish enough to frame her fiscal narrative like that. Her complaint about tax cuts is that they favour the wealthy. Instead, she told the Treasurer, he should target “the most disadvantaged”. “You’re forgoing income to the government at a time when you need to spend more,” she said.

If a family on the median income in a rented house in Rockdale is rich, then Sales may be right. Under the changes promised for 2022, workers earning between $43 and $57 an hour will be removed from the top tax bracket.

If targeted assistance is the way to go, our imagined middle-income family in Rockdale, a tree-starved suburb unfashionably close to Sydney Airport, would be a good place to start.

Not even the most brilliant government is able to spend with the precision of a household on a tight budget.

In the course of a grouchy interview with the Prime Minister the previous evening, Sales nominated sectors where government spending might be directed. The universities, perhaps, or the arts, where JobKeeper, JobSeeker, a special injection of $250m plus $400m in assistance for the film industry clearly wasn’t enough.

Did the Prime Minister accept that the government spending would have to remain high for some time? Did he accept that there is no urgency to pay down debt? Would the government’s spending commitments remain high and would he rule out slashing government spending in the short to medium term?

Crisis or no crisis, the conviction that governments spend more wisely than the citizens they serve is superglued to the consciousness of the utopian left. Margaret Thatcher’s projection that socialism would be exhausted when it ran out of other people’s money proved to be a fallacy.

Once its citizens’ pockets had been emptied, governments started borrowing on their behalf expecting them to pay the interest.

The left’s new fiscal fancy takes this one step further. Modern Monetary Theory postulates that governments don’t even have to borrow the money they spend. They just have to print it.

MMT began on the fringes of Australian universities as a critique of Peter Costello’s effort to pay down public debt. It found new life with the arrival of quantitative easing in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

Now the principles of MMT have been embraced at the ABC as the start of a new dawn.

“We may be on the cusp of a revolution,” wrote business reporter Gareth Hutchens earlier this month.

“What if everything we thought we knew about public finance over the past 40 years has been wrong?”

Australia’s political elite could afford to spend far more on public health and education, social housing, scientific research and green energy schemes, while eliminating unemployment, the credulous Hutchens continued.

“And yet they’re not — either from a misunderstanding of government finances or because they don’t want to.”

MMT holds that any nation with a sovereign currency and a floating exchange rate, like Australia, can print all the money the government needs to spend. The ready supply of currency will keep interest rates low.

Inflation would be kept in check by raising taxes, rather than increasing the cost of borrowing.

Coupled to MMT is a Job Guarantee program underwritten by the federal government. Community improvement schemes and other worthy public objects would act as a buffer against unemployment.

The reinterpretation of permanent public debt as a sign of good government is troubling. A Job Guarantee scheme, however well intentioned, would quickly drain the nation of its enterprising spirit and its people of ambition. It would lead us towards the dystopia described by Robert Menzies in 1942: “ … an all-powerful state on whose benevolence we shall live, spineless and effortless … where we shall all have our dividend without subscribing our capital.”

As Henry Ergas explained eloquently on these pages last Friday, the Menzies decision to harness personal ambition as the motive-power of progress, rather than state spending, was the key to Australia’s post-war achievements.

The inevitable consequence of MMT would be the expansion of the public sector at the expense of the productive private sector. Conventional economics suggests that controlling inflation by raising taxes and funding make-work schemes would put the brakes on business investment, reduce workforce participation, undermine productivity and send jobs offshore, hardly the recipe for success in a post-COVID-19 world.

Yet conventional economics, or “the neoliberal orthodoxy” as the ABC calls it, has become old hat. The tried and tested macro-economic theory that turned the fortunes of almost every industrial nation in the final decades of the 20th century is just another stone monument awaiting the sledgehammer.

The truly eye-watering thing right now is not the projection for debt or deficit, the likely need to extend emergency assistance or the Victorian government’s incompetence.

It is the break in the political consensus on fiscal policy that threatens to make our current level of government spending the new normal, even in the good times.

Public debt is heading from the billions to the trillions. But what the heck? Let’s chuck another boondoggle on the barbie.

“Gov debt is manageable & affordable,” tweeted Emma Alberici last week. “Maybe time for high speed rail?”

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, 2020

Weak, voluntary CO2 standards for Australian cars

And the Greens are fuming.  See below

The Australian car industry has finally admitted that it needs to clean up its act – but the voluntary scheme it outlined on Friday is so weak that it will barely cause a change from business as usual. And business as usual in Australia, unfortunately, means it is a dumping ground for dirty engines that car manufacturers can not sell in other markets.

The proposal outlined by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries aims for a non-compulsory emissions standard for passenger vehicles in 2030 that is actually weaker than the one being imposed, and legally enforced, in Europe in 2021.

And because it is voluntary, it won’t result in any penalties for companies that don’t comply. Any buying of “credits” suggested in the scheme will be more likely be for green-washing marketing purposes rather than actually cutting emissions and improving fuel consumption.

The lack of standards has also hit the hip pocket of Australian consumers. We each pay over $500 a year in additional fuel and maintenance, according to government estimates, because our cars are so dirty and inefficient

And yet consumers are told by government and vested interests that any move to introduce such standards would amount to a “carbon tax on wheels” and blow out the costs of new cars. Which the government’s own research also contradicts.

So it would seem to be a welcome move that the FCAI should outline on Friday a “voluntary CO2 emissions standard” that sets targets out to 2030, so the industry “can contribute to Australia’s commitment to the Paris agreement.”

It aims for a level of CO2 emissions for passenger and light SUVs of under 100 grams per kilometre, and under 145g/km for heavy SUVs and light commercials (mostly utes and vans).

The target will be voluntary, and each manufacturer will be able to plot their own path to the 2030 target, and it will allow the inclusion of Carry Forward Credits and/or Debits.

To put this into perspective, Europe is aiming for 95kg/km by 2021. That target is enforceable, and car companies face massive penalties if they don’t comply. Countries are being urged by climate experts to ban the sale of any petrol and diesel car from 2030, and many like the UK have committed to such bans.

“The intent behind this new Standard is to ensure automotive manufacturers can continue to do what they do best – and that is to bring the latest, safest, and most fuel-efficient vehicles to the Australian market,” FCAI boss Toney Weber said in a statement.

The Electric Vehicle Council, however, did welcome the move as a “step that paves the way forward” and at least means the industry recognises that CO2 standards benefit consumers.

SOURCE  





Here's how we can lift the standards of school teachers

Matthew Bach

An increased respect for school teachers may be one of the few welcome effects of this pandemic.

During the period of online learning (unfortunately still ongoing for most in Victoria) teachers did brilliantly to adapt, delivering innovative lessons.

Meanwhile, parents had a taste of just how challenging their children could be at school. More than a few were relieved when classes reopened. There is no doupt most teachers are excellent dedicated, expert and genuinely interested in the students they teach.

As a teacher and school leader before entering the Victorian parliament, I know this first-hand. But, as in any profession, a small number of teachers is not up to the mark. Most of us know someone who fell into teaching because their preferred career option didn't work out, or who always struggled academically yet is in charge of a classroom full of young minds.

One history teacher I used to work with thought, like Victoria's Deputy Chief Health Officer Armaliese van Diemen, that James Cook led the First Fleet. And while teaching religious studies I had to explain to a colleague that he was wrong to teach his students that Catholics weren't Christians. He wasn't trying to make some theological point; he just wasn't too bright.

It has been worrying to learn that one in 10 student teachers fails to meet the most basic standard in literacy and numeracy. The Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education Students, which was introduced in 2016, in time will prove to be a useful tool to improve teacher quality. So will increased Australian Tertiary Admission Rank scores for teaching courses -- not that either is a silver bullet.

When I first started secondary teaching I remember how struck I was by the almost complete autonomy I enjoyed: no appraisal, no key performance indicators, no meaningful oversight. I could teach whatever I liked, however I liked. As long as students and parents did not complain about me, I could do as I pleased.

This teacher autonomy is part of the culture of schools. But it has to change, as it has started to change — in a positive way — in the better private schools.

Far from the clutches of the powerful public education unions, some independent schools have started to introduce meaningful systems of staff appraisal. The best models include regular lesson observations by a school leader, with structured feedback; student surveys on teacher performance; targeted professional development guided by a mentor; and goal setting, with progress reviews.

This can be done, in my experience, in a collegial and supportive way. The many excellent teachers can be affirmed, encouraged and - enabled to be the best they can be. Underperformers can be supported to improve or perhaps weeded out.

This type of change, especially in state schools, will be difficult But we can't ignore the facts. The performance of Australian students in the critical areas of literacy, numeracy and science has been going backwards for years — at least since the Program for International Student Assessment first started publishing its reports in 2000. Teacher quality is not the only reason for this. From personal experience I know most teachers to be hardworking, quality educators. But if our goal is to provide every Australian kid with a great education, improving teacher quality must be a major part of the conversation.

From "The Australian" of 22.7.20





Coronavirus: Could more be done?

The national strategy to deal with the pandemic is aggressive suppression, to stop community transmission of the virus, rather than strict elimination. That latter approach, the Treasurer said, would cripple the economy, shut down more industries and not let anyone into the country. Treasury estimates a six-week hard lockdown would wipe $50bn from gross domestic product. National cabinet recommitted to the overall strategy on Friday. Acting Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said the task was to chase down every case, every day, ensure those people were isolated, to make sure the contacts of every case were notified and, where necessary, tested and isolated as soon as possible. The outbreaks in Victoria show how difficult that is, especially with a large number of cases.

In a sense, Victoria is stress-testing our systems and strategy; it points to human error, poor preparation, policy gaps, flaws in tracing tools and a rising complacency in the community and in government. Each state and territory is at a different stage of restrictions and caseload. In six jurisdictions, we’ve effectively reached elimination. For instance, there has been no community transmission in Western Australia or South Australia for over 100 days. The message from Scott Morrison on Friday was all states and territories remain on alert for outbreaks, and that we have the capacity to deal with them. “But you’ve got to be constant about it and you’ve got to throw everything at it,” the Prime Minister said. Certainly, Canberra has been throwing the kitchen sink at economic resuscitation. Nevertheless, there are signs of slippage in adherence to social distancing, isolation and tracing, and the provision of helpful public information.

Our federal system, evidenced by the sensible devolution from Canberra to the provinces for managing borders and the staged reopening of the economy, is working, in some ways better than ever. But it has led to general confusion in the community about what is allowed and what isn’t, even among those who closely follow news and monitor daily press conferences. Before Victoria’s spike in cases, with the bulk of infections confined to returned travellers in quarantine, people shifted their attitude to “up close and personal” on public transport and greeting friends not seen for months; venues pushed the envelope on allowable customer limits; companies urged workers to get back to the office but were lazy about supplying hand sanitiser or regular cleaning.

Our leaders need to step up the messaging for this new normal of germ aversion and distancing, even in states where there is no community transfer. As well, there are alarming lapses on contact tracing, especially in Victoria. One-quarter of people aren’t answering the phone when contacted by expert virus tracers; a high proportion of those tested are not isolating properly, while some in quarantine continue to refuse testing. The COVIDSafe app is not often spoken about in public by health experts or politicians. How come?

Most worrying are failures in aged care. We know the elderly are acutely vulnerable to COVID-19, as shown by the 23 deaths in Victoria’s second wave, and age-specific mortality rates. Aged-care workers, despite stricter protocols, have been infecting residents. As in other countries, Professor Kelly says “we’re learning as we go”. Mr Morrison noted one of the lessons from the deadly Newmarch episode was the need for better communication with families. Yet were safeguards put in place in other states after the fiasco in NSW? Questions remain about the adequacy of protections for aged-care residents, routine testing of staff, the rapidity of response to an infection, and the sharing of information and data in the sector about best practice. The COVID-19 crisis in Victoria exposes systemic weaknesses in nursing homes, a policy buck that stops with Canberra. Scaling that peak requires clear vision, vigilance and leadership from the top.

SOURCE  





Drought-stricken Australian cotton growers will be millions of dollars short after the collapse of a Chinese importer left thousands of cotton bales stranded

Chinese companies are increasingly shifting imports away from Australian growers towards domestic production in Xinjiang, the north-western Chinese province home to the persecuted Uighur Muslim minority. It comes as textile companies in China report the cost of Australian cotton is too high.

Industry sources, who declined to be named because the commercial negotiations were confidential, said privately owned Chinese merchant Weilin had committed to buy up to half the Australian cotton crop this year, which for the 2019-20 season came in at 600,000 bales.

Weilin offered growers about $620 a bale, at least $15 above the next best offer. But when the offer from its buyer in China dried up, it was unable to fulfil the contracts leaving growers hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket.

Industry sources said growers were left with few options to resell their bales, and most took offers of about $420 a bale.

Weilin entered voluntary administration in July. The administration firm Vincents has identified 130 creditors - taking in many more individual farm businesses which are involved in cooperative marketing companies and family trusts.

The impacts varied across businesses. Many farmers spread risk by selling to several merchants, but there are reports of growers who sold more than 1000 bales to Weilin.

The collapse of Weilin is unprecedented in the cotton industry. Australian grain growers frequently cop losses when traders, who operate in a more volatile global market, go under unexpectedly.

But never before has a large cotton merchant gone bust and left growers to foot the bill.

The company’s directors, Zhang Lin and Liu Wei, also own Weifang CHN-Miracle Agricultural Products, based in Shandong in northern China. The company invested more than $200 million in a cotton logistics processing plant to process 500,000 tonnes of lint annually. Large companies in China often have links to the Chinese Communist Party.

Zhang told Chinese state media in 2016 that the Australian market was a big opportunity for Chinese cotton producers.

"We took advantage of the strategic opportunity of the 'Belt and Road' and the policy of the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement to transport seed cotton from Australia back to the Weifang Comprehensive Free Trade Zone in our factory for processing,” he said. “Because the processing cost in China is much lower than that in Australia, it can greatly reduce production costs and improve our cotton's ability to resist risks in international market fluctuations."

Zhang said in May that production at Weifang CHN-Miracle Agricultural Products had restarted after being put on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic. “At a stage of coronavirus pandemic is passing and production is resuming,” he said.

Analysts at China’s textile network said on Thursday individual textile companies reported the cost of using Australian cotton was too high after the drought and importers had switched to Xinjiang cotton instead. “The export situation of Australian cotton is still not good,” the network said.

Senior ministers fly to Washington for talks on China
Defence and Foreign Ministers Linda Reynolds and Marise Payne will leave for the Washington tomorrow to meet with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defence Secretary Mark Esper.

The agriculture sector has been nervous about further trade strikes from Beijing after Australia was hit with restrictions on beef and barley in response to the Morrison government’s calls for an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus. The relationship has deteriorated further over disputes involving Chinese telecommunications provider Huawei and new national security laws imposed by Beijing on Hong Kong.

Australia rejected China's claim to key parts of the South China Sea on Saturday, joining the United States in branding the territorial ambitions unlawful at the United Nations.

The move could pave the way for increased naval engagement in the area a week after Australian warships encountered the Chinese navy in disputed territory between Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines.

The strategically significant area has large oil, gas and fishing resources. Up to one-third of the world's shipping passes through it. South Korea and Japan rely heavily on the route for their supply of fuels and raw materials.

The government has been surprised by the lack of immediate trade retaliation from China in response to its decision in early July to offer Hongkongers who wanted to stay in Australia visa extensions. Communication between producers, Austrade and ministers' offices has calmed down after a frantic first half of 2020.

Andrew Woods, an analyst at Mecardo, said commodities consumed in China, such as beef and barley, were more open to manipulation than a re-exported material such as cotton.

“But something that goes into China and is processed and then re-exported in large amounts, that is a different matter from a Chinese perspective because they don't want to upset their exporters,” he said.

Grant Hutchins, who runs forward market operations with Fox & Lillie Rural exporters, said the Weilin episode was an example of commercial risk in dealing with companies from Australia's largest trading partner.

"It's a new paradigm with Chinese industrial companies when they come in and use market share and then use price as the hook," he said.

“It's usually buyer beware but in this case its sellers beware. All Chinese companies have some level of government involvement. It might have been that the state representative in the company has been told to cut it loose.”

Hutchins backed the government’s more assertive China strategy. “I heard some China apologists say why are we being so hawkish? Why would be biting the hand that feeds us?” he said.

“Worst case China hits us, the dollar collapses, and we get other markets. Some people would be significantly affected by China pulling the pin but all that means is someone else's misfortune in the short term might be better for others in 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




27 July, 2020

It’s time to lift the ban on outbound travel

You know that old saying about Australia being the best place on earth, and why would anyone want to go anywhere else?

Well, you can’t currently go anywhere else. The international border is closed, and when might it open? I’m going to make the case for right now.

Not for tourists. That’s still too risky. But if you’re an Australian citizen, or indeed a permanent resident, and you want to go to Greece to visit your long-lost second cousins for, let’s say three months, why shouldn’t you be allowed?

If your family is from Lebanon and you’ve always wanted to see the village for yourself, why should you be prevented?

The Australian ban on all travel is one of the toughest anti-infection measures in the world. Nobody is telling citizens of Britain that they can’t leave. You can leave the EU, you can leave the US, you can leave Canada. Even New Zealanders are free to come and go.

Of course, you have to quarantine on your return, and get a COVID-19 test, but provided you agree to do that, and to pay, why shouldn’t Australians be allowed to leave Australia?

As it stands, Australians must submit a written application to the Department of Home Affairs to travel aboard. Exceptions are being made only in certain circumstances, like a personal emergency.

So, maybe your restaurant in Melbourne is closed, and you’ve accessed your super, and you want to spend six months finally getting to know your extended family in some other part of the world. You can’t go and not because they won’t take you. The European border has been open to Australians since the beginning of July. Maybe you’re a university student, and your course has gone online, and so you’ve decided to put the polish on your dissertation from a bar in Croatia?

You’re banned from doing that. Maybe you’re one of those people who can do all their work digitally. The Bahamas is developing a new “Welcome Stamp” for creative types who have found that they don’t really need to be in the office. It’s as safe as travel can be. Between June 17 and July 7, Barbados has reported just one active case of COVID-19.

Australians can’t take up the offer, either. These are opportunities lost, never likely to be regained, when life goes back to normal. But the ban has important implications for Australia’s status as a good global citizen, too.

Our travellers have long played a crucial role in ensuring poorer countries, and precious wildlife, are able to thrive.

Sujata Raman, who is regional managing director, Australia Asia Pacific, for the global luxury travel company, Abercrombie & Kent, has thought carefully about this issue, since it impacts her whole world.

“It is such a complex question: when can we go?” she tells Inquirer. “The health of the population must come first. But when this all started, we put aside, in a fund, $1m to pay the salaries of rangers in certain parts of Africa. Because without tourism, how do they live?

“Tourism has protected wildlife from poachers. Certainly, in the case of gorillas in Uganda and Rwanda, they have been protected by tourism. There is no question about that. It’s been incredibly important, in terms of awareness, too. Open borders allow people to consider the question of saving these species.”

Cameron Neill, general manager of travel company, Bench Africa, agrees, saying the risk of poaching of rare species increases without tourism, which helps “ensure the wildlife remain for generations, long after this current crisis is over.”

There seem to be two arguments for the Australian travel ban: first, it’s too risky to let Australians go overseas, because they might get sick. But it’s always risky to travel overseas. You can get malaria, or typhoid. The bungee cord might snap, or you might drown in a river while white-water rafting in Canada.

The government traditionally offers advice to Australian travellers, through the Smart Traveller program, which encourages them to avoid unnecessarily risky countries, but you’re an adult, so you’re still allowed to go.

The second part of the argument is: well, you can’t have outbound without inbound travel meaning those Australians who go must then come back, and they might be infected, and that’s a risk to everyone, not only you.

But returning travellers are already being asked to stay in quarantine, and to pay for it (quarantine costs around $3000 per person, and you don’t get a choice of hotel. The rules around that should also be relaxed. If you want to pay to stay somewhere fancy, why shouldn’t you be allowed?) The government claims it’s right to take such measures to protect public health.

Constitutional expert, George Williams, tells Inquirer: “In the absence of a Bill of Rights or other national rights protection, there is very little in the space that can assist Australians. I can think of nothing that would confer a right to leave the country … When it comes down to it, there are a few things a determined government cannot control given the lack of legal protection for even the most basic liberties.”

Travel has of course long felt less like a liberty and more like a fundamental human right to most Australians, who after all invented “the gap year” and probably also backpacking (our youngsters have always had to go away for a reasonably long time, because it’s always been so expensive, and everywhere is so far away.)

Going abroad is what we do: Australians made 11.3 million trips overseas in 2019. More than 8400 passports are issued every day.

Domestic tourism looks, in the end, like it will be fine during the pandemic, but the ban on outbound travel cripples those boutique agencies. It’s a frustrating situation, with the CEO of the Australian Federation of Travel Agents, Darren Rudd, telling Inquirer: “The time is rapidly approaching where we need to accept that Australians should be able to once again leave our shores.

“It may well be that the first phase of this involves Aussies who are heading off for indefinite stays overseas,” he says. “But we can re-open our domestic and national borders in a controlled and responsible manner while protecting lives.

“Travel bubbles can start right now between those states and countries that are already low risk. There were a range of security protocols put in place post-911 and we are going to need the health equivalent so let’s start doing the work now.”

There is currently no date for the opening of the borders, but for how long will Australians tolerate being held in an island version of the Hotel California? It’s time to let us leave.

SOURCE  






Australian Government sued by 23-year-old Melbourne student over financial risks of climate change

Governments have often been sued over global warming in the USA without success.  This is probably just a publicity grab

A 23-year-old Melbourne law student is suing the Australian Government for failing to disclose the risk climate change poses to Australians' super and other safe investments.

The world-first case filed today in the Federal Court alleges the Government, as well as two government officials, failed in a duty to disclose how climate change would impact the value of government bonds.

Katta O'Donnell, the head litigant for the class action suit, said she hoped the case would change the way Australia handled climate change.

"I'm suing the Government because I'm 23 [and] I think I need to be aware of the risks to my money and to the whole of society and the Australian economy," Ms O'Donnell said.

"I think the Government needs to stop keeping us in the dark so we can be aware of the risks that we're all faced with."

Experts say it is the first where a national government has been sued for its lack of transparency on climate risks.

Government bonds are considered the safest form of investment, with most Australians invested in them through compulsory superannuation.

Bonds are similar to shares, but instead of investing in companies, the investor lends a government money to build infrastructure and fund critical services such as health, welfare and national security.

Ms O'Donnell, who has invested in bonds independently from her super, said she did it to "protect her future".

However bonds, like shares, can lose value if they become less attractive to the market. This can occur if investors question a government's ability to repay them due to rising government debt, ethical or reputational reasons.

Ms O'Donnell said watching the impact of bushfires in Australia made her worry about the value of her bonds.

Despite the Government not disclosing climate-related risks to its investment products, government regulators are increasingly forcing companies to disclose how climate change will impact their shareholders.

This landmark trial has the potential to change the way superannuation funds invest retirement savings and pave the way for more climate-change-related litigation.

No damages, just recognition

Ms O'Donnell's case names the Commonwealth, as well as the secretary to the Department of Treasury and the chief executive of the Australian Office of Financial Management — both of whom are alleged to be responsible for promoting government bonds.

The case is a class action, with Ms O'Donnell representing all investors and potential investors in government bonds tradeable on the Australian Securities Exchange.

It does not seek damages, but instead a declaration that the Government and those two officials breached their duty.

It also seeks an injunction, forcing the Government to stop promoting bonds until it updates its disclosure information to include information about Australia's climate change risks.

The case is backed by heavy-hitting silk and former Federal Court judge Ron Merkel and barrister Thomas Wood, who was previously the counsel assisting the solicitor-general of the Commonwealth.

SOURCE  






Moral terror: Australia is not immune

You know we live in a strange world when classical liberal think tanks, such as the Centre for Independent Studies, are forced to draw comfort from the statements of Noam Chomsky. The left-wing radical was among 150 esteemed artists, authors and public intellectuals who this month signed a letter that condemns ‘cancel culture’ for stifling freedom of expression in journalism, higher education, philanthropy and the arts.

Writing in Harper’s magazine, the ideologically diverse group says: “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.” They go on to bemoan “an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.”

As the prominent British historian and columnist Simon Heffer argues in the new CIS Occasional Paper, Moral Terrorism,  it is abominable that, effectively, a bunch of blinkered, self-righteous activists are dictating to the rest of us how we should feel about certain issues. Blacklisting people because of what they sincerely feel and believe, and terrifying people into confessing their unorthodox thoughts in the hope they might achieve some sort of redemption, is not how liberal democracies are supposed to work.

This is a matter of grave concern that goes to the heart of liberal society. As Professor Heffer argues, by eroding free speech, the activists seek “not simply to create a certain orthodoxy of view, but to punish those who do not subscribe to that orthodoxy, even to the point of seeking to deny them a livelihood.” What the activists who run the  ‘cancel culture’ don’t understand is that you can disagree with them without wishing to obliterate them; though they seem to wish to obliterate their opponents.

To be sure, the trends of illiberal tolerance are more evident in the US (as a recent Wall Street Journal editorial)  and Britain (as Prof Heffer makes clear) than here. However, as Peter Kurti explains in a forthcoming CIS research paper, we are kidding ourselves if we think Australia is immune to these disturbing developments. Indeed, there is enough evidence to show that a small but highly vocal and zealous minority here are already using social media and parts of the mainstream media to seek to force their opinions and attitudes on everyone else.

All this is why genuine liberals — from whatever political leaning or creed — have to expose not just the activists’ ignorance and their unreasonableness, but their immense dangerousness. It is not just they invite an extremist response from their opponents. It is that if too many people roll over in front of them, we shall damage liberal democracy irreparably.

SOURCE  





US backs Australian rare earths production

The US is looking to work with Australia to boost production of rare earths and other critical minerals, according to the US Ambassador to Australia, Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr.

Speaking at the launch of a new report on US economic ties with Australia, Mr Culvahouse said the potential for improved co-operation between Australia and the US on critical minerals would be discussed next week at ministerial talks in Washington.

"There is an added impetus for us to work together in the area of critical minerals," he said. "Australia has most of the 14 critical minerals. "Australia has people with processing expertise and we have capital markets. "There is a real opportunity for us to work together.

Mr Culvahouse was speaking before leaving for Washington on Wednesday ahead of the annual AUSMIN talks next week between  Australia's Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Defence Minister Linda Reynolds, and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defence Secretary Mark Esper.

"Critical minerals are only becoming more critical," he said. "Both our countries will benefit from more robust, transparent and standards-based supply chains."

Mr Culvahouse was speaking at the launch of the report "Building Prosperity: The importance of the United States to the Australian economy", which argues that the US is Australia's most important "economic partner", a relationship contributing as much as 7 per cent to Australia's economic growth. He said US economic ties with Australia would continue to increase, with almost half of US companies in Australia expecting to increase their investments over the coming year.

In his speech he made a veiled reference to recent comments by the Chinese Ambassador to Australia warning that Australia's ex-ports to China could suffer as a result of Australia's push for an inquiry into the origins of COVID-19.

Seeking to contrast Australia's ties with China with those of the US, he said: "Australia will never see the day when a US ambassador threatens to withdraw from trading with and investing in Australia. "Recent events have shown starkly that economic security is national security. "It's not just about the money, it's who you trust, it's about shared values."

The report, by Deloitte Access Economics, argues that Australian exports to the US and the income generated from US investments in Australia collectively contribute $131bn a year to Australia's economy. It says US is now the largest single foreign investor in Australia with a total of $984bn as of 2019.

From "The Australian" of 22.7.20

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 2020

Melbourne intensive care nurse's blunt warning of big coronavirus risk to younger adults

This is contrary to all previous observations so requires explanation. 

The explanation probably lies in the origin of the current outbreak. It originated in big blocks of welfare housing. 

Many of the residents would be there because they had health challenges.  So they fit the usual observation that substantial co-morbidities normally are required for the virus to take hold.

So my hypothesis would be that the young patients came from welfare housing.  The virus normally hits the elderly most because most elderly do have substantial co-morbidities.


A senior Melbourne intensive care nurse says hospitals are preparing for the prospect of deaths among younger Victorians as authorities battle to rein in the state's coronavirus cases.

The head intensive care unit nurse at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Michelle Spence, said there was a growing number of younger adults being hospitalised by the virus.

"What we are seeing now is young people who are going to die. There is no doubt about it," she said. "And these are people who are 30s, 40s, 50s, who have no past history."

She said deaths in Victoria had so far predominately been in older people, but that would change.

Yesterday, authorities revealed 20 per cent of people in Victorian hospitals with the virus were aged under 50, including four children.

The figures also showed a quarter of COVID-19 infections were being recorded in people aged in their 20s.

The Royal Melbourne Hospital has acquired a further 22 ventilators as the intensive care unit prepares for a surge in cases.

Ms Spence, who is the hospital's ICU nurse manager, said the hospital had patients ranging from their 30s to their 80s "and all of them are at varying degrees of their COVID journey".

"We're definitely not just seeing the elderly, that is not the case at all."  "It is definitely not an old person's disease," Ms Spence said.

She said a COVID patient's time in the intensive care unit was a long, slow process, where very ill people were separated from their families.

"Being in ICU is not a nice place to be," she said. "It is absolutely not a comfortable thing to do."

Ms Spence warned the process of recovery, even after patients leave ICU, could take a long time.

She urged Melburnians of all ages to follow the directive to wear a face mask when outside their homes, saying wearing a mask was "way more comfortable than being on a ventilator".

SOURCE  






Managing Covid-19 without lockdowns

The fight against Covid-19 is a conundrum replete with knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns — as Donald Rumsfeld might have said — but policymakers don’t have the luxury of waiting for greater certainty and have to make choices here and now.

Some of the choices are reviewed in our analysis published online by the CIS this week, Policies against Covid-19: Reflections on the way in and the way out.

We conclude that ongoing or on-off reliance on heavy-handed lockdowns and shutdowns is unsustainably costly to jobs and living standards. It also produces downsides for other health outcomes, so the net impact on health over time is questionable.  Such policies deliver declining benefits, but rising costs, as shuttered business are driven past the point of no return.

Australia’s Covid objectives are now unclear. Having more than ‘flattened the curve’ of infections by mid-April below intensive care capacities that have been almost tripled, at least some state governments seem to have adopted an implicit objective of eliminating Covid — and this option is now being canvassed more openly.  But even if this could be achieved at all, it would be at an unsustainable economic and social cost.

The policies that worked best to reduce Australian infections to manageable levels were external border controls and quarantining of arrivals from overseas from early February, increasingly broadly and firmly applied through March. But as the situation in Victoria demonstrates, this policy has to be rigorously administered with no slip-ups.

With transmission from abroad shut down, keeping domestic transmission manageably low requires effective quarantine of the domestically-infected and isolation of their contacts. Contact tracing has to become speedier and interactive with testing to isolate new infections quickly.

Support for sensible social distancing has to be strengthened, relying on well-informed self-interest rather than heavy-handed proscription of business activity and customer restrictions. Providing growing evidence on the benefits of social distancing and the character of ‘superspreader’ events harnesses individuals’ self-interest and businesses’ entrepreneurship to sustain low-cost behaviour change and improve personal risk management.

This approach still involves costs. But they are lower relative to the benefits — and more sustainable than a continuation or return to the high-cost, low-benefit policies of business shut-downs and domestic lock-ins.

SOURCE  






We need a Covid plan that is, dare I say it, sustainable

When Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews blamed his own population for spreading the coronavirus, accusing them of flouting self-isolation rules (actually, his health authorities had given them the wrong advice), he threatened an extension of the current lockdown. Quite aside from the ugly blame-shifting by a leader who is yet to account for his government’s mistakes, few people seemed to consider the crucial sustainability question.

Can Victoria really keep going into lockdown? At what point does the balance between public health, economic wellbeing, community needs and individual livelihoods, deserve realistic evaluation? If you keep locking down, there won’t be much to lock down.

The whole country locked down in March and the federal government budgeted an unfathomable $130bn to sustain people through the following six months. They got the numbers wrong in a $60bn mistake that surely would have cost the Treasurer his job if the error had been to the other side of the ledger.

The wage replacement scheme has been extended by six months and $20bn but unemployment is still expected to top 9 per cent.

What if states are still locking down in a year? What if the virus is running rampant so that tourism and hospitality businesses cannot function 18 months from now? Would it be sustainable for wage replacement schemes, additional unemployment benefits and special industry stimulus packages to continue?

Scott Morrison, Treasurer Frydenberg and Health Minister Greg Hunt deserve enormous credit for putting Australia in this position; if an effective vaccine is readily available worldwide within a year, their response will rank as one of the world’s best.

But even if the current Victorian outbreak is suppressed and our national economy can operate relatively freely behind sealed international borders, how will we be placed in a year if the virus continues to run rampant across the world? How long can we continue to close ourselves off from overseas students, tourists and immigrants?

Would we simply be delaying the eventual spread of the virus across our nation? Would all our most drastic and costly measures have been in vain?

What we have done so far has our COVID-19 death rate per million people sitting at less than six, whereas the US is over 400, and in Britain and Spain it is more than 600. How long can we afford the policies that have delivered this staggering success?

We should thank our lucky stars that upwards of 98 per cent of infected people suffer minor symptoms only and the young are virtually impervious to the virus (compared to the Spanish flu which killed infants and healthy young people in their millions). We need ways of dealing with outbreaks that fall well short of closing businesses, crushing livelihoods and banning human interactions.

This is where widespread mask-wearing, social distancing and hygiene, coupled with protections for the vulnerable, offer vastly more sustainable options. We eventually might have to learn to live with the disease.

The economic sustainability of hard borders restricting interstate travel is highly questionable, especially for tourism and hospitality. And these measures hurt socially; communities like Albury-Wodonga and Coolangatta-Tweed Heads are being torn apart; families are being kept from each other.

Our politicians have been too eager to outsource decision-making to medical experts who have a singular focus on preventing infections, which we know can be stopped dead if we cease all human interaction.

This represents the “collapse of government legitimacy”, according to the Manhattan ­Institute’s Heather MacDonald, who has written about this phenomenon in the US.

“For three months, public officials abdicated their responsibility to balance the costs and benefits of any given policy,” she says. “They put the future of hundreds of millions of Americans in the hands of a narrow set of experts who lack all awareness of the workings of economic and social systems, and whose science was built on the ever-shifting sand of speculative models and on extreme risk aversion regarding only one kind of risk.”

MacDonald said the experts were “deaf to the pleas of law-abiding business owners who saw their life’s efforts snuffed out” as these decisions destroyed wealth through arbitrary decision making. This tragic summary sounds gut-wrenchingly familiar.

Secure in their permanent tenure, bureaucrats and publicly funded broadcasters have barracked for ever more draconian measures while the price has been paid by the unemployed and small business owners who have seen their hard-won assets eviscerated. As always, it is for politicians to carefully weigh-up costs and benefits.

Consider how the coronavirus measures have all but eradicated influenza infections this year and, according to the statistics, saved more lives than we have lost to COVID-19. Yet would we suggest imposing these lockdown measures every year, at these costs, to save 150 lives or so from flu? ­Obviously not, or else we would have done it ages ago.

Our leaders have changed their pandemic objectives on us without saying so explicitly. We were told initially that we were locking down to give authorities time to expand capacity within our health system so the pandemic would not overwhelm us.

Authorities tripled the availability of critical care beds nationally from just over 2000 to more than 7500 but, so far, the pandemic has not required more than 100 on any given day and fewer than 50 are being used now. We have ample surge capacity.

According to the original rationale, we ought to be more relaxed about higher levels of infection without shutting down society. So long as our hospitals are not overwhelmed, this might be more sustainable than lockdowns, especially if it is inevitable that we end up in this situation eventually anyway.

Instead, state politicians seem to be taking every infection case within their borders as a political blow. There is an absence of national policy as states ignore urgings from Canberra and shut borders and cities.

State governments seem able to shut down anything, except protests. And they are prepared to implement every pandemic ­response, so long as the federal government funds it.

This is the devolution of the federation; we are not all in this together, each state is in it for ­itself. It is not sustainable.

SOURCE  





Academic freedom bows at the altar of social media

The university was too canny to challenge Peter Ridd on his climate skepticism.  Instead they got him on a perverted legal tevhnicality

It’s out with philosophers John Stuart Mill, John Locke and Isaiah Berlin and it’s in with “the internet, social media and trolling”. According to the majority judgment of the Federal Court of Australia in James Cook University v Ridd handed down on Wednesday, that is.

Peter Ridd was employed by James Cook University for 27 years before his employment was terminated in May 2018 for serious misconduct. At the time Ridd was a physics professor. However, he was not dismissed on any academic or teaching grounds.

Rather, Ridd went down because JCU maintained that he had failed to act “in the collegial and academic spirit” required and had denigrated a fellow staff member by failing to act “with respect and courtesy”. Oh yes, Ridd had also denigrated JCU, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

In fact, Ridd disagreed on scientific grounds with the views of some fellow academics and some influential organisations about the long-term viability of the Great Barrier Reef.

He maintains that sections of the Great Barrier Reef are in good shape and that coral dies and is reborn as part of the reef’s life. This is inconsistent with the scientific orthodoxy preached by JCU and like-minded organisations.

Announcing the termination in May 2018, Iain Gordon, then JCU’s deputy vice-chancellor, referred not to the quality of Ridd’s teaching and research but to his “manner” and “disrespect”. You see, he had been charged with having “trivialised, satirised or parodied” JCU’s disciplinary processes. Why, Ridd had even sent a private email to a friend dealing with JCU that was headed “for your amusement”. How shocking is that?

It is a long time since there was genuine academic and intellectual freedom in the groves of academe — if this ever existed. The ideals pronounced by John Henry Newman’s 1875 The Idea of a University are essentially utopian. What’s new about the current JCU case is that the curtailment of academic freedom that once prevailed in the social sciences has extended into the physical sciences.

Take Australia, for example. The two big cases of academic freedom in the past half-century involve philosopher Frank Knopfelmacher (1923-95) and physicist Ridd. In 1965 Knopfelmacher, who was a lecturer at the University of Melbourne, was appointed to the position of senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Sydney. The appointment was overturned by the university’s professional board.

Knopfelmacher’s appointment was strongly supported by David Armstrong, one of Australia’s finest philosophers.

Like Ridd, Knopfelmacher went down because of his irreverent manner and a tendency to criticise colleagues in addition to his unfashionable views. An articulate and well-informed anti-communist, Knopfelmacher upset the leftist fashions of the time with his vehement criticism of the communist regimes in central and eastern Europe (East Germany, the Soviet Union) and Asia (North Korea, China, North Vietnam), and their supporters in the West.

In 1964 Knopfelmacher wrote an article in Twentieth Century magazine criticising the leftist ideology that prevailed in many of Melbourne University’s social science departments. He claimed that left-wing academics discriminated against non-leftists and exercised significant veto powers “in matters of academic preferments and sinecures”.

This accurate comment was used against Knopfelmacher by his opponents on Sydney University’s professional board.

In the half-century since the Knopfelmacher affair, the attack on academic and intellectual freedom has moved into universities as a whole, including the physical sciences. That is Ridd’s problem. JCU appears to have a view that the Great Barrier Reef is dying fast and anyone who disagrees with this orthodoxy, no matter how well qualified, does not have a right to be heard, especially if they are irreverent and outspoken.

In one sense, the Federal Court’s decision in JCU v Ridd turns on the interpretation of the enterprise agreement under which the respondent was employed.

In September last year the Federal Circuit Court (Judge Angelo Vasta presiding) found that JCU had contravened section 50 of the Fair Work Act by making findings against Ridd, giving him directions with respect to confidentiality and speech along with a “no satire” instruction. All this, the court found, had led to an improper employment termination.

However, the current case is more important than mere industrial relations. The majority — justices John Griffiths and Sarah Derrington — essentially dismissed “historical concepts of academic freedom”.

So the thoughts of Mill, Locke and Berlin are out of date. Griffiths and Derrington instead cited the work of American philosopher Jennifer Lackey concerning the internet and social media. They quoted favourably from the Illinois academic, who has written that the concept of academic freedom has been challenged not only by no-platforming but also by student demands for “content warnings and safe spaces” that “leave us in uncharted territory”.

Newman, originally an Anglican who became a cardinal in the Catholic Church, was a deeply religious man who saw a role for an essentially secular university bestowed with intellectual freedom. But many a modern campus has become an institution that acts in accordance with the notion that “error has no rights”.

This was once the teaching of extreme religious sects. Now it is being put into effect by censorious administrators, academics and students who believe that those with whom they disagree have no right to be heard.

In his dissent, Justice Darryl Rangiah placed much more emphasis on Ridd’s right to intellectual freedom. Rangiah agreed with the majority that the decision of the primary judge contained material errors on industrial law.

However, he said that while the appeal should be allowed, the proceedings should not be dismissed but remitted for a further hearing. Rangiah did not support the majority view that some aspects of Ridd’s conduct cannot be characterised as an exercise in intellectual freedom.

While JCU v Ridd turns primarily on industrial law, it is likely to have the unintended consequence of discouraging academics who are at odds with prevailing fashions in the social and physical sciences from speaking out.

Australian universities need more Knopfelmachers and Ridds — not fewer.

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 2020

Puzzle in the postcodes hit with lockdown

Yet another finding that lockdowns hinder rather than help

Melbourne local government areas with postcodes which were locked down almost three weeks ago continue to have some of the highest net increases in active coronavirus cases in Victoria, despite optimism from health authorities about a stabilisation in the state's caseload.

Analysis of Tuesday's local government area data shows that while the active caseload is falling in the City of Melbourne and Moonee Valley, which are home to significant public housing tower clusters, it continues to rise in the other four local government areas with postcodes which went into early lockdown on July 2.

There have also been significant increases in outer suburban and regional areas as the virus continues to spread among essential workers who are required to still be out and about, despite the July 9 Melbourne and Mitchell Shire lockdown.

With as much as 80 per cent of Victoria's caseload understood to be in essential workers and their close contacts, the Andrews government is now pinning its hopes on the success of its mandatory masks policy, which comes into effect at midnight on Wednesday.

The news comes as Victoria's Department of Health and Human Services, which is battling with a contact tracing backlog of more than 1000 cases, said it was "unable to provide that level of breakdown" when asked by The Australian to provide suburb or postcode-based case data for the three Melbourne LGAs with the highest caseload. A single local government area can contain more than 300,000 residents and cover hundreds of square kilometres, but the depart-ment has refused to provide a more localised breakdown of case numbers

From "The Australian" of 22.7.20





Indigenous owners lose bid to protect land earmarked for Shenhua mine

You can guarantee that any new mine, dam or road will be found to trespass on an Aboriginal sacred site.  There's money in such claims.  They usually result in a "compensation" payout for the Aborigines and their lawyers

But the company fought this one so everyone is out of pocket

This does clearly need reform.  A rule specifying that there will be no monetary reward for such claims would probably result in most such claims never even being raised.  An apology would have to suffice


An Aboriginal group has lost its bid to protect a culturally valuable site from being destroyed for the Shenhua coal mine in northern NSW, but says the fight to protect the area is not over.

Federal Court Judge Wendy Abraham dismissed the application for a judicial review of the Environment Minister's decision not to protect the Mount Watermark site near Gunnedah from the controversial open-cut mine.

The applicant, Veronica 'Dolly' Talbott, acting as a member of the Gomeroi Traditional Custodians, had submitted that Environment Minister Sussan Ley took into account an "irrelevant consideration" when she weighed the impact of the mine on Indigenous sites against perceived social and economic benefits to the local community.

In dismissing the application, Justice Abraham said the applicant had failed to establish that the social and economic impacts are irrelevant under the Heritage Act.

The judgment said Minister Ley had stated she "considered the expected social and economic benefits of the Shenhua Watermark Coal Mine to the local community outweighed the impacts of the mine ... as a result of the likely destruction of parts of their Indigenous cultural heritage."

Ms Talbott said the decision "demonstrates the abject failure of the [Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection] Act to provide meaningful protection for areas of particular significance to Aboriginal people."

She said the decision had not deterred Gomeroi elders from continuing to seek protection for the area, and the group, which represents more than 600 Gomeroi people and 31 Aboriginal nations, had made a new application to the Environment Minister to protect the area's sacred sites.

"If this mega-mine proceeds, our interlinked sacred places will be completely destroyed and obliterated from the landscape."

Ms Talbott said there is "an urgent need" to protect places of significance to Aboriginal people, especially following the destruction of the Juukan caves by mining giant Rio Tinto earlier this year.

A spokesman for Minister Ley said the ruling confirms her decision was made in accordance with the provisions of the act and has already announced her intention "to commence a national engagement process for modernising the protection of Indigenous cultural heritage, commencing with a round table meeting of state Indigenous and environment ministers."

The meeting will be jointly chaired by Minister Ley and the Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt.

SOURCE  





Top cop accused Facebook of contributing to rape and torture of kids

The Australian Federal Police commissioner has accused Facebook of contributing to the rape and torture of children.

Reece Kershaw has torn into tech giants for allowing paedophiles to hide behind end-to-end encryption. 'If I was running those companies, and you were going to contribute to the rape and torture of children, I can't see why that's a good thing,' he told the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday.

Mr Kershaw said Australian tech companies were extremely co-operative in helping the AFP weed out criminals exploiting encrypted platforms. 'The tech companies here are excellent and have been very helpful and supportive of what we have been trying to achieve,' he said.

'I'm not that happy with, obviously, Facebook and others.'

Mr Kershaw said his officers would be further disadvantaged by tech companies planning to use even more secure communication methods.

'Paedophiles are counting down the days because they cannot wait,' he said.

He said Australians could no longer ignore news of child exploitation. 'As a country we need to be more outraged,' Mr Kershaw said.

He challenged Australians who opposed legislation giving law enforcement access to encrypted communications to explain it to victims of child exploitation. 'They may never get justice because technology has been designed to keep the identity of their monster a secret,' Mr Kershaw said.

The AFP has received more than 11,000 referrals about child exploitation so far this year.

Mr Kershaw believes the insidious crime is 10 times more prevalent in the shadows of the dark web.

He warned more Australians were accessing child pornography during the coronavirus pandemic. 'There are more people at home on their computers and more desperate people across the world,' he said.

The AFP is increasingly vigilant to foreign interference in Australia, which security agencies believe has reached levels not seen since the Cold War. 'It's here, it's in our country,' Mr Kershaw said.

'Those that try to, under the auspices of a foreign principal, try to interfere in our systems and our processes, whether that's commonwealth or state government, we will take action.'

The AFP is also focused on the growing threat of right-wing terrorism.

'We don't discriminate on what the ideology is,' Mr Kershaw said.  'If you're out there to harm through violence and try and murder Austalians here or offshore then we're going to come after you, no matter what you believe in.'

Mr Kershaw, who is nine months into the role, wants his officers to seize between $600 million and $1 billion worth of criminal assets over the next five years.

SOURCE  






IEA chief tells Australia all coal must go if world to meet climate targets in orderly fashion

Fatty Birol is probably right.  But would meeting the targets change anything?

The head of the International Energy Agency has warned it will be impossible for the world to meet its climate targets, even the “modest ones,” if existing coal plants are allowed to continue operating at full capacity and for the full course of their lifetimes.

In a keynote address to the opening session of the Clean Energy Council’s first online-only Clean Energy Summit, IEA executive director Fatih Birol said the transition to renewable electricity was not enough; we should be working just as hard to decarbonise the remaining energy sector.

That is, rather than simply committing to a future where no new coal plants are built – a reality the notoriously conservative IEA accepted some years ago – we should be shutting down the existing global coal power fleet, or cleaning it up.

“The issue is, what to do with the existing coal plants,” Birol told the CEC webinar on Tuesday afternoon. “For me, it is the number one issue.

“Existing coal plants, if they operate for their normal economic lifetime… an average coal plant has a lifetime of 40 years or so, if they continue, it is impossible to reach our climate targets, even the modest ones,” he said.

“So, we have two big homework [tasks] in front of us: One, what we build new should be sustainable. Second, what do we do with the existing assets around the world? Steel facilities, cement factories, power plants – it is very important to decarbonise them.

“Even if everything new is zero carbon, it is not enough. We have to decarbonise the existing ones. And therefore, other technologies are very important; from hydrogen to carbon capture or other electrification technologies.”

The IEA chief’s frank comments impressed webinar host and Pacific Hydro CEO Rachel Watson, who described them as “very, very sobering,” particularly in light of Australia’s current energy policy debate, where new coal-fired power generation has not even been ruled out.

“So you’re well aware that the retirement of coal-fired power stations is a very hot topic in the Australian market. And I hadn’t actually heard it expressed exactly the way you did just now, that if we don’t retire early, some of the existing fleets, we will not reach our emissions reduction target,” Watson said.

“If we don’t retire [the coal plants] early, or, if we don’t use technology which decarbonises the existing plant, such as carbon capture,” Birol clarified.

“But as it stands, now, if they continue to operate as they are, impossible, and we can forget it. We can forget our climate targets,” he said.

This view was later reiterated by Kobad Bhavnagri, the global head of industry and building decarbonisation at Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Speaking in a panel discussion following Dr Birol’s address, Bhavnagri said renewables were set to dominate new investment in electricity generating capacity, as the least-cost source of new electrons almost everywhere in the world.

“That means that the electricity system is definitely transforming, but it is incremental, because you still, of course, have all this fossil fuel capacity that remains in the system,” he told the Summit.

“To 2030, the pattern of investment driven by economics alone, we think, will keep the electricity sector on a pathway towards 2°C [of global warming].

“After 2030, we need more to happen and the economic change itself, and in particular the persistence of coal in the energy systems around the world… means that after 2030 the electricity system deviates from the 2°C pathway.

“And, in all cases, we’re very far away from the 1.5°C pathway, so there’s still a lot that needs to be done, a lot of intervention that needs to take place.”

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 2020

Dr. Ridd: James Cook University wins unlawful sacking decision

The grounds for the university's actions were contemptible.  He was sacked for disagreeing with his colleagues.  If academics cannot disagree with one-another, where does that leave the search for truth?

He was not even abusive in what he said. He just said that their conclusions needed more validation -- a scientific comment if ever there was one. 

This needs to go to appeal but funding may be a barrier to that

The reason for the furore is that the JCU scientists said that the reef was damaged by global warming.  Dr. Ridd demurred


The Federal Court has allowed an appeal of a decision which found James Cook University acted unlawfully in its 2018 sacking of Peter Ridd, after the professor questioned colleagues' research on the impact of global warming on the Great Barrier Reef.

Dr Ridd was awarded $1.2 million in damages by the Federal Circuit Court in September, which had earlier found JCU sacked the physics professor unlawfully.

The case attracted intense focus due to Dr Ridd's scepticism of climate change science and the broader debate about free speech at Australian universities.

The university reiterated last year it would launch the appeal, and has maintained its sacking of the professor was based on his treatment of colleagues rather than the expression of his scientific views.

Dr Ridd had originally sought reinstatement to his position but later abandoned this in favour of compensation.

In a judgment published on Wednesday, the Federal Court set aside that compensation decision and allowed the university to appeal the earlier ruling it had acted unlawfully.

Justices John Griffiths and Roger Derrington found Dr Ridd's enterprise agreement did not give him "untrammelled right" to express his professional opinions beyond the standards imposed by the university's code of conduct.

The termination of his employment did therefore not breach the Fair Work Act, they said.

Outlining his final declarations and penalties last year in September, Federal Circuit Court Judge Salvatore Vasta suggested the university's conduct had bordered on "paranoia and hysteria fuelled by systemic vindictiveness".

"In this case, Professor Ridd has endured over three years of unfair treatment by JCU – an academic institution that failed to respect the rights to intellectual freedom that Professor Ridd had as per [his enterprise agreement]," the judge decided.

Conservative think-tank the Institute of Public Affairs described the new Federal Court judgment on Wednesday as a "devastating blow" to freedom of speech.

"Alarmingly, this decision shows that contractual provisions guaranteeing intellectual freedom do not protect academics against censorship by university administrators," IPA director of policy Gideon Rozner said. "The time has come for the Morrison government to intervene."

He added that Dr Ridd was now considering his legal options around a High Court challenge.

SOURCE  





'We're going to need the Australians': Pompeo lays out contest with China

Even Julia Gillard said that America can rely on Australia

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said global institutions trying to deal with an aggressive China are no longer fit for purpose, in part because Australia does not have a leading role in many of them.

And in extraordinary comments, Pompeo has hit out World Health Organisation boss Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, accusing him of aiding China's initial cover-up of the pandemic, saying that was the reason for "dead Britons" because he has been "bought by the Chinese government".

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo encouraged other nations to follow the UK's lead and push back against the actions of the Chinese Communist Party. Speaking on an official visit to London, Pompeo also described China's leadership as a threat.

Pompeo made the remarks in London to an assortment of British MPs at the Millbank headquarters of the Henry Jackson Society, a think tank that is hawkish on China. The society has been instrumental in leading the putsch against British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's original approval for Chinese firm Huawei to build Britain's 5G networks.

MPs from all parties, including the Conservative and Labour parties as well as the Liberal Democrats attended the meeting, which was held before the former CIA director met Johnson and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.

A source in the room said MPs asked Pompeo questions, mostly about how Britain could best deal with China, which has struck an aggressive posture since the pandemic.

Britain's own response has hardened as a result with the government suspending its extradition treaty with Hong Kong, extending its arms embargo to the territory, offering 3 million Hong Kongers potential citizenship and blocking Huawei from supplying its 5G networks.

In the meeting, Britain's former deputy prime minister and Conservative backbencher Damian Green asked Pompeo about the likelihood of assembling a global coalition to respond jointly to China to prevent it from steamrolling smaller countries.

Pompeo said any new coalition would need to perform better than the current multilateral institutions such as the United Nations Security Council where China has an automatic veto.

Pompeo said the US had boosted funding to NATO and sent it some of its best China analysts to help Europe better understand the Chinese military and its tactics. He listed the G7 and G20 among the many tools "out there" to try to uphold the international rules-based order.

Australia is a member of the G20 but not the G7; it last sat on the UN Security Council in 2014 and is bidding again for a position in 2029, which is the earliest opportunity because only one country from the Asia-Pacific region is eligible to contest each term.

But Australia's pushback against Chinese interference, including its world-leading ban on Huawei from critical telecoms networks, has earned it a reputation abroad as a pioneer in striking a security posture alongside its economic relationship with the world's second-largest economy. China is Australia's largest two-way trading partner.

"We just have to decide if any of those [multilateral institutions] are fit for purpose ... I also think that they're not shaped right for this current confrontation," Pompeo is said to have told MPs.

Pompeo said the US was actively thinking about how to resolve the issue but had not reached an answer. Greater representation was needed from south-east Asia, he said.

"We're going to need the 1 billion-plus people in India, we're going to need the Australians - it's going to take all of these democracies together."

But the most extraordinary response came when Labour MP Chris Bryant pressed Pompeo on the United States undermining the rules-based order with its own actions by quitting the Paris climate accord, World Health Organisation and Human Rights Council.

Pompeo prompted laughter when he coined them the "three sins" but strongly defended quitting the WHO, which he said was a "political" and not a "science-based organisation".

Both the British and US governments are facing fierce criticism for their COVID-19 death tolls. The US has the highest toll in the world, followed by Brazil, India and Russia. Britain is in the top 10 countries to lose the greatest number of people to the disease.

Pompeo did not provide MPs with any evidence to back his claim that Tedros had been "bought" by China.

"When push came to shove, when it really mattered to us, when there was a pandemic in China, Dr Tedros — who was hook line and sinker bought by the Chinese government — and I can't say more but I can tell you I'm saying this on informed intelligence.

"There was a deal made in the election [of Dr Tedros as the head of WHO] and when push came to shove you've got dead Britons because of the deal that was made," Pompeo said.

Speaking at his news conference earlier, Pompeo said of China: "You can’t engage in cover-ups and co-opt international institutions like the World Health Organisation."

The World Health Organisation denied the existence of any deal backed by China to support Tedros' election to the leadership position.

"WHO is not aware of any such statement but we strongly reject any ad hominem attacks and unfounded allegations," a spokesperson said to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

"WHO urges countries to remain focused on tackling the pandemic that is causing tragic loss of life and suffering."

Pompeo said the US had quit the Human Rights Council because it was "ridiculous". "To be part of the Human Rights Council who sanctions Israel but not China is nuts," he said.

SOURCE  





Coronavirus: how likely are international university students to choose Australia over the UK, US and Canada?

Unmentioned below is that Australia is in roughly the same time zone as China.  Hence no jetlag when travelling from one to the other -- a big plus

Australian universities are suffering revenue and job losses due to the current and projected loss of international students. A Mitchell Institute report has estimated the sector may lose up to A$19 billion in the next three years, while modelling from Universities Australia shows more than 20,000 jobs are at risk over six months, and more after that.

On April 3, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said international students in Australia could return home if they could not support themselves. Commentators feared such a flippant attitude would cause Australia to lose its world class reputation if it didn’t come to the aid of international students.

Months of tension with China (the biggest source of Australian university international students, at a third of the total) threatened to further jeopardise our international standing.

On Monday, the Australian government announced it will restart granting international student visas and allow current students to count online study while overseas in a push to restart international education.

Australia imposed a ban on travel from China on February 1, stranding an estimated 87,000 students abroad who were due to start their academic year in Australia in March.

By that time it was the middle of the second, or winter, semester for Australia’s big English language competitors in the northern hemisphere: the USA, UK and Canada. Most of these countries’ international students stayed to complete their semester, so universities did not suffer an immediate fall in revenue.

But universities in these countries did incur substantial additional costs as many completed the semester by transferring teaching online at short notice.

While online education meets similar standards to campus-based education, students prefer face-to-face learning. This is particularly true for international students, who see immersion in a different culture as one of the main benefits of studying overseas.

In May, many US and UK universities announced bullish plans to teach their first semester in autumn, starting in September, face-to-face (or mask-to-mask). There were various provisions for plexiglass, physical distancing, masks and regular testing.

But even partial campus reopening plans were never credible in the US when they were announced. Still, many universities in the competitor countries sought to maximise international enrolments by maintaining at least a substantial part of their campuses would be open by September.

The US

US universities no longer seem to be nearly as strong competitors for international students. While the number of new COVID-19 cases has bumpily fallen in Australia, Canada and the UK, they have been increasing in the US.

When it became clear US universities could not responsibly open their campuses, they started reversing their announcements of opening fully in September.

By July 20 some 53% of 1,215 US universities surveyed still planned to teach in person in September, 11% planned online education, 32% planned a mix of online and in person education, and 4% were considering a range of scenarios or had not yet decided their education mode.

US President Donald Trump sought to pressure universities to open fully by making studying at least partly on campus a condition of international students’ visas. He soon reversed that order, but may issue an alternative seeking the same effect.

US attractiveness as an international study destination is likely to be further reduced by the instability in universities’ plans, the uncertainty of federal immigration conditions, and continuing restrictions on entry from China and elsewhere.

The United Kingdom

Australian universities are in a much more similar position to UK universities, which are long time and powerful rivals for international students. They are expecting to lose substantially from COVID-19’s suppression of international enrolments.

Unlike Australia, the UK government has granted universities access to government-backed support such as a job retention scheme which includes short-term contracts, and business loan support.

The UK government has also brought forward teaching payments and block research grants, and increased funds for students in financial difficulty.

Unlike Australia, the UK does not impose international travel restrictions but requires entrants from most countries including China and India to self-isolate for a fortnight after entry. It will therefore remain a more attractive destination for new students until Australia lifts or at least relaxes its travel restrictions.

Canada

Canadian universities and colleges have some distinct advantages over their competitors for international students. They enjoy considerable financial and other support from their national and provincial governments.

While Canada’s average proportion of new COVID-19 cases is similar to Australia’s and the UK’s, these are concentrated in the biggest cities of Toronto, Montreal and their environs. The Atlantic provinces have Tasmanian levels of COVID-19 cases, and some of their universities attract very high proportions of international students.

Canada’s biggest competitive disadvantage is that while it will admit returning international students, it currently is not admitting new students for the foreseeable future.

The Canadian government will grant permits to international students who study online from abroad, and like Australia this will count towards their eligibility for a post-graduation work permit. The government has also introduced a temporary two-stage approval process for international students to expedite their approval to enter to study on campus when this is permitted.

But Canada is not likely to be a desirable destination for new international students until the government and then institutions can give a firm timetable and clear plans for studying on campus.

So, what should Australia do?

To remain competitive compared to the UK, Australian universities should keep prospective students updated on the issues that affect their study decisions such as entry requirements, start dates, and study and accommodation conditions. This communication should be targeted towards education agents and their clients, and be specific to individual students.

Few students and their parents are convinced about the value and quality of online education. And they fear much of the benefit of immersion in an English speaking university environment would be lost if spatial distancing required social distancing.

Australian universities will have to be as clear as they can about the benefits of the study and living conditions students are likely to experience here.

SOURCE  






Australia’s magazine industry hard hit

Yesterday, Bauer Media closed eight of the most famous magazines in Australia

It says a lot about how far – and how fast – the Australian magazine industry has fallen that when Bauer’s press release arrived on Tuesday morning, it didn’t come as a surprise.

Eight of the country’s most famous (and in some cases, most respected) magazines have closed.

From the top end of the market, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and InStyle.

From the health sector, Men’s Health, Women’s Health and Good Health.

And from the trashier end, NW and OK.

I’ll remember InStyle for putting on one of the glitziest magazine gala nights I’ve been to.

I’ll think of Men’s Health as a motivational, and occasionally inspirational, source of reasons to get back on a health kick.

And NW will be remembered as the waste of space typified by its final cover – made up stories about Brad Pitt (not) having a lovechild, Tom Cruise (not) getting married, and Hamish Blake (not) expecting a third baby.  NW – A work of fiction until the end

With the titles already suspended, there will be no final goodbye edition to readers.

But it will hopefully be the last piece of bad news we hear before the name Bauer disappears from the Australian media industry as the company rebrands in Australia and starts again under its new ownership.

And it seems fitting that the end should have come in as classless a way as possible, as that sums up the last eight years of Bauer family proprietorship.

When the COVID emergency led Bauer to suspend the magazine titles back in April, around 70 staff were made redundant and a similar number stood down.

At the time, few believed that the titles would come back, and others suspected the reason for suspending rather than closing was a cynical one.

Bauer told those stood down staff that it was unable to get them the government’s JobKeeper payments – the German parent company was either unwilling or unable to prove its revenues had fallen sufficiently for them to qualify.

It left those staff in a horrible limbo – without income but still technically employed. The staff faced a dilemma – resign to try to access JobSeeker payments, or hang on in the hopes of a redundancy payout.

Now though, the Bauer family has left the building. The company is now in the hands of private equity firm Mercury Capital.

The sale was completed on Friday. And the first priority for the new owners was to do the humane thing and put the stood down staff out of their misery. I wonder how much the Bauers saved on the redundancy payments.

Soon the company once known as Australian Consolidated Press, then ACP Magazines, before it absorbed Emap Australia and Pacific Magazines along the way, will change its name once more.

It’s the end of a disastrous eight years which saw the Bauer family’s half a billion dollar purchase price incinerated – they got back less than a tenth of that when they sold to Mercury, and would have had several loss-making years along the way.

But this can’t be explained by bad timing. Bauer completed the purchase in September 2012, from close-to-bankruptcy Nine Entertainment Co.

By then the worst of the GFC was over. Bauer should have known what it was getting into – all the trends for the magazine industry were already in place.

The Hamburg-based company, led by Yvonne Bauer, seemed to assume it could replicate the business models that worked so well in making it a powerhouse in Europe. This included strong reader revenues and cheap, repurposable content.

But they failed to take into account the Australian magazine market’s heavier reliance on advertising dollars rather than reader revenue.

The signals of weakness from magazines were everywhere.

Bauer was a key player in the coordinated withdrawal by publishers from the Audited Media Association of Australia in 2016. Hating the quarterly trade press headlines about declining circulations, the magazine players seemed to figure that no coverage would be better than negative coverage.

It was a nuclear strike against transparency. So the medium disappeared even further from advertisers’ sights. The lack of bad news didn’t stop the agencies turning away from magazines – they simply forgot they were there.

And along the way, Bauer kept on closing titles. The list of mastheads they closed over the last eight years is longer than the list of those still open. Eight in a day is still some kind of record though.

Often, being owned by private equity can spell bad news for staff. The model can be to strip out costs, artificially drive up profits and exit on a higher multiple in four or five years.

That won’t work for Mercury. There’s little fat left to cut. They’ll need to nurture the company instead.

And it helps that they paid so little for the asset. That means that once the company returns to profitability, there will be more dollars to invest in growth rather than repaying the original investment.

Soon, the company will have a new name. And it will still be Australia’s biggest magazine publisher.

And it owns some of the greatest media properties of all time. Australian Women’s Weekly, the jewel in the crown, still carries immense kudos. Luckily, brands are hard to kill.

Nonetheless, it’s a horrible time to be setting out on the journey. Advertising revenues were down for the sector by nearly 40% in April and 33% in June. Like the joke about the lost tourist looking for directions, if I were them, I wouldn’t start from here.

Nonetheless, it is a new start.

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





22 July 2020

One-touch environment assessment regime to hand control to states

Control of environmental assessments will be handed to state governments in return for a new system of national standards under a Morrison government plan to speed up major developments.

Environment Minister Sussan Ley said the government was consulting with the states over the "one-touch" regime, which would "devolve" the Commonwealth's legal responsibilities to them.

The mining and agriculture sectors welcomed the changes, while environmental groups expressed concern Ms Ley had ruled out an independent watchdog to ensure the states complied with the new standards.

Ms Ley revealed the plan as former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Graeme Samuel released the interim findings of his review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which he found was "ineffective and inefficient" and created significant extra costs for business.

"It does not enable the Commonwealth to protect and conserve environmental matters that are important for the nation," Mr Samuel said on Monday.

The Samuel review recommended cutting duplication in environmental regulation by allowing states to approve developments should they meet a strong set of national environmental standards.

The EPBC Act makes the Commonwealth responsible for matters deemed to be of national environmental significance, including the protection and recovery of threatened flora and fauna and World Heritage areas.

Under the bilateral approval system, states would be accredited by the Commonwealth to carry out environmental assessments required under the act.

"This is our chance to ensure the right protection for our environment while also unlocking job-creating projects to strengthen our economy and improve the livelihoods of everyday Australians," said Ms Ley, adding she hoped to introduce legislative changes to parliament this year.

Noting widespread community distrust of the system's ability to adequately protect the environment, the Samuel report said "a strong, independent cop on the beat" that was properly resourced and "not subject to actual or implied political direction from the Commonwealth minister" was required.

Ms Ley said the government would "strengthen compliance functions and ensure that all bilateral agreements with states and territories are subject to rigorous assurance monitoring".

"It will not, however, support additional layers of bureaucracy such as the establishment of an independent regulator," she said.

Since the EPBC Act was established in 1999, the average time taken for large, complex resource projects to be assessed and approved had increased to 1013 days from 817, the Samuel review found.

The Minerals Council of Australia said the proposed changes could deliver "faster approvals, greater national co-operation" and clearer guidelines that would "boost jobs and investment and improve biodiversity outcomes".

National Farmers' Federation chief executive Tony Mahar said the changes were "imperative" to the farm sector and "we must not squander this opportunity for overdue reform".

But environmental advocates said such changes could make a failing system of environmental protection worse.

"Without strong standards and oversight, fast-tracking approvals just fast-tracks extinctions," Australian Conservation Foundation chief executive Kelly O'Shanassy said.

She said state governments had an interest in approving developments in their jurisdictions and were sometimes even the proponents of potentially damaging developments, and it was not enough to have officers inside a department in oversight roles.

The Wilderness Society's law specialist, Suzanne Milthorpe, said the report showed environmental protection laws were failing, yet the government had proposed devolving federal safeguards to states while also ruling out an independent regulator.

Labor environment spokeswoman Terri Butler said her party would consider the report and blamed a blowout in approval times on Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment budget cuts.

"Since 2014, job and investment delays resulting from federal environment decisions have exploded from 19 days to a massive 116 days – almost 4 months – over the statutory timeframes on average in 2018-19."

Greens environment spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young said "the outlook is worse than grim". "The PM must immediately drop his plans to make approvals for big developers, land clearing and new mines easier," she said.

Mr Samuel will consult further with stakeholders before delivering his final report in October.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott attempted to devolve environmental approval powers to the states in 2014 but the changes were blocked in the Senate.

SOURCE  





How government intervention in the property market is actually harming it

Picture this: it’s a scene that plays out so often it seems inevitable. There’s an election campaign and a politician decides to shore up support by committing to a policy that’s proven to be popular: first-home buyer grants.

But what is the effect on the property market and the economy of these grants? No one knows definitively. Why?

The University of Sydney’s Cameron Murray said the way sales were reported made it nearly impossible to track and to research.

“The concerning thing in this is: why there is a gap [in knowledge]?” Dr Murray said. “Because property information, sales records and ownership records are difficult to get in this country.

“It’s almost an impossible task to match this up. So we have to go on secondary information and look at price changes in certain suburbs.”

While writing peer-reviewed research would help to discourage governments from undertaking the grants, which most agree didn’t work, governments seemed happy enough that they appeared to prevent prices from falling, he said.

So what do we know?

The approach by both state and federal governments to housing policy doesn’t work as a whole, and hasn’t achieved what it has set out to do since the post-war period, many housing experts and economists say.

Successive governments and successive policies haven’t made housing more widely available, and rapidly declining home ownership rates show this.

Housing is more unaffordable than it’s ever been, and academics and economists say the current economic consensus to housing, which tends towards as little government intervention as possible, must change if governments are to address any of their stated goals for housing policy.

Housing professor and author Hal Pawson said the idea that treating housing as a commodity and allowing market forces to dictate who got to own a home was misguided.

“[Governments] have put too much reliance on markets in the housing sphere,” the associate director of the City Futures Research Centre at UNSW said. “Housing doesn’t function in the same way as other commodities.

“It’s an experiment we’ve been living through for more than 25 years and it hasn’t had the effect that was hoped for.”

The experiment he refers to is demand-side stimulus in the form of grants for home buyers, mixed with tax settings which have turned housing into a wealth-creation vehicle for “mum and dad investors”. The grants exist in some form around the country, and have for decades.

Professor Pawson said the current era of housing policy began in 1996 when governments stepped away from regularly building public housing.

In 2000 the first grant-like scheme in this period began, offering buyers between $7000 to $14,000 to help them afford a property, in response to declining affordability.

Now, buyers can get as much as $20,000 to buy or build a new home in most states and territories, and some also offer stamp duty concessions.

The newest program in a similar vein to these grants was the HomeBuilder scheme. It offers $25,000 to people commencing a new build or renovation worth at least $150,000.

While they are effective at stimulating housing construction if targeted to new builds, they fail in almost every other measure.

“Housing is quite hard to turn the tap [supply] on enough very quickly,” Professor Pawson says.

The grants have done more to drive up housing demand than their stated aim of boosting housing supply, according to independent economist Saul Eslake.

“Up until the mid ’60s government policy was about boosting the supply of housing, not boosting the demand, but since then … governments lost enthusiasm for public housing,” Mr Eslake said.

“NIMBYism also emerged … so local and state government policy … switched to restricting supply rather than boosting it, whilst federal policy went to boosting demand [with first-home owner grants and changes to the capital gains tax grant, which boosted the appeal of negative gearing].”

Mr Eslake said cash grants – particularly first-home grants, which date back to 1964 – typically brought forward activity that would have occurred anyway, drove up property prices and did more to help existing property owners and developers.

“It’s hard to think of any other policy that’s been pursued for so long in the face of such incontrovertible evidence that it doesn’t work,” Mr Eslake said.

CoreLogic head of research Eliza Owen said this was called the “vacuum effect”, and it often left prices higher once a spike was over.

“There was what appeared to be a vacuum effect around the early 2000s [and] the GFC, as government provided grants to boost first-home owner purchases and part of the reason that demand fell away after an initial spike was because property values started to rise,” she said.

Katrina Raynor, a postdoctoral research fellow in affordable housing at the University of Melbourne, agreed and said providing grants was generally a silly and inflationary policy.

“It depends on who you’re trying to help and who you’re trying to hinder, but if you’re trying to do anything about housing affordability they don’t work,” said Dr Raynor.

“What they tend to do, particularly in a buoyant market, is that if you give people an extra $10,000, the price of housing in the market goes up by $10,000 … you’re helping the existing home owners or developer.”

Another widely panned aspect of Australia’s housing policy are tax settings which enable the precarious private rental system.

Industry Super Australia chief economist Stephen Anthony said as they were, things like capital gains tax concessions and negative gearing were preventing the housing market from working as it should and created dangerous levels of personal debt in the community.

“The tax policies let mum and dad buy one property after the other as a way of creating a retirement portfolio,” he said. “We had a debt frenzy and now the Australian household is the most indebted in the world. It’s the financial anchor that will sink us all.”

While in good times the debt load wasn’t too much of a big deal, it was a drag on the economy in the bad times, Mr Anthony said.

Housing policy could be improved by using tax settings as a supply-side stimulus, rather than using government cash to prop-up demand, he said.

Mr Anothony said tax breaks for institutions to create build-to-rent buildings was one way to increase supply, but should be paired with discouraging mum and dad investors from creating unneeded demand in buying houses by cutting negative gearing and other concessions.

Professor Pawson said while this was not the only solution, it would rein in price increases and make the whole system more sustainable.

“If a bigger component of our housing system was institutional interests, we’d have a system that’s not fickle and liable to respond by falling off a cliff, or being consumed by a house price boom when the dial turns in the other direction,” he said.

Professor Pawson said this could also be supported by a greater construction of social housing, which advocacy groups and academics had been pressuring the government to build for years.

But failing that, experts tend to agree a national housing strategy that names a problem and attempts to resolve it across Australia would also work better than piecemeal demand-side stimulus across the states and territories.

SOURCE  





'They wanted tandoori chicken': Australia's slow embrace of regional Indian cuisine

In an episode of the Netflix food documentary Ugly Delicious, the television host Padma Lakshmi is asked if she thinks Indian food is the most underrated cuisine in the world. “Indian food is really, really varied and regional,” she explains carefully. “People who have never been to India or know very little of India will only know north-western or Punjabi food. It’s always some vegetable or protein floating in brown or orange or red sauce.”

For context, she has a south Indian background, but anyone who has ever gone to an Indian restaurant and asked for chicken tikka masala might feel a bit called out at this.

Indian food, just like any cuisine, is influenced by climate, topography and agriculture, as well as centuries of trade. In north India, the temperate climate and wheat production means people make thick curries with dairy, nuts or a tomato base and eat it with bread. In comparison, the southern part of India is tropical or semi-tropical so the food centres around coconut, fresh chilli, curry leaves and rice-based dishes.

These regional differences are rarely present in Australia’s Indian restaurants. Indian food in Australia, much like Lakshmi’s assessment of North American Indian cuisine, tends to be more north Indian (or Punjabi) cuisine.

The Punjabi community were among the earliest wave of Indian immigrants to Australia and today Hindi and Punjabi are among the top 10 languages spoken at home in Australia. This meant that north Indian food became the default Indian cuisine, and it takes years to change that preconceived notion.

When the husband and wife duo Vikram Arumugam and Preeti Elamaran opened their restaurant Nithik’s Kitchen in Balmain, Sydney in 2013, their customers had never heard of Chettinad food. “They wanted tandoori chicken or butter naan,” Arumugam says.

But diners soon learned to embrace the restaurant’s south Indian flavours. “Our speciality is rice or idlis eaten with goat or fish curry,” Arumugam explains. “The food is always flavourful because we use tamarind, coconut and fenugreek.”

Nithik’s Kitchen is part of a broader trend. Though Australians can’t travel at the moment, before Covid-19 India was among the top 10 most popular tourist destinations for Australians, ahead of France or Italy. Meanwhile, ABS data estimates that Indians are now the third largest migrant group in the country. There are 592,000 Indians living in Australia as of June 2018, which is up 30% from 2016. Indian dialects including Tamil, Malayalam and Bengali saw a big jump in the 2016 census, which points to a newer, south and east Indian diaspora, who bring with them preferences for different types of Indian food.

The proliferation of dosas – a south Indian staple – are another indication of this shift. This typically rice-based savoury pancake is a versatile and healthy snack, and acts as a base for other ingredients like onions, egg, potato and even cheese. It is also suitable for people who are vegetarian or gluten intolerant. You can now spot dosa restaurants in most Australian cities. Dosa Hut is a particular success story – it opened its first outlet in 2007 and has grown to more than 20 franchises in Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland.

Arumugam notes that it has become much easier to obtain the specialty ingredients he uses both in his restaurant and as a home cook. “There was always ghee in Australia, but now I have choices in brands!”

He makes an interesting point about the proliferation of choices. Products like curry leaves or asafoetida still require a trip to speciality grocers but mainstream supermarkets have started selling regional spice mixes and curry kits. Shoppers can now find Bengali coconut daal spice mix alongside the more common korma curry sauce. These pre-made mixes cater to both newer immigrants, whose regional food is underrepresented in Australian restaurants, and to curious non-Indian customers who are broadening their home cooking repertoires.

As the range of Indian food grows in Australia, chefs have the liberty of defining their version of Indian food. Newer Indian restaurants, like Delhi Streets and Gopi Ka Chatka both in Melbourne, have done away with a regional focus and now present street food or “chaats” including bhel puri (puffed rice with assorted lentils and chutney) and pani puri (ball-shaped crispy shell filled with a mixture of tamarind chutney, potato, onion or chickpea) in a casual environment.

This shift is also clear at higher end restaurants, including Sauma in Perth. Its owner, Gurps Bagga, describes his food as regional Indian cuisine with local Australian flavours. “Our food here is distinctly south Indian, a bit of Goan and Keralan-inspired but it is also innovative and local,” he says.

For example, Bagga uses Western Australia’s hardwood sawdust mushrooms and cooks them with garlic, korma sauce, chilli oil and hazelnut truffle. “You can taste the Indian spices but I’ve added my own touch to it. You can call it modern, you can call it fusion. The important thing is that you think it’s tasty.”

And that just might be the unofficial ethos of Indian food

SOURCE  






US emphasises importance of economic links to Australia with new report

The United States has intensified its push to reshape Australian attitudes on foreign policy and trade, releasing a new report emphasising the deep economic links between the two countries.

The report by Deloitte Access Economics finds that direct trade and investment with the US together contributed more than $130 billion to the Australian economy last year, equivalent to 7 per cent of Australia's GDP.

The analysis also emphasises that the US is the most significant source of foreign direct investment in Australia.

It estimates the cumulative value of US investment in Australia reached more than $984 billion last year — more than a quarter of total foreign investment.

The report was commissioned by the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia and funded by the US State Department.

If Morrison's defence strategy sounds like war talk, that's because it is

If there's a benefit to any anxiety caused by Scott Morrison's bleak outlook of security in our region, it's that it will save time.

It is the latest push in a concerted strategy to challenge entrenched assumptions that Australia is overwhelmingly reliant on China for its prosperity.

China is Australia's largest export market by a huge margin. In 2018-19 it took almost a third of all Australian exports, bringing in more than $153 billion.

In the same period, Australian exports to Japan were worth almost $61 billion, while exports to the US brought in just under $25 billion.

But US diplomats have become frustrated by the way these figures dominate public discussions of Australian foreign policy, arguing that if you look at both trade and investment then the US is just as critical to Australia's economy as China.

A recent poll from the United States Study Centre found that only 17 per cent of Australians could correctly identify the US as the largest investor in Australia.

The US ambassador to Australia Arthur Culvahouse Jr launched the report in Sydney this morning and declared that the US was "Australia's most important economic partner".

"There's been this notion that you can have economic security on the one side and strategic security on the other. What this report shows is that they are one and the same," Mr Culvahouse Jr said.

The Deloitte report makes a similar argument.

"Australia's engagement with the global economy is often characterised with reference to commodity exports and to rapidly growing trade with emerging economies," it reads.

"That characterisation both understates Australia's relationship with the global economy and overstates the extent to which Australia's economy is at the mercy of the swings and roundabouts of emerging economy growth."

China's latest move straight from its punishment playbook

The Morrison Government seems to be betting that all it needs to do is hold its nerve and hold the line when it comes to China's trade threats, writes Stephen Dziedzic.

The report's release coincides with an intensifying debate over Australia's exposure to economic coercion from China.

In May, Beijing imposed tariffs on Australian barley and banned four Australian abattoirs from selling beef to China as the relationship between the two nations soured.

The Chinese ambassador to Australia also warned that Chinese consumers might boycott Australian products because of the Federal Government's push for an independent inquiry into the coronavirus outbreak.

Mr Culvahouse Jr made a thinly veiled reference to that controversy while launching the report.

"Australia will never see the day when a United States ambassador threatens to withdraw from trading with and investing in Australia," he said.

"Recent events have shown starkly that economic security is national security.

"It's not just about the money, it is who you trust. It's about shared values."

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, 2020

Australian Indigenous leader unloads on ‘privileged’ Meghan Markle for spreading the ‘false narrative’ of the Black Lives Matter movement

I have always disliked Meghan Markle. I saw a manipulator. Dragging Harry away from his family and into irrelevance was wicked

Indigenous leader Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has slammed 'privileged' Meghan Markle for spreading a 'false narrative' of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Alice Springs councillor called out the Suits star after she and Prince Harry filmed a video encouraging people to be 'a little uncomfortable' when tackling racism.

'Black Lives Matter continues to push a false narrative. There are a lot of people with a lot of goodwill who think by jumping on the bandwagon they are supporting Aboriginal Australians, but they are doing the exact opposite,' Ms Price told the Daily Telegraph.

Just weeks after her relative was bashed into a coma by her indigenous boyfriend, Ms Price said Black Lives Matter supporters only tend to care when the perpetrator is white.

'There is no interest in learning the truth. Aboriginal people are dying at a far greater rate at the hands of other Aboriginal people - that is something this movement is not interested in,' she said.

Ms Price described Markle as a 'woman of great privilege' who is 'completely removed from reality and circumstances on the ground'.

'Her lending her voice to the Black Lives Matter movement is silencing the voices of those people in the communities who are vulnerable to black-on-black crime,' she said.

Ms Price said said several of her family members have been murdered, including one woman who was stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend a decade ago.

Since the alleged murder of African-American father George Floyd at the hands of a cop in Minnesota, Black Lives Matter supporters have been calling for police to be defunded.

But Ms Price said the push is 'ridiculous' when the 'most vulnerable members of society' are African-Americans.

She said that here in Australia, indigenous women and children who are suffering sexual abuse and family violence, need the support of police and authorities.

Black Lives Matter protests swept the U.S. and Australia in June, but Ms Price said the movement has actually created a 'racial divide' in our nation.

Prince Harry, 35, and Markle, 38, filmed the video earlier this month from their $11million California mansion during a call with young leaders from the Queen's Commonwealth Trust. 

As part of the discussion on 'justice and equal rights', the Duchess of Sussex said people have to 'acknowledge whatever mistakes we've all made'.

'You have to look at each of us, individually. What have we done in our past that we put our hand up to,' she said.

'This is a moment of reckoning where so many people go: 'I need to own that. Maybe I didn't do the right thing there. I knew what I knew, but maybe it's a time to reset in a different way.'

Referring to the changes that need to be made, Meghan said the change requires people to feel 'uncomfortable' but come through the other side. 

'We're going to have to be a little uncomfortable right now, because it's only in pushing through that discomfort that we get to the other side of this and find the place where a high tide raises all ships.

'Equality does not put anyone on the back foot, it puts us all on the same footing - which is a fundamental human right.'

Markle, who became the first mixed race person to marry a senior British royal, also highlighted the 'quiet moments' of unconscious bias as a key issue, drawing on her own 'personal experience'.

'It's not even in the big moments right? It's in the quiet moments where racism and unconscious bias lies and hides and thrives,' she said.

She added: 'So much of what I've come to the understanding of, especially in learning even more about it of late, and obviously having had personal experience with it as well, in people's complacency, they're complicit.'

Harry added that the Commonwealth needs to follow others who have 'acknowledged the past' and are 'trying to right their wrongs,' and admitted to having his own 'unconscious bias'.

'When you look across the Commonwealth, there is no way that we can move forward unless we acknowledge the past,' he said.

'So many people have done such an incredible job of acknowledging the past and trying to right those wrongs, but I think we all acknowledge there is so much more still to do.'

SOURCE  





Jindalee extension will put a constant Australian eye on Melanesia

Hopes and fears about the South Pacific drive Australia’s policy ‘step-up’—along with the great needs of Papua New Guinea and the islands.

The hopes and needs get talked up while the fears quietly shape policy.

See that mix in the defence strategic update announcement that the Jindalee operational radar network (JORN), an over-the-horizon radar, will be extended ‘to provide wide area surveillance of Australia’s eastern approaches’.

‘Eastern approaches’ is a polite way of saying ‘Melanesia’.

Australia wants a constant view of every ship and plane operating in our South Pacific arc. What JORN does today for Australia’s northern and western approaches is to be extended to the east.

The Jindalee network is a wonder of Oz science and engineering, based on research started in the 1950s that became a core project in 1970. If it were suddenly invented tomorrow we’d be agog at the achievement: the perfect all-seeing answer for a nation with its own continent ‘girt by sea’.

Bouncing signals off the earth’s ionosphere, JORN does wide-area surveillance. A high-frequency radio signal is beamed skywards from a transmitter and refracted down from the ionosphere to illuminate a target. The echo from the target travels back to a separate receiver site and data is ‘processed into real-time tracking information’.

In Jindalee’s development phase, milestone moments were when the first ship was detected in January 1983, and an aircraft was automatically tracked in February 1984.

The air force says Jindalee’s range is from 1,000 to 3,000 kilometres, depending on atmospheric conditions.

With favourable conditions in the ionosphere (when the signal keeps bouncing) Jindalee can see a helluva long way. Several decades back, what’s known in my trade as a senior government source told me that Jindalee could sometimes track the Russian Backfire bombers taking off from the airbase at Vietnam’s Cam Ranh Bay. Take that as a boast neither confirmed nor denied, merely underlining that Jindalee is amazing kit.

As Defence Science and Technology puts it: ‘The JORN network is Australia’s first comprehensive land and air early warning system. It not only provides a 24-hour military surveillance of the northern and western approaches to Australia, but also serves a civilian purpose in assisting in detecting illegal entry, smuggling and unlicensed fishing.’

The air force says JORN can detect air targets the size of a Hawk-127 training fighter or larger, and objects on the surface of the water the same size as an Armidale-class patrol boat (56.8 metres long) or larger. Detecting wooden fishing boats is harder, or, in the RAAF’s words, ‘highly unlikely’.

The strategic update announced that the JORN site at Longreach in central Queensland will be expanded to look east as well as north. At the moment, the Longreach transmission station can cover most of Papua New Guinea and further north to the Bismarck Sea.

A new eastern array will be able to sweep around from PNG to cover Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia, probably reaching out as far as Fiji.

The timeline for the build is vague. The update allocates $700 million to $1 billion to ‘Operational Radar Network Expansion’, in the period to 2030. Much of that will be for Jindalee to look towards Melanesia.

Australia wants to turn a constant eye on a South Pacific that is, in a phrase du jour, more crowded and contested. See an islands element in the strategic update’s discussion of an era of state fragility, marked by coercion, competition, grey-zone activities and increased potential for conflict.

A driver for the Jindalee decision is found in an understated sentence in the Pacific chapter of Malcolm Turnbull’s memoir: ‘In recent years, China has been reported as taking an interest in establishing a naval base in variously PNG, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands.’

Those ‘reports’ express what Canberra thinks is a grave new fact: our strategic interests in the South Pacific are directly challenged by China. That galvanising fact casts a deeply different light on Australia’s desire to be the preferred security partner of the islands. It’s a thought about China at the heart of the third paragraph of chapter 1 of the strategic update:

Since 2016, major powers have become more assertive in advancing their strategic preferences and seeking to exert influence, including China’s active pursuit of greater influence in the Indo-Pacific. Australia is concerned by the potential for actions, such as the establishment of military bases, which could undermine stability in the Indo-Pacific and our immediate region.

Link the concerned thoughts in that sentence about ‘establishment of military bases’ and ‘our immediate region’ to express this judgement: Australia thinks China wants a base in Melanesia.

If that fear becomes a reality, Australia will have a constant eye for every ship and plane.

SOURCE  





Reform for Australia’s environment laws

Some rationalization

Minister for the Environment Sussan Ley will prioritise the development of new national environmental standards, further streamlining approval processes with State governments and national engagement on indigenous cultural heritage, following the release of an interim report into Australia’s environmental laws.

Professor Graeme Samuel’s interim report established that the existing Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 has become cumbersome and does not serve the interests of the environment or business.

“Not surprisingly, the statutory review is finding that 20-year-old legislation is struggling to meet the changing needs of the environment, agriculture, community planners and business,” Minister Ley said.

“This is our chance to ensure the right protection for our environment while also unlocking job-creating projects to strengthen our economy and improve the livelihoods of every-day Australians. We can do both as part of the Australian Government’s COVID recovery plan.

The Commonwealth will commit to the following priority areas on the basis of the interim report:

Develop Commonwealth led national environmental standards which will underpin new bilateral agreements with State Governments.

Commence discussions with willing states to enter agreements for single touch approvals (removing duplication by accrediting states to carry out environmental assessments and approvals on the Commonwealth’s behalf).

Commence a national engagement process for modernising the protection of indigenous cultural heritage, commencing with a round table meeting of state indigenous and environment ministers. This will be jointly chaired by Minister Ley and the Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt.

Explore market based solutions for better habitat restoration that will significantly improve environmental outcomes while providing greater certainty for business. The Minister will establish an environmental markets expert advisory group.

In line with the interim report findings, the Commonwealth will maintain its existing framework for regulating greenhouse gas and other emissions, and would not propose any expansion of the EPBC Act in this area.

The Commonwealth will take steps to strengthen compliance functions and ensure that all bilateral agreements with States and Territories are subject to rigorous assurance monitoring. It will not, however, support additional layers of bureaucracy such as the establishment of an independent regulator.

The report raises a range of other issues and reform directions. Further consultation will be undertaken regarding these.

“I thank Professor Samuel for his work and for his very clear message that we need to act,” Minister Ley said.

“As he works towards his final report, we will monitor its progress closely, while we continue to improve existing processes as much as possible.

“It is time to find a way past an adversarial approach and work together to create genuine reform that will protect our environment, while keeping our economy strong.”

SOURCE  




Koalas are helping humans in the effort to find a vaccine for a sexually transmitted infection

Jo is a wild koala under the purview of Endeavour Veterinary Ecology, a wildlife consulting company that specializes in bringing sick koala populations back from the brink of disease. Vets noticed on their last two field visits that she was sporting “a suspect bum,” as the veterinarian Pip Mc- Kay put it. So they brought her and her 1- year-old joey into the main veterinary clinic, which sits in a remote forest clearing in Toorbul, north of Brisbane, for a full health check.

Ms. McKay already had an inkling of what the trouble might be. “Looking at her, she probably has chlamydia,” she said.

Humans don’t have a monopoly on sexually transmitted infections. Oysters get herpes, rabbits get syphilis, dolphins get genital warts. But chlamydia — a pared-down, single-cell bacterium that acts like a virus — has been especially successful, infecting everything from frogs to fish to parakeets. You might say chlamydia connects us all.

This shared susceptibility has led some scientists to argue that studying, and saving, koalas may be the key to developing a long-lasting cure for humans. “They’re out there, they’ve got chlamydia, and we can give them a vaccine, we can observe what the vaccine does under real conditions,” said Peter Timms, a microbiologist at the University of Sunshine Coast in Queensland. He has spent the past decade developing a chlamydia vaccine for koalas, and is now conducting trials on wild koalas. “We can do something in koalas you could never do in humans,” Dr. Timms said.

In koalas, chlamydia’s ravages are extreme, leading to severe inflammation, cysts and scarring of the reproductive tract. In the worst cases, animals are left yelping in pain when they urinate, and they develop the telltale smell. But the bacteria responsible is similar to the human one, thanks to chlamydia’s tiny, highly conserved genome: It has just 900 active genes, far fewer than most infectious bacteria.

Because of these similarities, the vaccine trials that Endeavour and Dr. Timms are running may offer valuable clues for researchers across the globe who are developing a human vaccine.

A Riddle, Wrapped in a Mystery

How bad is chlamydia in humans? Consider that about one in 10 sexually active teenagers in the United States is already infected, said Dr. Toni Darville, chief of the division of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of North Carolina. Chlamydia is the most common sexually transmitted infection worldwide, with 131 million new cases reported each year.

Antibiotics exist, but they are not enough to solve the problem, Dr. Darville said. That’s because chlamydia is a “stealth organism,” producing few symptoms and often going undetected for years.

“We can screen them all and treat them, but if you don’t get all their partners and all their buddies at the other high schools, you have a big spring break party and before you know it everybody’s infected again,” Dr. Darville said. “So they have this long-term chronic smoldering infection, and they don’t even know it. And then when they’re 28 and they’re like, ‘Oh, I’m ready to have a baby, everything’s a mess.’”

In 2019, Dr. Darville and her colleagues received a multiyear, $10.7 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to develop a vaccine. The ideal package would combine a chlamydia and gonorrhea vaccine with the HPV vaccine already given to most preteenagers. “If we could combine those three, you’d basically have a fertility anticancer vaccine,” she said.

Chlamydia’s stealth and ubiquity — the name means “cloaklike mantle” — owes to its two-stage life cycle. It starts out as an elementary body, a sporelike structure that sneaks into cells and hides from the body’s immune system. Once inside, it wraps itself in a membrane envelope, hijacks the host cell’s machinery and starts pumping out copies of itself. These copies either burst out of the cell or are released into the bloodstream to continue their journey.

“Chlamydia is pretty unique in that regard,” said Ken Beagley, a professor of immunology at Queensland University of Technology and a former colleague of Dr. Timms. “It’s evolved to survive incredibly well in a particular niche, it doesn’t kill its host and the damage it causes occurs over quite a long time.”

The bacterium can hang out in the genital tract for months or years, wreaking reproductive havoc. Scarring and chronic inflammation can lead to infertility, ectopic pregnancy or pelvic inflammatory disease. Evidence is mounting that chlamydia harms male fertility as well: Dr. Beagley has found that the bacteria damages sperm and could lead to birth abnormalities.

All of this — except the spring break parties — is true in humans and koalas. Researchers who work with both species note that koala chlamydia looks strikingly similar to the human one. The main difference is severity: In koalas, the bacterium rapidly ascends the urogenital tract and can jump from the reproductive organs to the bladder thanks to their anatomical proximity.

These parallels have led Dr. Timms to argue that koalas could serve as a “missing link” in the search for a human vaccine. “The koala is more than just a fancy animal model,” he said. “It actually is really useful for human studies.”

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






20 July 2020

Australian leaders insist coronavirus elimination is an unrealistic goal

Some public health experts want us to strive for eradication of COVID-19 but political leaders say calls for this country to emulate the New Zealand strategy are unrealistic.

The COVID-19 outbreak in Victoria and lockdown of Australia's second-largest city for the second time in three months has got people wondering: are we on the right track?

Experts are mulling whether Australia should stick to its plan to control or suppress the disease to a level of cases we can live with, while acknowledging community transmission can still occur.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison insists the suppression strategy is broadly working as intended. It's kept the virus at bay in seven of the eight states and territories while allowing the economy to gradually reopen and jobs to return.

Morrison emphasised this week his preferred strategy has not changed. He wants to go right down the middle of the road, favouring neither a hard lockdown of business nor a let-it-rip approach.

The national spoiler – and dead weight on the economy – is of course Victoria. The hundreds of cases of community transmission now being detected every day in that state suggest we are going to have live with coronavirus for a long time. How we choose to do that and how well we execute on that plan will affect lives and livelihoods across the country.

Right now the pointy end of the debate is whether we stick with suppression or switch tack to elimination, which is what they are regarded to have done across the ditch. This means to eradicate community transmission by following New Zealand's example, where the motto is " keep it out, find it and stamp it out".

Victoria's Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton, says Australia should consider pursuing elimination once the current outbreak is brought under control.

Daniel Andrews, the state's Premier, says Victoria is a long way from being able to contemplate elimination. So far no political leaders are publicly advocating for this. In recent days, however, an increasing number of public health experts have come out in favour of a harder, and more prolonged lockdown to, in the words of Melbourne University epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely, "knock the bugger on the head".

The attractions are obvious: fewer virus cases, fewer deaths and, if successful, potentially allowing the domestic economy to open up more freely.

New Zealand's economy shrank about twice as much as Australia's in March, April and May. But on June 8, after no new cases were recorded for two weeks, all domestic restrictions were lifted. The country is not COVID-19 free – in the week to Thursday eight new cases were reported – but there has been no community transmission for two-and-a-half months. Most Kiwis have returned to work, bars are jumping, and the crowds are back at the football. The New Zealand economy may rebound faster than Australia's.

One fan of this approach, former federal Department of Health boss Stephen Duckett says achieving elimination would stop the "the yo-yoing" between partial freedom and hard lockdowns dictated by the present suppression strategy.

Morrison, however, says eradication would be a "very risky strategy" and the goal can be "very illusory".

There is a litany of problems with a total elimination strategy – not just the severe economic damage from a more prolonged shutdown of the economy for months to try to get active cases to zero.

The federal government's Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Nick Coatsworth, says eliminating COVID-19 is a "false hope" and would be a realistic national strategy only if a vaccine becomes available – and that's a big if.

If there was a guarantee – or even good grounds to hope – that there will a vaccine available in coming months, there would be a much stronger case to shutter the economy, close the borders and wait it out. But we are not in that territory; there has never been a vaccine for a coronavirus and even the most optimistic experts suggest this won't change for at least a year.

As Coatsworth points out, the World Health Organisation has recently confirmed its view that elimination or eradication are not realistic goals.

"In Australia, we will continue to strive for local elimination wherever possible. We remain one of the world's most successful nations in the fight against COVID-19.

"We have achieved this, not by pursuing the false hope of elimination, but by realistic, pragmatic and proportionate action when it is most necessary."

Proponents of the federal government's "steady as she goes" approach say the spiralling numbers in Victoria are a failure of execution. It was not the suppression strategy that was at fault but the way it was carried out. Lax hotel quarantining by private security guards and suboptimal testing and tracing compared with other states are the prime reasons why Victoria has suffered an outbreak. Assuming an elimination strategy had been in place, if these weaknesses were still present, the outcome would have been no different.

Morrison hinted this week that Victoria's tracing capacity was not as good as that of NSW, which has now lent resources to its southern neighbour. He suggested Victoria's coronavirus outbreak had been exacerbated by contact tracing delays blowing out beyond the recommended 24 hours, enabling infected people to unwittingly spread the virus in the community.

NSW was getting on top of its problems more quickly due to better procedures, Morrison said.

Katie Allen, the federal Liberal MP for the inner Melbourne seat of Higgins –and a qualified doctor – says a review of Victoria's testing and contact tracing is needed, in addition to the announced review of hotel quarantining.

Health Minister Greg Hunt wants to stick to the three major methods – physical distancing and hygiene, testing and tracing, and quarantine. Hunt donned a face mask in public for the first time this week – a measure that international evidence shows is effective in slowing the spread of the virus.

Federal Labor's health spokesman, Chris Bowen, says an elimination strategy would have implications for the economy and mental health.

Employment figures this week showed the reopening of the economy restored 210,000 jobs in June, before Victoria's renewed shutdown. All the gains were in part-time jobs as employers began to rehire.

The headline unemployment rate edged up to 7.4 per cent, the highest since 1998. But the real underlying jobless rate is about 12 per cent if two other groups – those working zero hours on JobKeeper and those who have given up looking for work so are no longer counted as being in the labor force – are included.

Melbourne-based ANZ senior economist Catherine Birch says the rise in employment was "solid", but a "second wave" of job losses looms from the lockdown of Victoria.

"Metropolitan Melbourne and Mitchell Shire together account for an estimated 21 per cent of national employment, so the new lockdown will set the labour market recovery back," she says.

"While Melbourne workers will feel the worst of it, regional Victoria will also be affected, and the nationwide recovery is likely to be slower, as consumer and business confidence is undermined, demand is more fragile and businesses more cautious about hiring."

While the outbreak in Victoria has shocked the nation, in an international context, our infection rates are comparatively low, as are the 111 COVID-19 fatalities recorded to date. These equate to less than 2 per cent of the 15,330 people who died of respiratory system diseases in Australia last year, according to doctor-certified deaths recorded by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Some 56 per cent of those who have died in Australia from COVID-19 complications were aged in their 80s or 90s, 29 per cent were in their 70s and 12 per cent were in their 60s. Almost 70 per cent of people had pre-existing chronic conditions including hypertension, dementia, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cancer.

The deaths are a massive undershoot of the government's overly pessimistic preliminary epidemiological modelling in early March, The initial modelling based on limited available international data suggested 50,000 to 150,000 people could die of the virus.

If Australia had suffered the same per capita COVID-19 death rates of the much maligned United States, about 10,500 Australians would have died to date.

The modelling also showed daily demand at its peak for intensive care beds could hit almost 5000, 17,000 or 35,000, depending on how hard governments locked down.

The projections by epidemiologists at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity swamped the 2200 ICU beds available at hospitals. So far, the ICU daily occupancy for COVID-19 patients peaked at below 100 in early April, although the numbers are increasing in Victoria with 32 COVID-19 patients in ICU by Friday.

The original justification for the national business lockdowns that began in late March was to build capacity in the health system to prevent hospitals being overwhelmed by the virus.

ICU beds have more than tripled to 7000. We are ready.

The smaller and more isolated states such as Western Australia and South Australia have been able to virtually achieve elimination of community transmission in recent months.

Yet the large states of NSW and Victoria have had to carry the load of accepting the majority of returning international travellers, who have a much higher rate of COVID-19.

From March 21, 2020, to June 30, 2020, more than 212,000 travellers arrived via air into Australia – about 72 per cent of the returned travellers going to the two main states. More than 96,000 arrived in Sydney, followed by more than 56,000 in Victoria.

Hence, the federal government has slashed the number of returning international travellers to 4000 a week, from about 7000.

New Zealand's population is one-fifth the size of Australia's and has far fewer returning international passengers – making quarantine and elimination an easier task.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian's management of the pandemic has been widely praised. In comments this week, she sounded reluctant but firm. Elimination is not a realistic goal. "I think suppression is our only option," Berejiklian says.

"Whilst we would all love to adopt a policy of elimination, it's, I think, unrealistic to assume we would get there – in fact, very unrealistic. Suppression is definitely the right strategy for a population the size of ours."

SOURCE  






Mark Leibler, his ‘lobby’ and their legacy

In the morning of a warm late summer’s day last year, Mark Leibler is getting­ ready to travel to Israel. We are sitting at a small table in his office, but he is oblivious to the sweeping views of the city that shimmers in the sunlight.

He has made these visits for 25 years, ever since he was elected to the two major inter­national Jewish organisa­tions that help determine how the substantial sums of money raised in diaspora communities will be spent on projects in Israel and, increasingl­y, in diaspora Jewish communities, especially the six-million-strong US community.

Even when he is in Israel, when his days are packed with meetings, he will be in constant touch with his office at Arnold Bloch Leibler, where he has been a partner for almost 50 years. He will take and make calls at any time of the day and night, talking to Jewish­ community leaders and Indigenous leaders who regularly seek him out for advice. Leibler is a man of many parts and he has learnt to move across these parts — from lawyer to Jewish leader to activist on behalf of Indigenous causes — so that each part enriches the others.

He is not well known to most Australians. His name does not appear in the newspapers often, though he has become, over the years, the go-to tax lawyer for financ­ial journalists. Yet his influence far exceeds his public profile. Of the 200 people and families on the 2019 Rich List, nearly one in five are clients of Arnold Bloch Leibler. Partly as a result of this client base, Leibler is widely recog­nised as one of Australia’s most influential tax lawyers. He has given advice and put the case for changes to tax laws to every Australian treasurer since John Howard had the job in the 1970s.

Since the late 1990s, when his older brother, Isi, pre-eminent leader of Jews in Australia and a major figure in world Jewry, settled­ in Israel, Mark Leibler has been recognised as Australia’s most influential and powerful Jewish leader, and has become increasin­gly influential in international Jewry. The Jerusalem Post has described him as one of the world’s 50 most influential Jews. He has had, and still has, relationshi­ps with Israeli politic­ians, including prime ministers.

Anyone who has lived such a public life, and has been involved in so many different and seemingly unconnected areas, is bound to have critics and even enemies. Leibler has both. Former senior Australian Taxation Office offic­ials who have had dealings with him have said he has a reputation as a bully who intimidates junior staffers conducting audits of his clients. Within the Jewish community, he has a reputation for being arrogant and a formidable and difficult opponent. Academic and writer Mark Baker, a lifelong Zionist, believes that Leibler has tried and has largely succeeded in shutting down any criticism of Israe­l in the Jewish community.

Over 40 or more years of public life, Leibler has developed and sustained close relationships — he calls them friendships — with senior Australian politicians, from Bill Hayden when he was foreign minister in the Hawke government to prime ministers John Howard, Paul Keating and Julia Gillard. Keating calls Leibler a friend. Gillard says that in her most difficult days as prime minister, she felt from him “a care and concern about me as a human being”. Indigenous leader Noel Pearson considers Leibler to be not just a mentor who taught him about the workings of power, but a father figure.

Others, such as Kevin Rudd when he was prime minister and foreign minister, and Bob Carr when he replaced Rudd as foreign minister, do not share such warm assessments of him. Both Rudd and Carr came to believe that Leibler and the “Israel lobby”, as they called it and which Leibler led, was a malign force in Australian politics, one that distorted Australia’s policies on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and turned many politicians and journalists into the lobby’s puppets, or, to use Carr’s word, “poodles”. Rudd came to believe that the lobby and Leibler in particular helped organise the coup that saw him replaced as prime minister by Gillard.

It was the so-called passports affair that solidified Rudd’s conviction that the Israel lobby was out to get him. On May 16, 2010, Australia expelled an Israeli diplomat who was also a senior agent of Israeli security service Mossad, after Mossad agents had used fake Australian passports to enter Dubai. There they had assassinated one of the top arms dealers of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist organisation that since 2007 has been the de facto governing ­authority in the Gaza Strip.

Rudd declared that the relationship with Israel had been affect­ed by this “outrageous” use of fake Australian passports. He said this was especially so, given that Mossad had used Australian passports for another operation in 2003, the details of which neither Israeli nor Australian security officia­ls have ever disclosed. After the 2003 incident, according to Rudd, Mossad had given ASIO a secret undertaking never to use Australian passports for any Israeli­ security exercise again.

Leibler, the chairman of the Australia Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, the powerful and priv­ately funded lobbying organisation for Israel, took extensive notes about the passports fiasco. These notes show the extent to which this crisis challenged and consumed him. They also show that he could reach out to cabinet ministers and senior public servants­, who invariably took his calls or agreed to see him. The passports incident was especially difficult, because it was impossible to defend what the Israelis had done.

Leibler has notes of conversations with foreign minister Stephen­ Smith and with other members of the Rudd government, as well as with senior Foreign­ Affairs officials, including Dennis Richardson, then head of the Department of Foreign Affairs­ and Trade. His notes record­ a meeting on May 27, 2010, with Richardson, who had been head of ASIO when Israeli agents had used fake Australian passports in 2003. At the meeting, Richardson said that a memorandum of understanding had been drawn up after the 2003 incid­ent, which spelled out that Mossad would not use Australian passports again.

Leibler told ­Richardson that on his next visit to Israel he would arrange a meeting with the head of Mossad to convey his concerns, and Richardson’s, about the further use of Australian passports. Leibler’s notes also reveal he told Richardson that Rudd had overreacted by expelling the Israeli diplomat, but that Leibler knew Israel did not have a strong case to argue over the expulsion. He wanted to settle this issue and for things to “move on”. He wanted to make it clear to Richardson that he, Leibler, could convey to Israeli leaders, including the head of Mossad, Richardson’s concerns.

Rudd gave his version of these events in the second volume of his memoirs, The PM Years, published in late 2018. Rudd writes in his book that what he called the Israel lobby had tried to “menace­” him for his strong response­ to the passports affair.

On June 1, 2010, Mark Dreyfus, later Gillard’s attorney-general, called Leibler, who he had known for many years. Dreyfus told ­Leibler that Rudd wanted to have a dinner with Leibler and a few other Jewish community leaders at the prime minister’s Canberra residence on June 3 to discuss the passports issue. The dinner was intended to begin the process of repairing the strained relationship between Rudd and the ­Jewish community, at least with its leaders, such as Leibler. Jewish MP Michael Danby was present, as was Dreyfus.

What happened at that dinner is contested. Rudd writes in his book that he agreed to host the dinner out of respect for Danby and Dreyfus, who had lobbied him to put on a dinner for the Jewish­ leaders. According to Rudd, he sat politely at the table while Leibler berated him for committing the “hostile act” of ­expelling the Israeli diplomat.

Rudd writes that he told Leibler­ that it had been the second time that Israel had used fake passports but that Leibler had responded­: “I don’t believe you.” When he offered Leibler a briefing with Richardson, Leibler turned angry and made a “menacing threat”. Rudd records Leibler as saying: “Julia is looking very good in the public eye these days, Prime Minister. She’s performing very strongly. She’s a great friend of Israel­. But you shouldn’t be anxiou­s about her, should you, Prime Minister.”

None of these incidents that Rudd recalls so vividly are in the nine pages of notes, dated June 7, that Leibler typed after the dinner. Leibler had made handwritten notes in his hotel room immed­iately after the dinner, before he flew back to Melbourne the next morning. None of the other guests at the dinner supported Rudd’s accusation that Leibler had ­menaced and threatened him at the dinner.

Leibler writes that when he was leaving he took Rudd aside and assured him that he was going to raise Rudd’s concerns over the passports issue with both the head of Mossad and with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The conflicting versions of what happened at that dinner, less than two weeks before Gillard deposed­ Rudd as prime minister, are revealing. Rudd’s version looks back, after everything that had happened to him. It seems that Gillard’s “betrayal” of him and the way she became close to Leibler when she was prime ­minister came together for Rudd, in retrospect. He had decided that the Israel lobby, Leibler in particular, had supported Gillard’s challenge to him and indeed, had spent a year organising the Gillard­ coup. On any reading, this was an extraordinary explanation for what had happened to him.

SOURCE  






Australian rooftop photovoltaic installations may face grid constraints

Australian households have adopted rooftop PV with unprecedented relish, with families and small businesses both contributing towards the transition away from polluting fossil fuels while reducing energy costs. While a downturn is expected on the back of Covid-19, installation rates are still exceeding most forecasts.

However, the right to install a rooftop system is not a given and people looking to install small-scale solar systems as soon as this decade could face significant limitations to grid exports of their PV power and even their ability to connect a system curtailed by grid operators. The outcome could be rooftop PV assets that are not able to push all of the power they generate into the grid – pushing out assumed payback periods.

“It would be detrimental for the industry and for consumers,” explains Ben Cerini, a consultant with Cornwall Insight Australia. “Households may find themselves with stranded assets, which is a bigger issue for them than institutional investors because they are not as sophisticated [investors].”

The warning comes on the back of recent analysis from Cornwall Insight Australia, which found that 24.5 GW of sub-100kWp solar is set to be added to Australian rooftops through to 2030 – if, that is, such constraints are not put in place.

Some electrical network operators, or DSNPs, have intensified their efforts in communicating that the ability of a household to export power a rooftop PV system is far from being a given “right.” Victorian DNSP Powercor, which services the western suburbs of Melbourne and the west of the state, is advising households in the regions it serves to check into whether PV export is allowed.

“If no action is taken by 2026, customers serviced by almost half of our zone substations will experience difficulties when they try to export energy to the grid,” said Steven Neave, Powercor GM of Electricity Networks said in a statement, issued in late May. In the same press release, Powercor noted that the number of rooftop PV systems on its network increased from 142,200 at the start of 2020, to 150,500 by April – indicating the solar installation rate was likely to increase by 18% in 2020, up from 14% in 2019.

DNSPs clearly have an interest in highlighting the challenges caused by rooftop solar in operating their networks. At the same time, so do solar installers, who wish to highlight the quick investment paybacks delivered by rooftop solar. However the equations used by solar salespeople may be based on the ability to feed solar energy into the grid – something that is not given.

SOURCE  






How to cancel ‘cancel culture’

If we were to rework the famous lament by German pastor and theologian Martin Niemoller, it might go something like this:

“First, they came for the ­authors, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t an author.

“Then they came for the comedians, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a comedian.

“Then they came for the scientists, the economists, the academics, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t one of them.

“Then they came for the journalists, and I didn’t speak up because I was not a journalist.

“Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

Each week brings more episodes of what, rightly or wrongly, we call “cancel culture”. This week, writer and editor Bari Weiss resigned from The New York Times citing the paper’s “illiberal environment”. Weiss wasn’t cancelled, but she is leaving because intolerance at the heart of cancel culture has settled into the NYT.

The New York Times hired Weiss after admitting that its one-eyed coverage of the 2016 presidential election failed readers. With another presidential election looming, Weiss fired off a powerful letter to NYT publisher AG Sulzberger lamenting that “intellectual curiosity” had become “a liability at The Times”.

“Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor,” she wrote in reference to the narrow range of views favoured by the newspaper, and the ousting of NYT opinion editor James Bennet for running an opinion column that upset the sensibilities of some NYT staff.

Diversity of opinion took another hit this week when influential writer, editor and author of The Conservative Soul, Andrew Sullivan, announced his resignation from New York magazine. Posting on Twitter, Sullivan said that it was “pretty self-evident” why he was leaving, and he would discuss the “broader questions involved” in his final column due out on Friday in the US.

We can throw our arms up in dismay, frustration, even outrage at the daily loss of intellectual ­diversity. But it will be much more productive if, for the sake of democracy, we stand up against the blatant intolerance of cancel culture that has been repackaged by social justice activists as “the reckoning”.

Our modern liberal democratic project is just that. It’s recent. And it’s not writ in stone that it will succeed. It is a wholly human project that needs more people to defend it than not against those trying to replace it with something less liberal and less democratic.

And the heavy lifting will come down to each of us because elites can’t be relied on. University leaders rarely defend intellectual freedom. Business leaders promote faux diversity that doesn’t include differing opinions. The Morrison government has an economic crisis on its hands. And we are paying for a human rights commissioner who remains a mystery to most Australians because he hasn’t uttered a peep about the dangers of rising intolerance towards freedom of expression. Keeping your head down is no way to defend our most fundamental human right.

The sad truth is that cancel culture has been happening in different ways for many decades. Salman Rushdie copped a fatwa from Islamist extremists for writing a book called Satanic Verses. And now fatwas of a different kind come from within the West, our own mob culture hunting down dissidents and wrecking careers over differences of opinion.

The rot set in when we attached legal consequences to offence. It was an invitation for people to take offence and then impose their own version of justice without heading to a court or a human rights commission. We have a marketplace of outrage that routinely dismantles a marketplace of ideas and social media platforms that provide the perfect breeding ground for more short-form outrage and mob rule, rather than nuance, thoughtful ­argument and debate.

While we might disagree on whether any particular episode is cancel culture or not, we can surely recognise a growing intolerance towards people expressing a ­diverse range of views. That intolerance delivers a triple whammy. First, it hinders our ability to sift the good ideas from the bad ones. Second, by shutting down robust debates, cancel culture will create unhinged, self-professed martyrs who thrive in online echo chambers, nurturing their hatred and bigotry far away from logical argument. And finally, the practitioners of cancel culture will stoke deep resentments that can easily be exploited by leaders who may not be defenders of a truly liberal democracy.

Earlier this week, long-time art curator Gary Garrels resigned from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art after a staff petition sought his removal for “his toxic white supremacist beliefs regarding race and equity” when curating art collections. At a recent meeting over Zoom, staff confronted him with an earlier comment he made following a presentation about new acquisitions by artists of colour. Garrels is reported to have said, “Don’t worry, we will definitely still continue to collect white artists.” During the meeting last week, Garrels, who is one of America’s most prominent curators, said that not collecting the work of white men would amount to “reverse discrimination”.

Museum staff sought and succeeded in getting rid of the curator. And next up is the banishment of art by white people. This is nothing short of cultural apartheid.

When mobs tear down statues, that is a form of cancel culture familiar to the Taliban. In a vibrant democracy we should have robust, passionate debates about these matters and then decide whether a statue remains, is removed or needs better explanation.

When staff at publishing house Hachette threatened to stop working on a new children’s book by JK Rowling last month, that is cancel culture too. To its credit, Hachette defended free speech as a cornerstone of publishing, saying: “We will never make our employees work on a book whose content they find upsetting for personal reasons, but we draw a distinction between that and refusing to work on a book ­because they disagree with an ­author’s views outside their writing, which runs contrary to our ­belief in free speech.”

Cancel culture is killing comedy. Comedian Ricky Gervais says his mockumentary series The ­Office couldn’t be made today. The BBC cancelled an episode of Fawlty Towers last month because it might offend some people. True, the broadcaster corrected the mistake after a public furore, but note that the default setting was to cancel a comedy because they didn’t think we could be trusted to watch something from a different era.

If comedy stops being confronting for fear of being cancelled by a new generation of self-­appointed cultural dietitians, we will lose more than our sense of humour. We will lose our ability to explore difficult subjects in myriad ways.

Over the last fortnight, the “Letter on Justice and Open Debate” published in Harper’s magazine and signed by 150 artists, authors, academics and other public intellectuals has attracted both kudos and criticism. Slamming it as “late, limp, and self-serving,” Gerard Baker in The Wall Street Journal pointed out that “only a handful of them spoke up when the mob was trying to cancel conservative thinkers”.

Sure, it’s a shame that some public intellectuals took so long to stand up for intellectual diversity. But, it’s also a case of better late than never. This is also how good ideas come to the fore when they are defended. Slowly, more and more people come to realise which ideas are better, why they matter, and why they need defending over and over again from bad ideas that have a habit of re-emerging.

Cancel culture is one of those really bad ideas. When illiberalism spreads, it’s only a matter of time before the cancellers come 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




19 July 2020

Opinions divided on whether Australia could effectively ban extremist far-right organisations

It's good that such bans are only talk at this stage.  The big issue is in defining who is "extremist far-right".  In America, conservative family-oriented organizations are sometimes branded as "white supremacist" or the like simply because they are conservative. One man's moderate can be another man's extremist.

To me all American Leftists are racist extremists because of their support for "affirmative action".  So any bans should be founded on a very clear definition of "far right" and "extremist" that is widely agreed on both sides of the political spectrum.

To me the only justifiable bans, if any, are on people who actually practice violence.  Big talk is common but it is mostly just hot air.  And where do we find any Australian Rightists practicing violence, let alone ones who are members of a violent group?  The repeated acts of violence by Muslims surely make them a group of political extremists but that seems to be OK somehow.

The only Australian "Far Rightist" who actually attacked and killed people as far as I can remember was Brenton Tarrant and he was very much a lone wolf.  And he was as much a Greenie as a Rightist.  And he didn't even carry out his attacks in Australia, sadly for New Zealanders.

So there are undoubtedly some Australians with views that could be described as "far Right" but what harm have they done?  They don't seem capable of energizing even one-another into violence, let alone people in the population at large.

Neo Nazis are undoubtedly extremists with some views that identify them as Rightist so what harm have they done in Australia?  I did a close-up study of them some years ago (See here and here) and found not even advocacy of violence among them.  They would say "I wish.." for violence against someone but showed not the slightest disposion to do anything about it personally.

So if even Australian neo-Nazis are non-violent in practice where are the "extremist far-right" organizations that need to be banned?


Terror analysts say there is growing pressure on Australia to ban extremist far-right organisations as other nations take decisive action on the issue.

Labor's home affairs spokeswoman Kristina Keneally this week called on the Morrison government to send a signal that extremist views won’t be tolerated by officially listing and banning right-wing organisations.

The United Kingdom, the United States and Canada have all moved to ban extremist right-wing groups in their jurisdictions.

Deakin University counter-terrorism expert Professor Greg Barton said Western democracies around the world are increasingly being forced to consider taking stronger against the extreme far-right.

“There certainly is increasing pressure from Western democracies to ban right-wing extremist groups both in the political realm and the social media realm,” he told SBS News.

“(But) this is the very challenging area, we don’t have such clear egregious examples that we can easily move – often I think in practice this will apply to individuals not organisations.”

Currently, there are no such groups on Australia’s banned terrorist organisation list. 

There are currently 26 groups on the Australian list - 25 of those are Islamist organisations and the other is the Kurdistan Worker's Party.

ASIO has warned that right-wing extremism poses an increasing threat in Australia as groups become more organised.

Counter-terrorism expert Leanne Close from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute told SBS News there were at least a dozen right-wing groups emerging in Australia.

She said they can be defined by a nationalistic and anti-Islamic approach, a focus on cultural superiority and behaviour that trends towards violence.  

“I know ASIO will always be keeping an eye on whether these groups are moving to a call to action,” she said.

“(But) the situation in Australia at the moment is... not as dire as places like the US and the experience that possibly the UK is having in relation to right-wing extremism.”

Earlier this week, the British home secretary Priti Patel moved to outlaw the far-right terror group Feuerkrieg Division, which has advocated the use of violence and mass murder as part of an apocalyptic race war.

In February, the United Kingdom also formally banned extremist right group the Sonnenkrieg Division and recognised the System Resistance Network as an alias of National Action – another right-wing group on the list.

In April this year the United States designated the Russian Imperial Movement, a white supremacist group, as global terrorists.

Canada has itself listed right wing extremist groups Blood and Honour and Combat 18 as terrorist groups.

Senator Keneally said the time has come for Australia to take stronger action against those that posed a right wing-extremist threat.

"The proscription of a right-wing organisation - international or domestic - would send a powerful message that these extremist views will not be tolerated,"" she wrote in an article for ASPI's The Strategist.

The coronavirus pandemic has also fuelled the spread of extremist messages.

Counter-terrorism analyst Professor Clive Williams has warned against specific bans on targeted groups.

“I don’t think it is a good idea to ban right wing groups because once you ban them it drives them underground and makes them much more cautious about their communication,” he told SBS News.

“The threat really from right-wing groups can be monitored fairly well because at the moment they are not particularly security conscience and they are relatively easy to infiltrate.“

Under Australia's national security laws, before an organisation is listed, the home affairs minister must be satisfied on reasonable grounds that it "is directly or indirectly engaged in preparing, planning, assisting or fostering the doing of a terrorist act, or advocates the doing of a terrorist act".

Mr Barton said the splintered nature of right-wing extremist groups means authorities in Australia remained more likely target the behaviour of individuals rather than implement targeted bans.

“Most of this is not going to be about banning a group … it’s going to be working out the individual behavioural level and communications,” he said.

“There does seem to be an awareness we are going to have to do something.”

SOURCE  







BLM’s inconvenient truth

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price

The greatest failing of the Black Lives Matter movement in Australia, and a complete contradiction to their cause, is that it ignores the lives taken at the hands of other black people. It is also driven by the false claim that black deaths in custody are a result of systemic racism by allegedly murderous white police.

The fact remains for Aboriginal Australians, as it does for African-Americans, that far more black lives are taken by other black people than by white people, or by white police.

While this is an inconvenient truth for the Black Lives Matter movement it is a fact we must confront if we are to improve the lives of Aboriginal Australians in Australia. Unfortunately such movements favour emotional rhetoric over fact.

Of the 400-plus Aboriginal deaths in custody since the Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Custody report in 1991, almost half in police custody were accidental, mostly as a result of  vehicle accident injuries, followed by natural causes and self-inflicted trauma.

For deaths in prison custody after being sentenced, most were due to natural causes, followed by suicide and other self-inflicted causes due to drugs and alcohol.

From 1989–2012, the Australian Institute of Criminology reports there were 1,096 homicide incidents involving at least one Indigenous person. There were 951 Aboriginal victims of homicide, more than double the 437 deaths  that Black Lives Matter protestors are solely concerned with. Of the 951 Indigenous homicide victims, 765 were killed by an Indigenous offender.

Of the 7,599 Australian homicide offenders (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) over that time, 16 per cent – or 1,234 – were Indigenous, yet we are only 3 per cent of the Australian population.

The facts are clear. Yet Black Lives Matter, some media and some of our country’s leaders ignore these fundamental truths. This only perpetuates the ongoing carnage and maintains the high rates of Indigenous incarceration.

It’s time for some honesty in order to confront these uncomfortable truths.

SOURCE  





NONE of the Aboriginal gang rapists who brutally attacked a five-year-old boy on a remote beach will be charged and will get COUNSELLING instead

This is an example of what Jacinta Price (above) is talking about

Four children under the age of 13 accused of brutally raping a five-year old boy on a remote beach in an Aboriginal community in Far North Queensland will not be charged or face prosecution.

The attack unfolded at Napranum, on the north-west coast of Cape York, on July 1, police allege. 

One of the alleged offenders is under the age of ten and cannot be held criminally responsible, while the other three boys are aged between ten and 13.

The alleged attack was so violent the five-year-old required emergency medical treatment and was airlifted to Cairns Hospital, some 800km away.

But due to the extremely young age of the alleged offenders in Napranum, police can use their discretion to determine how they proceed.

In this case, the four boys will be dealt with under the process of 'restorative justice'.

The unorthodox tactic is commonly used in indigenous communities and normally involves extensive counselling, a mediated meeting with the victim's family and an apology to the victim.   

Community members said the disturbing allegations have torn several families apart and reopened wounds from a shocking sex crime that happened 15 years earlier.

Napranum is considered one of the most deprived areas in Queensland with high levels of crime and unemployment in the 900-strong community.

The mother of the alleged victim fell pregnant with him before she had even reached her teens, The Australian reported.

A Queensland Police spokesman confirmed none of the alleged attackers would face criminal court. 

'Under the provisions of the Youth Justice Act, the Queensland Police Service have a number of avenues to consider, including Children’s Court, alternative diversion programs, conferencing and restorative justice processes,' the spokesman said.

'The action taken by police is based on evidence garnered throughout the investigative process and is reviewed by senior police prior to the commencement of any action.

'This action also considers giving the offender the best opportunity of rehabilitation and reducing the risk of repe­at offending.'

'There are big arguments about how this happened,' one local said.  'It is creating big problems in the town. It is not the first time something like this has happened.'  

The neighbouring community of Aurukun, about 40km south of Napranum, was at the centre of nationwide outrage in 2006 when a ten-year-old girl was gang raped by nine men aged between 13 and 25.

The young girl was born to an alcoholic mother and suffered from a mild intellectual disability.

Although the men all pleaded guilty to a litany of sexual offences, the judge spared them jail time and said the victim 'probably agreed' to have sex with them.

She ruled the men were also victims themselves after growing up deprived and subjected to physical and sexual abuse at the hands of others in their community.

No convictions were recorded in the horrifying case, sparking fury across Australia.

SOURCE  







Call for used car imports to boost EV sales

There should be plenty of secondhand electric cars to buy.  When people in cold climates such as Canada discover how useless such cars are in their long Winters, many would wish to cut their losses

Australia should pump-prime sales of electric vehicles by grey importing used EVs, according to a new report prepared with funding from the federal government’s renewable energy agency, ARENA.

Compiled by the EV lobby group Evenergi, the report is part of ARENA’s ‘Knowledge Bank’ series.

It says an opportunity exists for the import of used electrified passenger vehicles into Australia from fellow right-hand drive markets Japan and the UK, where EVs have sold in volume for some years.

It cites the Nissan LEAF and Renault ZOE battery electric vehicles and Toyota Prius and Volkswagen Golf GTE plug-in hybrids as candidates for local sale as grey imports.

“The establishment of a viable market for the importation of used electric vehicles represents a significant business opportunity, and is one of the most important ways that the adoption of electric vehicles can be accelerated in Australia,” the report stated

“In the absence of significant legislative and regulatory change in the short term, there is a clear opportunity over the next two-three years to create an opportunity for a ‘player’ to enter the Australian market at scale to establish themselves in the long term value chain.”

Not including Tesla, which doesn’t report to VFACTS, sales of plug-in vehicles (EVs and PHEVs) are up more than 18 per cent in a dramatically reduced Australian auto market in 2020. However, those 1516 sales to the end of June are still only a tiny 0.34 per cent share of the total.

A key impediment to growth is the price of new EVs, which start at best just under $50,000 in Australia and are usually much higher in price. A flow of used EVs would offer potential buyers a cheaper option.

Unsurprisingly, the concept of an EV grey market is not being received with much enthusiasm within the Australian automotive distribution and retailing network, which fought off a push to deregulate personal vehicle importation in 2017.

“We hope that report remains just that and simply gets presented to ARENA and that’s it,” said Australian Automotive Dealer Association (AADA) chief executive James Voortman.

The report used motoring body NRMA as an example of an organisation well positioned to become an EV importer.

“It has the complementary products required to fully articulate the revenue opportunities, and to lend the credibility needed to ensure the initiative is a success.

“Alternatively aggressive and well capitalised start-ups or existing importing incumbents could capitalise on the opportunity.”

The business model the report advocates is for the import of a small number of EVs for test driving, while vehicles are purchased sight unseen overseas and then imported for delivery.

The local sales company would provide warranties and post-sales support, the report explains.

“The supply and diversity of electric vehicles is growing globally and as such a reliable and cost-effective supply can be established. With a strong brand and streamlined process, initial estimates are that a business with strong margins can be established and scaled quickly with little capital,” the report says.

“Work by Evenergi and NRMA has demonstrated that there is significant and growing demand from a range of buyers for electric vehicles that cannot be satisfied by the current electric vehicle supply – primarily due to price or availability.”

The report recommends using the updated Specialist and Enthusiast Vehicles Scheme (SEVS) as the conduit for the import of EVs.

SOURCE  




17 July 2020

Qld. Premier confirms no new cases as border battle intensifies

All 19 Queenslanders who visited a hotel at the centre of the latest NSW coronavirus outbreak have now tested negative, the premier has confirmed.

Annastacia Palaszczuk took to Twitter to thank those who came forward for testing and urged anybody else who had visited the Crossroads Hotel in Casula, in southwest Sydney, between July 3 and 10 to come forward.

“We are urging anyone else who was at the venue to self-isolate and get tested immediately,” she said. “Queensland border protections remain strong and we’re closely monitoring the outbreaks interstate.”

It comes as Victoria today announced its highest daily infection rate, with 317 new cases and two more deaths.

Following gridlock at the Queensland border on Wednesday, a NSW-based traffic cam reported wait times of only 10 minutes on Thursday morning. Queensland Police have been contacted for confirmation.

All motorists with NSW licence plates are being stopped, with anyone who has been in declared COVID hot spots turned around.

It comes as the state’s peak trucking industry body told drivers coming from Campbelltown and Liverpool they would be allowed into Queensland, despite rumours otherwise.

The Queensland Trucking Association shut down the rumour mill and expressed its frustration at lengthy border delays.

“The rumour mill has been circulating that trucks are about to be stopped from entering Queensland at the border if they come from a declared hot spot,” CEO Gary Mahon said. “This is not right nor at any stage been considered.

“The QTA has continued to express our frustration with the continuing delays at borders with the new checking procedures and we would expect some improvements soon.”

Mr Mahon said the QTA was in regular contact with the Chief Health Officer Jeanette Young and urged fleets to introduce a regular testing regime.

“This will add an additional layer of protection in your COVID-safe protocols,” he said.

“This will require a co-ordinated approach to align with the application for the Queensland Border Declaration pass.”

SOURCE  






Anti-monarchists lose the plot

The sad decline of the Australian Republican Movement has been on display over the past two days in its angry, confused and convoluted attacks on the Queen and Buckingham Palace, accusing the crown of deception and complicity in Gough Whitlam’s dismissal.

As the Republican Movement goes on the offensive against the Queen, it seems to have lost any understanding of how and why it was defeated in the 1999 referendum to make Australia a republic.

Stirring up hostility towards the crown is the deepest and oldest republican sentiment. It has never worked in the past and never will in the future. The ARM by seizing upon the release of the Buckingham Palace and John Kerr correspondence has fallen into a familiar and disastrous trap.

There are three problems. Its attack on the Queen and the palace for dishonesty and complicity in Whitlam’s dismissal is false on the historical facts. This argument will alienate many Republican sympathisers appalled that populist misrepresentation is now a standard method for the republican cause. And finally, the argument won’t get traction with mainstream voters.

Doesn’t the ARM grasp that after 68 years on the throne, the Queen is respected for her diligence and integrity? Who are the tactical geniuses who think unwarranted abuse of the Queen and the palace actually helps the republican cause?

For the record, ARM national director Sandy Biar said the movement was calling out the palace’s “arrogant attempt at misleading Australians” about its involvement in Gough Whitlam’s sacking. Biar makes a series of unsubstantiated claims — that the palace was forewarned and “provided advice” on how the reserve powers might be exercised, when the palace actually urged caution on Kerr — and then makes the ludicrous claim that “without the explicit assurances” of the palace, Kerr might not have sacked Whitlam.

This is worse than cheapjack populism. It signals the ARM will engage in misrepresentation in an effort to fool and mislead. Obviously, it won’t work. How on earth did the ARM get derailed on such a futile track?

The case for the republic stands in its own right. It doesn’t need dishonest campaigns against the Queen about events that occurred 45 years ago. That might make republicans feel good but it doesn’t help their cause. Republicans outnumber monarchists in Australia and have for some time. But support is shallow and without agreement on the pivotal question: what type of republic?

The big lesson from the 1999 loss is that the fundamental issue is no longer the Queen. Someone should tell the ARM.

SOURCE  






CSIRO fracking research criticized

The criticisms are reasonable ones but the report was in line with worldwide experience

Research by an alliance between the Commonwealth research agency and major CSG companies has been used to argue that fracking is a safe method of extracting gas.

The CSIRO said the report — Air, Water and Soil Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing in the Surat Basin, Queensland — found "little to no impacts" from fracking "on air quality, soils, groundwater and waterways", but the organisation was subsequently criticised for testing just six gas wells out of the 19,000 across the state.

The research was conducted by the Gas Industry Social and Economic Research Alliance (GISERA), which is a joint research venture that includes the CSIRO and major gas companies.

An environmental scientist from Queensland's Griffith University, Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe, said that sample size "doesn't pass the pub test". "Six [wells] is just too small a sample out of 19,000 wells to have any confidence in the results," Professor Lowe said.

"The second and more basic problem is that the wells weren't chosen randomly: they were chosen by the industry and the industry obviously has a vested interest in looking good."

Former Australian chief scientist Professor Penny Sackett agreed.  Professor Sackett, who now works for the ANU's Climate Change Institute, questioned the choice of sites.

"There's simply not enough sites that are tested and also I think there could be a concern that the sites were chosen by the gas industry itself," she said.

GISERA's website states its alliance agreement with CSG companies "provides a robust and transparent governance framework to ensure that GISERA's research is demonstrably independent".

But Professor Sackett said there were concerns the CSIRO was compromised by its relationship with the CSG industry.

"The report was essentially conducted on behalf of the gas industry, funded primarily by the gas industry, with sites chosen by the gas industry," Professor Sackett said.

"You really want those sorts of reports done by independent bodies that are funded independently, preferably by public money."

SOURCE  






UNSW to cut 493 staff and merge faculties under COVID-19 response plan

The University of NSW will cut almost 500 full-time jobs and combine three faculties as it responds to the ongoing effects of COVID-19 and a $370 million budget shortfall next year.

It will also bolster online learning and offer more flexible working arrangements to address long-term shifts in the higher education sector propelled by the pandemic.

The job losses, revealed to staff on Wednesday, represent about 7.5 per cent of full-time university staff. UNSW is also employing 115 fewer casual staff than it was in January, before the pandemic.

UNSW vice-chancellor Professor Ian Jacobs said the university had avoided major job losses until now and instead cut discretionary spending, casual hours and pay to some senior managers and staff.

But he said 493 full-time equivalent job losses were needed to mitigate a remaining budget shortfall of $75 million in 2021, after other savings measures were made.

A restructure will also consolidate the university's eight respective faculties and divisions into six - with two deans and two vice-presidents to be removed from the senior leadership team.

UNSW National Tertiary Education Union branch president Sarah Gregson said it was a "shocking number" of job losses.

"I think people will be really reeling," she said. "Nobody denies there's a crisis, but the detail of what's necessary is difficult. We're obviously going to challenge every job loss we can."

The Community and Public Sector Union NSW, which represents professional university staff, said the higher education sector was in a "perilous situation" and needed greater Commonwealth assistance during the COVID-19 crisis.

"We need JobKeeper in our universities now, and then we need a fundamental rethink of the higher education system," union assistant secretary Troy Wright said. "We will hold a mass meeting with members [on Thursday] to make sure their voice is heard clearly during negotiations."

Professor Jacobs said redundancies would not target particular parts of the university. "The impact of this will be spread across ... I doubt that any part will be spared," he said.

The existing faculties of Built Environment, Art and Design and Arts and Social Sciences will merge into a single faculty headed by Professor Claire Annesley.

"There'll be some people who think they're strange bedfellows, and others might be happy about the relocation," Dr Gregson said. "We're just concerned that a lot of amalgamations are about cutting jobs, and there's concern for those who remain that workload isn't [forced] onto them."

The merger will deliver savings in faculty overheads, management and administrative costs, but Professor Jacobs said it did not signify a lack of commitment to the humanities, which are set to lose Commonwealth funding under the federal government's proposed higher education reforms.

"It's an opportunity to bring people together across that full spectrum [where they] interact and have much more influence over the university," he said.

But Professor Jacobs cautioned there was still uncertainty as student fees and enrolments, particularly from international students, could be affected by the recent outbreak in Victoria and suspension of a "safe corridor" trial for overseas arrivals.

"In my very optimistic moments, I can envisage lots of international students returning to face-to-face in early 2021," Professor Jacobs said. "In my most pessimistic moments, COVID-19 and geopolitical uncertainty mean international student numbers collapse and they don't even stay with us online.

"I'm more on the optimistic side ... But if it turns out to be worse, we will have to revisit."

Among UNSW's challenges are its declining student satisfaction levels, blamed on its controversial transition to a three-term academic year.

A new academic and student life division will be created with a "laser-like focus" on optimising the student experience, Professor Jacobs said.

He said trimesters had given the university "enormous flexibility" during the pandemic, and students were now seeing its merits.

"As students get used to [the timetable] and see the rest of investment we're making, our student experience will improve. The test of that will be over time," he said.

The university will also increase online teaching methods, which have earned mixed reviews from students this year, and move towards "lifelong learning" that involves working with industry and businesses on shorter teaching modules".

"Inevitably [online learning is] not perfect. There are so many variables: for the individual it depends on personality, the subject, it may vary across the time of their learning," Professor Jacobs said.

But he said there were benefits of both scale and education with high quality online delivery. "You have to get the right balance there, we're making progress on that. Online learning is not going to go away now, it will be an ever-increasing thing."

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 2020

Coronavirus in Australia: Experts say suppression was a mistake

You hear it all the time. “Is this our second wave?”  But it turns out the question posed by reporters at press conferences and pondered by colleagues over zoom chats has been poorly worded. Because Australia didn’t have a first wave … until now.

Professor Nick Talley is the editor-in-chief of the Medical Journal of Australia and has been watching the curve carefully since the pandemic reached Australia.

He told news.com.au Victoria and NSW are experiencing the real first wave of the virus and that it was a mistake to try for the suppression method when Australia should have been aiming to eliminate COVID-19 altogether.

“Obviously in March when we were all very worried, it was a little bit unclear how much of the virus was in the community,” Professor Talley said.

“Some of us worried it was widespread. But if it was, the first lockdown knocked that off. It looks as if most of it was international travellers.

“Now in Victoria and possibly NSW we have widespread community transmission. That is new. That’s why I say this is the first real wave. We had a trial wave. We eliminated it, but now we are not in that situation so it’s all changed. It’s a different enemy.”

He said Australia has a chance before the virus takes off on an exponential curve to eliminate the virus, but it won’t be easy and Australians won’t like it.

“New Zealand’s experience shows that if you’re an island nation like Australia then you can eliminate the virus. “In my view it can still be done. There will some short-term pain to make that happen.”

Professor Talley said what happens next depends largely on what happens in NSW and Queensland.

“In Victoria they’ve shut down Melbourne. They may have to go wider than that. It may be in the regions. The real issue is the length of shutdown. The type of shutdown is appropriate, it’s the length that matters now.”

He said that elimination would require a very aggressive strategy. It could be considered a success when there are zero new cases nationally for two incubation periods.

“The theory that we can ringfence and eradicate the virus in Victoria has failed.”

Victoria recorded 270 new cases of the virus on Tuesday. Of those cases, 242 were spread through the community by an unknown source. In NSW, there were 21 new cases on Monday.

Naturally, as case numbers grow, the conversation about eliminating the virus in Australia is gathering momentum.

The ABC’s resident coronavirus expert, Norman Swan, told the 7.30 program: “The next four or five weeks will shape how Australians will live until a vaccine comes along.”

Victoria’s Chief Medical Officer Brett Sutton told reporters: “As a public health person, I’d be very happy if elimination were a feasible thing to achieve.”

He continued: “I would hope that as we move through this phase in Victoria … that we don’t close ourselves off to a re-evaluation … of what the pros and cons (of elimination strategy) are.”

Professor of Epidemiology at UNSW and WHO adviser, Mary-Louise McLaws, told news.com.au she still supports “attempts to achieve ‘close-to-eradication’ and so I still believe going for suppression is not in the long run the most effective approach”.

“It is not yet too late for Victoria,” she said. “NSW case numbers without the return travellers (who have not been a high risk for spread indirectly to the community through hotel staff) have been low over two incubation periods which is used to determine the level of eradication and control.”

But Professor McLaws believes NSW could be on the cusp of a significant uptick in cases if the current number is not controlled.

She told The New Daily: “If it gets to about 100 cases across two incubation periods – about 14 days each – in very quick succession it doubles and then after that, it can double and triple each period.”

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian is now facing some difficult decisions. But if the virus continues on its current trajectory, so too does Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk already made a hard decision. On Tuesday morning, she announced that residents from NSW hotspots are banned from Queensland.

“Travellers who have been in a COVID-19 hotspot within the past 14 days can’t quarantine in Queensland and will be turned away at our borders,” she said.

SOURCE  






'Best doctors and nurses': Australia leads world in COVID-19 ICU survival rates

Australians severely ill with COVID-19 have recovered at an extraordinary rate throughout the pandemic, with 85 per cent of patients admitted into intensive care units surviving the deadly virus.

The latest data provided to the federal and Victorian governments on Tuesday suggests that, so long as the second wave of infections does not overwhelm the intensive care capacity of hospitals, Australia is unlikely to face a catastrophic loss of life.

As NSW health authorities work to contain its border outbreak, Victoria is bracing for a surge in hospital admissions, with the state’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton predicting that the current caseload of more than 1000 infections would result in at least 200 more patients in COVID-19 wards by the end of the month.

Data gathered and shared by Australia’s leading intensive medicine experts shows that even the sickest of these patients – those requiring mechanical ventilation and specialist nursing in an intensive care unit – have very good survival rates compared with other countries.

As of last Friday, a total of 214 confirmed COVID-19 patients had been admitted to ICUs since the start of the pandemic. Of the 200 cases where the outcome is known, 170 survived and 30 died.

Of 118 patients placed on mechanical ventilators, 78 per cent have survived.

The overall ICU mortality rate of 15 per cent compares to 40 per cent in Britain, 44 per cent in China, where COVID-19 originated, and up to 70 per cent in the US, where nearly 140,000 people have died from the disease.

The data does not include deaths from COVID-19 among people not admitted to ICU.

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt described the survival rate of patients admitted to ICUs as one of Australia’s most important achievements throughout the pandemic.

"Not only are hospitals well equipped with ICU capacity and surge capacity, but arguably they have the best doctors and nurses and systems in the world," he told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

"We have an integrated system where information on patient care, the latest treatments and medical research is shared through the Communicable Disease Network of Australia and the Medical Expert Panel. In short, our doctors, nurses and systems are saving lives and protecting lives."

A key source of information is data collated on a weekly basis by the SPRINT-SARI Australian Study, a collaboration between Monash University and the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society Trials Group.

The project takes real-time data on COVID-19 patient treatments and outcomes across 77 intensive care departments in Australian hospitals and shares that information with government and an Oxford-based international consortium of researchers that tracks emerging respiratory infections.

The latest findings build on data previously reported by The Age that showed similarly promising survival rates during the early stage of the pandemic in March.

Monash University associate professor Craig French, the director of intensive care at Western Health, a hospital group treating patients from COVID hotspots in Melbourne’s north and western suburbs, said the high survival rates recorded by Australian ICUs reflected a "business as usual" approach throughout the pandemic.

"This is a form of viral pneumonia," he said. "It does have differences to other viral pneumonia but our results are very good and we should continue to treat patients as we normally would treat them.

"The message to the average punter out there is to do what the government says in terms of public health prevention. Not only is that reducing the number of patients with COVID-19, it means that if you are unfortunate enough to get sick enough to need intensive care, you are coming into an environment that is not overwhelmed and can give you the attentive care you need to have the best possible chance of getting better."

Since the first wave of COVID-19 infections, Victoria’s ICU capacity has increased from 476 beds to nearly 700 and about 1200 ventilators have been distributed to health services. At the Western Health’s Sunshine and Footscray hospitals, a newly designed COVID-19 hood is being trialled so that non-invasive ventilation and other oxygen therapies can be used without putting staff and nearby patients at risk of infection from airborne droplets.

Australia currently has 105 COVID-19 patients in hospital and 27 in ICU. Of those, 85 are in Victorian hospitals and 26 in Victorian ICUs. Professor Sutton said those numbers would increase over the next two weeks.

"We have over 1800 active cases in Victoria," he said. "That's a really significant number of people with coronavirus and it does mean that in the next fortnight, we're going to see a number of people who will require hospital.

"There's often 10 per cent to 20 per cent of all coronavirus infections who require hospitalisation, so that's a couple of hundred individuals at least."

Dr French said there were "ample beds available" within the state’s intensive care units and that, if people observed the public health directions already in place, the risk of the system being overrun was "extremely low".

Professor Andrew Udy, the deputy director of the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Research Centre at Monash University, said Australia’s survival rates showed the strength of its well resourced intensive care system and highly skilled staff; especially intensive care nurses.

However, he said Australia’s success also reflected the relatively low number of COVID-19 cases recorded here in the first phase of the pandemic, which had not tested the capacity of the intensive care system.

"The key to combatting this is not in the hospital; it is outside the hospital," he said. "If you get very sick with COVID and the system is able to operate within capacity, we can hopefully achieve very good outcomes for most of those patients."

SOURCE  





NSW premier shuts down lockdown talk as cases rise

NSW teeters on the edge of a new coronavirus lockdown, but Premier Gladys Berejiklian insists it will not happen.

With Victoria already cut off from the rest of the country and Melbourne in lockdown at the heart of its coronavirus crisis, Ms Berejiklian indicated last night that NSW would not follow its southern neighbour even as cases grew.

"We can't shut down every time we have a cluster of cases," Ms Berejiklian told A Current Affair. "We can't keep shutting down and reopening, that is not a good way for us to manage the pandemic."

Ms Berejiklian said people must learn to live with coronavirus and the deadly threat it poses.

Her government's plan is for NSW residents to have a "good quality for life" for the duration of the pandemic, and manage the deadly threat without constant lockdowns. "We need to accept children need to be educated, that people need to go to work," she said.

"It would be unrealistic for us to assume we are going to see any situation where there's zero cases. "This is the nature of a pandemic – until we have a cure, we have to live with it."

Queensland has announced bans on people from NSW "hotspots", with multiple clusters having now taken hold, including the most significant stemming from the Crossroads Hotel with 30 cases.

Restrictions have been renewed on NSW pubs in an effort to halt further outbreaks.

Victoria recorded 270 new cases and two new deaths yesterday. The state's total active cases is now at 1803 and the national death toll is 110.

Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said Victoria had not "turned the corner yet" since the toughest measures in the country were reinstated last week. "Further restrictions need to be considered," Mr Sutton said.

With hundreds of thousands of people out of work and state economies spluttering to restart, leaders are desperate to avoid pumping the brakes.

The vehement opposition to a lockdown comes not only from Ms Berejiklian but also federal cabinet, O'Keefe said. "Melbourne and Sydney are the twin engines of our national economy … (and) we've already lost one."

But that decision may become unpalatable as deaths continue to rise.

SOURCE  






Only some violence matters

Bettina Arndt

Perhaps some of you might like to write to the Australian Institute of Criminology and possibly your local members of parliament and ask why this government organisation commissioned research that so selectively focused on one type of violence? The survey of 15,000 Australian women in May studied the prevalence and nature of domestic violence experienced by women during the pandemic.

You could mention this recent research report from the University of Queensland showing that’s only part of the story, with men and women equally likely to experience intimate partner violence – a finding replicated in thousands of other studies.

Perhaps the Institute could also have reported on experience of children locked up with violent fathers and mothers during that month. In fact, the Institute’s own research shows children report parents to be almost equally likely to be violent. The Institute’s 2001 Young Australians and Domestic Violence study found 23 per cent of young people were aware of domestic violence by fathers or stepfathers against their mothers or step-mothers yet an almost identical proportion (22 per cent) of young people were aware of domestic violence against their fathers or step-fathers by their mothers or step-mothers.

If we were really concerned about breaking the cycle of violence, the experiences of these younger victims of family violence would surely be relevant.

From: Bettina Arndt newsletter: newsletter@bettinaarndt.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






15 July 2020

An Aboriginal death in custody

There appears to be some mystification about this death.  There should not be.  Chatfield was an Aborigine and Cutmore probably was too. And the stimulus for the seizures leading to Chatfield's death was clearly his forced separation from his cellmate.

Why should separation from his cellmate be distressing?  Because Aborigines are hugely social.  They need to be with one another. An Aborigine put into solitary confinement will do his best to commit suicide.  That need for social connectedness is not unknown among whites.  I suffer from it to some extent also.  It can be very distressing.

That it is super-strong among Aborigines is demonstrated in the way Aborigines can be "Sung" to death by their tribe.  A tribal Aborigine who breaches an important tribal behaviour code will be "Sung" to death.  The singing/chanting is simply an emphasis of the fact that the offender has been excommunicated from the tribe.  It makes the excommunication final.  So the offender has no-one to whom he has a social connection.  Whatever the physical process may be, death is rapid.

One does see something similar among whites. A mother who suicides after the death of her child, for instance, will sometimes be referred to as having died of a "broken heart"

Chatfield and Cutmore would have been housed together because prison authorities know that housing Aborigines together reduces problems with them.  But in so doing they caused the usual Aborigine grabbing for affiliation to take place.  The two became "Mates" in a very strong sense.

So separating them led to the perfectly normal result among Aborigines:  Deep distress leading to death.


An inquest into the death of an Indigenous man in NSW custody has heard the young father may have had multiple seizures and was distressed to be separated from his cellmate on his last night in remand.

Tane Chatfield died in September 2017 after being held on remand at Tamworth Correctional Centre for two years. The 22-year-old attended court in Armidale but was returned to Tamworth after the first day of a hearing on 19 September.

Darren Brian Cutmore had been Chatfield’s cellmate in the preceding days, but was moved to a different cell that night as the pair were co-accused.

Cutmore told deputy state coroner Harriet Grahame that Chatfield was on the way back to Tamworth from court “happy as can be” as he was confident of being acquitted.

But Chatfield’s former cellmate, who considered himself an “older brother” to the 22-year-old, could still remember his reaction when he realised the pair were to be separated later that night.

“He was very upset ... he said ‘all we’ve got is each other and now they’ve fucking taken that away from us too’,” Cutmore told the inquest on Monday.

Cutmore also said that while the pair had often used drugs in prison together, he did not think Chatfield did so on the night of 19 September.

The man who replaced Cutmore in Chatfield’s cell, Barry Evans, told the inquest the deceased appeared “agitated” following his separation from Cutmore but he made his new cellmate feel “welcome and comfortable”.

Evans, who only met Chatfield that day, said he did not see his cellmate use drugs or hear him talk about doing so.

The former firefighter said he called for help after seeing Chatfield hit the floor. “It was like he was having a fit,” Evans told the inquest.

One of the officers at Tamworth Correctional Centre that day, David Mezanaric, told the inquest he knew of the victim having two seizures on 19 September – one in his cell and one in a treatment room before paramedics arrived.

The victim’s mother, Nioka Chatfield, said the grief she felt after the death of her son “became like a chronic illness” and her family needed accountability to move forward.

“I can’t tell you how my boy lost life ... there are lots of unanswered questions,” Chatfield said after the first day of the inquest.

“I’m only concentrating on the love that will never change for my boy. The boy who I saw smiling down at me when I was tying his laces ... the teenager I saw playing football, and the young 22-year-old who lost his life in custody.”

NSW Corrective Services at the time said Chatfield’s death was not suspicious, telling his family he took his own life.

Chatfield died after two days at Tamworth Base Hospital on 22 September 2017.

SOURCE  






Is social housing worth the cost?

Public housing is in the news with the lockdown of several Melbourne towers amid the spread of COVID-19. There were regular live crosses on news bulletins. Stranded residents were unhappy about the lack of notice and inadequate catering to their needs.

Melburnians are used to the imposing ugliness of these inner-suburban buildings. Built in the 1960s and 70s from precast concrete, they provide accommodation for many, often dis­advantaged, residents.

Whether it was a good idea to build them and if it might be sensible to demolish them are constantly debated. Other than their handy locations, there is little to commend them. They offer inadequate accommodation with shared laundry facilities and often broken-down lifts.

Several are drug-dealing hubs and violence is common. Some residents have uneasy relations with the police.

Their origin owes much to overseas developments. In Britain, run-down housing in parts of London and other cities was torn down and high-rise flats, often 20 or 30 storeys, constructed instead. Quite quickly, the slums that were demolished were replaced by another type of slum.

In Melbourne, there was a similar flattening of shabby inner-city houses. About 4000 houses were demolished, replaced by 7000 flats in tower blocks.

Few residents of the houses were relocated to the flats, and the houses that survived have been restored, renovated and sell for high prices.

Recently, some commentators have pushed for more government spending on public housing — also referred to as social housing — to stimulate the economy while meeting an obvious social need.

The best information on this comes from the Productivity Commission, which publishes the Report on Government Services each year and looks at housing and homelessness.

The states and territories are largely responsible for the construction, maintenance and administration of public housing; the federal government provides support through rental assistance. The National Housing and Homelessness Agreement between the federal government and the states and territories is the principal means of directing federal funds to support public housing and the homeless.

Substantial sums are involved. In 2019-20, more than $3bn of federal money was provided for housing and a further $4.6bn was provided for Commonwealth Rent Assistance. State and territory expenditure is also considerable.

What role does public housing play in Australia? About two-thirds of households are homeowners or purchasers, 27 per cent are private renters, with slightly more than 3 per cent in public housing. That number has dropped from almost 4 per cent in a decade.

The ACT has the highest proportion, at 6.8 per cent; Victoria the lowest, at 1.7 per cent. South Australia also has a high proportion (4.9 per cent), reflecting the historical legacy of state government policies that used public housing as a form of industrial development dating from the Playford era.

The type of households in public housing has changed. Where once there were families with dependent children, the typical occupant now is a single person, although many flats are overcrowded. This has led to a disjunction where about one-sixth of public housing is underused in terms of bedrooms with another one-sixth significantly over­crowded.

One of the principal reasons for investing in public housing is to relieve “rental stress” on low-income earners — defined as spending more than 30 per cent of gross household income on rent.

According to the Productivity Commission, in 2017-18, 43 per cent of private renters were on low incomes. About half experienced rental stress. Without rental assistance, close to 70 per cent would have experienced rental stress. Even with the assistance, many still suffer from it.

More public housing residents are likely to be unemployed. But in relative terms, rents have fallen across time, reflecting manner in which rents are set in relation to income.

The research on the effect of public housing tenure on employment outcomes is not clear-cut. But for those on the waiting list — and it is possible to be on a public housing waiting list for years — it seems some are dissuaded from active, full-time employment lest they jeopardise their place in the queue.

Failed experiments to encourage more affordable housing for low-income and disadvantaged households are common. A recent example was the National Rental Affordability Scheme introduced with much fanfare in 2008 by the then newly elected federal Labor government.

The plan was for 50,000 units to be built and to be rented at below market rates to low-income earners, with the federal government paying a subsidy of $6000 annually to the owners of the units for up to 10 years.

It was a shemozzle. The building program was slow — the target of 50,000 was to be met by June 30, 2012, but by mid-2015 only 26,000 dwellings had been constructed.

Because of the way the subsidy was designed, the developers ended up constructing a large number of — cheaper — studio apartments and many of the occupants were low-income earners only by virtue of being university students. International students also qualified.

The scheme was wound up by the incoming Coalition government although the subsidies continue to be paid out under the agreement.

Public housing policy can be devised only in the context of an understanding of the housing market. With the population recently allowed to grow rapidly by dint of high net overseas migration, there were always going to be significant price pressures, particularly given government-imposed restrictions on new housing investment — think zoning and release of land. That most migrants head to Melbourne and Sydney is another complication.

Whether long-term occupancy in public housing really provides a service to residents is not entirely clear, particularly where residents are locked into deficient, possibly dangerous accommodation. It is a worthwhile debate before even more taxpayer money is spent on public housing.

SOURCE  






Brisbane’s prestige market lures expat buyers looking to re-establish their Aussie roots

The lure of a COVID-free haven, a stable economy and bargain lifestyle homes are driving expats and international buyers into Brisbane’s prestige property market with dozens of sales clocked sight unseen across the city’s top real estate pockets.

Place Brisbane CEO Damien Hackett said the agency had witnessed a sharp increase in cashed-up expats looking to re-establish their roots in a city that had not only handled the pandemic commendably, but offered a better lifestyle at a lower cost compared with the nation’s major southern hot spots.

He said investors were following hot on their heels amid growing market confidence, with off-the-plan apartments close to the city centre in particularly hot demand.

“We’ve definitely seen an increase in inquiry from expats and that’s linked to the fact that they have found their roots back here (due to the pandemic). In fact, there has been a sharp increase and they are realising Australia is a good place to be,” Mr Hackett said.

“We’re also seeing a rise in foreign investment as well.

“A lot of this comes down to confidence and to invest and move forwards and the great thing we have going for us (at the moment) is the availability of funds and the cheapness of funds to move forward. That’s also the good thing about Brisbane – we have been immune to the rises and falls of the market and we haven’t had massive growth.”

Mr Hackett said while Place estate agencies had noticed a sharp rise in expat buyers, the city’s entire market was trucking along smoothly in a post-COVID world, particularly from a listing’s perspective.

“I think in the last three weeks sellers are more confident so we have seen an upswing in listings … but the biggest question for what happens next is economically,” he said.

Alex Jordan, of McGrath Paddington, said their agency had also witnessed increased appetite from interstate and international buyers – with expats particularly driven to buy in Brisbane.

“We’re seen as a safe haven economically, and that’s partly because of the way we handled COVID,” Mr Jordan said.

“We’re looked at from the outside and we’re seen as having a good lifestyle too and that’s what drives the demand. It’s also affordability (luring expat buyers into the market).”

Mr Jordan said while buyer interest was high across all sectors of the real estate market, the rise of international purchasers willing to snap up properties virtually revealed just how much confidence the city was continuing to generate.

“I’m speaking to a buyer at the moment and she’s a resident (living abroad) and she’s looking at properties via Facetime and Zoom – so these buyers are not even physically able to seen them and they are willing to transact sight unseen – that gives me some comfort,” Mr Jordan said.

“The ones that I’m exposed to and talking with are looking at properties above $1.5 million and they are looking for something modern or brand new and in a good location – typically in the more affluent pockets such as the inner west that’s close to quality schooling.”

While he said listing levels had also risen slightly on his end, supply was yet to meet demand with the McGrath Paddington office’s property stock levels down 30 per cent year on year.

SOURCE  





Australia’s Effective Unemployment Rate 13.3%, Frydenberg Says

Australia’s effective unemployment rate that also includes people who have opted against searching for work as the economy contracts is almost double the official jobless level, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said.

“That is around 13.3% right now,” Frydenberg said of the effective rate, in contrast to the official unemployment rate of 7.1%, in Melbourne Thursday. “That is a large number of people reflecting the economic challenges that we see right now.”

Unemployment would be higher if it included those who left labor force

Australia’s economy tumbled into recession in the first half of the year -- ending an almost three-decade expansion -- and Treasury, the department that provides economic analysis and develops policy for Frydenberg, reckons official unemployment will climb to 8% this quarter.

“We have seen a big reduction in hours worked in the months since the Covid pandemic first hit in Australia. Globally, they are seeing the same,” the treasurer said. “That just reflects the enormous economic challenge that we face and the impact it’s having on the unemployment rate.”

The official unemployment rate has been held down by people giving up looking for employment -- captured with sharp fall in the participation rate -- and by the government’s JobKeeper program that pays a wage subsidy to keep workers tied to employers.

The jobless rate probably edged up to 7.2% in June as those previously discouraged from job searching return, offsetting the 100,000 positions added in the month, economists predicted ahead of Thursday’s employment data. The expected surge in hiring reflects the removal of restrictions and reopening of the economy during the month.

The southern state of Victoria, the second largest contributor to gross domestic product, has since had to reimpose lockdown orders as a second wave of Covid-19 sweeps the state capital, Melbourne.

Frydenberg is due to deliver a fiscal and economic statement on July 23 that will outline the government’s plans for ongoing stimulus as programs like JobKeeper and JobSeeker, a temporarily higher welfare payment for the unemployed, are due to expire in September.

There will be a “second phase of income support. It will be governed by the same principles that have defined our economic measures to date, namely that our support will be targeted, it will be temporary, it will be designed based on existing systems and it will also be demand driven,” Frydenberg said.

“So it is fair to say in Victoria, with the lockdown, which is going to be harsh on businesses and households, that our announcements on the 23rd will take into account the Victorian circumstances,” he 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





14 July 2020

"Kimberley is our land and we want the right to work it"


So says an Aboriginal leader.

Aborigines have NO legal right to the many tracts of land they claim as theirs.  Various governments have GIVEN them title to some tracts in the hope that their claims on land will be satisfied by that.  But that is a joke of course.  "Give them an inch and they will take a mile" applies.  Nothing will ever be enough

So the sob story below is yet another grab for land.  They want to take over a productive station.

A line has to be drawn somewhere and it could surely be drawn in accordance with the best use of the land.  Farms and stations given to Aborigines in the past have been shockingly misused, going back to the Lake Tyers disaster.  Basically, what aborigines do is eat all the cattle and let the buildings go to rack and ruin.  A productive tract of land becomes a wilderness. 

Greenies no doubt think that is a good thing but what might the heavily taxed average citizen think of all that waste?


Last year, when Kimberley traditional owners bought Myroodah Station off the Indigenous Land Corporation, I was elated and deeply moved. Many generations of our families had worked on Myroodah for white bosses — some were paid, some were slaves.

Quanbun and Jubilee stations are located on my country, on the mighty Martuwarra, the Fitzroy River, the lifeblood of our country and connected to Yi-martuwarra Ngurrara people; it was made when the world was still soft in the Dreamtime.

When the Aboriginal-owned Kimberley Agriculture and Pastoral Company purchased Myroodah, I thought that we had reached a turning point where Kimberley traditional owners were shaping our own destiny, closing the gap through creating our own economic development opportunities, and stepping up to manage and set the strategic direction for the pastoral stations our families once laboured on.

Last week has seen a terrible knockback for our people, with the purchase of Jubilee Downs cattle station, which contains the Quanbun Station lease, by mining and pastoral magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest. Traditional owners — represented by KAPCO, Yanunijarra Aboriginal Corporation and the Nature Conservancy — put in a $25m bid to buy one of these stations. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to even get a foot in the door so we could negotiate further, bump up our bid. For us, this isn’t just an acquisition, just about money, just another asset to add to our portfolio. This is our country. We are trying to buy back our own country.

According to the ABC, Forrest spoke of “job creation for local communities”. Job creation isn’t sufficient. We do not wish to work for white bosses, like our mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers did. We wish to work for ourselves, under our own leadership, on our own traditional lands.

He spoke too, of continuing the legacy of the previous owners; that is, regenerative land management and a herd of quality cattle. What he didn’t mention, was the darker legacy — a legacy of trauma and dispossession still felt by Yi-martuwarra Ngurrara people, whose lands these stations occupy, today. Take Quanbun, for example. In the 1905 Royal Commission on the Condition of the Natives, commonly known as the Roth Report, evidence was heard that the white boss of Quanbun had an Aboriginal woman he kept, and the overseer had from eight to 10 Aboriginal women to choose from. History tells us that in many cases, on many stations, these women were stolen from their husbands and raped. In the case of the evidence gathered in the Roth Report, the women on Quanbun were whipped at night if they allowed the sheep to stray.

This is the legacy of white pastoralists we remember. And while it is, of course, true that Forrest has been generous to indigenous Australians and cannot be held accountable for the sins of past white men, whether his family or otherwise, it’s also true that Forrest’s family has a long and storied history in the Kimberley. His great, great uncle was Alexander Forrest, an explorer and politician, credited with opening up the Kimberley region for pastoral activity. Alexander had significant pastoral interests in the Kimberley, including ownership of Yeeda Station, where my great, great grandmother worked. In 1893, Alexander Forrest asked whether “the life of one European is not worth a thousand natives, as far as settlement of this country is concerned”. Within the context of the Black Lives Matter movement, within the context of the sale of this station to one “European”, one white owner, instead of to a collective worth “a thousand natives”, we’re asking ourselves, in almost 150 years, how much has really changed? Will the ill-starred history of Kimberley traditional owners continue repeating on us in terms of the ownership of our land?

Most critical is the position of these two stations on the Martuwarra, the Fitzroy River. The river is the lifeblood of Yi-martuwarra Ngurrara and Nykina country. Forrest has said that when it comes to plans for the properties nothing is off the table. This worries me, as large-scale irrigation projects have been floated by Gina Rinehart, and would threaten cultural sites, as well as barramundi, gummy sharks, sawfish and stingrays — a whole ecosystem. Our lifeblood. In the wake of this news, I’m especially disappointed for Kimberley traditional owners.

This is really not about Andrew Forrest. This is about justice for our people and getting our land back. He should relinquish the bid, right the wrongs of the past, and allow traditional owners to buy back our own lands.

SOURCE  






The cost of Free speech

Bureaucratic harassment of Forensic psychiatrist Donald Grant particularly troublesome

Des Houghton

The right to free speech is in danger of being, trampled as unelected, overzealous bureaucrats aim to silence dissenting voices and opinions

PAULINE Hanson, Germaine Greer, a spy known only as K and distinguished Brisbane doctor Donald Grant today find themselves to be strange bedfellows. All have incurred the wrath of unelected, overzealous bureaucrats who don't want you to hear what they have to say.

To my mind their right to free speech was trampled. If we had a bigger bed we could invite Drew Pavlou and Peter Ridd to join the Order of Strange Bedfellows. Pavlou, a philosophy student, was disciplined by the University of Queensland for supporting Hong Kong activists against friends of the Chinese Communist Party in campus demos. It's been a public relations disaster for UQ with accusations it has grovelled to Beijing for commercial gain.

Professor Ridd is fighting an ongoing legal battle with James Cook University after calling out what he said was bad science surrounding climate change and the Great Barrier Reef. The university went to extraordinary lengths to silence and punish him.

Boffins at several universities in the UK have gone so far as to ban Germaine Greer because they don't happen to like her views on transgender politics. Whether or not we agree with Greer, Ridd or Pavlou is largely irrelevant to the fundamental right of free speech. A free society tolerates dissenting voices.

Psychiatrist Donald Grant's case is especially troubling because he is a distinguished doctor whose writings have been praised by judges and fellow psychiatrists for shining a light into the dark world of violence committed by the mentally ill, His book, Killer Instinct: Having a Mind for Murder (MUP) sparked instant controversy.

Margaret McMurdo, a past president of the Court of Appeal, said Grant's book provided a valuable insight into forensic psychiatry and the legal system "including difficulties in predicting dangerousness". "Who hasn't wondered if given a particular set of circumstances or mental illness, they might be driven to kill another?" she said.

"Forensic psychiatrist Donald Grant, whose reports I read with confidence during my 26 years as a judge, explores that and other big questions, such as who is capable of rehabilitation, who has rehabilitated, and who is beyond redemption."

Grant has been interviewing killers for 40 years to determine whether they are fit enough to stand trial. I was shocked when The Courier-Mail reported recently that a complaint referred by Queensland Health may (or may not) see Grant facing charges of professional misconduct. His valuable book may be suppressed.

I'm wondering who the hell gave the incompetent health department the power to censor books. How dare they? With elective surgery waiting lists among the worst in the nation, the health chiefs should be concentrating their efforts elsewhere. Grant is a genuine expert whose opinions should be circulated by Queensland Health, not censored.

The book necessarily contains lurid details of crimes. In writing it, Grant has done exactly what journalists do every day. In fact Grant quotes from The Courier-Mail interviews with victims' families in some chapters. His book featured a sadomasochistic cross-dresser who brutally raped and murdered a 21-year-old girl, a mother who hid an infant's body in a washing machine and the loving wife who cut her husband's throat from ear to ear.

Grant told me in an exclusive interview two years ago he did not set out to sensationalise the cases. He simply sought to "increase our understanding of why violence and murder happens". The facts in themselves are shocking, he told me. "I haven't exaggerated or sought to create sensation in any way."

A complaint against Grant was driven by Sonia Anderson about a passage on the strangulation murder of her daughter Bianca, a decade ago. However, in my view Grant did not act unethically. The details of the case were already on the public record.

A free speech battle of a different sort is being played out in the intelligence community. Lawyer Bernard Collaery is being prosecuted for revealing national secrets; specifically, that Australia bugged East Timor's government building in 2004 to gain advantage in crucial oil and gas negotiations. He faces two years in jail.

Details of the case were smothered when Attorney-General Christian Porter used his national security powers to have the hearing held behind closed doors. Collaery, rightly, is critical of the secrecy. "I want to defend myself in public," he said. "That's the hallmark of our democracy, a public trial. I'm charged with conspiring with Witness K, my client, who I interviewed in the same way I have for 40, nearly 50 years."

Witness K is a former senior ASIS intelligence officer-turned whistleblower who led the bugging operations in Dili. Criminal charges against Collaery and K were filed by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions in June 2018. We may never know what happens.

Not all censorship comes from governments or the courts. Self-censorship by the media is perhaps the most disdainful. Pauline Hanson was dumped from her regular spot on by Nine's Today Show for saying people in a COVID-19 lockdown Melbourne apartments were drug addicts and alcoholics not too concerned with social distancing. In response, Nine news director Darren Wick adopted a lecturing tone.

I thought he sounded like a social worker. "We don't shy away from diverse opinions and robust debate on the Today Show," he said. "But this morning's accusations from Pauline Hanson were ill-informed and divisive. At a time of uncertainty in this national and global health crisis, Australians have to be united and supportive of one another. We need to get through this together," he said

Infuriating as Hanson can be she was partly right. Daniel Andrews, the Victorian premier, confirmed that some in the apartments had alcohol and drug problems. So the head of a major news network got away with censoring a federal politician on flimsy grounds. That, to me, was not an insignificant breach of free speech and betrayal of journalism.

From the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" of 11 July, 2020






Human trial for coronavirus vaccine starts in Queensland on 120 volunteers - and if successful it could be rolled out within months

A human trial for a coronavirus vaccine is starting in Queensland today. Some 120 volunteers in Herston, Brisbane will have the vaccine injected to see if it is safe and can generate immunity.

The vaccine, created by University of Queensland scientists in partnership with biotech company CSL, was tested successfully on animals in Australia and the Netherlands.

Clinical trials will run until the middle of next year - but, if successful, the vaccine could be rolled out at the start of next year for emergency use among the wider population.

There are 17 human trials for a potential vaccine happening around the world, including in the US, UK and China.

The Queensland vaccine has the advantage of being worked on in partnership with a manufacturer, CSL, meaning it could be mass produced quickly if successful.

More than 4,000 people volunteered for the trials but only 120 were required.

Professor Robert Booy, head of Clinical Research at the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance, said the animal trial would have 'ticked all the boxes' allowing the human testing to go ahead.

'There is no way the research team would be able to progress from animals to humans without a complete guarantee of safety and they would likely have a confidence in its effectiveness,' he said.

One of the Queensland University COVID-19 vaccine research leaders Professor Paul Young said the first human trial was about evaluating the safety and immune response of the vaccine in a group of healthy volunteers.

'The green light to move into this human trial follows extensive pre-clinical testing that the team has been conducting since first selecting the lead vaccine candidate on 14 February,' Professor Young said.

'This testing showed that the vaccine was effective in the lab in neutralising the virus and safe to give to humans.'

Professor Young said once human testing was under way, researchers expect to have preliminary results after about three months.

'We'll hold a collective breath while we wait to see how the trial goes,' he said.

'But if all goes well, we can move to the next stage in the vaccine's development – a larger trial with a much bigger group of people from a range of ages to see if the vaccine works across the board.'

Associate Professor Keith Chappell, co-lead on the UQ project, said the pace had been relentless and it was a fantastic achievement to move so quickly into clinical trials. 'We have reached this important stage with help from our collaborators at the Australian National University, the Doherty Institute and CSIRO,' Professor Chappell said.

There are more than 130 vaccines in the works around the world but UQ's work is believed to have shown great success in the pre-clinical stage of development.

The clinical batch of vaccine for use in the trial was a manufactured by a close partnership between UQ and CSIRO with technical assistance by Australian biotech company CSL, Brisbane based Thermo Fisher and Swedish company Cytiva.

The University of Queensland was tasked by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) to develop a vaccine against the novel coronavirus in January, supported by an initial investment of up to $6.5million.

UQ and CEPI entered into a partnership in June with CSL to take the rapid response 'molecular clamp' enabled vaccine through clinical development and manufacture, if it proves successful.

SOURCE  






Citizens not all equal when it comes to the getting of wisdom

Civics should be taught in the schools.  But what if it degenerates into Leftist propaganda?  That is the dilemma conservative governments face.  The author below does not see it

What do we want our citizens to know? Applicants for citizenship must pass a test on the rudiments of our political system and they are given a booklet to prepare for it. Citizens by birth pass no such test, and many would not be able to answer an abstract question such as: “What arm of government has the power to interpret and apply the law?”

The test, introduced by the Howard government in 2007, is for new citizens. But what about those born here, including the children of these new citizens?

For about 20 years I taught first-year Australian politics at La Trobe University to large classes of students, many of whom were the first in their family to attend university, and many of whose parents were born overseas. In the first tutorial, I would ask them why they were studying politics.

Occasionally one said it was because they wanted to become a politician, but the most common answer was that they would soon be casting their first vote and so wanted to know more about how our political system worked. Obviou­sly, they did not feel that what they could learn from their parents would be enough.

Politics is now one of the discip­lines that Education Minister Dan Tehan wants to charge students a premium to study, along with others in the humanities and social sciences.

Much of the discussion of this has been about the esoteric upper reaches of these disciplines where French theorists such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida are accused of spreading a conformist postmodernist relativism and under­mining confidence in the traditions and history of the West.

Defenders, such as Luke Slattery in Inquirer last month, stress the civilising role of the Western humanist tradition; others point to the lifelong benefits to individuals of learning how to read and think well, to the transferable skills of humanities and social ­science graduates and to their robust­ employment outcomes.

Little has been said, however, about what we want our young people to know. Bizarrely, Tehan’s schedule of HECS fees aims to encourage prospective students to do teaching while discouraging them from training in the disciplines many will actually teach, such as history, geography and politics. It also discourages them from studying subjects that would teach them about Australia, not to mention the countries from which many of them came.

My students learned nothing about Foucault or Derrida. Instead­ we studied Australia’s institutions of parliamentary demo­cracy, the challenge of balancing individual rights and liberties with democratic electoral politics, the tensions inherent in federalism, the histories of the parties. Such courses exist in every Australian university and thousands of students­ take them every year.

There are periodic outbursts of anxiety, especially from conservatives, about how little Australians know about the politics and histor­y of their own country. In January, in response to one such outburst, Tehan announced a special program of the Australian Research Council for research in Australian society, history and culture because, he said: ­“Between 2011 and 2020, just 3 per cent of grants under our primary competitive grant scheme — the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Grants — were in the areas of Australian society, history­ or culture.”

The reason for this is univer­sities’ competition for inter­national rankings, where Aust­ralian-focused research is at a disadvantage, but that is another story. The point is that the Morrison government recognises that the Australian community benefits from people knowing about our history, society and culture.

So why is it discouraging young people from studying them?

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




13 July 2020

Inside medicine’s culture of racism, bullying and harassment

I have no doubt that the instances described below did happen.  What I doubt is that they are common.  The medical profession encounters many of the hard edges of human society so is less idealistic.  As a result they can be cynical and reserved in their approach to others.

I see something of that when I meet a medical practitioner who is new to me.  When they hear that I am a retired university lecturer, their attitude to me visibly warms.  I become one of them rather than someone who has to be approached with caution. And I do generally get on well with doctors.

So I can see that doctors have been hardened by experience and that might make them unsympathetic or abrupt on occasions.  But does that do much harm?  One would think that Asian students might be treated unkindly and I believe that they are on occasions.  But the large numbers of Asian doctors I encounter one way or another tells me that they are pretty good at surviving any such travails.  The large number of female doctors tells a similar story

And the assumption that receivers of donor sperm usually prefer Caucasians as the donors is not ignorant. It is simply wrong. The fact is that Caucasian types are overwhelmingly preferred by recipients.  England gets a high proportion of its donated sperm from Denmark, where blue eyes and blond hair are common.  The Viking invasion is not over!

So the claim that medicine has a culture of racism, bullying and harassment surely has  something to it but not much


Being told indirectly that, unless you’re a white man, no one is going to want your sperm is not something you forget.

But medical students say racist slurs, social exclusion, gender discrimination and inappropriate jibes from their superiors are a common experience and it highlights the need for urgent changes in the industry.

Sam, a fifth-year medical student who is a person of colour, says bullying is “endemic” in medicine, especially if you are not white.

He has been subject to a number of slurs, including one incident a few weeks ago involving a midwife in the IVF ward of a Sydney hospital.

The student was in the room when a group of nurses were discussing a female patient who had requested an Asian sperm donor. “(The midwife) said, ‘I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to use caucasian sperm’,” Sam explained.

And Sam’s not alone. Many of his peers have also endured deeply unpleasant experiences.

Another fifth-year student, Tim*, said he benefited from being a white man in the medical industry and wanted to do more to help his international colleagues.

“It’s difficult to report because a lot of this stuff toes the line. It’s not like someone has slapped you across the face; it’s usually much less obvious,” Tim said.

One example he gave involved a teacher who was very particular about students arriving to class on time, and wouldn’t let them in if they were late.

“One day I arrived a few minutes late and he said, ‘Don’t worry, come in and sit down.’ But a student from an Indian background arrived straight after me and he wouldn’t let him in,” Tim explained.

“Then I noticed it was a repetitive thing. He’d let the caucasian students in but not the international students. It’s just not good enough.”

From belittling, to sexist comments and favouring male colleagues, sexism in medicine has also been allowed to flourish.

One female medical students told NCA NewsWire she was placed in a male-dominated team that made jokes about women being in surgery.

“They would say, ‘Why are you here? You need a family-friendly career,’” the student said.

“I couldn’t report it because I was the only female student in there and it would have been obvious that it was me.”

A second female student said while her experiences had been good, everyone assumed she was a nurse, not a doctor.

“Most of my teachers always refer to doctors being a ‘he’ and nurses being a ‘she’,” the student explained.

Sam supported those comments saying when he entered a theatre no one asked any questions, but when females do they were queried.

All four students described being ignored or hounded in front of patients or fellow staff.

When Tim spent time as part of a neurosurgery team, he should have done ward rounds and accompanied seniors into surgery. Instead, he was ignored.

“When they found out I was a student and not doctor, they wouldn’t even acknowledge me or say hello. This continued the entire time,” he said.

“For the majority of that term, it wasn’t what they were saying; it was them not saying anything.”

And when they were speaking, they often spent it belittling the Sydney student.

He said things escalated when he noticed a patient wasn’t responding to questions and failed to open her eyes, or move her hands.

“I thought, ‘this could be life-threatening’ so I said to the doctor, ‘Shouldn’t we do something? She doesn’t look good.’ But in front of everyone, they would be really dismissive and start asking things like, ‘What do you think is wrong with her? What should you do?’” he said.

“That patient was quite ill and no one was doing something about it.”

While not all doctors gave students a rough time, many have experienced verbal abuse, social exclusion, racial discrimination, gender stereotyping and general rudeness, usually from surgeons and physicians.

A report, published by BMC Medical Education and driven by fifth year UNSW Medicine student Laura Colenbrander, found in the past year alone Bankstown-Lidcombe, St George, Royal Prince Alfred, Westmead and Tamworth hospitals had all made headlines regarding mistreatment of junior doctors.

The hierarchical structure of medicine fuelled the “endemic culture” of bullying and harassment, often perpetrated by senior staff, Ms Colenbrander’s study found.

All four students said the hierarchy created barriers to reporting mistreatment, as they feared they would be labelled a troublemaker.

Students were also concerned it would affect career progression or that reporting avenues did not guarantee confidentiality or an outcome.

“Senior doctors were overwhelmingly considered unapproachable because they were ‘self-important’, sexist, uninterested, too busy, or participants feared verbal abuse,” the report states.

Australian Medical Students Association president Daniel Zou said the reporting processes for bullying and harassment remained unclear to many medical students.

“There should be confidential, easily accessible, clearly communicated and consistent reporting pathways available for all medical students,” he told NCA NewsWire.

“In many hospitals and medical schools, there are no guaranteed confidential reporting processes or anonymous reporting processes. For those hospitals and medical schools that do, they are oftentimes confusing pathways, inaccessible and ineffectual.”

Tim argued the industry had a responsibility to teach students about what bullying and harassment was.

“There are a lot of things we didn’t realise were serious,” he said. “And a lot of medical students won’t report it because we know nothing will happen. It’s not a big enough issue to bring up with top-level hospital management.”

Of the four study participants in Ms Colenbrander’s research who had reported an incident or knew someone who had, none had experienced desired outcomes.

This included sexist behaviour from surgeons on which the clinical school had insufficient authority to act.

This harassment extends beyond students. In 2015, the Australian Medical Association (AMA) confirmed more than 50 per cent of doctors and trainees (not including medical students) had been bullied or harassed, with verbal harassment among consultants most commonly cited.

Ms Colenbrander said the issue of bullying and harassment “spoke to her” because she knew many students who had experienced this in a hospital setting. “It just seemed widespread,” Ms Colenbrander told NCA NewsWire.

“Personally my experiences have been really positive. I’ve had great teachers and experiences but I’ve also definitely experienced the underbelly of medicine.”

According to a survey released by the Medical Board of Australia, one in three trainee doctors in Australia have experienced or witnessed bullying, harassment or discrimination in the past 12 months.

However, only a third have done anything about it, with 57 per cent believing they would suffer negative consequences if they reported the inappropriate behaviour.

And mistreatment of medical students will no doubt have long-term consequences on the nation’s future doctors.

“It has an epidemic bullying culture. Medicine isn’t immune from the stuff that happens in other professions. It’s still very rife and still there,” Sam said. “These are the people that look after you, so why can’t they look after their own.”

SOURCE  






Victorian woman is hit with massive $1,652 fine for breaking coronavirus lockdown because she fed her pet horse

This is authoritarian nonsense.  There has to be some flexibility in such matters. One size does NOT fit all.   People love their horses. They are big babies. What was wrong with just giving her a caution?  Minor crimes are often disposed of that way

A Victorian woman has been slapped with a $1,652 fine for breaking coronavirus lockdown rules by travelling 13km to feed her pet horse. 

Karen Evans, of Ferntree Gully, was issued an infringement notice for delivering food to her 16-year-old horse Lily after stage three restrictions were reimposed in parts of the state.

Stay-at-home orders were placed on residents in Metropolitan Melbourne and Mitchell Shire from 11.59pm Wednesday in a bid to stem the second wave of COVID-19 surging through the city.

The reimposed measure means residents are only permitted to leave home for work, exercise, medical care or to buy essential supplies.

Ms Evans said she pulled over returning home, but the officer told her she had an insufficient excuse to leave the house. 

'I said I've got no-one else to feed my horse for me,' Ms Evans told 7NEWS.

'So, he's just like well you do understand I have to fine you.

'I said this is ridiculous you can't fine me for caregiving just because she's not a human being.'

Ms Evans said she was angered by the incident believes that power was getting the heads of some members of the police force.

It is not the first time Victoria police have issued questionable coronavirus-related fines.

During the first lockdown, officers withdrew fines for a 16-year old learner driver in the car with her mother and a man washing his car.

The following month, In May, Victorian police officers were told to use 'increased discretion' and get permission first from supervisors after the state raked in almost $5million from residents deemed to be 'breaking the rules'.

SOURCE  





The use of a newly approved drug to treat COVID-19 will be limited to treating patients hospitalised with the virus

The Therapeutic Goods Administration on Friday night approved the use of anti-viral drug remdesivir for use on coronavirus patients.

Deputy Chief Health Officer Nick Coatsworth said on Saturday that the approval of remdesivir came with some caveats including that it would not be prescribed to people in the community.

Instead, he said, only patients hospitalised by COVID-19 would be given remdesivir, sold under the brand name Veklury.

"The important thing to note about any of these medications, of course, is that none of them as yet are a silver bullet," Dr Coatsworth said.

"It's a drug that is a direct-acting antiviral. What does that mean? It means that it stops the virus from multiplying further in the body."

But international trials had shown remdesivir might be effective in patients with moderate to severe COVID-19, he said.

"They include a reduction in the length of hospital stay, and a potential reduction in the serious adverse events that coronavirus sufferers can get during their episode of coronavirus disease," he said.

"What we don't know yet is whether it has a conclusive effect on mortality."

Gilead Sciences, the company behind remdesivir, said an analysis showed its antiviral drug had helped reduce the risk of death in severely ill COVID-19 patients, but cautioned that rigorous clinical trials were needed to confirm the benefit.

Remdesivir has been at the forefront of the global battle against COVID-19 after the intravenously administered medicine helped shorten hospital recovery times, according to data in April from a separate US government trial.

Gilead's late-stage study evaluated the safety and efficacy of five-day and 10-day dosing durations of remdesivir in hospitalised patients. The study did not have a placebo comparison.

Dr Susan Olender from Columbia University Irving Medical Centre said in the Gilead statement that the analysis drew from a real-world setting and served as an important adjunct to clinical trial data even though it is not as vigorous as a randomised controlled trial.

Dr Walid Gellad, a professor at University of Pittsburgh’s medical school, called it "a joke" to compare clinical trial data with observational data and conclude anything definitive about mortality.

Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said on Saturday that the state's clinical community would look at remdesivir and "love to have have it available for them" to use.

He said it was one of a number of drugs which could assist patients facing severe COVID-19 symptoms.

He said that while the Australian government would try to secure its own supply, stocks were affected because the "US really went very hard in gobbling up the entire global supply".

"Remdesivir is another drug that is showing some effects, possibly not as strong as the simple and cheap dexamethasone steroid drug, but it certainly has a role, and it seems to reduce the amount of time people are ill for and require in hospital," Professor Sutton said.

"It may have less of an effect on death rates ... but will be part of the (arsenal) clinicians will look to."

Meanwhile, Dr Coatsworth said the wearing of masks should be part of a suite of protective measures.

"We have been very clear that when community transmission goes up masks do have a value," he said.

On vaccines, Dr Coatsworth said Australia needed to prepare for a world without a vaccine for two years.

"That would be a very judicious way of responding to COVID-19, and the reality I think is that there are so many people looking at a vaccine at the moment," he said.

"There's at least two novel vaccine development methodologies that are being rolled out ... there is so much effort going into this that I think we should be hopeful that we can get a vaccine for COVID-19."

SOURCE  





Brisbane airport flying high with new runway

New runways worldwide are almost always publicly opposed by Greenies and Nimbys so this is a real achievement for Australia

Lengthy delays at Brisbane Airport will be a thing of the past after its new $1.1 billion parallel runway opened today.

Airport capacity will soar from 50 flight movements an hour to 110 – putting it on par with Sydney, Changi in Singapore and Hong Kong airports.

Brisbane Airport Corporation boss Gert-Jan de Graaff said the runway was more than a slab of very expensive asphalt.

“When I look at that 3.3km stretch of runway, I see hope,” he said. “Brisbane is in an ideal position to take advantage of all opportunities on the road to recovery from COVID.

“Today we are making history … and very soon, once again, we will be connecting the world.”

The $1.1 billion privately-funded project employed more than 3740 people during its construction phase.

After a turbulent start to the year as home carrier Virgin Australia’s finances plumetted due to coronavirus travel bans – flight VA78 had the honour of making the first departure.

Piloted by Captain John Ridd and First Officer Troy Parker, the plane flew to Cairns to highlight the connection to the state’s regions.

A crowd of about 200 people, including 10 local plane spotters who had won a prized place at the event, watched on as vintage planes spiralled through the sky in an aerobatics show to celebrate the World War II airfield’s rich history.

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 2020

Few female engineers? It’s a matter of choice

The Australian Academy of Sciences recently changed its definition of a woman. According to the new definition, anyone who identifies as a woman is a woman, regardless of their biological sex.

This definition has the clear advantage that people who don’t identify with their biological sex will now be recognised as their preferred gender, an obvious social justice issue.

However, with this new definition of woman, the academy is tacitly stating that biological sex is of no significance. Yet, at the same time, the academy is concerned with the under-representation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. So much so that to encourage women into STEM careers, the academy has fellowships, grants, and prizes designated for women only.

The existence of such fellowships, grants and prizes suggests that biological sex does matter and that we can encourage more women into STEM careers if we provide the right incentives.

So, does biological sex matter and can it help explain women’s career choices? Or is it irrelevant in general and to female under-representation in STEM?

To answer these questions, let’s take a look at the data on female under-representation in STEM. Is it the result of insufficient high-quality and affordable childcare? Probably not.

Countries with nearly free childcare, such as Sweden, Finland, and Norway, have some of the lowest number of women graduating from STEM subjects.

Is it due to pervasive inequality between men and women? Probably not. Countries that score the lowest in terms of gender equality, such as United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Turkey and Tunisia, have some of the highest number of female STEM graduates.

Is it prejudice against women in the sciences? Probably not. Women are not under-represented in STEM careers across the board. Far fewer women graduate with a PhD in engineering, mathematics, computer science and physics, but they slightly outnumber men in the biological sciences, and vastly outnumber men in the social and behavioural sciences, and the health sciences.

So why do women, on average, tend to make different choices than men?

To answer this question, we need to look at the ways in which males and females have been shaped by their evolutionary past.

The evolutionary success of all living organisms is measured by the number of offspring they produce that live to reproduce themselves. In other words, the more reproductively viable offspring one produces, the more successful one is in evolutionary terms.

Whatever heritable characteristics individuals have that allow them to produce and raise successful offspring will then be passed on to these offspring. In most animals, males and females differ in the ways they can achieve reproductive success.

Take elephant seals. During breeding season, male elephant seals spend most of their time fighting other elephant seals. The bigger and fatter the male, the more likely he is to defeat all other males in his group. Why does he care? Because only the winner will be able to mate with the females in the group. Almost every fertile female will mate and produce offspring, but most male elephant seals will produce none and a small minority will sire a large number of offspring in the few years in which they are the dominant male.

Biologists use a measure called effective population size to determine whether the number of reproducing males and females is equal in a population of organisms. In our elephant seal example, the effective population size of females is much larger than the effective population size of males.

But what does that have to do with humans? We don’t conduct our affairs like elephant seals, but the effective population sizes of men and women show a very similar pattern to elephant seals.

If we use Tinder as an example and count the number of times men swipe right on women versus the number of times women swipe right on men, humans look a lot like elephant seals. Almost all women on Tinder are swiped right by at least a few men, but many men are never swiped right at all, as the vast majority of female choices are aimed at a very small number of males.

Because the number of men and women is roughly equal, it follows that the reproductive success of men is far more variable than the reproductive success of women. For every man with multiple partners, there will be many men who have no partner at all. These differences in reproductive potential affect the manner in which males and females can increase their reproductive success.

For a man, the number of children he can conceive is constrained only by his access to fertile women. For a woman, the number of children she can rear to adulthood is constrained by her capacity and willingness to engage in repeat pregnancies. And rearing a human child is not an easy task. The primary reason for humanity’s position at the top of the food chain is our large brain. But that outsized brain also comes with associated costs.

Because of their large heads, human babies are born prematurely compared with other animals, as otherwise they couldn’t pass through the birth canal during birth. As a result, human babies take much longer to reach independence than the offspring of other apes.

Women, therefore, have been shaped over evolutionary time by their ability to successfully care for dependent children. Our ancestral mothers typically achieved this difficult task with lots of help from friends and family. So, men and women achieved reproductive success in fundamentally different ways. The most competitive men had the highest chance of leaving behind large numbers of children, typically in the care of their mothers. But the most successful women were those who forged strong social relationships with others to assist in rearing and providing for her children.

Female menopause is thought to have evolved so that older females shift from producing their own offspring to assisting with their grandchildren. Given the duration of parental care needed, an older female may not live long enough to rear her own child. Males have no such constraints.

In many human societies the presence of grandmothers increases the reproductive success of their children. For example, a study of pre-industrial French settlers in the St Lawrence Valley, Canada, during the 17th and 18th centuries showed that the presence of grandmothers increased the number of children born to their children. Our evolutionary history accounts for the physical differences we see between men and women. As in elephant seals, men are typically larger, more muscular (particularly in their upper body) and have higher levels of testosterone, all of which increase their probability of success in male-male competition.

Women typically have broader hips, more fat deposits on their buttocks, thighs, and breasts, and higher levels of oestrogen, all traits that increase their probability of bearing and raising a child. Our evolutionary history also had an effect on our brain, the seat of our mind. We all know the cliche. Men are great at reading maps but need women to find their car keys. In reality men and women are, on average, good at different things. STEM careers that are dominated by men all share a need for high levels of proficiency in mathematics. On average, boys are slightly more proficient than girls in mathematics. In contrast, girls outperform boys in verbal skills in every one of the 67 countries studied. Perhaps as a consequence of this difference in profiles, girls who are exceptional at mathematics also tend to be exceptional verbally. Boys gifted at mathematics tend to be less gifted verbally.

This means that girls who perform well in mathematics have many more career options open to them than boys who perform equally well in mathematics. The end result is that fewer women pursue math-intensive STEM careers than men, but this effect emerges only among women who are gifted both verbally and mathematically. Women who are better mathematically than verbally are just as likely as men to pursue a career in STEM.

Finally, even in STEM disciplines dominated by women, women remain under-represented at the full professor level, particularly at elite universities. Only a small percentage of PhD graduates in the sciences will ever become a full professor, which means that to get to the top a researcher needs to be highly competitive and willing to put in long hours. Surveys of highly gifted men and women show that the sexes differ in their priorities in this regard. Highly gifted men are more willing to work long hours and get more satisfaction out of work than highly gifted women. When asked what is most important in their career, these men are more concerned than women about getting a large salary and the ability to take risks In contrast, these women are more concerned about working no more than 40 hours a week and having strong friendships and time to socialise. Where the men get satisfaction from being the best in their field, satisfaction among these women is more tightly linked to the quality of their social relationships.

Clearly there are plenty of women who are highly competitive, and lots of men who value social relationships more than prestige. We have focused on average differences between the sexes, even though men and women are often more similar than they are different. But average differences matter. Most people seem to have no problem appreciating that men are typically better at weightlifting than women, but when it comes to career choices we are loath to consider biological differences between men and women.

If gender is a social construct and biological sex is insignificant, then society shouldn’t care that there are so few female engineers. But clearly society does care. Should our social goals of creating more female engineers trump our scientific goals of understanding why most women don’t want to be engineers? Ignoring our biological make-up can exacerbate the problems we’re trying to fix. Such an approach can also lead to an enormous waste of resources as we spend huge sums of money trying to recruit women into fields that appear not to interest them. Biological sex is real, it matters, and acceptance of that fact has no bearing on our social justice goals.

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Nothing to fear but climate fearmongers

The politics of fear is usually ascribed to the populist right, and disapprovingly so. Yet what is the contemporary global warming rhetoric and advocacy of the green left if not the politics of fear?

One of the green left’s secular saints, Al Gore, even opened his book The Assault on Reason by declaring: “Fear is the most powerful enemy of reason.” This, from a bloke who rose skywards in a cherry picker in An Inconvenient Truth to highlight predicted carbon dioxide increases, and then showed animations of Florida, San Francisco, The Netherlands, Shanghai, Bangladesh and Manhattan being swamped by oceans “if” Greenland and Antarctica “broke up and melted” before he talked about “a hundred million or more” refugees fleeing these rising oceans.

An assault on reason, indeed. Whether fear is the main driver, or ideology, or plain delusion, Gore was right to observe that rational debates are in short supply in the political arena.

Take the response of Greens leader Adam Bandt to the Eden-Monaro by-election. “The by-election did send a clear message to the government about acting on the climate crisis,” Bandt said this week on Sky News.

Given the Greens vote dropped by a third (from almost 9 per cent to less than 6 per cent) and Labor’s vote fell more than 3 per cent, while the Liberal vote climbed with the Coalition’s two-party-preferred share, you might think he meant that the result provided a ringing endorsement of current policies. But no; Bandt reckoned this result was a call for more climate action.

“Labor held on in part because of Greens preferences, and that should send also a very clear message to Labor now that they’ve won this seat off the back of people who want to see action on climate change,” he said. “As Labor starts to formulate its policies going to the next election it has to have action on climate front and centre.”

Oh dear. Even in the village of Cobargo, where a handful of locals excited the media and the left by being rude to the Prime Minister in the aftermath of the bushfires, the Liberal vote grew 6 per cent and the Greens vote fell by more than 3 per cent.

The Greens bushfire climate scare did not take hold even in Cobargo. So, this party of the environment does not seem to thrive outside of its natural habitat of treeless, congested, mains-powered, inner-city electorates.

In Eden-Monaro, ravaged by drought first, then fire, the climate fear campaign did not work. Catastrophist alarmism and pseudoscientific fear mongering was rejected by voters — once more — and yet the Greens will continue to push Labor further down this furtive and futile path.

Apart from being politically self-defeating for the Labor Party, and distracting and divisively ghoulish for the nation, the premeditated use of last summer’s bushfires to advance a climate policy agenda has been dumb and misleading. You cannot fool mainstream Australians who have grown up with the bushfire threat, seen bushfire disasters and understand the interaction of fuel loads, drought and the consequences of building houses close to bushland.

When smoke blanked our cities from last spring, university students and other agitators became putty in the hands of former fire chiefs and other climate activists who pre-positioned, at the far end of a drought, to ensure their case was amplified by any bushfires that happened along. It was a cynical sure bet, and I said so at the time.

None of this diminishes the trauma of the summer, the worst on record in NSW. It is simply and tragically true that the nation has seen worse, numerous times, and as I have documented through contemporaneous records, the timing and extent of the bushfires were not out of character with events recorded 70 years ago and more.

Protesters were clambering in Sydney in early December, long before the worst of the fires, demanding “climate justice” and a “green new deal”. Scott Morrison would have been better advised to holiday at home but the attacks on him for being in Hawaii, and the silly attempts to make bushfire management a prime ministerial issue, were driven by maniacal climate activism that was lapped up by extremists and the media but dismissed by most everyone else.

The Eden-Monaro test, along with the previous four federal elections, cements an inspiring resistance by mainstream voters to global warming hyperbole. The electorate has made it clear that it prefers sensible and cautious climate action over costly and risky gestures, but the progressive Left ignores the lessons.

This is a global phenomenon. Take the US presidential election this year, where the Democrats tasked policy committees to meld moderate Joe Biden policies with ideas that might hold sway with the radical leftists who were energised by Bernie Sanders.

This process threw up a climate policy paper this week and it opened with the usual appeal to primordial fear. “Climate change is a global emergency,” it said. “We have no time to waste in taking action to protect Americans’ lives.”

It went on to cite “record-breaking storms, devastating wildfires, and historic floods” as well as dams failing “catastrophically” and neighbourhoods “all but wiped off the map” while communities suffered “tens of billions of dollars” in losses and crops “drowned” — and all of this was supposed to have happened in the past four years under Donald Trump. “Thousands of Americans have died,” thundered the Democrat policy document. “And President Trump still callously and wilfully denies the science that explains why so many are suffering.”

This is junk politics and junk science. It is the blatant politics of fear that has Greta Thunberg and others, including Biden, talking about tipping points and the urgency of the moment.

In his latest climate video, the Democrat presidential candidate refers to the “climate disaster facing the nation and our world” as he goes on to talk about “more severe storms and droughts, rising sea levels and warming temperatures shrinking snow cover and ice sheets”. It is all accompanied by alarming pictures, graphics and music.

“It’s already happening,” says Biden, “and science tells us that how we act, or fail to act, in the next 12 years will determine the very liveability of our planet.” That is not a bad pitch, is it? Vote for me because if you vote for the other guy, life on earth is finished.

You could write a book about the prevalence of this toxic climate alarmism — and Michael Shellenberger just has — but let me provide at least one Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reference for context on climate change and natural disasters. It published a report on this topic in 2012.

“Increasing exposure of people and economic assets has been the major cause of long-term increases in economic losses from weather and climate-related disasters,” the IPCC found. “Long-term trends in economic disaster losses adjusted for wealth and population increases have not been attributed to climate change, but a role for climate change has not been excluded.”

In other words, there is nothing to see here. Yet.

So, while warming temperatures could increase the length of Australia’s fire season, in some parts of the country, and therefore increase the incidence of bad fire weather, this is a minor and uncertain factor in the bushfire debate. What is certain is that we have always faced catastrophic fire conditions and always will — and the things we can control are fuel loads and what we do to ensure housing and other built assets are separated or protected from fire risks.

We know social media, activists and Greens preference deals will keep pushing Labor towards more extreme and costly climate policies, ignoring both the electoral lessons of the past and the sensible voices in science and economics. For those who value Labor as a movement for mainstream families, and a party of government, that is a most frightening reality.

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Prosecutors drop 42 charges against Australian tax office whistleblower Richard Boyle

Prosecutors have dropped 42 charges against the former tax office employee turned whistleblower Richard Boyle, who lifted the lid on aggressive and unfair targeting of taxpayers.

Boyle spoke out about the Australian Taxation Office’s treatment of tax debtors during a 2018 ABC-Fairfax investigation.

The investigation raised serious concerns about the controversial and aggressive use of garnishee notices to recover debts, which devastated small businesses and destroyed livelihoods.

Boyle has since been charged with 66 offences, including allegedly photographing protected information, disclosing protected information, and unlawfully using listening devices to record conversations with other ATO employees.

The commonwealth director of public prosecutions has reduced the number of charges from 66 down to 24. They will proceed with the remaining 24 charges.

It is not uncommon for prosecutors to reduce the number of counts in lead-up to trial, particularly in complex matters that place a large number of individual allegations before a jury.

Crossbench senator Rex Patrick said the CDPP should now drop the rest of the charges against Boyle.  Patrick said Boyle should be “rewarded” for his actions “not prosecuted”.  “We must protect whistleblowers,” Patrick said. “It is not in the public interest to continue the prosecution.”

The decision follows revelations last month that the ATO conducted only a “superficial” investigation into Boyle’s concerns when he first blew the whistle internally.

In 2017, Boyle submitted a detailed and comprehensive public interest disclosure warning of the dangers of the ATO’s use of garnishee notices, which allow for the direct removal of money from a company’s bank account or direct collection from a company’s debtors.

The Senate asked for evidence from the ATO about how it responded to Boyle’s internal complaint. The evidence was heard in secret.

But the Senate economics legislation committee said in a brief statement that it was troubled by what appeared to be a superficial response by the ATO.

“Based on the evidence received from witnesses, and in particular from the commonwealth ombudsman, the committee is concerned that the standard of the ATO’s investigation could appear to the public to be superficial in addressing the concerns raised by ATO whistleblowers,” it said in a document tabled in the Senate.

Following that investigation, Boyle took his complaint to the inspector general of taxation and went public.

A subsequent inspector general’s report, though criticised as weak, did corroborate some of Boyle’s concerns, finding “problems did arise in certain localised pockets with the issuing of enduring garnishee notices for a limited period”.

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New home loan finance plunges in biggest monthly drop in Australian history

The Morrison government will be under new pressure to bulk up its measures to stimulate the housing sector after new loans for housing finance experienced the biggest monthly fall in the history of the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ housing data.

The new statistics back up anecdotal reports by those involved in the early part of the building process, such as architects and engineers, that the construction pipeline is drying up and the industry is heading for a dramatic slump.

The construction industry has so far weathered the Covid-19-induced slowdown better than most, with building sites continuing to operate. But with the sector accounting for nearly 10% of jobs, the broader economic malaise now appears to be biting.

In May 2020, new loan commitments (seasonally adjusted) fell 11.6% for all housing. The value of new loan commitments for owner-occupier housing fell 10.2%, while investor housing fell 15.6%.

Business construction loans rose by 3.6% in May, but this data is volatile and it will take some months before a clear trend emerges.

“For housing, the number and value of loan commitments for existing dwellings fell strongly, reflecting restrictions in late March and April on open houses, auctions and people’s mobility in general,” the ABS said.

But economists warn the slowdown in lending is usually the harbinger of something more fundamental.

“For three months Labor has been telling the government that the housing construction industry is about to go off a cliff,” the shadow housing spokesman, Jason Clare, said.

“The statistics released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics emphatically show that warning was correct. New home loan commitments fell a record 11.6% in May.

“This massive drop in new home loans will lead to a drop in new housing construction and job losses in the housing construction industry.”

In June, the government announced a stimulus package called “homebuilder”, which offers grants of up to $25,000 towards renovations and purchases of new homes.

But more than a month later, only one state – Tasmania – has begun accepting applications and processing them. The federal government did not consult the states before devising the scheme, which has been criticised for being too complex.

The states are required to assess that the applicant is an owner-occupier, that they meet an income test (for singles up to $125,000 or $200,000 for a couple), that the value of a new property being purchased is within the cap of $750,000 and in the case of renovations that they are within a cap of $150,000 to $750,000, and that the value of the property being renovated does not exceed $1.5m.

The states will also have to be satisfied that the contract with the builder is signed by 31 December and that it will begin within three months.

Most states have set up websites and have signed agreements with the federal government but they are still working through how to administer the scheme and have not begun to accept applications. Tasmania is however up and running.

The federal opposition is calling on the government to dramatically step up stimulus measures for the sector with a focus on investment in social housing and upgrading public housing, to solve homelessness at the same time.

There was also new data showing that over 10% of homeowners are experiencing some level of financial stress.

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority revealed that 11% of housing loans valued at $192bn were being given repayment deferrals by the major banks as part of the banking sector’s measures to assist homeowners.

Its survey of 21 major financial institutions also found that 18% or all business loans are on repayment pauses at the moment.

As well as taking advantage of the banks’ offers to defer repayments, the ABS data also showed customers were swapping to attractive fixed rate loans, which have driven sharp increases in refinancing of home loans.

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 2020

Apartheid for the poor

The virus restrictions in the Melbourne towers make little sense.  What is there to stop contact between the residents already IN the towers?  The restrictions presumably in fact make it more likely that people will talk to their neighbours -- thus potentially spreading the virus.  This policy is CREATING infections, not stopping it

As Pauline Hanson has pointed out, many residents of the towers will be people with health problems of various sorts -- including large numbers of the elderly, the prime group that the virus kills. So by making sure such people are locked up WITH the virus, it will make sure that they are infected.  The restrictions will actually kill people

The moral dimension of singling out poor people for harsh treatment does not appear to have been considered by the Labor government.  So much for "compassionate" Leftism


Across a verdant footy oval, some residents of Flemington's social housing towers can look out to a gleaming residential tower complex complete with a rooftop 'sky garden' designed by Jamie Durie.

The ALT-Sienna tower complex — designed by the same architecture firm behind Hobart's MONA Museum — is about an eight-minute walk from Flemington's public housing estate, now subject to an unprecedented lockdown to prevent coronavirus spreading among residents.

A similarly severe lockdown has been imposed on public housing towers in North Melbourne, some of which stand across the street from another luxury tower complex named Arden Gardens.

"Arden Gardens is a new landmark development for North Melbourne — an iconic address boasting the location of the inner-city along with the luxury of a park-side location, private landscaped plaza, cinemas, ground floor Woolworths and stunning city views," the complex's website reads.

Those in the nine public housing blocks in Flemington and North Melbourne are entering their fifth day of a total "hard lockdown" which forbids residents from leaving the property at all.

As of Wednesday morning, 75 total cases of coronavirus have been detected across the towers, though Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton has previously said the true number of infections may be much higher.

Under the "detention directions" governing the nine towers, the lockdown can last for up to 14 days — ending at 3:30pm on Saturday July 18 — and those who refuse coronavirus tests can be detained for another 10 days.

As he announced the sudden lockdown, Premier Daniel Andrews said it would last at least five days.

Their neighbours in private apartment blocks, who have not had any documented coronavirus cases, can still leave the house for the four main reasons allowed under the state's stage three restrictions: shopping for food, exercise, work or education and medical care or caregiving.

Some 3,000 people are spread across nine towers in two separate estates in Flemington and North Melbourne in the city's inner north-west.

Authorities have warned of the "explosive" potential for the virus to spread within the public housing towers.

Airflow, proximity, ventilation and plumbing have all been considered as contributing factors to the way the virus has spread within the walls of the high-rise towers.

Tenants in these apartment blocks often share facilities like lifts, corridors, rubbish facilities and laundry rooms.

Some residents have told the ABC about broken lifts making it "impossible" to safely distance.

It's understood many of the tenants work public-facing essential jobs, making it more likely they will come into contact with the virus.

A spokesperson for the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) told the ABC that the nine-tower lockdown was based on "expert public health advice".

"There are a significant number of vulnerable residents — including the elderly and people with medical conditions that place them at greater risk — while close confines and the shared community spaces within these large apartment blocks means this virus can spread rapidly," the spokesperson said.

Chris McLay, a North Melbourne resident in a private apartment near some of the towers, told the ABC "it was immediately obvious" that the public housing residents were going to face difficulties when the lockdown was announced.

"Living in an apartment building during the pandemic, it's so obvious how easily a building's residents can share the virus with each other," he said.

But he added the lockdown "was a huge burden for the people in the towers to take on".

"I just trust that the people who know best about public health think it's necessary, and hope that they can end it as soon as possible," he said.

Since the estate lockdown began, some residents of these public housing towers have criticised the sudden restrictions, which some said made them feel like criminals and may exacerbate existing tensions between some residents and police.

The nearby Flemington and Kensington Community Legal Service has previously claimed that many of the towers' residents of African descent are subject to over-policing and racial discrimination.

'If you live in public housing, it's easier to shut you up'
public housing towers can be seen from the aerial view
The Victorian Government said residents in these towers had to be locked down because of the number of active coronavirus cases.(ABC News: Simon Winter)

To qualify for public housing, dwellings are usually reserved for those from low socio-economic or migrant backgrounds, as well as those fleeing from domestic violence.

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Queensland locks out 'Sicktorians': Those coming from Victoria will no longer be able to enter or quarantine in the Sunshine State after second wave of coronavirus cases

Queensland has strengthened its border restrictions on Victorians as Melbourne goes into lockdown due to a second wave of coronavirus infections.

Previously Victorians could enter the Sunshine State if they spent two weeks in quarantine - but now they have been totally banned and will be turned back if they try to enter Queensland.

Deputy Premier Steven Miles said too many Victorians - who have been dubbed 'sicktorians' by social media users - were prepared to pay $2,800 for their own quarantine just to get out of Melbourne.

He said the government wants to preserve quarantine places for Queenslanders. From midday on Friday, Queenslanders will have to pay for their own quarantine if they are returning from Victoria. 'Please get home now. Please get home as quickly as you can,' Mr Miles said on Thursday.

'They (Victoria) now have more than twice the number of cases that Queensland had in total (and) they now have more locally acquired cases than Queensland had overseas acquired cases.'

Australians from other states and territories will be allowed to enter Queensland from midday on Friday but will be required to sign a declaration form promising to get tested if they develop symptoms.

Anyone who develops symptoms but does not immediately get tested will be fined $4,000, he said.

Border passes for freight drivers will need to be renewed every week.

Next week an estimated 238,000 people were forecast to be entering the state, police said.

Despite the relaxation of border restrictions, Queensland's premier said many lockdown restrictions will remain.

'Until there is a vaccine, we have to keep up with the social distancing, we never know when there could be a new case,' Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said.

'We have contact tracing in place ready to go and as we've seen, it can emerge very quickly, like it has in Victoria.'

The state government will continue to review restrictions and potentially ease them when safe to do so.

Melburnians were back in stay-at-home lockdown for six weeks in a bid to contain a second wave of coronavirus cases in the state.

Residents in metropolitan Melbourne and Mitchell Shire, north of the city, can only leave their homes to get food and supplies, receive or provide care, exercise, and study or work.

Premier Daniel Andrews says it's crucial Melburnians don't breach the rules and head into regional Victoria, which is largely coronavirus free.

'We are doing the hard work to look at options to accelerate opening up in regional Victoria, that comes with significant economic benefit, for them and therefore the whole state,' he said on Wednesday.

'That is only possible if we continue to safeguard the very low COVID or COVID-free status of large parts of regional and country Victoria.'

SOURCE  






Canberra has been coronavirus free for almost a month, and sewage samples confirm no hidden cases

Canberra has been free of 'known' cases of COVID-19 for some time — but it was the 'unknown' cases, potentially hiding within the community, that had authorities and many in the community worried.

Now, researchers from the Australian National University can confirm they had nothing to fear.

The ACT's sewage has been regularly tested for the last two months, with researchers looking for traces of SARS-CoV-2 within Canberra's waste.

Throughout all of May they did not find a single trace of the virus, suggesting it was entirely absent from the community.

June's results are still pending.

It adds an extra layer of confidence to the message from health authorities, that the virus is firmly under control — or in fact, non-existent — in the ACT

SOURCE  





Australia’s lack of fuel our national security ‘Achilles’ heel’

The town of Winnie in Texas, close to the border with Louisiana, is a very long way from Australia – more than 8000 kilometres as the crow flies.

It’s one of several sites that make up the US’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), designed so the country doesn’t run out of fuel should the unexpected happen. And in the past few months the Australian Government has scooped up almost $100 million of that fuel to “boost the nation’s long-term fuel security”.

But it has some scratching their heads about how Australia’s domestic fuel security is safeguarded by having that fuel stored half a world away from Australia.

“It‘s an issue of national security – having something in the US doesn’t provide for our national interest to be protected in the way that it should,” Labor leader Anthony Albanese said in April.

“It’s a solution but not the solution we need,” a security analyst has told news.com.au, adding the lack of fuel security was Australia’s “Achilles’ heel”.

Signatories to the International Energy Agency, of which Australia is one, should have a minimum of 90 days oil on tap, “in the event of a severe oil supply disruption”.

According to the monthly Australia Petroleum Statistics report Australia had 79 days’ worth of fuel in April.

However, that figure includes not only fuel stored in Australia but also oil on ships heading our way and oil sitting at overseas terminals destined for Australia.

Take those away and Australia only has 61 days’ worth of fuel. Indeed, we haven’t had 90 days’ worth of fuel since 2012.

In terms of petrol and jet fuel, it’s worse. We have only 30 days’ worth in the national tank and a mere 20 days of diesel.

“The average person thinks of fuel security as fuel for the car. But it impacts across the economy,” Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) security analyst John Coyne told news.com.au.

“It’s high-grade jet fuel to deep fat fryer oil. It’s diesel, and petroleum products to make bitumen and plastics.”

Throughout the pandemic, Australians were assured that we produced three times the food we could consume. That’s true, but food security is dependent on oil security.

“If you don’t have fuel, you can’t go out and muster cattle; you can’t work the combine harvester, you can’t run the generators that irrigate the fields or fuel the trucks to move those commodities.”

Australia now imports 90 per cent of its liquid fuel. Big fuel firms have decreased our domestic refinery and storage capacity as it costs less to ship oil in. In 10 years, Australia has gone from seven to just four refineries. Sydney now has no refineries at all.

“Your petrol in Sydney may have originated in Saudi Arabia, been refined in Singapore and shipped from there. It’s an incredibly long supply chain which works because it’s cheaper and less complex than storing large quantities of crude oil,” said Mr Coyne.

But the pandemic has shown how supply chains can be shaken. And this is just a virus, not a deliberate effort to disrupt supply.

This week, the Prime Minister announced a multi billion dollar boost to the Defence budget, part of which will be to ensure vital shipping routes to Australia remain open.

“If there was a war in the Middle East then fuel would be all over the ocean and Australia would be competing for it and that would have a risk to the availability of supply,” said Mr Coyne.

“The US keeps a strategic reserve so they can hold out for 90 days. We don’t so we’re highly vulnerable to sudden changes in demand and supply.

“Oil supply is a critical Achilles heel for Australia because you only have to constrain the supply of liquid fuel to Australia for 30 or 40 days and the whole economy comes to a halt.”

Speaking in April, Energy Minister Angus Taylor said the SPR was one of the world’s cheapest and best places to store fuel long term. “The Government is taking action to improve Australia’s fuel security and enhance our ability to withstand global shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, when they reach our shores,” he said.

But, asked Labor’s Mr Albanese, how will the fuel – that would take a month to travel from Texas to the Tasman at the best of times – even get here in a crisis?

“The US isn't New Zealand. It’s not next door. If there’s the sort of international conflict or issues that provide disruption to sea lanes, that may well occur at some stage in the future, then that is why nation states need to have this fuel capacity.”

A crisis of such magnitude that all shipping would seize up is unlikely. Nevertheless, Mr Taylor said the US-based stockpile was only a “down payment” on “a stronger and more secure fuel supply” for Australia.

Earlier this month, he called for proposals from the fuel industry to boost domestic reserves from 7 to 15 million barrels.

ASPI’s Mr Coyne was sceptical about whether the industry would fully deliver on Mr Taylor’s wish. “It was the industry that said it wasn’t viable to have storage in Australia, so it’s asking the people responsible for the problem to find the solution,” he said.

In the end the costs will be likely paid for by the taxpayer, either at the pump or because the government will have to directly intervene and fund some of the storage costs.

But even then, said Mr Coyne, Australia would be vulnerable. “It only buys us time, maybe an extra 30 days. It doesn’t fix the issue of national resilience. We need a review of the whole oil supply chain,” he said.

Some experts have called for more support for home grown oil production or innovative industries that will keep the wheels moving, such as electric vehicles.

However, there was another, perhaps unexpected, benefit to Australia’s offshore oil reserve. The nation bought the fuel at rock bottom prices just as COVID-19 hit. Oil companies were desperate for anyone to buy their wares. If we don’t ever need to use the fuel in the reserve, we can sell down the line for a hefty profit, Mr Coyne said.

“It’s like an insurance policy that will have economic dividends regardless.”

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 2020

Diversity comes in many colours but we’re stuck on shades of grey

I had to report this week on some young writers who quit The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald to protest against their own whiteness.

To explain: the parent company, Nine Entertainment, had received some money from the Copyright Agency and the Judith Neilson Institute to hire some “emerging critics” for the arts pages. They chose five people, and all were white.

Two promptly quit, saying: “Our resignation is in opposition to the lack of diversity in the ­selection, which resulted in an all-white group of peers.”

A third, Tiarney Miekus, described the whiteness of the group as “completely appalling and shameful”. She did not quit but will give up some of her salary to encourage Nine to hire more writers who are BIPOC — that’s black, indigenous or people of colour.

A white critic, Cassie Tongue, is “in discussions” to do the same. The fifth, Chloe Wolifson, has not shown her hand.

Nine now has had to readvertise the positions, with the emphasis on “diversity”.

I was reading the comments on the story — yes, of course we read the comments! — and I saw one reader who said: “I am over 70 and would like the fifth still employed young critic to resign in protest against Nine not hiring enough older Australians. This is entrenched ageism. I am of course available for the position and could do with the grant as well.” I think she was being facetious but it’s actually fair enough.

There is a diversity movement under way but it’s a narrow definition of diversity being employed here. Why shouldn’t Nine hire a dynamic woman in her 70s to be an emerging art critic? Women of a certain age make up a goodly proportion of theatre-goers and art lovers. Women over 50 fill the seats at literary festivals and they buy most of the books.

The reader’s comment got quite a bit of support: “Totally agree … staggering that these grants go solely to the younger, less qualified, less experienced candidates … ageism is strangely a huge prejudice that the left overlooks.”

The Australian Human Rights Commission has done a report on this subject, and it says companies show a reluctance to hire older workers. And by older, I should tell you, it means over 50.

Diversity can’t mean only racial diversity, and there was a time when it didn’t. Back when I was starting out, it meant gender. Most firms were under pressure to hire more women, and most of the emerging critics were women, but that work is apparently done. We used to think also about diversity in age, and also — and here’s a subject that’s near untouchable in Australia — class.

What if some of the group had been working-class kids from state schools? Could they have then stayed? What if some had been same-sex attracted? And what about diversity in education, meaning fewer people who haven’t been able to go to university? It was fairly common a few decades ago for young people to start their careers straight out of school — famously, you’d get a burger flipper such as Australian Charlie Bell running McDonalds, or a former teller such as Ralph Norris running the Commonwealth Bank.

Now the focus is solely on race, with the aim, we are told, of creating a workforce that more accurately reflects the Australian community. But if we in fact insisted on that, how would the workforce look?

Well, the uncomfortable truth for many activists is that you’d end up with a lot of employees who are older, white, conservative — that’s ­diversity of political opinion — and Christian. Because that’s Australia, too.

According to the 2016 census, about two-thirds, or 67 per cent, of the population was born right here. Asked about ancestry, the English dominate, at 36 per cent; Australians are next at 33 per cent, then come the Irish (11 per cent), Scottish (9 per cent) and only then do we see the first Asian nation, the Chinese, at a tiny 5.6 per cent. Then come the Italians, the Germans, the Greek and the Dutch. Those identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander comprise 2.8 per cent. Some people like to make a big deal about how we’re being “overrun by Muslims”, but Muslims make up a only 2.6 per cent of the population.

The reason you see a lot of white people in the workforce in Australia, in other words, is because there are a lot of white people around.

That said, if individual white people want to cancel themselves with the aim of creating a racially diverse workforce, well, they should, of course, be allowed to do it.

What troubles me is the cancelling of others. It has been happening for a while now: this actor or that person’s work being “cancelled” for being racist, sexist, homophobic and so on.

Here’s another example, from last week. There is in NSW a small, dynamic literary magazine called Verity La. It’ s run by a not-for-profit organisation that receives NSW government funds, through Create NSW, to pay writers $100 for each piece. In May, it published a piece of “creative nonfiction” called About Lin, about a white Australian male who travels abroad to sexually exploit a Filipino woman.

The writer was Stuart Cooke of Griffith University. He is a distinguished, experienced, award-winning, well-travelled, multi­lingual poet whose awards include the Gwen Harwood, Dorothy Porter and New Shoots poetry prizes, the BR Whiting Fellowship, and an Asialink Fellowship to The Philippines. He has translated a variety of ­indigenous and non-indigenous Australian and Latin American poets.

Cooke’s essay caused outrage in the Filipinx community — people of any gender, including non-binary, gender-queer and gender-fluid people from The Philippines — whose members described it as “narrow minded” and “dumbass”, racist, and misogynist, fetishistic and disablist.

In the face of early criticism, Verity La put a trigger warning on the piece, saying it aimed “to publish work that is strong, bold and provocative. At times, this approach runs the risk of us publishing pieces that some might find offensive.”

Cooke put up a note, too, saying: “I believe it is important to talk about these issues, rather than edit them for the sake of portraying a more palatable form of masculinity.”

They were determined to hold their nerve, in other words. But not for long.

Having endured a week of fierce criticism, Verity La in a statement on Monday apologised unreservedly for the piece, which it now describes as “grossly offensive. We acknowledge that it caused deep harm … We failed badly.” It also cancelled itself — or as the statement put it:“Verity La is taking a break from publishing so we can reflect on the ways in which the journal has been complicit with systemic racism, sexism and disablism … We can do better.”

We are now one literary journal down.

The contretemps left me, and probably others, intrigued to read the piece. What had Cooke said about Australian men who go to The Philippines to abuse local women? What would a reader learn about the cohort of men who do this?

Well, we don’t know.

“We made a grave error in leaving the piece on the journal’s website after that harm had been drawn to our attention,” the journal’s statement continued. “It has been removed from the website and will not be republished by Verity La in any form.”

And so, now, nobody can read it. And so, what do we learn? Nothing. And what does this achieve? I just don’t know.

SOURCE  







Transtasman bubble could open to some Australian states before others

This is according to New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who told Newstalk ZB the decision depends on the Australian government.

"The test for us remains the same. And our test could apply state by state or at a federal level," Ardern said.

The Prime Minister refused to make any commitment on when this might happen, saying any moves were contingent on Australia's fight against the virus.

"We are in a good place at the moment," she said. "Australia is really the one who has to make some calls about when they'll be ready."

Australian Tourism Minister Simon Birmingham suggested last week that quarantine-free travel between Australia and New Zealand could be in place as early as September.

However, the escalating outbreak in the state of Victoria has cast some serious doubt over whether it would be plausible for widespread travel to open between Australia and New Zealand by then.

Ardern told Newstalk ZB she is open to the idea of incorporating a travel plan based on the status of different states in Australia.

"Obviously, we won't be doing that with Victoria while they are where they are," Ardern said.

"One of the criteria for us is that they need to be where we are in terms of there being no community transmission."

If the transtasman bubble were to be incorporated on a state level, Ardern said New Zealand would need to ensure that the travel routes of the visitor were really confined to a certain state and that they hadn't crossed the border at all.

Some states in Australia have closed their borders to non-essential travel within the country. The borders of Victoria, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory all remain under strict restrictions and are being monitored by police.

Plans to relax these restrictions by July 20 were scrapped after the spike in the number of cases in Victoria.

The challenge for Australia right now will be to ensure the virus doesn't spread beyond Victoria into other states.

Ardern said that given there were still problems in certain states, any plans for a nationwide bubble including both Australia and New Zealand was some way off.

SOURCE  






Pauline Hanson blames non-English speaking migrants for deadly COVID-19 spike as she blasts public housing residents AGAIN and says they highlight 'the failures of multiculturalism'

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has doubled down on her extraordinary Today show rant about locked-down tower block residents which led to her being dumped from the Channel Nine breakfast show.

The outspoken senator was met with widespread criticism after saying on Monday residents confined to their apartments in Melbourne housing blocks were 'drug addicts and alcoholics'.

Former Labor leader Bill Shorten even refused to say her name as he condemned her comments on the program on Tuesday morning.

But in a fiery justification of her comments posted on her official website, Ms Hanson said they were simply 'an honest assessment' of Australia's inability to manage its multicultural society.

'The pandemic has revealed that the failure to assimilate into Australian culture and learn English can indirectly be deadly,' she said.

Hanson had sensationally stated in the interview with Today show host Allison Langdon locked-down residents were not social distancing because they could not understand government rules communicated in English.

In her statement published on Tuesday, Hanson re-emphasised that English-language health advice disseminated during the COVID-19 lockdown was lost on much of the immigrant population.

'Health advice during this emergency has been published only in English - our national language - so it meant many residents from non-English speaking backgrounds, who have rejected the English language, missed the safety message,' she said.

'We now have an emerging second wave and the Melbourne housing apartment harsh lockdown.'

Hanson also doubled down on her argument that confined residents 'should know what its like' to be locked down because of their war-torn countries of origin.

In her renewed justification of her criticism public housing residents, Ms Hanson said they were being more than looked after by the taxpayer.

'The two weeks in quarantine for the 3000 residents will be aided by taxpayer-funded food, alcohol and drug deliveries, government financial handouts, and more than 500 police guards,' she said.

'I have said many times that criticism is not racism. To reject certain opinions and stifle debate on the issues that affect our nation is an attack on free speech and also a roadblock to a better future for all Australia.'  

Nine executives ruled the ever-outspoken One Nation senator had crossed a line when she told Langdon residents complaining about being locked in their towers should 'know what it's like to be in tough conditions'. 

She said refugees should be accustomed to tough conditions having experienced life in their war-torn home countries.

Within hours Channel Nine announced she would no longer be a regular contributor on the show. A spokesperson for the network called her comments 'ill-informed and divisive'.

SOURCE  






Campus kangaroo courts

Bettina Arndt

I am still up to my ears working to expose the most grievous example of unfair administrative decision-making in relation to sexual misconduct – through my ongoing investigation of our campus kangaroo courts.

Over the past few months my diligent volunteers have done a great job sending letters, firstly to Vice Chancellors and more recently to university boards, asking questions about how they are tackling the issue of investigating and adjudicating sexual assault on campus – particularly in the light of Dan Tehan’s instruction, via TEQSA, that universities should get out of this territory.

Many have passed on to me the glowing letters they have received in response, as the university administrators claim all is hunky dory, with accused young men being offered procedural fairness and having all their rights protected. That’s so much hogwash.

Over recent weeks I have talked to the parents of a final year student who had his degree withheld for over a year after a sexual assault allegation. Despite no proper investigation, his accuser’s degree was promptly awarded while his life was in limbo.

Another student was excluded from all university premises after being caught with a drunken girl who’d partially undressed him. Then there was the mother whose student son now faces criminal charges even though his accuser admits she thought she was having sex with another student. At a fourth university, a young man is being humiliated by accusations of sexual assault and harassment being circulated on social media by his ex-girlfriend. This is the same university which has suspended male students for singing bawdy songs at a college event. 

Across the board our universities are selling out young men through administrative decision-making which denies them proper justice. With the lawyers and researchers helping with this project, I’m putting together documentation to show how few of our universities allow access to lawyers to protect the accused during the secretive investigations being conducted on our campuses. How very few allow proper examination of the evidence, let alone opportunity for cross-examination.

 Unlike our criminal courts, none of this administrative decision-making has proper oversight. The decisions to steal these young men’s degrees, derail their careers, shame and humiliate them are made by unnamed people, behind closed doors, with no public scrutiny.

newsletter@bettinaarndt.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





8 July 2020

Victoria's horror coronavirus outbreak spreads to New South Wales as a TENTH public housing tower in Melbourne is exposed to the virus  and a military operation is launched to lockdown the border

I am just ecstatic to be a Queenslander right now -- like almost all Queenslanders, I suspect.  And having a freezer crammed full of food is comforting too -- JR

Victoria's coronavirus outbreak has jumped the border to New South Wales as the crisis in Melbourne deepens and a military operation is launched to stop people crossing the state line.

All residents of the greater Melbourne area were banned from New South Wales as of 12.01am on Tuesday - and all Victorians will be stopped from crossing the border 24 hours later.

The ban had previously only applied to residents of Melbourne's 12 coronavirus hotspot postcodes.

The extension of the NSW HotSpot Order comes as the Victorian outbreak spread into the NSW town of Albury.

NSW Health confirmed on Monday night two people in the border town tested positive, one of whom had recently travelled to a Melbourne hotspot but returned before restrictions were imposed.

The Federal Government will send up to 500 military personnel to help NSW Police seal off the interstate border.

Many of the 55 road border crossings will be patrolled, while drones will spy from the air to stop people swimming across rivers or crossing through bushland.

'Defence is working closely with the NSW Government to finalise arrangements for the deployment of between 350 and 500 Australian Defence Force personnel to support the NSW Police Force border control checkpoints on the NSW-Victoria border,' an ADF spokeswoman said.

'The first of these are expected to deploy to the border to achieve the NSW Government directed border closure timings, pending finalising the agreement with NSW authorities.'  

As of Monday night, Victoria had 645 active cases which make up more than 97 per cent of Australia's total 668 active cases.

The state is to be shut off from the rest of the country after case numbers surged by 124 on Monday revised down from 127 - its highest daily increase since the start of the pandemic.

The previous daily high in the number of new COVID-19 cases recorded in Victoria was 111 on March 28.

Meanwhile, Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos announced a 30-bed field hospital was being set up at Melbourne Showgrounds to give first aid and triage to the 3000 residents of nine public housing towers under total lockdown in Flemington and North Melbourne.

Australia's first field hospital dedicated to the virus was jointly established by the Royal Melbourne Hospital and St John Ambulance to provide urgent care if needed, Victoria's Department of Health and Human Services said on Monday.

The public housing situation worsened on Monday with a 10th block exposed to the deadly virus.

A resident living in a locked-down North Melbourne tower also worked as a subcontractor for Victoria's Health Department in the 10th block, at 108 Elizbeth St, Richmond, Nine News reported. Seven levels of the building have now been sanitised but the building had not been locked down as of Monday night.

'Dying of starvation': Public housing say they've only eaten four sausage rolls since nine towers were forced into lockdown
Public housing residents trapped in their homes have broken down in tears as they claim food supplies are so dangerously low people could die from starvation.

Nine towers in Flemington and North Melbourne were locked down on Saturday in an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus, with 3,000 residents unable to leave their apartments for any reason for at least five days.

The state government says it has distributed 3000 meals, 1000 food hampers and 250 personal care packs to residents, while the charity FareShare has provided more than 3000 prepared meals and 4500 pastries.

But Debbie Harrison, who is caring for her 83-year-old mother, Ivy, at a housing unit in North Melbourne says they have only been given four sausage rolls to eat in 48 hours.

Ms Harrison broke down in tears and said she and her mother have run out of fruit, vegetables, meat and toilet paper.

The distressed woman said they had only received their first delivery on Monday despite going into complete lockdown at 4pm Saturday.

The mother and daughter were given four small sausage rolls to sustain them for the entire day. 'They are just going to go in the bin, we're not touching them,' Ms Harrison told A Current Affair.

Ms Harrison tried to get her daughter to deliver groceries, but she was turned away by police guarding the public housing tower.

The 83-year-old great-grandmother said she is more worried about her children and her great-grandchildren. 'I want things to be what they used to be, I've never known anything like this in my 83 years, never,' she said.

Residents of the nine towers have complained about not having enough food since the lockdown began on Saturday afternoon.

Flemington resident Steve Ulu told Nine News that nobody had knocked on his door to ask if he needed anything.

Mr Ulu said he was running low on cat food and was just lucky he had enough food in his freezer to get by when the lockdown began.

'The prisoners have got more than we do because they get to eat three times a day,' he said.

A resident who did not give her full name claimed that she and her seven children had been living off Weetbix cereal without milk, SBS News reported. 'I can't keep them fed anymore ... I don't know how to explain. I didn't expect this,' the resident said.

However photographs revealed police delivering pallet loads of bread and boxes of essential food to Melbourne's housing commission towers on Monday.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said on Monday that Foodbank had provided 1000 essential food hampers with cereal, pasta, long-life milk, sugar, and tinned vegetables to residents, while a further 3000 ready-made meals and 4500 pastries had also been delivered.

Melbourne community groups have also rallied to help the residents with Sikh Volunteers Australia bringing hundreds of hot vegetarian meals, Foodbank Victoria delivering 1600 hampers and the National Homeless Collective delivering 140 tins of baby formula, nappies and sanitary pads.

Mr Andrews said on Sunday that the Victorian Government would give residents of the subsidised housing towers food, free rent for two weeks, baby formula, pet food and medical essentials.

They will also be provided with counselling, treatment for drug and alcohol ­addiction including methadone for registered addicts, mental health care, family violence counselling and physical healthcare.

Translators will be doorknocking to explain directions to tenants who don't speak English.

Some residents of the public housing estate are employed and they will receive a $1500 hardship payment to compensate for missing work.

A crowdfunding campaign for residents by Victorian Trades Hall Council has raised more than $250,000.

However, residents on Monday complained to SBS news that the food parcels provided by the government were 'culturally inappropriate' including non-halal meat.

Sixteen new coronavirus cases were found at the nine towers on Monday bringing the total to 53 confirmed cases in the subsidised housing blocks.  

Five hundred police are patrolling the towers to make sure that nobody enters or leaves except essential service personnel.

The decision to close Victoria's border with New South Wales was made after three-way talks between Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

'The cases have escalated significantly now,' Mr Morrison told Radio 2GB on Monday evening. 'We had a three way hook up earlier this morning ... and agreed that now is the time for Victoria to isolate itself from the rest of the country.'

Mr Morrison said he expected there to be initial confusion and teething problems, but asked Australians to be patient.

The border closures will be enforced on the NSW side so as not to drain Victoria's resources that are being used to fight the outbreak.      

The Prime Minister criticised those among the 10,000 residents living in Victoria's hotspot postcodes who have refused coronavirus testing.

Mr Morrison said it was his view that they ought to be penalised however it was a matter for the state to decide.

A man in his 90s died in hospital on Sunday night, while a man in his 60s died on Monday, bringing the national pandemic death toll to 106.

Fourteen new coronavirus cases linked to the Al-Taqwa College outbreak were found on Monday, Victoria's Department of Health and Human Services said on Monday, bringing the total number of cases linked to the outbreak to 77.

All staff and students at the school at Truganina in Melbourne’s west have been placed into isolation for contact tracing.

Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton was concerned by the spread of cases in Melbourne, saying a significant number were in suburbs near 12 hotspot postcodes, where stay-at-home orders are currently in place.

'There's significant spillover and so to use the bushfire analogy - there are literally spot fires adjacent to those restricted postcodes,' he said.

On Sunday, Australia's Acting Chief Health Medical Officer Paul Kelly described the towers as 'vertical cruise ships', due to their potential to spread the virus.

Mr Andrews said more cases should be expected as authorities test all 3000 residents of the towers.

Meanwhile, Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton confirmed a 32-year-old resident of one of the towers at Flemington has been arrested for attempting to leave and biting police.

SOURCE  







Alan Jones slams Australia's 'alarmist' response to the coronavirus crisis and says we SHOULDN'T be in lockdown as he returns to broadcasting with a new show

He's got a point. The plain fact is that working-age people are in minimal danger

Alan Jones has blasted Australia's response to the coronavirus crisis in his return to broadcasting after retiring from radio.

The 79-year-old debuted his new program on Sky News on Monday night and claimed Australia has run an 'alarmist' campaign in dealing with COVID-19.

'Since I was last on air and even before I went off air, we have endured this extraordinary alarmist campaign over coronavirus and it still persists,' Jones said.

More than 8,400 people have been diagnosed with coronavirus in Australia with 106 fatalities, which Jones argued pales in comparison to the nation's yearly average of 160,000 deaths.

He noted figures from the World Health Organisation that 99 per cent of the world's coronavirus cases are mild and questioned why the disease has shut down the country.

'We’re breathlessly told how many more people have tested positive. Now this hysteria has gripped people,' he said. 'They baulk at getting into a lift.'

Jones said if Victoria 'was a public company it’d be in administration'.

The veteran broadcaster claimed 'almost none' of the new cases were critical despite an emergency field hospital being erected at Melbourne Showgrounds to cater for a feared spike in cases from nine of the city's locked down housing commission towers.

Five Victorian COVID-19 patients are currently receiving treatment in intensive care.

Jones said leaders must start 'providing leadership'  instead of frightening the public feeding hysteria surrounding the virus. 'Can we have some perspective in all of this? The economy has been crushed. What for?' Jones said.

'We’ve got political leaders who have become followers. Chief medical officers whose names have never appeared on a ballot paper are running the country.

'Businesses are going broke for God’s sake and people may have lost their jobs for good because the impression has been created that if you test positive, you must immediately go to Bunnings, get a box of nails, some pine boards, build a coffin and jump into it.'

SOURCE  






Australia proving 'resilient' to China's influence efforts, says CSIS

China's attempts to influence Australian attitudes and politics are ultimately aimed at peeling Australia away from its US alliance and neutralising its impact on geostrategic issues, says a leading US think tank.

Australia has been included by the Washington-based Centre for Strategic & International Studies alongside Japan, Germany and the UK as case studies of advanced economies that have been targeted by Beijing and Moscow.

"Like Japan, Australia is an attractive target for Chinese influence operations because of its strategic value as a US ally in the increasingly contested Indo-Pacific region," writes Amy Searight, a non-resident, senior associate for Asia at the CSIS.

"Neutralising Australia on a key issue such as the South China Sea would pay huge dividends for Beijing by reducing American regional leadership," say the authors of a new report. EPA

"Neutralising Australia on a key issue such as the South China Sea would pay huge dividends for Beijing by reducing American regional leadership."

The report by the CSIS, which receives funding from the Australian government, comes amid growing US media attention and awareness of what many on both sides of the political divide regard as China's economic bullying of Australia in recent weeks and months.

Even as attitudes harden in the US against China, Australia's case is increasingly making prime-time news. Brian Kilmeade, a high-profile pro-Donald Trump commentator on "Fox & Friends", last week urged Republican House of Representatives minority leader Kevin McCarthy to push for American purchases of Australian iron ore to counter China.

Ms Searight says Australia’s economic dependency on China and its large Chinese diaspora "create points of leverage for Beijing to exploit".

The CSIS also accuses China of trying to "divide Australia's multicultural society" by seeking to unite its Chinese diaspora inside the country to support Beijing "while also exploiting racial sensitivities".

Alongside resources trade, and tourism and education, China has a "natural constituency of support in the Australian business community and among university leadership for a cooperative relationship with China", she writes.

While Australia's "free and vibrant press" has helped draw attention to "Chinese malign influence activities in Australia", Australia's Chinese-language media is seen as having been largely co-opted or purchased by Beijing-linked interests.

"The growing use of WeChat and other Chinese-language social media further limits access of Chinese-speaking Australians to information and perspectives that fall outside of the Beijing-controlled narrative," Ms Searight writes.

The report notes a deterioration in Australian opinions on China since 2008, when 52 per cent surveyed by the Pew Research Centre had a "favourable" view of the Sino giant. In 2018 that number had shrunk to 36 per cent, with "unfavourable" views rising to 57 per cent from 40 per cent 12 years ago.

"Despite its vulnerabilities, Australia’s democratic political culture has proven resilient to China’s growing attempts to influence its political environment," the report's authors conclude.

Still, the CSIS warns that China and Russia are adapting and mutating their efforts, with Beijing starting to emulate Moscow's tactics by creating fake social media accounts to spread lies, "particularly related to the US administration's handling of the coronavirus epidemic".

"Just as China is learning from Russia, democracies under threat can learn from one another.

"Increasing this cooperation and finding common approaches to countering malign influence activities are the best ways to ensure those activities continue to fall short of their goals."

For the purposes of the CSIS study, the authors have adopted former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull's definition of malign influence activities as being "covert, coercive, or corrupting". Mr Turnbull outlined the definition in a speech to parliament in December 2017 when he introduced his espionage and foreign interference bill.

SOURCE  






An Endlessly Renewable Source of Green Agitprop

Stoking the fires of renewable energy’s purported advantages is the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), an intergovernmental outfit whose chief purpose is to serve as a spigot for endless propaganda. Its official message is that fossil fuel is an archaic source of electricity now being battered by upstart competitors wind and solar. Bear in mind that world electricity supply pans out at 38 per cent for coal, 23 per cent gas and 26 per cent hydro/nuclear. Wind/solar supply 10 per cent.

IRENA tirelessly advocates for renewables, saying they “could form a key component of economic stimulus packages in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.” And in the purple prose so common with these green-spruiking agencies it claims, “Scaling up renewables can boost struggling economies. It can save money for consumers, pique the appetites of investors and create numerous high-quality new jobs.” Investment in renewables is amplified by other benefits, the story goes, as it is alleged to bring “health, sustainability and inclusive prosperity.” When it comes to renewables, no snake-oil salesman of old could hold a carbon-neutral candle to the likes of their modern green-lipped urgers.

IRENA would have us see renewable power installations as a key component of economic stimulus packages in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, claiming that replacing one quarter of the world’s existing coal capacity with wind and solar would, in addition to cutting electricity costs, bestow a stimulus worth US$940 billion, or around one per cent of global GDP.

All this is, of course, is super-heated hot air billowing from the deep pockets of IRENA’s multi-government funding. It rests upon the sort of spurious arithmetic swallowed whole by Australian governments which, having granted regulatory favours to wind/solar, cheer the dynamiting of low-cost, dependable coal plants and the consequent price escalation and network unreliability.

IRENA estimates the cost of electricity from new coal plants at between US$50 per MWh and US$177 per MWh. The cost of plant itself is pretty standard internationally, but that of transmission and fuel is highly variable, as are construction costs. For Australia, rigorous analysis by GHD for the Minerals Council estimated a new, high efficiency/low emissions black coal generator would be as low as $40 per MWh. Australian coal’s locational advantages were the key to this low cost, offset somewhat by a “CFMEU” union loading disability (lifting labour costs 25 per cent above the level that would prevail without unionised rigidities).

Compared with its coal-generation cost estimates, the shaded area in the diagram below, IRENA puts the cost of solar photovoltaics as having declines to US$68 per MWh; of large scale solar to US$182 per MWh; and that of wind to $US53 per MWh.

Given all these entirely confected “advantages” of wind and solar, IRENA is disappointed that global growth in renewable investment seems to have stagnated over recent years. It attributes this to the concocted story — cooked up by itself, mind you — about “subsidies” to coal, the estimates for which are derived from another IRENA paper which confusingly traverses many different international sources with widely different approaches and estimates.

The global subsidy figure IRENA cites for fossil fuels is $447 billion, which excludes greenhouse “externality costs”. The subsidies for coal itself are said to be $17 billion (astonishingly, this includes the UK which no longer has any generation from coal). Germany is the largest coal subsidiser (to enable its coal industry to compete with imports). Coal comprises 40 per cent of German electricity supply, and IRENA quotes annual subsidy estimates ranging from $US 10 billion while also lending credibility to the (US)$58 billion Greenpeace estimate. Aside from coal, add a further $128 billions of subsidies to electricity generation generally, this from government-mandated price controls, estimates of concessional finance and support for carbon-capture and storage.

Coincidental to the IRENA release was a report of an agency dedicated to destroying the competitiveness of the Australian energy industry, the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute (GCCS).  Bear in mind that GCCS was bankrolled by the Rudd/Gillard government but, despite all that money from the public purse, it is very secretive about its accounting.  Its latest press release refers to yet another reputed success in carbon capture and storage, said to be burying 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 a year with Canadian government subsidies of C$558 million. Some may take a perverse comfort in knowing Australia is not the only country dedicated to committing economic suicide with addled “energy competitiveness” initiatives.

Agencies like IRENA parade their cost fabrications purely to arm the governments that finance them with the information they can use to promote the subsidies that are needed – temporarily of course – to get these “clean” energy investments over the line.

The message is heard loud and clear in all Western nations (except Trump’s America) and lip service is paid to it in the developing world just so long as rich countries pick up the tab. Most of the Western world is adopting economically debilitating emission-restraint policies, but there is no prospect of China, India, Vietnam and Indonesia sacrificing their possibilities of Western-style living standards by abandoning fossil fuels, always the cheapest energy source. As these nations are now responsible for two-thirds of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, all the international agitprop in the world will make no difference to the trivial global warming that the burning of fossil fuels may be causing.

Agencies like IRENA, their national counterparts, lobby organisations and leaders like that of EU President Ursula von der Leyen  continue to beat the drum even as reality bites elsewhere.

But reality bites elsewhere.  In Melbourne, several green-left councils have announced deferral of “sustainability” expenditures as they grapple with massive funding reductions in the light of the lockdown.  These councils will not be the only government agencies who decide that, with reduced incomes, saving the planet takes a back seat to saving public service jobs!

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, 2020

Why Melbourne's public housing towers have 'explosive potential' for coronavirus to spread

Nine Melbourne public housing estates are in their third day of a "hard lockdown", brought about by fears coronavirus has the "explosive potential" to spread within the units.

Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said the measures were in place because the environment was "desperately challenging".

That's because of a range of factors, like density, cleanliness and the jobs of many people living inside. High-density towers can be like 'vertical cruise ships'

We know one of the biggest weapons in stopping the spread of coronavirus is keeping our distance, and that the virus has more chance of transmission indoors.

Tenants in big apartment blocks often share facilities like lifts, corridors, rubbish facilities and laundry rooms — making the chance of running into someone higher.

Each one of the Melbourne tower blocks is home to hundreds of residents living in small units without balconies.

"Those towers have a large concentration of people in a small area," acting Australian Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said on Sunday. "They are vertical cruise ships, in a way.

"And so we have to take particular notice and particular attention to make sure that the spread is minimised and that people are protected."

Sharon Lewin, leading infectious diseases expert and the director of the Doherty Institute, said tightly-packed apartment blocks could be a "recipe for transmission".

"When you get very dense housing, it becomes very hard to physically distance and stop any spread," she told ABC Radio Melbourne.

Advocates have pointed to this as a reason there should be more public housing.

Victorian Public Tenants Association executive officer Mark Feenane said while COVID-19 did not discriminate based on income or housing tenure, "overcrowded living conditions assist the virus to spread".

On Sunday, 27 cases had been detected across the nine towers in Flemington and North Melbourne, but Professor Sutton said he expected there would be more diagnosed in coming days.

That's the big reason behind the lockdowns — authorities are concerned about people who may be "incubating" the virus.

As well as the problems faced by residents of an apartment block in containing the spread, tenants have told the ABC about broken lifts making it "impossible" to safely distance.

Melissa Wehan, who lives in one of the Racecourse Rd buildings in Flemington, told the ABC it was "inevitable" the virus would spread in her block. She said there was a lack of hand sanitiser around the building, including in communal spaces.

"Our lifts only hold — if we follow social-distancing instructions — two people at a time. There's 180 apartments in every building, nine flats in every floor," she said.

Other tenants have expressed concern about the lack of information in languages other than English.

Housing Minister Richard Wynne said "significant deep cleaning" had been done across Melbourne's 47 high-rise public housing blocks since the pandemic began.

"You can be assured that the deep cleaning both of the common areas, the lifts and indeed the common walkways has been very significantly ramped up since the start of the COVID virus, for all of the obvious reasons of the potential vulnerability of our tenants," he said on Sunday.

He said he had also asked his department to "ensure that we have got all of the appropriate language information in place".

Tenants are likely to work public-facing essential jobs
The Doherty Institute's Professor Lewin said while the physical environment was one factor, it was just part of the picture.

"A lot of people in these housing estates in Victoria particularly, are in work that's essential, so they're often more likely to be exposed to infection," she said.

"You're more in touch with the public if you can't work from home, so exposure is probably a big risk factor here.

And if people are living with larger family groups, they're more likely to bring the virus home.

But authorities have been careful to not lay blame on the residents of the towers. "It's not about the people who are there, it's about the entire environment and the way that people interact and the issue of how easily this virus spreads," Professor Sutton said.

Another potential factor is that the virus is known to last longer on surfaces with lower humidity and less sunlight — so a Melbourne winter could play a part.

There's also concern about background health status. Residents of public housing are often immigrants, on low income or living with a disability.

On Saturday, the Deputy Chief Health Officer, Annaliese van Diemen, said that added another layer of concern.

"The first priority here is to find every case in those towers so that we don't have an explosion of infections in a highly vulnerable community and very high rates of hospitalisations and deaths because of the background health status of a large number of people in these towers," she said.

Authorities are hoping they'll get on top of it with testing
The lockdown will last for at least five days, which authorities are hoping will be enough time to test all 3,000 residents and process the results. It could then be extended for longer.

Under the "detention directions" given to residents, the state also has the power to detain people for a further 10 days if they decline to be tested. Mr Andrews said that was because authorities would have to "assume you are positive".

Some residents felt unfairly targeted by the sudden lockdown and were left unprepared and confused when police arrived to enforce the new restrictions.

Professor Sutton said the "early, if imperfect control" was key to getting on top of the virus and preventing deaths. He said without the lockdown, the virus "would have spread beyond these towers".

Meanwhile, cases outside of those towers are continuing to climb around Melbourne, with tens of new infections recorded each day.

SOURCE  





Election results are tight enough that Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese can take a boost from it

A status quo result in the hotly contested Eden-Monaro by-election has simultaneously helped to strengthen Anthony Albanese's leadership of the Labor Party while giving Scott Morrison a shot in the arm, having withstood a possible protest vote over his handling of the bushfire crisis.

Both leaders were carefully managing expectations in the lead-up to the first by-election of the 46th Parliament, conducted under the shadow of a once-in-a-100-year pandemic, in the most challenging economic conditions since the Great Depression and in a region still traumatised by the black summer of fires.

These contaminants make it even harder than usual to pick apart the result and determine which issue ultimately swayed voters.

ABC election analyst Antony Green handed the win to Labor — a huge relief for Albanese who personally picked Labor's candidate Kristy McBain and threw everything at this seat to defend it.

He could not afford to be the first opposition leader in 100 years to lose a seat to a government in a by-election.

Labor had always said that it would lose about 3 per cent of its primary vote with the retirement of the popular sitting member Mike Kelly.

It turns out the party's vote fell by just over 2 per cent according to the latest figures, to 36 per cent, meaning it had to rely on favourable preference flows from the Greens, Shooters Fishers and Farmers Party and the Nationals to fall over the line.

That the junior Coalition partner even contested this election irritated the Liberals, that the party may have helped Labor win the seat, is a source of serious tension. But more on that later.

A win is a win but this result once again highlights the major challenge for Labor, exemplified by Bill Shorten at last year's election. Its primary vote is simply too low.

While it may have been distorted, somewhat, by the huge field of 14 candidates contesting Eden-Monaro, Labor frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon has openly conceded it's an issue, telling Insiders: "We do need to lift our primary vote and Anthony Albanese understands that."

But Fitzgibbon, who's from the party's right, has credited his left-wing leader with bringing Labor to the "sensible centre" and appealing to voters in regional Australia who have abandoned the party in droves.

"He was quick to jettison unpopular policies like franking credits," he told the ABC's Insiders. "He was quick to start establishing his bona fides with our traditional blue-collar base."

When asked if Albanese would lead Labor to the next election, Fitzgibbon responded "yes".

Equally, on the other side of politics, the Liberals are taking heart from the fact that the Coalition withstood the usual 3.8 per cent swing against a government in a by-election, even managing to ever so slightly improve its primary vote.

The bushfire crisis, together with McBain's personal profile, appears to have worked in Labor's favour along the NSW South Coast but the swings were largely contained, suggesting the white-hot anger directed at Morrison during the height of the crisis may have subsided.

That's possibly because of his handling of the COVID-19 crisis that followed.

But at a time when Morrison is enjoying sky-high personal approval ratings, some are questioning why that isn't translating into votes.

Indeed, the Newspoll results published in The Australian have already highlighted this issue.

Morrison's approval rating topped 68 per cent in the most recent poll but the two party preferred vote, showing the Coalition ahead of Labor 51-49 per cent, remains unchanged.

The PM didn't campaign nearly as much as Albanese in Eden-Monaro but it was his face on the corflutes outside the 70 or so polling booths, urging voters to back the Liberals.

SOURCE  





Volunteer firies 'disenchanted' and 'disrespected' by bureaucracy

Volunteer firefighters are leaving the ranks in NSW and Victoria due to disrespect from city-based professional emergency managers, the bushfire royal commission has heard.

Volunteer Fire Fighters Association of NSW vice-president Brian Williams said fire control plans overlooked input from local volunteers, which they feared put them at increased risk of harm.

The Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements has heard volunteer firefighters are dissatisfied with professional fire managers.
The Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements has heard volunteer firefighters are dissatisfied with professional fire managers.CREDIT:NICK MOIR

"The Rural Fire Service has become quite a city centric organisation and there has been a considerable loss of control at the local level," Mr Williams said. "Their [volunteer] input isn't valued like it used to be when we were under local government and they're tending to walk away and that's very unfortunate."

Volunteers do a "a very difficult, dangerous job" and the bureaucracy should "give them respect", Mr Williams said in a hearing of the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements on Friday.

He said a "growing feeling that we're no longer important" had been felt across the Rural Fire Service volunteer ranks for a number of years and as a result "really experienced people are becoming disenchanted and they're leaving the service".

Volunteer numbers had also taken a "worrying" drop in Victoria due to a lack of respect for their ranks, according to Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria chief executive Adam Barnett.

"We've still got a healthy culture in Australia for volunteering, and the healthy recruiting numbers I think lend themselves to say people want to volunteer," he said.

"But when you start looking into the reasons why volunteers are leaving and certainly those reasons from an association point of view, the dissatisfaction about how they are treated, it's dissatisfaction about how they are respected and recognised."

There were 65,992 volunteers in 1998 in Victoria but that number had dropped to 53,311 in 2020, he said.

"Unfortunately we have experienced a significant, I guess, downward trend in the last five years and looking at the figures we've probably lost roughly around the same amount of volunteers in the last five years as we had in the 15 years prior to that. So it's certainly a worrying trend in the short term," Mr Barnett said.

Association of Volunteer Bush Fire Brigades president Dave Gossage, from Western Australia, said volunteers had been "bullied" since local input had been diminished and administration of firefighting funding and regulations had been consolidated under the Department of Fires and Emergency Services.

"The department said to us that 'oh, you can have it so long as you come under our command and control'," Mr Gossage said. "That is just blatant bullying and abuse of power to actually use that, you know, control of the money to get people to come under their command and control."

Mr Gossage said the state bureaucracy created an "insulting" firefighting training system that ignored volunteers.

"In WA a system was brought in that created pathways for the paid people and then they said 'oh shivers, we forgot about the volunteers' and shoved them on," he said.

"But the way it was structured volunteers would always be subservient to the paid officers and that's insulting when we have volunteers who are running multi million dollar corporations and businesses and mines and all that being treated like fodder."

SOURCE  





NSW curriculum review is a fail

Despite the Berejiklian government’s  ‘back to basics’ rhetoric, the NSW curriculum review is proposing a radical overhaul that isn’t based on evidence, but will make life more difficult for teachers and students.

The curriculum definitely needs to be improved. But while many of the minor proposals of the latest review are sensible, the suggested major changes will make matters worse.

The most radical proposal is to move away from the normal year-level curriculum to an ‘untimed’ curriculum, so it will “not specify when every student must commence, or how long they have to learn, the content of each syllabus.”

This would remove any absolute standard for what all students should be expected to achieve in each year; yet another downward notch for the already-low expectations in our school system.

Teachers’ work in the classroom will be made harder because apparently they will need to — somehow — deliver lessons to students working on different syllabi within the same class, depending on their progress. It’s already a constant challenge to teach lessons to students with differing abilities and progress when covering the same syllabus.

How could a teacher possibly be reasonably expected to teach many different topics at the same time in one class and track each student’s progress against different standards? It’s a recipe for even more red tape for teachers, who already suffer from a heavy administrative burden.

Proof that this idea isn’t a practical one is that the review cannot point to any high-achieving school system, anywhere in the world, that has an ‘untimed’ curriculum. Not one.

Another proposal is that the HSC will have less emphasis on exams and introduce a “major project” for each Year 12 student.

But take-home assignments like this are far less fair than exams in demonstrating proficiency of a subject. For example, students from disadvantaged backgrounds would have less access to parental help or tutors at home for their major projects. This would undermine the integrity of the HSC — which is arguably the most rigorous Year 12 certificate in Australia — and negatively impact disadvantaged students in particular.

The review itself acknowledges these potential equity problems, and the best it can say in response is that they are “probably not insurmountable.” So that’s alright, then?

The NSW government’s response to the proposals for an untimed curriculum and major projects for the HSC has been “support in principle” but “further advice will be sought.” We can only hope this is bureaucratic code for “not going to happen.”

A review is one thing, government policy is another. The NSW government has only itself to blame if it implements the review’s recommendations and school results fail to improve — or continue to worsen — despite more taxpayer funding.

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



6 July, 2020

Why one of the world's top disease experts says Australia should abandon hard lockdowns, embrace 'herd immunity' and let COVID-19 rip

Sweden may have more deaths so far but should be safer from a future upsurge

A top disease expert has urged Australia to abandon its 'selfish' and 'self congratulatory' lockdown tactics and embrace a Swedish-style herd immunity strategy to fight COVID-19.

University of Oxford professor Sunetra Gupta said the Scandinavian country has 'done quite well in terms of deaths' - despite its record of 5,300 fatalities dwarfing Australia's.

Sweden holds the fifth-highest rate of deaths per capita in the world after the Nordic nation took its own path and declined to close its restaurants, bars, schools and shops to fight the spread of the virus.

Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has since called for an inquiry into the so-called soft approach. 

On the other hand, Australia took on a comparatively tougher stance and closed down state borders, businesses, restaurants and pubs earlier in the year.

The country has recorded 104 deaths with new coronavirus cases in the community only recorded in Victoria - despite the state enforcing some of the toughest lockdown measures in the country.

State premier Daniel Andrews was slammed by critics as 'Chairman Dan' for the state's harsh lockdown measures in response to the initial COVID outbreak in March - at one point even banning the playing of golf.

Victoria is now in the grips of what state health officials have politely described as a 'second peak', if not a second wave.

Professor Gupta has argued the state's predicament is proof that lockdown measures are ineffective in the longterm. 'There is no way lockdown can eliminate the virus … and so it's not at all surprising once you lift lockdown in areas it will flare up again,' she told The Australian.

'That is what we are seeing in the southern United States, and in Australia.'  

According to scientific research, between 30 and 81 per cent of the global population have T-cells from previous colds and flus that could automatically recognise the threat of the coronavirus, making them immune.

A large number of Australians will also be asymptomatic if they came down with the virus.

Professor Gupta argued it would be better to let COVID-19 spread in the community and have stronger measures to protect the vulnerable - such as the elderly or sick.

'You can only lock down for so long unless you choose to be in isolation for eternity so that's not a good solution,' she was quoted saying.

Australia has pinned its hopes on a vaccine, with human trials underway at universities around the world.

SOURCE  






Protests dying out in Brisbane

Fewer than a thousand people gathered for a Black Lives Matter protest in Brisbane city on Saturday, leaving organisers disheartened.

Just weeks ago, some 30,000 Queenslanders turned out to a rally following the death of African-American man George Floyd at the hands of police.

'I can not explain the disappointment,' Gomeroi Kooma woman Ruby Wharton told the small crowd gathered at King George Square on Saturday.

'It was okay for people to come out here and want to be a part of it when they were chasing a hundred likes on Instagram.'  'That is shameful and tokenism,' she said.

Organiser Bogaine Spearim told reporters the rally was intended to be a continuation of the global protests that kicked off in the wake of Mr Floyd's death in May.

'Deaths are continuing to happen in Australia - Dave Dungay Jnr said 'I can't breathe' before dying in custody,' he said. 'We will continue to hit the streets and disrupt until there is justice.'

Despite the small turnout, the protestors were vocal, shouting 'Always was, always will be Aboriginal land' and, 'No justice, no peace, no racist police'.

Garrwa and Butchulla man Fred Leone called on the Queensland government to conduct a broad review into black deaths in custody. 'F**k all has changed since 1991, since the last royal commission,' he said

'Black Lives Matter. They do not just matter cause it is trending, they matter every single day.'

More than 430 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are known to have died in custody in Australia since a royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody delivered its final report in 1991.

Organisers are also calling for anti-racism training in schools and an end to racial profiling by police.

SOURCE  





Australia risks squandering a lucrative export - and a diplomatic opportunity

There are a few things Australia is really good at. Most of them are resources, given to us through good fortune and geographical circumstance, we dig them up and send them all over the world, earning about $180 billion a year in the process.

A look down the top 10 list of Australia's exports - a roll call of the country's areas of comparative advantage – puts education at number three, tourism at number five, and mostly rocks in between.

Iron ore makes good steel but does little for exporting Australia's values or influence. Education does. Now it appears we may be squandering it.

Historically, the flow of people for educational exchange in Western democracies is seen as a way of transferring democratic values to non-democratic regions of the world.

There is no larger non-democratic market than China. At Australia's top universities they account for 60 per cent of all international enrolments, or 110,000 students. It is a massive market – worth $3.1 billion a year to the top 10 universities alone ? and with many international students coming from more privileged backgrounds than average, a huge strategic opportunity to influence the potential future leaders of industry and government.

On Friday, the Business Council of Australia's Asia Taskforce published a report that found the single greatest post-COVID-19 opportunity for the Australian economy lies in Asia. China is the only G20 economy and along with Vietnam, one of the few economies in the world currently forecast to show growth in 2020.

"Australia must maintain a comprehensive and multi-faceted economic relationship with China in a strategy which focuses on the national interest but based on the principle of “China and” rather than “China or," the taskforce said.

"A challenge for Australia is that China has a different political system and is becoming more
assertive on the international stage as its economy grows. At the same time, China will remain our largest trading partner and a significant foreign investor in Australia, and thus a significant contributor to much of our prosperity for the foreseeable future."

The key to harnessing that growth is people. Particularly those who understand how business operates in both China and Australia, many of whom are likely to be Chinese students who have studied here themselves.

Unfortunately, the flow-on effects of increasingly heated diplomatic rhetoric from politicians on both sides into the community is undermining that opportunity, as is a spike in discrimination against Chinese students and Chinese-Australian migrants during the coronavirus.

China has ratcheted up the tension in its increasingly shaky relationship with Australia, with the government now urging its citizens not to travel here.

Researchers from Stanford University in California this week released research that found Chinese students who study in the United States are more predisposed to favour liberal democracy than their peers in China. It is not unreasonable to expect similar tendencies to appear in those heading to Australia.

But the study of more than 300 Chinese first-year undergraduate students in 62 universities across the US found once they encountered anti-Chinese discrimination, it significantly reduces their belief that political reform is desirable for China and increases their support for authoritarian rule.

"Strikingly, we find that encountering xenophobic discrimination is more likely to increase support for autocracy among students who are more predisposed against the Chinese regime and less supportive nationalistic Chinese policies," researchers Yingjie Fan, Jennifer Pan, Zijie Shao, and Yiqing Xu found.

"Altogether, this means that xenophobic discrimination blocks and perhaps unravels the micro-foundation of the effects of education on transferring democratic values."

Two years before the coronavirus ravaged the global economy, Australia’s former Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane warned the China debate was “threatening to spill over into a general suspicion of Chinese-Australians,” Australia was "flirting with danger” and “intolerance has been emboldened”.

Asian-Australians reported almost 400 racist attacks since the beginning of April, according to a Per Capita survey.

It is jarring to be considering this now as Hong Kong goes through a violent and distressing erosion of its civil liberties driven by the very top of the Chinese Communist Party, but China thinks in decades, not years. It is likely that our engagement with our largest trading partner will have to continue in some form after its most liberal territory is suppressed.

To be sure there are valid reasons for alarm rising in the Australian community about Chinese government’s growing influence and ambitions in the region. It has waged campaigns of disinformation, attempted to manipulate Australian politics, hacked computer networks, is expanding its military reach in the Pacific and repressed, often brutally, ethnic minorities at home.

But the tenor of the conversation in Australia has now reached such a point that two of Australia's foremost foreign policy experts were denounced by Michael Danby, a former member of the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, for briefing a Labor shadow cabinet on the need for “sensible engagement” with China.

The two experts were Allan Gyngell, a former foreign policy adviser to Paul Keating and head of the Office of Nat­ional Assessments and Dennis Richardson, the former head of ASIO and Australia's ambassador to Washington.

Both suggested that a rising group of claw-branded Parliamentarians known as the Wolverines, who aim to aggressively curtail China's influence, may be counterproductive.

Danby was incensed. “It reeks of someone trying to reinforce ideological conformity," he told The Australian.

In other words, shut down the debate, there is no room for nuance on China.

"The list of compradors to be dragged before the Committee on UnAustralian Activities over not adhering to the correct line on China is getting longer by the day!," Richard McGregor, a senior fellow with the Lowy Institute posted on Twitter.

In the midst of all this, business is largely being cowed. Until Friday, the public has heard very little from the BCA or the Australia-China Business Council since bilateral diplomatic ties went into the freezer earlier this year. Big names such as Seven Group chairman Kerry Stokes and miner Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest go out and take the hits (with a heavy dose of self-interest) before retreating under a swell of anti-China sentiment. For every big business there are thousands of small businesses underneath that rely on China.

They cannot take part in the debate lest they are accused of reinforcing ideological conformity.

The Stanford University study suggests that while nuance is out of fashion, it might be the best chance Australia has of sending back well-informed former students to China with ideas that it may benefit from in the long term.

Those students that were not exposed to discrimination but were made aware of criticisms of the party did not tend to gravitate back towards authoritarianism.

"We find no increase in support for authoritarian rule when Chinese students encounter non-racist criticisms of China, the Chinese government, and China’s political institutions made by Americans," the study found.

SOURCE  







Australian first: Human coronavirus vaccine trials begin in South Australia

The first potential coronavirus vaccine developed in the southern hemisphere has begun human trials in Adelaide, with volunteers praised for their efforts to help save the world from the killer disease.

Australian company Vaxine will use a clinical trial unit at the Royal Adelaide Hospital to test the COVAX-19 vaccine.

Forty volunteers aged between 18 and 65 will be given two doses three weeks apart and will then have blood tests to measure protective antibody and their responses.

Vaxine research director Nikolai Petrovsky said COVAX-19 used a type of technology that mirrored previous work on vaccines for the SARS coronavirus.

He said it was thought to provide the most certain and reliable results. Known as the recombinant spike protein approach, it seeks to induce a hormonal and cellular immune response.

“As early as January 2020, our modelling identified that COVID-19 as a major pandemic threat that could potentially cause millions of deaths globally,” Professor Petrovsky said.  “Unfortunately, our early predictions were spot on.”

“Pandemic research is not something you can turn on and off like a tap,” she said. “People should not think that short-term funds, no matter how large, can deliver instant pandemic solutions after a crisis hits; it will always be too little, too late.”

South Australian Health Minister Stephen Wade said the willingness of volunteers to take part in the trial could play a key role in conquering COVID-19.

“As we can see with this trial today, by having local health networks that are friendly to research, we can actually give South Australians access to the very latest cutting edge technology and care,” Mr Wade said.

“We’ve got a strong emphasis on building medical research and programs such as this. “We’re very keen to make sure our facilities are not only delivering high-quality care for South Australians but also are the base for economic development.”

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 2020

Silver lining: Flu cases plummeting

There has been a massive drop in the number of flu cases in Australia, thanks to COVID-19 social isolation measures and an increase in flu vaccines.

In the first five months of 2019 — a particularly severe flu season — the national total of laboratory-confirmed influenza cases reached 74,176.

But Immunisation Coalition data shows the number of cases in 2020 has plummeted since coronavirus lockdowns were introduced — from 20,032 cases in the first three months, to 504 in April and May.

Australian Medical Association (AMA) SA president Dr Chris Moy said the number of flu deaths prevented since the coronavirus pandemic began was probably "quite significant".

"It may have, up to this point, saved more people than it's actually killed, and certainly the response to COVID has actually saved a lot of people," he said.

"The only proviso to that is that it is possible that we may have actually delayed an [influenza] outbreak.

"But I think [the number] will still be less, because we have a far more highly immunised population this year than we have had in previous years."

Last year, there were over 900 influenza-linked deaths in Australia.

But until the end of last month, federal authorities had only been alerted to 36 "laboratory-confirmed influenza-associated deaths" in 2020, according to the Australian Influenza Surveillance Report.

Immunisation Coalition CEO Kim Sampson said that, in terms of overall case numbers, 2020 was tracking similarly to last year until the coronavirus pandemic hit.

"We were preparing ourselves for a very bad flu season once again," he said.

"Around three quarters of the way through March there was an announcement … to introduce restrictions on our movement and lockdown was introduced.

"We saw immediately a drop of in flu numbers."

Mr Sampson said it quickly became clear that there was a link, because of the impact changes in behaviour brought about by COVID-19 have had on the spread of other illnesses.

"We checked other respiratory diseases too, such as RSV [respiratory syncytial virus], and that had also significantly reduced, as had rhinovirus," he said.

'Record' vaccination uptake

The drop in influenza cases had previously been predicted, but the magnitude of the decline is "a phenomenon … that we've never seen before", Dr Moy said.

"The mechanism of spread of influenza is essentially the same as that of COVID, and that is droplet spread," he said.

"By applying the physical distancing, the restrictions … [have] closed down the transmission of influenza at the same time."

Dr Moy said a high vaccination uptake this year was potentially another factor in keeping flu rates low, and had contributed to a "level of herd immunity".

"We've had record numbers of vaccinations at an early stage, which has partly been due to the urgings of the providers and health authorities like ourselves," he said.

"We really did not want, early on, outbreaks of COVID and influenza happening at the same time."

While it is difficult to know exactly how many vaccines have been administered this year, the Australian Immunisation Register puts the number at more than 7.3 million.

At the end of last month, Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt announced a record 18 million vaccinations would be made available during the 2020 season.

But Dr Moy warned against complacency, saying high vaccination rates early on could present problems down the track, and that a small number of people should consider speaking with their doctor about a booster shot.

"It may be that the peak effect of the vaccinations may actually occur a little bit too early," he said.

"If influenza does get going at some stage, the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine for some individuals may start to peter out later in the year."

SOURCE  











Australia set to ease virus visa hardship for foreign students

Australia appears set to address international students’ visa gripes just as a resurgence of coronavirus cases on both sides of the Tasman Sea threatens to neutralise Antipodean universities’ upper hand in the race to revive student flows.

Times Higher Education understands that the Australian government may announce new visa arrangements next week, bringing rules for foreign students more in line with those in competitor countries.

The plans are expected to include fee waivers for students forced to extend their stay in Australia because of the pandemic, and to clarify whether online classes count towards the period of study required to qualify for post-course work rights.

This would coincide with a retreat from plans to fly in select groups of international students on a trial basis, in New Zealand as well as Australia. In New Zealand, the education minister, Chris Hipkins, has ruled out a return of overseas students in July or August.

In early May, Mr Hipkins encouraged universities to produce a “concrete proposal” for international students to be readmitted into the country, initially under carefully managed quarantine. But in a late June letter to representative body Isana New Zealand, he scuttled any hope of this happening in time for the start of the second semester.

“International students remain a priority group in the government’s planning for any managed border entry arrangements,” he wrote. But he warned that there were “many details to be worked through, including quarantine and isolation arrangements, monitoring processes and how the costs can be shared by those arriving”.

New Zealand declared itself coronavirus free less than a month ago, arousing optimism that it could boost its share of international students on the back of its successful pandemic management.

But nerves emerged about its ability to safely manage the entry of people from Covid-19 hotspots, particularly when two returnees from the UK tested positive for the disease after being released from quarantine for compassionate reasons.

Similar doubts have surfaced in Australia, after sloppy management of hotel-based quarantine led to a coronavirus outbreak in Melbourne and forced the Victorian government to put 36 suburbs back under lockdown.

This has raised doubts over plans to fly in foreign students – particularly a scheme to jet in some 800 students to Adelaide.

The federal government has said that it will approve such plans only in states that allow untrammelled travel from interstate. South Australia has now scrapped plans to open its borders to Victorians in mid-July.

Ironically, New Zealand and Australia are stepping back from schemes to bring in international students just as universities in northern hemisphere competitor countries – where the coronavirus is far more prevalent – pursue plans of their own.

With Australian educators struggling to harness the country’s mostly successful pandemic management to their advantage, the release of the long-awaited student visa flexibility package will be welcome news.

The International Education Association of Australia said such concessions had been a long time coming. “After three and a half months of advocacy, education providers are frustrated at delays but hopeful that Australia will be in a more competitive position soon,” said chief executive Phil Honeywood.

The UK has increased the competitive pressure, announcing that it will allow international doctoral students to stay for three years after they graduate. However, Australia still trumps the UK on this measure, granting foreign PhD graduates up to four years’ post-study work rights.

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Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says police are hunting for Victorians being smuggled over the Queensland border in trucks

As Queensland reported another day without any new coronavirus infections, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has confirmed police are concerned about Victorians being smuggled in trucks over the state’s border.

Ms Palaszczuk told reporters this afternoon she’d received an operational briefing from the Queensland Police Commissioner and the state’s disaster co-ordinator regarding the people-smuggling fears.

“They do have some concerns that that practice could be in place,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

“So what we say to everyone out there is, if you are thinking about doing it, don’t do it. You will be hit with a fine. Trucks will also be randomly stopped, and if you are a truck driver participating in this you will also get fined as well.”

Queensland’s state disaster co-ordinator, Deputy Commissioner Steve Gollschewski, also warned “random” checks on freight and heavy vehicles will now be carried out at the border to ensure they weren’t smuggling in Victorians.

“Previously we’ve seen other heavy freight (and) that type of thing get waved through,” he said.

“They will still be able to do that but we will be randomly intercepting them to make sure that there are...not people getting through there that shouldn’t.

“We’ve already had people try and test the system all the way through, so we’re just going to make it really certain that people aren't doing that.”

From midday, any person (whether a Queensland resident or non-Queensland resident) who has been in any local government area in Victoria will be forced into mandatory hotel quarantine, for a minimum of 14 days, at their own expense.

Flights were booked out yesterday and today as Queenslanders raced to get back home.

“We’re calling on Queenslanders still there to come home as soon as possible. It’s safer here – we’ve had one case in almost two weeks and that was acquired overseas,” Deputy Premier and Health Minister Steven Miles told reporters yesterday.

“We just can’t risk removing border restrictions for people coming from areas of Victoria right now. These are very big concerns,” Ms Palaszczuk said on Tuesday.

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 2020

Australia set to offer safe haven visas to Hong Kong

Australia is set to offer safe haven visas to Hong Kong residents as the Chinese territory is consumed by another wave of protests and arrests over new national security laws imposed by Beijing.

The move will make Australia the second of the Five Eyes partners to offer Hong Kong residents refuge after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he would open the country's borders to more than 3 million Hong Kongers if they wanted to leave the former British colony.

Hong Kong police arrested more than 300 people on Wednesday for various breaches after the new laws came into force, criminalising acts that undermine the Chinese state with life imprisonment in the historically liberal city.

Up to 10 protesters were detained for specifically violating the new laws, which prohibit acts of subversion, including holding up independence signs with British and American flags on them.

The Chinese government maintains the new laws are necessary to restore law and order after more than 15 months of protests over Beijing's influence in the territory.

British Foreign Secretary Dominique Raab on Wednesday called on Britain's allies to follow its lead and offer support to residents who wanted to leave the global financial hub.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Thursday the developments were very concerning and Australia's position was consistent with other like-minded countries, including Britain, the US and Canada.

He said he was "very actively" considering proposals to provide support to Hong Kong residents worried about their future.

"There are proposals that I asked to be brought forward several weeks ago and the final touches will be put on those and they'll soon be considered by cabinet to provide similar opportunities," he said.

"We think that's important and very consistent with who we are as a people and very consistent practically with the views that we have expressed."

Hong Kong is also home to the second largest group of Australian expatriates in the world, with more than 100,000 living in the semi-autonomous region.

The Departments of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister and Cabinet have been working on measures to respond to China's increasing control of Hong Kong since the new laws were proposed at the National People's Congress in May.

"When we have made a final decision on those arrangements then I'll make the announcements," Mr Morrison said. "Are we prepared to step up and provide support? The answer is yes."

Mr Morrison's strong language indicates he is now inclined to back measures that would offer safe haven to some of Hong Kong's 7.4 million citizens. Pro-democracy leaders resigned en masse on Wednesday and disbanded their political parties, worried they would be persecuted by new national security agencies and judicial systems established in the territory.

The Australian government has been wary of sticking its neck out on the issue up until now after repeated diplomatic stoushes with Beijing over the coronavirus crisis led to a series of trade spats over beef, barley, tourism and international students this year. Any move to offer refuge to Hong Kong residents is likely to once again inflame bilateral tensions, despite Britain leading the global push.

In London on Wednesday, Mr Johnson said the enactment and imposition of the national security law constituted a "clear and serious breach of the Sino-British joint declaration" signed after Britain's handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997.

"It violates Hong Kong's high degree of autonomy and is in direct conflict with Hong Kong basic law," Mr Johnson said.

"We made it clear that if China continued down this path, we would introduce a new route for those with British national overseas status to enter the UK, granting them limited leave to remain with the ability to live and work in the UK, and thereafter to apply for citizenship; and that is precisely what we will do now."

SOURCE  






'We don't want a second wave': Victorian spike weighs on Queensland border call

The Queensland government is considering opening up the state faster, but community transmission of the coronavirus in Victoria is a concern, says Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

Her comments came after the state recorded no new cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours, a day after reported its first infection in more than a week.

Ms Palaszczuk confirmed an announcement about the opening of the Queensland border would be made on Tuesday after consideration of advice from the state's Chief Health Officer, Jeannette Young.

While consideration was being given to opening up faster, the spike in COVID-19 cases in Victoria was the "number one area of concern", she told reporters on Saturday. "We don't want a second wave and we don't want that community transmission here," Ms Palaszczuk said.

The government has come under fire for keeping the borders closed, including through two High Court cases unlikely to be heard before travel to Queensland is allowed again.

Ms Palaszczuk said the Dr Young would also consider the two-square-metre rule for smaller premises, down from four square metres, a change Prime Minister Scott Morrison said had been agreed in Friday's national cabinet.

A total of 1067 cases have now been recorded in Queensland and six people have died from the virus. There are currently two active cases of COVID-19 in Queensland, according to health department statistics.

The state's eight-day streak without new cases was broken on Friday when a Queensland ADF member tested positive in Papua New Guinea and was flown back to Brisbane.

Police Minister Mark Ryan on Friday announced extra quarantine compliance checks as travellers hit the road for the school holidays.

Backpackers and travellers in the Wide Bay region will be targeted - after a fruit picker tested positive on June 6 - as well as pubs and clubs across the state.

Mr Ryan said police had recently found a number of people not complying with quarantine orders. "Don't think we're not watching you," he warned.

"You're not just risking a fine. "You are also risking the healthcare of your fellow Queenslanders and you're risking all the hard work that Queenslanders have done to date in containing the coronavirus."

SOURCE  






Landlords tipped to claim billions more in tax losses as homes sit vacant

Australia's 2 million landlords will miss out on billions of dollars in rental income over the next two years as tenants struggle to pay.

Australian Taxation Office assistant commissioner Karen Foat predicts tax time will reveal a significant rise in negatively geared investors who typically claim a tax deduction when rental income does not cover the expense of owning the property.

In a typical financial year, landlords collectively declare to the Australian Taxation Office about $43 billion in total rent and $47 billion in deductions, Ms Foat said. About 60 per cent of rental properties are negatively geared.

"But we also know that this year, there's a lot of landlords who are receiving a reduced amount of rent, whether that's because their tenants are paying less, or unable to pay at all, or if their property is sitting vacant," she said.

"We would anticipate that there is going to be a greater number of people whose properties end up negatively geared because they still claim the expenses but they are likely to have some level of reduced rent."

This could lead to an extra $2 billion worth of losses claimed at tax time on estimates from SQM Research managing director Louis Christopher. He suspects a national 2.5 per cent decline in aggregate rents for the 2020 financial year, and a 2.5 per cent decline for the following year, bringing total rental income down to $40.9 billion.

Mr Christopher, whose company collects vacancy data and tracks market rents, said Sydney and Melbourne had been the "hardest hit" due to international border closures draining the market of short-term visitors, leading to more homes available on the standard rental market. In some inner CBD areas, more than one in 10 homes now sits vacant.

"The result of that is a rapid increase of supply in the inner-city areas for Sydney and Melbourne, as well as Brisbane to a lesser extent, which has created a major rise in rental vacancy rates and downward pressure on rent," he said.

However, Real Estate Institute of Australia president Adrian Kelly said the scenario was a "watch and wait" situation for the property industry, with eviction restrictions in many states and territories coming to an end in September.

"We've been making the federal government very much aware of the problem we've got coming in terms of what do we do with these tenants, because evicting them out on the street isn't going to be a great outcome for anybody," Mr Kelly said. "We need a form of rental assistance for these people and the government is very aware of that."

He estimates about 5 per cent of tenants are in the precarious position of being unable to pay their full rent and facing accruing rental arrears.

However, some experts are predicting the rental market will bounce back relatively quickly. PRD chief economist Diaswati Mardiasmo said previous crises, like the Asian Bird Flu and the Global Financial Crisis, also had a quick doubling in vacancy rates as tenants struggled financially but these recovered relatively quickly.

"We are at an all-time high [vacancy rate compared to] the past 15 years," Dr Mardiasmo said. "However, if we look at it from a health pandemic [and] financial crisis shock perspective we as a nation have been through this before and we have recovered," she said.

"With this we may see an increase in landlords negative gearing due to less rental prices and lost occupancy of their rental property, which is not uncommon nor surprising."

While some landlords have been able to freeze their mortgage for six months or delay council rate payments, she said "they will need to pay" eventually and in some cases this could be a bigger bill due to compounding interest.

Property research firm CoreLogic head of research Eliza Owen said rental incomes dropped about 0.5 per cent in Sydney and Melbourne between March and May.

"More severe deterioration in rental markets has been quite localised, and we expect that to continue in the second half of 2020," Ms Owen said.

"Rental price growth should stabilise once domestic restrictions on gatherings have eased, the labour market has improved, and interstate travel sees excess Airbnb stock withdrawn from the long term rental market."

SOURCE  





Australia has enough coronavirus drug remdesivir thanks to early supply donation

The Federal Health Minister says Australia has enough of the coronavirus drug remdesivir in the national stockpile thanks to donations made months ago by the drug's makers.

The United States has been accused of hoarding supplies of the drug

Greg Hunt said he recognised there were shortages around the world but said that was not the case in Australia. "Australia's in a fortunate position, it's available for doctors to use from the national medical stockpile for patients who are in hospital with illness," he said.

His comments come after the United States was criticised by health experts for hoarding almost all of the world's current supply of the drug. The US Government announced on Tuesday President Donald Trump struck a deal to buy 500,000 treatments of remdesivir from its makers at Gilead Sciences.

That represents 100 per cent of the company's July production capacity and 90 per cent of its capacity in August and September.

Remdesivir is a broad-spectrum antiviral drug designed to disable the mechanism by which some viruses make copies of themselves.

Mr Hunt said Australian health authorities acted early to secure a donation of the drug for use in coronavirus patients.

"Remdesivir is one of the therapies where there is some evidence — I don't want to overstate it — but some evidence that it can help to reduce the impacts on the critically ill," he said.

"We foresaw this, we acted early, we worked with the supplier Gilead to ensure that Australians were given a reserve supply."

Earlier, a spokesperson for the Minister said Australia had a "sufficient supply" of the drug "to meet current patient needs".

"The National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce currently states that the use of remdesivir for adults with moderate, severe or critical COVID-19 may be considered. "This recommendation will be updated as further evidence from clinical trials becomes available."

Mr Hunt said as at Thursday afternoon, there were 24 people in hospital, five in intensive care and one on ventilation.

Early trials testing the drug in patients hospitalised with COVID-19 found those who received it recovered quicker than those who did not. It is the only drug licensed by both the US and the European Union as a treatment for those with severe illness from coronavirus.

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, 2020

Remuneration season might bring the virtuous unstuck

To their growing horror, some corporate leaders will soon discover their virtue signalling comes at a very personal price. Their Faustian pact with environmental, social and governance ­activists is about to hit them where it hurts, right in their hip pockets. And big time.

Unless, of course, they admit, as many of us always suspected, that the “social licence to operate” guff was only ever intended as a marketing ploy, and never meant to have a serious impact on real corporate decisions, such as executive remuneration. It was meant to be the equivalent of a heartwarming musical for the corporate world with corporate leaders parading on stage spouting sweet-sounding monologues in synch about their social responsibility. When the curtains went down, it was back to the real world.

Coinciding with the end of the financial year, many of Australia’s largest corporations will be making decisions about remuneration for their high-flying executives in the next few weeks. Specifically, when deciding how much, if any, to award in bonuses, the words of Australian Council of Superannuation Investors chief executive Louise Davidson will be ringing in their ears: “We would expect boards to be using discretion to review variable remuneration outcomes over the coming months, taking into account the appropriateness of any payments in light of the experiences of their investors, staff, customers and the broader community.”

Even for those directors who have not been told the news directly by proxy advisers, industry super funds and other adherents of the environmental, social and governance movement, no translation is necessary because money talks. Given that ACSI advises non-profit super funds with something in the region of $1.5 trillion in assets on how to exercise their votes on AGM decisions such as remuneration reports and director elections, there is nothing subtle about the message. If you don’t take an axe to remuneration, ASCI members will vote against you.

Now, for companies in trouble, or for those cutting or suspending dividends, this may be perfectly appropriate. And many chief executives, senior executives and boards have taken a whopping cut to their pay already. That is as it should be. Despite activists deriding the shareholder primacy theory, the law has, for many centuries, held that boards can, and should, have regard to the interests of other stakeholders, and to their reputation, when making these kinds of decisions.

But the ESG industry has latched on to the “social licence to operate” theory to go much further. It tells us that shareholder primacy is dead, and the interests of shareholders is just one factor, and not a specially important one, among many that boards should take into account.

When the US Business Roundtable released its Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation last August, it proclaimed that the 181 chief executives who signed it “commit to lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders — customers, employees, suppliers, communities and shareholders”. It was not accidental that shareholders came in last.

Never mind that this amounts to expropriating shareholders’ money for social purposes. Under this new dispensation, what ACSI calls “the broader community” takes precedence.

Why is this frightening the pants off virtue-signalling corporates? Because they may be forced into taking pay cuts, or at least accept pay restraint, even though their own corporation is in terrific shape and even though it’s not in the interests of their own shareholders to take a pay cut.

It’s not hard to see the ESG industry, or the anti-shareholder primacy gang, saying that in times of widespread unemployment and significant social hardship, paying executives big bonuses would not be in the interests of “the broader community”.

Ignore for one moment the rank hypocrisy of this view emanating from obscenely well-paid fund managers.

Ignore too the sheer chutzpah of ACSI and industry super funds setting down prescriptive corporate governance rules for listed companies while studiously rejecting similar governance standards for themselves.

The key issue for this remuneration season is that the activists will say executives of listed companies wallowing in handsome bonuses while many are on the dole will be in breach of the “social licence to operate”.

You might think this is all terribly far-fetched. Surely the corporate musical called “social licence to operate” can’t require executives of strongly performing companies to take pay cuts just because of a pandemic. It makes no sense. But that’s the point, and the beauty, of the phrase “social ­licence to operate”. Like that awful Hollywood movie-musical La La Land, it conjures up dreams. It can, and does, mean whatever activists want it to mean.

Maybe it’s fair enough that a company that has maintained its dividends by laying off workers, or increasing prices to consumers, or reducing services, will get a bollocking if it pays bonuses. But even companies that haven’t laid off staff, or cut costs, will be at risk if they pay bonuses in a time of social misery. In a world of co-equal stakeholders, community pain could outrank sound business practice.

Those corporate executives who have spent years waxing lyrical about their commitment to a “social licence” will now, like Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, be screaming “the horror, the horror” for their advocacy. “Social licence to operate” wasn’t supposed to mean this, they will plead. It was meant to warm hearts, allow us to hold our heads up high at Toorak dinner parties, or to justify voting for Zali Steggall or the Greens. It was only a marketing ploy, they will beg. It wasn’t meant to justify pay cuts in the interests of “the broader community”, they will wail.

Well the ESG industry has news for you. Whether your company is doing well or poorly, you have to take one for the team. It doesn’t matter if you worked all the hours God gave you, if you produced a stellar result, or if your company discovered the cure for coronavirus due to your work. Inclusivity means pay cuts for all.

Alternatively, this might be a wake-up call for some executives about virtue signalling.

Perhaps they will be less effusive about the social licence industry and start admitting it was never meant to be taken seriously if it costs real money. Here’s a novel idea for the pre-COVID-19 virtue signallers: they might stand up to the corporate equivalents of Antifa.

It’s hard to know which alternative will be more fun to watch.

SOURCE  






Coronavirus: Palaszczuk shines while Queensland Labor goes low

Remember March? Punch-ups in aisle 12 over a packet of bog roll? Shopping trolleys used as battering rams? It was a kinder, gentler time.

Yesterday, Premier Palaszczuk announced Queensland borders would be opening to all but Victorians on July 10.

Remember in March, too, those who claimed that COVID-19 was no worse than your run-of-the-mill flu?

The flimsy juxtaposition and many others like it were posed as part of an overall argument that locking downs our communities, our cities, our states and our country was an act of economic vandalism.

Imagine for a moment if these people had been placed in charge of public policy, if they had been allowed to do what they agitated for — keeping cinemas, gyms, pubs, clubs open with people milling about and the inevitable super spreading event occurring, here, there and pretty soon everywhere.

We don’t see the specious comparisons so much these days. That was a March thing. Now, in July, this pandemic has caused half a million deaths globally with 10 million people infected. And we are just six months in.

Much of the thinking in March and then in April was based on the absurdity that a pandemic has only a past and a present – a neat set of data, a beginning and an end with no thought given to what was yet to happen, supported by a media fascination with headline data that begins and ends with numbers of recorded cases and numbers of deaths.

One of the points I have tried to stress is that while 5.3 million people are listed as having recovered, many will have serious ongoing medical problems. These range from loss of cognitive function to renal, cardiac and respiratory illness. Serious stuff that will a) require medical care, complex surgery even lung, heart and kidney transplants and b) will take years off their lives.

When you’re in the public policy business, all you can do, all that can be expected of you is that you listen to experts and respond accordingly. You have to do so knowing that failures will occur, humans make mistakes or ignore advice outright.

Some people are wilful. Let’s be honest here. There are a lot of idiots about.

In my own neck of the woods over the Easter holidays, I was stunned to see people milling about in town. I can tell the tourists from the locals. It’s not hard. The blow-ins, most of whom come from Sydney, were dressed from tip to toe in their latest winter finery, scarves, jumpers and jackets so new you’d expect to see the price tags still dangling from them, while the locals got about in T-shirts.

They were sitting in cafes or strolling around shops, spending money. That’s the good news. But they were also walking four abreast along footpaths. Social distancing was ignored.

Having been told by experts that the COVID-19 pandemic was likely to last for a year or more, people chose instead to assume it was over on the basis of a month’s worth of data.

Governments were pressured to open up their borders and resume business as usual.

Which brings me back to Palaszczuk. At her press conference yesterday, she took a big swipe at the federal government. When asked about the pressure that had been applied to Queensland she answered, “I think, for a start, these border wars have got to stop. I think a national leader should be able to bring all states and territories together.

“Frankly, I’m a bit sick that Queensland has been singled out as opposed to South Australia and Tasmania just to name a few.

“And perhaps if Victoria had been almost self-quarantined or quarantined, then the Prime Minister cold have set a date for all of the other states and territories once Victoria was under control.”

“At the moment, what we have is a bit of confrontation where fights are being picked with different states and, frankly, I don’t think it’s good enough.

“I’ve been silent for a long time and I will not be silenced for standing up for what I believe to be right, for the health advice that I am being provided for by (Queensland Chief Medical Officer Dr Jeannette Young).

“And Dr Young and the advice that she has given us has put Queensland in a very good position. We’re not out of it yet. We know that.”

What Palaszczuk has done is consistently followed expert advice. This is even more remarkable given she will face Queensland voters on October 31. It’s a tough time to make hard decisions. She deserves credit for it.

But the party she leads, Queensland Labor, is another matter. Within hours of the Queensland premier’s press conference, social media started seeing advertisements like this:

“Deb has been calling for the borders to be open for months. Negative Deb’s constant criticisms are a genuine risk to the health and economic warfare of Queenslanders. “If it was up to Deb, QLD would be flooded with Victorians.”

Warfare? I presume what they meant was welfare. But who knows what’s going on in the minds of Queensland Labor.

In case you’re thinking this is a piece of harmless Queensland parochialism, then substitute “Victorians” for indigenous Australians or elderly Australians or non-Australians and see how it reads.

Deb, of course is Deb Frecklington, the opposition leader who is facing off with Palaszczuk in the Queensland election. Two weeks ago, LNP internal polling was leaked to the Sunday Times showing Frecklington was heading for defeat in the election.

Now, I can’t speak for the veracity of the polling but the fact that it was leaked is a sure sign that, to use a Gareth Evanism, a section of Frecklington’s own party is, “pissing on her swag.”

The advertisement came down off Twitter last night. But a version of it remains on Queensland Labor’s Facebook page, albeit with the warfare/welfare mention removed.

Politics need not be a scorched earth caper. And politics in times of pandemic must be collaborative, consensus building with the creation of evidence-based policy. The old adage in politics is: “When your opponent is drowning, throw them an anvil”, but in times of pandemic, politics doesn’t need to kick people and it should never seek to divide Australia on the basis of political clannishness.

By the way, this is not a case of cancel culture. I’m not advocating Labor takes its advertisement down. In fact, I think it should stay up as a general reminder that there really are a lot of idiots about and there is no shortage of them in Queensland Labor.

SOURCE  






Abolish stamp duty and lift the GST, says key tax reform review

NSW will struggle to fund essential services in difficult economic times unless it embraces urgent and wide-ranging tax reform including the abolition of stamp duty and an increase to the GST.

That's the finding of a year-long review of federal-state financial relations, ordered by NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet and chaired by former Telstra boss David Thodey, which will be released on Wednesday.

The report puts the state on a potential collision course with the Morrison government by recommending the state's most crucial source of revenue – the GST – be broadened and its rate lifted above 10 per cent. It also recommends stamp duty should be abolished, with homeowners given the option to opt-in to a land tax.

Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has previously ruled out an increase in the GST, and said if the states wanted to embark on tax reform they would get no financial support from the government.

Mr Perrottet launched the review last year to identify ways the federal-state financial system could be improved and the overall national tax system could be made more efficient.

The report recommends that state governments, in consultation with the Commonwealth, consider options for lifting the GST rate and expanding its base over the medium to longer-term.

Overhauling the GST would see a move away from "harmful taxes including inefficient state taxes". But the extra GST revenue should go to lower-income households to ensure equity, the report says.

The NSW government should also replace stamp duty, which last year raised $7.5 billion for the state's coffers, with a broad-based land tax, the review committee recommended.

The review panel said there were various models to phase out stamp duty. "These included an option to allow homeowners to voluntarily opt in to land tax or pay transfer duty at the next purchase," the report says.

The report also calls for a "strategic national approach to payroll tax reform". The NSW government estimates it will raise $9.8 billion in revenue from payroll tax in 2019-20, out of a total $32.5 billion in state taxes collected.

Another recommendation in the report includes the introduction of user-pays road charging for electric vehicles as the federal government faces a projected shortfall in the $11.3 billion fuel excise. Forecasts show 60 per cent of all new cars sold to be electric-powered by 2046.

The report warns that state and territory governments face an era of higher debt, "challenging their ability to sustainably deliver essential services and infrastructure".

"The review recommends reforms at the state level that are challenging but necessary, as the states need to show, in good faith, that they are ready to carry their part of the load," it says.

The NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet believes dumping stamp duty is a crucial move in getting the state's economy moving again in wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Thodey said there was a new impetus to overhaul federal financial relations.

"The summer bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic have exposed the best and worst of the federation and have only added to the urgency to undertake significant reform," he said.

"The status quo will only exacerbate the challenge faced by the states in funding the essential services their citizens expect and deserve."

He said the review panel, which included former New Zealand prime minister Sir Bill English, found clear areas where federalism "can and must be improved for our long-term prosperity".

"Over months of consultation, we have found a consensus that our federation has served the nation well and, properly calibrated, can remain one of the most economically efficient forms of national government," Mr Thodey said.

Mr Perrottet said the pandemic proved "federation is strongest when states aren't afraid to lead".

"We all know our federation needs fixing. This is our once-in-a-generation opportunity to change it for the better," Mr Perrottet said. "As a government, our priority is clear: we want taxes that are lower, fairer, smarter and fit for purpose in the 21st century.

"It’s very fitting that on the 20th anniversary of the introduction of the GST we have the opportunity to consider what course we chart to revitalise our economy and deliver prosperity for the next generation."

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Australia's summer of extremes pushed grid to the limit, AEMO says

After several coal-fired power generators were decommissioned, this was to be expected

Australia's energy operator says the electricity grid barely made it through last summer's extreme temperatures and bushfires without major outages, with resilience to be further tested in the future.

The Australian Energy Market Operator's annual summer operations review found the nation's physical gas and electricity infrastructure was "being increasingly challenged", with "environmental limits and temperature tolerances for coal plants ... increasingly being approached and exceeded".

AEMO issued 178 directions to deal with actual or potential supply or system security issues, 10 times more than the previous three years. Of eight actual shortfalls — or a level 2 lack of reserves — half were in NSW, with three in Victoria and the other in South Australia.

The summer was Australia's second hottest on record, trailing only the previous summer, with maximum temperatures 2.11 degrees warmer than the 1961-90 average. December 2019 alone had 11 days when temperatures averaged above 40 degrees, equalling the number of such days during all previous years since 1910. Bushfires also charred large swathes of the forests of eastern Australia.

AEMO's managing director and chief executive, Audrey Zibelman, said the grid had to cope with longer lasting and more extreme climatic and bushfire conditions that also made forecasting more difficult.

“The industry and AEMO’s preparation contributed to mitigating the potentially extensive and significant power-system impacts of a season characterised by record high temperatures, catastrophic bushfires, significant smoke, dust, and violent storm activity,” Ms Zibelman said.

The avoidance of major blackouts was a key achievement of the summer, particularly after a heavy storm knocked out six transmission towers in south-west Victoria on January 31. South Australia was effectively cut off from the rest of the National Electricity Market for 17 days.

The addition of about 3700 megawatts of new capacity — mostly wind and solar — compared with the summer of 2018-19 helped provide additional supplies during peak demand.

While coal-fired power plants had their output cut during extreme heat, some wind farms were also curtailed, the first time AEMO had observed this.

"Dust exacerbated by the drought and bushfire smoke, ash and dust storms also materially impacted grid-scale and rooftop photovoltaic solar generation forecasts," AEMO's report said.

Prior to last summer, AEMO increased standby reserves - known as its Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader (RERT) mechanism - by buying 137MW of long notice reserves for Victoria and 1698 MW of medium and short-notice reserves across the market.

During four days of high demand, AEMO activated such capacity at a cost of $39.8 million, avoiding blackouts that would have affected as many as 92,500 homes at an associated cost of $77 million, the report said. Those RERT expenses cost the average household in NSW $3.24 and $2.43 in Victoria.

The summer generated a host of other lessons for power operators, including the need to improve forecasting to adjust to the swelling supplies of renewable energy.

Some of the forecasting challenge is meteorological, with agencies struggling to pick the top of the temperature peaks.

For instance, Penrith in Sydney's west hit 48.9 degrees on January 4, the hottest temperature recorded in an Australian metropolitan area, or several degrees more than predicted.

"The results demonstrate a bias towards under-forecasting at high temperatures and are indicative of challenges in accurately assessing generation reserve on peak demand days throughout summer," AEMO said.

"This under-forecasting is coupled to the increasing weather sensitivity of electricity demand as the use of airconditioning grows."

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, 2020

"The West Australian" blasted over racist Indigenous cartoon

The term "Aborigine" is NOT offensive.  It is the normal term for Australian blacks and is Latin for "from the beginning" -- so recognizes their priority.

And "Abo" is simply an abbreviation.  Australians are great abbreviators so "Abo" is a normal abbreviation with no offensive intentions

It is however true that some Leftists have recently pushed the Canadian term "First peoples" as an alternstive term.  Ironic that the term Aborigine says the same thing in Latin

And some Aborigines use their tribal name as an identification (Murri", Boori" etc.)  But such names are too specific to be generally useful.  "Boong" appears to have originally been a tribal name but is now a derogatory name for Aborigines generally


The West Australian newspaper is copping backlash after publishing a cartoon that refers to an Indigenous character using an offensive racial slur and compares them to a dog.

The Modesty Blaise comic, published yesterday, shows  characters discussing an Indigenous tracker who is trying to find them.

One character says they are being chased by “four men, all armed ... and an Aborigine” — a term some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people find offensive.

The characters go on to describe the Indigenous character as an “abo tracker”.

“It’s no use hiding, that abo will smell us out quicker than a bloodhound,” a character says in the comic.

The publication is being blasted on social media with many labelling it “disgusting”.

“Just wondering how many people were involved in the chain of decision making, to allow this cartoon to be printed in the @westaustralian newspaper in 2020?” asked radio and television presenter Shelley Ware.

“I’m literally devastated this has been printed and our children have access to this. Honestly wish I was surprised though!!”

Late on Monday evening, The West Australian published an apology to its website stating the cartoon was written in 1981 and was supplied by an outside agency.

SOURCE  






Incredible pictures from space show Australia 'turning green' thanks to record rainfall after years of crippling drought

We were told that the drought was caused by global warming, so are we now having global cooling?

Amazing pictures taken from space show south-eastern Australia's incredible transformation thanks to record rainfall after years of severe drought.

NASA's Earth Observatory took the natural-colour images two years apart, in May of 2018 and again in June 2020. 

The 2018 photo shows land ravaged by record heatwaves - reaching 49.9C in some areas that year - and the lowest rainfall in almost a century. 

In the most recent image, large swathes of green can be seen spreading across Victoria and New South Wales. 

According to the Bureau of Meteorology average to above average rainfall from January to May this year led to soil moisture recovery in much of the area shown in the pictures.

Meanwhile, some rainfall records were broken in Victoria during the same time period.

Melbourne received around 400mm of rain from January to April, almost eight times more than the same time period in 2019, and the wettest since 1924.

New South Wales and the Murray–Darling Basin also received its first average rainfall since 2016 in April and May of this year.  

In addition, the BoM predicts the winter will be wetter than average for western New South Wales and parts of South Australia.

The forecasts also indicate a wetter than average period between August and October for much of eastern Australia. 

The pictures were taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA's Aqua satellite.

SOURCE  






Making sense of the government's war on arts degrees

It's pretty cheeky for Leftists to expect a conservative government to keep funding attacks on it

Let’s face it: the federal government’s overhaul of university fees in the humanities, widely interpreted as a swipe against what it sees as pesky leftists, is pretty stinging.

As a Gen X’er, I was primed for the possibility – even the desirability – of winding up behind the desk at the local video library where my high-honours paper on “reading ideology and desire in Ferris Bueller's Day Off” would come in handy.

Still, federal minister Dan Tehan’s announcement comes at a time when humanities graduates have been forced into an existential reckoning about our relative uselessness in a national crisis. We analysed and interpreted and poeticised our strange new world to death, but the pandemic brought into sharp relief our non-essentialness against cleaners, truck drivers and supermarket workers, let alone teachers, farmers, nurses, doctors and the scientists beavering away for a COVID-19 vaccine.

If this doesn’t ring true for you, brilliant. But the idea that a mere arts degree is a dead end runs so deep that Tehan’s policy feels almost like a parental rebuke – if it wasn’t smothered in disingenuousness.

In the same way a crusader for sexual morality is obsessed with sex, the Coalition’s culture warriors display niche preoccupations with culture. Don’t “silo” your degree, Tehan says. If you choose philosophy, study IT as well. I’m attracted to the folksy commonsense in that statement, but the government isn’t just making subjects in IT or agriculture cheaper – it’s doubling the cost of philosophy et-al, which actively discourages mixing and matching. It appears punitive.

Want to tease out the political and philosophical subtext to the conservatives’ decades-long antipathy towards the higher-education sector? Well, it’ll cost you – about $45,000. Roughly double what an arts degree costs now, bringing the humanities into the same price band as commerce and law.

Which, as others have argued, paradoxically raises the courses’ perceived value. And that’s only one example of how the overhaul is unlikely to achieve the stated aims of steering young people away from the queer, black-armband, coal-hating humanities and towards “job ready” degrees.

As higher education expert Andrew Norton says: “You’re not going to do something that will bore you for three years and bore you for another 40 simply because the course is cheaper.” Unless, to begin with, you’re poorer than most.

When in 2014 the Abbott government sought to slash public funding of universities by 20 per cent and de-regulate fees, Labor roared about the prospect of “$100,000 degrees” and Senate crossbencher Jacqui Lambie saw a plot to keep the battlers in their place. The plan failed to pass. Since then, the conservatives have avoided the appearance of undermining equal opportunity to higher education.

And in the context of the Coalition’s broader ideological war, deterring low-income students from arts courses didn’t make much sense to me, at least initially.

Back in 1970, when only 7 per cent of 15-to-64 year-olds had bachelor degrees, political affiliation tended to be dictated by income. These days, the tertiary educated are a reliable constituency for Labor – and its social democratic counterparts in the US and UK – with sections of what we loosely call “the working class” increasingly up for grabs.

The conservatives argue they’re the real materialists: emphasising Jobson Growth while progressives talk about shutting down coal and micro-aggressions. I found myself idly theorising that low-income students might be more inclined to bring a pragmatic perspective to the humanities, the kind the government professes to want.

“I’m pretty sure most Australian taxpayers preferred their funding to be used for research other than spending $223,000 on projects like ‘Post orientalist arts of the Strait of Gibraltar',” tweeted then Education Minister Simon Birmingham in 2018, when he spectacularly vetoed $4.2 million in recommended university research grants.

(Though I still don’t understand why he binned “Beauty and Ugliness as Persuasive Tools in Changing China’s Gender Norms” – a subject I would have thought useful in China’s new masculinist ethos under strongman Xi Jinping.)

But then my arts training (and a few extra hours of sleep) awakened me to the flaw in my reasoning about low-income students; once they make it to uni, and certainly after graduation, they’ve shifted into the tertiary-educated demographic that skews left, bringing a critical eye to the status quo.

That’s because conservative narratives have become taboo in the humanities, the hard-core warriors say – with some justification, I suspect, though that’s a subject for a thesis. While the government-commissioned inquiry into free speech on Australian campuses found no evidence of a “systemic” crisis of free speech on Australian campuses, former High Court judge Robert French left enough wriggle room for columnists in The Australian to warn about a potential, pretty much already realised, free speech crisis on Australian campuses.

I should disclose: while The Australian’s weekly takedowns of the ABC overwhelmingly leave me baffled, I’m occasionally amused at the reporting on totalitarian groupthink in humanities departments. Like the yarn about the history student reportedly instructed to use the adjective “enslaved” befor­e a noun such as African, in place of the noun “slave”, because, her guide said, “people weren’t slaves; they were enslaved”.

I’m fairly certain graduates of history, or sociology or political science come away with more than tactical skills in avoiding linguistic landmines. Gaining a thread of understanding about slavery, however we talk about it, or Western civilisation or the Spanish Flu pandemic or the Great Depression might just be worth the time.

SOURCE  






Universities grapple with new ways to test students to combat cheating

Universities are exploring new ways to tackle cheating and prepare students for workplace demands in a post-coronavirus world, with a particular focus on how exams and other assessments are conducted.

Academic integrity researcher Cath Ellis, who is associate dean of education in the faculty of arts and social sciences at the University of NSW, has found the bulk of students who cheat do so under the noses of supervisors during old-fashioned exams.

"The trust that people put in the integrity of invigilated exams may be misplaced," she said.

Associate Professor Ellis and a team of researchers recently found that close to 6 per cent of more than 14,000 university students surveyed admitted to cheating. Of those, more than half said they had provided help with exams and 41 per cent said they received help. About 8 per cent admitted to taking an exam for someone else and 4.2 per cent admitted someone else had done their exam.

"This research showed that exam cheating remains the most common type of contract cheating behaviour to which students admit," she said.

It was also the most likely to have involved payment including through a professional service.

Some universities have started using expensive new software that monitors individual students through cameras and keyboards to keep an eye on students sitting exams. Different versions included directly watching students, tracking their eye movements and keyboard activity.

The changes come as the federal government establishes a $3.9 million integrity unit in the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA). New legislation will empower the unit to block access to cheating websites using court injunctions.

Associate Professor Ellis said the COVID-19 crisis had prompted universities to reconsider traditional ways of examining hundreds of students. "The real challenge we are facing is what can we do to replace exams," she said.

"I do appreciate there is a need for them in some circumstances. Whether we over-rely on them as an assessment technique is a valid question for us to ask ourselves.

"I think that there are cleverer more authentic ways to assess student learning and that is where a lot of universities are putting their efforts," Associate Professor Ellis said.

This included assessment of a broader range of skills students would be expected to demonstrate in the workforce. In that vein, the University of Sydney is trialling the assessment of student qualities including inventiveness, cultural competence and influence, which it hopes to adopt across all faculties.

The university's acting registrar and academic director for education policy and quality, Peter McCallum, said there had been a mixed response from different faculties including some that had raised concerns about their ability to fairly assess the graduate attributes.

Law professor Barbara McDonald said the law faculty had objected to the proposed assessment of students’ cultural competence or influence, among other things.

“Many academics have deep concerns about assessing cultural competence, and think it is ridiculous to be trying to assess whether a student has influence, as opposed to assessing their expertise and communication skills to go out and be influential," she said. "We think this is distracting us from our core responsibilities and would be impracticable to do fairly and meaningfully across hundreds of students."

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?



My son Joe


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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