This document is part of an archive of postings on Australian Politics, a blog hosted by Blogspot who are in turn owned by Google. The index to the archive is available here or here. Indexes to my other blogs can be located here or here. Archives do accompany my original postings but, given the animus towards conservative writing on Google and other internet institutions, their permanence is uncertain. These alternative archives help ensure a more permanent record of what I have written
This is a backup copy of the original blog
Monday, February 28, 2022
Constable Zachary Rolfe's murder trial told Kumanjayi Walker posed 'low threat' when second and third shots were fired
This is absurd and shows no awareness of the use of firearms in policing. The key point is that rapidly aimed fire from a handgun is not very likely to hit its target. Most shots will go wild. So the only way of being reasonably sure that the target is hit is to fire multiple rounds in close succession, which is exactly what Rolfe did.
It is easy to do armchair pontification about rights and wrongs after the event but the police are often confronted with a situation requiring split second decisions, which was the situation here. The root cause of the death was the deceased's hostility to the police, not the action of the police in response to it
It may be relevant that Const. Rolfe appears to be a little guy who would reasonably be particularly fearful of any physical confrontation
Biomechanical expert Andrew McIntosh on Friday gave evidence in the NT Supreme Court, where Constable Rolfe, 30, has pleaded not guilty to murder and two alternative charges over the fatal shooting in the remote community in November 2019.
Dr McIntosh was asked about the moments after Mr Walker began to struggle with Constable Rolfe and fellow officer Constable Adam Eberl, when the 19-year-old stabbed Constable Rolfe in the shoulder with a pair of medical scissors.
The first shot then fired by Constable Rolfe is not the subject of any charges, but prosecutors argue the second and third shots fired 2.6 and 0.5 seconds later were not legally justified because the threat posed by Mr Walker had been contained.
Dr McIntosh said the body-worn camera footage of the incident showed that after the first shot, Mr Walker and Constable Eberl fell onto a mattress on the floor.
As Mr Rolfe moved towards them with his gun drawn, Dr McIntosh said Constable Eberl could be seen putting his body weight on top of Mr Walker, who was lying on his right side.
Dr McIntosh said this meant Mr Walker's right arm, which was holding the scissors, would likely have been restricted in its movement range.
Under questioning from the prosecution, he agreed that when the second and third shots were fired, Mr Walker was not likely to be a "direct threat" to Constable Rolfe.
He agreed Mr Walker was likely to be a "low threat" to Constable Eberl, because his ability to deploy the scissors was impaired, as his arm was stuck beneath him.
"If you're using a weapon in your hand and your arm is pinned in that way, then it's very difficult to develop force with the weapon that you have because you can't accelerate your arm, reach any velocity, reach any momentum and exert a force onto someone else," Dr McIntosh said.
He said the degree of restriction depended on how much of Mr Walker's right arm was under his own body and that even if only the upper arm was pinned down, his movement would have been "greatly constrained".
Under cross-examination from the defence, Dr McIntosh agreed the body-worn camera footage never showed the extent of control Constable Eberl had on Mr Walker's right forearm, while he was lying on top of him.
Dr McIntosh also agreed that he had the "luxury of slowing down" the vision to make his analysis, which the officers were not able to do during the incident.
"Do you accept that the perception, or perspective, of both officers Eberl and Rolfe, may be quite different from your analysis?" defence barrister David Edwardson QC asked.
"Yes," Dr McIntosh replied.
Forensic pathologist Paull Botterill also took the stand on Friday and told the court the "overwhelming majority of stab and incised wounds" in the general community do not result in death.
But he said Mr Walker's scissors did have the potential to cause a life-threatening injury if they had struck a vulnerable part of the body at a sufficient force.
He added that if Mr Walker's arm movement was restricted, the likelihood of a lethal injury was slim.
"If the limb was not able to freely move, then the only way that an implement such as those scissors could have resulted in a serious life-threatening injury would be if there was movement of the other party, the police officer, up against that immobilised weapon," Dr Botterill said.
"And it's very unlikely to result in a potentially fatal injury."
At the end of Friday's proceedings Crown prosecutor Philip Strickland SC said he would call two more witnesses on Monday and expected to wrap up the prosecution's case on Tuesday morning.
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High school principal sparks outrage for claiming 'better breeding' is needed to improve student grades
I think he was just saying that there is a limit to what schools can do. The real work needed has to be done in the home
A former high school principal has been slammed for suggesting 'better breeding' is required in order to improve students' grades at a NSW public school.
The acting principal at Lithgow High School had been in a meeting with the director of educational leadership in September 2020 when they made the accusation.
They were asked by the director: 'What will it take to move students from Band 4 to Band 5 in each HSC course?' to which they replied 'better breeding'.
Their contentious response, which was recorded in the minutes of the meeting, has been unearthed by One Nation MP Mark Latham, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Mr Latham condemned the 'slur' as 'nasty, elitist and condescending' to the people of Lithgow as well as the students enrolled at the school.
The MP stumbled upon the comment when reviewing documents about a School Excellence Policy, following a parliamentary call for papers.
Mr Latham said the 'nasty' slur was the last thing the Lithgow community needed as it entered an economic transition following a loss of jobs in the mining sector.
'Is this really how schools in Lithgow are being run? With elitist, condescending, nasty reflections on the breeding of this working class community? he said.
'These are leaders who are supposed to have effective ways of improving school results – yet instead they are sneering at the school community by saying there's something wrong with their breeding.'
The Department of Education has responded to concerns by launching a formal investigation into the comments.
Underneath the initial response of 'better breeding' the relieving principal goes on to suggest grades could be improved by choosing the correct maths course.
'We have the small numbers to allow students to push themselves to achieve mathematically in a higher course,' they wrote.
'This means we achieve bands 3 and 4 in Advanced courses rather than bands 5 in the Standard course. This gives our students more scope to access university courses.'
NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said she was 'shocked' that such a statement had come from a staff member.
While it is unclear who made the 'elitist' remark the department of education has stated it came from a former relieving principal at the school.
'The Department unreservedly apologises for the comment, which was inappropriate and doesn't reflect the standards we expect of our principals,' a spokesperson said.
'The comment was made by the then relieving principal, who is no longer in the role or teaching at any school.
'The matter was immediately addressed by the local director. It has been referred to the department's Professional and Ethical Standards Unit.'
Lithgow High School is located in the NSW Central Tablelands, about a three hour drive west from Sydney, and has close to 900 students enrolled.
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Reporters swallow spin on coal power closures
Australian business journalists apparently missed some of the world’s biggest stories of the past year when they reported on last week’s $5bn bid by local billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes and Canadian “alternative asset manager” Brookfield.
They did not link the bid and statements about bringing forward the end of AGL’s coal power generation to four months of European power shortages and soaring prices driven by a lack of wind power, nor to brownouts in California and Texas or even to Russian gas price extortion.
The body representing the transmission industry here, Energy Networks Australia, warned last Thursday week: “Increases in energy supply charges across the UK are cause for concern as almost 22 million households will see an average increase in their energy bill of 54 per cent from April.”
Yet only days later many at the Nine newspapers were starry-eyed about their local tech hero bidding for an old-fashioned power company so he could close down its coal-fired power generators earlier than AGL had already planned. They seemed to accept Cannon-Brookes and Brookfield were putting the planet before their pockets.
Reporters showed no sign they had heard about last week’s pact between Russia and China to shore up 100 million tonnes of coal a year for their mutual benefit, a deal announced the Friday before Monday morning’s AGL bid.
This paper’s environment editor Graham Lloyd summed it up perfectly, telling this column: “Mike says renewables freeloading off coal are cheaper so ipso facto, building five times as much renewables will be cheaper still.”
READ MORE:Is nature really at the centre of the ‘green dream’?|Reporters find it hard to tell truth about renewables
Kerry Schott, head of the Energy Security Board, could see no reason for the government to block the bid, writing in The Australian Financial Review online last Tuesday. Schott did not mention early coal closures would depend on storage technologies to firm the power grid when the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine.
Yet she told PV magazine on May 4 last year: “I know a lot of people hate this but (it’s being proposed to) leave open some management of (coal station) exits so that we can actually keep the system going.
“As coal leaves the system it will be replaced by a mixture of pumped hydro and gas. In due course we will have hydrogen to complement the gas.”
Schott said in PV that big batteries were helpful for stabilising the grid but “as it stands they just aren’t a reliable capacity replacement”. Big batteries were about network frequency harmonisation, and their storage lasted a maximum of four hours.
Not much has been said about storage in the reporting of Mike’s excellent power adventure. Indeed, the bid scarcely mentions storage, although the word does appear in a response to AGL’s rejection of the $7.50 a share offer.
Mark Carney, vice-chair of Brookfield Asset Management, did however point to the reason this kind of deal is flourishing globally: “Energy transition will be one of the biggest investment opportunities of our lifetimes. It is estimated $US150 trillion will need to be invested globally through 2050 to drive the decarbonisation of energy markets.”
This column argued on October 18: “Investors are short-selling the fossil fuels industry because they can make more money on taxpayer-guaranteed renewables.” The transition is giving dictators in Moscow and Beijing a lever over the West that they could not have dreamt of. US President Joe Biden is playing into their hands right now, making it harder for gas pipeline companies to operate in the US.
In the UK it is possible only 10 companies of the 70 that supplied the electricity market a year ago will survive. Many in the UK want Britain to resume fracking and expand its North Sea oil drilling program.
Part of the problem around the world wherever the energy transition is advanced is the zealotry of environmentalists and their business and media acolytes who won’t admit renewables just don’t work well when demand for them is highest: at breakfast time, especially in winter while the sun is low and the wind calm, or at dinner time when the sun has gone.
They also hate admitting gas plants that can be turned on and off quickly are one of the most efficient ways of dealing with the intermittency problem.
Schott’s AFR piece argues the government has no need to worry about the AGL bid driving up prices. But speaking to this column on Thursday she did say AGL, and all other large suppliers, would be forced to rely more on gas when intermittent energy flows were low and that all the large suppliers would need pumped hydro.
“Particularly in Victoria, the state will need to build more gas and hydro dispatchable power,” Schott said.
Many in business and the media suggest storage batteries at the home, charged by rooftop solar during the day, may be the solution to firming the network. But just like state government subsidies for electric cars, this will involve the poor effectively paying more for power to subsidise those who can afford home battery storage.
Another preferred firming solution of the Energy Security Board is investing billions of dollars in extending transmission lines to help to offset geographical differences in wind and solar output on given days.
Schott told this column: “The way you deal with intermittency is first of all by having a lot of transmission to add renewable capacity and to use different regional weather patterns across the network. Typically if it’s not windy in northwest Victoria and South Australia, which have a similar wind system, it’s then very windy in New England. If you have more transmission lines when you have wind drought down south you can use more wind from Queensland and New England.”
So while the ESB has a plan to make the transition to renewables smooth and reliable it is not unreasonable for governments and large users such as the Tomago aluminium smelter in the NSW Hunter Valley to be concerned. When people such as Cannon-Brookes simply announce renewables are cheaper than coal, they are forgetting the tens of billions of dollars that will need to be spent on storage and new transmission lines, all of which will have to be paid for by consumers.
It is only the market design mechanism created in response to political decisions that has made coal uneconomical. Coal stations that run 24 hours a day cannot compete at five-minute bidding intervals with renewables, gas and hydro. Gas and hydro can be turned off when not used but large coal plants cannot.
Back to the real story about the AGL bid and coal closures. As Matthew Warren pointed out in Thursday’s AFR, AGL’s NSW and Victorian power stations, Bayswater and Loy Yang, are its most modern. Whatever Cannon-Brookes says and whoever owns AGL, these will be its last ones standing. AGL will need them for insurance so it can meet its contracts – lest it follow the UK suppliers down the tube.
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Anti-mining green frauds not welcome in Central Qld
Robert Schwarten of the ALP
If the Greens think they can repeat Bob Brown’s stunt of bringing an anti-mining convoy to Central Queensland, they’ve got another thing coming, says Robert Schwarten.
Greens leader Adam Brandt says he will repeat green fraud Bob Brown’s stunt in Capricornia in bringing up a paid gaggle of misfits and no-hopers to protest mining in Central Queensland.
He is in for a rude shock if he expects the same reception. Here’s why.
In 2019, Labor candidates in CQ were instructed to ignore Brown and his convoy of paid parasites on the way to promote a public meeting hosted by the LNP in Clermont.
I actually paid for a large sign to put on my ute and parked at the northern entrance to the city. I authorised the wording, “Welcome Brown and your convoy of coal-fired hypocrites.”
Russell Robertson, the ALP candidate for Capricornia, received a call from someone in the campaign office telling him to get rid of the signage.
As Robertson did not have any involvement he did not comply. Some campaign flunky rang me and I impolitely told him where to go.
This time Labor’s message is clear. Coalminers are not criminals, coal is here for as long as the market says, our coal workers will not be put at risk by overseas miners undercutting their jobs and product quality.
I note that has displeased some of the keyboard job snobs who tut-tut about Labor endorsing coalminers as candidates.
Our party was formed on miners, shearers and other manual workers. It is still their party, the one that still stands up for workers’ rights, and the Tories are still those that oppose them. Rump parties are still the opportunistic oddballs they always were.
Anthony Albanese has had to campaign directly against the inner-city Greens to preserve his political hide. He is not going to sanction any meekness towards a Greens invasion into Labor votes here.
His message could not have been clearer last time he was in Rocky: “Capricornia needs a coalmine worker in Canberra.”
He pointed to the number of times current LNP member Michelle Landry had voted down legislation aimed at improving the lot of workers. Casualisation, penalty rates, mine safety and wage parity were just a few points he raised.
Given that Australians are generally waking up to these impostors it is likely the vote will come down further.
The truth is, Labor has a proud record of achievement on environmental reforms. Brown big-noted himself on saving the Franklin River in Tasmania, but that was the Hawke Labor government.
Brown was merely the protester. The protectors were the Labor MPs who voted to save it.
The Greens voted (with the LNP and One Nation) to sink the Labor Carbon Trading scheme a decade ago. Every bit of carbon thrown into the air since then is theirs.
The Greens have never saved anything. They have never had to put up a Budget, much less a serious policy.
The billboards are awash up here with desperate statements from the LNP of a green alliance with Labor.
Reality is with polling pointing to a Labor lead the numbers mean it will be the LNP, which may well be trying to cobble together One Nation, the Katters and every other ratbag rump if they want to keep their hands in the public till.
Mining is not the conversation piece it was last time. Skills shortages, house prices, the lack of rental accommodation, nursing home workers’ pay are just to pick a few.
The sports rort issue is hotting up too as impoverished clubs want to know where their money is.
Petrol prices and interest rates are hot topics – the cost of meat in the beef capital is at an all-time high. That wages are not keeping pace is also being felt and talked about.
Adam Brandt and his other impostors take note. Whichever way you come into CQ, you will be met with a Labor-led protest.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Sunday, February 27, 2022
Wivenhoe dam is safe this time
This time the flood comparment has not been compromised for water storage. The previous Labor government of the clueless Anna Bligh tried to use the flood compartment as a substiute for building a new dam -- meaning that there was no flood control capacity when the big rains came. The present labor government has left the dam alone, mercifully
Releases from Wivenhoe a decade ago were blamed for contributing greatly to the flooding that inundated Brisbane and other parts of the South East in 2011. This is what is different this time around.
The dam’s storage can take millions more megalitres of water before any repeat of the catastrophe of the floods still fresh in the minds of South East Queensland residents.
Releases from Wivenhoe a decade ago were blamed for contributing greatly to the flooding that inundated Brisbane and other parts of the South East in 2011.
However, Graham Fraine, director-general of the department of water, said the current storage capacity of Wivenhoe meant there was no immediate threat of a repeat of that disaster, despite the grid’s main dam jumping from about 60 per cent to 100 per cent of capacity in a matter of days.
“For those interested in how that compares to the 2011 event, there is a lot more, in fact about two million megalitres more of supply that this dam can take at this point in time,” he said.
“There were some releases from Wivenhoe during the course of last evening and they were done at the time to do some strategic releases in order to manage water flow levels between the various parts of the SEQ network.
“Future releases will be looked at through the lens of the flood manuals that SEQ water operates by and through the lens of when rain and water levels subside.”
SEQ Water Chief Operating Officer Stuart Cassie said modelling showed Wivenhoe should be able to cope with the extra floodwaters without posing a risk to communities downstream.
“The current modelling that we’re using in conjunction with the BOM is not predicting that that capacity will be filled up,” he said.
“We’re playing a balancing act in terms of making sure that we’re not increasing the flows downstream unnecessarily so we will wait for the rains to subside and the flows in the rivers to subside and that’s the point that we will release water in accordance with the flood manuals.”
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Former deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth has taken aim at Daniel Andrews for making it compulsory for school students to wear face masks
Chairman Dan is an obnoxious tyrant
Dr Coatsworth took to Twitter on Saturday to retweet a scathing post made by Crikey columnist Adam Schwab.
Schwab condemned the requirement that school students above Year 3 must continue to wear the extra layer of protection in classrooms across Victoria.
The mandate comes despite the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the peak national health agency in the US, relaxing its face mask recommendation.
The CDC announced face masks were no longer necessary in most classrooms.
'Meanwhile, in Victoria, with only 38 people (0.0006%) in ICU with Covid, Dan Andrews and Brett Sutton still demanding small children where masks for 7 hours a day.'
The CDC announced on Friday it does not recommend students to wear face masks if their school is located in suburbs with 'low' or 'medium' Covid-19 cases.
Victoria recorded 5,874 cases on Saturday - one of its lowest figures since February 21.
Hospitalisations have dropped to 281 - down from 301 - while ICU rates have slightly risen to 43 - up from 38.
The US continues to record tens of thousands of new cases a day with its seven day case average at 75,208.
Dr Coatsworth retweeted the post made by Schwab to his 21,400 followers on Twitter in an apparent swipe against the premier.
The online dig is the latest attack made by the top doctor after he accused Mr Andrews of scaremongering and using the mask mandate to boost vaccine rates in children.
'I haven't been a big fan of masks in primary school age children and that's because the disease is mild in that age group and we know the disease spreads far more readily in adults,' Dr Coatsworth told the Today Show on Wednesday.
'In my view, it doesn't make a lot of sense. It does trouble me that this is a sort mandate in a way to create the impetus for people to go and get their kids vaccinated when, really, it should be a choice.'
About 54 per cent of children aged five to 11 are vaccinated against Covid in Victoria, compared with 93.9 per cent aged 12 and over.
Other experts argue requiring some students to wear masks while their older siblings are exempt from the rule is impractical and unfounded.
Mr Andrews pointed to lower vaccination rates as a driver behind the decision and the risk of the virus spreading from children to the elderly or immunocompromised.
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The stampede of green lemmings
No country on Earth relies entirely on wind and solar energy, but Australian politicians aim to achieve this miracle.
They are leaders in the ‘Stampede of the Green Lemmings’.
Solar energy has a huge problem. Even on sunny days almost nothing is generated to meet the demand peaks around breakfast time and dinner time – the solar energy union only works a six-hour day, goes on strike with little warning, and takes quite a few sickies.
So, for at least 18 hours of every day, electricity must come from somewhere else. Then at around noon millions of solar panels pour out far more electricity than is needed, causing electrical and financial chaos in the electrical grid.
Naturally, our green ‘engineers’ see wind power as filling the solar energy gaps. But wind power has a union too and they take lots of sickies when there is no wind over large areas of the continent. And they down tools in storms, gales, or cyclones in case their whirling toys are damaged.
So the green planners claim that batteries can solve these intermittent problems of the green energy twins.
They will need to be humungous batteries.
Batteries are just a crutch for a crippled generation system. And with fierce lithium battery fires reported regularly, who wants a humungous fire-prone battery over the back fence or in the basement?
A battery is not a generator of electricity – every battery (including Snowy 2.0) is a net consumer of electricity. Batteries are very expensive, most lose capacity as they age, and every conversion between DC storage and AC transmission triggers energy losses. To collect, back up, and re-distribute green electricity will require a continent-spanning spider-web of transmission lines with all the costs and energy losses that network entails.
Still nights and calm cloudy days are what really expose the problems of wind-solar-plus-batteries.
Suppose electricity consumers require 100 units of electricity every day. A well-designed coal, nuclear, or gas power station can do that, 24/7, day after day, whatever the weather.
But to insure a wind or solar system against, say, 7 days of calm or cloudy weather would require a battery capable of storing 700 units of electricity. To re-charge this huge battery while still supplying consumers will require much larger wind or solar generating capacity. However, if several weeks of windy or sunny weather then occur, this big battery will sit idle, connected to a bloated expensive generation system that is capable of delivering far more power than is needed.
Sunny or windy weather brings a deluge of green energy, causing power prices to plunge at irregular intervals, and forcing reliable generators to stop producing and lose money. Eventually they will close. Once all coal-gas generators are all gone, every (inevitable) green energy drought will awaken the spectre of extensive blackouts.
On top of all these practical problems of green energy, we have the massive carbon credits scam, where speculators sell green fairy stories to greedy bankers, and real producers are forced to buy these fictitious ‘products’, passing the costs onto real industry and consumers.
Australia is following the green energy lemmings of Europe.
Germany once produced abundant reliable electricity from coal and nuclear power – the backbone for German industry. Then green ants started nibbling at this backbone, replacing it with wind-solar toys. Now, Germany has expensive electricity – a grid in danger of collapse and must rely on imported gas from Russia, nuclear power from France or hydro-power from Scandinavia.
UK is also following similar foolish energy policies, even banning exploration of their own oil and gas resources.
Australia is almost alone in the Southern oceans, with no near neighbours to buy, beg or borrow electricity from. We cannot afford to follow the green energy lemmings or their billionaire pied pipers.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/02/the-stampede-of-green-lemmings/
*************************************************Want to ‘think bigger’? Switch off the ABC
Earlier this month, ABC Managing Director David Anderson delivered the startling news to a Senate Committee that, ‘Now, more than ever, the ABC belongs to all Australians, wherever they live.’
Anderson’s platitudinous refrain is as useful and potentially misleading as so much else that is said by the ABC about itself on all its platforms – but most importantly, its television platforms.
Does Anderson want us to ‘relate’ to the ABC much as we might relate to the Australian flag, the national anthem, or perhaps even to ANZAC Day itself?
Taxpayers know full well they pay for the national broadcaster – even the legions of people across this country who never engage with the broadcaster know it. Taxpayers also know the ABC stands alongside the Australian Tax Office, the Weather Bureau, and ASIO as ‘belonging’ to them. If not belonging to us – then who? The Managing Director of the public broadcaster it seems, was attempting to say the ABC means something more to taxpayers. What precisely, he never actually articulated.
Anderson went on at the hearing of the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee on February 15: ‘The ABC entered 2022 with the value of its services widely recognised and appreciated across the Australian community. Against the backdrop of a challenging year, the ABC achieved its highest reach in a decade in 2021.’
Lofty claims indeed.
Media organisations like nothing more than spruiking ‘dramatic’ and positive figures about audience reach and impact. Along with the claims about audience segmentation and market share from non-public broadcasters – audience members are right to be sceptical. Ask the right question and you’ll get the answer you’re looking for. Several people are employed at the ABC generating and collating audience data which, hardly surprisingly, is sliced and diced to be favourable to the ABC.
While the ABC’s commitment to higher staffing levels in rural and regional Australia is commendable – as is shifting some of the high-paid presenters out of their Sydney bunkers at Ultimo to Parramatta – it is on content the ABC should rightly be judged. In this – ABC television news and current affairs is consistently and comprehensively failing those who pay for it. The omission by Anderson to specifically mention ABC television current affairs in his opening remarks is itself telling.
Anderson, at no point during the hearing, revealed that ABC news rates third in Australia on a nightly basis with Channel 7 easily achieving in excess of one million viewers each night and Channel 9 not too far behind. The ABC, it has to be said, does sit ahead of Channel 10 – which astoundingly is watched by fewer people than live in the City of Geelong. (This data, which is not easy to obtain, was made available via sources that measure audience participation across Australia.)
The ABC makes much of trust. The broadcaster takes every opportunity to remind viewers and listeners how ‘trusted’ it is. Precisely how it measures this is not revealed and we are left to either ‘take it’ or ‘leave it’. Over the years 2019-21 – the ABC did increase its market share marginally, but then fell back again to 2019 numbers. Anderson failed to tell the Senate committee what the numbers are showing in 2022. In fairness, perhaps it’s too soon.
Interestingly, Anderson made much of truth and its relationship with democracy. It seems – according to Anderson’s logic – by committing oneself to the waves of verbiage from the ABC you can be sure of getting the truth, and this, in turn, builds and buttresses a flourishing democracy. Needless to say, reporters, presenters, producers, and so-called ABC ‘fact checkers’ love this notion as they can feel entirely virtuous for their role in building a stronger democracy. The ABC, so we asked to believe, is the bulwark against a sea of dangerous, unreliable junk (my words) from commercial TV land.
Audience members are repeatedly bombarded with exhortations to ‘think bigger’ by tuning in to ABC networks. Without a shred of humility, the ABC wants all of us to believe that by accessing the array of ABC platforms our minds will be expanded, our thinking deepened and presumably our knowledge more elevated. Implied also is that by tuning to non-ABC networks our thinking will not ‘get bigger.’
Some of what makes it to air on ABC current affairs television is of very high quality, but quite a deal isn’t. Foreign Correspondent is outstanding – showcasing the talent and experience of offshore ABC correspondents.
When a previously highly respected program such as Four Corners becomes embroiled in litigation and defamation action as it has over recent years, viewers rightly begin to ask if they are seeing the beginning of the end of a once world class production. It has been especially galling that taxpayers have picked up the costs in the majority of these matters.
More immediate current affairs offerings such as 7.30, The Drum, and Q&A have become formulaic, predictable, and each of them attract criticism for leaning to one side of politics over the other.
Not infrequently, such criticism would seem to be justified particularly in regard to 7.30’s coverage of national politics which has become strident, bitter, and decidedly lop-sided. That the ABC repeatedly tells its audience that these shows are ‘world class’ and ‘outstanding’ does not make them so. Viewers make these assessments, not the broadcaster.
The television current affairs model is clearly under pressure and all broadcasters – public and private – are having to rapidly adapt to survive contemporary and likely future upheavals.
Australians should both expect and demand so much more from the publicly funded broadcaster than it is currently getting. The parallel universe in which the ABC sees virtue in all that it does – minus the bloopers, barnacles, and blemishes – is no longer credible.
Something else that might exercise the minds of ABC executives and programmers is that young people are no longer accessing their news or current affairs from television.
They find the regimentation of television constraining and time consuming. In other words – the ABC’s so-called ‘flagship’ news and current affairs shows may well find themselves on a media scrap heap within a relatively short time. By the time news goes to air these days the vast majority of viewers already know it.
The rapidly changing tastes and habits of Australians, young and older, make the ABC’s vision to become the ‘most trusted digital content provider within five years’ all the more urgent and commendable.
Without a doubt, public broadcasting and digital news and current affairs provision are vitally important and Australians should be encouraged to demand of their ABC the very best that is reasonably affordable and deliverable.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/02/want-to-think-bigger-switch-off-the-abc/
************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Friday, February 25, 2022
Australian health authorities have treated our kids shamefully during Covid
Some sections of our community have had a ‘good’ pandemic. If you’re a cold-eyed capitalist with a flair for early adoption and lobbying, you’ve made a motza from masks and RAT riches. If you’re a middling health bureaucrat with a dour expression and a flair for the dramatic, you’ve clogged our television screens for hours at a time and not lost a single day’s pay.
Not everyone has been so lucky. While our public health overlords strenuously ignore it, it is clear the worst effects of the Covid panic have been suffered by children. Lockdowns were particularly troubling. A Unesco report in 2021 examined the adverse consequences of school closures. The report details the effects felt by children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. From missing out on meals to increases in unreported sexual abuse, poorer children suffered the most. Protecting the vulnerable, indeed.
These lockdowns and restrictions trapped children in the home with their abusers. Kids Helpline reporting data demonstrate a 49 per cent increase in sexual abuse reports in the home during lockdowns. Anecdotal evidence from police officers indicates that this is probably far greater, as children have gone unseen by health services, schools or community groups which otherwise might notice and file mandatory reports.
Children have borne the brunt of the effects of draconian policies and those who have been born during this era will feel the effects well into their futures. Babies born recently will be victims of missed screenings that identify early childhood issues, like deafness or astigmatisms, which, if diagnosed early, can result in better outcomes over the course of a lifetime.
This is coupled with foolish policy decisions like the cancellation of home visits by community nurses in South Australia. They only serve to punish newborns that will be victims of missing checks identifying physical safety concerns or domestic violence, putting them at risk of SIDS, the third highest cause of death in children under one. Without a rigorous cost-benefit analysis against the risk of Covid in children under one it is an arbitrary and potentially dangerous decision.
The ongoing Resonance Study at Brown University in the United States recently released a pre-print paper indicating that children born during the pandemic in the USA experienced declines in verbal, motor and cognitive performance and an average decline in standardised IQ testing of 22 points. If this is even half correct, it’s still cause for alarm.
As with all the pandemic’s negative effects, authorities and commentators are quick to castigate parents, rather than cast so much as a glance at their own policy failure, blaming any loss in children’s cognition or speech on parental neglect, when so many of them were trying to work, keep house and teach children all at once as required by health department diktat.
Childcare, going to playgroup or shopping with a parent or carer are all regular routines that promote socialisation and help develop verbal and emotional skills. These mundane societal interactions help shape children’s development, and their loss has had a devastating effect.
For children turning four this year and entering preschool, half their lives have been shaped by inane rules, denial of simple pleasures and lack of social contact. This drives an increase in social isolation and bleeds into the poor educational outcomes that older children experience.
Ironically, bureaucratic overreach and Covid theatre have created a situation where children who truly require medical attention can’t receive it. When my own son was ill and I was nervous about pneumonia, I was forced to first have a farcical telehealth consult (‘shall I hold the phone up to his chest for you?’) before being ushered to a sweltering back room along with supplies and an old fax machine, because his complaint was ‘respiratory’ in nature. Covid cases in Adelaide at the time? Zero.
Other longer-term medical concerns for children’s health have also been obliterated due to Covid monomania. At a time when children’s obesity rates have been steadily rising, we have abandoned them to devices and screens, further entrenching the sedentary lifestyles already commonplace prior to the pandemic. Once again, it is our poorest children that end up worst off here, with obesity rates in children from lower socio-economic areas 2.4 times greater than children from our most wealthy areas. Anyone who has tackled obesity from childhood knows how hard it is to reverse. Protecting our health system, indeed.
The irrationality of decisions about children’s participation in activities that would help to reverse obesity trends knows no bounds. The same children that play sports together at weekends are banned from interschool sports in South Australia, while unvaccinated teens are locked out of community sports in Victoria. Some of the more ludicrous decisions made about children’s lifestyles in South Australia are all the more galling given the chief public health officer, Professor Nicola Spurrier, is a paediatrician by trade. Perhaps, in all her pronouncements of ‘do not touch that ball’ or the ‘pizza box strain’, she simply forgot about the children.
The rhetoric across Australia has become increasingly shrill. One of the ugliest scenes recently was breakfast television host Natalie Barr and media identity Mayor Basil Zempilas cheering on the idea floated by the WA government that would see unvaccinated parents restricted from accompanying or visiting sick children in hospital. Any civil society ought to reject outright such a vile notion, if not for the parents, at least for the sick children unduly punished by the edict.
Of course, the media in Australia have a case to answer for in championing these policies and their less-than-subtle attempts to shift the Overton Window to make outlandish restrictions seem required by the masses. Children have been scared witless by news coverage throughout attempting to paint Covid as the peril of our lifetime. The relentlessness of the pandemic news coverage cannot have been good for children’s mental health. Banning breakfast television has been one of the simplest and easiest mental health boosters in this household.
From failing young children through reducing their verbal skills, to creating the sadness of teenagers missing out on school formals due to ridiculous vaccine mandates, there has been no end to the cruelties foisted on our kids.
Our children have had a terrible pandemic. Nelson Mandela said, ‘The true character of society is revealed in how it treats its children.’ Australia’s bureaucrats have demonstrated that children are at the absolute bottom of the pile when it comes to wearing the consequences of poor policy and draconian crackdown. We should all hang our heads in shame.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/02/suffer-the-little-children-during-covid/
********************************************Revolt has Dan Andrews in retreat on property tax
Daniel Andrews has blamed Victoria’s housing industry after being forced to reconsider his government’s latest property tax.
Housing Minister Richard Wynne announced the $800m “social and affordable housing contribution” less than a week ago, but by Wednesday the Premier conceded the future of the bill was “very uncertain”.
On Thursday Mr Andrews denied that was due to fears Labor could lose outer-suburban marginal seats at the November election should the property industry and opposition campaign on the impact the tax could have on supply and affordability. He instead accused the Property Council of reneging on a deal.
Mr Andrews said the bill would see developers receive windfalls worth billions of dollars through the removal of red tape, in exchange for contributing 1.75 per cent of the value of all newly built developments with three dwellings or more, or three or more lot subdivisions.
“Engagement began on this very issue, and written submissions began back in 2019, so this has been a process that’s taken quite some time, and people were very clear on what their positions would be,” Mr Andrews said.
But peak bodies denied the Premier’s claims. “Both prior to, and following the government’s announcement, we have not been provided with any further documentation, modelling, legislation or any other government analysis of the proposed planning reform or social and affordable housing contribution,” the Property Council said.
The Urban Development Institute of Australia said the imposition of “yet another tax” would add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of a new home.
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Australia is pushing ahead with new coking coal projects for decades to come
Money is being pumped into research and technology to reduce big polluters' carbon footprints, none more so than in steel making, which accounts for eight per cent of all CO2 emissions globally.
Australia is the world's largest exporter of metallurgical coal used in steelmaking, and the second-largest exporter of thermal coal, used for electricity generation.
So in Queensland's coal belt, where so many livelihoods depend on this black gold, how long will its run last?
CQ University resource economist John Rolfe believes there'll be a strong need for coking coal in the foreseeable future — that is at least until green steel made without coking coal becomes economically viable.
"That's a low possibility," he said. "It's a bit like electric cars. Electric cars have been around for a long time and there's been talk for nearly 30 years that they will soon become mainstream, but the conversion has been really slow."
It's a snail-pace transition that mining companies like Sojitz Blue are planning to capitalise on. The company has three mine sites in central Queensland: Gregory, Minerva and Meteor Downs South.
Sojitz Blue has "committed to reducing its environmental impacts", but has also recently proposed to expand its operations at the Gregory Crinum Mine to continue producing two million tonnes of hard coking coal per year until 2043.
Sojitz Blue declined the ABC's request for an interview about its future, as its plans for expansion are still open for public comment.
Professor Rolfe is urging all mining companies to be prepared for changes in supply and demand as technology develops. "The new technologies could be both positive and negative," he said.
"If carbon capture becomes more viable then that will probably increase demand for coal mines. "But if alternative forms of energy become more viable then that will reduce the demand for coal."
New mines planned for Queensland
The Queensland Resources Council's Ian Macfarlane said the state could expect to see a number of coking coal mines open in the next three to five years.
"There is a very strong demand for high quality coking coal and central Queensland has the best coking coal in the world," Mr Macfarlane said.
Mr Macfarlane said there were three likely prospects for new mines in the state, including the Winchester South and Olive Downs mines planned for near Moranbah.
Blast furnace age will direct future coal use
When new technologies become commercially viable, Dr Tahmasebi explains there could be a reluctance from countries like China, which produces half the world's steel, to jump onboard quickly.
"The average age of the reactors that are used in China, for example, are about 14, 15 years old," he said.
"Ideally you want to operate that for 40 years, so there's another 25 to 30 years that they will want to use their reactors.
"From some of those countries there's going to be some resistance to shift to lower carbon alternative and technologies.
"The blast furnace technology is also very efficient and it's producing iron at a low cost, so there will need to be a lot of effort in alternative routes to decrease the cost to compete with that."
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Broadcaster slams calls for Australia to allow 235,000 new immigrants a year claiming it would push up house prices and bring wages down
Ben Fordham has slammed a push to open Australia to hundreds of thousands of skilled migrants as a 'quick fix' to pay back debts.
The 2GB radio host questioned if enthusiasm surrounding foreign workers was prompted by the tens of millions of dollars owed by the federal government.
He explained the influx would mean more tax could be collected but claimed it would stretch public services, inflate house prices, and pull wages down.
This is despite Australia having virtually no immigrants for two years since Covid closed the borders, and accepting 200,000 net a year before that.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg recently called for 235,000 new arrivals every year.
'That's the population of Hobart arriving in Australia every year,' Fordham said on his 2GB radio show.
'Our leaders see this as a money tree but is this really in our best interests?
'We're not talking about government interests or the treasurer, we're talking about the best interests of everyday Australians.
'It may satisfy economists but it won't help those who are waiting years for surgery and it won't assist anyone who can only dream of buying a house.'
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce backed the push to bring skilled migrants Down Under but said they had to be prepared to settle down in regional areas.
'We have to say 'if you want to come to Australia you have to live in Tamworth. Sydney's full,' he said on the 2GB show.
'Sydney does not want more people but regional areas do.'
Fordham said though immigrants were crucial in building Australia, he worried housing, health services and transport would suffer.
He said a mass influx of 190,000 or even 235,000 skilled workers may satisfy economists but make life tougher for residents.
'For our political leaders it's a quick fix,' he said.
Fordham said Sydney was crippled by some of the worst traffic congestion in the world with 500 schools already crowded with too many students.
'Before Covid came along, one in three patients in our hospitals were waiting too long to be treated in emergency rooms,' he said, with 100,000 on the waiting list for elective surgeries.
House prices in the Harbour City also soared up to three times the rate of wages, faster than the rest of the country.
He said the demand for housing in Sydney would result in many having nowhere to live, putting pressure on public services to help the homeless.
The influx of skilled migrants would also put pressure on the 900,000 Australians currently surviving on unemployment benefits, he claimed.
Business leaders are complaining of a job shortage and there are fears employers will favour migrants to avoid paying higher wages to Australians.
'More needs to be done to put Aussies in jobs, before sending an SOS to the other side of the world,' Fordham said.
'You've got to show some tough love to those who refuse to work. And if you're a leaner and not a lifter you can't keep on collecting a cheque from taxpayers.'
Economists said the arrival of foreign workers would fill the gaps in high and low-skill jobs and contribute at least $1 billion a year to the economy.
Accounting giant KPMG has suggested bumping net migration levels beyond 350,000 a year to reverse a population decline and stimulate demand, increasing the size of the labour pool.
The report said pushing migration to 350,000 people a year - equivalent to adding a city the size of Brisbane every seven years - would boost GDP by 4.4 per cent.
However, the Grattan Institute said numbers alone would be counter-productive and the migration policy must tilt even more towards skilled workers, even though they far outnumber family reunion arrivals.
Business groups demanded the nation's cap on permanent skilled migration to be bumped up to 200,000 per year, rather than the current 160,000.
National wages growth has been stuck below the long-term average of 3 per cent since mid-2013 and last year grew by just 2.2 per cent, Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed.
Property prices in the year to January 2022 rose by 22.4 per cent, the fastest annual pace since June 1989, as professionals who could work from home took advantage of record-low interest rates to buy a bigger house or move to coastal regional areas.
The CoreLogic data showed an even more dramatic 29.8 per cent surge in Sydney's median house price to $1.39million, putting a home with a backyard beyond the reach of an average, full-time income earner on $90,329.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Thursday, February 24, 2022
Gender ideology endangers Girl guides
Admission of homoxsexual scoutmasters into the Boy Scouts led to a slide in membership there. Something similar seems set to happen with Girl Guides. It is a loss for young people who might have benefited from those organizations. Parents will undertandably want to keep their children safe from sexual predation
You could barely imagine a more ludicrous scenario. A female CEO sacked without process. From Girl Guides. For questioning why Girl Guides admits males.
And a political and media culture that sees nothing wrong with this.
The firing of former CEO Karyn Lisignoli by Girl Guides WA should send a shiver down the spine of every Australian. It shows that even in the most obvious situations where the safeguarding of young girls should be the top priority, it is forbidden to question the radical left-wing ideology that males have a right to identify into any female space.
As Ms Lisignoli told The Australian: ‘There is a reason why there are certain situations in which we say men can’t be present. Do parents know when they send their nervous and shy 12-year-old girl to Girl Guides that she might be camping in a tent with a biological boy of the age of 15?’
This is more than simply a fair question for the leader of an organisation with young girls in its care. In the eyes of most Australians, it would be downright negligent not to ask questions and inform parents about the presence of young males on a Girl Guide camp with their daughters.
30 per cent of Australian women experienced physical or sexual violence before the age of sixteen. 97 per cent of sex offenders are male. The reasons why we separate girls from boys in activities like an overnight camp is as clear as crystal.
Ms Lisignoli’s dismissal for raising this issue sets an abhorrent standard for the next CEO. To avoid being sacked, the new appointee will either be a person who is happy to place a teenage boy in a tent with a young girl without the knowledge of her parents, or a person who knows that this goes against every safeguarding principle in the book, but is prepared to stay quiet about it to preserve their employment.
In any other circumstance, a female CEO being sacked for trying to protect girls in her care would be on the front page of every paper in the country. Yet what do we hear from left-wing media and the taxpayer-funded broadcaster? Silence.
It’s time for us as a nation to grow a backbone before it’s too late. The sensible majority is being continually dictated to by a vindictive mob – a mob that will gladly harass women out of a job for raising basic safeguarding questions about protecting young girls. Spineless institutions and businesses are happy to play along if it keeps them out of the gun. Australia has barely finished digesting a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and already we are back to organisations choosing to prioritise their reputation above reducing the risk to children in their care.
Hundreds of Australians have contacted me over the last two years raising concerns about the risks of this uncritical adoption of gender ideology in their professions. They are doctors, lawyers, teachers, psychologists, nurses, elite athletes and coaches, academics, scientists, and public servants. People widely respected in their fields and from professions highly valued in the community – yet all believe that speaking out against the new elite orthodoxy could well end their career. I’d be lying if I told them they were wrong.
Activists demanding total subservience to their ideas now have the tools to enforce that compliance as media, government departments and universities sign up to their ideology. They can have you fired, they can stop you getting jobs or appearing at events, they can have you dragged by a left-wing media outlet. Or they can have you hauled before an archaic and draconian anti-discrimination process, as happened to me 18 months ago and which is continuing to happen, in secret, to others around the country.
Unless you’re one of the activists revelling in having this power over your fellow Australians, you should be very concerned about how a small minority has been given the tools to punish Australians for non-compliance with their views.
Three years ago, it would have been impossible to imagine someone losing their job for saying males shouldn’t be in the Girl Guides. If we don’t take a stand for common sense now, nobody can tell you it won’t be you in their sights next.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/02/dark-times-for-freedom-of-speech/
***********************************************Covid and government in Australia: illogical panic
Numbers weren’t meant to be complicated. We use them daily, yet when it comes to Covid and our health they often appear mired in confusing technical terms. This article seeks to demystify the situation using over a million positive test results published by NSW Health this year whilst remaining relevant across our great country.
It is evident from the graphs that we have passed the natural peek of cases and are experiencing a normalising trend. Countries including England, Denmark, and Norway have removed limitations, even though it is winter in the northern hemisphere. It makes me wonder why our government seems quick to impose but slow to remove restrictions.
Around 13 per cent of the NSW population have tested positive to Covid thus far. We have a total vaccination of 84 per cent which is higher than the national average of 81 per cent. Across the population, the chance of surviving Covid is 99.90 per cent.
Former Deputy Chief Health Officer Dr. Nick Coatsworth recently said Omicron is clearly no more dangerous than influenza for those who are young and healthy.
According to the Department of Health surveillance report, the chances of death from Influenza is around 0.2 per cent (five year average 2014-19), which supports his conclusion.
Government and health experts have repeatedly portrayed the influence of Covid in an overly dramatic manner – choosing to generate fear over hope. I have discussed this further in another article. According to the data, however, an average person below 70 – or someone in good health – has little more to fear from Omicron than they have from seasonal influenza.
Prior to the pandemic, experts were saying that the two major groups affected by severe Covid viruses were the elderly and obese with related illnesses. Everyone ages, but we can try to improve our health.
Rather than leading the country and encouraging us to join in on dropping some weight whilst doing some exercise in keeping with the old ‘Life be In It’ ads, governments restricted our movement and made us fearful to go outside. We joke about the extra ‘Covid Kilos’ but it has made us more vulnerable to disease. Just some of the ways policies have compromised our health include:
Vitamin D deficiency
Increased body fat
Increased alcohol consumption
Increase in sedentary lifestyle
Increased Cortisol levels
Cortisol is part of our ‘fight or flight mechanism’ induced during high-stress events and designed for short bursts. The problem is our bodies have been experiencing long and sustained periods of stress due to constant fear-inducing messaging, policies, and health orders. The Mayo clinic attributes overexposure to Cortisol in response to prolonged stress to an increased risk of heart disease, heart attack, high blood pressure, stroke, and weight gain – all increasing chances of an adverse reaction to Covid and other diseases (Mayo Clinic, 2022).
Contracting Covid and being obese has a multiplier effect of three for hospitalisation according to the CDC (CDC, 2020) and between 1.5 and 9.48 of fatality according to multiple studies. An Australian study by Bette Liu, Paula Spokes, Wenqiang He & John Kaldor found that obesity, in the presence of diabetes and chronic lung disease, increased the risk of ICU or death by a factor of 5.34 and concluded by recommended targeted prevention strategies.
We are individually responsibility for our health decisions, but governments have intervened with our ability to make such choices freely and hence have a proportional responsibility for the outcomes.
I was critical in 2021 when the NSW CHO Kerry Chant said that Covid was her sole focus. As the peak health bureaucrat her responsibility is for all aspects of health. What about cancer, depression, obesity, diabetes, and other diseases? What if the focus on one aspect created a larger burden on our overall health and hence became counterproductive?
Are the Covid vaccines beneficial?
According to this data, the benefit of vaccination is a multiplier effect of 1.5. So if you are 55 your chance of dying increases from around 0.028 per cent to 0.042 per cent – still well below that of influenza. Along with this benefit also comes risks of adverse reactions, unknown long-term effects, and some ethical questions about their development.
There also appears to be more benefit in eating healthy and regular exercise – particularly outdoors. So, why have the lines to the local KFC been the longest I have ever seen? Why haven’t our leaders and experts been promoting being healthy? Is it because they find it too complicated to motivate us? Or is it that the fear generated has made us more malleable for compliance? A favourite word of our premiers in 2021.
Perhaps we would do well to remember Senator Rennick’s speech to the Federal Senate on November 21, 2021:
‘The government overreach of the state premiers in destroying our civil liberties has gone too far. This is no longer about health but is rather about politicians wielding power for the sake of power instead of doing what they should be doing and protecting the people.’
I cannot find compelling evidence supporting the government intrusion and mandates into our lives. If it is there, it has been well hidden behind secretive health orders. Encourage vaccine uptake to vulnerable groups but, more importantly, encourage a healthy life balance and in doing so maybe we can turn a national weakness into a strength.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/02/covid-and-government-health-as-a-numbers-game/
************************************************‘Clear’ need for STEM boost to prepare job-ready graduates
The billionaire founder and chief executive of logistics software outfit WiseTech, Richard White, has called for a major boost to STEM education in Australia, declaring he’ll “tell anyone who listens” that the nation needs to improve its outcomes for primary and high school students.
Amid an ongoing battle for tech talent, WiseTech on Wednesday posted an 18 per cent increase in revenue to $281m for the first six months of the financial year, while earnings before interest taxation depreciation and amortisation jumped by 54 per cent to $137.7m.
The company also upgraded its EBITDA growth guidance by 10 per cent to 43 per cent, representing EBITDA of $275m to $295m.
Its net profit climbed a whopping 74 per cent to $77.4m.
Mr White said that WiseTech’s string of acquisitions in recent years was beginning to pay off, and that its CargoWise product in particular had been up a strong performer, with its revenue up 33 per cent year-on-year.
WiseTech’s software helps simplify logistics solutions for businesses.
It noted that despite the overall positive outlook “uncertainty around future economic and industrial production growth and/or global trade may lead to alternative outcomes” and “prevailing uncertainties relating to sovereign and geopolitical risk may also reduce assumed growth rates.”
The executive, a former guitar tech for AC/DC, said that for both WiseTech and Australia’s technology sector more broadly, Australia needs to boost its education efforts and pump out more job-ready graduates.
“This is something I‘ve been clear on for more than a decade,” Mr White said. “I want Australia to lift education, particularly digital technology education, and I’ll tell everybody, from politicians to industry leaders and everybody, that we need to do better.
“In primary school, and in high school, we need to get students in to digital technologies and into STEM so that when they arrive in the workforce they‘re highly skilled in the technologies for the future, rather than focused on what they might perceive as an interesting career but that is not necessarily the future.”
WiseTech shares closed up 4.2 per cent to $44.58.
The company has been caught up in the recent choppy market valuations, but Mr White said that businesses with strong fundamentals will have no trouble weathering the storms.
He added that while the recent acquisitions have been important for WiseTech’s success, he’s concentrating now on “not getting distracted by shiny objects’’.
“It’s important that we focus on really sticking to our knitting, and making this business’s core capabilities better and better,” he said. “So to be frank, the next year is about more of the same and being as good as we can.”
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Australian parents turn to religious schools as public enrolments slide
Australia has recorded its most significant shift in school enrolments since 2008, with 6,388 fewer Australian students in the public system in 2021 — meaning less funding for state schools while private schools will see a windfall.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) annual schools report, the number of public primary and secondary students fell by 0.2 per cent in 2021, with low-fee independent Islamic and Anglican schools in the suburbs picking up the most new students.
The move from public schools was greatest in primary years, with 0.8 per cent of students leaving.
Overall, independent schools grew by 2.2 per cent across Australia, or 30,101 extra pupils.
The ABS said Australia's closed borders and the first net loss of migrants since 1946 was influential in the trend, with new arrivals generally guaranteeing growth at public schools.
Public schools receive $14,776 per student in a combination of state and commonwealth funding, so a drop of 6,388 students means $94,389,088 less for public schools. Meanwhile, funding to the private sector, which receives $11,724 on average per student, is expected to rise by $352,904,124.
It's money that will be gratefully received at schools like the Australian International Academy, a fast-growing Islamic school with three campuses in Sydney's outer western suburbs.
Principal Mona Abdel-Fattah started the school a decade ago with just 19 pupils. Today, there are 611, with more joining at the start of every year.
"It's almost a hundred a year, and at the moment, there are classes where we cannot accept any more students," Ms Abdel-Fattah said.
Ms Abdel-Fattah said the attraction for many of the young families in the area was the extra moral guidance and shared faith.
"A big attraction at our school is the Islamic environment. It's the identity, the care, the compassion," she said.
Islamic schools see huge growth as families prioritise values
Nasha Mohammed moved her 13-year-old daughter Lujain and 10- and six-year-old siblings Layan and Alfarouk from the state system to the Islamic school at the start of the year.
Mrs Mohammed made the decision because her daughter was entering high school and she wanted to prioritise values.
"I wanted her to be around people who pray the same way, are brought up the same way and have the same priorities and same ideas," Mrs Mohammed said.
Mrs Mohammed had a great experience at the public school her children attended last year, but as a busy mum decided to move Layan and Alfarouk as well.
"I wasn't really sure but I thought as a parent I thought it would be easier to drop them off in the same spot and pick them up at the end of the day," Mrs Mohammed said.
Lujain Mohammed said the smaller class sizes allowed her teachers to give her more attention.
"They know more about students' health and wellbeing," she said.
Nationally, Islamic schools have enjoyed enormous growth, with the number of students tripling over the past 15 years.
Last year's Australia Talks survey found parents at independent and Catholic schools had the highest rates of parental satisfaction, leading to calls for an investment in the public system.
Pressure on public schools expected to grow after recent baby boom
Leading International education expert Pasi Sahlberg, from the Gonski Institute at the University of New South Wales, said it would not be the last tough year for public education.
"Governments need to take the responsibility to make sure that the neighbourhood public schools [are] always good enough … for all children," Professor Sahlberg said.
"When this doesn't happen, for example due to insufficient resourcing of these schools, I'm afraid we are going to see trends similar to education statistics published today also in the future."
Professor Sahlberg and other education experts expect pressure on the public system to grow after a recent baby boom.
"This means new schools and many more teachers that need to be available as these numbers grow," he said.
"It is important that the governments will invest in their public infrastructure and human resources to secure a good school and trained teacher for every child."
Independent schools across Australia have welcomed the figures.
In New South Wales, the growth means that for the first time independent schools have more students than the Catholic sector, which set up its first school in Australia in the 19th century.
"This record growth now makes the independent school sector the second largest in NSW and reflects the confidence and satisfaction of parents from across the socio-economic spectrum," Association of Independent Schools New South Wales chief executive Geoff Newcombe said.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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23 February, 2022
Concrete: The big CO2 source Greenies have forgotten
In vowing not to close coal fired power stations until equivalent replacement generation is in place, the bidders for AGL – Atlassian’s Mike Cannon-Brookes and Brookfield’s Stewart Upson – have added realism to the “shut down coal frenzy” sweeping Australia.
For that, the nation can be grateful because, until now, the frenzy was not being moderated by that vital qualification. The frenzy has also obscured sources of carbon pollution which rival coal that few want to discuss, because they go to the heart of the current Australian and world economic stimulation. That is the use of concrete and steel in construction.
Twiggy Forrest’s Fortescue has highlighted the carbon content of steel production, but concrete is rarely talked about probably because, as a community, in most of our houses we are replacing stored carbon in the form of timber with concrete slabs and their associated carbon emissions.
If we are serious about carbon emissions, then we must not leave all the heavy lifting to coal – concrete must be part of the action. And just like coal, we can’t simply abandon concrete unless we develop techniques and materials to either replace it or make it differently. Late last week Frank Cerra, head of Perth based project engineers BG&E, sent me a note highlighting the size of carbon emissions from concrete.
– The global construction sector accounts for 25 per cent of the world’s emissions. And as the world increases its investment in infrastructure and new buildings, emissions are rising rapidly. It’s predicted the equivalent of one New York City will be built every month globally until 2060.
– The global cement industry produces 7 to 8 per cent of the world’s man-made carbon dioxide. Concrete is consumed at a rate of 33 billion tonnes per annum and is the most consumed material in the world after water.
– Currently, over 20 per cent of Australia’s GDP is attributed to infrastructure sectors, with 33 per cent of planned infrastructure project activity occurring in NSW and Victoria. Approximately 25 million cubic metres of concrete are used annually in construction.
Cerra says engineers understand the critical interdependence of structural efficiency and materials and are working with key players to reduce embodied carbon in their projects, but a lot more needs to be done.
Meanwhile NSW has launched a program to reduce carbon in infrastructure by developing “collaborative solutions which are practical yet ambitious while also ensuring our infrastructure is fit-for-purpose and built to last”.
Now to the “Bacchus Marsh” cement-making technology story. Soon after the turn of the century, scientist Mark Sceats concluded that for many furnace applications, including cement, it would be far better to use a cylinder heated to very high temperatures and to conduct the treatment process inside that cylinder. That method of operation would also allow electrification of the furnace.
Washington H. Soul Pattinson saw Sceats process as a potential way of making better bricks. A test plant was commissioned at Bacchus Marsh in Victoria, but Soul Pattinson pulled out with the plant not completed. The employees raised the money to complete the plant and managed to keep it operational. Sceats is now the chief scientist at Calix, the listed-Australian company that owns the technology.
Australian cement makers were not interested, but in Europe there was a crisis. Back in 2005, the enormous emissions from its cement makers were neutralised by huge carbon credit certificates which would have lasted many decades.
But the cement makers were greedy and didn’t take carbon seriously, so they sold their abundant carbon credits for a profit of some $8bn.
Now the European Union is being tougher on carbon but most of the credits have gone. So far the cement makers have not been able to find a satisfactory substitute for lime in cement so they are pursuing a strategy of developing technology to separate and collect the carbon emissions from the cement process. They will either use the separated carbon in industry or store it in old oil wells.
The Bacchus Marsh plant was able to separate carbon so the European cement makers trialled the Australian technology (officially called LEILAC-1) in a massive Belgium pilot plant. Other technologies were also tested before the Europeans declared last October that the Australian technology offers the cheapest way yet to decarbonise the cement industry.
Calix will receive royalties, but it is now pursuing non-cement uses for its technology.
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Scott Morrison backs 'terrific bill' to ban transgender women from playing female sport
Scott Morrison has backed a new push to prevent transgender women who were born male from playing female sport.
The Prime Minister has thrown his support behind Liberal senator Claire Chandler's proposed law to prevent women's clubs from being sued for excluding a trans player to reduce the risk of injury and unfair competition.
'I support it, I think it is a terrific bill and I've given her great encouragement,' he said alongside the Tasmanian senator in Trianbunna on Tuesday.
'Claire is a champion for women's sport and I think she has been right to raise these issues in the way that she has.'
Senator Chandler has raised concerns about transgender participation, especially in contact sports where the risk of injury is higher, since entering Parliament in 2019.
'Women's sport was invented for people of the female sex and any suggestion that it is somewhat provocative or controversial to articulate this view I think is pretty ludicrous,' she told Daily Mail Australia in an interview in 2020.
In 2019 Sport Australia had issued pro-trans guidelines recommending that 16,000 sport clubs across the nation catagorise sport based on 'gender identity' not biological sex, meaning a person can chose whether to play men's or women's sport.
Senator Chandler, who received 'hundreds and hundreds' of emails and phone calls from parents concerned that girls' sport was being undermined, said the guidelines 'prioritise transgender inclusion over the health and safety of women'.
Her proposal - dubbed the Save Women's Sport Bill - would amend the Sex Discrimination Act to specify that 'offering single-sex sport is lawful'.
When she introduced her bill earlier this month, Senator Chandler said: 'Australia's Sex Discrimination Act 1984 has always acknowledged that sex is relevant in sport, but under recent interpretations has unacceptably limited the circumstances in which single-sex sport can be offered.
'As a result, sports clubs, associations and volunteers are threatened with legal action if they exclude males from women's sport.'
Equality Australia has rejected the bill as 'divisive and unnecessary'.
The inclusion of transgender athletes in elite women's sport has been intensely disputed in recent years.
Transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, who transitioned in her 30s, sparked controversy when she won a gold medal for New Zealand in women's events at the Pacific Games in Samoa in July 2019.
She then won two gold medals at the Roma World Cup in January 2020.
Broadcaster Piers Morgan said 'women's rights to equality and fairness were being slaughtered at the alter of political correctness'.
Former Australian Olympic middle-distance runner Tamsyn Lewis told Sydney radio station 2GB in March 2020: 'There's been a lot of people who are scared to come out and say anything because of political correctness.
'You don't want to get to the point where we haven't tackled this issue head on and in a respectful manner, that in 20 years time we're seeing our kids grow up and compete in sports that they just actually can't win,' she said.
In 2018 Australian women's handball player Hannah Mouncey, a trans woman who is 1.88metres tall and weighs 100kg, withdrew her nomination from the draft for the Australian Football League's professional women's competition.
She said the toll of trying to meet the AFL's standard - which demands that players can prove that their testosterone levels have been maintained below a threshold for at least two years - had proved 'too great'.
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Muslim father jailed for 'unspeakable' murder of daughter and son-in-law
A Melbourne father who gunned down his own daughter and her husband, partly because he was not invited to their wedding, has been jailed for life over the "cold-hearted" and "cowardly" killings.
Osman Shaptafaj, 57, today appeared in the Supreme Court of Victoria where he was ordered to serve two life sentences concurrently after pleading guilty to murdering Lindita Musai, 25, and Veton Musai, 29, at Yarraville about two years ago.
Shaptafaj will have to serve at least 35 years, meaning he will be in his nineties before he becomes eligible for parole.
Confronting details were aired in the Supreme Court about how Shaptafaj lay in wait for the couple for almost two hours before shooting them both in the head at point-blank range.
Leaving his daughter and son-in-law lying on the porch, Shaptafaj then rang the doorbell of the house so that they could be found by Mr Musai's distressed family members.
He then walked to nearby grasslands where he shot himself twice while being watched by onlookers.
Shaptafaj claims he has no memory of what happened and the Supreme Court heard that he believed he was stuck in a "glitch" of the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops, a first-person shooter game set during the Cold War.
Justice Andrew Tinney called Shaptafaj's crimes "cowardly".
"You've taken away two young lives. Your crimes were premeditated, carried out upon two members of your family who should legitimately have expected you to be their protector, not someone who would kill them so savagely," Justice Tinney said.
"Yet you allowed your unjustified feelings of resentment and anger towards then to drive you to commit unspeakable crimes.
"In view of your current age … the long non-parole period required to be passed would you have you ineligible for consideration of parole until you're quite elderly.
"If the result of that is that you go forward from today with the expectation that you will likely die in prison, that is an unavoidable by-product of your heinous crimes."
By the time Shaptafaj had made the decision to murder his daughter, Lindita, and her husband Veton, their relationship had been in tatters for some time.
Prosecutors previously told the court that the 57-year-old had been a violent husband and father, which ultimately sparked his divorce and left his children loathing him.
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BlueScope’s $1 billion blast furnace rebuild indicates ‘green steel’ isn’t coming anytime soon
BlueScope Steel (ASX:BSL), the steel business carved out of BHP (ASX:BHP) two decades ago will press ahead with a study on a $1 billion furnace reline at the Port Kembla steelworks.
It is a surefire indication those in the know do not view the transition to so-called ‘green steel’ as a near-term shift.
The reline of the mothballed number 6 blast furnace will have a 20 year life and cost up to $300 million more than BlueScope initially planned, setting the firm up to maintain its domestic supply of steel from 2026, helping BlueScope through the energy transition ahead of its 2050 net zero target.
BlueScope’s position is the furnace reline will provide a “challenging but credible timeline” for the development of low emissions steelmaking technologies.
“The reline does not lock BlueScope in to blast furnace steelmaking for the full 20 years if technology is ready earlier,” the company said.
“However, achieving this will be dependent on several enablers including access to low cost green hydrogen, firmed and affordable renewable energy, the development of suitable raw material supply chains and appropriate policy settings.”
It follows comments last week from South32 (ASX:S32) CEO Graham Kerr, a supplier of metallurgical coal to BlueScope, that coal would have a use in the steelmaking process for at least 20 years given the infancy of low emissions technologies like green hydrogen.
BlueScope is well stocked to deploy capital at the moment after reporting record first half underlying profit of $1.57 billion, up 373% on the same period in 2021.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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22 February, 2022
Apartment buildings face massive bill for electric vehicle charging stations
The costs and other obstacles are such that NO charging stations are likely to be provided in most existing apartment buildings. That might effectively prohibit electric car ownership for most apartment dwellers, a very large number
Body corporates are facing costs in the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars to retrofit complexes to accommodate the power to supply electric vehicles, experts have warned.
There’s also likely to be confrontation between those who want to retrofit a complex and unit owners who do not drive nor live there and have no interest in the paying for an EV charging stations, says strata title specialist Chris Irons.
Unit owners may not even have the right to install an EV charger in their ‘exclusive’ car space even if they foot the bill, the former Queensland commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management said.
“If you have exclusive use of a parking space, or even it is on the title, to install a charging station may require a motion at an AGM to be passed as technically the car park is common property,” Mr Irons said.
“Even if the body corporate decides to install several charging stations as a convenience, but on common property, there may be owners who do not own electric vehicles and do not want money spent on them.
“You also have the issue of where they are going to be placed and how is the vehicle owner charged for the use of the power if it is a shared meter.”
Transformers for established complexes are highly unlikely to cope with the power demand to service dozens of EV charging stations, said Master Electricians Australia CEO Malcolm Richards.
Body corporates can expect to pay more than $100,000 alone just to upgrade a transformer, before pricing the cost of retrofitting the wiring for their complex and individual meters, he said.
“In terms of putting car charging stations in the basement of existing premises, you have got a significant headache for the body corporate to put infrastructure in place,” Mr Richards said.
“They have to determine what type of chargers are going to be installed, how much extra power they going to draw.
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Power time bomb for industries, jobs
Energy Minister Angus Taylor says the future of Australia’s manufacturing and mining sectors “will be won or lost in the next decade”, warning the early closures of coal-fired power plants risked hundreds of thousands of jobs and power supply shortages.
Speaking at the Illawarra First Energy and Renewables summit in Wollongong on Tuesday, Mr Taylor will say there is no point “planning for a green steel or aluminium industry, if high energy prices decimate the industries we have today”.
After Scott Morrison warned Australia’s coal-fired generation fleet must “run to its life” to keep energy prices down, Mr Taylor will say AGL’s decision to bring forward the closures of Bayswater and Loy Yang A “and Brookfield’s bid to accelerate these closure dates even further only compounds the risk” of energy shortages.
“I’ve been calling this out since the day I became Energy Minister. That hasn’t always been a popular position – there are plenty of others who are happy to hand-wave, hiding behind technicalities to proclaim ‘it will all be OK’,” Mr Taylor will say.
“But we’ve seen this movie before. If a major generator is closed down, there’s a gap in supply that must be replaced. And if there is no replacement, it’s customers who wear the pain.”
Speaking to blue-collar workers in the Illawarra, Mr Taylor will say those who focus on getting to carbon neutrality through a centrally planned, linear pathway put energy-intensive jobs at risk.
“While long-term goals are important, our focus must be firmly on the road in front of us,” he will say. “Let’s be clear – these energy companies provide an essential service. Customers must come first. And to keep energy companies and investors honest, we will do what is needed to keep prices low and the lights on.
“That is my focus. We will work with the NSW government and the private sector to ensure more dispatchable capacity is available to replace Eraring when it closes.”
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Techie comes ‘clean’, blackouts will generate billions
Terry McCrann comments on AGL takeover bid by Mike Cannon-Brookes
Thank you Mike for so promptly demonstrating the truth of what I wrote about Origin’s proposed closure of a real power station, Eraring.
That it would have a cascading impact on all the other real – coal-fired – power stations; forcing their accelerated closures, because the totally destructive and destabilising impact of ever-increasing so-called renewables in the grid rendered the real stations unable to function.
You and your Canadian partners are really only proposing upfront to do what AGL would have ended up being forced to do anyway: bring forward the planned closure dates.
This would be both exactly the same as, and also accelerated by, what Origin is doing with Eraring - bringing it forward from ‘over the horizon’ in 2032 to an all-too immediate 2025.
Even a Green loon like NSW’s laughingly titled ‘Energy’ Minister, Matt Kean, can see that 2025 is all-too close to now for comfort; heck, it’s even possible that he could still be in the job when the blackouts and brownouts start.Thank you Mike for also announcing that – at least, you think - there are big dollars to be made in Australia’s blackout and brownout future, off the back of real pain for 26m Australians. You and Brookfield are not putting - or more accurately, being prepared to put - $8bn on the table, to play Father Christmas to Aussie consumers.
You want to and intend to take more dollars out of their pockets for the same amount of electricity they’d be getting – when of course the wind is blowing and the batteries haven’t run flat, and they can actually get it – not fewer dollars.
The bid by got-lucky-techie Cannon-Brookes and Brook-field (no relation, other than intelligence-challenged wokeness) is best judged on two levels.
On both levels it’s a joke.
The first is as just another opportunistic corporate play: launching at AGL when it’s vulnerable with its de-merger proposal. AGL needs 75 per cent shareholder approval to break itself into two packages – the ongoing, heading for the business cemetery, coal-fired stations, and the ‘new-age’ energy player plus retailer.
Brookes, Cannon and Field, want the same 75 per cent to vote for their $7.50 cash a share upfront and not have to worry about what the package going forward will be worth.
The simple counter is that they think that package going forward can be made to be worth more, much more, than $7.50. Current holders should say thanks but no thanks, as indeed the AGL board has promptly done. We’ll keep the extra dollars from Australia’s blackouts and brownouts future, if you don’t mind.
In the context of both corporate realities and the seemingly unstoppable sleep-walk to Australia’s energy future disaster, the demerger makes sense.
The two most recent examples have been value-accretive for holders. That was Wesfarmers hiving off the Coles supermarket business, and Woolworths separating its Endeavour grog and pokies business. And it should be also with BHP selling its oil and gas business to Woodside, with BHP holders retaining their equity pro-rata in the merged entity.
On the second level, AGL and Australia’s energy future, the bid is an even bigger – and thoroughly sick – joke. The bidding duo’s core proposal is to replace 7GW (7000MW) of existing AGL real 24/7 coal and gas generation, with “a build-out of at least 8 GW of clean energy and storage (batteries)”. Let’s say, for example, that’s 6GW of wind/solar and 2GW of batteries.
When the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine – for at least 8 hours every night and often 24 hours through a full day – that 6GW could and will drop close to zero; the 2GW of batteries will run flat in a couple of hours. Hullo blackouts; hullo brownouts. And very expensive power, as in even crazier Europe.
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Catastrophic drop in apprentices could send house costs soaring
There’s been new and alarming twist in the Australia-wide shortage of labour. The number of young people wanting to take up apprenticeships in trades like electrical, plumbing, carpentry, concrete laying and similar areas has slumped dramatically.
In many other areas the hope is that when we lift migration rates the shortages will be greatly reduced. But, without rule changes, building-skills migration is complex and not likely to substantially reduce the impact of reduced apprenticeships in the short to medium term.
The shortage of apprentices is catastrophic because it is going to increase the price of constructing a new house (not the land cost) by between 20 and 30 per cent. Such a huge rise in the construction costs will press state and local governments to reduce their bureaucracies and taxes.
My friends in the industry say the shortages are nationwide but particularly severe on the east coast. Large apprenticeship recruiters get almost no worthwhile responses from advertisements. The recruiting agencies still contribute, but the overall intake in many areas looks to be down 40 to 50 per cent.
There is already a shortage of skilled labour in the building industry and that will increase over time because of the age levels of the workforce. Apprentices normally contribute substantially in their third and fourth year, so the shortage of skills will be extended along with building delays.
What makes this so dangerous for costs is that there are two levels of payment in the building industry. The first is the large, unionised projects that extend into multistorey apartments. Renumeration and labour costs in that part of the industry are usually more than twice that of the second part, the housing sector.
This difference has been maintained because a lot of building people don’t like working in a unionised environment. But the shortage of skills and apprentices is impacting both sectors as well as engineering operations and factories.
Not surprisingly many tradespeople in the lower-remunerated areas are now looking for better paid work. The long-term skills shortages will make the remuneration differences unsustainable. So renumeration in the housing and other sectors will rise in the next two or three years.
Just how much this will add to the total price of a new house depends on the extent of the remuneration increase, the land content and the way the house is designed and constructed. There will be wide variations, but it is not unreasonable to assume that a theoretical doubling of the trade renumeration in the area will add 20 or 30 per cent to the construction cost of houses.
There are a large variety of opinions as to why young people are turning away from apprenticeships when it is clear that once they are done they are going to be rewarded with very large pay rates.
If the shortages continue remuneration will exceed $100 an hour, often by a big margin. Here are some of the reasons being widely canvased. It is not an exhaustive list, and there is room for legitimate disagreement:
* A regular source of the apprenticeships has been TAFE and similar courses that have provided young people aged around 15 and 16 with a pre-apprenticeship course. Covid substantially reduced the ability of these colleges to operate in many states.
* Although there is a very large carrot at the end of an apprenticeship, first and second year apprentices’ wages are very low and can be under $10 an hour. Many young people can get twice that in hospitality and retail areas. There is a great deal of well-paid unskilled work on the large construction sites. Young people are taking the cash rather than the future prize. That short-term view may also be linked to concerns about climate etc.
* Although most of today’s building and industrial sites are very different to say five or 10 years ago, they can still be a bit “rough”, with frequent use of swear words. Young people coming out of a modern school environment are not well prepared for this way of working.
* Many of the trades involve so-called “dirty work” or the discipline of a factory. Many young people don’t want to work in such environments.
* The Covid handouts have created among young people a sense of entitlement which has damaged the work ethic of the community. This widely held view is certainly not universal among young people. I am seeing in many areas of the community young people very keen to work but they require inspiring management.
* The absence of foreign students means that if a young person wants to go to a university it is much easier to gain enrolment. University enrolment or trade skills will become an increasing debate among young people, as the rewards in trades are set to exceed those in many professions.
While we can all debate the reasons for this slump in apprenticeships, it is a signal for serious problems ahead.
First-home buyers are already finding it difficult to fund the high cost of housing and another substantial rise in costs will multiply this problem. It will also force state and local governments to look at their practices, because they contribute about half the cost of the house – partly due to stamp duty and GST, but also because their bureaucracies and organisations are designed to delay good developments and boost costs.
In theory we could train the bureaucrats to be apprentices but under the adult apprenticeship rules anyone aged over 21 has to be paid a full adult wage. Inexperienced apprentices are very costly in their first two years because a lot of time needs to be put into training them. As a result, adult apprentices are a relatively small part of the skills workforce. Maybe that needs to change.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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21 February, 2022
‘Grey corruption’ cuts our living standards, so it’s a shame they shelved the integrity commission
What Danielle Wood says below is broadly correct but she is the Chief executive of the Grattan Institute, a Leftist outfit, so she can be expected not to see the elephant in the room. She doesn't seem to have thought at all about WHY corruption happens. And the elephant is constant Leftist attacks on business, mostly in the name of the environment.
Defence against Greenie attacks is often difficult and most of those attacked will inevitably take any recourse to defend themselves -- in forms that can sometimes be identified as "corruption".
It would be much easier for businesses to keep on the ethical "strait and narrow" if they were more often allowed to just get on with business. It won't happen, of course
A week ago, the government very quietly announced it would not deliver on its promise for a federal integrity commission in this term of Parliament. This came just a fortnight after Transparency International announced Australia had tumbled down the international league table for its corruption perceptions index.
Bad news for government integrity, certainly. But also bad news for the economy.
The uncomfortable truth is that clean government matters for living standards.
Decades of economic research have illuminated the relationship between government corruption and economic stagnation. It has also identified the reason corruption is such a handbrake on growth.
First, corruption increases the uncertainty around investment decisions. How much will I have to bribe someone to get a licence to operate? Is the government going to be giving a leg-up to my competitors? This uncertainty depresses the level of private business investment and wastes entrepreneurial talent. Why take a punt in the market when there are better returns to be had ingratiating yourself with the government?
Second, corruption influences the level and type of government spending. Tax breaks for mates, and/or channelling government money into projects to benefit friends and benefactors, means less for worthy projects and core spending such as health and education which improves the lives of everyday citizens and the productive capacity of the economy.
Third, corruption means more red tape and regulation. The more complex the operating environment, the more incumbent firms can extract economic rents, often without raising attention. The proliferation of regulation dulls economic dynamism by creating impediments to innovation and new entrants.
Finally, corruption can erode some forms of what economists call “civic” or “social capital” – essentially the trust between fellow citizens. A country where suspicion and distrust is rife is a country where it is harder for firms to reach mutually beneficial deals.
If you think that these concerns only apply in “really” corrupt countries – ones where bags of money change hands to get things done – think again.
The insidious impacts of “grey corruption” – governments exercising their powers to favour private interests or political interests over the national interest – can chill economic activity through exactly the same channels.
This means we can boost Australians’ living standards by sweeping a broom through the areas where grey corruption typically flourishes.
Greater controls on pork-barrelling – the misuse of taxpayers’ money for political advantage – would be a good starting point. Examples are thick on the ground of federal and state governments directing infrastructure dollars, or grants schemes, or defence projects, with an eye to the seat margin rather than the size of benefit to the country. Redeploying the billions of dollars spent on these projects each year to ones that deliver better value for money would be an immediate boost to living standards.
Another area ripe for disinfectant is the role of money in Australian politics. The federal government lags much of the developed world, and its state government counterparts, in rules to reduce the risk of donor influence. There are currently no limits on how much money can flow to federal political candidates or parties. The transparency regime for donations is so inadequate that we can’t even be sure who the biggest donors are.
Grattan Institute analysis shows the sectors with the most to gain or lose from government decisions – mining, property and construction, gambling – tend to donate much more than we would expect given the size of their contribution to the economy. This means that Australians are living with permanently heightened risk that government decisions – including in big, economically sensitive areas like tax, housing, and climate policy – will be skewed to favour donors over the national interest.
Capping campaign expenditure and moving to best-practice disclosure requirements would lift an impediment to better policy-making.
Another priority should be safeguarding our important institutions from political interference. This means making sure that independent institutions – courts and tribunals, but also important economic institutions including the Reserve Bank, ASIC, and the ACCC – can pursue their mandates fearlessly. One step would be to ensure appointments to these types of institutions are made on merit rather than gifted to political mates, which forthcoming Grattan’s research suggests is becoming more common. For example, about 21 per cent of current members of the Administrative Appeal Tribunal have a direct political affiliation. The proportion of new members appointed to the AAT with a political affiliation increased from less than 8 per cent in 2014-15 to 32 per cent in 2018-19.
Ultimately, making sure than the best-qualified people occupy these important roles, free to make decisions without political baggage, would help Australians to retain confidence in the rule of law and independent economic decision-making. These are central foundations of Australia’s long-run economic prosperity.
Fixing the rules of the game in each of these areas would make a difference. But a federal integrity commission is also needed, to make sure governments are playing by these rules. It must be empowered to investigate significant maladministration – these types of grey corruption – and not just criminal conduct.
Australian governments are rightly looking for a way to build a stronger, more dynamic economy in the wake of COVID-19. Cleaning up their conduct, to put the public interest at the centre of all government decision-making, would be an excellent place to start.
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Attention NSW government: you do not ‘own’ our children
Last weekend I received a notice from Service NSW, which commenced as follows:
"Hello – Being together in a classroom is the most effective way for students to learn and grow. Since COVID-19 remains a relatively mild illness for most children, we’re committed to return to school safely in 2022. We will support this through the following measures."
Did you notice the phrase, ‘Covid remains a relatively mild illness for most children?’ It is refreshing to see such honesty at the start of a government communication. However, it appears that the meaning of their description does ‘not compute’ in their thinking and subsequent actions. Why? Because the rest of the advice to parents is the government responding to something much more harmful than a ‘mild illness’.
They recommend vaccinations for children as young as five! The link explains that: ‘Evidence shows vaccination offers excellent protection against Covid in children.’ This is the same virus that is described by Service NSW as a ‘relatively mild illness’! They also insist that all schools now distribute and check RATs twice a week, completed by parents. This is from the theatre of the absurd because it is illegal in New South Wales to teach and work in a school unless you are double vaccinated. In other words, the government wants children to be vaccinated from a mild illness while they engage with adults who are vaccinated to keep the illness mild for them.
Yet the state tells parents what they must do and tries to ‘guilt’ them into an unnecessary vaccination.
The state does not own our children. We, the parents do, in a stewardship sense. Parents are to train children into civility (which they may or may not keep when independent), and they are to invite them into being a constructive part of humanity (and beyond). But this government approach should not surprise us – it is a line of thinking that has been developing for the last thirty years or so in the West.
Increasingly, the state has been telling those who are minors under the law that they need not inform their parents about important issues, like going to the doctors to receive contraception, or seeking counselling about their deepest concerns. Currently, the same avoidance of involving parents can include seeking to transition how they express their sexuality, or having an abortion.
In these acts we see a breach of a basic principle of life – if we are given responsibility for moral commitments, we need the freedom to act accordingly. But this right in Australia is being progressively eroded for parents. Children are told that they can seek advice and take life-changing action, but parents are still responsible for stewarding them for their development. While fulfilling this responsibility, they have less and less any input over critical aspects of their lives. This is abhorrent.
This latest episode with Covid is just as miserable. Most children are not at risk, but parents are not only told what the state insists on doing, they are also given the responsibility to do the state’s work. Parents do not get to decide whether to subject their children to two RATs a week and they have to administer it.
Given the rise in our ‘dob-in’ culture at the moment, our leaders seem blind to what is going to happen when they keep asking for child vaccination even when their own advice notes the risk as mild. Children will be uninvited to social gatherings when it is found out that they are not vaccinated. Some teachers – like some doctors have done – will start to distinguish between students in subtle but clear ways (after all, some will be most interested in keeping themselves ‘absolutely’ safe, as if that is even possible). Parents will be the ones who will have the responsibility of cleaning up this mess because the state has intruded yet again.
I once had a young person who had been in long-term foster care (for which he was ultimately grateful) express that he knew that his other friend who had been adopted was better off. When I asked ‘why’, he said that once you are in a family they (normally) do not give up on you, even when you make poor choices.
Our government leaders work in reverse. They intrude into families, take over their rightful decision-making, create social and relational messes that make us less human in how we relate, and then expect parents to clean up while paying even more taxes so that they can keep interfering!
This pressure comes from all kinds of political benches.
Have you ever noticed that these benches are filled with what Peter Rieff called those of the ‘anti-culture’ movement – leaders so focussed on self as the main moral criteria, that they cannot sustain ways of encouraging more humane life together? Of course, one of the great ironies is that these folk are the ones who will statistically die out. Why? Because they have so few children. Perhaps there is some truth in social evolution after all, and the survival of the fittest will see those genuinely committed to families and children being the ones who are shown to be most ready to populate civil societies.
In a similar vein, perhaps state ownership of children will also work against the survival of politicians, once it is called out for what it is. For example, when Democrat Terry McAuliffe made the following claim, ‘I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,’ it brought to a head this issue of who is primarily responsible for children. In that voting context, parents reasserted their opinion strongly.
Apart from a Federal Education Minister (who is currently stood aside) and Mark Latham in state parliament, the rest of our leaders seem content with the anti-culture of so-called therapeutic safetyism and emotivism, which exerts more authority over our children whilst deflecting responsibility from themselves. The Teachers Union seems to have bought into safetyism, as has the Association of Independent Schools. Their disregard for parents is a major neglect of the civic responsibility which adheres to their roles.
Such leaders are only successful because they live as though they own our children. It’s time to call it for what it is – a lie encased in ‘keeping people safe at all costs’ while taking authority to themselves which is not due to them. A society where children belong to the state is horrible and chilling in so many ways – is that what Australia is becoming?
https://spectator.com.au/2022/02/att-service-nsw-you-do-not-own-our-children/
********************************************Disability problems
The elevation of Dylan Alcott to Australian of the Year is a great win for the disability sector, but threatens to entrench disability as another hostile arm of identity politics.
Alcott’s first major statement was to insist on further funding for the NDIS, a program whose costs are approaching thirty billion dollars a year. The Budget will include a further $13.2 billion for the NDIS between 2021 and 2024. Some government estimates fear it has the potential to dwarf Medicare by 2030 at its current rate of growth.
What disability advocates have no answer for is the ever-burgeoning net that the term disability captures, especially where it overlaps with mental health. I assess such applications regularly for those suffering serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia.
Unfortunately, the market for disability is not terribly different to any other. If people get paid to be classified as disabled, demand will only increase.
But the growth in funding is trending away from physical disabilities like Alcott’s, who suffered a surgically induced spinal injury as a baby, towards behavioural disturbance, intellectual retardation and chronic mental illness.
Those diagnosed with autism for example have quadrupled in the last twenty years and represent the fastest growing segment of NDIS applicants.
The breadth of symptoms in autism is large, incorporating everything from people missing social cues, being easily overwhelmed by sensory stimuli such as loud noises to preferring repetition and routine. Many of these symptoms overlap with other disorders such as ADHD, social anxiety or conduct problems that do not readily attract extra support.
This can lead to considerable pressures upon clinicians to place people suffering from an undifferentiated mix of cognitive, mood or behavioural disturbance into the autism category in order to attract funding. There is a broad spectrum of variation in the level of severity and dysfunction among autism sufferers, hence the ever growing label of ‘high-functioning’.
If is often preferable to retain the therapeutic alliance by fitting patients into the already malleable psychiatric categories. Health workers have little incentive to constrain costs when payments are uncapped and not tied to their own departments.
This was touched upon by former minister for disability Linda Reynolds who said the scheme was ‘too reliant on the empathy of public servants’. Reynolds ultimately failed in her attempt to bring greater discipline and objectivity to the process in the form of independent assessments. Meanwhile the cost blowout in uncapped NDIS payments continues unchecked and blends into an expensive synthesis with broader advocacy for mental health funding.
The definition of disability has steadily shifted in recent decades to its current idea of a long-term functional disorder that limits an ability to fulfil social roles. The concept is evolving, combining perspectives from both human rights and medicine. Like other civil rights movements, its aim to give dignity to historically marginalised groups is laudable.
But in line with its parallels to other movements in identity politics, such as race and gender, are accusations of able-ism. The undercurrent of this term is that disabilities like autism are not disorders but differences. Activists like Greta Thunberg referred to her diagnosed autism as a superpower giving her a black and white outlook that her supporters interpreted as moral clarity.
The political implication of the neurodiversity movement is that if only society could be more accommodating, those with disabilities such as autism could live relatively normal lives. There is a significant contradiction in such pronouncements given those with serious illnesses like schizophrenia or brain injury require sophisticated treatments, especially when acutely unwell.
Nobody will question that those with disabilities deserve the necessary support, understanding and accommodations to help live meaningful lives.
But the huge growth in NDIS funding is helping to entrench the notion of disability as an attractive identity, over and above the world of insecure work. This is especially true in a world created by explosive identity politics where the public proclamation of pain helps allow the extraction of privilege.
This is the silent undercurrent of our low unemployment figures, so pronounced during the pandemic where employers cannot find locals to fill jobs. A significant portion of locals who probably could work, have given up doing so. Find me someone delivering food via an algorithm who is an Australian citizen?
Even before the NDIS was enshrined, there had been a steady shift from looking for work to being placed on the disability pension, a tripling in the decade to 2013 when the Gillard government tightened the guidelines. Unfortunately very few people shift back from the disability support pension once approved, less than five per cent. This rise has been dominated by an increase in mental health claims, away from the more common historical reason of bad backs. The changes in disability pension payments are a sensitive indicator of the economy’s shift from manufacturing to services.
While not all recipients of the disability pension receive NDIS, the majority do. One of the supporting claims from the Productivity Commission’s original assessment of the benefits of the NDIS scheme was the potential to shift disabled people into more work. However this has occurred only in rare cases.
I see it in my patients who are long-term unemployed, struggling for confidence and see themselves as too old to retrain in alternative sectors. For those who coined the catchy phrase, ‘don’t dis my ability’, in such groups the ‘dis’ often wins over the ‘ability’, especially when the financial rewards are more immediate.
Recent winners of the Australian of the Year award such as Rosie Batty or Grace Tame became fiercely partisan cultural warriors throughout their term and simplistically cast anyone from the conservative side of politics as a villain.
Alcott can make an especially useful contribution if he can communicate the growing loosening of the term disability. He may then avoid his advocacy for the disabled descending into ever greater demands for further funding the sinkhole the NDIS has become.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/02/aussie-life-55
**************************************************Queensland house ad infuriates hundreds of Reddit users
This is a very unsophisticated comment. Such blocks of land are called "battleaxe" blocks and are well-known in Queensland. Apartment blocks often have them. My house is built on one and I have never had any problems with it -- but it is handy for setting up a long table for summer evening dinner parties
An aerial shot of the home — located in Logan and positioned on a 3258 sqm block — was shared to the forum site.
At first glance, it looks like your average block of land — but on closer inspection, has an L-shaped “private yard” that wraps around the neighbouring home on one side, and very little space between the neighbouring house on the other side.
Many pointed out the narrow-looking home and odd shaped yard were likely the result of one person buying a single, large block of land and then dividing it into two or three.
“I imagine the weird block shape was due to an owner dividing one larger block into two, rather than anyone who was in a position to build row houses,” commented one user.
Another wrote that they “used to live in a house where the owner sold off part of the backyard (original block was over 1000 sqm so we still had a yard)”.
“Developer next door built three units on his resulting L shaped block. Then I discovered selling off your yard was not uncommon here,” they went on.
“To access the back you have to go THROUGH the current house which makes it impractical to build or sell afterwards. The block on the left would be a better proposition for that.”
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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20 February, 2022
Thousands of homes left empty in Tasmania despite critical rental shortage
Now why would owners with a second house leave it empty? A major reason is poor protection for landlords. Destructive tenants can leave owners with repair bills in the tens of thousands of dollars. And there is nothing to be done about it. Many owners experiencing that will simply withdraw from the rental market
An analysis of Taswater data suggests up to 2,000 homes could be sitting empty across Tasmania, despite Hobart having the tightest rental market in the country.
The Tenants' Union used water consumption data to estimate how many empty houses there were within three inner-city council areas.
If a property used less than 10 per cent of the annual average water consumption over three consecutive years, it was deemed empty.
"It's extremely disheartening that we have up to 2,000 empty homes across Tasmania during a housing crisis," Ben Bartl from the Tenants Union of Tasmania said.
"Not shacks. Not Airbnbs. Just empty."
The data found there were 192 vacant residential properties in the Hobart City Council area, 115 in the Glenorchy municipality and 256 in Launceston.
The Tenants Union excluded areas with a high number of shacks, and calculated that across Tasmania there could be between 1,486 and 1,932 empty homes.
"That is homes that are just sitting there while we have a housing crisis," said Mr Bartl.
"There are thousands of people looking for affordable rental properties.
"It just beggars belief that we have people that are prepared to sit on investment properties."
Hobart has the lowest rental vacancy rate of any Australian capital at 0.9 per cent.
Launceston's vacancy rate is 0.8 per cent.
Calls to introduce 'empty house' tax
Mr Bartl wants the state government to introduce an empty home tax to act as disincentive to investors.
"In Vancouver and Melbourne, if you leave your home empty for more than six months without a reasonable excuse you are charged 1 per cent of the value of the property."
He said the revenue could be invested in affordable housing.
"With the average house price in Hobart $675,000 and in Launceston $461,000, a 1-per-cent tax on empty homes in the Launceston, Hobart and Glenorchy municipalities would have raised $3.2 million for affordable housing each year or almost $10 million for affordable housing over the past three years."
Mr Bartl argues it would also put downward pressure on rents.
The Rental Affordability Index found Hobart is the least affordable capital city in Australia.
"We need to be pulling all levers [so] that everybody that does [need to] have a roof over their head has one."
Matt Haubrick from the Housing Alliance Tasmania supports the idea. "It's a bit of a disgrace," he said.
"The majority of people are just having to stay living at home, living with friends, living on couches, living in lounge rooms or in their vehicles.
"Those are the lucky people who have some sort of support network and aren't forced to live on the streets or in crisis accommodation."
The Minister for Housing, Michael Ferguson, ruled out imposing an empty house tax.
"Without clarification on what is captured in their statistics regarding vacant lots, houses under construction or in the planning phase or other factors that might result in low water usage, it is very difficult to say how relevant the statistics provided by the Tenant's Union are," he said.
He said the government's priority was addressing housing supply issues.
"This is the only way to combat the rising housing [prices] and put downwards pressure on home prices and rentals," Mr Ferguson said.
The Tasmanian government plans to build 3,500 new social and affordable houses by 2027.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-18/taswater-data-shows-thousands-of-homes-left-empty-/100840790
****************************************************Shorter, fewer school suspensions under controversial behaviour policy
The length of school suspensions will be halved and students cannot be sent home more than three times a year under a new behaviour strategy designed to reduce the high number of sanctions against vulnerable children in NSW public schools.
Parents support the policy, but the teachers union says it will increase safety risks for staff and students by constraining teachers’ ability to manage disruptive and dangerous behaviour.
The changes come amid concerns that 40 per cent of suspensions – including around two-thirds of the hundreds of kindergarten suspensions each year – involve students with disabilities. Indigenous students are also more likely to be sent home from school.
Under the new policy, to begin next term, principals must give a warning – valid for 50 days –if a student’s behaviour is raising the prospect of suspension, and can only send them home immediately if there is a threat to the safety of others.
Students from kindergarten to year 2 can be sent home for a maximum of five days instead of the previous 20, although the government abandoned an earlier plan to ban all suspensions in that age group. A principal must take in the student’s circumstances – including any disability or background of trauma – before making the decision.
A new expulsion process will require schools to give the student and their parents seven days’ warning of a decision and to conduct a risk assessment before the student attends another school. If the risk is too great, the minister can ban the student from the public system.
There are also new rules around the use of so-called restrictive practices such as seclusion, which can only be used in an emergency, and mechanical restraint, which requires parental consent and approval from the student’s medical team.
Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said the new strategy would also come with extra resources, such as behaviour specialists to support schools and training for staff in managing student behaviour.
“Behaviour management in our schools is one of the most important aspects of providing quality education, and we need to get it right,” she said.
“We know that what is currently happening is not working as too many students, particularly those with learning difficulties or from low socio-economic families, are suspended and do not receive the support they need.”
The suspension issue has divided school communities. Parents say students are being suspended for behaviours caused by their disability, but teachers say they don’t have the resources to deal with extreme behaviour that puts other students and staff at risk.
A draft of the policy, released 18 months ago, was welcomed by parent groups but led to tense negotiations with principals and the teachers’ union, who argued it would undermine their ability to protect the safety of staff and students.
One of their chief concerns was the scrapping of a list of grounds for suspension, ranging from physical violence or drug possession - which would result in a long, or 20-day suspension - to continued disobedience or aggressive behaviour, which could lead to a short, 10-day suspension.
The Secondary Principals Council said it had not yet seen the finalised policy so declined to comment.
However, one principal – who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media – said some were angry enough to consider industrial action if their concerns were not met.
The new strategy allows principals to apply to their superior, the regional director, for permission to suspend students for longer than the maximum 10 days, or more often than the three times outlined in the policy.
The Advocate for Children and Young People, Zoe Robinson, welcomed the policy. “We know there is a link between suspensions and youth justice. We welcome this policy reform as a step forward and are glad the department and Minister have worked with and listened to children and young people.”
P&C Federation president Natalie Walker also backed the plan. “This strategy looks to provide a more inclusive and engaging and accessible education for all children and families in NSW public schools.”
Louise Kuchel from Square Peg, Round Whole – a community of parents advocating for children with disabilities – said parents supported reducing the number and length of suspensions but wanted to see them banned for the youngest children.
“Some parents have lost count of how often their kids have been suspended,” she said. “We’re not improving outcomes for young, neurodivergent people when we keep excluding them and sending them away.”
However, the NSW Teachers Federation wrote to the NSW Department of Education on Thursday, warning the policy would increase teachers’ workload and put safety at risk.
“It will constrain the ability of schools to manage and address appropriate student behaviour, denying the vast majority of students a safe and settled learning environment,” deputy president Henry Rajendra told the Herald.
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Pronoun email sparks bitter City council row
A councillor in inner-city Melbourne who questioned the use of pronouns in email signatures has been blasted by the mayor for his “harmful” actions.
City of Stonnington councillor Alexander Lew questioned why council managers had started including gender pronouns like “he/him” in their email signatures. He also declared that staff who didn’t want to add their pronouns “may themselves feel ostracised or pressured”.
“Can you please advise of how the adding pronouns to email signatures is consistent with the need for council staff to remain apolitical,” he wrote to Stonnington chief executive Jacqui Weatherill, in emails seen by the Herald Sun.
His email – which was also copied in to other councillors – also included a link to a federal parliamentary committee hearing where a heated exchange between a Victorian Greens senator and a City of Melton councillor over the transgender issue took place.
Mr Lew’s message was met with fury by a number of his colleagues, including Stonnington Mayor Jami Klisaris.
“Your email has caused great offense (sic), and I am deeply concerned that you don’t appreciate the harmful ramifications that your communication is having on many people,” she wrote in response to Mr Lew’s suggestion, the Herald Sun reports.
Ms Klisaris said the council’s leadership team fully supported staff to “choose and share their gender pronouns in the workplace should they wish”.
She also suggested Mr Lew undergo diversity and inclusion training.
Greens councillor Mike Scott denied that using gender pronouns in emails was political, telling the paper it was “a small step in making people feel accepted for who they are, welcomed at council and that they are safe to participate as their full selves
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Koalas not endangered
Vic Jurskis
The Long March has reached its destination. Our world is governed by mass hysteria and Australia’s a world leader. There’s the Climate Crisis, the climate-driven Bushfire Crisis, the Reef Crisis and – it’s finally official – a Koala Crisis.
The Environment Minister has listed koalas with postcodes in the 2000s or 4000s as an endangered species. The same species with postcodes in the 3000s or 5000s are not officially endangered because everyone knows there’s plenty of them. Supposedly because they’re inbred, with limited genetic diversity.
Minister Ley has this on good authority – our Threatened Species Scientific Committee (TSSC). TSSC, in turn, were informed by our leading koala experts. These scientists are so confident in their abilities that they didn’t need any empirical data to make their assessment. In their own words: ‘A quantitative, scientific method for deriving estimates of koala populations and trends was possible, in the absence of empirical data on abundances.’
An ‘elicitation specialist’ helped the experts make up the numbers using ‘a modified version of the Delphi process’. I assume the process is named after the famous Oracle. These quotes aren’t from Monty Python, they’re from Diversity and Distributions – A Journal of Conservation Biogeography.
Their numbers are wrong. I pointed this out in Ecological history of the koala and implications for management, published in CSIRO’s Wildlife Research journal. It was available to TSSC, but peer-reviewed science is seemingly irrelevant unless it gives the Scientific Committee the answer it wants.
Koalas are in absolutely no danger of extinction. There are more koalas over a much wider area than there were when Europeans arrived in Australia. They are naturally rare because they eat soft young shoots which are scarce in healthy mature forests.
Koalas have big noses and strong limbs to aid their nightly quest for edible and nutritious browse in their large ~ 100 ha home ranges containing thousands of trees. Natural, stable populations have chlamydia but no disease and they are invisible. Koalas didn’t live in the open grassy woodlands sought by explorers and pastoralists.
Strzelecki was the only explorer to see koalas. There were plagues in the ranges that now bear his name. Struggling for 26 days through 50 miles of dense young forest, he ate koalas. There were no kangaroos, emus or small game to be had in the scrub. The Yowenjerre had been decimated by smallpox in 1789. Without the firestick, scrub climbed out of deep dark gullies and covered their land. It exploded from lightning in a hot, dry summer around 1820.
European occupation from the 1830s disrupted Aboriginal management across Victoria.
The 1851 Black Thursday holocaust burnt more than 12 million acres. The ranges were also incinerated by Red Tuesday 1898, Black Friday 1939, Black Saturday 2009 and many other un-named disasters. A total of 20 megafires raged in 200 years. The Strzelecki koalas, supposedly the last natural population in Victoria, are still in unnaturally high numbers.
The northern koalas were listed as vulnerable after the Senate Environment Committee accepted that there were 10 million koalas in 1788. The evidence was that millions were shot for fur after 1888. Truth is, koala plagues followed European occupation as dense young forests grew in the hills and mature trees declined in the valleys. Declining trees continuously re-sprouted soft young shoots. Koalas irrupted in the hills, invaded the valleys and outstripped their food.
People shot starving, diseased koalas and sold their fur. But the more adults they shot, the more young survived. When leaves frizzled and trees died in the Federation Drought, koalas crashed back to natural levels.
National Parks expanded and mild burning declined in the late 20th century. People planted eucalypts for timber or amenity. Koalas irrupted again.
The valleys are now occupied by suburbia. As koalas move in, they fall prey to dogs and motor vehicles. Wild dogs and carpet pythons bred up in response to irruptions on the Koala Coast. During the Millennium Drought, dense populations at Pilliga – Gunnedah – Liverpool Plains and on the Koala Coast crashed. Overcrowded koalas in VIC and SA were translocated to die out of sight. The weakest were euthanised.
Koalas are currently breeding like rabbits on all the soft young growth after Black Summer. I showed NSW Koala Inquiry a picture of a young koala in dense scrub south of Eden where they’re supposedly extinct. I explained that lack of mild burning, koala irruptions and megafires go together. I sent them a picture of the same spot after the holocaust. Green Chair Cate Faehrmann wasn’t interested. She likes crises, they’re good for business.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/02/the-koala-industry-has-won-but-not-the-koalas/
*********************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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18 February, 2022
Kids’ health and development hit by pandemic lockdowns, say paediatricians
I cannot imagine how kids cope with the lockdowns. Kids are of course more flexible than adults but also have fewer resources -- and deprivation is still deprivation.
When I was a kid, I roamed free whenever I wanted to. My parents were very permisive and often had no idea of where I went or what I did on weekends. As long as I was home for dinner, they were content.
And despite being a real bookworm I balanced that by time spent roaming the great outdoors. I had a pushbike so could travel considerable distances. If I saw a hill that I wanted to climb, I climbed it, with no-one other than myself knowing of the climb concerned. I did so rarely but the point is that I was free to do so
In retrospect, I didn't remotely realize what a good and free childhood I had. I would wish for all kids to have such a childhood
But what about safety? In my roaming could I not have been attacked by some weirdo?? I was rather lucky about that too, though I did have one close-shave. I lived in a small country town and my father was a well-known brawler with a reputation as a king-hitter. So no-one wanted to tangle with him. And they all knew I was his kid. So I was safe under his aegis
Australian young people are suffering anxiety, insomnia and developmental delays believed to be linked to the pandemic, prompting the peak body for paediatricians to call for a national children’s recovery taskforce.
Atticus, 10, started to have trouble sleeping as the COVID-19 case numbers spiked near his home in Canberra at the start of its two-month lockdown.
“I didn’t necessarily always feel worried, but sometimes I was like ‘it’s getting very, very close’,” Atticus said.
Sydney paediatrician Dr Jacqueline Small said many children were struggling with the lingering effects of lockdowns and she had noticed a spike in presentations of children with developmental delays in her practice, reflecting a pattern shown in research.
Dr Small, president-elect of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP), which represents paediatricians and other specialist physicians, said the more serious health impacts of COVID-19 on adults had meant children’s wellbeing had taken “a back seat” but it was “time to put children first”.
“Some children seem to have coped well,” she said. “There are others where the loss of learning is very significant.”
Melbourne’s Leticia Hodson said living through the city’s six COVID-19 lockdowns, which cumulatively lasted almost a year, had a dramatic impact on her son Wade’s wellbeing. The 10-year-old struggled to readjust at school after living through the world’s longest lockdown in Melbourne.
Wade, who has Down Syndrome, attends a “fantastic” mainstream school but suffered a setback in his learning and development without real-life interaction with his teachers and peers.
“It’s hard for him, he has to relearn how to socialise and meet friends,” she said.
As the nation opens up, the RACP is calling on both major parties to commit to setting up a National COVID-19 taskforce to lead a recovery plan and a Chief Paediatrician appointed to lead the effort.
Liberal backbencher Dr Katie Allen, a paediatrician who worked as a medical researcher before entering Parliament, is backing the RACP campaign alongside Labor’s shadow assistant health minister Ged Kearney, a former nurses’ union secretary.
“COVID lockdowns have affected children in ways we don’t yet fully understand,” Ms Allen said.
“Getting their social development, education and general wellbeing back on track has to be central to our COVID recovery.”
A study published in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Pediatrics in October tracked about 6000 Chinese infants before and after the pandemic began, finding a higher risk of delay in fine motor and communication skills among firstborn one-year-olds born from 2020.
Dr Small said pandemic-related stress during pregnancy “can affect brain development”, while parents having to juggle more roles while working from home could affect their interactions with children.
Then there was “the loss of the extended community and support that children and families engage with when their children are very young,” she said.
Dr Small said a combination of factors such as parental stress, including during pregnancy, and a rise in screen use along with a reduction in social connections were thought to be contributing to developmental problems.
And, she said, “missing several months of school can really have a significant impact” with research suggesting some children’s learning progression effectively paused for the period of school closures, while opportunities were missed to help vulnerable children.
Ms Hodson said she had agonised over the decision to send Wade back to school as Victoria emerged from restrictions while the Omicron variant circulated, “not knowing how the disease would impact him”.
“The whole pandemic has been having to choose a path where none of those paths feel acceptable,” she said.
During lockdown, she said, “we kept things pretty light around him, but he picked up on the stress of the adults around him”.
While Atticus is back at school and feeling more secure after receiving his first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, life is still not completely back to normal, with caution among some friends’ parents meaning his social life is still limited.
“I feel like it won’t be back to proper normal for a while, but I feel like if this is the best normal we can do, it’s a pretty okay normal,” Atticus said.
Data collected by Royal Life Saving Australia shows drowning deaths among children aged four and under increased by 108 per cent in 2021 compared to the previous year, a spike attributed to swimming lessons being cancelled.
An Australian study published in Archives of Disease in Childhood showed a 104 per cent increase in children with anorexia nervosa being admitted to hospital for nutritional rehabilitation in 2020 compared with the previous three years.
The RACP wants whoever wins government to implement the National Children’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy, a 120-page report detailing ways to improve child mental health and parenting support, which the federal government released in October.
More support in schools for students with disability or learning difficulties, universal access to three-year-old preschool and new laws restricting junk food marketing are also on the college’s wishlist.
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Another divide now dominant in Australia
There are two nations now in Australia, two world views, two tribes. And each seems to be living life as if the other did not exist. No, it is not a traditional divide between left and right, Labor and Liberal, working class versus capital, conservative and progressive. These divides are still there; it is just that they are now not the main ideological game. The world, and Australia, are now divided into insiders and outsiders, elites and deplorables. The deplorables were out in force on Commonwealth Avenue. The elites were dressing their children as superheroes in order to go and get a needle. And, no doubt, feeling very, very virtuous. Some worried that those evil, violent, probably ‘mum and dad terrorists’ might come and disrupt the holy proceedings at the AIS.
One Australia is made up of those who think that elections still make a difference to normal people’s lives. Who think that we should endlessly support the Liberal party because ‘the other mob would be worse’. Who remember the Liberals once every three years, just long enough to keep voting them back in, then totally forget why they so voted for the ensuing three years, until the next time. Rinse, repeat. Who think that the Covid State is either a sensible imposition and/or it hasn’t caused anyone that much harm.(What are they all whinging about, anyway?). Who think that the management of Covid is just one political issue among many upon which to vote. Who think we should worry endlessly about (non-existent) discrimination by Christian schools against closet or non-closet homosexuals, but not give a rat’s about those who have lost their livelihoods because they believe in bodily integrity, those Australians who have suffered, you know, real discrimination. Who think that the unvaccinated and assorted Covid dissidents are beyond the pale, weirdos, and probably that they are, indeed, worthy of serious attention from Asio. Who believe in the boosters like they were some sort of consecrated, religious sacrament. Who can somehow suspend rational thinking and replace it with robotic, Kool Aid-infused, system-thinking. And who think that this is ‘thinking’.
Representatives of the other Australia have possibly lost their jobs and careers. Cannot see their interstate families. Cannot leave the country without some bureaucrat’s permission. Have possibly been dragooned, much against their will, into getting a useless vaccine that now most of the thinking world knows to be useless, certainly after a month or so. Have probably experienced dramatic hardship from state lockdowns. Might have a teenage daughter or son suffering from mental disintegration. Or worse. Might have missed a diagnosis of cancer that will be lethal, by staying away from our shuttered hospitals. Might have missed saying goodbye to an aged loved one. Frustrated beyond belief, impoverished, powerless, shunned by sneering politicians and journalists, gaslit and alone. They have found their voice. And the ruling class doesn’t like it one bit. Journalists and their fellow sneerers, some of whom luxuriate in the very descriptor ‘insider’, ‘other’ the unvaccinated (deplorables) and those who stand up for them – see under Rogan, Joe, or the Canadian trucker-heroes – by in turns ignoring them, laughing at them, sniggering, abusing, fact-checking, mocking, analysing, segregating.
The people of deplorable Australia don’t really care who wins the various elections. With oppositions that only ever parrot Covid class theatrics, that endlessly chant ‘earlier and harder’, what is the choice for the over 20 per cent of Australians – yes, the numbers are that high, despite the efforts of health bureaucracies to cook the books by counting teenagers who are jabbed – who haven’t been blue-pilled? We will see very shortly. Red-pilled Australians have taken to the streets, just as their international brothers and sisters have done. They might draw comfort from the words of George W. Bush, who said in quite another context after 9-11, megaphone in hand and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with firefighters amidst the rubble of Ground Zero, ‘We hear you, the rest of the world hears you, and the people who [did this] will hear all of us soon’. Perhaps not through Nuremberg Two, but in the streets of our towns and at the ballot box, without the shadow of a doubt.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/02/two-australias/
********************************************Republicanism in Australia is about abolishing the monarchy. What drives it?
David Flint
The fundamental problem with republicanism in Australia is it is always fake republicanism.
It’s never about designing a virtuous, constitutional republic, actually empowering Australians. It’s always the opposite: increasing politicians’ power. The current version is to get rid of the one part of the constitutional system which works smoothly and at minimal cost, providing both leadership beyond politics and a constitutional guardian. During the epidemic, it became glaringly obvious that politicians have even chipped away at this.
As political scientist, Graham Maddox, concluded before the 1999 referendum, the Australian Republican Movement’s brand of republicanism has no roots in Australia’s past or her traditions.
Our tradition,’ he says, is more linked to collective action and public ownership than ‘rational economics’ would allow. And which Labor prime minister covered his push for rational economics with fake republicanism? Unsurprisingly, Governor-General Bill Hayden warned the Queen that Paul Keating was using republicanism as an electoral distraction.
Maddox noted something I had also found, that those modern states with the strongest commitment to communal welfare are precisely those that have retained their constitutional monarchy, a point supported by the prominent French socialist, Jack Lang.
I made this point in an early referendum debate run by an inner-city Liberal party branch. This was not in the usual dusty school of arts, but over a fine hotel sit-down dinner. When I recalled that constitutional monarchies are disproportionately over-represented among the world’s most advanced countries, a group of no doubt left-Liberals almost fell onto the floor shrieking in laughter. I merely listed Europe’s constitutional monarchies; they gradually fell into a sullen silence.
When it came to ascertaining whether the ARM’s predecessor movements were also fake republicans, I found the best source was the Bulletin. As a boy, I could hardly fail to notice it, not so much for its pink cover, but for the brutal front-page banner which, until Kerry Packer bought it, shrieked that pronunciamento, ‘AUSTRALIA FOR THE WHITE MAN’.
To advance its purpose pre-federation, the Bulletin was determined that Australia should become a white republic outside the Empire. The reason? Immigration was mainly an imperial matter, and the Empire’s immigration policy was far too liberal. Clearly, the Bulletin believed, wrongly it transpired, that only in a republic could White Australia survive.
So, in 1888, it rallied 40,000 people to an anti-Chinese, pro-republican demonstration in the Sydney Domain. Forty thousand is enormous today; imagine how large it seemed then.
Leading that first republican movement, the Bulletin declared Australia had to choose ‘between independence and infection, between the Australian Republic or the Chinese leper.’ The journal particularly denounced Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain when Royal Assent was refused to the Queensland Sugar Works Guarantee Amending Bill. Why? Contrary to Imperial policy for racial equality, the Queensland Bill would have banned the employment of coloured labour! In the year our predecessors formed a federal Commonwealth under the Crown, the Bulletin published this denunciation of the very minister who guided our Constitution through the Imperial Parliament:
If Judas Chamberlain can find a black, or brown or yellow race… that has as high a standard of civilisation and intelligence as the whites… as brave, as sturdy, as good nation building material, and that can intermarry with the whites without the mixed progeny showing signs of deterioration, that race is welcome.
What the journal did not appreciate was that Section 51(xxvii) of the recently approved Constitution gave the new parliament full power over immigration. Despite objections from London, a Bill was given Royal Assent by the constitutional head, the Governor-General, for the legal means to apply the White Australia Policy. The only real debate was whether White Australia should be openly stated, an ALP demand.
The second republican movement was even worse. The agenda of the Soviet-controlled Communist party was for a one-party people’s republic. While at times they attained the commanding heights of the trade union movement, unlike Italy and France, communism never made any significant electoral impact in Australia.
Thus every significant republican movement in Australia has been fake, unconcerned with improving the governance of Australia. Even the Real Republicans, who were cast with Australians for Constitutional Monarchy in the referendum No case, chose a questionable Convention model. This would have effectively involved the ruling parties choosing three candidates the people could vote on. Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Keating? But at least they have rejected the ARM’s latest outrage.
So even the Real Republicans’ direct-election model was just another politicians’ republic, the term so superbly devised by ACM’s lead referendum strategist, Rick Brown. Provided any future referendum No Case is run by people as competent, as constant and as committed as those who ran ACM’s 1999 No case, Australia will never become a ‘politicians’ republic’.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/02/racists-in-the-republican-ranks/
*****************************************Aboriginal Australians slam explosion in number of people falsely claiming to be indigenous to steal scholarships and job opportunities
As well they might be
Prominent Aboriginal Australians have hit out at the rising number of people who are falsely identifying as indigenous to cash in on benefits like scholarships and priority jobs.
They say there is a growing cohort of fraudsters growing up in a non-indigenous background but later making dubious claims to Aboriginal heritage.
Indigenous actor Luke Carroll, who stars in a play that explores the contentious issue, described such false identification as a 'growing problem'.
'I know of people here in Sydney who haven't grown up Aboriginal and all of a sudden, their kids are identifying as Aboriginal,' he told the Sydney Morning Herald.
'They are attending the schools, getting the jobs and taking away opportunities from people who have grown up Aboriginal.'
'Box-tickers' are appropriating a culture that is not theirs and taking jobs and resources meant to help Aboriginal Australians, he said.
The federal government since the 1980s has applied a three-part test of indigeneity, which requires a person be of Aboriginal descent, to identify as Aboriginal and be accepted in the community in which they live.
Thousands of Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families in 1910 to 1970 during the Stolen Generation, and their descendants - many with a mostly white phenotype and upbringing - only recognise their indigenous heritage decades later.
However, the community is divided over the importance of growing up within the culture when identifying as indigenous in later life.
Indigenous playwright Nathan Maynard - who delves into the contested issue in his play At What Cost - said Aboriginal Australians were 'trendier than smashed avocado on toast'.
'In this world, people want to have something special about them and they see being Aboriginal as a point of difference,' he said.
Until recently, the focus in Australia on box-tickers has been on outing individuals - in what some see as a witch hunt - but race-shifting is now recognised to be an international phenomenon.
Many 'box-tickers' are motivated by the promise of indigenous-specific scholarships and monetary benefits, as well as reserved jobs with large salaries.
Aboriginal historian Victoria Grieve-Williams said there was a growing number of Australians who claimed to be indigenous when they had no such ancestry.
Dr Grieve-Williams, a Warraimaay woman from the mid-north coast of NSW and now adjunct professor at RMIT University in Melbourne, described what they do as 'indigenous identify fraud'.
'Aboriginal people are actually very badly affected by this,' she told Daily Mail Australia in July of last year.
'Universities and governments are employing so-called Aboriginal people without due diligence.
'High-level positions, huge salaries, great opportunities through Indigenous Business Australia, all of that's being gobbled up.
'There's no penalties, or checks and balances. These numbers are increasing.'
There is no way of knowing how many box-tickers there are in Australia but the practice seems particularly prevalent in academia and sectors of the public service where Aboriginality is sought for workplace diversity and sometimes rewarded.
'It's a huge problem but the figures are difficult to assess,' Dr Grieve-Williams said.
Dr Grieve-Williams said Australian universities employed bogus Aboriginal academics as professors, right up to pro and deputy vice-chancellors.
'The interesting thing I'm finding with my research is that Aboriginal people always recognise them, they always know they're not Aboriginal,' she said.
'Aboriginal people have been saying, "Hold on, that person isn't one of us" and nobody takes any notice.
'It's not only Aboriginal people who recognise it. It's non-Aboriginal people too.
'It's very surreal, particularly to a person my age because when I grew up the worst thing you could be was Aboriginal.
'Aboriginal people were so scorned and vilified. There were these nasty 'Abo' jokes. I couldn't begin to tell you the depths of racism that I experienced.
'We were always made to feel in deficit. And now the tables have turned right around but it's not the real Aboriginal people who are getting the benefit from all of this.'
There are particular benefits for box-tickers within academia who falsely claim to be Aboriginal.
'The benefits are to do with status, you have a certain status when you're a recognised Aboriginal person,' Dr Grieve-Williams said. 'But the main benefit is material.
'People get promoted very quickly. The interesting thing is box-tickers, or those committing identity fraud, seem to get the big jobs.
'They're promoted over other Aboriginal people. We joke and we say they're better at being Aboriginal people than we are.'
Dr Grieve-Williams said non-indigenous people taking public service jobs meant for Aboriginal applicants were known as 'nine-to-five blacks' and caused resentment.
'If you've got a person who comes in who calls themselves Aboriginal but who actually doesn't know anything about being Aboriginal then they rely on other people to inform them,' she said.
'They call them nine-to-five blacks because they're only black when they're in the office and then they go home to their white lives.'
Another term, 'black cladding', refers to a non-indigenous business masquerading as one by deceptive marketing which invents or exaggerates Aboriginal involvement in the enterprise.
Dr Grieve-Williams was frustrated the box-ticking problem was not taken more seriously by governments.
She said any debate was stifled by those with vested interests and that the fakes protested personal offence when their Aboriginality was challenged.
'The people who are committing this identify fraud, they cry lateral violence. They say, 'Are you questioning my Aboriginality? I'm getting traumatised by this'.'
The number of Australians who say they are Aboriginal has been increasing for decades at a rate far faster than the broader population, or that can be explained by births.
The last Census, conducted in 2016, estimated there were 798,400 Indigenous Australians - Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander or both - making up 3.3 per cent of the citizenry.
That number was an increase of 128,500 or 19 per cent in just five years since the previous 2011 census.
During the same five-year period the whole Australian population grew by just 8.4 per cent.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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17 February, 2022
Super battery to boost NSW supply once coal-fired power station closes
What rubbish! You just have to have an extended period of high demand and the battery will go flat. What do you do then?
NSW Treasurer and Energy Minister Matt Kean says NSW’s energy supply will be secured through a super battery to be installed by the private sector as Australia’s largest coal-burning power station prepares to close early.
Mr Kean made the announcement on the back of Origin Energy’s revealing that it intended to bring forward the closure of its Eraring power station in Lake Macquarie. Eraring supplies 20 per cent of the state’s energy.
The Treasurer said he was disappointed about Origin’s announcement but the government had been doing preparatory work after the company flagged several months ago its intentions to close the station.
Eraring was originally intended to close in 2032.
The 700 megawatt super battery will be operational by 2025 to release grid capacity to ensure Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong consumers can access more energy from existing electricity generation, Mr Kean said.
Mr Kean said the battery would be the “biggest in the southern hemisphere and would act as a shock absorber for incidents such as lightning strikes and bushfires.
“NSW has the strongest reliability standard in the country – the Energy Security Target – which aims to have sufficient firm capacity to keep the lights on even if the state’s two largest generating units are offline during a one-in-10 year peak demand event,” Mr Kean said.
The Eraring power station was originally intended to close in 2032, but will now shut in 2025.
The Eraring power station was originally intended to close in 2032, but will now shut in 2025.CREDIT:DEAN SEWELL
The government will also accelerate its NSW electricity infrastructure road map to keep energy prices affordable.
“The best way to put downward pressure on electricity prices is to increase supply and the road map provides us the tools to do just that,” he said.
Under its road map, the NSW government will drive the transition to renewable energy by attracting $32 billion of private investment in infrastructure.
As part of that plan, the government will support the private sector to build critical energy infrastructure by 2030 as NSW faces the end of the coal-fired power generation.
Mr Kean said the government would release a significant support package on Friday for workers affected by the closure of Eraring.
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Children’s book pulled after complaints over Indigenous petrol sniffing, alcohol references
Must not depict Aborigines realistically
Publisher Pan Macmillan says it is “deeply sorry” for offending Indigenous people after temporarily pulling supply of the Macquarie Junior Indigenous Atlas due to concerns over its content, including references to petrol sniffing and alcohol use that were criticised for lacking context.
In a brief statement issued on Monday, Pan Macmillan said the book would undergo a further round of “sensitivity” reading.
“Several items in this title have caused concern with members of the public, and, as the publisher, we take their comments seriously,” the statement said.
“We are temporarily withholding further supply of the Junior Atlas of Indigenous Australia from today (15 February 2022) in order to ensure it undergoes a further sensitivity read.”
Bardi and Kija woman Sharon Davis criticised several sections of the book on social media last week alongside screenshots of pages explaining petrol sniffing and alcohol use.
"Hey @MacmillanAus... Just wondering the thought process behind including this kind of information in the Junior Atlas book for children, without referencing the cause(s) such as dispossession, genocide, colonisation etc etc?" she tweeted.
The page on petrol sniffing cited by Ms Davis discussed the issue without explaining causes for the problem.
“Since the 1970s the deliberate inhalation of petrol fumes has been a damaging form of drug use among younger people,” the page began, before explaining the health risks of the practice.
“In 2005, a low-aromatic lead-free fuel called Opal was made available. It lacked the ingredients which produced the ‘high’ sought by sniffers.”
“A large number of remote communities and nearby petrol stations replaced their standard fuel with Opal and the number of people sniffing petrol dropped dramatically.”
Another page on alcohol use was also criticised. “Although many Indigenous Australians do not drink alcohol at all, those who do are more likely to do so at dangerous levels,” it said.
In a statement to The Sydney Morning Herald, representatives of Pan Macmillan apologised to the Indigenous community.
However, the publisher defended specific sections regarding petrol sniffing and alcohol use, and said more information would be included in companion teaching notes to the atlas.
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Now there’s political correctness for SHARKS: Push to call shark attacks ‘shark bites’ and ‘shark interventions’
Ben Fordham has hit out at a move by bureaucrats to rename shark attacks 'interactions' and 'negative encounters' after a swimmer was mauled to death by a great white.
The 2GB radio host mocked the changes after a swimmer was attacked by the 4.5m great white shark at Little Bay Beach in Sydney's east on Wednesday afternoon.
Nearby fishermen and beachgoers filmed his horrifying final moments from a nearby rock shelf.
In July, it emerged officials in Queensland and NSW would be rebranding shark attacks to change the animal's image as a 'man-eating monster'.
Fordham on Thursday morning said he didn't know how changing the language around the attack 'helps anyone'.
'There was a push from bureaucrats to stop using the word "attack" when talking about sharks,' he said.
'They prefer "shark bite", "shark interaction" or "shark encounter". I don't know how that helps anyone.'
The NSW Department of Primary Industries had started describing a shark encounter as 'incidents' or 'interactions' in their official reports, The Sydney Morning Herald reported in July.
Leonardo Guida, a shark researcher at the Australian Marine Conservation Society, said that the word choice can be 'potent'.
He said public fears can be inflamed by language used by politicians and the media.
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Nick Coatsworth claims Omicron is 'clearly not' more dangerous than the flu and boosters and masks are unnecessary for most Australians
Former deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth has claimed the omicron variant of Covid is 'clearly not' more dangerous than the flu.
Dr Coatsworth said people without pre-existing medical conditions had little to fear from the milder strain once vaccinated and most wouldn't need booster shots.
The Canberra infectious disease physician earlier told Daily Mail Australia the time had come to stop wearing masks and predicted the pandemic would end in 2022.
'No, it's not. It's clearly not,' he told Sky News when asked if Omicron was more dangerous than seasonal flu.
Dr Coatsworth claimed Covid booster shots were only necessary for vulnerable or elderly Australians and those with chronic illnesses.
'Young, fit, healthy adults and kids, their risk was so low anyway that if you take it from 0.007 to 0.001 per cent – I'm using those numbers to demonstrate the effect, I'd have to get the actual numbers for you,' he said.
'So, for the booster perspective, from the disease perspective, this is an illness that will very rarely cause harm to young, fit, healthy adults and kids,' he said.
This is despite the waning of Delta and Omicron waves in Europe and Israel being correlated with the rollout of booster shots.
Booster shots are mandated for workers in 'high risk' areas such as hospitals, aged care, schools and prisons, in most states across Australia.
The federal government updated its vaccine policy last week on the advice of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation.
Australians will no longer be classed as 'up to date' on their Covid vaccinations if they have not had a booster six months after their second dose.
Dr Coatsworth has also called to end mask wearing as the nation enters its second year living with the virus.
************************************
Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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16 February, 2022
Instagram picture shows Grace Tame pictured with a very large bong. The then-19-year-old posted the photo along with a small green weed symbol
She is alarmingly good-looking and marijuane use has always been fine to the Left so the rapturous support evoked by the picture below was entirely predictable. And the look on her face tells it all. She was pretty high. I have not once used any drug of abuse but I have been around users often so I know that look.
The literature on the subject is quite mixed but there have been many studies reporting a descent into psychosis by users. I have seen that too. So a reasonable response to the photo might be to question her judgment. That would include her rudeness to the PM
Comedians, musicians, politicians and other high-profile Australians have rallied around Grace Tame after an old photo of her pictured next to a bong went viral online.
The sexual abuse survivor and former Australian of the Year was back in the headlines just hours after she came under fire from Prime Minister Scott Morrison's wife for not showing 'respect or manners' after being welcomed into their home.
Critics delved into Ms Tame's Instagram feed on Monday and unearthed a photo from 2014 of her as a 19-year-old sitting on a couch with a large bong - a water pipe used for smoking cannabis - next to her.
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Astonishing list highlighting what's REALLY causing Covid-19 deaths in Australia: 'It wasn't Covid that claimed their lives'
There were 2,639 Covid-related deaths nationally between March 2020 and January 31 - of which 2,556 (96.8 per cent) had an underlying health condition - according to new figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
There were 32,000 deaths from heart disease in Australia in that period, with Covid deaths making up only one per cent of all fatalities nationwide.
Another 100,000 died from cancer during those 22 months.
'We're not overplaying the situation and we're not ignoring the victims,' the 2GB host said. 'But these records expose the overblown scare campaign we've witnessed.
'Ninety-two per cent had other underlying health issues - an average of three [underlying health issues] per person. It wasn't Covid that claimed their lives.'
Those underlying health issues ranged from pneumonia to kidney infection or chronic heart illnesses, according to the ABS data.
Fordham said the health advice during Australia's lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 should have focused more on countering one of the worst Covid co-morbities- obesity.
'Why aren't we warning people that one of the biggest risk factors is carrying around too much weight,' he said. 'Were we worried about fat-shaming?'
The US, where 16 states have obesity rates of higher than 35 per cent, has the world's highest Covid death rate with 947,895 fatalities.
The 2GB host said it wasn't 'overplaying the situation' to say the new records expose 'the overblown scare campaign we've witnessed'
*********************************************
Energy minister warns AGL over coal closures
Federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor has issued a warning to AGL Energy over its decision to accelerate the closure of its giant coal stations in NSW and Victoria, saying he is concerned the premature exit of so much supply could hit prices and system reliability.
The 2640 megawatt Bayswater coal plant in NSW’s Hunter Valley will shut down up to five years early by 2030 compared with its scheduled closure date of 2035 while the 2210MW Loy Yang A facility in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley faces the axe as early as 2040 from its expected retirement in 2048.
Both are the victims of a fast-paced move to renewable supply and a realisation that the most polluting fossil fuel must be phased out of the energy system sooner than planned to meet climate goals.
AGL has given ample warning of its plans, but Mr Taylor said the loss of 5000 megawatts of supply or roughly 8 per cent of generation in the national electricity market, was cause for concern.
The “exit of such a considerable amount of reliable generation is a concern for the continued reliability and affordability of the system. Delivery of new, timely, replacement dispatchable capacity will be critical in keeping prices low and the lights on,” Mr Taylor said.
AGL’s planned offshoot, Accel Energy, over the long-term plans to develop Loy Yang, Bayswater and Torrens Island into major energy hubs spanning hydrogen through batteries.
Recalling the political dogfight over the closure of AGL’s Liddell coal plant in NSW in 2023, Mr Taylor said he was watching investment plans closely to ensure enough replacement capacity is put in place.
“As we saw with the announced closure of Liddell, proposals for new projects are not enough. It is critical that private sector announcements translate to actual investments,’’ Mr Taylor said.
“The government will closely monitor and model the impact of these closures, to hold industry to account on the dispatchable capacity needed to ensure affordable, reliable power for consumers.’’
AGL has given a 2030-2033 range for closing Bayswater depending on market conditions, meaning it could be culled five years early with Loy Yang A given a 2040-2045 range, signalling a shut down eight years faster than expected.
“The readiness of the entire energy system to operate without our critical baseload generation will determine whether the earlier, more ambitious, targets within the range can be achieved,“ AGL said in a statement alongside its half-year results.
“AGL Australia and Accel Energy are committed to working with government, industry and the community in pursuit of this and will be reporting annually on progress towards this ambition.”
Bayswater produces enough power for 2 million Australian households and combined with AGL’s Liddell station, set to close next summer, supplies 35 per cent of NSW power.
Loy Yang A generates 30 per cent of Victoria’s power requirements and its coal mine also supplies Loy Yang B, owned by Alinta and set to close in 2047.
The 180-year old power giant is Australia’s biggest polluter and has set a range of new emissions reduction targets as it looks to wean itself off the fossil fuel and move into a broader set of supply sources including batteries and hydrogen.
AGL’s interim profit dived amid low power prices, although it upgraded its annual earnings guidance due to a stronger trading and generation performance and amid a recovery in wholesale prices.
Its underlying profit after tax fell 41 per cent to $194m while its dividend was slashed to 16c from 41c, underscoring the tough conditions which in part pushed the power giant to forge ahead with a demerger.
The outlook for the 2022 financial year looks brighter however.
Underlying earnings are expected to be between $1.275bn and $1.4bn compared with previous guidance of $1.2bn to $1.4bn. Underlying net profit is seen between $260 and $340m from a prior forecast between $220m and $340m.
“With the rise of energy and commodity prices across the globe, AGL Energy is well positioned to benefit from improving wholesale electricity prices, seen over the past six months, and if it is sustained, we expect to see this reflected in future earnings beyond FY22 as hedging positions roll off,” AGL’s chief executive Graeme Hunt said.
The company’s shares hit a 20-year low of $5.10 in November amid rock bottom power prices and an uncertain earnings outlook.
However, a bounce in wholesale prices in January has seen AGL shares rebound by 48 per cent to $7.53, handing it a stronger platform as it seeks to lock in a historic demerger of its business later this year.
Volatile market conditions in the last few years have routed profits for some of the industry’s biggest names and piled pressure on AGL’s coal-heavy generation portfolio, forcing it to split the company in two amid pressure from investors to act.
Mr Hunt, its former chairman who took the helm in July 2021, will head up its coal-dominated generation arm known as Accel Energy should the split of the company go ahead.
AGL Australia, a green focused energy retailer, will be led by AGL’s current chief customer officer Christine Corbett, with a shareholder vote on the split set to take place in the June quarter.
Emissions from Accel’s electricity generation assets will be reduced by a further 90m tonnes over the period 2023 to 2050, compared to modelled outcomes of its previous commitments.
With Liddell scheduled to close by April 2023, Accel will deliver a reduction in annual emissions of 18-27 per cent between 2025 and 2034, and by 55-60 per cent in annual emissions between 2035 to 2046 compared to an 2019 baseline.
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Renewables revolution is revolting
For decades consumers have been promised renewable energy that will be greener, cheaper and more reliable than the power delivered by the derided fossil-fuel generators. Instead, after billions if not trillions of dollars investment in the likes of wind farms and solar panels, consumers worldwide find they must pay much higher energy bills in return for a service that is far less reliable – all for a reduction in emissions that can have no appreciable effect on climate.
A major case in point is the vast increase in the number of times the Australian National Energy Market Operator (AEMO) is being forced to intervene in generator operations, to ensure stability of the east coast grid. In a submission to the Australian Energy Regulator on a focus paper on Wholesale Market Performance Monitoring late last year, the Australian Energy Council (AEC) notes that before 2017 the AEMO rarely issued what are known as intervention orders.
The AEC, which represents the biggest operators in the energy market, says that now these orders are almost commonplace and have become seemingly the default way of managing the market. These orders may involve directing a gas generator to remain in the market, or a diesel generator to continue operating because the AEMO has realised that there is not enough reserve capacity. The safety net if something goes wrong has become too thin, and more firm generation has to be made available.
Although the AEC does not say so, the cause of this instability is the shift away from reliable coal-fired generations towards weather-dependent renewable energy, particularly in the wind farm capital state of South Australia which is the subject of many of the notices, not to mention a number of wholesale price spikes in excess of $5,000 a megawatt hour. Instead, understandably, the AEC’s focus is on the cost of all these interventions, and that no one seems to be ensuring that the underlying problem is fixed through commercial arrangements – that is by power providers being paid to make additional firm power generation available when required.
As matters stand, Australian consumers may be in a bad way when it comes to paying for energy, but at least their lot has improved in recent years. A graph in the annual retail markets report produced by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for 2020-21 shows that power prices spiked in 2018 at about 80 per cent plus above 2005 prices in real terms. At last count they were about 60 per cent or so above 2005 prices, which is better but still far above the 20 per cent increase in real incomes over the same period, with much of the recent reduction being due to a surge in investment in networks working its way through the system.
The increasing level of intermittent renewables on the system – an AEMO interactive site shows that about three per cent of power came from solar in the past 12 months and ten per cent from wind – has certainly not reduced consumer bills, despite the blather from activists. But they also have not added much to costs directly. The main effect of renewables in Australia has been to help drive the old, efficient, reliable brown coal plants out of business. The closure of so much reliable capacity has driven up wholesale power prices.
However, the Australian experience with power prices remains rosy compared with that of European consumers, particular when much colder winter temperatures mean that consumers have to pay higher energy bills or freeze in their own homes.
In the UK, a price cap on power bills has shielded consumers from the worst of a spike in wholesale prices, although that cap has been still set high enough for them to complain bitterly. Another major effect of the cap has been to push a lot of smaller power suppliers out of business, as they are unable to pass on price increases to consumers. The price cap is expected to be increased by perhaps 50 per cent in the northern spring.
This European-wide spike in wholesale electricity prices increasing consumer distress is, in turn, the result of Russia putting Europe low on the list of customers for its gas – and the gas that does make it through the connecting pipelines will vanish if Russia invades the Ukraine. However, European countries have also gone out of their way to block development of other sources of gas such as through fracking, and even to close still viable nuclear and coal power plants all due to often marginal if not imaginary green concerns.
The major LNG producers, Australia, Qatar and the US, are potential sources of gas, but LNG sold overseas in the fast-expanding market for the fuel are typically purchased under long-term supply arrangements. As prices have been high for many months LNG production trains are operating at full capacity, with all production sold forward. There is little to spare for European consumers.
One fact noticeably absent in all of this is the immense renewable energy assets which the UK and Germany in particular have built up over years of screaming by green activists that doom is just around the corner. This is in part because solar power does not count for much in the dead of winter in Europe and wind farms have been affected by a wind drought. UK academics have noted that 2021 was an unusually still one, with UK power company SSE reporting that its renewable assets produced 32 per cent less power than expected.
Although last year was unusual, calm periods, or wind droughts as they are now called, associated with high pressure systems are a feature of European weather – a feature that has not been a factor in economic life since the days of sailing ships.
With less wind than expected and gas at a premium, both Germany and Britain have restarted coal plants – although coal remains a small part of the UK’s generating capacity – and the roller coaster ride of coal prices continues with a major upswing in price.
An assessment of electricity prices for EU countries by the union’s statistical body Eurostat for the first half of last year found that green-mad Germany had the region’s highest electricity prices, followed by Denmark which has been boasting about its use of renewables. Renewables-mad Spain is in fifth place.
All of this is a world away from the airy confidence of activists that the adoption of renewable energy adds up to a new industrial revolution of clean, cheap energy while coal is consigned to the rubbish bind of history. Instead, renewables are increasingly likely to be seen as a footnote in coal’s grand march through history.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/02/renewables-revolution-is-revolting/
************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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15 February, 2022
Nurses feared for their lives, as town of Bourke grapples with rising crime by Aboriginal youths
It is getting towards a refusal by nurses to go there. There have been examples of that elsewhere. But the young thugs don't care. In such situations an enhanced police presence is often the only thing that keeps medical services available
The nurses told the ABC's The World Today program that they fear for the safety of their colleagues and patients due to a lack of security and staff.
All of the nurses who spoke to the ABC shared their stories on the condition of anonymity.
Steve, not his real name, said he feared a nurse could lose their life if security was not improved. "I can get stabbed any time of the day, that can happen at any time," he said.
In one of the most recent incidents, several student nurses were allegedly threatened and robbed by young offenders armed with a knife.
The escalating threat of violent crime has had an effect on staff at Bourke's hospital and their ability to care for patients, according to the nurses, and they fear some patients could even die due to a chronic lack of hospital staff.
Helen, another nurse, said staffing and security had to be improved before it was too late. "Are they going to wait for someone to die before they do something?" she said.
Mark Spittal, the chief executive of the Western NSW Local Health District, which has responsibility for the hospital in Bourke, said the safety of staff was of the highest priority. "We have zero tolerance for threatening or criminal behaviour that affects our workforce," said Mr Spittal.
But the town, 800 kilometres west of Sydney, is still struggling to end the threat of crime.
On Sunday night, a visiting magistrate experienced crime first-hand. Police say several young offenders allegedly broke into a Bourke motel room where the 66-year-old woman was sleeping and tried to steal her handbag, after wrestling her to the ground.
Three juveniles, including a 10-year-old, were arrested.
Abuse 'every single day', says nurse
The nurses who spoke to the ABC shared details of several times they had felt unsafe during their time in the community.
Nancy worked as a nurse at Bourke hospital for more than two years, before leaving in 2020. "They just abuse us, every single day," she said. "I've had colleagues who were physically harmed by the patients, one of them was punched in the face."
She said there were not enough staff at the hospital to deal with patients with mental health and drug and alcohol issues, which she said were common.
"A mental health patient, he was brought in by the police, they said they already frisk searched him for any dangerous items," she said.
But quickly a violent and dangerous scene broke out in front of her. "Right in front of me, right in front of the hospital, he just took out a blade and started slashing himself," she said.
"He went out of the hospital and grabbed a rubbish bin and he smashed it, he smashed it on the front door and the glass front door, it was broken."
Incidents such as this have led the University of Sydney to suspend its student nurse placements in Bourke.
The situation is exacerbated by the lack of adequate security staffing, according to Steve. "It's pretty scary because we don't have like a proper security guard on duty at night," he said.
He said he had been told by violent patients that they would stab him if they saw him outside the hospital.
While he worked in the town, he feared going to authorities and having to testify in court, because of potential reprisals.
"Bourke is just a small town and if I appear in court or something like that, I don't know what will happen, I'm just also scared of my life if I do that," he said.
Another nurse, Helen, said general staff at the hospital had tried to help with the security situation, but with only one security guard who was not always on shift, protecting nurses was impossible.
"The gardeners, the cleaners, the kitchen staff [tried to help but], they don’t hold a licence as security," she said.
She left Bourke in 2020, after three years at the hospital.
Mr Spittal from the Western NSW Local Health District told the ABC that after a recent security audit of the hospital, changes have been made since the incidents described by the nurses.
"A number of measures have been established or expanded, including a 24/7 presence of security personnel and improvements to infrastructure, including lighting," he said.
"Further improvements and measures will be put in place in the coming days."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-12/bourke-nurses-attacked/100818520
*********************************************Another dubious Aborigine
Brooke, a proud Noongar-Yamatji woman from Western Australia, will have both men and women vying for her heart—this is an Australian-first.
"I am so ready for this," Brooke said in a statement back in May.
"I've done it twice before and now, having the opportunity to choose my person and who I want in my life, is a truly unique and special experience.
"My perfect person is someone that loves me for me," she added. "I hope they offer shared values and compassion for others. All the dreamy things! I'm so excited and hope that I finally find that person I've been waiting for."
https://www.elle.com.au/news/brooke-blurton-25272
*************************************************Push to remove ‘woke’ anti-racist street signs from Woollahra fails
Woollahra Municipal Council voted 8-7 to keep the “racism not welcome” signs in their current locations after a contentious debate on Monday night.
Three Liberal councillors originally proposed removing all 12 red signs from the local government area (LGA) because they created the “false impression that Woollahra locals are racists”.
A compromise proposal to remove the signs from residential streets and reposition them in public areas such as parks and transport hubs failed after councillor Mary-Lou Jarvis insisted the signs be removed from the area entirely.
Ms Jarvis said she was distressed by how the “politically correct” signs had set residents in the area against each other.
“This has divided the council, it’s divided the community.”
Mary-Lou Jarvis, Woollahra councillor
“This has divided the council, it’s divided the community,” she said. “It’s wokeism writ large and has created division where there wasn’t any before. This is all about making people feel good rather than taking actions to reduce racism.”
She added: “I hope the people who got us into this mess feel good about what they’ve done.”
Ms Jarvis said she was reflecting the concerns of residents upset that the “race-based politics” of the inner-city were being imported to the eastern suburbs.
Other residents told her they went to local parks to escape politics but were instead confronted by anti-racist signs which they regarded as “graffiti to the eye”.
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Marxism’s long march through Australia's political parties
David Flint
Why should anyone be surprised that some in the far-left faction of the parliamentary Liberal parties, the LINOs, demonstrate their dislike of those who are even mildly conservative? Intolerance of even slightly different views is a badge of Marxism, a creed which is marching through too many institutions in the Anglo-American world.
That they would carelessly leave texts about this is unlikely; this is no doubt done for a reason.
The existence of a disguised Marxist wing in a parliamentary Liberal party is readily demonstrated by the most minimal consideration of what can happen under Coalition governments in, among many other examples, education. Too often education is being replaced with Marxist indoctrination even to the extent of lowering standards in core subjects. True, there are Liberals who put up a good fight against this. Think of Alan Tudge. But he is an exception.
For those not part of the far-left, the typical attitude is to let sleeping dogs lie. Waiting recently to be interviewed on 2GB while he was talking with Mark Latham, my fellow columnist Kel Richards recounted the reaction when he proposed to a former NSW Liberal minister of education that some leftist outrage be corrected. The minister’s media adviser responded: ‘Kel, Kel, you just don’t understand. We run the minister’s office. The Marxists run the department. The last thing we want is to have a public stand-up fight with them.’
And why incidentally do you think the Liberal party was almost wiped out in the recent WA elections? Did you hear their leader on global warming? Labor parties are always doomed to have a Marxist wing, but now there’s even one emerging among the Nationals. While Liberal Marxists are, in terms of the total membership, quite small, as with all Marxists their agenda is to take power by hook or by crook.
On that, don’t fall for the myth that Lenin took power in a revolution – it was just a well-organised coup with no wide support.
To get power, LINOs are closely integrated with the cabal of powerbrokers who actually run the party. And of course, unlike during Menzies’ time, rank-and-file Liberals are no more than useful foot soldiers.
The emergence of this faction recalls a time when the Berejiklian government came close to losing its majority on the floor of Parliament. This was after the 2019 election when the Parliament was suddenly confronted with the urgent need for abortion law reform, portrayed as a soi-disant conscience question.
This was deemed so urgent that it was not even mentioned in the immediately past election campaign. And with abortion already freely available in the state, was the problem that the rate at which the unborn were being killed was too low?
We should recall that there was a time, not so many years ago, when few in the Coalition would have endorsed abortion. Nor would many Labor MPs, then strongly influenced by Catholic teaching. For Marxists once, abortion was only a Stalinist population-planning tool; today it has become a core feminist belief. For Liberals in Menzies day, it offended a fundamental principle on which democracy and the rule of law is based, enunciated succinctly by the American founders. This is that mankind is endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
In any event, the obviously supportive role of the Premier in 2019 for the abortion bill (disguised as a reproductive reform bill) so outraged two real Liberal MPs, Tanya Davies and Kevin Conolly, that they told Ms. Berejiklian they would no longer sit in the party room if crucial amendments to the bill were not passed. In particular they were opposed to the first introduction of the lawful infanticide of living babies, those ones who escape the abortion and are actually born. When a bill authorising this was approved by the New York Senate, it attracted a standing ovation.
The true Liberals would not have that in NSW and they prevailed. If an abortion actually results in a baby being born, the abortionist doctor is required to care for that baby.
You would have thought that that was obvious and should never have been resisted.
Another matter of concern was the killing of far more girls than boys, sex-selective abortion, one of the aspects of multiculturalism not talked about in elite circles. Although sex-selective abortion is widely practised in a number of cultures resulting in the world-wide loss of millions of girl babies, the reply was that there is ‘no credible evidence of sex-selection abortions in NSW.’
One concession to the defenders of life was an agreement to hold an official inquiry. This has now found that some people have actually revealed that the sole reason for the abortion was that the baby was a girl. So girls are being killed because they are girls, and probably many more than revealed.
This should invite the outrage of feminists. But bowing to various Marxist dogmas, including the equality of civilisations, many feminists find a solution in either embarrassed silence or even in an aggressive support of abortion based on sex-selection.
In the meantime, always conscientious in such matters, the Reverend Fred Nile has introduced an Abortion Law Reform (Sex-Selection Prohibition) Amendment Bill which seeks to eliminate the practice of aborting unborn children on the grounds of their sex. Further, the Bill penalises medical practitioners who conduct a sex-selective abortion.
If the Bill is passed the problem will be that such abortions will continue but not be revealed, at least initially.
As the Reverend Fred Nile points out, the first step is to declare the legal principle.
This also raises wider issues. Why is it considered right to kill the innocent? And why do so many sit back and allow the Marxists to infiltrate everything?
https://spectator.com.au/2022/02/marxisms-long-march-through-the-political-parties
************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
***************************************
14 February, 2022
NSW uni bosses order review of perfect ATARs after IB students beat James Ruse
Lenient marking has been widely used as a response to pandemic difficulties and IB markers may have gone a bit too far. But how to mark during extensive classroom absences is not an easy dilemma to solve
Powerful university chiefs have ordered a review of International Baccalaureate results amid concerns that overly generous marking gave private schools an ATAR advantage after more than one in 20 IB students in NSW achieved 99.95 last year.
The surprising results have upset some school principals, parents and many in the broader education sector, who worry that inflated IB results could undermine the fairness of the HSC. Students with top ranks gain access to the most sought-after degrees in the state, such as law and medicine.
The IB is offered in only some NSW private schools and is often part of the school’s marketing. It is not offered in public schools. Former HSC boss Tom Alegounarias said the most disadvantaged students suffered when “financial privilege” played a role in school-leaving credentials.
“There is no clearer ethical responsibility than to treat all students equally, and our universities are failing at it here,” he said.
But a spokeswoman for the IB said the organisation’s priority was to ensure students were not disadvantaged when applying for university during the pandemic.
Last year fewer than 600 NSW students sat the IB diploma, but at least 41 of them achieved the highest possible university entrance rank, compared with just 35 across the whole country the year before. Of 55,000 HSC students eligible for ATARs, only 48 achieved the same 99.95.
Twelve of the IB top achievers were from a single, non-selective girls’ school, and nine were from a non-selective boys’ school. Just five students from the highly selective James Ruse Agricultural High – the state’s top school for the past 26 years – achieved the same rank by doing the HSC.
The NSW Vice Chancellors’ Committee has asked the University Admissions Centre (UAC) – which it owns – to investigate the sharp rise in so-called perfect scores, a number of sources told the Herald on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly. IB students’ ranks will not be affected.
The university chiefs are concerned about so-called grade inflation, which involves awarding higher marks than in the past for the same standard of work.
“As we saw with the HSC, changes were made to IB assessment procedures in consideration of the pandemic and this may have impacted on their scores,” the UAC’s head of marketing and engagement, Kim Paino, said. “But we will continue to monitor IB results to ensure that our conversion remains fair.”
The IB was generous in its marking of Northern Hemisphere exams last May, giving out quadruple the number of top marks as it had on average over the previous four years.
The number of top IB ranks does not affect the number of top ranks given to HSC students, but it does secure them spots in the state’s most sought-after university courses at the expense of lower-ranked HSC students.
The issue of how to equate IB marks with the ATAR has long been a point of friction, partly because of the lack of information given to Australian authorities, and partly because many in the education sector feel it gives some private school students an unfair advantage.
The IB only gives Australian authorities a mark out of 45, and not the students’ raw marks. UAC equates a 45 with an ATAR of 99.95. In contrast, UAC has access to all HSC data and analyses it significantly, adjusting according to subject difficulty before giving students a mark out of 500 and ranking them.
UAC was supposed to get more detailed data from the IB for 2022 university admissions so that it could better differentiate ranks, but the IB decided to delay that until 2023, saying students had already faced too much disruption during the pandemic.
Many of the private principals whose schools do not offer the IB are worried about this year’s results.
“It’s causing consternation,” said one, who did not want to be named. “I think there will be some schools who think, ‘if you can get 12 kids to get 99.95, why would we be doing the HSC?’ I think it’s a real threat to the reputation of the future of the HSC if that’s going to continue.”
Ms Paino said UAC was guided by fairness and accuracy when assessing ATAR equivalents for international qualifications, which include British A-levels and American SATs. “It’s not always easy because of the very fine-grained nature of university selection ranks,” she said.
“We also regularly review our conversions to ensure they are providing a fair comparison with local students.”
The chair of IB Schools Australasia, David Boardman, said the conversion from IB scores to ATAR equivalents was managed by Australian authorities and the association had no input. “The association wishes that all students are treated equitably regardless of whether they study an IB program or an alternative,” he said.
The IB Organisation has been honest about easing students through the pandemic. “The IB has taken the pandemic’s global disruption to education into account when determining grades for this year,” a spokeswoman said. “The IB’s main priority has been to ensure students are not disadvantaged by the pandemic, including their applications to university and higher education.”
How does the International Baccalaureate compare to the HSC?
There has been significant grade inflation in Britain’s A-levels since the pandemic began, with the proportion of students there getting top grades rising by almost 75 per cent. The IB is widely used in Britain, where students with both credentials compete for university entry.
Between 2017 and 2019, between 260 and 275 students achieved top scores of 45 in the May session of the IB. In 2020, that climbed to 341, and in 2021 it soared to 1187. There were fewer candidates in 2021 than in 2020.
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Qld.: Palaszczuk Government takes dishonesty to another level
Peter Gleeson
The sophistication attached to the current government’s dishonesty goes way beyond corrupt cops paying politicians bribes to keep criminals in business during the 1970-80s.
This is a government addicted to a culture of looking after mates – particularly union mates – by cleverly hiding evidence, aided and abetted by a flaccid public service and an inability of the Crime and Corruption Commission to pursue crooks.
The Labor Party believes it is immune from corruption, that they are on the side of the angels and bad behaviour is the domain of those nasty National Party scallywags. Former senior Palaszczuk Government staffer David Barbagello even told a parliamentary inquiry that it was the Nats who were corrupt, not Labor.
They believe themselves to be modern-day untouchables, and even Al Capone would blush at their antics.
Compounding the problem is a media unit that, despite warnings from the Fitzgerald Inquiry in 1989, is run as a propaganda machine.
It runs interference and obfuscates, ignoring and disregarding integrity as simply a casualty of their war on truth. Public servants are urged not to commit anything contentious to writing, for fear it will be picked up in an RTI request. Even worse, we have a bureaucracy that is paralysed by fear, knowing that if it allows the truth to emerge it will result in their job. They are either a willing participant as defacto arm of the Labor Party, or are too scared to raise the alarm.
That is, until recently, where we have seen a conga line of senior and former senior bureaucrats question the integrity of this government.
The biggest issue of them all is that we have a statutory body with enormous power – the Crime and Corruption Commission – that relies upon the government for its funding and ongoing tenure, scared to rock the boat and target Cabinet Ministers for fear of retribution.
No doubt Tony Fitzgerald, charged again with an integrity probe to look at the CCC, will fix that anomaly during his investigation. Queensland circa 2022 is no different to Queensland circa 1985. Nowadays, it’s unlawful and power-mad unions calling the shots, with a number of Cabinet Ministers owing their $360,000 a year jobs to the union bovver boys. Plausible deniability is the buzzword in government circles. If you didn’t know it was happening, you can’t be responsible.
It’s why senior aides keep premier Annastacia Palaszczuk out of the loop on so many issues. Despite this, her initial denials last week that there is a problem with integrity in Queensland makes her look weak and vulnerable.
She looked like a haughty school headmistress, lecturing reporters. How many times have you heard her say at press conferences – “I don’t know anything about that. I’ll get back to you.’’ Or “I haven’t read that report, I’m dealing with a pandemic.’’ It’s true.
Senior aides protect their bosses from pesky questions from journalists and that’s what they do with senior cabinet Ministers and the premier.
Until Queenslanders say enough is enough, this government will wear its secrecy and Kremlin-like attitude to dealing with the public as its own badge of honour.
Let’s use Queensland health as just one example. For years, I’ve been writing about how its senior executives bully and harangue and the culture is toxic, despite the hard work and dedication of so many doctors and nurses.
When somebody blows the whistle on such culture issues, like they did at the Sunshine Coast Hospital last year, they are suspended or driven out.
Every government department is overrun with mediocrity, borne out of a desperation of public servants to indeed just be that – servants.
Don’t rock the boat or you will be thrown out and drown. What a terrible way to live your life, beholden to some person further up the food chain who is beholden to another person even higher up the management merry-go-round. And yet we voters put up with this rubbish. We give this government a free pass on its lack of integrity and honesty. Why? Because we probably think all politicians are shysters? Isn’t that just putting the white flag up to poor behaviour? Aren’t we as a state better than that?
They are rotten to the core. And you, dear voters, are the mugs for allowing it to happen. Integrity challenges may well be the “vibe’’, as Deputy premier Steven Miles says, but it’s time for voters to “tell em they’re dreaming’’.
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Mob hysteria over the claims of two vocal women
Kevin Donnelly
While both Grace Tame, a victim of sexual abuse, and Brittany Higgins, who was allegedly raped in Parliament House, have every right to argue men are misogynist and their mistreatment of women is motivated by a thirst for power – their appearance at yesterday’s Canberra Press Gallery cannot go unchallenged.
While the woke commentariat attending responded to every criticism and attack with applause and nods of approval, the reality is what occurred represents an appalling lack of journalistic impartiality and objectivity while serving as an example of mindless group think and mob hysteria.
In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, set at the time of the Salem witch hunts but also reflecting the anti-communist inquisition led by Senator Joe McCarthy, mob mentality and unchecked emotion rule the day.
A play where Abigail and her accomplices conjure the devil to accuse the innocent, including John Proctor, and where the court betrays any sense of justice and a commitment to the truth.
A play where Miller reveals a deep-seated, primitive side of human nature and where once the laws are trounced there is nowhere to hide.
While Grace Tame is no Abigail, anyone who saw her performance yesterday witnessed somebody accomplished in working the audience by using every utterance, every pause and inflexion, and every movement to reinforce her message that Scott Morrison and the Liberal government are beyond redemption.
A partisan performance, where an alleged phone call by an anonymous senior bureaucrat is used as evidence to prove the Prime Minister is insensitive and callous and consumed by a thirst for power.
Although Brittany Higgins’ rape allegations have yet to be tested in court, she also swayed the audience to abandon any sense of objectivity. Reminiscent of the Salem witch hunts, an unproven accusation was taken as truth with no attempt to question the events surrounding the alleged crime.
Higgins, working in concert with Tame, also accused the Prime Minister of insincerity and an unwillingness to admit his complicity in what both characterised as a parliamentary atmosphere riven with misogyny and sexual abuse.
As argued by the American feminist Camille Paglia, such is the pervasive influence of the cultural-left’s political correctness and cancel culture. We are living in a time ‘where intolerance masquerades as tolerance and where individual liberty is crushed by the tyranny of the group’.
A time where primitive emotion trumps reason, language is weaponised to enforce mindless group think, and where conservative men – condemned as white, male and stale – are especially targeted and forever guilty.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/02/mob-hysteria
**********************************************The great hydrogen controversy
This week has seen an amusing to and fro of ads from the federal government about its commitment to “clean hydrogen” and counter ads from iron ore billionaire Andrew Forrest, who has become a “green hydrogen” evangelist.
The brightly coloured ads, with their cartoon pictures of a truck carrying “hydrogen” (in the case of the government ad), or “green hydrogen” (in the case of those by Forrest’s Fortescue Future Industries) have been a welcome addition to newspaper advertising revenue, which is (hopefully) set to benefit even more from the approaching federal election.
The government ad declares that “a clean hydrogen industry is part of our plan to reach net zero by 2050”. Scott Morrison sees “clean hydrogen” as being an essential part of the nation’s technology-led move to zero carbon by 2050.
But Forrest strongly rejects the idea that the Prime Minister’s version of “clean hydrogen” – which includes hydrogen made from fossil fuels – is clean.
FFI’s counter ad declares: “A green hydrogen industry is our plan to reach net zero by 2030.”
Forrest argues that only green hydrogen is clean hydrogen. All the other types, as he explains in the ad, are made from fossil fuel such as coal or gas and are not clean.
Forrest argues that the greenhouse gas footprint of what he calls “blue hydrogen” – hydrogen made from fossil fuels – can actually be as much as 20 per cent larger than burning natural gas or coal for heat.
The ads confirm two things – that the nuances of climate change and energy policy will be a major issue in the election campaign, and that business will be at the forefront of change.
It was only the last election that Morrison and his team led a scare campaign about Labor’s electric vehicles plans. Last year, he took a big step forward (for his party) by outlining his own policy to facilitate the use of electric cars.
Once seen primarily as being a threat to jobs in the coalmining industry, climate change and green business has become big business, with almost every company having a commitment to become more energy efficient, to shift their own company’s reliance on coal-fired energy to more renewable energy, and making some form of commitment to net zero carbon emissions.
A few years ago, the average Australian knew little about hydrogen energy. Now the debate is not whether hydrogen energy will be part of Australia’s clean energy future, but what sort of hydrogen it will be and how we will get there.
While each major company has been on its own journey through, Forrest has become a poster boy for the big shift.
Having made his billions from exporting iron ore to China, he is now recycling a large chunk into clean energy subsidiary FFI, which was set up in 2020.
Some of Forrest’s followers, and some of his more traditional shareholders, have questioned his motives in his big shift to renewable energy.
Forrest has committed to spending 10 per cent of Fortescue Metals’ profits on FFI projects.
He argues that any projects FFI commits to will be externally funded without having recourse to the Fortescue Metals balance sheet.
Forrest is approaching his new-found fervour for green hydrogen with evangelical zeal, having spent a lot of time in 2020 and 2021 signing up new hydrogen energy deals for FFI.
Not all Fortescue Metals investors like it. Many traditional mining investors don’t, as has been pointed out by articles in this newspaper.
But then again, there is a new range of climate-conscious institutional investors – including pension funds, super funds and other funds – pushing companies to become greener.
Los Angeles-based Capital Group last month announced that it had bought a 5 per cent stake in Fortescue, becoming its third-largest shareholder for a cost of about $3bn.
In comments made in December, Forrest said FFI now had the largest single portfolio of green hydrogen, green ammonia, green iron ore, green iron and other green product developments in the world. He said the number of shareholders in Fortescue Metals had “increased exponentially” since FFI was announced. The total number of shareholders has almost tripled over the past two years – from 60,000 to 170,000.
Fortescue Metals’ share price is affected by the price of iron ore, its biggest single commodity, making it hard to pull apart its ups and downs. Its shares rose from $10.12 in January 2020 to $24.76 in January last year on the back of soaring iron ore prices.
They slumped to just over $14 in October last year on the back of slowing prices and – some critics would argue – concern about how much money was going into the FFI expansion.
Since then, as more details of FFI emerge, its price has recovered to above $21.
Fortescue Metals will release its half-yearly results next Wednesday, and we can expect to hear more about the company’s plans for FFI.
FFI chief executive Julie Shuttleworth, who has gone on a wild global ride into green hydrogen with Forrest, must be considered a serious contender as a replacement for Elizabeth Gaines, who has announced her plans to step down from the role of Fortescue Metals chief executive.
In a report this week, analysts at Goldman Sachs said Australia had the potential to become the world’s biggest exporter of hydrogen, competing with the Middle East, Chile and North America for the title. Another major report released on Thursday by ANZ also talks about Australia’s potential as a global exporter of hydrogen.
The debate over the potential of hydrogen energy, including how clean it is, is only just beginning in Australia. Either way, the debate over the potential of Australia’s hydrogen energy potential is set to heat up, with major implications for corporate Australia and its investors.
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How a change to Triple Zero emergency line due to Covid could have KILLED girl, nine, who almost drowned when she knocked herself out and got caught in a spa
What brainless bureaucrat thought of this idea?
A change to Triple Zero almost cost a little girl's life with her terrified parents stuck listening to a 24-second Covid message as their nine-year-old lay 'blue and unconscious'.
The Parents of Perth schoolgirl Mahalia Lade thought they had called the wrong number when an automated Triple Zero message began telling them about Covid information.
The message was introduced on January 14 in response to growing calls about non-urgent Covid-related situations.
Mahalia had tripped and fallen into the family spa when her hair became tangled in the jet trapping her below the water's surface. Mahalia said she tried desperately to fight against the spa until her strength was gone. 'I tried pushing against the wall, the ledge where my hair was stuck and then my heart goes 'I can't resist anymore, I'm sort of done now',' she told 7News.
Her father Pete discovered Mahalia and pulled her from the spa, blue and unconscious, and the girl's mother Vicky ran to call Triple Zero.
'I was just screaming and my other daughter was screaming and I grabbed my phone to dial triple-zero and I was still screaming,' she said.
'It says 'you have dialled triple zero, this is a Covid announcement' and I thought to myself, I've rung the wrong number.'
Vicky said she hung up and redialled the number but was met with the same 24-second long Covid message.
She described the message as 'feeling like hours' when she desperately tried to get help for her dying daughter. 'Everything was in slow motion ... it would have been over minute by the time I go through ... I had rung twice.'
Fortunately Pete knew CPR and began performing the life-saving procedure on the little girl, saving her.
Mahalia said she believes if her dad didn't know CPR she would be 'gone'.
She spent two days in hospital recovering from the near-death experience.
Since the little girl's drowning the Federal Government has decided it will scrap the Covid message on Monday.
************************************
Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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13 February, 2022
Leftist hatred of Christianity
Christian doctrine as set out by the Apostle Paul in Romans 2 says that Christians should not condemn homosexuals but that God will punish them because they are evildoers. So any influence drawing one into such evil is clearly to be zealously avoided. Deviants are not being condemned, just avoided as an evil influence.
Christians should be entitled to obey their Holy book. Freedom of religion is widely respected but not by the Left. Before the Peace of Westphalia, religious wars killed millions. Tolerance of religious ideas avoids that
The peace of Westphalia ended religious wars between nations. Religious tolerance within a nation was slower coming. The big break came with revulsion against the persecutions by the murderous Mary Tudor. Her successor, Elizabeth I, specifically renounced religious consciousness
This is what happens when the self-appointed preachers of tolerance and respect don’t get their way. LGBTQ activists have covered Citipointe Christian College in foul graffiti.
The school, which made national headlines this month for asking parents to agree to a Christian view of sexuality as a condition of enrolment, has been forced to remove signage to prevent further vandalism.
Staff have received a barrage of abuse, including death threats.
‘Be more respectful, or we’ll destroy your property.’
‘Be tolerant like us, or we’ll kill you.’
It’s a hell of an argument against people exercising their religious freedom.
Speaking of argument, everyone knows opponents of the Religious Discrimination Bill are not really trying to stop children being expelled from Christian schools for being gay. We know this because there’s not a single example of it ever happening. Not one.
What opponents of the Religious Discrimination Bill really want to stop is the LGBTQ worldview ever being criticised in a Christian School. We know this because they have said so. Repeatedly.
It is telling that critics of Citipointe Christian College’s enrolment contract were not satisfied when it was rescinded.
That’s because critics were less outraged by the contract than by the Christian worldview that informed the contract; specifically that homosexuality is a sin, and that gender is a fixed biological reality.
What activists really want is for Christians to agree that Christian beliefs on sexuality and gender are wrong. In short, activists are demanding Christians be less Christian.
A gay former Citipointe Christian College student told SBS that ‘language condemning homosexuality was very damaging to himself and other young people’.
It was so damaging that he completed 12 years at the school. And he wasn’t expelled for being gay. He graduated.
But, you know, the ‘language’!
A Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PLAG) spokeswoman said Citipointe Christian College needed to do more than scrap the enrolment contract and remove the principal, they needed to ‘show that they have changed their thinking’.
‘They need to come out publicly stating that there has been an error in their judgment and their thinking, and they agree that they were wrong,’ she said.
Well sure. But why stop there? Perhaps PLAG could do a full audit of Christian doctrines and advise the Citipointe community which ones they should change. Whatever’s left, after the gays and lesbians have redacted the bits and pieces they don’t like, could be called the Bible.
Just days after the Citipointe College contact became public, The Guardian pointed out that Penrith Christian College had a statement of faith that listed homosexuality and transgenderism as ‘not acceptable to God’.
How this is news, I am not quite sure.
There’s an old adage in journalism that news is not a dog biting a man; news is a man biting a dog. Similarly, one would think news is not a Christian school promoting a Christian worldview; news would be a Christian school promoting the LGBTQ worldview.
The Guardian reported breathlessly that Penrith school’s statement of faith is attached to enrolment forms and parents are asked if they have ‘read and understood’ it.
Rationalist Society of Australia president Dr Meredith Doig described the school’s beliefs as ‘appalling’ and warned that ‘schools like Penrith and Citipointe are just the tip of the iceberg’.
‘Their biblically-based anti-LGBTI views will become much more commonly seen if the Religious Discrimination Bill is passed,’ she said.
In other words, Christian views will become much more commonly seen if Christian schools are allowed to freely express their Christian views. This, rather than the imagined gay child expelled by hateful Christian teachers, is the real problem opponents of the Religious Discrimination Bill have.
Psychologist Paul Martin agreed the problem at Citipointe was not just the controversial enrolment contract but that ‘many people in evangelical Christian communities and even in evangelical conservative Protestant families still hold on to outdated beliefs about homosexuality’.
So, Dr Martin believes the problem with many Christians is that they still hold Christian beliefs.
Dr Martin insists that Christianity needs to move with the times, ‘the times’ being a euphemism for ‘fashion’. The problem for Dr Martin is that Christians aren’t trying to be fashionable, they are trying to be true to what they believe is the word of God, which puts their views beyond the times.
The psychologist continued: ‘What has happened at the school is so harmful that it could – for some people – be the trigger for suicidality.’
Speaking of psychology, it would be interesting to study the merits of the ‘change your views to mine, or people will die’ debating tactic. I suspect it is intended to work much the same as the ‘don’t let children be expelled for being gay’ tactic works – as a Trojan horse for banning suddenly unfashionable Christian doctrine altogether.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/02/man-bites-dog/
***********************************************"The greater good" as a recipe for Fascism
Every time I hear some middling news reporter parrot ‘for the greater good’ in reference to whatever the next absurd Covid health order is, I am reminded of that famous scene in Hot Fuzz.
A circle of people are discovered in a secret underground lair by the protagonist – torches held beneath their chins and black hoods covering half their faces. They nod at each other chanting ‘the greater good!’ over and over after confessing to murdering half the village to win the coveted ‘Village of the Year’ award. Their addiction to perfection and rules created a superficially idyllic, but ultimately violent hell.
The black comedy is meant to depict a very real ideological horror story where the pursuit of utopia justifies terror.
When civilisation gives up on moral principle and decides to try out ‘moral outcomes’ it leads the government to view individuals as subservient to the collective. Their rights and safety can be ignored so long as the ‘greater good’ is being served. Once the individual is no longer sovereign, any group desire can justify the abuse of rights until citizens become nothing more than depersoned identities. This is the idea that sits at the heart of every collectivist regime and we have seen it quietly gaining popularity within a range of activist movements.
Want to starve a few hundred million people to death? That’s fine, because the regime will survive through their ‘sacrifice’. Want to annihilate an entire race? It has to be done to protect the purity of the collective. Want to reduce an entire nation to slaves? All good. Their misery means that the collective has achieved its promised ‘equality’.
There is no measure to say how much atrocity must be survived before the collective admits failure. Usually, collectivist regimes are overthrown only after shocking levels of violence have been endured.
For thousands of years, Western Civilisation has rejected the ‘greater good’ in favour of individual supremacy. It is only through enshrining the safety and liberty of each member of society – rich or poor – that society has flourished. Respecting the individual, by proxy, creates respect for society at large. While it is not a perfect solution, it has proven enticing enough that people run from collectivist regimes toward the safety of Western democracy. Even liberty’s critics must admit that whatever is going on here is desirable when compared to alternative systems.
Human beings have a general understanding that life isn’t fair. It is, after all, the basis of evolution and the foundation of necessary competition. What humans require is confirmation that life’s rules have some kind of justice to them. Collectivism is a betrayal of this basic need, which is why it facilitates enormous harm no matter what sort of ‘collective’ is being serviced.
The Age of Covid is increasingly being referred to as ‘medical fascism’ because it embraced collectivist thinking.
All manner of civil abuses were permitted in pursuit of puritanical health orders while the messaging put out by the government was fundamentally collectivist. ‘Do this to save others.’ ‘You’re selfish if you refuse vaccination.’ ‘We’re all in this together.’ Their Covid mandates were equally skewed in favour of the collective. Segregation, state-sanctioned discrimination, stalking apps, vaccine passports, state vaccine employment policies – all of these things violated what Australians understood to be their individual rights. This abuse against the population was rationalised by premiers and Chief Health Officers insisting that it was ‘necessary’ to protect Australia as a whole.
Not only was this claim always demonstrably false – it ran contrary to every law and ethical obligation that the Australian nation was built on.
The government’s only role in a respiratory pandemic (where it was known almost immediately that the spread could not be contained) was to offer medical intervention for those that wanted it and to funnel public resources into offering protective equipment and necessary aid.
While organisations like the World Economic Forum were off brainwashing our leaders into collectivist responses at their yearly pandemic simulation events – this is not the reason Australia wound up as a medical fascist state.
At the outset, all levels of the Australian government made the crucial political error of assuming personal responsibility for the pandemic. They came out and promised that they could ‘keep Australians safe’ – hoping, no doubt, that their pledge to protect would translate into a winning election strategy.
Predictably and dangerously, this made government actively responsible for the progress of Covid.
As the virus did what it was always going to do – work its way through society in waves – governments saw increasing cases as a reflection on their performance. Public backlash blamed the government for the spread of the virus instead of the understanding that it was an unavoidable biological reality. This is the fault of the government for inviting the comparison.
In order for governments to protect themselves from public backlash, they drafted and implemented ever-more tyrannical health orders to bring the pandemic (and their reputation) under control.
Suddenly, the rights of citizens to make informed and free choices about their health were treated as ‘selfish acts’ by a government desperate to enforce mass compliance to their public health plans. Any form of contrary debate or conversation that challenged the ‘science’ sprouted by the Department of Health had to be erased – not discussed.
There was nothing scientific about how Covid unfolded. Australia played host to a landscape of dogma and entry-level propaganda that manipulated public responses. Society was dangerously incited to hate dissenters to the point where actual harm was caused not only by police, but by members of the public.
The government’s desperation to protect itself in the face of an uncontrollable crisis is how we ended up with civil liberty being defined as ‘terrorism’.
What is less clear is why the media, tasked with holding governments to account, decided to assist in the erosion of civil rights. Generally speaking, it seems that this was done willingly by a class of journalists terrified into collectivist behaviour by personal fear. They believed the propaganda put out by their publications and were happy to silence the public, hide information, mislead, and outright lie about protesters.
Truth has a way of surviving. With every week that passes, the narrative peddled by the government sheds more armour. It is becoming easy to hurl pitchforks into the open policy wounds and watch ministers relinquish their unlawful control one health mandate at a time.
This collapse of Covid will probably result in the return of our liberties (eventually), but it is doubtful that the wider public will recognise the dangers of collectivist thinking and how easily they were led into supporting ruthless authority.
The unvaccinated, and those that were coerced into vaccination, will remember what it felt like to watch family and lifelong friends turn on them overnight to the point that they were perfectly happy to report them to government authorities. Strangers assaulted people over masks and lamented on social media that police didn’t shoot Freedom protesters with real bullets. Many continue to cheer premiers like Mark McGowan for using sick children to emotionally bully their parents, and how many rejoiced in the sacking of unvaccinated colleagues or sneered at those left standing outside businesses with a big red ‘X’ on their phones? We fell so far as a civilisation that we allowed pharmaceutical companies to endanger children to make adults ‘feel safe’ while denying them access to a normal education and social life.
As with every collectivist regime in history, most of the terror was perpetuated by ordinary people against each other.
Australians lost their humanity during Covid after being led easily astray by fear. If we fail to acknowledge this failure in ourselves, it will happen again. The climate change cult is already moving in to replace Covid with the same collectivist message. ‘We’re all in this together.’ ‘Individuals have to make sacrifices to save the planet.’ On and on it goes. The poor will freeze in their homes. Millions will starve. Citizens will own nothing while the rich collect more super yachts. The fear of apocalypse will be used to justify the removal of rights and this time the pandemic of fear won’t end because there is no apocalypse. It is a dateless bargain with a global collective.
In serving ‘the greater good’, you are constructing a grander evil. One that, once established, will become inescapable.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/02/the-greater-good-or-a-grander-evil/
*************************************************Pandering to grievances threatens justice
Bumbling PM
Two big challenges face parliamentary workplaces. First, those little fiefdoms of MPs that have operated as the wild west, with few rules and no clear lines of accountability, need to change. Immediately. Parliament must be brought into the real world to protect staff from workplace misbehaviour. The Jenkins review into parliamentary culture, instigated by Scott Morrison, is an important part of that reckoning.
The second, related challenge is how to avoid a crazy pendulum swing. Parliament risks moving from one wild west to another if due process and other principles of basic fairness are discarded when dealing with allegations of wrongdoing in the workplace.
It is a dark omen, then, that the Prime Minister chose to throw the most fundamental principles under the bus on Tuesday in his public statement acknowledging the trauma caused by bullying, sexual harassment and sexual assault in political offices.
Speaking on Tuesday about the allegation by former Liberal staff member Brittany Higgins last year that she had been raped in a parliamentary office, Morrison said: “I am sorry. We are sorry. I am sorry to Ms Higgins for the terrible things that took place here … the place that should have been a place for safety and contribution turned out to be a nightmare.”
Higgins made an allegation. A very serious one. But an allegation that will be, and should be, tested in the ACT Supreme Court in June given that the accused has denied raping Higgins, or any sexual intercourse between them.
The more serious the allegation, the more important it is that we abide by principles that underpin our justice system, including the presumption of innocence until proven guilty by court of law.
How can an accused be assured of a fair trial when the Prime Minister has publicly prejudged the guilt of the accused?
Only after grave criticisms to that effect by senior silks, and the accused’s lawyers, did Morrison try to argue that his statement was “by no means a reflection on the matters before a court”. But surely the damage was done.
Some context reveals how Morrison carelessly swerves from one position to another to suit the politics of the day. First, Morrison made a hash of the situation early on when he said he understood the importance of the rape allegation after speaking to his wife and considering his daughters.
From that clumsy position, Morrison chose a politically cynical one by siding with Higgins so comprehensively that the accused’s right to a fair trial is now in question.
Whoever drafted that Tuesday statement has determinedly pushed the workplace pendulum to a different version of wild west where untested allegations are presumed to be true, with not a scintilla of concern for the accused’s rights.
Rather than throw principles under the bus of politics, the Prime Minister could have said: “These are very serious allegations that a court of law must resolve. I cannot comment on a case that is before the courts. To do so could possibly prejudice the outcome. Our justice system must be respected; it is what protects us from injustice. Rest assured that, beyond this unresolved case, we are committed to making parliament safe for women, setting up careful and fair processes for those making allegations and for those who stand accused of workplace misbehaviour.”
Instead, the Morrison government appears to be signalling a new order where federal parliament will follow corporate Australia. If so, we will get a bum steer because companies, especially the biggest ones, are rife with misguided practices to regulate workplace behaviour.
Indeed, I am routinely swamped with growing concerns from people at all levels inside companies who are too afraid to speak out about dreadful practices of HR departments. Many are too afraid to expose the malign influence of HR executives as powerful and capricious arbiters of culture, where mere allegation is enough to end careers. Too afraid to point out how easily HR departments can bully a chief executive, board and employees alike.
“Human resources” doesn’t get to the heart of what these departments do now. They have become corporate police departments armed with vaguely drafted internal codes of conduct to enforce, often capriciously, their version of morality.
Many of these departments are staffed overwhelmingly by women. Those who propagate diversity are the least diverse. They are the only corporate groups immune from gender quotas but paradoxically might benefit most from different perspectives, the best kind of diversity.
What increasingly happens in workplaces across Australia is a far cry from best practice when regulating workplace behaviour. For example, nowadays it is common practice for corporate employees to store away, with written notes, a few allegations of bullying or sexual harassment against a boss or co-worker in case of need.
Overlooked for promotion? Pull out the bullying allegation against the successful candidate, anonymously if necessary. Having difficult conversations with your boss about performance? On the way out? Time to re-heat the old sexual harassment allegation – this will, at minimum, delay matters, and maybe even secure a big payout.
Some will object that this is far-fetched, that it is so stressful to make allegations of harassment or bullying no one would ever do it unless it were true, particularly if the allegation is sexual. Hence, HR departments have joined the chorus saying we must believe a woman who makes an allegation.
This is nonsense to those with real experiences of what is happening inside workplaces, and to anyone who understands that human nature is messy and imperfect. People can and frequently do make false allegations of harassment and bullying.
Importantly, each bogus accusation steals power, time and energy that should be devoted to genuine claims of workplace bullying, harassment and discrimination. Instead workplace safety has become a game.
HR departments have enabled this poisonous war inside corporations and benefited enormously from them. The growing tide of claims are the equivalent of an annuity stream for HR executives, their raison d’etre, their reward and reason for bosses to become dependent on them. And so, HR departments feed these internal wars by promulgating ever more virtuous, yet ever more ambiguous and uncertain codes of conduct prescribing employee conduct and founding employee complaints.
Like the Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, HR departments stride around corporations on guard for infractions that feed their power. No longer limited to complaints about bullying or harassment, the new rules have enabled a modern-day Stasi to jot down notes about staff members in all matter of moral and political conduct. Policing swearing, off-colour jokes or risque comments has given way to enforcing the puritanical standards of inner-city liberals on matters such as race, sex, gender and occasionally politics.
If federal parliament follows in these footsteps, a different, equally rotten kind of wild west will take hold.
Best practice dictates that clear, transparent and final consequences flow from any disciplinary process. Here again, corporate Australia is a lousy role model. The latest wheeze by HR departments and their lawyers is to deliberately refrain from giving unambiguous advice about the impact of disciplinary proceedings on prospects of promotion or to lie about it.
In a world short of talent, HR departments often tell their chief executives and boards to keep a one-way option on a worker who has been disciplined. To keep them, at least in the short term, an employee might be told that if they reform their ways, serve their time and keep their nose clean for a set period, the disciplinary infraction won’t be relevant when promotion is considered.
Simultaneously, HR departments are telling their bosses that even after having served their time, errant employees can be punished again by denying promotion if “community expectations” have changed. Just look at what Cricket Australia did to Tim Paine. In other words, the employee can be punished again for the original offence, having been misled into staying with an employer by a promise their offence will eventually be spent. HR departments, chief executives and boards apparently seem to think this kind of dishonesty and deception is clever.
Getting rid of self-appointed and freely roving morality police in HR departments will not of itself cure the dire state of Australian workplaces, but it will go a long way. Cui bono – who benefits – is a good rule of thumb. Get rid of the beneficiaries of the war and the war will at minimum become less bloody.
There is no question that federal parliament needs a safer, more accountable workplace culture. But it must be done carefully, with a sense of proportion, and respect for our most basic principles. By following corporate Australia and treating an accusation as evidence of guilt, Morrison is taking the parliament, and the country, down the wrong path.
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Gender controversy embroils Australian Girl Guides as sacked CEO warns of ‘cancel culture‘
A sacked Girl Guides executive has blasted the organisation’s “cancel culture’’ for opening membership to anyone identifying as a girl or woman.
Karyn Lisignoli was dumped just days into her new job as chief executive of Girl Guides Western Australia after seeking legal advice on changing the membership rules to “biological females”.
Her dismissal spotlights the tension between freedom of speech and the legal obligations to protect transgender Australians from discrimination.
The Guides’ decision to let members self-identify as female could also set a precedent for enrolment at single-sex schools, following the Morrison government’s botched attempt to change discrimination laws this week.
The Girl Guides WA constitution defines a girl as “any person under the age of 18 years who lives their life as female”, and a woman as “any person aged 18 years or older who lives their life as female”.
The wording alarmed Ms Lisignoli, who used Twitter to message women’s rights lawyer Katherine Deves, the head of Save Women’s Sport Australia, to seek legal advice.
“I’ve noticed our constitution panders to this ideology,’’ Ms Lisignoli wrote, in reference to Ms Deves’ tweet about the UK Supreme Court ruling against gender-neutral passports in December. “Can I DM (direct message) you to find the legal standing on this? If we change it back to biological female are we breaking the law?”
An LGBTI+ website, OUTinPerth, noticed the tweet and published an online article exposing the new chief executive’s criticism.
The next day, Ms Lisignoli was given her marching orders in a letter from Girl Guides WA chairwoman Yvonne Power, who terminated her employment because the tweet had “exposed the organisation to serious reputational risk’’.
“Your conduct has caused a serious and imminent risk to the reputation of the organisation,’’ said the letter, dated December 18.
“You made external statements that undermine the policy of the organisation and were made without due consideration of our governance structure.
“We consider that your actions constitute serious misconduct warranting summary dismissal.’’
Speaking for the first time about her dismissal, Ms Lisignoli said she was seeking legal advice because she worried about the safety implications of girls sharing tents with men or boys identifying as female. She insists the definition of girls and women used in the Girl Guides WA constitution is “ideology not biology”.
“This is a classic case of cancel culture,” she said on Friday. “Inclusion has been taken too far.
“If we include trans girls who are biological males, they can go to mixed-sex school camps.
“There is a reason why there are certain situations in which we say men can’t be present. Do parents know when they send their nervous and shy 12-year-old girl to Girl Guides that she might be camping in a tent with a biological boy of the age of 15? They might identify as a girl but they are a biological boy.’’
Ms Lisignoli said the inclusion of transgender members, staff and volunteers was causing problems for Girl Guides in Britain.
Girlguiding UK revealed last November that it was investigating Instagram photos of a transgender Girl Guide leader dressed as a dominatrix and wielding what appeared to be a fake assault rifle.
Girl Guides WA is the only state or territory branch to give a definition of girls or women in its constitution.
But the national headquarters has drawn up guidelines on inclusion and gender diversity, which state that “an individual is to be considered the final authority on their own gender identity’’.
They state that “the girl will participate in the same activities as all other youth members of your unit”.
“This includes sleeping in the same area as the other youth members,’’ the guidelines say.
Denying transgender people access to bathrooms is a form of discrimination, the guidelines state.
But if a girl transitions to become a boy, they must quit Girl Guides.
“As an all-female organisation, (Girl Guides) are no longer the right place for members who have transitioned to male,’’ the guidelines state.
Girl Guides Australia chief commissioner Rosemary Derwin said the guidelines had been drawn up to comply with state and territory anti-discrimination laws in 2018.
“There was never a push from the transgender community telling us to do that,’’ she said. “Girls and women who identify and live in the community as female are welcomed in our organisation.’’
Ms Derwin said she did not know how many transgender children or adults belonged to the organisation.
“We don’t ask parents: is your daughter a transgender girl or a biological girl, as that would be discriminatory in itself,’’ she said. “All people are treated equally and with mutual respect regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. If a transgender girl goes to school as a girl, and her friends go to Guides, it’s important they can come too, otherwise it’s discriminatory.”
Ms Derwin said the Guides’ policy on gender had been publicly available before Ms Lisignoli took the job as chief executive.
“I think a CEO who comes into an organisation and is fundamentally against your membership criteria, that’s a little bit challenging,’’ she said.
Ms Deves said Ms Lisignoli’s dismissal showed the difficulties of harmonising a range of rights and freedoms.
“It seems to me that the former CEO gave primacy to the precautionary approach to young girls’ safety. That was certainly an approach reasonably open to her, for which I don’t think she can be properly criticised,” Ms Deves said.
A Girl Guides WA spokeswoman said the organisation stood by its commitment to providing a “respectful, open, and safe environment where all people are treated equitably and with mutual respect regardless of their background, ethnicity, culture, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, or level of ability”.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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11 February, 2022
Christians across Australia furious over religious bill drama
A number of Christian groups across the country have reacted with fury over the drama surrounding the government’s barely breathing religious bill, claiming they are also facing discrimination.
The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) and Christian Schools Australia (CSA) are among the high profile names to trash the PM and the federal government, with the Director of Public Policy for CSA particularly unhappy on Sky News.
Conservative Christian organisation Family Voice questioned the Prime Minister “why the hostile attacks?” and Liberal MP Jason Falinski claimed Australians of belief “remain unprotected under the law”.
“This is an open and tolerant society, we have protections under law on issues of gender, disability, sexuality – and that should be … extended to freedom of thought, freedom of belief and freedom of association,” Mr Falinski told Sky News host Chris Kenny.
“It’s not just a failure for the government, it’s a failure for our nation, and most importantly, it’s a failure for Australians.
“We do not have in our laws now, embedded, the rights and the freedoms and protections of law for people for freedom of belief, freedom of thought and freedom of association.”
The Morrison government shelved its controversial religious freedom laws after a high adrenaline day which saw the bill, with amendments, pass the House of Representatives in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Those amendments mean protections for gay and transgender children from discrimination by religious schools.
The move shocked many conservatives, with political party Australian Christians calling it “simply unacceptable”.
As the furore grew on Thursday afternoon, the government shelved the bill, reasoning that it doesn’t give the Senate enough time to debate it before the election.
Labor MP Stephen Jones dubbed the move a “big dummy spit” by the Coalition.
As it stands, the religious discrimination bill is technically still breathing, but the likelihood of it being passed is incredibly slim.
Overnight, Liberal Senator Amanda Stoker told Sky News host Peta Credlin the bill in the end was not “workable”.
“With the amendments that were passed in the wee hours of this morning, we were left as a government with no option but to pull the entire package because the changes that were made would’ve actually exposed religious people to more discrimination.
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Muslim men awarded $61,755 in costs after court played police bodycam vision
Five men who were wrongly accused of assaulting police have been awarded $61,755 in legal costs after a magistrate noted there were “glaring and serious discrepancies” between the police version of events and video footage of the incident.
Khaled Zreika, 21, and Hussein Zraika, 22, had just bought disposable face masks at a petrol station at Guildford in Sydney’s west on September 24 last year when police entered the store and arrested them for failing to wear masks.
The situation rapidly deteriorated when the men followed police outside and questioned why they were being arrested, with the officers from Raptor Squad wrestling the pair to the ground and calling for assistance.
Noah Obeid, 19, Fadi Zraika, 20, and Zachariya Al-Ahmad, 20, who approached police to criticise them for the arrest, were also arrested as scores of officers responded.
The five were charged with various offences including assaulting police, harassing police, hindering police and resisting arrest, however all charges were later withdrawn apart from a breach of the public health order.
On Thursday, Magistrate Greg Grogin said it was “abundantly clear” there was a “major” discrepancy between vision of the incident and the officers’ claims.
He found the proceedings against the men were initiated without reasonable cause, and ordered police pay $61,755.80 of legal costs.
Police had earlier conceded there was no reasonable cause to bring the charges and agreed to pay costs, but argued the amount sought by the men was manifestly excessive.
In bodycam footage played to Parramatta Local Court on Thursday, Constable James Katsetis and Constable Dylan Leyshon from Raptor Squad can be seen walking into the service station, with one of the officers greeting the men by saying “hey brother, how you going”.
“No mask, both you boys,” Constable Katsetis continues. “You’re both under arrest ... can you hop outside for us?”
The officer, who initially admonishes Hussein Zraika for swearing in a public place, is depicted a short time later wrestling with him on the ground before telling him, “you f---ing move, I’ll knock you out c--t”.
Constable Katsetis then moves to where Khaled Zreika is being restrained nearby and knees him multiple times, causing him to shout in pain, before telling him: “don’t f---ing move c--t”.
Mr Grogin said lawyers representing the men had criticised the actions of police, but the award of costs could not be viewed as being a punishment.
“The fact that costs are not punitive does not require this court to come to a decision as to the actions of the police on the day,” he said. “Suffice to say, a picture paints a thousand words.”
Mr Grogin said he had viewed the facts sheets prepared by police, as well as CCTV footage and bodycam vision, and “there are obvious, glaring and serious discrepancies, to my eyes”.
“It would be obvious to anybody involved with the criminal law and the criminal courts the reason why these charges were withdrawn,” he said. “To say that the video showed nothing but a very serious physical altercation between police and the defendants would be an understatement.”
Police prosecutor Lachlan Kirby told the court he has not been informed why charges against the five men were withdrawn, but there is a “clear inference, having watched that footage, that this matter was not going to end in favour of the prosecution”.
“I’m drawing the same inference as everyone else as to the reason the matters were withdrawn” Senior Sergeant Kirby said. “I’m not an idiot.”
Mr Grogin said the lawyer for the men, Abdul Saddik, began to carry out his own investigation including sourcing CCTV from the petrol station due to fears the footage would not be disclosed by police.
“It would appear his concerns were well-founded,” Mr Grogin said.
The court heard police did not serve a brief of evidence containing CCTV or statements, in defiance of a court deadline, before the charges were withdrawn. Some documents were given to the men for the first time on Thursday.
Mr Grogin said the costs proceeding was “not a forum for criticism” or the “airing of grievances” and “I am not determining the actions of anybody, particularly any police officers involved”.
It is understood that lawyers for the men will ask for police to investigate the officers’ actions and consider criminal charges. If this is not done, the lawyers will consider a private prosecution.
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Australia leads world on standing up to China, Blinken says
China’s trade sanctions on Australia have backfired, and by standing up to Beijing Australia “set an incredibly powerful example” for the world, according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“I think China has lost more than Australia has in its efforts to squeeze Australia economically,” Mr Blinken said. Beijing would be “thinking twice about this in the future”, he told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in an interview.
The Biden administration’s chief diplomat is in Melbourne for talks with his counterparts from the Quad nations – Australia, India, Japan and the US – while simultaneously negotiating to deter Russia from attacking Ukraine.
His visit in the midst of the Ukraine crisis “only reinforces the point that for us, as a Pacific nation ourselves, we see the future, we see it here and you have got to keep focus on the core thing even as you deal with the challenge of the moment”, he said.
Mr Blinken said that if Russia did attack its neighbour, he would expect Australia to contribute to imposing “massive costs” on Moscow, diplomatic and political as well as financial and economic, but not military.
The Quad ministers, meeting on Friday, are expected to discuss the Ukraine crisis in an effort to reach a joint position. The leaders of the four Indo-Pacific democracies are due to hold a summit in the next few months.
“I think China has lost more than Australia has in its efforts to squeeze Australia economically”
While China has imposed boycotts on more than $20 billion worth of Australian products, US companies have taken their place in some areas of the Chinese market. Asked whether there was a more effective way that countries could deal with Beijing’s trade coercion, Mr Blinken had no direct solution to offer.
He first paid tribute to “the very good and effective work that Australia has done, and Australian companies have done, in terms of diversifying markets and supply chains, tremendous resilience that I think will have China thinking twice about this in the future”.
Australian trade economist Tim Harcourt concurred with Mr Blinken’s assessment that China had lost more than Australia through its punitive sanctions.
“China disrupted their own supply chains – they have shortages now in coal and iron ore and Australian exporters have been able to effectively diversify.
“They have energy security issues, they have food security issues, they have 300 million middle-class kids wanting to go to uni, so anything aggressive was going to hurt China.”
Coincidentally, the Financial Times on Wednesday carried the headline: “Australia offers timely lessons in resisting Chinese trade coercion”.
Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said in September that total exports to China in affected sectors “are estimated to have fallen by around $5.4 billion over the year to the June quarter” but that exports of those goods to the rest of the world have increased by $4.4 billion. The implied loss to affected Australian industries was $1 billion over the year.
Mr Blinken pointed out that the US supported Australia’s economy as the biggest foreign investor by its accumulated stock of investment, although Japan was the biggest source of new investment in Australia last year.
He said that while the five-month-old AUKUS security partnership between Australia, the US, and the UK was new, “there’s a lot of focus” on how best to get US nuclear propulsion technology into submarines for Australia.
He said Washington was “looking at the most effective and efficient pathways to move that forward – there’s a lot of focus on that now. As well, of course, as setting the standard when it comes to upholding the non-proliferation regime.”
Mr Blinken was keen to draw attention to “the flip side of the AUKUS coin, which is collaboration among us – and potentially other countries coming in – on other things that are going to be vital to our security and wellbeing, particularly collaboration on emerging technologies, on AI, on quantum, but also on supply chains and building more resilience there.
“That’s also a part of AUKUS and that’s going to make a profound difference to sustainable security for all our countries.”
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Getting new power sources to market needs more attention
Transmission links are expensive but indispensible if new power sources are going to be used
The federal government-owned Snowy Hydro has attacked a planned national energy blueprint, warning a failure to push ahead with crucial investment in new electricity transmission could trigger higher power prices, blackouts and dangerous system instability.
Snowy, currently building a giant expansion of its hydro scheme, has written to the Australian Energy Market Operator saying its 20-year plan for the national electricity market released in December has gone backwards in recognising the urgency of transmission reform, and contains false modelling assumptions.
The major energy player, which owns retail power companies Red Energy and Lumo, has also attacked assumptions AEMO makes in its integrated system plan about the value of Tasmania’s wind farms, and says global energy investors are worried their spending on generation and storage may be put at risk due to the glacial pace of progress pushing on with more than $10bn of urgent transmission links.
“Transmission augmentation which takes place later than required not only leads to higher prices and slower decarbonisation, but also blackouts and dangerous system instability,” Snowy chief executive Paul Broad said in the company’s submission to AEMO, obtained by The Australian.
The 2022 integrated system plan “seeks to delay transmission upgrades until the last moment while retaining the flexibility to bring forward or yet further delay projects as needed. That may appear to be sensible policy but it is unworkable in practice.
“It is impossible to reconcile AEMO’s forecasts of an increasingly rapid structural shift towards renewables with its recommendations to delay key transmission links.”
Snowy is worried whether there will be enough transmission in place to transport power from its Snowy 2.0 expansion to market once it is completed in 2026. That includes TransGrid’s proposed Hume Link to southern NSW and the southern transmission link to Melbourne called VNI West.
AEMO, which runs the national electricity network, has plotted a “step-change” scenario after consultation with industry to guide power grid investment over the next decades and ensure Australia hits goals to cut pollution.
Under the plan, coal is set to be extinguished from the electricity system up to a decade earlier than planned, exiting three times faster than expected, under a radical blueprint for the power grid that requires a nine-fold increase in wind and solar capacity by 2050 to meet the nation’s net zero emissions targets.
Snowy also hit out at what it regards as the prioritisation of the Marinus Link, a second power cable connecting Tasmania to Victoria, ahead of transmission needed in NSW and Victoria under the latest draft of the power market scheme.
The plan “prioritises Marinus Link over VNI West, seemingly valuing Tasmanian wind resources (which, in fact, offer little diversity value) over the larger renewables investment in Victoria and access to Snowy 2.0, the single best asset for shoring up system security in the national electricity market. This is dangerous for consumers and industry,’’ Snowy said.
Mr Broad casts doubt on plans for Tasmania’s Battery of the Nation and the Marinus Link ever being built.
“Given that Snowy 2.0 is under construction, what is the probability that Battery of the Nation and Marinus will even exist? Deferring VNI West for four years (compared to ISP2018 and ISP2020) in the hope that a marginally economic and geographically remote undersea cable and remote storage will save the day is playing Russian roulette with national electricity market reliability and efficiency,’’ he said.
Snowy has previously warned the lack of transmission could kill the transition to renewables – with a string of major players weighing into the debate – and singled out concerns over infrastructure as a major issue that needs to be confronted to ensure supplies can flow to users.
Renewable developers and network operators are worried a pipeline of power generation and clean energy supplies faces delays or gridlock unless major electricity transmission projects are delivered across the national power system.
It cautioned that major global energy investors could be put off by the uncertainty in the transmission sector, an assertion that may raise heckles from other big market players that have previously accused Snowy of distorting the market with its government ownership.
“It does not help Australia’s case that these participants (many of whom already deliver renewable energy to Snowy via long-term offtakes negotiated across 2019-21) look on in dismay at the fate of VNI West’s role in transmitting their energy to the load centres and to Snowy 2.0,’’ Snowy said in its submission. “These investors are … typically global energy investors who cross-invest in generation and storage, and therefore know that Snowy 2.0 is a key piece to ensuring generation backup and storage for Victoria. The treatment to which Snowy 2.0 has been subjected provides them no comfort that their own investments would be treated equitably or transparently.’’
AEMO has said transmission projects will add $29bn in value while allowing renewables to be spread across the grid, with the Victoria NSW Interconnector and HumeLink projects both seen as critical to guard consumers against the risk of faster-than-expected coal retirements.
Consultation on the draft 2022 plan will be open until Friday
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‘Taiwan should join trade bloc’: Parliamentary committee recommends
A bipartisan committee has called for the government to back Taiwan’s bid to join one of the world’s biggest trade agreements, and block consideration of China’s membership until it ends its coercive trade measures and re-establishes ministerial dialogue with Australia.
In a report tabled on Thursday, the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade recommended the government “encourage and facilitate the accession of Taiwan” to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for trans-Pacific Partnership, and consider a bilateral trade agreement with Taipei.
The unanimous report says Australia should also support CPTPP membership applications by the UK and South Korea, encourage the United States to reconsider joining the agreement, and back informal talks with Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines on joining the pact.
But it warns talks should not even be considered with China until it demonstrates its commitment to global trading rules.
“The Committee recommends that the Australian Government work with other CPTPP members to encourage China to re-establish full trading relations including ending its coercive trade measures and re-engaging in ministerial dialogue, and to demonstrate an ability and willingness to commit to the CPTPP’s high standards, prior to supporting the commencement of an accession process,” it says.
The committee’s chairman Ted O’Brien said Australia should support the expansion of the CPTPP’s membership, “but not unconditionally”.
“The ball is in (China’s) court,” Mr O’Brien said. “It’s up to China if it wishes to re-engage with Australia and I hope it does because that would enable the discussions that are necessary to determine whether an accession process should commence.
“Only aspiring economies that support an open, transparent and stable trading environment and those that demonstrate an ability and willingness to meet the agreement’s high standards should be considered.
“The CPTPP is one of the world’s most comprehensive trade agreements and its quality must be maintained.”
He said consideration of a bilateral FTA with Taiwan – which would infuriate China – could assist efforts to secure its efforts into the CPTPP.
“A lesson from our experience with the UK is that benefits accrue from negotiating a bilateral FTA and the CPTPP at the same time, and we see merit in replicating this approach with Taiwan,” Mr O’Brien said.
Taiwan, the UK, South Korea and China have all announced bids to join the regional trade bloc, which currently has 11 members representing about 13.4 per cent of global GDP.
Scott Morrison warned late last year that China had little hope of gaining entry into the CPTPP following its campaign of economic coercion against Australia.
Amid fallout for exporters from $20bn in targeted Chinese trade bans against Australia, the Prime Minister said it would struggle to meet the high bar for entry into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for trans-Pacific Partnership.
“The CPTPP sets a very high benchmark that you have to be able to achieve and it is important that those who are seeking to become part of an arrangement like that wouldn’t want to have a track record of coercing other trade partners,” Mr Morrison said in November.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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10 February, 2022
Facts come second for journalists partial to ‘worry porn’
Positive news rarely mentioned
The Wall Street Journal’s Holman W. Jenkins uses the term “worry porn” to describe what this column has called “catastrophist” journalism – the sensationalising of every story.
Much political reporting of the Covid-19 pandemic by the ABC and Guardian has been catastrophist, with the media outlets seldom acknowledging Australia has done better than most of the world with 120 deaths per million of population since the start of the pandemic, compared with more than 2600 per million in the US and more than 2000 in much of western Europe.
Writing in the WSJ on January 8, Jenkins ridiculed as “worry porn” the over-hyping by the US left media of the anniversary of the storming of Washington’s Capitol building by supporters of former US president Donald Trump on January 6, 2021. Our own ABC treated the anniversary as if it really did mark history’s greatest threat to US democracy.
US Vice President Kamala Harris launched into rhetorical “hyper-drive”, claiming the Capitol march was worse than the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour in December 1941.
In Washington last year, one law enforcement officer died of stroke the day after the protest. One protester, a female former air force veteran, was shot dead. Another died of a drug overdose and two of heart attacks. Pearl Harbour it most certainly was not.
Journalistic “worry porn” allows the media to profit from the clicks of consumers who love to read this kind of confirmation bias. In Australia, journalists, politicians and media consumers of the left seem to have a ravenous appetite for stories suggesting the federal government has bungled its pandemic response for the past two years.
According to the trade union-owned New Daily, the government’s poor performance is down to “neoliberalism”. This charge ignores the fact the Morrison government is running the largest deficits in our history, and a bit more “neoliberalism” might help differentiate the conservative side of politics.
Still, the government does give the appearance of being slow to act as circumstances change, and of repeatedly failing to learn the same lessons. For example, after more than 600 deaths in aged care in Victoria in the winter of 2020, the federally regulated sector should have been on the front foot last winter and again with booster vaccines during this summer’s Omicron wave. Yet federal Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck seems unable to anticipate anything about a sector in which 1124 residents have died with Covid since March 2020, almost half the national toll.
This column suggested in May last year that part of the issue was the overly cautious approach of the nation’s medical establishment, and particularly ATAGI (the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation). Here’s the problem: as the media and political left chant that governments should never ignore the science, how do political leaders deal with scientific advisers who can be slow and sometimes just plain self-interested?
The Australian Financial Review, in an editorial and in reporting by Aaron Patrick and Jill Margo, has done a good job fleshing out the issue – indeed a much better job than our politicians who seem flat-footed trying to explain the problems to voters.
Patrick, in a fascinating piece on January 12, analysed the role of the influential OzSAGE group that advocates extreme health measures and virus elimination. Its members are often at odds with national and state chief medical officers.
OzSAGE members Kerryn Phelps and Raina MacIntyre are prominent on the ABC, and the wider OzSAGE group clearly influences the opinions of ABC health reporter Norman Swan.
On January 11, Margo reported the Royal College of Pathologists of Australia had between October 2020 and December 2021 released “five media statements to caution the public about RATs”.
“In its promotion of PCR testing, the college was doing what was scientifically correct to control the virus in a country with a low prevalence of cases. Unfortunately it was talking down RATs which were playing an important role in other countries and could become important in Australia too,” Margo wrote.
How would critics in the media have reacted had Morrison and the premiers ignored such advice? Truth is medical and political leaders cannot know what they do not know until a situation changes. With Delta in the ascendancy throughout November and much of December there was little reason to foresee the swamping of PCR testing with the arrival of the just-discovered Omicron variant.
The AFR on January 12 editorialised “opposition to allowing the use of less sensitive RATs is another example of the medical establishment’s failure to appropriately weigh the trade-offs between health outcomes and wider societal benefits”.
This is the sort of analysis of a political problem that is missing from the national broadcaster as senior journalists there unleash their personal hatred of Morrison, and reporters simply give voice to every interest group with a complaint.
“Worry porn’’ certainly applied to much of the reporting about a hot day at Onslow in Western Australia. In much of the media, every hot day is used to bang the climate change drum.
Yet, several experts were willing to point out that the 50.7C recorded at Onslow on January 13 had been equalled on January 2, 1960, in Oodnadatta in South Australia. Temperatures over 50C had also been recorded in Wilcannia, NSW, in 1939, Oodnadatta again on January 3, 1960, and at Mardie Station in WA in 1998.
But the actual highest recorded temperature in Australia, though no longer officially recognised by the Bureau of Meteorology, was 53.1C at Cloncurry in Queensland on January 16, 1889.
Retired meteorologist William Kininmonth, who ran the BOM’s national climate centre for 12 years, refers to a graph of maximum mean temperatures back to 1887 that clearly shows “the early 1900s were hotter than recent decades”.
“Worry porn” generates consumer interest and is easier than hard-nosed reporting. It’s also much more exciting for activist reporters who want to change the world. Who wants to bother with digging out difficult facts when you can earn “likes” on social media just for writing about your fears?
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Coalition backing down on religious laws, will push for inquiry instead
The federal government will push for a Senate inquiry into key parts of its religious discrimination bills in a decision that avoids a vote in the upper house after NSW Liberal senator Andrew Bragg told the government he was prepared to cross the floor to protect the rights of transgender children.
Attorney-General Michaelia Cash is seeking a Senate inquiry rather than an immediate vote on the basis of legal advice from the Australian Government Solicitor to warn that the amendments passed in the Parliament in the early hours of Thursday morning had “unintended consequences” that could harm students.
The federal government’s contentious religious discrimination bill passed through the House of Representatives after a marathon session of Parliament on Wednesday night.
Senator Bragg has declined requests for interviews this week but has told Liberal colleagues he could not vote in the Senate to overturn the changes that passed the lower house in the early hours of Wednesday morning when his colleagues Bridget Archer, Katie Allen, Fiona Martin, Dave Sharma and Trent Zimmerman crossed the floor to amend the bill.
One Liberal said Senator Bragg said he had major moral issues with the treatment of transgender children and was not going to vote to wind back something that gave them more protection.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison wants the Parliament to reject the change to the Sex Discrimination Act so the government package can pass in its original form, arguing the changes create more problems
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‘Substantial concerns’ raised by Integrity Commissioner as Premier makes dramatic about face
In a recognition the integrity crisis is damaging the government politically, on Wednesday the Premier exhibited a dramatic shift in tone and also backed giving the Integrity Commissioner Independence.
It was a dramatic about face from the previous day, when Ms Palaszczuk engaged in a highly combative press conference and challenged reporters on their integrity questions.
On Wednesday, Ms Palaszczuk issued an apology for the first time since the integrity crisis engulfed the government more than two weeks ago.
“There were some people who said that they felt that they weren’t listened to and I apologise if they feel that way,” she said.
“But we absolutely need to make sure that we have absolute confidence and Queenslanders should have confidence in the robust checks and balances that we have.”
The Premier also said “we do acknowledge there are issues, and we are endeavouring to fix them as quickly as possible”, referring to her decision to ask director-general Rachel Hunter to write to all public servants to encourage them to provide frank and fearless advice.
Ms Palaszczuk also backed making the integrity watchdog into an independent office following weeks of questioning, saying: “I don’t have any problem with Kevin Yearbury’s recommendations in relation to the office of the Integrity Commissioner.”
The Yearbury review into the Integrity Commissioner made several recommendations last year including that it be separated from inappropriate Public Service Commission governance.
After on Monday conceding that “some things could’ve been done better” with regards to the government’s handling of integrity allegations from former senior independent officials, Ms Palaszczuk on Tuesday refused to elaborate.
Instead, during a press conference on a surprise trip to Bundaberg, Ms Palaszczuk engaged in a bizarre back-and-forth with a journalist saying “what issues are you talking about?” when asked about the government’s integrity crisis.
“I’m talking about your government’s integrity … (in relation to) the many issues that have been brought up over the past week,” the journalist replied.
Ms Palaszczuk asked: “Such as?”
The Premier’s comments on Wednesday came as Integrity Commissioner Nikola Stepanov said she didn’t know why a separate recommendation from the Premier’s 2019 Bridgeman Review, which deemed the oversight of her office by the PSC as inappropriate, was never implemented.
“The concerns raised by Bridgeman are substantial,” she told The Courier-Mail. “I have sought on a number of occasions, including prior to the 2019 Bridgeman review, to have appropriate governance arrangements put in place. “I am unclear why the Bridgeman recommendation was not implemented in 2019, including who made or influenced that decision, and on what basis.”
The Premier’s Department didn’t answer questions concerning the Bridgeman Review and the PSC didn’t respond by deadline.
It comes as John McKenna QC will conduct the review into allegations raised by former State Archivist Mike Summerell including that he was pressured to remove any content that could be perceived negatively in the drafts of two annual reports.
Meanwhile the Premier’s office was unable to explain why the government sought advice from the Crime and Corruption Commission about the release of Mr Summerell’s report into his 2017 Mark Bailey Mangocube investigation.
Mr Summerell has previously said the report, which was handed to a director-general and was not his report to the CCC, detailed recommendations to improve governance and close “loopholes”.
Asked why the watchdog needed to give advice about its release, and when this was expected to be received, a government spokesman said, “We have asked the CCC if we can release the report.” “The request is with the CCC,” he said.
Mr Bailey was cleared by the corruption watchdog of any wrongdoing in 2017.
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Editorial: Please don’t destroy the economy again
The Queensland tourism industry is once again holding its breath – and, sadly, it’s because of more unfortunate and really unnecessary dillydallying from Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.
The mood in the tourism industry was better than it had been in two years early yesterday, with hopes high that the February 21 national reopening would see an influx of tourists from overseas.
But that was before the Premier refused to answer directly if she would be allowing into Queensland any international tourists who had not had their booster shot – saying she would wait for the health advice from Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI).
On one hand that is fair enough. Following the advice of the experts regardless of the economic and emotional toll that has taken is the playbook that has led to Ms Palaszczuk being able to boast that she has “kept Queenslanders safe” during the pandemic.
But Australia’s Chief Medical Officer says two jabs are enough – and it is only Victorian Premier Dan Andrews who has so far called for a mandatory three-jab rule.
When the ATAGI health advice is given is anyone’s guess. Some say it could be as early as today.
Let’s hope so for tourism’s sake – because the industry has taken so many body blows, the last thing it needs is more ongoing uncertainty to add to two years of constant border closures, jab mandates for interstate arrivals, and confusion around what constituted a close contact that crippled staffing and supplies. Billions have been wiped from the bottom line of tourism operators, traditionally one of Queensland’s biggest industries.
But a triple-jab mandate – if that is the outcome – could actually end up being the biggest blow of all, with Queensland set to miss out on up to 99 per cent of some if its biggest tourism markets because of low third-jab rates around the world.
For instance, just one-third of New Zealanders have so far had a third dose of a Covid vaccine. In the UK that figure is just over half. In the US it’s so far just over one in four. Those three countries alone were responsible for 760,000 arrivals who landed directly in Queensland in the calendar year before the pandemic.
Or how about Japan, from where 213,550 visitors came from in 2019. There, third-jab rates are so far at just 6 per cent. In India, they are at 1 per cent – and 50,000 Indians came to Queensland direct in 2019.
Let us all hope, then, that the expert the Premier ends up listening to is the state’s Chief Health Officer Dr John Gerrard, and that he continues to give the calm and commonsense advice that has become his trademark.
And we hope that not just for the tourism industry. The flow-on effect to the hospitality sector could also be huge. Despite mandatory check-ins being lifted at supermarkets and retail outlets this week, you still have to have prove you are double-vaxxed to get into restaurants, cafes and bars in Queensland. And so if international visitors are to require three jabs to be considered fully vaccinated, could the same be imposed on the hospitality sector?
Let us hope not – or that could spell the end for hundreds of hardworking small businesses that have held on for dear life trying to ride out the pandemic. Keeping Queenslanders safe from the virus is one thing. Keeping them secure in their jobs is now just as important, and so we urge the Premier to do the right thing here.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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9 February, 2022
Bumper crop elevates GrainCorp to ASX’s best performer
So sad for Greenies: We are not starving yet
GrainCorp says it expects its full year net profit to soar by as much as 100 per cent following a bumper crop, defying pandemic-fuelled labour shortages and supply chain disruptions that have plagued Australia’s food bowl.
The profit upgrade made it the best performer on the ASX on Monday, its shares surging by 13 per cent to $8.50 before easing to close at $8.10.
Chief executive Robert Spurway said the company overcame labour shortages and supply chain disruptions from Covid-19 and floods to process the harvest, which “broke multiple site receival records across our network”.
“The biggest challenge in the end for growers was the wet weather and the interrupted harvest from that point of view. Labour supply was certainly a challenge. But from our perspective, we planned for that very early and we were able to get the complement of workers that we needed,” Mr Spurway said.
The company now expects its full-year earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation to be $480m to $540m. This compares with $331m in 2021.
Meanwhile it has forecast underlying net profit of $235m to $280m versus $139m last year.
Not even VB maker, Asahi, bypassing GrainCorp to secure grain directly from farmers could dull Mr Spurway’s enthusiasm.
“I certainly wouldn’t like to comment but I still enjoy a drink when I can get one, in moderation,” he said.
“Generally, we continue to build a strong relationship with a number of global brewers and maltsters around the world and we’re seeing good demand for high quality malting barley both in Australia and globally.”
Key to the strong earnings forecast are the higher prices Australian grain has attracted, following drought across the northern US and Canada, combined with the threat of a Russian invasion in Ukraine, which threatens the nation’s harvest.
Ukraine harvested 32.4 million tonnes of wheat last year. Meanwhile, Australia’s wheat production is set to hit a record of 34.4 million tonnes this season, 3 per cent higher than the previous record set in the 2020-21 season.
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Single-sex schools may discriminate against trans pupils
Single-sex schools will still be allowed to discriminate against transgender students under the government’s amendment to the Sex Discrimination Act, amid concerns that boys’ and girls’ schools would be ill-equipped to cater to the needs of the opposite sex.
Attorney-General Michaelia Cash has referred the matter, along with exemptions to discriminate against staff, to the Australian Law Reform Commission which is reviewing all religious exemptions in anti-discrimination law.
In a situation where a student transitions while enrolled at a single-sex college, a religious school would need to address issues including uniforms, bathrooms and the wishes of other parents to send their children to a single-sex school.
“If subsection 38(3) of the Sex Discrimination Act were amended to remove the exemption for religious schools to discriminate against a student on the basis of their gender identity, it could have the potential to effectively nullify the intention and ethos of religious single-sex schools,” Senator Cash said.
“Striking the balance between any individuals right to want to change their sexual identity and other parents’ and childrens’ wishes to go to a single sex-sex school must be sensitively managed.
“For example, if a current student transitioned whilst enrolled at a single-sex school, a religious single-sex school would not be adequately equipped to cater to the needs of the opposite sex. Matters such as uniforms, bathrooms, as well as the wishes of other parents to send their children to a single-sex schools would need to be addressed.”
Senator Cash said the ALRC would carefully consider changes to the SDA to “allow for these issues to managed and addressed correctly”.
“This is an important and crucial step that cannot be rushed. Let me be very clear, the government believes that discrimination against students is unacceptable,” she said.
LGBTI groups have raised concerns about whether transgender children would be included in an amendment to the SDA, prohibiting religious schools from discriminating against gay students.
Swimming legend Ian Thorpe, who is in Canberra campaigning against the reform, on Tuesday said transgender children would be further marginalised by the bill.
“This is a group of people that should be protecting,” Mr Thorpe said.
“When it comes to the biggest killer of people that are in their youth, it is suicide. And then, it is exponentially increased if you happen to be gay. And it’s even worse when we look at the statistics of someone who is part of a trans community.
“With this bill, we want to see it disappear. What this is, it becomes state sanctioned discrimination.”
Manager of opposition business Tony Burke on Tuesday said “the Prime Minister said he would end discrimination for all students”.
“He said he would end it for all students, that that’s what he said, full stop, and he should be true to his word,” Mr Burke told the ABC.
The Australian understands Labor’s major issue with the religious discrimination bill, which is separate to the SDA amendment, relates to constitutional issues around the overriding of state and territory laws, which the Victorian Labor government opposes.
Finance Minister Simon Birmingham said the government was not, at this time, removing exemptions in the Sex Discrimination Act allowing educational institutions to discriminate against transgender students because it could undermine their ability to run single sex schools.
He said this was why the government had referred broader changes to the Sex Discrimination Act to the Australian Law Reform Commission.
“I understand the proposal that is put forward is to repeal the exemption as it relates to students who are being exempted from the Sex Discrimination Act on the basis of their sexual orientation,” Mr Birmingham told the ABC.
“Now it doesn’t go further than that. Those other matters, as I understand it, would still be subject to a relatively quick, within 12 month, review by the Australian Law Reform Commission to try to address the best way to be able to enact any other changes without undermining certain issues around same sex schools or other matters that are there.”
University of Notre Dame adjunct associate professor Mark Fowler said the government’s proposal to “remove the ability to expel a gay student would be consistent with what peak bodies have said – no school seeks a right to expel a student because they are gay”.
Mr Fowler said significant “complexity arises when this apparently simple proposition is placed within the framework of the Sex Discrimination Act”.
“This is why the referral to the Australian Law Reform Commission was a reasonable way to address this issue. What if a group of students within a school starts a media campaign requesting that the school discard its traditional view of marriage,” Mr Fowler said.
“Would the school be prevented from refusing that request because its actions were on the basis not only of the students’ actions, but also their orientation? If the proposal does not take account of these issues, the amendment may undermine the ability of religious schools to maintain their distinct ethos.”
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Bungles by NSW police officers cost $30m a year
Assault, battery, trespass and unlawful imprisonment and other cases against NSW police are costing $30 million a year.
NSW police bungles are costing more than $30 million a year in damages and compensation payouts to members of the public claiming to have been mistreated.
The number of successful claims involving police in New South Wales reached almost 400 in the past financial year – the highest level in five years and included assault, battery, unlawful imprisonment, malicious prosecution and trespass
More than $148 million has been paid since 2016 – an average of more than $80,000 a day – for more than 1600 incidents, sparking calls to overhaul police training and the “woke” police leadership.
Answers to Questions on Notice in NSW state parliament have revealed that during the pandemic year 2020-2021, police paid out $32,972,561 for 398 incidents, a jump of 100 incidents from 2019-2020 when $24,164,658 was paid out for 298 claims.
In comparison, Queensland for the same period paid out only $2,281,850 million, although the force has about 12,000 officers and NSW has about 17,000.
Retired detective sergeant turned One Nation MP Rod Roberts, said the consistency of the payouts every year showed the problems in NSW Police were “systemic” and had been ongoing for years.
“Police are a law enforcement body. Not social workers. To enforce the law they need to know the law, which by these figures they do not,” said Mr Roberts.
“We need to support our frontline officers and the first step in this is ensuring that they receive the appropriate training to enable them to perform their roles professionally,” he said.
NSW Police Acting Deputy Commissioner Corporate Services, Paul Pisanos said, “There is a myriad of reasons why civil claims are brought against the NSW Police Force, and to suggest that training – or lack thereof – is the cause is incorrect.”
The claim costs, including legal expenses for defending the police, are paid for by the NSW Police Force insurer.
The compensation amounts were revealed after questions in the NSW parliament and showed the categories of claims spanned intimidation, injurious falsehood, collateral abuse of process, negligence, trespass, misfeasance in public office.
Last year police were told they would not be held to account if they issued tickets wrongly for Covid breaches.
Mr Roberts said the management and leadership of the police in the past had been “too woke”.
“This is evidence they are not being trained properly and are being taught too much woke political correctness,” he said.
“The police are not getting the bread-and-butter education they need and the taxpayer is paying for it.
“The way we can be protected is for police to be aware of their powers.”
The call for better police training comes after criticism of plans by NSW Police to train 315 officers to become special gay and lesbian liaison officers for a huge World Pride event next year.
One Nation MP Mark Latham said the number was disproportionate and police should instead consider special training for dealing with housing estate and elderly residents.
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‘Scary’ rise in retirees’ cost of living
Surging petrol, health, grocery and petrol prices have put seniors under extra financial pressure as the cost of a comfortable retirement climbs at its fastest rate since 2010.
Retirees suffered greater price rise pain than other households in 2021 because rising inflation hit unavoidable, non-discretionary expenses the hardest, pushing a couple’s annual comfortable retirement budget to $64,771.
This was up 3.5 per cent since 2020, while the budget for a single retiree rose 3.9 per cent to $45,962, according to a new report by the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA).
The ASFA Retirement Standard for the December quarter found fuel prices jumped 6.6 per cent in three months, dairy products rose 1.7 per cent and non-durable household goods – such as toilet paper – increased 3.7 per cent.
ASFA Deputy CEO Glen McCrea said higher food, petrol and health costs meant many retirees were “really suffering at the moment” as their price increases outstripped those of employees. “That triple whammy is really having an impact on the budget of retirees,” he said.
ASFA says a retiring couple wanting a comfortable lifestyle will need a combined super balance of $640,000, while a single retiree requires $545,000, based on a combination of super drawdowns and the age pension.
“The higher the cost of living, the more you need to get to that comfortable standard,” Mr McCrea said. “For retirees it’s harder to save money, and you can’t work more,” he said.
“For those people who are approaching retirement, and also younger people, the more you save in super will give you more room to deal with some of these inflationary shocks, which are very hard to manage when you’re a retiree on a fixed income.”
MBA Financial Strategists director Darren James said the rising cost of living came up in a lot of retirement conversations with clients.
“Especially in the initial discussions about what you think you need to live on, the first thing they say is the cost of living going up is scary,” he said.
“Everything costs a lot more and private health insurance scares a lot of them.”
Mr James combining super savings and the age pension would fund the retirement of a majority of people who did not have a full working lifetime of receiving compulsory superannuation.
“If you spend all of your retirement savings, your fallback position is you get the age pension of $38,000 a year (for a couple),” he said.
“Anything you can add to that just improves your quality of life.”
The Australian Bureau of Statistics this month revealed that in 2021 the cost of living for age pension households rose 3.4 per cent, almost one-third higher than the 2.6 per cent price rise for employee households.
ABS head of prices statistics Michelle Marquardt said: “automotive fuel prices have increased over 30 per cent over the last 12 months and continue to be the largest contributor to higher living costs for Australian households”.
“Food makes up a higher proportion of overall expenditure for age pensioner households compared to other types of households,” she said.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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8 February, 2022
Australia's Gestapo State: Police stop Catholic masss to check masks
Churchgoers have been left stunned after a police officer stopped a Catholic mass on Thursday to check parishioners were wearing masks.
Police halted the service at St Bernadette’s Glendalough church midway through the priest addressing the congregation following a tip off that people were not wearing masks.
Masks are currently required to be worn at all public indoor setting across Perth and the Peel, South West, Wheatbelt and Great Southern regions.
Five people were found to not be wearing masks, one of which had an exemption while the four others were made to put them on.
The incident was shared to Facebook by a parishioner, who wrote “a policeman allowed himself in, strutting up the aisle demanding correct mask behaviour and checking exemptions.”
“Where have we seen this behaviour before in history?
Police said in a statement they responded to a report from a member of the public of people not wearing masks inside a church in Mount Hawthorn.
“Upon attendance, 5 people were spoken to by police and complied in wearing a mask,” they said. “One person provided proof of an exemption.”
Catholic Archdiocese of Perth archbishop Tim Costelloe said it is “highly regrettable” that police felt obliged to intervene during the service to enforce the mask rules.
“It is my hope that other ways can be found to deal with this delicate issue in future and my office stands ready to cooperate with the police in this matter,” he said.
“It is the formal and very public policy of the Archdiocese of Perth to do everything it can to facilitate compliance with all the government’s requirements in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It is a matter of regret to me that the police were placed in a position which led them to take the action they did.”
The church has since shared a message to its Facebook page reminding all parishioners that they cannot enter the place of worship without a mask.
The interruption left churchgoers stunned, with one audience member saying it was “confronting” to see an officer in the church.
“Everyone was pretty stunned, it was confronting,” parishioner Matthew told 6PR Radio. “It’s troubling to see the liturgy you love stopped by police.”
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International students should be encouraged to come back
The Prime Minister has announced a number of excellent initiatives to encourage the return of international students to Australia now that our borders have reopened, from extending working rights to rebates on visas. Behind these initiatives is a recognition that international students are critical contributors to our economic prosperity and crucial to filling workforce shortages in key industries.
This is equally true at a state level. Pre-COVID, spending by international students and their visiting families helped to support more than 95,000 full-time equivalent jobs in NSW, not just in education but also in sectors such as hospitality and tourism, pouring $30 million a day into the NSW economy. And the vibrancy of the diverse cultural life international students bring underpins the character of a globally connected community.
International students hold our education system and qualifications in high regard – nearly 90 per cent are satisfied with their study experience at an Australian university, according to government surveys. They also see Australia as a safe and enjoyable destination.
But during the past two years, many international students who would otherwise have studied in NSW have instead gone to countries with fewer border restrictions like the United States, Britain and Canada. Or they have simply decided to study at home. That meant a $5 billion hit to the NSW economy in 2021, and potentially another $6 billion this year.
Even though our borders are now open, the rate of student return is very slow. Given the proven benefit of our international students to our communities and to NSW, what more can be done by universities, government and business to hasten their return?
In order to restore their confidence in us and put us ahead of competitor destinations, government, business and the education sector should work together to provide a suite of targeted incentives for students to come to NSW.
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'Inappropriate’: Former state archivist slams crony appointment
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has defended the appointment of her director-general to probe damning allegations an important report was doctored after it was slammed as “inappropriate” and posed a potential conflict of interest.
As the Premier declared she didn’t believe annual reports were doctored to suit the government’s political agenda, Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said there shouldn’t be interference with them.
It came as former state archivist Mike Summerell, who says his 2018-19 annual report didn’t include his critical statement of the government in the published version, lashed out at the government saying it was a “poor choice” for a senior official whose role is “primarily to support the Premier” to undertake the investigation into his claims.
He said the appointment of Director-General Rachel Hunter to review matters was “inappropriate” and presented a potential conflict of interest that could lead to her findings being viewed with suspicion, even if unfairly.
“I believe that for some the ability to be honest and truthful will be extremely difficult given the seniority and status of this individual,” he said.
“The DG of DPC is a powerful position held in awe and fear by many senior public servants.
“The question of conflict of interest is an obvious one.”
Mr Summerell said a number of matters he had raised involved the Premier and her office.
“I would stress the matters don’t involve inappropriate interference or similar by the Premier or her office, but they do relate to matters where others potentially sought to protect the Premier or her office, whether they needed it or not,” he said.
“The DG of DPC would be an inappropriate person to undertake such a review in my opinion because of this potential perception of a conflict of interest.”
He called for an “independent entity” to be appointed instead, such as the state’s corruption watchdog, the Queensland Audit Office, or the Ombudsman.
But the Premier defended the decision – pointing to Ms Hunter’s role as the head of the Queensland public service.
“She (Ms Hunter) had a conversation with me yesterday (Monday),” Ms Palaszczuk said.
“She said that she will begin work on that. She will issue those terms. “They will become public and they will be released once she’s ready.
“The head of the public service is the right body to look at any issues of misconduct of the departments.”
Ms Palaszczuk said she would not be involving herself in the investigation.
Asked if it was common for annual reports to be changed from when they’re submitted to when they’re published to the public, Ms Palaszczuk said it was a matter for each department.
“Sometimes there might be spelling mistakes,” she said.
“Sometimes there might be incorrect reporting figures, so from time to time annual reports would be changed. “But if there are any serious allegations the director-general is the appropriate person to look at that.”
Meanwhile Ms D’Ath defended the government’s integrity while saying she hadn’t interfered with any annual reports.
She said it was not the practice for annual reports to be altered.
“Hospital and health services produce their reports, the department produces the reports and as the Minister I table those report and I’m answerable to those reports every estimates (hearing),” she said.
Asked then that if it was not the practice – would she agree that it would be unacceptable for that to happen – the Minister said it was reasonable for errors to be changed.
“But as far as asking for it to be changed – no there shouldn’t be interference with annual reports,” she said.
Ms D’Ath, who is also Leader of the House, denied Opposition Leader David Crisafulli’s request for parliament to be recalled early amid the integrity issues dogging the government.
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It’s business abnormal thanks to an abundance of caution
DAVID PENBERTHY
The pandemic has served up a slew of cliches, many of which have a completely opposite meaning to what they intend to convey.
“We’re all in this together” is something Boris Johnson might say over a gin and tonic with chums in his back garden while his neighbours down the street farewell a dying loved one via Microsoft Teams.
“The new normal” is a pleading marketing line favoured by politicians and bureaucrats, urging us to adopt illogical conduct without question.
From this congested field of cant, line honours goes to the phrase “an abundance of caution”. An abundance of caution seeks to validate behaviour that makes absolutely zero sense but has been earmarked as the only sensible and possible course of action.
Here is a true example.
Out of an abundance of caution, the producer of my Adelaide radio show is in isolation. This is because she does not have the coronavirus.
She briefly thought she did because she did a work-mandated PCR test, as the few of us still in the building are, reflecting the paranoia of corporate Australia at having staff numbers gutted by infections.
Surprisingly, that test was positive, even though she had no symptoms, felt as fit as a fiddle and had barely left the house for the past month. For those reasons, in line with the medical maxim, she sought a second opinion. It was, she assumed, a superior opinion, the vaunted “gold standard” PCR tests overseen by SA Health.
As she suspected, the second test came back negative. Happy days. Or so she thought until she made the tactical error of double-checking with SA Health as to her subsequent course of action.
In what anecdotal evidence suggests has become a form of bureaucrat call centre lotto, the health wonk she jagged on the phone said that even though the second test was negative, it was prudent (out of an abundance of caution) to remain in isolation anyway.
And isolation in South Australia still means a full 10 days, even though national cabinet has decreed seven days as standard.
It gets funnier and weirder.
Our producer also inquired as to the status of our assistant producer, who shares a windowed production booth with her for three hours every morning. Surely he wasn’t a close contact?
Ummm, yeah, out of an abundance of caution, he probably is too, so he should isolate for seven days as a close contact.
So here’s the state of play. Out of an abundance of caution we now have our entire production team in isolation: the producer, who does not have the coronavirus, and the assistant producer who, terrifyingly enough, is a close contact of the producer without the coronavirus.
I suppose if you can catch Covid off pizza boxes and flying footballs, who’s to say that someone in a glass container who doesn’t have the coronavirus could give it to someone who doesn’t have it either?
I might be tempting fate here, but as my co-host and I occupy the studio next door to the producers’ glass box of pestilence, maybe out of an abundance of caution we should be close contacts too? Along with my kids, my wife, our two dogs and Dave the butcher down the road, whose hand I shook while buying mince to make some chilli con carne on Wednesday?
We keep getting told we are riding past the Omicron peak and normality beckons.
I am not sure if everyone has got the memo.
The manner in which our office has been up-ended by all this suggests a lethal pincer movement involving the Health Department and the HR department will prevent businesses from operating normally for an extended period.
I know people in business who are conducting PCR tests on each other almost for fun. A friend of mine is high up in the AFL and he told me this week that you almost need a PCR test to walk down the end of the corridor and get a Coke out of the drink machine.
I am aware of cases of PCR testing in the corporate world that make zero logical sense, where workers who have already been in contact with colleagues are having tests but not receiving their results until their shifts are finished. If they did have the virus, they already would have exposed their colleagues to it anyway.
It renders the entire testing regime useless, save for the feel-good factor of management saying they’re at least trying to look after their most valuable asset – people – to use the cloying language favoured by HR.
And in defence of the HR folks, for reasons of legality and compliance businesses will always err on the side of caution, meaning that under our current shambolic arrangements they will be guided by the official government health advice, however dubious or paranoid it might be.
This can’t go on forever. At some point we will all have to be brave enough to just come into work without repeatedly jamming a pipe cleaner up our noses three times a week, especially when we are triple-vaccinated and have zero symptoms.
And surely the same people who brought us the magic pizza box can take a deep breath and recognise that people without the virus (and their close contacts) are probably safe to go to work. Call me a wild-eyed madman, but I am up for taking risks like that.
Writing on these pages many years ago, the late, great Paddy McGuinness bemoaned the early intrusions of the health-and-wellness brigade into the joys of having a quiet beer and a fag at his beloved Riverview Hotel. McGuinness warned of a world where drinkers one day would be required by law to fit themselves with bicycle helmets lest they fall drunkenly off their stools and do themselves a mischief.
The bloke was Nostradamus. Out of an abundance of caution, it all makes perfect sense.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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7 February, 2022
Nick Coatsworth shares US Covid data comparing states with mask mandates
The face of Australia's Covid vaccine rollout has shared US data which shows states that introduced mask mandates only had slightly more cases than those which did not.
Australia's former deputy chief medical officer Dr Nick Coatsworth used the controversial statistics to rail against calls to make N95 masks mandatory.
He also branded demands to install stringent air ventilation systems in all buildings a 'colossal cost and minimal benefit'.
The graph shared by Dr Coatsworth shows little difference in Covid case numbers in the US from November 1 to January 31, despite face mask mandates.
The data does not show that masks are ineffective against transmitting the virus, as those living in states without mandates may still be wearing face coverings at comparable levels.
It could also be possible that infection rates in states with mandates may have been far higher if the restrictions were not introduced.
But Dr Coatsworth suggests enforcing face mask mask requirements has a muted effect in society.
'When plausibility meets reality. The null hypothesis lands a knockout punch on the precautionary principle,' he tweeted alongside the graph.
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Massive changes coming to the school curriculum in Australia - here's everything your kids will learning about
School curriculums across the country could soon be overhauled with major changes to history, English and maths lessons.
State education ministers will meet on Friday to discuss proposed changes to a revised curriculum that would be adopted nationwide.
The 'balanced literacy' method of teaching children to read will be replaced by an emphasis on phonics, while changes to maths lessons aim to improve the current standards expected of students.
The history curriculum is set to undergo a massive overhaul with more focus on Western and Christian heritage, while reference to debates over the Anzac legend being 'contested' has been removed, Nine newspapers reported.
A briefing to ministers says students will have 'the opportunity to deepen their understanding of the importance of our Western and Christian heritage in the development of Australia as a prosperous and peaceful democracy, as well as learn more about our First Nations Australian histories and cultures'.
Under the new secondary school history curriculum, students would study Indigenous history and ancient society in year 7, medieval Europe in year 8, World War I in year 9, and World War II and 'modern campaigns for rights and freedoms' in year 10.
Sources say the revised the increased emphasis on Western heritage would not water down Indigenous content in the history curriculum.
References to Christianity have been restored to the Civics and Citizenship curriculum following widespread backlash over the term' 'multi-faith'.
The briefing also proposes massive changes to the maths curriculum, where a previous decision to push back the introduction of times tables until year 3 to 4 will be reversed.
High school students would start learning Pythagoras 12 months earlier in year 8, where they were also be be introduced to inequalities.
It's understood the changes to maths will be a major subject of debate between ministers
The proposed English curriculum will remove references to 'balanced literacy', a popular method used in many states in teaching children how to read.
NSW is one of the few states which has already adopted a focus on phonics approached in its literacy curriculum for years kindergarten to year 2.
Education leaders have urged state and territory leaders to reach a consensus on as many areas as possible.
The Australian, Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority is keen to have an approved draft to begin preparing schools for the changes
'Ministers should progress forward on what can be resolved, and agree to further negotiation on those without agreement. That way most educators can get more clarity on where curriculum will go moving forward,' Centre for Independent Studies research fellow Glenn Fahey told the publication.
'Where divisions remain - whether political or technical - those areas could be parked temporarily.'
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Australian Survivor goes woke: The word that is now BANNED from Channel Ten reality series as gender-neutral terms are mandated to promote 'inclusivity'
The Channel Ten reality show has kicked off this year's Blood v Water season with the introduction of 'de-gendered' language, as producers attempt to promote 'inclusivity' on-screen.
According to The Daily Telegraph, the word 'guys' has officially been banned from the cast's lexicon, meaning that host Jonathan LaPaglia has had to change his iconic catch-phrase: 'Come on in, guys.'
The 'gendered' phrase, which is considered by some as sexist, has been used by LaPaglia to welcome contestants into challenges since the show's inception in 2016.
'With the ever growing conversation around inclusivity, it was a natural progression to adapt our language to reflect this,' LaPaglia told The Daily Telegraph on Sunday. 'The US has also adopted a similar change,' he added.
Indeed, Survivor USA host Jeff Probst also officially stopped using the line, 'Come on in, guys', during last year's season.
Jeff had previously used the phrase for a whopping 40 seasons.
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Archbishop sued for anti-discrimination pleads for MPs to pass ‘strong’ religious freedom bill
An Archbishop hauled before an anti-discrimination body for sharing church teaching on gay marriage is pleading with MPs not to water-down proposed federal religious freedom legislation.
Hobart Catholic Archbishop Julian Porteous said overreach by state anti-discrimination laws was undermining freedom of religious expression and free speech.
Further changes to protect gay students and staff within religious schools were “unnecessary”, he said.
“In our institutions we have a lot of people – students in our schools or doctors and nurses in our hospitals, staff in our nursing homes – who aren’t Catholic and who may have personal views different to what the Catholic Church believes.
“We respect their right to hold personal views. We don’t require them to change. But we do require of them at a professional level to recognise that they are working within a Catholic institution which has certain beliefs.”
Speaking out on the eve of the parliamentary debate amid division on the issue within Coalition ranks, he accused opponents of the Religious Discrimination Bill of spreading misinformation.
He said Catholic schools had no intention of following Brisbane’s Citipointe Christian College in requiring contracts – since abandoned – allowing the expulsion of openly gay or transgender children.
“The feeling that this legislation would somehow mean that the church could persecute someone who doesn’t hold the same views is not the case at all,” he said.
Instead, the legislation was “very much needed” to address an erosion of religious rights and tolerance in Australia, driven by state anti-discrimination laws.
In 2015, Archbishop Porteous was subject to an anti-discrimination process over the distribution of an anti-gay marriage brochure.
While the case was ultimately dropped, Archbishop Porteous said it and similar actions had a “chilling effect” on open debate.
“Because that case was never resolved, I’m not sure if tomorrow someone will cite me again,” he said.
“That’s why it’s so important that we have some legislation that recognises the right of a person to express their deeply held religious beliefs, in a way that’s respectful and where there’s no intention to incite violence.”
He also “very much hoped” the federal legislation would protect Catholic aged homes and hospitals which refused to be a part of state voluntary euthanasia schemes.
Opponents of the federal bill complain it will override Tasmania’s “gold standard” anti-discrimination legislation, which goes further than most, making it an offence to “offend” or “insult” someone on the basis of certain attributes.
Archbishop Porteous said this interference with state law was “a necessary thing”.
“In a democracy, one of the things that is very highly prized is the right of people to express what they believe, through often robust debate,” he said. “That’s how we are able to resolve issues and decide on a path to take.”
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Strange scholarship at the University of Melbourne
Insanity is everywhere these days. The aggressive Left have cowed people into adopting their ideas
The University of Melbourne advertises itself as Australia’s best university—the first and only member of the Australian Ivy League. This isn’t an unreasonable claim. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2019 put the University of Melbourne 32nd in the world, 17 spots ahead of Australian National University, its nearest Australian rival. Numerous other figures seem to demonstrate the school’s excellence at preparing students for prosperous employment and at developing their critical thinking skills.
Naturally, I was pleased and even proud to have been accepted into the University of Melbourne’s 2017 Master of Journalism program. I believed, without really thinking about it, that I was in for a challenging year and a half at a school far more rigorous than the one from which I received my baccalaureate. (The University of Oklahoma consistently lands somewhere in the 400s on the Times Higher Education index.)
Of course, I was aware of the complaints directed at Australian universities—that the integrity of their curricula had gradually been compromised to appease social justice activists. Ubiquitous Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson expresses these concerns somewhat apocalyptically:
You may not realize it, but you are currently funding some dangerous people. They are indoctrinating young minds throughout the West with their resentment-ridden ideology… They produce the mobs that violently shut down campus speakers, the language police who enshrine into law use of fabricated gender pronouns and the deans whose livelihoods depend on madly rooting out discrimination where little or none exists… And now we rack up education-related debt, not so that our children learn to think critically, write clearly or speak properly, but so they can model their mentors’ destructive agenda.
It’s natural that these denunciations should sound wildly hyperbolic—a bit like Joseph McCarthy’s claim that there were 81 Communists lurking in the State Department. Who but a political cultist would be willing to believe something like that without seeing it for himself?
The first indication I received that something had gone awry at Australia’s best university was in a criminology class titled “Violence, Trauma, and Reconciliation.” According to the University of Melbourne handbook, this class “considers the forms of trauma people experience as a response to… forms of violence and explores how this trauma propels calls for apologies, truth commissions, retribution, and torture.”
The instructor, Dr. Juliet Rogers, devoted a lecture to female genital mutilation—a natural enough topic for a class on trauma. In Rogers’s view, however, the true source of trauma was not the practice of FGM itself, but the “violence” of anti-FGM laws. After all, Western societies pressure women into body modification in the form of ear piercings—so who are we to pass judgment on those who practice clitorectomies and infibulations on children? And isn’t it true that legislators’ supposed concern with FGM is actually motivated by “Islamophobia”?
In the article “The First Case Addressing Female Genital Mutilation in Australia: Where is the Harm?” Rogers takes issue with Australian “prejudice” against the practice of clitoral “nicking”:
For each claim that a woman’s sexual health is impacted, there is a study which suggests it is not, and others which suggest it is enhanced. For each claim of trauma, there is another which claims empowerment. However, it is the violent images which are played and replayed, on airport shelves, in documentaries and in fiction that form opinion. These, “through repetition” have come in Obermeyer’s terms again “to gain authority as truth.” Similarly, in the FLC’s [Family Law Court’s] Report the image of violence is only presented and then repeated, with the name “female genital mutilation” always attached. There is no discussion of the benefits of the practices, the increases in sexual enjoyment that women report, the cultural empowerment that women experience, the desires of many to undergo the practices or the rage that many women have at being called ‘mutilated’ when so many clearly feel that they are not.
While working with the US Peace Corps in rural Gambia, I encountered the practice of female genital mutilation firsthand. The empowering effect of having one’s clitoris razored off was not readily apparent.
It was clear from the tone of Rogers’s lecture that she regarded these ideas as quite subversive and challenging. However, most of the room nodded along quite comfortably. If we didn’t actually find these ideas challenging, we could at least derive some satisfaction from the thought of how challenged a less enlightened third party might be.
Another peculiar class was Terror, Law, and War, ostensibly a survey of legal and military responses to terrorism. In practice, the class focused almost exclusively on American, European, and Israeli misbehavior, and on the perceived ridiculousness of Australian anti-terrorism measures. Islamist terrorism was left unconsidered except as a hallucination of xenophobic Westerners. As if to drive the point home, one presentation on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict referred to Palestinian suicide bombings as “terrorism,” in scare quotes.
We spent a period discussing a televised interview with Wassim Doureihi, spokesman for the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. During the interview, Lateline host Emma Alberici took a combative stance, demanding that Doureihi either clearly denounce the Islamic State’s tactics or admit that he condoned them. Doureihi refused to cooperate, instead pushing the conversation toward Australian mistreatment of Muslims.
The subsequent class discussion became something like a rally: we unanimously acclaimed Doureihi’s dignity and courage and took turns mocking Alberici’s hypocrisy and ill-concealed racism. The teaching assistant declared with apparent pride that she was friends with Doureihi and that he had confided in her that the interview was a trying experience, but necessary. Some of the students who rose to voice their support for Doureihi were so agitated that their voices shook. Somehow, throughout this bacchanal of self-righteousness, the fact that Hizb ut-Tahrir is an explicitly anti-democratic organization that supports the killing of apostates and whose leaders describe Jews as “the most evil creatures of Allah” escaped mention. Evidently, one can’t take sides between liberalism and totalitarianism without knowing the pigmentations of those involved.
To hear Australia’s most privileged youth praise a theocrat like Doureihi was unsettling, but classes equally often took a turn for the comical. On one occasion, Rogers interrupted a Violence, Trauma and Reconciliation lecture to tell us about Lego’s “criminal” figure (right). The figure is about what you might expect: a child-friendly depiction of a burglar, sporting a sinister grin, a stocking cap and a black-and-white-striped prison uniform. What this piece of Lego has to do with either violence, trauma or reconciliation may not be immediately obvious: the criminal, you see, is depicted with visible chest hair. This chest hair is a coded indication that the criminal is nonwhite, thereby implying that people of color are criminals and terrorists. Oddly enough, another of my instructors also brought up this Lego figure and its racist chest hair during her own class. I suppose it had been doing the rounds among the faculty.
Students were always instructed to question their assumptions rather than acquiescing mindlessly to the status quo. At the University of Melbourne, however, the assumption that racial identification is of paramount significance, that Western societies are uniquely malignant and oppressive, that Islamist theocrats are victims and not perpetrators, et cetera, is the status quo. What does it signify when the authorities tell you to dissent?
In some classes, the frantic obsession with demographics was spearheaded by the students, against the apparent wishes of their instructors. In one nonfiction writing class, discussion of Gay Talese’s influential 1966 profile of Frank Sinatra centered not on Talese’s quippy yet unhurried scene-setting, or on his vivid portraiture of a subject he’d never actually interviewed, but on Talese’s misogyny. (One student said that Talese’s description of two Sinatra groupies as “attractive but fading blondes” was “chilling.”) David Foster Wallace’s essay “Tense Present” was subjected to a similarly myopic “discussion” of Wallace’s whiteness and his failure to acknowledge English as an “imperial language.” Any technical lessons we might have taken from Talese or Wallace were lost altogether—instead, we enumerated the things they might have learned from us.
During these Two Minutes Hate sessions, the instructor often stood back, grimacing uncomfortably and sometimes trying to steer the discussion back toward the piece of writing at hand. He was a gentle man with a clear love for long-form journalism, and I suspect he sometimes wondered why his class discussions had grown so frenzied.
What if I’d heard about this from someone else? I asked myself from time to time. What if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes? I knew the answer—I wouldn’t have believed a word of it. I would have assumed the narrator of these outlandish events to be a right-wing doomsayer ready to contort the truth however necessary to vilify his opponents. Can I reasonably expect more charity from you, the reader of this article? Hard to say.
Perhaps the most unexpected part of life at the University of Melbourne was how easy the actual work was. In Terror, Law and War, the essays I submitted consisted of structureless, deliberately turgid summaries of class readings, enlivened with the odd anti-Western cliché and handed in without proofreading or revision. This seemed to be the level of seriousness appropriate to the class. My diploma is proof that this material, produced almost without conscious effort, was up to the standards of Australia’s top university.
During one and a half years attending journalism classes, I was exposed to surprisingly little information on the actual craft of journalism. Recipients of the University of Melbourne’s Master of Journalism degree will know about the inverted pyramid model and other basic concepts. Deeper questions, however, are left mostly unexamined. When should an interviewer rely on a list of questions and when should he improvise? How does one efficiently cut a news story down to 125 words? How does news writing differ from other prose in grammar and punctuation? It is possible to obtain a 150-point journalism degree from the University of Melbourne without learning the answers to these questions. Of course, who has time for such trivialities when there’s a revolution on? University of Melbourne students may matriculate unprepared to produce clear and accurate news articles, but they will understand their political objectives.
I graduated in December 2018, amidst rallies against “fascism on campus.” (Given that, in 18 months on campus, I encountered no fascists, these rallies seem to have been very effective.) Behaving compliantly throughout these peculiar antics was a mistake. The most I can do after the fact is relay my observations without inventing a heroic role for myself.
Was pursuing a degree at Australia’s top university a waste of time? Not necessarily. The name of an institution whose superiority is supported by so many statistics surely helps beautify my résumé. And I was granted the chance to dip into a strange emerging culture, one whose existence I probably would not have accepted if I hadn’t seen it for myself. It seems the doomsayers are sometimes correct.
https://quillette.com/2019/05/22/when-the-authorities-tell-you-to-dissent/
************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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6 February, 2022
Living with the unvaccinated
CHRIS KENNY
When British Health Secretary Sajid Javid stood in the House of Commons this week he announced a major backflip for the trouble-plagued Johnson government and struck a blow for pandemic realism globally. “While vaccination remains our very best line of defence,” Javid said, “I believe it is no longer proportionate to require vaccination as a condition of deployment by statute.”
This was the end of vaccine mandates in Britain, as Javid announced consultations about “ending vaccination as a condition of deployment” across the National Health Service.
Reports suggest the health and aged-care sector already had lost more than 40,000 workers because of the mandatory jab policy and that if the deadline of last Thursday had been enforced up to 140,000 more health care workers would have been dismissed.
Rather than add to pandemic and health system challenges by creating a shortage of doctors, nurses, cleaners and orderlies, the Health Secretary chose to scrap the rule. Also, the medical grounds for imposing such mandates have evaporated, especially with the onset of the Omicron variant.
The argument that vaccinations are crucial in blocking transmission of the virus has fallen over. The proposition that you are vaccinating yourself to protect others no longer stands up.
This is clear to anyone looking at what is happening in Australia, with tens of thousands of new Omicron cases daily despite a vaccination rate of more than 90 per cent. That the unvaccinated are denied entry into some venues – let alone barred from work – because they might spread the disease is farcical; the virus is spreading well enough among the doubled jabbed, thank you very much.
In prestigious medical journal The Lancet this week, University of Colorado associate professor of infectious diseases Carlos Franco-Paredes shared the latest research on this topic from Britain, Israel, Texas and California.
He noted these studies showed “the impact of vaccination on community transmission of circulating variants of SARS-CoV-2 appeared to be not significantly different from the impact among unvaccinated people”.
Franco-Paredes drew two key conclusions: current “mandatory vaccination polices might need to be reconsidered” and, on the other hand, “mitigation practices” such as physical distancing and mask-wearing still would need to be followed, even in highly vaccinated populations. This is the contemporary reality. Experts have long suspected that this is the case – Covid-19 vaccines have been very effective in reducing the incidence of serious illness and death but not so in preventing infection and transmission.
The only burden imposed on society by the unvaccinated is a disproportionate load on our hospitals because of their higher risk of serious illness. But we could say the same for the overweight, smokers, drinkers and motorcyclists.
Not that the risks of serious illness for healthy adults or children are high, especially now with Omicron. The weekly epidemiology reports published by NSW Health show a dramatic drop in virus danger. Delta sent 10 per cent of cases to hospital, with 2 per cent ending up in intensive care units and one in every 100 dying.
Since late November the hospitalisation rate has dropped by a factor of 90 per cent to just 1 per cent, and only 0.1 per cent of cases require ICU, while the mortality rate is now running at 0.04 per cent.
Omicron is far more contagious but dramatically less dangerous than Delta. The numbers are far lower for healthy adults and children, of course, with most serious illnesses and deaths in the over-70s.
It is worth comparing all this with the national influenza report for 2019, which cited 30,000 hospital admissions from 313,000 notified cases – a hospitalisation rate of 10 per cent, similar to Delta. There were more than 950 influenza deaths, a mortality rate of 0.03 per cent, which is significantly less deadly than Delta but on a par with Omicron.
These comforting statistics reflect the benefits of widespread vaccination and improved treatments, as well as the milder variant. Little wonder Denmark has scrapped all restrictions and is no longer treating Covid-19 as a “socially critical disease”.
I write this week from home isolation because my 10-year-old son tested positive last weekend. He was ill with a fever for 24 hours – which is worse than most kids suffer – but has been robust all week and should be back out on the cricket field by the time you read this.
Yet his 24-hour illness has cost him and his brother their first week at school and kept his mum and me working from home all week even though we have not been able to conjure a positive test between us. This is not only unnecessary but, replicated everywhere, it is crippling the country.
With tens of thousands of often asymptomatic cases knocking out close contacts from work or school, the country is dislocated for no good reason.
We should not be far from a Denmark-style realisation where the symptomatic or sick stay home and the rest go about their business with due regard for social distancing and hygiene.
Yet most media and politicians are stuck in a theatre of paranoia that dramatises infections and heightens fears. Seldom is there perspective about how more than 400 people die in this country every day, most of them elderly, many in aged-care homes and often from respiratory infections.
In its pre-vaccine, Alpha phase, Covid-19 was a horrible threat cutting a swath through aged communities. But for years into the future it is likely to be one of the viruses we are alert to, keeping our vaccinations up to date, knowing it will be at least partly responsible, along with the flu and the common cold, for the deaths of some of our elderly. We need to concentrate on protecting these vulnerable cohorts.
Australian National University infectious diseases expert Peter Collignon has been a pragmatic and prescient voice for the past two years. He told me on air last week that we are seeing “much, much less deaths per person infected” and “the people who are mainly coming to grief, unfortunately, are those who are elderly, often with underlying conditions”.
Collignon also noted the unvaccinated figure “disproportionately” in ICU admissions and deaths. He says Covid-19 deaths will be with us for years to come and, to some extent, the virus will replace other ailments as a cause of death.
Former deputy national chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth told me vaccine mandates have a “time-limited role in a pandemic”. However, he believes Australia will need to put the Omicron wave behind it – probably within the first quarter of this year – before we consider ending existing mandates, with health and aged-care workers the last to be relieved of these requirements. Discussion of this practical reality is at odds not just with current media hysteria but with the way governments and the private sector are treating vaccines and the unvaccinated – politicians have demonised the unvaccinated.
In the latest high-profile case, former Port Adelaide AFL premiership captain Warren Tredrea has lost his job as a Nine News sports broadcaster in Adelaide because he refuses to be vaccinated. Yet if vaccination does not prevent infection and transmission, what is the argument for denying someone employment over their refusal to get the jab? The unvaccinated are putting no one at risk but themselves.
It has been obvious for almost two years that we will all be exposed to this virus, which is why we needed to learn to live with it. In Australia we gave ourselves a year of quarantine to keep the virus at bay until we got vaccines.
Yet look at the madness gripping Western Australia, where Mark McGowan’s Covid-zero delusion creates bizarre disruptions. Some schools, with single infections, are sending dozens of teachers and hundreds of students into 14 days of home isolation.
Perth’s Corpus Christi College had one student test positive, so 17 teachers and 212 students are now in isolation. WA Education Minister Sue Ellery helpfully said only the students needed to isolate, not their entire families.
Yes, Minister, I can imagine families choosing to banish their child to the pool room for a fortnight, excluding them not only from school but from the comfort of family. What callous, brainless tosh. On Thursday night a policeman entered a Catholic church in Perth during mass, checking on mask-wearing.
Instead of questioning this sort of futile and damaging pandemic management, or sharing the reassuring facts about coronavirus infections, our national political media obsesses over nasty text messages from two years ago and price checks in aisle five. Our media epidemic of superficiality directly affects our ability to deal with the pandemic.
The Twitterfication of our national debate is part of the reason that just a day after asserting the need to “get back to normal” the Prime Minister refused to criticise McGowan’s hard border. Does that mean Scott Morrison is the Prime Minister of just five states and two territories for now? Has Canberra no interest in uniting the nation? Was WA’s long-discussed secession as easy as that?
Consider for a moment how often premiers, including Victoria’s Daniel Andrews, have hidden behind their hallowed but never disclosed medical advice. Lately Andrews has been advocating a redefinition of full vaccination to include a third, booster shot.
But this week when Victoria’s chief health officer Brett Sutton was quizzed on this proposition, he revealed he had not been asked to provide any advice on that prescription. Ah, that infallible medical advice – hide behind it one minute, make it up the next.
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‘Real dog’s breakfast’: COVID-19 sceptics turn to online crowdfunding sites to raise money
A crowdfunding campaign that raised almost $180,000 to protest COVID-19 mandates has been shut down, amid concerns about the spread of COVID-19 misinformation on digital platforms.
The Oz to Canberra Convoy Official page on GoFundMe raised money from 2800 donations for supporters of a convoy of trucks and cars travelling to Canberra to protest COVID-19 vaccines and public health measures.
A GoFundMe spokeswoman said on Saturday the fundraiser had been removed for breaching the crowdfunding platform’s terms of service, and all donations had been refunded in full.
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Teacher questions how effective the mask mandate will be in high schools, as experts call for respirators to help prevent COVID spread
A teacher on Queensland's Sunshine Coast is questioning how effective the mask mandate will be when school starts next week, arguing students would not be wearing them most of the time.
Air quality experts have also called for more effective masks, respirators, to be worn, warning coronavirus was "potentially very transmissible" in a classroom setting.
Under the Queensland government's back-to-school plan, high school students and teachers must wear a mask unless they are seated or are able to maintain a 1.5 metres distance from others.
Carmel Walton, a secondary school teacher in Noosaville, said the mask protocol "seems completely pointless".
"As any teacher knows, the students are seated for the majority of the time in the classroom … so there's no mandatory masks happening at all," Ms Walton said.
"Then they're also saying the teacher doesn't have to wear a mask while they're teaching, which is the whole time inside the classroom as well — so I don't see when they think they're going to wear them."
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Judge blasts ‘rogue union’ and its boss for bad behaviour
The CFMEU has been branded a “rogue union” unabashed by its bad behaviour and its boss blasted as ”pointlessly flouting” his obligations under the law by a Federal Circuit Court judge in a scathing ruling handed down on Thursday.
The union has been ordered to pay almost $120,000 in fines and CFMEU Queensland boss Michael Ravbar more than $10,000 for breaching right of entry rules on the QPAC upgrade in November 2020.
But CFMEU assistant secretary blasted the decision as “gratuitous and over the top” and accused the judge of “editorialising”.
The court found that in November 2020, the union, Mr Ravbar and another official Andrew Blakely breached right of entry laws at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) upgrade construction site.
Breaches under the Fair Work Act related to not giving 24 hours notice of entry, failing to comply with the site’s occupational health and safety requirements, remaining onsite unlawfully and bringing up to a dozen people on site who were not workers and had not been inducted.
Judge Gregory Egan said the union had an “appalling and disgraceful record” of breaking the industrial laws and continued to do so “unabashed and unashamed”.
“There can be no doubt that the CFMMEU is a rogue union untroubled by its ongoing bad behaviour. It seems that it prides itself on its recidivism,” he said.
He also criticised Mr Ravbar for the actions, saying it was significant that he was the national vice-president and state secretary of the union at the time the breaches took place.
“He was well aware of the need for compliance by him with provisions of the (Fair Work Act), but he chose to pointlessly flout his obligation to do so,” Mr Egan said.
CFMEU assistant secretary Jade Ingham said the union would be appealing the decision.
“The decision is outrageous and completely over the top, and made even worse by gratuitous editorialising from the presiding judge,” Mr Ingham said.
“Lendlease had authorised the EBA meeting but had not informed workers of the venue. As a result the state secretary left the site a few minutes later than the agreed time.”
Construction watchdog Australian Building and Construction Commissioner boss Stephan McBurney said courts had repeatedly criticised the union’s behaviour but it showed no signs of changing.
“Mr Ravbar’s involvement demonstrates that the law breaking is carried out with the knowledge, endorsement and active participation of the most senior officials in the CFMMEU,” Mr McBurney said.
Mr Blakely was also fined $7992 for his involvement, with the total fine imposed reduced as he may have been “acting under the instruction or influence” of Mr Ravbar.
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Qld. Police have been warned they could face disciplinary or legal action for posting criticisms of the government or politicians on social media
Free speech?
Police have been warned they could face disciplinary or legal action for posting criticisms of the government or politicians on social media, with a new policy being sent out to officers.
The social media policy says Queensland police must not post criticisms of respective parties or policies that raise questions about the officer‘s capacity to work “professionally, effectively or impartially”.
It also bans them for posting or publishing derogatory comments about police service policies, procedures, operations and activities, as well as partner agencies.
The new policy comes after Commissioner Katarina Carroll unleashed on rogue officers making offensive social media comments about fellow officers and members of parliament, launching an investigation into “deeply concerning, nasty and defamatory” material.
In July she told officers she was investigating inappropriate content on external social media pages linked to current and former Queensland Police Service members.
One of the Facebook groups was understood to be Defend the Blue – a private group for police officers who used it to express frustrations with the government or the service hierarchy.
“Members may be subject to disciplinary and/or legal action for improper use of social media in a personal and non-work related capacity including, but not limited to, when using their own name, a version of it, a person or persons name/s which is not their own (with or without permission) and/or pseudonym/s,” the new policy says.
“A claim of anonymity may be irrelevant.”
The new policy has also told officers to put on the highest privacy settings possible on social media and warned them that messages sent in a private capacity in Messenger or WhatsApp could still result in dismissal.
It said officers could not create or manage unofficial social media police groups, pages or accounts and that personal or corporate accounts must not be used to “establish or pursue an improper relationship with any current or former victim, offender or witness”.
Bond University professor Terry Goldsworthy, a former police detective, said officers now had to be “apolitical” without engaging in any commentary.
He said the social media policy change was necessary and would “eradicate the keyboard warriors”.
“It’s risk management, they’ve been caught short with that Facebook group and now what they’ve done is put out a comprehensive policy that captures just about anything,” Mr Goldsworthy said.
“It would suggest that now if you are a police officer you wouldn’t want to be putting up any posts that has any kind of commentary or politics or government policy at all.
“I think the service had to do it, it’s all encompassing and it’s very limiting,” he said.
“The job of police is to enforce the mandate of the government which is duly elected by the people, it’s not there to offer commentary of it and if they’ve got issues or critiques they can be dealt with internally.”
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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4 February, 2020
What we really think about coal and gas
This is a laugh. The survey was commissioned by the greenie crooks at the Climate Council. As an old survey hand from way back, I know how you get the results you want from a survey. I also know how to guard against that and did so in my own surveys. But I see none of that in this survey
They may be hugely valuable exports, but new polling has revealed exactly what people in New South Wales and Queensland think about coal and gas.
Support for fossil fuels such as coal and gas appears to be tanking in Queensland and NSW, despite record prices being paid for the commodities overseas.
Australia’s resource and energy exports are expected to fetch $379 billion in earnings in 2021-22, up from $310 billion last year, the latest forecast from the Office of the Chief Economist shows.
But a new survey from YouGov commissioned by the Climate Council shows declining levels of support for fossil fuel industries, with fewer than one in five voters saying coal or gas should be an investment priority.
Surveying more than 2000 voters in Queensland and NSW, YouGov found massive support for renewables, with 60 per cent of respondents saying they should be a top government investment priority.
But coal was nominated as an investment priority by just 20 per cent of respondents in Queensland and 15 per cent in NSW. Gas was chosen as a priority by 15 per cent of respondents in Queensland and 17 per cent in NSW.
There were some discrepancies in views between the capital cities and the regions – support for coal was at 17 per cent in Brisbane but 28 per cent in outback Queensland – but in many instances the divide was slim.
Climate Council economist Nicki Hutley said the poll showed “people in NSW and QLD understand the era of coal and gas in this country is coming to a close”.
The results also showed it was not just so-called “latte sippers” who had concerns about fossil fuels, Ms Hutley said.
“We’re seeing strong agreement right across the board,” she said. “Whether it’s in NSW or Queensland, the majority are saying that our future prosperity lies in renewable exports or mineral critical exports such as lithium, not in exporting gas.”
The global value of critical minerals was expected to equal that of fossil fuels by 2040, Ms Hutley said, and Australians were becoming increasingly aware of the opportunities this presented.
“Losing coal … will be hard for people in that sector, and yes the government needs to support the transition, but it doesn’t mean that we’re going to fall into an abyss,” Ms Hutley said. “It’s quite the opposite. If we grab all the opportunities and become first movers [with renewables], there is a huge amount of economic opportunity for the taking.”
While the survey suggested a drop in support for natural gas, a spokesman for the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association (APPEA) said rates of domestic usage for the commodity remained steady. People aren’t disconnecting, in other words.
APPEA CEO Andrew McConville said other recent polling by JWS Research showed 74 per cent of people think there is a role for gas in Australia’s future energy mix.
“This isn’t a question about choosing one energy type or another,” Mr McConville said. “We will always need gas and the evidence shows there will be demand stretching decades into the future.”
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Questions not asked by the mainstream media
The questions put to Prime Minister Scott Morrison at the National Press Club this week, lobbed at him with all the grace and dignity of a Gazan teenager tossing a Molotov cocktail over a border fence, by those who are meant to be the cream of our nation’s journalists, ranged from the asinine to the fatuous to the repugnant. Well done, fellow scribes. Those questions do not bear repeating here, suffice to say that second-hand and unsubstantiated personal smears alongside ‘when did you stop beating your wife?’ style questions demeaned the press gallery far more than they did the Prime Minister.
Moreover, the contrast between those spiteful, innuendo-laden questions and the soapy froth with which the Canberra press gallery lathered and massaged opposition leader Anthony Albanese the previous week was, equally, an indictment on the so-called professional standards of those employed by the ABC and the left-leaning mainstream media, whose job (and in the case of the ABC whose legal responsibility) is to approach political debate in a fair and balanced fashion.
Yet again, those on the centre-right of politics are forced to ponder what on earth the Liberal party is up to. By refusing to de-fang (defund?) the national broadcaster after eight years in power, the government only has itself to blame for the constant attacks and political damage it and individuals within its ranks suffer at the hands of these hardcore, hard-left, single-minded political campaigners posing (not very convincingly) as responsible journalists.
How many times does the Prime Minister have to be mocked on the national stage before he and his minders realise that they don’t actually need to show up at leftist events like the National Press Club, or trot on down to Ultimo to face ritual humiliation, in order to talk to mainstream Australians?
But above all, what this recent charade demonstrated is the utter failure, as Ramesh Thakur spells out in his column this week, of the Fourth Estate to hold this federal government and indeed all our state governments accountable where it genuinely matters; namely, on the clear abuse of power and authoritarian over-reach during the ‘once-in-a-century’ Covid pandemic. And the economic pain and destruction needlessly wrought on everyday Australians and small businesses through lockdowns, internal border closures and curfews.
This theme is picked up by Mark Latham as well, as the NSW One Nation leader in his column ridicules the Covid bedwetters supposedly from the centre-right of politics who have become captive to the endless fear-mongering of the overly-zealous health bureaucrats and their supine political overlords.
One Nation’s Senator Pauline Hanson has called for a Royal Commission into the abuses of power during the Covid pandemic, and this week on our Flat White online magazine our Editor-in-Chief Rowan Dean listed just a few of the questions that such an inquiry might address. Alas, as readers have pointed out, with the Liberals, Nationals, Greens and Labor all basically on the same ticket when it comes to supporting excessive Covid restrictions over the last two years, it is unlikely a parliamentary majority will ever agree to a Royal Commission of any sort regarding the pandemic. Instead, the narrative will continue around what Sanjeev Sabhlok identified on Flat White earlier in the week as ‘the big lie’: that Covid is a terrifying and existential once-in-100-year pandemic requiring the dismantling and suspension of democratic safeguards and pre-planned measures.
As Rocco Loiacono writes in this issue, already one well-respected media outlet, the British Medical Journal, has broken ranks with the mainstream leftist media and is demanding that all relevant Covid vaccine data be released for scrutiny.
That our own supposedly elite press galley appears more interested in trivia and smears is a crying shame, but entirely predictable. There are many, many questions that need to be asked about the pandemic and the way our various governments reacted to it. The appropriateness of the severity of the restrictions and harm done to everyday Australians, not to mention our long-term economic well-being, can only be properly judged by a full and frank appraisal of the severity of the disease itself and an honest appraisal of how wrong the models were from reality. Basic questions such as the exact numbers of those who died ‘with’ as opposed to ‘of’ Covid must be answered.
Every Covid death is a tragedy. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that our politicians and their bureaucratic bodies are hell-bent on continuing to sell us the fear and panic that has been repeatedly peddled throughout the last two years. This they do as a means of justifying measures which at the time were highly questionable (just check our back copies) and now look evermore reprehensible and ill-judged.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/02/questions-not-asked/
********************************************The invisible pandemic: Surprising study of random Aussie homes finds four out of five Covid-positive people have NO symptoms
Queensland's top doctor has released a study of random homes that found four out of five Covid-positive people had no symptoms at all.
The state's Chief Health Officer Dr John Gerrard unveiled the research, which saw health workers randomly survey 117 houses on the Gold Coast over consecutive weekends in January, at the state's Covid update on Thursday.
The survey is the first of its kind in Australia to find out how many people have Covid-19 and don't know it.
On January 22, when the current Omicron wave was at its peak in the city, 20 people out of 117 tested came back positive from PCR tests.
Only four of those 20 were showing any symptoms, Dr Gerrard said, and only two knew they were positive. 'To recap, four out of five had no symptoms and nine out of 10 did not know they were positive. 'It is quite extraordinary.
'There are people walking around the Gold Coast who had no idea they were infected...hence the importance of masks even when you feel well.
'A lot of people that have been infected are completely unaware they were infected. That number is significant.”
The survey was repeated on the following weekend, when 11 out of 143 people tested positive. Of those, six reported having symptoms.
The revelations came as the state recorded another nine deaths and 8643 new cases.
The deaths included one person was in their 60s, two in their 70s, three in their 80s, one in the 90s and two over the age of 100.
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Reef notes
Jennifer Marohasy
With the recent A$1billion announced to save the ‘dying’ Great Barrier Reef, I wonder how many realise there has been an increase in the amount of coral dug-up and sold overseas as part of the aquarium trade – the quota is now 200 tonnes each year. This is not a lot considering the size of the entire ecosystem that is visible from outer space, but it is probably more than is going to be replanted with the A$1 billion.
When the announcement of the new funding was made, there was commentary that this is about the upcoming federal election and keeping the Cairns-based seat of Leichhardt and, also, satisfying the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation monitors, who will soon be taking another look at Australia’s environmental policies. The focus has been on climate policies. There will be funding for replanting corals, ostensibly dead from bleaching – from global warming. No mention anywhere that each year more and more tonnes of coral, many of the species listed as endangered, are being excavated and exported. With the new funding for replanting, this could end up being one big hole-digging and filling in operation.
The UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee is considering a draft ruling declaring the Great Barrier Reef to be a World Heritage Site in danger. University Professor Terry Hughes, a well-known proponent of ‘The End is Nigh’, was on national radio saying that the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Area deserved to be downgraded by the United Nations because he didn’t like our climate change policies. It had nothing to do with the state of the coral reefs, not even those being sold overseas.
Journalist Fran Kelly made the very reasonable comment that a listing should have something to do with actual impacts.
‘…if we look at it more broadly though, Terry, I mean, if climate change impacts are used as a justification for an endangered listing, then every reef must be, therefore, listed in danger because climate change is a problem [all over the world]. Every World Heritage Site that is affected in any way by climate change, must be listed as endangered. Is that the logical extension of this?’
The University Professor gave a very political reply.
‘Not really. There are 29 World Heritage Sites that have coral reefs. Four of them are in Australia. But other countries that are responsible for those World Heritage properties have much better climate policies [not necessarily better reefs] than Australia does. Australia is still refusing to sign up to a net zero target by 2050, which makes it a complete outlier. And I think this draft decision from UNESCO is pointing the finger at Australia and saying, If you’re serious about saving the Great Barrier Reef, you need to do something about your climate policies.’
Australia is a rich country with a population concentrated in the south – a long way from the corals. Commercial fishing is heavily regulated. Tourism is heavily regulated. Every town has a sewage treatment plant. High-tech agriculture is the other side of heavily mangroved-river catchments. Temperatures are monitored at eighty sites within the Great Barrier Reef by the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences, and individual records do not show a long-term warming trend. There are no studies showing either a deterioration in coral cover or water quality.
Back in 1998, soon after the World Wildlife Fund Inc. launched its campaign focussed on the impacts of fishing and agriculture on the Great Barrier Reef, WWF revenue from the federal government increased seven-fold from less than $500,000 to more than $3.5 million in just four years.
In April 2018, then Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull approved a $443 million grant to the tiny Great Barrier Reef Foundation with $86 million for ‘administration’.
Those who believe in the competence of government and the integrity of science might assume that in the process of grant distribution, scientists identify and prioritise the big remaining research questions, through some process that included rigorous checks and some quality assurance. But we know from Peter Ridd’s book Reef Heresy: Science, Research and the Great Barrier Reef that there is none – no accountability, no quality assurance, no system for prioritising.
But not even $443 million seems like a great deal of money any more, not with the recently announced $1 billion.
With some of this new money going to go to the consortium that want to replant corals there will be jobs for scuba divers, and it will be filmed by underwater videographers, marine scientists will collect data around the program and boats will be chartered. There will be money for almost everyone who wants to participate – if they are vaccinated, believe in human-caused climate change and that the Great Barrier Reef is dying.
There may even be money for the ‘coral fishery’ people – that is the euphemism for the trade in rare and endangered corals. Never mind corals are not fish! An October 2021 assessment of the Queensland Coral Fishery by the federal Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment explains there is a quota of 200 tonne total allowable catch, split between ‘specialty coral’ (30 per cent) and ‘other coral’ (70 per cent).
Many of the corals are listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). The assessment report does mention that there is some concern around the lack of harvest limits for CITES-listed coral species and the lack of adequate mechanisms to enforce harvest limits. It also explains that the take of corals has been increasing. But not a mention of this 200-tonne quota by Fran Kelly or Terry Hughes on Radio National. It was somewhat brazen of Professor Hughes to suggest that it is not the state of the corals but politics that should dictate how a coral reef is listed by the United Nations.
And I can’t image that his team at James Cook University will be measuring the area of coral replanted relative to the area dug up over the next few years.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/02/australian-notes-311
************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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3 February, 2022
Fears over Aboriginal child removals as report reveals 'endemic racism' in WA Department of Communities
This is the old "Stolen Generation" myth again. There is one and only one reason why so many Aboriginal children have been relocated: Aboriginal families are very hard on their children. Parents -- particuilarly fathers -- are often neglectful and too often violent to their chidren. Relocating them is a mercy to them
The author of the 2019 report says she does not think any of her 49 recommendations have been acted on by the WA government
The report by Indigenous Psychological Services (IPS), which was commissioned by the department to examine its cultural competency and child protection standards, was finalised in October 2019 but never released publicly.
The recently leaked report painted a damning picture of the department, including evidence of "endemic racism", and found that of the 295 child protection staff who were surveyed, not one felt culturally safe in the department's workplace.
Psychologist and Nyamal woman Tracy Westerman, who headed the report, told the ABC that racism was a driving factor behind the over-representation of Indigenous children in state care.
Despite only 4 per cent of the WA population being Indigenous, the Department of Communities' 2017-2018 annual report showed 55 per cent of the children in state care were Aboriginal.
By 2020-21, the annual report stated that of the 5,344 children in care, 3,056 were Aboriginal — an increase of more than 2 per cent to 57.2 per cent.
Aboriginal Family Legal Service WA chief executive Corina Martin agreed with Dr Westerman, saying she expected rates of Aboriginal children being removed from their families to continue rise.
"[The department is] more in line with assimilation than they are with trying to help families," Ms Martin said.
"I think what they're trying to do is make a black mother become a white mother and it's not going to work."
Family Matters report released
The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children entering the child protection system could increase by more than 50 per cent over the next decade without "wholesale change to legislation, policy and practice", a report finds.
Department of Communities assistant director general for Aboriginal outcomes Cheryl Smith said claims that child removal rates would rise, were not backed up by child protection data.
She said in the last reporting year, there was a reduction in the total number of Aboriginal children in care for the first time since 1997.
"Encouragingly, this trend has continued into the new reporting year, with the current number of Aboriginal children in care fewer than 3,000 children for the first time since 2019," Ms Smith said.
However, while the overall number of Indigenous children in state care fell slightly, the proportion of Aboriginal children compared to non-Indigenous children in care increased
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Ord Irrigation Scheme to expand into the NT, AAMIG selected as developer
Amazing that this old dream lives on. You can grow almost anything at the Ord but it is remote from possible markets so transport costs make its products uncompetitive in price. Last I heard, the only thing they were successfully selling was Sandalwood -- used as incense in Asia
The long-awaited expansion of the Ord Irrigation Scheme into the Northern Territory is a step closer, with AAM Investment Group chosen as the preferred developer.
Historically known as Ord Stage 3, the Keep Plains Agricultural Development is a 67,500 hectare parcel of land in the Northern Territory adjacent to Western Australia's Ord Irrigation Scheme.
AAM Investment Group (AAMIG) is an Australian-owned investment company that already owns the nearby Legune cattle station.
Its portfolio also includes broadacre mixed farming and livestock operations near Forbes in New South Wales, cattle and sheep operations near Blackall in Queensland and large-scale poultry operations in South Australia.
The company says it is aiming to start with dryland farming on the Keep Plains and to eventually develop irrigated crops like mangoes, bananas, nut trees, maize and other fruit and vegetables.
Opportunities for jobs and innovation
AAMIG and the Northern Territory Land Corporation will now enter into negotiations to finalise a Project Development Agreement.
NT Farmers Association chief executive Paul Burke said the "major agricultural development" would bring "significant long-term economic as well as regional development and investment outcomes".
"The flow-on will create new jobs and training opportunities and grow northern Australia's capacity to lead with new innovation, technology and infrastructure, and environmental stewardship," he said.
The land release is understood to be the biggest of its kind ever seen in the Northern Territory.
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Corporates face climate crackdown from big investors
Australia’s biggest polluters face a crackdown from a powerful group of climate investors who have vowed to push for new executive leaders if companies fail to move to net zero emissions or signal enough ambition on green transition plans.
Climate Action 100+, a global investor group which controls $65tn in assets, plans to boost its focus on how big business and emitters are responding to the threat of climate change amid concern a flurry of net zero announcements may not be followed through with significant action in the short and medium term.
Integrating climate risk into financial accounts will be among the focus areas in 2022 annual general meetings, according to Climate Action 100+ which includes Australia’s biggest superannuation funds including AusSuper, Cbus and UniSuper.
“In 2022, investor signatories expect more climate-focused shareholder resolutions and higher votes, including a laser focus on how company net zero goals are being met with short, medium and long-term emissions reduction targets aligned with the Paris Agreement,” the group said in its 2021 progress update.
“An increasingly critical and hot topic, they also anticipate more resolutions on integrating climate risk into financial accounts and oversight of such risks by audit committees and auditors.”
Australian corporates are increasingly under pressure on climate change as institutional investors such as Climate Action 100+, backed by domestic superannuation funds, use their power to hold companies to account.
Companies in the spotlight in Australia include AGL Energy, BHP, Rio Tinto and Origin Energy while globally 111 of the 165 focus companies have now set 2050 net zero targets.
The group last year started probing the credentials of non-executive directors serving on Australian energy companies, questioning whether stacking boards with oil and gas veterans was appropriate given escalating climate pressures. It’s indicated it will step up that focus into 2022.
Investors “have made it clear that if companies aren’t willing or able to respond to the challenge of moving towards a net zero transition, they will look for new leadership. Where signatories don’t see required progress from companies, the next step is to ask board directors to respond to these challenges and bring about required change.”
Some 70 new investors joined the Climate Action 100+ group in 2021, marking 170 per cent growth since 2017.
One of the world’s biggest money managers, State Street Global Advisers, put Australian companies on notice earlier in January that they need to come clean on how they intend to hit net zero targets, arguing that climate change represents a “systemic risk” that has the potential to destroy value.
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Home schooling hit hip pockets as education costs soar
Home schooling cost many families $10,000 extra as working parents were forced to take unpaid leave during pandemic lockdowns last year, analysis reveals.
Educating a child at home during the Covid-19 pandemic cost parents an extra $1856 in direct expenses, on average, the Futurity Investment Group calculated for its annual Planning for Education index.
The cost included $400 for electronic devices, $201 on extra software, apps and textbooks, $293 to set up a home classroom and $433 in extra food and electricity costs for children at home all day.
One in three parents who took holidays or unpaid leave to help home-school a child reported earning “substantially less’’ – with half losing at least $10,000 in wages.
The report estimates that for a child starting school this year, the average cost of a private school education across Australia will soar to $349,404 over the next 13 years of schooling once tuition fees, textbooks, technology, uniforms and tutoring are taken into account.
For students in “free” public schooling, costs will total $83,869 – about $6450 a year – including uniforms, excursions, contributions, textbooks, stationery, technology and external tutoring.
A Catholic school education will cost $143,944 on average over 13 years of schooling.
Sydney has the nation’s most expensive schooling, the analysis compiled from the federal government’s MySchool website data and a survey of 1800 Futurity Investment members, shows.
A private education in Sydney will average $459,236 compared with $404,373 in Melbourne and $273,280 in Brisbane.
Private schooling costs far less in regional and remote areas, averaging $143,701 over 13 years because of the high number of low-fee independent schools.
In Adelaide, a private school education will cost $284,690, on average, compared with $215,554 in Perth.
Brisbane has the costliest Catholic school education, averaging $158,199 – well above the national average or Sydney’s average of $132,048.
In Sydney, where academically selective public schools are concentrated in wealthy suburbs, parents will spend the most for state schooling – $92,375 compared with the lowest cost of $59,162 in regional Victoria.
Public school levies will average $442 this year in Sydney, but parents will pay a further $1891 on outside tuition, $735 on school camps and sporting equipment, $525 on electronic devices and $473 on uniforms and textbooks.
Futurity Group chief executive Kate Hill said the cost of education had risen at more than double the rate of inflation over the past decade.
“Education costs, including school fees, outside tuition, software and electronic devices are demanding a far greater share of the family budget than in the past,’’ she said. “We know many Australians are struggling with the cost of living.
“Covid-19 has only exacerbated the financial challenge, with parents forking out hundreds of extra dollars on unplanned education-related expenses at the height of the pandemic.’’
The Futurity Group has launched a “tuition loan’’ so cash-strapped families can spread the annual cost of schooling into weekly or monthly payments.
Brisbane banker Livian Lian is spending $20,000 a year educating her six-year-old Year 2 student Claire – including $10,000 in private school fees and $10,000 in extra-curricular activities. “We decided a private school gives a better environment and facilities but we find the school’s education is not quite enough so she also learns piano, ballet and ice skating; she’s also learning Chinese and drama as well as tuition.’’
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A straw man defence of "Dark Emu"
Peter O'Brien points out the lies in a Leftist fantasy:
Recently in a comment thread, a Spectator Australia reader took me to task for claiming in the promotion for my book Bitter Harvest – the illusion of Aboriginal Agriculture in Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu, that:
Pascoe postulates that rather than being a nomadic hunter-gatherer society, Australian Aborigines were actually sedentary agriculturalists with ‘skills superior to those of the white colonists who took their land and despoiled it’.
My interlocutor claimed that I had constructed a straw man argument and that Pascoe had not made this claim but had merely highlighted that Aboriginal culture was more sophisticated than mainstream Australians had given it credit for.
I could not let that go unchallenged because this is a defence of Pascoe that has been deployed by a number of his cheer squad, notably in the aftermath of the release of Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers – the Dark Emu debate by anthropologist Dr Peter Sutton and archaeologist Dr Kerryn Walshe.
It is a straw man defence that has allowed incurious cheerleaders to gloss over the fact that Drs Sutton and Walshe described Dark Emu as ‘not a scholarly work’ or the fact that I have methodically checked almost all of his sources and proved that he has deliberately misquoted or misrepresented them.
Despite taking what should have been massive hull damage below the waterline, the good ship Bruce Pascoe sails serenely on, kept afloat by the strenuous bailing activity of, inter alia, the ABC, and Wikipedia.
So let me put the evidence that Pascoe did make extravagant claims about Aboriginal culture. The back cover blurb for Dark Emu tells us:
Pascoe puts forward a compelling argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer label for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating and storing – behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag.
In other words, Pascoe was rejecting the notion that Aborigines were predominantly hunter-gatherers. In fact, as I show in my book, the evidence Pascoe is able to amass does not support that conclusion. He provides plenty of evidence that Aborigines harvested native grasses and tubers such as murnong. But that is just as true of hunter-gatherer societies.
What would distinguish hunter-gatherers from agriculturalists would be sowing of seed. Pascoe provides only three instances of Aboriginal people being observed sowing seed. They all occur in the twentieth century and they are all small scale broadcast by hand. Sutton and Walshe describe this as spiritual propagation. In other words, it is a ceremony designed to petition the spirit ancestors to send them a plentiful supply of food.
The ABC, one of Pascoe’s staunchest defenders, also thinks he was claiming that Aborigines were agriculturalists. From the ABC Education website:
In 2014, Bruce Pascoe wrote a book called Dark Emu that challenged the belief that the First Australians were hunter-gatherers. In researching his book, Bruce examined the journals of the early explorers and found evidence of a complex civilisation that was using sophisticated technologies to live, farm and manage the land.
And Pascoe himself said in a 2018 talk:
In 2014 I wrote a book, Dark Emu, which exploded the myth that Aboriginal people were mere hunters and gatherers and did nothing with the land. I wrote the book because I found it hard to convince Australians that Aboriginal people were farming. Using colonial journals, the sources Australians hold to be true, I was able to form a radically different view of Australian history. Aboriginal people were farming. There’s no other conclusion to draw.
Well, there’s no other conclusion to draw if you accept unquestioningly Pascoe’s grotesque distortion of his sources. Even if you believe that Pascoe was claiming no more than that Aborigines were, on the whole, hunter-gatherers but significantly (in a statistical sense) also employed agricultural techniques, he fails to prove his case, not by sloppy scholarship but by blatant deception.
If you would like to see the full extent of this deception you will have to read Bitter Harvest. There are still a few copies left.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/02/a-straw-man-defence-of-dark-emu/
************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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2 February, 2022
Australian navy's new ships are crap
A result of relying on the bungling British
Australia’s new $45bn Hunter-class frigates will be “substantially” slower, have a shorter range than originally intended, and could be vulnerable to detection by enemy vessels, a classified Defence Department report reveals.
The Defence “Engineering Team Assessment” of the frigates program, undertaken last November, warns the ships could also be less safe for crews, with the potential for sailors to become trapped below deck by floodwaters in “credible damage conditions”.
The 36-page report sets out an array of serious problems with the “immature” British design, which is being substantially modified to meet Australian requirements, and warns that the government’s contract with shipbuilder BAE Systems provides “very limited means … to influence contractor performance”.
BAE won the contract in 2018 to build nine anti-submarine frigates in Adelaide to replace the Anzac-class fleet, with the first ship due to enter service in 2033.
The company claimed its design was the most advanced and stealthy on offer. But unlike its competitors, Spain’s Navantia and Italy’s Fincantieri, BAE’s design was an unproven one.
Taxpayers could now face a drawn-out design and construction process – with escalating costs and delays – like those that dogged other recent Defence projects including the recently dumped French submarine program.
The report, seen by The Australian, is scathing in its criticism of the British contractor, which will be responsible for building the nation‘s nuclear submarines if Australia goes with the UK’s Astute-class boat.
It blasts slow feedback and “confusing and incoherent” provision of data by BAE, and says the company’s design process “does not adhere to normal system engineering practice”.
The report says Australian defence companies are being passed over, with BAE claiming local industry content requirements are “a complicating factor for system design maturity”.
The document, marked “sensitive”, warns that the inclusion of a US combat system and Australian-designed CEAFAR2 radar have pushed the ships’ “space, weight, power and cooling margins” to their limits, posing “significant potential risk”.
The proposed ships are now “substantially heavier” than BAE’s original Type-26 frigate design, which has also faced delays and design headaches, requiring a modified hull to accommodate the additional weight and design changes.
The report warns that the changes have caused serious design issues that have cascaded through the program, driving up electrical power consumption with “a negative impact on speed and range”, and causing problems with the cooling of the vessel’s combat system.
“The overall power demand of the Hunter-class frigate still exceeds its generating capacity … and is exacerbated in tropical and antarctic environmental conditions,” it says. “Vessel maximum speed at start of life will be substantially lower than comparable RAN surface combatants.”.
The report adds that the heavier-than-anticipated ship will face “increased fuel consumption and running costs, particularly in the 17-18 knots range”.
The shortfall in the vessel’s available power will force commanders to decide whether to “prioritise power allocation to either the CEAFAR2 Radar or the propulsion system depending on the ship’s operational requirements”, the authors warn.
The “System Design Review Exit” report says the ship’s mast design could increase its radar cross-section, and the additional thrust required from its propellers could breach the contract’s “underwater radiated noise” requirements, making the vessels more vulnerable to the submarines they are supposed to hunt.
The Defence engineering team says it has “low confidence” that the vessels will meet Royal Australian Navy weight-margin standards, leaving the first three ships potentially “unable to respond to technological surprise with future capability upgrades”.
It also warns that the new design of the ship’s topside mast is so immature that there is a risk it could destabilise the vessel “past the point where a feasible ship design is possible”.
The modified design’s additional displacement and draught have called into question previous assessments – based on the Type-26 – of its seakeeping performance. The need to fit in additional power and cooling equipment is reportedly degrading “the overall liveability of the ship‘s habitable space”, while the document warns of design compromises in the provision of fixed firefighting systems.
Last July, Defence Minister Peter Dutton approved a delay in commencement of construction on the first boat, from December 2022 to June 2024, but the report says this deadline is now tight.
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Erratic output from renewables requires Australian government agency to spend a lot on bringing in other electricity supplies
Costs incurred by the body that keeps the lights on across Australia's major electricity systems are skyrocketing as surging levels of renewable energy increasingly challenge the security of the grid.
Following another year in which record amounts of renewable energy were added to the national electricity mix, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) is pushing for a big hike in funding to oversee one of its key jurisdictions.
The agency wants $156.2 million over three years to 2025 — a 66 per cent jump on the previous period – to operate the main electricity market in Western Australia.
In a submission to WA's economic watchdog, the AEMO said it needed the extra funds to help cope with the increasing complexity and volatility in the market as more and more renewable energy flooded onto the system.
"While the growing level of variable renewable generation is helping the [WA system] transition towards clean, low-cost generation, it can pose operational challenges," it said in its submission.
The proposal mirrors the AEMO's actions in Australia's biggest power system — the National Electricity Market (NEM) – where the organisation has faced steeply rising costs to stabilise a grid that services almost 10 million customers.
As part of its most recent snapshot of the market, the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) noted the AEMO was spending tens of millions of dollars on contingency measures to ensure the NEM did not run short of power at vulnerable times.
Much of the outlay was on back-up capacity — provided either by power plants that could generate electricity or major users who could scale back consumption when needed — for times when the grid was "under stress".
The AER noted that the so-called reliability and emergency reserve trader scheme had been in place for a number of years but had rarely been used until recently.
It said the scheme had now been invoked in all the biggest states, including South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, while its total cost between 2017 and 2020 had reached $110m.
On top of this, the regulator said the AEMO was having to intervene in the normal functioning of the market by calling on more expensive power plants that could help with the stability of the grid.
The regulator noted these interventions had "risen sharply in recent years" as the AEMO ordered some generators, such as gas-fired power plants, to stay on while telling others, including wind and solar farms, to back off at certain times.
These interventions had come "at significant cost to consumers", the AER said, with the AEMO shelling out $50m in 2018 and 2019 to compensate affected generators.
Despite efforts to control these costs, the AER noted they were higher still in 2020 at $66m.
"Aside from formal compensation, the use of constraints or directions penalises consumers by driving up wholesale electricity prices," the AER said in its report.
"For example, by restricting wind or solar output that might have zero marginal costs, AEMO directions may lead to dispatch from synchronous (coal- or gas-fired) generators with higher costs."
The AEMO said the growing challenges of keeping the lights on were highlighted in its latest snapshot of the market, which showed record volatility in the three months to December 31.
Minimum demand for electricity from the grid fell to new lows in SA, NSW and Victoria as cooler weather subdued demand and growing amounts of rooftop solar pushed out fossil fuel-fired generators.
Across the NEM, the average output of renewable energy also increased from 31.6 per cent to 34.9 per cent, with maximum output reaching as high as 61.8 per cent for a short time on November 15.
The AEMO said the combination of factors helped to push wholesale power prices into negative territory, where generators have to pay someone to take their electricity, a record number of times.
At the same time, the market body noted its own costs "remained elevated" for the quarter as it scrambled to ensure there was enough back-up to meet demand when renewable generation fell away or when there were other shocks to the system.
Synergy, the WA state-owned power provider that would be up for the biggest share of the AEMO's cost increase in the west, declined to comment.
The Australian Energy Council, which represents big electricity providers, said the AEMO's spending plan reflected the "dramatic shift in the energy mix and significant government reforms".
But the council also said it was critical to ensure the AEMO's spending was transparent to ensure it was kept to a minimum.
"WA's Economic Regulation Authority … plays an important oversight role [in the WA market] and we expect to make a detailed submission once the ERA has released its draft determination," a spokesman said
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Many lessons to learn in improving education
Australia’s low ranking in education performance is one of the greatest dangers to our long-term national prosperity as we enter a new skills-based industrial revolution.
This national danger has triggered much-needed efforts to reform curriculums. But the NSW Productivity Commissioner Peter Achterstraat’s research reveals an even deeper problem: our systems of recruiting and training teachers are simply not working and he recommends fundamental change.
The Achterstraat plan concentrates on NSW but the teacher recruiting and training mistakes he isolates are duplicated around the nation.
The Achterstraat conclusions were publicised last year but over the new year break the NSW commissioner sent me a personal copy of his massive document entitled “rebooting the economy”. And to make sure I understood what was happening he highlighted key sentences!
And while I was looking at the education sections that dominate Achterstraat’s 370-page productivity document, across my desk came an article from Malcolm Elliott, the president of the Australian Primary Principals Association. Elliott was criticising NAPLAN but the thrust of his remarks showed that those at the top of the teaching profession do not recognise the validity of Achterstraat’s warning.
Accordingly, we are headed for a nation-changing debate that will determine our future. I hope both major political parties address the education crisis at the next federal election.
Around the nation many parents don’t have Achterstraat’s research but recognise that something is wrong in the way their children are being taught the basics.
Some are paying large sums to buy dwellings in selected catchment areas so they can send their children to a government school that they believe has attracted excellent teachers who excel in teaching the basics – reading, writing, science and mathematics. Others with the same view send their children to selected private schools.
Achterstraat does not make detailed evaluation of curriculum issues but says NSW needs to redesign and modernise its curriculum, providing strong foundations for lifeline learning. It needs to cut “inessential teacher workloads” so teachers can focus on the core of their jobs: teaching our children.
The NSW experience shows that simply spending money on education does not solve the problem.
Federal and state governments increased spending on each NSW student by 22 per cent in the decade to 2018-19 but not only did NSW performance decline but states like Victoria, where less money was spent, performed better than NSW.
The proportion of NSW students failing to achieve minimum standards across the three PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) domains has risen from 32 per cent in 2006 to 42 per cent in 2018. Achterstraat believes these bad educational outcomes are surface manifestations of fundamental flaws in teacher recruiting and training.
He emphasises that the quality of our schooling system ultimately rests on the quality of classroom instruction by our teachers and school leaders. Learning is usually determined by how teaching is delivered in classrooms and how the curriculum is conveyed to students.
I isolate some of the areas where Achterstraat says the system is failing and then summarise some of the Achterstraat solutions which would revolutionise Australia’s teacher recruitment and training. The faults:
* Australia has introduced waves of reform demanding that new teachers must meet increased academic requirements to enter initial teacher education programs.
But these more onerous and longer qualifications for new teachers have unintentionally raised barriers for talented people entering the profession.
Worse, the evidence suggests that the educational gains from longer teaching pathways are minimal or even nil.
* Some teachers realise that they are poorly suited to teaching only upon entering the classroom and extra university training delays this discovery. The messages from their bad experience adversely impacts teacher recruitment.
* Like any other worker, a teacher cannot improve “without setting goals, striving to achieve them and receiving insightful, regular and constructive feedback plus correctional help”. But currently goals and benchmarks are often poorly defined, making it very difficult to identify relevant evidence and measure performance against them. A teacher with relatively low-performing students may be driving strong improvement while a teacher with high performing students may not be contributing much to their performance.
* Australia is not matching the world in high-performing education systems to supplement standardised teaching, with indicators that help show what teachers and schools are contributing to student learning growth.
* In many areas of Australia, including NSW, teacher standards and teacher accreditation has seen weak implementation and there is only a loose link between creditation and teacher effectiveness. It becomes difficult to identify relevant evidence and measure performance against them.
The solutions:
* Given the teacher entry system is not working as planned, it needs to be reviewed to make it less onerous, but identifying better teaching prospects and broadening the source of quality teachers with employment-based teaching pathways.
* Systems of classroom observations including peer-to-peer and supervisor observations need to be implemented.
* A separate set of aims should be established for school principals that reflect their unique role and makes them accountable for improving school teaching. They must report annually on the implementation of these performance measures.
Australia’s problem is that we have a substantial number of teachers who have not been trained along these lines and will vigorously oppose it.
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Britain's backdoor tax on Australian wine
Because Australian wine tends to be more alcoholic than other wines, the British want to tax it more
Treasury Wine Estates, the largest producer of Australian wine bound for the British market, has begun lobbying for the British government to reconsider a new tax regime for wine imports – one the company says will wipe out any benefit from the free trade agreement.
In a submission to British Treasury officials, TWE chief executive Tim Ford writes that the company supports the objectives of the new tax system – an attempt to simplify complicated alcohol duties – but says the result will largely penalise Australia for its climate, soil and grape varieties.
Mr Ford also warns that the current proposal is not workable in practice because the alcohol content in Australian wines can shift several times a year, making measurement and labelling difficult.
Australian winemakers are warning that the overhaul of alcohol duties, increasing the tax paid on drinks with an alcohol content higher than 11.5 per cent, will make their products more expensive and drive away British consumers. Britain is the largest export destination for Australian wines.
The submission notes that 62 per cent of TWE’s sales by volume have an alcohol content of between 12 and 15 per cent. European wines have a far lower alcohol level. TWE, whose global brands include Penfolds, Wolf Blass and Lindeman’s, says that the new regime is unfair.
The submission states: “Environmental conditions largely determine alcohol content in wine and are not readily modified after grapes are harvested. Hence, unlike some other beverage types that can innovate towards lower alcohol content, an increased duty burden placed on higher alcohol still wines (is) inherently a tax unavoidably borne by Australian producers.”
“Under the current proposal … the average price of Australian wine imports to the UK will rise, and to such an extent that the forecast price drop for Australian wine resulting from A-UKFTA will be completely reversed,” it reads. “A standard bottle of almost any Australian wine would be more expensive in the UK, not cheaper, as had been hoped by TWE when A-UKFTA was first proposed.
“TWE believes that further work needs to be done to modify the proposed new duty tax system to ensure that non-tariff, ‘behind the border’ measures do not distort the impact from the reduction in tariffs and retail prices that would result from A-UKFTA’s introduction.”
TWE has engaged CT Group, previously Crosby Textor, for advice during the consultation process, as it considers how to lobby British parliamentarians. CT has extensive links with both the Morrison government and Boris Johnson’s administration in London.
Under the British proposal, the tax impost would increase with every 0.5 per cent increase in the alcohol by volume. In its submission, TWE argues that this should be increased to every 1 per cent – meaning wine producers would pay on average 10p per bottle less for every band increase.
TWE has also asked for labelling to allow for a wider variance from the alcohol content in the bottle – permitting up to 1 per cent rather than the proposed 0.5 per cent. By increasing the margin for error in labelling, producers could more easily fall into a lower taxing band.
The TWE submission points out that the proposed 0.5 per cent band is in keeping with strict European Union standards, which it says is out of step with the rest of the wine-producing world.
A labelling tolerance of 0.8 per cent was agreed to under the Australia-UK free trade agreement. This is already lower than the amount permitted in the Australian market: 1.5 per cent.
The submission states: “That the UK would want to simply maintain an approach more akin to the EU’s wine regulations, and for no perceivable benefit, seems antithetical to the stated objective of the current duty reforms.”
Australia is the clear market leader for British wine imports, with a 23 per cent share in the year to September 2021. Italy follows with a 13 per cent share.
Because much of the Aussie wine exported is in bulk and later bottled in Britain, TWE argues that by making life harder for Australian producers, Britain could be hurting its own manufacturing industry.
This is point not lost on the British Wine and Spirit Trade Association.
In its January submission to a British committee inquiry it noted: “Australian wine is the number one ‘country of origin wine’ on the UK market by volume, supporting an extensive range of jobs throughout Britain, from bottling and logistics to marketing and retail. It is a vital import to the UK economy and worth £1.5bn in UK sales.”
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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1 February, 2022
Brisbane's Citipointe Christian College defends demanding parents sign contract on student gender identity, homosexuality
Why is this controversial? There are plenty of other schools the sexually abnormal can go to. Let them choose a school that accepts them and leave Christians free to obey the repeated statements in the Bible about sexual deviance being an abomination to God. See Romans chapter 1. It's not as if anybody is compelled to go to that school.
And the limits the school imposes could well make it popular with many parents, Christian or not. Homosexuality is not a lifestyle many parents would want for their children.
Up until relatively recently, the American Psychoogical Asociation categorized homosexuallity as a mental illness -- until Leftist pressure got that expunged. The long term adverse consequences of homosexuality remain, however. There have always been homosexuals in my social circle and I have seen the sadness that eventually comes to them. Women, by contrast, have always been a source of happiness to me.
I sent my son to a Catholic school precisely because I thought he would get Christian teachings there. He did. Even under Pope Francis, church teachings on homosexuality have remained unwavering in opposition to it
Citipointe Christian College on Brisbane's southside sent families a contract last Friday and said parents must sign the contract or unenrol their child from the school.
More than 26,000 people have signed an online petition demanding the college recall the enrolment contract, with organisers arguing the school is "using their religious beliefs to openly discriminate against queer and trans students".
In an e-mail to parents on Friday, principal Pastor Brian Mulheran said the new clauses in the enrolment contract were included to "ensure that we retain our Christian ethos, which is the foundation of what has made the College what it is today".
The contract states "the college will only enrol the student on the basis of the gender that corresponds to their biological sex" to maintain consistent with the college's "Christian Ethos Requirements".
The contract goes on to state that the college "acknowledges the biological sex of a person as recognised at birth and requires practices consistent with that sex".
Another clause states the college has the right to "exclude a student from the college" should they not adhere to the "doctrinal precepts including those as to biological sex".
To keep their child enrolled at the school, parents must agree with a set of "religious beliefs" laid out in a "Declaration of Faith" attached to the contract.
Part of the declaration states that "any form of sexual immorality (including but not limited to; adultery, fornication, homosexual acts, bisexual acts, bestiality, incest, paedophilia, and pornography) is sinful and offensive to God and is destructive to human relationships and society".
'We weren't given any warning that this was happening'
A parent, who is also a teacher at Citipointe and did not want to be named, said she was "saddened that students who are struggling or going through their journey of finding out who they are were going to be encased in more vocabulary of them being 'other' and not accepted".
"As an educator whose priority it is to look after a child, and as a parent wanting to bring up a young [child] to be a functioning member of this society, I knew I was in trouble as to whether I could sign this document," she said.
She said she was "extremely angry" about the timing of the contract's release because students were starting school today. "I felt very much backed into a corner," she said.
"We, as the staff, weren't told about [the contract amendments]. I only found out about it because I was a parent."
She said she was now looking for another school for her child because she was unable to sign the amended enrolment contract.
"I am having to ask [the child] now to leave their friends through no fault of [their] own. We weren't given any warning that this was happening, and we've been told you either sign it or you have two weeks leeway to go," she said.
"I feel like my options are very, very limited."
She also said this would have a wider impact on the community at Citipointe.
"It is going to be so divisive in the school. It's going to separate people. And that's not my understanding of what the Christian faith is all about," she said.
A 2018 Citipointe alumnus Bree Leitch, who identifies as bisexual, said she was "pretty floored" when her parents received the amended contract on Friday.
She said her brother has been attending the school and he was supposed to start Year 12 today.
"I'm worried about what my brother is going to do and how he's going to get his education and graduate this year, and I'm really wanting to do something about it," Ms Leitch said.
Ms Leitch said she came to terms with her bisexuality when she was in Year 12 at Citipointe.
"I remember when I was in school, I would always think, 'If I was gay, I would never come out' … that would just be so hard. So scary," she said.
"And you just don't know what would happen, whether you'd get kicked out, there was just so much fear there.
"And having to just keep that part of me completely silent, and question it alone without being able to talk to anyone about it is pretty scary."
Ms Leitch said the amended contract was a "horrible thing" but "it means that it's something we can fight directly."
"It's something that's there and it exists, and it's black and white. And we're able to be say 'this is not OK'… we have a platform to build off of now," she said.
Ms Leitch said she wanted queer students at Citipointe, and other schools, to know they were not alone.
"You're valid and these things they're saying is not true. Don't let it change how you see yourself and don't let it make yourself think that you're not worthy. This whole community of people will stand behind you and support you, and we're doing to do everything we can to change this experience for you."
School has 'certain freedoms' under law to include clauses
In a statement to the media, Principal Pastor Brian Mulheran said the college "does not judge students on their sexuality or gender identity and we would not make a decision about their enrolment in the college simply on that basis".
He said the college wants to give parents and students the right to make an "informed choice" about supporting the school's approach to Christian education.
"We have always held these Christian beliefs and we have tried to be fair and transparent to everyone in our community by making them clear in the enrolment contract," he said.
"The college, through the freedoms afforded to it by law, has outlined our common beliefs and practices, so that parents can choose for their children to be educated at Citipointe and join our faith-based community."
Mr Mulheran said the school had sought legal advice in amending the contract, and argued it had "certain freedoms under international law and under Commonwealth and state legislation" which allowed it to include the new clauses.
Independent Schools Queensland chief executive Christopher Mountford told ABC Radio Brisbane independent schools were "their own entities" and could "deliver their own enrolment contract".
"The schools are being transparent and up-front in their enrolment contracts around the issues and beliefs that they have as a school, and that's consistent with other independent schools as well, and those contracts are legal under the current legislation," he said.
"The question of whether or not the school should or could do these things, is best answered by thinking through 'what are the school's ethos and processes they're putting forward to the community?' Is it reasonable and legal, what they're putting forward, and then can parents choose to engage in that school or not?"
He said it was important to have diversity across schools to allow parents to send their child to a school that "aligns with their beliefs and values".
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Queensland scientists discover previously unknown genes linked to depression
Queensland researchers have discovered 23 more genes linked to a person's risk of developing major depression, in a breakthrough they hope will further reduce any stigma associated with the condition.
The findings take the number of known genetic variants associated with depression to more than 100, with the scientists also hopeful that understanding more about the biological basis of the psychiatric condition may pave the way for better treatments and early intervention.
Scientists analysed the DNA of more than 13,000 people who participated in the Australian Genetics of Depression Study, comparing their genes with a similar number of volunteers who had no history of psychiatric illness.
Researchers found evidence that genes implicated in brain development also played a role in major depression, with their findings published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.
'Depression is not something to feel ashamed or guilty about'
The study's lead researcher Brittany Mitchell, from QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, said people with the highest number of known genetic markers linked to the common mental health condition were 6.5 times more likely to have experienced major depression than those in the lowest 10 per cent of biological risk.
She said they were also more likely to have developed depression at a younger age and to have had multiple depressive episodes in their lifetime.
"Mental health disorders are still really highly stigmatised and that needs to change," Dr Mitchell said.
"We really hope that this research sheds light on the fact that depression has biological causes and it's not something to feel ashamed or guilty about — it's just like heart disease or cancer."
Dr Mitchell, who conducted the research as part of her PhD, said the study suggested unique genetic risk profiles were associated with different types of depression, such as seasonal affective disorder, but more research was needed to pinpoint the key genes involved.
No 'one-size-fits-all answer' to depression
University of Queensland-based statistical geneticist Enda Byrne, who was also involved in the research, said it showed depression was a complex condition with no "one-size-fits-all answer".
"This research could one day allow for future gene-mapping technology to deliver a more personalised and targeted treatment plan and potentially assist in developing new drug treatments or a repurposing of current drugs for better outcomes," Dr Byrne said.
Dr Mitchell said the next step for the research was to identify more genes involved with major depression and to understand more about the genetic pathways involved in different types of the condition.
But Dr Mitchell said the scientists needed to recruit more people with depression into research studies to increase the power of their findings.
The Australian Genetics of Depression Study is the local arm of an international scientific collaboration aiming to identify genetic risk factors associated with depression. It receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).
Adults with a history of depression interested in participating in further research can visit the Australian Genetics of Depression study website.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-27/qld-research-links-more-genes-to-risk-of-depression/100783908
****************************************Speaking up about abuses actively discouraged in Queensland
A former senior media adviser to the Palaszczuk government has alleged he was forced out of his job after raising concerns about “unethical, immoral and at times potentially illegal behaviour”.
Neil Doorley, who worked for four cabinet ministers between 2015 and 2018, has backed calls for a commission of inquiry into political interference with watchdog bodies, alleging a “dark culture” that discourages public servants from speaking out.
The veteran Nine Network reporter, who later worked for News Corp, sued the state for compensation over his dismissal by the Premier’s office in 2019, believing his penchant for speaking up on alleged bad behaviour cost him his job.
The state government is understood to have settled the case in 2020 and awarded Mr Doorley compensation.
Before being sacked, he challenged, among other things, the use of ministerial resources that he believed at times were “outside the scope of official duties”.
After putting some concerns in writing, Mr Doorley was told his emails were not “helpful”.
He says several ministerial staff decided to leave quietly rather than commit “career suicide” by complaining.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk continues to resist calls for a commission of inquiry into integrity after the heads of two Queensland statutory bodies alleged interference in their offices. Integrity Commissioner Nikola Stepanov tendered her resignation last week while former state archivist Mike Summerell revealed he was pushed out of his job by the government last March.
Both have backed calls for an inquiry.
Dr Stepanov, who has made a formal complaint of alleged interference in her office, at the weekend took to her LinkedIn page to encourage people to “continue to be brave” and speak openly.
In a separate development, Crime and Corruption Commission chair Alan MacSporran also quit last week after a bipartisan parliamentary committee gave a scathing assessment of his organisation’s performance.
Ms Palaszczuk said her cabinet would on Monday consider launching an inquiry into the structure and powers of the CCC, but indicated it did not plan to extend the scope more widely.
“Queensland has robust mechanisms and checks on integrity and accountability in this state,” she said.
“We have the CCC, which is a standing royal commission.”
She said a routine five-year review into the Office of the Integrity Commissioner was finished last year and is being examined by a parliamentary committee.
Concerns about interference raised by Dr Stepanov and Mr Summerell are being considered by the CCC and Ms Palaszczuk said she could not comment further.
She said despite integrity concerns raised this week, public servants should be comfortable coming forward with complaints.
“We should have a public service that can give fearless, frank advice. I have always had that opinion,” Ms Palaszczuk said.
Mr Doorley said he was “buoyed” after Ms Palaszczuk implored public servants with complaints about her government to come forward, as “the dark arts practised behind closed doors continue in ministerial offices”. “The concept of acting in the public good at all times as a guiding principle has been seemingly long lost.”
“I’m more than happy to help the Premier “do better” when it comes to her government’s track record with integrity and accountability,” he said.
“I’ve no doubt my offer will be quickly dismissed – unlike the growing push for her to make this government responsible for its actions and the consequences of those actions – a fundamental part of healthy moral practices and making sure there’s a clear line between what’s right and wrong.”
Mr Doorley - who worked for Ministers Steven Miles, Mick de Brenni, Leeanne Enoch and Craig Crawford - said he was weighed down by the guilt of failing to make a formal complaint.
“I just had no confidence it would go anywhere,” he said.
His concerns echoed those raised by Mr Summerall last week who alleged he was pushed out of his job because of his stance on integrity and independence.
“For many senior public servants in Queensland the concept of an impartial, apolitical and professional public service is career suicide,” Mr Summerall said.
Dr Stepanov, who will continue in her role until July, made complaints to the CCC last year after officers from the Public Service Commission went to her office and seized a laptop without her knowledge.
She had earlier made requests to the PSC and the Department of Premier and Cabinet for a forensic examination of the laptop, which she suspected had highly sensitive material transferred onto it during the 2020 state election.
In her social media post, Dr Stepanov said integrity in the public sector was achieved through” robust public discourse”.
“Part of the obligation and responsibility that comes with independent roles like mine is the need to be frank and fearless, at all times,” she wrote.
“The public expects no less; nor should they.”
Dr Stepanov said media reporting on integrity issues had created a public ‘space’, for issues and strengths in governance and public administration to be raised and more discussed openly.
“We change by learning about how we can do things better, in the public interest. When we don’t square up and face things head on, we miss our chance to bring about meaningful change.”
“Let’s continue to be brave and to have those conversations.”
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Why good news on Covid goes unreported by journalists of the left
Twitter is a good window into the private views of journalists. Many have used it to slam the Morrison government for every pandemic failing – real or imagined – while defending every action by Labor premiers, even the indefensible.
It is little wonder Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce was hammered for telling the ABC’s new RN Breakfast host Patricia Karvelas on her first day in the job on January 24 that no one was dying with Omicron.
Karvelas, rightly, pulled him up and he corrected his error. The Twitter pile-on exploded.
Yet Joyce had a point, even if some enmeshed in Covid catastrophism may struggle to see it.
Separating domestic pandemic numbers out to before and after Omicron reveals some interesting facts about the variant and its predecessors here.
On December 1, there had been a reported 211,654 cases and 2011 deaths since early 2020.
By Australia Day last week, case numbers had blown out to 2.29 million and deaths stood at 3230. So, an extra two million cases and 1200 more deaths, all compressed into less than two months.
As doctors have noted, it is likely many more people during the Omicron wave have been infected than the reported total. Most will have been people who remained asymptomatic.
Yet even using the official federal department of heath total, the fatality rate stands at 0.14 per cent across the pandemic. Over the past two months that rate is about 0.06 per cent.
The US Centers for Disease Control says flu deaths over 20 years to 2019 averaged 1.8 per 100,000. In a bad season, flu can kill more than 1000 people in Australia, which was about the annual Covid fatality total pre-Omicron.
The danger for the media in over-hyping Omicron risks? So many people have now had Omicron that Australians are waking up: this is not the catastrophe many journalists are pretending. Many of us have seen family members and friends test positive only to be fit and well again a day or two later. It might not be the vibe in newsrooms, but at the dining tables in country NSW where I spent the silly season, it is what people are saying.
While the sheer numbers of cases have produced high absolute numbers of hospitalisations and deaths compared with previous waves of the virus, there has been far too little media focus on the good news: that for healthy vaccinated people, especially those who have had a third booster shot, Omicron is not much of a threat.
How then to judge the extreme hostility to Morrison of “lockdown luvvie” journalists who insist he is personally responsible for a “let it rip” strategy that is destroying the nation’s health system and needlessly killing Australians? Sure, as this column remarked last week, the federal government has made mistakes and been slow to learn some lessons, especially in aged care.
But opening up after reaching double dose vaccination targets of 80 per cent was part of a national plan that state and territory governments agreed to with the federal government. The Labor states of Queensland and Victoria have stuck with the plan and opened at a similar pace to the Coalition states of NSW and South Australia.
Many journalists who had tweeted support for every Covid restriction, however ill-advised, by the Andrews and Palaszczuk governments during 2020 and 2021, have avoided highlighting the high infection numbers, hospitalisations and deaths in Victoria and Queensland since the states’ reopening. Only Morrison is blamed.
Yet while turning a blind eye to infection rises in the two Labor states that have opened, they continue to heap praise on WA Labor leader Mark McGowan for keeping his state shut to protect his citizens.
This is blatant politicisation of the pandemic by journalists of the left. It is no different from the politicisation of Covid by some medical professionals who just bat for team Labor. Every journalist and every doctor had known for months the national agreement was to open up and learn to live with Covid.
The truth is, despite obvious mistakes, Australia has done better than most of the world. We have moved up the Worldometer global table since Omicron and last Friday sat at 29 because case numbers have risen tenfold. But the nations near us on the table in total infection numbers all have much higher death totals than the 3000-odd recorded in Australia.
Switzerland, Japan, Portugal and Israel have similar total cases to Australia, but deaths at 12,751, 18,559, 19,703 and 8513 respectively. On the key deaths per million indicator, we sat at 128, Switzerland at 1457, Japan at 147, Portugal at 1941 and Israel at 913.
Yet on Ten’s The Project and on much of the ABC, Australia’s pandemic performance is reported as a disaster. High-profile journalists continue to advocate for harsher restrictions.
No one knows how the pandemic will pan out, but as this column suggested before Christmas, we may end up thinking Omicron was a blessing that, together with third vaccine doses, improved national immunity. Remaining closed forever will not prevent the disease eventually hitting, as Hong Kong, and to a lesser extent Taiwan, now seem to be finding out.
Nick Coatsworth, infectious diseases specialist and former federal deputy chief medical officer, made the sensible point on Twitter on January 21: “Delay WA opening until 80 per cent boosted, which will occur some time around May, to coincide with the winter flu season, which may well be worse this season due to lack of, you guessed it, immunity from recent infection. Courageous indeed.”
Journalists have known for at least 18 months that most people recover from Covid and those who don’t are overwhelmingly the elderly and those with severe comorbidities. Such deaths are a tragedy but the fact remains the average age of all Covid deaths here before Omicron was slightly higher than average life expectancy of 82.9 years.
Australia reports an average of 160,000 deaths a year, or about 440 a day. The main killers remain heart disease, stroke and cancer. So since the first Covid case here, about 320,000 Australians have died over two years but only about 3200 with (rather than necessarily from) Covid.
The media focus on Covid does not help the lives of the vast majority of Australians for whom better diets, more exercise and less alcohol and tobacco would be the most beneficial changes they could make. And getting a third dose of a Covid vaccine.
Back to Twitter for a sensible last word. Professor Greg Dore, of the Kirby Institute, wrote on January 25: “Lazy optimism — ‘hopium’ – is problematic. Lazy pessimism – constant worst-case scenarios, selective bad outcome posting and riding uncertainty for all it’s worth – also a huge problem, particularly given the community fear and anxiety it generates. Optimistic realism’s the go.”
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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