This document is part of an archive of postings by John Ray on Australian Politics, a blog hosted by Blogspot who are in turn owned by Google. The index to the archive is available here or here. Indexes to my other blogs can be located here or here. Archives do accompany my original postings but, given the animus towards conservative writing on Google and other internet institutions, their permanence is uncertain. These alternative archives help ensure a more permanent record of what I have written

This is a backup copy of the original blog







30 June, 2022

Census 2021: Boom time for middle Australia

The past five years have been revealed as a period of booming prosperity for middle Australia, with census data revealing the average Australian’s income increasing by 20 per cent between 2016 and 2021, or at twice the pace of living costs.

The median weekly income lifted from $662 in 2016 to $805, or equivalent to $41,900 a year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Canberrans enjoy the highest average annual gross personal incomes in the country at $62,600 – 50 per cent above the national figure – according to the census, while Tasmanians earned the least, at $36,500.

After the ACT, the next highest earning jurisdictions were the resource-rich but sparsely populated Northern Territory – at $48,700 on average in 2021 – followed by similarly blessed Western Australia, where the median personal income was $44,100.

Among the big east-coast states, the averages were $42,300 in NSW, $41,800 in Victoria, and $40,900 in Queensland. South Australians on average earned $38,200 a year.

Victorians reported the fastest-paced growth in median incomes for individuals, up 25 per cent over the five years, and the NT the slowest, at 7 per cent.

Alongside booming housing and superannuation wealth, the ABS data painted a picture of five years of climbing national prosperity and rising real incomes.

Housing stress fell despite the strong upward trajectory for property prices, as rents failed to keep up with income growth, and home loan rates trended lower despite a climbing indebtedness.

Economists said this year’s surge in inflation to multi-decade highs, alongside what is anticipated will be a string of Reserve Bank rate hikes, presented a more challenging outlook over the coming 12-18 months.

The figures include the adult population from 15 years to above 85 years, including those who were unemployed or retired.

The data revealed about 40 per cent of Australian households reported annual personal income of more than $100,000, and a similar proportion said they earned under $78,000.

By household, the ACT recorded the highest median total personal income, at $123,400, and Tasmania the lowest, at $70,600.

Associate professor Ben Phillips at the ANU’s Centre for Social Research and Methods said the census showed, at least on the surface, that “it’s been a very good five years in terms of household living standards for a typical Australian family”.

He said there was little in the initial census data to show the trends around inequality, although the ABS’s use of the median figure meant the outcome had not been distorted by large moves at the top end of the income scale. “At least middle Australia is doing reasonably well – we don’t know about lower income groups, or in the regions,” he said.

“Overall, it’s a pretty rosy picture, although obviously with some potential storm clouds with rates and the general cost of living increases. There are more concerns about where we’re heading, rather than where we’ve been.”

The ABS figures revealed a lower proportion of Australians in housing stress.

The lift in median personal income since 2016 was twice the growth in average household rents, and three times that of mortgage costs.

Households spending more than 30 per cent of their income on mortgage payments – a common threshold for stress – fell from 19.3 per cent in 2016 to 14.5 per cent in 2021. The equivalent share or renting households under stress fell from 36 per cent to 32.2 per cent, the census showed.

Mr Phillips said “we’ve heard a lot about mortgage stress. For some people, this is true, like first-home buyers getting into the market. For the average punter on an existing rental arrangement or who got their housing loan five, 10, 15 years ago, they have done OK”.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/census-2021-average-australians-annual-income-hits-41900/news-story/d59647e991f6b5bca6ad61e21657297b

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Decline of Christianity is a loss for everyone

Amid all the social trends that this week’s census data reveals, none is more significant than the truly seismic collapse in religious belief, especially in Christian faith.

Doubtless, many will welcome this. Indeed, why should any of us have the “assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things unseen”, given – as we now know from a myriad of official ­reports – that the successors of St Peter have been guilty of the most appalling human betrayals. Even if there was once a Nazarene who said to his friend “you are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”, surely it was an impossible hope to think that any human institution could last millennia, especially when it has so often fallen so far short of its ideals. But lest we merely note this as just another one of the many interesting contemporary social trends, let’s consider the centrality of Christian inspiration to Western civilisation; and ponder the impact on the institutions and the attitudes we value, if the underlying religious convictions that created them are rapidly fading away.

Fifty years back, in 1971, 87 per cent of Australians identified as religious, and overwhelmingly as Christian. Now it’s just 54 per cent. And here’s the really striking feature: only five years ago, 52 per cent of us identified as Christian. Now it’s just 44 per cent. That’s an almost 20 per cent decline in Christian belief in just five years. Some of that will be people who don’t worship regularly anymore and feel fraudulent in ticking the religion box even though their faith is still with them. For others it represents a clear rejection of organised religion. Five years back, only 30 per cent of us identified as having no religion. Now it’s 39 per cent. That’s a 30 per cent leap in just five years, making no religion the fastest-growing “creed” in the country.

Why does that matter? It may not be fashionable to say so, but the way we live is unimaginable without a Christian cultural foundation. Our democracy, for instance, rests on the notion that everyone is equal in rights and dignity, something that’s come down to us through the Christian gospels. It’s on this very principle, as an example, that I reject the idea of a race-based body in our Constitution in the form of the Indigenous voice to the parliament and it’s disappointing to see some religious leaders support it because it’s an anathema to the fundamentals of Christian faith.

Elsewhere in our culture, our justice system rests on the notion that we should treat others as we’d be treated ourselves; again, something that’s come down to us through Christian teaching. Our sense of community too rests on the notion that we should “love our neighbours as we love ourselves”. It’s a commandment that lies at the heart of our volunteerism and philanthropy.

Then there’s the not insignificant matter of what religious organisations contribute in terms of social uplift. Beyond a values-based education, they run an abundance of health and community services. To reference the largest Christian denomination, the Catholic Church, as an example, there are 80 Catholic hospitals across the country and 25,000-plus aged-care beds in Catholic nursing homes, as well as social welfare bodies and charities with a broader Christian inspiration – from the Salvation Army, to the St Vincent de Paul Society, to Anglicare, to Lifeline, and Alcoholics Anonymous – all organisations that are generally thought to be serving Australians well, however discredited the zeitgeist might find the faith which inspires their good works.

For several decades, Christianity has been giving way to other religious and cultural traditions. The federal parliament might still start with the Lord’s Prayer but only after an acknowledgment of country. Christian beliefs and Christian representatives are routinely mocked and ridiculed in the public square (the witch hunt against Cardinal George Pell is only the most extreme instance) in a way that other faiths (Judaism perhaps excepted) never would be. And this can be expected to intensify, given that most schools are now not only indifferent but often hostile to Christian faith, and often ignorant too, to Christian knowledge.

Rightly, young Australians are taught to respect the Dreaming stories and Indigenous spirituality. But how many would be readily familiar with any of the Bible stories other than the Christmas one, despite their centrality in our culture? How many would understand the significance of Easter, except as a holiday with too much chocolate? Of course, faith is a matter of spiritual conversion that can’t be learnt like a lesson, but any Australian who’s not at least familiar with the gospels is culturally impoverished, even if not always spiritually worse off.

Tellingly, the census data this week revealed that mental illness is now our most prevalent chronic health condition (ahead of arthritis and asthma) and doubtless this owes much to the decline of the beliefs that gave the lives of our forebears spiritual comfort and purpose. As an imperfect Christian myself, who doesn’t always agree with the teachings of my faith, I don’t claim to know how an increasingly god-less ­society might be re-evangelised; just that there’s so much that we’ll miss when it’s gone, as individuals and as a society.

It’s worth noting another key feature of the census, the fact that a larger proportion of our population is born overseas than in any other developed country. More than 50 per cent of us are now foreign-born or have at least one ­foreign-born parent – and that’s much less, these days, in the UK or New Zealand, and increasingly in India and China.

Again, on the issue of the voice, creating two classes of ­Australian by virtue of their race risks unsettling the great multicultural nation we have become with the implicit message that only those with a demonstrated Aboriginal genealogy are legitimate; that the rest of us are somehow less worthy.

It goes without saying that professing religion doesn’t make anyone a better person. Still, in their own ways, every faith calls us to be better. Religious or not, Australia remains a wonderful country and the best place in the world to live. But there’s plenty to work on if we are to stay that way, and much we should protect.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/decline-of-christianity-is-aloss-for-everyone/news-story/cff5e22baadb0ed0dee99747fb06b8c1

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A huge Marxist influence pervades education today

The NSW Liberal Senator Hollie Hughes gave a speech to the Sydney Institute identifying why the Scott Morrison government was defeated in the recent election. In doing so, she suggested that many young voters have been influenced by ‘an education system basically run by Marxists’.

There’s no doubt the popularity of the Greens Party and the so-called Teal independents was especially strong among voters under the age of 24 and with higher levels of education. There’s also no doubt since the late 60s and early 70s Australia’s education system has been infiltrated and dominated by the neo-Marxist inspired cultural-Left.

Despite the ALP’s education minister Jason Clare describing Senator Hughes’ comment as ‘just crazy’, the reality is those in control of Australia’s schools and universities have given up any pretence of being impartial, balanced, and objective.

As detailed in the chapters on school and tertiary education published in Cancel Culture and the Left’s Long March, Australia’s education system has long been captured by neo-Marxist inspired Critical Theory and cultural-Left ideology dedicated to overthrowing the status quo.

A commitment to a liberal education dealing with what TS Eliot describes as ‘the preservation of learning, for the pursuit of Truth, and in so far as men are capable of it, the attainment of wisdom’ has long been jettisoned in favour of using education to overthrow capitalism and undermine Western societies denounced as Eurocentric, racist, and misogynistic.

The school curriculum, in areas like Climate Change, gender and sexuality, multiculturalism, and Indigenous studies, is dominated by the cultural-Left. Generations of students have left school convinced about the impending apocalypse caused by man-made global warming, that gender and sexuality are social constructs and Western Civilisation is riven with structural sexism, racism, and xenophobia.

In her 1983 speech to the Fabian Society Joan Kirner, one-time Education Minister and Premier of Victoria, argues education has must be reshaped as ‘part of the socialist struggle for equality, participation and social change, rather than an instrument of the capitalist system’.

University faculties preach a rainbow alliance of liberating ideologies ranging from deconstructionism and postmodernism to radical gender, feminist, queer, and post-colonial theories. Trigger warnings, safe spaces, and diversity guidelines based on identity politics and victimhood abound.

Such is the destructive impact of cultural-Left ideology on universities, the ANU’s Pierre Ryckmans in his 1996 Boyer Lectures argues universities have long since been deprived of their ‘spiritual means of operation’. Ryckmans concludes the ‘main problem is not so much that the University as Western civilisation knew it, is now virtually dead, but that its death has hardly registered’.

For those who have read the Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, it should not surprise the cultural-Left has long since targeted education as a key institution in its long march to overthrow capitalism.

Central to the Manifesto is the conviction, ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.’ Capitalist society subjugates and exploits workers and the aim of the communist party is to overthrow capitalism and achieve a socialist utopia where conflict disappears and all are free.

Marxists argue that instead of education and culture being inherently beneficial or worthwhile, capitalist society and the bourgeoisie use both as instruments to enforce their domination and control. Given its impact on workers, culture is condemned as ‘a mere training to act as a machine’.

Marx and Engels argue concepts like culture, freedom and the law are ‘but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and your bourgeois property’ and communism’s goal is ‘to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class’.

While published in 1848, the Manifesto continues to have a profound impact on schools and universities in Western societies like Australia. Drawing on Louis Althusser’s concept of the ideological state apparatus, where education is employed to impose capitalist hegemony, the argument is curriculum must be radically reshaped.

Instead of being objective and impartial and dealing with wisdom and truth, knowledge is seen as a social construct employed by the elites to indoctrinate students and future citizens to accept as normal what is inherently unjust and inequitable.

Since the late 70s, the Australian Education Union has argued students must be taught Australian society is characterised by inequality and injustice and teachers must decide whose side they are on in the battle against oppression.

The Australian Association for the Teaching of English, instead of formal grammar and syntax and enduring literary works, champions critical literacy based on the works of the Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freire. An approach where literary works are deconstructed and critiqued in terms of power relationships and students are conditioned to be new-age, cultural warriors.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/06/marxist-education-senator-hughes-might-be-right/

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The Teals as populists

Commentators on the hard-left love to throw around the word ‘populism’ as a sneer word to attack conservative movements or politicians. If you don’t like Donald Trump, you can dismiss him with a wave of the hand as a populist. 

But are the Teal independents the real populists? In his book The Global Rise of Populism, Benjamin Moffitt argues that there are certain traits associated with typical populists. One is claiming that we are in a state of crisis, facing a life-threatening emergency. Does that sound like the Teal climate alarmists? 

Another is persuading people that they (the populists) are not part of the establishment – and here we have the Teals making a song and dance about being political virgins unstained by the inadequate climate targets adopted by the major parties. 

Populists are also likely to be drawn towards authoritarianism – such as forcing us all out of our (evil) petrol cars. 

And populists tend to promote very few policies. Not for them the messy business of foreign affairs, national security and economic management. And that’s the Teals, isn’t it? Give them drastic climate action and a federal ICAC and their political philosophy is complete. 

Narrow interests and an emotional appeal – does that sound like manipulative ‘populism’? It certainly sounds like the Teals

https://spectator.com.au/2022/06/language-17/

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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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29 June, 2022

Alarming statistic reveals the depths of Australia's housing crisis as more than one million homes remain empty while renters struggle to find a place to live

This mismatch is almost entirely a government creation.  As I said previously:

Only a minority of these homes will be actually unused but some will be  -- particularly homes owned by people living overseas.  Some owners are so wary of the unrecoverable damage that tenants can and do sometimes inflict that they regard protecting their investment as a higher priority than renting it out for income.  

And given the extremely pro-tenant laws, who could be blamed for not wanting to tangle with tenants?  Landlord protection laws would put most of the properties into the rental market but there is no prospect of such laws emerging.  Government meddling in the market is once again producing perverse behaviour.  Legislation designed to help tenants in fact hurts them.  At the very least, it pushes up their costs

I in fact have a rental property that I do not rent out  even though it is little used.  I prefer to keep it available for occasional use by family rather than bother with tenants and all the "protections" that come with them.  I am not even allowed to bar pets these days.  Awful of me but if you smell what some pets do to carpet you will understand.  I have been a landlord.  I know.

If tenants want more choice of housing, they should be telling governments to back off but it's the opposite that's being advocated

Australia's housing crisis has been laid bare with new Census data revealing more than one million homes are sitting empty as renters struggle to find a place to live and first home buyers are locked out of the market. 

Some desperate Aussies have even been forced to live out of caravans and tents, as they battle soaring cost of living pressures and one of the tightest rental markets in the nation's history.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed earlier this month, the national vacancy rate had dropped to just 1.1 per cent in April.

Census data released on Tuesday by the ABS, uncovered about one-in-10 Aussie houses - believed to be holiday homes and investment properties - are currently vacant.

Australian National University demographer, Dr Liz Allen, told The Project she's shocked by the contrast between the haves and have-nots.

'Let me tell you, it's a punch in the face for all those Gen X's and Millennials who have no hope of ever owning their own home,' she said. 

'What this Census does is allows us to bare witness in real time, to the impacts Covid had across a wide range of things in Australian society.' 

'This is by far and away a global first and something that the world will look to, to examine the impacts of Covid,' Dr Allen added. 

The survey uncovered that of the 10.8 million private dwellings counted, 1,043,776 were vacant the night of Census.

Dr Allen added: 'The over one million homes should definitely be a priority for Governments across Australia to consider how we can truly make Australia fairer and redress housing inequality.'

She said that this can be achieved by considering this large chunk of homes that are 'just waiting for someone to move in.' 

The Census identified more than 58,000 people were living in caravans, while almost 30,000 were living on houseboats.

The survey also revealed the ability for Aussies to own their home has dropped 10 per cent over the past 25 years, from 41.6 to 31 per cent.  

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10960139/One-million-vacant-homes-Australia-2021-Census.html

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New '$100M senator' gives first interview since election victory

After four weeks of 'sleepless nights'—as the AEC counted preferences; Ralph Babet finally made it across the line, taking a seat in the Australian Senate 'for the freedom movement'.

Dubbed the $100M senator, referencing the United Australia Party spend, Babet gave an exclusive first interview to Rebel News.

"I wanted to give you guys [Rebel News and Real Rukshan] the first scoop because you always present both sides of the argument", Babet said.

The newly elected senator says it's his mission to 'unite the freedom movement' in the lead-up to the Victorian State election.

"I believe the freedom movement was a little fragmented", he added.

Barbet went on to passionately urge Australians to get politically active.

"You need to get off your behind, and you need to work. Because if you want change. If you want real, measurable change, it comes from you. It doesn't come from me. It comes from you. So get up there. Do something about everything you hate that's happening in our world right now."

https://www.rebelnews.com/ralph_babet_first_interview

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Rainbow tyranny at universities

Universities should be impartial when it comes to active ideological disagreements, and they should certainly not cede that impartiality in order to side with a position in opposition to the rights of members of their community who they have publicly claimed to support. The first is anti-democratic, the second is hypocritical and unethical.

University impartiality is important because it facilitates pluralism within the academic community.

A report on global democracy released in March found that democracy is on the decline and dictatorship is on the rise, with democracy having backslid to 1989 levels. One shift thought to be responsible for this is ‘toxic polarisation’ and one solution, according to politics professor Matthew Flinders at the University of Sheffield, is for universities to operate as ‘sites of democratic socialisation’ by committing to pluralism as part of their existing commitment to freedom of speech.

If you head into the University of Melbourne campus today, you will find the ‘inclusive’ redesigned Pride flag at every entrance to the university, as well as unfurled down the side of one of its outward-facing buildings. On the surface, the message might seem innocuous: the university supports lesbian, gay, and bisexual people (the rainbow part of the flag), trans people (the pink, blue, and white part of the flag), and ‘queer’ people of colour (the black and brown part of the flag).

Let’s focus on the pink, blue, and white part: the trans flag. This flag was featured at the ‘Stock Out’ protests lead to the resignation of Professor Kathleen Stock from her position at the University of Sussex; used by protesters who assaulted a feminist in Manchester and blocked access to a suffragette statue; and featured on posters protesting against my teaching of feminism.

With that in mind, the message of the ‘inclusive’ Pride flag is actually far from innocuous. Rather than referring to a collection of people with diverse political views, religious faiths, and moral values who happen to be gay, or trans, or queer persons of colour, the flags refer to a specific collection of ideas – an ‘ideology’ – about sexual orientation and gender identity.

One of these ideas is that biological sex is a ‘social construction’ rather than a real difference found in nature throughout our evolutionary history and across the animal and plant kingdom. Another is that because biological sex is a social construction, we should stop caring so much about it, and start caring about other things that are more important like ‘gender identity’ which is a person’s subjective sense of themselves in terms of masculinity, femininity (or neither).

Yet another is that because there are a great many gender identities, there are correspondingly a great many sexual orientations, and sexual orientations are not what we thought they were. Yet another is that identity trumps any material facts. You can be a ‘woman’ without being female, you can be a ‘lesbian’ even when you are a male who sleeps exclusively with females.

Do you see the problem? If there is no sex then there is no same-sex attraction,so there is no homosexuality or bisexuality as the gay rights struggle understood it. Recent legislation aligned with this ideology removed protection for same-sex attraction from the Victorian Equal Opportunity Act, replacing it with a word salad referring to attractions between ‘persons of a different gender or the same gender or more than one gender’. The head of Stonewall, an organization once dedicated to the gay rights struggle, now describes exclusive same-sex attraction as a ‘social prejudice’.

Supporters of this ideology rush to ‘affirm’ gender non-conforming children (who are most likely to grow up to be gay) as transgender, which greatly increases their likelihood of irreversible medical interventions. Arguably, then, this ideology is not affirming of, but rather actively undermines the gay rights struggle. The ‘inclusive’ Pride flag tells me, and all other lesbians on campus, that we are wrong to exclude males from our sexual orientations. We’ve heard that before.

Where does this leave the members of the university community who happen to be gay, trans, or queer persons of colour, and yet who reject this ideology? By flying these flags the university compromises pluralism on campus by making it more difficult for staff and students to voice a dissenting view. This is not just hypothetical: in April, in response to a social media post in which I expressed displeasure about flags put up for ‘Trans Day of Visibility’, the University tweeted:

‘This post runs counter to the views and the values of the University of Melbourne. The author has been counselled and has subsequently edited the post to remove the offensive content.’

Members who disagree with the university’s position risk censure. If most go along with the university out of fear or cowardice, and the university has taken the wrong position, then bankrupt ideologies gain a stronger foothold. And this is not the only consequence; what of the university’s commitment to inclusivity for women, and for lesbian, gay, and bisexual people?

Universities must facilitate constructive disagreement among the members of their communities. That is their obligation, given their function within democratic societies. They fail to do that when they take sides in complex and controversial debates; they fail doubly when the side they take undermines the rights struggles of other members of their community.

It’s time for the University of Melbourne to take down the flags.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/06/peddling-rainbows/

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Australia  unfairly demononized by Greenies

When Australians eventually reach the Pearly Gates they may, whatever their earthly sins, finally receive some redemption for their efforts to save the world from climate change. After decades of persecution for not doing enough they may at last be recognised for doing more than most.

As the rest of the world suffers collective amnesia, Australia faithfully continues its missionary work to achieve its 2030 and 2050 Paris and Glasgow emission reduction delusions.

While China lifts its annual coal output by 300 million tonnes, (two-thirds Australia’s total production), Australia imposes a virtual moratorium on new mines. State bans, together with native title and environmental opposition, have also largely stopped new coal-seam gas drilling and fracking.

No coal plants are under construction in Australia with the largest, Eraring, due to close seven years early. The existing fleet is ageing and, with the end in sight, it is suffering predictable neglect. At the start of winter, one-quarter of Australia’s coal generation was offline. Not so China. It is building 43 new coal-fired power stations. Nor in Europe, where several countries, together with Britain, are bringing retired coal plants back online and are planning new mines.

Japan, always mindful of its national interest, has stalled its withdrawal from fossil fuels.

But, to Australian critics, none of this matters. Who cares if Australians spend four to five times more per capita on renewable energy than China, the EU, Japan and the United States? Or that Australia’s fossil fuel energy mix for 2020 was 76 per cent compared to China’s 84 per cent, the EU’s, 85 per cent (which includes burning wood), Japan’s 88 per cent and America’s 84 per cent?

Confirming Australia’s pariah status, the latest Climate Change Performance rankings published by advocacy group Germanwatch, rank Australia 59th out of 63 nations on greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy, energy use and climate policy.

The environment charity, Greenfleet, notes that ‘when it emerged that Australia contributed only 1.3 per cent of total global CO2 emissions, many people were led to believe that as a nation, we were already doing enough’. Not so it cautions. Australia’s coal exports accounted for more than a quarter of the nation’s total exports over the last decade and most of our electricity is still powered by fossil fuels. On that basis, Australia contributed about 3.6 per cent to global emissions.

Moreover, that number doesn’t include emissions from other mineral exports or consider the emissions produced as a result of those exports. By taking these into account, and Australia’s population being around 0.33 per cent of the world’s population, instead of being virtuous, Aussies are among the highest emitters on the planet.

Australian bumbling, we learn, has led to it shunning its closest neighbours’ plea for an end to the coal industry and to contributing to the climate change plight of Pacific Islands nations. This is why the Solomon Islands nation has become a virtual Chinese colony.

As new Foreign Minister, Penny Wong now acknowledges, Australia previously ‘disrespected’ the struggle of Pacific nations as they grappled with the consequences of climate change.

But, what struggle is she referring to? The reality is that in the 30 years since 1990, a period characterised by consistent satellite observation, tropical cyclone activity in the Pacific has been decreasing. Moreover, rather than facing existential threats from rising sea levels, the latest satellite imaging shows 80 per cent of Pacific Islands, are growing or stable.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese sides with the nation’s critics and hopes some day, ‘Australia will once again be a trusted global partner on climate action’.

Is it intellectual cowardice or crass ignorance which drives Australia’s political class on its suicidal mission? It’s certainly not the science.

At least the leftist Potsdam Institute’s Professor Ottmar Edenhofer has the courage to say out loud what is becoming more obvious by the day. ‘One has to free oneself,’ he says, ‘from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth’.

Assuming he was talking about redistribution from the rich to the poor, the reality is, it’s going the other way. Renewable energy rent-seekers, particularly Big Wind, have colluded with climate activists to bully governments into paying them massive subsidies and to levy imposts on electricity consumers.

Energy expert, Dr Alan Moran, observes ‘government no longer publicises the extent of these, but they come to about $7 billion a year. This gives wind and solar double the price which coal receives and it is this that is driving coal out of the market’.

Until now, the average Australian has felt removed from the complexities of energy and climate change politics. For those who can afford the capital outlay, subsidised roof solar panels have provided an incentive to support renewables. For others, rising electricity prices have been philosophically  absorbed, offset, in part, by rising wages and declining interest rates. Most have broadly accepted climate change propaganda and left the esoteric scientific arguments for the elite to sort out.

Russia’s actions in Ukraine have changed all that. The West’s ageing coal fleet and dependence on renewables was always an accident waiting to happen. So when supply shortages hit a world ripe for inflation courtesy of years of reckless fiscal and monetary policies, household budgets were hit hard with the poor suffering most. Many will become jobless and in winter have to choose between heating their homes or buying groceries.

Globally, Australians are among the first to experience this, but its governments stubbornly refuse to change tack. Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews believes, ‘It’s wrong to be doing anything else other than forging ahead’ and, new Energy Minister, Chris Bowen agrees. For him, nuclear power is an expensive ‘joke’. Batteries and band-aids are better and cheaper.

Still, shivering Aussies should take comfort that when their time comes, their fruitless sacrifices to save the planet may at least be acknowledged by St. Peter.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/06/perhaps-in-the-next-life

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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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28 June, 2022

Pointless splurge on pre-school education

It only has point as a child-minding service.  Its educational benefits are illusory. But a free child-minding service will be popular with women who want or need to work.. It's only free to the user, however.  The cost to the taxpayer will be huge

The huge "Head-start" progam in the USA started out with similar bright-eyed hopes but had no lasting benefit

On June 16, the Premiers of New South Wales and Victoria announced ‘the greatest transformation of childhood education in a generation’.

The Victorian government will spend $9 billion to provide 30 hours a week of play-based learning for four-year-olds, with a rollout from 2025. They will also provide free kindergarten for three-year-olds, for up to 15 hours.

The New South Wales government will spend $5.8 billion on a similar scheme with later commencement, it reports that this would somehow eventually translate into $17 billion in increased economic activity; this is in addition to the federal government committing $5 billion to the cost of childcare.

Following Covid, the federal and state finances are in disarray.

Federal debt has ballooned towards $1 trillion. NSW debt stood at $50 billion in 2019, heading to $140 billion this year and under $200 billion by 2025. Figures for Victoria are equally parlous, increasing from under $50 billion in 2019 to $150 this year and $210 billion by 2025. The other states and territories have had relatively smaller increases as they were less damaged by Draconian, and perhaps unnecessary, lock-downs.

With these economic threats, it seems a bad time to introduce yet more welfare demand, a demand which we know, once introduced, will never be rescinded. Should we need a better example of where this leads, we have to look no further than the sky-rocketing cost of the NDIS.

Apart from the financial consequences, there are a number of political imperatives at work here. There is a belief that early commencement of education will result in improved educational outcomes; teachers and other unions are in favour of this job creation.

Also, that greater child care will allow more parents to return to the workforce. Underlying this debate is the changed concept of parenting, with the welfare state increasingly expected to take over the traditional role of rearing children, a role which was once considered not only a parental obligation but also their financial commitment.

Currently, there is a shortage of workers in many areas, it is tempting to think that freedom from the (self-inflicted) demands of parenting, would allow many women to return to work to fill those shortages. There are, fortunately, still some who consider involvement in their children’s development to be an obligation and a source of iuytrsatisfaction. At the other extreme, there are a number who look on this as a release from responsibility, but who have no intention of going to work. In view of the cost, it would seem logical to provide child-care, if considered appropriate, only for those who do return to work. There may also be only a short-term demand for workers, if predictions of a recession come to pass the situation may change dramatically, with unemployment rising.

The other big question is the predicted educational outcome, there is no doubt education is in disarray. A UNICEF study in 2017 showed that Australia had slipped down the league tables of educational achievement, coming in at 39 out of 41 in high and middle-income countries, ahead of only Turkey and Romania. In 2003, the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) ranked 15-year-old Australian students 10th in maths, 4th in reading, and 6th in science; 15 years later the results were 23rd in maths, 16th in reading, and 14th in science.

The problems besetting education relate to classroom discipline, distorted curricula, declining teaching standards, fad-driven teaching methods, and reduced parental input. As classroom size has declined and more money is invested, ($36 billion in 2019-2020), the deterioration continues, now enhanced by the Covid pandemic. It is nothing short of scandalous that after 12 years of schooling, 40 per cent of adults have achieved only a basic level of literacy; for many of my parents’ generation, leaving school at 14 had educated them better than those with 4 extra years

A quarter of a million children were enrolled in pre-school activity at 3 years age, part of Julia Gillard’s “education revolution” to develop a child’s “social and cognitive development”; this number had risen to 330,000 by 2021. The traditional education starting point had been at age 5 years, prior to commencing year 1 schooling at 6. Studies from America (whence all good things come) in the early 2000s suggested that improved economic outcomes could be achieved with an earlier start, but that misguided philosophy seems to have persisted. It is also concerning that children of this age are being subtly targeted by left-wing ideology in areas such as trans-gender, climate change, anti-colonialism, etc.

Parents in America have complained about drag queens in classrooms to promote ‘inclusivity’, New York schools have spent $200,000 on this activity; at least the parents (when informed) have the ability to demand change.

A suggestion of early improvement following pre-school does not carry through to later years. Several studies, both in Australia and overseas, have failed to show any long-term benefit from early education, in literacy and numeracy, on NAPLAN (National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy) testing. The latest 2021 US study has confirmed no academic benefit, it did suggest it resulted in better-adjusted children, but without considering the input of motivated parents who had to pay for this activity. NSW and Victoria appear intent on following the Biden playbook with free pre-schooling, in the case of America, an eye-watering extra $1.8 trillion over 10 years, would be needed from the debt-ridden economy.

We are already breaking the bank with debt, yet politics indicate, without evidence, we ‘must do more’ to improve both education and employment prospects. As is often the case, with welfare, education, health, care of the disabled or elderly, or the NDIS, we must be governed, not by what we would like, but by what we can afford.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/06/nsw-and-victoria-meddle-in-pre-schools/

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NSW Auditor-General warns universities of China risk

NSW’s top universities are now much more reliant on Chinese students than before the Covid-19 pandemic and are creating risks for the entire sector, the state’s auditor-general has warned.

Chinese students accounted for 50.5 per cent of the state’s foreign students in 2021 – up nearly 6 per cent on the previous year – due to an enrolment boost of nearly 2300 more students from China, while the number of students from other countries fell, according to the Auditor-General’s latest report on NSW universities, released on Monday.

Chinese students flocked to the University of Sydney, whose revenue from Chinese students rose by a massive 35 per cent to $1.2bn last year.

Figures calculated from university financial statements and the Auditor-General’s report also show that the University of NSW’s revenue from Chinese students rose 12 per cent to about $580m last year.

The rise comes despite ­repeated warnings from governments and national security figures over the past two years on the need for universities to wean off the Chinese student market, amid growing tensions with Beijing and increased concerns about foreign interference on Australian campuses.

In her report, NSW Auditor-General Margaret Crawford slammed universities in the state for their failure to diversify their foreign student intakes and warned of a “concentration risk”.

“Seven out of the 10 universities now record China as the leading source of overseas student revenues. This creates not only a concentration risk for each university, but for the NSW university sector as a whole,” she said in her Universities 2021 report.

“For two universities, the University of Wollongong and Southern Cross University, the top country of origin changed from India to China in 2021.”

In her report Ms Crawford repeated warnings the Auditor-General made in previous years about universities’ over-reliance on students from a limited number of countries. “Unexpected shifts in demand arising from changes in the geo-political or geo-economic landscape, or from restrictions over visas or travel can impact revenues, operating results and cash flows,” she said.

Group of Eight universities CEO Vicki Thomson, who represents both the University of Sydney and the University of NSW, said the higher education sector was not different to any other sector of the economy, including mining, in its exposure to China.

“Our universities are very aware of the commercial risk and the need to balance their portfolios in their recruitment strategies, including with students from China. But, like other industry sectors, we will not walk away from the Chinese market,” she said.

Ms Thomson said Chinese students were choosing Australia because of its “quality offering”.

“We want Chinese students to continue to see Australia as a destination of choice. We are looking at other markets, as we always have, but building alternative markets takes time, investment and resources,” she said.

Overall the number of international students in NSW fell by 12.5 per cent in the first two years of the pandemic, the Auditor-General’s report says. Other universities highly reliant on Chinese students include UTS and University of Newcastle.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/nsw-auditorgeneral-warns-universities-of-china-risk/news-story/4ffb88874c81f64978319949c18cb1fa

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Families to pay double for electricity thanks to a net zero climate change policy with $3,200 bills expected

Australian families are set to pay double for their electricity by 2030 as part of a net zero by 2050 carbon emissions policy, a new report says.

The Institute of Public Affairs, a free market think tank, said the closure of six coal-fired power stations in NSW, Victoria and Queensland in less than a decade would see consumers on average pay $3,248 a year - or $812 a quarter - on electricity.

The absence of affordable baseload power would cause wholesale power prices to quadruple within eight years.

This would cause retail prices to double by 2030, rising by 103 per cent as wholesale prices, comprising a third of an electricity bill, soared by 310 per cent.

Australians are already paying $1,600 a year on average or $400 every three months for their electricity.

But a 103 per cent increase by 2030 would see average electricity bills climb to $3,248 a year or $812 a quarter.

The IPA feared the decommissioning of the Yallourn W, Eraring, Bayswater, Liddell, Vales Point B and Callide B plants would remove 11 gigawatts - or 11 billion watts - of generation capacity from the National Energy Market.

These six stations make up 20 per cent of the National Energy Market's total capacity and are slated for closure, respectively, in 2028, 2025, 2030, 2023, 2029 and 2028.

The closure of these stations was expected to cause national wholesale electricity prices to surge by 310 per cent by 2030. 

'In the absence of reliable and affordable replacement baseload power supply facilities in the next decade, consumers can expect to see more than a doubling in their electricity bills as a result of the closures,' IPA report authors Kevin You and Daniel Wild said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's new Labor government last week pledged to the UN a 43 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. His predecessor Scott Morrison's Liberal Party had a less ambitious 26 to 28 per cent reduction within that time frame. 

But both sides of politics were committed to a net zero by 2050 target.

'The policy of net zero emissions by 2050 presents a significant risk to job growth, economic development, and Australia’s energy reliability and affordability,' the IPA said.

A move to be carbon neutral would also see electric cars put pressure on the grid as new petrol cars were phased out.

Electric cars last year had a minuscule 1.57 per cent market share, when Tesla sales data was included in Electric Vehicle Council estimates.

But as electric vehicle popularity increased, a trial by Origin Energy and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency estimated EV recharging could cause electricity demand at peak times to rise by at least 30 per cent.

The report recommended financial incentives to encourage EV owners to recharge outside peak times. 

Tasmania became Australia's first state to achieve net zero carbon emissions in 2015 by virtue of having vast forests.

Despite that, the IPA forecast the island state's average electricity bills rising by 125 per cent to $4,500 a year - the most expensive predicted for 2030.

Electricity bills were also expected to double in the other mainland states, with South Australia expected to have the next higher average annual bill of $3,200, followed by New South Wales on $2,600, and Queensland and Victoria on $2,500.

Coal-fired power stations have been faltering this year with energy companies reluctant to upgrade them ahead of their closure.

This saw wholesale electricity prices more than double, surging by 141 per cent in the year to March, Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) data showed.

The AEMO last week took the unprecedented step of suspending the national spot price of electricity but that $300 a megawatt hour cap was due to be lifted on Thursday morning.

Small electricity retailers are now advising their customers to find another provider from July 1.

Consumer group One Big Switch campaign director Joel Gibson noted Discover Energy had advised customers of a 285 per cent increase, estimating that would see bills almost quadruple by $1,563 a year. 

'Hundreds of thousands of households with smaller retailers now need to switch ASAP or they will cop increases of 50 per cent to 285 per cent on their power bills and pay unfair prices,' he said.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10943885/Institute-Public-Affairs-expects-electricity-bills-double-2030-net-zero-carbon-policy.html

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Energy crisis won’t be solved by wind and sun

Nigerian Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo recently lambasted the rich West for its hypocrisy on energy policy. Writing in The Economist, he declared “rich countries, especially in Europe, have repeatedly called for African states to use only renewable power sources”. 

Objecting to the patronising efforts of Westerners to prod Nigerians into “leapfrogging” over fossil fuels into wind and solar, Osinbajo points out that a moratorium on fossil fuel sentences Nigeria to poverty. “Though solar will provide most of our power in the future, we still need natural gas for baseload power.”

Osinbajo is right with regard to the African continent, but rich Westerners are hypocritical at home as well. Advocates of new-generation renewables will often argue that we must choose wind or solar – or submit to the ravages of a changing climate. 

But this is a false choice. Some European countries get more than 90 per cent of their electricity from low carbon dioxide sources, such as France (nuclear energy) and Norway (hydropower). Yet no country gets most of their electricity from wind or solar.

In fact, the percentage of the world’s electricity that comes from clean sources has remained stagnant since the 1980s. Although there has been a boom in investment in wind and solar, there has been a lack of investment in nuclear. When nuclear plants shut down, coal-powered plants tend to replace them. Unfortunately, this lack of investment in nuclear has cancelled out the reductions in CO2 emissions made by new-generation renewables. In 1985, 35 per cent of the world’s electricity came from low-CO2 sources; by last year it was just 38.26 per cent.

One of the greatest lies told about climate change is that solving the problem is simply a matter of willpower. If only governments around the world would listen to Greta Thunberg and Simon Holmes a Court, and install solar panels and wind turbines at a faster rate, then temperatures would stabilise. Unfortunately, the problem of climate change is not simply a matter of goodwill. If it were, the Germans would not be reopening their mothballed coal-fired power plants after pledging to be coal-free by 2030.

The Dutch and the Austrians, similarly, would not be following the Germans in reopening their coal-fired plants as well, a week after Russia halted gas deliveries via the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

“The cabinet has decided to im­mediately withdraw the restriction on production for coal-fired power stations from 2002 to 2024,” Dutch Climate and Energy Minister Rob Jetten told media.

“The situation is serious,” said German Economic Affairs and Climate Action Minister Robert Habeck. “It is obviously Putin’s strategy to upset us, to drive prices upwards and to divide us … We won’t allow this to happen.”

It is becoming increasingly clear that one of the biggest catastrophes of modern geopolitics has been Europe’s entanglement with Russia over energy. During the past five years, while the West was busy taking policy advice from a teenager, Russia was at work fracking and drilling for oil.

Back home, our politicians persist with the fanciful notion that an entire country’s electricity grid can be powered by wind turbines and solar panels.

On June 16, Andrew Wilkie tweeted: “While the Aus Govt’s target to cut emissions by 43% by 2030 is a step forward, it’s still not good enough. We need a 75% reduction by 2030 & net-zero by 2035. The only way to do this is to quickly phase out coal, gas & oil & fast-track to 100% renewables.”

When Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen was asked by Nine journalist Chris Uhlmann about whether the solution to Australia’s recent energy crisis (during which the Australian Energy Market Operator suspended the electricity market to ensure supply) was to invest in the continued maintenance of our coal-fired plants, Bowen fired off an angrily defensive reply. Yet just a week later, emergency powers were invoked to block the export of coal in the event of such a crisis happening again.

In response to our recent power crisis, environmentalists at home have called for a blockage on gas exports, a gas export tax and increased government subsidies for battery storage technologies. Yet these are simply Band-Aid solutions. To ensure energy security, Australia needs to extract more gas, invest in and maintain our existing coal-fired power plants, and think seriously about a long-term transition to nuclear energy. 

While nuclear energy is often dismissed as being too costly, the question is: compared with what? The battery storage required to power the whole of Australia has been estimated to cost $6.5 trillion. If this is a cost-effective solution, then God help us all.

An inconvenient truth is that the push for wind and solar may have other motivations than simply concern about climate change.

Last year, The Economist constructed a portfolio of companies that would benefit from the world’s energy transition and estimated that these companies had a total market value of $US3.7 trillion. Tracking these companies’ economic performance, it found that since the start of 2020, they had performed twice as well as the S&P 500, with the “greenest 25% of firms (seeing) their share prices rise by 110%”. But the problem is, according to The Economist, that 30 per cent of these companies do not yet turn a profit.

Just as the cryptocurrency bubble has burst this year, the new-generation renewable energy bubble is likely to burst in the foreseeable future. While big money has piled into the push to transition energy – and this investor exuberance has led to increased pressure on politicians to “transition faster” – the real world presents obstacles in the form of physics and thugs such as Vladimir Putin.

When Putin continues to use energy as a weapon against Europeans, a Nigerian vice-president calls out the hypocrisy of Western leaders, and when countries such as Australia are threatened by blackouts, more people will start to see through the wind and solar hype. The question is, will Australian politicians continue living in a fantasy or will they have the courage to face up to reality?

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/energy-crisis-wont-be-solved-bywind-and-sun/news-story/945ffa07c966f84ba4fe79c89852c06f

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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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27 June, 2022 

Anthony Albanese to go ahead with Voice referendum even if Coalition refuses to back Indigenous body

He's a fool.  Referenda are always lost in Australia if they have any significant opposition.  National party anyone?  But maybe Albo doesn't care about the result.  Being seen as "Doing something" may be all he wants

Anthony Albanese will put a referendum to enshrine a First Nations voice to parliament in the Constitution this term even if the Liberal and National parties do not formally support it.

In an exclusive interview, the Prime Minister said he would adopt a “genuinely bipartisan” approach towards implementing the Uluru Statement from the Heart with an Aboriginal advisory body to parliament but would not give “right of veto” to the Coalition.

“You don’t need a consensus but you need a broad agreement, firstly, among First Nations leaders and then, secondly, you would seek to get as broad a political agreement as possible for a referendum,” Mr Albanese said.

“So that doesn’t mean that any group would have veto power because my concern is that unless there is a referendum in the foreseeable future, then the momentum will be lost.”

Mr Albanese said there was enough support in the community for a referendum on the voice to parliament to succeed without major party bipartisanship and reiterated that if the ­Coalition opposed the referendum, it would not stop him putting it to voters.

“We would consider that as a factor but not necessarily a decisive one,” he said. “That would obviously be a factor that we would have to take into consideration … but I’m not giving any political organisation or any grouping a right of veto.

“Julian Leeser’s appointment as shadow attorney-general and as well as Indigenous affairs I see as a positive sign and (there is) enormous goodwill from people in media organisations, in the business community, in the trade union movement and in civil society to really do something that is positive for the nation.”

A voice to parliament is opposed by former Liberal prime ministers Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, who each characterised it as a “third chamber” even though it would not be able to propose, amend or reject legislation, and would not scrutinise every bill or motion. Peter Dutton, who also ­labelled it a “third chamber”, recently said he was open to supporting a referendum.

“The nature of the voice to parliament would still be subject of legislation,” Mr Albanese clarified . “It is not … an attempt to bind ­future governments. It is, though, a clear decision by enshrining it in the Constitution, that a voice to parliament and consultation with First Nations people would be something that couldn’t just be dismissed.”

In the past week, Indigenous leader Pat Turner said she could not see a way forward on constitutional recognition and there was not enough detail on how a national Voice would work, while Greens Indigenous affairs spokeswoman Lidia Thorpe said in an ­interview with The Weekend ­Australian that the nation was not ready for a public vote on the voice, and it would be risky to proceed before a national treaty between the commonwealth and Indigenous people.

Mr Albanese feared momentum would be lost if he did not push ahead with constitutional recognition to enshrine a voice to parliament this term and lashed the Greens for saying a treaty should be the priority rather than an Aboriginal advisory body.

“It is now five years since the Uluru Statement from the Heart,” he said. “It is a generous and ­gracious statement that asks for nothing more than good ­manners to be applied in that if an issue is going to affect Indigenous people, they should be consulted on it. It also envisages recognising that Australia’s history of this magnificent continent didn’t begin in 1788 – it goes back at least 65,000 years – and that we should be proud of having the oldest continuous civilisation on earth. And that to me is unfinished business.

“Once it occurs, I think it will be like the apology to the stolen generations – people will wonder what the fuss was about. But we need to get it done. And if we don‘t get it done in the next term, then it risks drifting.”

While committed to transitioning Australia from a constitutional monarchy to a republic, Mr Albanese said his priority was constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians with the voice to parliament. A republic would be pursued in a second or third term. “I can’t envisage a ­circumstance whereby Australia changed our head of state but we still did not recognise first nations people in our birth certificate,” he said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/anthony-albanese-to-go-ahead-with-voice-referendum-even-if-coalition-refuses-to-back-indigenous-body/news-story/ca9864bb1b97bd5ab9cfe36579d163e6

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Vaccines on trial

When a two-year-old boy died in South Australia last week, Chief Public Health Officer Professor Nicola Spurrier was quick to link the death to Covid adding, ‘I know that parents who have heard this news will be pretty worried… that something may happen to their young child if they catch Covid,’ and advising that ‘the best thing families can do, because we’re not vaccinating that age group, is make sure everyone else in the family is vaccinated.’

One family that didn’t take kindly to Spurrier’s announcement were the grieving parents of the deceased child. The infuriated father wrote on the SA Health Facebook page, ‘How dare you lie about my son! He did not die of Covid, you lying witch!’ The mother was equally incensed accusing Spurrier of using her son’s death ‘to push an agenda’ when the cause of death had not even been established.

The agenda is the vaccination against Covid of children aged six months to four years. It was a new low for Spurrier but she is not alone in distorting facts in the rush to vaccinate babies and toddlers.

Dr Clare Craig, a diagnostic pathologist was shocked by the shoddy data Pfizer presented to the FDA in support of its application. Craig is co-chair of the HART Group, highly qualified UK doctors, scientists, economists and other experts who came together over shared concerns about policy relating to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Craig noted, that the trial recruited 4,526 children yet only 1,526 children made it to the end of the trial, a staggering rate of attrition. She called on Pfizer to explain why two-thirds of the participants dropped out and said without an explanation the trial should be deemed ‘null and void’.

The results of the trial are even more disturbing. There were no cases approximating severe Covid, so Pfizer cooked up its own definition of children experiencing a slightly raised heart rate or a few more breaths per minute. On this basis, there were six children aged two to four in the vaccine group who had ‘severe Covid’ but only one in the placebo group, which suggests the vaccine might actually be causing the children to get ‘severe Covid’. Even more damning, one child had to be hospitalised because they had a fever and suffered a seizure and that child had been vaccinated.

Yet it was when it came to counting cases of Covid, that Pfizer got really creative. In the three weeks after the children had their first shot, 34 vaccinated children got Covid and only 13 in the placebo group, a 30 per cent increase in the risk of getting Covid among the vaccinated, so Pfizer simply ignored that data. There was an eight-week period between the second and third dose during which, once again, more children got Covid in the vaccinated group, and this trend persisted after the third dose. Indeed, to get a positive result, Pfizer had to ignore 97 per cent of all Covid cases that occurred during the trial and only counted ten cases that occurred right at the end, three in the vaccine arm and seven in the placebo arm, declaring that this proved the vaccine was effective.

But that’s not all. In the two-month follow-up period, 12 children got Covid twice and all bar one of them were vaccinated, mostly triple dosed.

On Friday, on the basis of this dodgy data, Pfizer was granted an Emergency Use Authorisation by the FDA, approval that is meant to be granted only when the treatment group faces serious injury or death. Yet as the trial demonstrated, Pfizer was forced to invent a bogus definition of ‘severe Covid’ because Covid is so mild in children in this age group. Moderna’s two-shot vaccine was also approved based on a study which showed efficacy of just 37 per cent, far below the minimum level set at 50 per cent. On Saturday, a panel at the US Centers for Disease Control voted unanimously to recommend approval of the vaccines guaranteeing that they will be rolled out in the US and almost certainly be approved for use in Australia too.

How it can be ethical to give a vaccine to infants who are at so little risk, when there is no long-term safety data is a mystery, especially when so many studies raise safety concerns. Bio-distribution studies that Pfizer conducted but tried to keep secret show that the the lipid nanoparticles that contain the mRNA do not stay in the arm but travel to every organ including the testes and ovaries, where they have unknown impact on reproductive health. The journal Andrology published a peer-reviewed paper last Friday showing large decreases in sperm counts in men after the second Pfizer jab. Transfected cells expressing the spike protein can cause autoimmune diseases including myocarditis.

They also seem to attack key parts of the immune system that suppress viruses and cancers, perhaps explaining why so many vaccinated people suffer the reactivation of latent viruses. mRNA and transfected spike protein can also remain for extended periods in the lymph node germinal centres damaging the immune system by causing T-cell exhaustion. The latest nightmare is that the vaccines appear to trigger a new aggressive form of Creuzfeldt-Jakob disease in some people and amyloidosis in others.

Why does the FDA seem so indifferent to the dangers posed by the vaccine? It’s impossible to say but a trial about to get underway in the US may throw light on the matter. Robert Barnes is the attorney for Brook Jackson, a whistleblower who worked on the Pfizer vaccine trials. Barnes alleges that Jackson reported to the FDA that the Pfizer trials were ‘riddled not only with error but with fraudulent and false certifications to the US government’.

What is fascinating is that Barnes says that Pfizer has moved to dismiss the case on the grounds that it doesn’t matter if they submitted fraudulent certifications or false statements under penalty of perjury to the government, or lied about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine because the government knew what was going on and was their co-conspirator.

It sounds incredible, but it would explain why the FDA tried to suppress the Pfizer trial data for 75 years. And why it seems to pay so little heed to the harm it might do to little children.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/06/vaccines-on-trial/

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Griffith University academics mount cancel culture attack

Disturbing that some loony obscure academics could be influenced by heavily biased Leftist "historian" Henry Reynolds, of "black armband" fame.  Birds of a feather flock together, I guess

Although few may remember him today, Sir Samuel Griffith made an immense contribution to the early development of Australia’s parliamentary and legal systems as the primary author of the Constitution and the first Chief Justice of the High Court. He played an integral role in securing the system of government that has made Australia one of the most stable, prosperous, and long-lasting liberal democracies in the world.

That is why it is so remarkable that there are now some who wish to see Samuel Griffith’s name erased from places of public recognition. Even more remarkably, these calls for Samuel Griffith to be ‘cancelled’ are not coming from fringe elements, but from a symposium that took place this month at Griffith University in Queensland.

Inspired by a recent book by author Henry Reynolds, Griffith University Senior Lecturer Dr Fiona Foley argues that Griffith’s name should be removed from the University – and perhaps the federal electorate, Canberra suburb, and New South Wales town as well. Instead, Dr Foley suggests that the University should be called ‘Dundalli University’ in honour of the Indigenous warrior who led the resistance to European settlement in South-East Queensland.

But what was Samuel Griffith’s great crime? Reynolds alleges that Griffith was an ‘enabler’ of massacres because he does not think that Griffith did enough to prevent skirmishes between Europeans and Indigenous groups during his time as Attorney-General and Premier of Queensland.

Professor Geoffrey Blainey AC and historian Keith Windschuttle have both described Reynolds’ approach as adopting a ‘black armband view’ of Australian history. While it is certainly appropriate to reflect critically upon our past as we continue to grow as a society, in having these conversations we should be very hesitant to ‘cancel’ anyone in the absence of highly compelling reasons.

It simply isn’t necessary to agree with everything Samuel Griffith did or believed in order to acknowledge and commemorate what he did to make Australia what it is today. I certainly don’t agree with everything Griffith did as a politician, but none of that detracts from the significance and value of his work as a jurist and drafter of the Constitution.

It is appropriate to continue to commemorate and preserve Griffith’s legacy because we continue to enjoy its benefits. It will be an Australia that no longer appreciates the value of responsible government, robust democracy, and the rule of law that ‘cancels’ Sir Samuel Griffith.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/06/griffith-university-takes-cancel-culture-too-far/

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AgForce chief Michael Guerin questions climate science, blasts NZ pledge to cut farm emissions

The head of Queensland's peak rural lobby group AgForce says the science is not settled on climate change as he criticises New Zealand's plan to reduce agricultural emissions.

New Zealand farmers have worked with government on a proposed farm-level levy system as an alternative to the industry being included in the country's emissions trading scheme.

Queensland AgForce chief executive Michael Guerin said he was "horrified" by the plan.

"One of the things I believe very strongly, having spent a lot of time working with scientists — and I'm not a scientist — but the belief I have is that the science is never settled," he said.

"By its very definition it's a process of continuous learning, so climate change is real [but] it's coming from a number of sources, the scientists tell us.

"There are a lot of examples where things have been decided in the past where [they have] changed their mind with updated science."

He said his personal views on climate change did not affect the work he did in his role representing the state's farmers.

"What I do is represent now about 6,500 members, and through a committee process represent their collective views into the core issues," he said.

"There are various views about where climate change comes from, but there's an unanimous view that we want to work collaboratively and productively with science and with government in some of these issues."

Carbon sequestration in cattle

Mr Guerin said agriculture was the only industry in Australia that had made a tangible reduction in net emissions since 1995, but he acknowledged there was more to do.

"It's a powerfully positive story that can be accelerated through incentives, rather than slowed up through taxes," he said.

He said grazing animals contributed to carbon sequestration and a new project, AgCarE (Agriculture, Carbon and the Environment), demonstrated that much of Queensland's cattle industry was positive sequesters.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/markets/agforce-chief-michael-guerin-questions-climate-science-blasts-nz-pledge-to-cut-farm-emissions/ar-AAYHKF1

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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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26 June, 2022

Divisive Greenies put reconciliation in peril

Albo spoke well to the matter but the flag is a side-issue.  The hopelessly impractical Greenie climate policies are the big issue.  And the Greens now have substantial representation in both houses of parliament so those policies matter.  

The  temptation for the Left is to ally with the Greens as both of them wish destruction on us.  So we can only hope that Albo gets enough support for saner policies from the conservatives to resist that temptation

Anthony Albanese says the push for reconciliation risks being undermined by the refusal of Greens leader Adam Bandt to stand in front of the Australian flag.

The Prime Minister said every parliamentarian should be proud to stand in front of the national flag, urging Mr Bandt to “reconsider his position and work to promote unity and work to promote reconciliation”.

“Reconciliation is about bringing people together on the journey that we need to undertake.

“It is undermined if people look for division rather than look for unity,” Mr Albanese said.

The criticism of the Greens escalated further on Wednesday after the party’s First Nations spokeswoman, Lidia Thorpe, said she was only in the parliament to “infiltrate” the “colonial project”.

Incoming Northern Territory Country Liberal Party senator Jacinta Price said Governor-General David Hurley should investigate whether there were grounds to dismiss Senator Thorpe from parliament. “I think she has nothing but contempt for the Australian people and she doesn’t respect the position she is in,” Ms Price said.

“I personally feel that the ­Governor-General should take a closer look at what her real ­intentions are and consider whether this is possible grounds for dismissal.

“She doesn’t see herself as an Australian, she doesn’t see herself as being represented by the Australian flag. Therefore she is not the right person to be in a position to represent the Australian people nor does it indicate she has Aus­tralia’s best interests at heart.”

Indigenous leader Warren Mundine said he was “flabbergasted” by Senator Thorpe’s comments.

“She is carrying on like she is in a five-year-old’s spy game,” Mr Mundine said.

“I just shake my head at these people. We have got so many problems with Indigenous communities … They have got to have jobs and businesses operating, and education.

“So is she there to blow the place up? It is just bizarre.”

On Tuesday night, Senator Thorpe said both the flag and the parliament “does not represent me or my people”.

“It represents the colonisation of these lands. And it has no permission to be here. There’s been no consent,” Senator Thorpe told Network Ten’s The Project.

“I’m there to infiltrate.

“I signed up to become a senator in the colonial project and that wasn’t an easy decision for me personally, and it wasn’t an easy decision for my family either to support me in this. However, we need voices like this to question the illegitimate occupation of the colonial system in this country.”

RSL Australia president Greg Melick said Mr Bandt’s action on the flag was disrespectful to ­Australian service personnel and veterans. “The RSL condemns the ­actions of Mr Bandt in the strongest possible terms,” he said.

“Australians have served under our national flag, irrespective of their race, religion or political views, and it and all our present and past service personnel deserve the highest respect.

“Mr Bandt’s move was dis­respectful to all these people and the RSL rejects it as unfitting of a member of our national ­parliament.”

Labor Left senator Tim Ayres said Mr Bandt’s flag policy was “some of the most empty gesture politics”.

“University, Trotskyite-sort of politics,” Senator Ayres told the ABC.

“There ought to be a bit of growing up around the place and a bit of self-reflection is absolutely in order for Mr Bandt and his ­colleagues.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/divisive-adam-bandt-puts-reconciliation-in-peril-anthony-albanese-says/news-story/0d6ede1d147478816b6e9ff1508d2fb1

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Australian influencer wants choice for abortions AND vaccinations

An Australian influencer is causing controversy over a post that conflated abortion rights with the Victorian government’s Covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

Melbourne entrepreneur Mia Plecic reacted to Friday’s US Supreme Court decision to overturn abortion rights, saying it is no different to the loss of freedom Australians faced from Covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

On Saturday morning AEST, millions of American women lost the legal right to have an abortion after the US Supreme Court overturned a landmark ruling which for nearly half a century had permitted terminations during the first two trimesters of pregnancy.

Roe v Wade, which in 1973 provided the constitutional right to abortions up until foetal viability, was overturned on Friday local time. It is now up to each state to determine whether women can have legal abortions.

It’s sparked a wave of protests across the world and some views that were divisive.

Ms Plecic, 30, took to Instagram to share to her 16,000 followers what she saw as a double standard.

She quoted another user, who wrote: “I’m seeing more opinions from Australians on domestic issues in the US than I ever saw from people in Melbourne (or Australia in general) when Victoria Police were shooting rubber bullets at peaceful protesters last year or when Government-enforced mandates surrounding medical procedure were coming into play, for example.

“You want to have a public opinion on human rights, post them all over your stories and look like a hero on social media? Then pick a lane.”

Ms Plecic added: “Why is it ok to be pro choice about one human right but not the other? “The same people who are against freedom of choice with mandates are the same people who are screaming freedom of choice about abortions.

“It doesn’t work like that. Freedom of choice regardless of your narrative”.

In a follow-up Instagram story, Ms Plecic said she was pro-choice, which she applied to all situations, including vaccines or women’s bodies.

She also claimed more than 500 people had reached out to her to express agreement.

Ms Plecic, who is founder and CEO of Slick Hair Company, told news.com.au: “I’m pro choice. Your body, your choice. Period.”

Ms Plecic’s comments were quickly picked up by Instagram page Aussie Influencer Opinions, which has more than 70,000 followers.

One person jumped onto the comment section, writing: “Yeah it’s totally the same thing because being slightly delayed in when you could go eat in restaurants is definitely the same as being forced to see a pregnancy to term, give birth and then raise the child all while taking on the cost and physical burden of what the pregnancy and delivery and recovery does to your body. Totally the same”.

“Covid is contagious, and pregnancy is not. Simple really,” said another..

Last year, Ms Plecic made headlines for her strong anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination stances but ended up issuing an apology over her “political view” after receiving some backlash.

According to her Instagram stories, she attended an anti-lockdown protest and also claimed she would find a “black market doctor” to give her a fake vaccine passport.

“What the media won’t show you,” she wrote on Instagram in 2021, according to a screenshot of her among a crowd of protesters. “30k+ Victorians protesting for their rights for freedom.”

In June, she wrote “I’ll pay a black market doctor to sign my ‘covid passport’ if I have to. IDGAF [I don’t give a f**k].

“I’ll go as far as I need. Nobody will bribe me to jab poison in my body in order to be free.”

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/aussie-influencer-slammed-for-abortion-laws-view-in-wake-of-roe-v-wade-being-overturned/news-story/e8cda754def5b1a81896b21625e61092

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Energy reality is now biting hard

Turning a blind eye to the limits of "renewables" no longer works.  We may be getting close to their practical limit

Energy crises have a useful ambiguity to them. Each crisis creates an opportunity for everyone to claim that, ‘It would never have happened if we’d just done what they said all along!’

Everyone, that is, except the people who actually did do what they said – they have to sit down and explain why it was both unforeseeable but will resolve if we just continue doing what they say.

Reality always wins. Politicians can argue, investors can throw around money, and journalists can spin dramatic headlines. Energy does not care.

What we knew was coming

Several years ago, I attended a Lunch & Learn by the CEO of the Clean Energy Council. He put up a slide listing all the Australian coal-fired power stations that would be reaching the end of their design life in the next thirty years. It looked something like this:

He then put a question to the group: ‘Why wouldn’t we replace these with the cheapest form of energy available?’ It sounds obvious. At the time, a wind farm had been approved with an agreed price of only $55/MWh, which is a very low cost.

The problem with this argument (as I previously pointed out here) is that you may be paying less for wind and solar, but you aren’t getting the same thing. Coal-fired power stations not only provide energy, they provide available capacity when the wind isn’t blowing, frequency stabilisation, and a single connection for a large energy supply.

If we replace them with wind then we need wind farms, but we also need energy storage, frequency control systems, multiple connections – some of those with long transmission lines.

I challenged the speaker with expensive reality after his presentation. He replied, ‘Yes, but nobody knows the cost of those things.’ How is that an acceptable answer? If nobody knows the cost, you can’t just assume it is zero. That is beyond moronic, it is flagrantly dishonest.

Here is a useful bit of information – the larger the portion of supply that comes from wind and solar, the more supplementary infrastructure is required.

When renewables are supplying less than 20 per cent of total capacity, their shortcomings can be accommodated elsewhere in the electricity network. Above this, they begin to create significant issues.

South Australia had to install a battery, synchronous condensers, additional backup generation, and relies heavily on its connection to the rest of the NEM through an interconnector. The Grattan Institute report Go for net zero showed that even achieving 90 per cent renewable would be significantly easier than 100 per cent.

For this reason, after attending the IEA lunch, my conclusion was this: For now, we may be able to replace the coal generation we have lost with a combination of renewables, supplementary infrastructure, and other flexible backup generation (i.e. gas-fired open-circuit generators). So far we have indeed handled the closures of one-third of our coal plants, equivalent to about 20 per cent of energy supply.

This is unlikely to continue.

The sheer volume of energy that we will need to displace is large. The question is not whether the network can handle more renewables, but where they will even be installed and whether they can be built fast enough.

Eventually, the storage problem will be revealed as just that – a problem. We may have to hold our noses and build more coal-fired generators. If we aren’t willing to do that then the only remaining compromise, as conservative commentators have been saying forever… may be to build some nuclear power plants.

Yet the clear and loud objective of the clean energy council (which is a lobby) and many other parties, is to ensure this doesn’t happen. Their firm belief is that we can replace our fossil fuel generation with renewables. Worse, however, the attitude of many is that if they directly oppose coal-fired power, then they will force the change that they want.

Last year, when the International Energy Agency released its first Net Zero by 2050 report, it said the following: ‘There is no need for new investment in fossil fuel supply in our Net Zero pathway.’

In the pathway, there were two milestones for 2021: ‘No new unabated coal plants approved for development’ and ‘no new oil and gas fields approved for development’. Considering the two energy crises that have occurred in 2022 – oil and gas shortages and coal shortages – they appear to be getting what they wanted.

The Australian energy stalemate

The future of our existing fossil-fuel assets has been topical for a long time. Back in 2017, it raised its head with the announcement of the closure of Liddell. You may recall that several conservative politicians (Tony Abbott, George Christensen, etc.) fought for Liddell to remain online and tabled nationalising it as a means to force its sale rather than closure. This was based on a kind of compromised view – if we are not going to build any new coal power, then at least we must try to get our current coal power to last as long as possible, to reduce the shock to the system.

Some green idealists, however, responded with the opposite aim. They desire to close the coal plants as fast as possible to fulfil their primary goal – leaving coal in the ground. The most notable manifestation of this view is Mike Cannon-Brookes’ recent actions. Having earned billions from software development, he tried to team up with a Canadian investment company Brookefields to purchase AGL. The stated aim was to accelerate coal power-plant closures.

AGL rejected his bid, and the board advanced a demerger proposal. The demerger would result in two companies, only one of which would hold all the coal generation assets. AGL has been responsible for building and managing a large number of renewables projects all around Australia, yet because they also own coal assets, they are demonised and considered untouchable for green investment. In response, Mike Cannon-Brookes bought 10 per cent of the company and sent a letter to the rest of the shareholders asking them to vote against the demerger. The board gave up the plan for the demerger, and several board members announced their impending resignations.

AGL is in an unworkable position – no one wants to invest in their work. At the same time, as a major generator, they have obligations to the market operator. They are required to retain generation capacity or replace capacity that they remove, without compromising grid stability.

Further evidence of the stalemate that has existed in the energy business over the last few years is the Kurri-Kurri project. When the federal government realised that the NEM would need more generation capacity once Liddell closes, they were essentially forced to construct the new Kurri-Kurri power plant themselves, because the private sector wouldn’t do it. It should have been the safest investment around – critical infrastructure with government backing. And yet the political and social climate has everyone terrified of putting money into fossil fuels.

The project has faced continuous negative media, including Matt Kean.

Hopefully, the projects detractors can now feel egg dripping off their chins. The current energy crisis is clear evidence that additional generation capacity will be welcome and possible not even enough (SA’s state-owned diesel generator has certainly been getting a workout over the last month!)

Machines don’t suddenly fail the day that they reach their design life. Power plants are really just giant engines, similar to the one in your car. Imagine you were driving your car continuously for 50 years. Would you expect it to start needing maintenance at the end of that? Eventually, your car would need so much care that the maintenance costs would exceed the value that the car returns, and you are better off getting a new one.

Currently, we have two simultaneous crises. The first is international. The entire world is facing a fuel availability crisis caused simultaneously by the after-shocks of the Covid pandemic (demand recovered at a rapid rate after the pandemic) and the Russia-Ukraine war. This has been exacerbated by some government policies and a hostile investment climate. The latter two issues work together in a negative feedback loop stoked by green activists – the more government policy is hostile, the more reluctant everyone is to invest. This international energy problem is felt mainly through the current high prices.

The second crisis is local. The energy market operator reports on reserve capacity. This is the amount of additional electricity generation that is available to the market if needed. If reserve capacity becomes less than the two largest generators in the system, this is called a Loss of Reserve (LOR) level 1 event. This means that if we had a sudden shutdown of our two largest generators, the system would have insufficient capacity to meet demand.

If capacity goes below the single largest generator, this is called a LOR 2, and means that losing the largest generator could trigger a supply shortfall. LOR 3 occurs when there is an insufficient reserve, and the operator expects to have to trigger intentional blackouts for load-shedding.

This local crisis is only tangentially related to the international one. It occurred mainly because some ageing infrastructure had issues and needed to shut down. As can be seen on the following graph, Bayswater, one of the largest suppliers to the system, lost two generators between June 7-9, reducing it to a third of its registered capacity (one of them came back online just two days ago). Since late May, Liddell has been running only 2 of its 4 generator trains. Gladstone in Queensland is also operating well below its registered capacity.

Writers for The Guardian, RenewEconomy, many journalists at the ABC, and probably every Teal Independent, argue that the current crisis proves that coal is the problem. After all, the coal infrastructure is to blame, so we wouldn’t have these issues if it wasn’t there, right? But the current issue is being caused by only a partial supply shortfall of coal power. What if we lost it all?

At the risk of repeating myself, I must stress: wind and solar can’t solve this problem. 100 per cent supply shortfalls of solar are a daily occurrence. It’s called nighttime. Supply shortfalls of wind are a weekly occurrence at least. The NEM was operating on only 1 per cent wind just two days ago. Comparing solar/wind supply with coal is to make a category error. One cannot replace the other until we have bulk energy storage infrastructure, which currently, simply, does not exist.

Conclusion

Last year, the IEA ‘Net Zero’ roadmap received two different receptions. Some perceived it as what it claimed to be: a pathway for Net Zero 2050. Where the report said that all government, people, private sector across the whole world would have to ‘work together’ to ‘act immediately’, they believed that this is what must surely happen because Net Zero by 2050 is the only option.

Others (like me) received the report as a clear statement that Net Zero by 2050 is doomed. When it listed seven things that would all have to happen in order to achieve Net Zero by 2050, and all of them were virtually impossible, and on further inspection, its assessment of the state of technology was even optimistic… It didn’t look like a roadmap to a place this planet is going anytime soon. In my view, unless a significant technological advancement comes along, we will not be achieving Net Zero by 2050.

The current buzzword is ‘the energy transition’. Note the definite article ‘the’ – it is spoken about as if it is a fact, and yet it is not a transition driven by natural causes. Any natural drivers for change – such as scarcity or competitiveness of new technology – are many decades away. This is a transition that requires a forced change. Hence, the persistent focus of its proponents on government action and divestment.

Yet this is our power supply that they are messing with. When there are supply shortfalls in the electricity market, people die. And they don’t die in twenty years due to global temperature rises, they die tomorrow. Unlike the ‘climate emergency’, electricity supply shortfalls actually meet the definition of an emergency.

If Australian billionaires and investors wish to effect an energy transition, then they are free to build the technology needed to do it. They can build batteries and develop tidal technology, geothermal, or solar, they can support better housing insulation, they can make hydrogen or ammonia or biogas, they can make electric vehicles… They can do whatever floats their boats. But until they have, they need to stop demonising and sabotaging the infrastructure that already exists and is keeping us alive.

That’s the reality, and reality always wins.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/06/energy-reality-bites-hard/

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Australia: The greenest lemmings in the world?

Viv Forbes

Australia’s new ALP/Green/Teal government has a Zero Emissions plan, putting them on track to be the victor in the Great Green Lemming Race.

America’s John Kerry was previously a strong contender to win the Great Green Lemming race, but he was given a stiff handicap by United Nations organisers due to America having access to reliable coal, oil, gas, hydro, and nuclear power, not to mention plus cross-border pipelines and power lines.

Biden is trying to close these loopholes. Literally.

Eight nations have withdrawn from the Green Lemming Race. Russia has joined China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Iran, and Turkey in forming a new and powerful G8. This hard-headed group ignore Net Zero dogma unless that suits their business plan. The G8 members have diverse reliable energy supplies – oil, coal, gas, hydro. and nuclear. They use wind and solar primarily for virtue-signalling or to earn billions making and selling millions of green toys to Net Zero Lemmings like us.

Europeans were disqualified from the Great Green Lemming Race when they were caught cheating. They pretended to run on intermittent energy from windmills and sunbeams, but whenever these failed they quickly filled the power shortfall with reliable energy from French nuclear, Scandinavian hydro, Polish and German coal, Iceland geothermal, North Sea natural gas, and (sanctions permitting) Russian gas, oil, and coal.

Australia has ageing coal plants (marked for demolition), wildly unstable supplies of disruptive and intermittent green electricity, oodles of gas (but unwelcome in local markets), and abundant uranium for export (but none for local nuclear power). Australia is also a remote island with no extension cords to neighbours with reliable energy. They remain a clear favourite in the Great Green Lemming Race.

Sometime soon, at dinner time on a cold still night, the Aussie winners of the Great Green Lemming Race will be acclaimed by widespread blackouts and a failing economy.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/06/the-greenest-lemmings-in-the-world/

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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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24 June, 2022

Qld picks fossil fuel over energy storage

Is there no such thing as an intelligent journalist left?  OF COURSE nobody much is investing in energy storage.  Either it is useful only for a few hours (batteries) or its costs are astronomical (pumped hydro).  Coal, gas and nuclear are the only reliable power sources.  All the rest is fantasy

The Queensland government has prioritised coal and gas-fired generation over energy storage 

Twice as many taxpayer dollars will be spent on Queensland coal and gas-fired plants this year as they will on installing new renewable energy storage in the state.

Queensland already has the nation's highest wholesale electricity prices, which experts say is mostly due to its reliance on fossil fuel and lack of energy storage.

Household electricity bills will rise by 10 per cent, while power bills for businesses will soar 20 per cent from July.

Treasurer Cameron Dick will partly offset that by wiping $14.58 off household monthly bills for the next 12 months.

However, businesses won't get any support and will likely pass on their extra costs to consumers.

Over the long term, the state government will need to transition to renewable energy sooner if it wants to spare consumers further price pain.

Vast renewable generation projects are under construction, but the state needs about 6.5 gigawatts of energy storage as well.

Mr Dick promised $35 million in funding for a feasibility study on a 5-7GW pumped hydropower storage project in Tuesday's budget.

Another $13 million will be spent on finalising a study for a proposed 1GW pumped hydro project near Gympie.

However, the three public electricity generators will also spend $480 million with the majority of that propping up ageing coal and gas generation, rather than storage.

Stanwell Corporation, CS Energy and CleanCo will spend about $232.7 million on maintenance, upgrades and spare parts for coal and gas plants in 2022/23.

Stanwell will pour $21 million into the Meandu coal mine and CS Energy will invest $1.2 million on the Kogan Creek coal mine.

CleanCo - originally set up to be a renewable energy firm - will spend $13.6 million on the Kogan North Gas Field, which it jointly owns with Arrow Energy.

The big investment in fossil fuel generation comes with the government expecting to bank dividends from the generators in 2022/23, and for those to rise in 2023/24.

"This trend reflects earnings growth of these businesses, with the current wholesale market environment supporting returns in the next couple of years, and a return to more stable levels over the forward estimates," the budget said.

Meanwhile, the three generators will invest less than half the amount they spend on fossil fuel generation than they will on increasing renewable energy storage capacity.

About $122.5 million will be spent on two batteries at Chinchilla and on the Darling Downs, which will eventually be able to store about 500MW, in 2022/23.

Queensland will need about 14 times more storage than that to transition to renewable energy and phase out coal generation.

The three generators are also investing about $85.1 million in the Wambo and Karara wind farms, which will eventually generate 353MW of electricity.

In total, the state government will invest $281.8 million on renewable energy and $232.7 million on fossil fuel generation in 2022/23.

https://7news.com.au/politics/qld-picks-fossil-fuel-over-energy-storage-c-7258943

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Queensland government to scrap gendered language like 'maternity leave' and 'she' as part of major shake up to industrial laws

The terms 'she' and 'maternity' are set to be replaced in a series of changes to Queensland's industrial relations laws proposed by the state government.

The changes were put forward by Queensland's Industrial Relations Minister Grace Grace on Thursday, reports The Courier Mail.

It comes after the government's five-year independent review into state workplace laws was released by Premier Anastasia Palaszczuk and Miss Grace in February.

The review resulted in 40 recommendations to Queensland's industrial relations laws to 'better reflect evolving community standards for the workplace'.

Among the changes, gendered language will be removed and replaced with gender-neutral terms.  

The word 'she' will be scrapped and replaced with the term 'the employee'.

'Maternity leave' will also be cut and changed to 'birth-related leave'. 

In another clause in the recommendations, 'maternity leave' was swapped with the term 'pregnancy-related'.

It was explained in the Bill that these changes were being made to 'remove language implying gendered divisions of parental leave'. 

Other recommendations not related to the removal of gendered language included strengthening protections of employees subject to sexual harassment and gender pay equity changes. 

There was also improvements to adoption leave entitlements and unpaid leave entitlements for a parent whose child was stillborn.

Queensland's Industrial Relations Minister Grace Grace said: 'The Palaszczuk Government is committed to doing all we can to prevent sexual harassment and gender inequity.'

'That's why I am proud that the Palaszczuk Government is introducing nation-leading reforms which provide workers subject to this type of abhorrent conduct a variety of remedies available through the QIRC.'

Miss Grace noted that the government had taken action because a 'lack of regulation' can 'create safety risks' and affects the 'financial security' of employees. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10945675/Queensland-government-scrap-gendered-language-like-industrial-relations-laws.html 

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Alarming warning over new Omicron sub-variants on the rise across the country with fears infections will rise - and no one is safe

Health authorities have issued a warning over a new Omicron subvariants on the rise across the country as experts expect they will soon become the dominant strains. 

Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 have been both detected in Queensland and NSW, with cases rising in recent months. 

On Thursday, authorities from both states on issued an alert amid concerns the variants could result in a wave of new Covid cases.

'It is expected the Covid-19 sub-lineages BA.4 and BA.5 will become the dominant strains in coming weeks,' NSW Health tweeted. 

'This is likely to result in an increase in infections, including in people who have previously had Covid-19.' 

In a similar warning, QLD Chief Health Officer Dr John Gerrard estimated the variants would become the main strain within 'two weeks'. 

However, he stressed that intensive care admissions remains low for all strains of the virus, which was a testament to the efficacy of vaccines. 

'We must stress that all Covid-19 variants can cause severe illness, especially in vulnerable people,' Dr Gerrard said. 

'We strongly encourage Queenslanders to remain up to date with their boosters, particularly those over 65 years of age and those with impaired immunity,' he said.

'This virus will continue to mutate so we all need to remain vigilant and responsive by staying home when sick, washing your hands regularly, keeping your distance from others where possible and wearing a face mask when you can’t.'

Queensland recorded 4970 new Covid cases overnight and five deaths, with 512 people in hospital, including six in ICU. 

In NSW, there were 9203 positive tests, 26 deaths, and 1500 hospitalisations, with 53 ICU patients. 

The alert comes as Australia's chief medical officer warns older Australians and people vulnerable to Covid should have a plan to combat the virus before they test positive. 

Like asthma and other respiratory illnesses, people should have a treatment plan in place if they're more at risk of severe disease from the coronavirus, Professor Paul Kelly said.

Two oral antiviral treatments - Lagevrio and Paxlovid - are available for people vulnerable to severe effects of Covid.

Since the treatments were added to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme there has been increased use, but more people are eligible, Prof Kelly said.

'Now is the time if you're in those vulnerable groups to have that conversation ... (so you) know exactly where you can access those medications and know exactly how to use them,' he said.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/covid-australia-warning-over-new-omicron-sub-variants-on-the-rise-across-the-country/ar-AAYMdml?ocid=uxbndlbing

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Australia Post parcel's 'laughable' 9000km journey: 'Been more places than us'

This sort of bungling is why I rarely buy anything online

“Your birthday present is in the mail,” is an excuse many Aussies may be familiar with.

But for one Gold Coast man it’s a line he’s been forced to give his wife for the last 20 days as his parcel makes an astonishing 9,000 kilometre journey across the country.

“It’s gotten to the stage where it’s laughable,” Nick Goodrick told Channel Nine.

“It’s like a guessing game of where it will be each day.”

The 58-year-old bought the birthday present online from Western Australia at the end of May.

Since then, it has passed through three states with no end in sight.

According to A Current Affair, Mr Goodrick’s tracking number showed the parcel left Geraldton, a country town about 400 kilometres north of Perth, on May 31. Six days later, it was processed at a facility in Sydney’s west, and less than an hour later it was on its way to Brisbane.

By June 7, it was bound for its final destination, the Gold Coast, but somehow ended up back in Sydney.

Within a minute, reportedly, it was sent back to Brisbane where it arrived a day later.

Hopes were high in the Goodrick household but they were quickly dashed when the parcel was spotted en route back to Sydney.

Then, like clockwork, the parcel was redirected back to Brisbane, ACA said.

“It’s been more places than we’ve been during the last couple of years,” Mr Goodrick’s wife, Kirsten, added as she awaits her much delayed birthday gift.

Unfortunately, they aren't the only Aussies waiting by the mailbox.

Bruce Greenaway, also from the Gold Coast, said his package made 24 stops before it reached his home.

After leaving Yamba on the NSW North Coast on May 20, the 68-year-old's parcel passed through Sydney, the NSW Central West, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane on repeat for 18 days.

“According to Australia Post’s tracking, it travelled somewhere around 18,000 kilometres,” Mr Greenaway told Channel Nine.

Even more straightforward journeys seem to be causing headaches for Australia Post customers.

Andrew Lindsey had been waiting for a package from Rochedale in Brisbane to arrive in Jimboomba, just south of the city.

It’s only a 30 minute journey by car.

But for Australia Post, the parcel went interstate, travelling to Chullora in NSW and Fyshwick in the ACT before reaching its final destination back in Queensland.

“They are so full of excuses,” Mr Lindsey wrote on Facebook, “no one knew where my parcel was.”

His story was slammed as ‘typical’ by other social media users.

“It would have been quicker to drive to Rochdale to pick it up,” one person said.

In a statement to Yahoo News Australia, Australia Post says it processes and delivers up to 14 million parcels each week, with the majority arriving safely and on time.

“Sometimes issues such as incorrect address details, smudged or ineligible writing or an incorrect postcode can create challenges for us, and occasionally our sorting machines can get it wrong,” it said.

"When we were alerted to the issue, Australia Post located both customers packages. One of these packages has now been delivered and we are working to get the remaining package delivered as an urgent priority."

https://au.news.yahoo.com/australia-post-parcel-9000-km-journey-gold-coast-024906873.html

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Qld kids failing to meet basic literacy, numeracy targets

Queensland children are failing to meet basic literacy and numeracy targets, with new data showing the alarming levels state school students are falling behind.

This week’s state government budget papers have revealed in every instance, Queensland state school students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 missed the department’s targets on the percentage of students meeting the national minimum standard in reading, writing and numeracy.

The 2021-2022 statistics showed older students were falling behind the furthest, with less than 90 per cent of year 7 students meeting the minimum standard for numeracy, well below the 96 per cent target. Just 82.9 per cent of year 9 students met the standard for reading, compared with a target of 90 per cent.

Writing also proved to be an area of concern with just 72 per cent of year 9 students achieving the minimum standard – compared with a target of 86 per cent – and 83.4 per cent of year 7 students, against a target of 92 per cent.

Indigenous student levels were also below the department’s targets of students hitting the national minimum standards in key numeracy and literacy areas.

Less than half of all year 9 Indigenous students met the national minimum standard for writing, well short of the target of 69 per cent. Just two thirds of year 9 Indigenous students met the national minimum standard for reading, against a target of 78 per cent.

LNP education spokesman Christian Rowan said the results were “extremely concerning”. 

“More worrying still, there is no comprehensive plan from the state government to address this steady decline,” Dr Rowan said. “Queensland’s students, parents, teachers and school staff deserve a world-class education system that exceeds targets.”

But Education Minister Grace Grace commended students and staff for grappling with the “incredibly challenging circumstances” during the Covid-19 pandemic, and insisted NAPLAN results proved there had been “significant improvements”.

“Online learning, staying home when sick, and isolating as close contacts have all had an impact,” she said.

“We make no apologies for setting ambitious and stretching targets, many of which we are very close to achieving after consistent improvements over a number of years.”

The state government also missed its employment and training targets with thousands of students failing to complete apprenticeships or traineeships.

About 3400 fewer students completed their studies than expected, and just 79 per cent of graduates were able to gain employment or continue studies – well below the targeted 87 per cent. Only 73 per cent of employers were happy with apprentices and trainees – below the targeted 83 per cent.

The proportion of Queenslanders with higher qualifications reached 64.9 per cent, above the 62 per cent target.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/education-queensland/qld-kids-failing-to-meet-basic-literacy-numeracy-targets/news-story/5be2d9dfed95829b4ba26a2af9cdc3d4

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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 June, 2022

Adam Bandt slammed as ‘idiotic’ for divisive anti-Aussie flag stunt

Bandt has wormed his way to the top of the Greens but it looks like he is still the nasty old Trot he always was

A racially divisive publicity stunt by Adam Bandt which saw the Greens leader hold a press conference with the Australian flag pushed off to the side of the room with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders flags front and centre has been labelled “idiotic”.

The event occurred Monday afternoon in Sydney shortly before Bandt was to hold a press conference with Deputy Greens leader Mehreen Faruqi at the Commonwealth Parliamentary Offices in the CBD.

Shortly before Bandt and Faruqi appeared a staffer moved the Australian flag to the side.

When asked why the flag was moved from behind the speakers, Mr Bandt said the symbol was “hurtful” to many Aboriginal Australians, a charge that was rejected by Indigenous leader Warren Mundine.

“It’s idiotic,” Mundine said. “Are the Greens actually in the Australian Federal Parliament? Seriously? Do they actually hate Australians that much,” he asked. “Aboriginals call themselves Australians all the time. “The Greens are just a fringe university type group trying to run down the country.”

Dr Bella d’Abrera, Director of the Foundations of Western Civilisation Program at the Institute of Public Affairs said the actions were “completely out of touch with real Australians who are proud of their country, and proud of their history”.

“As an elected member of the Commonwealth parliament, Adam Bandt has shown he is unfit to be a member of parliament when he demonstrates contempt for one of Australia’s most unifying symbols.”

“This is exactly the type of empty virtue signalling we have come to expect from the Greens Party.”

“The Australian flag is a unifying symbol that is a pillar of our history and the Australian way of life,” she said.

Dr d’Abrera pointed to polling by her organisation which in January found that 84 per cent of Australians agreed they were “proud to be Australian”, with only five per cent disagreeing.

Nationals Senator Matt Canavan likewise called the move a “disgrace.”

“If the Greens are not proud of our Commonwealth they should not be using taxpayer funded Commonwealth offices for their press conferences,” he said.

The Greens’ actions come after NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet pledged $25 million to fly an Aboriginal flag permanently from the Harbour Bridge, despite not knowing why it would cost so much to add an extra flagpole to the structure.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s office declined to comment on the Greens leader’s actions, however one Coalition source said that Bandt’s behaviour “spoke for itself”.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/adam-bandt-slammed-as-idiotic-for-divisive-antiaussie-flag-stunt/news-story/e4632a3c419c88a466fda7d83395141f

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How Australia's biggest state is spending $633MILLION on electric cars when fewer than one per cent of Aussies own one

Australia's most populated state is spending more than $630million on its electric car strategy even though just 0.6 per cent of Aussies own one, NSW budget figures reveal.  

State Treasurer Matt Kean - known for climate change campaigning - announced on Tuesday that his government will spend an extra $38million on its electric car strategy, taking total investment to more than half a billion dollars.

The cash will be spent on rolling out more charging points in streets, apartment buildings and designated charging stations.   

Australia lags the rest of the world when it comes to the take-up of electric vehicles, which account for less than one per cent of the million new cars sold every year. Across Australia, fully electric vehicles have a minuscule 0.6 per cent market share. 

The NSW government wants to drive that figure to more than 50 per cent by 2030-31 under its Electric Vehicle Strategy.

Critics say the policies only help the rich because electric cars - which start at $44,000 - are too expensive for average income earners. 

But supporters insist investment needs to be made now in preparation for when electric cars are cheaper and more popular.

Software billionaire and clean energy investor Mike Cannon-Brookes is among those who support electric car take-up.

Earlier this month he shared his surprise that the Moss Services Club in the southern highlands had a charging point. 

'Kudos to the Moss Vale Services Club for having an @NRMA double EV charger in the car park,' he wrote.

'Charging my car while getting a schnitzel at the RSL with the kids felt like a new future for Australia… one that was nicely connected with our past.'

NSW Treasurer Matt Kean said rolling out more charges will 'allow more EV drivers to benefit from their cheaper running costs and a cleaner, quieter and more sustainable road network.'

He added: 'You'll never be far from a charger on our major highways, in regional destinations, apartment buildings and on kerbsides in metropolitan areas with limited off-street parking.'

The NSW government's strategy involves offering stamp duty exemptions for new and used electric vehicles worth up to $78,000.

Buyers are also spared paying up to $3,000 in charges that buyers of petrol and diesel cars still have to pay.

With a stamp duty exemption of $2,537.50 and that $3,000 rebate, they are getting back up to $5,540 from the taxpayers. 

One Nation's NSW leader Mark Latham noted there was a a larger uptake for the subsidy in wealthier areas of Sydney's north shore and north-west.

'This shows how delusional NSW Treasurer Matt Kean has become in thinking he can save the planet with schemes like this,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'Even from these early numbers, the inequity of the scheme is clear.

'This was always going to be a cross-subsidy from the poorer parts of NSW to the wealthier suburbs.'

As more people use electric cars, less fuel will be bought and governments will lose fuel duty revenue. 

To make up for this the NSW government will introduce a road user charge of 2.5 cents per km (indexed to CPI) to electric cars from 1 July 2027 or when EVs make up 30 per cent of all new vehicle sales, whichever comes first.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10936305/How-Australias-biggest-state-spending-633MILLION-electric-vehicles.html

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Premier introduces a LAW instructing schools to teach students about the 'trauma' of white colonisation

Schools will teach kids about the 'significant trauma' of white colonisation, commemorate 'Sorry Day' and fly the Aboriginal flag under new laws in Victoria. 

Premier Dan Andrews said he expected every school to adopt the reconciliation initiatives and that every year level would take part. 

'Being reconciled is just that. You can't be reconciled if you're not prepared to acknowledge some pretty awful stuff that happened in the past,' Mr Andrews said on Tuesday.

'It's about making sure that everybody feels equal, everybody feels included and everybody feels safe.' 'I think it might be the whole school and I don't see anything wrong with that.' 

Victorian Opposition leader Matthew Guy said it was important for kids to learn about history but it must be done carefully not to create division in children. 'It is important that they do learn lessons of fact from the past, but that is done respectfully,' he said.  'When it involves kids, we've got to make sure that we're not pitting one against the other.'

The new legal standards require that from next term all educational facilities including universities and high schools but also primary schools, kindergartens and childcare centres provide a 'culturally inclusive' environment. 

This includes a recognition that will affect teaching frameworks that 'Australia's colonial history has caused significant trauma and hurt that individuals, families and communities still feel'.

Days marking significant reconciliation steps will also be commemorated including Close the Gap Day on March 18, Mabo Day on June 3, and Sorry Day on May 26. 

National Close the Gap day, held annually since 2009, is part of a social justice campaign advocating for equality and the health of First Nations people. 

Mabo Day marks the concept of 'terra nullius' or land belonging to noone being overturned in a legal case which gave Indigenous Australians land rights. 

While Sorry Day notes the apology issued by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to the 'stolen generations' who were removed from their families and communities and raised in colonial settings.  

In addition to the national days, schools will be encouraged to display plaques noting traditional ownership and take steps to respect Indigenous culture and stamp out racism. 

The standards will also apply to government departments, hospitals, councils and also to businesses where children attend such as play gyms and party venues. 

The new laws are part of revised Child Safe Standards overseen by the Victorian Commission for Children and Young People. 

Principal commissioner Liana Buchanan said compliance would be achieved by working with and supporting educational facilities as well as sanctions for those lagging behind.

New laws to create an independent authority to oversee Victoria's treaty negotiations are also set to pass with bipartisan support.

The Victorian coalition initially reserved backing the Treaty Authority Bill after the Andrews government introduced it in state parliament a fortnight ago. But Opposition Leader Matthew Guy confirmed the Liberals and Nationals would vote for the bill without amendment after a joint partyroom meeting on Tuesday morning.  'We'll be supporting the legislation when it comes to parliament tomorrow,' he told reporters.

'Reconciliation is a topic that should be around uniting Australians ... that's why this is an important step.'

The Victorian coalition announced its support for treaty negotiations in May after Mr Guy suggested a federal process would 'make more sense' before the 2018 state election.

Liberal MP Tim Smith, who will not recontest his seat in November after a drink-driving crash, said he does not support 'illiberal and divisive tokenism' and will vote against the legislation. 'I will be crossing the floor,' he tweeted.

Shadow Aboriginal affairs minister Peter Walsh would not say if Mr Smith or others spoke out against the bill in the partyroom. 'Tim, as an individual, is entitled to his opinions,' he said.

If the legislation passes, as expected, the treaty authority will have legal powers to oversee treaty talks and resolve any disputes between the state government and the First Peoples' Assembly of Victoria.

It will be led by Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander people elected by an independent panel and be grounded in culture, lore and law.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10936571/Daniel-Andrews-introduces-LAW-schools-teach-students-white-colonisation.html

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Sordid timeline shows dysfunctional building watchdog must be abolished

The QBCC is a dysfunctional rabble, and on the evidence presented to The Courier-Mail, it must be blown up and totally reformed.

No amount of cheesy TV ads telling us how good it is can camouflage a body that is in crisis, scarred by scandal after scandal.

Once the Varghese report is handed down, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk must strip the responsible Minister, Mick de Brenni, of the portfolio and give it to a person who won’t use it as his or her personal plaything.

Mr De Brenni is arguably the most incompetent minister within Cabinet.

The real test for Mr Varghese lies in a case known as the Kirra Vista controversy, where the building company Groupline was singled out for special QBCC treatment.

The drama began in June, 2019 when Groupline – a boutique Gold Coast building company – began work on an eight-level, 16 unit project at Kirra, known as Maya.

A month later, during retention piling of Maya, movement was detected in the 50-year old building next door, Kirra Vista.

A month later, Kirra Vista body corporate outlined concerns, and Groupline said its insurance would cover any remedies required at Kirra Vista. Soon after, Groupline installed monitoring equipment.

On September 6, 2019, Kirra Vista body corporate chairwoman Toni Bowler – who has strong Labor ties – met Public Works Minister Mick de Brenni.

On the same day as the meeting between Ms Bowler and Mr De Brenni, then QBCC Commissioner Brett Bassett wrote to a senior employee - after receiving a call from the MO (Minister’s office) - ordering a briefing.

A day later, a senior QBCC employee did a report into the dispute, and two days later Mr Bassett issued a show cause notice saying Groupline had undertaken building work in contravention of the building code. On September 19, 2019, the QBCC issued a stop work notice to Groupline

Two days later, Commissioner Bassett wrote to two senior Ministerial staffers, Ravi Chandra and Melissa Hallam, “re an update on the status of Kirra Vista stop work’’.

On November 13, 2019, Groupline’s building licence was cancelled. On December 18, 2019, the Supreme Court rules QBCC acted unlawfully in cancelling the licence.

In early 2020, the QBCC appealed the decision and a week later the Court of Appeal dismissed the QBCC appeal and says it acted outside its jurisdictional control.

On August 10, 2021 Minister de Brenni told an estimates committee hearing, when asked had he or his office intervened in any operational QBCC decisions, that “in respect of individual cases, there is no role for anybody on the boards of the QBCC or myself or my office in any circumstance’’.

Groupline now wants a Commission of Inquiry into the matter to determine “why the Minister and Board members were involved in the operational matter that eventually the actions of the QBCC proved to be unlawful’’.

“Further, Groupline requests that the inquiry to put forward a process and recommendations by which the QBCC pay to Groupline damages for the unlawful suspension of its licence,’’ a Groupline spokesman said.

“Despite Minister De Brenni denying in parliament that he had not been involved in this matter as an operational matter it is quite clear that he had a significant involvement in arranging for Groupline’s licence to be unlawfully suspended.

“We also can see that (QBCC chair) Dick Williams was involved in the meeting which the QBCC board members (and) he should not involve themselves with operational matters.

“At this meeting there was an agenda for the meeting in which it quite clearly shows that the decisions that were made in this matter came from the meeting with the Minister and the Board member present.’’

Both Mr de Brenni and Mr Williams have always maintained they do not get involved in individual QBCC cases.

For Mr Varghese, cleaning up the QBCC will be a big challenge. His recommendations must address alleged board and Ministerial interference in matters such as the Kirra Vista affair.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/peter-gleeson/opinion-sordid-timeline-shows-dysfunctional-qbcc-must-be-blown-up/news-story/841482d9bafa8e8179fd433781c9d6d4

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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 June, 2022

Brisbane to charge Airbnb hosts higher council rates to tackle housing availability

A brilliant idea: Solve the shortage of rental acomodation by penalizing those who provide it!  Short-term lets are  an important source of accomodation but they are bad somehow.  Property owners concerned may withdraw from the market entirely if they are penalized for it.  Attempts to make people do what they do not want to do will always be met with evasion in some form

Brisbane homeowners who list their properties as short-term accommodation on sites like Airbnb will be slugged with a 50% rates hike amid a chronic shortage of rental properties.

Handing down the city’s $4bn budget on Wednesday, the LNP lord mayor, Adrian Schrinner, said a new “transitory accommodation” category will help tackle housing availability and affordability in Australia’s fastest growing capital city.

Schrinner said the 50% rate increase would mean a property on Brisbane’s minimum rating category would pay $600 extra a year, providing an incentive to landlords to rent their property to longer term tenants.

Brisbane’s rental vacancy rate was 0.7% in May, according to SQM Research.

Related: Short-term rentals, long-term anguish for Australian towns struggling to find homes for locals

“There’s a serious housing affordability issue and we need to be looking at new ways to increase housing supply,” Schrinner said.

“It’s about getting more accommodation for renters to be available in that long-term rental market. Every single property that switches from short-term to long-term rental is a win for the community.”

It comes as Schrinner said residential rates would increase by 4.93% – the city’s highest rates increase in more than a decade – as Brisbane grapples with the aftermath of February’s floods.

From 1 July, property owners who list their homes on Airbnb, Booking.com and Stayz will be asked to self-identify and be charged higher rates. The charges will only apply to entire properties, not single rooms or granny flats, and only to those rented out on short-term leases for more than 60 days a year.

Schrinner said council would use online resources to identify properties listed as short-term accommodation, and also allow people to report their neighbours.

He said there had been almost 300 complaints from the community about short-term rentals in the past three years across Darra, Wavell Heights, Rochedale and Paddington.

“Think about how you would feel as a resident if your nextdoor neighbour kept on changing every second night, [and] every weekend [there were] parties happening in the house,” he said.

“This is what’s being reported to us. And so that’s just one of many ways that we can identify this problem.”

Schrinner said the city needs more housing supply and criticised the Greens for opposing new developments.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/brisbane-to-charge-airbnb-hosts-higher-council-rates-to-tackle-housing-availability/ar-AAYtp3w

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Submarine realism at last

Australia will prioritise the purchase of nuclear-powered submarines able to hit the water the fastest, under an Albanese Government pledge to deliver a “fit for purpose” defence force to meet modern threats.

Reaffirming Labor’s commitment to the AUKUS partnership, Defence Minister Richard Marles has revealed he wants to close the 20-year “capability gap” between when new submarines were first promised by the Coalition, and the expected delivery of a nuclear-powered fleet in the 2040s.

“We really need to be doing everything we can in terms of the timing of the next generation of submarines to close that gap as much as possible,” he said.

Australia is yet to decide between pursuing UK or US designed submarines, with Mr Marles indicating the government’s preferred option would consider the time frame to deliver.

“We’re looking at having that capability delivered as soon as possible,” he said.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/defence-minister-richard-marles-wants-more-military-collaboration-with-us-india-and-japan/news-story/7698dc846c2744b4d766ff23afe8faef

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Right masks boost virus protection: study

Healthcare departments across Australia need to more selectively procure respirator masks to encourage stronger compliance among frontline workers, researchers say.

The finding follows the federal government signing off on an extra $760 million to help states and territories in the ongoing fight against COVID-19.

Existing commonwealth-state funding arrangements were set to expire in September but were extended on Friday by three months.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the pandemic “clearly isn’t over yet and it would be very brave to suggest that you can make that projection”.

Study author Irene Ng, a consultant anaesthetist at Royal Melbourne Hospital, said healthcare workers often do not comply with recommendations for using respirators, particularly N95 respirators.

“Explanations for non-compliance include the lack of standardisation of donning and doffing techniques, and design features of respirators that reduce comfort and usability,” Dr Ng said.  

Some 378 health workers completed a comfort and usability survey, which formed the basis for the study.

The overall fit test pass rates were 65 per cent for semi-rigid cup respirators, 32 per cent for the flat-fold models, 59 per cent for the duckbill respirators and 96 per cent for three-panel flat-fold designs.

The latter was therefore the obvious choice for administrators and state and federal health departments when considering how to maximise respiratory protection.

Australia’s coronavirus-related death toll continues to rise, with more than 100 fatalities announced over the weekend including 48 in Victoria.

https://www.pharmacytimes.com.au/right-masks-boost-virus-protection-study/

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Renewable or reliable? Energy cannot be both

Australia’s new ALP government has gigantic green energy plans to be funded by electricity consumers and taxpayers.

They promise (with a straight face) that Australia’s electricity will be 82 per cent renewable by 2030.

They predict a 43 per cent reduction in emissions and being ‘on track for Net Zero by 2050’.

They threaten to litter the landscape with 400 community batteries, 85 solar banks, and a $20B expansion of the electricity grid.

This gigantic ‘green’ electricity plan will need at least 150 million Chinese solar panels covering outback kingdoms of land, plus thousands of bird-slicing metal-hungry wind turbines, plus never-ending roads and powerlines – not friendly to grass or trees and with no room for native birds, bees, bats or marsupials – not green at all.

The ALP has also revived the hoary plan to run an extension cord to Tasmania.

Naturally, some greedy green Tasmanians want to keep all that wind, solar, and hydro energy for themselves. Others dream of sending Northern Territory sunshine up a long cable from Darwin to Singapore.

With enthusiastic support from the new Parliament full of Climatists, Net Zeros, Teals, and Greens (but very few engineers) we can expect a disorderly rush to plaster a mess of electrical machinery and appliances all over the face of Australia.

They will also promote more demand for electricity for electric cars, many seeking overnight charging (despite having zero solar power and intermittent wind power at night). So we will need giant fire-prone batteries to recharge small fire-prone batteries.

When there is no sun on a single solar panel for 12 hours, no one notices; when all wind turbines sit idle for days under a slow-moving winter high, no one cares; but when one aging under-maintained coal plant falters, we notice; when three coal generators fail, we have a power crisis.

Yet we have green millionaires urging quicker closure of our few remaining 24/7 coal-powered generators.

The ALP/Green/Teal plan will clutter the countryside with solar panels, wind turbines, transmission lines, access roads (some bitumen), giant batteries, and fire-prone National Parks.

Eastern Australia recently had several very windy days, which caused many blackouts as trees and powerlines were blown down. Imagine the outages and repair costs after a cyclone slices thru this continent-wide spider-web of fragile power lines connecting millions of wind/solar generators, fire-prone batteries, and diverse markets. Picture the green energy network after the next big flood or bushfire.

Europeans can pretend to run a modern society with intermittent energy from windmills and sunbeams because they can call on reliable energy from French nuclear, Scandinavian hydro, Polish and German coal, Iceland geothermal, North Sea natural gas, and (sometimes) Russian gas, oil, and coal.

Australia has no extension cord to neighbours with reliable energy – we are on our own.

We can have Renewable Energy, or Reliable Energy, but not both.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/06/renewable-or-reliable-energy-cannot-be-both/

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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  June, 2022

Youth crime Qld: Why minimum age of detention could be raised from 10 to 14

The main driver for this change is to exculpate young Aborigines, who are commonly expert sneak thieves from an early age.  The change would give them licence to offend repeatedly.  But Leftists just see their age and want them exonerated on that ground alone  -- with the usual Leftist blindness to consequences

Attorney-General Shannon Fentiman says she will look at the minimum age of detention in Queensland following Tasmania’s move to increase it from 10 to 14.

Ms Fentiman described the recently announced decision by the Tasmanian Liberal government as an “interesting reform” as she spoke before the Queensland Media Club on Tuesday.

Under 14s will no longer be admitted to detention under the flagged changes in Tasmania, which are set to come into effect from 2024 – but they will still be held criminally responsible.

“Here in Queensland, very few young people – particularly aged ten to 12 – actually are in detention,” Ms Fentiman said. “But I think it is an interesting reform to look at. “Very happy to look at Tasmania’s approach, which is looking at detention, not (criminal) responsibility.”

Ms Fentiman acknowledged every jurisdiction across the country was meanwhile pushing for the minimum age of criminal responsibility to be raised from ten to 12.

She suggested each jurisdiction would want to make the move together to ensure consistency – with work underway in each state and territory to determine how it could be done.

“We haven’t had a Meeting of Attorneys-General yet with the new (federal) Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, but I know he is very interested in this,” she said.

“And perhaps we will get some leadership from the federal government on this issue as well which would help.”

Meanwhile, it can be revealed the government is now considering the Bob Atkinson-led review into its youth justice reforms – but it is yet to publicly release the report to the community.

Opposition Leader David Crisafulli said if the government valued transparency and wanted to take meaningful action on youth crime, it would release the report “immediately”.

“Is the government keeping this report secret because the Premier doesn’t want the negative publicity when it’s released,” he asked.

In response to questions put to Youth Justice Minister Leanne Linard, a spokeswoman would only say the report would be released “soon” – with recommendations being considered by the government.

She also wouldn’t say if electronic monitoring devices as a condition of bail for accused youth offenders would be made a permanent measure beyond the trial period.

As of January, only three electronic monitoring devices had been fitted on 16 and 17-year-olds as a condition of bail following the introduction of the government’s laws.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/truecrimeaustralia/police-courts-qld/youth-crime-qld-why-minimum-age-of-detention-could-be-raised-from-10-to-14/news-story/8c86c1c09ece735ceecc934003f08420

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"Dark Emu" rebuttal added to school reading list

"Dark Emu" is a monstrous work of fiction parading as history.  But the Left love it.  They routinely ignore the facts.  That's what they do

A critique of Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu has been included by Victoria’s curriculum authority on a resource list for the state’s Australian history teachers to use in the classroom.

In the latest challenge to Professor Pascoe’s work, a book by anthropologist Peter Sutton and archaeologist Keryn Walshe – which says Dark Emu relies on colonial accounts as sources – has been endorsed by the state’s curriculum chiefs.

Professor Pascoe says before European conquest, Indigenous Australians engaged in sophisticated agricultural and farming techniques. He contends that precolonial Aboriginal people sometimes lived in houses and villages and employed technology to harvest food.

Professor Sutton and Dr ­Walshe challenge this, claiming Indigenous Australians were “complex hunter-gatherers”.

Their work, Farmers or ­hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu debate, was published last year and has been added to a list of optional resources, alongside Dark Emu, for teachers and now thousands of year 11 and 12 students across the state to use in the study of Australian history.

Professor Sutton, from the University of Adelaide and the South Australian museum, said if students were being given Dark Emu without a critical analysis of the work, they were being “misled”.

“I think that’s quite shameful. Let’s say the Dalai Lama tells you that two and two makes five. You say, look, with all due respect, your spiritual highness, two and two does not make five,” he told The Australian.

“So this issue is not really about Bruce … It’s about whether students are being guided … in terms of reliable sources of factual information.”

Professor Pascoe’s 2014 work, Dark Emu Black Seeds: agriculture or accident?, has been included on the same list since at least 2015 according to a VCAA resource list dated that year.

It argues that the economy and culture of Indigenous Australians before European conquest has been undervalued, and that journals and diaries of explorers revealed “a much more complicated Aboriginal economy than the primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyle we had been told was the simple lot of Australia’s First People.”

Professor Sutton and Dr ­Walshe “contend that Pascoe is broadly wrong” and say Indigenous Australians were “hunter-gatherers-plus” whose “hunting, fishing and gathering economy was far more complex than might be imagined from the word ‘mere’.”

Dark Emu is listed as an optional resource in two NSW high school subject “sample programs” – they include stage 6 Investigating science and Stage 4 Technology Mandatory – but it is not a prescribed text. Nor is Professor Sutton’s work.

Queensland and Western Australia recommend neither book as a prescribed or recommended resource.

Professor Sutton, an anthropologist since 1969, said students should have the opportunity to review both pieces of work, not Dark Emu alone. “(Dark Emu should) either be excluded on the basis that it’s been disproved by the heavy weight of Aboriginal evidence in our expert opinion or you present both that book and its answer and you get the students to compare the pair,” he said.

“I often say to people ‘Don‘t read our book first. Go and buy a copy of Dark Emu, have a good read, then read ours,’ ”

Professor Pascoe did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokesman from Victoria’s Department of Education said books were selected by individual schools to support teachers in delivering the state’s curriculum.

“Texts to support the implementation of the Victorian curriculum are determined by individual schools, consistent with advice provided by the Department of Education and Training on the selection of suitable teaching resources,” he said.

“Farmers or hunter-gatherers: The Dark Emu debate" by Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe is not on any of the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority’s prescribed text lists for senior secondary VCE studies. However, the book is on a list of optional resources that teachers may use to explore a range of different interpretations of the past in the study of VCE Australian History Units 3 and 4.”

Professor Sutton described his work as a “forensic examination” of Professor Pascoe’s, whom he said omitted evidence that did not suit his theory and relied too heavily on the work of European explorers.

Professor Sutton’s work is included in the optional reading list for the VCE subject area “from custodianship to the Anthropocene (60,000 BCE-1901)”.

A spokeswoman for the ­national curriculum authority, the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority, said it did not recommend books for students to read.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/dark-emu-rebuttal-added-to-school-reading-list/news-story/9bfab1364a39acbb4e5062b25ebea666

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Cook cancelled: when will we call this out as racism?

Peaceful explorer, cartographer, and navigator Captain James Cook has been removed from the Australia versus England Test match crystal Cook Cup.

After a quarter of a century, one of the greatest men in history will be replaced by the ‘Ella-Mobbs Trophy’ due to be unveiled in Perth this July.

The hyphenated name is for two people, an English winger and casualty of the first world war on the Western Front Edgar Mobbs, and the Indigenous Australian Mark Ella who served as the first Indigenous captain.

Ultra-Woke Rugby Australia is believed to have led the move to rename the cup.

Bowing to the ridiculous cancel culture of the foreign Marxist-driven social movement set on committing acts of cultural vandalism in the West, Rugby Australia and the Rugby Football Union said that this change would ‘better represent’ the history of both nations.

‘The majority of Indigenous people wouldn’t want that [Cook’s name] on the cup,’ said Glen Ella, Mark’s twin, in a comment that would be deemed highly offensive and inappropriate if it were said about an Indigenous person.

‘I don’t have a problem, personally, it doesn’t really worry me. But to do the right thing by Aboriginal people, yeah, I understand why they’ve made that call. There is still a lot of angst about that among the elders, so they’re doing the right thing and making an effort to change the name to something more to do with rugby, and not carry those connotations.’

Considering Cook discovered Australia, no one would be playing rugby and certainly not an Australia-England Test match if it weren’t for Captain Cook.

‘The Wallabies’ England Test series will see a new trophy introduced for all future series between the nations. Australia and England first played against each other in a Test match in 1909 in London. With such a vast history between them, Rugby Australia and the Rugby Football Union made the decision that the trophy should better represent the proud rugby history of both nations,’ said an RFU spokesperson.

The claim is that Cook is a divisive figure in Australia – except that he isn’t – or at least he wasn’t until the Black Lives Matter mob latched onto the navigator and tried to tear down his achievements to elevate their race-driven revenge activism.

It has become Woke and ‘cool’ to hate the people who contributed the most to the founding of Australia, even when they were decent human beings.

Captain Cook quite literally put Australia on the map. By all accounts, his morality, ethics, courage, and leadership stand in better stead than most activists screeching at the nearest microphone. He was revered and honoured across Australian culture because he deserved it. He is also the link between England and Australia, hence his significance for the Test match trophy.

Despite being a good and peaceful man, he was killed and cooked in 1779 by Hawaiian natives.

The only criticism activists can level at Cook is that he ‘enabled Colonialism’ but if activists were being honest with history and themselves, every culture on Earth went out and explored lands. The Indigenous people of Australia are themselves explorers from Asia who came down in successive waves with today’s people having warred with, intermarried, and in many cases killed existing tribes.

As far as anyone can tell, Cook never killed anyone. At one point, he fired three non-lethal loads toward antagonistic Aboriginal warriors with the intention of scaring them away. One shot slightly injured a warrior in the leg after the warrior had thrown stones and other projectiles at Cook’s men. The object was to keep his crew safe after cultural misunderstandings arose during otherwise peaceful trade negotiations which the Aboriginal people had previously been engaged in. What is often left out of the story is that at the time of the shots being fired, the Aboriginal warriors were throwing poisoned darts with the intent of killing. Cook was merely trying to hold them back without causing harm while his men retreated.

This trade exchange between two peoples who were unable to communicate except through the most crude of hand signals and offerings is exaggerated by activists into an act of imperialism or aggression. It is a complete nonsense and fabrication of history designed to re-paint the world as a ‘struggle’ between victims and oppressors instead of human beings trying to navigate the world and its challenges.

Cook was an adventurer that greatly expanded our scientific knowledge of nature and geography – something that the Left proclaim to value and yet refuse to praise or acknowledge the individuals who actually did it because they don’t like the colour of their skin.

Cancelling people because of their heritage, culture, or skin colour is a racist trend imported from jealous, hateful Marxists looking to tear down their ideological betters and replace Australia’s truly equal political system with a race-based society of victimhood and division which can be easily extorted for money and power.

The Left love to go on about ‘offense’ well, it is offensive to attack, malign, and paint an historical figure like Captain James Cook with fabricated hatred. It shows a complete lack of respect to Australia, its history, and the story of how we all came to be here together in peace.

Shame on Rugby Australia and RFU for cancelling one of the greatest men in Australian history – especially considering they chase balls around for a living. Perspective…

https://spectator.com.au/2022/06/cook-cancelled-when-will-we-call-this-out-as-racism/

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Coal, gas payments for reliable power fix

Coal and gas power stations would receive payments to secure reliable supply and keep Australia’s ailing electricity system operating, as the government faces pressure to avoid blackouts and fix the ­national energy crisis.

The Energy Security Board has rejected demands for the fossil fuels to be cut from its draft ­capacity mechanism, saying it was essential coal and gas plants did not exit the power grid before replacement renewables and storage generation were in place.

The mechanism would allow generators to be paid for guaranteeing standby supply to meet ­demand, helping to avoid a repeat of the current grid suspension and incentivise companies to invest in new energy capacity.

But the states will retain the final say over whether to include coal and gas in the mechanism amid calls for it to be focused on storage technologies to support more renewables.

“From an investor’s point of view, a capacity mechanism would reduce reliance on wholesale market outcomes that are ­becoming increasingly difficult to predict. It would provide an alternative revenue source that would be potentially more predictable and secure, rewarding the ­capacity service that the market needs,” the ESB said.

After a horror week which saw the entire national electricity market suspended, repeat warnings of blackouts and allegations from Anthony Albanese that generators were gaming the system, the ESB said offering incentives only to new clean energy and storage suppliers would hand them an unfair advantage over existing generators, including coal and gas.

“Providing payments to only new capacity would, all else being equal, give them a competitive ­advantage while at the same time reduce revenues for all capacity providers – through increased competition, which will drive prices down – and potentially make some uneconomic, thereby ­increasing the risk of a disorderly transition to net zero,” the ESB said.

The loss of a quarter of coal supply in recent weeks has contributed to soaring wholesale prices and the threat of power blackouts, underlining the need for the fossil fuel to remain in the electricity mix during the transition to a renewables-dominated energy system.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/coal-gas-payments-for-reliable-power-fix/news-story/ef718b9232b44685dc574ed5a4a1b919

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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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19 June, 2022

Rent crisis: 87,000 properties ‘empty’, water’s on, no-one’s home

Only a minority of these homes will be actually unused but some will be  -- particularly homes owned by people living overseas.  Some owners are so wary of the unrecoverable damage that tenants can and do sometimes inflict that they regard protecting their investment as a higher priority than renting it out for income.  

And given the extremely pro-tenant laws, who could be blamed for not wanting to tangle with tenants?  Landlord protection laws would put most of the properties into the rental market but there is no prospect of such laws emerging.  Government meddling in the market is once again producing perverse behaviour.  Legislation designed to help tenants in fact hurts them.  At the very least, it pushes up their costs

I in fact have a rental property that I do not rent out  even though it is little used.  I prefer to keep it available for occasional use by family rather than bother with tenants and all the "protections" that come with them.  I am not even allowed to bar pets these days.  Awful of me but if you smell what some pets do to carpet you will understand.  I have been a landlord.  I know.

If tenants want more choice of housing, they should be telling governments to back off -- which is exactly the opposite of what is proposed below.  The proposals below would undoubtedly take even more housing out of the rental market.  You can only push people so far.  And guess what?  Landlords are people too!

Despite the worst rental crisis on record, about 87,000 ‘empty’ homes are not being put to work prompting calls for penalties against owners who don’t rent them out.

Shock analysis of the latest housing data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows around 87,000 Qld residential properties that aren’t the main home of their owners were not being rented out, a figure which stretches out to 577,000 nationally.

An ABS spokeswoman said “the data includes properties used for other purposes, such as holiday homes, second residences, dwellings occupied rent-free by family members etc”.

Veteran property expert Michael Matusik said new tax measures were necessary to incentivise or penalise owners to release the homes for rent given how tight the market was.

“Around 29 per cent of investment properties are not rented out. They are sitting there vacant.,” he said.

Exclusive data from Qld’s biggest water provider, Urban Utilities, revealed 19,500 homes across lower SEQ had their water connection on, but noone seemed to be home for months.

Spokeswoman Michelle Cull said the firm provided water and sewage for around 590,000 residential properties in Brisbane, Ipswich, Somerset, Scenic Rim and Lockyer Valley – with new data finding about 3.3 per cent had low or no water consumption over a three-month period.

“According to our water usage data, around 19,500 properties in our service region had a water usage of between zero and two kilolitres during the last quarter of 2021 (October to December),” Ms Cull said.

“Properties may have no or low water usage for a range of reasons including the use of water tanks instead of town water supply, residents could be away from home, or the property could be vacant or uninhabitable.”

Unitywater executive manager customer and community Katherine Gee said their numbers showed 2,104 houses that used 1,000 litres or less water over a 90 day period – of which 96 were in Noosa, 1,020 on the Sunshine Coast and 988 in Moreton Bay.

“It is important to note that it cannot be categorically stated that these properties are ‘vacant’. We operate in a desirable region and some of these properties may be holiday homes or homes that are occupied for only parts of the year,” she said.

Mackay Regional Council confirmed it too had zero/low consumption segments “however, this is not a definite indication that the property is vacant” given “the property owner may be away for an extended period, it could be a holiday home or estate or the owner may have another water source (rainwater/bore)”.

The figures for ‘empty’ apartments are harder to get given “there are a significant number of residential units/complexes that feed off a single meter and it will depend if each unit/complex are separate parcels of land (lot and plan),” a Mackay spokeswoman said.

The rental crisis spurred Brisbane Mayor Adrian Schrinner to open the floodgates over under-utilised rental properties, announcing “significantly higher rates” for landlords who “turned homes into mini hotels”.

“If owners have these properties in the market for a short term, that is their choice, but what they’ll be facing now is a 50 per cent increase in their rates. We’re excluding (those that rent out) individual rooms. This is about people who rent out the whole house.”

The city saw house rent surge 22 per cent in the past year to $610 a week, with units up 11.2 per cent to $430 a week, latest SQM Research data found. It put Brisbane’s vacancy rate at 0.7 per cent – its tightest level in history – with listings almost halving in one year (-46 per cent) to 2,200.

There are now calls for the Qld Government to step up, with Strata Community Association Qld president Kristi Kinast repeating calls for legislation to allow bodies corporate to ban short-term letting.

“This is currently impossible for 99 per cent of Queensland’s strata communities,” she said. “SCA Qld believes this is a good policy that will help alleviate rental shortages and discourage short-term letting in strata schemes that were not intended for that purpose.”

The Federal Government’s whip has been a vacancy fee penalty – enforced against international buyers who leave their real estate investments empty.

Australian Taxation Office figures show it collected $2.3m in penalties in 2021, $3.7m in 2019/20 and $1.8m in its first year of collection (2018/19).

Prosper Australia director of advocacy Karl Fitzgerald said foreign investors were not solely to blame for empty or under-utilised homes, with “speculative vacancies” by Australian investors curbing supply and pushing prices higher.

He said governments needed to reduce incentives for short-term profiteering from housing.

“Higher land taxes, more effective vacancy taxes and even curbing interest-only loans could all help. Switching away from stamp duties and towards land taxes – the ultimate vacancy tax – is a vital step forward.”

The best form of vacancy tax locally, Mr Fitzgerald said, would be to replace stamp duty with a land tax set at a significant rate of about 1.5 per cent of site values.

He said the ATO should also consider denying depreciation as a tax write-off if a property owner did not put it up for rent at a competitive rate. “Further investigation is needed of an incremental land tax for sites that refuse to be put to work.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/property/rent-crisis-87000-properties-empty-waters-on-noones-home/news-story/3ca0caf5850f074335aac1999085f45c

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A welfare explosion

It is one of life’s sad realities that, as soon as there is an attempt to improve the population’s welfare, unscrupulous individuals take advantage of the best of intentions.

Our welfare system could be said to discourage work and self-reliance, it also tests the ability to pay for it.

Over the years, we have seen solo parent support encourage more pregnancies for financial gain, without financial input from fathers. The unemployment benefit was established as temporary support for those out of work, for some it has become a permanent and sometimes multi-generational way of life; while jobs in agriculture and hospitality are unfilled, we have an unemployment rate which, although temporarily improved, is high by OECD comparison.

Accident Compensation is another scheme that has become blighted by ‘permanent invalids’, who seem capable of mowing the lawn whilst incapable of work. The cost of aged care continues to rise, whilst their children expect the government to pay the bills – and complain when they consider care to be substandard. Welfare demands are still higher in the Aboriginal population, with average benefits at $40,000 per capita, compared with $20,000 for non-Aboriginals.

The cost of these good intentions has risen rapidly, from $160 billion in 2017, to currently $200 billion, with an increasing proportion funded by the federal government.

The latest addition to the welfare bill is the NDIS, a scheme introduced by the Gillard government designed to support those under 65 with significant, permanent disability.

The scheme was initially trialled in 2013, in Tasmania for young adults, in South Australia for children, in Victoria for general groups, and in New South Wales for older adults. It was formally launched in July 2016 and, by year’s end, covered 30,000. West Australia joined in 2020.

The initial cost was estimated at $4 billion for the year 2016-17, with funding provided by an increase of half a per cent in the Medicare levy. It was planned to cover Musculoskeletal conditions, cancer, visual and hearing impairment, and neurological conditions such as stroke, Parkinson’s disease, and spinal cord injury.

In August 2017 mental health disorders, including anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, and autism, became eligible; by November that year, the number of enrolments had increased to 120,000.

At the completion of enrolment, it was estimated that 400,000 would be supported at a cost of $14 billion. By 2019-20, the first full year of operation, the cost had ballooned to $22 billion (1.1 per cent of GDP). By June 2021 there were 463,000 claimants, now 480,000, with an average individual cost increasing to $71,000.

Forward estimates now suggest a spiralling increase to $42 billion by 2024-25 (1.5 per cent of GDP), and $46 by the following year; future figures up to $60 billion have been suggested, with as many as 860,000 supported. The government is rightly concerned as to why this has occurred, and what can be done to control costs.

One aspect of the increase is the increasing inclusion of behavioural disorders, once considered the result of bad parenting, now reclassified into the psychiatric domain as new conditions are invented. Autism is a clear-cut diagnosis, autism spectrum diagnosis in Australia increased from 30,000 cases in 2003, to 60,000 by 2009 and 120,000 by 2012; as diagnostic boundaries expand, the latest estimate is 230,000 cases (approximately 1 per cent of the population), with around half being children.

The same increase has been noted in other countries: in Canada, it expanded from 4 per 10,000 in 2003, to 20 per 10,000 and by 2020 to 1 per cent (100 per 10,000). In the UK, the incidence was 5 per 10,000 in 1990, now increased to 1 per cent of children and 2 per cent of the general population. The estimated incidence in India remains low at 3 per 10,000 (0.03 per cent), and worldwide 60 per 10,000 (0.6 per cent). A recent Japanese study suggests this increase in incidence may be a consequence of exposing children to excess screen time at a young age; the study also revealed that 90 per cent of 1-year-olds were exposed to between 1 and 4 hours daily. The WHO has advised total bans on use in the very young.

Projections are the total number here will continue to rise, to 1.5 per cent, 350,000 cases, as diagnostic criteria are refined and milder degrees are included. With no specific test the diagnosis is subjective and, as milder degrees are added, the autism spectrum becomes a major cost. The proportion claiming NDIS support because of mental or behavioural problems has progressively increased, reaching 66,000 by the end of 2021 and predicted 90,000 by 2030; other, new psychological disorders have the potential to add further to the numbers.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCDC) is now estimated at 3 per cent of the Australian population, around 500,000; attention deficit disorder (ADHD) is now found in 5 per cent, and Asperger’s syndrome has now been reclassified as part of the autism spectrum. The latest behavioural problems to add to the diagnostic alphabet are oppositional defiance disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD).

It seems that bad behaviour, as well as being a problem in the classroom, is becoming a cost to the taxpayer and a source of income for some parents and psychologists.

The latest conditions are not, as yet, included in the NDIS list, but parents of children with ADHD are being encouraged to explore the additional diagnosis of the autism spectrum to qualify for payment. As of June 2019, one-third of those funded by NDIS for psychological disorders had autism spectrum as their primary diagnosis; evidence is accumulating that the explosion in numbers is due to young children having excess screen time exposure, instead of parental input. Care now involves psychology, counselling, and even art and music therapy.

Since the Covid pandemic disability diagnoses have soared with up to one in five now eligible for assistance. Claims relate to ‘social-emotional’ disability (7 per cent), cognitive disability conditions (12 per cent), and physical disability (3 per cent). Since the start of the pandemic, an extra 43,000 children have been added, a 12 per cent increase; the increase in ‘lockdown’ Victoria was even more pronounced at 17 per cent.

Another explanation for the cost blowout is the increasing severity of disability classification, with individual payments increasing by an average 12.5 per cent annually.

After an increase of 23 per cent in 2 years, the federal government has become concerned about spiralling costs: attempts to rein in costs have reduced per capita spending from $71,200 in 2020 to $68,500 in 2021.

The states, (who had historically been responsible for the disabled) had initially been responsible for 50 per cent; their contribution had been limited to a 4 per cent annual increase, meaning the federal proportion is rising to 60 per cent of the total.

Following a revue this year, it wanted to introduce an independent assessment of both diagnosis and severity of both current and future eligibility. This review and subsequent planned legislation, has inevitably produced an outcry from the welfare lobby groups, as well as the left of politics who are always happy to spend other people’s money. A simple (but unlikely) solution would be to revert to the original premise and exclude psychiatric disorders.

Welfare and disability advocates demand yet more support for the NDIS, and even suggest it saves money! Currently, the Australian government spends around 40 per cent of GDP gross domestic product, with around half that amount spent on welfare. The leaders in welfare are the Swedes at around 25 per cent, now overtaken by the French who spend 30 per cent of their GDP on welfare. Not only has the proportion spent on welfare increased, but the total spending is now increasingly supported by borrowing and accumulated debt; this has increased from about 40 per cent of GDP to nearly 100 per cent since the Covid lockdowns.

Future projections of NDIS costs are heading toward $60 billion, with a new Labor government the problem remains the same- how to pay for it. They need to grasp the nettle and assess the worth of this and other welfare schemes – ultimately, we must accept what we can afford, rather than what we want.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/06/ndis-used-or-abused/?

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ABC boss Ita Buttrose criticised by hyphenated lady for using the term ‘Aborigines’ in speech

ABC chair Ita Buttrose has been accused of failing to comply with the broadcaster’s own editorial style guide in a major speech where she referred to First Nations people as “Aborigines”.

Ms Buttrose used the term in Sydney on Friday night as she delivered an annual media lecture in honour of distinguished journalist Andrew Olle, who died in 1995 at age 48.

While speaking about Mr Olle’s work, she said “he’d tell the stories of Aborigines, the mentally ill, the poor and the powerless … stories, at that time, with no assured place on the mainstream media’s agenda”.

Former ABC, SBS and NITV journalist Jennetta Quinn-Bates took offence at use of the term “Aborigines” and she took to Twitter to highlight it was not in-line with the ABC style guide.

“She’s still calling us Aborigines and basically reminding First Nations people we’re lucky for any airtime at all,” Ms Quinn-Bates wrote.

“Message received loud and clear. Sincerest apologies to my former ABC indigenous colleagues.”

After her initial comments, Ms Quinn-Bates posted screenshots of the ABC editorial style guide, which directs staff to “avoid Aborigine outside of quotes”.

Ms Quinn-Bates said while Ms Buttrose could argue it was “only a guide”, she called for “some respect please”.

“You would think one would be familiar with the policies and standards of the organisation they chair,” Ms Quinn-Bates posted.

https://www.news.com.au/national/abc-boss-ita-buttrose-criticised-for-using-the-term-aborigines-in-speech/news-story/4de08fa951dba47d82e4aff8741332f9

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NSW will need Narrabri gas resources minister in Federal Leftist government says

Resources Minister Madeleine King has warned of a bigger energy crisis in future years if new gas fields like the Narrabri project in northern NSW do not go ahead, declaring that critics of the project should accept the need for gas as part of the transition from coal to renewable energy.

Warning of gas shortfalls that could hurt industry and households, the new federal minister said Narrabri should proceed if it met environmental safeguards and all the gas should flow to the domestic market.

Santos wants to produce the first gas from the controversial project in 2026 and says it could sell the gas “two or three times over” on the domestic market because demand is so strong, but the company must gain state and federal approvals for gas production and a pipeline to Sydney.

The gas field is opposed by the Australian Conservation Foundation, Greenpeace, the Climate Council, the Gomeroi traditional owners and others, while Greens leader Adam Bandt wants federal Labor to halt all new gas and coal projects.

King said she hoped the project would go ahead but understood it had to pass further regulatory checks, including challenges under native title legislation.

“If Narrabri meets all the environmental standards, and by all accounts it does, then it makes sense for it to go ahead,” King said in her first interview with the Herald and The Age since taking office.

“It is an important gas reserve that will help the population of NSW address a future power crisis. It avoids a crisis, is what it does, because it means more gas closer to your systems.”

While the NSW government has backed the Santos plan in principle, the project is subject to independent environmental approvals while the government also examines a separate plan to build an import terminal in Port Kembla to supply gas that has been shipped from Western Australia.

King emphasised that she wanted to “decarbonise” the economy by shifting to renewables but had to deal with household and industry demand “and accept some of the realities of our current energy mix”.

She said demand for gas would fall over time and she wanted Australia to reach net zero emissions by 2050 with Labor policies to shift to renewables and invest in the electricity grid, but she said gas was part of the transition because it would replace dirtier emissions from coal-fired power.

“I understand people’s concerns about there being a lack of determination around meeting net zero emissions and a lack of an energy plan and that has been because of the climate wars in this country in the last 10 or 15 years,” she said.

“I have a lot of sympathy for it and I’m as angry as anyone about the inaction that has allowed the current crisis to be upon us.

“But everyone needs to understand, especially I think in some of the southern states, that right now when you flick on your light switch or have your dishwasher running or turn on your telly, for the most part, that moves a turbine in a coal-fired generator ... you’re using more coal, which is high in emissions.

“While the government is now bringing in an energy plan which will get working on renewables, and that’s our very determined ambition, gas is the transition fuel that is able to bring down emissions in the short term.

“So it’s not a perfect answer. We’d all love to switch straight from coal to renewables. But it’s simply not possible,” she said.

“So I guess for the good people of NSW, they need to consider what they really want. And I imagine they still want to be able to turn on their television and keep their fridge running.

“What is the current means to be able to do it and be on a downward trajectory with emissions? Well, it’s via gas on the way to a proper, solid, reliable transmission system that allows renewables and the storage of renewables to operate into the long term.

“We’ve got a long way to go, actually, because of the lack of investment over the last 10 or 15 years and you can’t switch on investment like we switch on lights.

“And for those people that will get angry at me for what I’ve said, I just want to let them know that I want to clean and decarbonised world as well. And that’s what we’re working towards. It might not be on the same timeline as others. But we are all going through the same goal.”

Santos has promised in the past that all the gas from Narrabri would serve the domestic market if the project gained approval, making this part of its formal submission to the Independent Planning Commission.

“Santos has committed to providing all this gas to the domestic market and agreed to accept a condition to this effect on any petroleum production lease granted for the project under the Petroleum (Onshore) Act 1991,” the company wrote.

Santos chief executive Kevin Gallagher confirmed the pledge in an interview on Sky News on June 8.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/nsw-will-need-narrabri-gas-resources-minister-20220614-p5atlb.html

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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  June 2022

One Nation's Pauline Hanson wins Queensland Senate seat

My vote counted

It means Liberal National Party Senator Amanda Stoker has lost her seat.

The 68-year-old Senator Hanson has been elected for a second six-year term, after entering the Senate as a One Nation Candidate in 2016. 

Senator Stoker exits after being placed in the Senate by the LNP in 2018 when George Brandis resigned. 

Ms Hanson, who has previously represented the Lower House seat of Oxley, west of Brisbane, garnered 191,156 first-preference votes.

As a party, One Nation polled just over half the amount required for a quota in Queensland.

With Ms Stoker losing her seat, Queensland's traditional Senate split of three right and three left senators has been restored.

The Brisbane solicitor worked in corporate law before she first joined the Senate in 2018, where she became a vocal supporter of her government’s Religious Discrimination Bill.

The mother-of-three served tenures as Assistant Minister for Women, Industrial Relations and to the Attorney-General while in office. 

While the AEC officially declared the Queensland winners today, the ABC's election calculator had already called five of the six spots.

In a statement Pauline Hanson thanked supporters.

"I thank Queenslanders for entrusting me to continue to represent them in Canberra and I thank all those Australians who supported our party and lifted our national vote," she said.

"I congratulate Mr Albanese on Labor's win. I've said in the past he probably wouldn't make a good Prime Minister, however I sincerely hope he proves me wrong.

"Australians need representation which puts them and their country first more than ever," she said.

"The costs of living are skyrocketing. We have an energy crisis created by the major parties that One Nation has been warning about for many years.

"We're in the middle of a housing crisis. We have significant security challenges.

"We have a new government seemingly all too ready and willing to sacrifice the Australian economy and countless Australian jobs on the altar of climate change."

Labor's Murray Watt and Anthony Chisholm have been re-elected, along with the LNP's James McGrath and Matt Canavan.

The Greens' Penny Allman-Payne also won a seat.

There are six Senate seats up for grabs in each state at every federal election

The AEC's official declaration of the result today confirms the United Australia Party's Clive Palmer failed to win a seat.

Despite Senator Hanson's win, the ABC's chief election analyst Antony Green told ABC Radio Brisbane this election was a "step back" for One Nation.

"One Nation did not poll as well as I thought they would – only got 7 per cent, I thought they would do better," he said.

"One Nation has elected a Senator, but other than that, it's not been as successful as it was in the last election."

Mr Green said preferences from parties who were not elected helped Senator Hanson get across the line.

"Under the current Senate electoral system at the last two elections, Pauline Hanson will attract more preferences from excluded parties than anybody else on the ballot paper," he said.

Mr Green said Labor's Senator Chisholm and the Greens' incoming Senator, Penny Allman-Payne also relied on preferences to win their seats.

The LNP's two successful candidates and Labor's Senator Watt were returned to the upper house on full quotas, which means they reached 14.4 per cent of the vote.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-17/qld-stoker-vs-hanson-senate-race-queensland-federal-senate-seat/101162456

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Bondi school parents slam decision to ban outdoor play before class

Power-mad bureaucrats at work

Frustrated parents have lashed a decision by Bondi Beach Public School to prohibit outdoor play before school, warning that children are missing out on vital exercise and interaction after months of disruption.

In a letter sent to a parent who raised concerns about limiting outdoor play on school grounds, Paul Owens, from the Bondi Principals Network, said the principal and school executive was “evaluating a focus on quieter and semi-active social interaction prior to morning classes”.

“This initiative responds to playground observations, incidents that may arise, and students’ preparedness for learning once they’ve entered classrooms,” the letter said.

But parents said restricting students from using the playground before school started was causing consternation, with many worried that limiting outdoor play would cut back on critical exercise and interaction with other classes and year groups.

“There has been little discussion between the school principal about the restrictions or changes to when children can play in the school playground,” a parent said, who has a child in a senior primary year and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“None of the parents I have come across at the school thinks no play outdoors before school is a good idea,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Education said the “initiative has been implemented on a short-term basis in response to school leadership and teacher observations of playground interactions and students’ preparedness for learning once they entered classrooms”.

The Herald understands Bondi Beach Public is the only school in the area trialling a routine to limit before school outdoor play.

“The trial is one of a number of strategies Bondi Beach Public School has implemented to support positive classroom behaviour and learning. Other examples include having two breaks in the day of a similar length where children can engage in active play if they wish,” the spokesperson said.

“Wellbeing data, student comments, and teacher observations, show the trial is having a positive impact.”

Another parent, who has had three children attend the school over 10 years, said there was concern that children were being “forced to sit quietly in classrooms before the school day starts”.

Annie Robin, a parent whose son is in year 4, said after months of COVID-19 disruptions students need to “socialise with other year groups”.

“My main frustration is the kids aren’t learning to put out fires themselves and deal with conflict in the school playground – they need to be around other kids. They need to be running around burning energy,” she said. “Parents are really upset about this.”

Under the latest COVID-19 advice, schools are not required to keep students in their class or year group cohorts and there is no need to stagger start and finish times. Schools can also run activities and assemblies with mixed year groups.

Another parent, with two children in different years at Bondi Beach Public, said many restrictions introduced during the pandemic have stayed in place.

“There is indignation in the community. Before COVID-19 kids could show up at school from 8.30am and play in the school yard before the bell went,” the parent said. “All stages mixed and it was very sociable. But many of the COVID-19 rules have been kept and it’s just hindering kids interaction which is so important while they are preparing for high school.”

In a letter to a parent the Bondi Principals Network said the “positive impact of the current routine will be seen over time and therefore, [principal] Ms O’Neill explained the evaluation will not be finalised until the end of the year”.

“Ms O’Neill will provide an update to parents once feedback has allowed for appropriate conclusions to be drawn,” the letter said.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/bondi-school-parents-slam-decision-to-ban-outdoor-play-before-class-20220615-p5atv1.html

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New 'sticky' Omicron variants will take over in NSW, concerns about reinfection

Two new Omicron variants are set to become the most dominant in NSW as a result of their "growth advantage" over previous strains, according to a new report.

The new variants—  BA.4 and BA.5 — are set to overtake the previously prevalent BA.2 variant in coming weeks, the NSW Health respiratory surveillance report said.

"It is anticipated that in coming weeks the BA.4 and BA.5 sub-lineages, first identified in early April, will become the dominant strains," a NSW Health spokesperson said.

"And will likely be associated with an increase in infections."

Virologist Stuart Turville from the University of NSW's Kirby Institute said BA. 5 was "stickier" than its predecessors because of differences in its spike glycoprotein, which influences how the virus engages with cells. 

"BA.5 doesn't look to be a big seismic shift like we saw with BA.1 and BA.2 in comparison to Delta," Professor Turville said.

"[But] the thing we're keeping an eye on with BA.5 is that it's starting to like tissue that pre-Omicron variants like ... it likes proteins on the lung.

"What we want to know now is does it like it as much as Delta and pre-Omicron variants or is it just a bit of a shift from BA.2?"

Infectious disease experts say there is evidence the Omicron sub-variants are effective at reinfecting people with previous infections from BA.1 or other lineages.

There is also concern these sub-variants may infect people who have been vaccinated.

However, there hasn't been a link to an increase in disease severity just yet, although this is being closely monitored, according to the NSW Health report. 

Hospital and lab surveillance noted an early start to influenza season this year as well as a rapid increase in reported cases, raising concerns for strains on essential services.

University of Sydney Faculty of Medicine and Health Professor Elizabeth Elliott said there was no doubt "chaos" would be caused by the emergence of new variants in the winter flu season.

"Hospitals are already struggling with the load. And kids are not exempt. We recommend flu and COVID vaccines for all eligible," she said.

However, Professor Turville is more optimistic that precautionary measures can help ease the pressure. 

"I would say if you haven't already, go and get your third dose. Although it may not stop you getting infected, it will definitely help with disease severity," he said.

"If you've had a third dose a while ago and ATAGI (Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation) recommends a fourth dose, just do it. Don't get complacent.

"The other thing is, although people don't like restrictions, it's important to be considerate and wear a mask. We don't know who has or doesn't have a good vaccine response."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-17/new-covid-omicron-variants-become-dominant-in-nsw/101162684

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Green lunacy

He mentions storage but shows no awareness of its monstrous cost if it were to replace much generating

Chris Bowen has furiously dismissed suggestions that prolonging coal-fired power is the solution to Australia's energy crisis

The Energy Minister Minister fired-up in a press conference when he was challenged by a journalist about the unreliability of renewable energy.

One of the reasons given for the National Electricity Market suspension on Wednesday was a lack of wind and solar power. 

The journalist asked: 'Isn't part of the supply problem the fact that you cannot direct wind into the market?

'The only thing you can do is to keep the coal-fired generators going to their end of life and to fix the ones that you have got now and include them in the capacity market, isn't that the short-term fix?'

Minister Bowen said the solution is to rapidly invest in renewable energy and storage - not more unreliable coal power. 

'The problem is there is not enough investment in renewable energy. There hasn't been enough investment in storage,' he said.

'Yes, you can say the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. The rain doesn't always fall either but we can store the water and we can store renewable energy if we have the investment.

'That investment has been lacking for the last decade. That is the problem.' 

Mr Bowen said the current crisis has 'largely' been caused by unexpected outages at coal-fired power stations which are nearing the end of their lifespans.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton cautioned Labor against moving into renewables too quickly, risking further power shortages down the track.

'Labor is rushing toward a new system when it's not at a sensible pace,' he told 2GB.

'They went into the election promising electricity bills would be cheaper and that is not going to happen.' 

Last night hospitals were ordered to reduce electricity use and millions of people urged not to use basic appliances.

The potential for mass blackouts has increased with about 1800MW of coal-fired power not operating in Queensland and 1200MW of capacity offline in the states of NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. 

The Tomago aluminium smelter in NSW, the country's biggest electricity user, was also forced to cut production to reduce the chance of a blackout. 

NSW Treasurer Matt Kean on Wednesday evening begged residents not to run dishwashers until late at night, and Sydney hospital staff were ordered to conserve power in all non-clinical settings.

'This is the result of two-and-a-half decades of policy failures by all sides of politics,' Victorian state Liberal MP Tim Smith said on Wednesday night. 'Like a third world country, we are rationing power in the two first weeks of winter.'

Former Victorian Liberal Party President Michael Kroger said Australia had become 'an international laughing stock' over the crisis. 

'We've got more uranium, oil, gas, gold, diamonds, whatever. We are the most energy rich country on the globe,' he told Sky News on Wednesday night. 'We're exploding with natural resources, yet we have an energy crisis. What a farce.' 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10921777/Energy-minister-Chris-Bowen-loses-journalist-energy-crisis.html

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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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16 June, 2022

Boys falling far behind girls in HSC and at university

The feminization of education reaps its inevitable rewards. It starts in primary school with the idea that boys are inherently disgusting, obnoxious, violent, and disrespectful, and asking them to sit the heck down during class and pay attention to the teacher.  It is a system where boys are punished for behaving like boys and have few if any male teacher role models

Boys are falling far behind girls in school-leaving exams and at university to the extent that a University Admissions Centre (UAC) analysis of results found that being male was “greater than any of the other recognised disadvantages we looked at”.

The centre looked at Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) and first-year university grade point average data and found the gender education gap persisted across socio-economic quartiles at both senior school and university levels.

Educators said there could be many factors at play, including different maturity levels, the compulsory inclusion of English in the HSC, which tended to favour girls, the declining popularity of difficult maths and sciences, and the increase in the school-leaving age.

Jennifer Buckingham, a reading expert who has studied the gender education gap in a previous role at the Centre for Independent Studies, said all jobs, including trades, now needed workers with strong literacy and numeracy skills. “The options for boys who don’t do well at school are becoming fewer and fewer,” she said.

“The expectations of what they can achieve change, they set their sights lower, and there are economic consequences of that too.”

The UAC analysis of ATAR data over many years, but particularly from 2020, found there was gender parity at the top end of the ATAR scale, above 98, and at the bottom end, below 39, but boys were far outnumbered by girls in the middle range.

The analysis said boys were under-represented due to a “combination of boys not performing as well as girls placed at similar points in the gender ability spectrum, and, more importantly, boys choosing study patterns that do not make them eligible for an ATAR or an HSC”.

The centre’s analysis found an ATAR-aged boy was 16.3 per cent less likely to obtain an HSC qualification than a girl in the same group, and 15 per cent less likely to complete at least one subject in 2020 than girls. “The effect of being male was greater than any of the other recognised disadvantages we looked at,” the analysis found.

The gap persists into university, the UAC analysis found, with boys enrolling at lower rates, less likely to pass all their subjects, and more likely to fail everything. The issue was across socio-economic quartiles.

NSW Department of Education data also show boys are also more likely to skip school. Attendance among high school girls is more than 82 per cent, compared with less than 73 per cent for boys. Boys also represent 70 per cent of school suspensions.

Robin Nagy, the director of Academic Profiles, which examines data for the independent sector, said the gap could be partly due to NSW requiring English to count towards a fifth of a student’s HSC mark. “On average, girls would appear to benefit more from this requirement than boys, due to the archetype of girls performing better in English,” he said.

Female enrolments outnumber male ones in the harder English subjects, which scale to higher ATAR marks, and boys were over-represented in easier subjects.

Craig Petersen, the head of the Secondary Principals Council, which represents public school principals, said there had also been significant efforts over several decades to ensure girls were catered to in HSC examinations.

“In response to the research that shows girls respond better to narrative questions, we started seeing scientific or mathematical problems voiced as a story,” he said.

This so-called “feminisation” of the HSC physics and chemistry syllabuses, in particular, was wound back in the most recent revision of the syllabuses, released in 2018, which had greater focus on mathematical applications and less on sociology-based content.

Petersen said boys also matured more slowly than girls; the prefrontal cortex, which helps people understand the consequences of their actions, does not finish developing for boys until 25. “That may be the area that says, ‘I want to have a good job, therefore I need to study hard’.”

The decision to raise the school-leaving age to 17 about a decade ago also meant boys who would once have left after year 10 for a trade were now staying on, Petersen said. “[Some] fall into this malaise, they don’t really want to be there, aren’t motivated,” he said.

Melissa Abu-Gazaleh is the managing director of the Top Blokes Foundation, which advocates addressing the health and wellbeing of young men to increase their engagement in school.

She said many young men were still tied to the stereotype that they should not express vulnerability or seek help, and expressed their frustration in outbursts, which led to disciplinary action.

“This then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where the male student then has lower aspirations to be better or achieve more,” she said. Giving male students a different message about seeking help and positive role models would help, she said.

Concerned that boys needed more help, Dapto High principal Andrew FitzSimons appointed a boys’ mentor, Andrew Horsley, who works with the Top Blokes Foundation and local service providers to ensure boys get the support they need.

“For me, it’s all about developing connections,” Horsley said. “With boys, sometimes you need to spend a bit of time and effort and energy to develop those connections, and then they’ll feel safer, if they’re struggling with something.”

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/boys-falling-far-behind-girls-in-hsc-and-at-university-20220607-p5arsk.html

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California Pride...?

Children in Los Angeles came across Drag Queens throwing lube while exposing bare breasts and male buttocks at the weekend’s Pride Month parade.

Sky News Australia broadcast censored footage of the event.

Australia’s equivalent parades take place at other times of the year, but many Australian governments have promoted the global festival throughout June.

For instance, the streets of inner Sydney are decked with taxpayer-funded rainbow flags, but few understand the consequences of buying into this political symbol.

Mainstream Australians support dignity and non-discrimination for same-sex attracted people so they can get on with their lives, something most want to do without fuss. But it’s quite another thing for mainstream Australians and their children to be forced to celebrate Pride Month and pay for aspects of it through their taxes.

After all, the 1970s rallying cry of the gay rights movement was ‘what happens in the privacy of the bedroom is no one else’s business’.

If only that’s where the political activists left things…

For the duration of June, global Pride Month fosters gender fluidity and radical sexual expressionism onto the rest of the population, including (and especially) children.

We’ve seen all this at Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade held in March each year. Like its LA counterpart, it’s not a family-friendly event.

Victoria’s taxpayer-funded ‘Pride Centre’ in St Kilda is also hosting events this month, including for children who must be ‘accompanied by an adult’.

Since de-gendering marriage, there’s been an aggressive push in schools to indoctrinate children into gender fluid ideology, teaching them their gender was ‘assigned at birth’, not observed, and that it can be changed.

This is having consequences here and abroad.

The number of children and young people in America now identifying as transgender, (or who are confused about their biological gender), has more than doubled since 2017.

Australian statistics from our secretive gender clinics are hard to come by, but it is widely acknowledged Australia has an unprecedented epidemic of gender-confused children.

This comes as international and Australian medical experts urge caution before putting children on the pathway to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery related to the permanent alteration of breasts and genitals.

That hasn’t stopped politicians in Queensland, Victoria, and the ACT banning children from receiving help from anyone other than a therapist who will affirm LGBTQ+ gender-fluid ideology.

New South Wales and Tasmania are about to debate similar laws banning the tried and tested ‘watch and wait’ protocols that successfully helped children (who overwhelmingly grow out of gender confusion) avoid puberty blockers, hormones, or the gender surgeon’s scalpel.

Pride Month seeks to amplify gender fluid ideology and further normalise it.

US Vice-President Kamala Harris did her bit, posing for a photo on social media with a scantily clad person who appeared to a man presenting as a woman.

Another senior American politician, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, celebrated Pride Month by making an appearance on RuPaul’s Drag Race television program. 

‘Your freedom of expression of yourselves in drag is what America is all about!’

This is something most parents concerned about Drag Queen Story Time events in public libraries might question.

Pelosi finished by saying, ‘God bless America!’ The rest of us mutter, God help America.

Meanwhile, still in the land of the free, the New York Post reports this week that $200,000 of taxpayer money is being spent sending LGBTQ+ drag queens into schools to indoctrinate children into gender fluid ideology, often without parents’ knowledge.

Pride Month is global and it is here. Even Woke corporates like ANZ are getting into the swing of things, folding Marxist Black Lives Matter movement imagery and LGBTQ+ flags into corporate logos.

A legitimate battle for equality before the law has been won, but LGBTQ+ political activism didn’t stop there.

Under the guise of tolerance, the movement demands affirmation, validation, and celebration for everything LGBTQ+.

Politicians and corporates kowtow. No one questions the agenda. None speak out.

So this June, when you see a rainbow flag hanging from a public lamppost in the Sydney CBD or lighting up the taxpayer-funded Pride Centre at St Kilda, remember that your child’s gender is fluid and you were a bigot to ‘assign’ his or her gender based on what the midwife observed at birth. (Or something.)

Happy Pride Month, mainstream Australia.

Perhaps it’s time to get involved in politics because politics sure is getting involved in your kids’ lives.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/06/california-pride

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The Dark Ages for Australian energy

When the sun finally sets on the West, the English-speaking peoples will find out that they are as fragile and expendable as the starving third-world children used by aid organisation to pick pockets.

Modernity is held together by cheap energy, not the rainbow-padding nonsense of progressive politics that does little but catch fire on the frayed wires of civilisation, much like Rudd’s notorious pink batts.

Yesterday, millions of Australian homes on the east coast were told to switch off non-essential appliances after blackouts began and extended short-falls loomed. Energy suppliers cautioned the affluent Teal-heartland of Sydney’s Northern Beaches that they were at risk of losing power as temperatures plunged. Suggestions such as ‘consider how many rooms need to be heated’ were made, presumably targeted to the mansion-dwelling community who voted to put ‘Climate Change’ above energy security.

Green-tinged Queensland suffered a similar problem, with the situation so concerning that the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) put in place a $300-per-megawatt-hour price cap.

As a result, everyone is turning to gas suppliers in a panic, demanding that gas companies ‘find gas’ and offer it at ‘low prices’ – or else? This would be after the government went out of its way to deny the gas industry in favour of their preferred ‘renewables’ mates. The gas industry is unsurprisingly reluctant to help out, considering they require $500-per-megawatt-hour to profit.

As a side note, the climatecouncil.org.au insists, ‘Output of oil and gas in developed nations needs to be cut by 74 per cent by 2030, with a complete phase-out by 2034.’ That is going to be tricky with renewables leaning on gas to cover the giant voids in output. Basically, if you’re still breathing, somewhat warm, and well-fed – you’re probably a burden to the climate goal.

Back in the real world, if governments and energy suppliers are begging people to turn off their toasters, it’s a good thing the Australian population ignored Labor’s demands to switch to electric vehicles or we’d be waking up to streets littered with expensive, useless cars.

The price cap has created its own problem, with the Australian Energy Regulator issuing a letter to power generators instructing them to ‘bid capacity into the market’ regardless of the cap as blackouts threaten across the country. The existence of price caps causes energy providers to withhold supply to protect revenue – which is why socialist-style intervention on market prices rarely works. The government gives ‘stuff away for free’ but businesses can’t do that or there will be nothing for tomorrow.

According to an article in The Australian, AER chair Clare Savage had this to say:

‘Recently the AER has observed that following the application of administered pricing in the NEM, generators are withdrawing available capacity from the market. This behaviour may be motivated by generators seeking to avoid the administered pricing compensation process in favour of the AEMO directions compensation process. As you know, market participants must not, by any act or omission, whether intentionally or recklessly, cause or significantly contribute to the circumstances causing a direction to be issued, without reasonable cause.’

New Energy Minister Chris Bowen has done a lot of theatrical waving of his hands, pretending that there’s ‘nothing to see here’ as the country faces an energy crisis.

‘The operator tells them there is no need to be concerned about blackouts in the immediate future,’ Bowen said, giving a speech that should never have to be made in a responsible, first-world nation. ‘Nobody should turn off any power usage that they need, that they are using for their comfort or their safety. Nobody should do that.’

When the energy grid was truly competitive, Australia had reliable, cheap, and plentiful energy. The interference of government has had disastrous consequences, with public money being tossed at ‘renewables’ to make them look more ‘profitable’ when in reality, they are propped up by taxes. Productive energy sources have been punished by severe restrictions on access, expansion, and investment. Banks have gone so far as to consider denying loans in the fossil fuel sector to keep green-themed shareholders happy.

The same people who did their best to demonise and dismantle the fossil fuel grid are now complaining about the shutdown of coal-fired plants. Well kids, this is a glimpse of the future promised by Labor, the Greens, Teals, and Liberal moderates.

There is a solution to both ‘climate woes’ and energy security in the form of nuclear energy – a technology for which Australia is uniquely placed to benefit. Labor has given a definitive ‘no’ on nuclear, almost certainly because they felt their green investment portfolio shudder in terror. The introduction of nuclear to the Australian grid erases the need for solar, wind, and battery storage – destroying profits for the ‘green economy’.

At the same time as federal Labor has been out – quite literally – begging coal-fired plants to increase their operation to stave off disaster, Western Australia Labor Premier Mark McGowan has promised to close all state-owned coal-fired plants by 2030 and gift renewables barons $4 billion in public money. He complains that the ‘glut of excess power’ produced by them is costing money – so one is left to wonder why McGowan’s idea of saving $3 billion over ten years involves spending $4 billion.

‘We’re standing at a point where to continue business as usual would lead to around $3 billion of losses by the end of the decade. Those losses either have to be covered by taxpayers or would lead to dramatically higher power bills for West Australians – while still continuing to emit higher levels of carbon emissions. Either way, it’s simply not sustainable in the long term.’

Why not just close the power stations and let the renewables sector expand on its own? Or is it not profitable without a drip attacked to the state coffers…?

No, don’t bother looking for the Liberal Party. It was former-Liberal Leader Zak Kirkup’s idea in the first place. The great news is that Western Australia doesn’t have an extension cord long enough to cross the desert, so McGowan will have nowhere to hide when it all goes horribly wrong.

All this is taking place while bored billionaires purchase coal-fired power stations for fun and shut them down unnecessarily.

The result of closing power plants is a sudden and drastic reliance on gas – of which there isn’t an infinite amount to go around. Shortages are being flagged, even if resources are expanded. Gas was meant to prop renewables up for decades, but the determination for ‘climate action right-now’ is resulting in the ridiculous culling of gas reserves which will, in turn, limit the lifespan of the renewables industry.

This is all complete madness when a few strategically placed nuclear plants could permanently solve the energy crisis with next-to-no emissions. For those who say, ‘oh nuclear is expensive!’ weren’t they telling us that ‘no expense is too much to save the world from extinction?’ We’re not told the total green price tag, but subsidies for renewables alone were set at $11.6 billion in 2021.

The answer is sitting in front of Australia, but governments, the energy industry, and mining companies have no interest in pursuing nuclear until they have dug up and sold every last dollar from other resources that are set to be devalued when the ‘Nuclear Age’ arrives.

Energy supply doesn’t care much for virtue-signalling politics or the ambitions of career politicians. It is a world of engineering absolutes, brick walls, and fail points. Reliable, stable power is essential to sustain the lives of millions of people where even short-lived blackouts pose a serious threat.

Hippy colonies can get away with a few cold nights or a failed market garden by collapsing around a campfire for a bit of weed-induced ‘Kumbaya’ followed by a sneaky trip to the local shops. When the same thing happens to a city, panic takes hold. Investors pull out. Businesses close. The elderly freeze to death.

Covid was not an emergency. Sustained blackouts and a ruined power grid is an emergency.

Any government that chooses to play politics with energy is reckless to the point of criminal. Finally (and just for fun) what happens if Australia finally gets its 100 per cent magnificent wind and solar grid backed up by battery power during the night when there’s no wind?

Uh, blackouts…

https://spectator.com.au/2022/06/the-dark-ages-for-australian-energy/

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Teal zeal

A religion of many delusions

A tweet doing the rounds this week is surely satire? Apparently not. Writing from Sydney’s oceanside suburb of Manly, the spiritual and political heartland of the Teal independents, the writer says: ‘Many houses on the northern beaches were without power this morning and there will be more blackouts to come. I know it’s a bit cold but it’s a very small price to pay as we finally take real action on climate change (the words ‘climate change’ are highlighted in a suitably reverent greeny/teal colour) and ensure we never have bush fires (sic), floods or earthquakes ever again.’

And there in a nutshell (the emphasis being on the word nut) we see the monumental and frightening stupidity that an entire generation of young Australians and arguably (if the recent election is anything to go on) a majority of the population has decided to embrace.

In this brave new teal-coloured world, it is now a virtue to freeze your socks off and to go without the basics of warmth, light and energy (and food?) in order to, er, ensure that we tame nature. The religious zealotry with which the author appropriates traditional religious concepts of suffering and self-denial in order to appease the gods of nature is startling. In that one tweet, centuries of enlightened thinking, science, philosophy, physics and theology are turfed out the window.

The new religion, or Teal zeal as it should be known, is in serious denial about a number of indisputable and rather pertinent facts. Firstly, the current cold snap, which has seen record snow falls, record early snow and snow reported on beaches in south-eastern Australia, not to mention tumbling cold records from Queensland to Tasmania, is in flagrant contradiction to the climate models and predictions from the early 2000s that were themselves built sturdily on the IPCC-sponsored theory of anthropogenic global warming. Indeed, even our most prestigious scientific body joined in the hoop-la best summed up in the media reports at the turn of the century hysterically claiming that children would never again experience snow. In a mark of how idiotic those predictions were, kids pulling on their mittens and beanies to go frolicking in the freezing white stuff this weekend weren’t even born when the climate change cult was already predicting they would never know what snow was.

The refusal to deal in observable realities continues with the ludicrous pronouncement that by cutting down on energy use Australia will never again experience bushfires, floods or earthquakes. This comment is so dopey and irrational but, alas, is something that many a passionate climate academic or eco-warrior today genuinely believes – frequently suggesting that even natural geological events such as tsunamis are somehow brought on by ‘climate change’). As crazy as this sounds, it is at heart nonetheless no sillier from a philosophical point of view than any of the net zero commitments embraced by all our major political parties. Put simply, do we seriously believe that by partially or even totally reversing the 3 to 4 per cent of man-made emissions that make up the earth’s atmosphere that we are suddenly going to usher in a magical world where no cyclones, hurricanes, bushfires, high tides or floods ever occur? Or are we so vain that despite any serious scientific proof we simply cross our fingers and trust that spending trillions of dollars decarbonising our industrialised world will have a blissful, harmonious and beneficial impact upon the climate patterns of our planet, returning us to some imagined Club Med-style Garden of Eden of endless blue skies and balmy breezes?

Apparently so. For nowadays pretty much every type of weather other than Noosa-blue is swiftly categorised by the media as an ‘extreme weather event’. Sadly, adults who should know better are happy to play along with this conceit, tut-tutting about how ‘it never used to be like this’, forgetting of course that weather patterns are by definition changeable. Here in Australia our history is defined by extremes of weather, and always will be.

The real tragedy facing us now is that by embracing this nonsense we have squandered our natural and God-given advantages of cheap, abundant and reliable energy. And we have traded them in for an abundance of environmental zeal and overt stupidity that will cost us dearly indeed.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/06/teal-zeal/

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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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15 June, 2022

Culture of violence in remote communities drives attacks on Aboriginal  women

The article below is very instructive.  It shows how gross the problem with Aborigines is and how insoluble it is. Governments have tried all sort of approaches to improve the Aborigine lifestyle but nothing works.  The article below shows why.  You would have to transform an entire culture.  And how do you do that?

And I haven't even mentioned the different range of cognitive skills among Aborigines

A high-profile crown prosecutor says a major factor in the domestic violence epidemic afflicting Northern Territory Indigenous women is an “enculturation of violence” on remote communities.

In a rare and candid interview, Victorian Senior Crown Prosecutor Nanette Rogers, one of the nation’s most experienced criminal barristers, said resolving the Territory’s family violence crisis required “profound change’’ to address such violence, which was “predominantly male-on-female”.

“It’s really trying to change that enculturation of violence; that culture of entitlement to assault or using violence on any person.’’

Ms Rogers also said some “remote communities tend to be very punitive towards a victim or someone who has helped a victim or sought help from the police’’.

On such communities, victims of domestic abuse had sometimes “been punished by their family members as well as the perpetrator’s family members” for reporting such crimes.

Ms Rogers is the former Central Australian prosecutor who stunned the nation in 2006 when she spoke out about horrific cases of physical and sexual abuse of Aboriginal children and women. She also spoke about how a male-dominated Indigenous culture and kinship connections had helped to create a conspiracy of silence.

READ MORE:‘Epidemic of violence’ plagues women: judge

Her revelations led to the 2007 report Little Children Are Sacred, which was followed by the Howard government’s contentious NT Intervention.

Ms Rogers, who left the NT almost nine years ago, said she was shocked by how little things had changed for Indigenous women from remote Territory communities in recent decades.

“What is disappointing for me is that nothing’s changed,’’ she said. “That is the takeaway point for me. I find it shocking that nothing has changed.

“… My understanding is that the violence towards Aboriginal women and children by Aboriginal men continues unabated.’’

Remote communities, Ms Rogers said, could be “extremely unsafe” for Indigenous women.

She was responding to comments by NT Supreme Court judge Judith Kelly, who said last week that Aboriginal women in remote communities remain trapped in an epidemic of violence caused by disadvantage and intergenerational abuse, and a culture that privileges the rights of perpetrators over those of victims.

Justice Kelly wept as she described cases in which women who had tried to flee violence were effectively kidnapped and endured beatings and rape on outstations.

“I just want people to know what’s happening to Aboriginal women,’’ she said, as she argued they were bearing the “absolutely dreadful” brunt of society’s failure to address high levels of welfare dependency, substance abuse and other problems on far-flung Indigenous communities.

Ms Rogers agreed that better education and more jobs for men and women on remote communities were needed to help build individuals’ self-esteem. She added: “On top of that you’ve got this enculturation of violence that is predominantly male-on-female.’’

Ms Rogers has conducted successful prosecutions against Victorian murderer Adrian Basham, who killed his estranged wife in 2018, and sexual sadist Jaymes Todd, who raped and murdered aspiring comedian Eurydice Dix-on in Melbourne in the same year.

Ms Rogers said that since she left the Territory, she had noticed a change in “the judicial language” used there, with some judges and magistrates more likely to call out “toxic” relationships between perpetrators and victims, especially if a perpetrator had abused his partner for years before severely injuring her. “Judicial officers are much more prepared to say it doesn’t matter whether you are an Aboriginal person or not; this is unacceptable,’’ she said.

“It must be really soul-destroying as a judge from the bench to see time and time again these horrific acts of violence that never stop.’’ She said that for such judicial officers “there must be a point at which you go ‘This is outrageous, no matter how liberal my attitude is towards Indigenous people and the Indigenous cause’.’’

According to a 2017 NT government report, Indigenous women in the Territory are 40 times more likely than non-Indigenous women to be hospitalised following family violence assaults. The same report quotes an NPY Women’s Council estimate that Aboriginal women from the NT, South Australia and Western Australia border region are about 60 times more likely to be murdered than non-Aboriginal women.

In a three-part series, The Australian recently revealed how a young Aboriginal woman, Ruby, was raped and bashed by her father in Yuendumu in Central Australia, and then forced to leave the desert town after he was jailed.

Last year, another NT Supreme Court judge, Justice Jenny Blokland, called on the NT government to address a potential, emerging pattern of sexual assault victims “being incidentally punished in their home communities through a form of banishment’’.

She made this remark while sentencing 32-year-old Simeon Riley, who pleaded guilty to raping an adolescent girl he had kidnapped and kept as a sex slave for several weeks in 2005. During that time, the girl, then aged 13 or 14, was kept in one room, sexually assaulted and forced to urinate and defecate through a hole in the floorboards.

The judge added that the victim of this “chilling” crime, who came forward to police in 2018, had been further punished as she felt she could not return home. The judge urged leaders from the girl’s otherwise “well-functioning” community to “seriously” reflect on that.

Justice Kelly also described a culture within some remote Indigenous communities that protected perpetrators of violence rather than their victims, and Ms Rogers said this was a longstanding problem. She said courts had traditionally assumed that when a victim of violence left the NT “that it’s a choice’’. But she said often, “their lives have been made so unlivable’’ and so “horrible and difficult” they have no choice “but to leave”.

In the wake of Justice Kelly’s remarks, Indigenous academic Marcia Langton called for a permanent group of experts to advise the federal government on how to improve safety for Indigenous women and children. Professor Langton argued that “lives are being lost while people in the women’s safety sector dither about irrelevant issues’’.

Ms Rogers said that like abuse victims in the wider community, some Indigenous women were torn between love and hate for an abuser. They could also have mixed feelings about their own relatives, whom they loved but who might have banished them for reporting abuse.

“It’s a double burden for those who have to leave,’’ she said, as they dealt with their violence-related trauma and being exiled from close relatives – sometimes including a mother or grandmother. “It’s an enduring situation – the woman has to leave, never the man … in that way, it’s not unlike any other culture.’’

Ms Rogers said domestic violence on remote NT communities was often intergenerational, with a father being sentenced for acts of violence and his son coming before the same judge for similar crimes 15 years later.

She said the unacceptably high levels of abuse endured by Indigenous women on such communities was not adequately acknowledged by the wider community.

Most people who live in Sydney or Melbourne “have never been to the Northern Territory. Most people have never been to a remote community. Most people have never met an Aboriginal person.’’

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/culture-of-violence-in-remote-communities-drives-attacks-on-indigenous-women/news-story/d36e67f2d427673bf07272bd80d78029

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My all-girls education failed to give me the skills I now value most

This article by Anita Punton is a good antidote to the deeply biased <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/education/why-girls-schools-succeed-at-producing-women-who-lead-20220612-p5at3t.html">article by Loren Bridge</a> that <a hred="http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/2022/06/why-girls-schools-succeed-at-producing.html">I rubbished</a> recently

I went to a private, all-girls school from the age of five. Whenever I had my violin lesson, the portraits of the two Miss Singletons, tightly stitched into their Victorian gowns, looked down on me with admirable patience.

The Singleton sisters were the joint principals of my alma mater in the late 19th century, and they were determined to provide girls with a proper education.

I found them hugely inspiring. Still do. But my all-girls education failed to give me the skills that I now value most. I had to learn those skills in the real world.

I support anyone who believes an all-girls school is the best choice for their daughter, but I don’t subscribe to the theory that this educational model is how our future female leaders have the greatest chance of succeeding.

When my two sons reached high school age, I was determined that they would go to a co-ed school, because I believed it was the best way for them to grow up treating women as equals.

Paradoxically, I wanted my daughter to go an all-girls school like me, to give her “opportunities” to “fulfil her potential” and be a “leader”. These are the same words and phrases that all-girls schools use so liberally in their marketing.

However, I started to notice that most of my highly educated, successful female friends were choosing to send their girls to co-ed schools. One of them told me bluntly: “The world is not single sex. They will have to work with men all their lives.”

I began to question the logic that girls must be sequestered away from males in order to learn the very skills that are needed to work with them in the future.

One of the underlying assumptions about all-girls schooling is that boys are an impediment to a girl achieving her potential. They are “other”. It’s as if their presence will take something away from a girl, that she will not feel confident enough to thrive in their presence.

This was certainly the messaging I took on board throughout my time at an all-girls school, and I still hear the same messaging from parents today.

Now I feel those assumptions not only further entrench outdated gender roles, but demonstrate an offensive distrust in both the strength and capacity of our girls and the humanity of our boys.

On a daily basis, boys in a co-ed school get to see that girls are confident, capable, courageous and profoundly human. They get to experience a female perspective when discussing issues. They work together on projects. They see girls succeeding and leading and it is completely normal.

The idea that girls must be isolated from the rest of society and overtly taught strategies of how they are going to cope when they finally are catapulted back into it seems a back-to-front way of going about preparing girls for leadership. The cultivation of women’s leadership potential should not be the sole responsibility of women; all of society must contribute.

My daughter has grown up with a second language that wasn’t available to me as a teenager – a language to express female solidarity, strength, possibility and self-worth. The culture she has experienced is totally different to the one I knew as a teenager.

And while some might dismiss the empowering effect of a Taylor Swift lyric, or watching The Simpsons episode “Lisa vs Malibu Stacey”, those cultural experiences have done as much to provide fluency in that language for her as any overt teaching by her parents or school.

I ended up sending my three children to the local high school. My daughter is now 15. What has she missed out on going to a co-ed school? Her government school, like many, had some poor facilities, inconsistency in teaching due to a staff room under immense pressure, funding shortages.

What has she gained? All those skills it took me so long to learn. Enviable confidence that she can talk to anyone and handle herself in any situation. An ability to try new things, make a fool of herself and find it funny, rather than humiliating. A complete indifference to the “otherness” of boys. She lives her life with them every day. They are her friends and collaborators.

This morning, I asked her if she had ever felt any sense of discrimination at school because she was a girl. Did the boys dominate? Has she ever been tempted to “play small” because she’s worried what the boys will think of her? Did she feel that the boys were stopping her from achieving her potential?

She gave me the same withering look as the time I asked her to explain TikTok. “Never,” she said. She’s too polite to say “OK, Boomer”, but I’m pretty sure she thought it.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/my-all-girls-education-failed-to-give-me-the-skills-i-now-value-most-20220614-p5atmj.html

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Energy crisis Qld: ‘Sun tax’ hit looms for solar customers

Solar panel users will now be PENALIZED.  Quite a turnup

Solar customers are being urged to install battery systems ahead of an impending “sun tax” that will see users charged for exporting power when there is low demand, as the state grapples with the ongoing energy crisis.

LNP energy spokesman Pat Weir said Queenslanders would “continue to operate in the dark while the Palaszczuk government fails to detail its plan for future energy supply”.

“Solar users are rightly concerned that feed-in tariffs are dropping at a time when there should be incentives for the uptake of renewable energy,” he said. “The events of the last 24 hours have again proved the importance of a reliable energy network that prioritises network security and affordability.”

Clean Energy Council director of distributed energy Darren Gladman said “most solar customers still purchase some electricity from the grid so if electricity prices rise, they will be affected by that”.

He said the increase in wholesale electricity prices will (eventually) lead to an increase in the feed-in tariff (FiT).

“This will make solar an even more financially attractive option in future, once the electricity prices increases have flowed through to consumers,” Mr Gladman said.

The AEMC Retail Price Trends report for 2021 estimates annual consumption in Queensland to be 5650kWh per annum, which is equivalent to about 15.5kWh per day.

A 5kW system in Brisbane is expected to generate about 21.0kWh per day on average.

But Mr Gladman said to avoid buying from the grid, “the electricity would either need to be consumed when it is generated or stored in a battery”.

“Sales of solar PV in Queensland in May were about 10 per cent above April figures – anecdotal reports from industry suggest sales are rebounding even more strongly in June,” he said.

It comes as the Australian Energy Regulator has confirmed a controversial shake-up to the solar industry that will see households charged for exporting solar electricity at certain times from 2025.

But experts say the impost can be navigated by avoiding peak times and making better use of energy storage systems.

Compare the Market’s general manager energy and utilities Brett Mifsud said when two-way pricing was introduced, families would likely be charged a fee to export during low-demand times, such as the middle of the day when solar electricity was generated.

Changes are set to come into effect from July 1, 2025, in Queensland to ensure the electricity grid isn’t overwhelmed by an upswing in solar use.

Storing excess solar electricity in batteries will allow it to be used when needed most or be exported back to the grid when the payback is higher.

Batteries can cost anywhere from a few thousand dollars for a smaller system to almost $20,000 for systems with more storage and inverter chargers.

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen says there is enough energy supply in the system to avoid load shedding. “There is enough supply in the system to avoid load shedding, asking the big industrial users to reduce their energy use or…

Lauren Daley, who runs Al’s Plumbing and Gas from her home in Clayfield, said her family had been reaping the rewards of solar energy since 2017.

“99 per cent of the time it’s sunny Queensland but the solar panels definitely make a difference in summer when the aircon is running non-stop.”

Mrs Daley said they are also considering installing a battery system amid the current energy crisis and following weeks of unpredictable weather.

“It’s just one of those things we haven’t quite got to but you try to do everything in your power to reduce costs,” she said.

Ms Daley said her house is running 24 hours a day with “the business, three young kids, two washing machines and two dryers”.

“If we are not living in it (the house), I’m working in it.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/energy-crisis-qld-sun-tax-hit-looms-for-solar-customers/news-story/22974db1627853505ebb75313acf70a1

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The reality of owning an electric car in Australia: Driver struggles with useless ghost chargers, other motorists stealing his spot and taking a whole day to finish a trip between Canberra and Sydney

An electric vehicle owner has shared the brutal reality of going on a roadtrip in his $72,000 car - taking a full day to drive from Sydney to Canberra and back again after repeatedly struggling to find spots to  charge it.

A video posted to TikTok by user Suthocam on June 10 showed the issues EV drivers who do not have access to the Tesla supercharging network face.   

Suthocam detailed his charging port debacle after a Sydney to Canberra round trip in a Hyundai IONIQ 5 using only third party chargers.

'The car itself is a great road trip vehicle - it's super spacious, great seats, great speakers and has a cool big sunroof,' Suthocam said. 

Suthocam said the $71,900 vehicle, with an estimated range of 450km, was able to make the trip to Canberra in one charge but he decided to give it a top-up which would allow him to drive the car around the city once there. 

His first stop was a charging station in Goulburn, 196km from Sydney, where the only available port was out-of-order.  

The NRMA ChargeFox charger screen notified the driver that the 'station had faulted' and had not been fixed since the beginning of the year despite an 'estimated' repair date of January 14. 

Suthocam waited until a working charger became available and then had to park halfway in a disabled parking spot for the cord to reach his car's battery - a scene he described as 'just a bit sketchy'. 

'Once we got going again we made it... so worth it,' Suthocam said. 'It was pretty in Canberra but we had to get back on the road so we had to go find some chargers.' 

The first charger the EV driver found was located in a carpark and did not work. 

The Tesla wall chargers did not work with his Hyundai and the other chargers that did work were often taken up by other cars.   

'Finally we found a free charger (in an Ikea carpark) in what felt like a really long time but it was super slow,' Suthocam said. 'I didn't want to wait four hours to get 100 per cent so I had to find a fast charger.'

Suthocam drove to a third charging station but to his frustration it was blocked by a petrol ute. 

He then drove to a fourth charging port but was unable to locate it despite it appearing on the car's map. He found a fifth, but it was being used by a Tesla.

A sixth station was found but to Suthocam's dismay it had a similar speed to the Ikea carpark charger. 'We ended up having to jump back into Goulburn, charge there, and then finally made it home,' Suthocam said.   

The charging port ordeal added two-and-a-half hours to Suthocam's round trip - a drive which typically takes six to seven hours. 

The video, which he captioned 'we need more chargers tbh', has received more than 190,000 views and almost 700 comments.

'I love the idea of EVs but good lord I’d go insane if I had to spend 50 per cent of my day worrying about charging just to get to Canberra and back,' one user commented.  'You’ve convinced me to give it another two to three years before considering getting EV,' a second user wrote. 

'Same issues in the UK. Until they sort out charging infrastructure I'm going to stick with dinosaur juice,' a third chimed.    

The Electric Vehicle Council (the national body representing Australia's EV industry), reported an 85 per cent increase in the number of ultra-fast charging stations across the country and a 29.6 per cent increase in standard stations since August 2020. 

However, drivers are reluctant to make the switch to plug-in cars as the nation's infrastructure for fast-charging ports has not caught up to the demand. 

In Australia, just 1.5 per cent of cars sold are electric and plug-in hybrid, compared to 17 per cent in the United Kingdom and 85 per cent in Norway.  

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is set to introduce policies to boost the take-up of electric vehicles but will stop short of imposing a ban on petrol or diesel cars as part of his plan to tackle climate change.

The Labor Party will introduce tax benefits to reduce the price of electric cars and plug-in hybrids, forecasting that 89 per cent of new car sales will be electric by 2030.

By making electric cars cheaper and more convenient, Mr Albanese hopes there will be 3.8 million on the road by 2030, with 15 per cent of all cars on the road by then being zero-emission.

Electric cars will be exempt from a five per cent import tariff that would reduce the cost of a $40,000 vehicle by $2000. The move would result in savings of up to $8700 for a $50,000 vehicle. The tax cuts will be introduced on July 1 this year and will be reviewed in three years.

Labor will also invest $39.3 million, matched by the NRMA, to deliver 117 fast charging stations on highways across Australia.

This will provide charging stations at an average interval of 150km on major roads, allowing Aussies to drive from Adelaide to Perth or Darwin to Broome with an electric car.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10913793/Electric-car-owner-struggles-charge-road-trip-Sydney-Canberra-Hyundai-IONIQ-5.html

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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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14 June, 2022

As ever, price control reduces the supply

The high price of inputs such as coal is making electricity generation more expensive  -- meaning that  generators need to charge more to recover their increased costs.  But making electricity more expensive is deeply unpopular so Australa's brilliant bureaucrats capped the amount generators can charge for their product  -- price control.

So to protect their income the generators have been reducing their output to a bare minimum.  Doing that also breaks the price caps so it is a stoush between the bureaucrats and the generators  -- with the public at risk -- being faced with blackouts

Power generators are exploiting the chaotic energy market by withdrawing power supply from the electricity grid and waiting until strict rules to prevent blackouts kick in, forcing the energy market operator to direct them to fire their plants back up and triggering profitable compensation payments.

There’s no law stopping power companies from withdrawing their electricity generation from the market, and in the past two days they have reduced the volume available by 2 gigawatts in Victoria, 3 gigawatts in NSW and 1.5 gigawatts in Queensland.

The withdrawals were prompted by the Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) decision to put a cap on spiralling prices that electricity generators are charging for wholesale power, which crimped the profit margin of some generators, which are battling coal prices that are soaring because of sanctions on Russian exports.

But the electricity market is tightly regulated and AEMO has powers, designed to prevent blackouts, which enable it to force generators to fire up units and start supplying electricity to the grid. Whenever AEMO does this, companies are awarded compensation.

AEMO was unusually forthright in a public statement yesterday when it said that directly after price caps were imposed on power companies “available offers were reduced”.

These withdrawals represent more than 10 per cent of the east coast energy grid’s total generation capacity of 55 gigawatts and come on top of an energy crunch created by a series of breakdowns and maintenance outages that have forced about one-quarter of the east coast’s coal-fired power stations out of action.

Melbourne University energy expert Dylan McConnell said while power companies may have reduced their output for legitimate reasons, the scale of withdrawal across the industry raised concerns over its social licence.

“It’s not in good faith and fairly unconscionable conduct. Yes there is some sort of justification for it, but it’s the wrong thing to do,” McConnell said.

Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen was asked on Tuesday if power companies were gaming the system and said the compliance regulator was monitoring the situation “very, very closely”.

“The Australian Energy Regulator reminded [power companies] of their obligations of the law this morning,” Bowen said.

The market regulator has reassured ministers that it believes there is still sufficient power available to the grid – but it’s likely that power companies will continue to be directed to switch their units back on, triggering more compensation payments.

“I have been in contact with [AEMO] and they are confident the situation can be and will be avoided in NSW and Victoria in particular in coming days,” Bowen said on Tuesday. “Nobody should turn off any power usage that they need for their comfort or their safety ... nobody is asking for that to happen.”

A spokesperson for the Australian Energy Council, which represents major power generators including AGL, EnergyAustralia and Origin, said its members faced a “complex issue” but were seeking solutions to the power crunch.

“The price cap unintentionally means that some plants can’t recover their fuel costs. Participants are legitimately seeking ways to resolve the problem,” the spokesperson said.

NSW Treasurer and Energy Minister Matt Kean said he was in close contact with AEMO and had “every confidence” there was enough power available to avoid blackouts, and he identified compensation payments as a cause of shortfall warnings that had sparked concern.

“The reason that generators are waiting for the market operator to direct them, rather than taking a loss in the market is because they are eligible for some compensation from the Australian Energy Regulator,” Kean said.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/power-companies-accused-of-unconscionable-conduct-as-they-withdraw-from-grid-20220614-p5ath9.html

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Federalism comes to coal

The clause below

"until the transition to renewables and storage is complete"

both shows an awareness of the energy problem and tells us how foolish the faith in "renewables" is.  To transform to 100% renewables you would need "storage" (batteries) on an umimaginable scale

Individual states and territories will decide whether to exclude coal and gas power from a temporary capacity mechanism, designed to secure enough baseload generation until the transition to renewables and storage is complete.

The Energy Security Board’s draft capacity mechanism, to be released within two weeks, is understood to be based on a technology-neutral model and will not endorse subsidies to keep coal-fired power stations and gas in the system longer than needed.

The ESB brief from federal, state and territory ministers is that the capacity mechanism should not conflict with ambitious renewables and storage targets, and that different jurisdictions can opt in to preferred technologies.

Energy ministers are keen to avoid costs being passed on to customers when energy retailers lock in long-term electricity supplies under a capacity mechanism, which other countries facing supply pressures have adopted.

Amid an east coast electricity crisis fuelled by global factors and outages across the National Electricity Market, more coal-fired power capacity will come online this week to reduce the reliance on high-priced gas.

Queensland’s CS Energy, which contributes 10 per cent of the NEM’s output, is preparing to bring three of the four units at the 1525MW Callide power station online next month, increasing output alongside its 750MW Kogan Creek plant. The Callide plant’s C4 generator, which was shut after an explosion last year, will not resume activity until April next year.

Queensland Energy Minister Mick de Brenni said the government would “not be shutting the gate on our power stations, their workers or their communities and instead will invest in their future”.

“The energy ministers meeting was clear – we will finally have a sensible plan to boost our energy capacity across the nation,” he said. “But we were also clear – in Queensland, the diversity of our energy system is what delivered reliable power, and our power stations will continue to sit at the heart of that. Because Queenslanders own their own energy assets, we have avoided the energy chaos that has gripped southern states in the wake of nine years of the divided Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government.”

Grattan Institute energy and climate change director Tony Wood said the proposed capacity mechanism was not a “coal-keeper or gas-keeper … it’s the lights-on-keeper”.

Mr Wood said a capacity mechanism was unlikely to lock in long-term investment in coal-fired power stations, and predicted fierce opposition to “perverse incentives” extending the life of coal plants. He raised concerns about high coal prices on the spot market, which were “just as bad” as gas.

“If the capacity mechanism is designed properly, it will only be there while we need it,” he said.

“Other countries have forms of a capacity mechanism, Western Australia has a capacity mechanism. You can design a bad one or you can design a good one. You can design one that rules out certain technologies but there will be consequences if you rule out certain technologies.”

Mr Wood said guidelines provided by energy ministers to the ESB last year would give cover to some, including Victorian Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio, to say “we don’t want to have coal or gas getting capacity payments”.

He described the mechanism as a “shock absorber or comfort blanket” for governments that would “not stay in any longer than necessary”. “I do not know how you have a capacity mechanism without coal and gas because you’ve only got a couple of large pumped hydro projects and one of them is already running late,” he said.

“The collective ministers (need to be convinced) that this is not a coal-keeper, or gas-keeper or fossil fuel-keeper. This is a policy that says if we are going to achieve (high renewables targets) we’re going to need capacity to be there when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. One way to do that is to pay for it.”

Energy ministers will discuss a new net zero emissions energy market plan at their next meeting in July to better align federal, state and territory strategies to decarbonise the sector.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/states-get-power-to-decide-on-energy-needs/news-story/e7ff563dd901778080af2d3cb173a563

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Peter Gleeson: Some people are born bad so let the grubs rot in jail

There’s an 18-year old man languishing in a jail cell right now, having killed a young couple and their unborn baby while driving a stolen car, high on alcohol and drugs.

Before that fateful killing in Brisbane on Australia Day last year, the perpetrator had a 12-page rapsheet, a juvenile delinquent in every sense of the word.

We can’t name him because he was 17 when the offence of manslaughter was committed. So he will retain his anonymity for a crime that shocked the country.

He will also be out of jail on Australia Day, 2027, having served six years for a crime so heinous – so far reaching and evil – that it has sparked an outpouring of anger and grief. The teen ran a red light and collided with a truck before rolling and hitting the couple as they were out on an afternoon walk.

The families of Kate Leadbetter and Mathew Field gave victim impact statements to the sentencing court that were as raw and emotional as they were shocking.

Kate’s mother Jeannie Thorne said she is now living another life – the life that she never wanted. “I should be in my other life, the one that’s been ripped away,’’ she told the court.

All she wants is her old life back with her daughter, son-in-law and the prospect of being a grandmother to the boy they were going to call Miles.

Instead, they are living every parent’s worst nightmare, having to lay to rest two beautiful young souls, taken in the prime of their lives by a young man who was a menace to society and an accident waiting to happen.

It is little use debating the pros and cons of soft sentencing. On any measure, serving six years in jail for the callous disregard and loss of human life experienced during this tragedy is clearly not in keeping with community expectations.

Everybody knows a similar case in their own backyard.

But Judge Martin Burns has a job to do, noting no sentence would ever be enough for the families, giving the offender a sentence commensurate with what the law allowed.

Here’s what I think. Throw the key away for the little grub. Let him rot in a jail cell forever. Change the law. Mandatory life for such a terrible crime.

This cretin should never enjoy the comforts and luxuries afforded to law-abiding people.  His social licence has been revoked. Some people are just born bad. He is one of them.

Mind you, vigilantism is never the answer.  Yet, I’ve had several emails in the last few days from men suggesting they’d take justice into their own hands if it was their daughter and son-in-law. It’s an emotive and some would say entirely natural response.

But the big question remains; How do we weigh up the rehabilitation prospects of a young man who clearly has no regard for the law, or for the general wellbeing of people?

Is this person capable of redemption, of being able to go straight and learn from this enormous tragedy?

Or is he to be forever consigned as bad to the bone, a threat to society, a person who will die early, either through his own actions or those of somebody else?

My sense, my fear, is that this guy is evil. As such, when he gets out in 2027, he’ll go back to his old ways.

Hopefully, I’m wrong. However, the real truth in this sad story is that two families, and the many friends of the dead couple, are living a life of sheer hell. For that, there will never be justice.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/peter-gleeson-some-people-are-born-bad-so-let-the-little-grub-rot-in-jail/news-story/cd7bc6d2f1509174f0ee853413c5dae3

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Australians will pay dearly for the green pipe-dreams of Mike Cannon-Brookes and his ilk

A polar blast from Antarctica has left many Australians shivering in their homes, as icy winds have torn down power lines. It feels like a portent of things to come. Even without electricity outages, Australians are contemplating turning off their heaters and putting on extra cardigans as the national regulator announced price increases of up to 18 per cent from the start of July.

The cold snap won’t bother Mike Cannon-Brookes. He’s unlikely to be switching off lights in spare rooms at his $100 million Point Piper mansion or any of his other trophy homes. On the contrary, he was cock-a-hoop. ‘Wow. A huge day for Australia,’ he tweeted on Monday. Having bought just over 11 per cent of the shares of AGL, Australia’s largest energy provider, the rich lister climate activist successfully intimidated management into dropping its plan to split its retail business from its coal-fired power plants, sparking the resignation of the CEO and the chairman of the board, as well as two other directors. Management was convinced that a majority of shareholders supported its plan but they needed 75 per cent and rather than put the proposition to a vote they turned tail and ran.

Caving into to Cannon-Brookes didn’t impress AGL shareholders, with the stock price falling this week, but that is unlikely to worry the billionaire who has money to burn and has been retweeting the thoughts of António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, and a former socialist prime minister of Portugal. Guterres is grumpy that ‘We still see funding for coal & fossil fuels from some of the biggest names in finance, hedge funds & private equity,’ and tweeted that ‘Investing in fossil fuels is a dead end – economically & environmentally,’ and ‘No amount of greenwashing or spin can change that,’ exhorting his followers, ‘Don’t work for climate-wreckers.’

No prizes for guessing who are ‘the climate wreckers’ that are still investing in fossil fuels. China’s Yankuang Energy Group is keen to buy out other shareholders in Yancoal, an Australian coal producer and developer operating open cut and underground coal mines in New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia.

China’s enthusiasm for fossil fuels doesn’t worry Australia’s climate zealots. Australia’s emissions of carbon dioxide peaked in 2009 at 390 megatons (Mt) and have now fallen to 376 Mt, less than 45 per cent of our emissions in 1990 whereas China’s emissions are more than 2600 per cent greater, at 9,876 Mt, and it has said it will not even try to cut them until at least 2030 or to reach net zero until 2060, ten years later than other countries.

Despite this, during the federal election campaign Allegra Spender, the new teal member for Wentworth told Sky’s Chris Kenny, that China’s climate policies were ‘incredible’. The most incredible thing about China’s climate policies is that Ms Spender would praise them. China’s plans for 169 new and expanded coal projects will boost domestic coal production by 559 million tons per annum, and could boost global methane emissions, the most powerful greenhouse gas, by 10 per cent. It also increased its raw coal output by 10.5 per cent in the first four months of 2022 and expanded coal imports in April by 8.4 per cent year-on-year.

India is also planning to import Australian coal this year, for the first time since 2015, amid fears of power shortages during peak demand over the summer. This is despite the fact that the price is more than three times higher than at the end of last year, driven up by Europe seeking to replace Russian supplies following the invasion of Ukraine. Rather than fuelling increased investment in renewables as the green dreamers claim, the high price of coal may simply spur India, like China, to mine more coal domestically.

Despite the rising global demand for fossil fuels, new Labor prime minister Anthony Albanese has decided to force taxpayers to bankroll the profits of wealthy renewable investors like Cannon-Brookes and Macquarie Bank by using government money to foot the bill for expanding and upgrading the energy grid to handle more renewables. Labor hopes to trick taxpayers by hiding the costs off-budget, as it did with the public money it sunk into the NBN. It is music to the ears of green champagne socialists – public subsidies to cover the costs of building new infrastructure while private investors milk the profits.

AGL was planning to close the last of its coal-fired power plants between 2040 and 2045 instead of 2048, but Cannon-Brookes wants those dates brought forward to 2035 and to invest A$20 billion in renewable energy and storage solutions. Yet even with taxpayers covering the cost of upgrading the grid, the early closure will mean greater reliance on energy sources which will be more expensive than existing coal-fired power plants. One analyst estimates that AGL will have to spend at least $10-$15 billion to replace $1 billion of earnings coming from coal assets. In addition, having dumped its demerger, AGL will also have to establish new debt facilities in a far more difficult environment, with higher interest rates and even greater environmental hurdles.

Cannon-Brookes thinks his plan is in the best interests of ‘shareholders, customers, Australian taxpayers and the planet’, no less. Yet one wonders how in touch he is with his customers few of whom could afford to take up a green loan of $100,000 he wants AGL to offer to back their ‘decarbonisation journeys’ to convert their households to 100 per cent renewable electricity.

Indeed, there is a distinct air of unreality about the wish list of Cannon-Brookes’ backers who want Paris-aligned climate goals, a genuine decarbonisation plan that maintains jobs without a huge increase in prices, and enhances and protects shareholder value, while providing comprehensive support for impacted communities. AGL has said it is open to new approaches from third parties, but as one analyst remarked, ‘who would be willing to take on the whole business in the current political climate is beyond me’.

Cannon-Brookes says he will be seeking assurances from what is left of AGL’s management that the new plan they come up with is not simply to sell off AGL’s assets piece by piece. But whatever plan they come up with his green pipe dreams will cost the rest of us dearly

https://spectator.com.au/2022/06/cannon-brookes-fodder/

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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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13 June, 2022

Why girls’ schools succeed at producing women who lead

There is probably some truth in the claims below by the partisan Loren Bridge but she ignores the elephant in the room:  Girls schools are almost all private, even if they are Catholic schools only.  

And private schools are almost all selective in some way.  Most require fees for attendance and that selects for parents who can afford such fees -- almost all being from better-off families.  And richer people tend to be brighter, which their daughters inherit.  So the pupils at such schools will mostly be of above-average IQ.  And high IQ helps with almost everything in life

And at least some of the claims above are simply untrue.  She says that boys and girls have equal basic ability at maths.  But all the psychometric research shows otherwise.  And how many Fields medals were won by women?  Just one, an Iranian lady

And I haven't even mentioned testosterone

The whole article below is suffused by Leftist bias, so should be taken with a large grain of salt

Much has been said about this exciting “teal wave” of forthright, trailblazing, smart women. Five out of the eight female independents who will take their place on the crossbench of this parliament – Dr Monique Ryan, Dr Sophie Scamps, Dai Le, Allegra Spender and Zali Steggall – are graduates of girls’ schools.

This would be no surprise to anyone familiar with the benefits of single-sex education for girls, but for those who aren’t, it’s important to put this figure into perspective — girls’ schools make up just 2 per cent of schools in Australia.

Clearly, there is something inherent to the girls’ school environment that better prepares women for high-level leadership.

So what is it about a girls’ school education that ignites in young women the determination, inspiration and motivation to lead? What gives them the courage and grit to be change-makers in a world that continues to squeeze women onto the edges of the centre stage positions that men carve for themselves?

In girls’ schools, students are intentionally equipped with the knowledge and skills required to overcome social and cultural gender biases, and in doing so, actively break the stereotypical norms that define women in society. This is achieved through an education that rewires the implicit biases that so often limit women.

Women are expected to walk a tightrope between exhibiting the characteristics society expects of women and being seen to have the “strength” to lead. They are in a double bind. The obsession with former prime minister Julia Gillard’s empty fruit bowl in her kitchen illustrated this perfectly.

To resist this concentrated pressure, girls must be encouraged to take a leap of faith. They must leap from the tightrope and defy gendered pressure. To do this, they need the confidence to lead and be disruptors.

A study by the University of Queensland found that confidence levels for girls in single-sex schools matches that of boys, while girls in the general population consistently demonstrate lower confidence levels than boys.

In other words, the study found that a girls’ school provides the environment for girls to develop and maintain innate confidence and healthy self-belief. And it is confidence, or a lack of confidence, that is frequently attributed to the under-representation of women in senior leadership roles.

Let’s be clear — girls aren’t innately less confident or assertive than boys, they aren’t less capable in maths and sciences and they certainly don’t have more body image or mental health issues than boys as infants. It is our patriarchal society that stereotypes women diminishing their self-belief and self-efficacy, quashing their voice and ultimately, their power.

A girls’ school turns the tables on gender stereotypes, and this can be life-changing for a girl.

Girls’ schools provide significant leadership opportunities — 100 per cent of the leadership positions (not just 50 per cent) are held by girls. The power of mentoring and role modelling provided by past students, and the predominantly female leadership of girls’ schools, provides girls with leadership development opportunities beyond those available in co-ed schools. With no requirement to cater to boys, girls’ schools balance the inequality in broader society through purposeful, targeted education.

Data from a US study shows that girls’ school graduates are more likely than co-ed school counterparts to be involved in political activities, demonstrate social and political agency, and be supportive of societal improvements. They are more likely to be change-makers.

Research shows unequivocally that girls thrive in an all-girls environment; they do better academically, socially, and emotionally. Regardless of socio-economic factors, data — not just from a single study but from a plethora of unique studies from all over the world — indicates that girls simply do better in girls’ schools.

Girls in co-ed schools tend to be more self-conscious and less confident; they are less likely to speak up in class, ask questions or take on a leadership role. They are also more likely to have a negative body image and considerably more likely to experience sexual harassment or bullying. In contrast, girls in girls-only environments participate more freely in discussions, are more competitive and take more healthy risks with their learning — skills that are advantageous for life success.

Girls’ schools are at the forefront of gender equality, deliberately challenging gendered norms and purposefully building girls’ confidence, conviction and self-belief, making sure that girls have the skills and knowledge to speak out and to break down barriers.

These are skills our new female MPs will certainly need as they step into the male-dominated Parliament House, famed for its sexism and misogyny. May their voices add power to changing that culture and progressing the ongoing fight for a more equal society.

https://www.smh.com.au/education/why-girls-schools-succeed-at-producing-women-who-lead-20220612-p5at3t.html

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‘Outright lying’: Australian scientist hits out at TGA after ‘life-changing’ Covid vaccine injury

An Australian scientist, left unable to work for eight months after a debilitating neurological reaction he blames on the Covid shot, has likened the treatment of people suffering vaccine injuries to that of returning veterans with health issues after the Vietnam War.

Dr Rado Faletic has slammed the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s (TGA) adverse event reporting process, saying the medicines regulator tasked with vaccine safety surveillance was “simply uninterested” in investigating his symptoms despite submitting multiple reports.

“I’m similar to thousands of Aussies. After the vaccine I had a huge constellation of symptoms from head to toe,” the 46-year-old said, describing it as similar to “mutant long Covid”.

“The worst has been an oppressive brain fog. I’ve had headaches, chest pains, abdominal pains, unbelievable muscle twitching, issues focusing my vision. Basically I’ve been unable to work for eight months. I’m only now just starting to feel a little bit normal. This is not a mild side effect – this has been life-changing.”

Dr Faletic said doctors and specialists were unable to find anything obviously wrong with him.

“You go to the hospital, they take your blood, do an echocardiogram or X-ray or MRI and don’t find anything,” he said. “They say, ‘Well you look fine, go home and rest.’”

He added, “I don’t necessarily blame the doctors. The problem is there hasn’t been a test to find out what’s wrong. I know some people are getting misdiagnosed with anxiety or functional neurological disorder – that’s not what’s going on. It’s a physical injury.”

Dr Faletic, who earned his PhD in hypersonic technology from the ANU and now runs an international research consulting firm based in Canberra, says his faith in the scientific and medical community has been badly shaken by his experience.

He received his first Pfizer dose on October 19 last year and his second on November 9. He had a bad reaction to both “within hours”, but says the second was “dramatically off the charts”.

“I waited a little while (to take the vaccine) – I work with technology and have a science background, so I understood that with a new product, new technology, there could be some things we don’t know about,” he said.

“I thought, enough time has passed, surely our government would have flagged any reactions of concern. I took it and all this stuff happened to me. It’s not a matter of it being a coincidence – it all happened within hours of the shots. Then I thought, surely the government would be interested in what’s happened to me? Nope.”

Dr Faletic says it soon became clear to him that the TGA wasn’t interested. “I’ve done 50 rounds with the TGA on this,” he said.

“They’ve said, ‘We can find no safety signals,’ which I think is disingenuous if not outright lying. In my small personal circle I know over a dozen people with different long vax problems, [ranging from] ongoing headaches, memory problems or brain fog to some people who were basically bedridden for months.”

When he went searching for answers, he found “hundreds of people” in online groups who had experienced similar symptoms and submitted reports themselves.

“The TGA still claims there is nothing to see,” he said.

“We are being treated with the same type of derision and condescension as Vietnam vets when they came back damaged. The government doesn’t want to acknowledge us, people in the community look down on us. There are a lot of parallels.”

In the 1970s, Australian troops who had returned from Vietnam began to experience high incidences of cancer and other illnesses, with the government initially denying exposure to Agent Orange and other chemicals sprayed by the US military was to blame.

While health regulators and drug manufacturers including Pfizer have previously denied any causal link between the vaccines and neurological symptoms, the tide appears to be slowly turning as a growing number of experts call for more investigation.

Earlier this year, Sydney woman Daniella Lenarczyk, 34, spoke out about her persistent symptoms that included migraines, tinnitus, neck pain and numbness in her arm.

In the US, the National Institutes of Health conducted a small observational study last year of patients who reported neurological problems within one month of Covid vaccination, including pins and needles in the face or limb, orthostasis – sudden decrease in blood pressure when standing or sitting – heat intolerance and palpitation.

That paper, currently in preprint, concluded that “a variety of neuropathic symptoms may manifest after SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations and in some patients might be an immune-mediated process”.

“There doesn’t seem to be a majority theory,” Dr Faletic said.

“Whilst we’ve all been damaged in the same way, our cluster of symptoms vary from person to person.”

In a statement, the TGA said it “monitors the safety of Covid-19 vaccines using information from a variety of sources, including analysis of adverse event reports submitted to the TGA, emerging published literature, worldwide safety data submitted by vaccine sponsors and information shared by international regulators”.

“If the TGA identifies a safety concern it will take regulatory action to address the safety issue and promptly provide information to the public,” a spokeswoman said.

“The recognised adverse effects of Covid-19 vaccines are included in the approved Product Information (PI). These are updated as new safety information is identified. To date, the TGA has undertaken 26 actions with the sponsors to include new safety information in the PIs for Covid-19 vaccines.”

Those have included the addition of hypoaesthesia (reduced sense of touch or numbness) and paraesthesia (an unusual feeling in the skin, such as a tingling or crawling sensation) to the PIs for Comirnaty (Pfizer) and Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca).

Meanwhile, new figures obtained by news.com.au reveal the federal government’s vaccine injury compensation scheme has approved just 16 payouts in six months of operation.

The Covid-19 vaccine claims scheme allows people to claim a one-off payment ranging from $1000 to $20,000 for lost wages or other expenses if they suffer a bad reaction, and in cases of death the family may be able to claim funeral costs.

But the scheme has been criticised by legal experts and victims as overly complex and narrowly targeted towards a very limited number of officially recognised adverse effects.

Services Australia confirmed it had received 2225 applications as of June 2. Of these just 16 have been approved, 49 have been withdrawn and 671 are “waiting further information from applicants”.

“The assessment process can be complex, and claims may also be reviewed independently by medical and other appropriately qualified experts,” a spokesman said.

“In many cases, Services Australia has had to seek additional information from applicants in order to further progress consideration of their application. In other cases, applications have also been withdrawn. If found eligible, applicants are given up to six months to accept an offer of compensation, therefore finalisation of claims may also take some time.”

Services Australia declined to provide any data on the amounts of payouts or types of claims, citing privacy concerns due to the small number involved.

According to the TGA’s most recent safety update, there have been 129,995 total adverse event reports from 59.4 million vaccine doses administered to June 5.

Eleven deaths have been ruled as likely linked to vaccination, all after AstraZeneca.

No deaths have been officially linked to Pfizer in Australia from around 41 million doses administered.

In New Zealand, three deaths have been ruled as likely due to vaccine-induced myocarditis after Pfizer, from around 11 million doses.

Last month, the family of one of the 11 Australians who died after receiving AstraZeneca spoke out for the first time.

Victorian woman Robyn, a “fit and healthy” 77-year-old, died in September last year from Guillain-Barre syndrome.

Speaking to ABC Radio, her children said while they still supported Covid vaccination, they felt let down by the lack of government support.

They said they believed they were entitled to a lump-sum payment of $70,680 plus funeral expenses, but were critical about the complexity of the application process.

Her son Ross said reading through the vaccine claims policy, it felt callous. “It’s a policy that’s designed to protect medical professionals from legal repercussions if something happens, like to my mother,” he said.

“My understanding is that it is to facilitate the actual vaccine rollout, so the doctors aren’t scared to administer vaccines. But for people who have suffered from the side effects, it feels like we’re just an afterthought to that.”

Dr Faletic said he had also looked over the scheme carefully and “it’s absolutely clear they’ve written it to not include people like me”.

“From a philosophical point of view we had these massive, broad, sweeping economic sanctions on all of us – lockdowns, travel shutdown – all done because someone may transmit Covid, the precautionary principle,” he said.

“But when it’s these vaccines it’s the exact opposite – you have to prove every single thing.”

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/outright-lying-australian-scientist-hits-out-at-tga-after-lifechanging-covid-vaccine-injury/news-story/c57a554e4f7b6750e8ae6ff2db6c9514

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Matt Canavan: Energy pie in the sky is great but how do we cook it?

We need coal still -- and gas mining opposition in NSW and Victoria needs to be stopped

The saying “pie in the sky” was coined by American labour activist Joe Hill. He penned a song criticising Christian labour activists who, in his view, let people live on “hay” in this life, but promised them “pie in the sky” in the next.

For a long time we have been promised our energy version of pie in the sky as long as we just keep investing in renewable energy.

Australia has swallowed this gospel and then some. We have installed renewable energy at a faster rate than any other country in the world.  Australia has been building renewables at a rate of 200 watts per person per year. This is more than four times the rate of growth in Europe and North America.

Yet here we are are, with no pie, and power prices that are out of control in a country blessed with energy resources.

To get power prices down we must drop our obsession with pie in the sky solutions that we are told will work in the next world. Wind and solar that is not reliable is the most fashionable but there are a variety of pies that have been promised.

Hydrogen, batteries, pumped hydro and the latest, small modular nuclear reactors. None of these things have been successfully used at scale anywhere. Yet the energy charlatans continue to promise their latest snake oil to a gullible public.

I do think we should consider nuclear but the case for it is undermined when some push the myth that a small scale nuclear reactor can just be bought off the shelf. Modular reactors are still in the design and testing phase and could be years or decades away from commercial application.

We have an energy crisis today and we need solutions that will work within years not decades. The scale of the crisis is hard to fathom and has blindsided our energy regulators who had been drunk on the renewable energy Kool Aid. Since the Liddell coal fired power station shut its first unit in April (its remaining three will shut over the next year) wholesale power prices have skyrocketed to more than 5 times their average levels.

The wholesale power price makes up about a third of the electricity bill you pay in your home. So unless something is done soon your electricity bill will more than double.

The creation and distribution of electricity is a complex engineering challenge that few understand. But because of that there is a tendency to think that the economics of energy is complex too. It is not.

To bring down power prices we simply need to increase the supply of reliable power. To fix the crisis we have now we need to focus on options that work today, not ones that might help tomorrow.

Hundreds of High Efficiency, Low Emission coal fired power stations have built around the world yet we do not have one with the latest technology in Australia. We have the world’s best coal that is best suited to these modern coal fired power stations. We should build some to replace our ageing coal fired power fleet.

We should remove the red and green tape on the gas industry that is creating gas shortages especially in southern Australia. Victoria continues to demand that Queensland send more of its gas to it despite having a complete ban on fracking.

As Ronald Reagan said there are no easy answers but there are simple ones.

We simply need to generate more reliable power because more supply of electricity will bring the price down. If we don’t focus on the real solutions soon our only hope will be to pray for an intervention from the sky.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/matt-canavan-energy-pie-in-the-sky-is-great-but-how-do-we-cook-it/news-story/5ceb9a9b06b559ddcb832192e307d5af

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Public sympathy won’t pay costs of false refugee status

JENNIFER ORIEL

On the day Labor won the election, illegal immigrants set sail for Australia. Under the Coalition government, there had been no boat arrivals for two years. In the three weeks since Labor came to power, three vessels from Sri Lanka have been intercepted. Border security and immigration played a key role in Labor’s demise as a political force for nearly a decade. It is already showing weakness on national security and adopting a populist approach where firmer resolve is required.

By ministerial intervention, Sri Lankan couple Nades and Priya Murugappan were granted bridging visas last month. After fighting deportation for years, the Murugappans have a kind of celebrity status in the Australian media. Their protracted fight to gain citizenship is depicted as a battle between the persecuted poor and a conservative government that insisted on strong border security. Labor pledged to release them from detention if it came to power and made good on the promise when Jim Chalmers, acting as interim home affairs minister, intervened to grant them a bridging visa.

The media has painted the Murugappan story in a sympathetic light, portraying them as victims. New Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese joined the chorus of lament, describing the Murugappans being taken in the middle of the night by authorities and saying Australia should do better than that. Ethnic Communities Council of WA president Suresh Rajan said: “Despite everything we as a nation have thrown at them, they appear to be incredibly loving and incredibly fond of Australians.”

The widespread sympathy is at odds with reality, given multiple court proceedings found the Tamil family were not refugees. After the High Court of Australia rejected an application to hear an appeal from them last year, then immigration minister Alex Hawke said it “followed a series of previous decisions by the Department of Home Affairs, Administrative Appeals Tribunal, Federal Circuit Court, Federal Court, Full Federal Court and High Court in relation to the family”.

One of the most notable decisions was made by the Federal Circuit Court, which rejected the Tamil family’s appeal against deportation. Justice Caroline Kirton found the initial Immigration Assessment Authority denying them refugee status was valid. She noted the Sri Lankan civil war had ended in 2009 and Nades, who claimed a fear of persecution, had returned to Sri Lanka three times during the civil war without harm. Former home affairs minister Peter Dutton said the Murugappan case was “completely without merit in terms of their claim to be refugees”.

A Department of Home Affairs spokesperson told the ABC the Tamil family’s case had been assessed over many years by various tribunals and courts and consistently found not to warrant refugee status. The spokesperson said: “Foreign nationals who do not hold a valid visa are expected to depart voluntarily.” But the Murugappans declined to do so and in January, Federal Circuit Judge Heather Riley ruled that three members of the family could reapply for bridging visas.

The victory for the Tamil couple in gaining prime ministerial support for their permanent residency bid could be a green light to people-smugglers. Sri Lankan authorities have suggested the country’s current economic woes are a major push factor driving illegal boat arrivals on Australian shores. Yet it was a major issue back in 2019 when Dutton visited Sri Lanka.

Speaking to The Weekend Australian, Sri Lankan navy spokesman Indika de Silva said the navy had been apprehending at least one boat a week for the past month. He noted that people-smugglers are fooling the population into believing they will have a better life in Australia, even though Labor has not announced plans to welcome illegal boat arrivals. The Labor government has committed to maintaining the Coalition’s key border security policy, Operation Sovereign Borders. But people-smugglers are liars and cheats. They exploit legal loopholes, look for signs of weakness in government policy and play the victim when caught. One common tactic is to plead refugee status falsely. Some use boats to bypass proper vetting procedures because their passengers are economic migrants, not genuine refugees. Others ferry criminals across borders to escape justice in their home countries where the law may be less liberal. The reality of terrorists exploiting weak border policy was brought into gruesome clarity by the jihadi attacks on Western soil at the height of Islamic State power.

Albanese knows the history of Labor government includes disastrous border security failures. When last in office, Labor dismantled Howard-era policy for what it claimed was a more humane approach to people seeking asylum. The compassionate approach resulted in more than 50,000 people arriving by boat and 1200 dying at sea. More than 8000 children were left in detention. The Coalition cleaned up the mess and estimated the cost at more than $17bn.

In recent months, Australia has followed the rest of the developed world in facing inflationary pressures as a result of the Covid pandemic. Rising interest rates and the high price of basic necessities will force many Australians into financial hardship. The priority of the government must be ensuring a return to prosperity. Short-term feel-good policies must give way to long-term strategic planning. At the last census, more than 116,000 Australians were homeless. In the turbulent economic times ahead, priority must be given to helping existing citizens including newly settled refugees and migrants. We should welcome those who demonstrate respect for our country and rule of law by undertaking proper processes to gain visas.

The Murugappan case might be the exception to the rule, but people-smugglers will sell it as the rule. However well liked by the Biloela community, their case will encourage other foreign nationals to think they have a chance of permanent residency in Australia even with asylum claims not recognised by the courts. Labor will be faced with the consequences and taxpayers will be left with the bill.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/public-sympathy-wont-pay-costs-of-false-refugee-status/news-story/bb1eeee1efded9ad81ce841286b8ab47

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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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12 June, 2022

Aboriginal mother claims she was followed around a Kmart store by 'racially profiling' staff and her bags searched as she shopped with her family

This woman's treatment certainly seems extraordinary and oppressive.  She  undoubtedly deserves an apology at least. But what happened should be understood nonetheless.  

In their ancestral hunting lifestyle, Aborigines have developed enormous skills pertinent to that lifestyle.  And those skills make them extraordinarily skilled sneak thieves.  Combine that with  their disrespect for white society and you get a lot of property crime from them.  And in a working class suburb like Merryylands, retailers would be well aware of that.  

So Aborigines in general are a problem there and that makes individual Aborigines suspicious.  The lady bore the brunt of the perceptions that her fellow Aborigines have created. Sad for her but probably inescapable

An indigenous musician claims she was racially profiled and accused of stealing while shopping with her children at Kmart. 

Australian rapper Barkaa, real name Chloe Quaylee, was shopping at her local Kmart store in the western Sydney suburb of Merrylands on Wednesday night.

She claimed she and her family were watched and followed by three staff and  stopped from leaving the store until they checked her bags.

'I walked into Kmart with my family and was spotted by one of the women who worked there, who continued staring at us,' Barkaa wrote in an Instagram post.

'She then grabs two young men (one that was in uniform and one that wasn't) and all three followed me through the toy section with my young kids, snickering things under their breathe and laughing.'

Barkaa confronted the woman asking whether 'she was ok', the woman replied: 'yes, just looking at this' - which she then told the woman: 'I know you are following me, can you please stop, it's rude.' 

The mother-of-three called her children to follow her and leave the store when two young men allegedly followed them through the aisles. 

'As we were leaving the two young men followed us so I decided to start video recording as it was distressing and humiliating for me,' Barkaa wrote. 

'Once we got to the check out and checked all of our items through and proceeded to walk out, we were then stopped by a young woman who said "I have to check your bag".' 

Barkaa claimed three Kmart workers pulled out all the items she bought out of her bags and insisted they 'had to because it was their job' - while other customers left with their bags unchecked.

'I said to them, 'I have no need to steal, I'm in here with my kids, I have more than enough to pay for these items,' Barkaa told the Kmart staff. 

The artist felt 'humiliated and ashamed' but believed she had to speak out against racism and discrimination and had the platform to do so - sharing the experience with her 59,700 followers. 

'I have the platform to do so and I wish this wasn't my job, but so many of us are still being discriminated against and racially profiled, followed around in stores and targeted just for being who we are,' she wrote. 

'Tonight I felt humiliated and ashamed, I had people looking at me and my young kids like we had done something wrong. 

'I felt like crying when I got out of the shop but instead I had to walk off and explain to my kids what just happened and comfort my eldest daughter. 'I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.'

The budget retailer, which is a subsidiary of Wesfarmers, said it was aware of Barkaa's experience and was investigating the matter further.  'We are aware of Barkaa’s experience in our store and we are investigating internally and taking it extremely seriously,' Kmart told Daily Mail Australia.

'We have been in contact with Barkaa and are speaking with her to understand more about her experience. 'We want all our customers to have a great experience every time they are in one of our stores and we understand we have not delivered on this experience this time around.'

In two Instagram story posts on Friday night, one of which was deleted, Barkaa labelled users leaving negative comments as 'whinging racists'. 'It's 2022, I don't need racists for permission to be a Blak [sic] woman in this country with a voice,' she wrote.  'What happened was unacceptable... I'm not backing down and I have every right to be upset... it was traumatic for myself and my babies.' 

'Fancy being called a thief on stolen land,' she wrote and then quickly deleted. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10903189/Aboriginal-mother-claims-racially-profiled-Kmart.html

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This is the electricity crisis we had to have

It's all about gas

This is the electricity crisis we had to have. It forces leaders in business, politics – state and federal – and regulators to face the big structural problems, feet to the flame.

Thankfully the new Labor government has not had a knee-jerk response to the crisis. Instead ministers claw their way up the learning curve. This is “not an easy fix” they say. Translated this means customers, retail and manufacturing will feel pain for some time.

The crisis has at last demonstrated to Australians just how important gas is as a reliable firm power that, unlike coal, can be turned on and off with the flick of a switch.

What just happened in the past couple of months? The crisis is both simple and very complicated.

The East Coast lost more power more suddenly than the USS Enterprise on a bad day. It was not gas which failed, it was coal. Like it or not, coal still normally provides 60 per cent of the grid’s electricity, but incredibly, up to a third of it is out of action.

A plethora of failures at the largest coal-fired power stations have caused this, from unplanned shutdowns to coal supply chain problems triggered by wet weather. Coal power stations once down, take time to come back. On Friday came the grim news that AGL had lost half its capacity at NSW’s Bayswater, and Loy Yang in Victoria would take an extra two months to fix.

At the same time a cold snap has caused customer demand for energy to rise. Unfortunately wet weather has meant that renewables have not been at their best.

This supply-demand mismatch has everyone scrabbling for more gas to fill the gap.

But there are limits to the amount of gas that is easily accessible. In part, that is because the system has been set up to export most of the gas in production. And in part it is because for years now opportunities to access new gas, in NSW and Victoria in particular, have been frustrated. Victorian Premier Dan Andrews is insincere to deny this.

What is missing are the huge transmission links between states that would help the grid to balance energy capacity. Poles and wires infrastructure is woefully behind.

What is also missing is the capacity market called for by the former Energy Security Board chief Dr Kerry Schott – with instructions last year to “just get on with it”. Schott’s proposal was that the market would pay for firm reliable power generators, be they hydro, battery, gas or indeed coal, to have energy capacity available when urgently required.

Labor’s crisis meeting with state counterparts agreed to a market where firm renewables could be part of the capacity market but not coal.

Now Snowy 2.0, the flagship renewables project that would provide oodles of firm power is delayed another 19 months.

Farcically, even when that project is built, there is still no clear date for the transmission line, the Hume Link, to take that power to Sydney.

What a mess. What a contrast to Labor’s grand Powering Australia plan which promises that by 2025 family power bills will be $275 a year cheaper than they were at the end of 2021.

And Labor knows that any major intervention to permanently cap retail prices risks knocking investment confidence. It is looking for $58bn from the private sector to help build the infrastructure to deliver low price renewable power.

Back to Scotty in the boiler room needing more power now: the East Coast can’t get it from coal, nor from renewables. It has to be more gas.

Last week the market operator AEMO had to put a temporary cap of $40 a gigajoule on gas prices which had spiked to $800, a price that would blow up any manufacturer needing gas. On Thursday, that temporary cap was extended in NSW and Victoria.

Two questions immediately come to mind.

Why can’t the East Coast demand a 15 per cent domestic gas reserve, effective immediately and divert gas destined for the export market back into the home market?

And second, why can’t more loose gas that isn’t locked up and destined for export be found?

To the first, breaking an international gas contract with customers is not just a force majeure that threats Australia’s sovereign risk status. It also threatens the energy security of our Asian neighbours relying on Australian gas in Japan, Korea and elsewhere. These customers could be left scrambling for gas at record prices after Russia turned off the tap.

When the newly elected Labor government went first to Tokyo for the Quad meeting, then to the Pacific Islands and most recently to Indonesia, the No.1 agenda item was national security.

Two of the three big LNG joint ventures on the East Coast are already supplying 10 to 15 per cent of production to the domestic market anyway. Only Santos has difficulty.

To the second question, it is likely that more gas can be found than the sector cares to admit. This is where Labor needs to quickly get to know the bosses running the major oil and gas companies.

Business has a far more sophisticated understanding of the market. New Nationals leader David Littleproud says gas companies ride high in the stirrups and can see where the resource is accessible. Right now, that available spot gas sells for a terrific price on international markets.

This is where government jawboning around intervention comes in.

Last week, Energy Minister Chris Bowen branded the Coalition’s gas intervention mechanism as useless. But it was the threat of its use that has in the past squeezed more out of gas players.

This week Labor sensibly changed tack, ordering a review of the domestic gas security mechanism.

It is also a furphy that the pipeline bringing gas down is at capacity. It might have been at capacity on one day, but it is not at capacity at all times.

For new projects a gas domestic reservation plan seems sensible. Santos’ Narrabri gas project (which has been locked in red tape for nearly a decade) is all destined for the domestic market.

But the real urgency is to shore up coal-fired power where companies face every incentive to under-invest. Even coal supplies are running tight because miners can get much higher prices on the international market. So do coal generators lock in three-year coal contracts knowing there is risk of earlier closure as activist pressure continues?

Australia’s two biggest power players are under pressure. Origin’s accelerated closure of its ­Eraring coal-fired power station was on the premise that Snowy 2.0 would be up and running by 2025. It will not be. AGL has its own corporate crisis. Like politics, energy transition is the art of the possible and our political leaders are going to have to get their hands dirty.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/this-is-the-electricity-crisis-we-hadto-have/news-story/19d2dfc036c43c0030a20dcada292f57

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The Teals are useless, powerless and irrelevant

I sometimes struggle with similes. If a person is said not to have any particular utility, there’s no shortage of idiomatic phrases available. Ashtrays on motorbikes. Pockets on singlets. Ejection seats in helicopters. But these tend to be cliché. So, I’m going to settle on being as useful as a Teal independent in the parliament.

We saw the rise of the Teals at the federal election. I predicted their triumphs in Liberal blue-ribbon seats in Melbourne, Sydney and in Perth. We should have been immediately suspicious because truth be told, their rah-rah merch is more turquoise than teal. Alas, turquoise is a difficult spell – way too many vowels stuck together, and the plural form sounds clumsy.

See, I would have gone with Tree Tories but would have been shouted down in the focus group.

Much has been postulated about the rise of the Teals post-election. Demographers have scrambled to make sense of it and lapsed into furious disagreement. Some put it down to a shift to high density dwellings, the introduction of a new aspirational class of younger voters snapping up apartments and townhouses which might explain Kooyong and even Goldstein but in Mackellar not so much.

Others speak of global political trends towards progressivism among the professional classes combined with dwindling confidence in the major parties which might be right but a one off does not make a trend. It could easily be a blip.

Labor fretted and fingered the runes of electoral defeat in 2019 and flung policy overboard when it could have saved itself some angst and time in the post-match review and come up with two crisp words to understand it: Bill Shorten. Likewise, the Liberals might end their soul searching by the use of a similarly brief explanatory: Scott Morrison.

Conservative commentators and the odd conservative politician have determined these freshly turquoise-ed electorates lost once to the Liberals should be forsaken for ever more, left to their own devices, entire electorates reverted to p[arty political wastelands where candidates are pre-selected over a cucumber sandwich and herbal tea in a person’s loungeroom who claims he or she is a voice for the community.

The Teals are party that isn’t a party who aimed for the support of a critical demographic of forgotten people who drive Porsche Cayennes, enjoy negative gearing on their Sydney property portfolios, assorted middle class tax breaks on equity markets investments, have disposable income up the wah-zoo, and still think they’ve somehow been dudded by government.

Overall, the Teal phenomenon seems to be an assertion that the rich might be a waste of money, but the poor are a waste of time.

Now we come to the pointy end of the Teals’ political raison d’etre. Parliamentary politics. In what will surely be a crushing disappointment for the turquoise-bedecked, they find themselves stuck on a cross bench with Labor enjoying a workable majority on the floor of the House.

The first poignant reminder of their lack of political utility will come when they take their seats in the chamber no less than five metres away from Bob ‘The Hat’ Katter. Dispiriting for them, hugely amusing for the rest of us.

At the first sitting of the 47th Parliament, the Teals – nine of them in total, the freshly inducted members for Kooyong, Goldstein, Wentworth, North Sydney, Mackellar and Curtin will join the old salts already on a first-name basis with the staff at Aussies Café, the members for Clark, Indi and Warringah and maybe Mayo, too, depending on whether Rebekha Sharkie has shifted from the orange hue of the Centre Alliance or the more Zeitgeist packed turquoise.

And then down to business. The Teals have a trifecta of political purpose. The first is the Teals demand more parliamentary representation from women but of Labor’s 17 fresh faced MHRs, ten are women. Of Labor’s 77 seats in the chamber, 35 are women. Ten of the 23-member cabinet are women. This does smack of the Teals who aren’t a party being late to that particular party.

When it comes to the business of integrity, the Albanese government will create an independent anti-corruption commission. While the exact nature of the body is yet to find legislative form and will be subject to discussion and consultation across the parliament, the fact remains the Albanese government will have created it with or without the Teals.

And then we get to the biggie. Climate change. The Prime Minister has signalled an end to the climate wars, but no one seems to have told the Teals about the armistice. There is a global energy crisis driven in no small part by the conflict in Ukraine.

Resources Minister Madeleine King has said the solution to it is a sensible mix of coal, gas, and renewables.

“We need a sensible plan of action that looks at all the energy mix. That will be a combination of fossil fuel energy, coal for the moment, certainly gas for some time, but importantly renewables and hydro. Pitting them against each other or turning this into a political football – which we have done for far too long – has led us to this situation,” she told The Australian.

“My starting point is that all of our energy mix must be in the plan for the future. As things fluctuate, you have outages. The question becomes: how do we back them up? It’s gas right now. Will it be renewables in the future? It will, provided there’s proper investment and the battery storage capacity is built up.”

But there is little or no sign of flexibility coming from the turquoise sector on the crossbench, although Curtin’s Kate Cheney and Clark’s Andrew Wilkie seem at least to understand the nature of the problem.

Others, including Goldstein’s Zoe Daniel and Wentworth’s Allegra Spender are babbling about gas company profits. Being ideologically intractable puts any politician up there with the behaviour of the Greens (indeed there is no sign they have matured) who were walking expressions of the aphorism, the perfect is the enemy of the good.

Should many or all of them remain uncompromising, the debate over the energy mix driven by raging power prices and gas supply shortages will simply pass the Teals by, their musings consigned to angry letters to the editor of the Guardian.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/the-teals-set-to-veer-into-irrelevance-as-useful-as/news-story/739de7755e4bcf3ab58de95eb8860322

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Hydrogen hot air

When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared in his election victory speech that his new government would work to make Australia ‘a green energy superpower’, those who knew anything about the problems involved groaned aloud.

Australia is already a major power in energy markets as it has vast reserves of coal and natural gas that other countries want, despite all the talk about net zero, and which can be easily transported. Renewable energy is different. Every country can generate its own energy, with equipment imported from China, and it is far more difficult to transport over long distances.

Admittedly some countries have less space for such activities, such as Singapore, Japan and the UK, but renewable energy activists are full of ideas for offshore wind generators and even floating generators, or photovoltaic panels on every rooftop and never mind what happens in the rainy season. They also all want to be energy superpowers, or ‘the Saudi Arabia of wind’ as UK Prime Minister Boris Johnston put it when he announced plans to build yet more offshore wind turbines around the UK.

In other words, why would any country buy expensive energy from Australia when they can generate their own expensive energy, especially as the problems of transporting energy many thousands of kilometres from Australia wind farms and solar installations will add greatly to the cost of that energy?

This point was forcefully made by renewable energy advocate Andrew Blakers, a professor of engineering at the Australian National University, on the Conversation in early April. He says that the federal government has already set aside hundreds of millions of dollars to help create a major green hydrogen export industry, particularly to Japan, for which Australia signed an export deal in January. However, he also points out that Japan has more than enough solar and wind energy to be self-sufficient in energy and – assuming all that energy is harnessed – does not need to import either fossil fuels or Australian green hydrogen. Whether or not you agree with Professor Blakers that Japan can realistically meet all of its energy needs from local renewable energy the country can certainly generate hydrogen locally.

In fact, Japan is already doing so with a government-supported facility for producing hydrogen derived from a token 20 MW of solar power, which started operating in March 2020. (Major coal power plants generate 2,000 MW plus.) The resulting small parcels of the gas are shipped in hydrogen tube trailers to be used in stationary fuel-cell systems and in specially adapted cars and buses. This is hardly world shattering but it far more than Australia is doing at the moment. However, Japan has pledged to develop the first full-scale hydrogen supply chain and is interested in importing the fuel, having built the Suiso Frontier, the first ship in the world designed to carry hydrogen. This has shipped one load of hydrogen from Australia which was produced using steam and natural gas, the usual method of producing hydrogen for industrial processes and far cheaper than using electrolysis (sticking two bare ends of wire attached to the same power source into water).

The Suiso shipment in January attracted some media attention without the stories noting that the shipment only involved a test quantity of around 70 tonnes. A good-sized LNG carrier will take 72,000 tonnes. The exercise would also have represented a net power loss, for the process of making, condensing and shipping hydrogen is known to be technically challenging and wasteful.

Professor Blakers cites an estimate that converting energy to hydrogen, shipping it to where it is needed and then converting back into energy could consume 70 per cent of the energy generated. Michael Liebreich, a senior contributor to BloombergNEF (new energy finance) wrote in 2020 that as an energy storage medium, hydrogen has only a 50 per cent round-trip efficiency – far worse than batteries. As a source of heat, he estimates that hydrogen costs four times as much as natural gas. Hydrogen pipelines also cost three times as much as power lines.

Activists who talk so glibly about using hydrogen to store energy are no doubt thinking of liquid natural gas, which is now the basis of a thriving international trade using purpose-built container vessels. The international trade in LNG, in which Australia is a major player, started growing in the 1960s with the large-scale adoption of techniques for liquifying the gas in giant facilities called ‘trains’ and for keeping it liquid for long periods in what amounts to giant thermos bottles. LNG requires low temperatures, minus 160 degrees centigrade, but the gas itself is a source of energy and some of that energy can be used to power the liquification process. Once at that temperature the liquid form of the gas can be stored relatively safely at atmospheric pressures.

But hydrogen is not methane. It is a much smaller molecule so seals and pipes that would comfortably prevent methane leakage do not keep hydrogen in. The liquification temperature for hydrogen is also much lower, specifically minus 253 degrees centigrade or just 14 degrees above what physicists call absolute zero – you can’t get any colder – requiring considerably more energy to achieve and maintain. The Suiso Frontier cargo was liquified in a special facility that was powered from the grid. Hydrogen is also a considerably more dangerous gas than methane. Transmission lines are safer, but the same problem with demand arises. One group has been trying to raise interest in building a $16 billion transmission line from northern Australia to Singapore for years. But if the Singaporeans felt the need for intermittent energy why not take it from neighbouring Malaysia which also has all sorts of schemes to generate green energy and transmission would not be so expensive? While activists are on the subject, they could calculate just how much intermittent energy would have to be transmitted over the proposed line to justify the investment.

But as demonstrated by the suspension of senior HSBC executive Stuart Kirk by HSBC pending an internal investigation into a presentation he made at an event, the Financial Times Moral Money Summit, in late May, reality in renewable energy debate is not the issue. Kirk’s presentation, entitled ‘Why investors need not worry about climate risk,’ pointed out that most of the projections of economic loss due to climate change either have to fudge the figures or come up with numbers that are too small over the long periods involved to matter at all. Among other valid points in his presentation, Kirk likened the climate crisis to the Y2K bug that predicted a widespread computer glitch at the turn of the millennium and declared that ‘unsubstantiated, shrill, partisan, self-serving, apocalyptic warnings are always wrong’. But as far as the greens are concerned reality and economic analysis are simply not relevant.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/06/hydrogen-hot-air/

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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 June, 2022

Court order to expose @PRguy17 threatens the right to be anonymous online

The problem is not anonymity.  It is defamation. A more robust and accessible system to punish misleading and derogatory tweets is what is needed

A Federal Court order forcing Twitter to hand over identifying details of a prominent anonymous account has far-reaching consequences for all internet users.

For those who engage in heated online debates under a pseudonym, the decision means they may be at risk of having their identity exposed.

But even if you’re not a chronic online poster, this court decision has important implications for our online rights. It is part of a growing debate about the merit of online anonymity, which stands to affect the way we can participate in cyberspace.

The court order is a result of defamation proceedings launched by far-right social media personality Avi Yemini against anonymous Twitter account @PRGuy17, which was set up in March 2020 and has since attracted more than 80,000 users.

The account is known for posting content in support of the Labor Party, with particular emphasis on praising Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. PRGuy has been critical of the anti-lockdown “Freedom Movement”, of which Yemini has been a figurehead. Sky News has accused the account of pumping out “pro-Labor propaganda” and some have claimed it may be connected to the premier’s office.

However, the precedent created by this case – where a social media platform has been ordered to hand over identifying information so a party to a court case can legally pursue the person behind the account – is chilling for many who use anonymity to participate in online debate. Defamation has a notorious history in Australia, and certain plaintiffs have used it to strategically silence criticism.

Those who benefit from the use of pseudonyms online are not a small minority. People who have jobs that limit their ability to engage in public debates, such as those in the public service or in frontline client-facing roles, often rely on anonymity to call out bad behaviour (or to simply have an opinion) without fear of repercussions in the physical world.

Human rights defenders, political organisers, lawyers and whistleblowers often rely on the shield offered by anonymity to do their vital work while also engaging in regular online life. Even if you aren’t one of these people, we all benefit from their ability to hold power to account.

We cannot glorify the Arab Spring protests and the might that social media has given to other social movements since then, then seek to remove the key ingredient which made those movements possible.

All this must be balanced against the proliferation of online trolling, in which people can be subjected to hundreds, even thousands, of abusive messages, often for posting something innocuous.

Defamation policy won’t tackle online trolls, lawyers tell PM

In criticising trolls in October 2021, then prime minister Scott Morrison labelled social media a “cowards’ palace” and called for a crackdown on anonymous accounts. In March that year, a federal parliamentary committee had recommended people be required to provide 100 points of ID to create a social media account. Morrison’s government then unveiled draft legislation purported to tackle online trolls with a requirement that social media companies collect unspecified additional identifying information. This has a huge impact on those who need online anonymity for safety, such as victims of domestic violence.

Regardless of whether you personally feel you have “nothing to hide”, in an environment where it is increasingly difficult to protect our data from breaches and misuse, the proposal to hand over additional information to big tech giants – despite the privacy and security risks – is troubling.

There is little evidence that reducing anonymity online would prevent trolling. Research has found that prohibiting anonymity online does not necessarily reduce bullying or the spread of misinformation. And when it was attempted in South Korea, 35 million people had their national identification numbers stolen by hackers. We need to improve the quality of online debate, but policies should be based on evidence, not instinct.

These are not easy challenges to tackle. Anyone who has ever been attacked by an anonymous online troll would tell you the abuse has real-world consequences. But if we give up the ability to be anonymous we pave the way for the complete erosion of privacy online, to the detriment of public debate, safety, expression and democratic participation.

Regardless of your opinion on Yemini or PRGuy, we shouldn’t let a public beef between two of Australia’s most divisive people on the internet obscure why online anonymity is vital for our democracy. The consequences of this court decision may very well impact all internet users, not just the people who say things we don’t like.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/court-order-to-expose-anonymous-tweeter-threatens-all-our-democratic-freedoms-and-safety-20220608-p5as3g.html

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Australian universities have held their position in world rankings through the pandemic with seven institutions in the latest global top 100 list released by higher ­education analyst firm QS

At 30th, the Australian Nat­ional University retains its position as the best ranked local institution in the 2023 QS World University Rankings, down three places from 27th last year.

Second is the University of Melbourne at 33rd, followed by the University of Sydney at 41st.

Also in the top 100 are UNSW (45th), the ­University of Queensland (50th), Monash University (57th) and the University of Western Australia (90th).

Among other Australian universities, La Trobe stood out, rising 46 places to 316th in the latest ranking list. QS said the improvement was mainly due to a rise in the number of citations per ­research paper published by La Trobe academics.

La Trobe has also increased its output of research papers, up by 37 per cent since 2016, nearly three times higher than the 13 per cent average growth in research output over that period.

QS senior vice-president Ben Sowter said although Australian universities had suffered from international isolation during the pandemic, their rankings had stagnated rather than declined.

“There are as many universities rising as falling,” he said. “Australia continues to shine for research excellence, but its recognition among the global academic community and employers has taken a hit, connected with the reduced international engagement during the pandemic.”

Mr Sowter said if the number of international students in Australia took a long time to recover, it would “jeopardise the intellectual diversity and exchange that are causing Australia’s institutions to thrive”.

Because of two years of closed borders during the pandemic, Australian universities also went backwards in the reputation surveys that account for half of the QS ranking. Of the 38 ranked Australian universities, 37 declined in the academic reputation survey of more than 150,000 ­academics globally, which makes up 40 per cent of the QS ranking.

And all 38 ranked universities declined in the employer reputation survey (which samples nearly 100,000 employers ­globally), which makes up 10 per cent of the ranking.

However, Australian universities did well on the research measure, which counts the number of research citations per academic, and makes up 20 per cent of the ranking score. Thirteen Australian universities are in the world’s top 100 on the research measure.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/seven-australian-universities-are-in-qs-world-rankings-top-100/news-story/5e36dd99035a6dcc74ce701026c2b277

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Why men kill themselves

Bettina Arndt 

Over twenty years ago, federal member of parliament Greg Wilton took his own life. The tragedy was the culmination of a series of events which highlight how poorly we deal with vulnerable men. Three weeks earlier, Wilton had been found “in a distressed state” with his children in a car in the national park, apparently rigging a hose to the exhaust. It was widely reported as an attempted murder-suicide.

He spent time in psychiatric care, but with his Labor colleagues maneuvering to force him out of parliament and relentless hounding from the press, it wasn’t long before he tried again. This time he succeeded. On June 14, 2000, the 44-year was found dead in his car, with the exhaust hose attached.  

A few years earlier Wilton had given a speech to parliament pointing out that group most likely to commit suicide in this country were men like him – adult males struggling with marital separation. He mentioned extensive research that had emerged over previous years showing “men kill themselves due to an inability to cope with life events such as relationship breakups of the kind I myself have suffered.”

In the two decades since then, that research has piled up. The case is now overwhelming that men facing relationship breakdown should be a key target of Australia’s suicide prevention policies.

There’s no way our health bureaucrats are going to let that happen. The March 2022 budget allocated $2.1 billion to services for women and girls and just $1 million to “improve long term health outcomes” for men and boys. Isn’t that extraordinary? Somehow females are seen as deserving of 2000 times more investment in their health than men, despite their more robust health resulting in four extra years of life expectancy.  

What a tribute to the mighty efforts of our feminist health bureaucracy which for decades has strenuously ignored the enormous elephant sitting in their room - namely, the ever-increasing male suicide rate wiping out so many younger adult males.

Suicide is the leading cause of death for people aged 25-44. Male vulnerability is at the heart of the problem. Look at these statistics:

·      Men account for 3 in 4 of the lives lost to suicide.

·      7 of the 9 people who kill themselves every day are male.

·      There have always been more male than female suicides.

·      Over the past ten years males have become even more at risk.

·      The male suicide rate is twice the annual road toll.  

Men wiping themselves out is a hugely important health issue – yet there’s a very good reason why our politicians and feminist bureaucrats don’t want to go there. As Greg Wilton pointed out, the evidence is piling up that a key reason many of these young men are at risk is they are casualties of family breakup.

The consequent minefield that hits these men, who are frequently fathers, often proves unbearable. Most face some combination of stressful legal battles, false accusations, crippling child support payments; financial ruin and most importantly, the loss of their children.  

Marty Grant could have been one such casualty. He had it all planned. The tough young farmer from the West Australian wheat belt had the wire around his neck.

The other end was tied to a tree and the car ready to surge into motion. But he stopped himself. “I realized I couldn’t do it to my family and friends.” Marty pulled back, drove himself home, packed a bag and set off to seek help from the local nurse.

I wrote about Marty many years ago in an article on bush suicide for the Australian Women’s Weekly, covering all the stresses these farmers were going through, including crippling drought, dropping commodity prices, succession problems. But it took some doing to persuade the magazine editors to let me tackle the major suicide research issue emerging at that time – family breakdown. It was the loss of his loved ones which pushed Marty over the edge. His partner took off because she didn’t want to be a farmer’s wife, and then the son from a previous relationship – a child Marty had cared for a decade as a single parent - went off to live with his mum. Marty’s family disappeared.

This was the type of story highlighted in research published around that time by the Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention at Griffith University which found relationship breakdown to be the main trigger for suicide, with male risk four times that of females.

According to the researchers Drs Chris Cantor and Pierre Baume, men are most vulnerable in the period immediately after separation – with separation from children a major source of their despair.

That’s a red flag, crying out for suicide prevention intervention. Just think what usually happens when we discover one of these trigger points. Like mothers at risk of suicide due to post-partum depression. When that first made the news, support groups got to work, government funding started pouring in, and now prevention programs are everywhere.

Currently the federal government is targeting anorexic girls. Wham, the latest suicide funding promised $20 million for eating disorder treatment services. Then there’s indigenous suicide. Righty-o. They’ve come up with $79 million in the budget for that one.

Yet for the last two decades there has been absolutely no government funding to follow up  Cantor and Baume’s work on vulnerable divorcing men, even though recent Griffith University research still shows relationship difficulties to be the major triggering life event, accounting for 42.5 % of suicides. The Australian Bureau of Statistics data lists relationship disruptions/problems as the key suicide psychological risk factors after self-harm, which is more a symptom of distress than a trigger.

But this key issue never features in the public narrative. Instead, we are presented with carefully constructed red herrings. Remember the lavish 2016 ABC television program, Man Up, which spent three episodes claiming we need to teach suicidal men to show their feelings. Hours of television about men having to learn to cry, but not a word about what they were crying about.

Then they announced a mental health expert, Christine Morgan, as National Suicide Prevention Officer, and followed up with $5.6 million from mental health funding to encourage men to seek help. Don’t they love this new diversion, focussing on encouraging men to rid themselves of their toxic masculinity and show their softer side?

But the fact is that even though many suicidal men have mental health problems, our authorities are strenuously ignoring the key event which might push them over the edge. Data from the Queensland Suicide register shows that 42% of men who die by suicide have a mental health diagnosis but 98% have experienced a recent life event, such as relationship breakdown.  

Given the ongoing male suicide crisis, it is an absolute scandal that our suicide policies are still proudly “gender neutral” with up to 4 of 5 beneficiaries female, according to analysis by the Australian Men’s Health Forum. Read the case AMHF makes for a male suicide prevention strategy here.

Yet finally there are tiny green shoots appearing midst the ongoing gloom.  In January this year Suicide Prevention Australia, the peak body for suicide prevention organisations, announced that “it’s time to talk about male suicide prevention.”

“Of the 3,000 lives tragically lost to suicide each year, over 75% are men. They are our husbands and fathers, our brothers and uncles, our colleagues and friends”, wrote CEO Nieves Murray, announcing they were pushing for an “ambitious male suicide prevention strategy,” guided by “the evidence” and “addressing underlying issues that might lead men to the point of crisis,” and actually mentioning support for men in family courts.

The Morrison government announced last November that some suicide prevention funding would be targeted at risk groups including men but didn’t manage to get this up before the election. No doubt the health bureaucrats have no interest in rushing this one through and it’s hard to imagine this happening if a Labor/Green government gets into power.

Look what happened after Pauline Hanson had the guts to speak out about false allegations and bias against men when appointed Deputy Chair of the recent parliamentary inquiry into family law. She was ripped apart in the media and her Labor/Green committee members stymied any hope of addressing these issues, despite hundreds of submissions documenting how men are being done over.

Tackling male suicide means highlighting the way the family law system is now weaponised against men. This will attract huge resistance from the feminist mob controlling our media, so adept at cowering politicians into inaction. But too many people now know and care about what’s driving so many men to take their lives.

The time is right for a mighty campaign to galvanise public opinion and demand real change

https://www.thinkspot.com/discourse/jMua25/post/bettina-arndt/why-men-kill-themselves/bvZtjy

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The power struggle: inconvenient truth proves renewables can’t cut it

Australia’s low-emissions energy journey is locked in a struggle ­between engineering and hope.

The nation has lost its way on energy because it has failed to think long term, excluded emerging technologies from the discussion, and refused to learn the lessons of failure from elsewhere.

Debate this week about how a capacity market should work to keep the lights on and industry in business underscores the point.

Too many people with too little understanding have turned a problem of physics and engineering into one of politics and economics. The breakdown in electricity supply is as serious as it has been predictable. Engineers know that grinding the coal sector into the ground won’t make renewables produce electricity when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. Leaving gas in the ground, as NSW and Victoria have done, won’t power a back-up supply. Stealing back supplies of gas from companies that have contracted to sell it elsewhere will compound the problems.

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has fired back at the Coalition over their push for Labor to…

Governments generally don’t last long enough to reap the product of the chaos they sow. But new governments should learn the mistakes of others.

Contrary to popular opinion, Germany’s transition away from nuclear power has not been fuelled by wind and solar. It has been powered by greater use of brown coal and a dependence on Russian Gas. Power shortages in South Australia, California, Texas, UK and Europe all share a common feature, a naive hope that renewable energy will do the job it is not equipped to do.

Politicians have been cowered into supporting solutions they don’t understand. No serious thinker believes it’s economically sensible to firm up a national grid with batteries but a whole industry is willing to take government money to give it a try.

It might well be an expensive fix for individual households, but not industry. Spending billions to extend the national grid is based on the premise that the wind will always be blowing somewhere. The reality is this is not necessarily the case.

Hydrogen is a promising technology but experts who have worked in the field maintain it is a dangerous substance, difficult to contain and invisible when it burns. From an environmental perspective, the vast amount of materials and area of land needed to attempt what is being proposed using wind, solar, batteries, pumped hydro, hydrogen and transmission lines does not meet the cost/benefit test. A bigger concern is electricity is only a small part of the challenge ahead. Bigger and more important for industry is process heat, something that wind and solar can never deliver.

Alinta Energy chief executive Jeff Dimery belled the cat this week that the energy crisis was caused by chaotic market planning that had swamped the country with renewables that in turn made coal uncompetitive.

“We’re committing economic suicide if we rush and try to do it too quickly when we haven’t got the alternative supplies in place,” he told a Melbourne conference.

To illustrate the point, he said renewable energy plants in South Australia last Wednesday at 6.15pm were producing one megawatt of electricity, a tiny fraction of capacity. There was no wind in Victoria either.

“So it wouldn’t have mattered if you doubled the capacity of the transmission, and it wouldn’t have mattered if you quadrupled the capacity of intermittent generation. Without coal and gas, the lights would have gone out in South Australia, that is a fact,” he said.

Watching on, as the nation’s energy thinkers look for Band-Aid solutions to potentially fatal conditions in the energy market is the former head of Australia’s Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Adi Paterson, who has also commercialised pioneering research on lithium ion batteries and participated hydrogen policy work in South Africa.

Paterson says the nation is locked in a false struggle. “This ­debate has become about economics and the universal law of economics is that it does not trump physics,” he says.

“We have the burden of ­explaining more clearly to people what the real energy choices look like. Carbon-free process heat is a much bigger problem than electricity. And the fundamental problem is, if we are going to electrify everything, we are going to need reliable, predictable, ‘always-on’ electricity for a rational society to function.

“With the energy cost issues, people are starting to see that when you take the baseload out the costs go up.”

He said it was important to have an intergenerational view of the problem: “We do not have to do it all in 10 years. In the next century, I believe, if we just take off the false time problem, we will be looking for the highest density of energy we can get, and at the top of that pile is nuclear fusion.”

There are critics who can point to decades of promises but the world is looking to new-generation nuclear reactors and fusion to solve the problem of low-emissions electrification to run a developed industrial economy.

In the domain of nuclear fission, the first small-scale modular nuclear reactor by a US firm NuScale is under construction and will be completed this decade.

The US National Academies road map has set a time line to build nuclear fusion reactors from 2035. Australian company HB11 Energy, of which Paterson is a ­director, is leading the world in ­exploring nuclear fusion using a new generation of high-energy ­lasers. The technology won a Nobel prize for the inventors and can bring decades of theory into reality.

HB11 Energy is looking at the 2040s to have a plant operating based on the principles of inertial fusion using lasers.

Despite this, nuclear fission and fusion technology are not part of Australia’s official energy discussion. Jim Chalmers, says he has ruled out nuclear energy because “the economics don’t stack up”.

The Treasurer said he had never been a supporter of nuclear power and would maintain his opposition to it, which was “economic not ideological”.

Paterson says this view misunderstands the problem.

“There is a tendency to oversimplify,” he says. “I think the fundamental problem of wind and solar is it is highly accessible to the domestic consumer but most of what is useful in our society we don’t really understand. You can win an argument by saying solar, wind and batteries because people understand it.

“I think we need to have this discussion about fission and fusion as a low-cost source of electrons because it gives us predictability and optionality.

“It will give us a stab at solving the energy problem not just the electricity problem. The question for wind, solar and batteries is ‘Where is the process heat?’

“If we solve the issue of nuclear fusion plants – because they will also provide process heat for ­industry – they will be the anchor tenant of most modern economies from about 2060.”

This line might not suit the catastrophisation narrative of a climate emergency. But at least it might just work.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/in-the-dark-on-the-power-struggle-inconvenient-truth-proves-renewables-cant-cut-it/news-story/c27c87f70c854bc5cf5a7e867c3b01f6

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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 June, 2022

‘I rent because I choose to have my money working harder in other places’

Wow!  How poorly advised can you get?  See below. The only way of making enough money to have an independent income is usually via real estate.  I too come from a humble background but real estate allowed me to retire at age 39

When personal trainer Brando Hasick catches up with friends, he is often the one who brings up the subject of money.

“I can’t help it. I like surrounding myself with people who are doing interesting things with their money,” he says.

“When we’re out for dinner, I find it fascinating to hear their approach to making it work for them. It’s how I learn,” he says.

The 29-year-old Sydneysider’s ultimate dream is to establish a passive income stream – maybe shares that pay good dividends – that will set him up financially for life. He hopes it would enable him to retire early. “It would be nice to think that working is a choice,” he says.

Brando has a savings account, a transaction account and another as a means for stashing some cash away to pay any additional tax requirements. He admits to being a diligent saver.

He rents an apartment that he shares with partner Aisha and their baby Rupert. It provides him with greater liquidity to make a move – if he sees a good investment opportunity.

‘We always had what we needed, but there wasn’t much left over.’

“I rent because I choose to have my money working harder in other places”, he says

Brando has always been determined to be financially independent, even paying mentors to teach him the tricks of business. One charged $6000 to impart their knowledge, but he didn’t flinch. “I saw it as an investment in my future,” he says.

However, learning financial lessons has come at a cost: He lost more than $75,000 in a failed business attempt. “That experience definitely made me systemise things better, which has probably been a silver lining for me,” he says.

‘Being careful with money was drilled into me’

Brando grew up in a working-class family in Sydney’s western suburbs, which spurred him on to work hard and seek out financial independence. “We always had what we needed, but there wasn’t much left over,” he says.

By his teens, he was working in a fast-food restaurant and managed to save up to 50 per cent of his pay while trying to figure out what to do with it long term. This meant that when he was offered the chance to live in the UK for six months as part of his tertiary education, he was able to jump at the opportunity, using $30,000 in savings to cover living expenses.

When he returned to Australia, he moved into an apartment with a friend. He worked as a personal trainer, launching a side hustle in his backyard a year later.

Brando has been an investor in cryptocurrency for a few years, and also bought shares. Ultimately, he would like to help his parents financially. “They’ve always been there for me, and I’d like to be able to be there for them,” he says.

https://www.smh.com.au/money/planning-and-budgeting/i-rent-because-i-choose-to-have-my-money-working-harder-in-other-places-20220607-p5arn5.html

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Submarine realism at last

Defence was working on a plan before the election to purchase two Virginia-class nuclear-­powered submarines from the US by 2030 – at least a decade before their scheduled arrival if they were built in Australia.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, who was defence minister three weeks ago, says he came to the view that the American submarine was the best option for Australia, and believes the US government would sell Australia the boats off its Connecticut production line.

The disclosure is the first ­concrete insight into the work of Defence’s high-level nuclear submarine taskforce, led by navy Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead.

It’s understood preliminary discussions on the option were held with the US government, which would also have to supply submariners to serve on the vessels to train Australian personnel.

The plan would, if successful, eliminate a feared capability gap following the retirement of the Collins-class submarines from 2038. Writing in the The Australian, Mr Dutton says the option is “laid out” for new Defence Minister Richard Marles, and makes an interim “Son of Collins” submarine “unfeasible”.

If it went ahead with the option, the Coalition would have pledged to build a further eight boats in Adelaide, as originally envisaged, lifting the planned acquisition to a total of 10 nuclear-powered submarines.

Mr Dutton, who hinted before the election of a plan to fast-track the nuclear-powered submarine program, says it “became obvious” to him that Australia should opt for the US Virginia-class boats under the trilateral AUKUS partnership with the US and UK.

The prospect of securing two Virginias within the next eight years was key to Mr Dutton’s preference for the US design.

“I believed it possible to negotiate with the Americans to ­acquire, say, the first two submarines off the production line out of Connecticut,” he writes.

“This wouldn’t mean waiting until 2038 for the first submarine to be built here in Australia. We would have our first two subs this decade. I had formed a judgment the Americans would have facilitated exactly that.”

Mr Dutton says the Albanese government should “continue to encourage the Americans to base some of their Virginia class subs here in our waters”.

“Again, I believe this is achievable and should be pursued vigorously,” he says.

Unlike Britain’s Astute-class submarine, the Virginia has vertical missile-launch tubes, and is a “mature design”, with 22 completed and another 44 on order.

As production of the Astute is due to end in the UK after seven submarines, Mr Dutton says ­selecting a British boat would mean signing on to a “first-in-class design”, with inevitable time and cost blowouts.

Mr Dutton says Australia could purchase more Hunter-class frigates or other British made hardware to “honour and respect” the UK’s role in the AUKUS partnership.

Mr Marles told The Australian this week that plugging the anticipated submarine capability gap was his most urgent priority. He said he was “completely open-minded” about the potential options, declaring it was too early to be drawn on whether an interim “Son of Collins” or some other capability could plug the gap.

Mr Dutton says more Collins boats would be “easily detectable and inoperable” by the time they get in the water, and “Australia doesn’t have the construction workforce, let alone the crew capability to run three classes of submarines”.

“I am speaking out on this topic because Labor is on the cusp of making a very dangerous decision which would clearly be against our national security interests,” Mr Dutton writes.

Vice-Admiral Mead’s taskforce is midway through its 18-month study to determine how Australia will acquire nuclear-powered submarines.

The process, due for completion in about March next year, will identify a preferred design, develop plans for building and crewing the submarines, and examine the regulatory and infrastructure requirements for basing nuclear submarines in Australia.

Mr Dutton told the ABC’s Insiders program in March that the anticipated 2040 timeline for the arrival of the first nuclear submarine could be brought forward, with details on design and construction to be announced “within a couple of months”. He later told Sky News he believed the first subs could be acquired “much sooner” than expected, avoiding the need for an interim conventionally powered boat.

Mr Marles told Nine Newspapers this week that the projected submarine delivery schedule under the Coalition was “more likely to be in the mid-2040s”.

Mr Dutton says Australia needs nuclear-powered because “diesel-electric submarines would not be able to compete against the Chinese in the South China Sea beyond 2035”. His successor said the Albanese government was “completely committed to doing what is required” to deliver eight nuclear submarines, including providing the necessary funding.

“We have got to make this work,” Mr Marles told The Australian.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute says building eight nuclear boats in Australia could cost $117bn to $171bn, with extra regulatory and infrastructure costs potentially adding tens of billions of dollars to the bill.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/defence/peter-duttons-secret-planto-fast-track-nuclear-submarines/news-story/1c5dde51594d2fb6210128c97c7ee02e

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The dismal history of bushfire prevention

We once knew how

Three consecutive extreme summers accompanied the Settlement Drought of 1790-93. Masses of flying foxes and lorikeets dropped dead in Parramatta during three days of blistering northwesterly gales with temperatures above 43 degrees Celsius. Aboriginal fires were burning 24/7 but there were no fire disasters.

Our first megafire, around 1820, established the Great Scrub of South Gippsland after Aboriginal burning was disrupted by a 1789 smallpox epidemic. Following European occupation, five million hectares of Victoria exploded in the Black Thursday disaster of 1851. The Strzelecki Ranges were incinerated again on Red Tuesday 1898.

When the Highlands were set alight in extreme weather on Black Friday 1939. Fourteen large fires in East Gippsland did little damage because the land was managed by grazing and burning. In 1961, four towns in Western Australia were destroyed by the Dwellingup fires. Foresters woke up, reintroduced broad area burning, and developed aerial ignition techniques. Bega was saved from disaster in the horrendous 1968 fires by prior aerial burning in what is now wilderness to the northwest.

In the 1970s, ecologists had a dream that species that thrived through about 40,000 years of Aboriginal burning would be wiped out by mild fires. Prescribed burning was reduced and the Hume-Snowy Bushfire Prevention Scheme was disbanded.

In 2003, lightning strikes started many fires in and around Kosciuszko National Park. Fires in managed areas outside the park were all rounded up within three days. Fires in the park went on to destroy nearly 500 homes in Canberra and claim four human lives.

The parliamentary inquiry into A Nation Charred took evidence from land managers and:

‘Heard a consistent message right around Australia:- there has been grossly inadequate hazard reduction burning on public lands for far too long; local knowledge and experience is being ignored by an increasingly top heavy bureaucracy.’

A dissenting report relied heavily on information from Professor Robert Whelan of Wollongong University who claimed that ‘broad scale hazard reduction is threatening biodiversity conservation and must therefore be avoided by land managers and resisted at a political level’.

South-eastern bureaucracies boycotted the Nairn Inquiry and set up a Council of Australian Governments Inquiry under an emergency manager, Professor Whelan, and another professor. They gave us ‘learning to live with bushfires’ – education, emergency response, and evacuation instead of sustainable fire management.

Since COAG 2004, more than 200 people have been killed in bushfires.

Whelan set up a bushfire ‘research’ industry at Wollongong University which eventually became the core of NSW Bushfire Research Hub. The academics made models supposedly showing that prescribed burning doesn’t work in the southeast because it’s biogeographically different from the southwest, where 60 years of real data have proved its effectiveness. They said that, in any case, prior burning has no effect under extreme conditions.

The long-term operational data from Western Australia show that burning is ineffective unless a minimum of around 9 per cent of the landscape is treated each year. The effects last up to six years. So prescribed burning is effective when at least half the landscape is being maintained. In the southeast, the figure has been around 1 per cent per annum. The real data also show that the positive effects of maintenance apply particularly in severe seasons, by preventing the development of unstoppable firestorms.

Authorities in the southeast use models to target the miniscule amount of prescribed burning around the edges of suburbia. They are, in effect, creating supposed firebreaks. The scientific and historical evidence is crystal clear that firebreaks, fire engines, and waterbombers can’t stop firestorms coming from unmanaged land. The world record Gospers Mountain fire of half a million hectares started from one lightning strike in the Wollemi Wilderness.

After Black Summer, NSW’s Bushfire Inquiry took advice from the Bushfire Research Hub. I will not attend the International Fire & Climate Conference set to be held on 7-9th June 2022, but I think one of the highlights must surely be this presentation by Professor Ross Bradstock, the Founder and, until recently, Director of the Research Hub: The role of science in the bushfire-inquiry cycle: a case study from the 2019/20 fire season.

It will be impossible for attendees to miss the Keynote Address by Mr. Greg Mullins, Climate Councillor and Founder of Emergency Leaders for Climate Action: Climate and fire – learnings from the political interface.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/06/the-incredible-international-fire-climate-conference

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Lockdown disasters:  We told you so

Not for the first time – and certainly not for the last, we can assure you – The Spectator Australia has been shown to have been prescient and astute in its analysis when all around us were heading in the opposite direction. That the knowledge that we belled the cat early on and against the orthodoxy comes with a degree of satisfaction is self-evident, but it also comes tinged with genuine unease. Why on earth does what appears to be common sense to so many of our writers and readers fly in the face of the accepted media and political dogma of the day?

In this instance, and it is by no means a solitary example, we now learn from a variety of respected and reputable sources that the draconian lockdowns we repeatedly railed against in these pages may have done more harm than good – quelle surprise! – including untold medical damage out of all proportion to their claimed successes. Worse, lockdowns may even have led to the deaths of thousands of young people who were never at risk from the virus in the first place. Indeed, one US study reports 170,000 surplus deaths amongst people in the prime of their lives (18-44) who were of low risk from Covid.

This disgraceful news was conveyed to an astonished world via the Australian newspaper this week along with numerous other sources.

Yet twelve months ago Dr David Adler, in his column in these pages entitled ‘Lockdown needs a slapdown’, was predicting this very outcome.

For the first time I deeply fear for the future of my country. This fear arises not from existential threats and challenges but because Australia is being trashed by incompetent control freak leadership which has also succeeded in severely scaring much of our citizenship. Panic rules the day.

Melbourne with over six months cumulative lockdown already holds the world record for the most locked down city and we’ve seen other cities locked down for a handful of community cases. Our state premiers are the world’s most reactionary in imposing panic lockdowns. The PM has signalled this is to continue.

There has been a complete loss of proportionality with Australian lockdowns doing much more harm than good and based on international data and experience, we now have impossible policy settings to sustain if we want life to return to normality. Our situation could now be described in the Eagles classic hit ‘Hotel California’, ‘you can check out anytime you like but you can never leave’.

The damage being done by lockdowns in smashing small businesses, disruption of education for kids, mental health problems including rise in self-harm and suicides, deferred routine health services resulting in delayed diagnoses of cancer and other illnesses – far exceed the harm caused by the virus. Australia may experience a wave of additional morbidity and mortality in the next few years due to cancers not being detected in 2020 and 2021 at Stage 1, but once they have spread to Stage 3 or 4. This could well affect thousands of patients.

Pursuing the lockdown and zero-case policy will do untold economic, health and lifestyle damage to Australians.

That is just part of Dr Adler’s article from a year ago. Several other Speccie writers, but most notably Rebecca Weisser and Ramesh Thakur, have throughout the two years of the pandemic, often on a weekly basis, provided insights, analysis, facts and warnings regarded as heresy by the left wokerati. Indeed, both have must-read articles in this week’s magazine, including a terrific – and terrifying – piece on excess mortality and the vaccines by Ms Weisser.

As the editor of  The Spectator Australia, my commitment to you is that we will never flinch in providing you with well-researched and informed opinion that quite often upsets those in positions of power and flies in the face of the politically correct dictates of the day. And yes, there is a word for that, too. It’s called journalism.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/06/das-spectatorfuhlung

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Poor to suffer as the climate wars bite

As Woke South Australian politicians last week declared a ‘climate emergency’, the reality of Australia’s ill-thought-out climate policy is biting families and businesses.

Regulators are warning of a shortage of gas and the possibility of electricity blackouts for no other reason than bad politics.

The Australian reports:

‘Regulators have warned Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania face potential gas shortages while power supplies in NSW and Queensland will be stretched over the next 24 hours, as (Treasurer) Jim Chalmers declared the economy confronted a “perfect storm’’ of energy price spikes.’

Our nation is blessed with some of the world’s most abundant reserves of energy, yet some people may not be able to heat their homes this winter and all of us are paying through the nose.

How did it come to this?

The answer lies in the shutting down of discussion on climate policy. This censorship has been as ruthless and premature as the shutting of coal-fired power stations which have not been replaced with a suitable or stable generating capacity.

Regardless of where one sits in the debate about the impact of small quantities of human-generated CO2 joining the vast array of naturally occurring CO2 in the atmosphere, it is an incontrovertible fact that our energy policies are driving prices through the roof and reliability through the floor.

Meanwhile, China keeps opening new coal-fired power stations, emitting more CO2 every 16 days than Australia’s entire annual contribution.

This will not stop any time soon.

Even our chief scientist said Australia’s contribution could not influence the temperature of the planet, yet politicians are happy for some pensioners to freeze this winter because they can’t afford their rising utility bills.

For sure, the war in Ukraine is having an impact on global prices, but that is driving the United Kingdom and Europe back to cheaper and more reliable fossil fuels while Australia jettisons reliable energy sources without a viable replacement plan.

The LNP’s Matt Canavan was not wrong to observe that Net Zero, as a policy aim in Europe, is dead.

Reality bites.

The UK is re-thinking plans to close coal mines because windmills and solar panels can’t do the job.

At this crucial moment for energy security, Australians from rich suburbs (who are largely insulated from rising electricity and gas prices) have populated our Parliament with un-costed demands to close fossil fuel generating capacity.

There is no consideration of, or debate about, the consequences.

What happens if there’s not enough power after the premature closures? They don’t know. Mumbling something about ‘battery storage’ isn’t going to cut it when the lights go out.

Even the new Nationals leader, David Littleproud, is turning Teal as out-going leader Barnaby Joyce now admits that Net Zero is not a realistic objective.

He wrote on Facebook this week:

‘Climate policy affects how much is in your wallet and this is becoming more and more evident each day. The question is, are you willing to pay the price for the policy?

When you pay for your power, you are paying for a 2050 target, when you pay for your petrol, you are paying for a 2050 target, when you buy groceries, you are paying for a 2050 target. Some people cannot afford the extra cost of a 2050 target and a 2030 target will massively exacerbate this. These people must be heard.

The nation cannot shut down its major exports, such as coal, gas, live cattle and sheep, losing hundreds of billions of export dollars and associated taxes, but still expect to have the same money for health, education, the NDIS, roads, communication, the arts and defence.’

It’s a shame he wasn’t writing this on Facebook when he was cajoling the Nationals Party room to get on board with Net Zero before then Prime Minister jetted off to the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow last year.

Discussions of ‘green’ policy consequences have not formed part of the election discourse. Politicians sadly kowtow to politically correct and Woke orthodoxy rather than telling us the truth – afraid it would lose them the votes of young apocalyptic ideologues.

But these energy shortages and price hikes are our moment of truth in what was a completely avoidable crisis.

We all want to help the environment, but we need a truthful debate about the costs versus the benefits.

To get that, we must put principled and courageous people in our parliaments.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/06/poor-to-suffer-as-the-climate-wars-bite/

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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 June, 2022

The sentimental narrative of Aboriginality

Usually far divorced from reality

In last Saturday’s Weekend Australian, Professor Peter Sutton, an internationally recognised anthropologist and linguist, wrote ‘Indigenous identity has become such an attractive option that false claims to it now abound’. If you are not familiar with the considerable body of his work, look him up and then ask yourself why Bruce Pascoe needs no introduction while you weren’t aware of the achievements of Peter Sutton.

Also in the Australian that weekend was an article by Jacinta Price in which she claimed, ‘…the genuine voices of indigenous suffering are being drowned out by the virtue-signalling calls for a “voice” and “recognition”’. What characterises the comments of both Sutton and Price is the impeccable credentials they bring to a debate which is going to dominate the political arena for the life of the new parliament.

Unfortunately their arguments are probably going to be lost in the torrent of comments from the wokerati and their fellow travellers which are going to inundate us in the months ahead. Take this bit of grovelling Greenspeak which is from the Greens’ policy statement which says we must ‘recognise,learn from and seek consent for first nations peoples spiritual, cultural and physical relationship …environment, and their rights and obligations’. I suppose it means something to the Greens.

On a more practical level is Andrew Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation, the aim of which is to establish ‘parity with and for Indigenous Australians within one generation’. Given that the considerable efforts from both the private and public sectors over the past half-century have not had much success, we wish the Minderoo project well. The CEO of the team charged with achieving this goal is Ms Shelley Cable, a young woman who describes herself as ‘a Wilman-Nyoongar woman from Perth’ and therein lies a problem. The numerous photographs of Ms Cable on the Minderoo Foundation website show her to be a well-groomed, attractive person, of what appears to be Caucasian heritage.

I do not, for one moment, wish to imply that Ms Cable does not have a strong connection to ‘Wilman-Noongar’ culture. Nor do I wish to argue that her belief in that connection is not genuine. What I find troublesome is the fact that she is content to describe herself in a way which, to someone who knows nothing about her, would seem to ignore a major part of her genetic inheritance. She is of course not alone in making such a claim. The vast majority of the people of indigenous background who rise to positions of prominence, and are of mixed race descent, never acknowledge the complexity of their ethnic origins. The females, in particular, are always ‘proud Yolngu’ or ‘proud Wiradjuri’ women when clearly, a substantial part of their ancestry must have been the terrible racist white people who stole the land and then went on to steal the children.

It is worth considering why so many ‘indigenous’ public figures choose to avoid an honest discussion of their genetic heritage. In this they stand in contrast to politicians who are keen to spruik the complexities of their heritage. Your average pollie will be proud to emphasise that he or she has a multicultural background but will always identify as an Australian first and foremost. The indigenous community leaders and especially those who frequent the corridors of self-delusion in the ABC Ultimo Centre, almost never identify as Australian. Instead they identify as part of the oppressed minority who are the descendants of people who suffered dispossession and two centuries of discrimination.

The problem with this approach is that it ignores the complexity of the history black white relations in this country. Of course over the past two centuries there was considerable cruelty and injustice. But there were also examples of genuine attempts to work together to develop outback Australia and there were and are hundreds of thousands of children being born from interracial relationships.

Yes, we must recognise that not all the relationships were based on equality of the partners and, in the past, white men frequently used their economic power to obtain sexual favours from Aboriginal women. But the days when, as Stanner so bluntly put it, ‘any woman could be bought for a fingernail of (tobacco) or a spoonful of (tea)’ are long gone. Also gone is the shame of being the product of such relationships. But every day we see intelligent articulate mixed race women appearing on television telling us how proud they are of their indigenous heritage while glossing over the unmistakeable fact that a substantial part of their genetic and cultural heritage is European.

The current emphasis on a ‘truth telling’ emerged from the ‘statement from the heart’ produced five years ago to provide “a Voice to Parliament enshrined in the Constitution providing a practical path forward to…address the issues that governments alone have been unable to solve”. An essential component of this will be “a truth telling about our history” but many of the Yorta Yorta, Djabwurrung, Gunnai Gunditjamara et al., women are simply not telling the truth about their own ancestors. The much-vaunted ‘truth telling’ focuses on a selective view of the past. It isn’t so concerned with truth telling about the present or about the vast discrepancy between the lives of the ABC/Canberra ‘first nations’ mob and the people they claim to represent who live in remote outback settlements. Furthermore, with the full backing of the Labor Party, our new Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Linda Burney, will ensure that, very shortly, we shall be inundated with the sort of feel good statements designed to bring forward a referendum on constitutional amendment. There is going to be a torrent of ‘truth telling’ from privileged middle-class indigenous women who will tell us all about the hardships they faced at school and how difficult it was to get access to free university education.

My own guess is that the majority of Australians have little sympathy with the ideas contained in the Voice Treaty Truth rhetoric.  Warren Mundine has said ‘The Uluru Statement made two proposals. One is a “top-down” lawyers’ approach that will certainly fail. The other is a grass roots proposal with overwhelming indigenous support that could be implemented without the need for any referendum. I’m calling time on ten years of discussion on constitutional recognition. We don’t need it’. Unfortunately Mr Mundine’s position of honest pragmatism is probably going to be crushed by the woke steamroller.

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False promises of cost-of-living relief from renewable energy

How’s your first polar blast of winter going?  So much for global warming. It’s enough to freeze the testicles off a brass monkey.

Even in Queensland, where winter is usually like a Pommy summer, the heaters and air conditioners are in overdrive as people seek refuge inside from the icy weather. And to make matters worse, we’re in the grip of a massive surge in power and gas prices. Some businesses have seen their gas costs quadruple in the past few months.

Experts blame the big rises on a global shortage of coal and gas. The Australian Energy Market Operator says wholesale prices are up 141 per cent in the past 12 months.

So much for promises of cost-of-living relief by our political leaders.

The fact is – when it comes to renewable energy driving down the cost of electricity – we’re being sold a pup.

For 15 years, we’ve heard mostly Labor and Greens MPs talking up the transition to renewables and how it will drive down power prices. I call bulldust. Power prices have escalated while we’re chasing renewable pipedreams.

Any politician who bobs up with an argument that our transition to net zero by 2050 will reduce electricity prices is talking rubbish.

Remember Prime Minister Anthony Albanese talking about helping with cost-of-living pressures during the election campaign? The politicians, frankly, are full of excrement on cost-of-living relief. There’s more chance of me playing five-eighth for the Blues on Wednesday than pollies driving down cost-of-living pressures.

The Milky Bar Kid, former PM Kevin Rudd, is the zero renewables muppet-in-chief.

When his predecessor, Liberal PM John Howard, brought in a renewable energy target in 2001, it was set at a tokenistic 2 per cent. When Rudd took office in December 2007, things changed.

By 2010, the Labor-Green Alliance had enshrined a 45,000GWh renewable target set for 2020 – 41,000 of which sat under the Large-Scale RET, and the balance under the Small-Scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES). Had the 41,000 GWh LRET remained in place, it would have amounted to around 30 per cent of Australia’s electricity market in 2020.

“The message for coal, long-term globally, is down and out,” Rudd told Sky News in 2017. We need “a heavy mix of renewables”, which was why he was proud the government had introduced the renewable energy target.

Rudd upped the target by more than 450 per cent in an uncosted promise before the 2007 election. It was crazy, as the Productivity Commission politely tried to tell him in a 2008 submission. The target would not increase abatement but would impose extra costs and lead to higher prices.

It would favour wind and solar while holding back new ideas. Rudd, of course, knew better. Not for the last time, he ignored the Productivity Commission and pushed ahead with his renewable target of 45,000GWh by 2020, of which 41,000GWh would come from wind and solar.

If the policy was designed to punish Australian consumers, it was a roaring success. Household electricity bills increased by 92 per cent under the Rudd-Gillard governments, six times the level of inflation. Rudd went further, and further. He is close to Albanese.

The winter chills around power prices have only just begun.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/peter-gleeson/opinion-so-much-for-promises-of-costofliving-relief/news-story/6e66c215a091a0bea8de6f8d7dc3f2ff

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Corrupt Victoria hurting the innocent

Where I live, in Kooyong, many voters have sent a message that they care deeply about issues of integrity. Rightly or wrongly, this was perceived to be a weak point for the Morrison government.

With upcoming state elections, we’ll soon be able to test if the Teals were genuine in their concerns, or whether they were simply a plausible excuse to give high-profile Liberal men a metaphorical kicking.

The Teals did particularly well in Victoria, knocking off both the Treasurer in Kooyong and Tim Wilson in Goldstein. Good luck to them. I, for one, hope integrity features just as strongly at the Victorian state election this November as it did at the federal election.

When the Victorian state Liberals were last in power, we established the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission, which has done outstanding work ever since.

It has shone a light on the appalling behaviour that has clearly become normalised within the Victorian branch of the Labor Party. The Premier himself has been hauled before IBAC at least twice.

In all, six Labor Cabinet Ministers have lost their jobs in this term of Parliament alone, most notably, Adem Somyurek. Somyurek says Labor ‘stole’ the 2014 election after misappropriating public funds through the Red Shirts scheme.

Sometimes, issues of corruption generate significant interest inside the beltway, yet fail to cut through with voters. But Victorian Labor’s malfeasance, unlike that of the Federal Coalition, is so bad that it might make it into the election discussion.

We should all care that our leaders act with integrity because when they don’t, fundamental services suffer; people suffer.

Let’s take child protection. I need to admit that when it comes to child protection I’m deeply biased. You see, I was born into the care of the State in Victoria.

After some months in foster care as a baby, I was put into a permanent placement with a wonderful family. After the mandated period (then 12 months) this generous family adopted me.

This isn’t a sob story or a hard luck story. I’m incredibly lucky to have been born in Victoria at a time when the child protection system functioned really well under an outstanding Minister – Labor’s Pauline Toner – our state’s first female cabinet Minister.

Back then, being born into the care of the state could act as a springboard to a life of real opportunity. Not any more.

Last week at the Victorian Parliament’s Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, we learned that over 2,500 young people with confirmed cases of abuse or neglect have not even been provided with a case worker. That’s over 16 per cent of all kids in the system.

We are also aware that, in this term of government, a record number of Victorian children known to child protection have died. More than half had not been allocated a worker. So, it matters.

The Child Protection Minister, Anthony Carbines, took to ABC radio to play down the significance of this metric. Nothing to see here…

His spin didn’t wash.

Carbines’ bizarre, train-wreck interview precipitated a huge response from listeners, all with their own stories of the failures of child protection under Labor. The ABC’s Virginia Trioli has now described the interview as ‘notorious’.

It was particularly odd for Carbines to assert that a huge number of unallocated cases is not a problem as the previous Minister – Luke Donnellan – had bragged about reducing the unallocated rate to 4 per cent just a year earlier.

I’m not a great fan of Luke. He resigned after coming to the notice of IBAC and admitted to breaking Labor Party rules. But to his credit, he worked to drive down the number of unallocated child protection cases. Then had had to quit. The vital Child Protection portfolio was shifted on a temporary basis to Richard Wynne, the Minister for Planning. Go figure. Finally, it was given to Anthony Carbines, who – in a long Parliamentary career – had never previously held a front bench position.

Carbines has also been implicated in the corruption probes that are dogging the government. Last December it was reported that he ‘gave a taxpayer-funded job to one of sacked powerbroker Adem Sumyurek’s chief branch stackers’.

In the midst of all this, the Andrews Labor government dropped the ball, and vulnerable children are suffering as a result.

Being born into the system, I know far better than most that the Child Protection portfolio matters. That’s why it deserves a senior Minister who is committed for the long term; like Labor’s Pauline Toner in the 80s or the Liberal’s Mary Wooldridge from 2010-14.

State Labor’s corruption scandals have robbed us of that. So, for the sake of our most vulnerable kids, let’s hope integrity matters just as much to Victorian voters in November as it did in May.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/06/does-integrity-matter-to-the-teals-lets-see/

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Safetyism

Is safety the best course of action? Our grandparents were willing to sacrifice their lives to preserve freedom for future generations. Our generation is sacrificing children’s futures to protect our lives… There is something terribly wrong in this equation and to me, it feels cowardly.

Our societies appear to be labouring under the belief that safety is the most important value to possess.

In public spaces, there are imprecations that ‘your safety is our top priority’ and entrances to all buildings are besmirched with myriad posters with details about viruses and hand hygiene. Who actually reads these is anyone’s guess, but there they remain a symbol of public health and government outreach. Indeed, one of the more common greetings we encounter is ‘stay safe’.

I don’t want to stay safe – I want an appropriately risky day for the activities I have chosen to undertake. Although I admit, that sounds less pithy.

Ultimately, Safetyism is an example of what Thomas Sowell might call ‘stage-one thinking’. Namely, a theoretical solution to a theoretical problem is implemented without anticipating the consequences.

Sadly, so-called ‘stage-one thinking’ appeals to politicians as the messaging is simple. ‘Risk is bad’ and our party’s intervention will reduce this risk. Invariably we do not know if 1) said intervention does reduce said risk 2) there are adverse effects of said intervention or if 3) the costs outweigh the benefit.

I submit that having safety as the priority is a poor mantra.

On one level, there will always be a trade-off between safety and convenience, thus in most domains we accept a certain level of danger to have convenience in our lives. Though none of us want to disregard safety as a principle, for many of us it is the danger of certain activities which makes them fun and exciting.

The element of individual assessment is key to this. Imprecations of safety for someone in their eighties are going to be very different to a healthy eighteen-year-old. The priorities and the risks will be very different. By having a blanket policy of safety for all of society we do not admit this difference and we risk harming our young and healthy people through Safetyism.

It is especially relevant as, over the last decades, we have seen the results caused by over-protecting children from risk as they develop.

In order to grow as humans on a social, psychological, and immune-physiological level, we need to expose ourselves to reasonable risk. The consequence of this has been a generation of young adults who are ill-equipped to defend themselves by means other than censorship (see Jonathan Haidt).

It is damaging on so many levels to protect someone who does not need protecting. The same principle allows us to improve at our jobs; especially in medicine, it is only by being out of our comfort zone that we learn new skills and improve as clinicians.

Benjamin Franklin said, ‘Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.’

We each have our own takes on this, but there is something cowardly in society about having too much of a focus on safety. Without saying we should court danger, to live life in perpetual fear of an existential threat is no way to live.

It is ignoble and dehumanising to have safety as the pure priority, for safety is not what gives life meaning. It is interactions with fellow humans, sports, activities, social groups and religions, jobs, and voluntary exchange which gives our lives meaning, and these involve risk. Safety is incidental and can either facilitate or curtail these activities. To have such a disproportionate focus on safety is to sacrifice our humanity and the meaning in our lives for an indefinite end.

Increasingly, in medicine we have been shifting towards a holistic model of care, where we are not just asking how to most extend a life or cure a disease, but rather, how can we provide an individual’s life with the most meaning. It asks how we can care for a patient by considering their concerns and wishes.

We accept some people for joint replacements despite the risk of surgery because the improvement in quality of life for them may outweigh any risk of surgery. We also do not always treat illnesses towards the end of life because the treatment will cause more suffering than the disease running its course. Indeed, a lot of the time we chose not to investigate low-risk conditions is because the investigations themselves may cause harm and are unlikely to show anything.

With every decision there is always risk, what matters is if this is justifiable.

Why the emphasis now? Perhaps the exigencies of a pandemic warrant this. Perhaps the damage to healthy populations by safety measures is justified by the benefit to at-risk populations. On the other hand, perhaps Safetyism is the easiest way for a government to avoid addressing complex and difficult questions – the easiest way to appear proactive whilst avoiding the issue. At what expense does this come?

Just as an individual needs risk exposure to develop themselves, our societies do as well. We can purchase temporary safety from disease, from industrial accidents, from corruption by a burden of regulations and rules. This comes at the expense of our future; as our society starts to stultify, we stop taking risks, we stop investing, and we stop providing for the future. Instead, we develop a high time preference, thinking of the present and thinking of ourselves.

Our ancestors sacrificed themselves to protect future liberty; we are sacrificing liberty to protect ourselves, perhaps we are cowards after all.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/06/we-all-need-a-little-risk-to-survive/

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The full costs of the pandemic response are yet to come

There is a cost of lockdown crisis coming. It will be economic and political. Take the latter first. This political lockdown crisis, in my view, will really only hit right-of-centre parties. Left-wing parties (I’m about to generalise) tend to be peopled by voters who trust big government and for whom equality concerns easily trump freedom concerns. On the left, to continue to generalise you understand, are the parties of the public servants, the human rights barrister caste, the well-off, the university, public broadcaster and corporate HR classes, the virtue-signallers (but I repeat myself) and those on welfare. 

Almost none of those groups did badly out of the pandemic and the brutal, despotic, heavy-handed governmental responses we saw pretty much everywhere outside of Sweden, Florida, South Dakota, a few other US States, and a few islands like Iceland and Taiwan. In fact, most did very well. The super-rich did super well.  To be blunt, these castes had no skin in the game when it came to the costs of these liberty and small-business-crushing ‘non-pharmaceutical interventions’. (And my Lord I hate these Orwellian acronyms.)

On the other hand, all right-of-centre parties have a segment of their voting base that really cares about freedom-related issues. Now certainly the big tent, broad coalition that makes up right-of-centre parties includes your low-tax types, some of whom aren’t too fussed either way once you leave the economic sphere. And there are social conservatives, some (not all, but some) of whom aren’t overly concerned about freedom issues at all. 

But there is no denying that a noticeable chunk of all right-leaning political parties is comprised of voters who care deeply about freedom issues, a fair chunk of whom did very badly indeed out of the pandemic. And let me be clear, I mean they did badly due to governments opting half-heartedly to emulate the ‘let’s copy China and weld them into their homes’ strategy. You know. There we are in November 2019 with a World Health Organisation pandemic plan that is based on a century of data and that says ‘never lockdown, never shut schools, give people the information’. Yet other than in Sweden really (whose wonderful chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell said ‘I just copied the existing British and WHO plans’ which the data now shows was the correct approach) this gets tossed out the window after China welds a few cities’ people in their homes and journalists go down the fear-porn route in reporting from Italy.

Well, as I said the costs have overwhelmingly hit a segment of the political base of right-of-centre parties. Many a person’s life has been unalterably ruined. And many are not in the forgive-and-forget mode, however much these same right-leaning parties now do not want to talk about their despotic pandemic approaches. At this point I usually get all sorts of unsolicited (and not infrequently hostile) emails telling me how wonderfully Australia did in its pandemic response. Heck, half the Sky After Dark hosts and three-quarters of the op-ed writers in the Australian continue to say this. In my view, it’s palpably untrue. 

UNSW academic Gigi Foster has spent the last year getting the data together and she says it is nothing like 40,000 lives that the Morrison government’s ‘let’s not say a bad word about any despotic lockdown anywhere in the country’ approach saved. At most it was not even 10,000. In quality-adjusted life-years it was a far less impressive figure again. But that’s just one item in the cost-benefit ledger, deaths ‘with and because of’ Covid. 

On the other side there are going to be all sorts of deaths because of lockdowns themselves.  This data is starting to pour in. In the US more people died of alcoholism than Covid in 2021. Wonder why? There are missed health checks. Two years of schooling that poor kids will never make up, never, and that will have big health effects. And get this. A huge pandemic literature review and meta-analysis out of Johns Hopkins by Professors Hanke et al. now calculates the ‘how many Covid deaths did lockdowns save compared to Sweden pre vaccines’ at barely over two per cent…. [so] ‘had little to no effect on Covid mortality rates’. 

Remember, that’s the sum total of the benefits side of the ledger. Meanwhile the costs will be, heck are, immense. And these authors have a small section that is relevant to Australia. When you look at island countries – Australia, NZ, Iceland, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan – there is almost no statistical difference in Covid deaths per million despite some countries (think Oz, think NZ) being despotic and others (think Iceland, think Taiwan) being much, much closer to the Swedish approach. All island nations did extremely well. I wonder what the lockdownistas have to say about that? Well, nothing of course.

But here’s the thing. Some of us on the right of the political spectrum are not going to forget what our side of politics did to us. It’s one of the reasons the Morrison government lost I think (and why I’m glad it lost). It is why in the province of Alberta the conservative premier was a fortnight ago removed by his side of politics; he had caved in too much to the despots. It’s why Boris is in big trouble in Britain and people are obsessing over a few 30-minute parties – because if you are going to impose insanely irrational rules on all and sundry and make the police enforce them then if you’re caught cheating it’s not going to help you to plead ‘we need a bit of perspective here’. 

And let’s be clear that Boris showed infinitely more resolve in standing up to the fearmongers than ScoMo ever did – just remember the 1,200 supposed UK public health experts who wrote the open letter in mid-2021 saying the sky would fall if Boris opened up. Boris did anyway and it didn’t. But we on the right are still angry and want ‘politicians on our side’ to be taught a big lesson. 

Compare that to Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida who locked down for not much more than a fortnight and then realised this was wrong and moved straight over to the Swedish approach. He was literally called a ‘granny killer’ by the media. Last election DeSantis barely pipped the Democrat; today he is over ten points ahead – the rewards of political bravery!

So that’s the political side. The economics is easy. All but the uber-Keynesian economists believe that inflation is everywhere and always a monetary phenomenon. Print money like a Zimbabwean and borrow and spend like a drunken sailor and (Modern Monetary Theory notwithstanding) there will come a day of reckoning. It may well bring stagflation and worse in its wake. In part this will be another effect of the pandemic response, though actually it was happening before Covid. 

This time, though, the politics will hit both sides because the left-leaning parties are in even more thrall to uber-Keynesianism than the right (and Treasury and the Reserve Bank). And the Left barracked even more for this big spending, big Keynesianism.

Want to know what it’s going to be like for indebted governments and house-owners when interest rates rocket up? Just wait and see.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/06/the-coming-cost-of-lockdown-crisis/

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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 June, 2022

A damaging obsession?

Since ancient times, women have long sought to improve their appearance by colouring their faces and hair in various ways -- and that is a major industry to this day.   Modern times differ in the availability of surgery -- with face-lifts and boob-jobs being well-known.

The article below is aimed at curbing the surgical adventures. But it is not clear why that should be so.  Where the procedures do harm, one can be critical with some justification but otherwise if it gives satisfaction, why not?

The small point in the critique below is that people sometimes feel pressured into undergoing the procdures and are not really happy with it.  But that is a personality matter.  Susceptibility to social pressure is real but so can the the ability to withstand it be.  And if that resistance is lacking, who else is able and entitled to supply it?.

I personally inherited a "Roman" or "aquiline" nose, which is both unusual and sometimes regarded as ugly.  I have never felt the slightest urge to alter it but I understand that affected women sometimes do

Australians' body image problems are getting worse. Amidst an 'epidemic of body image anxiety', could one simple act change everything?

The term 'body modification' covers everything from hair-dye and braces, to lip fillers, nose jobs and butt augmentation.

What's considered normal or extreme comes down to who you hang around with: depending on your social circle, you might consider make-up unusual, or regular botox injections the norm.

But across the spectrum of procedures, there are two powerful common points. More of us are opting for body modification than ever. And more of us are judging the choices others are making. UK philosopher Heather Widdows says we are increasingly comparing ourselves to others online, with a "moral judgement that goes both ways"�.

It's directed towards those who do and those who don't modify their bodies, she says. And it's becoming a destructive force. "We have an epidemic of body image anxiety,"� Professor Widdows says. "We have to move away from that."�

In Australia, more than 43 per cent of people are highly concerned about their body image, according to Monash University's Body Image Research Group.

In a study of over 3,000 mostly female Australians, aged 18 and over, the Butterfly Foundation found that over 70 per cent said appearance was "very important"� and wished they could change the way they look.

Roughly one-fifth of the respondents had attempted to change themselves to look like images they saw on social media. Nearly half felt pressure to look a certain way.

Behind statistics like these is the influence of beauty ideals on body image "” and it's time to talk about that, Professor Widdows says. "We need to start taking it seriously."�

Joseph Taylor, 36, says he grew up hating his "stereotypical [ethnic] big nose"�. He's since had three nose jobs, the first when he was 17.

Schoolyard teasing played a part in his decision. "Kids can be horrible,"� he says. "Someone probably said something like, 'Oh, you big nose'. "It must have, at some point, really got to me."�

"When we're young, we're constantly trying to be the best that we can be on the exterior because we feel that's all that matters "¦ and we're so impressionable,"� Mr Taylor says.

But it's not only in our youth that we are susceptible to this influence. For young people and adults alike, beauty has become "our primary obsession"�, Professor Widdows argues.

She's not out to criticise beauty rituals. After all, as she notes, "we are embodied beings; we live in our bodies. It's how we see other people, how we relate to them"�.

The cosmetic enhancement industry in Australia is booming. We meet the people chasing their aesthetic ideal and those jumping off the cosmetic enhancement conveyor belt.

And plenty of beauty practices are enjoyable. Mr Taylor, for example, says today he is happy and confident with his appearance, and he feels in control of the influence of beauty in his life.  "I've definitely grown to like the way I am,"� he says.

It's when beauty ideals tip into an obsession that problems can arise. For example, when not weighing what you'd like ruins your day. When getting one selfie right takes hours of preparation and editing before posting. Or when not being happy with the way you look might even stop you leaving the house.

These, Professor Widdows says, are things she's observed in researching her latest book, Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal. She believes they signal a "very profound shift"� in values.

"We've gone from beauty being one thing we care about to it being almost defining of who we are,"� she says. "How we present success used to be the car or the house. Now it's how we look."�

Professor Widdows suggests several reasons for this shift.

* We live in a more "visual culture"� today, where "the image always speaks louder than words"�, she says.

* Courtesy of social media, we are able to constantly examine our appearance in relation to that of others.

* Also, where once beauty treatments were "very topical and superficial"�, now "we literally can change the shape of our bodies"�, she says. "You go from the cut of the dress to the cut of the breast."�

Philosopher and physician Yves Saint James Aquino argues that with an increase in accessibility, there's now a "normalisation"� of body modification, which has also fuelled its rise. "Now because it's so common, it's part of people's lives, they feel less stigmatised "¦ and therefore they feel freer to do it,"� he says.

Dr Aquino says another factor has led to the rise of body modification: prolonged exposure to our own faces on video calls throughout the pandemic.

Yves Saint James Aquino says body modification has become normalised and destigmatised. ABC RN: Siobhan Marin

"People are encountering their faces more than ever,"� he says. "That's when they start noticing things that they haven't really noticed before."�

This, Dr Aquino says, has led to an uptick in cosmetic surgery around the world.

In the last five years or so, there's been a sharp increase in the use of injectables (such as in wrinkle-reducing or lip-filling procedures) in Australia. And the Brazilian Butt Lift (BBL) operation is the fastest growing cosmetic surgery in the world today.

At 2018, Australians were spending more per capita on cosmetic surgery than people in the US, with anti-wrinkle (Botox) injections the most popular operation at the time. And while it is mostly women choosing cosmetic surgery, the number of male clients is growing.

Former Vogue Australia editor-in-chief Kirstie Clements had the majority of her cosmetic procedures in her 40s, including lip fillers, Botox and collagen injections.

A decade later, she'd had enough. "I didn't like that sort of overworked look that it gives you, the kind of chubby cheeks and squinty eyes,"� she says. "When I got to my 50s, I thought, 'Oh, who are you kidding now?'  "So I gave it up."�

Ms Clements, now 60, believes ageism is a driving force in the increase of cosmetic enhancement. "The pressure is for us to try and keep up and to stay young and to be fresh,"� she says.

And cosmetic procedures are even more readily available today.  "There are now literally lunchtime procedures where you can go back to work and nobody cares that there's a few marks in your face,"� Ms Clements says.

"They're not taboo. It's as fashionable as getting a piece of clothing, which is quite sobering. It's your skin that's being punctured."�

Ms Clements calls out the "constant hammering"� of edited or altered images that prompt us to question if we should benchmark ourselves against them. "It's the brave woman who says, 'No, I don't care what any of you do. I'm happy in my own skin',"� she says.

But resisting pressure isn't just about bravery or defiance; it's about deflecting messages that arrive with increasing frequency. Where once we might have encountered beauty images 12 times a year in a monthly magazine, today "you're seeing things 12 times in 10 minutes"� on social media, Ms Clements says. "It's getting more and more pervasive ". So it's the strong person who can stand back and say 'no'."�

Professor Widdows is concerned about a future in which we might "begin to see exceptionally modified bodies as normal"�.

To downgrade the status of beauty in our lives, she is calling for a culture shift.

What do people of colour, who've often been racially vilified for their appearance, have to say about others cherry-picking their features?

She wants us to ditch the negative comments about other people's bodies and appearance. "Often, cosmetic surgery recipients report that their insecurity began with a nasty comment,"� she says.

Professor Widdows believes more of us need to understand the harm that negative comments and body shaming can cause, arguing that it should be considered as seriously as any other form of discrimination.

"I say, if you don't do [body modifying], don't feel smug because you don't feel the pressure,"� she says. Similarly, if you do engage in body modification, don't question those who don't.

"Rather let's think about, culturally, do we want to live in a society where people feel pressured to engage more and more? That's the bit I want to push back against, the social pressure,"� she says.

Professor Widdows' plea? Stop talking about other people's bodies "” full stop. "Let's not look at what people do or don't do. Let's not say, 'this practice is okay, that perhaps is not',"� she says. "Let's just take the pressure completely off."�

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-03/body-image-beauty-face-value-heather-widdows-kirstie-clements/101109500

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Greens fury as Labor won’t rule out more coal to deal with energy crisis

THE energy and gas crisis has put the days-old Albanese Government under pressure after it did not rule out increasing coal-fired power output to deal with shortages, sparking a fiery response from the Greens fresh off record-breaking election wins.

There was large swing to the Greens in Brisbane which saw the party pick up three seats, with climate change a big issue in the areas.

New Energy Minister Chris Bowen said he was not ruling any options “in or out” as the government seeks to deal with a “very serious” gas shortfall driving up wholesale power prices.

A “perfect storm” of coal-fired power outages, flooded coal mines and the war in Ukraine impacting gas supply has caused prices to soar, leaving the east coast states at risk of a supply shortage in the coming days.

Last month more than 30 per cent of the coal power capacity in the National Electricity Market was estimated to be offline.

Origin Energy boss Frank Calabria has called for government and industry to work together to increase coal power in the short term.

Asked about the comments, Mr Bowen said the Federal Government’s ability to up output might be “limited” compared to the private sector or states. “If there is advice to me about sensible and measure actions that can be taken, I will take them,” he said.

Mr Bowen confirmed he had spoken with Mr Calabria, and would convene an emergency meeting with all state and territory energy ministers early next week to discuss the crisis. He is also in talks with heavy industry and regulators to work on options to ease the extreme pressure on the Australian market.

Incoming Greens Griffith MP Max Chandler-Mather said Labor should not be considering ramping up coal or opening up more gas to deal with the issues.

“Fire chiefs and climate scientists are begging Labor to take urgent climate action – but instead, they’re doing the complete opposite by backing massive new gas projects,” Mr Chandler-Mather said.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/greens-fury-as-labor-wont-rule-out-more-coal-to-deal-with-energy-crisis/news-story/7fc671419057b5da1aef333c3f191fd3

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Pandering to women won’t save the Libs

Bettina Arndt

‘Women were the forgotten people in this election’, pronounced Katherine Deves on Sky News Australia, following the election. The Liberal candidate for Warringah claimed, ‘Women want to be listened to and they need to have a voice,’ suggesting the Morrison government’s failure to pay attention to women contributed to the 6 per cent swing against her in Tony Abbott’s former seat. 

Deves took a brave stance arguing for females not only in women’s sports, but supporting the notion that the Coalition government didn’t do enough for women – which is absurd.

For decades our conservative governments have bent over backwards to pander to feminist demands in an extravagant display that failed to win them votes but repelled their true base – namely, the majority of men and women keen that both genders in this egalitarian country should receive fair and equal treatment. 

Yet Deves is joined by a mighty chorus of Coalition figures indulging in the same delusion. The newly appointed Deputy Opposition Leader, Sussan Ley, told Australian women that her party ‘hears them’ and is determined to ‘win back women’s trust’.

Give me a break. Won’t these people ever learn that the folk who created this notion of the Coalition’s ‘women problem’ would never think of voting for a conservative party? This is the same mob who ignored the fact that Julia Gillard’s famous misogyny speech was a desperate attempt to detract attention from her political reliance on Speaker Peter Slipper, who was then in trouble over a text comparing female genitalia to ‘a mussel removed from its shell… salty c***s in brine’.

We’ve seen successive Coalition governments cowering to the feminist lobby, throwing endless money trying to appease their insatiable appetite for an obscenely large slice of the cake. Malcolm Turnbull’s first act as Prime Minister was his plea for ‘respect for women’ as he announced the first $100 million of the never-ending bucket-loads of funding poured into the domestic violence industry. Last year, Scott Morrison topped up these rivers of gold with a 150 per cent increase in funding, from $100 to $250 million per year, as a result of the feminist’s Covid scare campaign about women being locked up with dangerous men – money paid out even as official statistics showed decreased violence during lockdowns. 

Just last week, Tom Burton in the Australian Financial Review named the ‘shameful failure to end family violence’ as the greatest social policy issue which he claims led women to vote for ‘real change’. Do these journalists really have no idea that domestic violence rates are being artificially inflated by the current epidemic of false accusations related to family law battles?

The former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson has published a conversation with me covering, in detail, the evidence of how feminist ideology has risen to dominate public policy. It reveals how the movement has set about advantaging women at the expense of men through the distortion of the Australian media, tilting law, promoting anti-male ideology in schools and workplaces, and consistently manipulating government statistics to demonise men. This is the alternate reality that is usually kept well hidden from the world of powerful men.

It wasn’t that the Morrison government didn’t listen to women. This whipped crew sniveled and groveled, like a cuckolded man clutching desperately at the ankles of his departing wife. Remember the awkward apology to Brittany Higgins? Or Morrison’s forced smile when Grace Tame gave him the side-eye? Or the cowardly act of allowing Christian Porter and Alan Tudge to be pushed out of their ministerial roles over unproven sexual assault allegations? Or the cringing over the parliamentary harassment report, denying the very low incidence of actual harassment and high rates of female bullying…?

Recent Coalition governments have gone in for the shameless promotion of women into every conceivable public role. We had Susan Kiefel appointed Chief Justice of the High Court. Ita Buttrose as Chair of the ABC. Lorraine Finlay for Human Rights Commissioner. Cathy Foley as Chief Scientist. Women, women, women. A constant stream of beaming female faces endlessly gracing our news. 

Consider the extraordinary appointment of Christine Morgan, as National Suicide Prevention Officer, at a time when six of the eight people killing themselves each day were men and 4 of every 5 beneficiaries of their ‘gender neutral’ prevention programs were women. 

The results of the Coalition government’s relentless push to get more women into higher levels of the public service are all too apparent in grossly biased policy outcomes, like the March 2022 budget allocation of $2.1 billion to services for women and girls and just $1 million to ‘improve long term health outcomes’ for men and boys.

For the last few weeks we’ve been treated to unabashed celebration from our biased media about the ousting of the Coalition and wild assertions that this was all due to angry women turning on Morrison. No mention, of course, of the fact that conservative parties everywhere are now struggling to attract women. 

Irrespective of how desperately the Coalition tried to win them over, women are turning left. Five years ago, I wrote about the growing power of left-wing women, making the point that women are becoming more left-wing in their policy preferences – not only in Australia, but across much of the Western world. Analysis by the Australian Election Study (AES) of 2019 election results confirmed an ever-widening gender gap, starting back in the 1990s marked by dropping female support for the Liberal Party. 

By 2019, 45 per cent of men and 35 per cent of women voted Liberal, while the split for the Greens was 15 per cent to 9 per cent. 

The AES asked voters to rate themselves on a scale from left to right, where 0 is left and 10 is right. In 2019 the average position for men was 5.2 whereas for women it was 4.8, a significant shift from the 1990s when there were minimum gender differences. 

One of the key factors I identified back in 2017 for why the shift was occurring was leftist university education.

‘The hearts and minds being captured in our universities belong mainly to young women’, I wrote, pointing to fascinating research from the AES showing women emerge from university education notably more left-leaning than women without degrees, whereas male graduates aren’t very different from less educated men in their political views. 

Women’s increasingly left-wing policy preferences have been showing up in AES data on issue after issue: asylum-seekers; government spending on indigenous affairs; stiffer criminal penalties; positive discrimination for women and same-sex marriage. The 2017 postal survey on same-sex marriage showed that more women voted yes in every age group from 18 through to 75. 

Over 60 per cent of graduates are now female, so women are disproportionately affected by the ideological indoctrination taking place in our universities, particularly as they are mainly the ones studying humanities subjects steeped in identity politics and neo-Marxist propaganda. 

Unlike many men who become more conservative as they age, the work/life patterns in most women’s lives simply reinforce these beliefs. Women predominantly work in education, health care, and welfare services or as public service professionals. They make up 58 per cent of public service positions and are more likely than men to work in unionised jobs. All this means their working environment provides a culture that supports rather than challenges their political beliefs. 

Then there’s the motherhood issue, with mothers particularly receptive to the Left’s big spending promises – and scare campaigns – on health and education. The growing number of single mothers significantly dependent on government benefits is another key issue, with the left-wing parties playing up their support for such disadvantaged families. 

So, it goes on. Hardly surprising then that polling suggests the indoctrinated mob of professional women flocked to the Teal faux Independents with their trendy list of leftist policy proposals. No doubt when proper analysis of the gender gap in this election is available, we will discover even more women across the board may be turning their backs on traditional conservative beliefs.

But the biggest risk for the conservative parties currently licking their wounds is to believe the mad left media claim that they were ousted by the wrath of angry women. Somehow, we need to convince Coalition politicians that they have long been bleeding votes from ordinary folk who have had a gutful of seeing women endlessly privileged whilst the men they love, their fathers, sons, brothers, and friends, are pushed to the back of the bus and at every point denied fair treatment.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/06/pandering-to-women-wont-save-the-libs

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Has Albanese government’s support for a 5.1pc pay rise lit the fuse to its demise?

TERRY MCCRANN compares the Albanian to Whitlam

Will the Albanese government’s support for a 5.1 per cent minimum wage rise come to be the signature policy exercise that combines with and unleashes forces which end up destroying it?

Like has happened with every other Labor government in the 77 years since the Second World War?

In the 1970s, it was the Whitlam Government’s shock – dashing and daring – 25 per cent across the board tariff cut.

This was aimed at fighting surging inflation, by slashing the prices of almost the entire array of consumer durables – fridges, TVs, washing machines, stoves and the rest – in a way not possible in today’s tariff-free all-imported reality.

It was bold. It was innovative. As a young commentator, I supported it.

But it turned into both an economic and political disaster – especially when joined with, so ominously, portentously, resonant of today’s 5.1 per cent – another Whitlam agenda.

This was the deliberate policy of having big public sector wage rises, literally to “set the pace” for wage rises across the economy, precisely like with the 5.1 per cent, to keep pace with inflation.

The tariff cut did zero in taming inflation – which through the mid-1970s was running at 14-16 per cent a year.

Joined with the big pay rises, businesses and jobs in manufacturing and across the economy were destroyed.

This joined with a whole range of other forces, which were so destabilising to both the economy and the government.

Back then the world was smack in the middle of the first oil shock. Back then, the Coalition had far, far more powerful supporters in business.

Then in the 1980s came the 18 per cent Reserve Bank interest rate which sent home loans rates to 17 per cent. Try putting that in your loan repayments calculator.

The savage rate increases weren’t only supported by then treasurer Paul Keating; he actually urged the RBA on – and sent the economy plunging into a real recession, which dwarfed anything we’ve seen over the past two years.

The by-then Keating-led Labor government should have lost the 1993 election. It was saved by a totally inept opposition leader named John Hewson and his infamous GST cake.

But as the consequences of those high rates ground on, the reckoning was only postponed, until 1996 and someone named John Howard.

In the Rudd-Gillard years, the signature policy move was – well, there were probably two: the boats and the carbon tax, along with the budget deficits after Peter Costello’s unending surpluses and even more potently, his yearly tax cuts.

Tony Abbott promised to axe the tax and stop the boats. He won the election and did both. Missing him, yet?

You can argue over the appropriateness of the policy decisions, whether they got ambushed by circumstances outside their control, or just the reality of ‘unintended consequences’.

But all that is subsumed by the ‘only poll that matters’ – as so many prime ministers in trouble have intoned over the years. The one on election day.

So why am I suggesting that the support for the 5.1 per cent might be this government’s ultimate Achilles Heel?

Surely it’s a classic, even obligatory Labor policy? Having the lowest-paid at least keeping up with inflation?

Won’t it actually be helpful for the economy? Can’t it be limited, as the government wants?

Ah, that’s the problem. It can’t be and it won’t be. The government is directly replaying the Whitlam pace-setting reality. In the 1970s it was public servants; today it’s the low-paid. I have to add, it’s pretty obvious which were/are more deserving.

It is also doing so, precisely into a world – that I suggest you can pretty obviously see – that is ‘right on the edge’ in so many ways and across so many fronts.

Energy prices – all of them: gas, petrol and electricity – are rocketing, and are not going back to 2018 levels anytime soon if indeed ever. Indeed, price is bad enough, we may actually be heading into rationing.

We’re still grappling with the Covid legacy.

What it’s done directly to our economy and our lives; plus all the supply-chain issues; a China which is not the benign China pumping cheap product into the world of the pre-Covid years.

The war against Ukraine has already unleashed a global food crisis; and again it’s only going to get worse. The high prices our farmers will get will be only a small offset.

Then there’s the way that we have built the entire world economy on this great bubble of zero interest rates and multi-trillion dollar money printing.

We are going to see the RBA raise its rate – it has to raise by at least 0.4 per cent – on Tuesday, with more to come.

The support for the 5.1 per cent could turn out to be the tiny spark that lights the fuse to the great explosion.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/economics/has-albanese-governments-support-for-a-51pc-pay-rise-lit-the-fuse-to-its-demise/news-story/2c564838f2bcf2590207e7dc1533f00b

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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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6 June, 2022

Annastacia Palaszczuk announces forensic lab probe

Incompetent forensic science in Queensland goes back to the notorious John Tonge scandal of 2005. How come it is still happening?

Annastacia Palaszczuk has announced a commission of inquiry into Queensland’s troubled forensic laboratory.

Former court of appeal president Walter Sofronoff will head the inquiry, with terms of reference to be finalised this week.

Problems in the lab were first exposed in the Australian’s investigative podcast Shandee’s Story.

Last week The Australian revealed police had begun reviewing hundreds of rape cases back to 2018 after discovering DNA profiles could be generated in up to 66 per cent of samples that the lab initially claimed had “insufficient DNA for further processing”.

Ms Palaszczuk said Queenslanders must have confidence in the reliability of results coming out of the lab.

The commission will examine the number of cases and date range that will be examined.

As the inquiry was launched, the state’s unusually high threshold for testing DNA was abandoned.

To progress to DNA profiling, the lab requires crime scene samples to have the equivalent of at least 22 cells to be fully tested, which is double the number of cells required in NSW.

The lab has not tested below this threshold since 2018, believing the chance of finding new DNA from these samples was 1.86 per cent.

Queensland Police last week revealed success of building usable profiles from DNA samples below the threshold was as high as 66 per cent in sexual assault cases.

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said the thresholds would be abandoned while the six-month commission of inquiry was underway.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/annastacia-palaszczuk-announces-forensic-lab-probe/news-story/0737a7760b51491cb6849ebe04b6ef92

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Depp wins battle, but men are losing the war

Along with many around the world, I predicted Johnny Depp would win his defamation case against his ex-wife Amber Heard.

Predictably, much of the ABC has reported the verdict today as ‘complicated’ or some kind of dead-heat, when it’s not. Heard has been found guilty of defamation and has to pay compensatory and punitive (punishment) damages.

Make no mistake, while this is a great personal victory for Depp (and, if there’s any justice in this world, he will get his career and life back), but men as a group will continue to lose the war against ‘Victim Feminism’ and their leading brand: #MeToo.

This week, new laws came into force in New South Wales that – incredibly – require men and women to seek and receive positive verbal consent for all sexual activity.

The effect of the law, as no doubt was its intention, is to expose more men to claims of sexual assault and rape.

The state is now the third party in all sexual encounters in NSW, and can, if called upon, hold hearings as to whether positive consent was sought and received, at some later date.

This is law reform in the era of #MeToo and will of course make future prosecutions of men based on false claims, much easier to push through to conviction.

Former influential criminal lawyer, Margaret Cunneen SC, has called the laws out as over-reach, but she stands alone, as a courageous woman, to do so.

Immediately following today’s verdict, Heard released a statement on her Twitter account, asserting that the jury’s decision was a setback for the #MeToo movement and an infringement of her freedom of speech.

Like an invisibility cloak, Heard is using #MeToo in a blatant attempt to shift the blame away from her allegation against Depp, toward the narrative that she is somehow struggling against ‘powerful men’.

To be clear, the jury found she lied, maliciously, in branding her ex-husband an abuser. During the trail, while tangential to the question of defamation, recorded evidence was presented suggesting that Heard engaged in abusive behaviour during the marriage.

The verdict will be a test of mainstream media, as well as the many powerful women in our society and the entertainment industry: will they present this case for what it is, the exposure of a malicious lie (as the jury explicitly states – she defamed Depp with ‘actual malice’)?

Or will they carry on the bigger lie, that we must ‘believe all women’ and that Heard’s claims should still be entertained, even after this emphatic finding against Heard?

My prediction: the ‘believe all women’ narrative will roll on. This verdict will simply be a speed hump towards Victim Feminism’s strategic goal: ever-increasing criminalisation and targeting of men as a group.

Until influential women stand up and call out the corrosive and very real phenomenon of false allegations against men (as the jury has found in this case) then we will see many more men’s lives destroyed, ground in the gears of #MeToo.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/06/depp-wins-battle-but-men-are-losing-the-war/

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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese renamed an island on Canberra's Lake Burley Griffin to Queen Elizabeth II Island to mark the Jubilee milestone

Mr Albanese lauded the Queen in a speech on Saturday, unveiling a monument in her honour.

'She has stood with Australia as a true and steadfast friend,' Mr Albanese said. 'We give her name to this place in the heart of our capital – a place where history and progress meet.

'It is a fitting salute to Her Majesty, and celebrates her long life and 70 years of service to Australia and the Commonwealth, including her 16 visits to our shores.'

Known for his staunch support of the nation becoming a republic, Mr Albanese told reporters on Saturday that Aussies 'will determine the future themselves'. 

'Today is not the day for those discussions, today's a day to pay tribute to Her Majesty and her service to Australia,' Mr Albanese said. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10884547/Australian-Governor-General-flags-republic-discussions-Queen-dies.html

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Can Peter Dutton stop the Leftist wave of destruction?

It is now abundantly clear that conservatives and a conservative opposition will be essential to prevent Australia becoming a quasi-socialist state whose bewildered populace looks back upon its former prosperity and vanishing freedoms with a mixture of envy and confusion, wondering ‘where did it all go wrong?’

Over the next three years, this once fiercely independent larrikin nation will likely transform itself into a mixture of modern New Zealand and Argentina, nations shackled by debt and welfarism, strangled by red and green tape and stifled from expressing democratic dissent. That is clearly the goal of the new Labor government, as Anthony Albanese boasts that he intends not to waste a single one of the next thousand or so days as he ‘changes Australia’ and ‘ends the climate wars’. In other words, as he turns this country into something quite unrecognisable and uses ‘climate denialism’ to cancel legitimate democratic debate.

We only have to look to New Zealand to see the extraordinary damage being done by an avowed left-wing government obsessed with identity and race politics and, of course, climate change. Once former International Socialist Youth leader Jacinda Ardern and her government achieved power in their own right, she dramatically accelerated her turbo-drive towards socialism. Mr Albanese, a former hard-left leader of Young Labor, already has a majority in the lower house, and the Senate is flooded with Greens. Unlike Ms Ardern in her first term, there is nothing to hold his inner-communist in check.

A quick glance at the sorry history of Argentina shows how easily a wealthy, self-sufficient nation with an abundance of natural wealth and agricultural and mineral resources can squander the lot through bad political choices. With seven out of ten Australians having voted for parties other than Labor, it is difficult to see how the government can truly be regarded as representing the wishes of us all. Yet thanks to our ludicrous compulsory preferential voting system, which this magazine has long criticised, Labor is free to impose its hard-left ideological values across the land.

Climate change policies will ruin many a small business, hurt families and the vulnerable and threaten manufacturing and enterprise in this country, as has happened in Europe and the United Kingdom. The failure of the Coalition to use the recent election campaign to highlight and to fight against the insidious and destructive nature of green energy policies overseas is beyond shameful.

Labor will assault our freedoms and our rights on a variety of fronts. Under the guise of seeking a republic (they have even appointed an assistant minister for the republic – they are not mucking around), Labor will use every bureaucratic weapon in the government’s arsenal to propagandise a republic, demonise traditional values and to lay the groundwork for entrenching left-wing power into the Constitution. Part of which will be the elevation of the so-called ‘first nations’ – a purely ideological concept lifted holus-bolus from the Canadian and American Left – in order to create further cultural divisions within our country, our legal systems and our individual rights based on the principle that we ‘non-indigenous’ are all living on ‘stolen land’.

The shocking speed with which the New Zealand Labour government has created two classes of citizen based on genetics and elevated iwi rights above others will be the blueprint for Labor here and the impetus for a push towards any number of new institutions, bureaucracies and laws which will do plenty to enrich the activist classes but absolutely nothing to help real Australian Aborigines in remote townships achieve economic independence.

As for our education system, expect our children and our grandchildren to be blindsided by a massive onslaught of left-wing propaganda on socialism, climate change and white guilt as well as being thoroughly immersed – groomed might be a more appropriate word – in identity (i.e. gender and gay sex) politics.

History will come to recognise what this magazine sadly realised during the final years of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Liberal government: that if you don’t actively fight the culture wars and support conservative values to the hilt, you have already surrendered every issue to the Left. Former prime minister Scott Morrison repeatedly took the coward’s approach and refused to defend even the most basic conservative principles. We will now all be the poorer for that pusillanimity.

It is clear that the fight for the soul of the Coalition still rages, with the asinine choice of the bed-wetting David Littleproud to lead the Nationals.

So the hope of the side remains new Liberal leader Peter Dutton. Never has the role of leader of the opposition been more critical to the future of this country.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/06/hope-of-the-side/

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New minister says coal may remain King for decades under Labor’s watch

Resources Minister Madeleine King has vowed never to put a limit on how much coal Australia will export, saying it is possible Australia could be sending the resource to Asian trading partners past 2050.

The West Australian cabinet minister said the Albanese government would not negotiate with the Greens over the minor party’s push to end coal and gas development, saying every Labor MP understood the importance of the industry.

Ms King said she was not concerned her role of championing the coal and gas sectors had become more difficult internally, despite the growing threat to inner city seats from the Greens and an election result which showed climate change action had become a more pressing concern for voters.

“Not at all because the party acknowledges the role of these industries,” Ms King told The Weekend Australian.

“There is not a (Labor) member that doesn’t understand that it is the resources industry that is the backbone of the economy.

“It is always a contested place, and I get that, but the main thing is we are committed to net-zero emissions by 2050, most of the country is, the community is, the mining and resources industry certainly is.”

With the Coalition accusing Labor of pretending to back the coal sector before the election to prevent losing seats in the NSW Hunter Valley, Ms King used her first week in as a minister to declare her support for the industry would never waver.

“Absolutely, 100 per cent, I support the coal industry,” she said.

“NSW was built on coalmining. It is a deep tradition and it is really good, high quality coal compared to coal from other countries. So that is important to recognise.

“It supports lots of jobs and lots of communities. That is really important for people to acknowledge. But the industry itself knows there are challenges around net-zero emissions needs and they are seeking to address that themselves.”

Ms King took over the resources portfolio last year from former Hunter MP Joel Fitzgibbon, who used the portfolio to wage a high-profile campaign to improve the party’s standing among blue-collar workers.

Former Labor Minister Stephen Conroy says the Labor Party is giving workers in the coal industry a “very positive… sign” by reaffirming the importance of coal. Labor has recently voiced support for the coal industry, with resources spokeswoman Madeleine King announcing the party will not stand in the More

She maintained Mr Fitzgibbon’s supportive rhetoric of the sector but was less antagonistic towards the party’s environmentalists who were pushing for ambitious climate change goals.

In April last year, Ms King controversially predicted Australia would export thermal coal past 2050. “I think we go beyond the ­middle of the century, I really do,” Ms King said told The Australian last year.

Since then, the election of US President Joe Biden has turbocharged global climate change action, with most of the developed world dramatically increasing emissions reduction targets.

While not as bullish, Ms King said she believed it was still possible Australia would be exporting the resource beyond 2050. “It is a difficult question because it is international markets that change. It will be international markets that decide these things, in boardrooms elsewhere, as to what they will purchase,” she said.

“I do think it is possible and I actually wouldn’t want to put any kind of timeline on how long we export coal for.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/new-minister-says-coal-may-remain-king-for-decades-under-labors-watch/news-story/43bce3b3428c1d14aee09d6904a4ae25

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Grace Tame's cheeky response to the news Anthony Albanese will call The Lodge home after refusing to smile for photos with Scott Morrison

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10885535/Grace-Tames-cheeky-response-news-Anthony-Albanese-call-Lodge-home.html

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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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5 June, 2022

Gold Coast mother loses kids after smacking child with wooden spoon

Excessive government intervention.  Smacking a child is allowed in Queensland as long as the force used is "reasonable under the circumstances".  That would seem to be the case here.  As the child was autistic, smacking was probably needed to get his attention

A single Gold Coast mum who smacked her 10-year-old with a wooden spoon has been placed on probation and she is now fighting to get her kids back.

The mum, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty in the Southport Magistrates Court on Thursday to assault occasioning bodily harm.

The court was told the mum hit the 10-year-old once on the bottom with the wooden spoon after she found out he put $600 on her credit card through mobile phone games.

The child, with autism and attention deficit disorder, was left with bruises on their bottom.

The court was told after the incident the Department of Child Safety got involved and she lost both of her children. It is not clear how the smacking incident came to light.

She is currently having supervised visits with the children.

Magistrate Mark Bamberry placed her on nine months’ probation.  No conviction was recorded.

Outside of court Antonious Abdelshahied, of Abdelshahied Lawyers, said: “It was a one off incident. “There was no previous violence.

“She is extremely remorseful and her focus is on trying to get her children back.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/gold-coast/gold-coast-mum-loses-kids-after-smacking-child-with-wooden-spoon/news-story/b0881f01e053d1e5a622a9522cdfb1e3

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Luxury politics has no place on ALP’s agenda

Middle-class welfare has always had, and deserved, a bad name. It is not the preserve of any one political party. John Howard’s government was justifiably criticised for doling it out. And who could forget Brendan Nelson’s attack on the Rudd government when it sought to means test the $5000 baby bonus introduced by the Howard government in 2004? “Every mother loves her baby. Every baby is valued, and Mr Rudd should value all babies equally,” Nelson pleaded.

Middle-class welfare is bad enough when the country can afford it, as it arguably could in the Howard era. We are now seeing a new level of policy self-indulgence when we can no longer afford it. Call it luxury politics – expensive policies loved by the rich and by those immune to economic downturns but that will be paid for by those who can least afford them.

As interest rates, global uncertainty and the cost of living rise, many Australians will come to rue the profligacy of policies designed in more certain and affluent times.

A prime example of luxury politics is the $5.4bn childcare policy promised by the Albanese government, due to start in July next year. As economic risks grow, this policy will introduce a level of middle-class welfare that should gobsmack even Howard, Nelson and co.

It will not only significantly lift the percentages of childcare costs the government (aka taxpayers) will pay for, but it also will lift the family income cap for families that will be entitled to the subsidy from the previously shameful level of $400,000 to the positively sickening level of $530,000.

While the maximum subsidy rate of 90 per cent applies to families earning up to $80,000, a sliding scale will continue to offer subsidies to families earning up to $530,000.

Yes, that’s right. Anyone who pays tax will be contributing to the childcare costs of families earning more than a half-million a year.

The hard-pressed aged-care workers, nurses and teachers we heard so much about in the election will be setting aside a few dollars each week to give to doctors, lawyers and the like to help them pay their childcare costs. Whether you are single or childless, gay or straight, rich or poor, you will be helping to subsidise the childcare costs of the wealthy parents in the electorates of Wentworth, Brisbane and Kooyong and beyond.

Whether there has ever been a time the average Australian could afford this is doubtful, but it is unquestionably a luxury the ordinary worker cannot afford today.

It says much about the debased condition of our welfare state that not only did this escape almost unnoticed during the election campaign, but that as a so-called woman’s issue it seemed immune from criticism.

It appears that privileged women not only don’t feel ashamed to be taking money from the poor to pay childcare costs they could easily pay themselves but regard it, hilariously, as a down payment on gender equality.

This sense of entitlement, and what caused it, deserves close scrutiny, but let us first look at some of the alleged justifications for this reverse Robin Hood mentality wrapped up in Labor’s childcare policy.

First, we’re assured that this is a productivity issue. The costs of childcare are so high that workers, especially women, are effectively locked out of the workforce because the costs of care consume the after-tax benefits of work.

This argument certainly has merit at lower levels of income. That’s why carefully targeted and means-tested childcare subsidies can be justified. Targeted appropriately, this kind of subsidy can indeed be a means of social mobility and a tool to help people help themselves.

But as a family’s income goes up and the costs of childcare as a proportion of that family’s income go down, this kind of subsidy becomes less and less defensible.

My objection here is to middle-class welfare, not welfare per se. At a family income of a half-million a year, it is obscene for women to whine that they can’t afford to go to work because of childcare costs and so demand that taxpayers earning far less should subsidise their career choices. Spare me the guff about gender equality. Let’s focus on what’s fair.

The next argument treats childcare subsidies as some kind of human right, like universal medical care, irrespective of your financial position. We hear it packaged up as universal childcare, with Labor signalling its aim ultimately to apply the 90 per cent subsidies to all families, regardless of income. Universal childcare attaches to everyone equally because you’re human, or at least a parent.

Not even those drafting the ALP’s childcare policy really believe this. If this argument had any merit, it would follow there should be no caps, no means testing and an equal payment for everyone.

This argument means the uber-wealthy are entitled to welfare just like anyone else. It is preposterous in good economic times. It is plain nuts right now.

One of the biggest spending measures promised by the Albanese government was on childcare, with Labor… pledging to spend around $5.4 billion extra over the course of the next four years. The idea is to take pressure off skills shortages, by boosting the workforce and improving the accessibility More

More to the point, it is palpably unfair to force Australians on lower incomes to contribute to the childcare bills of those people who will barely feel any pain from rising petrol prices, energy bills that are set to jump up to 18 per cent, increased mortgage repayments, and other cost-of-living pressures.

The ALP policy does at least have caps and, mercifully, the current plan fades out completely at family incomes of $530,000, so even the ALP realises, at least for now, that a childcare subsidy is not an unqualified right but a matter of where you draw the income line.

If ever there were a benefit that had some claim to universality, the Age Pension would be it. If you pay tax all your life, you should get a pension. But the pension is, of course, rigorously means-tested. According to government figures, as of March last year, only 62 per cent of the over-65 cohort receive a pension and, of those, 32 per cent receive only a partial pension.

So how have we become so addicted to policies of such manifest luxury? Why are we not querying them? Sadly, some of the worst examples of this kind of new luxury politics are justified as gender equity issues. Call the most indulgent policy a woman’s issue and it becomes sacrosanct.

Beyond reproach, or even analysis. I have previously noted how women have played men for fools – find a Male Champion of Change and you have found a woolly thinker so easily duped by women that they wouldn’t dream of criticising whatever plan women put forward.

There is an inescapable air of entitlement about women’s claims to childcare subsidies and many similar policies.

Women who have grown accustomed to demanding 50 per cent of the glamorous jobs in occupations where candidate pools are rarely going to be more than 25 per cent female are not used to pushback. It takes mammoth chutzpah to advocate a policy that requires poor and struggling Australians to subsidise the childcare costs of the rich.

Yet, as economic conditions worsen and the cost-of-living crisis deepens for the average Australian family, a day of reckoning will come for luxury politics.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/luxury-politics-has-no-place-on-alps-agenda/news-story/7dab33982f03001c368abf1c0b73b3ee

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Vulnerable suffering at hands of climate catastrophists

It should be a source of national shame that in a first-world nation blessed with abundant natural resources we have so many unable to warm their home in winter.

The climate catastrophists who shriek the loudest about global warming being an existential crisis that threatens lives are rather blasé about a deadly crisis they’ve helped create.

They claim “people are dying” due to global warming when the truth is that cold weather kills in greater numbers than any warming.

And tragically, soaring energy costs will undoubtedly see more vulnerable people die with increasing numbers of Australians not adequately heating their homes in the coldest months.

It should be a source of national shame that in a first world nation blessed with abundant natural resources we have so many people failing to cool their homes in summer and warm them in winter.

As the winter chill takes hold, consider the plight of pensioners, low-income earners and even some middle income households where crippling energy costs see people opting to remain cold rather than risk bill shock by turning on the heater.

There are people who should be enjoying their golden years staying in bed until early afternoon, not because they fancy a sleep-in but because it is the warmest place in the house and it means they can delay turning on the heating.

Three years ago I wrote about research conducted by doctors at The Alfred and academics from Monash University showing people who had been indoors presenting to hospitals with hypothermic emergency. The 2019 paper published in Internal Medicine Journal revealed that in just two inner-city emergency departments, more than 200 patients presented with hypothermia, with 23 people dying, over a seven-year period to 2016.

About 80 per cent of the patients presenting with hypothermic emergency were found indoors and close to three quarters of all patients were pensioners. If that is not appalling enough, consider that those stats reflect what happened in just two emergency departments and only up to 2016.

As we know all too well, energy costs have increased and are about to skyrocket further due largely to self-inflicted harm caused by policies to reduce emission targets. Interestingly, the author of the aforementioned study is now the member for Higgins, Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah. She said back in 2019: “We’re seeing patients who are clearly coming in profoundly hypothermic and being found indoors. Hypothermia is generally not something that happens suddenly ... when you get to a certain temperature, you’re vulnerable to sudden death.”

During the election campaign there was not much said about hypothermic patients but plenty about slashing emissions and ‘meaningful action on climate change.’

Never mind that such action, as we have seen in Europe and North America, invariably lead to greater unreliability and significantly higher costs.

National Seniors chief advocate Ian Henschke told the Herald Sun heating and cooling are important in keeping elderly people healthy but many pensioners do not properly heat or cool their homes due to soaring costs.

“We know during heatwaves they don’t put on airconditioning and in winter stay in bed to keep warm,” he said. “Australia has too much pension poverty. We’re wealthy a country that can do better. That’s why we want an independent tribunal to set the rate of the pension and rules changed to allow poor pensioners to work more without penalty. We hope the new government will fix this.”

Meanwhile, Mr Henschke urges all seniors to check their eligibility for discounts by using the National Seniors Concessions Calculator.

Around 6.5 per cent of deaths in Australia are attributed to cold weather while hot weather accounts for 0.5 per cent, according to Yuming Guo, head of Monash University’s Climate, Air Quality Research Unit and professor of Global Environmental Health and Biostatistics.

Sadly, the numbers of Australians whose health will deteriorate due to prolonged exposure to cold temperatures is set to increase in line with higher heating costs.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/rita-panahi-vulnerable-suffering-at-hands-of-climate-catastrophists/news-story/1f6e7d60ff14b3f37989a79ff294d011

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‘Undemocratic’: Monarchist fury over republican ministry appointment

When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced his ministry this week, one appointment jumped out to many observers: Matt Thistlethwaite, assistant minister for the republic.

For the first time, a government MP has been given official responsibility for shepherding the country towards embracing a native head of state. By a quirk of fate, it was just as Buckingham Palace prepared to host lavish celebrations for Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee.

Albanese will light a beacon for the Queen in Canberra on Thursday night as part of Jubilee celebrations occurring throughout the Commonwealth.

Peter FitzSimons, chair of the Australian Republic Movement, said republicans felt “joyous” about Thistlethwaite’s appointment after having little to celebrate since the crushing defeat of the 1999 referendum.

“It is the greatest breakthrough for the republic movement in nigh on a quarter of a century,” said FitzSimons, a Sydney Morning Herald columnist. “We’re now on a countdown to another referendum.”

Monarchists, however, were incensed that a minister of the Crown was being paid by taxpayers to advocate for the removal of the Crown.

“It’s very disturbing, terribly unfair and undemocratic,” Philip Benwell, chair of the Australian Monarchist League, said.

“If it’s a level playing field we don’t have a problem with the government moving towards another referendum. The problem we have is that an unfair advantage is being given to the republican side. It’s not up to the government to push a particular outcome on people.”

Thistlethwaite said constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians and the creation of a Voice to parliament would be Labor’s priorities during this parliamentary term.

“I’m not going to distract from that at all,” he said. “If we’re successful with the Voice, we will move onto the republic in a second term.”

Thistlethwaite, who has represented the south-east Sydney electorate of Kingsford Smith since 2013, said the creation of an Australian republic was one of the issues that drove him to enter politics.

In his first speech to parliament, he said: “I hope that during my time in this place, we see our nation fully recognise our maturity and become a republic.”

He held responsibility for the republic as a shadow assistant minister since 2015, a position that went largely unnoticed.

Queen Elizabeth, 96, has been in poor health recently, forcing her to miss the reading of the Queen’s Speech at the ceremonial opening of the British parliament in May. Prince Charles filled in for her for the first time.

Thistlethwaite said Charles’s accession to the throne, whenever it occurs, would kickstart a new debate about Australia’s ties to the monarchy.

“As the Queen reaches the end of her reign and looks to hand on to Charles, this is an opportunity to have a serious discussion in Australia again about our future,” Thistlethwaite said.

“Australians will wake up one day, Charles will be the king and they won’t have had an opportunity to have a say in that.

“I think that in itself will trigger a lot of Australians to think: is this appropriate for a modern independent nation like Australia?”

He said Barbados’s move last November to become a republic offered a good example of a country cutting ties with the monarchy but doing so respectfully.

In January, the Australian Republic Movement released a model that would see voters elect a head of state from a pool of 11 nominees selected by state and federal politicians.

Former prime minister Paul Keating lashed out at the proposal, saying it would create a “massive shift in the current model of power” and “change forever the model of representative governance that Australia currently enjoys”.

Thistlethwaite said he understood from painful experience how the previous push for a republic was scuttled by division over whether an Australian head of state should be elected by parliament or the public.

He added he had a “completely open mind” about what model would be put to voters at a future republican referendum.

“We’re not going to do this quickly,” he said. “We’re going to take it slowly and methodically and work through the issues to make sure that the next time we get to this it’s successful.”

https://www.smh.com.au/national/undemocratic-monarchist-fury-over-republican-ministry-appointment-20220602-p5aqmj.html

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Labor Agriculture Minister Murray Watt confirms live sheep export ban will apply to air and sea

Weeks prior to the federal election, Labor confirmed its plan to end Australia's $92 million live sheep trade, which it claimed had been in decline for 20 years.

Speaking with the ABC, Senator Watt confirmed the ban would be all-inclusive, covering exports both by sea and air.

"My understanding is that it was a general commitment across the industry overall," he explained.

Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment figures show 552,957 sheep were exported by sea in 2021, while air exports accounted for 22,572, with one mortality recorded.

But Senator Watt said the government had no set time frame to phase out the industry.

"We recognise that there has got to be consultation with the industry, with the relevant state governments, and a whole bunch of other stakeholders about the phase out. It's not something that you do overnight," he said.

What did occur overnight 11 years ago was the suspension of the live export of cattle to Indonesia, leading many to fear a live export ban on sheep would be extended to cattle. 

But the new Agriculture Minister insisted this was not the case. "We absolutely have no plans to end or phase out the live cattle export trade," Senator Watt said.

The minister's comments on air exports came as a surprise to the Australian Livestock Exporters Council CEO Mark Harvey-Sutton, who said he would seek further clarification.

"If it's true, I think it does further point to the unnecessary nature of the policy," Mr Harvey-Sutton said.

"Air performance is one of the best ways to transport livestock going around. So, to try and implement a phase out of that strikes me is completely unnecessary."

Mr Harvey-Sutton said he still hoped the industry could change the federal government's mind. "What [Senator Watt is] saying is a correct articulation of the policy that Labor took to the election. But what I do know was that he emphasised the need to work with industry. He emphasised the fact that there is no timeline on that phase out," he said.

Mr Harvey-Sutton said with the industry operating primarily out of Western Australia, there was room for further discussions with Labor Premier Mark McGowan, who he said had expressed the support for the industry. "I think there's a fair bit of consultation that still needs to be done," he said.

In the meantime, the new Agriculture Minister said there were opportunities to look closer to home for meat processing.

"I want to look at what more we can be do doing to take Australian agriculture further up the value chain," he said.

"We want to obviously produce the world's best commodities, whether they be beef, lamb, crops, anything whatsoever, but we also want to make sure that we're processing them into the best products.

"So, where there are opportunities to expand onshore meat processing, I'd be really keen to take them up."

Underpinning the ban on sheep exports was the general decline in the industry, he said. "The industry has been in decline for some time now and in some respects, this [the ban] would be continuing a trend that is already happening," Senator Watt said.

But Mr Harvey-Sutton said volumes could ebb and flow over time and it was too simplistic an approach to end a trade based on declining volumes. "It sends an extremely poor message," he said. "What sort of precedent does this set? If you are an industry in decline, why bother?

"[It would say] never mind the food security, never mind the farmers that rely on it, we are going to shut it down."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-03/sheep-live-export-ban-labor-agriculture-minister-confirms/101119752

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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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3 June, 2022

Brisbane 2011 flood class action win of $450 million to be distributed by early 2023

A 12 year wait to get compensation for government bungling.  The genesis of the problem was a decision by the Bligh Labor government to use the flood compartment of the Wivenhoes dam for water storage

Victims of the 2011 Brisbane floods have started receiving part of the $450 million settlement won in a class action against dam operator SunWater and the state of Queensland. 

In November 2019, the Supreme Court in New South Wales found flood engineers operating the Wivenhoe and Somerset Dams in Queensland were negligent and failed to follow the manual they had helped draft.

While the court ruled in favour of the negligence claim against the Queensland government of the day, as well as Seqwater and SunWater, other aspects of the case failed.

The class action alleged the dam operators failed to follow their own manual and did not make enough room for heavy rainfall until it was too late, heightening flood levels and damaging more properties.

Maurice Blackburn lawyer Rebecca Gilsenan told ABC Radio Brisbane's Steve Austin some of the almost 7,000 claimants had received an interim payment.

She said the total payout would not be distributed until all legal matters associated with the case were finalised. That could take until the end of this year or early 2023.

"We are releasing partial payments now so people can get something," Ms Gilsenan said. "We've paid about 300 people so far and we are paying on a rolling basis — when people accept their loss assessment, we can pay them."

Maurice Blackburn developed a settlement scheme which informed how the money would be distributed among the claimants and took into account their location and the damage sustained.

Ms Gilsenan said most people accepted their assessment and wanted to "move through the process". "There are a small number of people who have appealed and asked us to look at that assessment again and we've done that," she said.

"They're only ever going to get half of what they lost, at most, because we only settled half the case, half the case we lost, so I can understand why some people are angry. "But more than 95 per cent understand and accept what's being allocated."

Describing the initial payouts as a "conservative amount", Ms Gilsenan said most were valued at just several thousand dollars.

She acknowledged the decade-long legal process was too long and left victims without a sense of closure for many years

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-02/2011-brisbane-flood-class-action-payout-maurice-blackburn/101118556

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Barnaby Joyce issues a dire warning to Australia NOT to ditch coal with the country in the grips of an energy crisis as Germany announces that it could switch on coal power plants once again

Barnaby Joyce has called for Australia to generate more coal-fired power to ease the energy crisis as power bills soar.

The former deputy prime minister said Australia should follow European nations including Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Romania and the Czech Republic which plan to burn more coal as a temporary measure while they reduce reliance on Russian gas.

Sanctions on major oil and gas exporter Russia over its invasion of Ukraine as well as soaring demand after Covid-19 lockdowns have seen global energy prices skyrocket.

Germany has drawn up a bill this week ordering coal power plants that were due to shut down to be maintained on standby in case they are needed at short notice. 

Financial comparison group Finder is predicting Australian electricity prices could double in July, taking average monthly bills in NSW from about $120 to $240.

Mr Joyce, who is against Australia's net zero carbon emissions by 2050 target which his own government implemented, said one solution is to burn more coal and gas.

He blasted the Coalition for not building more fossil fuel plants or nuclear power stations which are banned in Australia.

'We've sort of gone off on this tangent that we don't need coal fired power, we don't need baseload power,' Mr Joyce told 2GB on Thursday morning. 

'And of course that's like saying you don't need a roof, that you can live alright in your house if you just wear a coat and unfortunately these chickens are coming home to roost.'

Labor Treasurer Jim Chalmers takes the opposite view, insisting that a 'decade of inaction' on renewable energy under the Coalition government has left Australians paying more for their power. 

'These are the costs and consequences of almost a decade of a former government which had 22 different energy policies, a range of different energy ministers, and didn't take the steps that we needed them to take,' he told reporters on Thursday.

Dr Chalmers said the Coalition had failed at 'improving transmission, getting cleaner and cheaper energy into the system, or injecting some certainty in the market so that we can get the investment that we need.'

The new Labor government wants 82 per cent of the nation's electricity to come from renewable sources by 2030 and believes this will bring down power prices because hydro, solar and wind energy is cheaper.

Currently about 60 per cent of Australia's electricity comes from coal, 32 per cent from renewables and eight per cent from gas. 

Mr Joyce, who was toppled as Nationals leader on Monday, said he wants to change public opinion to garner support for more coal and gas.   

'What we have to do now is get the attitude change in the public that you want to get baseload power up and running,' he said.

'You want to get the coal fired power stations up and running. You have to seriously consider nuclear because the alternative is coming to you in the mail and it's called the power bill and it's going through the roof.' 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10876855/Barnaby-Joyce-issues-dire-warning-Australia-amid-power-crisis.html

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Perth pick for Northern ministry draws wrath of Bob Katter

LABOR’S lack of talent north of the Brisbane Line has been underscored by its selection of an MP from Perth to be the next Minister for Northern Australia.

The Member for Brand, Madeleine King, was sworn in as Minister for Resources and Northern Australia on Wednesday in a Cabinet lacking representation from the North.

Even Cairns-based Labor Senator Nita Green,appointed Special Envoy for the Great Barrier Reef, did not make the Outer Ministry.

The selections drew fire from North Queensland MP Bob Katter who described Ms King’s appointment as “complete lunacy”.

“I’m trying to get a message to my fellow North Queenslanders, it’s not that they hate you or that they have higher priorities, it’s that you don’t exist for them. We are not on their radar, that’s the whole issue,” Mr Katter said.

Ms King said she was honoured to be named as the Minister for Resources and Northern Australia and denied she lacked experience in the North.

“Having held the resources portfolio in Opposition, I have spent a great deal of time on the ground at mine sites and mining communities across Australia, including in Northern Australia, and met regularly with local government representatives in places like Karratha, Isaac, East Pilbara and Gladstone,” Ms King said.

“Before that, I visited Northern Australia regularly to undertake parliamentary committee work, including Darwin, Katherine, and remote communities in the Northern Territory and WA. I have family in Far North Queensland, and I am delighted that my sister, who lives in Cairns, could join me for the swearing (on Wednesday).”

She said there were clear complementarities between the Resources and Northern Australia and that she looked forward to engaging with communities to address the challenges and grasp the opportunities.

Gold Coast-based Queensland Senator Murray Watt, previously Labor’s Northern Australia spokesman, was appointed Minister for Emergency Management and Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.

One of the problems for Labor is that it has few representatives in Northern Australia although it does have two MPs in the Northern Territory, including Darwin-based MP Luke Gosling.

Mr Katter said that like all parties Labor would have been trying to appease its factions.

“We don’t count at all. Nor did we in the last government,” Mr Katter said.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/townsville/perth-pick-for-northern-ministry-draws-wrath-of-bob-katter/news-story/f94457082124f4c0b9b0be31b7200efa

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Liberal:  We're not dead yet!

Kevin Donnelly

In response to the federal election and to paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of centre-right parties, including the Liberal Party, is much exaggerated.

The Australian’s Paul Kelly’s pompous claims the Australian electorate is facing the ‘great realignment’ and the ‘decapitation of the liberals in their heartland’ plus describing Anthony Albanese as the ‘realignment Prime Minister’, while colourful, are far from the truth.

Richard Flanagan’s article in The Age, in addition to being characterised by bitterness, also misses the mark in claiming the arrival of an ALP government heralds the end of conservatism and the triumph of progressive, Woke ideology.

Much of the commentary in response to the election is also misplaced and dangerous when suggesting the sole aim of political parties is to get the numbers to win government. Instead of developing policy based on what best serves the common good, Dave Sharma in The Age suggests if parties are to win government they need to ‘ensure their values keep in step with the electorate’.

While it’s true Edmund Burke may have retained his seat if he accepted Sharma’s advice, it’s also true the primary duty of a Member of Parliament is to act according to his or her conscience and not the demands of the electorate. Burke writes in his speech to the electors of Bristol:

‘Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.’

Burke’s view is politicians must act according to their conscience and what is best for the nation as opposed to a Machiavellian view of politics where gaining and retaining power is the sole objective. Such a belief explains why the Liberal Party allows parliamentarians a conscience vote.

While there’s no doubt the Liberal Party suffered a heavy loss to the Teal faux-Independents, as argued by Peta Credlin, it’s also true the ALP suffered a significant decline in its primary vote. Based on the election result, only a third of Australians voted for Albanese as their first choice as Prime Minister.

Credlin also notes while left-of-centre parties won 47.9 per cent of first preferences, the equivalent figure for centre-right parties was also 47.9 per cent. Talk of a progressive, Woke landslide ignores the reality so many voters preferred the more conservative alternative.

As political history tells us politics is dynamic and as societies evolve and change old parties either disappear or reshaped and new parties arise. Sir Robert Menzies, after serving as Prime Minister for the United Australia Party, founded the Liberal Party in 1944. In 1955, the ALP split with the newly established DLP ensuring Menzies became Australia’s longest-serving Prime Minister.

Donald Chip in 1977 became leader of the Australian Democrats. More recently, the Greens Party and now the Teal faux-Independents have arisen as a political force. In many ways, the most recent election result is simply a playing out of the cultural changes impacting Australian society and the fact political parties too often become ossified and dominated by apparatchiks and power seekers.

While many of the LINO Members of Parliament who lost their seats argue the way ahead is for the Liberal Party to out-Woke-the-Woke, the greatest danger facing centre-right parties, especially the Liberal Party, is to try and mimic the policies of the LGT alliance (Labor, Greens, Teals). Trying to regain seats like Kooyong where Millennials indoctrinated with Woke alarmism, radical feminist, and gender ideology are living in increasing numbders is pointless.

As argued by Peter Dutton, the new leader of the Liberal opposition, far better to appeal to voters in suburban and rural Australia where the LGT parties either do not exist or are most vulnerable. Central to this will be engaging and motivating voters by developing a coherent, carefully thought through, and persuasive case for change.

A narrative grounded in firmly held ideas and beliefs that embody what is best for the nation and future generations. A government that is fiscally responsible and less intrusive, where small businesses and communities are supported and that acknowledges the institutions and way of life that underpin what makes Australia unique in an increasingly dangerous world.

A government committed to the liberties and freedoms too long taken for granted and prepared to defend the nation’s sovereignty against the global push to dominate and control evidenced by the Great Reset, the IPCC’s climate alarmism, and global behemoths including Facebook, Google, Instagram, and Twitter.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/06/were-not-dead-yet/

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Outrage idiocy takes root in unexpected field

You will be surprised to learn, as I have, that the study of plants is a field beset with structural racism. But so insidious is this malaise that it has infiltrated professions you would least suspect.

As the ABC reported last week, the International Congress on Plant Molecular Biology (IPMB) is the latest institution to be indicted. A single tweet from that organisation has put in doubt its ability to host an international conference in Cairns this October as planned.

Specifically, it concerns IPMB conference committee chair, plant biochemist, and Curtin University professor Josh Mylne, who has been meticulously planning the conference for over four years. In January, the IPMB tweeted a collage of 94 images of headline speakers and session chairs.

“We had one of the best gender balances I’d seen, career-stage diversity with younger and older scientists, so much different science — more than ever before — chairs from all around the world, including for the first time Africa and India,” Mylne later reflected.

But he was bemused when replies to this tweet alleged under-representation of black American, South American, and Africans. When one person angrily tweeted “International and no Africans!” he replied, “Look harder”.

That was it. Not “Look harder next time before you make a goose of yourself” or “It’s not my fault you don’t have the intelligence to think before you tweet”. Nevertheless Mylne’s response angered the critics, who accused him of being “disrespectful”. His deletion of the tweet the next day only made matters worse, prompting accusations the organisation was attempting to forestall discussions about diversity.

In fairness to the critics, I too identified diversity shortfalls in the collage concerned. It did not appear the Asháninka people of Peru were represented nor the Uriankhai Mongols for that matter. Neither did I spot a single Sentinelese botanist of the Andaman Islands but given that tribe’s habit of throwing spears and shooting arrows at outsiders, I assumed an invitation would have been problematic.

Within a few days, IPMB officially responded. The script – well, I hardly need detail it – is depressingly familiar. “This experience has been a wakeup call and we have listened,” the release read. Pledging “to do better with respect to diversity, equity and inclusion,” and effect “structural change” to end discrimination and promote inclusion, the organisation declared it was “deeply sorry” for its “initial and poorly conceived responses from leadership”.

But even this was not enough to appease the screechers. Five days after the IPMB’s capitulation, the American Society of Plant Biologists announced it was withdrawing support for the Congress. “ASPB has an obligation to advocate not only for plant science, but also for plant scientists,” the board declared. “We are not fulfilling our obligations to the latter if we stand by as members from groups that have been historically marginalised continue to face exclusionary practices, taunting, and harassment from others in the community.”

According to APSB president-elect Gustavo MacIntosh, one of the main reasons for the decision was a private email sent from the Congress leadership team to an APSB member which implied, as the ABC reported, “that it was up to people of colour to fix any problem with the diversity of speakers”.

“Again it’s not understanding the problem, and then compounding the problem, by just keeping the same attitude that is aggressive towards a person of colour,” said MacIntosh, although he later conceded this was a perception only. “Is the person that did it trying to be aggressive? I don’t know,” he said. So why go the nuclear option?

Revealingly, MacIntosh also conceded the accusations that the Congress did not provide a diverse field of speakers had not been substantiated. “The criticisms could have been valid or not, but independent of this, the problem we have is what happened afterwards,” he said.

And there’s the rub with identity politics. Racism as well as other prejudices are alleged ad nauseam, but they are secondary to the real issue, which is the urge to dominate the mainstream through virtue bullying. Its practitioners are often indifferent to actual racism but highly attuned to the threat posed by those who challenge their narrative. As we see in this case, the Congress’s cardinal sin was not the collage poster but its chair’s refuting the accusations that the conference lacked diversity.

But kudos must go to Diversity Council of Australia CEO Lisa Anesse for her woke confounding of this incident. As the ABC reported, she maintains Australia “is lagging behind countries like the US when it comes to talking about race”.

“We’ve raised generations of Australians without race-based language and without an understanding of how to have conversations about race,” she said. And how did this reticence come about? According to her, it is the “shame of the White Australia policy”.

Never mind that the last vestiges of that policy were abolished nearly 50 years ago. As for the absence of race-based language or the disinclination to obsess about race, who aside from the grievance industry regards that as a bad thing?

Spare a thought for poor Mylne, who hopes to salvage the conference by holding it next year instead. “We can and will do better,” he said.

But you have done nothing wrong, professor. If the aggrieved ASPB members do attend, you should treat them politely and acknowledge the importance of Black Lives Matter activism. And then you should immediately go on to talk about delicate petals and other native flora. “That reminds me,” you could say. “Did I mention the Cairns region is home to the parasitic strangler fig species Fichus virens, which wraps itself around a perfectly good tree and sucks the life out of it?”

As for the ASPB, it clearly sees an opportunity for its activists to flex their muscles, saying “This ordeal has caused ASPB to reflect on what a global plant meeting looks like, and we look forward to sharing a reimagined vision for a truly global convention in the future.”

I’m no botanical scientist, but I can tell you what this outrage idiocy means for the profession. A global plant meeting overflowing with diversity, tolerance, and harmony? More like something from The Day of the Triffids.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/outrage-idiocy-takes-root-in-unexpected-field/news-story/a70bcb76800cae4a2727ca943feed2e0

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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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2 June, 2022 

Useless "Welcome to Country" ceremonies. A ‘Virtuous fad’

I have never seen the point of this. Just because one's ancestors once lived in a place, does that give them any rights? There is no legal doctrine to that effect yet that seems to be what is implied.  It is just another bit of Leftist racism as far as I can see

“It is hard to hear the softest of voices,” she wrote, “in a room filled with clamouring chatter. Only in silence can the quiet truly be heard.”

These words, which were published over the weekend, belong to Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who is the Indigenous Country Liberal Party senator for the Northern Territory and who went where few dare to tread in denouncing what she described as the virtue-signalling calls for Indigenous “voice” and “recognition”.

Ever sat through a Welcome to Country ceremony and wondered just what in real terms it contributed to the many challenges facing Indigenous women and children and thought that just maybe it was a piece of theatre designed to make everybody – individuals, corporations, governments, universities, councils – feel that they were making a contribution to “recognition”?

You might think it, but you dare not give voice to the thought for fear of being denounced as an uncaring, disrespectful racist. Senator Price does not run that risk and spoke for many, I suspect, when she wrote that Indigenous recognition has become “the latest virtuous fad”.

“On any given day in our nation you can be confronted with non-Indigenous Australians vying to have their virtues heard when they monotonously and mechanically pay their ‘respects to elders past, present and emerging’,” she wrote.

“Simultaneously, Australians with Indigenous heritage purport to be ‘proud’ members of some – or a number of – tribes belonging to fashionably termed ‘First Nations’.”

Her point is that it’s lovely to nod virtuously at such ceremonies while resisting the urge to look at your watch or check your phone, but something else entirely to do something about Indigenous social issues.

Politicians of all persuasions are quick to embrace such virtue signalling, but do little to combat the appalling level of physical violence and sexual assaults being perpetrated on Indigenous women and children at many times the rate of that in the non-Indigenous population.

There have been some horrific instances of domestic violence in Queensland and elsewhere in recent times and the issue has generated outrage, public outpourings of grief and demands for a more effective government action.

Senator Price puts this in an uncomfortable perspective when she says that her cousin was attacked with an axe for supporting her niece in a rape case against an Indigenous relative, an attack that was witnessed by schoolchildren.

If the attack had taken place in Brisbane or any capital city, she said, women would have taken to the streets demanding an end to what she described as this “patriarchy” – but nothing happened.

The electoral success of the Greens and Independents in the federal election has pushed climate change to the very forefront of the national debate. Younger voters and the well-educated and financially secure elite embraced the Greens and the allegedly independent teals as they might the latest in winter coats by Burberry.

In doing so did they ever pause for a moment and wonder just how large climate change concerns loom in the minds of Indigenous women and children who live in daily fear of being bashed or raped? Hardly, for as Senator Price opined, these victims are out of sight and mind to the virtue-signalling class. “These attacks cannot be fixed by ‘Welcome to Country or elders past, present and emerging’,” she says.

The superficially virtuous are also quick to champion the establishment of a separate Indigenous voice to federal parliament and a treaty with Indigenous people neither of which, as Price points out, make any reference to, suggest any solutions to, or even acknowledge the existence of the issue of violence and abuse.

Virtue, like talk, is cheap. It has replaced tree hugging as elements of our society proclaim their determination to save the planet while conveniently ignoring the issues that plague sections of our community.

Saving the planet is dead easy. You just cast your vote and all but bursting with virtue go home, put your feet up, pour a glass of vegan wine, turn on the reverse cycle aircon if it’s getting a bit chilly and relax – job done. It’s so much easier than confronting what Senator Price describes as raw and unpleasant truths.

The next time you sit through a Welcome to Country ceremony, you might ask yourself how deep your virtue runs. Talking the talk is one thing, but walking the walk is another

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/mike-oconnor/mike-oconnor-virtue-signalling-fails-to-confront-hard-truth/news-story/b69a6135bd64937f47d00cd12213bd45

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Enshrining race in Australia's  political system

During the course of the next three years, an attempt will be made to add another constitutional chamber to the Commonwealth Parliament. The sole defining characteristic for membership of the new chamber, known colloquially as the ‘Voice’, will be a person’s race.

The idea has the full support of the Labor Party. One of the very first things Prime Minister Albanese said in his new role was that he supported a constitutional amendment that would enshrine the Indigenous Voice and would be calling for a referendum on the issue.

We also know that Australian church leaders have endorsed the idea of a constitutionally enshrined ethnic advisory chamber. It is not known whether or from whom church leaders sought advice or whether they simply relied on the power of prayer, but the introduction of a third, racially based chamber into our colour-blind Constitution suggests a complete absence of reflection on its likely effects.

Perhaps it is an example of how the gods destroy by first sending men mad. Or less theatrically, these exceedingly pious individuals have demonstrated once again that, by relying on their feelings and avoiding any careful thought as to what they are supporting, the road to hell really is paved with good intentions.

Some other well-intentioned people might claim that we should wait and see what the amendment will contain before we rush to judgment. This does seem to bear out my point that that detail is usually where the devil will be found. By the time this detail arrives, it will probably be too late. There will be no referendum unless the polls tell Mr Albanese that the likelihood of success is high.

It is probably impossible to overlook the inherent racism of a separate, constitutionally protected voice for Indigenous Australians; particularly when those same Australians can also vote for and participate in the national and state Parliaments. That would, at my reckoning, give them two voices.

Is it possible for a democracy to overlook a proposal that would give an ethnic group a separate advisory voice which is denied to the rest of the nation?

Perhaps someone should ask each state government whether they can see the benefit for a separately enshrined state Indigenous chamber? My bet is the suggestion would be met with a resounding raspberry. Power is only shared when it is compelled to be shared. That was the principle of the Commonwealth Constitution, before the 1920 High Court decided to change it.

So, if we set the racism apart, the most obvious reason why such an advisory chamber will not lead to good government is because Indigenous advisory bodies in each state have been failing Indigenous peoples for a century. The reason for that failure is the calibre of the people chosen to sit on those councils.

For every worthy soul like Noel Pearson, whose strategies have been the most successful, there are a hundred who are only there for the wages and the hubris. That will not change with an elected council. It will likely be worse. And the Voice they want will appeal above the elected Parliament directly to the media. The advice may go to the government, but the media will amplify any negative aspects throughout the country.

That combination of Indigenous Voice and the media megaphone will ensure government entente if only to silence the baying viewers.

There are many good reasons to oppose this mooted change to our Constitution, but the most important must surely be the democratic principle on which it is based, a principle expressed by the equality of representation among our citizens, shared across two parliamentary chambers.

The Uluru Statement envisages a third chamber of Indigenous representatives elected by Indigenous Australians. In its haste to repair pandemic indigenous problems, the Uluru Statement proposes to introduce apartheid into our Constitution and to dilute the equality on which it stands. It is not a louder voice that Indigenous peoples need, just more effective action.

We cannot say where the Liberal Party stands on this issue, but there will be many in the party who will oppose it, as they did Malcolm Turnbull’s ‘republican’ constitutional reform some twenty years ago. Given the electoral results in New South Wales, where so many woke Liberal members were voted from office, I am hopeful that the new leader, Peter Dutton, will be courageous enough to confront this constitutional ignorance.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/05/enshrining-race-in-the-political-system/

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Legislating Net-Zero by 2050 Unnecessary: Nationals Leader David Littleproud

Newly elected National Party leader David Littleproud has said while his party is committed to net-zero by 2050, implementing legislation around it is unnecessary.

Speaking to ABC Radio National on Tuesday morning, Littleproud said that he doesn’t believe the federal government needs to tell Australians what to do.

“Australians are doing this by themselves,” he said. “I mean, we set a target of 26 to 28 percent and Australians by themselves, not only rooftop solar, but Australian industry themselves, are taking the leading role.”

Littleproud stressed that households and industry are doing it anyway because they’re part of a global community.

“I trust Australians; I actually back Australians,” he said. “I don’t need to walk into this place and put a piece of legislation over them,” Littleproud said.

“I think Australians are far more sensible than we give them credit for,” he said, adding that what’s most important is to put the environmental infrastructure around them to achieve emissions targets.

Littleproud went on to say that he has a lot of confidence in the Australian public because emissions have already been reduced by 20 percent, and most of that has been achieved through rooftop solar, while industries are also doing it because they have to be competitive and market their product in international marketplaces.

“So I don’t think government needs to tell everyone what to do all the time. I think Australians have had a gutful of that,” he said.

“They’ve had two and a half years of being told what to do. And if governments just get out of our lives but put the guide rails around us to go and do the things that we need to do, we’ll do it because we’re good people.”

This comes after now Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced before the election that Labor had a plan to reduce carbon emissions by 43 percent by 2030, topping Liberal’s 35 percent by 2030 target.

Labor’s Powering Australia plan includes upgrading the national electricity grid, making electric cars cheaper, and adopting the Business Council of Australia’s recommendation that facilities reduce emissions gradually and predictably over time.

Labor will also provide direct financial support for measures that improve energy efficiency within existing industries and develop new industries in regional Australia, as well as work with large businesses to provide greater transparency on their climate-related risks and opportunities.

Former Liberal MP Trent Zimmerman told ABC Radio National on Monday that the new Labor government was elected with a clear mandate about its 2030 emissions reduction target, and the Opposition—Liberals and Nationals, if a coalition is once again formed—should go along with it. “There is now bipartisanship on the end goal, which is the net-zero commitment by 2050, ” he said.

“But for me, I think that the easy early step that the Opposition could take is to recognise that the Labor government does have a mandate for its 43 percent target and that it will accept the outcome, the verdict of voters on that.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/legislating-net-zero-by-2050-unnecessary-nationals-leader-david-littleproud_4501521.html

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More than 20 per cent of NSW students fall below acceptable standards

More than one in five NSW public school students are below the lowest acceptable standard in reading and numeracy, and the gap between the most and least advantaged students is widening.

The NSW Department of Education admitted it needs to do better after it again fell well short of the government’s achievement targets. Its 2021 annual report showed students improved slightly on some measures and went backwards on others.

“We will need considerable improvement across all cohorts and schools in our systems,” the report said.

One target involved increasing the proportion of public school students above the minimum standard for reading and numeracy in NAPLAN to 87.9 per cent, but average results were almost nine percentage points below that target.

The gap between the highest and lowest socioeconomic status students increased slightly between 2019 and 2021, making the target of narrowing the gap in the top two NAPLAN bands even more difficult to achieve.

More than half the students in public schools are from low socioeconomic backgrounds, the report said. “We will need to show significant improvement across all years and learning domains to reduce the widening gap,” it said.

The department was also more than 10 percentage points below its target of ensuring two-thirds of students achieved the growth expected of them in reading and numeracy. While year 3 and 5 students were on track, years 7 and 9 were significantly below.

However, the system fell only slightly short of its target of more than two-thirds of students making it into the top two HSC bands. It was also on track to achieve its 2022 target of ensuring almost 92 per cent of school-leavers were in higher education, training or work.

Craig Petersen, the head of the Secondary Principals Council, said NAPLAN was a simplistic measure and measured basic skills rather than the more complex things students were taught at high school, such as critical thinking and problem-solving.

He also said the past two years were highly disrupted due to COVID-19. “I think the targets were always highly ambitious, and [then came the] the challenges of COVID and, even more significantly, staffing [shortages],” he said. “If I haven’t got qualified maths or science teachers in front of every class, I’m not going to meet those targets.”

A NSW Education spokesman said the ultimate goal was to ensure improvement for every student in every school.

“It is pleasing to see that our NAPLAN results are heading in the right direction despite disruptions to learning over the past 2.5 years due to COVID-19.

“We know there is more work to do which is why we have given teachers and principals more time to focus on students’ attendance, literacy, numeracy and wellbeing outcomes by taking a number of requirements off their plates.”

He said the department invested $256 million, through the School Success Model, in targeted support to lift literacy and numeracy results.

The NSW government has provided an additional $383 million for a renewed COVID-19 Intensive Learning Support program in 2022, as well as $337 million provided for targeted small group tuition for students in 2021, he said.

The department also came under fire from the NSW Teachers Federation over its use of consultants, with its consultancy bill more than doubling to more than $10 million from $4.5 million in 2020.

They include almost $5 million to Encompass Consulting Services for “department portfolio and program optimisation” and $3.3 million to KPMG for “transformation of support services operating model”.

“It beggars belief that so much money is being squandered on consultancy after consultancy and, beyond that, one has to ask what is it that the department actually does other than manage contracts,” said president Angelo Gavrielatos.

The department said it only engaged consultants when it was unable to deliver outcomes or when it needed independent advice.

“The $10.7 million consultancy expenditure in the 2021 annual report represents around 0.05 per cent of the department’s total expenses budget (about $20 billion) over this period,” the spokesman said.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/more-than-20-per-cent-of-nsw-students-fall-below-acceptable-standards-20220601-p5aq9h.html

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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 June, 2022

Murdoch University will review its controversial decision implemented last year to stop offering majors in maths, physics and chemistry, according to new vice-chancellor Andrew Deeks

Sanity returns.  Crazy Finnish lady gone to Ireland.  Lucky Ireland

He distanced himself from the decision made in 2020 under former vice-chancellor Eeva Leinonen, saying “it was perhaps a particular view of the management at the time”.

“It wasn’t a view of the broader academic community,” said Professor Deeks, who started as vice-chancellor in April.

The changes, which also curtailed Murdoch’s engineering degrees, abandoned the majors previously offered in maths, physics and chemistry in favour of offering less specialist STEM subjects more broadly.

The Australian Institute of Physics and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute – both accrediting bodies for university courses – said at the time that they “strongly objected” to the move.

Professor Deeks, who is by background a civil engineer, said the maths, physics and chemistry majors had been suspended rather than cancelled completely.

He said he had asked to see the business case for bringing them back, as well as other subjects such as Indonesian, radio, theatre and drama that were cut as part of Covid cost-saving measures.

“I’ve put the challenge to the heads of discipline right the way across the university to go back and have another look at this and see where it makes sense,” Professor Deeks said.

“I’ve said to bring back programs if they will work or to bring back replacements which are enhanced for the current age.”

He said Murdoch would not be focused solely on STEM but “more of the STEAM concept (science, technology, engineering, arts and maths) of ensuring we have that engagement with the humanities and social sciences”.

In an interview with The Australian Professor Deeks said Murdoch University was now on a different course to when it sued a whistleblower staff member, Gerd Schroder-Turk, in 2019 after he questioned the university’s standards and revealed that international students who were not academically ready for their courses were being enrolled via a questionable education agent.

The university withdrew the action against Professor Schroder-Turk, a physics academic who is also a member of the university’s governing body, in 2020.

“I think that was a very unfortunate incident in the university’s history. There were obviously some failings which were revealed at that time,” Professor Deeks said.

“The university’s taken very strong action on the back of that and has put in place robust processes to ensure the quality of all the students that we’re admitting, and especially the international students and especially students that would be coming to us through agents.

“We’re no longer working with the particular agent concerned.”

He said he was meeting regularly with Professor Schroder-Turk, who continues as a member of the university’s Senate.

”It was an unfortunate decision by the then management at the university to pursue one of its academics legally. I can assure you that under my watch we will not be going in that direction.” Professor Deeks said.

As proof of the university’s new direction he pointed to the fact that the higher education regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, had renewed Murdoch’s registration for the full seven years in March after last year limiting it to four years registration while it demonstrated “the effective implementation of improvements”.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/murdoch-uni-reviews-controversial-changes-to-stem-degrees/news-story/3f6d73e449482912b30df2d9f6db9a93

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Australia to be hit hard by European attempts to hurt Russia

Business leaders have warned companies face “apocalyptic’’ damage from spiking gas prices as motorists confront months of pain at the bowser, with petrol to ­remain above $2 a litre, driven by Europe’s oil blockade on Russia.

The rise in energy costs, coupled with a predicted 10 per cent rise in food prices, threatens to deepen cost-of-living pressures and extend a surge in inflation, which reached a 20-year high of 5.1 per cent in the March quarter.

The rise in global oil prices to above $US120 a barrel came after the European Union said it would ban all imports of Russian oil by ship in retaliation for the Ukraine war, a move that would block about two-thirds of Russia’s oil ­exports.

The Australian Energy Market Operator on Tuesday scrambled to impose a cap on gas markets in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane after wholesale prices soared 80 times normal levels.

Anthony Albanese said briefings with Treasury and finance included issues of cost of living. “We will give proper consideration with proper advice to any policy moves that are made,’’ he said, “but we’ve been very conscious about the issue of cost of living.’’

The spike in wholesale gas prices followed a cold snap that drove demand higher, exacerbated by last week’s collapse of energy ­retailer Weston Energy. The rise in energy prices came as David Williams, an investment banker specialising in agribusiness, predicted food prices would soar 10 per cent this year.

Speaking ahead of The Australian’s Global Food Forum, Mr Williams said many producers would need to secure price rises to cover soaring input costs.

“One-off significant increases in grain costs will drive food inflation and increase the cost of stock feed and therefore beef and other proteins. The effect of this will be that the unbelievable success of ­increasing incomes in developing countries will now be undermined by pushing people back into poverty and starvation for others,” Mr Williams said.

“Compounding all this, I expect to see significant increases of up to 10 per cent in many food companies’ costs from Covid-related effects alone.”

Mr Williams said there would be a “perfect storm” with the failure of a large part of the Chinese crop because of floods at the same time as India halted wheat exports and some Canadian farmers cut back their plantings — all while Ukrainian exports stalled due to the Russian invasion.

Ai Group chief executive Innes Willox warned that persistently higher energy costs had the potential to devastate energy-­intensive industries.

“Apocalyptic rises in energy prices threaten chaos for industry and pain for households,” Mr Willox said. “They demand a national, integrated and strategic response. With Europe announcing further steps today to wean itself from Russian energy, we can ­expect international factors to sustain high energy price pressures for years to come – especially in natural gas.”

Mining companies are among the biggest fuel users in Australia, with Fortescue Metals Group alone consuming up to 450 million litres of diesel each year to run its fleet of giant trucks and diggers in the Pilbara. However the rise in energy costs will be a boon for Australian oil and gas producers, with analysts estimating that each $US10-a-barrel rise in the global price of oil would add up to $US500m in earnings to Woodside Petroleum and Santos.

Australian Logistics Council chief executive Brad Williams warned that the compounding pressures felt by logistics firms across rail, road and air would ­inevitably feed through to even higher consumer prices.

“Most businesses operate with low margins, which means they have limited capacity to absorb significant and ongoing price increases,” Mr Williams said.

“Labour shortages, exacerbated by international border ­closures and heightened with Covid and influenza absenteeism continue to put cost pressure on the supply chain. It is inevitable these costs will be felt across the supply chain, including at the consumer end.”

RBC Capital global energy strategist Michael Tran said the EU’s decision to ban member states from purchasing Russian crude and refined products by sea had moved European action from “virtue signalling” to “up-ending” the global oil trade.

“This policy is perhaps a foreign policy win for the West, but it will prove economically inflationary for all nations involved, given that the reshuffling of global flows is likely to be structural as long as the war remains a slow burn,” Mr Tran said.

The price of 91-octane unleaded fuel once again breached $2 a litre earlier this month, despite the 22.1-cent fuel excise cut delivered in the March budget.

CBA commodity analyst Vivek Dhar said he expected the Brent crude price to average $US110 a barrel by the end of September, and to ease only to about $US100 by the end of the year.

Mr Dhar said movements in the Australian dollar would influence how high oil prices would translate to the bowser, but added that “the risk is that we stay around $2 a litre”.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has said the Albanese government is “unlikely” to extend the excise cut beyond September, pointing to its $2.9bn six-month price tag in the context of huge, ongoing levels of debt and deficits.

While rising energy costs have lifted inflation, analysts predict the national accounts figures will show the economy expanded by 0.7 per cent in the March quarter, and by 3 per cent over the year. A big drag from net exports – as a result of disruptions to mining exports and a solid lift in spending on imported goods – is expected to be offset by a stronger than anticipated boost from government spending and business inventories, underpinned by robust domestic ­demand.

ANZ senior economist Felicity Emmett projected that the national accounts’ broader measure of worker pay – including bonuses, overtime and allowances – would paint a more positive picture of household income growth.

The widely quoted wage price index pointed to only 2.4 per cent growth over the year to March, but Ms Emmett said business profit figures, released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday, suggested average hourly earnings for workers jumped by 2.6 per cent in the March quarter, and by 5.3 per cent over the year. “Today’s data suggest that 2022 got off to a solid start, and that a tight labour market is feeding through more quickly into wages than the wage price index suggests,” she said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/business-faces-gas-apocalypse-from-european-oil-blockade/news-story/ab3ddaea0b50a25c195602688e924b1e

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Labor deliberately designed climate policies to thwart Greenies

New Energy Minister Chris Bowen insists voters gave Labor a mandate to deliver its “ambitious” climate plan, warning independents and Greens that his crossbench-proof climate policy won’t require negotiating an end to coal and gas.

Greens leader Adam Bandt is demanding that Labor step up its climate targets, including a ban on new coal and gas projects. However, Bowen said he deliberately designed the party’s Powering Australia climate policies so they could be implemented without the support of the Senate, where the Greens hold the balance of power.

“In relation to the Senate, a lot of the stuff in Powering Australia doesn’t need legislation; there’s a lot of stuff we’ll just be getting on with,” he told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

Labor has committed to legislating its target of hitting net zero emissions by 2050 – a goal with bipartisan support. However, it has not promised to do the same for its 2030 target, which is to cut greenhouse emissions by 43 per cent from 2005 levels, even though that is the party’s preference.

No new laws are required to implement the key elements of Labor’s Powering Australia climate policy over the next three years.

“We designed that very deliberately so that we would have scope to just get on with the policy and not get bogged down in the climate wars,” Bowen said.

He has designated two areas to do the heavy lifting in Labor’s first term in government under the Powering Australia plan.

One involves tightening the Safeguard Mechanism, which lay dormant under the Coalition government, to impose caps on Australia’s 215 biggest polluters.

The other is a $20 billion Rewiring the Nation fund that will pour money into the electricity grid and expand its capacity so that it can handle a near-tripling of renewables, which are expected to comprise 82 per cent of the grid by 2030.

Bowen said Labor’s win, which delivered the party a majority in the lower house, represented a mandate for the climate policy it took to the election. Bending to the Greens’ demands to veto coal and gas projects would be a betrayal of the electorate, he said.

“I find that argument just a little bit odd,” he said. “The [Greens’] argument goes something like this – to oversimplify it: ‘Congratulations on winning the election. The first thing we’d like you to do is trash the policies you took to the election.’ ”

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/labor-deliberately-designed-climate-policies-to-skip-over-the-crossbench-20220531-p5apty.html

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My son was found not guilty

Bettina Arndt

Last week, a long ordeal finally ended for an ordinary Australian family. Their son, Lucas, was found not guilty of sexual contact with a child. The female judge who delivered this verdict said she believed Lucas’ version of events – not the vile accusations that led him to spend seven months in prison, nor the vicious rumours in the local paper describing him as a ‘pedo’ and leading to death threats on social media.

I’ve just made a video with Lucas’ mother, Debbie Garratt, a brave woman who has made the considered decision to go public with what happened to them, to warn other parents of dangers awaiting young men in this hypervigilant anti-male culture. Her story suggests we are reaching the point where it is just too risky for men to take jobs caring for children.

Debbie is actually a step-mum to Lucas, but he’d had been part of their large, blended family since he was a small child. He was in his early twenties when he decided on a career in childcare, a prospect which made his parents somewhat nervous, but they knew children had always flocked to this easy-going, considerate young man and he thrived in the job, with families often seeking out his babysitting services after hours.

One evening in August 2018 he was babysitting for a family he knew well, having cared for their children many times, including the five-year-old girl he’d looked after since she was a toddler in nappies. During the evening, he noticed the little girl seemed to be ‘fiddling’, apparently bothered by an irritated vulva. When he found her scratching herself half asleep in bed, he quickly swiped the area with a baby wipe, hoping the moist towelette would ease the irritation.

It didn’t occur to him that this could create a problem until the police came and interviewed him at work the next day. It transpired that early that day the little girl had mentioned to her mother that, ‘Lucas licked me.’ The mum went on high alert, told the girl to stop talking, screamed for her husband, and then subjected the child to a grilling, recorded on an iPhone.

In her verdict, the judge commented that the parents’ reaction contributed to setting in place the whole disastrous sequence of events that followed, which sadly included the girl being interrogated at the police station and taken for internal examinations. When initially questioned by the police, the child denied that Lucas had put his head near her vulva, or even that he had touched her, but these negative responses were omitted from the evidence used for the charges and not conveyed to the child’s parents.

I hope you will listen to this whole extraordinary story as there are important lessons to be learned.

It’s quite something to hear how the legal aid barrister sold out this young man, bullying him in a corridor outside the courtroom, telling him he had to plead guilty to avoid further distress to the child, convincing him that he was bound to be convicted and this was the only way to get a reduced sentence.

Any parent would identify with Debbie’s emotion as she describes the result – Lucas was convicted and simply whisked off to prison. They weren’t even able to find out where the authorities had taken him for ten days, by which time his guilty plea was all over the newspapers and social media alive with advice about hanging the ‘scumbag animal’.

We can all imagine the family’s relief when the judge affirmed Lucas’ version of events, stating a number of times that the child must have been mistaken. This was not a case of the accused being found not guilty due to insufficient evidence but rather, a female judge determining a male was to be believed. And that’s quite something.

What’s inspirational is Debbie’s advice to Lucas during the years he spent living at home with his parents, unable to get a job, and nervous about leaving the house. Debbie would make him come with her to the supermarket, telling him to ‘put your head up’ and demonstrate to everyone that he had no reason to hide away. ‘It’s important not to be caught in shame,’ she told him.

But the same applies to parents. Most parents like Debbie, even after their sons are found not guilty of this type of allegation, get caught in shame. The whole ordeal is so overwhelming that they choose to just hide away and try to get on with their lives – which is perfectly understandable.

How rare it is for someone whose child has slipped the noose to come out fighting, willing to subject herself and her family to still more public scrutiny in the hope that others will take heed.

A word of caution – I know some people reading this will be shocked at the naivety shown by Lucas. Many smugly assume their own children would have the good sense never to touch a child in that way, even though the judge agreed this had been done ‘for hygienic purposes and in good faith’. Men today know good faith isn’t enough to protect them.

Yet in this current climate, with false allegations rampant, all men working with children are at risk, however they behave. Talk to a few teachers and you hear the stories. Like the newly graduated teacher working in a school in Port Macquarie who ran into problems with a female student who refused to finish the assignment he’d set for the class. ‘If you try to make me, I’ll tell them that you touched me,’ the little miss told her teacher. He was lucky. He reported her to the school principal who suspended her. The teacher’s story was believed because she was a known troublemaker but it could easily have turned out badly for him instead.

It’s a tragic irony that just as the world is finally waking up to the damage to children who miss out on masculine influence in their lives, the moral panic over sexual abuse is driving away the very few men still working with them – men who play a particularly vital role for kids in single mum households. Naturally, this sad state of affairs receives no public scrutiny

https://spectator.com.au/2022/05/my-son-was-found-not-guilty

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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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For the notes and pix appearing in the sidebar of the original blog see HERE


Most pictures that I use in the body of the blog should stay up throughout the year. But how long they stay up after that is uncertain. At the end of every year therefore I intend to put up a collection of all pictures used my blogs in that year. That should enable missing pictures to be replaced. The archive of last year's pictures on this blog is therefore now up. Note that the filename of the picture is clickable and clicking will bring the picture up. See here (2021). See also here (2020)



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