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

This is a backup copy of the original blog










31 March, 2022 

The NSW areas with high rate of school suspensions

Problem children tend to disrupt the schooling of the whole class they are in. And suspending them is usually too little too late.  Such problems could be largely avoided if "special schools" were revived but that falls foul of the Leftist compulsion to ignore differences and pretend that all children are equal even when they are not.  So troubled students are thrown in with normal students to the detriment of both.

In special schools provision can be made to have professional help available for troubled students, which would give realistic alternatives to suspensions, which usually achieve nothing

In the north-west of NSW, home to some of the state’s most disadvantaged and remote schools, one in 13 students was suspended in the first half of last year. In the north of Sydney, the rate was fewer than one in 100.

New figures from the NSW Department of Education also show suspension rates for students who are Indigenous or have a disability continue to be disproportionately high, with one in 10 Aboriginal students sent home from school in term one in 2021.

Suspensions are at the centre of a fiery debate in NSW education. A plan to make it harder for principals to give them out was delayed this week amid intense opposition from teacher unions and principals’ groups, who argue it will lead to rowdier classrooms.

The new figures – which compares term one data over the past five years, due to the lockdown in the second half of 2021 – show suspensions among secondary students were the highest in five years, with 6.8 per cent of students sent home for continued disobedience or aggressive behaviour.

However, suspensions in primary schools were lower than usual, at 1.1 per cent.

More than 10,000 students received long suspensions for the most serious behavioural issues, and were away for an average 12.2 days. They included 184 students from kindergarten to year 2.

Most were for persistent misbehaviour or physical violence, while 640 were for serious, school-related criminal behaviour, 715 were for possession or use of a suspected illegal substance, and 527 related to weapons.

One in 10 Aboriginal students – who account for 8.6 per cent of enrolments in government schools – was suspended at least once during semester one, a lower rate than previous years. Some 8.4 per cent of students with a disability were suspended.

City schools had lower suspension rates than country ones, ranging from 0.8 per cent of students in Sydney’s north to 2 per cent in the inner city, 2.8 per cent in the west and 3.9 per cent in the south-west.

Country rates ranged from 4.8 per cent in the state’s south-east, Newcastle and the Central Coast, to 6.2 per cent in the north-east and 7.4 per cent in the north-west.

Just 128 students were expelled, a number that has trended down. About half were expelled for misbehaviour, and half for unsatisfactory participation.

Amid concern about the high rates of disadvantaged students suspended, Education Minister Sarah Mitchell has led the development of a new behaviour strategy that halves the length of school suspensions and prevents students being sent home more than three times a year.

The new policy, which had been due to begin next term, also requires principals to give a warning if a student’s behaviour was raising the prospect of suspension. They could only send students home immediately if there was a threat to the safety of others.

Principals and the teachers union said the policy would reduce consequences for poor behaviour in schools. The NSW Teachers Federation passed a resolution calling on schools not to implement it, and called for more resources for staff to deal with complex student needs.

About 500 principals have written to Ms Mitchell opposing the new strategy over the past month.

Ms Mitchell this week said she would delay the implementation of the behaviour strategy until term three, to allow schools – which have been hit hard by COVID-19 and floods this term – more time to prepare.

New rules around restrictive practices, such as seclusion and process to follow if a child becomes violent, will be delayed until the beginning of next year.

“We’re committed to the policy, and we’re not shifting,” Ms Mitchell said. “We want to make sure we implement it well. The other thing we’re wanting to look at [is principals’] concerns about better inter-agency collaboration.”

NSW Teachers Federation vice president Henry Rajendra said the delay was a response to teachers’ opposition.

“Our schools don’t have the necessary staffing to meet the needs of our students, particularly measures to intervene early, so we can provide the maximum support, so they can engage positively throughout the classroom,” he said.

But Louise Kuchel from Square Peg Round Whole – a community of parents advocating for children with disabilities – said the delay was “upsetting and frustrating and not fair”.

“We’re getting really tired of advocating for [students’] rights and being consistently blocked by the union, who we are trying to help by providing them with some strategies to help our kids.”

One mother, who wanted to remain anonymous to protect her children, said her children’s public school’s understanding of disability had improved with a new principal.

One son, now eight, who has autism, was suspended four times, triggering such deep anxiety about school that she decided to teach him at home.

Another son – who is on a six-month waiting list for a diagnosis and who struggles to leave his parents – has been given warnings rather than suspensions for his behaviour. “If a student with attachment issues gets to spend more time with his parents [through suspension], he will repeat the behaviour and make the situation worse,” the mother said.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/revealed-the-nsw-areas-with-the-fewest-school-suspensions-20220330-p5a9du.html

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Lachlan Murdoch claims Australia's way of life is 'under attack' and that a woke ABC is undermining the country

Lachlan Murdoch has slammed the ABC and claimed the Australian way of life is under siege in a pointed speech to the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA). 

'Our core values, our successes and even our history are under constant attack,' Rupert Murdoch's eldest son said on Tuesday night as he launched the Centre for the Australian Way of Life - 'a centre of cultural and intellectual influence and authority' at the IPA. 

'Nourishing and defending those core values is extremely important. Not to do so has real world, real bad outcomes,' he said. 

Mr Murdoch, who is the CEO of Fox Corporation and thought most likely to succeed his father, did not name the ABC in his 3,400 speech, instead referring to it as 'the national broadcaster'.

'To listen to our national broadcaster or much of the media elite is to hear about a uniquely racist, selfish, slavish and monchromatic country,' the billionaire media baron said. 

He said the reality was very different, that Australia is one of the most 'tolerant, generous, independent and multicultural countries in human history', but that 'our national identity and culture are are weathering constant attempts to recast Australia as something it isn't'.

Mr Murdoch, who arrived back in Sydney last Friday on his $90million private jet, said Australians had an 'innate concept of fairness' and believed in a 'fair go'. 

'I am always saddened when elements of our citizenry, often the elites who have benefited most from our country, display not a love of our values but a disdain for them,' said the 50-year-old, who was born in London, raised in New York and moved from Los Angeles to Sydney last year.

'How can we expect people to defend the values, interests and sovereignty of this nation if we teach our children only our faults and none of our virtues,' he added.  

Mr Murdoch railed against what he called 'the damage done to the American psyche' through attacks on its values and the 'destructive rewriting of its history' and said Australia must 'learn from this cautionary tale'.  

He also offered some advice on Australia's response to the Covid-19 pandemic, saying the country was right to 'turn the tyranny of distance into a temporary pandemic advantage ... until vaccines were developed'. 

But he claimed the country then became 'a victim of our own success, with state leaders thinking they could out-do each other with lockdowns and remain Covid-free forever'. 

Mr Murdoch said the approval of these approaches by much of the public 'was fuelled by the alarmist language and fear mongering of politicians and much of the media'. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10666269/Lachlan-Murdoch-claims-Australias-way-life-attack-woke-ABC-undermining-country.html

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ABC cancels book on cartoonist

There was enormous interest in last week’s “The Silence of the Aunty” segment of Media Watch Dog which was titled “The ABC’s Cancellation of Books on the Pell Case”.

This documented the fact that the taxpayer funded public broadcaster had “cancelled” recent books about Cardinal George Pell’s convictions on historical child sexual abuse charges which were quashed in a 7 to Zip decision by the High Court of Australia on 7 April 2020.

ABC journalists led the media pile-on against Pell and the ABC website contains numerous pages on the Pell Case. But ABC producers and presenters have refused to discuss three books which came out after the High Court decision. Namely, Keith Windschuttle The Persecution of George Pell, Frank Brennan Observations on the Pell Proceedings and Gerard Henderson Cardinal Pell, The Media Pile-On & Collective Guilt. With only one exception. Windschuttle was interviewed on ABC Radio National’s The Religion and Ethics Report.

MWD understands from its sources inside the ABC Soviet that there was considerable opposition from within the ABC to Windschuttle’s appearance on the ABC – despite the fact that no one has been able to point to any significant error in his book. Neither Brennan nor Henderson has been invited on to any ABC program.

An avid reader reminded MWD that author Fred Pawle suffered a similar fate with respect to his 2021 book Die Laughing: The Biography of Bill Leak.

Without question, Bill Leak (1956-2017) was one of Australia’s finest cartoonists and painters. In his introduction to Die Laughing, the comedian and artiste Barry Humphries described Leak as a “truly great and fearless Australian” whose work is not only “a record of its time” but also “funny”, “brutal”, “incisive” and “relentless”.

When Bill Leak was on the left and a fierce critic of John Howard and other political conservatives – including, at times, Jackie’s (male) co-owner – his work was untouched. However, when Leak became a critic of the left and adopted some conservative positions – there were many attempts by left-wing activists to silence him.

Fred Pawle’s work is what a good biography should be – sympathetic but also critical. In short, it is not a hagiography as is the case with many biographies of the left, by the left and for the left which are discussed ad nauseam on the ABC. Rather it’s an insightful, considered assessment of a brilliant artist and a clever but flawed man.

Australians can be trusted to read Pawle’s biography and make their own conclusions about Bill Leak. But not according to the ABC, it seems. For years, ABC types paraded against political and social censorship. Now censorship is rife within the ABC.

And so it has come to pass that ABC presenters and producers have effectively “cancelled” Die Laughing. The author has received only one interview on the ABC since his book was published last year – on ABC Radio National’s Between the Lines hosted by Tom Switzer. That’s all.

Now Bill Leak had quite a few mates in the ABC. Including Phillip Adams, Richard Fidler and Leigh Sales – currently the presenters of Radio National’s Late Night Live , ABC Radio’s Conversations and ABC TV’s 7.30 respectively.

Adams, Fidler and Sales spoke about their late friend Bill Leak for Die Laughing. But not one has brought about a situation whereby Fred Pawle has been interviewed on their programs – despite the fact that Late Night Live, Conversations and 7.30 interview authors about books. This suggests a lack of intellectual courage. If this trio does not believe that Leak is worth discussing on the ABC – why did they think it was worth talking to Pawle about his subject?

This appears to be yet another action by the ABC to silence voices that it does not want to hear. Another example of “The Silence of the Aunty”.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/media-watch-dog-abc-cancels-bill-leak-die-laughing-biography/news-story/e4f5023fccbefbc9c093304b2aae4658

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SA election shows Morrison the path to victory

The defeat of Liberal Premier Stephen ‘Marshmallow’ Marshall in South Australia opens a path to victory for Prime Minister Scott Morrison at the federal election but only if Morrison has the courage to follow the example of new Labor Premier Peter Malinauskas.

A Liberal defeat that presages a victory is not as contradictory as it seems. Marshall was a creature of the so-called moderate wing of the Liberal party. Malinauskas is a socially conservative Catholic who openly opposed same-sex marriage and voted against the legalisation of euthanasia and late-term abortion.

Labor presented Malinauskas as a dad who plays footy, but he is closer to former prime minister Tony Abbott and NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet than to opposition leader Anthony Albanese, who religiously attends Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

Malinauskas leads the Catholic right faction and the resignations of former treasurer Jack Snelling and former minister Don Kenyon to revive the Family First party forced his factional enemies to realise that if they wanted to win government, they would have to keep their bigotry to themselves. Labor’s cheer squad followed suit. No protesters screamed, ‘Get your rosaries off my ovaries’, those attacks are reserved for the Christian right.

Yet it was moderate Liberals who gave Malinauskas his biggest break. Attorney-General Vickie Chapman infuriated social conservatives by introducing a private member’s bill allowing abortion up to the time of birth, which was fast-tracked by Marshall. When Liberal minister David Speirs tried to limit the damage by introducing an amendment to restrict access to late-term abortion, Marshall voted against it; Malinauskas supported it. Marshall added fuel to the fire by also fast-tracking a bill on euthanasia. Not content with these legislative victories, won with the support of the Greens and Labor, moderates thwarted a move by hundreds of Christians to join the party. SA Liberal party president Legh Davis, backed by Marshall and federal government leader in the Senate Simon Birmingham, forced recent members or those seeking to join the party to declare their support for endorsed candidates.

The purge of Pentecostals infuriated Tony Pasin, the Liberal member for the federal seat of Barker, who said it bordered on religious vilification, and incensed outgoing federal Liberal MP Nicolle Flint who slammed the move as undemocratic. It also prompted the Australian Christian Lobby and Family First to target all MPs who voted in favour of late-term abortion, along with One Nation and former Family First senator Bob Day, who campaigned against the attack on Christian values.

The election results show the outcome. Three socially conservative Liberals who left the party comfortably won seats as independents. Moderate Liberals in safe seats suffered massive swings. Marshall’s claim to be a better economic manager bought him nothing. At best, the Liberals will have 15 out of 47 MPs, with Marshall in danger of losing his own seat.

The notion that Marshall should have won because he did a good job managing the pandemic is delusional. He earned the moniker Marshmallow because he hid behind his police chief who exercised draconian powers at the behest of the chief health officer, a nutty professor who famously claimed you could catch Covid from touching a football. To this day, if you test positive for Covid in South Australia you must quarantine for a week, while your close contacts must isolate for a fortnight. Who knows why? When there was no Covid in the state, Marshall tolerated business-strangling restrictions. When the state opened in late November, the combination of Omicron and crazy quarantine rules crippled the economy by forcing people into repeated isolation.

The lesson for Morrison is stark. The marginalisation of Christians in the Liberal party is a cardinal error, just as it has been for Labor, which is usually beholden to the godless Greens when in power. By bringing Christians into the Labor fold, Malinauskas has won a majority in the lower house after only one term in opposition.

Malinauskas has another lesson for Morrison. Unlike Marshall, he is pro-nuclear and has had the courage to defend the establishment of a nuclear waste repository or a nuclear power plant in South Australia, saying it could be a safe source of base-load power with zero emissions.

This is a golden, or a uranium-plated opportunity for Morrison. Albanese puts himself forward as a leader in the mould of Bob Hawke or John Howard. Not on nuclear energy, which both supported. As a student politician, Albanese was aligned with the hard Left and friendly with People for Nuclear Disarmament. In 2004, as shadow minister for environment he campaigned against nuclear power when it was raised by Howard. In 2019, he called any discussion of nuclear technology a ‘fantasy’ which his Green allies found ‘alarming’.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has gifted Morrison the opportunity to cut energy prices in ways Albanese won’t be able to copy; extending the life of coal-fired power plants, accelerating gas plants, and fast-tracking an increase in energy exports to bolster our allies. It also allows Morrison to drive a wedge through Labor on nuclear technology by talking to Malinauskas about nuclear industry in South Australia.

Morrison also needs to address the heightened threat of conflict posed by Russia and China. With support from Malinauskas, he can put flesh on his new Aukus alliance with the US and the UK by announcing the purchase of nuclear submarines and establishing an industry to support their maintenance in South Australia. He could also start discussions with Malinauskas on safe, small-scale, fourth-generation nuclear power, based on the miniature reactors in nuclear submarines.

Albanese likes to pretend he is like Malinauskas. Hardly. While Albanese has been cosying up to communists since his days as a student politician, the Malinauskas family fled communism in eastern Europe to set up a fish and chip shop in Adelaide. Labor, under Albanese, is hostile to politicians like the late senator Kimberley Kitching and retiring MP Anthony Byrne who were among the diminishing few to criticise China because under Albanese, Australia will kowtow to China, not defend the national interest.

Morrison once said he didn’t want to fight ‘culture wars’ because they don’t deliver jobs, but if he wants to hold on to his own job, he has to make the moderates in the Liberal party recognise that unless they win the support of Christians and conservatives at the next election, the marshmallows in the party will be toast.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/toasted-marshmallow/?

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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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30 March, 2022 

Teaching sexual consent in high schools

Bettina Arndt makes a number of good points below.  She is undoubtedy right to ascribe present policies to anti-male feminists.  

She should have gone further, though.  WOMEN also need education about consent.  I doubt that any consent education will do much but I am sure that almost any experienced man  will tell you that female consent can be an enigma wrapped in a mystery. 

It used to be well-known that women play games with men.  They may be open to having sex with a man but will at no stage utter a clear consent. It is essentially a "wait-and-see" strategy that is not inherently unreasonable but it sure can be confusing to the male concerned

I have always refused to be part of such games.  I was willing to spend time talking with a woman but if the conversation seemed too flirtatious I would simply desist from further conversation, apparently to the confusion of the woman concerned on some occasions.  I once left  party rather early after having a rather involved conversation with an Eve but was told the day after by a friend who had also been present:  "You could have got her into bed, you know". I think he was right.  I felt that at the time.  I just didn't like the  complexity of the games.

So in my case I have confined myself to situations where an approach  of some sort from me was met with clear agreement, but not necessarily verbal agreement.  Behaviour can be more eloquent than words.  So I have always acted with clear consent but am well aware that I have missed out in situations where consent was less clear.  And I have no doubt that on some such occasions the woman concerned has felt frustrated by my "stupidity".  I know that because the woman concerned has persisted with me and been much more direct on a second occasion.

And a big problem often is that a rather assertive approach by a male is required for the woman to give consent. The consent will be genuine but for various reasons the woman likes an assertive approach.  And thererein lies a big problem.  How is the male to work out when assertiveness is required as opposed to  where consent is genuinely not given?  It can be a guessing game and guessing games can go wrong.  Neither party is at fault when it goes wrong.  The fault lies with a culture in which female consent or the lack of it may not be clear

 

So can we "educate" women to be clearer in giving or  refusing consent?  I would like to think so but am not holding my breath

Last month it was announced all Australian high school students are to be taught about sexual consent and coercion. Mandatory education programs are being rolled out across the country teaching boys not to rape. 

It’s mainly due to Sydney schoolgirl Chanel Contos, who burst into the limelight last year when she announced that a school sex education course had led her to discover she’d been raped two years earlier. As a 13-year-old she’d been ‘forced’ to go down on a boy at a party but it took a Year-10 school sex education course for her to realize what had happened to her. She started a website encouraging other girls to tell stories of similar sexual assaults and nearly 2,000 obliged. Ever since she’s been out there calling out male misbehaviour and lobbying for school sexual consent courses. 

This is just the latest front in the mighty feminist battle to rein in male sexuality and punish more rapists. I wrote recently about how the NSW parliament was misled by false statistics which were used to assist the smooth passage of enthusiastic consent regulations into law. At much the same time over 1,500 school kids were signing a Contos petition calling for enthusiastic consent to be taught in schools. 

Our compliant media dutifully pushed the fear-mongering as Contos met with members of parliament and other power brokers to make it all happen. We heard shocking stories of drunk girls waking up to discover males taking advantage of them, boys behaving badly, circulating photos of their mates having sex, etc. some truly unacceptable male behaviour. 

But gradually questions started appearing in online comments about why so many girls were finding themselves in these risky situations, why were so many vulnerable youngsters attending these alcohol and drug-fuelled parties?

Naturally, any suggestion that girls needed to take care of themselves were howled down. A principal of a Sydney girls school dared to suggest that along with more sex education in schools, parents need to be ‘having conversations regarding consent, the impact of alcohol, risk-taking behaviours, and self-respect’. Her sensible suggestion was treated with disdain by journalists who lined up enlightened souls to put her straight. The problem is ‘not about girls’ pronounced an executive from the Alliance of Girls’ Schools, but rather about the ‘underbelly of disrespect, privilege, and callousness displayed by young men towards young women’. 

‘This is a systemic, centuries-old societal problem,’ she explained. ‘Behaviour that endorses male sexual entitlement, lack of accountability, and a power imbalance.’

That’s it, you see. Feminism 101, all designed to tie in nicely with the ‘respect for women’ ideological claptrap already rolled out in the Respectful Relationships programs allegedly tackling domestic violence, which are currently indoctrinating children in schools – teaching them about toxic males and helpless females. 

Now sexual consent education will reinforce that message. I’ve just been sent snapshots taken from the brand-new curriculum being introduced in one South Australian school. Apparently, there’s flexibility in how the educators choose to address the topic but it seems most schools will take a similar approach.

It’s fascinating seeing how the educators twist themselves into knots to avoid any hint of victim-blaming. They’ve come up with a new slogan: ‘Vulnerability is not the same as responsibility.’ Look at this little scenario featuring Kim. Be warned, it’s pretty confusing because we aren’t given the gender of Kim, who uses the pronoun ‘they’. 

Kim is out drinking, and a man ‘they’ know offers ‘them’ a ride home but instead drives to a secluded spot, parks and wants to have sex. Our educators spell out the message very clearly: it’s the villain, the driver, who is 100 per cent responsible for his actions and whether or not Kim is safe. Kim is simply ‘vulnerable’ as a result of decisions ‘they’ have made to get into this situation.

Neat, eh? In this particular scenario we don’t know the gender of the potential victim, but the bulk of the responsibility/vulnerability examples given in the curriculum involve males taking advantage of girls who arguably signal sexual interest in various ways by: wearing low-cut dresses; or inviting a boy to ‘snuggle’ with them in a private room at a party. Here’s a classic example, featuring Jen and Luke. Note that it is taken from an American publication called Men Stopping Rape – which says it all…

The predominantly female teachers who will be guiding the students’ discussion of these scenes will no doubt work hard to convince the kids that the boy is inevitably 100 per cent ‘responsible’ while the innocent girl is simply ‘vulnerable’. 

Very occasionally they do present a girl as the baddie. Like the sexually aggressive Mila who is all over her boyfriend Luke and gets very indignant when he says he wants to take his time. ‘I said it was time to be a real man and do the deed,’ responds Mila. A rare toxic woman but overwhelmed by large numbers of pushy blokes who don’t take no for an answer, have sex with sleeping girls and boast about having sex to their mates. 

The curriculum does include one scenario, Ali and Josh, describing the situation of a girl who has sex because she fears her boyfriend might dump her if she doesn’t. That’s true to life – a very good example of a girl giving consent she may later regret. The great pity is there is so little in this curriculum about the many reasons girls might be ambivalent about consent. The central myth of the ‘enthusiastic consent’ dogma is the notion that girls/women know their own minds and clearly indicate their desires. The truth is males are forced to interpret the muddy waters of female sexual ambivalence, obfuscation, and confusion. The apparent ‘Yeses’ that are really ‘Maybes’ or secret ‘Nos’. 

This week I had a live chat on Thinkspot with a famous YouTuber, Steve Bonnell – also known as ‘Destiny’. Bonnell has made big bucks as video game Twitch streamer. but this clever, articulate young man is also a political commentator, debating all manner of issues usually from a leftist perspective. Funnily enough, just after our conversation Bonnell was banned from Twitch for ‘hateful conduct’ which might just have included our chat about sexual consent, which certainly would have got up the nose of the woke folk running social media.

Bonnell regularly challenges the new dogma on this issue, throwing down the gauntlet by declaring that women no longer have bad sexual experiences – if was bad, it was rape and the man’s fault. His argument is that men are being forced into a parental role – treating women like infants with no agency of their own. Bonnell also declares that if you invite someone to your house, you must expect them to see that as a sexual invitation. And that when it comes to stealthing, women shouldn’t have sex with anyone whom they wouldn’t be comfortable telling not to remove a condom. 

Naturally I agreed with him on these points, but amusingly Bonnell was very careful not to align too strongly with what he sees as my overly protective pro-male stance. I was intrigued to hear him talk about young women today, whom he claims enter every sexual encounter with some element of fear. As I pointed out, I’ve never felt like that and see this as a total failure of modern feminism. Whatever happened to feminism’s celebration of women’s female strength and independence? Remember Helen Reddy’s triumphant song – I am woman, hear me roar? 

Many of you will know Camile Paglia’s famous story about being in college in the 1960s when girls were still chaperoned and locked safely away from boys at night. She describes their fight to rid themselves of this protectionism, the fight for the freedom to risk rape. ‘I think it is discouraging to see the surrender of young women of their personal autonomy,’ she says, amazed that women are welcoming ‘the intrusion and surveillance of authority figures over their private lives’.

That’s the bottom line here. The sexual consent courses being introduced in our schools are simply the latest effort to convince young women that they are all potential victims, needing protection from dangerous males. Another step to creating a divided society.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/03/teaching-sexual-consent-in-high-schools/

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Australian Covid-killing ‘fog’ guards Singapore Airport

Hi-tech hand sanitisers, nasal sprays, pills and even cannabis have all been spruiked as treatments to kill or ease symptoms of Covid-19. But could crushing the virus be as simple as using water?

Or more specifically, electrified water, with a sprinkling of salt, that can create a potent dis­infectant?

The nation’s peak science agency, the CSIRO, thinks so and has backed a South Australian company that has developed a Covid-killing “fog” that will be deployed at Singapore Airport in coming months.

The technology has received approval from Australia’s health regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, as well as undergone testing from the world’s two biggest airline manufacturers, Airbus and Boeing.

For the company, Ecas4, it is proof that life can really present bouquets. It originally developed the technology to extend the shelf life of fresh cut flowers.

The “fog” involves electrolysis of salt and water, creating a pH-neutral disinfectant solution known as Ecas4-Anolyte. This solution can be sprayed onto a surface or fogged in an enclosed space using a specialised machine, such as an aircraft cabin, to sanitise all the surfaces it comes into contact with.

Crucially, it has no harsh chemicals or side effects, meaning people can breathe it in (and out), helping stop the spread of Covid.

It is similar technology to the salt chlorinators commonly used in swimming pools, and Ecas4 director Tony Amorico cites this connection when highlighting its safety.

“Chlorine about 2000mg/litre becomes a dangerous, hazardous product. Below that it’s safe. We’re producing at levels two to 300 where we know we kill bacteria and Covid effectively, instantly,” Mr Amorico said.

After international borders reopened last month, Industry Minister Angus Taylor said Ecas4’s technology would help give people the confidence to return to the skies following two pandemic-plagued years.

“From incredible inventions such as rapid breath Covid tests, mRNA technology, to innovations such as this cleaning and sanitising solution from Ecas4 helping to get us back in the skies, this is the kind of groundbreaking innovation the Morrison government is supporting to grow our economy, create new jobs and help our nation reach the other side of the pandemic,” Mr Taylor told The Australian.

But like most fledgling companies with great ideas, committing precious funds for research and development can be risky and cost-prohibitive. And this is where the CSIRO comes in via its Innovation Connections scheme, part of the Australian government’s Entrepreneurs’ Program.

CSIRO introduced Ecas4 to the University of South Australia, which began investigating whether the solution could eliminate traces of Covid-19. The project was successful, and the solution subsequently received approvals from TGA and major aircraft manufacturers.

Other beneficiaries of the CSIRO’s innovation fund include plant-based meat start-up V2food, which formed a partnership with Jack Cowin’s Competitive Foods to launch the Rebel Whopper at Hungry Jacks.

For Ecas4, getting Singapore Airport on board was challenging, given international travel bans prevented them from installing the system in-person.

“Because the cost of transporting a solution to them was prohibitive, we built a purpose built machine to allow a batch production, which we can remotely connect to and we remotely see how much they’re producing,” Mr Amorico said.

“The best part of it is we can switch it off if I need to, as well for any reasons to stop them from producing if we want them to. And that’s how we ensure the quality of the product is produced on a regular basis because we can measure the conductivity of the solution and we can also measure the current and the voltage that we’re providing through that process.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/aviation/aussie-covidkilling-fog-guards-singapore-airport-as-csiro-backs-adelaide-startup-ecas4/news-story/15e9a74a3cf292b44903e9e9b6581379

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The Australian Federal budget holds an economic miracle

Perhaps it is the misery brought on by the ongoing global pandemic and war in Ukraine that has dulled the awareness of Australians to the economic miracle forming before them.

Two years ago when the economy was deliberately put into hibernation in order to save lives after the Covid-19 virus entered the country through air and sea ports, economists were full of dire warnings about coming double-digit unemployment, a house price collapse, and the deepest recession in a century.

The pandemic came to snap nearly 30 years of sustained economic growth, and put before policy makers a threat to the prosperity of the country that easily dwarfed that of the Global Financial Crisis in 2008.

As international and state borders slammed shut in 2020, Australians hunkered down in their homes and braced for the worst, with a generation of them unaware of what a recession meant.

It is through this bleak prism that the economic forecasts contained in the federal government’s budget for 2023 released on Tuesday need to be viewed.

Instead of a job market horribly scarred by years of recession, the country is now on the cusp of full employment. In simple terms that mean that anybody seeking a job can get one, or already has one.

Nearly every forecast for unemployment since the outbreak of the pandemic has had to be binned quickly as the economy consistently outperformed.

The jobless rate is now forecast to fall to 3.75 per cent by mid-2022 from 4 per cent currently. That’s a number no economic policy maker or politician in the country will have seen in their working lives.

Even Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe, who joined the central bank out if school in the late 1970s, can’t claim he has been witnessed to such a low number.

It’s a staggering forecast that, if anything, looks conservative given current trends in hiring and record numbers of job vacancies. It’s highly possible the unemployment rate will fall even further than that in the next year.

So instead of long lines of long-term unemployed, Australia is engaging its labour force, which is underpinning a forecast for the economy to grow by 3.5 per cent over the next year.

Some economists will argue that with closed borders and a federal government fiscal stimulus of more than $300bn to battle the pandemic, the country should indeed be approaching full employment.

They’d be right too. But the success also reflects the design of the government spending which had at its core a wage subsidy known as job keeper that kept firms afloat, but more importantly, kept employers paid and linked to a firm.

So when the lockdowns ended, the engines of growth re-engaged at speed. Prior recessions, like the one in the early 1990s, have been marked by years of sustained high unemployment. It’s usual that older and low skilled workers remain on the trash heap for some time.

The budget also includes a forecast that wages will grow by 3.25 per cent in the next year, reversing the trend of the moribund trend of the last decade.

Those looking for a dark lining in the Australian economic story will point to rising inflation. This is where it gets interesting. The budget forecasts consumer prices will rise by just 3.0 per cent in 2022-24 and by just 2.75 per cent in 2023-24.

Viewed against a back drop of inflation running hot in major economies, stoked by interrupted supply chains and soaring energy costs, these low numbers look ambitious. But Australia has been an inflation outlier for some time. Its proximity to Asia, where inflation is more benign, and a sluggish wage setting system, have helped to keep wage growth down.

Still, if the budget’s economic forecasts are too optimistic, it is here as inflation could still easily break out of its cage in the next year, setting up the next great challenge for policy makers to rein it back in.

Getting this wrong could undo the good work that is now visible strength in the economy, bringing with it rapid rises in interest rates.

Still, there is a strong argument to suggest that much of what consists of current price pressures in the economy will eventually fade. To have a true inflation break out, you need wages to jump. While they are drifting up, there’s no surge yet that would signal the genie is out of the bottle.

To round the story of the economy, the last batch of GDP growth data showed the economy steaming ahead at its fastest pace since March 1976, unemployment is currently at a 14-year low, and consumers have saved a large portion of the pandemic stimulus. It sit in bank accounts waiting to be spent.

In the last year, house prices have jumped by more than 20 per cent. While that’s a vexed statistic given the rise has frozen many out of home ownership, it still represents a big lift in household wealth.

After two years of pandemic, Australia has been left with a bulging government mountain that some economists will argue leaves the country more vulnerable in the event of another shock.

All that is true, but still, Australia’s debt burden is much lower than that of many of the major economies and the strong job market means the debt mountain can be eaten into by driving GDP growth faster.

By late 2022 (if not earlier), full employment is likely to have been achieved, and on current indications, interest rates will still be low.

It wasn’t meant to be like this.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-federal-budget-holds-an-economic-miracle/news-story/03532b660e06930558269a22ebe89a88

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The 'beautiful surprise' in the Budget that NO ONE is talking about - as top economist reveals why interest rates WON'T rise as soon as everyone thinks

A top economist has shone a spotlight on one of the most 'beautiful' things hidden in last night's Budget - sustained low employment rates. 

Deloitte Access Economics partner Chris Richardson said the 'beautiful surprise' hidden in the 2022 Budget was welcome, and also predicted interest rates would not rise any time soon.

'It's not mentioned in any headline anywhere, it's only been a handful of months since the Treasury last updated us [and] they are now of the view that low unemployment rates in Australia can be sustained,' he told Sunrise host David Koch on Wednesday. 

'Basically an extra 140,000 Australians can be in jobs from here on in. It looks as though we can run the Australian economy faster for longer, and that's great.'

Those considered 'winners' in Treasurer Josh Frydenberg's fourth budget were pensioners, carers, motorists, low to middle income earners and job seekers. 

When asked if he thought there were any 'losers' the economist said of this budget: 'If you've got a pulse and a vote then you've got some money.' 

However, he said there were 'hidden costs' as well as some consequences of splashing cash on an already healthy economy, with unemployment predicted to reach 3.75 per cent in September, the lowest level since 1974.

'When you drop extra money atop an economy that is pretty strong, you get higher inflation, that means our money doesn't go as far,' Mr Richardson explained. 

'You may annoy the Reserve Bank into an interest rate rise, so the cost of your mortgage goes up, and we import more and speed up other economies rather than ours.'

He said the welcomed cash splash will in turn put pressure on the RBA to push interest rates up faster, but not as soon as people might think.

'We've got the view that is now unusual that the Reserve Bank will not be raising rates in the next few months. They'll still do it, but it's going to be the end of 2022 before they do it,' Mr Richardson predicted. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10665491/Budget-2022-Economist-reveals-beautiful-thing-Budget-no-one-talking-about.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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29 March, 2022

Carbon fraud claims rejected by industry players

A set of whistleblower allegations slamming the integrity of Australia’s carbon offset program has been rejected by the industry body, which says the “sensational accusations” threaten projects aimed at cutting emissions.

A new bout of volatility has hit the sector just before a federal poll after the former chair of an audit committee alleged a majority of carbon credits issued by the Regulator were flawed.

Andrew Macintosh – an ANU professor and former chair of the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee – last week unveiled a series of problems with the government’s Emissions Reduction Fund, which is run by the Clean Energy Regulator.

The Carbon Market Institute – whose 130 members include ANZ, BHP, Coles and Woodside Petroleum – has denied the ­charges.

“Sensational claims of ‘fraud’, ‘rorts’ and ‘sham’ amount to a direct attack on a vast network of farmers, traditional owners, service providers, investors, auditors, conservationists and public servants, many of whom have spent the last decade striving to accelerate support for stronger industrial emission reduction, sustainable agriculture and reversal of deforestation,” CMI chief executive John Connor said.

“Many of these participants are feeling aggrieved by accusations which do not appear to be substantiated by the academic papers.”

The Clean Energy Regulator directly contracts for the purchase of Australian Carbon Credit Units from carbon offset schemes such as revegetation on pastoral properties, energy efficiency projects run by big energy users and even promises by farmers to end or avoid land clearing.

Mr Macintosh, tasked with overseeing the integrity of the carbon credit scheme, alleged “proponents are being issued ACCUs for growing trees that were already there when the projects started” among other claims and called for an independent investigation to explore the Clean Energy Regulator’s administration and the broader suitability of the Emissions Reduction Fund.

The CMI said both it and its members were analysing the technical papers released late last week by Mr Macintosh, and would issue a “comprehensive response” later this week.

However, it said on Sunday that Mr Macintosh’s land management papers did not back up claims that 70-80 per cent of ACCUs lacked integrity.

“The papers focused on the Human-Induced Regeneration methodology appear to confuse principles under the methodology, which is aimed at crediting transition to forest cover, not current forest levels. The transition to forest cover is closely regulated, including five-yearly regeneration checks and a 15-year forest cover attainment check,” the CMI said.

CMI said it would take part in any independent review “to enable the investments and reforms necessary to address our twin climate and biodiversity crises”.

The Clean Energy Regulator said on Friday it stood by the Emissions Reduction Fund, describing it as “a robust offsets scheme with a high degree of integrity” and said complaints about several of its carbon methods were unfounded. Labor has vowed to hold an independent review of the scheme if it wins a looming federal election.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/renewable-energy-economy/carbon-fraud-claims-rejected-by-industry-players/news-story/7fdef5fc4316bcf51e8c622d0a489626

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‘Absolute disgrace’: 85 per cent of CFMEU officials penalised or before courts

Labor’s promise to scrap the construction watchdog has come under fire after it was revealed 85 per cent of CFMMEU leaders in the division are before the courts or have been fined.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese will promise to follow in the footsteps of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating in a pre-election speech today. He will vow to rediscover a spirit of consensus between governments, unions, businesses and civil society.

QLD News

Industrial Relations Minister Michaelia Cash said Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese will give the “green light” to appalling behaviour and chaos on constructions if he wins the election and follows through with the pledge.

But Labor says it makes no apology for its plans to scrap the watchdog, saying it was a “politicised and discredited organisation”, while CFMMEU construction union boss Dave Noonan said the ABCC was “giving the green light” for bosses to rip off workers.

Of the 28 listed CFMMEU construction and general division officials, 24 either have been penalised by the federal court or are facing court hearings.

Senator Cash said the union’s record was a disgrace.

“Mr Albanese’s promise to abolish the ABCC will lead to chaos on Australia’s building sites and give the green light to appalling behaviour,” she said.

“This would also threaten billions of dollars in construction projects and jeopardise the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of workers in the construction sector.”

She said the record of the CFMMEU officials was “absolute disgrace”.

“The level of law-breaking committed by just one union and its delegates is breathtaking,” Senator Cash said.

“Instead of promising to crack down on this type of behaviour, Anthony Albanese is promising to abolish the ABCC, which is keeping these disgraceful actions in check.”

Opposition industrial relations spokesman Tony Burke said the ABCC was a “politicised and totally discredited organisation” and accused it of targeting workers had previously been found to have acted unlawfully under its previous Commissioner.

“It was set up by the LNP to dismantle unions and undermine the pay, conditions and job security of ordinary Australian workers,” Mr Burke said.

“We will abolish it and we make no apology for that.”

CFMMEU national secretary Dave Noonan said construction workers were more likely to be fined for standing up for their rights, than employers who were “stealing their wages or putting their safety at risk.

“The ABCC gives dodgy bosses a green light to rip off workers,” he said.

“It does nothing when big builders go to the wall owing workers millions. Yet it punishes workers who speak out about safety or demand to be paid the wages and entitlements they are owed.

“Construction workers should not face being targeted and fined by a regulator with the powers of a Royal Commission that ignores criminal behaviour by employers.”

Mr Albanese has been unable to explain who will prosecute unlawful industrial activity if he scraps the Australian Building and Construction Commission, while Master Builders Association warned it will “unleash union thuggery”.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/absolute-disgrace-85-per-cent-of-cfmeu-officials-penalised-or-before-courts/news-story/1136bf2685f399588682de8fd1e0f4c8

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The ‘Green’ shades of political hypocrisy

It was only last month that the Leader of the Victorian Greens, Samantha Ratnam, called on the government to ensure that all rental properties contained ‘compulsory air conditioning’ as part of a minimum standard requirement in a letter to Minister for Consumer Affairs, Gaming and Liquor Regulation, Melissa Horne.

Air conditioning is an energy-consuming monster.

While those of us who are comfortable living in the modern world feel no guilt about the advances in technology that allow humans to wear a jumper inside when it’s over 45 degrees outside – the Greens hail from the apocalyptic ‘end is nigh’ pool of thought. They are prepared to send Australia back to the caves armed with candles through their relentless pursuit of policies that dismantle Australia’s energy security, but sure, let’s mandate air conditioners?

While the Greens terrify children and incite them to skip school and stage mock ‘die-ins’ in capital cities, they don’t mind arguing in favour of air conditioning to drag votes from the hot and sweaty poor (who are being made more poor by Climate Change policies).

This month, the Greens are back on track, calling for the luvvies in Canberra to give up their vehicles on ‘car-free’ days and try out ‘car-free zones’ in the city. Mind you, this might not be necessary as fuel prices continue to rise on the back of Australia’s dependence on internationally-sourced oil (because ideological zealots fight against domestic resources).

Jo Clay, the Greens’ transport spokesperson, released a discussion paper containing the above proposals along with the usual cash splurge on footpaths, bikes, and – of course – dramatically lowering speed limits so that cars have to expend more fossil fuels to go nowhere.

The paper also suggests mucking around with traffic light sequencing to make life miserable for motorists and leave cars pumping out fumes while bikes and pedestrians take priority. Or if that doesn’t suit, other recommendations include removing roads entirely to make ‘more space for the community’. Pesky things like on-street parking are listed as a ‘loss of space for little real gain’ – aside from having somewhere to park, which is a pretty big gain for motorists.

‘Canberrans love active travel,’ Clay insisted. ‘We have the highest level of cycling in Australia and almost everyone uses active travel at some point. Even those who drive most places will still get out of their car and walk or wheel to their final destination.’

According to Clay, these car-free days and zones are meant to offer the people of Canberra a way to ‘experience a different way to use our roads’ because exploring transport options for fun is probably high up on the list of activities for struggling businesses and families desperately scrambling to recover from Covid health orders.

Australians are more likely to believe in ‘active transport’ when representatives of the Greens permanently exchange their government-funded cars for push-bikes and cycle to Parliament in the pouring rain, freezing cold, and sweltering heat of Canberra. If they want us to believe that the working-class need to give up their cars for the ‘greater good’, Greens MPs should set the example by refusing to fly around the country and instead hop on long-distance trains or buses.

No takers?

‘We have to do more to help Canberrans choose the original zero-emissions transport method of active travel. We need to make active travel fun, accessible, and safe for everyone.’

How does this declaration work with the paper’s recommendation to trial off-road bicycle exemptions for helmet requirements? Helmets are widely regarded as the most important safety advancement for cyclists – something openly acknowledged by the paper – but people don’t like wearing helmets so the Greens reckon we should just ‘ditch them’ because cycling ‘participation dropped when helmet laws were introduced’. Sure, but fatalities also dropped by 46 per cent.

‘This off road exemption could be trialled and the effect on participation measured to see if this increases cycle commuting, especially for short distances within suburbs.’

The original zero-emissions method of transport has been common with the peasantry for thousands of years – walking – although we are yet to see that less-glamorous mode of transport kick off with MPs screeching ‘Net Zero!’ from the chambers of Parliament.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/the-green-shades-of-political-hypocrisy/

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Climate change activist Maxim O'Donnell Curmi jailed for four months after protests

A man who scaled a 60m-high crane at Sydney's Port Botany during one of several stunts by climate change activists last week has been jailed for four months.

Maxim O'Donnell Curmi today pleaded guilty to five charges, including endangering a person on a railway and encouraging the commission of a crime, before Waverley Local Court.

The 26-year-old from Hurstbridge in Victoria will appeal the sentence, said activist group Blockade Australia.

It has claimed responsibility for a series of protests around the Port Botany area held for five consecutive days, which also targeted freight rail lines and roads.

On Friday, Curmi jumped a barbed wire fence and evaded workers before climbing to the top of a large crane used to load and unload shipping containers at the port.

He remained dangling from a rope for five hours, blocking the loading of a docked ship.

Today, Magistrate Ross Hudson accepted Curmi's guilty pleas and sentenced him to four months in jail plus a $1,500 fine.

The sentence will expire on June 24.

Last week, the NSW government introduced harsher penalties of up to two years in jail and a $22,000 fine for protesters as a reaction to the Blockade Australia campaign.

An amendment was added to make it an offence to disrupt any tunnel or bridge across Sydney, and laws could be expanded further to include roads and key facilities.

Attorney-General Mark Speakman said the previous fine of up to $2,200 was not enough to deter activists he described as "economic vandals".

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-28/port-botany-protest-four-months-jail/100945668

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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 March, 2022

From 'problematic' bogans to the COVID divide: Australia's messy relationship with social class

The article below talks of class in terms of income.  But there is more to it than that.  Even occupational prestige does not capture it.  Yet there clearly is a stratum in Australian society where people have an elite identity.  People in that stratum are economically prosperous but economic affluence is by itself not enough for such an  identity.  People can become suddenly rich without acquiring an elite identity.  

So what is the key variable leading to an elite identity?  It is IQ.  Elite people are smart and it is the characteristics of high IQ people that become markers of high social class.  Toby Young explains it

So the article below rather misses the point.  It shows an awareness of cultural differences but explains those differences in terms of income.  But any approach to levelling income will not abolish social class.  Smart people will always do better.  Even in the heavily equalitarian Soviet Union, there was a "nomenklatura"  who lived privileged lives

Australia, we are often told, is the land where everyone can get a "fair go." It's one of many egalitarian terms that are used in this country, from inside our parliament to throughout our pop culture. But is Australia as equal as many of us like to think?

Steve Threadgold, an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Newcastle, has a clear opinion: No way.

"People start at different places [in life]," Professor Threadgold tells ABC RN's Saturday Extra, "but we don't really like to talk about class very much, for some reason."

He's co-edited a new book with fellow researcher Associate Professor Jessica Gerrard titled Class in Australia, which dissects the topic and looks at how social class can be a barrier.

And first up, he wants Australians to improve how they discuss the realities of class.

Bogans, hipsters and class

The term 'bogan' immediately conjures up the image of a very specific Australian — likely involving a singlet, cigarettes and a mullet.

So too with 'hipster' — tight black jeans, a soy latte and smashed avocado on toast are probably involved.

But Professor Threadgold has researched the usage of these terms and says they're problematic substitutes for talking about class.

"These are ways that class is represented and spoken about in the public sphere, without really talking about class … 'Bogan' has tended to stand in for vulgar working class tastes and 'hipster' for ironic middle class consumer cultures," he says.

"What's interesting is that the hipster is often [portrayed] as a quite ironic, almost playful figure, while the bogan tends to elicit much more denigration.

"The bogan is seen as doing things wrong."

He says the bogan has "become a representation of cultural aspects of class, particularly around taste. And then, by using this figure, you don't need to say 'working class people are this' you can invoke 'the bogan.'"

In this way, he says working class people can be maligned in the media and everyday conversations, and the realities of their lives are often obscured.

So just how big are Australia's class divides? Very big, according to Professor Threadgold and other research.

A widening gap between rich and poor

The book lays out a stark picture of inequality and disadvantage in Australia.

"According to measures of inequality, the rich/poor gap is widening, returning to the heights of the 1920s. Education is getting more expensive, while social welfare is increasingly difficult to access," the co-editors write.

"The reality for anyone who is not from a privileged, well-connected background is exclusion from the housing market and the prospect of insecure work."

Although there are many "distinctive experiences of disadvantage and inequality — gender, race, Indigeneity, sexuality, ability, age", talking about class can "make inequality a public issue anchored in economic structures and social/cultural institutions."

And research suggests that Australia is much more unequal than many people may realise.

According to one analysis from the Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS) and the University of New South Wales, before the pandemic, the incomes of those in the top 20 per cent were six times higher than those in the lowest 20 per cent.

When it came to average wealth, the numbers were even more stark, with the top 20 per cent ($3,255,000) having 90 times that of the lowest 20 per cent ($36,000).

Cassandra Goldie, the CEO of ACOSS, says: "In a wealthy country like Australia, the dominant perception is everybody's doing well … but there are large numbers of people who are living on very low and modest incomes."

"Unless we get some major changes to policy directions here, we will see an increasingly divided society, both in terms of income adequacy, and in terms of wealth behind you," she adds.

Class and the pandemic

Dr Goldie says that COVID-19 affected well-off and less-well-off Australians in dramatically different ways.

"We've had two very different experiences of this pandemic," she says.

Dr Goldie points out that many people from lower socio-economic areas "were required to go out and continue to do frontline, low-paid casual work," instead of being able to work from home.

With a focus on international politics and business, Geraldine Doogue talks to expert commentators about the things that matter to Australians.

In addition, these Australians "[sometimes] live in overcrowded housing, often with many people living in one home, and are much less able to self isolate."

"So therefore [such groups] were much more heavily exposed to the consequences of the virus."

One report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found that in the first year of the pandemic, people living in the lowest socio-economic areas had COVID-19 mortality rates 2.6 times higher than for people living in the highest socio-economic areas.

And a separate analysis by ACOSS and the University of New South Wales found poverty and inequality actually reduced early in the pandemic due to crisis support payments, but then spiked later in the pandemic as these supports were rolled back.

"The kinds of policies introduced [in 2020] helped to close gaps … but then this unravelled," Dr Goldie says.

Class in politics

Professor Threadgold says despite class being an important issue, it rarely features in our political debates.

"When you do hear political leaders talk about class, they tend to reverse it," he says.

"So if an argument is made for something like taxing billionaires, or having some kind of shared wealth, then all of a sudden, it's a class war against the rich. And that's really the only time you hear [about class in politics]."

Professor Threadgold cites one elected individual as having a distinct voice in the political realm: Tasmanian independent senator Jacqui Lambie.

"She's a very rare instance of someone from a relatively disadvantaged background with a voice in the Australian public sphere … She is a person that seems to speak often about the views of the disadvantaged, and she's experienced that herself."

But Professor Threadgold says "beyond when she gets to speak for herself, much of the writing and talking and representations of her tend to be parodies."

Political change

Dr Goldie says, while there are many issues around inequality to be dealt with, there is one significant area that needs to be addressed.

"[One] important focus, we believe, is over our revenue base," she says, questioning the federal government's "eye-watering tax cuts."

"There's the 'stage 3 [tax cuts],' which are $16 billion per annum, that will mostly be going to people on higher incomes, mostly men, who already have enough and don't need any more relief," she says.

"[Meanwhile] there's a refusal to look at tax reforms that actually will tackle these serious inequalities and secure a more adequate revenue base for the kind of critical services like health and education — which are some of the key drivers to ensuring a more equal and balanced and fair society."

"I think the community does generally understand that we have real choices here [around policies]. The wealth that we have accumulated is being increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer people — that's not good for anybody."

So why consider class?

Professor Threadgold says a better understanding of class means inequality and disadvantage in Australia could be better addressed.

"If someone doesn't do well at school, or loses their job, or is in poverty, often they're blamed as an individual: they're lazy, they don't work hard enough or they made all the wrong choices," he says.

"But what we find is [when considering] class, those kinds of things, those kinds of inequalities, are much more systematic."

He says: "If we can think about these things on a more systematic basis, the public will be better informed about what's going on."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-24/australia-s-messy-relationship-with-class/100891532

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Australia did well on Covid? Pull the other one

Thousands of lonely deaths in our disastrous and secretive response to the Wuhan virus

David Flint

It is to the credit of a group of parliamentarians that an independent cross-party inquiry has been convened into the Australian response to the pandemic.

Absent a Royal Commission, it is only through such an inquiry that a peoples’  national pandemic contingency plan can emerge.

Hopefully it will not be ignored as former health minister Tony Abbott’s was, despite, as we noted here, his work being internationally acclaimed.

Any assessment should begin by burying the myth that in responding to the pandemic, Australia did relatively well.

Occupying a whole continent, Australia enjoys the unique advantage of being the world’s largest (remote) island nation.

Our death rate should be similar to New Zealand’s, 19 deaths per million (DPM). Taiwan, close to where the virus emerged and hardly remote, comes in at 35 DPM. But Australia’s was many times these, 218 DPM.

While total Australian deaths should have been about 780, the Australian total to date is 5,665.

Worse, for too many, this death was too often a lonely departure resulting from a cruel and unjustified  policy of depriving the dying, in their final hours, of the comfort of children and others close to them.

On any fair assessment, the Australian response to the Wuhan virus has been secretive and arbitrary. In terms of costs and deaths, it has been a disaster.

Apart from closer control of the international borders, at times inadequate ?  as we saw with the Ruby Princess ? almost every decision taken by the ruling politicians was wrong.

They set aside what was surely their overriding duty, to protect the easily identifiable vulnerable. Apart from advice on hygiene and distancing and ensuring early treatment was available, their role should have been to allow the rest of the nation to get on with their lives in a free society. However, that was the last thing the politicians would tolerate.

As the distinguished American academic Michael Rectenwald observed in a recent lecture at Hillsdale College, ‘hitherto democratic Western states (he particularly singles out Australia) have been ‘transformed into totalitarian regimes modelled after China’. This, he says, was done with the goal of having economies operate under ‘capitalism with (communist) Chinese characteristics’, a two-tiered economy with profitable monopolies and government on the top and socialism for the majority below.

This led to the probably unlawful imposition of that draconian Chinese communist remedy, the lockdown. The sheer inutility of this is demonstrated by the fact that the state with  the longest lockdowns, Victoria, was the very one with the largest number of deaths, to date 2,675.

This also led to an unhealthy obsession not only with invariably wrong modelling but also with Big Pharma’s vaccines. Robert F. Kennedy Jr, with the imprimatur of a large team of scientists including two Nobel Prize laureates, describes these in his recent book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Big Pharma’s Global War on Democracy, Humanity, and Public Health as ‘novel, shoddily tested and improperly licensed technology’.

Under US federal law, these vaccines could not qualify for emergency use authorisation if any existing FDA-approved drug proves effective against the same malady. This explains the worldwide campaign by Big Pharma, supported by Big Media and Big Tech, not only against ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine but also against the very idea of early treatment.

Given the lack of proper testing, the immediate effect of the vaccines is still a matter for proper assessment, with the long- term consequences unknown. Accordingly, governments should have concentrated on offering them to the most vulnerable. Instead, their use has been almost universally forced on the population despite federal assurances to the contrary. Proposed crossbench legislation to stop this was blocked, notwithstanding legal advice that the Commonwealth has power to enact this.

In addition, there has been a wholly unnecessary program to vaccinate children with such ‘shoddily tested’ vaccines, despite the fact that children are in no way seriously vulnerable unless they have other medical problems. In fact, statistics indicate that only six people under 20 years of age died of the virus and four of these were under ten.

The draconian Beijing-style policies  adopted by governments have had devastating impacts on Australians, in relation to their finances, their work, their businesses, their education and their mental health. The  delays in elective surgery and in testing for all sorts of diseases, including cancer, will no doubt have a deleterious effect. The nation and especially future generations have been left a massive debt. None of this was necessary; all of this must be avoided in planning how best to respond to the next virus.

What we saw during the crisis was the culmination of the gradual whittling away under the rigorous two-party system of the protections against the phenomenon about which Acton famously warned, that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

In many ways the best  protection against this was in the intricate structure of checks and balances which once characterised our system of government, even in colonial times. But during the crisis the power to make law by regulation was secretive, slipping entirely both from proper audit in the Executive Council to ensure the propriety of the process and proper parliamentary scrutiny.

What we saw everywhere was government at the whim of one or two ruling politicians. One example was the closing down of the NSW construction industry (at a cost of $1.4 billion) apparently without medical advice. As to a solution, it is possible that as with the live cattle ban, much regulatory action will be found after years of litigation to constitute misfeasance in public office. If so, the taxpayers and not the delinquent politicians will pay.

Solutions more immediate than litigation lie in the first place with all Australians when they come to cast their votes. The future pandemic plan must involve the restoration of traditional checks and balances in our system of governance . Further. the dose of direct democracy which we already see in the requirement for a constitutional referendum should be extended as proposed in the petition change.org/takebackyourcountry so that the ruling politicians are henceforth truly accountable, 24/7, to the Australian people.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/australia-did-well-on-covid-pull-the-other-one

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Claims a baby was STRIP SEARCHED by police with an officer 'spreading the infant's legs'

The cop was clearly searching for contraband, a common problem in prisons.  And if no harm comes to the baby I see no big problem with it.  But the law neeeds to be changed, not breached

The family of an eight-month old baby is suing the state of NSW claiming he was unlawfully strip searched by a female police officer.

The boy's mother was on her way to visit his father in jail on September 2, 2018, when the officer allegedly took the baby out of his nappy, spread the his leg's and inspected his body. 

The incident outside Mid North Coast Correctional Centre near Kempsey is the second such allegation to go to court in NSW with the family of a 16-month-old boy settling out of court in a previous case. 

There is no suggestion either child's family were attempting to smuggle contraband and it is not clear if the same officer was involved in both incidents. 

When arriving for the visit about 8.30am, both the baby and mother were first examined by sniffer dogs before being directed on to a bus where the boy was allegedly further searched. 

'The police officer inspected the (baby's) naked body, ­including (his) genitals and buttocks area,' court documents seen by The Daily Telegraph state. 

The lawyers for the baby under direction of his mother are suing for unlawful detention and battery. 

'NSW laws clearly state that a child under 10 cannot be strip searched,' their lawyer Todd Scott said. 

The law in NSW also states a member of the same sex must perform any strip search. 

He added the alleged incident was a 'flagrant' violation of the rights of the baby who was unable to assert any objection. 

The family is also seeking damages in Port Macquarie District Court. 

The state on behalf of NSW Police is yet to submit a defence in the case. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10655749/Babys-family-sues-police-claiming-illegally-strip-searched-NSW.html

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A NSW school assignment that gave students the option to argue in support of the slave trade is under investigation

This Would Be A Rather Good Exercise In Thinking Outside The Box but sensitivities were understandably aroused

Lake Macquarie High School, south of Newcastle, came under fire after the history assignment handed out earlier this month was shared on social media.

It gave students the option to write as the US Economy Minister where “your report will argue for the continuation of the Slave Trade” or as the US Human Rights Minister where “your report wants to stop Slave Trade”.

For those arguing in support of slavery, students were told to outline “the positive contribution” slaves made to economies in Africa, England and the US.

They were instructed to present their viewpoint from an “empathetic perspective”, which was described as to “understand from the viewpoint of the people involved”.

Maria Alier shared the assignment on Instagram, which she had received from a friend of African descent whose siblings were in the class.

She claimed students were even told by the teacher that if they wrote a report advocating for slavery, they were more likely to receive higher marks.

Ms Alier said she was “initially baffled and then quickly insulted” by the assignment brief and couldn’t understand how it was not stopped along the way before it was handed to students.

“Asking kids to justify the unjustifiable and argue for the continuation of indescribably painful and cruel practice such as slavery sends their easily impressionable adolescent minds to the very same right wing material that could manipulate even the most forward thinking kids into a rabbit hole of bigotry and prejudice,” she told news.com.au of her reasoning to share the assignment on social media and encourage people to contact the school and department of education to voice their concerns.

“No one is saying that we can’t learn about slavery or the injustices of the past, but it is not correct to sit there and justify them.”

Ms Alier pointed out it wouldn’t be appropriate to justify the Holocaust or the Stolen Generations, so she couldn’t understand how educators thought it would be for the slave trade.

Commenters on Ms Alier’s Instagram post praised her for publicising the issue, and others shared their reactions on TikTok.

“As a person who has been racially abused for being black in the past, thank you,” one woman wrote. “Thank you so much, you are spreading information and empowering other people to speak out about injustice.”

Another replied: “This is honestly so disgusting that a school will allow this. thank you for sharing this! The school/teachers need to be held accountable.”

Jagorda Manyuon, the older sister of students in the class, told Pedestrian her family received a verbal apology from the principal after persistent complaints were made.

“[They] said ‘I’m not racist’ and I get that. Okay, cool you’re not racist – but can you still do something about this? What’s being done?” she said.

“I’m not sure an apology is enough. These things will just keep happening.”

The NSW department of education confirmed to news.com.au it was “aware of an allegation of inappropriate content appearing in an assessment task” at the school and was investigating.

“The Department has had an Anti-Racism Policy in place for 30 years,” a spokesman said.

“It promotes respect for people from all cultural, linguistic and religious backgrounds and rejects all forms of racism in schools and department offices.”

Ms Alier said what she wanted to come out of the investigation was a public apology to African students, how the department plans to ensure it doesn’t happen again, and better implementation of the school’s anti-racism policy and training.

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/parenting/school-life/nsw-school-investigated-over-proslavery-assignment/news-story/41c0d720489de501eceec6590e6e4f27

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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 March, 2022

Australia declares 'mass bleaching' at Great Barrier Reef

The usual lies, presumably.  Probably because of La Nina, Australia is having a rather cool year so global warming is an unlikely explanation for bleaching.  

And is there really any bleaching?  Viewed from a distance, corals underwater  look grey regardless of their close-up colour.  So what these galoots saw from their planes and helicopters may tell us nothing

 The last big bleaching event was caused by reduced sea levels so if there is actually any bleaching, sea levels, not warming are likely to blame

Australia's spectacular Great Barrier Reef is suffering "mass bleaching" as corals lose their colour under the stress of warmer seas, authorities said Friday, in a blow widely blamed on climate change.

The world's largest coral reef system, stretching for more than 2,300 kilometres (1,400 miles) along the northeast coast of Australia, is showing the harmful effects of the heat, said the Reef Authority.

The Great Barrier Reef, home to some 1,500 species of fish and 4,000 types of mollusc, was suffering despite the cooling effect of the La Nina weather phenomenon, which is currently influencing Australia's climate, the authority said.

Though bleached corals are under stress, they can still recover if conditions become more moderate, the Reef Authority said.

The mass bleaching report emerged four days after the United Nations began a monitoring mission to assess whether the World Heritage site is being protected from climate change.

UNESCO's mission is to assess whether the Australian government is doing enough to address threats to the Great Barrier Reef -- including climate change -- before the World Heritage Committee considers listing it as "in danger" in June.

He pressed the government to show the damaged areas to the UN mission now inspecting the reef rather than the picturesque areas that have been untouched.

"Here, corals are being cooked by temperatures up to four degrees above average, which is particularly alarming during a La Nina year when ocean temperatures are cooler."

When the UN previously threatened to downgrade the reef's World Heritage listing in 2015, Australia created a "Reef 2050" plan and poured billions of dollars into protection. 

"Unfortunately, as more severe bleaching is reported across our beloved Great Barrier Reef, we can see these devastating events are becoming more common under the continuing high rate of greenhouse gas emissions," she said.

- 'No safe limit' -

An average increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels would see more than 99 percent of the world's coral reefs unable to recover from increasingly frequent marine heatwaves, they reported in the journal PLOS Climate.

"The stark reality is that there is no safe limit of global warming for coral reefs," lead author Adele Dixon, a researcher at the University of Leeds' School of Biology, told AFP.

The 2015 Paris Agreement enjoins nearly 200 nations to keep global heating "well below" 2C.

https://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/australia-declares-mass-bleaching-at-great-barrier-reef/news-story/4a4df6c8c8599fdec7723d8c069ec779

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Chinese company exits Cubbie Station as Macquarie takes control of famed cotton property

The Chinese actually rescued Cubbie after it went broke due to drought

China’s multi-billion dollar textile giant Shandong Ruyi has finally exited its once controversial holding in Australia’s largest irrigated cotton property Cubbie Station, selling its 51 per cent interest to funds controlled by Macquarie Group.

The Chinese company had a decade long involvement with the station and in its early years of ownership came under political pressure to sell down its long time 80 per cent stake to 51 per cent.

It hit that mark in 2019 when an agricultural fund managed by Macquarie took over a 49 per cent stake.

The Macquarie-led fund has now bought the remaining 51 per cent stake in Cubbie Station, associated properties and cotton ginnery, bringing the fund’s total ownership to 100 per cent.

The sale comes amid a pullback of China’s ambitions in property and corporate Australia, and at a time that also suits Macquarie’s expansion in Australian agriculture.

The 2012 purchase of Cubbie Station by Shandong Ruyi sparked political discord about rising foreign, and in particular Chinese, investment in Australian farmland. Former Labor treasurer Wayne Swan approved the $232m deal on the condition that the Chinese group “sell down its interest in the Cubbie Group from 80 per cent to 51 per cent to an independent third party (or parties) within three years”.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison later extended Ruyi’s deadline by another three years when he was treasurer in 2016.

Cubbie Station is one of the country’s most critical agricultural assets and accounts for about 10 per cent of national cotton output. The 93,000-hectare property near Dirranbandi and St George, on the border of Queensland and NSW, also has valuable licences to store more water than Sydney Harbour.

However, before the Chinese-led purchase Cubbie Group had languished and fell into administration in 2009 with debts of about $300m.

Shandong Ruyi initially took an 80 per cent stake when its acquisition was finally approved in 2012, with Melbourne-based family company Lempriere holding the remaining 20 per cent interest. By 2016, the Chinese owners had absorbed Lempriere stake into their business, and Dubbo businessman Roger Fletcher took the remaining 20 per cent stake.

Colliers head of agribusiness, transaction services Rawdon Briggs confirmed his involvement in Shandong Ruyi’s initial sell down in 2019, but declined to comment on the latest sell-off of the company’s remaining interest.

Macquarie Asset Management, which manages the acquiring fund, is one of the country’s top operators in local agriculture and said it “looks forward to continuing Cubbie Ag’s involvement in and support for local communities”.

The company said the ownership change would “not materially change the day?to?day operations of Cubbie”. Veteran manager Paul Brimblecombe will continue as chief executive of Cubbie, and staffing remains unchanged.

The now full owners said there would also be no change to the Voluntary Water Contribution that was announced when the Macquarie fund acquired its initial interest and the area’s environment has since been transformed.

When the 2019 sale was announced the new joint-owners committed to supporting the Northern Murray Darling Basin, with a voluntary contribution of up to 10GL to the Culgoa River and Lower Balonne intersecting streams.

Ruyi and Macquarie said at the time that the 10GL would “increase the volume of water in the river at critical times and help deliver a range of community and environmental outcomes.

Cubbie’s three properties are near Dirranbandi and St George in south west Queensland and span 93,700 hectares, including 22,100 hectares of irrigated cropping.

The last time before the 2019 deal that Cubbie took water from the river system was in April 2017 when it drew 14GL, or about 9 per cent of the 156GL that passed through St George.

After the Ruyi-led consortium bought Cubbie Station in 2012 for $232m it poured more than $26m into maintaining and improving the efficiency of Cubbie’s operations and put more than $25m buying and upgrading the Dirranbandi ginnery, and also funded major low-season maintenance programs.

The Chinese parent group has been under financial pressure.

Last month, creditors of Shandong Ruyi said the Chinese company had defaulted on a loan used to buy Lycra Co. and that they would seek to gain control of the stretchy-fabric maker.

That move was but the latest financial challenge for Ruyi, the company assembled by textile magnate Qiu Yafu, who had promised to challenge the likes of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE as a global luxury conglomerate.

Macquarie’s purchase is well-timed as cotton price have spiked – doubling since 2019 – and despite challenges by the drought since then Cubbie Station is now receiving heavy water flows after the floods.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/property/chinas-shandong-ruyi-exits-cubbie-station-as-macquarie-takes-control-of-famed-cotton-property/news-story/e8ba88b7e27b2f94888c1ee50c4aba6e

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Group of Eight universities boost their share of international students

The Group of Eight research-intensive universities have boosted their share of international students during the past year of the Covid pandemic.

New data from the Go8 shows its universities enrolled nearly half (48 per cent) of international students in January this year compared with 41 per cent in January last year. The figures indicate that students are more wedded to what they perceive as the more prestigious degrees at Go8 universities, compared with the generally lower-cost courses at other universities.

The Go8 universities also enrol a higher proportion of Chinese students – who have proved more willing to continue studying during the pandemic – than other universities, either online or at study centres set up in Chinese cities. In January this year the Go8 market share of Chinese students enrolled in higher education courses in Australia rose to 75 per cent, compared with 69 per cent in January last year.

Overall, the number of Chinese students studying in Go8 universities is still lower than a year ago. In January this year the figure was 65,663, compared with 70,760 in January last year.

But even in the Indian market, where students look for lower-fee courses and the research-intensive universities attract a far smaller segment of the market, the Go8 still improved its share of students over the past year. In January this year the Go8 had a 17 per cent slice of the Indian market, compared with 14 per cent in January last year.

Again this was achieved despite a drop in the number of students from India enrolled in Go8 universities. In January this year the figure was 4083, compared with 6130 in January last year.

The Go8 data gives a fuller picture of the latest international student statistics released by the federal Education Department, which shows 201,052 international students were enrolled in higher education in January this year, 23 per cent less than in January last year.

In all education sectors (including vocational, schools and English language tuition), there were 364,643 international students in January, down 21 per cent on January last year.

The worst hit sector is English language tuition where 8,187 international students were enrolled in January this year, 52 per cent less than in January last year.

Because English language tuition relies on students spending a relatively short time in Australia for courses of up to six months, it was quickly devastated by the Covid border closures. This year’s enrolments are 83 per cent less than two years ago

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/group-of-eight-unis-boost-their-share-of-international-students/news-story/18e757603dd49fb89df12a687b890549

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Lies, damned lies, and Covid statistics

New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet lied. The New South Wales Health Department lied. The question remains, did other state premiers misrepresent Covid health policies?

No, this is not an assumption, unfounded allegation, or exaggeration.

Several weeks ago, Dominic Perrottet openly admitted to deliberately misleading the public in a bizarre rant that exposed recent health orders in New South Wales as nothing more than superficial (and expensive) measures to make the Department of Education ‘feel better’ about children returning to school.

Perrottet referred to the re-installment of QR testing and the state-wide use of RAT testing in schools as having ‘no utility’ and ‘no science’.

‘The most ironic one I thought was we [NSW government] ended up bringing QR codes back when we weren’t even tracking and tracing. There was no science behind it at all. It had zero utility. But there was a massive campaign and when those campaigns get run what it does is that it depletes confidence. And that kind of reporting, as we have seen over this period of time has been depleting confidence in our people. So we actually brought it back for one reason only – to instil confidence so that people would go out using QR codes.’

Yes, our supposed ‘trust the science’ Covid-Safe society was unable to handle the truth, so the government made businesses stand there and watch people check-in to nowhere for weeks, and police fined them if they refused to partake in the theatre of nonsense.

According to an ABC article at the time, Perrottet’s decision came after a National Cabinet meeting (the contents of which are protected after the Prime Minister passed legislation to deter Freedom of Information requests). Perrottet explained the decision to reintroduce QR check-ins was created as part of a range of measures that would ‘assist with contact tracing’.

What is this if not a lie?

The NSW websites still says, ‘From 18 February 2022, QR check-ins will only be required for nightclubs, strip clubs, sex on premises venues and for music festivals with more than 1,000 people. Hospitals, aged and disability facilities may use their existing systems for recording visitors.’

Is anyone using this information? It seems unlikely, and even if they are, what is the scientific value of tracing a virus with 195,000 active cases?

By far the more disturbing insight offered by Perrottet was the abuse of the state’s children to make the Education sector ‘feel better’.

‘When we announced schools going back, the media would rush to find the scariest epidemiologist who was out there saying “every child across New South Wales would die”. And that was a problem, because we had to instil confidence. So what did we do? Together we agreed we would go and get all these Rapid Antigen Tests – which was a massive fee,’ said the Premier.

Instead of standing his ground and defending the much-lauded ‘science’ of NSW Health – something that citizens were told that they could not question when it was destroying their businesses and holding them hostage in their homes – Perrottet implemented measures to keep the media quiet.

With the state in a financial mess, Perrottet authorised the NSW Department of Health to spend over $57 million on Rapid Antigen Tests for school students to make the Department of Education feel better about hypochondriac parents and teachers.

Dubbed the ‘Covid Smart Plan’ to (unnecessarily) assist the return of children to school, it remains proudly advertised on the government’s website – even after the Premier rubbished it as old-fashioned propaganda.

‘Premier Dominic Perrottet said supporting students to return safely to the classroom is vital after two years of disruption to their education. […] New COVID-smart measures will help make this happen, including surveillance testing both students and staff twice weekly with RATS.’

Compare this to the Premier’s candid comments in late February.

‘I mean, we had to procure – we procured millions of these tests and had the plan together and distributed them before schools started to three thousand schools across our state and five thousand childcare and early childcare education centres.

‘And by doing that together and having that plan – and this is another interesting thing about the pandemic – [the Department of] Health completely disagreed with this approach, by the way, they didn’t see the point of having surveillance testing, but [the Department of] Education wanted it because we need to once again instil confidence in our teachers and instil confidence in our parents.’

This is a lie that continues in print and as policy. Why hasn’t it been retracted with an apology?

When these revelations came to light on social media, the majority of the press allowed the embarrassing truth to sink quietly beneath the headlines, probably because they had invested thousands of pages in justifying and congratulating the exposed health measures – and also because Perrottet name-dropped the press as being part of the problem.

There were no repercussions for this deception – not for the Department of Education, the Department of Health, or the media.

At least Perrottet offered an admission to the fabrication of Covid health orders at this late stage of the pandemic, but what about his peers in National Cabinet?

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk ran near-identical RAT programs for school children earlier this year while the Federal Minister for Health, Greg Hunt, competed for bragging rights.

They have said nothing.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/03/lies-damned-lies-and-covid-statistics/

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Good News About "Threatened" marsupial

A recent Epoch Times article details the resurgence of one iconic Australian animal species impacted by the “Black Summer” fires of 2019-2020. The story out of Australia demonstrates, once again, the resilience of animal species confronted with disturbed habitat and is good news for anyone concerned about the impact of large wildfires on vulnerable animals elsewhere.

In the article, “Australia’s Rare Potoroos Bouncing Back After Bushfires,” Epoch Times reports that in December 2021, in the aftermath of large fires across Australia, the rabbit-sized relative of kangaroos called “potoroos” were spotted via camera monitoring systems in 35 of 120 monitored locations. The number of sites has increased since then.

“On March 2022, environment minister Lily D’Ambrosio announced that this has increased to 53 sites across over 300,000 hectares of land,” Epoch Times writes.

The good news for the potoroo has not been widely covered by corporate media outlets. The resurgence of the marsupial serves as an example of nature recovering from bushfires, which at the time were hyped as proof of the impacts of climate change.

Even before the Black Summer fires, alarmists claimed that climate change would decimate the Australian native mammal populations by more frequent or intense fires and associated habitat destruction.

Meteorological data discussed in Climate Realism show there is no meaningful trend of increasing or decreasing rainfall across Australia.  In addition, data does not suggest Australian wildfires are becoming more extreme or widespread as the earth modestly warms. To the contrary, data show a declining trend of wildfires since at least the 1970s. NASA satellite data show the amount of acres lost to wildfire annually across the globe decreased by 24 percent since 1998, as described on Climate Realism, here.

As with other fires, new environmental policies, such as limiting the clearing brush, timber, and halting controlled burns may be most responsible for the severity of the 2019-2020 bushfires, following, as they did, multiple years of abundant rainfall and growth. Evidence indicates that many of the Australian fires were lit on purpose by arsonists. Regarding wildfires, the co-director of Australia’s National Centre for Research in Bushfire and Arson said “[a]bout 85 per cent are related to human activity, 13 per cent confirmed arson and 37 per cent suspected arson.”

Invasive grass species and mismanagement of fuel load were also be to blame for the out of control bushfires.

Besides the fact that there is no increasing trend of wildfire extent or severity in Australia, fire is completely natural to the landscape, and even essential to many native species’ survival and health. This is most famously seen in some eucalyptus trees which need fire to germinate their seeds. Eucalyptus are highly flammable, which assists their reproduction.

Rather than climate change induced wildfires, invasive species brought to Australia by humans, like cats and foxes, and habitat loss to development, pose the greatest threat to all small native ground dwelling species. In fact, one of the strategies implemented to aid the potoroo’s continued rebound mentioned by Epoch Times is to set traps and poisons for foxes that are known to kill the marsupial.  This active approach to helping the potoroo numbers grow in their original habitat will do far more to promote the species flourishing than limiting fossil fuel use to fight climate change.

https://climaterealism.com/2022/03/thanks-epoch-times-for-reporting-on-the-good-news-about-this-roo/

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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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25 March, 2022 

Australia faces the near certainty of new Covid variants, waning ­immunity from vaccination and rising cases as it heads into winter, epidemiologists have warned

As far as I can see, the claim below that our existing vaccines stop Omicron is false.  But even if it is true, the death rate from Omicron is the tiniest fraction of the population,  much smaller than other causes of death -- such as road accidents, heart disease etc. And the deaths are mainly among the old and ill, who would probably die soon anyway.   

I am alive today because of an immune-boosting therapy and am grateful for it but I don't think that the whole society should be victimized to prolong the life of a few elderly.  I have had two shots of AstraZeneca some time ago but, failing no new evidence,  I can see no reason to get any "booster".  I am 78 so it is a considered decision.  I will however go along with it if it becomes mandatory -- for the sake of peace

Burnet Institute chief executive Brendan Crabb said Australia’s lagging booster rate was “extremely worrying” and blamed the states for pursuing policies that had made people believe the virus was no longer a serious threat and that life could go back to normal.

“We’re going to face a situation with new viruses, waning immunity that will lead to a virus surge and a highly disrupted society,” Professor Crabb said. “The thing we do know is that unpredictable variants are likely, and waning ­immunity is definite, so we need to plan for that or else we will be caught out once again with all the health and economic and social disaster that comes from that.”

Australia’s booster rate of the population aged over 12 is just under 60 per cent compared to a 94 per cent double vaccination rate. The rollout in the five to 11 age group has also been sluggish, with only 49 per cent of children having received their first dose.

Despite the slow booster take-up, Australia’s vaccine advisory group is preparing to announce a fourth dose strategy, likely to ­initially be recommended for ­immunocompromised people.

A major study in the New ­England Journal of Medicine, ­released on Thursday and based on data from young healthcare workers in Israel, found that a fourth dose of the Pfizer vaccine can restore antibody levels to the peak seen after the third booster dose, but does not boost them any further. The scientists who carried out the study said this indicated people’s maximum immune ­response was seen after three doses, and a fourth would have only marginal benefits in young healthy people.

The study comes as the Omircon subvariant BA. 2 continues to spread, fuelling rising case numbers particularly in NSW, where cases exceeded 24,000 on Thursday for the second day in a row. As well, a new variant dubbed Deltacron – a hybrid of the Delta and Omicron variants – was being monitored around the world.

“We’re going to continue to see new viruses, that is a certainty,” Professor Crabb said. “A third of the world has never seen one dose of vaccine, and those countries are factories for new variants.

“The lower third dose rate of vaccination in Australia is ­extremely worrying, and I think fostered by the confusing attitude people get from the top, from federal and state governments, that says ‘don’t worry too much about Covid anymore’. But as the virus has become Omicron, the third dose became absolutely essential. It really is the difference between possibly saving your life or having severe disease or not.”

Deakin University epidemiologist Catherine Bennett said Australia was likely to have double the number of cases of Covid-19 in ICU per 1000 people during winter than Denmark had, because Denmark’s booster rate was 13 per cent higher than Australia’s.

“At the peak of their Omicron wave, for every 1000 cases they had one person in ICU. In Australia at the moment, for every 1000 cases we have two people in ICU.

“That’s the difference. Push up your booster rate by 10 per cent in your total population and you can potentially halve the ICU rate.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/covid19-triple-threat-fears-as-winter-looms/news-story/abe3de13826e4e0fbb34f9fecb90da61

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Bald Hills Wind Farm ordered to stop emitting night-time noise, pay neighbours damages in landmark ruling

A Victorian court has ordered a wind farm in the state's south east to stop emitting noise at night in a momentous court decision.

The Victorian Supreme Court today found the noise from the Bald Hills Wind Farm at Tarwin Lower created a nuisance to its neighbours ordering damages and an injunction.

John Zakula and Noel Uren took civil action against the wind farm last year, telling the court that "roaring" intermittent noise from the wind turbines caused health problems and loss of sleep.

In a precedent-setting decision, Justice Melinda Richards said the company had not complied with its noise permit conditions and ordered a permanent injunction over the wind farm, with an initial three-month period to fix the issue.

The injunction will require the Bald Hills operators to "take necessary measures to abate" emitting loud noise at night.

"Bald Hills has not established that the sound received at either Mr Uren's house or Mr Zakula's house complied with the noise conditions in the permit at any time," Justice Richards said.

"Noise from the turbines on the wind farm has caused a substantial interference with both plaintiffs' enjoyment of their land. "Specifically, their ability to sleep undisturbed at night in their own beds in their own homes."

Damages for 'distress' and 'annoyance'

The court ordered the operators of Bald Hills Wind Farm to pay the men a total of $260,000.

The court said Mr Zakula, who lives about a kilometre from one of the company's wind turbines, is entitled to damages of $84,000 for "distress, inconvenience and annoyance".

Mr Uren sold his property next to the wind farm in 2018, but the court said he should be paid $46,000 in damages.

Justice Richards also ordered the wind farm operator to pay aggravated damages of an additional $84,000 for Mr Zakula and $46,000 to Mr Uren.

"Bald Hills' conduct towards both Mr Uren and Mr Zakula was high-handed and warrants an award of aggravated damages," Justice Richards said.

In her judgement, the Supreme Court judge also made a pointed comment about the renewable energy push and the rights of neighbouring landholders.

"The generation of renewable energy by the wind farm is a socially valuable activity, and it is in the public interest for it to continue."

She said it should not be a "binary choice between the generation of clean energy by the wind farm and a good night's sleep for its neighbours". "It should be possible to achieve both."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-25/bald-hills-wind-farm-to-pay-damages/100938656

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NZ refugee deal ‘not open to future arrivals’

Australia has implemented a deal with the Ardern government to resettle up to 150 refugees a year in New Zealand nearly a decade after an agreement was struck in 2013.

Under the three-year deal, New Zealand will accept up to 450 refugees who have been banned from ever settling in Australia because they arrived by boat or were intercepted at sea.

They include refugees currently on Nauru and others on temporary protection visas in Australia.

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said the deal would also not be available to future boat ­arrivals, and that no one who ­attempted to come to Australia by boat would ever be allowed to stay.

“This arrangement does not apply to anyone who attempts an illegal maritime journey to Australia in the future,” she said. “Australia remains firm – illegal maritime arrivals will not settle here permanently. Anyone who attempts to breach our borders will be turned back or sent to Nauru.”

Those to be transferred under the agreement must be confirmed as refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and not be on a path to ­resettlement in the US or another country.

Labor home affairs spokeswoman Kristina Keneally welcomed the announcement, describing it as a “humiliating backflip” by Scott Morrison who said as recently as 2018 that the arrangement would restart the people-smuggling trade.

“(Former home affairs minister) Peter Dutton foolishly backed-in Mr Morrison, saying New Zealand is being ‘marketed and pitched’ as a destination by people-smugglers,” Senator ­Keneally said. “That was not true then, and is not true now – as the Morrison government has been forced to admit today.”

She said the policy reversal was a bid to protect inner-city Liberal seats, and declared “only Labor will restore humanity to Australia’s immigration policies, while also protecting Australia’s borders”.

The 450-person agreement won’t be able to resettle all of the 112 refugees on Nauru together with the 1168 who have come from offshore detention to Australia for medical treatment.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/nz-refugee-deal-not-open-to-future-arrivals/news-story/1bedffb3854c88b8495f7b55dd3eac90

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Albo flunks it

This week Australians, and in particular Australian women, were given a unique insight into the true character of the man who wishes to lead this nation – and indeed, come the end of May, may be our next prime minister. And it is not a pretty sight.

The saga and sad death of Senator Kimberley Kitching is a defining moment. After years of modern Labor lecturing and haranguing not only their political opponents in the Liberal party but every Australian male in and out of the workplace about their ‘toxic masculinity’ and their unacceptable bullying and poor treatment of women in the workplace, it turns out that one of the most dangerous workplaces of all is in fact within the Labor party. 

How else to explain the words of Kimberley’s best friend, secretary of the Health Workers Union, Diana Asmar, who wrote in the Herald-Sun that, ‘Having spent much of the last 48 hours of her life with her and holding her hand in the middle of a suburban Strathmore street as her soul left her, I have no doubt that the workplace bullying Kimberley endured by her Labor colleagues, inflicted on her over many years, significantly worsened her health. Specifically, she was under severe stress caused by workplace bullying at the hands of Labor’s senior leadership group.’

Faced with this appalling allegation, Anthony Albanese has shown his true character. He chose to duck and to hide. To obfuscate and to evade. To dissemble and to distract. There will be no inquiry into the alleged shocking behaviour of Labor’s most senior women, we are told, because apparently Kimberley didn’t ‘formally’ complain, or some such officious twaddle.

Let every woman in the Australian workforce now know that as far as Labor’s leadership team is concerned, your safety from bullying and mental anguish at work counts for nothing if you happen to challenge the groupthink of the favoured, pampered, self-important, female Labor elite.

The man who may soon be the prime minister of this nation has defined himself, under pressure, as a weakling, a coward and a hypocrite. A man who chooses protecting the Labor brand over investigating the most egregious allegations against his own senators. Who chooses to dismiss the suffering of a dead colleague because she didn’t fill in the right forms.

Which begs the question, how would a Prime Minister Anthony Albanese behave under genuine sustained and intense pressure? The world is a far more dangerous place than even just a few years ago when ‘Albo’ became leader of the opposition. In the next parliamentary term we are likely to see some truly terrifying world events unfold. A nuclear Iran. Russia continuing to flex its muscles. China on the march. A flailing American president. Roaring inflation. Who knows what nightmares lie ahead? If ‘Albo’ can’t even stand up to three ‘mean girls’, how on earth will he deal with the mean boys?

https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/mean-boys

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Tougher laws introduced for ‘economic vandals’ after third day of climate protests

Protesters who disrupt any bridge or tunnel across greater Sydney will now face penalties of up to $22,000 or two years jail, as climate change activists caused chaos at Port Botany for a third consecutive day.

The state government on Thursday said tougher regulations were needed to deter protesters after emergency services were forced to remove a man suspended from a pole across a container railway blocking all trains in and out of Port Botany.

In a further escalation, federal Immigration Minister Alex Hawke exercised his power to cancel the visas of two German nationals involved in the protests this week.

Mr Hawke said he had cancelled the visas of both men on “good order grounds” and said they would be removed from Australia as soon as possible.

“People have to understand we have zero tolerance for temporary visa holders committing crimes in Australia,” he said.

Acting Premier Paul Toole insisted enhanced state penalties would crack down on protesters that impacted the daily lives of the community.

“Groups like Blockade Australia, they have gotten a lot smarter than ever before. They’ve got legal teams that are actually doing work for them to actually work out what the penalties might be,” he said.

“We’ve had enough. We’re not going to tolerate this any longer.”

An amendment will be made immediately making it an offence to disrupt any bridge or tunnel across Sydney. The government will then bring legislation to Parliament to expand the law to include roads and industrial and transport facilities.

NSW Police will also establish a strike force dedicated to addressing the climate protesters, targeted to the Port Botany region with mounted police, dogs and aviation at its disposal.

“Strike Force Guard will ensure Police are always one step ahead of the protesters to make sure we crack down on this economic vandalism,” Mr Toole said.

Attorney-General Mark Speakman said the change was needed because the current fine of $2,200 was failing to deter activists.

“That’s not enough of a deterrent to economic vandals,” Mr Speakman said. “It’s almost a small license fee to pay to cause millions of dollars of havoc so that needs to be increased.”

Roads Minister Natalie Ward said the new legislation would be brought to the parliament urgently.

Thursday’s protest, which began about 7.30am, followed two demonstrations by a man on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The German national suspended himself from a nine-metre pole across a busy intersection in Port Botany on Tuesday before climbing a pole on Sirius Bridge on Wednesday. He was arrested by police on both occasions.

NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Peter Cotter said officers were now searching for one of the German brothers charged over this week’s protest.

“His brother, who we are looking for at the moment we ask, please come forward and make it very easy for both the authorities and yourself,” Mr Cotter said.

Two women were also charged on Thursday morning as a result of the protests.

Police said officers were called to Port Botany following reports two vehicles parked on Penrhyn Road were blocking the entrance to the container terminal in both directions.

One of the protesters, a 71-year-old woman, was sitting in a truck with a bike lock secured to herself and the steering wheel. The second protester, a 57-year-old woman, was sitting on top of a second truck.

The women were arrested and charged with encouraging the carrying on operation for the commission of a crime, not obeying police directions and preventing free passage of a person, vehicle or vessel.

Both were given conditional bail to appear at Waverley Local Court on April 20.

Speaking on 2GB radio on Thursday morning, federal Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews slammed the protest group.

“Their behaviour is appalling. I encourage them to stop,” she said.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/appalling-protesters-create-chaos-at-port-botany-for-a-third-consecutive-day-20220324-p5a7fe.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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24 March, 2022 

Walgett Community College has been notoriously violent for years. Why hasn't that changed?

This is a rather pathetic piece of elephantine invisibility.  Both Walgett and its school have a large Aboriginal population.  And, largely because of the sense of grievance instilled into them by Leftists, Aborigines in isolated communities tend to be angry people who act out their anger.  With other Aboriginal communities only an enhanced  police presence has served to calm things down.  Walgett needs that too. A police presence in schools is common in America.  It is needed in the Walgett school as well

Walgett Community College, the only high school in the northern NSW town of 2,145, has seen 20 principals come and go over the past 15 years

But there is high turnover among the student population too, with young kids witnessing and being subjected to acts that have left them traumatised and unwilling to return.

Felicity Forbes, now 15, said she had never experienced a panic attack in her life before she started high school, but that changed within her first week at the college.

"There was a lockdown, everyone was stationed up against the wall," the 15-year-old said. "The main kid in the situation was very violent. "It was terrifying as an 11-year-old to be seeing those kinds of things.

"During a lockdown there's constant beeping. "Students are told to pull blinds down, lock doors and have no interaction with anyone outside."

Felicity developed severe anxiety during her four years at the school and now, along with her sister, is learning at home via distance education.

Now in Year 11, Felicity says hearing an alarm tone or the sound of something smashing can trigger a panic attack — and that she is struggling to catch up with the curriculum.

"It definitely impacted my education," she said. "When there was a lockdown, that would usually be it for the day."

Slammed onto concrete

Another Walgett student, 16-year-old Anicia Brown, left town after being bashed at school. "Anicia's about 1,500 kilometres away with my parents in Emerald, central Queensland," her mother Kylie McKenzie said. "She was assaulted at school twice.

"To have to basically get her out of town so that she could live a normal teenager's life without the worry of being bashed is really hard. "It was hard on her and it was hard on us, but we've had to do it for her mental health."

Ms McKenzie says she has seen a video of her daughter being attacked by students after school. "They threw her down on the concrete, they had hold of her head and were kicking into her," she said.  "It was really horrible and she was terrified.

"Her mental health has been absolutely shot, knowing that if she comes home, she's being told, 'We're going to get you'."

A fight 'nobody wants'

Parents say an independent investigation must be undertaken to stop the cycle of disadvantage, and say they do not understand why the college's issues have gone unaddressed for so long.

Sick of waiting, Felicity's mum Rebecca Trindall is campaigning for students to be able to attend school in Lightning Ridge.

She wants legislation to change to allow out-of-area enrolments and a direct bus route for the 150-kilometre round trip.

"It seems that nobody wants to be part of this fight," Ms Trindall said. "I think it might turn into a race issue, but let's be clear — it's not about being black or white. "It's a community issue, it's an education issue.

"These kids deserve better — Walgett needs a high school, but they need to clean it out. "They need to get it right, because we're losing precious time."

NSW Department of Education data shows 149 students were enrolled at the high school in 2021. Only two attended the school for 90 per cent or more of the year.

Ms Trindall said a lack of funding was not to blame and said she wanted the efficacy of the programs at the school to be investigated. "The money's there, the programs are there," she said.  "Where are the outcomes? Where's the change?

"I look forward to a full investigation, because it's actually disgusting to have all the resources and no outcomes."

No comment from Minister

State MP Roy Butler is backing the calls for an independent review. He says his correspondence with NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell has been "fluffy".

"She says, 'Yes, we're working on fixing it, we're addressing the problems'," Mr Butler said. "But on the ground, for those teachers, students and parents — they're not seeing those changes."

Mr Butler said an investigation would be best led by someone who understood the system and had lived experience.

"Education would contract the suitable person, terms of reference would be established in consultation with the Department of Education and community," he said.

"The person I would suggest is a retired principal who would be arm's length from department."

Mr Butler said it would take an "independent set of eyes to get to the bottom of it".

"Ask the staff — 'Where is it going wrong? Where are the blockages?'," he said.

"Why are we stuck here and why have we been stuck here for so long?"

Ms Mitchell and the Department of Education declined interview requests.

In a statement, an education department spokesperson said the department was committed to providing staff and students with a high-quality local school.

"In partnership with the local community, we are committed to resolving some unique challenges the school is facing," the spokesperson said.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/walgett-community-college-has-been-notoriously-violent-for-years-why-hasn-t-that-changed/ar-AAVnzeX?ocid=winp1taskbar

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Queensland Ambulance paramedics’ struggle revealed in Right to Information release

Paramedics sleeping at stations, patients waiting almost 11 hours, officers so tired they require a “welfare check” – welcome to Queensland’s ambulance anarchy.

Exhausted paramedics have been stood down from shifts due to fatigue, left to sleep at their station and forced to use personal cars due to an ambulance shortage as Queenslanders wait hours for assistance, documents reveal.

An almost 1000-page Right to Information dossier has revealed significant incidents of ramping and patients waiting almost 11 hours for an ambulance as Queensland Ambulance Service paramedics struggle to keep up with demand.

QAS station operations briefs, released to the Opposition through a Right to Information request, detail significant challenges at Southport where patients faced significant delays for several days.

A shift report for October 3 reveals 30 code 2A patients were waiting for an ambulance, the longest for 10.5 hours.

The dossier reveals several incidents where paramedics were told to expect delays due to ramping at hospitals, leaving patients waiting several hours for assistance.

On several occasions paramedics were stood down from their shift due to fatigue, and one incident noted a “welfare check” was done on a tired officer who needed to sleep at the station before driving home.

It comes as quarterly hospital performance figures for the October to December quarter revealed little change, with 74 per cent of patients seen within clinically-recommended time frames – a one per cent drop on the previous quarter.

Statewide emergency department presentations rose 9 per cent to 640,258 during the final quarter of last year.

Logan has the highest rate of ambulance ramping in southeast Queensland, with 55 per cent of ambulances left waiting outside hospitals.

In the Redlands ramping has increased 18 per cent on the previous quarter, with one in two now ramped.

Opposition Leader David Crisafulli said the state government had failed to address problems within Queensland Health despite acknowledging there was a problem.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/qld-politics/queensland-ambulance-paramedics-struggle-revealed-in-right-to-information-release/news-story/45399bfe45a66c4338792ed23d0ddc61

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Liberal-led council threatens not to collect bins with anti-Morrison stickers

Philip Ruddock’s Hornsby Shire Council has threatened not to collect the rubbish of residents with anti-Scott Morrison stickers on their bins after receiving a complaint from an “offended” neighbour.

The stickers feature photographs of Mr Morrison holding a lump of coal in Parliament, as well as Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, and are accompanied by captions such as “bin him” and “chuck them out”.

They were originally produced by the Smart Energy Council – whose board includes climate campaigners Simon Holmes a Court and Oliver Yates – until an intervention by the charities regulator. They are now disseminated by a separate company run by a Smart Energy Council employee.

Asquith resident Peter Rickwood affixed the stickers to his wheelie bins earlier this year. In recent weeks he received a letter from Hornsby Shire Council warning he was obscuring the council’s logo on the bins, and it was “not appropriate” to use council property to convey political messages.

The letter, signed by council’s waste manager Chris Horsey, said Mr Rickwood must remove the stickers or “you risk council’s collection contractor not servicing your bins as they cannot identify council’s logo on the bin”. It also warned the council may remove the stickers or replace the bins entirely.

Mr Rickwood said he found the letter “a bit weird given there are plenty of other people who have stickers on their bins”, such as those supporting football teams.

“It seems a bit odd that they’re suddenly choosing to police this no-sticker policy when it happens to be political,” he said.

A Hornsby Shire Council spokesperson said the council did not allow unauthorised signage to be applied to its assets, including bins, bus shelters or buildings. The council had only sent one letter to one resident about this particular issue, the spokesperson said.

“The matter was brought to our attention through a complaint from a resident who was offended by the content of the signage. However, this rule would apply to signage of any type applied to council assets where a complaint is made,” the spokesperson said.

Mr Ruddock, the Liberal mayor of Hornsby, is also the NSW Liberal Party president and was a long-serving minister in the Howard government, including as attorney-general.

He said the intervention was not his decision, nor was it a decision made by councillors – but the bins were council property and it was “quite inappropriate” for residents to decorate them with political propaganda.

“Put it on your front letterbox,” Mr Ruddock suggested. “Political advertising should not be undertaken except when there’s an election on, and there’s no election on yet. [Also] we don’t believe they should do it on council property.”

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/liberal-led-council-threatens-not-to-collect-bins-with-anti-morrison-stickers-20220322-p5a6tr.html

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Unemployment payments plunging to historic low

Australia’s unemployment welfare bill is set to plummet, with next week’s budget revealing ­almost 200,000 fewer people claiming the dole by 2023 than forecast last year, as the government frames an election contest with Labor over spending ­restraint and budget repair.

In an interview with The Australian, Finance Minister Simon Birmingham said the number of JobSeeker recipients was projected to hit historically low levels.

Senator Birmingham on Tuesday also left the door open to a temporary cut to fuel excise as a bowser fix for cost-of-living pressures and hinted that the pandemic-induced $1 trillion debt bill would be avoided.

While the federal government last year legislated a rise in Jobseeker payments of $50 a fortnight, the overall taxpayer burden was forecast to fall. JobSeeker numbers were on track to dip under pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2022-23, with the unemployment rate expected to drop under 4 per cent within months.

“In terms of JobSeeker numbers, and therefore JobSeeker payments as a share of payments and share of the economy, we are trending towards historic lows in the amount that other taxpayers are having to contribute towards the safety net for Australians out of work,” Senator Birmingham said.

“That is one of the funda­mental dividends of a strong economy: that low unemployment rates give us the double bonus of lower payments on ­social safety net and higher revenue from Australians contributing and therefore paying taxes as part of those contributions.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/jobless-bill-plunges-to-historic-low-simon-birmingham/news-story/206bf7396ae343d48f60c74c32c8a63f

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Also see my other blogs.  Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH) 

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH) 

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH) 

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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23 March, 2022

Sharing power with people of colour

The good old Leftist racism again below.  Why cannot we judge people's competence without referring to their race?  If the agitators below were to come up with just one excample of a minority person who missed out on a prominent job when a less competent mainstream person got it, then they might have made a case.  But they did not.  

And judging competence needs to be multidimensional.  A person who is otherwise competent but who has a thick accent or an intrusive religion could quite rightly be judged as not ideal for a position involving a lot of contact with the public

And note that many people with a minority background in Australia were not born here.  And it can take a lifetime to build up the social skills and competencies to succeed in the political sphere.  You have to be perceived as "one of the boys" (or girls) to be politically successful -- and that can take very fine tuning indeed.  Many try but few succeed

And note that, ever since the conservatives put the very Aboriginal Neville Bonner into the Australian parliament, there have been many others elected who have some Aboriginal background.  There have been 52 Indigenous members of the ten Australian legislatures.  The Minister for Indigenous Australians in the current Federal government -- Ken Wyatt -- identifies as Aboriginal

So the claim that minorities are systematically kept out of power in Australia is blatant rubbish on several levels.  It's just another Leftist whine and just another example of the Leftist obsession with race

The Diversity Council of Australia says racism is "when an individual or organisation discriminates, excludes, or disadvantages someone because of their race, colour, descent, nationality, ethnicity, religion, and/or immigrant status".

Other social scientists and academics also argue that racism requires both racial prejudice and institutional power. But it's a contentious definition because there are several levels of racism, such as internalised or interpersonal racism.

What one can't deny, though, is the fact that those who are in power, such as in governmental institutions and workplaces, are overwhelmingly white.

For example, the Australian Human Rights Commission, in a 2018 report, found that about 95 per cent of senior leaders in Australia came from an Anglo-Celtic or European background. Only 0.4 per cent are Indigenous Australians and under 5 per cent had a non-European and non-Indigenous Australian background.

"The people who make decisions about who can come into the elite are the people who are the current members. And they are very reluctant to recognise quality in people from backgrounds they don't understand," Mr Jakubowicz said.

What 'be a little less white' means

Anti-racism educator Robin DiAngelo says white people need to stop being defensive, and start talking about racism.

Peter Mousaferiadis, the founder and CEO of Cultural Infusion, said that as a result, the created system gives people who are connected to that cultural hegemony a privilege — or "white privilege" — while other people outside the group miss out.

The belief that white people have superior knowledge, opinions and capabilities is an obstacle for people of colour to gain similar power in society. Adding to that is an additional barrier for those whose native language isn't English.

That's why the focus should be shifted to having a wide representation of backgrounds, to help debunk that thinking.

"If we focus on representation, then we're going to create organisations and systems that mirror the environment," Mr Mousaferiadis said.

"Representation will iron out power for one particular group. The power will become more evenly [shared]."

But if we fail to do this, and if organisations don't mirror the reality of diversity, it can create tension.

Let's talk about racism, not cultural diversity

Racism is so "systemic" that it's "embedded" in workplaces, according to the Racism at Work report published by the Diversity Council Australia (DCA) on Monday.

Dr Virginia Mapedzahama, a co-author of the report, said those words focus on the "positive or celebratory things" and obscure a painful truth. "If we just concentrate on things like harmony, there's the side that we're not actually focusing [on]. There's another conversation that was silenced and we are not having," she said. 

Like "harmony", words like "diversity" and the bureaucratic acronym "Culturally and Linguistically Diverse" (CALD) often miss the point.

Would we be better off without 'CALD'?

Our varied backgrounds and experiences are all classified as culturally and linguistically diverse by the government. But the term's limitations may outweigh its utility.

"CALD is a problematic term. It derives meaning from the supposition that within a given population there is a subset who can be aggregated into a separate category," Mr Mousaferiadis told the ABC.

He said the continuation of accepting the CALD concept perpetuates the problems that organisations are attempting to overcome because it "normalises and entrenches the binary" between CALD and the dominant cultural group.

Further, it's an unhelpfully blunt term for a wide array of experiences — it can include Australians whose ancestors arrived more than 150 years ago from China and speak fluent English, as well as the Afghan refugee family who arrived in Australia a month ago.

The term "has had its day", Mr Mousaferiadis said, adding the focus should not be on identity itself, but what communities actually need.

Dr Virginia Mapedzahama said while concepts of diversity and social cohesion are important, "if we use those conversations as entry points to discussing racism, we're not going to get to eradicating racism at work". 

That's why many social scientists and anti-racism advocates keep reminding us to listen to the voices of people with lived experiences of racism.

But there are also barriers there — as Mr Jakubowicz points out, the linguistic aspect is often forgotten in discussions about racism, and we may unconsciously or consciously discriminate against people who have different accents.

When we don't hear accents in mainstream media, such as radio or television, it reinforces biases, Mr Jakubowicz said. "They're quite comfortable with people who look different, but very uncomfortable with those who sound different," he said.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-23/talking-about-racism-during-celebration-of-harmony-week/100925672

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Tax exempt charity donations may not be used for political purposes

The Smart Energy Council was forced to abandon a witty campaign using stickers on wheelie bins showing the Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce holding coal with slogans that said: “Bin him” or “Chuck them out”.

It risked the Smart Energy Council’s charitable status. It received first a phone call and then an email from the Charities Commission (ACNC) which said it was in breach of charity laws. Losing that charitable status means those who donate aren’t eligible for tax deductions and the charity is liable to income tax, even if the organisation wasn’t using those funds for the allegedly political purpose.

The council’s chief executive John Grimes said its lawyers were prepared to have the fight, but the executive team decided this small organisation without a bottomless oilwell of funding would struggle to mount a legal battle when it should be battling climate change.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/why-our-charities-should-be-free-to-criticise-hopeless-policy-20220321-p5a6mw.html

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Fertiliser prices soar, leaving farmers struggling with cost of production

With fertiliser prices reaching never-before-seen highs and the cost of fuel soaring, Australian farmers are struggling to keep up with the cost of production.

Fertiliser Technology Research Centre director Mike McLaughlin said there were two reasons for the price hike.

Ukraine has deposits of key fertiliser ingredients potash and urea, and exports have been limited. 

Russia is the world's biggest fertiliser exporter but because of trade sanctions, restrictions have been placed on imports into Australia.  

“The demand is still there because food demand is always increasing, but the supply of fertiliser is limited, so the price just shot up,” Professor McLaughlin said. “These are the highest prices ever for fertiliser raw materials and that means it's going to flow through.

"It’s one of the reasons also that wheat prices have also gone up."

The cost of vegetables such as broccoli, potatoes and cabbages have recently risen by up to 75 per cent, with the cost of fresh and frozen food tipped to continue to increase in coming weeks.

Thomas Elder Market analyst Andrew Whitelaw said Australian farmers had not benefited from the increase in grain price. "The cost of farming is going up at a rate beyond the grain price," he said. "Fertiliser is expensive [as well as] chemicals, labour, and diesel. "[They are] the four main inputs that a farmer will face and they're all at record levels." 

Professor McLaughlin said some countries were looking for alternative supplies of fertiliser as well as trying to ramp up domestic production. “It is difficult to cut back on fertiliser use because it will get reflected in lower yields and lower yields means that the price of grain will go up in the future," he said. "The price of food will probably increase.

“When oil prices go up, people look for alternatives and with oil we have substitutes in terms of electric vehicles and gas, but with fertiliser there are no substitutes,” Prof McLaughlin said.

“We may see new mines or new facilities open up because the fertiliser price is so high and it suddenly makes that particular resource economic."

He said high natural gas prices will also continue to impact fertiliser prices because natural gas is used to manufacture nitrogen fertilisers.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/rural-news/2022-03-23/record-fertiliser-prices/100929526

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'Tough' new laws set to deter Victorian animal activists trespassing on farms

People caught trespassing on Victorian farms could be slapped with on-the-spot fines of $1,272 for an individual and $8,178 for an organisation under new legislation passed in Parliament yesterday.

The Victorian government said the new laws were the toughest of their kind in Australia and will deter people from trespassing on farms.

Under the Livestock Management Amendment (Animal Activism) Act 2021 penalties of $10,904 for an individual and up to $54,522 may apply to an organisation for more serious offending.

The bill was introduced in response to several incidences of farm trespass by animal activists, including at the Gippy Goat Cafe in Yarragon in 2018.

Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF) president Emma Germano said the new legislation had been "a longtime coming", three years after the Inquiry into the Impact of Animal Rights Activism on Victorian Agriculture.

"The VFF worked with parliamentarians back in 2018 to get the inquiry off the ground at a time when we were faced with an unacceptable situation where animal activists were getting off virtually scot-free," she said.

"This is a big step in providing better protection for farmers from law-breaking animal activists." 

"At a time when we are dealing with significant human and animal biosecurity outbreaks our rigorous farm biosecurity systems have never been more important," she said.

"The biosecurity management plans will not only protect farmers from unacceptable harassment by animal activists, but also from potential biosecurity breaches."

The new arrangements will come into effect later this year.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2022-03-23/laws-deter-victorian-animal-activists-trespassing-on-farms/100932410

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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 March, 2022

Pathological spirituality

"Spiritual" feelings are common but very strong ones can be pathological.  So it seems to have been below.  He thought he was sailing off into a wonderful new world but all he did was prematurely terminate his own existence

A woman has given an insight to the alarming life of a man whose body was found in a dam near Kingaroy and his partner.

Police yesterday said a man who was found by a kayaker in Gordonbrook Dam at the weekend was 51-year-old Darryl Smith, who also went by the name Matthew Goldman.

Mr Smith was found tethered to a woman, who has not been formally identified but is believed to be his wife.

A fortune teller, who briefly worked for the “spiritually fanatical” Goldmans at a shop they operated in Kingaroy has revealed she googled the couple two weeks ago just to make sure “they were still alive”.

“Two weeks ago - I was googling them, I was googling everything about them because I wanted to see if they were still alive,” she said.

The fortune teller said she “distanced” herself from the Goldmans (Darryl Smith and his wife) in December “within a month of knowing them”.

“The first day I went into the shop to work for them they were telling me about their plans and how they were just about to commit suicide before the shop, a ‘gift from god’,” she said.

“I just remember thinking that’s pretty heavy stuff to be telling someone you just met and also someone so spiritual.”

“I did one reading for a client at the shop and noticed they were living out the back, their energy was frenetic and the more I knew them the worse it got.”

The woman likened her interactions with Mr Goldman to Reverend Jones, an apocalyptic cult, saying “it was that kind of frenetic spirituality.”

“Each time I would hang out with them my gut instinct just told me this was a dangerous man,” she said.

“I didn’t tell them for a few weeks but then I had to put it in writing because they were kind of grooming me in a way.”

The woman claimed the Goldmans confided in her about how they had “sold everything” and “bought a box of pills through the mail.”

The woman believed Mr Goldman was the “frontrunner”, “the talker” and although the couple had been together for 20 years it was a “really sick relationship.”

“All the signs were there - the narcissism, the gaslighting - they said they had been together for over 20 years but I’ve never seen a woman look at a man like that unless they were in a cult,” she said.

“He really did all the talking for both of them and being a feminist I thought there’s something not right here, I looked at how she was with him, she was incredibly passive and then they got talking about spirituality, fortune telling, carding reading but when they took me out the back – I thought it was going to be quite a professional meeting but then straight away they started talking about how they were blessed and how they had nearly committed suicide.”

“They were scary on every level - mentally, emotionally, and physically.”

Just three months after the fortune teller met the Goldmans she decided to block them on her phone and social media.

“Matthew told me about (his wife’s) life, how tragic it was and he had rescued her, I just kept saying ‘look I don’t want to hear this’,” she said.

The woman said the shop was a “hangout for broken people.”

“Matthew would tell me about how he was going to transform everyone’s lives but when I walked into the shop a few times there were always the people you know are broken – that kind of upset because I knew they were manipulating these people and trying to sell them stuff,” she said.

The woman said when she found out the couple had died she felt “validated” that she had managed to “escape them”.

“I’m happy they are together because in all honestly one of them was going to do something stupid, I’m glad they are at peace - it was Folie a deux (madness of two),” she said

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/scary-on-every-level-dead-dam-couples-bizarre-life-suicide-plans-revealed/news-story/1bc516823dcaa8178280944e955ac7b4

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Prelude to resume LNG production

Shell’s $US12bn ($16bn) Prelude floating LNG project off Australia’s northwest coast is poised to resume production after a lengthy outage, offering the market a new source of energy amid a global squeeze on supply.

The oil and gas giant has not produced LNG from the facility since December 2, after an electrical fault forced the closure of the floating vessel located near the Prelude gas field, 475km northeast of Broome.

Shell said in February difficulties in giving specialists access to the platform because of mandatory 14-day quarantine requirements in Western Australia were partly to blame for the length of the outage.

The National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority on Friday cleared Shell to restart Prelude but no start-up date has yet been provided.

“We continue to work methodically through the stages in the process to prepare for hydrocarbon restart with safety and stability foremost in mind,” a Shell spokeswoman said on Sunday.

The addition of the plant’s 3.6 million tonnes of capacity will be well timed, with markets tight because of sanctions and restrictions on Russia, the world’s fourth-largest LNG producer.

Brent oil jumped to $US139 a barrel, a 14-year high, earlier in March while spot LNG prices rose to the equivalent of $US500 a barrel – described as “off the charts” by Woodside Petroleum – amid fears Russian output could be sidelined.

Consultancy Rystad said the restart of Prelude was positive for LNG markets.

“Australian regulator NOPSEMA has cleared Shell’s 3.6 Mtpa Prelude FLNG for a restart after the facility was taken offline in December 2021 due to a fire.

“Though commissioning may take a few weeks, this is a positive development for a region badly in need of every LNG molecule it can get its hands on,” Rystad said.

Prelude was touted by Shell as the first of a revolutionary line of projects to unlock gas resources previously considered too remote to support development of conventional land-based LNG plants.

The floating LNG vessel started delivering supplies from the Prelude gas field in June 2019.

However, the plant was yet to get anywhere near its 3.6 million tonne-a-year capacity when a series of safety incidents occurred early in 2020, which were probed by the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority.

It then suffered the electrical fault that caused the vessel to shut down in December.

Shell – one of the nation’s biggest gas producers and foreign investors – was forced to write off $US6.2bn from its Australian operations for the 2020 financial year after the price of crude plummeted to a two-decade low last year.

The Prelude platform was to blame for the bulk of the impairment as Shell cut its oil price forecasts and revised its stance on the “attractiveness” of the venture.

Shell boss Ben van Beurden conceded in February the platform was suffering from “teething troubles”.

“Quite a few teething troubles, of course,” Mr van Beurden said.

“But bear in mind this is a unique asset but with, of course, quite unique challenges.

“We just want to make sure that whenever we restart, we know that we have solved the problem and we can do so safely.

“And for now we expect it to be out for most of the first quarter,” he said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/prelude-to-resume-lng-production/news-story/54bb52042e7aca5a405b82585dd4a8e7

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The labor party is no longer the party of the worker

It is no small irony that Anthony Albanese has adopted a small target strategy just as there is a tectonic upheaval in the age-old battle of capital and labour.

In his attempts to look more business-friendly and preaching, in his own words, ‘renewal not revolution’ he is merely highlighting the growing distance between the parties of the Left and workers in the physical economy.

Only last month, in my home state of New South Wales, the city was brought to chaos amid a stoush between train drivers and the state government. Premier Dominic Perrotet did not hesitate to accuse the development as ‘a co-ordinated attack by the Labor party and the labour movement’.

In the same period nurses in the state held their first strike in over a decade. Teachers and bus drivers have also flagged their intentions to agitate for better conditions, especially given the NSW state government has capped any wage increase at 2.5 per cent.

The local truck convoy which attracted over ten thousand people took place in the shadow of protests across the developed world over vaccine mandates. The past gratitude towards essential workers exhibited by what Canadian trucker Gord Magill titled the ‘email jobs caste’ is no longer proving to be adequate compensation.

Even in the United States, traditionally a place where common wisdom states worker movements have been neutralised as a political force, there have been notable union successes at Kellogg and agricultural company John Deere.

The opportunity sensed by the unions has not always been met with support from their political party representatives. While the most heated confrontations came last September over vaccine mandates for Victorian construction workers, the tensions have played out throughout the pandemic.

While not alone, it has been the parties of the Left who have most enthusiastically supported lockdowns and Covid restrictions, despite their well-documented, disproportionate impact upon workers in the physical economy.

These workers are also more likely to live in outer-metropolitan areas and be of an ethnic background, exactly the kind of demographics the Labor party has traditionally taken for granted but are now desperate to win back. Those workers protesting against mandates have been painted by ALP leaders as anti-vax tinged by the far right when they could just as legitimately be seen as another arm of class struggle.

Albanese has been largely silent on the unrest among Labor’s traditional base, fearing his past as a comrade on the socialist left of the Labor party will come back to bite him. His subdued stance may be politically wise, but out of step with a pivotal moment.

The tensions between capital and labour as pandemics end have considerable historical resonance. After the Black Death in the 14th century there was a huge shortage of labour. It prompted many serfs to rebel against their noble paymasters. Landowners were outraged and responded with violence as hundreds of thousands of people walked away from jobs in search of something better.

As Matthew Anderson writes in the New York Times: ‘The struggles over wages and the value of labour that defined the post-plague years were in some ways as dramatic as the pandemic itself.’

We don’t have the same demographic crises as in the 14th century when up to a third of the population died in some parts of Europe. But we still have trends like the large-scale talent migration coined the Great Resignation by University of Texas professor Anthony Klotz. In combination with the more traditional industrial unrest, this is evidence that right across the developed world workers are re-assessing the value of their labour.

But the language of class struggle is seen as too dangerous within modern elections amid a diverse, aspirational electorate.

The Albanese strategy seems to be the Napoleonic one of never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

This may well be wise.

Wherever one lies in their support of Morrison, a psychological feature is that we are unlikely to have a clear transition point for the end of the pandemic, being instead limited to individual choices how best to co-exist.

War and floods may function as a full stop for some, but there are large sections of the community whose identity has become intertwined with following the rules of Covid, fearing people will die otherwise. They have spent the last two years in perpetual surveillance mode against an invisible foe. For a minority the status games inherent in wealthy, industrialised cities have expanded to who can be the most masked, the best at socially distancing and even policing others.

For all the talk of the pandemic encouraging a more communitarian focus, it has empowered social dictators and helped fray the bonds of mutual citizenship. Without collective rituals to mark a transition, the population may well look to the federal election to mark a cleansing full stop to the last two and half years.

This bodes poorly for Morrison and the Liberal party, a marker that the cycle of the pandemic suiting incumbents may be turning. Just ask Premier Steven Marshall in South Australia, who looks set to lose after just one term to charismatic upstart Peter Malinauskas.

It is true that the federal ALP has promised just over a billion dollars in funding towards vocational training amid an aim to train up local workers.

But it seems a tepid response amid the global upheaval clearly taking place in what is traditionally the signature battle in politics.

The Labor party and the traditional parties of the Left must be careful that they don’t increasingly taint any kind of angry worker as immediately linked to white supremacy or conspiracy theorists.

Albanese may well find his voice if elected, harking back to his proud comrade days leading the Labor left, but his current strategic timidity is also symbolic of the diluted links between the proud worker and their representatives striving for power.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/post-pandemic-class-struggles/

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The Victorian Liberals have performed a major policy backflip over a controversial tax ahead of the state election

The Victorian opposition has performed a major policy backflip ahead of the state election, after the party announced a change in its stance towards a controversial mental health levy.

The tax, announced in last year’s state budget to address gaps in mental health, was initially opposed by the party, with leader Matthew Guy arguing businesses should not have to bear the brunt of the levy.

The tax, which is expected raise $843 million per annum, came into effect this year and charges a surcharge to businesses with more than $10 million in wages.

The opposition voted against the bill when it was introduced in parliament in May last year with Matthew Guy vowing to scrap the tax at a press conference in February

“We’ve said that we don’t want to increase taxes or put on new taxes,” he said at the time.

But in a noticeable backflip on Monday, his colleague shadow treasurer David Davis and mental health spokesman Emma Kealy maintained the levy would remain.

“We said initially that we didn’t support the tax,” Ms Kealy told reporters.

“The tax is now in place, it has been in place since January of this year. We’ve always said we’d support the Royal Commission’s vision of what they want to achieve for Victoria.”

Following the press conference, Victorian deputy Premier James Merlino accused the opposition of backflipping on the major policy and called the Liberal party “divided”.

“This is a rabble of an opposition,” he said.

“They’ve been spooked by the South Australian election. They know they can’t go to an election talking about health cuts.”

It comes just months ahead of the November 26th election, with key battles expected to play out over the budget, health and the rising cost of living.

Mental health has also been a central issue for both parties, following two years of consistent lockdowns placing severe pressure on Victorians, particularly the state’s youth.

The pandemic further highlighted gaps in the mental health system, with Labor pushing through implementing crucial recommendations from the Royal Commission, and the Victorian Liberals pushing its own promises if elected

https://www.couriermail.com.au/breaking-news/victorian-opposition-backflips-on-major-election-issue/news-story/23b3e8a46aebe587c249ff4294e67145

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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 March, 2022

The political response to Covid was much more harmful than the disease itself

Four out of five young Australians surveyed say they experienced mental health issues in the last two years.

One in four young Australians thought about suicide over the past two years and 15 per cent attempted self-harm, according to a poll of 16- to 24-year-olds.

Experts called for urgent action to tackle the nation’s deepening youth mental health crisis as the exclusive survey for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald revealed the magnitude of the pandemic’s toll on young people.

Eighty-two per cent of those surveyed said they had experienced mental health issues during COVID-19.

Young Australians have taken the biggest psychological hit – a separate poll found significantly fewer adults aged 25 and over (49 per cent) reported mental health issues.

Those aged 16 to 24 were most likely to report symptoms of anxiety (75 per cent) and depression (62 per cent), while 36 per cent identified eating disorder symptoms, binge-eating being the most common.

While youth mental health was a growing problem before COVID-19, the survey shows issues have been exacerbated by the pandemic. Forty-two per cent said their mental health issues had become worse and 11 per cent said they were caused by the impact of the pandemic.

The survey, conducted by research company Resolve Strategic, was based on questions to 1002 people aged between 16 and 24 from February 16 to 27. The findings have a margin of error of 3 per cent.

Molli Johns, a 19-year-old from the Melbourne suburb of Richmond, said she relapsed into her eating disorder during the pandemic and became depressed.

Ms Johns is one of several young people who shared their experience of mental illness for a new podcast about youth mental health, called Enough, being launched on Monday by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

“I lost all motivation,” said Ms Johns, who studied year 12 remotely in 2020. “I was getting up just to sit in front of my computer screen and what was the point?”

Professor Patrick McGorry, executive director of Orygen, the National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health, said mental ill-health in young people was at crisis point.

“We’ve been trying to wake people up for 20 years about youth mental health because it’s been deteriorating, worldwide, and especially in Australia all that time,” Professor McGorry said.

“The pandemic has definitely put the skids under young people.”

The Australian mental health system had been overwhelmed during the pandemic, Professor McGorry said, with GPs, headspace centres (which provide mental health services to 12 to 25-year-olds) and emergency departments inundated and the workforce dwindling and exhausted.

He called on the federal government to urgently invest in specialised early intervention back-up systems of care for the “missing middle” – those young people with severe mental health problems such as anorexia, early psychosis and personality disorders – that the 20 Medicare-subsidised psychology sessions could not fix.

“This is an urgent national priority,” he said.

While the Resolve poll found one in four respondents had suicidal thoughts, the latest Australian government figures show the number of people under 25 who died by suicide remained steady in the first year of the pandemic.

In 2020, 480 Australians under the age of 25 took their own lives, the same number as in 2019.

Resolve director Jim Reed said behind each statistic in the poll was a human story and the sheer scale of the issue was staggering.

“While we can only really be certain that a young person is experiencing a specific or serious problem with an expert diagnosis, surveys like this can capture a lot of people who have not attempted to get a formal diagnosis or for whom the symptoms are less severe,” he said.

A separate Resolve poll of 1414 people aged over 25, conducted a week earlier, found significantly less psychological distress among adults.

Forty-nine per cent of this cohort reported mental health issues during the pandemic compared with 82 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds, 13 per cent had thought about suicide (compared with 25 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds) and 3 per cent had attempted self-harm (compared with 15 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds).

“Ironically, few young people tell us they’re worried about vaccines or COVID itself, and for them social restrictions have been the major force,” Mr Reed said. “The cure has been worse than the disease for this age group.”

Isaac Percy, 23, from Camden in outer Sydney, said his anxiety was exacerbated by COVID-19 uncertainty and fear.

“It was really hard to be pulled away from my support network of friends … and not being able to go do things I enjoy like seeing live music.”

Australian Psychological Society CEO Dr Zena Burgess said the survey findings were sobering and tallied with the experiences of the society’s members.

“Eating disorders got worse, anxiety got worse, depression got worse and generally, all the self-esteem issues of adolescence and young adulthood got worse,” she said.

One in three psychologists have been so busy they have had to close their books, according to an Australian Psychological Society survey of its members last month, compared with one in 100 before the pandemic.

https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellness/urgent-national-priority-pandemic-s-staggering-mental-toll-on-young-australians-20220318-p5a5v0.html

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Who owns Australia?

Historically, ownership of a place has been by right of conquest.  If you control it, you own it

Is it after they have moved onto the land and not been ejected for a period of time, perhaps a generation? Is it when some changes are made by the newcomers to the environment which will make it more suitable for the newcomer: by settled agriculture or nomadic pastoral management, or by some other device imposed upon the environment? Or is it by displacement of the previous owners or settlers, by either warfare or by mass migration? Or is it when the land is purchased from the local group, whether by money or some other acceptable valuable?

Maybe the question should be extended a little further to include species, genus family, order, class phylum, kingdom, and domain. When and how does any part of the world belong to any group?

The question, of course, is not academic. It is a process that has been going on since life started on earth. Newcomers arise and displace the older group, environments change, due to either natural, or unnatural, processes, whether slow or sudden, and those best equipped to survive in the environment become dominant and may own parts of the earth.

We are well aware of the age of dinosaurs, the age of megafauna, the multitude of human species that arose and died out. Changing environments, changing species. We know of the rise and fall of civilisations: Egyptian, Mayan, Aztec, Comanche, Apache, Vikings, Romans, Assyrian, Babylonian, Celts, Mongols. What ethical or moral constraints were there during, or following, the change? As far as I can see there were none. The old were supplanted and life went on with people making the best of it as they could, as they had always done.

Consider Australia. When the first people moved into the land which we now call Australia, there were no other humans. Or maybe there were but they were displaced or killed off. Nobody knows because they are not part of Aboriginal story telling and no records have been unearthed.

But we do know that when the first people arrived, whether that was seventy thousand, or any other time in pre-recorded history, the land was not as it was a couple of hundred years ago. The country was full of megafauna and the climate and vegetation were different to today. The new landowners, who moved into an empty land, or who displaced the previous group who were here, lived through the death of megafauna, probably assisting in their demise.

Some ten thousand years ago another migration into Australia took place after the worldwide ice age had lowered all sea levels. This group brought the dingo into Australia, but whether the new group displaced or intermingled with the earlier groups is not known although it is most likely that they chased at least some of the earlier groups south until they were only left in Tasmania, an island which reappeared as the ice age receded and seas level rose. They altered the environment to suit their requirements, by fire management and developed some minor agricultural practices.

Then, five hundred years ago, or so, we had the worldwide expansion of Europeans, for both trade and conquest. There were empires being built all over the world, Americas, Asia, Africa, and the oceans, by European Nations, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, German, British, French, as well as fighting amongst themselves for control of Europe. The Dutch certainly reached Western Australia but they found nothing of value, just deserts and very hostile natives, not the spice islands to the north which they wished to visit. So they left. They did find Tasmania, Van Deimen’s Land but never colonised it. The big two European colonisers in the Pacific region were Britain and France and it is only by chance that Captain Cook claimed Australia before any French explorer. Cook never knew what Australia was really like, he saw so little of it and only stayed for a short time. He had other scientific work to attend in the Pacific.

The settlement of Australia by the First Fleet just beat the French by a few days. Again, the new arrivals never had any idea what they had found, they didn’t even know that Western Australia was part of the land which extended to New South Wales, as they proclaimed their settlement land on the east coast. It took many years before Mathew Flinders circumnavigated Australia and truly found what Britain had colonised, even if their colonies were scattered and very few. Most settlement was by free settlers, very few were convicts and the military were basically for the safety of the colonisers and control of convicts, not the subjugation of the local natives.

The new settlers were determined to create a new, better, life and develop the country in the way that they understood. They were farmers and graziers and builders and miners. They were connected with the rest of the world and had a world view on economics and the politics of power. These concepts appeared to be totally alien to the local inhabitants, who were overrun in many areas which were suitable for the new settlers, assisted by diseases that may have affected the new settlers but which were absolutely deadly to the indigenous population.

The new settlers prospered and grew in numbers. The local natives suffered and retreated or stayed in remote areas, or moved into the fringes of towns and cities, where they were given social security handouts. Many Aborigines assimilated into the new societies and are now part of the community. But many have been left on the outside, with their traditional lifestyle destroyed.

Australia is now a developed country with a modern economy. Land ownership has changed and is now regulated to maintain the new societies requirements. The old Aboriginal way of life is gone. There are too few who actually remember and who could live in the old ways, even if the land was available to them. Some Aborigines are actually purchasing some of their traditional lands and working them for grazing or other industrial activities. But they do not try and revert to the old indigenous native lifestyles. The social fabrics have been torn apart.

Aborigines constitute no more than 3 per cent of the Australian population, which includes a few thousand Thursday Islanders and many of these live in towns and cities and are part of the normal social fabric of the community. Many Aborigines live in Aboriginal communities but they do not live their old life styles. They are now sedentary; most have forgotten their bush skills and they are subject to first world advertising and lifestyles. These communities often consist of more than one original family group or tribe. They are losing their language and knowledge. Many are suffering from substance abuse and food choices which are unhealthy and few have any chance of improving their lot in life. Although the Constitution originally excluded aborigines from the political process, that situation was rectified in the referendum of 1964. They have full citizen rights, they can vote, they can be a political representative at all levels of government, a situation to which some have availed themselves. As an old culture they have been superseded.

And Aborigines proclaim that they did not own the land, they belong to the land, they are part of it. So, why are we so hung up about this situation now? Always was and always will be? History shows that expression to be a fallacy.

So, whose land is it?

https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/in-the-beginning/

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Labor doesn't ‘walk the talk’ on women

Despite what the Labor Party – and the wacky Woke may think – Conservative and Liberal women have always been leaders in politics, the original breakers of the glass ceiling.

However, International Women’s Day last week brought on the usual bout of self-glorification by the Australian Labor Party about its female activism. Fanciful stuff, even on a good day.

When quotas provide the co-ordinates to the Cabinet room, it’s a telling tale about the truth.

Yet on that day to celebrate women, Federal Member for Lilley, Labor’s Anika Wells, was on radio waxing lyrical about former Labor MP, Ros Kelly. Ms Wells said Ms Kelly was Australia’s first female Minister.

She wasn’t.

That was Dame Enid Lyons in the Menzies Government – well before Ms Kelly, and before quotas, and certainly before International Women’s Day.

Ms Kelly was indeed Labor’s first female minister. And to be fair – such significant use of a whiteboard was probably a Labor first – so credit where it’s due.

The Labor Party continually stratifies the superlatives on Whitlam: the progressive, the Goliath of the mighty left. But for all the eternal worshipping, there was not one woman in Whitlam’s Cabinet. Zip all. I’d say that’s more boo-hoo than woo-hoo.

It’s Time the Labor Party delivered accuracy and honesty in reporting the true history of women in politics in Australia.

It’s also time they stopped pointing fingers, especially those complete with painted nails.

These are not glory days for Labor.

Just 24 hours after their International Women’s Day histrionics, Labor’s former Victorian Legislative Council MP, Kaushaliya Vaghela, was raising serious complaints in the Parliament about bullying of her by men and women from within the Labor Party. The Premier, Daniel Andrews, is on her list that has now gone to WorkSafe for investigation.

Bullying by the ‘Mean Girls’ and others within Labor has also been discussed in the death of Victorian Labor Senator, Kimberley Kitching. Those involved continue to deny the allegations.

In her passing, close friends and colleagues have further exposed Labor’s seeping factional sores – those who – when tested – cared little for a female MP who didn’t kowtow to lesser ideals. Aren’t these the women that Labor claims to champion? The strong? The fearless? The intelligent?

Kitching deserved better than political bastardry dressed up in heels. Our nation deserves better too. It is already the poorer for her absence.

So, while Labor talks about celebrating women, the Liberal Party walks it.

As the Member for Lilley sang Labor’s female song last week, I reached for my list on non-Labor firsts. It includes:

First female federal Cabinet Minister (without portfolio) – Hon Dame Enid Lyons in 1951 – Liberal

First female federal Minister with portfolio – Hon Dame Annabelle Rankin between 1966-68 – Liberal

First female in any Parliament – Edith Cowan OBE (WA State) 1921-24 – National

First female in Qld Parliament – Irene Longman 1929 – Country Party

First female in Vic Parliament – Lady (Millicent) Peacock 1933-35 – UAP

First female federal MP – Hon Dame Enid Lyons AD, 1943-51 – UAP/Liberal

First female Senator from Queensland – Hon Dame Annabelle Rankin 1947-71 – Liberal

First female Cabinet Minister in Australia (WA State) – Hon Dame Florence Cardell-Oliver 1949-53 – Liberal

First female Mayor in Qld – Nell Robinson OBE, Mayor of Toowoomba 1967-81 – Country/National

First federal female Cabinet Minister with portfolio – Hon Dame Margaret Guilfoyle AC, DBE 1975-82 – Liberal

First female Lord Mayor of Brisbane – Sallyanne Atkinson AO 1985-92 – Liberal

First female Lord Mayor of Sydney – Lucy Turnbull AO 2003-2004 – Liberal

First female party leader in SA – Isobel Redmond 2009-2012 – Liberal

First female Speaker of Tasmanian House of Assembly – Hon Elise Archer MLA 2014-17 – Liberal

First popularly elected female Premier of NSW – Hon Gladys Berejiklian (Liberal) 2019-2021 – Liberal

Labor doesn’t own women’s successes, it just peacocks the politics of it. Others treat women as equals and celebrate merit-based appointments.

The women I know neither need, nor want, a social or workplace artifice. False applause is not their thing.

When conservative women such as Dame Enid Lyons broke through that glass ceiling, they did so without much noise, but shouted their success through their outstanding work standards and quiet resolve.

If we are truly to be equals – assuming it is equality and not supremacy the mob are after – one wonders when International Men’s Day will land on the calendar?

Even then, it is more likely to be about quiet, smoky barbeques than cute juice breakfasts in fancy suits.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/labor-doesnt-walk-the-talk-on-women/

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Childcare centres are feeding children for as little as 65 cents a day, with kids going hungry, a shocking report reveals

Some childcare care directors and cooks reveal they never spend more than $5 a day per child on food, with the average spend just $2.15 which also covered snacks.

A News Corp investigation has uncovered examples of the types of food children are being served including a plate of bread and butter for afternoon tea and plates of cheap “filler” foods such as pasta, with no protein or nutritional value.

One in five directors and cooks who responded to a United Workers Union survey thought the food budget at their centre was not enough, while 60 per cent of cooks said that they have bought food for children in their care out of their own pocket.

In one private Facebook group, where childcare centre cooks vent over their meagre budgets, one fumed: “I feed my dog more a day than the budget I get. If parents knew they’d be appalled”.

Dietitian Bonnie Searle, who was part of a research team from the University of Queensland observing food served at five childcare centres in Brisbane, said they witnessed children asking for seconds, but there was no food left.

She said sometimes the children did not get what was advertised on the menu, with a hot meal replaced with something completely different, or it was greatly exaggerated.

One example was a menu boasting “gourmet sandwiches” that turned out to be white bread with a jam or vegemite filling.

In some cases uneaten chopped fruit from morning break, would be brought out for afternoon tea and the banana would be “brown and slimy”.

“A big plate of fruit is not going to keep children full,” Ms Searle said.

“They need some fat and protein. The food groups we did not see enough of were vegetables and meat.”

She said children who don’t get enough food, or the right types of food were not able to regulate their emotions, which impacts their ability to learn.

University of Queensland Early Childhood Education and Care Professor Karen Thorpe said her team of researchers had been studying food quality at thousands of centres across Australia for many years and found children who needed the highest quality of care were getting the lowest.

She said some children were simply not getting enough food.

“If you are hungry you are not going to learn,” she said.

“If you get poor quality food, you become obese and you are not going to live for as long.

“The purpose of early education should be to set a child up for life.”

UWU Director of Early Education Helen Gibbons, who released the survey findings in a report called Children Going Hungry, said the amount of money allocated to food budgets revealed by workers was “a disgrace”.

“How can $0.65 possibly be enough to provide adequate nutrition for a developing child?” she said.

“Parents in Australia pay some of the highest out-of-pocket costs … yet many centres, especially among for-profit providers, are making a profit while children go hungry.”

Ms Gibbons argued childcare centres needed to be held accountable, especially those making big profits.

“Every day early childhood educators work hard to do the impossible; provide healthy nutritious food for the children in their care without enough funds,” she said.

“Now educators are speaking out about how taxpayer funding and parents’ fees are being taken away from food budgets and funnelled into profits.

“Educators who cannot stand to see children without enough to eat are buying food staples out of their own low wages, in a sector that is unsustainable for workers, children and parents.

“This cannot be allowed to continue. Parents deserve to know how much of their fees are being spent on feeding their children.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/federal-election/childcare-centres-spend-as-little-as-65-cents-a-day

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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 March, 2022

NAPLAN: Pandemic lockdowns have widened the wealth gap in our schools

Less intelligent students need more help to achieve so reducing that help has serious consequences.  Highly intelligent students by contrast do well in any system.  And intelligence is both hereditary and a major precursor to wealth.  So private schools on average have smarter kids with richer parents

A learning gap between rich and poor students is widening as literacy and numeracy tests reveal schools in disadvantaged suburbs have fallen behind during the ­pandemic lockdowns.

Educators have warned of higher dropout rates and social scarring without intervention to help students from poorer families catch up on their lost learning.

Fresh NAPLAN data, to be published on Wednesday, reveals patches of poor performance in suburbs blighted by high unemployment, poverty or large numbers of students whose parents don’t speak English.

Australian Education Union president Correna Haythorpe warned that many students from disadvantaged backgrounds were being “left behind’’.

“These deep-rooted education inequities have widened in recent years because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Morrison government has done nothing to address them,’’ she said.

Across Australia, the average NAPLAN score for year 9 reading fell by 4.5 points to 577, while writing scores rose by 1.8 points to 551, between 2019 and 2021. Numeracy performance dropped by an average of 4.6 points to 588.

At Chifley College’s Mt Druitt campus in western Sydney, where three out of four students live in the poorest 25 per cent of households and half speak a foreign language, the year 9 writing results fell by 18 points, while writing scores dropped 35 points.

Bucking the trend is Sydney Adventist School in Auburn, in Sydney’s multicultural western suburbs, where old-school teaching methods have driven success.

Despite 80 per cent of children being from non-English speaking families, the school lifted the reading and writing scores for year 3 students in 2021. The school’s deputy principal, Jenny Hahnel, said the school expected high academic standards from students, whose migrant parents value education and respect teachers.

The school uses “explicit teaching’’, providing clear instruction until each student has mastered the content of a lesson.

Reading is based on phonics, and children learn their times ­tables, as well as hands-on learning such as measuring objects in the playground for maths. “Explicit teaching focuses on a lot of repetition,’’ Ms Hahnel said.

“Every day we start the lesson revisiting content we’ve already taught. We’re consistently checking for understanding during the lesson, and we focus on student engagement.

“You’ll never see a child sitting at a desk and not knowing what to do. Not one child went backwards during Covid.’’

The Smith Family, a charity that is helping 58,000 disadvantaged children attend school through its Learning for Life sponsorship program, warned that more children had fallen behind as a result of lockdowns.

Anton Leschen, the charity’s Victorian general manager, said he knew of a single parent home schooling seven children, using one smartphone with a cracked screen and limited data.

“Living in disadvantage is a matter of chaos and survival,’’ he said. “Access to digital resources is always a major issue.’’

Mr Leschen called for targeted learning support for children who had fallen behind at school. “Some of them are very bright and hardworking,’’ he said. “Others have arrived at school with low initial literacy and cognitive and social skills. They’re not write-offs, but targeted support and help to catch up is all the more necessary.’’

At Kurnai College in Morwell, in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, reading scores dropped by 38 points, writing by 43 points and numeracy by 17 points. On the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, half the students attending Western Port Secondary College live in the poorest 25 per cent of households.

Year 9 students’ NAPLAN results dropped 15 points for reading, 56 points for writing and 15 points for numeracy.

Punchbowl Boys’ High School in NSW enrols 72 per cent of its students from the poorest households – virtually all from a non-English speaking background. Its results in year 9 fell by 19 points for reading and 23 points for numeracy, but rose six points for writing.

At Durack, one of Brisbane’s poorest suburbs, Glenala State High School’s year 9 students performed 10 points lower in 2021 than the crop of year 9s in 2019, before the start of the pandemic.

Writing scores fell 15 points and numeracy scores 19 points.

Australian Secondary Principals’ Association president Andrew Pierpoint said many poorer families could not afford computers or tablets for home schooling and online lessons.

“They might have a phone shared between siblings,’’ he said.

“The students have to read a document and type on a phone.’’

Mr Pierpoint said the pandemic had made the gap between poor and wealthy students “wider than we’ve ever seen before’’.

He called for more funding for the most disadvantaged schools. “Some schools need more money because life keeps running over the top of them, and it’s not the kids’ fault,’’ he said. “We need to address this as a nation.’’

Australian Primary Principals’ Association president Malcolm Elliott said many students had struggled when their parents could not help with home schooling, provide technology or pay for tutoring.

“Some of the maths that children get sent home with can look very complex for parents,’’ he said.

NSW Teachers’ Federation senior vice-president Amber Flohm said 3000 students had dropped out of school in 2020 and “never returned’.

“Students with disability or who are learning English are heavily reliant on face-to-face interaction,’’ she said. “English as an additional language is not something that lends itself to remote learning and teaching.’’

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/naplan-pandemic-lockdowns-have-widened-the-wealth-gap-in-our-schools/news-story/a2fdbd208d65d3c693aa412c79a5e674

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Bureaucratic nightmare for Northern Territory Aborigines

Many Australians would be understandably sceptical of the Greens’ call for a ‘Truth and Justice Commission’ to conduct ‘truth-telling’ with regards to human rights abuses of Indigenous Australians. However, such a commission may be valuable if it is used to lift the lid on Australia’s outback socialism that crushes Indigenous people to this day.

In January, the Greens called for ‘$250 million for a national Truth and Justice Commission to investigate human rights abuses against First Nations people’. Victorian Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe said such a commission would ‘allow the truth to be told in this country and it will allow us to come together so we can come forward’.

The devastating legacy of Australia’s land rights system in the Northern Territory is not well understood by the general public. If a Truth and Justice Commission became a vehicle to rectify that, it would be more than worthwhile.

Since the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (ALRA) was passed by the Fraser government in 1976, governments have returned roughly 50 per cent of the Northern Territory and 20 per cent of the country to Indigenous communities. This has been popularly understood as Indigenous people ‘getting their land back’. However, it may surprise many Australians that for much of the last four decades, Chinese and Russian citizens have had stronger property rights than Indigenous people living on ALRA land in the Northern Territory.

It was not possible for an Indigenous person on ALRA land in the Northern Territory to own their own home until 2006. Even now, only a handful of the tens of thousands of people on ALRA land in the Northern Territory actually do so.

Alongside this denial of private property rights are weak and opaque communal property rights. To grant an estate or interest in their land, most Traditional Owners in the Northern Territory require the approval of the relevant regional Land Council – meaning decisions about land use haven’t been returned to Traditional Owners but reside with government bureaucracies often located hundreds of kilometres away.

Suffice to say, approval can be hard to get.

In its ‘Submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Northern Australia’ in January 2020, the Aboriginal Investment Group outlined the trials faced by a group of Traditional Owners trying to convert a vacated building into a youth drop-in café. Under ALRA, Traditional Owners in these circumstances must present a proposal from themselves, to themselves, and be consulted on it by the Land Council, whose costs they must pay. Furthermore, it’s likely they have to charge themselves commercial rates of rent, otherwise the Land Council won’t approve the license or lease. And the whole approval process will take at least six months.

Property rights are human rights. The denial of private and communal property rights to Indigenous Australians on ALRA land is first and foremost a moral issue. However, the economic and social impacts are unsurprisingly catastrophic. A lack of property rights on ALRA land contributes to chronic underdevelopment and unemployment with the full gamut of socials ills that invariably follow: crime, violence, alcohol, drug abuse, ill-health, and despair. Not to mention parlous health and education outcomes.

Indigenous people on ALRA land don’t require protection from the broader Australian economy and culture. They require the freedom to pursue their destiny like Australians from all different races, religions and backgrounds have been free to do so.

Australia’s outback socialism has crushed Indigenous people on ALRA land. Their stories deserve to be told every bit as much as those of victims of the Stolen Generation, frontier violence and institutional racism.

Maybe a Truth and Justice Commission isn’t such a bad idea after all.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/03/the-greens-call-for-truth-and-justice/

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Radical gender theory starts in kindergarten

A recent research paper titled Parents’ perspectives on the inclusion of gender and sexuality diversity in K-12 schooling: results from an Australian national study published in the Sex Education journal illustrates how gender theory is motivated by Marxist-inspired ideology.

The authors argue Western societies like Australia are structurally and inherently heteronormative where LGBTIQ+ students are ‘mistreated’ and subject to ‘exclusion and discrimination’. Those who are not ‘heterosexual, cisgender, white, middle class, and male’ are ‘positioned as abnormal, immoral, problematic, non-contributory, and even socially perilous’.

Such an argument can be traced to Marxist authors like Antonio Gramsci and Louise Althusser who argue in Western societies like Australia, capitalist elites maintain power by privileging those in control and oppressing and marginalising any who fail to conform.

As a result of this capitalist, male-dominated hegemony schools are ‘socio-cultural entities’ made to promote cisgenderism – defined as ‘the idea that there are only two genders, that gender is determined on the basis of assigned sex… and thus the mistreatment of people on the basis of their gender is legitimate’.

This ‘culture of limitation’, the authors argue, is associated with society’s ‘underlying racism, sexism, homophobia and cisgenderism that intersects with neoliberal, neoconservative and patriarchal discourses that subjugate, limit and marginalise individuals and communities who do not fit the dominant, normative personage’.

Not surprisingly, the authors cite the French philosopher Michael Foucault to support their argument that in Western, capitalist societies how people self-identify and interact is driven by power relationships where those defined as the other are always oppressed and marginalised.

Roger Scruton in Culture Counts criticises this Foucauldian argument for suggesting ‘the traditional views of man, of the family, of sexual relations and sexual morality, have no authority beyond the power which upholds them’. Those championing Foucault argue when it comes to beliefs ‘there is no intrinsic validity of truth’ as what people feel and think are social constructs that have to be deconstructed and critiqued.

As well as contradicting human biology, radical gender and sexuality theory denies the word of God. As argued by Pope Benedict, ‘The words of the creation account: ‘male and female he created them’ (Gen 1-27) no longer apply.’

Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia also criticises radical gender theory arguing ‘biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated’ and to ‘attempt to sunder what are inseparable aspects of reality’ is to be guilty of ‘trying to replace the Creator’.

Proven by the example of the Brisbane Christian Citipointe, where the school was attacked and the principal pressured to resign for arguing, ‘God created human beings as biological males (boys) or biological females (girls),’ the power and dominance of radical gender and sexuality theory should never be underestimated.

Australian schools, especially government schools, are awash with neo-Marxist-inspired gender fluidity programs. One example is a recent discussion paper informing a review of the government guidelines for kindergartens and pre-schools that mandates teachers force radical gender theory on young, impressionable minds.

The discussion paper argues kindergarten children ‘have multiple and changing identities’ and, as a result, they must be taught about ‘identity formation that encompass gender identity and gender expression (with a non-binary dichotomy) and family diversity’. Concepts most adults find difficult to understand, much less 7 to 10-year-old children.

A second example is the internet Kids Helpline which also promotes radical gender theory. Instead of accepting gender and sexuality are biologically determined the Kids Helpline argues, ‘Sexuality is about how you see and express yourself sexually – like who you have a crush on, who you want to go out with, and who you want to have sexual experiences with.’

While gender fluidity programs like Safe Schools, where children are taught boys can be girls and girls can be boys, are justified as anti-bullying and a way to ensure LGBTIQ+ students are not discriminated against, the reality is such programs are Marxist-inspired and directed at radically reshaping Western society, the family, and how individuals define themselves and relate to others.

As admitted by Roz Ward, one of the founders of the Safe Schools gender and sexuality program, ‘Safe Schools Coalition is about supporting gender and sexual diversity, not about stopping bullying.’ Ward also argues ‘only Marxism provides the theory and practice of genuine human liberation’.

Parents are their children’s first educators and moral guardians and international covenants and agreements protect their right to ensure schools do not indoctrinate their children with ideas and beliefs contrary to what they hold to be true.

What is occurring across Australian state and territory schools, whether kindergarten, pre-school, or primary and secondary, is a direct attack on parent’s rights and a calculated campaign by cultural Marxists to force their ideology on young minds and destroy the family and a Christian view of sexuality and gender. It must be stopped.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/03/radical-gender-theory-starts-in-kindergarten/

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Home buybacks part of Qld floods package

Rocklea residents will be hoping that it actually  happens.  Floods are often financially disastrous without help

Up to 500 Queenslanders hit by the southeast floods will be able to access a home buyback scheme under a new support package released by the state.

The government has asked the Commonwealth for joint funding support for the $771 million package under national disaster recovery arrangements, Deputy Premier Steven Miles said on Saturday. 

A key element of the package is giving affected Queenslanders the option to retrofit, raise or sell back their flood affected homes.

It includes $275 million to retrofit 5500 homes, $100 million to elevate 1000 homes and a $350 million residential buyback program.

"This is the biggest potential buyback...fund we've ever had available to us. We anticipate that will allow us to buy back 500 properties if people want to," Mr Miles told reporters.

Guidelines to determine which residents can access specific options still needs to be finalised.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/home-buybacks-part-of-qld-floods-package/ar-AAVfF8v?ocid=winp1taskbar

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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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18 March, 2022

Eco-grief a burden for some

These credulous people deserve little sympathy.  Instead of wailing about a theoretical future they would a do lot more good agitating for measures that might make a real environmental difference -- such as agitating for more preventive measures against forest fires -- such as regular off-season back- burning

And I am always delighted to hear that the fears and grief of such people deter them from having children. It helps to improve the gene pool as far as I can see

The planet has heated by 1.1 degrees and Australia’s land mass has warmed by an average of 1.4 degrees since 1910, according to the CSIRO.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on climate change last year issued a “code red for humanity”. The group’s most recent report on March 1 said climate change will cost Australia’s economy hundreds of billions of dollars in coming decades.

Various terms have been coined to describe the psychological distress which accompanies climate change. There’s climate anxiety and eco-anxiety, as well as solastalgia (from the Latin “solacium” for comfort and the Greek root “-algia” for pain, coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht in 2003 to describe a “homesickness you have when you are still at home”).

Although its use dates back to the 1940s, perhaps the most apt term for the modern state of affairs is “eco-grief”.

“That’s the grief that people are feeling as we watch our planet die around us,” explains Dr Kate Wylie, chair of the Royal Australian College of GPs’ climate and environmental medicine group.

Wylie says GPs are seeing an increase in people of all ages presenting with psychological distress they attribute to concern for the climate.

“One of the interesting things about it is not really an anxiety disorder: it’s an extremely rational response. It makes sense to be sad,” Wylie says.

In its position statement on climate change, the Australian Psychological Society says it believes the phenomenon “involves serious and irreversible harm to the environment and to human health and psychological wellbeing”.

Concern for the climate becomes climate anxiety when it interrupts a person’s life.

The climate crisis has led some young people to reconsider what their futures should look like, including whether they should bring children into the world, Professor Cavenett says.

A 2019 survey of about 1600 young people aged 14 to 23 found 82 per cent believed climate change would “diminish their quality of life” and 80 per cent reported being “somewhat or very anxious” about climate change.

Macheon Smeaton, a 24-year-old university student from Sydney’s inner west, says he “struggles to imagine” what the world will look like when he is 50.

“I have two nieces and I’m already thinking about their future and how difficult parts of their future will be because of what’s already set in motion,” he says.

Asked what form the mental stress he experiences from climate change takes, Smeaton says it is more sadness for himself but anxiety for his nieces.

“I guess getting involved in activism, whether or not we are actually making a huge difference, does help,” he says.

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/climate-change/anxious-nation-eco-grief-takes-hold-as-code-red-for-humanity-hits-home-20220311-p5a3ua.html

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English teachers told to focus on grammar, punctuation as writing declines

English departments will be chiefly responsible for teaching grammar, sentence structure and punctuation, under a draft new syllabus, after the decades-long approach of sharing the job among teachers from all subjects contributed to a steep decline in writing standards.

The draft NSW English syllabus for years 3 to 10 will intensify focus on literacy skills amid concerns writing has been neglected in high schools, leaving even the brightest students struggling with crucial skills such as writing clear sentences and expressing ideas.

But the English Teachers Association (ETA) said the changes - to be released for consultation on Friday - would hand them an unnecessary burden because literacy skills differed from subject to subject.

“Returning sentence structure and all of that kind of stuff purely to English I think is unfortunate,” said Eva Gold, executive officer at the ETA.

The changes follow a NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) review, revealed by the Herald, that found writing had been neglected in the state’s high schools and in 2019 year 9 students were the equivalent of five months behind their peers in 2011.

A survey of more than 4000 teachers found many - especially science teachers, but also two in five English teachers - felt they lacked the skills and confidence to teach writing.

Among the reforms in the draft years 7 to 10 syllabus, students will be taught ways to interpret unfamiliar words and use grammar to clarify complex ideas. They will also read a wider range of texts, including non-fiction and essays. They could include George Orwell’s Why I Write, which is an HSC text.

The new syllabus will also address concerns about reading. After the kindergarten to year 2 syllabus focused on phonics, the year 3 to 6 one will increase emphasis on vocabulary - key to reading comprehension - and require teachers to ensure students in years 3 and 4 can read fluently and decipher new words quickly.

The focus on reading skills also aims to foster enjoyment of reading.

Peter Knapp, an expert in teaching writing, said sharing responsibility for teaching writing between different subjects was introduced 30 years ago, and was never enacted properly. Science did not think to teach sentence structure, and English did not think to teach scientific report-writing.

“The reality is that no one is doing it,” he said.

Maureen Abrahams, the head of English at Asquith Girls High School, said students often have brilliant ideas but cannot express them because of limited writing skills. She said English would still focus on literature, but welcomed the new responsibility for literacy. “I feel with writing and literacy, there are deep connections to English as a subject,” she said.

But Ms Gold said writing styles differed between subjects and English teachers should not have to teach skills better left to other faculties. Science, for example, used the passive voice, which was avoided in English. “We like students’ writing to be active, to be vibrant, and not to be detached or removed unless we are asking for it,” she said.

“Often students who perform only in a mediocre way [do so] because they are not confident of the language of their discipline, and it’s not up to English to teach that.”

Head of humanities and English teacher at Northholm Grammar, Rebecca Birch, said she understood the new approach. “This is knowledge and understanding that until now we have assumed students come with when they arrive in high school, but obviously a lot of students don’t,” she said.

However, many English teachers were themselves never taught skills such as grammar at either school or university, and NESA would need to address a skills shortage. “Three years of studying literature won’t cut it under this new syllabus, so universities need to step up in their offerings,” she said.

NESA will also release a draft years 3 to 10 maths syllabus, in which some times tables will be introduced in year 3 and the rest in year 4. There is controversy over times tables, with the federal government saying Australia’s national curriculum - to which NSW is aligned - should follow Singapore’s lead and introduce them in year 2, and have students master them in year 3.

The new high school curriculum will also scrap a three-tiered approach to maths in years 9 and 10, in which there are syllabuses of varying difficulty, and instead have core subjects that equip students for HSC standard maths, and more difficult options that prepare students for harder subjects.

A NESA spokesperson said the recommendations are being integrated across the new NSW curriculum.

“The new content will embed, more explicitly, writing skills across all subjects. To equip teachers delivering the new curriculum, NESA is providing teachers with enhanced support materials which will include teaching advice,” the spokesperson said.

Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said draft English and maths syllabuses - to become mandatory in 2024 - would create room for deeper learning, put more focus on reasoning and problem-solving in maths, and better prepare students for HSC courses.

“Our focus is on lifting standards in reading, writing and numeracy so providing all students with a great education and the benefits that brings,” she said.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/english-teachers-told-to-focus-on-grammar-punctuation-as-writing-declines-20220317-p5a5l9.html

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Nuclear energy key to jobs, says union boss

The mining and energy union has proposed replacing ageing coal-fired power stations in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley with small modular nuclear reactors, saying it would create 810 direct jobs and 1600 construction jobs over a decade.

The Victorian branch secretary of the CFMEU Mining and Energy Division, Geoff Dyke, said nuclear power would provide “secure, reliable, low-cost power”.

He said turning the Latrobe Valley into a nuclear region would help stem the 2600 job losses from the closure of the Hazelwood and Yallourn coal-fired generators, warning there would be fewer jobs if the region became a renewables hub.

“If we were to repurpose sites with small modular nuclear reactors, 2770 megawatts of small modular reactors would create 810 direct, well-paying, ongoing jobs,” Mr Dyke told a Victorian parliamentary inquiry into the closure of coal-fired power stations in the Latrobe Valley.

“About 1600 jobs in the Latrobe Valley would be required for construction over a decade. The construction jobs would add an estimated $240m per year to the region in income.”

Mr Dyke claimed nuclear power was “cost competitive with coal” and had a lower carbon footprint than renewables.

“It has the lowest greenhouse gas intensity of any energy source; it is even lower than renewables, because more materials go into building renewables, and more energy,” he said.

The CFMEU’s pro-nuclear stance is shared by the Australian Workers’ Union but federal Labor is opposed to lifting the prohibition on the energy source.

Outgoing Hunter MP Joel Fitzgibbon and Victorian senator Raff Ciccone are among a small number of Labor MPs who believe the ban on nuclear energy should be reconsidered, while a majority of Coalition MPs want it lifted.

Scott Morrison has ruled out lifting the prohibition on nuclear energy unless he receives bipartisan support from Labor.

Grattan Institute energy and climate change program director Tony Wood said there was no evidence small modular nuclear reactors produced energy that was cost competitive with coal generators.

“No one has yet built them at commercial scale,” Mr Wood told The Australian. “They are coming. There is a lot of speculation that they will have the advantage of being smaller, they will be less of a problem from a waste proliferation and a weapons perspective.

“The argument they could be more economic is you could make them in a factory and churn them out, where as every one of these big power stations is made bespoke every single time.”

In November hearings in the Victorian town of Traralgon, Mr Dyke also endorsed building new coal-fired power stations with carbon capture and storage to create a hydrogen hub in the valley.

“There is the potential to make 225,000 tonnes of hydrogen per year. It has the potential to decarbonise transport,” he said. “The cost of making hydrogen with coal is 40 per cent of the cost of making it with renewables, so it is 2½ times as cheap and there are near-zero greenhouse gas emissions with carbon capture and storage.

“With carbon capture and storage, if a pipeline is developed for that industry, we could attract new carbon-intensive industries to the Latrobe Valley, for example cement manufacture, and store their CO2 in (the) Bass Strait.”

The Hazelwood Power Station closed in 2017 while the Yallourn plant is due to close in 2028.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has backed renewables projects to fill the void from the death of coal in the Latrobe Valley.

But Mr Dyke said the 2375 megawatts of renewables and 540MW hours of batteries that are slated for the region would “only create about 14 direct jobs” in the Latrobe Valley. “We estimate that the Energy Australia 340MW-hour battery would create two jobs on an ongoing basis, AGL’s 200MW-hour battery another two jobs, the 300MW Delburn wind farm five jobs, and the 75MW Toongabbie Frasers solar farm five jobs,” Mr Dyke said.

“The Star of the South 2000MW offshore wind farm claims to have 200 ongoing jobs, but they are all outside the Latrobe Valley,” he added.

Mr Dyke said that renewable power was not dispatchable and “energy storage is insufficient in the Latrobe Valley for what is being ­proposed”.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/nuclear-energy-key-to-jobs-says-union-boss-geoff-dyke/news-story/60cffeba0e85295af4b4643177a85713

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Tesla-driving Leftist politician tells Aussies to buy electric cars to avoid rising fuels costs - but here's why they will NEVER catch on in Australia

Bill Shorten has urged Australians to buy electric cars because petrol prices are so high, while blaming Scott Morrison for the unaffordability of EVs.

The former Labor leader has called on the government to make electric vehicles, more affordable as a solution to the high cost of living.

Mr Shorten, who is paid $211,250 of public funds per year as a federal politician, drives a taxpayer-subsidised $60,900 Tesla and said he enjoys not facing the same rising fuel expenses as most Australian drivers.

Petrol prices have surged to record highs in recent months, nearing an eye-watering average of $2.11 in Sydney and were $2.19 in Melbourne.

The number of Australians who rate petrol as their most stressful expense has reached its highest ever level, Finder.com said on Tuesday.

Shorten told Karl Stefanovic and Chris O'Keefe on the Today show on Wednesday morning that the government should do more to encourage people to switch to electric vehicles.

'We've done nothing on electric vehicles so poor people can't get electric vehicles and I blame the government,' Shorten said.'At the moment I'm driving an electric vehicle, and the price of filling up my vehicle with electricity is so much cheaper than petrol, we're long overdue to do something about it.'

O'Keefe quickly fired back at Shorten's suggestion that EVs are the answer. 'Telsas cost a fortune. I don't know if Bill Shorten is going to get in his Tesla... and drive from Melbourne to Canberra, he won't get half way. 

'Are you going to plug it in at the Maccas?'

Shorten replied: 'Do you know why they cost a fortune? Because the government hasn't done anything to make electric vehicles cheaper.' 

But O'Keefe said electric vehicles are not a viable solution in Australia due to the country's sheer size. 'I still can't drive more than 300km without having to plug it in, wait 45 minute, and eat a three-course dinner and wait to charge it up.' 

Shorten acknowledged the war in Ukraine has impacted petrol prices - but said prices were headed north before the conflict. 'There's no doubt that the price of petrol is a barbecue stopper at the moment, it's north of $2 a litre.

He claimed a 'longer-term solution' is needed because 'we knew that energy shocks would come.'

Shorten's comments come after Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he won’t be 'forcing anyone' to drive an electric vehicle. 'If you want to drive one and buy one, good for you, that’s great, I think that’s your choice,' he said. 'If you don’t want to drive one, that’s fine, keep driving the car you’ve got.'

Mr Morrison reiterated that his government’s emissions reduction policy is about 'choice, not mandates'.  

'It's not about taxes, it's about technology, and the technology will move at the pace of the consumers and what they want.

'I'm not about to be subsidising those costs. I mean, if you buy an electric vehicle, you don't pay fuel excise for start. So there is already an inbuilt advantage of going down that path, if that's what you want to do,' Morrison said.

'But my opponent, the Labor Party, Anthony Albanese, said that he is going to encourage electric vehicles by abolishing the import tariffs on them.

'There aren't any import tariffs on electric vehicles. That's what comes when you haven't done a budget before and you've never had a financial portfolio.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10612637/Bill-Shorten-tells-Australians-buy-electric-car.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 March, 2022

Landlord sells two rental homes in the middle of tenancy crisis because of government changes

In my years as a landlord I never had much property damage from tenants, though I had to paint out graffiti a bit.  The main negative was having to replace carpet after a tenant's pet had shat on it. You can't get the smell out and no new tenant will take a stinking property.  I got so I bought carpet by the roll.  

But dealing with difficult and dishonest  tenants eventually got too much for me so I sold out and put my money into blue-chip shares on the stockmarket, which worked well with no hassles

Uncertainty about tenancy laws and the ‘lucky dip’ search for tenants who treat a property with respect has led to landlord Steve Allthorpe selling two rental homes in the middle of a rental crisis.

From replacing carpets to repairing walls, the damage caused by one of the tenants has left the plumber thousands out of dollars out of pocket, he said.

Besides having to restore a property, the tenants were also $1400 behind in their rent when they departed, leaving the $2200 bond to only partially cover expenses, he said.

“They were behind in their rent and on top of that you miss out on rent while you’re repairing the property so it starts to mount up,” Mr Allthorpe said.

“There was $2000 just spent on new carpet and there needed to be extensive cleaning and they were only there 18 months.”

There’s also the additional burden of paying about $3,000 a year in land tax, he said.

Unless investors purchase either the Toomey St, Chermside West property and or another house in Geebung, with both being offered for private sale, it will be two fewer houses for rent in Brisbane.

Mr Allthorpe’s decision to sell does not surprise Real Estate Institute of Queensland CEO Antonia Mercorella who says rental tenancy laws overhaul are pushing investors away instead of attracting them in the middle of a housing crisis.

“You need laws that protect tenants, but we have been saying for a long time you need fair, balanced legislation or you drive investors away and couple that with the announcement of land tax reforms,” she said.

“This is a government that continually punishes property owners who do the heavy lifting when it comes housing Queenslanders.”

REIQ CEO Antonia Mercorella says the government needs to be mindful of rental tenancy law changes driving landlords away. Picture:

Vacancy rates were at 1 per cent across Greater Brisbane and also across the state during the December quarter, according to the REIQ.

A healthy rental vacancy rate is between 2.6-3.5 per cent.

Furthermore, new government rental laws that provide further protection for tenants and unchecked pet ownership were tipping points in deciding to sell the house, Mr Allthorpe said.

“The new laws basically do not allow owners to stop a tenant from having pets, and I love pets and I have a dog, but some of the damage I had to repair was caused by pets,” he said.

“It’s not worth the stress and the hassle, you’re better off finding another way to invest

https://www.realestate.com.au/news/landlord-sells-two-rental-homes-in-the-middle-of-tenancy-crisis-because-of-government-changes/?rsf=syn:news:nca:news:spa

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Australian renters face extreme temperature conditions

For the sake of all tenants, one hopes dimwit Dignam below is ignored.  Government mandates on landlords to improve their properties would further restrict the availability of affordable rental accomodation.  A landlord who has undergone the costs of an upgrade would put his rents up to compensate.  And rather than spend on upgrades, some landlords will simply take their property off the rental market and sell it -- thus worsening an already tight rental mrkdet.  Lord preserve us from brainless do-gooders

There are warnings that eight million Aussie renters are facing “threatening” situations, that could even result in deaths.

The extreme heat in Meg Chatterton’s rental was so bad over summer that she was forced to sit inside in the dark all day, a situation that has severely impacted her mental health.

The university student lives in a share house with three others in the Melbourne suburb of Box Hill and said on hot summer days there is “nowhere to escape from the heat”.

“Our house is really badly insulated and there is no airconditioning so the first thing in the morning I shut the windows and curtains to keep the heat out as much as I can,” she told news.com.au.

Despite a milder summer with more rain and cooler temperatures overall, the Better Renting report called Hot Homes, disturbingly found that homes across Australia routinely exceeded the recommended safe maximum temperature of 25C.

Joel Dignam, founder of Better Renting, said the government needs to introduce minimum rental standards that are explicit about safe temperatures, which would make it easier for tenants to request modifications to a home.

“I think what struck me most is just how normalised it has become for people in rentals to just put up with temperatures and conditions that are quite frightful,” he told news.com.au. “The sheer amount of time that rental homes are in threatening temperatures and its affecting so many people – about eight million people rent in Australia – so it’s a big issue.

“In Perth, they had such a hot summer and were seeing three hours a day above 30 degree inside their homes and it’s a bit of warning of what’s to come. We need to be doing something about this now.”

“It’s really tough for renters to address this as they can’t change their homes … and instead they just put up with it,” Dignam said.

“But to make rentals liveable requires governments to take action and requires landlords to make homes decent to live in.”

https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/renting/nowhere-to-escape-australian-renters-face-extreme-conditions/news-story/3c33ddab57b59ff9ab0d3d4c2892fb02

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Hip-pocket pain hurts retirees most

Self-funded retirees are experiencing the sharpest rise in living costs since the last federal election, as the prices for essentials such as transport, food, health and home repairs surge.

According to household cost of living indexes compiled by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, self-funded retirees experienced a 5.5 per cent inflation rate from the June quarter 2019 until the end of last year.

Over the Coalition’s third term, employee households’ living costs rose by 2.6 per cent, as mortgage imposts tumbled and one-off pandemic childcare subsidies eased charges on parents.

Self-funded retirees spend twice as much of their budgets on health than the average household, as well as a higher share on leisure and transport, which rose by 6.5 per cent and 9 per cent respectively over the term.

This group of about two million Australians – whose principal source of income is superannuation or from property and are aged 55 and not in the labour force – spends proportionately much less of its income on housing and education than average.

Cost of living issues for older Australians often take a back seat to health as a concern for government action, but these voters are acutely focused on returns from nest eggs and retirement income rules, and are lobbying for policy changes in this month’s budget.

Eleven of the Morrison government’s 22 most vulnerable seats (with a margin below 6.5 per cent) have an above-average pool of people aged 65 and over.

Ultra-low interest rates for term deposits during the pandemic have cut incomes for retirees, who also face higher petrol costs and a range of price hikes for non-discretionary items such as food and health fees, where prices growth is running ahead of the broader consumer price index.

President of the Association of Independent Retirees Wayne Strandquist told The Australian rising living costs and stagnant incomes were squeezing members.

“Out-of-pocket health costs for self-funded retirees have been a concern for some time,” Mr Strandquist said.

“Premiums have been rising at a rate above the CPI so the gap ­between the rebate and the cost is getting wider and wider.”

Mr Strandquist said given retirees were unable to travel overseas during the pandemic, the popularity of domestic driving holidays meant high fuel prices were a source of hip-pocket pain.

As well, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme safety net threshold of $1542, after which medicine prices are heavily reduced, is the same for singles and couples or families.

AIR is calling for a reduction in the threshold for single people.

On the income side, Mr Strandquist said cash-strapped independent retirees were forced to draw down faster on their savings, take riskier investment positions or tap their home equity.

The AIR president said for many retirees with relatively low-balance nest eggs, cash refunds for unused franking credits were an important source of income.

At the 2019 election, Bill Shorten sought to abolish cash refunds for excess franking credits. Full and part pensioners would have been exempt but the Coalition ran an effective scare campaign against it as a “retirees’ tax”.

Although the ALP election campaign review found the franking credits policy per se did not cost it votes, Anthony Albanese dumped the policy last year, arguing that it had distracted voters from the party’s key messages.

According to the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia, last year the annual increases in income needed for a “comfortable retirement” were the largest since 2010.

ASFA deputy chief executive Glen McCrea said prices were up by 3.5 per cent for the comfortable couple budget ($64,771) and by 3.9 per cent for the comfortable single budget ($45,962).

“While it is difficult for current self-funded retirees to take action to avoid these cost-of-living pressures (given many of the costs relate to essential items), it is clear that for future generations of retirees, the more you have in superannuation, the greater the flexibility you have to deal with these costs in retirement,” Mr McCrea said.

In its submission to the budget process, ASFA said it was crucial governments remained committed to lifting the superannuation rate to 12 per cent of wages over the next few years.

The rate is scheduled to go to 10.5 per cent on July 1.

Since the 2019 election, Age Pension households’ living costs rose by 4.8 per cent. Age pensioners have their benefits adjusted for inflation twice a year, as well as having them benchmarked against average earnings.

According to National Seniors Australia, 1.5 million people rely on the pension as their sole source of income and one in three lives in poverty.

In its submission to the 2022-23 budget, the retirees’ advocacy group has called for an independent tribunal to set the rate of the pension and other related payments “to take the politics out of the pension”.

As well, it wants more pensioners to be able to work.

Fewer than 3 per cent of Australian pensioners work compared with almost 25 per cent in New Zealand.

NSA chief advocate Ian Henschke said exempting employment earnings from income tests for pensioners would not only ease their financial strains, it would boost supply at a time of critical labour shortages.

“It would be a win for pensioners, a win for the economy and a win for the budget,” Mr Henschke said.

Political parties see the so-called “grey vote” as a vital demographic, although it is dispersed geographically and by income.

One-third of the population is aged over 50, with the cohort making up about 45 per cent of all voters.

According to opinion pollster JWS Research, 70 per cent of voters aged over 55 want to see government action on health, hospitals and ageing.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/economics/hippocket-pain-hurts-retirees-most/news-story/d6f3842e30c5975c9e638f09fee2d1c7

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The incorrectness of dredging

How environmentalists and politicians helped cause the Brisbane floods

At a public meeting at Brisbane’s Mt Crosby in 1996, the halting of dredging the Brisbane River was concluded. The Lord Mayor claimed that the ‘ugly dredgers were causing bank erosion’. These dredgers with diminutive 300hp engines and 4-knot speed, were only capable of running with the tide and incapable of making a bow wave. The dredging was stopped, concluding over 100 years of effective acquisition of sand and aggregates. Brisbane then was the cheapest place in the country to build a house due to the abundance of cheap concrete, bricks, pavers and tiles delivered into the city by the river.

As the lone consultant appointed two days earlier by the Premier’s Department I protested against this decision, explaining that replacing these two quiet, old 2,000-tonne barges with 160 truck movements (each with 400hp turbocharged diesels) a day was madness, endangering schoolkids, contributing thousands of cubic metres of truck exhaust gases daily and adding to road maintenance costs.

I also concluded that the halting of the river dredging would shallow the river and exacerbate the danger of flooding. Simple cross-sectional area geometry, if you shallow the river the water will go sideways into the ‘burbs. While dams can assist in slowing upstream water volumes in rain events, dredging is a basic tool for flood mitigation, confirmed by Brisbane based dredging expert Captain Kasper Kuiper. Yet the Lord Mayor hailed the decision to halt dredging as ‘a significant victory for Queensland’. He said that for 100 years, the Brisbane River had been ‘treated as a sewer and a mine’.

‘No other capital cities in the world allow ugly dredgers into the heart of their city to mine their river’, he claimed. Nodding their agreement was an environment minister, a natural resources minister, two mayors, and the Queensland Conservation Council head who said the agreement was ‘a major breakthrough for the rehabilitation of the river’ and continued, ‘Clearly dredging is way out of line with community attitudes’.

These fools are probably perplexed that the Brisbane river, and every other river in the country, is still brown.

Most river port cities in the world have active dredging programs with aggregate extraction as the lowest cost method of maintaining navigation channel depth and mitigating flood levels. Take a trip around Asia and you will see on the Pearl River in China, Saigon River in Vietnam and the Chao Phraya river in Bangkok, multitudes of low-powered grab dredgers that are anchored until the tide changes, as they, like the Brisbane river grab dredgers, are only capable of steaming with the tide.

Fifteen years later, in 2011, I shook my head in dismay watching the Brisbane River floods on TV. Even a 300-500mm difference in water levels makes a huge difference to some houses and businesses, and the subsequent enquiry unfortunately ignored the fact that continued river dredging could have dropped the flood levels. This 2011 flood claimed 38 lives and this recent one claimed 13 lives. The people who supported and made this decision to halt river dredging should hang their heads in shame. The upper Brisbane River was navigable 46kms from the CBD by the Riverside coal barges until the Nineties.

Recent declarations that the proposed Melbourne to Brisbane rail corridor was to end in Acacia Ridge rail terminal and then thousands of containers would be barged to the port, came to a sticky halt when the clever transport policy people discovered that the Brisbane river is now ‘way too shallow’. Rail or road alternatives down to the port will be at least 40 times more expensive, and certainly louder. During the Nineties dredging debate, despite the state government getting royalties from every cubic metre extracted, dredging was halted. The navigation channel through to the Gold Coast at Jacobs Well, kept open by a sand extraction program, was abandoned, and vessels started to run aground again at anything below mid-tide. The program to attract luxury superyachts to the region suffered a knockback.

Cruise ship companies are seeking new destinations and the year-round good weather of Queensland is a natural attraction. But even to anchor off some of the beautiful destinations and send their tenders ashore is being hampered by the ongoing demonisation of dredging by the Queensland government. Picturesque destinations such as Innisfail and 1770 are not accessible from the sea except for high tide, due to lack of dredging at the river mouths. Cooktown has been listed as unsafe by marine underwriters, with the state program of a visit by a large dredger every five years. Frequent modest dredging is the best and proven way to keep a river mouth deep, and more importantly, safe !

Five years ago, a video-link to nation-building initiative of extracting sand from river mouths for local use was circulated to the councils in control of 138 blocked river outlets around the nation. You can view it at The reaction was overwhelmingly positive. Clean sand extraction at river mouths makes bar conditions safer for small vessels. Every year sees family members drown on the various bars around the nation when their cruiser or fishing boats capsize during transit.

The Queensland Labor government’s anti-dredging policy for the last twenty-six years has been an economic disaster for jobs and prosperity. Despite their claim of creating jobs, the present Labor government implemented policies that not only halted capital dredging around the state, but they halted transhipping and export mini ports through their ridiculous ‘Sustainable Ports Act’. To clarify this, the analogy is a ‘Sustainable Milk Bar Act’ where the state government owns the ten milk bars in an emerging economy, and then passes an Act to stop anyone else building or operating a milk bar.

The successful mini port of Bing Bong  in the Northern Territory, has exported more than $11 billion of cargo in the last thirty years with one small transhipment vessel, and with royalties paid to the government of over $700m. The indigenous Mawa group are still co-owners of the transhipment vessel. But no such opportunity in Queensland.

A proposal by the Hopevale Congress, just north of Cooktown, to export silica sand by barge transhipment was soundly rejected, despite the product being exported being the same as the stuff on the seabed at the proposed transhipment point making the remote possibility of pollution by spillage to be zero. One senior official stated to me, ‘That may well be Dr Ballantyne, but they could use that export point to handle coal!’ The Green/Labor paranoia about coal knows no bounds.

Nowhere in our nation for the last 100 years will you find evidence of any environmental damage from dredging or transhipping. This Green/Labor philosophy and decisions totally ignore regional Australia, our traditional owners, the prosperity of the states and jobs for our kids and grandkids.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/selling-queensland-down-the-river/

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PM: Australia must ADAPT to climate change'

Scott Morrison has called for more dams and a better approach to managing fuel loads in forests to handle natural disasters worsened by climate change.

After major floods in NSW and Queensland this past fortnight, the Prime Minister on Sunday said that Australia is becoming a harder place to live due to climate change.

But Mr Morrison said the nation's approach to climate needs to focus on resilience and adapting to climate change, as well as bringing down carbon emissions.

“Let's talk about bushfires in that context. You want to deal with resilience on bushfires, you have to do fuel load management,” he said.

“You want to deal with floods, you have to build dams. Now, it hasn't been the Coalition that has been against reducing fuel loads.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/politicsnow-climate-change-making-australia-harder-place-to-live-scott-morrison-says/live-coverage/e96ad46bc3492a4eed56fc3e21c4a9bd

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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 March, 2022

How living near Sydney’s green spaces makes you healthier and happier

This is an old claim but the evidence for it is slight.  The actual research studies done routinely fail to use adequate socio-economic controls.  "Green" suburbs are desirable so cost more.  But the rich people who move there are healthier anyway.  That rich people are healthier is probably the best replicated finding in epidemiology

How green is your valley? If you live somewhere in Sydney that has access to parks, trees, fresh air, good food and walkable streets, it’s odds on that you’ll be healthier, fitter and will live to a grand old age.

If, however, you’re trapped somewhere with little greenery, lots of pollution and have to hop in a car and fight traffic jams to get anywhere you want to go, then, sorry, but precisely the opposite is likely to be true.

“There is now so much evidence and research done on how access to the natural environment is good for both our physical and mental health,” says Dr Nicky Morrison, professor of planning at the Western Sydney University and one of the leading academic authorities on the subject.

“There’s also a lot of research on how we change the built environment to deliver resilient, healthy and sustainable communities. But there are many barriers to this all along the way, with local government having limited capacity and competing priorities, and state government wanting to deliver housing – often at the expense of public open space.”

Yet, there’s a growing realisation throughout most cities in the world that quality green open space isn’t merely an aesthetic adornment to the urban environment, it’s an absolute necessity.

The accessibility within cities to green spaces has been found to have numerous benefits, says Morrison, including increasing overall well-being and quality of life, fitness, cognitive ability, productivity, imaginative powers, creativity and spiritual vitality, and decreasing obesity, stress, the effects of ageing, sickness and mental health issues.

There’s evidence, too, that regular engagement with green spaces is linked with longevity, and the healing power of nature has hugely positive impacts on physical strength, socialisation and mental ill-health.

Meanwhile, the experience of living with the COVID-19 pandemic and local lockdowns has only strengthened the attraction of having open green areas in neighbourhoods, or the lure of further afield.

A new report on NSW, Making Healthy Places, by researchers from the University of NSW City Futures Research Centre and the southwest Sydney local health unit, led by Dr Nicky Morrison, shows that the built environment can positively impact the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities.

Where you live, it found, shapes how easy it is to buy healthy food, use active transport, and make social connections. Survey participants said the most important aspects of healthy place-making were in enabling active lifestyles, with walkability to shops, schools and work most important. They also said that increasing access to natural environments and opportunities for social interaction were vital for their mental health.

The main issue it identified was how to go about creating more open green places that help deliver positive health and wellbeing outcomes for all.

“We are all much more aware now of the importance of green spaces in our cities,” says professor Susan Thompson, professor of planning and associate director of City Futures. “I’ve been working in this space for a long, long time now, and we’ve been advocating for a more comprehensive and holistic policy towards green spaces that will keep people healthy and well through the course of their lives.

https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/how-living-near-sydney-s-green-spaces-makes-you-healthier-and-happier-20220314-p5a4i0.html

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Top Australian doctor has rubbished Pfizer's promotion of fourth Covid jab 

A leading Australian doctor has slammed Pfizer's call for a fourth Covid jab, saying the company should use its staggering profits to provide vaccines for developing countries. 

Dr Nick Coatsworth, who fronted the Government's vaccine rollout campaign, said Pfizer should 'stop doing press releases about how we need a fourth dose' and tackle other more pressing issues. 

'How about you really surprise us and provide pneumococcal vaccine at cost to low income nations. Be like Astra,' the former deputy chief medical officer tweeted on Tuesday. 

Pfizer raked in a record $US37billion in revenue from its Covid vaccine in 2021 making it one of the most lucrative products ever.

The United States based drug-maker's overall revenue doubled to $81.3billion and is forecasting a even bigger 2022, which will also see the release of its Covid pill Paxlovid. 

'The CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla, has come out on two occasions talking about how we need a fourth dose of the Covid vaccine, the CEO of Moderna has done it as well,' he told Dr Coatsworth told news.com.

'It’s a problem because you don’t listen to the person who’s responsible for shareholder profits if they tell you to take a drug.'

In stark contrast, vaccine competitor AstraZeneca announced early on in 2020 it would not seek to profit from a Covid vaccine while the pandemic was in effect, only recently moving to a profit-based model. 

Covid vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and other manufacturers have saved millions of lives worldwide with Pfizer's CEO claiming the outlook of the company had shifted. 

'We are proud to say we have delivered both the first FDA-authorised vaccine against Covid-19 (with our partner, BioNTech) and the first FDA-authorised oral treatment for Covid-19,' Albert Boula said earlier this year.

'These successes have not only made a positive difference in the world, but I believe they have fundamentally changed Pfizer and its culture for ever.'

And yet the company has been criticised for keeping a tight grip on the recipe for its Covid vaccines and not supplying them at reduced cost to developing countries.

'Pfizer is now richer than most countries; it has made more than enough money from this crisis. It's time to suspend intellectual property and break vaccine monopolies,' Tim Bierley, from Global Justice Now told The Guardian last month. 

Dr Coatsworth said Covid vaccines weren't the only ones that the pharma giant  could provide to needy nations. 

'[Pfizer's CEO] has on two occasions talked about how we need a fourth dose, the CEO of Moderna has done it as well... You don't listen to the person who's responsible for shareholder profits if they tell you to take a drug,' Dr Coatsworth said.

He said given Pfizer's massive revenue it could be a 'good corporate citizen' and subsidised its vaccines for low income countries.

'They don't do that and haven't done it for 20 years... It would be a simple and effective action... Pneumococcal disease is a bigger problem than Covid,' he said.

Pneumococcal disease is caused by any infection from Streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria, which can cause pneumonia, meningitis, and blood infection.

The World Health Organization estimates 300,000 children under five die from the infection each year - mostly in poor countries - despite a vaccine being developed 20 years ago.

Dr Coatsworth said Pfizer could easily save lives by using some of its Covid profits to subsidise the vaccine for this disease in those countries - where its cost of up to $21 a dose can make it unaffordable.  

Competitor Moderna said on Monday it would set up a manufacturing facility in Kenya, its first in Africa, to produce messenger mRNA vaccines.

The company said it expects to invest about $500million in the Kenyan facility and supply as many as 500 million doses to the continent each year.

Africa has lagged sharply behind other regions in vaccinating its citizens through the pandemic and there have been several efforts in recent months to help the continent produce its own vaccines.

'Kenya and the entire continent of Africa went through challenges in the earlier stages of this pandemic that resulted in Africa being left behind,' Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta said.

The World Health Organization last year set up a tech transfer hub in South Africa to give poorer nations the know-how to produce Covid-19 vaccines and has been trying to get Moderna and Pfizer to join in its efforts.

However, in September, a senior WHO official said there had not been much progress in talks with Moderna.

WHO-backed South Africa's Afrigen Biologics said in February it would produce its own version of Moderna's shot. While Moderna said it would not enforce any intellectual property or patent rights, it has not yet volunteered assistance.

BioNTech, which teamed up with Pfizer to make the western world's most widely-used Covid-19 job, has also announced plans to begin work on its mRNA manufacturing facility in the African Union this year.

Moderna's COVID vaccine brought in $17.7 billion in sales in 2021 and has been cleared for use in over 70 countries.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10614861/Dr-Nick-Coatsworth-rubbishes-claims-need-FOURTH-Covid-vaccine-slams-Pfizer.html

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High school students LOSE climate change court case against the environment minister after demanding she block a coal mine to 'save the future'

A legal decision finding the Australian government owes the country's children protection from harm caused by climate change has been overturned by a court.

The full bench of the Federal Court on Tuesday morning unanimously ruled in favour of an appeal by the Environment Minister Sussan Ley, reversing a decision by a previous judge.

Eight high school students took Ms Ley to court in 2020, seeking to block the expansion of a coal mine that is expected to produce an additional 100 million tonnes of carbon emissions.

Federal Court Justice Mordecai Bromberg in May 2021 knocked back their bid to stop the expansion, but he did rule that Ms Ley has a duty of reasonable care to not cause the children personal injury when exercising her legislative decision-making powers regarding the mine. It was lauded as a landmark win that would open an avenue for legal challenges to the government's future decisions on coal projects.

However, Ms Ley soon after announced she would appeal the finding, and on Tuesday the full Federal Court bench - Justices James Allsop, Jonathan Beach and Michael Wheelahan - ruled in her favour. All agreed a legal duty of care should not be imposed, but the judges varied in their reasons.

Chief Justice James Allsop concluded that decisions about mining approvals belonging to the executive arm of government - ministers of the day - not the judiciary.

Ms Ley also had control over only a tiny contribution to global carbon emissions, he said. 'The lack of proportionality between the tiny increase in risk and lack of control, and the liability for all damaged by heatwaves, bushfires and rising sea levels ... into the future, mean that the duty ... should not be imposed.'

Chief Justice Allsop did, however, note the considerable evidence demonstrating the dangers to humanity that climate change presents was not challenged. 'None of the evidence was disputed,' he said.

'There was no cross examination of any witness brought by the applicants by those acting for the minister and there was no contrary or qualifying evidence,' he said.

Lawyers acting for the group of children now have the option to appeal that decision in the High Court.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10613223/Sussan-Ley-wins-climate-change-Federal-Court-case-against-high-school-kids.html

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School principals hounded out by violent parents and students

Violence, burnout and “brutal’’ workloads will push school principals to quit in record numbers this year, a study shows.

Four out of 10 principals were exposed to violence in schools last year, with some punched or pushed by angry parents, or injured breaking up schoolyard fights.

Escalating violence and stress in schools is exposed in the latest Australian Principal Occupational Health and Wellbeing Survey of 2590 principals and deputy principals, which is carried out each year by Australian Catholic University researchers.

Workloads worsened during the pandemic, with principals and their deputies working 55-hour weeks, on average, as they devoted more time to dealing with pandemic planning and students’ mental health problems.

The research shows 39 per cent of school leaders were exposed to workplace violence in schools last year – 10 times higher than the general population. Some 7 per cent of principals were threatened with assault by parents and 37 per cent by students.

“At this rate, half of all school leaders will endure physical violence by 2025,’’ ACU investigator and former principal Paul Kidson said on Monday. “Principals have to deal with students who are fighting one another – if three or four students are belting one another up and they have to get in the middle to break up the fight, they’re exposed to violence.

“I’ve even had to break up parent scuffles in the carpark.’’

Dr Kidson said the survey found principals had “brutal’’ workloads and worked an average of 23 hours a week during school holidays. A record one in 12 principals intends to retire early this year, as school leaders report the highest level of mental burnout since the survey began in 2011.

“The system is broken and on its knees,’’ one NSW public high school principal said.

“(There is) an unsustainable workload, poor working conditions (and) a significant increase in students and their families presenting with complex problems that schools do not have the resources to manage effectively.’’

Australian Secondary Principals Association president Andrew Pierpoint said he had been “roughed up’’ by a former student 10 years ago.

“The young fellow came into the school – I don’t know why he was aggrieved or if there was substance abuse – but I asked him to leave the school grounds, calm down and then come back,’’ Mr Pier­point said. “He lunged forward and punched me in the head – that really rattled me for a while.

“There are plenty of women who’ve been attacked by students or parents,” he added.

Mr Pierpoint said increasing violence, as well as the pandemic, had made life “close to intolerable’’ for some principals. A third of principals reported being cyberbullied, and 45 per cent were victims of gossip and slander.

“It’s not just physical bullying; I know of a principal who had his face superimposed on a known pedophile’s body and circulated among the community,’’ Mr Pierpoint said. “He and his family had to pack up and leave town.’’

Mr Pierpoint said principals were also having to deal daily with students distraught over bushfires, floods, domestic violence and Covid-19 outbreaks.

Australian Primary School Principals Association president Malcolm Elliott said he had been “threatened so many times I’ve lost count’’.

“I’ve witnessed a principal who was punched in the face by a high school student,’’ he said.

“The student’s parents and relatives drove into the carpark, then a carload of people got out and egged on the student as he punched the principal.

“Principals are being man­handled and hit, injured and having objects thrown at them.

“We’re not talking about children throwing a rubber – just recently, one principal was hit on the head with a sizeable rock.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/school-principals-hounded-out-by-violent-parents-and-students/news-story/21b84bdbe41ec1c2880e18a9ea03675e

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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 March, 2022

The Gonski ‘failure’: why did it happen and who is to blame for the ‘defrauding’ of public schools?

Gonski was just a well-connected businessman.  He knew little about education.  His ideas were accordingly just conventional dreams.  "Spend more money" was the core of his profoundly unoriginal contribution

And he seems to have had no clear idea of how and why educational inequalities come about.  That they are unfair and wicked seems to have been the depth of his thinking.  No wonder his recommendations went nowhere 

The commenter below is similarly uninteresting

When the Gonski review was released a decade ago, it was hailed as the answer to Australia’s educational woes – a roadmap to creating an equitable school funding system, and boosting the performance of Australian students on the global stage.

But rather than celebrating its success, its 10-year anniversary last month sparked critique of the failure of successive governments to implement the report’s recommendations.

Despite record levels of funding flowing to Australia’s schools, education results have suffered a 20-year decline on international benchmarks. 

Meanwhile, a new analysis paints a bleak picture of a widening gap between advantaged and disadvantaged schools, with commonwealth and state funding for private schools increasing at nearly five times the rate of public school funding over the decade to 2019-20.

Education experts now warn that the vision enshrined in the review will only be realised if the commonwealth and states unite to end the “defrauding” of public schools and fully fund them to their needs-based benchmark.

Ahead of next year’s expiry of the current state-federal funding deal, the National School Reform Agreement, experts say there must be a coordinated effort to ensure Gonski’s vision is realised.

What did Gonski recommend?

In 2010, businessman David Gonski was engaged by the Rudd government to lead a review into Australia’s school funding, with the aim of reducing the impact of social disadvantage on educational outcomes, and ending inequities in the distribution of public money. The report was released in February 2012, during Julia Gillard’s prime ministership.

The reforms recommended that governments reduce payments to overfunded schools that didn’t need them and redirect funds on a needs-based model. Its key recommendation was the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) – a base rate of funding per student with additional loading for disadvantage factors such as Indigenous heritage. The SRS would determine the required funding needed for each school. But a decade on, most public schools are yet to reach their full funding according to their SRS and more funding has gone to the less needy schools, with non-government schools well above their benchmark.

Gonski said the system would “ensure that differences in educational outcomes are not the result of differences in wealth, income, power or possessions” when he delivered his findings to government in 2011.

Why did it fail?

Trevor Cobbold, an economist and national convenor for public school advocacy group Save Our Schools, says the failure to achieve the review’s goals was a result of failures by the Gillard government and those that followed to implement the report’s recommendations.

“Gonski didn’t fail. It is governments that failed Gonski, and thereby failed disadvantaged students,” he says.

“You have to construct a system that recognises both the commonwealth and state roles, and Gonski did this by designing a nationally integrated model on a needs-basis.”

Tom Greenwell, a Canberra-based teacher and co-author of Waiting for Gonski – How Australia Failed its Schools, says a “huge problem” is that the “real work of additional funding has always been delayed beyond the forward estimates, to the next funding agreement”.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/mar/13/the-gonski-failure-why-did-it-happen-and-who-is-to-blame-for-the-defrauding-of-public-schools

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Queensland's Public Trustee system to be investigated after Four Corners report revealed high fees and financial mismanagement

It has long been known by many that you must never get involved with the Qld Trustee.  They are bureaucratic sharks

The Queensland government has ordered two separate investigations into the state's Office of the Public Trustee, after a Four Corners report revealed exorbitant fees and dire financial mismanagement.

The program had to go to the Supreme Court to be able to report the cases

There are calls for a compensation scheme to be introduced

Public Trustees are supposed to protect the finances of people with cognitive deficits caused by such conditions as dementia, brain injury or intellectual disability.

Queensland Attorney-General Shannon Fentiman said she took the stories featured in Four Corners "very seriously" and described them as "difficult to watch" and "uncomfortable viewing". "Their experiences are unacceptable for any Queenslander," she said.

She announced an internal review of the Public Trustee's practices and policies and an extensive, independent external review into the three cases highlighted in the program.

Ms Fentiman said the moves were needed "so that Queenslanders can have confidence that every matter raised in that Four Corners story is being investigated".

Public Trustees have escaped media scrutiny because gag laws in most of the country stop 'clients' from talking publicly. Journalists can be fined or jailed for identifying them, even after they have died.

The ABC went to the Supreme Court in Queensland and Western Australia to lift the ban on identifying former clients of the Public Trustee offices. A team of forensic accountants helped Four Corners work through their financial documents, revealing mismanagement and extraordinary fees.

The Disability Royal Commission has told the ABC there will be hearings into the guardianship and trustee system later this year, saying that while the process serves some people, it has received submissions that "it may limit some people's decision making rights and can amount to, or lead to, violence, abuse, neglect or exploitation."

Christine Dalas, from the grassroots advocacy group Australian Association to Stop Guardianship and Administration Abuse, said state governments were turning a blind eye to the known problems.

"The main concern for me is the Public Trustee has an open cheque book. It's an open cheque book to your finances and there's no checks and balances," she said.

The Tasmanian government has been under pressure since a scathing independent review last year found that its Public Trustee office had misunderstood its legislative role for over 26 years by making decisions without consulting its vulnerable clients.

Before the Four Corners' program went to air and with prominent publicity about the ABC investigation, the chair of the Public Trustee of Tasmania, Mark Scanlon, resigned unexpectedly on Friday.

CEO of Your say Advocacy Tasmania Leanne Groombridge is calling for a compensation scheme for those who have had their finances mismanaged. 

"People who have suffered at the hands of the Public Trustee, lost everything, left with a few hundred dollars after having things taken to the tip or sold off at auction, had cars disappear, their belongings, no inventories made — why should they have to battle to get some level of compensation?

"We want a system where people can actually get some form of compensation so that they can start trying to regain the lives that have been destroyed by the Public Trustee," she said. 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-15/public-trustee-system-under-fire-over-fees-to-vulnerable-people/100908772

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Hundreds have gathered outside Queensland Parliament to protest vaccine mandates

Hundreds of people have gathered outside Queensland Parliament to protest “freedom over fear”.

Many of the protesters were rallying against Covid vaccine mandates which left them out of work after refusing to get the jab.

A former teacher who addressed the crowd said he had worked for Education Queensland – “the guys behind me” – for 23 years before he was fired.

“Hand-in-hand, that’s how our country will go forward,” he said.

A second protest marched from King George Square to Queensland Parliament. That protest was led by firefighters and One Nation leader Pauline Hanson who said she was walking with “me and my friends”.

Katter’s Australian Party leader Robbie Katter was also at the protest to rally for the end of mandates. “It’s a position we have had from the start – I think it’s important for people to get a voice and put their side of the argument forward,” Mr Katter said.

As the crowd marched through the streets of Brisbane’s CBD, people chanted “my body, my choice”, “end the segregation” and “freedom to work”.

Rogue Coalition backbencher George Christensen, who has come under fire for his anti-vaccination rhetoric, was among the crowd at Queensland Parliament. But Mr Christensen said “I’m more anti-mandate than anything else”.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/coronavirus/hundreds-have-gathered-outside-queensland-parliament-to-protest-vaccine-mandates/news-story/9fdebc88a1790b8ca343122dfa4e0ee5

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DNA lab accused of corrupt conduct

Forensic science laboratories in Qld. have long been notorious for inaccuracy

The Queensland government’s forensic DNA laboratory has been accused of knowingly using flawed testing processes that may have let dangerous criminals walk free or led to wrongful convictions.

Leading forensic scientist ­Kirsty Wright has lodged an ­explosive complaint with the state’s Crime and Corruption Commission alleging lab experts engaged in systemic dishonest conduct that could have spanned more than a decade, impacting a huge number of cases.

Dr Wright called on the commission to launch a public inquiry, saying the lab had ignored serious concerns raised by internal and external scientists about the ­reliability of test results being presented to police and the courts.

“The CCC will identify ongoing deliberate attempts by DNA Analysis Unit staff to cover up the flawed testing processes and dishonest conduct,” her complaint alleges. “The CCC will also identify crimes in which the negligent processing by the DNA Analysis Unit of evidence has led to offenders being either not prosecuted at all or acquitted.”

Her calls for an inquiry were backed by prominent lawyers.

Dr Wright’s concerns about the Queensland Health Forensic and Scientific Services lab were raised after she agreed to review DNA evidence from the murder of Shandee Blackburn for investi­gative podcast series Shandee’s Story. She found the lab had failed to generate DNA profiles from crime scene evidence where it would normally be expected, such as from blood and skin samples.

Her complaint alleges the lab misled the courts and impeded the criminal investigation into the murder of Blackburn, 23, who was stabbed to death while walking home from work in Mackay, Queensland, in 2013.

Blackburn’s former boyfriend, John Peros, was acquitted of the murder by a jury in 2017, before Coroner David O’Connell found in 2020 that he did in fact kill her. He denies involvement.

Rather than it being an isolated case, Dr Wright now believes the lab has concealed systemic issues with its testing methods and procedures, putting the public at risk from serious and violent offenders who are not being identified and brought to justice.

Unreliable and inaccurate ­results were being provided to police, and misleading evidence and expert testimony was being given to courts, her complaint states. “These systemic issues would have affected many thousands of other criminal investi­gations and court proceedings,” Dr Wright said.

“There is evidence this conduct is continuing to the present day, ­potentially affecting criminal cases currently being heard before the courts, and overall compromising the integrity of Queensland’s criminal justice system.”

Dr Wright is a decorated forensic biologist who previously worked in the lab and went on to run the National Criminal Investigation DNA database.

She steered Queensland’s DNA response to the Bali bombings, and led efforts to identify Boxing Day tsunami victims. Her assistance in recovering and identifying the remains of murdered schoolboy Daniel Morcombe earned her a Queensland Police Commissioner’s Award.

She had shown her findings to, and taken advice from, senior scientific colleagues who agreed there was evidence in the official case documents of negligence and dishonesty, her complaint states.

“Only a powerfully equipped independent and external review will fully uncover these serious ­issues and prescribed remedies for repair,” she says.

“For these reasons I am ­requesting the CCC to open a public inquiry into the conduct of staff at the QHFSS DNA Analysis Unit as a matter of urgency. My motivations as a senior scientist to urge a public inquiry by the CCC to highlight and root out misconduct and restore public confidence are born from my growing concerns that the misconduct will continue compromising public safety.”

Queensland Council for Civil Liberties president Michael Cope said an independent inquiry was needed to ensure public confidence. “There’s enough in what The Australian has raised to justify an independent expert conducting an inquiry,” Mr Cope said.

Because of Australia’s very small forensics community, an ­expert should be sought from overseas, he said.

Former Queensland Law ­Society president Bill Potts said the CCC or an independent scientific body should investigate.

The wrongful conviction of Lindy Chamberlain over the death of her 10-week-old daughter, Azaria, led to a review of scientific and forensic facilities, he said. “There is precedent for this,” he said.

Dr Wright submitted the complaint confidentially more than five weeks ago, on February 1. The commission’s immense investi­gative powers include the ability to compel scientists, bureaucrats and others to give evidence in ­secret and public hearings.

The commission contacted Dr Wright on Thursday and she is ­expected to provide further information in coming days.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/dna-lab-accused-of-corrupt-conduct/news-story/984e0725a0181f60dbafef4fcf707475

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Five years on, Snowy 2.0 emerges as a $10 billion white elephant

A very costly alternative to coal.  The original Snowy scheme was a boondoggle too

Five years ago on Tuesday, then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull announced, with great fanfare, the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project: “The Turnbull Government will start work on an electricity game-changer ... This plan will increase the generation of the Snowy Hydro scheme by 50 per cent, adding 2000 megawatts of renewable energy to the National Electricity Market (NEM).”

Senate Estimates papers confirm the announcement was cobbled together in less than two weeks after the concept was floated by Snowy Hydro.

The nation-building vision was for a big battery to be added to the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme. It was to be completed in four years (that is, by last year) at a cost of $2 billion without any taxpayer subsidy, bring down electricity prices, generate renewable energy and incur minimal environmental impact on Kosciuszko National Park.

Inspiring stuff. But not one of these grand claims has turned out to be true. Worse, Australian taxpayers and NSW electricity consumers will be up for billions of dollars in subsidies and increased electricity costs, all while Kosciuszko is trashed. Let’s have a quick recap.

Snowy Hydro now expects completion in 10 years, not four, by 2026. Some experts consider even this extended timeframe to be optimistic. Construction of the tunnels is running at least six months behind the latest schedule and the transmission connection is unlikely to be built by 2026 anyway. The all-up cost has increased at least five-fold, to $10 billion-plus, as energy experts warned the Prime Minister and the then NSW premier in 2020.

The underground power station and tunnels alone will cost more than $6 billion, and Snowy Hydro avoids mentioning the transmission connections to Sydney – $4 billion-plus for HumeLink and the Sydney ring – and to Victoria. To make matters worse, Snowy Hydro refuses to contribute to these transmission works, leaving it to electricity consumers to pick up the tab. Transmission tariffs in NSW will increase by more than 50 per cent if the NSW government allows Snowy Hydro to get its way, based on analysis in a Victoria Energy Policy Centre report.

It’s been around for decades but pumped hydro power is gaining attention as a potential back up for renewable energy, which is increasing its share of the electricity grid. It’s also technology the federal government is interested in.

Despite the assurance that taxpayer subsidies were not required, the federal government was forced to shore up Snowy 2.0’s business case with a $1.4bn “equity injection”. Further taxpayer funding is inevitable, warned Standard & Poors when it downgraded Snowy Hydro’s credit rating in 2020.

Far from bringing electricity prices down, Snowy Hydro’s own modelling predicts that prices will rise because of Snowy 2.0.

As far as the claim that Snowy 2.0 will add 2000 megawatts of renewable energy to the National Electricity Market, Snowy 2.0 is not a conventional hydro station generating renewable energy. It is no different to any other battery, and as such it will be a net load on the NEM. For every 100 units of electricity purchased from the NEM to pump water uphill, only 75 units are returned when the water flows back down through the turbine generators. Not only is the electricity generated not renewable, Snowy 2.0 will be the most inefficient battery on the NEM, losing 25 per cent of energy cycled.

And on the final claim of minimal environmental impact to Kosciuszko National Park, vast areas have already been cleared, blasted, reshaped and compacted. Hundreds of kilometres of roads and tracks are being constructed, twenty million tonnes of excavated spoil will be dumped (astoundingly, mainly in Snowy Hydro’s reservoirs), and noxious fish will be transferred throughout the Snowy Mountains and the headwaters of the Murrumbidgee, Murray and Snowy Rivers, devastating native fish and trout. The NSW government has even agreed to issue exemptions to its own legislation to override the prohibition of such pest fish transfers – an astonishing precedent.

The massive cost and environmental impacts of Snowy 2.0 cannot be justified for providing occasional longer-term storage.

The latest revelation in this dismal saga is the proposal for four high-voltage transmission lines through eight kilometres of Kosciuszko National Park with a cleared easement swath up to 200 metres wide. The statutory plan of management that controls activities in Kosciuszko expressly prohibits the construction of new overhead transmission lines, as is the norm with national parks in Australia and throughout the developed world. Reprehensibly, the NSW government has released a draft amendment to exempt Snowy 2.0 from having to install underground cables.

Despite Snowy 2.0’s abysmal track record over the past five years, the Commonwealth and NSW governments continue to bend over backwards with billion-dollar subsidies (and more to come), electricity price increases and environmental exemptions, despite conclusive evidence that the project is fundamentally flawed and can never pay for itself.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/five-years-on-snowy-2-0-emerges-as-a-10-billion-white-elephant-20220310-p5a3ge.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 March, 2022

How much longer can the law justify the killing of Aboriginal people?

Teela Reid

The article below attributed to Teela Reid is both delightfully articulate and deeply offensive. It turns on the matter of Northern Territory police officer Zachary Rolfe and his attacker. If a hardened criminal is coming at you with a sharp object you are supposed to just cop it because the attacker is black? That seems to be the claim by Ms Reid. It was the Aborigine who initiated the series of events leading to his own death, no-one else. The law did not "justify" the death on frivolous or unreasonable grounds.

It is in fact Ms Reid who is most open to the claim of unreasonableness. She repeatedly skates over important details in the matters she refers to. In referring to the Coniston masssacre, for instance, she ignores the fact the the precipitating event there was also the work of Aborigines. They killed a white man who was friendly with them and who camped with them. And even then the matter was not glided over by the authorities. It was the subject of official reports, three court hearings and a Board of Enquiry. The outcome of the various hearings has been claimed to be unfair but if the acquittal of Const. Rolfe was unfair, whence unfairness?

It is true that white setters in the early days did mount punitive expeditions in response to attacks on isolated whites by blacks but that was indeed defensive. Aborigines had formidable skills derived from their hunting lifestyle. They had genius-level skills at sneaking up on alert prey animals and killing them. Evidence that such skills were being turned against whites was justifiably terrifying to local whites. To comfortable present-day urbanites, what the whites did is easily seen as unfair and unjust but they were not in the shoes of the whites concerned. In law, as in much else, context is not everything but it is close to it.

I could go on to dissect further the foolish screed below but I think I have said enough to show it for the inspissated bias that it is

The killing of Kumanjayi Walker, a 19-year-old Aboriginal man in Yuendumu, reminds us that the law does not always equal justice when it comes to Aboriginal experiences within the criminal process. In the wake of Northern Territory police officer Zachary Rolfe’s acquittal, the Walpiri people have stood strong and dignified in their calls for ceasefire, police accountability and control of their homelands.

This case begs the question: how much longer can the law justify the killing of Aboriginal people?

Without cavilling with the not guilty verdict or the conduct of the trial, there are legitimate concerns about the training and recruitment of the Northern Territory Police Force. How is it that NT police officers are trained and drilled that an “edged weapon equals a gun”, as Rolfe’s lawyer argued, and in this instance that the three bullets Rolfe shot into Kumanjayi’s body were a lawful response to his threat of having a pair of medical scissors?

It wasn’t just the shooting of Kumanjayi that sent shockwaves across the desert; it was also the fact he died alone in the most undignified way inside a police station while the rest of his family and community sat outside wailing and waiting for answers, wondering if he was dead or alive the same day the Walpiri buried his uncle.

Surely, there are more appropriate and humane ways to respond and disarm a person. And the Northern Territory police have proven an alternative approach is possible when the person posing the threat is a white man. In June 2019, the same year Kumanjayi’s life was cut short inside a family member’s home, Benjamin Hoffman, a white man who terrorised the streets of Darwin in a one-hour killing spree that resulted in the death of four people, was spared his life. Why is the response different when it comes to Aboriginal men like Kumanjayi?

The disparity is jarring and the rage and fear felt by First Nations people across the continent is valid. Police preparedness to shoot Aboriginal men was reinforced during the Kumanjayi murder trial – as the jury deliberated Rolfe’s fate, the Northern Territory police fired six shots into another 19-year-old Aboriginal man in Palmerston.

Not long after the trial and further shooting, Samara Fernandez-Brown, the cousin of Kumanjayi, stood on the steps of the Northern Territory Supreme Court and described how his death has affected other young Blak men. “We are all in so much pain, particularly our young men. They have struggled, they have been scared, yet they have been respectful of this process.”

Our Blak men deserve better.

And it is not as though Australia doesn’t know what to do. The issues were ventilated in the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody more than 30 years ago that made 339 recommendations. These were reinforced in the royal commission into Don Dale, and they continue to be revealed in the many coronial inquiries and highlighted in mass protests for Black Lives Matter – yet the suffering of Aboriginal people at the hands of state-sanctioned violence continues. This is an indictment on our nation and a status quo none of us should accept.

Since Rolfe killed Kumanjayi, the Walpiri made clear their community had remained in Sorry Business for the past two years. On Friday, in a powerful statement, Walpiri elder Ned Jampijinpa Hargraves broke his silence after attending the five-week trial: “We want ceasefire. No more guns in our communities. It must never happen again. The police must put down their weapons. We have been saying this since the beginning. We cannot walk around in fear in our own homes.”

To appreciate the significance of this demand, we must understand the terror and disempowerment that stems from the 1928 Coniston Massacre in which up to 60 Walpiri, Anmatyrre and Kayteye men, women and children were slaughtered by settlers. This is Australia’s most recently documented massacre.

None of the perpetrators have been held accountable for the murders and an inquiry set up to investigate the killings ruled the settlers “acted in self-defence”. A justification that has become all too familiar when it comes to Blak victims and white perpetrators.

It is the relentless injustice where the law protects white innocence, yet Blak people are often considered guilty until proven innocent and have all aspects of our lives policed. It is the fact that we can see in plain sight white police officers shoot our Blak men and walk free, meanwhile, our children as young as 10 sit inside police cells for doing a lot less.

It is the abuse of police power monitoring Aboriginal communities that is exacerbated by the lack of accountability for the wrongs perpetrated against First Nations communities that reveals a racist system that privileges white supremacy at the expense of Blak lives – too many Blak deaths, not enough justice.

The criminal process, coronial inquests and royal commissions cannot bring back the Blak lives already lost.

But we can prevent many more unnecessary deaths if we ameliorate the tension between the police and Aboriginal communities.

We need enforceable police accountability mechanisms for abuses of power and systemic changes to confront and dismantle the systemic racism that is rife among the police forces across Australia.

If there is any jurisdiction in Australia that exposes the urgent need for a powerful First Nations Voice enshrined in the constitution to guarantee the voices of the Walpiri are honoured, and proper independent oversight of the implementation of countless recommendations that have been ignored by governments, it is the Northern Territory.

And, perhaps, we all need to show Blak men a little more love to ensure their lives do, in fact, matter.

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/how-much-longer-can-the-law-justify-the-killing-of-aboriginal-people-20220313-p5a46n.html

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Let’s think twice before we exclude white male artists from our art galleries

Terms such as “social justice, equity and inclusion” can mean replacing one set of prejudices with a different but equally narrow variety.

By John McDonald

A change is always an opportunity and Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art is set to begin a new chapter with the departure of long-term director Elizabeth Ann Macgregor and senior curator Rachel Kent. Yet, the transition has been complicated by two years of pandemic, and the impending opening of the Art Gallery of NSW’s Sydney Modern – a new wing that will duplicate much that goes on at Circular Quay.

The pressure is on the new director Suzanne Cotter, an Australian who has worked in Luxembourg, Portugal, the Middle East and the UK, to quickly come to terms with the nature of the museum and its audience. In her first few weeks, Cotter has said all the positive things one might expect from a new incumbent and raised a few warning signs.

She has spoken of the need to implement “urgent reforms with respect to social justice, equity, inclusion, and now COVID which has had a particular impact on the financial models of museums.” In theory, nobody could object to such goals, but terms such as “social justice, equity and inclusion” can mean replacing one set of prejudices with a different but equally narrow variety.

When we try to understand how this translates into attendance figures, sponsorships and patronage, there is a danger of principle outstripping practicality. It’s indisputable that public museums and galleries have historically favoured male artists over females, but does that mean today’s museums should deliberately reverse the trend? The same applies to Indigenous work, which was often treated as amateur or folk art. Should museum collections now give precedence to Indigenous art over more cosmopolitan expressions?

Move too far, too fast, in the direction of affirmative action and the museum runs the risk of alienating more people than it attracts. There’s no consolation in feeling virtuous when your paymasters are asking why attendances and revenues are down.

In countries such as France and Germany, the arts are taken seriously by a more cultured set of politicians. In Australia, with a few notable exceptions, our MPs are rank philistines who see the visual arts as part of the tourist industry. For the average politician, who would probably prefer arts funding to be handled by the private sector, the quality of a show is judged by its attendance numbers.

Corporate sponsors are equally keen on the big numbers when it comes to deciding how they distribute their largesse. When a museum has to reconcile a commitment to social justice with the need to raise revenue, the “financial models” are more complex to navigate.

Cotter dramatised this dilemma when she was quoted in The Australian as saying: “Today, if you are a white male artist, you are not so interesting... It doesn’t mean to say you’re not a great artist – I think it’s more that this isn’t what is ­relevant for people now. You have to think in a timely way.”

This sounds like bad news for white male artists, but it also raises the question of “relevance”. All contemporary institutions act as tastemakers, imposing their ideas about what’s relevant, fashionable, politically correct, etc, on their exhibition programs. But what a curator believes to be “relevant”, may be completely contrary to the views of the average gallery-goer.

The museum needs to strike a balance, avoiding populism without venturing too far into the realms of the esoteric. It needs to recognise minoritarian concerns, but pitch exhibitions to the broadest possible audience. In recent years the MCA has got its best results from projects with a touch of the wow factor. I’m thinking of solo shows by artists including Pipilotti Rist, Cornelia Parker and Sun Xun. Neither should we discount major retrospectives by David Goldblatt and John Mawurndjul that may not have been crowd-pullers but deserve the highest accolades.

At the time the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago opened in October 1967, Modern art was breaking down into Conceptual Art, performance, political activism, and a range of “anti-art” gestures.

With its militant attachment to “the New”, the museum was greeted with a mixture of enthusiasm and scepticism. In an essay titled Museum of the New, critic Harold Rosenberg pointed out the obvious contradictions of a museum devoted to the avant-garde project of dissolving the boundaries that separate art from life. Exhibit A was Allen Kaprow, the pioneer of “happenings”, who saw the museum as “a fuddy-duddy remnant from another era” and called for such institutions to be turned into swimming pools and nightclubs.

New gallery director aims to bring showstopping art to Sydney

Kaprow’s iconoclasm didn’t prevent the Chicago MCA from including his work – or at least documentation of his work – in its opening display. It’s a gesture that has been repeated countless times in the decades that followed: the artist who declares that art and its institutions are either dead or deserve to be killed, is celebrated and collected by those same institutions.

The logic is explained in Chicago’s mission statement of 1966: “A museum of contemporary art is different from the general art museum where the values of the past are enshrined. Instead, it is a place where new ideas are shown and tested.”

But if the “new idea” is that museums must be abolished, how can this be reconciled with a bricks-and-mortar institution caught up in the familiar round of exhibition and collection development, fund-raising, tourist initiatives and public education?

Perhaps the only option is to invoke Ralph Waldo Emerson, who once wrote: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

https://www.smh.com.au/culture/art-and-design/small-art-for-narrow-minds-is-what-happens-when-identity-politics-take-precedence-20220225-p59znp.html

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The "woke" CSIRO

Don’t expect Australia’s peak science body to come up with a vaccine against ‘wokeness’. They are, themselves, riddled with it.

Last week, the CSIRO announced it was abandoning science to chase the pot of gender confusion at the end of the LGBTQ+ rainbow – a case of spending taxpayer gold in pursuit of the fools’ kind.

In an announcement timed to coincide with the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, our Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation said it would be offering staff extra leave for ‘gender reassignment’ surgery.

Our premier science organisation no longer regards gender as a fixed biological reality. Instead, gender is something assigned at birth – often incorrectly, as it so happens – but that can be ‘reassigned’ with a surgeon’s knife and the state-approved adjustment to birth certificates.

While telling the public to ‘follow the science’, our scientific community has decided to follow Caitlyn Jenner.

So-called ‘experts’ tell us that ‘the science is settled’ on climate change, but are happy to do a bit of casual re-writing on the basics of biology.

I’m sure the irony isn’t lost on people demonised for questioning ‘climate science’.

In particular, the CSIRO’s Gender Affirmation policy entitles staff to take time off for medical appointments before and after surgery, and to organise new birth certificates. This is probably annoying for staff who would like extra time off for non-woke activities.

All staff are to be given ‘diversity training’ to make the CSIRO more welcoming for non-binary, trans, and gender-diverse team members.

Finally, CSIRO computer software will be updated to allow researchers to display their preferred pronouns.

It’s all very sciencey.

CSIRO spokesman Chris Gerbing boasted that the Australian government agency responsible for scientific research had given staff permission to ‘be themselves at work’. The public, who are bankrolling the CSIRO, would probably rather its scientists knuckle down and get some work done.

Imagine what a ghastly work environment the CSIRO used to be before the Gender Affirmation Policy came into effect… All those un-affirmed genders out there, forced to walk the corridors and do research without ‘being themselves’. After all, an employer’s chief role is to continuously affirm the gender and sexual preferences of their staff, is it not? Or was it to not ask personal questions?

The Pride@CSIRO Network Leadership, which among other things exists to identify LGBTQI+ staff and their allies, claimed ‘diversity of thought is crucial to doing impactful science’.

Such a pity that diversity of thought at the CSIRO is positively mandated when it comes to gender, yet actively discouraged when it comes to climate, or to vaccine efficacy, or to mask mandates, or to the usefulness of taboo Ivermectin, or to the merits of lockdowns or to any number of real issues that actually matter to Australians the CSIRO are paid to serve.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/csiro-lgbtqqiaap/

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Ignore climate twerps, fossil fuels coal, gas and oil still rule

Don’t we have enough twerps in Australia that we have to import one like the former hapless and hopeless Bank of England governor turned climate-boondoggle main-chancer Mark Carney?

Carney, who is now vice-chairman of Canadian investment group Brookfield, was ‘in’ Australia – be thankful for small mercies, only virtually – to lecture Australians on two topics.

The first was our tardiness in embracing ‘going dark’ with so-called full-on renewable energy.

The second was to berate the board of AGL specifically for knocking back the opportunistic takeover bid Brookfield had launched for it in partnership with ‘Mr Harbourside Mansions Version 2.0’, got-lucky, once, tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes.

Brookfield and Brookes wanted to buy AGL, abandon its proposed de-merger into two companies, and accelerate the closure of its coal-fired stations which are currently keeping Australian lights on, especially, when the wind don’t blow - and you know the rest. Last weekend the partners had upped their bid to $8.25 a share. It was promptly – and sensibly – rejected by the AGL board.

The central point that AGL holders should understand is that if the duo were prepared to pay $8.25, AGL shares are worth more, much more. Bidders don’t go around offering to spend $9bn just to play Father Christmas.

They want to make big bucks on their billions outlaid. The central point that the other 25m Australians should understand is that those ‘big bucks’ would be made by ripping more dollars out of their pockets, either directly as consumers or indirectly as taxpayers, while taking them into an increasingly – real, not virtual – dark future.

Indeed, with surprising – utterly unknowing? – ‘honesty’ Carney said as much out loud. “The scale of the net zero transition (read: destroying cheap, reliable power generation) is such that this is a target-rich environment (read: there are trillions of dollars to be made from hapless governments and suffering consumers),” he said.

You could not have asked for more exquisite timing for Carney’s comments, as the events in and out of Ukraine prove the absolute, utterly critical, centrality of coal, gas and oil – fossil fuels all – in our every-day 24/7 energy needs and indeed our very existence. Despite the trillions of dollars already wasted around the world on useless wind and solar, 85 per cent of global energy still comes from coal, gas and oil.

Just 5 per cent comes from so-called ‘renewables (not including the real renewable, hated by Dark Greens, hydro) after all those trillions. The trillions more that Carney talks about will barely take it up to 10 percent. And people like Carney never talk about China, pumping one-third of global emissions today and yet more tomorrow, other than to make fatuous and false claims China is ‘taking action on climate change’.

Go coal, gas and oil to keep the lights on; go renewables-woke, go broke and go dark. Talking of twerps, there was opposition leader and wannabe-PM Anthony Albanese Wednesday saying in a speech that he would be a PM like John Howard (and Bob Hawke). So, was that Albanese saying he intended to emulate the “petulance, pettiness and sheer grinding inadequacy” that he judged Howard as PM?

I’m indebted to blogger Michael Smith for highlighting a speech Albanese gave back in 1998 where he described Howard as a worse PM even than Billy McMahon. Is it Albanese’s intent to ‘match that’? I was particularly taken with Albanese’s reference to Howard – nicely highlighted by Smith:

“You can trim the eyebrows; you can cap the teeth; you can cut the hair; you can put on different glasses; you can give him a ewe’s milk facial, for all I care; but, to paraphrase a gritty Australian saying, `Same stuff, different bucket’.”

Looked in a mirror recently, Anthony?

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/ignore-climate-twerps-fossil-fuels-coal-gas-and-oil-still-rule/news-story/82e906e34c815364079658444a84f7eb

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Shortlist was ignored for three Qld. judicial appointments in 2017

Not sure how relevant this is five years later

The Palaszczuk government is again at the centre of an integrity scandal after it dumped its much trumpeted protocol for judicial appointments in 2017 and appointed three magistrates who had not been among a short list of 20 provided by a review panel.

Yesterday, Attorney-General Shannon Fentiman put out a statement saying that “every (judicial) appointment is based on the recommendations of a panel of independent professionals from each arm of the legal profession’’.

“The Palaszczuk government introduced a robust policy for judicial appointments in 2016 to ensure every appointment is based on the recommendations of a panel of independent professionals from each arm of the legal profession,’’ she said.

“This ensures that all appointees are well respected and qualified members of the legal community, and each appointment is based on merit.’’

Yet in 2017, then attorney-general Yvette D’Ath trumpeted “a transparent protocol for judicial appointments in Queensland’’ and then ignored some of the specialist panel’s recommendations and appointed three “captain’s picks’’.

Ms D’Ath received 20 names on a short list and appointed eight magistrates. Five people came from the short list of 20 and three did not.

It is unknown which of the five were recommended by the panel, and which were not. The appointees were Clare Kelly (Southport), Dennis Kinsella (Caboolture), Andrew Molony (Children’s Court), Louise Shepherd (Southport), Stephen Courtney (Townsville), Donald McKenzie (Southport), Kerrie O’Callaghan (Southport) and Mark Nolan (Mackay).

The Sunday Mail does not suggest any of the appointments lacked merit.

In a departmental document sighted by the Sunday Mail, authored by then chair of the

appointments panel Judge Sarah Bradley, five recommendations from the panel were appointed, and three magistrates were appointed who were not recommended by the panel.

In the document – sent to the panel members, it says:

“The panel met for the second time in July, 2017. It considered 213 expressions of interest in relation to six vacancies. We provided a list of 20 suitable appointees to the AG. Eight appointments were made, five from the list provided by the panel.’’

The anomaly in appointments comes a day after The Courier-Mail reported just how many judicial appointments under the current government have gone to relatives and friends of Labor figures.

On October 15, 2015, then attorney-general Yvette D’Ath said: “The Palaszczuk government is pushing forward with its plan to deliver a transparent protocol for judicial appointments in Queensland.

“Confidence in the expertise, independence and impartiality of the judiciary is essential to the proper functioning of government in Queensland.

“The Palaszczuk government believes that the public will only share that confidence if the process for the selection and appointment of members of the judiciary can be seen to be transparent and genuinely consultative.’’

A senior judicial source said the selection process was “far from transparent if the panel puts up 20 names and only five are chosen among eight appointments”.

“So you’ve had three ring-ins that were selected by the A-G, that were not even on the list of 20 names supplied by the panel,” the source said.

“It just reinforces the notion that this government will say anything, do anything, to protect itself from scrutiny.’’

A spokesperson for Ms Fentiman said she had always taken the recommendation of the panel in appointing magistrates and judges and the 2017 decision was best explained by then AG Yvette D’Ath.

A spokesman for former attorney-general Yvette D’Ath said: “As attorney-general, the minister adhered to all protocols around judicial appointments.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/qld-politics/shortlist-was-ignored-for-three-judicial-appointments-in-2017/news-story/40d8197acfb6acca042733bf08c4c224

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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 March, 2022

Women who preach

As the epistles of the apostle Paul reveal, women have always had a role in Christian congregations -- and they still do. What they MAY NOT do is take a leadership role in the congregation. Specifically they must remain silent during worship sessions. So for believers in the Bible, congregations led by women are simply not Christian. They deliberately defy a clear command from the Christian Holy book.

It is perfectly reasonable in this day and age for spiritually oriented organizations and meetings to be led by women but any pretence that they are Christian is a fraud.

That does mean that those congregations which allow women to preach -- mainly in the Anglican and Uniting denominations -- are practicing a fraud. They could trip up genuine faith-seekers into a false belief about the true Christian life.

Such churches would label themselves post-Christian if they were honest. That they do not is revealing. They are drifting anchorless in a sea of secularism. In Christ's words they are of "the World", not his called-out followers

The women described below obviously get personal satisfaction out of their preaching but it is at the expense of practicing an imposture. They are deceivers, not Christians. And Christians know who the Great Deceiver is

"Preaching is such a gift", says Reverend Radhika Sukumar-White, a minister and team leader at Leichhardt Uniting Church in Sydney.

"Throughout history, great changes happen through great oratory. Preaching has the ability to change hearts and change lives, call people to action and call people to account."

Sukumar-White was 20 when she had a call to ministry.

It was, she says, a "God speaking to me in Morgan Freeman's voice … kind of experience."

Sukumar-White had always wanted to work with people and was studying physiotherapy at university at the time.

Her life would take another path, however.

With her calling came the realisation that "I was going to be able to walk with people and help people using the gifts and skills that I have in the Church, which I so loved," she says.

Sukumar-White, whose parents migrated to Australia from Sri Lanka in the 1970s, grew up in the Uniting Church.

"My parents' parents were converted by American missionaries in Sri Lanka in the early twentieth century," she says.

"When they migrated to Australia, the Church was the first thing they sought in making Australia their home."

Once called, Sukumar-White began the "rigorous process" to become a Minister of the Word, including three years' study at United Theological College in Parramatta, plus numerous interviews and field placements.

She was ordained in 2016, and in 2019, joined Leichhardt Uniting Church, an affirming church that welcomes LGBTQI+ people in its congregation.

"It's a young community of faith — two-thirds would be under the age of 35," says Sukumar-White.

"The community is incredibly switched on when it comes to justice, not just queer inclusion, but climate action, First Nations issues, asylum seeker policy."

'Gender is just not a factor for us'

The role of women in the Church — controversial in other denominations and dioceses — has been resolved in the Uniting Church in Australia.

"It's not even a question," says Sukumar-White.

"We ordain men and women equally — there's no difference in ordination, there's no difference in who gets to be in the pulpit or not. Gender is just not a factor for us."

Sukumar-White believes women have a lot to offer as preachers of the gospel.

"There's something powerful about women in the pulpit," she says. "I think we bring a different energy."

Giving women a platform to preach

The saying "You can't be what you can't see" has particular resonance for Tracy McEwan, who recently completed a PhD examining the participation of Catholic Gen X women in the church in Australia.

In Catholicism, church law forbids laypeople – including all women — from delivering the homily during Mass.

In the dozens of interviews McEwan conducted with Catholic women during her research, she heard a "recurrent story about feeling isolated and marginalised".

The lack of visible female leaders in faith communities "has a huge impact" on the young women in their congregations, she says.

"Having another woman in your line of sight makes a difference."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-12/christian-women-preach-mass-church-female-ordination/100898246

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World’s best weather equipment couldn’t predict deadly Qld floods

But they can predict the global temperature in 50 years' time!

Forecasts issued by the Bureau of Meteorology during last month’s floods failed to predict how long a deadly supercell would remain over southeast Queensland despite Australia having the world’s best equipment, experts say.

Analysis of the deadly southeast Queensland flood event indicates the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and authorities were shocked by the slow-moving nature of the cell, which lingered above the region to dump one metre of rain over four days.

Questions have been raised about the accuracy of forecasts, which led to delays in warnings for people in low-lying areas.

During the height of the floods Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, who staunchly defended authorities’ response, declared the amount of rain and flood levels were “not foreseeable”.

Experts say the severity of the rain event, which would become the south east’s wettest three days since records began, was “very difficult” to predict.

Queensland University of Technology Adjunct Professor Mark Gibbs, a specialist in weather research, said the BOM forecasts were made using the world’s best equipment.

He said the bureau accurately predicted the region and severity of the supercell system, but declared it tough to forecast which towns and suburbs would be hardest hit.

“It was more than a typical summer storm and they are very, very difficult to predict,” he said.

“The thing is very sensitive and there’s a tipping point – a little bit less rain it would have been fine but it hung around for that little bit longer and the flood compartments in the dam filled up.

“People want everything perfect these days … we want to know when it’s going to rain, where and how much – the science is very very good but it’s not at that stage.”

Prof Gibbs said the BOM issued “carefully worded and thought-out forecasts”, which he said people often misread or expected to be certain.

“Economic forecasts are mostly wrong yet we seem to accept that – whereas with the weather forecasts people expect them to be 100 per cent right all the time,” he said.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/weather/worlds-best-weather-equipment-couldnt-predict-deadly-qld-floods/news-story/d50cbccc3389c5d5fb8009c11fdf640d

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More bureaucratic bungling. Helicopters not used during floods

Private helicopter operators say they were never called upon by the NSW government to assist during this month’s flood emergency, even though it pays them to be on standby so they can rapidly respond to natural disasters, including floods.

Multiple businesses confirmed to the Herald that their aircraft – specially equipped to respond to catastrophic situations such as the flooding event – remained grounded throughout the crisis while they awaited a call to help that never came.

The pilots said they were perplexed and frustrated at the decision not to draw on their resources, amid reports locals were so desperate for help they were forced to charter helicopter flights themselves or use crowdfunding campaigns to cover the expense.

The owner of one of the businesses approached by the Herald, Mark Harrold of Sydney Helicopters, said the situation was ridiculous.

“We have the capabilities and the community, I understand, has been screaming for these kinds of resources.”

Mr Harrold said he was blindsided when his aircraft were deployed to Cooma on March 1, while on the other side of the state, Ballina was being evacuated and two people died as floodwaters peaked in Lismore.

“We were expecting the phone call to go to Ballina and were told to go to Cooma, and it was like, okay, really? So we flew from Penrith to Cooma,” Mr Harrold said.

“We sat there for a day and-a-half in Cooma and obviously didn’t do anything, and then we were stood down.”

The revelations are likely to reignite controversy over authorities’ handling of the flood disaster, with both state and federal governments already under fire over allegations an anaemic official response left locals to fend for themselves.

The NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) operates the State Air Desk, which tasks aircraft to assist during fires, floods and storms.

At its disposal is a growing fleet of in-house RFS aircraft, as well as a pool of helicopters belonging to private operators who are under contract with the RFS to assist during emergencies.

An RFS spokesman said the NSW SES was the lead agency during the flood disaster and was responsible for determining the number of aircraft required and where they were deployed for flood rescues, transport, resupply and reconnaissance purposes.

“All requests for aviation support received from the NSW SES were actioned by the State Air Desk,” the spokesman said. “Alongside government aircraft … private operators were and continue to be utilised across the state as part of this flood emergency.”

However, the manager of a helicopter business that wasn’t contacted by the State Air Desk during the floods said they were “absolutely” surprised about it.

Their government contract requires the business’ helicopters are fuelled and have crew on standby so they can be deployed with fifteen minutes’ notice.

“We’re still on one of those contracts and haven’t been deployed which says to us that we’re not needed. But it’s contradictory to what we’re hearing in the reported media,” said the manager, who declined to be identified due to concerns about repercussions for the business.

The manager said their helicopters were highly specialised and fitted with winches and hooks to meet strict government requirements. “It’s not feasible for the general public to charter that calibre of aircraft. It’s not fair.”

Ross Meadows spearheaded a crowdfunding campaign to source helicopters privately to drop supplies to flood victims across northern NSW.

He was stunned when the Herald put it to him that private helicopter operators were given the impression there was no demand for their services. “If someone from the government told them that, they’re being lied to.”

Mr Meadows said his team’s helicopters arrived to find the town of Coraki “decimated”.

“We were the first ones there and the only ones there. I’d say nearly every single person we went to had received no food and had pretty much no food left.

“There could have been another five aircraft in the air, without a shadow of a doubt.”

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/nsw/baffled-pilots-say-their-helicopters-were-not-wanted-by-government-during-flood-crisis-20220312-p5a41t.html

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Unemployment is near record lows, wages are recovering and the economy is booming... yet BOTH political parties want to increase immigration... putting pressure on homes, schools, roads, and our Aussie lifestyle

Australia's economy since World War II has largely been been fuelled by immigration.

Both major political parties, in government, have relied on immigration to provide workers, since Australia's first immigration minister Arthur Calwell, from the Labor Party, in 1945 declared the country needed to 'populate or perish'.

Migrants from eastern Europe helped build the Snowy Hydro scheme in the 1950s, as Australia began accepting new arrivals who weren't Anglo-Celtic and didn't have English as their first language.

Australia's immigration policy evolved from assimilation to modern-day multiculturalism, which debuted in 1973, with the scrapping of the racist White Australia policy.

People from Asia, locked out in 1901 by the post-gold rush Immigration Restriction Act, had gradually returned during the 1960s as students and are now a major source of skilled migration.

For much of the 20th century, Australia accepted 70,000 new permanent arrivals a year, on average.

From 1959 to 2004, Australia's population doubled, from 10million to 20million.

Australia added 5million migrants between 2004 and 2018 - with the respective passing of the 20million and 25million population milestones.

This surge coincided with net annual immigration climbing above the 100,000 mark in 2002 and the 200,000 level just 11 years later.

Sydney and Melbourne are together home to 40 per cent of Australia's population and are increasingly congested.

The push for more migrants, from both Labor and the Coalition, has caused house prices to surge while wages growth has stagnated.

This has stopped younger Australians from being able to afford their first home after almost a decade of lousy pay rises.

Despite the evidence, big business interests are now actively campaigning for skilled immigration levels to be ramped up in a bid to 'unshackle the private sector' - even though the federal government is already escalating arrival numbers.

The Business Council of Australia - a powerful the lobby group - and Treasury bureaucrats argue a high immigration intake is needed for economic growth - despite the fact Australia's economy has rebounded strongly post-Covid despite immigration almost completely drying up.

Dr Bob Birrell, a sociologist who heads The Australian Population Research Institute, is warning a surge in immigration again will 'massively worsen' the housing affordability crisis and suppress the wages of young Australians.

Employers in particular like high immigration because it boosts the supply of labour and spares them from having to train workers locally.

'There is a strong argument that the huge rate of workforce growth is attributable to immigration,' Dr Birrell told Daily Mail Australia.

'Businesses are able to utilise extra labour without having to worry about the cost of investing in new equipment.'

Treasury has also traditionally pushed higher immigration based on reaping more tax revenue.

'Treasury is obliged to ensure that revenue rises at the expected rate - population growth therefore taxable persons is the ironclad way to ensure this happens,' Dr Birrell said.

Dr Birrell said the Liberal Party was traditionally more receptive to the big business push for high immigration than Labor, which is now promising to train more Australians for skilled jobs.

'A big majority of Australian voters do not support that policy.'

Without immigration, Australia's economy has strongly rebounded from lockdowns and unemployment fell below 5 per cent.

In December and January, it was at a 13-year low of 4.2 per cent.

The national jobless fell to four per cent twice in 2008 but it has not fallen below that level since the Australian Bureau of Statistics began compiling monthly labour force data in 1978.

Westpac is now expecting the jobless rate to fall to 3.8 per cent by the end of 2022, a level unseen since 1974, which chief economist Bill Evans predicted would gradually see wages growth climb closer to 3 per cent - the long-term average.

Per capita economic growth, averaged out for every Australian, last year grew by an impressive four per cent.

Gross domestic product climbed by 3.4 per cent in the December quarter, following lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne, marking the strongest quarterly surge since 1976.

While high immigration increases the supply of consumers and labour, it also suppresses wages growth and causes house prices to increase beyond the reach of average-income earners.

This exacerbates mortgage stress and depresses retail spending.

Dr Birrell said with many international students continuing to stay in Australia, a greater supply of low-paid labour had done more to keep wages down.

'The numbers leaving are far shorter than those arriving - they have a huge impact on what we call entry-level labour market, on younger domestic workers,' he said.

Since the June quarter of 2013 the wage price index, as measured by the ABS, has remained the below the long-term average of three per cent.

Pay levels last year rose by 2.3 per cent as headline inflation surged by 3.5 per cent.

An average, full-time income earner on $90,329, with a 20 per cent deposit, would have a debt-to-income ratio of 6.4 paying off a $582,427 loan.

APRA, the banking regulator, considers six to be very risky.

In Sydney, the median house price now stands at $1,410,128 following an annual surge of 26 per cent, making a typical home with a backyard a financial stretch for a dual-income couple.

'A new impetus from immigration will massively worsen the problem,' Dr Birrell said.

As Australia prepared to open again, Prime Minister Scott Morrison in November suggested 200,000 new arrivals would be allowed in - far surpassing the entire 194,000 intake of 2019-20, as estimated by Treasury.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg last week rejected a suggestion from Melbourne 3AW broadcaster Neil Mitchell it was time to rethink high immigration levels.

'Firstly, I think Australia is stronger for having a very well targeted and considered immigration policy,' he said.

'Again, getting the immigration settings right is an important part of growing our economy.'

Even though the government is already committing to pre-Covid immigration levels, the Business Council of Australia wants the annual permanent cap raised to 220,000 for 2022-23 and 2023-24.

The club for CEOs, including Qantas boss Alan Joyce and the Commonwealth Bank's Matt Comyn, described its push for higher immigration as a 'top priority'.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10575425/Australias-immigration-rate-Liberal-Labor-parties-policy-increase-migrants.html

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A handful of Sydney students were shocked when they opened up their email on a Friday night to find some “bloody awful” news waiting in their inbox.

On Friday night, at 5.15pm, journalism students from Macleay College, a private college based in Sydney which also has a virtual Melbourne campus, found a “life-changing” email waiting for them in their inbox.

Two weeks into their first trimester, they were informed that the Diploma and Bachelor of Journalism courses had been cancelled due to “low enrolments”.

Earlier that day, the first-year students had gone to class and had been assigned homework for the following week.

In fact, their tutors and lecturers were only warned 25 minutes before them about the course terminations.

It has left staff facing unemployment and students with their life turned upside down; pupils in the middle of their degree may only be able to leave with a statement of attainment, not even a diploma or a degree to show for their hard work.

Meanwhile, first year students have quit full-time jobs, moved interstate and turned down other university offers for a now defunct degree and it is too late to apply to another university for this term.

“To be told on a Friday afternoon after hours is really heartless,” new journalism student Chelsea Caffery told news.com.au.

Students are wondering why Macleay College allowed their classes to continue for two weeks with the knowledge that enrolment numbers were too low to keep the course going.

The college has offered up an alternative degree, Digital Media, which is not a pure journalism course like the one they signed up for.

Now students have just one week before the census cut off date to decide whether to drop out of the course or enrol into the alternate degree.

For students where this is not their first year in the course, they have a “teach out” option which involves them studying as much as they can until their trimester ends on May 20, by which time they will either have finished their degree or will only receive a statement of attainment.

Contractors revealed to news.com.au that their contracts were never renewed for this year, and instead they were being paid through weekly invoices, in what could be a sign that the future of the course had been uncertain for some time.

Ms Caffery, 20, who was two weeks into the $54,000 Bachelor of Journalism course, gave up a full-time job and another university offer to land her dream degree at Macleay.

“It’s really really tough, we’re angry and we’re upset and we’re really confused,” she said.

“We’re literally four business days [until the census date] away from making a life-changing decision.

“This was the next two years of my life, I had it all planned out. This degree I was so excited for. I’ve been sitting here for the next 24 hours wondering what do I do with my life now.”

In a move that students have labelled as even more insulting, their queries to Macleay College have gone unanswered, some claim.

The bombshell email was sent 15 minutes after close of business on a Friday and students have been unable to get in touch with college executives since.

Students have taken to social media to express their outrage, with one person calling the situation “unconscionable”.

Macleay College was purchased by fashion entrepreneur Sarah Stavrow last year.

Ms Stavrow had previously assured staff that the program would be retained as it was what Macleay was “known for”.

But at the meeting outlining the course closure, Ms Stavrow was not present and refused to take calls afterwards

https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/other-industries/bloody-awful-lifechanging-news-in-email-from-australian-university/news-story/b1d9119afc988bbd61ba21546b812792

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Lawyer of Iranian origin fires up over man's old-fashioned email greeting as 'lazy' and 'ignorant'

She is right that the form of address is silly but attitudes to women in Iran are a lot worse than silly. One would think she would forgive a little silliness among Australians

A female lawyer has slammed a man as 'lazy' and 'ignorant' after he referred to her and other female colleagues as 'Sirs'.

Making matters worse, the email to Alexia Ereboni Yazdani, the principal solicitor at a Sydney legal practice, came from an unexpected source. 'He's a solicitor, which made it all the more annoying,' Ms Ereboni Yazdani told Daily Mail Australia.

It began simply enough with 'Dear Sirs'. Though it was sent to a woman whose first name also appeared in her email address, it could just have been a simple mistake.

Ms Ereboni Yazdani sent a polite reply on Monday, February 28, first dealing with the matter being discussed, then saying 'Also, please note, there are no Sirs here.'

If she thought that would change things, she was mistaken. On Wednesday, March 2, Ms Ereboni Yazdani got another email from the same person, again beginning with 'Dear Sirs'.

'Sometimes people just assume that is the correct way to address a law firm because they've seen it in other correspondence. But I definitely think that sometimes it is a power thing.'

Shockingly, even other women have referred to Ms Ereboni Yazdani as if she was male.

'I often get emails from female solicitors that use 'Dear Sir'. That's a bit more annoying than getting it from a male, because there's another female on the other side who is using that really old school way of addressing another law firm,' she said.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10591691/Female-lawyer-erupts-mans-old-fashioned-email-greeting-corrected-him.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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11 March, 2022

Water releases from Wivenhoe have been halted. So what's the status of south-east Queensland's major water supply?

The flooding would have been much worse without it. Unlike 2011, the dam was intelligently managed this time, with orderly and timely water releases

SEQ Water has stopped releases from Wivenhoe Dam, more than a week after they commenced. So does that mean Wivenhoe's full? How long will that water last? And how did it ever surpass 100 per cent capacity?

How did Wivenhoe just go well past 100 per cent capacity?

Yes, Wivenhoe Dam is now at the full supply level, something it hadn't reached since 2015.

In fact, only two weeks ago it was at 58 per cent capacity and in September it had fallen as low as 41.8 per cent.

Wivenhoe is a dual-purpose dam: it provides 1,165,238 megalitres of drinking water storage as well as 1,967,000 megalitres of temporary flood space.

That's a grand total of 3.132 million megalitres.

So, when Seqwater says "full supply level", they're talking about drinking water. There's still another 1.9 million megalitres of water storage available. That's how we saw figures like 180 per cent capacity during the floods.

Wivenhoe only supplies 50 per cent of south-east Queensland's drinking water but, according to an Seqwater spokesperson, the downfall from the last two weeks alone will last a couple of years.

"The significant increase in the SEQ water grid over the past two weeks is expected to deliver an additional two-to-three years of drinking water supply."

Did Wivenhoe actually do its job during the recent rain event?
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said last week that Wivenhoe had held back four Sydney Harbours worth of water during the floods.

"Wivenhoe has two purposes: to hold our drinking water … secondly, it does flood mitigation," she said. "Flood mitigation means that it can actually have that extra capacity to have all of that extra water.

"In 2011, it was uncontrolled releases. What we're seeing now is, it is being managed and it's controlled releases. "That means that the controlled releases will not have any further impact in terms of the height of the floodwaters."

"The Wivenhoe Dam was managed in accordance with the manual."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-10/wivenhoe-dam-capacity-stopping-water-releases/100896366

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Researchers discover drug-resistant Covid in Australian patients

One of the main medicines used to combat severe cases of Covid-19 is causing the virus to mutate and there is a risk it could spread in the community.

If this happens, elderly and immunocompromised patients can’t be treated with the drug Sotrovimab.

Sydney University researcher Dr Rebecca Rockett studied 100 Covid patients in health care facilities in the Western Sydney Local Health District in New South Wales during the Delta outbreak between August and November 2021.

For four of the patients given the drug, the virus in their body mutated within six to 13 days and the treatment was no longer effective at containing the infection.

Samples of the mutated virus taken from these patients were able to be grown in a laboratory dish and this proved the new version of the virus was capable of spreading to others.

“The worrying thing is the fact that the virus was still viable and persisting in these patients after they develop the resistance,” Dr Rockett said.

“What we don’t want to see is that someone in the community develops resistance and they can pass that resistance to other people and that makes the drug ineffective, not just for that individual but for who they transmit the virus to,” she said.

Many of the patients in the study were severely immunocompromised and Dr Rockett said one theory about the emergence of the Delta and Omicron variants of the virus was that they developed in such people.

“There are definitely cases in the literature where these patients with really immunocompromised conditions are given a lot of different therapies and could develop a number of mutations that can make the virus less more likely to evade current vaccines and treatment strategies,” she said.

This is a key reason this population of patients should be kept under surveillance, she said.

To keep control of the virus, doctors must undertake active surveillance of severely ill patients and identify treatment-resistant mutations earlier so they can be contained, she said.

The research team has not conducted experiments to determine whether current Covid-19 vaccines could combat the mutated virus that developed in these patients.

Sotrovimab is one of three key Covid-19 treatments called monoclonal antibodies that doctors were using to stop patients from becoming seriously ill.

These types of treatments are laboratory-made proteins that mimic the immune system’s ability to fight off viruses.

In January, the US FDA revealed that two of these treatments no longer worked against Omicron leaving Sotrovimab as the only weapon in the arsenal.

In another worrying development last month a Colombia University study that is yet to be peer reviewed found the cousin of Omicron – BA. 2 – had developed resistance to Sotrovimab.

This leaves recently approved treatments paxlovid, molnupiravir which are in short supply as the mainstay of treatment.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/researchers-discover-drugresistant-covid-in-aussie-patients/news-story/2ab9993ba83490316810b59d307864b0

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BOM deception

The recent torrential rains in South East Queensland are not unprecedented. The Australian 24-hour rainfall record of 907mm is still Crohamhurst in the Brisbane catchment recorded on 3 February, 1893. We don’t know how much rain fell at Crohamhurst in February 2022 because that weather station (#040062) was closed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) in March 2003.

The Bureau has a habit of closing inconvenient stations. It closed the Charlotte Pass weather station which holds the record of ?23.0 °C for the lowest daily minimum temperature in Australia, set on 29 June 1994. That weather station was closed in March 2015. Meanwhile, in June 2017, the Bureau opened several new stations in very hot western New South Wales. One of these stations, Borrona Downs, had a hardware fault and in August 2017 was spuriously recording temperatures as low as –62.5 °C. At the same time, in the cold Australian alps a limit of –10.4 °C had been set on how cold temperatures could be recorded.

The idea of such a limit on cold days does sound conspiratorial and it was reluctantly acknowledged in an official report from the Bureau – but only after I alerted Josh Frydenberg, then the minister responsible for the Bureau, to the problem at the Thredbo and Goulburn stations in July 2017. I could go on. The Bureau deleted what was long regarded as the hottest day ever recorded in Australia – Bourke’s 51.7°C on the 3 January, 1909 recorded at an official recording station in a near-new Stevenson screen with a mercury thermometer. It was scratched from the record in 1997 and replaced with the lower 50.7 °C recorded at Oodnadatta, South Australia, on 2 January, 1960.

These stunning examples of unacceptable behaviour pale into insignificance when compared with the industrial-scale remodelling of the historical record over the last 20 years that has stripped away the natural climate cycles, so even cool years now add warming to the official trend. In denying the very nature of Australia’s climate, which is dominated by wet and dry cycles, the experts are now unable to anticipate extremely wet weather because they have lost all sense of history. February 2022 was extremely wet in South East Queensland. The city of Brisbane flooded again. There were tens of thousands of homes inundated. It is a tragedy. This is the second time in eleven years.

The flooding in 2011 was caused by the emergency release of water from Wivenhoe Dam, a dam built for flood mitigation following devastating flooding in 1974. The 2011 flooding was the subject of a class action with the Queensland government, SunWater and SEQ Water (the dam operators) recently found negligent.

During the worst of the flooding this year the dam operator again kept releasing water as the city flooded. Though the torrential rains had stopped, water kept being released because the Bureau forecast that more – even worse – rain was imminent. Rain that never eventuated. As usual, the Bureau’s skill at forecasting proved dismal with devastating consequences. I benchmarked the skill of the Bureau’s simulation modelling for seasonal rainfall forecasting in a series of papers with John Abbot published in international peer-reviewed journals, conference papers and book chapters from 2012 to 2017. Our conclusion was that the Bureau’s simulation model POAMA, developed over a period of twenty years in collaboration with other IPCC-aligned scientists, had very limited skill at rainfall forecasting despite being run on an expensive supercomputer.

Back in late 2010, it was evident from the very high Southern Oscillation Index that we were likely to experience a very wet summer. But there was no preparation – Wivenhoe Dam was kept full of water until it was too late. This last summer it was not as obvious that we were going to experience torrential flooding rains. It could be that the relatively mild La Nina conditions this year across the South Pacific were made worse by an atmosphere exceptionally high in volcanic aerosols from the explosion of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai a month earlier.

Very high rainfall totals in Hong Kong in 1982 correlate with the arrival of stratospheric aerosol plumes from the eruption of El Chichon, which spewed 20 million tonnes of aerosol.

Atmospheres high in aerosols can contribute to exceptionally high rainfall, but this is ignored by mainstream climate scientists who continue to run simulation models mistakenly emphasising the role of carbon dioxide in climate change.

The most accurate seasonal weather prediction systems rely on statistical models using artificial intelligence software to elucidate patterns in historical data. So, the integrity of Australia’s temperature and rainfall record is paramount. Yet both temperature and rainfall records are being constantly eroded by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Important weather stations are being closed and the available temperature data remodelled, stripping away evidence of past cycles of warming and cooling that correspond with periods of drought and floods.

Back in 2014 an investigation of these issues was proposed by then prime minister Tony Abbot but prevented because of intervention by his environment minister Greg Hunt. He argued in Cabinet that the credibility of the Bureau was paramount so the public would heed weather warnings. No consideration was given to the accuracy, or otherwise, of these warnings.

I was in Brisbane just after the recent flooding (3 March) helping with the clean-up. Tools were downed at 2pm because of the Bureau’s weather warning that described our situation as ‘dangerous’ and ‘potentially life threatening’. All the while the sun kept shining. Not a drop of rain fell from the sky. As I drove out of Brisbane that evening, on my way home, the flash flooding forecast for that same afternoon was cancelled by the Bureau. Next, on the radio there was discussion about the ‘Rain Bombs’ of five days earlier. How they had been ‘unprecedented’. More than one metre of rain had fallen at some locations in just a few days. There was no mention of the more than two metres of rain that fell at Crohamhurst in early February 1893 or the 24-hour record of 907mm that still stands as the highest 24-hour total for anywhere in Australia.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/rain-bom

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NT police officer Zachary Rolfe found not guilty of murder over fatal shooting of aggressive Aborigine

Northern Territory police officer Zachary Rolfe has been cleared of all charges over the fatal shooting of 19-year-old Kumanjayi Walker during an attempted arrest in the remote community of Yuendumu.

The jury found Constable Rolfe not guilty of murder as well as the two alternative charges of manslaughter and engaging in a violent act causing death.

Constable Rolfe, 30, showed no emotion as the verdict was announced in the NT Supreme Court. Afterwards, he smiled and hugged his defence lawyer.

The jury returned following just under seven hours of deliberations.

Mr Walker was shot three times during a struggle with officers in a home in the community 300 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs in November 2019.

The first shot, which came after Mr Walker stabbed Constable Rolfe in the shoulder with a pair of scissors, was not the subject of any charges.

Constable Rolfe's legal team argued he was acting in defence of himself and his partner and in line with his training and duties.

Constable Rolfe addressed a media scrum outside the court shortly after the verdict was announced. "Obviously I think that was the right decision to make," he said.

"But a lot of people are hurting today — Kumanjayi's family and his community ... and I'm going to leave this space for them."

Constable Rolfe's defence lawyer David Edwardson QC told the waiting media "there are no winners in this case." "A young man died and that's tragic," he said.

"At the same time, Zachary Rolfe, in my view was wrongly charged in the first place. "It was an appalling investigation and very much regretted."

The jury heard almost five weeks of evidence and testimony from more than 40 witnesses before retiring to deliberate at lunchtime on Thursday.

Constable Rolfe had pleaded not guilty to all charges laid over the shooting, which happened just after 7:20pm on Saturday, November 9, 2019.

Police body-worn camera footage played throughout the trial captured the struggle that started less than a minute after Constable Rolfe and his policing partner, Constable Adam Eberl, entered a home in Yuendumu and identified Kumanjayi Walker.

The 19-year-old was wanted by police because of an incident that took place three days prior, when he had confronted two local officers with an axe as they tried to arrest him for breaching a suspended sentence.

Prosecutors agreed the first shot was legally justifiable because it came after Constable Rolfe was stabbed in the shoulder with a pair of scissors and while Mr Walker was on his feet and struggling with Constable Eberl.

But they argued that Mr Walker had been effectively restrained on the ground by Constable Eberl when Constable Rolfe fired his second shot 2.6 seconds after the first and a third shot 0.5 seconds after the second.

The prosecution case was that Constable Rolfe did not have an honest belief that the second and third shots were necessary and therefore was not acting reasonably and in good faith in the performance of his duties.

Constable Rolfe said Mr Walker was not restrained and that he feared for his fellow officer's life when the second and third shots were fired.

He said police training held that officers should fire as many rounds as necessary to "incapacitate" a threat involving an edged weapon.

He rejected the prosecution's suggestion that he lied in his evidence about having seen Mr Walker stabbing Constable Eberl in order to justify his actions.

Mr Walker died around an hour after the shooting, in the Yuendumu police station, where he was given first aid because health clinic staff had been evacuated earlier that day.

Constable Rolfe, who was bailed after he was charged and suspended on full pay, faced the NT's mandatory minimum non-parole period of 20 years if found guilty of murder.

Mr Walker's death and the charge against Constable Rolfe made global headlines and sparked protests against Aboriginal deaths in custody around Australia.

Constable Rolfe was the first NT police officer to face trial over an Aboriginal death in custody since the 1991 royal commission.

In his closing address, Constable Rolfe's defence lawyer said the murder charge, which was laid four days after the shooting, came before a proper investigation was carried out. He described the pursuit of the case by the NT Police executive as a disgrace.

Senior NT police officers, including an assistant commissioner, gave evidence as prosecution witnesses during the trial.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-11/zachary-rolfe-not-guilty-murder-kumanjayi-walker-police/100895368

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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 March, 2022

"Race" is out

It has been a dangerous word to use for some time. Any mention of it is likely to generate an accusation that the person using it is a "racist". These days, I mostly talk about "groups" instead. I can say what I wanted to say that way without setting off an hysterical reaction.

We are used to words being banned – but now it seems the word police are coming for the word ‘race’ itself. Students and staff are being discouraged from using the word ‘race’ in the Cultural Diversity and Inclusive Practice Toolkit issued by the University of New South Wales.

Discussing the word ‘race’ the Toolkit says: ‘Despite the presence of the term “race” in everyday language, and its use in various policies and statements referred to throughout this toolkit, the Macquarie Dictionary, under “usage” of the term, states: “Because the 19th century classification of humans into distinct races has been challenged scientifically, and has been misused, many now prefer to avoid this term when referring to a group of humans, and to replace it with another term such as ‘peoples’ or ‘community.’”

Now, is it my misreading, or is this university Toolkit suggesting that we stop using the word ‘race’ and instead say ‘people’ or ‘community’? Does this mean that Critical Race Theory will have to become Critical People. Theory or Critical Community Theory? Are they suggesting we stop using ‘racist’ and instead label offenders as being ‘people-ist’ or ‘community-ist’? The more they play with the language the more ridiculous they become.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/aussie-language-49/ ?

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Universities criticise minister’s research veto powers

Vetoing apparenty silly and trivial research grants has always been politically available to avoid public criticisms about a waste of taxpayers' money

University leaders have warned of a chilling effect on research caused by the federal education minister’s ability to veto funding grants, saying their institutions were at risk of losing world-class academics to overseas competitors.

In a decision that has been widely criticised by academics, acting Education Minister Stuart Robert vetoed Australian Research Council (ARC) funding to six humanities projects for 2022 on Christmas Eve – the third time in four years the power has been used by the Coalition.

Appearing at a Senate inquiry on Wednesday, university chiefs and academic leaders were in lockstep in raising concerns about the lack of transparency over the ministerial intervention and the singling out of individual grants for rejection without detailed explanation. But they were divided over a Greens proposal to abolish the veto, with the Senate’s education committee examining the merits of a bill by senator Mehreen Faruqi that would amend ARC legislation to achieve this.

Supporting the bill, ANU vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt said the minister’s veto power was a “serious problem” that was compromising universities’ ability to attract and retain world-class academics, saying the issue had been raised with him by top researchers from overseas competitor institutions.

“People around the globe who I talk to, trying to recruit [them] to come to Australia, have noticed what’s going on. [They] have expressed their concerns to the point of saying ‘I am not going to come to Australia until you sort this out’,” Professor Schmidt told the inquiry. “It is literally affecting my ability to attract talent to Australia”.

Professor James McCluskey, University of Melbourne deputy vice-chancellor research, said the veto power was a “significant departure from world’s best practice”, noting that research councils in the US and UK were autonomous and not subject to ministerial intervention.

Western Sydney University had two grants vetoed in the 2022 funding round, with deputy vice-chancellor Deborah Sweeney telling the inquiry the intervention had had “a chilling, devastating and demoralising effect” on those researchers.

The ANU, University of Melbourne, Western Sydney University and the University of Tasmania support removing the veto power – a position that has been also been endorsed by Universities Australia and Group of Eight lobby groups.

But some universities – including the Australian Catholic University and Queensland University of Technology – have departed from this view arguing that the ministerial veto should be rarely used, but not be scrapped entirely. Instead, they support legislative changes that would improve transparency over the decision-making process, such as requiring the minister to provide an explanation to the Parliament detailing why projects were rejected.

Dr John Byron, from QUT, said completely removing the veto power was not “politically realistic or necessarily democratically desirable”, telling the inquiry that the principles of responsible government meant the minister must retain oversight of funding decisions.

Monash University deputy vice-chancellor Rebekah Brown said the lack of transparency in the veto process was diminishing credibility in the ARC’s peer-review process, and gave evidence about how a project vetoed in 2018 had significantly affected the university’s broader program of humanities research.

“The project was eventually funded two years later, but missed a significant opportunity in those intervening two years to make a global impact [and] to collect really important data during that two-year period,” she said.

Under the ARC process, an independent college of experts reviews the grant applications, worth between $30,000 and $500,000 a year, and makes recommendations for approval.

The six rejected projects included one about student climate protests and democracy, and one about religion in science fiction and fantasy novels. Two were about modern China, and two were about English literature.

Mr Robert has claimed that the six projects, which were all recommended for approval by the ARC, did not demonstrate value for taxpayers’ money or contribute to the national interest. He approved 98.8 per cent of projects recommended.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/chilling-effect-universities-criticise-minister-s-research-veto-powers-20220309-p5a32b.html

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Abandoning ‘net zero’ could be the highroad to electoral victory for Scott Morrison

The path to electoral victory is crystal clear. Scott Morrison must abandon net zero to win the next election.

Much has changed since those halcyon Glasgow days back in October, when reaching net zero carbon emissions was all the rage. This week, the great climate warrior himself, Boris Johnson, recognised the inevitable and declared Britain and the rest of the West must ‘give a climate pass’ to natural gas and ramp up gas production. Net zero in the UK, following a Tory backbench revolt, a freezing winter of power cuts, spiralling energy costs and now the Ukrainian war, is almost certainly dead. Leaders in the capitals of the West, faced with Russian military aggression driven by and financed by Europe’s reliance on Russian fossil fuels, are rapidly waking up to the fact that, to put it in a simplistic but irrefutable equation: fossil fuels equal peace, ‘net zero’ equals war.

That this grim equation has for many years been both predicted and feared by many conservative-leaning thinkers, from Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan to, of course, Donald Trump, comes as no solace.

Unfortunately for the likes of Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion, even the most fanciful extremist climate change ‘rising sea levels’ and ‘Biblical floods’ doomsday scenarios pale into insignificance compared to the very real ‘Armageddon for mankind’ that nuclear conflict would deliver.

As has long been recognised by conservatives, peace lies in the preparation for war. Credible military deterrence is the ultimate guarantor of freedom. Since the end of the second world war, the West has kept the rapacious communists at bay through superior military weaponry and leaders who proclaimed they were prepared to use them. Up until the hapless Joe Biden stumbled into the White House, the events unravelling in Ukraine were unimaginable.

But the last decade has seen a headlong rush by a plethora of weak Western leaders and institutions to focus primarily on juvenile, trite and idiotic concepts such as ‘diversity and inclusion’, ‘gender fluidity’, critical race theory and climate change and in doing so advertise our impotence.

Perhaps our church-going Prime Minister might like to recall the lines from Corinthians 13.11: ‘When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.’ Climate change is a child’s obsession – both metaphorically and literally – but in an age of potential nuclear war and totalitarian ambitions we need adult, indeed manly, leadership.

Scott Morrison has talked tough on both Russia and China. So he should. And as he and his focus group handlers –sorry, typo, his political advisers – are obviously aware, the way to beat Labor at the forthcoming election is to play the national security card for all it’s worth. In times of strife, the average Aussie family man and woman will always feel more comfortable with a right-leaning politician running the show than a starry-eyed eco-luvvy or some class-obsessed union hack. Again, so they should.

The Prime Minister points out that Labor can never be trusted to protect our borders and to guarantee our national security. And he is right. But unless he backs up his own tough talk with genuine action, the sad truth is that neither can he be trusted. You cannot protect a nation while agreeing to ‘de-growth’ and ‘net zero emissions’. And you cannot protect Australia if your future source of energy is a fantasy like Twiggy’s green hydrogen.

It’s time to grow up, abandon net zero, and deliver a Coalition victory

https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/abandon-net-zero-and-win

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Mutant Omicron strain is killing 280 people a DAY in Hong Kong - and it's already in Australia

A new Omicron mutation has made Hong Kong the deadliest place on earth for Covid - and the rogue strain has already been detected in Australia.

Hong Kong has been ravaged by the virus since mid-February when deaths soared from just 224 to 2287 within weeks.

Omicron killed 280 people in Hong Kong on Monday, and there's been 450,000 cases since February 15. Before Omicron, the city had only 50,000 since the start of the pandemic.

All recent cases have been of a slightly mutated strain of the BA2 form of the disease which tweaks the amino acid profile in one of the Covid virus cell spike proteins.

The mutation, dubbed BA2.2, is almost unique to Hong Kong at this stage, but has also been seen in small numbers in the UK, Singapore and Australia, according to Arkansas State University Professor Raj Rajnarayanan.

Debate is now raging among scientists about whether the new mutation is key to Hong Kong's shocking death rate - or if it is coincidental.

Covid mortality in the city is 29.18 deaths per million, dwarfing Australia's worst-ever mortality rate in January of 3.4 per million.

Its seven-day average of 193 deaths per day in a city of 7.5 million even surpasses India, with a population of 1.4 billion, currently averaging 180 daily deaths.

And it's even higher than the UK's worst-ever pre-vaccination death rates.

Some epidemiologists believe the tweaked mutation has arisen from virus genetic in-breeding caused by the original limited source of the Omicron outbreak in Hong Kong, in a process called founder effect, rather an evolutionary step forward to adapt and improve.

It's unclear how the mutation affects vaccine resistance, if at all, but the majority of those dying in Hong Kong are either unvaccinated or not fully-vaccinated.

Some experts have also questioned the effectiveness of China's home-produced Sinovac against Omicron, with studies casting doubt on even a double jab of it producing enough antibodies to fight the Covid variant.

Hong Kong launched a vaccination blitz in February in a bid to combat the Omicron wave, with a high take-up among younger residents.

But vaccination rates in Hong Kong are especially low among the elderly because of cultural distrust of western medicine, keeping overall numbers low.

Imperial College of London virologist Tom Peacock questioned the impact of the new mutant BA2.2 strain on being behind Hong Kong's death rate.

'Don't think we need a new mutant to explain the tragic situation in Hong Kong?' he tweeted. 'Would be surprised if this is anything but a founder effect due to low initial seeding of this specific thing.'

Georgia Tech scientist Tony Burnetti added: 'There's nothing virologically interesting at all. It's all about the local population. 'They were relying on containment and have abysmal vaccination rates. It finally got out, into a population where two-thirds of the vulnerable elderly are unprotected.'

Just 32 per cent of those over 80 are double-jabbed, and only 61 per cent of those over 70. The vast majority of the city's deaths have been among those over 70.

The city worked hard to minimise the threat of Covid throughout the pandemic with strict restrictions and travel bans, but those proved insufficient to contain Omicron.

The younger population have a much higher vaccination percentage, but that is causing its own problems as they are catching the disease asymptomatically and may be spreading it without realising.

'It means the disease can be spreading silently,' Deakin University epidemiologist Professor Catherine Bennett said.

'Part of the reason that they worked so hard to keep the virus out was because it is a difficult city to manage the virus in. It is high density living.

'You have families and extended families not just living in apartments and divided apartments but towers. You have a high reliance on public transport.

'There's a range of things that are part of that dynamic life in Hong Kong that actually make it really difficult when you have something that spreads as readily as any of the variants of Omicron will do.'

She said Australia and the rest of the world must now wait to see more data come out of Hong Kong to judge the threat of the new mutant Omicron strain.

Comparisons of infection rates with the new variant rate in hospital cases versus the wider population will give a better indication of its potential impact, matched also against vaccination details.'But without that information, we simply don't know,' Prof Bennett added.

The inherent danger of a widespread outbreak in a densely populated city like Hong Kong is the creation of further mutant strains as a result of the rapid and easy spread of the disease.

But Prof Bennett added that Australia is now in a better position to deal with any new variants and limit their impact as a result of both its successful vaccination program and also the Omicron outbreak which swept the nation.

'A lot of young people were infected who are most likely to spread the disease, but prior infection combined with vaccines gives much broader immunity,' she said.

'We can be a little less fearful of new variants. It's much tougher for Covid to mutate effectively now.

'A new variant has to look different to Omicron and the ancestral strains to defeat our vaccines and it has to be both viable and an effective pathogen.

'Our vaccines should still give that extra bit of protection against any other new variant that might turn up.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10592027/Covid-Australia-Deadly-mutant-Omicron-strain-Hong-Kong-hits-Australia.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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9 March, 2022

The anti-free speech politicians of Australia

Free speech is not just another one of our freedoms, it is the foundation of freedom that all our other freedoms come from. If we can’t speak freely, then we can’t think freely.

If you have never heard an idea before, then you will not think about it. Unless you read, hear, or see a new idea it will not permeate your thinking and you will not grow from experiencing it – even if you disagree. Such is the power of new information.

It is incredibly easy to police ‘wrongthink’, particularly within certain topics. All that is required is for example to made of a person who says the ‘wrong’ thing. If they experience public and painful consequences, other people quickly learn that they must not make the same mistake. Not only will the rest of society avoid saying the ‘wrong’ thing in public, they stop thinking the ‘wrong’ thing in private.

To ‘protect’ themselves and their friends, they will contribute to the persecution of strangers that say the ‘wrong’ thing – thereby perpetuating a general attack on free speech.

In the remnants of classical education at my British Boarding School, in History class, we were explicitly told by the master that he didn’t care what our opinion was, he wanted us to show him how we could argue between two opposing points of view with academic references to support each argument.

Today, kids are taught one side of an argument but not the other. They are marked down for arguing points of view that oppose the school-approved perspective.

If kids are taught what to say and not to question things or argue opposing points of view publicly, the result is that they stop thinking about opposing points of view privately. Schools are no longer teaching kids how to think, but what to think. This is the fulfilment of the ‘Outcome Based Learning’ philosophy that was introduced to replace classical learning in the Western World after the second world war.

Politics is full of examples where this type of controlled thinking plays out in the adult world. After becoming an Australian Citizen in 2020 and learning about the wonderful history of our country, I proudly became a member of what I thought was the major conservative party in Australia: The Liberal Party.

After time spent dabbling in local politics where I was involved in successfully tackling corruption, I decided to nominate for an internal Liberal Party committee position, as I had become concerned with the direction the party was taking. They had recently rejected the application of Christian groups in South Australia on the basis that Christian values ‘didn’t align’ with the modern Liberal Party’s move away from the values of its inception. I had recently raised my concerns about the party’s moral decline with a serving state Liberal MP in Victoria. When she told me that all the party wanted to do was ‘get back into power’ and they would do anything to achieve it, I was deeply concerned!

Having nominated for the internal committee position, I was contacted by the administrator for the currently serving federal Liberal MP in my electorate. The administrator specifically asked me what I thought of the federal MP’s service. It did not impress me that the MP engaged in self-seeking rather than seeking the best for their community. A brochure had been recently sent around with the MP parading her numerous successes and virtues, while the world lay in tatters around us. At that point, I thought nothing of freely expressing my miss-givings about her. I subsequently realised that this was a polling activity to gauge my level of support for the current Liberal Party leadership…

New committee members were to be elected by vote during a local branch meeting. After the meeting, based on the accepted analysis of ‘first count indicators’ in the Australian preferential voting system, I was guaranteed a place on the committee. The next day – to my shock – the meeting and the vote were both declared invalid. Apparently, there had been some infraction of the meeting rules based on the Party Constitution. I immediately smelled a rat and contacted the Head Office to validate which article of the Constitution had been breached. I received no response. The meeting and vote were rescheduled. Feeling disillusioned, I was persuaded to nominate again.

At the rescheduled meeting, there was a line of ‘new’ people that I had never seen before down one side of the room. They had all nominated for the position. The results of the vote this time were a resounding victory for the newcomers and I barely received a single vote. Clearly, there had been some coordination behind the scenes to make sure I didn’t get on and that these ‘friends’ of the party were successful.

Rather than allow free debate about ideas that might challenge the status quo, the Liberal Party leadership has shown itself to be committed to silencing discussion by penalising those that try to speak freely. Their aversion to free speech is antithetical to the conservative ethos that the Liberal Party was founded on, which is meant to put free speech at paramount importance.

Politicians are supposed to protect free speech at all costs, not tell people what to say.

They should trust that logic and truth are inherently powerful, therefore by simply protecting free speech in the marketplace of ideas, only the genuine truth will be logically consistent enough to survive.

As more young minds are exposed to the infallible logic of truth and allowed to debate, they will demolish any illogical or bad ideas. There is no risk that if we deregulate speech, the bad ideas will grow. History shows us that bad ideas will be displaced – like darkness is displaced by light.

We find ourselves living through trying times, and we need truthful ideas more than ever. If we are to overcome the major challenges that face us, we need more truth – not less – and the liberty to openly discuss our problems.

The last thing we should be doing is silencing people that question or try to articulate opposing arguments. We should be able to learn from these arguments without being threatened. The ability to speak freely with impunity must be protected at all costs. After all, the truth is not threatened by the lie, but the lie is threatened by the truth!

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/03/the-anti-free-speech-politicians-of-australia/

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Single picture costs university $16 million as funding pulled over ‘unacceptable’ decision

Last week, the university handed out its latest round of honorary doctorates and a photo of it circulated online. But critics couldn’t help but notice one glaring detail in the picture – the six recipients were all white men.

On Monday, this prompted the Snow Medical Research Foundation, which has given $24 million to Melbourne University in recent years, to immediately halt any further funding programs.

That included suspending its Snow Fellowship program, of which $16 million had already been pledged to the university.

“The University of Melbourne awarded their most prestigious award, their honorary doctorate, to six white men,” Snow Medical said in a statement.

“Further, in the last three years, not a single honorary doctorate has been awarded to women or someone of non-white descent. This is unacceptable.”

When Snow Medical challenged the uni about its recent spate of awards, “the response from the University of Melbourne has been unsatisfactory,” it added.

“While it appears the policies on gender equality and diversity are in place, the outcomes do not align with the University’s stated goals.”

The organisation’s founder and chair, Tom Snow, said it was a “difficult decision” but ultimately a necessary one to suspend funding indefinitely.

“This has been a difficult decision for our family, but a decision we have made very proudly,” he said online.

“NOW is the time for action on gender equality and diversity.”

Mr Snow himself attended the University of Melbourne as a student in the 1990s and his foundation has given out $90 million in research funding to date, to a number of universities and various research projects.

The current $16 million in place will still be provided to researchers, the foundation clarified, in a bid to “provide long-term certainty”.

Melbourne University admitted it had a lot of room for improvement but was obviously disappointed by the decision.

“The University of Melbourne is committed to strengthening a vibrant and inclusive community where diversity is recognised, valued and celebrated,” it said in a statement.

“While we acknowledge the areas where we need to improve, Snow Medical has made their decision on the basis of a single honorary doctorate event.

“This event is not a true reflection of who we are as a university and the steps we are taking, and continue to take, to build a diverse university community, reflective of broader society.”

Three women and an Indigenous man were meant to be at the ceremony as well but were unable to make it.

Mr Snow said he was unimpressed and wondered why they didn’t delay the ceremony until everyone could attend.

“Not one person along the way said, ‘It’s not right, we should be deferring the ceremony,’” he said.

https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/other-industries/single-picture-costs-university-16-million-as-funding-pulled-over-unacceptable-decision/news-story/f02b225b9ef2eb435fdcc3d18e4d83b9

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‘Master teachers’ on $180k could help boost education standards, say campaigners

Education campaigners want public schools to get a fair go and for “master teachers” – on wages of up to $180,000 to lift standards as Australia’s performance in the global education rankings continues to slide.

That slide has come despite billions of extra dollars going into schools in the last decade.

And despite a push to remove the inequities in the education sector by giving more funding to those who are disadvantaged, unions say it is private students that have benefited the most from federal funding, receiving three times the amount going to public students.

The Australian Education Union (AEU) said the Productivity Commission had found private school students received $10,211 each from the federal government, while public school students got just a fraction of that – $2760.

The bulk of public education funding actually comes from the states and territories – 80 per cent compared to the federal government’s 20 per cent.

So overall, the government said, public schools received the highest level of support, with average per student public funding in 2019-20 reaching $20,181, compared with $13,189 for non-government school students.

The union countered that argument by saying private school fees paid by parents ensured private students were far better off than their poorer cousins in the public sector.

Australian Education Union federal president, Correna Haythorpe said the recommendations of the 2012 Gonski report, which was about finding a way to financially support disadvantaged students, had been ignored by successive Coalition governments.

Figures showed that public schools were only funded, by both levels of government, to the tune of around 90 per cent of what Gonski recommended, according to McKell Institute chief executive Michael Buckland.

The McKell Institute looked across the whole of the sector from early-childhood to primary, secondary, tertiary and vocational education, and concluded reform was necessary, if Australia wanted to compete on the world stage with the likes of China.

The slow running down of TAFE and the flawed funding model for universities, which heavily relied on overseas students, were also problems, Mr Buckland said.

“Australia’s fall in education rankings, underfunded public schools and the long running down of investment in TAFE are shortsighted public policy decisions that hurt us all,” he said.

“We also risk damaging universities for good if we don’t come up with another way to fund it.”

The results of a survey by the AEU released this week revealed that 83 per cent of TAFE teachers reported that their institution had closed courses in the past three years, with lack of funding the most commonly cited reason.

It also found 80 per cent of teachers did not believe TAFE students studying today were receiving the same quality of education as they did two years go.

Meanwhile, Universities Australia chief executive Catriona Jackson said the sector took a $1.8 billion hit during the pandemic, when international students were unable to get into the country. In order to mitigate those financial losses, 17,300 full-time, part-time and casual jobs had been slashed.

“The way we fund universities is not sustainable,” she said.

Ms Jackson said the group would be calling on the federal government to invest more and encourage industry with incentives to back university research programs.

Mr Buckland said free TAFE courses in identified areas of skill shortages was an economic reform that would help Australia build back stronger after Covid, while good quality, childhood education from birth to primary school would also benefit kids and the economy.

He said that the Federal Government also needed to do more to combat the shortage of teachers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects by introducing incentives.

Grattan Institute’s Jordana Hunter said a top priority for new education spending was to restructure the teacher career path to encourage high achievers to pursue the profession.

“We should be paying our expert teachers much more and giving them more responsibility for building the quality of teaching in our schools,” she said.

Ms Hunter said the institute, a public policy think tank, recommended two new roles. ‘instructional specialists’ would be paid around $140,000 – about $40,000 more than the top pay for classroom teachers – to work with teachers in their schools. ‘Master teachers’ would be paid around $180,000 to work with several schools to improve practices.

Meanwhile, early childhood education campaigners said one in five kids from disadvantaged backgrounds were already behind their peers when they started primary school – and they were never able to catch up.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/federal-election/education-master-teachers-on-180k-could-help-boost-education-standards-say-campaigners/news-story/7fc3ce6598849b07d40866e16a0c2c76

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Liberal Democrats lose High Court bid to keep party name

The Liberal Democrats party will have to change its name after losing a High Court bid to overturn new electoral laws.

The case was sparked by the Liberal Party's challenge to the Liberal Democrats over the use of the word "Liberal" in its party name.

The High Court today found the electoral laws, which allow an established party to challenge a newer party over the use of the same words in its name, were valid.

The High Court delivered the result quickly, to enable the situation to be resolved ahead of the next election.

New electoral laws can force name change

The challenge before the High Court today related to changes made last year to the so-called non-confusion provisions in the Electoral Act's Register of Political Parties.

The new rules enable an incumbent party to force (via objection) a name change or de-registration of a registered party when the name shares a word in common with the original party.

In this case, it was the use of the word "Liberal" in "Liberal Democrats".

The Liberal Democrats formed about 20 years ago, and have been registered as a party since 2001 in the ACT. The party has been operating under the current name since 2008.

Presumably pre-empting the High Court's decision, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) confirmed it had received an application from the Liberal Democratic Party requesting its name be changed to the Liberty and Democracy Party on February 14.

Under the Electoral Act, the intention for a party to register or change its name must be advertised publicly by the AEC for one month to allow for any objections.

That means the party's name could be officially updated in less than a week.

The High Court will deliver its reasons for the decision at a later time.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-09/liberal-democrats-lose-high-court-bid-to-keep-party-name/100894356

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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 March, 2022

Disaster in Rocklea again

I once owned a house in Heaton St., Rocklea so I know a bit about this. Homes in Rocklea regularly sell cheaply because of the flood danger so they do tempt people. Some government action to prevent such mistakes would be kind. People can be completely wiped out financially by a flood

The houses in the suburb that have been raised up high in response to past floods are a vivid warning of what can happen



Rocklea resident Luke Greaves and his partner lost everything when the low-lying house they bought in 2016 was submerged in floodwater for three days.

Mr Greaves said although he knew flooding was a possibility, the information available when he bought the house did not show the full extent of the risk.

"The house right now has been submerged worse than the 2011 flood," he said.

Several properties around Mr Greaves's house were acquired by the council and demolished as part of the Voluntary Home Purchase Scheme before it was axed.

The father of three young children said, given the extent of last week's flood disaster, voluntary buybacks should return.

"Seeing the waters come in, I think it would be better that future residents aren't impacted by this," he said.

He also said it's "disgraceful" that the council's Flood Resilient Homes Program has not been rolled out in flood-prone Rocklea.

As part of the program, invited property owners are given financial assistance to adapt their homes through measures including raising them.

Mr Greaves said he has been asking to be included in the scheme since it began but said he was told by the council that Rocklea is not impacted severely enough by flooding and does not meet the criteria.

Mr Greaves's neighbour, Sandy Xia, is in an even worse position because she does not have insurance. Her house flooded so badly that parts of the ceiling caved in and there are holes in the walls. She, her partner and baby are now living in a hotel.

Ms Xia said when she bought the house in 2015, a real estate agent told her floodwater would never come into the house. "Back then, it was said the 2011 flood was an every 30 years kind of flood, I thought I would be living in another place in 30 years," she said.

"Buyback, that's the best option, that's the best thing I can think of," she said. "To buy back this property so we can start to find some place with no flood risk or lower flood risk area."

Councillor for Moorooka Ward Steve Griffiths has long called on the Brisbane City Council to bring back the Voluntary Home Purchase Scheme.

"It was cut by this Mayor and there are so many homes and so many people who want to participate in a voluntary buyback so we can remove those homes that are worst affected," he said.

"In the past, it's worked on a voluntary basis where residents have applied to council, council have assessed the need and the depth to which they flood … it's for homes where water is coming into their living areas," Mr Griffiths said.

He said the council was responsible for originally approving residential development in the low-lying area. "I believe council's got to take responsibility for fixing the problem up, eliminating the problem so we don't have the problem in the future," he said.

Brisbane Lord Mayor will 'consider all options'

When asked yesterday if he would consider reinstating the voluntary buyback scheme, Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner said, "a number of residents" in flood-affected areas did not want to sell but that, "we'll consider all options."

He said he is "very keen" to ensure the council gets support from other levels of government.

"There's lots of different things we can do, there's lots of different programs we can continue to gear up and we're really keen to make sure that all levels of government help people build back better," he said.

Deputy Premier Steven Miles said the state government was considering all "appropriate" options.

"We're just doing the disaster assessments now so it will take some time to work through both assessing the level of damage in those locations and assessing the best, the most appropriate resilience projects there," Mr Miles said.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-08/queensland-flood-victims-plead-voluntary-home-buyback/100890018

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Dishonest climate propaganda from the ABC

Another instance where Leftists deliberately lie to prop up their ideology

As residents of Northern New South Wales, a region known as the Northern Rivers, are still clinging to their rooftops awaiting rescue from emergency services and selfless fellow citizens in the wake of this week’s devastating floods, the ABC was playing politics with their lives.

While the façade of ABC news reporting sort to shine a light on the personal misfortune of thousands of affected residents and their local communities and businesses, the real underlying agenda was to weaponize this misfortune in its religious quest to proselytise Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) aka ‘climate change’.

Cue the NSW, Sydney-based edition of the 7PM nightly news bulletin on March 1. Those of us who are familiar with the ABC modus operandi of AGW propaganda know that slotting in the word ‘unprecedented’ at every available opportunity, whether factually correct or not, is foundational in spreading the word of their climate change overlords. And when ‘unprecedented’ doesn’t quite fit the historical facts, well why not alter the playing field so that an unsuspecting audience is none the wiser?

Approximately a third of the way through the bulletin, after fielding reports from reporters on the ground in northern NSW and beyond, the anchor brought the weather presenter into the frame to highlight rainfall totals for the town of Casino, located on the Richmond River, in a historical context. We were informed in a stern ‘you have been a bad boy’ kind of way utilising a bar graph visual prop, that the 2022 rainfall totals to date already represented over half the mean annual rainfall for Casino dating back to the seemingly arbitrarily chosen year of 1953. We were psychologically implored to be convinced that such a phenomenon was outside what could be attributed to a pre-AGW world. The implied pitch and tone were clearly aimed at convincing viewers that this was ‘unprecedented’. However, as is so often the case with the ABC, all is not what it seems or more specifically all is not what their ABC is seeking to have you believe.

Let’s start with rainfall data for the town of Casino itself. The nearest Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) weather station that is currently in service is the Automatic Weather Station (AWS -58208) at the nearby Casino airport which is located almost 4km from the town centre. Now that seems like a relatively central location to be representative of the greater Casino region. The February 2022 monthly total for rain at this station was a hefty 573mm adding to the January total of 155mm to register over 720mm for the year to date – well above average – but is that unprecedented when compared with historical data?

This is where we encounter our first significant issue with the ABC news report. The Casino AWS situated at Casino Airport has only been operational since 1995, hardly a comprehensive sweep of historical rainfall data for the region. The 2022 (January and February combined) totals above are certainly the most substantial in the period 1995 to 2022, with the next largest combined total for the first two months of a year being 574mm in 2008. Where did the arbitrary starting point of 1953 come from as referenced by the ABC news report broadcast to at least a quarter of a million viewers statewide at the time?

Well it seems data was merged for Casino from the old decommissioned BOM weather station (58063) that was located around 1km away at the Casino Airport from the current station and about 3km from the centre of town. This weather station has uninterrupted data commencing from 1858 through to 2011. What does this treasure trove of data reveal in regards to the ‘unprecedented’ nature of Casino’s 2022 rainfall to date? Those who retain the capacity for critical thinking may not be surprised to learn that the year to date 2022 rainfall totals for Casino have to take a back seat to 1893, which recorded a truly eye-watering 1005mm to the end of February exceeding the 2022 total by almost a third again. Other notable contenders were 1890 (644mm), 1959 (612mm), 1953 (597mm), 1947 (575mm), 1954 (563mm), and 2008(574mm). What of the highest daily totals for Casino across its 170 years of records? On February 28 the AWS station recorded 240mm, however on May 14, 1921, 279 mm was recorded in one 24 hour period and on February 22, 1954, 267mm was recorded. To be sure some weather stations recorded in northern NSW recorded over double these 24 hour totals in the last week, but again this is unlikely to be historically unprecedented in the wetter regions of Northern NSW of which Casino is not one of them.

So why did the ABC choose to cut off its historical lens on Casino’s rainfall in 1953 when the same data source extended back another 100 years from that point?

It would seem that the 1890s data represented a truth bomb to their ABC’s ‘unprecedented’ AGW rain bomb narrative. To add to their discomfort and difficulty the ABC has in addressing the real data in the face of cult-like adherence to AGW dogma, the wettest year on record for Casino was 1890 with 1955mm and the runner up was 1893 with 1844mm when atmospheric CO2 concentrations were thought to be between 280 – 300ppm. Go Figure!

All of this recent commentary around record rainfall in NSW and beyond has occurred in the aftermath of the ABC repeatedly reporting, especially since 2019, that Australia’s eastern seaboard was becoming hotter and drier and that this trend was ‘locked in’. Now, in the wake of two consecutive years of above-average rainfall across the eastern seaboard (indeed much of Australia), along with cooler than average temperatures, it’s as if that previous ‘settled climate science’ and associated prognostications never happened.

Ask yourself, how many of these same ABC journalists are willing to look the residents of northern NSW in the eye and guarantee them that if only, just only, we reach Net Zero CO2 emissions their towns will never flood again? Answer – net zero… So, the next time you hear an ABC presenter utter the words ‘Net Zero, it may well be a reference to the ABC’s credibility.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/the-abc-where-activism-beats-compassion/

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A feminist failure

Trophy wife can be an attractive role still

By MAGGIE McPHEE

I have been teaching at an all-girls’ school for more than 11 years, and I am still astounded at my students’ capacity for romance.

Even after 60 years of modern feminism, patriarchal myths sold in the fairytales of childhood, have al alluring pull over many young women.

A case in point: our leavers were asked to dress up as their future selves as a lighthearted activity. We saw astronauts and doctors, but a couple dressed up as “trophy wives”.

I asked them if they were being ironic. They were not.

Just the other day when my Year 12 English class was talking about gender politics in society, the subject turned to #MeToo. To my horror several girls asked innocently: “What’s #MeToo”?

As their committed feminist of an English teacher, I feel the need to “sell” feminism, to prepare them for when they inevitably leave the protected matriarchy of single-sex schooling and prepare to engage in earnest with the complex reality of a male-dominated world.

It’s a hard sell. Some of our strong, clever young women are afraid of the label “feminist” and avoid association with the movement. It is frustrating that some students are blasé about gender issues in a world in which Grace Tame and Brittany Higgins are fighting so hard for their rights as women. What are they afraid of? Being labelled as “difficult”? A complainer? Or perhaps the potential, and unspoken consequences of such an association.

Why are our young women disengaged from this issue that connects so directly to the shape of their futures? Perhaps the subtle messages their context sends them are part of the problem. Often, we underestimate girls, thinking they are not able to cope with the complexities of life. We protect them, enable their relatively harmless fantasies (the Year 12 ball is testament to that) and risk failing to prepare them for the challenges of a life that will expect them to be able to stand their ground and stake their claim.

We also give them an exhausting list of boxes to be ticked – you need to be independent, educated, skilled and trained, but you also need to be soft, empathetic, gentle, kind and feminine. No wonder my students are overwhelmed.

I suppose I can understand the impulse to retreat to the safety of apparently simple roles or solutions. Sometimes it may even be easier to opt out of the discussion altogether.

We all know the statistics trotted out every International Women’s Day about the gender pay gap, and we know the reasons : women tend to enter less lucrative industries; they take unpaid or poorly remunerated time out of the workforce for childrearing; women are less likely to go for top jobs and less likely to negotiate the same sort of salaries as their male counterparts. These statistics are stubborn – and although we are preparing girls for a world 60 years on from the second wave of feminism, it seems there is little we can do to shift these numbers.

What can we do collectively as educators to enable girls to be women who can choose to study in a male-dominated field or to have the self-confidence to apply for the top job and sit in front of a room full of men to argue for a higher salary?

At schools such as mine much has been done to try to develop resilient and courageous young women, including the introduction of programs designed to encourage taking a risk, potentially failing and trying again, as well as encouraging students to develop self-leadership skills, the confidence to persist in adversity.

It is important that we don’t just teach our young women the content they will need to study or to get a job – they need to have the personal skills to accompany that knowledge. All this is necessary. I see my role as a teacher as educating critical minds that will question assumed wisdom and cultural myths, including those around gender. The tempting illusions that we allow to remain unquestioned by young women should be challenged, for their necessarily complex lives to be rich and fulfilling.

Greater comfort will derive from deep engagement with the world as it is. The great challenge facing young people, not just girls, is disinterest and disengagement from the great ideas and movements flowing through the world. By protecting our students from the fascinating grubbiness, we are potentially robbing them of the chance to be realistic, pragmatic and perhaps even develop enough resistance to change the world.

I have made peace with the fact that my task is to plant a seed, not grow the garden.

Not everything can be taught before they leave school.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/special-reports/life-plan-for-girls-trophy-wives-or-astronauts/news-story/2a25ce76086a9eff8d17db1e9fd58464

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Medical clinics are binning thousands of booster vaccines amid slow uptake

This is despite more than a third of eligible Australians still to receive a booster dose.

"To date we have thrown out about 1,000 doses of Pfizer and 1,000 doses of Moderna," Albury-based GP Priya Kondappan said. "There's definitely been a lack of initiative and people coming forward for the booster. "We have certainly seen very minimal uptake in people 30 years and below."

After months of working to secure the vaccines, Dr Kondappan admits it's hard watching them being thrown away. "Being an immigrant myself I wish we could offer these vaccines to countries where it's more in need."

A few streets away from Dr Kondappan’s Sarkon Medical Centre, staff at the iHealth Albury clinic started the week by binning out-of-date COVID vaccinations.

"It's a terrible feeling for us doctors and nurses when we need to throw out these vaccinations, especially because we know that people need them, and it's a real waste of resources," GP Rebecca McGowan said.

Over summer, many border clinics in the area faced huge demand as residents scrambled to get a coveted third dose of the COVID vaccination. But now, lack of demand has lead to some vaccination clinics significantly cutting their hours. The Sarkon clinic has cut back the operation of its vaccination hubs from five days a week to two.

Despite the reduced hours, the clinic's appointment books and walk-in slots are far from capacity.

"Most general practices have even stopped booster doses simply because it's a waste of resources since the uptake has been so poor."

"We think the young groups — and that's over the age of 16 — are becoming a bit complacent about it, people think we are over COVID," Dr McGowan said.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-08/albury-gps-call-for-higher-booster-uptake-amid-dose-throwing/100890728

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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 March, 2022

The game of marriage chicken

Bettina Arndt notes below how feminists have dug a hole for their more normal sisters. Normal women still want marriage and a family but many men prefer to just "play the field" now that feminists have made that a legitimate choice. Men will often hook up with a lady for a while and then ghost her.

And that is complicated by the fact that women greatly dislike marrying a man less educated than they are. But the feminist influence in the educational system has forced many men out of it, leading to a shortage of tertiary-educated men. The men that well-educated normal women want are just not there for many

And it's not just women who are losing out. The feminist-dominated legal system with its incredible rules about "consent" and ferocious divorce laws has made many men opt out of normal relationships altogether. Too risky.

Bettina notes how often women are unrealistically "fussy" about whom they choose. They want more than they are ever likely to get. And that seems to be a lifelong tendency. I have been married four times so I have obviously got "it" but when I became single in my '70s, all of my assets were for nought, given my elderly appearance. As I have a Ph.D., I could not be more educated but even that earned me no kudos. The women in my own age-range whom I might have teamed up with wanted a younger-looking man. Fortunately, a well-presented and well-educated lady eventually emerged who forgave my current looks so I once again have a pleasing companion. And she is pleased too


The rejected visage

China is grappling with the problem of what to do with what they call ‘leftover’ women – unmarried women, often highly educated and urban – who can’t find a mate. The officials are finding their proposed incentives to persuade these women to marry unemployed men are meeting stiff resistance.

Meanwhile, black American leftover women are lining up for a harrowing dose of reality from YouTube sensation, Kevin Samuels. Over 2.5 million viewers have checked out this image consultant’s video, You’re Average at Best, where he demolishes a 36-year-old owner of a pet grooming business who believes she deserves a ‘six-figure guy’.

Samuels attracts ‘people who cannot look away from a train crash’ (claims this blogger) who admits she can’t stop watching him. There’s certainly a mesmerising quality to his endless interviews with delusional women convinced that their PhD and high earnings will attract a ‘high-value man’ – the modern equivalent of a prince in shining armour – despite these women often being overweight and single mothers.

Samuels is arrogant, misogynist, and totally wrong on many fronts. But I suspect the big attraction is seeing a man calling out the ‘because I’m worth it’ mentality afflicting so many successful women today. Watching their sense of entitlement flounder on the rocky shoals of today’s marriage market makes for irresistible viewing.

Black America gives a glimpse of our future. I spent five years living in New York in the mid-1980s and wrote about the growing pool of well-educated black women already having difficulty meeting black men who could match them. They grumbled that unless they were willing to marry down, or broaden their racial preferences, they’d be left on their own.

Their dim dating prospects have darkened further. The current pool of black students with higher education reveals black women being awarded 64.1 per cent of bachelor’s degrees, 71.5 per cent of master’s degrees and 65.9 per cent of doctoral, medical, and dental degrees. No wonder Kevin Samuels tells them to get real.

Meanwhile, here in Australia, we are heading for similar problems. The extraordinary success of the feminist mission to promote girls’ education is adding to the already tight market for thirty-plus educated women keen to settle down. Last week I received an email from a woman long married to her university sweetheart who reports her friends are complaining ‘there aren’t enough men on their socio-economic level to form partnerships’. As she says, our society never acknowledges that in order to help women find meaningful relationships we need to promote men’s education/employment.

Her friends are already up against it. In the 25-34-year age group more than half of females now have a degree compared with about a third of males (50.4 per cent vs 36.6 per cent). And the trend is clear

These successful women show little shift from their traditional hypergamy, still desiring to marry up or at least find a comparable man. A large study of 41,000 dating interactions by QUT economists, Stephen Whyte and Benno Torgler showed women seeking men of similar or superior levels of education right through to their forties. Only when breeding is no longer on the cards do women become less fussy about their choices.

The imbalance in numbers of well-educated men and women is simply deepening the mighty hole women created in their marriage prospects decades ago. Where it all really went astray was the strategic decision by women back in the 1970s to delay settling down. They embraced feminist rhetoric telling them they could have it all – spend the first decade of their adult lives getting educated, establishing their careers, having fun playing the field and only then get serious about finding the right mate. And that’s what they did. Over the past half-century, the average age of first marriage has shifted from the early twenties to around thirty.

For years, male bloggers have been gleefully boasting about how well that decade of dating worked out for men. Dalrock, who was one of the first to spot the trend, put it this way: ‘Today’s unmarried 20-something women have given men an ultimatum: “I’ll marry when I’m ready, take it or leave it.” This is of course their right. But ultimatums are a risky thing, because there is always a possibility the other side will decide to leave it. In the next decade we will witness the end result of this game of marriage chicken.’

Boy, did those chickens come home to roost… The new social order worked predominantly in men’s favour. Suddenly they didn’t have to marry to get sex – for many, particularly handsome, successful males, that became freely available. They could afford to sit back and wait while their own market value steadily increased. Even nerdy blokes who spent their early dating years being constantly rejected were able to acquire assets, career success, and confidence so that by the time women decided to get serious, many of these men found themselves much in demand.

Allowing most men, particularly educated men, to remain fancy-free for that critical decade means that by the time women hit thirty, the pool of eligible prospects is already depleted. Desirable successful thirty-something males have all the choices, with many fishing outside their pond, some choosing younger women and others seeking partners who offer something other than career success. Almost one in three degree-educated 35-year-old men marry or live with women aged 30 or under.

For the leftovers – successful women in their thirties facing their rapidly closing reproductive window – the prospects are grim. The solution is easy, many say – they should just get real and marry down. But the reality is most men in their twenties aren’t interested in dealing with the hassle of the older woman’s fertility time clock, when a younger woman means less pressure, more time for making good decisions. And as an online dating coach I found many younger men happy to meet up with my older clients, but sex was usually the only thing on their agenda.

We have to understand women’s choices. I was once involved in a market research project asking successful single women what they were looking for in a mate. Most expressed a desire to meet men of equivalent income because they didn’t want to be robbed of the choice of staying out of the workforce to care for their young children through being dependent on her higher income to pay the mortgage. Women’s preferences are governed by more than just status.

I should point out that current trends show most people do still get married or will do so over their lifetime. Many of these successful professional women will ultimately find a mate, but may end up missing out on children if they partner in their 40s or later, often with someone who has been married before. And in case you are wondering why I am talking about finding marriage partners rather than just cohabiting, well-educated women pretty consistently prefer to delay breeding until they are married, unlike less advantaged women who increasingly now have children out of wedlock.

Currently what we are seeing in this top-end thirties dating market is a lot of desperate women and elusive men. Here’s my correspondent talking about the trouble her friends are having: ‘The guys are willing to have sex with them but won’t commit to a relationship – let alone marriage. Again, I don’t really blame the men for acting this way, it’s because of the sexual culture the feminists have implemented. A guy will have sex with a girl giving her the impression that a relationship could eventuate then once they’ve had the hookup, they ghost her. Is it any wonder that these women today are terribly bitter and angry? After a while these women feel so furious that they think to themselves they’re going to make out he assaulted them because he led them on.’

Furious and dangerous. In this Brittany Higgins era, it is extraordinary men still take the risk of playing with that fire. Surely we must expect to see more men opting out of the whole business, now that women have shown themselves at their most venal and vindictive. The sight of baying groups of females out for blood at the Brett Kavanagh hearing, or at the Higgins’ talk at the National Press Club talk should have sensible men running for cover.

Clearly some are doing so. Last year the media was agog at this graph, published using data from the Washington Post, showing a third of men under thirty were virgins.

Part of the story here relates to boys’ education. Young men, with lower levels of education, are dropping out of the labour force, many living with their parents, with no income, no prospects, no women.

The bigger question is how much of this is also MGTOW – men choosing to go their own way. It makes sense in this anti-male culture for these younger men to be wary of sexual contact which could turn around to bite them, just as the older successful men know that the wrong marriage is a very quick way to lose most of what they have. Good reason to expect elusive men to become ever more common.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/the-game-of-marriage-chicken/

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Chief Scientist wants more girls to embrace science and maths

This pressure is a bit arrogant. Why should girls not choose what they want?

Dropout rates from high school maths and science subjects have sparked calls from Australia’s chief scientist Cathy Foley for better trained teachers.

Dr Foley said women risk missing out on highly paid jobs unless more girls studied STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects at school and university. She said boys made up 78 per cent of physics enrolments for the Higher School Certificate in NSW.

Too many students were “dropping out of important subjects at the last minute’’ in years 11 and 12, Dr Foley said. “That’s not the recipe we need for great opportunities for women to have fabulous jobs that are technology-based.’’

Student enrolment data for the two biggest states, NSW and Victoria, reveal high dropout rates from science subjects in senior years. In NSW, one in three of all students who enrolled in physics or chemistry in 2019 had dropped the subject by the end of year 12.

In Victoria, a quarter of students who enrolled in year 11 chemistry in 2020 dropped the subject in year 12, with 3886 students quitting the core science subject last year.

In mathematical methods, necessary to study engineering or medicine, one in four students shed the subject between years 11 and 12.

Nearly 4000 year 12 students completed specialist mathematics in Victoria last year, but boys were twice as likely as girls to have studied the most difficult maths subject. Just 1653 year 12 girls completed physics studies last year compared with 5596 boys – with a 22 per cent dropout rate for the subject in the senior years in Victorian high schools.

In systems engineering, 68 girls finished the subject in year 12, compared with 1045 boys.

Dr Foley said school girls with a talent for science often dreamt of becoming doctors so they could help people.

That meant girls were overlooking lucrative and interesting careers in data science, artificial intelligence and robotics that could help humanity, she said.

“A lot of young girls are brought up with societal expectations to be a carer, a social secretary and to make sure they’re nice to people,’’ she said.

“But there’s a narrow idea of what it means to help people. If they go into STEM-related research, they can develop something used by many people; they can change the world by science.’’

Dr Foley said Australia will need an extra 250,000 workers with digital skills within the next two years. “We’re not graduating anywhere near the number of (qualified workers) we need … to move from a service-based economy built on mineral extraction and services.’’

She said international students were more likely than Australian students to study engineering or physical sciences at university.

Better teaching, rather than a new curriculum, was the key to stopping students dropping out of science and maths in senior high school, Dr Foley said.

“Curriculums don’t inspire children, teachers inspire children. It doesn’t matter how good the content is, you need an inspiring teacher.

“At the moment, teachers often are teaching outside their area of expertise.

“Phys-ed teachers working as maths and science teachers is not a pathway that’s serving us well.’’

Dr Foley praised schools such as St Aiden’s Anglican Girls’ School in Brisbane, where students learn about coding and ­robotics from their first year of primary school.

Girls take part in an annual ­robotics contest, the Australian Space Design Competition and a First Lego League contest.

Principal Toni Riordan said 45 per cent of the class of 2021 year 12 graduates had applied for STEM-related studies at university. This year, 22 per cent of year 12 students are studying physics, 54 per cent chemistry and 56 per cent biology.

“The quality and professionalism of our teachers allow us to deliver our school-wide priority to deliver age-appropriate and diverse opportunities in STEM,’’ Ms Riordan said. “Our students embrace these opportunities with a curious mindset and creative problem-solving, which we know will prepare them for the world they will encounter.’’

Dr Foley, who trained as a school teacher before becoming a scientist, said too few teachers had the “right skills’’ to teach maths and science.

She said children’s engagement with social media and gaming meant “their need to be excited and inspired and engaged is heightened’’.

Scientists, engineers and IT professionals needed financial incentives, such as scholarships, to retrain as teachers, she added.

And she questioned the need for university-educated professionals to complete a two-year master’s degree in education to become a teacher.

“If you’ve been on a fair salary, you can’t suddenly dip out for two years (to complete a master’s degree),’’ Dr Foley said.

“Many people who’ve been in the workforce a long time have skills that are transferable.

“They might not need to do all aspects of a two-year master’s (degree).’’

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/chief-scientist-wants-more-girls-to-embrace-science-and-maths/news-story/35682520d46c3e8684b812ef416a4bee

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Time to put the Covid pandemic behind us

While we can safely rule out Vladimir Putin as a contender for this year’s Nobel peace prize, he may not yet be out of the running for the Nobel prize in medicine. After all, the invasion of Ukraine has put a stop to Covid-19, or at least the interminable conversations about a waning pandemic.

Omicron may be ripping through Australia and New Zealand somewhat faster than a fleet of Russian tanks but it presents less danger to human life and limb. Putin has presented the world with something far more frightening than a coronavirus mutation: a hostile invasion of a sovereign neighbour that may yet trigger a wider conflict.

The rains saturating the east coast have provided further distraction from the Covid dark opera. And when even The New York Times runs the headline, “Get Out of Your Pyjamas, the Pandemic is Over”, it should be time to call it quits.

International data should give us the confidence to declare that Covid-19 is in its death throes, having accomplished its mission of infecting every community on Earth, even NZ, where daily case numbers per 100,000 people last week were higher than the peaks in either Britain or the US. Thankfully, however, just like everywhere else, almost nobody is dying. The number of active cases across the world has been steadily declining since its Omicron peak in late January. The stockmarket saw it coming. Shares in Moderna and BioNTech are a quarter of the price they were in August and Pfizer has lost around 20 per cent of its value since December.

Last week, the US Senate narrowly passed a resolution to end the state of emergency. Republican senator Ron Marshall from Kansas, who introduced the measure, described it as “a symbolic victory to our citizens that normalcy is around the corner”. Mopping up the executive overreach, however, may be easier said than done.

Few in positions of authority have mustered the courage to declare the pandemic over. The deadly Wuhan virus, which prompted the World Health Organisation to declare a pandemic, is extinct. Omicron is far less deadly. Yet there appears little appetite to review the pandemic status, suggesting there are those who prefer to keep it in place. The people resisting a return to normality are generally in positions of power and influence. They have profited from the pandemic either financially or through a rise in the sense of their importance.

They include many in the mainstream media who, with some honourable exceptions, have kept their fingers on the panic button, even as the risk to public health has declined.

Two weeks ago, former deputy chief health officer Nick Coatsworth told Chris Kenny on Sky News that the Omicron variant was “clearly not” as dangerous to healthy adults and children as influenza. “If you had to give me a choice between which one I would vaccinate (my children) against, every time I would be choosing influenza over a Covid-19 vaccine,” he said. “That’s how I feel about the difference in severity between the two.”

Coatsworth’s advice was based on clinical experience and data. Yet, as Kenny reflected in The Weekend Australian the following Saturday, most of the rest of the media ignored the story. Taking away our liberties came much easier to the elite than handing them back.

Countless rules, regulations and protocols that were put in place when the risk was perceived to be rising remain in place with no prospect of any immediate review. Worse still, many of the measures were put in place without an expiry date, even though the pandemic was bound to pass.

We should have known after 9/11 that rushed measures to deal with a perceived emergency are hard to remove.

The security guards who were put in place to patrol the walkway on the Sydney Harbour Bridge have been strolling pointlessly up and down 24 hours a day for more than 20 years. No one can remember why they were put there, let alone who has the authority to stand them down, but perhaps someone should find out.

Hopefully, the mask “protocol” (not a rule or regulation) in airports and on domestic flights will be scrapped some time before 2040, but you wouldn’t put your money on it. The measure was agreed by national cabinet in January 2021 and updated in October. Transmission of the virus aboard an aircraft is far rarer than most would imagine, thanks to high-back, forward-facing seats and constant fresh air pumped through highly efficient filters. There is no conclusive scientific evidence that a scrappy mask, carelessly worn, is any more capable of stopping the Omicron variant than a hapless security guard could stop a low-flying 737. Yet the rule remains in place, serving as yet another barrier to civilised human interaction and a burden on those required to enforce it.

The absence of open debate is perhaps the most troubling restriction of all. Coatsworth is not the only person to harbour doubts about booster shots for children or whether universal booster shots, not just for the elderly or others at high risk, is a sensible or proportionate policy.

Questioning whether we really need to ostracise the unvaccinated remains a taboo even as state authorities are considering when dismissed workers could be invited back into their jobs to fill the vacancies for skilled staff in health and education.

Last week, the NZ High Court recognised the new reality by upholding an appeal by unvaccinated police and members of the NZ defence force, declaring their dismissal to be unlawful.

The court found their dismissal was not “a reasonable limit on the applicants’ rights that can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society”. The expert advice before the court did not show that the dismissal of unvaccinated workers made “a material difference” to health outcomes in the era of Omicron.

In other words, the only justifiable redundancies are the dispensing of superfluous rules.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/time-to-put-the-covid-pandemic-behind-us/news-story/cbc6ba92003db828f110358206f8fdc9

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Corporate regulator ASIC to roll back financial scam protections

The corporate regulator is pushing ahead with plans to roll back consumer protections against bank transfer scams despite strong opposition from consumer groups who say the move will leave the public more vulnerable to financial losses.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission said on Monday that it would proceed with narrowing the scope of the ePayments Code in relation to scams following a review of submissions from stakeholders including the banking industry, consumer representatives, industry associations and fintechs.

Consumer groups labelled the move “shocking” and “disappointing”.

Changes to the code, due to be updated in April, include amending the definition of ‘mistaken internet payment’ so it only covers input mistakes in the payment request and not payments made to a scammer.

A second change relates to unauthorised transactions provisions, whereby these will now only apply when a third party has made a transaction on a person’s account without their consent and not where a consumer makes a transaction themselves as a result of misunderstanding or falling victim to a scam.

“Recovery of transactions involving scams under the mistaken internet payments framework is increasingly challenging due to fraudsters quickly moving the funds out of the receiving account,” ASIC said in a statement.

“Clarifying that scams processes are not subject to the mistaken internet payments process in the Code would allow better consumer outcomes to be achieved because scam transactions could be managed sooner (if not required to go through the mistaken internet payments process).”

The mistaken internet payments framework had not been designed to allocate liability between the consumer and subscriber for lost funds, ASIC added.

“Rather, it is a process for the sending and receiving ADIs to assist the consumer, who has made the mistaken payment, in retrieving their funds from the unintended recipient.”

But Consumers Federation of Australia chair Gerard Brody said the move to narrow elements of the code would hurt consumers at a time when scams are on the rise.

“It’s shocking that ASIC is proceeding to roll back application of the ePayments code. This is the sole regulatory instrument we have to provide some level of consumer protection with electronic transactions, and it comes at a time when Australians are losing $2bn a year in scams, according to the ACCC,” Mr Brody said in an interview.

Mr Brody called on the government to step up to fill the gap created by the new code.

“ASIC actually acknowledges that this (update) will leave a gap in regulation relating to scams. So it’s disappointing that they’re not choosing to close that gap.

“They do say that it‘s more of an action for government and I very much hope that government takes that on board and steps in to regulate this area.”

ASIC Commissioner Sean Hughes acknowledged the updated code would not address or resolve every issue raised in the consultation process.

“This interim refresh will target a range of key issues with the code to support its ongoing relevance and effectiveness, pending the Government’s broader consideration of a mandatory code,” he said.

“This includes taking into account significant developments in technological innovation and preserving the intention for the code to be simple to apply and easy to understand.”

The ePayments code is currently voluntary but the government is expected to begin consulting this year on making it mandatory through legislation.

ASIC’s “refresh” of the code is understood to be an interim measure to take into account the technologies that have emerged since the previous review more than a decade ago.

An ASIC spokesperson said the regulator would welcome the code becoming mandatory.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/financial-services/corporate-regulator-asic-to-roll-back-financial-scam-protections/news-story/9dbc392e3361ab2ead80ebb732a8427e

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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 March, 2022

Nadia Bokody: Why married women stop having sex

As a Lesbian, Ms Bokody is not in the best position to talk about this and her comments are simplistic. She says that bearing a big load of housework suppresses the desire for sex in women.

It is true that libido drops off for both men and women in the course of a long relationship but I not aware that the effect is stronger for women. From many discussions I have had with women, I get the impression that women stay interested for longer.

And I think it is fair to say that all relationships are sui generis. They all involve an explicit or implicit "deal" between the partners. If the wife is satisfied with the relationship that is all that matters. To outsiders a particular set of arrangements may seem unfair but the outsiders are unlikely to know all details of how a couple relate to one-another. If the wife sees the arrangements as unfair there is a problem. But it is for the woman concerned to say that something is unsatisfactory, not outsiders.

Often the role of the male may not be immediately obvious. That the man is on standby to "fix" household devices when they go wrong may not always be immediately visible.

At the risk of lapsing into triviality, the classic situation where a jar with a tightly-fitting lid is handed to the man to open is very well known. And the service provide by the man does not have to be that trivial. In my own case I recently had to deal with two household devices that had ceased to function. My girlfriend identified the problems and promptly handed the devices to me. It took me quite a lot of thinking and fiddling to dismantle the two devices, remove the problem and then mantle them again. The mantling can be the hardest part.

And all the while my girlfriend concentrated on food preparation and cleaning. So was that unfair? Judging by the affection that she later lavished on me, she clearly did not think so. But our relationship is of course sui generis. What works for us may not work for all. All couples have their own explicit or implicit arrangements and understandings. It is not for outsiders to judge them. Matthew 7:1-3.


Every time I think I’ve written the last column I’m going to write about this, the bar for the men who partner with them sinks to an abysmal new low.

Take the TikTok trend captioned, “Things that turn me on as a mum”, in which montages of men performing painfully simple tasks like folding clothes, cooking dinner, and putting nappies on their own babies are synched to a sexy soundtrack and juxtaposed with footage of their eager-eyed wives watching on, barely able to contain their arousal.

The comments sections of these videos are almost as disturbing as the clips themselves – an orgy of women positively charged with erotic excitement collectively exclaim, “#DaddyGoals!” and “Where can I find myself a hubby like that?!!”, punctuating their enthusiasm with heart eye emojis.

You could be forgiven for thinking this was satire – that it mimics the same kind of hyperbolic praise you’d expect a child to receive from a parent after completing their homework – but poking fun of men’s limited participation in housework has become a depressing kind of signature for women on the internet in 2022.

Of course, we aren’t taught to be nonchalant about men’s scant contributions to domestic labour.

We’re conditioned to believe the mere act of being chosen by a man is in and of itself the highest form of acknowledgment of our existence. That, securing a man for marriage is so covetable, it nullifies any self-sacrifice or degradation a woman may have to endure as part of being able to call herself a wife.

Sure, your husband almost never puts the toilet seat down and still thinks it’s cute to leave a halo of his soiled undies on the floor around the laundry basket, however – YOU HAVE A HUSBAND! So what if you have to mother him every so often?

It’s not like he doesn’t care. He’d truly LOVE to help you out with the groceries. But he’s just a man … How is he supposed to know what brand of milk to get, or navigate the complex task of determining the appropriate Tupperware container to stow the couscous away in when he gets home with everything??

I mean, like, he COULD clean the bathroom, but he’s just not as well versed as you are on the sophisticated mechanics of swirling a brush around a toilet bowl and wiping Windex across reflective surfaces. You know you’ll just have to redo it anyway.

Never send a man to do a woman’s job! Amirite, ladies??!

This infantilisation of men isn’t by accident, and it’s certainly not because women get off on mothering their grown adult spouses. It’s the result of wilful, learned behaviour – something some psychologists are now referring to as “weaponised incompetence”.

Originally coined “strategic incompetence” in a 2007 Wall Street Journal article, weaponised incompetence is the act of feigning an inability to understand or complete a task (though it can also include doing the task but deliberately carrying it out poorly), so as never to be asked to do it again.

And it’s so prevalent, the most recent Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (Hilda) survey found that, on average, women do 21 hours additional unpaid labour each week than men.

This was true even when the woman was the breadwinner in the couple, so the old “but he works really hard to bring home the bacon” trope isn’t actually accurate. (This is not even to mention the emotionally, mentally, and physically intensive labour stay-at-home mums carry out in the home that’s still ignorantly deemed “not actual work”.)

The survey, which was conducted in 2019, revealed this gendered gap is most pronounced in heterosexual couples with dependent children, and that the biggest form of unpaid work was housework, closely followed by child-rearing.

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/dating/nadia-bokody-why-married-women-stop-having-sex/news-story/778dae054585c0496d457dfe5933358b

EPILOGUE:

I can't resist the temptation to add another anecdote about the male role:

Many years ago, I was sharing an apartment with two lively ladies. They concluded that there was something wrong with the deadlock on their front door and decided to fix it themselves. They took it off the door and opened it up. It promptly went SPROINNGG, as devices using springs tend to do, and scattered its parts around. They just sat there in dismay looking at the disaster.

They did not even look at me. They assumed that as an academic I would be useless at practical things. So I gathered up the parts, mantled the lock correctly and handed it back to them for attachment to the door. They did so very quietly. I later married one of the ladies concerned so I think it can be assumed that my standby services were appreciated. They were not to know that locks have been a minor hobby of mine since childhood. I still fix them.

Years later, when I fixed the lock on another lady's door, she commented: "I didn't think you could do that". She and I ended up having a four-year relationship. She was pretty too.

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Tudge affair exposes dangers of when #MeToo goes too far

Australia lost the services of a very competent government minister because of the unfair claims of a disappointed woman

Alan Tudge’s decision not to seek reinstatement in cabinet as Education Minister must surely represent the high-water mark of a posse of women behaving badly, and of cowardly leaders not merely hoisting, but avidly waving, the white flag at them.

That this small gang is as unrepresentative of women as they are loud is no comfort. There comes a time when they need to be called out.

A few weeks ago, when the Prime Minister delivered an apology in parliament for the poor ­culture that women face in parliament, Rachelle Miller said she felt vindicated. For too long, Tudge’s former staffer, and lover, has been able to control the narrative of this imbroglio. Not anymore. In light of the Thom report, it is clear that the only vindicated party is Tudge.

We now know, according to Vivienne Thom’s report and multiple submissions and source documents seen by The Weekend Australian, including emails, texts and witness accounts, Miller was not a wronged woman, nor the victim of bullying or harassment or discrimination by Tudge.

In fact, if there was discrimination, it may have arguably worked in Miller’s favour when Tudge and his chief of staff tried to secure her a promotion.

Most importantly, too, Thom found no evidence to substantiate Miller’s most wicked allegations, that Tudge was emotionally or physically abusive towards her during their consensual relationship between June and October 2017.

As is her right, Miller chose not to participate in the Thom Inquiry, just as she chose not to co-operate with an earlier investigation into her bullying allegations by the Department of Finance that also found no evidence to support her claims.

However their private entanglement started, it is clear that after it ended in October 2017 Miller wanted something more. The three or four occasions when they fooled around appeared to cause her great frustration, with Tudge refusing to have sexual intercourse with her.

It is also clear that Miller’s public allegations against Tudge followed his refusal to start a serious relationship with her. In other words, this looks to be a case of hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

The story of mismatched affections is as old as the hills, a sad one, to be sure, but not yet illegal. The Thom inquiry was told that then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was aware of the intimate interactions between Tudge and Miller in 2017 and did not consider these interactions constituted a breach of the Ministerial Standards that existed at the time.

Turnbull’s bonk ban came into effect after this liaison ended.

Yet, scared silly by the monstrous but small legion of female activists who have convinced Morrison that he has a “woman problem”, the Prime Minister has shown no support for Tudge.

A strategic leak, surely from the PM’s office, meant there was speculation that Morrison planned to sack Tudge on the manifestly spurious ground that the then human services minister had sought a promotion for Miller without disclosing his relationship with her.

Though Morrison’s office denied that was the case, the damage was done. Morrison’s lack of support for one of his best ministers has been remarked on privately by those closest to him.

Tudge was effectively given his marching orders via a newspaper report, despite lengthy evidence given to Thom about the background to trying to secure a promotion for Miller. Miller had apparently requested a promotion from Tudge’s chief of staff, Andrew Asten more than once. Both Tudge and Asten finally considered a promotion appropriate given Miller’s experience, her increased workload, the scope of her job, and the fact that Tudge’s portfolio of human services had moved into cabinet.

With promotions requiring sign off by the Prime Minister’s ­office, Asten wrote to Malcolm Turnbull’s chief of staff Drew Clarke requesting a change in allocation to cater for a senior adviser position in Tudge’s office. Sally Cray, Turnbull’s principal private secretary, wrote back to Asten declining the promotion for Miller.

Thom was informed that Tudge’s office had sought promotions for “every single one of my long-term media advisers”.

Tudge and Miller had shared one night of intimacy prior to his office seeking a promotion for her. Had a promotion not been sought, it is entirely possible Miller might have claimed she was discriminated against because of one night of fooling around with the boss.

Section 2.23 of the Ministerial Standards states that “ministers’ close relatives and partners” must not be appointed to positions in their ministerial or electorate offices, or in the offices of other members of the executive government, without the prime minister’s express approval.

Tudge maintains that at some point Turnbull’s office knew about his relationship with Miller, and also knew about his efforts to secure a promotion for Miller. And still, Tudge remained in Turnbull’s cabinet.

In any case, was Miller his “partner” – the criteria for the ministerial standard? To repeat the unseemly details, they had some form of sexual contact, but not sexual intercourse, three or four times. Miller appears to have yearned for more, as detailed in texts and emails sent to Tudge by the woman in her 40s over a four-year period after the liaison ended.

But, as the Thom inquiry was told, there was nothing about their interactions that amounted to a “relationship” in the normal sense of that word, let alone her assuming the role of his partner.

None of this is an excuse for poor decisions by Tudge and Miller, both adults. But what stinks even more is the puritanical witch-hunt that now routinely punishes a person over and over again.

This is becoming a familiar story: unjust processes kicking in to suit the politics of the day. The same conduct that did not attract punishment a few years earlier is used to impose punishment because it suits a new set of optics. It happens in the sporting world, in corporate Australia, and now this unfair practice was set to be employed by the Prime Minister.

It usually involves bleating about “community expectations” changing between date x and y. That makes sense if we’re talking about the passage of many years. Social mores change. But when barely a few years have passed, it becomes a nifty phrase, open to exploitation by two groups of people – the vengeful who want to see people retried for past actions, and the cowards who cave in to those seeking retrospective punishment.

The sham is easily exposed by asking how are these community standards measured? By surveys? If so, let’s see them. Or is the ­so-called pulse of the nation taken from a cosy conversation around a dinner table with like-minded people?

The outcome of the ruse on this occasion is that, with a single strategic leak, predictably denied by his office, the Prime Minister has thrown his colleague and a cabinet minister under the bus for no reason other than to appease an unrepresentative bunch of activists pushing allegations of harassment and bullying which according to the Thom Report are supported by no evidence.

By deciding not to put himself forward for reinstatement into cabinet, Tudge saved Morrison from the grief of publicly sacking a very good minister. Tudge also saved the PM from having to reveal an irony noted privately within Liberal circles, including by those close to Morrison.

Given that Turnbull made no moves against Tudge, or leaked any intention to get rid of his cabinet minister, the sneaky move to leak Tudge’s likely dismissal, based on the flimsiest of evidence, renders Morrison less loyal than Turnbull. That’s quite a head-turning event.

For the sake of a few votes, Morrison made it known he was willing to snivel in the face of a bunch of graceless women. The irony is that because most women are smart enough to see exactly what has happened here, his cowardice may well lose him more votes than it wins him.

The larger point goes beyond whether Tudge is in cabinet or not. It concerns the way we conduct politics in this country.

Lynch mobs come and lynch mobs go – from the women of Salem to the Ku Klux Klan to McCarthyism – but until political leaders are prepared to stand up to this behaviour, it will get worse.

Standing up to the mob in this case is particularly hard because the mob does have legitimate complai­nts. Women have clearly suffered unfair treatment in parliament and its surrounds.

It cannot be doubted Parliament House has sheltered more sexual predators than it should have and there was some abominable behaviour.

But as the Tudge imbroglio demonstrates, we must not believe every allegation made about every man just because a woman makes it. Some women do lie. Some women have ulterior motives, including revenge, disappointment, frustration, for making allegations against a man. Yet today’s female activists appear hell bent on using such thin pretexts as the Tudge/Miller matter as justification for overthrowing the presumption of innocence, the rules against double jeopardy and retrospective punishment, legal professional privilege, and contractual confidentiality in a mad rush to send ­alleged male offenders to the ­gallows.

Similarly, these women, and even the PM, may not think Brittany Higgins’ alleged attacker deserves a fair trial, but that way madness lies. The PM seems to be frightened of women who think they should be free to roam the landscape pointing the bone at alleged offenders without benefit of trial or other traditional niceties.

There is another group of women who have been forgotten by the Prime Minister – women who prefer a civilised and just society over one where women have the right of instant, trial-free punishment of men they don’t like.

PM take note. Courage should not have been beyond you.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/tudge-affair-exposes-dangers-of-when-metoo-goes-too-far/news-story/ce4b88a06a68c15a6fa6f6090f9560ad

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Climate catastrophists see opportunity in disaster

While homes in Brisbane, Lismore and Windsor were swamped by floodwaters, again, and at least 15 people were losing their lives, and volunteers were taking risks to rescue others, climate keyboard warriors saw an opportunity to make political hay while the sun was not shining. “If not us, who?” tweeted so-called Voices of independent candidate Zoe Daniel above a reference to the latest climate report. “If not now, when?”

Thankfully, other Australians had a far more useful response to those two questions. They said “me” and “now” as they filled sandbags, crewed boats and delivered food to help others in need.

From surfing legend and great white wrangler Mick Fanning’s jet ski run for the local pharmacist, to two police officers diving under water into a Lismore house to rescue a 93-year-old woman floating on a mattress in an air pocket against the ceiling, the stories of help and heroism were great and small. But some climate crusaders sensed only an opportunity.

As they have done with bushfires, heatwaves, droughts, snowstorms (and lack of snowstorms) climate activists use wild weather to foster fear and further their political causes. Where some see natural peril and human tragedy, and act to help, others see dramatic images and political opportunity, then jump on social media.

Another so-called Voices of independent, Allegra Spender, posted pictures of the flood trauma with familiar slogans. She said a vote for her would “tackle climate change” and protect the environ­ment.

Presumably when people argue we should “follow the science” they mean we should stick to the facts and logic. Yet such an approach would see these climate catastrophists exposed as false prophets pushing false promises – they can no more alter the climate, let alone prevent natural disasters, than Superman can spin the planet backwards on its axis.

By science people tend to mean the increasingly alarmist papers published by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There is much science behind these papers but also plenty of public relations in the way they are presented, with a rolling release of reports making the same points, which is why climate news sounds like deja vu.

We hear plenty about “tipping points” and last chances but seldom a word of scepticism, questioning of IPCC statements or references to the benefits of global warming; we get only doom and gloom. NASA findings on the carbon dioxide-induced greening of the planet or research about reduced mortality from milder northern hemisphere winters are not the kind of science the advocates follow.

Let us accept the general thrust of what the bulk of the climate scientists argue: that the Earth’s atmosphere is warming, that most warming is attributable to human-induced emissions and that we will see an increase in the regularity and intensity of weather events. Science also says much of this is baked into the atmosphere, even if we reduce emissions in the medium term, and that a global cut to net zero is necessary to reverse the trend.

There are debates to be had about weather records, interpretation of data, scientific modelling and forecasts. But the first thing to say about the climate activists’ response to natural disasters is that they are not new; floods, droughts, fires, heatwaves and storms have always been with us and always will be, especially in this land of droughts and flooding rains.

The pretence that climate policies can relieve us of these natural traumas is a ridiculously emotive and deceptive ploy. Do the activists really think they can deliver some Truman Show world where we dial up the weather we desire?

They are always desperate to use the word unprecedented so they can pretend global warming is visiting a wrath upon us that our forebears never knew. Every heatwave, cold snap, drought, flood or fire has to be worse than ever to suit their narrative.

In these pages I have demonstrated why this is untrue when it comes to the horrific bushfires in the summer of 2019-20. They were widespread, rampaging and deadly, but this country has had fires cover wider areas, kill more people and start earlier in the season. Firestorms are fearsome but, tragically, Australia will always suffer from them from time to time – always has.

Which is why grand plans to change the climate are unfortunate distractions from the protections that will work here and now, no matter what happens to the climate. We need to control fuel loads near settlements and ensure houses and properties are sufficiently protected in how they are built, where they are built and how much cleared area they are allowed or must have around them.

Despite repeated inquiries making recommendations about this, we have made little progress, and our complacency will lead to more damage from future fires. Instead of these difficult reforms, governments find it easier to buy firefighting aircraft that are useful for some fires but hopeless against the worst.

It is a similar story with floods. At Lismore this week’s flooding was the worst on record, more than 14m. But given there have been many floods over 12m, even in the 19th century, there will be other factors involved beyond climate, such as landclearing and urban build-up. Again, the practical solution to repeated inundations is not some fanciful plan to change the global climate but to adapt to a reality that has always existed and always will. If Lismore is the most regularly flooded town in the country, might we not rethink rebuilding in the same way at the same locations?

If we keep doing the same things we have been doing on fires, floods and droughts, and pretend our climate change policies will fix it, we are doomed to repetitive trauma. Dams can reduce flooding and droughtproof communities yet we seem to bust every dam proposed.

Even the entirely logical plan to extend the height of Sydney’s Warragamba Dam to mitigate the sort of flooding we have seen for two summers in a row has been held up by all the usual environmental objections. This is not rational or practical behaviour; science tells us floods will come and dams can manage them.

Instead of building dams, clearing bush around houses and ensuring buildings on flood plains can endure floods, activists pretend subsidising electric cars and mandating energy-saving light bulbs will tame our natural disasters, and too many politicians play along. Sometimes this country’s political system seems like a press release in search of governance.

Apart from the tackiness of spruiking for votes on the back of natural disasters, this is the first big lie of the climate alarmists: that their policies are the best way to eliminate or minimise the damage from natural disasters.

The second lie is even more preposterous because it goes to their propensity to deliver. Even if we accepted that controlling global climate was a reasonable and plausible goal, how, precisely, could an independent politician achieve this outcome?

To what degree, for instance, has Zali Steggall been able to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and limit global warming. She has done as much on that cause as she has on world peace.

The Greens, Labor and the so-called Voices of independents fallaciously accuse the government of inaction on climate. Reducing emissions by 20 per cent already (up-ending our energy system to do it) and committing to net-zero emissions by 2050 is more than most nations do, and too much for many informed people, so it is a bit cute to dismiss it as inaction.

But let us say, for argument’s sake, that a few of the so-called Voices of independents and the Greens win the balance of power and install a Labor government that is dependent on them for survival. This is their dream scenario, where they could dictate climate policy.

So, we could pretend they get our country to net-zero emissions by 2030 (lord knows how, perhaps by closing all industries and building a dozen nuclear reactors). We could go even further and have them shut down our coal exports.

Would this, could this, change the climate? Between 2019 and 2021 China increased its emissions by 600 million tonnes and India by 200 million. In total, that amounts to double Australia’s annual emissions. In other words, if Australia’s 1.1 per cent of global emissions disappeared overnight, they would be replaced within a year by the global growth.

And no less coal would be burned, our exports would merely be replaced by other nations, as would the produce of our closed factories and farms, adding emissions elsewhere.

The scientific, economic and practical reality is that our self-harm would not reduce global emissions, therefore not improve the climate. That is what would happen in the extreme, impossible expression of the climate catastrophists loony plans.

So imagine the futility of whatever policy morsels they might cajole out of government. The pretence that any politicians, let alone so-called independents, can change the climate is misleading, ignorant and juvenile.

The eventual elimination of greenhouse gas emissions, so long as it is in concert with the rest of the world, makes sense. The way to do it in Australia, while protecting our economy, environment and sovereignty, might be through nuclear power (as France and Germany are suddenly rediscovering) and through abatement schemes involving revegetation, soil carbon and the like.

Climate change, like most other complex policy areas, needs to be tackled with factual, realistic and proportionate progress. Emotive, jingoistic and frankly silly claims about delivering us from Armageddon to Nirvana are not worthy of adult discussion, and certainly have no right to claim science as their defence.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/climate-catastrophists-see-opportunity-in-disaster/news-story/d4d934d45ecbd9b328363527d831ccdf

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Grace Tame seems to have let go of her anger


At her betrothal. An interview below:

As our cover star for Stellar’s sixth annual International Women’s Day issue, what does International Women’s Day mean to you?

As an advocate of the child sexual abuse survivor community, the significance of International Women’s Day is multilayered. By default, of course, I’m an advocate for women. But what I am is an advocate for survivors of child sexual abuse.

There are a lot of male survivors of child sexual abuse, and male survivors are among my best friends. I’ve never once said, “I hate men.” And yet yesterday I read this thing from this man who said, “Oh, from here where I’m sitting, you’re just a man hater.”

I’ve never, never, never had the words “I hate men” come out of my mouth, so I find it really, really hard being in the space. I do my darnedest to be the best advocate I can possibly be of the survivor community, which very much includes boys.

So while we must always equally acknowledge, protect and advocate for our boys, and men who are fellow survivors of child sexual abuse, all of these things can be done while recognising that there are added layers of compounding disadvantage built into the experience of being a female, which must be addressed.

It goes without saying that our own nation also has its own entrenched, systemic inequalities that can’t be ignored. First Nations women, women of colour, women with disabilities, migrant women and other minorities as a result face even greater barriers to justice. But I have never called myself a feminist.

Not because I’m not. But it just never occurred to me to call myself a feminist because I just assumed that everyone wants equality. International Women’s Day to me means another opportunity to continue the conversation of equality that is inclusive of everyone, regardless of gender.

Today, you are announcing your new role as a L’Oréal Paris Woman of Worth, which marks your first beauty brand partnership. Why did you decide working with L’Oréal Paris was the right fit for you and how do you navigate the line between advocate and brand ambassador?

What really drew me to this particular partnership is the depth to it. That it’s not this “commercial, product” thing. It’s changing the way that we do marketing. Before it was about selling products and now it’s about selling progress.

My number-one value is integrity, and it’s about the cause. It’s about [asking], “Is this going to benefit what we’re trying to achieve with The Grace Tame Foundation and the survivor community in eradicating abuse culture in all of its forms?”

This is a campaign that’s aimed at stopping harassment. [Tame will be the face of the brand’s global Stand Up Against Street Harassment campaign in Australia in April.] And so it was a no-brainer for us.

Max [Heerey, Tame’s fiancé] and I, we’re a team of two, and we had a really rigid set of criteria. We’ve been approached by a lot of companies. We thought long and hard about it, and we were really impressed by the direction that L’Oréal Paris are going in with this campaign. And I’ll be frank with you: we think it needs some work, but we’ve been impressed with where it is [at]. We see that it has so much potential.

So many women who have bottled up their frustration for so long finally feel like they have permission to be angry. Are you aware of this impact you’ve had? How do you feel about being the catalyst for this change?

I’m very humbled and honoured to hear that, but I would say I’m not comfortable in being [called] “the” catalyst. This is a longstanding conversation and there are survivor advocates and sector experts who’ve been progressing and pushing this conversation forever and yelling into a void.

I just happened to get up on that stage and people were ready to listen. It’s one thing to have a message, it’s another thing for people to be receptive to it. I didn’t just come along without a team behind me who were pushing me.

Whether it was my mum or Nina Funnell [journalist Funnell created and managed the #LetHerSpeak campaign, and funded Grace Tame’s legal work and the legal work of the other 16 survivors featured in the campaign], I wouldn’t be here if Nina didn’t believe in me and start #LetHerSpeak and give the other brave survivors hope and a platform.

There’s an army behind me, there’s an army in front of me, there’s an army on either side of me.

Where have I heard that before? "Vor uns liegt Deutschland, in uns marschiert Deutschland und hinter uns kommt Deutschland!" An undoubted Fascist awareness. She has her Reich now.

It wouldn’t be fair of me to go “Yes, I am the catalyst.” I’m just a domino, that’s how I think of myself in the scheme of things.

You got engaged to Max, now your manager, in January. Where do wedding plans lie amid everything else that you’ve got going on?

We’re looking to get married in February next year, something low-key, maybe on a beach somewhere. Max and I are very chilled people. Believe it or not, we like minimal fuss. We are your parmie and pub type of humans. Maybe we might just run away somewhere and then have a party afterwards.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/lifestyle/stellar/grace-tame-i-dont-hate-men/news-story/cde4a44ab77c27aced8927484a8d8287

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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4 March, 2022

Ping, Pong, Pang: we went to enjoy the opera but found it perpetuating racism

By Cat-Thao Nguyen

On reading the story below, I do feel sorry for Ms Nguyen. But Puccini's "Turandot" is one of the greatest works of opera so should be sacrosanct in a way. Its first performance took place at the "Teatro alla Scala" in Milan in 1926, conducted by Arturo Toscanini, after which it rapidly became a classic. Who has not wondered at the power of its great aria "Nessun dorma"?

We should not meddle with the transcendent and it seems that the Sydney performance was true to the original, as it should have been.

So I think Ms Nguyen should simply see the opera as the fantasy that it is, without ascribing personal reference to it. That would seem to be the only constructive way forward, difficult though it might be. After all, works by Wagner are now performed in Israel, for their artistic merit, not their historical relevance

Growing up in poverty in Bankstown as a Vietnamese refugee, I was always on the outside looking in at the Sydney Opera House. My mother always warned us the city had a different temperature. Crossing train lines was like crossing countries.

So when my Canadian-Chinese husband suggested we go to a performance at the Opera House earlier this month, I wore the heavy coat imposed by mum. After showing our vaccination documents and checking in we ascended the steps of the Joan Sutherland Theatre to see Opera Australia’s performance of Puccini’s Turandot.

Our previous experience of a Puccini opera was by accident while on holiday in Italy. Inside an ancient church, there were two unassuming singers without any costumes, stage or surtitles. And it was transcendent. But what we saw in Sydney shocked us.

In 2019, a comedian withdrew her show, Aisha the Aussie Geisha, from the Melbourne Festival. It had featured a white person dressing up as a geisha with face paint, drawing complaints about its use of “yellowface”. Yet Opera Australia apparently feels comfortable having white performers dress up in face paint and exaggerated Asian features to play Chinese characters such as Ping, Pong and Pang.

Turandot is set in ancient China, even though Puccini never went to the country. Unsurprisingly, the play, which centres around a barbaric Chinese princess, contains outdated orientalist stereotypes of Chinese people. As an Asian woman, I have had to battle exotic fetishism and binary depictions that oscillate between submissive servant and dragon lady – the exact binary I was now watching on stage.

As I sat in the theatre, the horrible caricatures kept coming like a tidal assault. Ping, Pong and Pang pranced around the stage with their Fu Manchu-style moustaches and fake long ponytails flicking across their costumes. I felt utterly sick. I clutched my husband and clamped my hand over my mouth. As the scenes unfolded, I felt a violent wilting of dignity for myself and my Chinese husband.

We decided to leave after the first act. Most of the audience that night was white but the only thing white for me was my hot rage. I quoted the Jewish teacher Elie Wiesel to my husband. Wiesel said: “It is illegal to shout ‘Fire’ in a crowded theatre. But if there is a fire, it is immoral to remain silent ... One must raise an alarm in such a moment, even though it will be perceived as the act of a madman, even though it makes people uncomfortable.” It seemed no one else was alarmed.

No one else saw the fire of cultural appropriation and the use of Chinese music, traditional dress and perpetuating historical Western depictions as demeaning. Instead, on the Opera House balcony people chuckled, talked about property and holidays. It was achingly normal.

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/culture/opera/ping-pong-pang-we-went-to-enjoy-the-opera-but-found-it-perpetuating-racism-20220221-p59yai.html

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No one cares about boys doing badly

Bettina Arndt

Nearly forty years ago, I was interviewing a senior New South Wales bureaucrat about how badly boys were doing in schools.

‘What do we do if we find girls continue to draw ahead of boys?’ I asked her.

‘We wait 2,000 years and continue to analyse the results very, very carefully,’ said this Director of Curriculum.

She later claimed that was a joke, but that has precisely been the strategy of feminists running our education system since that time. This was in the mid-1990s and they’ve been sitting pretty ever since the 1972 Whitlam government introduced strategies to encourage girls’ achievement in schools. Girls were surging ahead across the board.

But the endless promotion of girls’ achievement threatened to come unstuck when, suddenly, parents started to notice what was happening to the boys.

Robert MacCann from the NSW Board of Studies released a startling report giving a very detailed analysis of sex differences in final school results which showed girls doing increasingly well and boys’ results dropping through the floor.

Suddenly the newspapers were full of stories of irate parents demanding to know what was going on. Parents sent me cuttings from local newspapers showing the smiling faces of girls winning all the prizes in school speech days whilst boys filled the remedial classes or dropped out of school.

(Unsurprisingly, after launching his bombshell report, there’s no sign Robert MacCann appeared in public again. The gulag, perhaps?)

It was obvious that girls’ education strategies had more than levelled the playing field. But that wasn’t the main game for the feminists now firmly entrenched in our education departments. A letter I received in response to my articles on boys’ education spelt out the feminist goals very clearly.

‘Girls today are far beyond needing equality. They need compensation for 2,000 years of being repressed, mutilated, enslaved, raped, and treated as inferior,’ the hostile reader wrote.

Similar sentiments, more tactfully expressed, were published in an article But the Girls Are Doing Brilliantly in a gender equity magazine produced by the Federal Education Department. It suggested that increasing girls’ performance in maths and science wouldn’t provide girls with a passport to career success, nor result in better paying jobs or increased workforce participation. More had to be done.

This mob wasn’t at all happy when governments responded to the massive community disquiet about the boys being left behind with two parliamentary inquiries. The first, led by Liberal backbencher Stephen O’Doherty in New South Wales, made worthy recommendations only to have the project shelved when Bob Carr’s Labor government came to power, kowtowed to the Teacher’s Union, and buried the whole thing.

Next came the Howard Government’s House of Representatives Inquiry, which reported in 2002 after receiving a record number of submissions. The bipartisan committee unanimously recommended programs to assist boys, especially in literacy. The Deputy Chair, Labor MP Rod Sawford, spoke out about the ‘state of denial’ the committee encountered in education bureaucrats and academics, which they put down to ‘the fear that addressing boys’ issues would undermine ongoing support for strategies for girls’.

Federal Education Minister Brendon Nelson announced he planned to tackle this head-on, with his government considering to what extent pro-girl policies were ‘letting down boys and their families’. He announced boys’ ‘Lighthouse’ programs to fund schools developing strategies to improve boys’ achievement.

But naturally, Labor’s powerful handbag brigade weren’t having a bar of this and funding for boys’ initiatives rapidly dried up when the Coalition lost power. (Every time I despair of Morrison’s pathetic Coalition government I think of this history – Labor has ruthlessly dismantled programs benefiting men and boys in family law, support for fathers, etc.)

This was just when Christina Hoff Sommers was exposing the plight of boys’ education in America in her powerful book, The War Against Boys. Similar patterns were to emerge in many Western countries – ‘Worldwide, boys are 50 per cent less likely than girls to meet basic proficiency in reading, maths, and science,’ notes Warren Farrell.

Here we are twenty years later with boys’ education totally off the agenda. The 2019 Alice Springs Education Declaration setting out Australia’s current goals for education didn’t mention ‘boys’ in their entire document.

Most of the data showing how badly boys are slipping behind never sees the light of day. Evidence that is available reveals a dire picture of boys in trouble:

Boys are dropping out of school. For every 17-year-old girl not going to school in 2020 there were 1.5 boys. That trend has been getting worse for the last half-century.
Boys are left behind. NAPLAN results tracking basic skills show more boys than girls falling below minimum standards in every subject. In the writing test, boys are seven months behind girls in Year 3, 9 months in Year 5, 18 months in Year 7, and 20 months in Year 9 – trailing girls by almost two full years. In the graph below showing Year 7 NAPLAN results we see that in most subjects, boys in Year 7 are about twice as likely to be in trouble as girls. Overall, 11 per cent of teenage boys can’t read at a minimum standard. And even in numeracy, more boys are below par.

Boys’ final school results are also slipping. Last year in New South Wales, girls were awarded 58 per cent of all the high scores in the HSC results, with about 6,300 more top scores than boys received. Most states simply don’t publish final year results by gender.

Boys are no longer going to university. In 2021 there were 1.4 females for every male doing a degree or graduate study. More girls than boys have been going to university since 1989, with the gender gap increasing steadily.

Over the past two decades, we have seen more and more measures introduced which favour girls’ achievement. The inclusion of a compulsory unit of English in the calculation of NSW tertiary entrance marks in 1994 was a major factor contributing to the increasing domination of girls at that time. Seven years later, the bureaucrats doubled the compulsory English requirement, which experts calculated immediately tilted by 4 per cent the ratio of girls in the top 10 per cent.

Bias against boys is now worn as a badge of honour. Look at this Melbourne University academic presenting her research showing boys do better in multi-choice maths exams – which she proudly declares is reason to do away with them.

There’s long been a shift to assessment methods that favour girls, like ongoing assessment rather than exams. The currently favoured open-ended inquiry approach and self-directed learning means boys are more easily distracted and can fall behind. Boys do better in orderly classrooms where there are clear directions, explicit goals, timely feedback, and consistent sanctions for uncompleted work. They require high expectations and praise to stay on task and achieve good work – yet teachers praise boys less than girls. With male teachers now outnumbered 2.8 to 1, female teachers’ bias against boys is a major issue. Female teachers are more likely to mark boys down, as this OECD study found.

There’s plenty that could be done to facilitate boys’ learning, including a greater emphasis on literacy and reading – starting with a phonics-based reading model. And regular breaks from sitting still. My older son spent time in a school in Manhattan where the boys had scheduled runs up and down the stairs of their high-rise building every hour or two – orderly chaos but great for their learning.

In his latest book, The Boy Crisis, Warren Farrell makes this chilling point. ‘For the first time in American history, our sons will have less education than their dads.’ Farrell explained he grew up in an era in which girls were doing badly in maths and science but added, ‘We concluded the trouble was with the schools.’ His country decided to tackle the problem and girls are now thriving.

Now boys are doing badly in almost every subject. And what’s the reaction? ‘We say the trouble is with the boys,’ said Farrell.

It’s that darned toxic masculinity. That’s the problem. Our entire education system, with unrestrained glee, now has that firmly in their sights.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/03/no-one-cares-about-boys-doing-badly/

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Castrating Australia

Ukraine, the causes, the strategies and the ramifications for us all

One theme, of course, keeps recurring, and that is what Rebecca Weisser describes in this week’s cover story as our Peter Pan politics, the notion that the West has for far too long indulged in fairy-tale policies built on fantasy ‘woke’ concerns – such as climate, race and gender identity – but now it is time for us all to ‘grow up’.

That’s one way of putting it. A Speccie reader has put it rather more bluntly, by writing to all members of the Morrison Cabinet berating them for the unacceptable risk they have placed this nation under by recklessly embracing left-wing environmental politics and policies.

He writes, somewhat scathingly:

Dear Minister, Well, not one summer but two in Melbourne in which there has been not one day of 40 degrees or over.

The dams are virtually full at the end of summer. The average world temperatures are the same today as 43 years ago and that comparison is even after China’s increased coal-burning. The CSIRO cannot quantify how much CO2 is in the air generated by man.

Yet you have led us into a Green’s paradise where no scientific peer-reviewed data seems to justify putting our coal and gas electricity generation into a crisis position.

The writer goes on to detail the explosion in electricity costs to be paid by you the consumer that are directly due to the subsidising of – and new infrastructure required for – our so-called ‘renewables’.

But it is the last line in the letter to ministers that is the most devastating:

Let Germany and Britain be a glaring warning to you fools.

Indeed.

As this magazine has repeatedly maintained – and we are a lone voice in the media brave enough to bluntly spell it out – the pursuit of net zero emissions is a treacherous policy that exposes future generations of Australians to virtual enslavement

As China ignores any environmental concerns to build up her massive and unstoppable military and industrial strength, our leaders and business elites are destroying the very energy strength this nation may desperately need in the years ahead not only to defend ourselves militarily but in order to prosper as a free and sovereign democratic nation.

Now that we have seen the clear and present danger of diminishing one’s access to cheap, reliable and abundant energy resources, such as has wilfully occurred in Europe, the Coalition must immediately end the commitment to net zero emissions. And while they are at it, please remove the moratorium on nuclear power.

Or else, like Labor and the Greens, the Coalition will forever risk the epitaph of having deliberately and treacherously castrated the industrial strength of this nation.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/castrating-australia

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Maths and science teachers need better pay, report warns

Maths and science teachers would be paid extra under a radical reform to fill skills shortages.

A two-tier salary system for teachers is recommended in a report by the Centre for Independent Studies, which wants higher wages paid to teachers who specialise in hard-to-fill fields such as science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM).

The CIS disputes predictions of a teacher shortage, arguing that workers qualified in professions such as information technology, accounting and engineering could be given fast-track training to teach in high schools.

“Union demands for across-the-board pay rises are not ­responsive to the actual needs on the ground,’’ CIS education ­research fellow Glenn Fahey said.

“The (teachers’) union says all teachers should be paid the same, based on an old industrial model. “But when it comes to maths, there should be a more market-responsive salary available that reflects industry demand – a salary that gets close to what they could earn in industry.’’

In NSW, which pays the highest teacher salaries, new graduates earn $75,605, but the salary for “highly accomplished” ­teachers is capped at $111,271, with up to 12 weeks’ annual leave.

Consulting giant EY’s cyber security professionals earn $68,000 as graduates, $150,000 as a senior consultant and $310,000 as a senior manager. The median salary for a mining and gas engineer is $158,775, with a standard four weeks of leave.

The CIS report suggests a 5 per cent salary bonus for science and maths teachers. “Mathematics and science teachers tend to earn lower salaries in teaching than their graduating peers in industry, while in all other subjects the opposite is true,’’ it says.

“In order to attract and retain teachers in shortage areas – particularly with specialisations in maths and science – policymakers should consider flexible pay rates, making them more market-based, rather than fully regulated. There is evidence that maths and science teachers’ salary expectations are relatively sensitive to market salaries outside of teaching.

“The same is not necessarily true for the wider teacher workforce who … report relatively high levels of satisfaction with pay and conditions.’’

Mr Fahey said professionals with existing science or maths ­degrees could not afford to quit high-paid jobs and start at the bottom of the salary ladder as an entry-level teacher.

“If you’re a mid-career professional (and switch to teaching) you have to start at the bottom on an entry-level salary,’’ he said. “That doesn’t make sense. That subject knowledge and ­experience should be recognised in the salary.’’

Mr Fahey said industry professionals with a mastery of STEM subjects were good at “explicit teaching’’ to school students.

“Teachers who bring with them industry experience and knowledge tend to be better in the classroom,’’ he said. “They are better able to ­explain the sequences involved in solving problems.’’

The CIS report recommends that high-performing teachers be paid a 20 per cent bonus.

It states that Australia has enough teachers, but they need to be better trained at university.

“The number of students per teacher has almost halved since the late 1960s,’’ Mr Fahey said. “While there are claims of a growing shortage of teachers, the truth is that staffing increases ­significantly outpace student ­increases.’’

Mr Fahey also called for better quality controls on teaching ­degrees.

“The problem is not so much a poor quality of potential teachers attending university, but that those coming out of training are underprepared,’’ he sa

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/maths-and-science-teachers-need-better-pay-report-warns/news-story/ee3e774d6c74cff4f36f504a1eb867e9

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Must not call footballers fat

The AFL has warned clubs and players that body shaming is covered by the league’s recently revised vilification rules, alongside racist and sexist abuse.

Club officials were surprised to see body shaming explicitly mentioned in communication this year about the vilification code, which was updated last year and is known as the “Peek rule”.

AFL executive general manager of inclusion and social policy Tanya Hosch said the rule was designed to stamp out ridicule based on appearance or body shape, not to interfere with reasonable demands of elite footballers.

While body shaming was recently highlighted with clubs, Hosch explained that a review had found the existing wording in the vilification rule was sufficient to cover that kind of abuse, so it was not a new addition.

The rule – previously known as rule 35 - was introduced in 1995 after Michael Long was racially abused in the Anzac Day match that year . It has been expanded over the years to cover vilification related to disability, appearance and sexuality, and applies to AFL, AFLW and community footy.

Hosch said body shaming was raised as a serious concern by men and women consulted during the review process before changes were put to the AFL Commission last year.

“It did come up in the consultation process and I want people to understand it,” Hosch said.

“As a precursor to the rule changes, we did consult and we sought submissions from the clubs, umpires and a range of other people including people working in the media and broadcasters and other important stakeholders in footy - obviously including players as well - about what has your experience been? And body shaming was definitely something that came up in those conversations, and it came up not just from women but men as well.

“It was recognised in the consultation process enough to know it was something that we needed to be able to address.”

The warning came as Gold Coast Suns player Sarah Perkins was subjected to abusive comments about her weight on social media after a loss to St Kilda.

Perkins, a 2017 All-Australian and Adelaide Crows premiership player with a booming kick, received support from teammates and opponents. Former Melbourne teammate Libby Birch said the industry needed to take a stand against body shaming.

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/sport/afl/afl-cracks-down-on-body-shaming-in-vilification-code-20220228-p5a0d6.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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3 March, 2022

South-east Queensland parents told to pick up kids from school NOW as Queensland cops ANOTHER huge storm in a matter of hours after being battered by a 'hail bomb' with floodwaters rising AGAIN

I am glad I no longer have little children to get to school. I am surviving this weather pretty well. I live on the side of a hill in an elevated area so I am above any floods. Even the hail would not bother me if it came my way as my little old Toyota already has hail dents from the big 2011 storm. A few more dents would make no difference. But my girlfriend lives in an area that is well and truly cut off. But we have just spent 4 days living together so I can handle that too. She got home just in time before the latest downpour

Queensland parents have been urged to pick up children from schools as soon as possible with flood waters rising yet again as another storm pummels Brisbane with up to 48mm of rain in just half an hour.

Brisbane, Ipswich, the Sunshine and Gold coasts are all being severely affected by the dangerous trough passing over the region.

At a press conference on Thursday, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said residents of Grantham to the west of Brisbane will be evacuated and parents should collect students from schools north of the capital in expectation of more severe storms.

'These are unprecedented times. I have lived in Brisbane essentially all my life and I haven't seen storms and floods like this,' she said.

Ms Palaszczuk said storms of 'serious concern' are forecast to affect the northern Moreton Bay region, Sunshine Coast, Gympie, Wide Bay and coastal areas up to Bundaberg.

'As a precaution, we would like people to collect their children when they think it is safe to go out on the road and do so,' she said.

Schools in the affected areas will remain open for the children of essential workers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10570883/Supercell-storm-hammers-flooded-Queensland-hail-size-oranges-90km-h-winds.html

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Australia to the rescue: Australia has a bumper crop of wheat while Ukrainian supplies are cut off

With wheat flows from the Black Sea region snarled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, buyers are starting to consider forward contracts for Australian grains as far out as the third quarter, said top shipper CBH Group.

The war in Ukraine has left the world’s biggest importers scrambling for grain as shipments from the two countries grind to a virtual standstill. Russia and Ukraine normally account for more than 25% of global wheat exports, and there are increasing concerns that the fighting and chaos in the country will also reduce prospects for the harvests this summer.

Buoyed by a bumper crop, from Friday CBH will offer more than 500,000 tons of capacity to meet new demand, in addition to about 17 million tons already anticipated to be shipped out of Western Australia, Ben Tiller, the shipper’s head of trading, told a conference Wednesday. That’s nearly a 20% increase on the previous record for export volumes out of the major wheat-producing state.

Satisfying demand in the near term, though, is a challenge, with export capacity limited in Australia and shipping slots fully booked for months. That’s already driven buyers to purchase positions much further out, with the Black Sea situation creating added pressure to secure contracts.

Wheat Trade Routes Set to Shift as Ukraine Crisis Upends Market

“We’re anticipating further demand here with the loss of Black Sea volumes in the short to medium term,” Tiller said. “The supply chain here is certainly trying its best to respond.”

As the market digests the upheaval in Europe, nascent demand for longer-dated contracts could become more pronounced, Tiller said. “Buyers have initially, I think, thought there is some time yet before they need to make a decision for positions that may be right out to quarter three of 2022.” he said. That sentiment has now shifted.

“We may start to see that accelerate as the reality of this massive disruption to the grain supply chains globally takes place,” Tiller said.

Security Crisis

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe’s worst security crisis in decades, leaves a vital source of wheat supplies hanging in the balance. Timing has an impact -- a large portion of the season’s exports from both countries would have already sailed by now. The next harvest from Ukraine and Russia would be around July and August, and there are fears of shortages.

Australia’s just wrapped up a record wheat harvest, with production this year estimated to be even larger than expected after mostly favorable weather, helping to ease global shortages caused by drought and the war in Ukraine.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-02/black-sea-chaos-spurs-buyers-to-book-australia-wheat-further-out

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Global scramble for Australian coal to replace Russian exports

Australian trade officials are in discussions with local coal producers as the federal government co-ordinates efforts to find supply for Poland and Asian trading partners amid a global scramble to replace Russian resources.

Officials from Austrade and the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources have been in contact with coal miners this week, asking whether capacity was available to supply Polish utilities – and whether coal promised into existing contracts could be diverted to Europe temporarily due to the Ukraine crisis.

The calls were made after high-level approaches by the Polish government seeking alternative sources to Russian coal used for heating and power generation.

Resources Minister Keith Pitt confirmed the government was “facilitating access to Australian thermal coal producers to interested parties as they seek alternative supplies from Russia”.

“Australian producers have indicated they are willing to help our friends and allies if they can,” Mr Pitt told The Australian.

Russia supplies up to 90 per cent of Poland’s coal but the country’s government has led the European charge to impose sanctions on Russia in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.

Last week Poland proposed coal be included in a European Union sanctions list despite its dependence on imports.

Industry sources say officials also sought information on whether coal supplies could be made available to customers in South Korea and Japan, following requests from their counterparts in those countries.

A number of major Australian coal producers confirmed they had been approached by Austrade and senior DISER officials, although each declined to comment on the discussions due to the sensitive nature of the requests.

Coal producers have promised to weigh the requests in consultation with their marketing and trading teams, but industry sources say additional supply is unlikely to become free for months, amid tight markets for coal and soaring global prices.

Australian coal miners have been running at full tilt for the last six months as the coal price has surged, and say there is little capacity in the system to lift export rates. There is an additional bottleneck at Australian ports, with the largest, the Port of Newcastle, at 93 per cent capacity. The Port of Brisbane is closed due to flooding.

Italy and Croatia may also follow Poland’s lead and ask Australian producers for additional tonnes to be sold to their economies, amid talk Italy is about to announce to return a mothballed coal plant in Trieste to service. Bulgaria is also said to be scouring global markets for new sources of coal supply.

While no sanctions have yet to be levied on Russian energy exports, sources say major buyers of Russian coal in Asia and Europe have already begun to cancel shipments and seek alternatives in anticipation the crisis in Europe will intensify, setting off a global scramble for supply.

Coal producers say they have also begun receiving requests for additional supplies of coking coal, though the urgency of the requests is said to be lower than that of those seeking thermal supplies.

Russia produces about 75 million tonnes of metallurgical coal a year, according to recent Macquarie figures, and about 360 million tonnes of thermal coal. About 40 per cent of its coking coal is sent into export markets, along with just under half of its thermal coal production.

The benchmark price for high quality Australian coal hit a record $US256 ($353) a tonne on Friday, and thermal coal prices delivered to Europe have jumped by $US80 in a week to $US285 a tonne on March 1. Forward curves for Australian energy coal have shot up beyond $US300 a tonne this week, industry sources say, with one shipment of high grade thermal coal from South Africa reported to have changed hands for as much as $US350 recently.

The shock return of war in Europe has forced a short-term reshaping of global energy trade routes outside of coal. Qatar is rerouting some LNG shipments bound for Asia to European customers, with Australian producers stepping into the gap to make up for the regional shortfall.

But the crisis brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is also forcing a broader rethink of energy policy in the EU and beyond.

German Economic Affairs Minister Robert Habeck told the country’s parliament that it needed a new energy masterplan to end its reliance on Russian gas exports, flagging a potential reversal of policies to phase out nuclear and coal power stations.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/global-scramble-for-australian-coal-to-replace-russian-exports/news-story/7f2c8b0f3331e9bfbe6421c74af67934

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Closing the border made 26m Aussies richer

Amazing per capita growth rate

The December quarter GDP numbers delivered two big ‘truths’ – one maybe a little fatuous, the other seriously and challengingly profound and bitingly relevant for decisions that are being made, right now in 2022, both for 2022 and indeed for all of the 2020s.

The first is the old truth of how great it feels when you ‘stop banging your head against a brick wall’.

For most of the last September quarter NSW and Victoria were in – let’s hope they were the last, ever – lockdowns.

That’s nearly 60 per cent of the national economy. As a result GDP fell 1.9 per cent in that September quarter.

Bad enough as that was, it was way better than the 6.8 per cent plunge in the June quarter 2020 when all of Australia – in sync with pretty much all of the world – was in the initial Covid-hysteria lockdown.

So, when Victoria and NSW came out of lockdown in the December quarter, GDP growth rocketed up 3.4 per cent – or, 13.6 per cent on an annualised basis, as the Americans report their GDP numbers – and making it 4.2 per cent for the year.

For comparison, US December quarter GDP growth was 1.7 per cent, making 5.5 per cent through 2021.

This meant that we were up 3.4 per cent on the last pre-Covid, December 2019 quarter. The US was up slightly less, 3.1 per cent over the two years.

So the bounce-back is great when you stop ‘banging your head’, so to speak; and the worse the head-banging, the bigger the bounce-back.

True, after both of those big lockdown-caused GDP plunges, GDP leapt the same 3.4 per cent in the immediate recovery quarter.

However, the national GDP increase would have been more than 5 per cent in the September 2020 quarter, but for of course, Chairman Dan keeping Victoria and one quarter of the national economy in its own specially curated lockdown, as he set after the world’s lockdown record.

He of course finally ‘achieved’ the world record after lockdown #26 - or something, I’m still too locked-in and locked-out punch-drunk to remember exactly.

The second, bigger, more telling, truth is more than a little awkward for our ‘Big Australia’ elites to contemplate.

Simply, that bigger is not just not better, it is categorically worse.

Through 2021 overall GDP growth was 4.2 per cent. GDP growth per capita (per Australian) was only slightly lower at 4.0 per cent.

Contrast that with the last pre-Covid year, 2019. Overall GDP growth was 2.2 per cent and per capita growth just 0.7 per cent; with the previous year almost exactly the same at 2.3 per cent/0.7 per cent.

Indeed, over the two years of Covid, per capita GDP growth has been almost double that of the previous two years, when immigration was running at 250k a year.

The only growth that really matters; the only growth that really delivers rising prosperity – and that doesn’t just mean bigger flat-screen TVs, but more and better hospitals and social services etc etc – is per capita growth.

There’s no point – there is no increase in either average or indeed aggregate prosperity - in doubling the size of the economy if you also double the population. Everyone stands still; and indeed would really go backward.

But that is exactly what we have been doing pretty much all of the 21st century, until March 2020 when Covid brought that game to an abrupt – and, I would hope, permanent - stop,

Indeed, much of that earlier ‘growth’ was simply building more and more infrastructure, just to keep up with the population, not more and better infrastructure for people generally.

Do we have to get to 20-lane toll roads for a 12m population Melbourne before that penny drops? And Sydney?

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/closing-the-border-made-26m-aussies-richer/news-story/4269ccc7c9623665507c9d4668f94d37

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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 March, 2022

Australian police use sonic ‘torture weapons’ on vaccine protesters

It's long been admitted that the police do have and use LRADs and that they can be misused. So the time appears to have come when the police are misusing them. The shocking part is that the mainstream media seem to be largely ignoring it

SINISTER stories have emerged from the trucker convoy camp in Canberra. Nasty new devices seem now to be deployed against peaceful citizens. This is Australia in the 2020s.

Canberra is the insiders’ insider paradise. Woke on steroids does not begin to describe the place. A workers’ promised land. With fewer than half a million residents, it is run by a glorified local council. As the Australian Capital Territory’s Chief Minister, Andrew Barr, says in as many words, vaccinated to within an inch of its life. As I have noted elsewhere:

‘Australia’s two separate worlds were vividly on display on Saturday, 12 February. In Canberra, tens of thousands of protesters marched upon the national Parliament in the biggest display of controlled public anger at government since Vietnam. The numbers and the raw emotion involved make the pro-Gough rallies of 1975 look puny in comparison. People from all over the country rose up and marched on the capital. Across town, meanwhile, youngsters as young as five were being dressed up as superheroes as they were led off to be vaccinated against a minor illness that will not even touch most of them.’

Then came horrifying reports of the way the police had managed the crowd, the ‘weaponry’ they had deployed, of unexplained injuries at the convoy camp. Was something literally ‘cooking’ the protesters?

Your News reported: ‘Australian police have been deploying directed energy weapons (DEWs) against the peaceful Freedom Convoy protesters around the capital, according to reports.

‘Disturbing videos and photos circulating social media show Canberra protesters, including women and children, who appear to have been badly burned by directed microwave energy weapons, with blisters on their faces, arms, and torsos.

‘These particular DEWs reportedly used concentrated microwave radiation to inflict painful burns on the skin from far distances. ‘

The mainstream media has accepted that the Canberra cops were using sonic devices called long-range acoustic devices (LRADs) which the Australian Broadcasting Corporation tried to put a benign spin on. It said ‘sonic weapons’ were used by police in Canberra’s protests, but only to broadcast messages rather than do harm.

All ok, then.

Why the use of designer torture devices by the police? One hundred thousand and more protesters from all over Australia have presumably caused some serious political buttock-clenching. John Stapleton at A Sense of Place magazine called it ‘the day Australia changed’. Here we have the resistance to the resistance. Ottawa style. The concerted effort to portray protesters as liars as well as everything else of which they are regularly accused is the Covid State.

The use of harmful devices is utterly consistent with the tactics used by the State across Australia and in other Dominions to quell peaceful protests. And consistent with the overarching strategy of doing harm to citizens, and with the lies, spin, propaganda and misinformation.

The ACT’s Chief Minister doesn’t like protesters much. On Wednesday morning, Andrew Barr told ABC’s Radio National the protesters’ behaviour had been ‘over the top’ and they were ‘effectively stalking Canberrans, harassing business owners and residents, and aggressively flouting the law’.

Mr Barr said the protesters ‘couldn’t have a less receptive audience anywhere in the world’ with Canberra – if not the most vaccinated city on the planet – among the most vaccinated cities.

‘It is an eccentric and eclectic bunch, there’s no denying that,’ he said. ‘And it appears to have been infiltrated, or at least part of the protest movement has, by very extremist views.’

But some of its Canberra’s denizens are stirring. Craig Kelly MP has called for an inquiry into the claims about sonic weapons. Senator Malcolm Roberts of One Nation has asked questions in parliament. As has Liberal Party hero Alex Antic, detained by police at Adelaide Airport and placed forcibly in quarantine last year for entering his own state whileunvaccinated, when it was the norm that home isolation was all that was required.

A far more trustworthy news source than the mainstream media, the Canadian Rebel News reported both the sonic devices whose use in Canberra was admitted by police, but framed to appear innocent, and the deployment of other devices that caused a range of documented injuries and reactions.

The site said: ‘What started out at the beginning of the week as the “stuff of conspiracy theories” was eventually confirmed by police. Australian Capital Territory Policing admitted they did use a Long-Range Acoustic Device (also known as a LRAD) during the Canberra Convoy Freedom rallies outside Parliament House.

‘Reports are still coming in on various injuries at the protest – most relating to what looks like sunburn and heat stroke. There are also clear allergic reactions from what some speculate might be contact with chemicals.’

The LRAD is technically a sonic crowd control weapon. It has two settings and can project extremely loud sounds over long distances to cripple a crowd. This ‘alert setting’ on the device is particularly dangerous and has been known to cause permanent hearing damage, dizziness, disorientation and brain damage.

Ironically, as Rebel News points out, when the weapons arrived down under in 2016, the ABC was ‘concerned’: ‘They can break up protests with loud, piercing sound, but Long-Range Acoustic Devices can also cause permanent hearing damage. Australian law enforcement agencies are now investing in the technology, but sound and law experts say their potential use is extremely concerning.’

At the time Melbourne University expert James Parker told the ABC, ‘The secrecy of the state around the tools, the weapons that it has and is capable of using on its population is something to be really, really concerned about. It expands the nature of police/state/military authority in a certain kind of way. It makes sound itself part of the arsenal that police and military and state institutions use.’

Since then, the ABC has discovered deplorables and anti-vaxxers, those same folks routinely referred to by politicians, police commanders and journalists as ‘domestic terrorists’.

Whatever the murky tactics used by police, the message to we-the-people from the Canberra community was clear. One local rammed a protester’s vehicle with her car, then let loose with expletive-laden vitriol.

The Canberra Times editorial made its position clear, after a mere few days of extremely polite, heartfelt protest by the deplorables. ’You have made your point. Now go home’. The same Canberra Times accused Craig Kelly of ‘bringing a conspiracy [theory] into the House of Representatives’.

Taxpayer-funded Canberra seems not to have noticed that Australia has fallen apart, its citizens’ rights crushed. For two years. Lives have been ruined. The parking of the unvaccinated in the bad corner and the use of language to diminish their ‘grievances’ is a classic tactic of the Covid class. According to the police boss, the crowd had a ‘poor attitude’. Thought crime. Only three arrests, though.

As we know, names will never hurt us. It is the rather sophisticated and sinister sticks and stones of the politicised police that are doing the harm. Like the truckers in Ottawa, we have been used as punching bags. The legacy ‘journalists’ are useful idiots, with the Covid Kool-Aid dribbling down their chins.

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/australian-police-use-sonic-torture-weapons-on-vaccine-protesters/

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Covid vaccines offer almost NO protection against infection for young children just weeks after their second dose, top Australian expert warns

An Australian Covid expert has warned new data shows the Pfizer vaccine offers very little protection against infection for young children.

New York Health Department researchers found the two-dose Pfizer shot was only 12 percent effective at preventing Omicron infection in children aged five to 11 after only a month.

Protection against catching the virus was about 67 per cent after the second jab, but dropped rapidly by 28 to 34 days.

Australian National University professor Peter Collignon discussed the results on his social media, noting the vaccine's ineffectiveness against the dominant strain.

'While protection against hospitalisation is still strong, the vaccine offered almost no protection against infection, even just a month after full vaccination,' he wrote.

ATAGI recommends everyone five or older get a Covid vaccine - with only Pfizer available for those under five, and both Moderna and Pfizer for six to 11.

New York researchers gathered data 852,384 children aged 12 to 17 and 365,502 aged five to 11 for the study.

The study, which is pre-print and pending peer-review, gathered data from the Omicron period of the pandemic, from December 2021 and January 2022.

Participants in the study were followed up with and compared to general figures from unvaccinated populations.

Pfizer's effectiveness at preventing infection dropped from 66 per cent to 51 per cent in older children when up against the Omicron variant - and in younger children dropped from 67 per cent to just 12 per cent.

The most dramatic difference in numbers was noted between 11 and 12-year-olds in the week leading up to January 30 where those aged 12 had 67 per cent protection and those aged 11 had just 11 per cent protection.

'The difference between the two age groups is striking,' Florian Krammer, an immunologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, said.

One major difference between the study groups is the dosage of the vaccine. Children aged 12 and older receive a 30 microgram shot, but only 10 micrograms for the five to 11 age group.

'This is super interesting because it would almost suggest that it's the dose that makes the difference. The question is how to fix that,' Dr Krammer said.

The findings have far reaching implications on the use of the vaccines, and whether parents will want to get their children jabbed.

Children do not suffer much of a risk from the virus, with hospitalizations and deaths being especially rare.

The main argument in favor of vaccinating them is to prevent them from spreading the virus, though these findings imply that the vaccine does little to prevent that.

The Omicron variant, though causing less severe symptoms, is far more contagious and more children were hospitalised during this wave than at any other point in the pandemic.

As well as illness directly from Covid, there is growing evidence of associated conditions that can appear weeks after infection.

A study from Italy showed a link to severe gastrointestinal illness in children 4-6 weeks after infection, while in the US more than 7,000 children have been diagnosed with multisystem inflammatory syndrome, a rare but serious condition.

While the Omicron wave has largely subsided, experts agree more Covid variants will appear.

Pfizer and BioNTech are testing a third vaccine dose in children aged 5 to 11 based on a third dose significantly improving immune system response in adults against Omicron.

Several labs around the world are also working on a pan-sarbecovirus vaccine - a single dose vaccine to protect against all future variants of Covid.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10562335/Australian-professor-warns-Covid-vaccine-offers-NO-protection-infection-young-children.html

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Huge legal costs eating up disability money

Bureaucracy gone mad. Bureaucrats will do anything to avoid making a decision. So they turn disputes over to the courts

Labor has fired an early election salvo on the National Disability Insurance Scheme by committing to investigate a “blowout” in legal fees spent by the government to defend cuts in NDIS participant’s plan costs.

Shadow NDIS minister Bill Shorten said a newly-elected Labor government would within its first 100 days commence an investigation into tens of millions of dollars in legal costs being racked up by the agency running the NDIS.

Mr Shorten said the National Disability Insurance Agency had brought in external lawyers, at inflated fees, to “stop NDIS participants accessing disability products and services.”

“The Morrison government’s legal spend is on an expensive upward trajectory,” he said. “In the seven months from July 1 2021, it spent an average of $28 million on external lawyers, just to fight appeals in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. In the previous 12 months the Government spent $21.5 million for its total legal expenses.”

Mr Shorten said there appeared to be a new strategy within the government to try and rein in NDIS costs, currently sitting at around $30 billion a year, through cutting individual plans, at great emotional cost to many participants.

“This is a form of ‘lawfare’ by the government against participants, and is causing suffering and stress,” he said. “These are not people who are used to having to appear in court, and the government seems to be engaged in a battle of attrition, often settling the matter at the door of the court.”

The NDIA said it had spent $19.1 million on external legal fees in the six months to December 31 out of a total legal spend of $21.5 million. In the previous financial year it spent a total of $20.8 million, it said.

“The legal spend reflects the increase in the number of NDIS participants, which flows onto the appeals process,” an NDIA spokeswoman said.

“The NDIA is continuing to make decisions in accordance with the NDIS Act, about reasonable and necessary supports. This is resulting in more planning-related AAT cases seeking to test and clarify the concept of ‘reasonable and necessary’,” she said.

The NDIS, which currently provides support for around 500,000 Australians living with permanent and significant disability or a developmental delay, is broadly supported by both sides of politics but is increasingly becoming a political battleground as the federal election looms.

The Coalition has warned the cost trajectory of the scheme, anticipated to increase to $60 billion annually by 2030, is not sustainable.

But Mr Shorten warned that the attempt to bring costs under control had become “adversarial” and is leading to poor outcomes for many already on the scheme with a plan.

He said many NDIS participants are being told their existing plan was being changed because it didn’t represent “value for money”.

“Cases at the AAT have gone up by 400 per cent,” Mr Shorten said. “It feels like the agency and the government have outsourced the running of the scheme to the courts.”

Mr Shorten and Queensland disability minister Craig Crawford also criticised the proposed appointment by federal NDIS minister Linda Reynolds of former Victorian Liberal premier Denis Napthine to the role of NDIS chair.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/ndis-participants-being-hurt-by-plan-changes-labor-warns/news-story/52e22497e9b08acebc2019a29cba6b67

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A landlord fed up with having units trashed and threats by drunk, drug-addled tenants has quit her rental properties, citing new laws leaving investors in the lurch

A landlord fed up with having units trashed and threats by drunk, drug-addled tenants has quit her rental properties citing new laws leaving landlords in the lurch.

Jackie Newton, who had units in Burleigh, Miami, Broadbeach and Townsville, said new state laws had left landlords with “little rights”, causing many owners to get out.

“Unless you have lived in the shoes of a landlord, then people don’t have much of any idea as to what really happens,” Ms Newton said, citing instances of dog poo left inside and vindictive tenants who were evicted putting superglue in locks.

“Both myself and so many people I know have all sold their rental properties, particularly since these new rental laws have been introduced by the current state government.

“Things have always been bad enough when it comes to getting a fair go for landlords, but these new laws have left landlords with little rights.

“I have been told by my agent if you have tenants on a periodic lease, then it can be a nightmare to evict your tenants.

“Now we have had enough and sold our properties and you have to wonder why there is a housing shortage.”

Among the measures in the Housing Legislation Amendment Bill passed by parliament was a clause that makes it much harder for landlords to refuse to accept pets.

Ms Newton said the change, which will come into effect on October 1 this year, will be a nightmare for landlords.

“I had a beautiful house here at Burleigh that had new carpet laid, when supposedly good-referenced tenants moved in,” Ms Newton said.

“I am a pet lover and allowed them to have one dog, saying it must be an outside dog.

“Towards the end of this lease, the tenants notified my agent that they were moving out. My agent had a lot of people interested in viewing my house, in the hope that they could apply for it. So the current tenant agreed to let my agent host one open house.

“All these people turned up to view my property and when they got inside these people had to dodge the dog poo left all over the carpeted stairs up to the bedrooms. Upon getting up the stairs, there was a huge stain that smelt like dog urine, in my newer carpet.

“I’ve had one couple who hid their great dane in the bedroom built-in wardrobe. Then when they left, I was made to pay for the doors that had been ripped off their hinges because of this dog.”

Ms Newton said it was unfair landlords had to give tenants two months’ notice, while tenants only had to give two weeks.

She said when eviction notices were issued, sometimes “all hell breaks loose”, leaving landlords with an enormous mess to clean up when tenants leave.

“These tenants can do whatever they like to your property in that time and there really isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.

“I was getting complaints about a tenant from neighbours (so) I wanted her gone and she left my unit in a heap.

“I had one long-term tenant who lost his job, got on the drugs and then when he got evicted, decided to trash my place.

“It was a small unit years ago and there was about $15,000 damage done. When we changed the locks on this place, this scumbag was apparently hiding up the road watching what was going on and then came back and put superglue in my new locks and also the garage door lock.”

Ms Newton’s concerns reflect those raised by The Real Estate Institute of Queensland (REIQ) after the new legislation was passed in October.

REIQ CEO Antonia Mercorella said the legislation introduced more onerous requirements for property owners and reduced their contractual rights.

“We know for some property owners, this Bill will be the final straw and we will see some investors making the decision to sell,” Ms Mercorella said.

“The ripple effect of this could see renters struggling to find suitable housing under already tight conditions. With the current state of Queensland’s rental market, it’s imperative we don’t further discourage property rentals.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/property/gold-coast-landlord-quits-rentals-after-dog-poo-superglue-drugs-drama/news-story/4dd19ccb20616a0be287e7c63f6193d3

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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 March, 2022

The END of ATMs in Australia? Thousands of cash machines are removed across the country as banks go digital

This is obnoxious. It is in effect banning cash. But many older people are much more comfortable with cash. A cash transaction is much simpler than navigating the frustrating and time-consuming complexities of the internet. And going into a branch is frustrating too. The few that still exist are overwhelmed with customers -- leading to long waits. A modern society should be able to limit time-wasting. The reality is the opposite. Just handing over cash for a transaction is so much simpler

As Australian banks continue to focus on digital transactions for customers, ATMs and bank branches are disappearing across the country, according to new data.

The analysis revealed close to 460 bank branches have shut down across the nation in recent years, and dating back to 2020, approximately 3800 previously active ATMs have been removed.

NSW alone now has 140 fewer in-store banks, and almost 300 suburbs don't have a singular ATM to withdraw cash.

It is a similar story in Victoria, where 120 branches have permanently closed their doors to customers.

'Closures have a devastating impact on local communities,' Finance Sector Union national secretary Julia Angrisano said.

'Jobs are lost, business is impacted, and another local service disappears.'

The closures have hit hard in regional and rural areas, and for older citizens, Ms Angrisano added.

Another key factor for the branch closures and reduced ATM's is the fact that banks are bringing in a small fortune from daily digital transactions.

As Australia accelerates towards a cashless society, fees from either the customer or vender for online banking have become common place.

In a modern-day digital world, an estimated 80 per cent of Aussies prefer to bank online.

But the remaining 20 per cent, namely the disabled or those who are not digital savvy, have been left stranded.

Tellingly, CBA now has 875 bank branches nationwide - compared to 1134 in February 2020.

Their number of ATMs has reduced to just over 2000 - in 2019 there were 4118 ATM's in circulation.

Last year, ANZ head of distribution Kath Bray said bank branch closures were a sign of the times, with digital transactions now the primary focus for many.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10561999/The-END-ATMS-Australia-Thousands-cash-machines-removed-banks-digital.html

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Qld. Labor government in bed with corrupt union

Queensland’s militant CFMEU could control every major construction site across the state as part of a new “deal” drawn up by the state government which could cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, insiders say.

New requirements developed by the Department of Transport require projects $100m and above to include a Best Practice Industry Conditions agreement.

The agreement, supported by left-faction Transport Minister Mark Bailey, requires a building company tendering for a government contract to negotiate with left-leaning unions including the CFMEU.

While it is not compulsory for a contractor to sign the agreement, industry sources say they are being pressured to agree to union enterprise demands or risk missing future government contracts.

Mr Bailey declined to say whether companies were being pressured to sign the industry condition agreement and if they could lose future government contracts on refusal.

The industry conditions agreement will give the CFMEU a greater input in the civil construction of road and tunnels, which had traditionally been the remit of the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU).

Construction industry insiders fear the new conditions agreement will give the CFMEU more say over every major construction project in the state.

A senior Labor Party source familiar with the matter said the industry conditions agreement was developed by Mr Bailey, a leading left-faction minister, to “cut in the left-aligned CFMEU”.

“The government is putting a gun to the head of major contractors and saying let the CFMEU in or risk future work,” they said.

“Contractors are saying do we want to go to war with the CFMEU and the government, which controls the purse strings, or do we roll the dice and deal with the CFMEU?”

The party official said the AWU was considered more “rational and reasonable actors to negotiate with” compared to the “chaotic” practices of the CFMEU.

Both the CFMEU and AWU declined to comment.

Negotiations over the industry conditions agreement has created a stalemate at stage three of the $1.04bn Gold Coast Light Rail project.

The Courier-Mail can reveal preferred contractor John Holland Group is refusing to retrospectively apply the industry conditions agreement despite pressure.

It is understood the major building firm is yet to sign the project contract with the state government over fears it would increase the cost and set a precedent for future developments across the state.

LNP MP Ray Stevens, who represents Mermaid Beach where light rail will be built, said the industry conditions agreement could also add “wage loading to the tune of some $300m” on the project – which he declared was the “sticking point” for John Holland Group.

“John Holland will be locked in forever on future infrastructure projects if they cop this over-the-top ambit claim,” he said.

A spokesman for John Holland Group declined to comment due to ongoing negotiations with the Queensland Government.

Mr Bailey defended the industry conditions agreement, declaring it beneficial for workers and the economy.

“Our procurement rules create local jobs and encourage use of local suppliers and manufacturers because we want as much of our record infrastructure investment as possible to benefit Queensland workers and businesses,” he said.

“They ensure contractors adhere to the highest possible safety standards and emphasise training opportunities for Queensland workers especially during such a tight labour market period.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/qld-politics/government-pressures-builders-to-dealin-cfmeu-mates/news-story/5644b7559d98e0f73548ea67984431cc

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NSW Treasurer ‘shocked’ by allegations Covid-19 money was treated as ‘slush fund’

The NSW Treasurer says he was shocked by a report Covid-19 emergency money had been used as a “slush fund” by government departments.

Matt Kean told a budget estimates hearing on Monday he would order a review of the checks and balances in place to avoid pandemic funds being wrongly used.

It came after a media report at the weekend alleged agencies had used emergency cash as an “endless slush fund”.

Whistleblowers alleged government agencies used money meant for pandemic-related costs for such things as office equipment and carpet replacements with “very little oversight”.

“When I read that article, I was shocked by it, and I’ve asked the (Treasury) department to look into it and advise me on whether or not our systems and processes are up to scratch,” Mr Kean said.

The Treasurer, who has the power to approve emergency payments, was unable to say how much such pandemic cash he had personally approved.

When asked repeatedly about it, Mr Kean became irritable and accused opposition MPs of trying to “lecture” him on financial management.

But the Treasurer promised the issue would be dealt with. “I can absolutely give the committee and the people of NSW an assurance that we will be paying close attention to these issues raised and put in place the systems and processes required to give people confidence that the money is being spent wisely,” he said.

The committee heard $346 million of Covid-19 expenditure above the appropriation had been approved in the 2020-2021 financial year.

That’s more than 10 per cent of the funding of the Treasury’s budget, Labor’s Daniel Mookhey told the hearing.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/breaking-news/nsw-treasurer-shocked-by-allegations-covid19-money-was-treated-as-slush-fund/news-story/3fe537c0b6e36e7a582ca0be76446596

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Wishy washy conservatives are now the norm

Where are our human rights ‘experts’ as Covid authoritarians strip away our freedoms?

I have resisted the temptation to write about the fact that ScoMo and co. have earlier this month decided to unfreeze $84 million previously held back from the ABC, thereby guaranteeing them $3.3 billion dollars over the next three years. You see it comes close to defying belief that a political party would do this, one that is always and everywhere hammered and traduced by a public broadcaster that has not a single, solitary conservative presenter, producer or higher-up type – not one – and which is so skewed to the left that (I quote a British journalist here) ‘it makes the BBC look like Fox News’. Why do it? Stockholm Syndrome? My guess, and it’s only a guess, is that the lefties in the party room – the Sharmas and Zimmermans and yes, our Treasurer Josh Frydenberg – are so desperate to retain their chardonnay-sipping inner-city seats that they begged a pusillanimous PM to do this. On their hands and knees they begged and pleaded. And right now in the Liberal party what the left faction (aka the people who put him in the job) wants, Mr Morrison gives.

But as I argued in a column at the start of this month, in the near to medium term all of these inner-city seats will be lost to the Coalition. Conservative parties, even ones that make only vague genuflections in the direction of anything remotely conservative, will lose all these seats. That has already pretty much happened in the rest of the Anglosphere. Only our preferential voting system is slowing down – not stopping, just slowing down – that trend here because it forces disaffected conservatives like me not just to vote for some other small party and be done with it (as in Britain, the US and Canada under first-past-the-post) but positively to preference Labor over the Libs. Most righties can’t bring themselves to do that. I can. In fact, I did it in the Turnbull election. Yet most can’t. Still, a PM who capitulates to the ABC-appeasing instincts of Messrs Frydenberg and co. is not just devoid of principle and strategic acumen, he’s stupid; he’s unaware of the sort of winning conservative coalition that Mr Trump built and that does not include these sort of seats. Such a placatory PM will lose more votes than he gains with this type of appeasement. Ditto the PM’s net zero cave in. Ditto his abandonment of all freedom-related principles during Covid. Ditto his inability to grasp the presumption of innocence. Etc., ad nauseam. OK, so I only half-resisted that temptation to blast a pusillanimous Coalition for throwing billions of our money, the taxpayers’, at this biased behemoth. But you have to agree it was a powerful temptation, one requiring super-human restraint to resist.

Meanwhile on that point about the way in which not just the Liberal party, but virtually the entirety of the elite and establishment class in this country has actively encouraged or turned a blind eye to the draconian Covid restrictions imposed on so many ordinary people, let us not forget the disgraceful inactions by the human rights lobby. I’ve noted this before, but it is worth another mention. All those highly resourced legal centres, law firms, self-styled human rights barristers and the like have barely said a word while police have hounded citizens, arrested pregnant women and attacked a swathe of civil liberties. The human rights mob will rouse themselves into paroxysms of indignation at the mere thought that someone claiming to be a refugee (who basically isn’t complying with an out-of-date convention from the 1950s, as though we wouldn’t repeal or amend domestic laws that were seventy years old) might have to apply from off-shore – otherwise known as ‘not skipping the queue and cheating others’. Basically the human rights lobby, often able to convince a good few like-minded judges, will fight tooth and nail on behalf of ‘rights’ in these sort of instances. Or give the HR lobby some pseudo-Marxist race-based claim, framed in the language of ‘equity’ or ‘diversity’, and they can kick into gear faster than Lewis Hamilton can take a knee. This might include lawfare, or op-eds in the Guardian or in that scintillatingly good read the Conversation or make-up the entirety of a week’s ABC early evening programming, with the requisite self-flagellating attacks on Australian democracy.

But come, in the words of retired British Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption, ‘the greatest inroads on our civil liberties in over two centuries’ and the human rights brigade in this country is almost completely silent. Actually, to be fair, the same is true in the entire Anglosphere. In the face of governmental despotism and illiberalism and heavy-handed policing and real attacks on the freedoms and civil liberties of all citizens of the sort none of us has ever seen in our lifetimes, these self-proclaimed ‘human rights experts’ and ‘human rights organisations’ are as mute as Oddjob in Goldfinger. And it’s not hard to guess why. It’s because most members of the lawyerly caste (one which leans so far politically left, as a generalisation, that a Rip Van Winkle awakened after fifty years simply would not believe what had happened to the legal profession) agree with all the Covid heavy-handedness. As part of the laptop class they favoured lockdowns. Wanted masking. Liked muscular policing. Couldn’t wait for vaccine mandates. And so on and so forth.

This has long been the core of my claims against bills of rights. When you buy one of these instruments, be it a constitutionalised or a statutory model, all you are buying is the policy druthers of unelected judges. Full stop. The vague, amorphous rights in a bill of rights are not self-enforcing or self-defining. These instruments take that power from elected politicians and hand it over to the judiciary. If most judges happen to put more weight on equality concerns over religious freedom ones – and they do, nearly everywhere – then that is what these instruments will deliver. And notice that nowhere, not even in the US with its admirable free speech First Amendment jurisprudence, have we seen judges using a bill of rights to strike down and invalidate despotic Covid laws. Nowhere. Not once. What we have seen, in a few US state jurisdictions in the last few months, are judges using old-fashioned administrative law principles to rein in despotic Covid rules decreed by the executive. These judges have looked at the governing statute and demanded that it clearly authorise whatever regulations or orders the state governor has issued. Great. But no one needs a bill of rights to go down that path. Long ago I predicted that that was the best shot to win in court. Asking judges to gainsay politicians under the banner of some shapeless ‘rights-respecting’ claim can work when the judges agree with the substance of the underlying claim. (And note here that since 1992 all successful implied rights cases in this country have been against Coalition legislation, never Labor’s.) But when the preponderance of the judges are as happy with the lockdown mania as your average Canberran public servant, well fuggeddaboudit. Some of my fellow writers here at the Speccie think a bill of rights would have helped during the pandemic. Alas, they’re indulging in ‘modelling’ I’m afraid, not looking at the data.

And we know where that leads us.

https://app.spectator.com.au/2022/02/the-hypocrites-lobby/pugpig_index.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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