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. Backups from previous months accessible here
31 May, 2023
Australian building approvals hit 11-year low in blow to hopes of solution to rental, housing crisis
There is actually no rental housing shortage in Australia. Huge numbers of dwellings have been taken out of long-term rental and advertised as holiday lettings, via AirBnb and the like. If all the holiday lettings were transferred into long term availability, the rental shortage would vanish. Governments are aware of that but cannot do much about it.
They need to ask WHY owners are putting their houses into a high-maintenance and intensive management situation. Why are owners making more work for themselves? There is only one main reason for that. Holiday lets escape the onerous regulations on long-term letting. It follows that replacing all the long term regulations with the same low level of control that prevails for holiday lets would rapidly see lots of dwellings back in the long-term market.
But governments love their extensive "pro-tenant" regulations so no change is likely. The rental shortage is goverment-created, not a deficiency in housing supply
Australia’s building approvals have hit an 11-year low, in a fresh new blow to hopes of a quick solution to our housing crisis.
According to data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics: “the total number of dwellings approved fell 8.1 per cent in April, in seasonally adjusted terms, following a 1.0 per cent decrease in March”.
That April figure is the lowest monthly figure in over a decade.
“Total dwellings approved fell to the lowest level since April 2012,” Daniel Rossi, ABS head of construction statistics said. “The overall decline was driven by a fall in approvals for private sector dwellings excluding houses, which fell 16.5 per cent, to the lowest level since January 2012
Rising interest rates and inflation are affecting the number of new home builds. Picture: Brendan Radke
“Private sector house approvals also continued to decline, falling 3.8 per cent in April, following a 3.7 per cent decrease in March.”
The slowing rate of construction is likely to exacerbate Australia’s housing and rental crisis, at least in the short to medium term.
Master Builders Australia said the slowing rate of construction would “impact Australia’s ability to meet its housing target”.
The Albanese Government has pledged to build one million homes over five years from 2024.
“The reverses in new home building approvals come in the aftermath of twelve months of rising interest rates and inflation at its highest in over 30 years,” Master Builders Australia Acting CEO Shaun Schmitke said.
“The biggest drops were in higher density home building approvals and home renovations falling 16.9 per cent and 26.6 per cent respectively.
“Although demand for medium and high-density housing is surging, the pipeline of new stock is rapidly diminishing.
“The fall in new builds will exacerbate pressures in the rental market at the worst possible time with media reports today showing the portion of income needed to pay rent lifting to the highest level since June 2014
“To ensure we continue to supply enough homes to house all Australians, governments need to look at what impact their regulations and policies have on the cost of building homes and on the cost of building social infrastructure.”
Record high immigration is also set to put further strain on Australia’s housing market.
According to the PropTrack New Homes Report – May 2023: “While the government has committed to increasing housing stock, construction industry headwinds and fast population growth may hamper plans to provide a prompt solution to the housing crisis”.
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Must not say a divisive issue is divisive
With a strong Left/Right split on the issue, how can it not be divisive?
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the success of the Voice to Parliament referendum will depend on millions of conversations across the country.
Channel 9 has become the latest broadcaster to come under fire for its reporting on the Voice to Parliament, after the referendum was labelled “divisive” in a news bulletin.
Australians supporting the Voice have taken to social media to call out the “despicable” act that involved Sydney newsreader Amber Sherlock reading out the phrase “the divisive Voice to Parliament” at the start of an intro to the next story.
The incident occurred on Monday evening and was used to highlight Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s visit to Adelaide “for a special keynote speech”, the annual Lowitja O’Donoghue Orations.
In the speech, Mr Albanese addressed his support for the Voice and called on Australians to “do one better”, while dismissing claims it would divide the nation.
Sherlock later crossed to reporter Mike Lorigan to highlight Mr Albanese’s success at the talk, but pro-Voice supporters were upset with the use of the word “divisive”.
“So Channel 9 are now officially referring to The Voice as ‘the divisive Voice to Parliament’ in their news reports? Just disgraceful,” one Yes supporter tweeted.
They later added they heard the word “by chance” and initially believed they had misheard the comment.
“When I replayed, I couldn’t believe (Sherlock) said that,” they said. “It is kind of frightening.”
Another supporter labelled the wording as “despicable” and “outrageous”, stating she felt “quite shaken”.
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Work until 70: higher pension age on horizon as life expectancy rises
Australia’s pension age will rise to 67 on July 1 this year and needs to increase further, new research has found, but it warns it should be a gradual climb spanning decades.
As France braces for more nationwide protests next week over its planned retirement age rise from 62 to 64, a new report by Macquarie University’s Business School says Australia’s pension system will require a pension age of 70 to be sustainable amid a fast-growing group of very old retirees.
However, it says the higher pension age of 70 should not be introduced until 2050, following a rise to 68 by 2030 and 69 by 2036.
“As Australians live longer than before, it presents a challenge to the government to fund retirees through a pension scheme,” said Macquarie University statistician Professor Hanlin Shang.
“Raising the pension age is the obvious way to sustain the current pension scheme without collecting more taxes,” he said.
The report’s suggested time frame for pension age increases is much slower than a 2014 Liberal Government plan to reach 70 by 2035.
That plan was abandoned in 2018, and Professor Shang said it had faced stiff public opposition and claims it was causing anxiety among older people.
He said raising the pension age to 70 by the mid-2030s would be “exceeding the increase in human life expectancy” and his analysis, conducted with Monash University professors Rob J. Hyndman and Yijun Zeng, found a slower gradual rise would sustain the current system without requiring extra federal government input.
“While it’s great that we are living longer, it may not be good for the government pension system.
“Who would have ever thought there would be so many centenarians? As people live longer, there is a longevity risk and they will consume more pension from the government.”
Professor Shang said government figures showed in 2021 there were 3700 centenarians in Australia, and this was expected to reach 50,000 by 2050.
Social researcher Mark McCrindle said Australia’s pension age would need to increase but “incremental change is the way to go”.
“People live for the present – if it’s happening down the track and if it’s in small steps, we are fine with that,” he said.
“We are living longer than we were a decade ago and the trend continues to point up.”
Mr McCrindle said average life expectancies for all Australians would exceed 85 by 2030, and seniors had more active lifestyles – people in their 80s were getting hip replacements and wanting to do more.
“It’s a good new story that’s driving the ageing of the population,” he said.
“People are active in work later. Because we are in a knowledge economy people can work later and retire later.
“It’s arguable that people’s skill set grows with age in a knowledge economy – their value becomes increased in the workforce as they age.”
Compulsory superannuation is also helping Australians enjoy active lives as seniors, although Professor Shang said most Australians reaching pension age still received a full or partial age pension.
He said Australia already had one of the highest pension ages in the OECD, on par with Iceland and Norway.
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Federal Labor needs to make QLD inroads: PM
The Qld vote has often stymied Federal Labor
Labor will need to make inroads in Queensland at the next federal election, Anthony Albanese has told colleagues, but he made no mention of the upcoming Fadden by-election.
Labor will need to make inroads in Queensland at the next federal election, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has told colleagues, but he made no mention of the upcoming Fadden by-election.
Mr Albanese addressed colleagues in Labor’s caucus meeting on Tuesday, noting the resignation of WA Premier Mark McGowan.
Mr McGowan’s popularity helped sweep Labor to power federally, with the party picking up four seats from the Coalition in the western state – securing the PM a two-seat majority.
Despite Mr McGowan’s absence, Mr Albanese told MPs Labor could pick up at least two more WA seats at the next election, before naming target seats across the country.
While he named specific seats in other states, such as Menzies in Victoria and Banks in NSW, Mr Albanese did not refer to any particular Queensland seats.
Labor went backwards in Queensland in 2022, losing the seat of Griffith to the Greens while failing to win back any regional seats from the LNP.
It will face a battle on two-fronts in the state, as it seeks to fend off the Greens on its left while seeking to take ground from the Coalition to secure its hold on government.
The upcoming by-election in Fadden, to be held on July 15, was not raised.
Labor has yet to preselect a candidate for the safe LNP seat, but is expected to open nominations from Tuesday.
In the past two federal elections, 2022 and 2109, Labor has had eight target seats including Forde, Flynn, Dickson, Petrie, Dawson, Bonner and Leichhardt.
The Albanese Government increased its majority to three seats after it won the Aston by-election in Victoria earlier this year.
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30 May, 2023
Covid censorship tyranny: fear and control used to ‘keep us safe’
What we saw with our own eyes during the pandemic pandemonium was bad enough – a pregnant woman arrested in her own home for daring to dissent online about lockdowns; police herding people off beaches and out of parks; rubber bullets fired at construction workers protesting against vaccine mandates – but the secret actions of government revealed this week are equally disturbing.
Under Coalition and Labor federal governments Australians have been subjected to covert, online censorship on Covid-19 related matters – and it is still happening.
That this has not escalated immediately into a national scandal tells us much about the way the political/bureaucratic/media class has colluded in a mutually beneficial orgy of fear and control since the early days of the pandemic. Sadly, it also reveals how complacent and compliant the public has become, enabling and encouraging the erosion of basic liberties.
We’ve simultaneously experienced the tyrannies of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World. Police powers, blocked borders, lockdowns, rings of steel, school closures and curfews delivered an authoritarian, Orwellian subjugation, while it was Aldous Huxley who foresaw us buying into the fear porn and distractions, dobbing on our neighbours, meekly accepting the rules, propaganda and censorship.
It is only because dissident Liberal senator Alex Antic pursued Covid-19 censorship through a Freedom of Information application that we know the basics of what transpired in online information surveillance. But we still do not know the full details or extent of the government’s social media thought control.
To December last year the Department of Home Affairs had intervened 4213 times with digital platforms to have pandemic posts removed. We know that not all bids were successful; we know very little about what was deleted; but, worryingly, we know it is still occurring and will continue until funding expires at the end of next month.
Thanks to Elon Musk’s exposure of the Twitter files, Barcelona-based journalist Andrew Lowenthal has been able to reveal a small sample of the federal government’s interventions on that platform. One tweet showed Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews sporting a medical mask emblazoned with the words “This mask is as useless as me.” Our government’s submission to Twitter argued this amounted to “potentially harmful information” that contradicted “official information on face mask efficacy”.
The scientific basis of this call is highly debatable, and censoring such a view was an attempt to silence a medically important and contentious debate that never should have been banned during the pandemic.
We cannot ignore the political context either and the possible aim of shielding the premier from ridicule. Canberra clearly was also keen to ensure public debate allowed no room for dissent, and delivered only meek compliance with its extraordinary interventions.
It is outrageous that such a harmlessly contrarian post could be censored secretly by government. There has been no transparency or accountability on these matters.
Other tweets the government asked Twitter to delete include an observation that then health minister Greg Hunt had used “emotionally manipulative language” and one ridiculed people over queueing for seven hours to take a Covid-19 test. Our government even asked Twitter to take down an overseas tweet retweeted into “Australia’s digital information environment”.
The arrogance and unaccountable overreach of government here is breathtaking. Not only were they on a mission to “keep us safe” but also to protect us from any debates about their methods for doing so – presumably the politicians and bureaucrats believed open debate of contentious medical and public health decisions might have turned a locked-down and acquiescent population into an unruly mob in festering dystopia.
Asked about the revelations in Senate estimates this week, Emergency Management Minister Murray Watt said he was “comfortable” with this digital censorship, which was a “really good thing”. Watt said it was about “governments providing and ensuring the Australian public receives information based on science rather than … on the fringes of the Twittersphere.”
Yet this is not about disseminating government information; this is actually about meddling online to ensure nobody can question or disagree with the government’s proclamations. We are talking about crucial issues such as vaccine efficacy, risks and mandates, as well as masks, lockdowns, border closures and other measures that were highly contentious in scientific debates at the time and on which in some cases the official lines subsequently have been proven incorrect.
We were constantly told, for instance, that there was a community benefit in vaccination for those who were not vulnerable because it would prevent infection and transmission – we were constantly told about the “pandemic of the unvaccinated”. But from early on it seemed this was not true and so it has been proven.
Yet it seems this vital debate, too, must have been covertly curtailed through this secret government censorship. With political consensus from the major parties, media buy-in and public debate corralled, where was the opportunity for proper consideration of pandemic response alternatives?
That politicians who would claim to be liberal-minded or conservative would defend this overreach is extraordinary. Yet, with very few exceptions, politicians of all stripes defend these secretive and unaccountable intrusions on free speech or turn a blind eye (either that or all their strident protests are being censored from their Twitter accounts).
The mechanics for this insidious intrusion on our free speech belong to counter-terrorism measures. Civil libertarians have long argued that laws introduced to combat terrorism could curtail freedoms more broadly – in this case they have been proven right.
The Home Affairs Department runs an online surveillance function to spot terrorism and violent extremism material so it can work with the digital giants to have it taken down. In the early days of the pandemic, the Health Department – presumably at the behest of the cabinet – tasked Home Affairs to watch out for Covid-19 misinformation too. How very convenient.
Across six years there have been more than 13,000 requests to delete material, with more than 9000 of them related to terrorism and extremism. But in just under three years there have been more than 4000 related to the pandemic.
Lowenthal has accessed 18 emails to Twitter focusing on 222 tweets, which must be the tip of the iceberg because the department says most of the requests went to Facebook. He notes the public servants doing this undercover fact-checking repeatedly misspelled the word extremism in their job title, which is less than reassuring.
The unit conducting this work could have been named by George Orwell himself – the Social Cohesion Division. Alarmingly, the email correspondence refers to the government and the social media platform as partners and deliberately invokes the Five Eyes terminology of our intelligence sharing with the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.
The world’s most prominent Twitter files reporter, Matt Taibbi, has written about the revelations under the headline “Australia’s Creepy Covid Cops”. And the leading lockdown and vaccine mandate critic, Stanford University epidemiologist Jay Bhattacharya, welcomed the reports as some “sunshine” in Australia after “three long years”.
Taibbi wrote that the Department of Home Affairs emails “show a stricter, more nakedly dystopian approach to speech control” than was seen in American intelligence communications.
“Australian authorities in these emails are seen trying to cast a wider net over potential speech violations than we’re used to seeing, targeting hyperbolic language (eg a claim that PCR tests are ‘shoved up into your brain’), jokes, tweets from people with literal handfuls of followers, and medical recommendations that were either merely controversial or later proved correct,” Taibbi wrote.
Yet in Australia, who cares? My report on Monday hardly set the world on fire. Ben Fordham followed up on 2GB the following day, and Antic joined me on Sky News but he has not been inundated with interview requests.
Antic got more media attention back when he tried to turn up to parliament without proof of vaccination. One of the few politicians to highlight his revelations is One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, who continues to call for a Covid response royal commission.
This was not the only censorship that occurred during the pandemic. Social media activists and anti-News Corp campaigners weaponised the digital giants’ pandemic rules and the edicts of the World Health Organisation to challenge what Sky News put to air.
At Sky my colleagues and I had to waste huge amounts of time and energy haggling with lawyers about what facts, opinions and dissent we could share while ensuring compliance with the broadcasting codes of practice or without having our videos banned from digital platforms (some clips were taken down and many others not posted to comply with the platform policies). The public debate suffered and crucial information was either suppressed or downplayed.
We are talking about scientific experts questioning vaccine efficacy, disagreeing with mandates, suggesting more liberal lockdown and social distancing strategies, and discussing the potential of alternative treatments. These were vital debates, with some of the dissenting views proven correct over time – yet they were constantly thwarted.
Not only was this an affront to freedom of expression, it probably prolonged the unnecessary suffering of many citizens. It might have cost lives, too, with too many healthy young people convinced to get the jab on the basis it would deliver a community benefit.
We had governments drastically overreact to the pandemic with illiberal bans on travel, lockdowns, school closures and the like. And all the while they overtly and covertly suppressed dissent.
This is another reason we simply must have a full national royal commission into our pandemic response. Anthony Albanese promised an inquiry from opposition and confirmed this intent in government but has done nothing about it. Neither the major parties nor most media are agitating for this. Perhaps they would rather not examine their three years of co-operation in fear and control.
We must fight back against this insidious trend of censorship in public debate. It is already being leveraged to stifle discussion of global warming and climate change policy, as well as debate on the Indigenous voice.
The unimpeded and unendorsed expansion of government power, unauthorised contraction of citizens’ rights and unannounced restriction of media freedom might have done more harm to our society than the virus. It is a dramatic demonstration of the fragility of our hard-won democratic ideals and a reminder that freedom can be wasted on the free.
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Energy dreams trump reality
Michael de Percy challenged Chris Bowen in person at the Sydney Institute regarding whether or not the government had a Plan B to keep the lights on if their Plan A fails. No coherent reply was forthcoming, and it looks as though the best we can expect from Bowen are more subsidies to keep the coal fires burning.
The official energy story is not likely to have a happy ending. The time has come for a new energy narrative based on realism and concern for the welfare of people and the planet. Let’s be energy realists and responsible stewards of the environment.
Energy realism rules in China and the rest of the developing world where they scramble for all the coal, oil, and gas they can get. Meanwhile, the nations of the West emulate the mythical farmer who incrementally reduced the rations of his workhorse until it died. We run down coal power and gas until there is not enough conventional power and parts of the grid are likely to die on nights when there is little or no wind.
Britain and Germany have passed that point and they are rapidly de-industrialising. Their collapse is cushioned by power from neighbours like Norway, France, and Poland who are well-served with conventional power.
Australia has recently reached that point, but we don’t have the benefit of extension cords. Our cushion is de-industrialisation as billions of dollars of investment in power-intensive industries has been outsourced to the US where energy is much cheaper.
We will be in dangerous territory if another coal plant closes while demand is boosted by population growth and the electrification of cars and households in places like the ACT where gas is banned.
The official Plan A is to increase the amount of wind and solar capacity, plus battery, however, we know that while renewable energy can displace coal, it cannot replace it.
The exit from coal is not accelerated by increasing penetration on good days because it is limited by the lowest level of output on nights with little or no wind, as a convoy travels at the speed of the slowest vessel.
Turning to the moral case for fossil fuels and the petrochemical industries. They enable people to live lives of ease and comfort that were inconceivable for the masses in the past. They are the basis of modern life, providing thousands of products that are ubiquitous in modern society. These include items that we use practically every minute of the day from putting on our makeup and cleaning our teeth to undergoing medical treatment. Imagine the pharmaceutical industry without petrochemical products.
From the Heartland Institute challenged the United Nations after the climate conference COP 27 in 2022:
The UN needs to have a plan to be able to support the demands of the eight billion on this globe for all the products and infrastructures that exist today that did not exist a few hundred years ago.
Efforts to cease the use of crude oil, without a planned replacement, could be the greatest threat to civilisation’s eight billion.
That is demonstrated by the overwhelming dominance of fossil fuels in the total energy use for Britain. (Electricity accounts for about a third of total energy consumption.)
Alex Epstein is a leading protagonist of the new energy narrative. In 2014 he published The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels and last year he released Fossil Future to explain that hydrocarbons and nuclear power are cheaper than (firmed) intermittent energy. They are reliable and have less environmental impact.
As for the environmental credentials of ‘clean energy’, look at the trail of environmental and human damage from the beginning to the end of the life of batteries, turbines, and solar panels. The cleanliness of ‘clean’ energy is one of the Big Lies of our time. Wind and solar power are not cheap or energy-efficient, after taking account of the energy required for mining, transport, processing, construction, and disposal of the hardware at the end of the line.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/change-the-narrative-change-the-game/
*********************************************The renewables backup problem
In the Snowy 2.0 project,‘Florence’, the gigantic tunneller, has fallen through some soft ground and become hopelessly stuck. She is now wedged in tonnes of earth and rocks and appears to be immovable.
But who can forget the promises made by Malcolm Turnbull, then prime minister, about the potential of Snowy 2.0? Pumped hydro would be one of the missing jigsaw pieces that would enable a deep penetration of wind and solar generation in our electricity grid. It was going to cost around $2 billion, although this had the same credibility as the original estimates of the cost of the NBN, which were devised on a drink coaster.
Moreover, the figure of $2 billion never included the cost of the additional transmission needed to hook the project up to the grid. That would cost more billions and would be subject to fierce local opposition as the required pylons and cables cut an ugly swath through rural land.
Even so, those were the salad days for the project. Water would be pumped up during the day to the upper dam – electricity prices would be cheap and generated mainly by renewable energy – and released when needed to the lower dam, thereby generating electricity. OK, there’s a lot of energy lost in the process and, of course, no new electricity is actually generated. And given the capital costs, it’s not clear it would ever generate a rate of return. But what the heck, when you are saving the planet.
We were told that Snowy 2.0 would act like a giant battery, providing needed backup to intermittent renewable energy. The nominal capacity was around 2,000 megawatts, about the size of a standard coal-fired power station, although it would only be able to operate for several hours each day. It was to be ready in 2023-24, which now sounds hopelessly optimistic.
The most likely scenario now is that the project will be completed by the end of the decade and the total cost, not including transmission, will be around $10 billion. Let’s not forget that stuck-Florence is costing an arm and leg because this type of specialised machinery – she was built in Germany – is leased and daily fees will still be ticking over. One way or another, the operators will find a way around the Florence problem.
The bigger picture is this: renewable energy will simply not work without sufficient backup and it’s the backup conundrum that has everyone stumped. Even if Snowy 2.0 had gone well, it is only a tiny part of the backup solution. The trouble is that Australia’s topography simply doesn’t lend itself to multiple pumped hydro projects.
The Kidston project in far-north Queensland has been nearly a decade in the making and this was starting, by chance, with two dams at different levels that existed because of a former mining operation. The biggest capital contribution to the project has come from governments, with the investors contributing a smaller amount. When it is eventually finished, it will help power households in the area but any cost-benefit analysis would show that this project should never have gone ahead.
The hope of the side was always batteries, the bigger the better. But the assumed technology leaps have simply not occurred. They provide a few hours of power and do help with stabilising the grid through frequency control. But given the components required to build these batteries – think lithium, cobalt, nickel – and the shortage of them, it’s not clear that batteries are a universal solution. They also remain expensive, in part because so many countries around the world are following the same path: renewable energy plus batteries.
Gas plants are the obvious solution, but they of course emit carbon dioxide. While closed-cycle gas turbines are much more efficient than the open-cycle ones – they use less gas and emit less carbon dioxide – it is the latter which are best designed for backup because they can be cranked up at short notice to cover shortfalls from renewable sources. In other words, to make solar and wind viable means of generating electricity, they need to be backed up by relatively emissions-intensive gas plants. You know it makes sense.
It’s also important to note here that the buildout of land-hungry wind and solar means that any existing coal-fired plant is made obsolete before its time. That is because these plants are simply not designed to provide backup power; rather they are designed to provide continuous power with constantly turning turbines. When made to provide backup power, their operating and maintenance costs skyrocket.
The fact is that even the pious Climate Change and Energy Minister, Chris Bowen, cannot make the wind blow or prevent the sun from setting. Even in his true-believing world, there is a need for backup power. Building more and more solar and wind installations doesn’t overcome this problem and is highly inefficient of itself.
A number of countries, including the UK, Canada and France, have become very lukewarm about nuclear energy but are now having second thoughts. These governments are committing to substantial investments in new nuclear installations, which are not necessarily well-designed to provide backup but can do so without any emissions.
Over time, these governments may conclude that it’s just easier (and cheaper) to go fully nuclear and forget the turbines and solar panels. After all, these renewable installations wear out quickly – probably off-shore turbines last only 15 years – and will need to be replaced. This will leave Australia in a pickle, with a motley collection of wind, solar, gas plants, ugly big batteries and possibly Snowy 2.0, adding up to unreliable and expensive power.
Just perhaps a future government will see sense and take a different path that involves nuclear power. This could be about the same time that Florence is finally rescued from her uncomfortable resting spot.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/florence-gets-stuck-in-a-pickle/
******************************************************The silencing and vilification of women and girls
Edie Wyatt
The UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem has issued a statement voicing concerns about the silencing and vilification of women and girls who are attempting to engage in debate about the human rights of women and girls.
Ms Alsalem said that ‘women and girls who emphasise the specific needs of women born female and who call for and engage in discussions around the definitions of sex gender and gender identity and the interaction of rights’ should be able to ‘express themselves and their concerns on these issues in safety and in dignity’.
It shouldn’t be an astounding statement, but it is, and at a time when the Australian government is ramping up censorship toward the very people Reem Alsalem is refereeing to, gender-critical activists…
Let me take you back, if I may, to the dark days of November 2022. I was still in a Twitter dungeon, banished from the bird app for stating that men pretending to be lesbians is rape culture. My appeals were falling on the deaf ears of soon-to-be unemployed community safety moderators.
It was as if the ABC knew they would be facing the dark shadow of women like me emerging from the musky underworld to say the things in the light that should only be spoken of in the dark.
The headline read, Australia’s eSafety commissioner writes to Elon Musk concerned about Twitter’s direction. In the story, our ABC warned about the risk of jeopardising ‘safety online, and allowing misinformation to flourish’. The eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, was pictured next to Musk, who was referred to in the article, and by Grant herself, as the ‘chief twit’.
‘If the first week of the chief twit’s tenure is any indication, I think they have a bumpy ride ahead of them. It’s said that content moderation is not rocket science but in some ways it’s more complex and nuanced than that,’ Ms Inman Grant said.
According to feminist publication Reduxx, the eSafety Commissioner has now begun a ‘censorship rampage’. Reduxx claim that they were told to ‘censor or delete an article’ by the eSaftey Commissioner, before having it hidden from Australian audiences. I have no idea if that is true or not, but if it is true, that raises potential infractions of Australian law.
For engaging in political action in the gender debate, Kirralee Smith also allegedly found herself disciplined by the eSafety Commissioner, allegedly having her Facebook page deleted. She has now received attention from the NSW police, with the issuing of an Apprehensive Violence Orders to Smith.
The UK’s Daily Mail described Smith as a ‘campaigner fighting to “keep blokes out of women’s sport”’. You would never see Smith described that way in the Australian media. The national broadcaster covered the issue, their headline read, ‘Football Australia to accelerate trans-inclusive high performance policy following anti-trans harassment cases in NSW.’
Gender-critical feminists like me, now happily tap away on the bird app, while facing the very real prospect that the Australian government censor or a member of our state police will punish us for our words.
Last week a notice was given to my friend and former breastfeeding counsellor Jasmine Sussex by Twitter, advising her of an Australian law infraction. I met Jasmine in person just over a year ago at a Brisbane radical feminist conference, but she first contacted me in 2021 when I wrote an article in The Spectator Oz titled On “Chestfeeding”.
At this time Jasmine’s long relationship with the Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA) was ending in some level of pain and bitterness. As I wrote in my article, the ABA was collaborating with an organisation called Rainbow Families. The result was the adoption by the ABA of some gender identity ideology-based practices that Jasmine found problematic and dangerous.
Jasmine raised concerns with the ABA, that the inclusion of men in their purview meant an alignment with very shoddy and experimental medicine, just to name one of the many red flags that she raised. Jasmine lost her position as a breastfeeding counsellor and has become entrenched in activism on the gender identity vs sex issue.
Reem Alsalem said that she is concerned about the reprisals women face for speaking on this issue such as ‘censorship, legal harassment, loss of jobs, loss of income, removal from social media platforms, speaking engagements and the refusal to publish research conclusions and articles’. I now know dozens of women in Australia who have faced these kinds of reprisals because they refuse to yield the factual definition of sex.
Women like Jasmine speak up because they can’t turn from what they see. In the world of breastfeeding, the inclusion of gender identity ideology in women’s support infrastructure, is leading to the assumption that male people can produce milk suitable for an infant, and these males should be supported in the pursuit of feeding an infant from their body by the entirety of the medical profession, including birth and lactation specialists. Apart from the coercion that is required to implement such a practice, the process by which endocrinologists are getting human males to exude a substance from their nipples, seems to be ethically debased and scientifically unsupported.
Jasmine Sussex and a Brisbane women’s rights activist recently took to Twitter to highlight the disturbing promotion of males feeding infants through an untested chemically induced process. Both women have received notices that their tweets are in violation of Australian law, and the tweets are now hidden from Australian audiences.
When I raised this issue on Twitter recently, a trans activist posted a study in response, as an argument for the support of men ‘chest-feeding’. It was called Case Report: Induced Lactation in a Transgender Woman and it involved experimentation on an adopted human infant.
Isidora Sanger, who is a medical doctor and author of Born in the Right Body, says that the study is not only unethical but ‘fraught with incomplete and misleading information, disingenuous analysis and undeclared conflict of interest’. In what could be a warning to health professionals in Australia, Sanger said the study is ‘an example of how transgender health clinics prioritise emotional needs of trans-identified males over the welfare of women and children’.
If what the women are saying in the censored tweets is true, endocrinologists could be conducting unaccountable experiments on human infants in this country, and there is not a news outlet in the nation that would cover this using actual words that mean what they say.
The smoke and mirrors of ‘inclusive’, ‘queer’, and ‘diversity’, mask an unpalatable tale of misogyny and abuse of power that is told only when we are permitted to use words with correct meanings. The reality is that gender identity cannot survive without linguistic subterfuge and the broadscale censorship of women declaring their bodily needs and political interests.
Reen Alsalem said in her statement:
‘Sweeping restrictions on the ability of women and men to raise concerns regarding the scope of rights based on gender identity and sex are in violation of the fundamentals of freedom of thought and freedom of belief and expression.’
How we allowed Australia to lag so badly in the human rights of women and children is baffling to me.
Alsalem also raised concerns about the smearing of women who are organising politically to raise issues of the protection of women and girls, specifically their smearing as ‘Nazis’. Our national broadcaster is leaning heavily into this narrative, with a story recently published about neo-Nazi groups, strongly linking them to women who organise to fight against gender identity laws.
Former Attorney General of Queensland Shannon Fentiman refused to meet with groups of gender-critical women when changing legislation for birth certificates, saying openly in Parliament that such groups ‘cloak their transphobia in the guise of women’s safety’.
Having been involved with such Brisbane-based women’s groups, I find it strange that Fentiman would believe that a bunch of left-leaning, gainfully employed, middle-aged women have decided to risk their jobs, social standing, and physical safety to meet in secret, pool their resources, and engage in political action, with the single objective of picking on a minority group that have no firm definition.
After being in this fight a few years, I can report that trans activists are some of the meanest, nastiest individuals I have ever encountered in my life, and no woman would pick a fight with them without serious consideration. The most aggressive of the activists, stripped of identity signifiers, are mostly straight white men.
We are facing a failure of democracy and a corruption of liberalism and a time when we have a chronic dearth of liberals. The recent problems with John Pesutto and the Victorian Liberals show just how quickly the testicles of the Australian Liberal man will shrink back into his body when he is threatened. It has become obvious that some Victorian Liberals are fleeing for safety in appeasement to gender identity ideology in the face of aggressive state power, or what we used to call tyranny.
Maybe we should send the Victorian Liberal ‘moderates’ away from their Melbourne Pinot Grigio swilling mates for a few days to attend John Stuart Mill Camp, where they could listen to On Liberty on repeat and be subject to images from the Russian gulags, just to remind them what the people of Victoria pay them to be in favour of, and what they are meant to be against.
I hear political commentators regularly citing ‘the trans issue’ as a fringe or minor issue, but if the state can re-define the sex of our body, the role of a mother, and the purpose of a baby, and we are not permitted to critique that, we have already yielded essential liberties. Liberties that we need to politically organise and bring our requests to the state that we fund, to the liberal democratic state that is supposed to be accountable to the people, including women people.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/the-silencing-and-vilification-of-women-and-girls/
************************************29 May, 2023
Rolf Harris
There are very many articles currently in the media about the late Rolf Harris -- and all of them excoriate him for his pedophilia, which consisted mostly of non-violent sexual relationships with teenage females.
It seems to me however that we should consider that a man who was a beloved entertainer for most of his life was not wholly bad. I myself was no follower of his but I always wondered at his improbable skill with a large paintbrush.
So what should we think of him as an artist? Predictably, his art has been scorned by critics but I disagree. I just want to make the single point that his portrait of the Queen was exceptionally good. I have seen innumerable pictures and portraits of the queen but, in my view, the Harris portrait best captures her essence, which is the normal goal of portrait painters
The arty-farty establishment will never be able to find in themselves any praise for that picture. They will probably call it "chocolate-boxy". But that is their problem. Much that they praise seems moronic to me. But we are both entitled to our opinions. De gustibus non disputandum est
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Bravo! Albanese knows what a woman is
British broadcaster Piers Morgan asked the Prime Minister the question on his new show 'Piers Morgan Uncensored' on Sky News in early May.
Mr Albanese gave a very simple answer to the question, defining a woman as 'an adult female'.
'How difficult was that to answer?,' Morgan then asked.
'Not too hard. I was asked during the campaign actually, but I think that we need to respect people for whoever they are,' Mr Albanese said.
The 'what is a woman' question has become controversial in recent months, with many politicians struggling to answer in fear of upsetting critics or supporters of trans rights.
However Mr Albanese's answer continues to anger many in the transgender community, with some calling him a 'transphobe' and claiming he is using talking points echoed by TERF (Trans-exclusionary radical feminist).
The CEO of Equality Australia, Anna Brown, suggested that the prime minister shouldn't answer a question designed to 'attack' transgender people.
'But when any leader is asked a question designed to attack trans women, they should first call it out for what it is,' she told media.
'They can instead speak to trans people in Australia and directly let them know that they will not be part of the punching down.'
Greens MP Stephen Bates said the prime minister needed to 'get a spine and stop mumbling platitudes in an attempt to placate the transphobes'.
'You don't get to march with us in Mardi Gras and then ignore us when things get tricky for you,' he wrote.
During the interview, Albanese was also grilled by Morgan on the issue of transgender athletes in women's sport.
'That's an example in that the sporting organisations are dealing with that issue,' Mr Albanese said. 'My view is the sporting organisations should deal with that issue.'
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Gender transition insurance cover cut for GPs
That would effectively bar them from assisting with gender transitions. They may be able to find another insurer but that may not continue.
br> One of the country’s biggest medical insurers will no longer cover private practitioners prescribing gender-affirming care to adolescents, in a move that could leave young people languishing on already-stretched public waiting lists.
MDA National, one of four major medical indemnity providers insuring GPs and other private practitioners against legal claims, updated its policy this month to exclude cover for claims “arising from aspects of gender transitioning treatment for under 18-year-old patients”.
Dr Michael Gannon, the organisation’s president, said young people experiencing gender dysphoria should be initially assessed by multidisciplinary teams in hospital – not by GPs.
“This is the same hospital system that is very, very comfortable placing greater demands on general practitioners,” he said. “It’s simply not fair to ask individual GPs in the suburbs or the bush to be making these complex decisions on their own.”
Gannon said the decision was made in response to legal cases overseas, including the high-profile inquiry into, and subsequent closure of, Britain’s only children’s gender clinic.
“We’re not taking a moral stance or an ethical stance – this is very much an insurance decision,” he said. “We don’t think we can accurately and fairly price the risk of regret.”
Dr Michelle Dutton, a GP in Fitzroy North in Melbourne, said she was leaving MDA National for a different provider before the change takes effect on July 1. “It’s disappointing ... I need to be covered for the work that I do as a GP, and if that work is no longer covered, I need to find a different provider,” she said. “I would have changed anyway because I fundamentally disagree with the decision.”
Dr Portia Predny, a GP at Sydney’s Rozelle Medical Centre and vice-president of the trans health advocacy body AusPATH, said she was concerned the change would further limit the options available to transgender adolescents by discouraging private practitioners from treating them.
“There are very few clinics who actually service this group of patients,” she said. “There’s already barriers to care for this age group – this is care that’s often life-saving, and that’s not an exaggeration.”
She said AusPATH had been reassured by two other major insurers, Avant and Medical Indemnity Protection Society (MIPs), that they would continue to cover GPs prescribing hormones to transgender patients under 18.
Predny said GPs were already working with other healthcare providers, such as psychiatrists and endocrinologists, to provide safe care to young patients.
“To state that the only way for people to access interdisciplinary care is through a multidisciplinary clinic [at a hospital] is misleading,” she said.
NSW has publicly funded gender clinics at Westmead Hospital and Maple Leaf House in Newcastle.
As of March 2023, there were 139 clients aged under 25 waiting for treatment at Maple Leaf House, though a spokesperson said not all those patients would be seeking medical-affirming care.
In Victoria, the Monash Health Gender Clinic is the only specialist public service available to transgender people between the ages of 16 and 18.
Associate Professor Ruth McNair, from the University of Melbourne’s department of general practice, said requiring every young person experiencing gender dysphoria to go through a public gender clinic first would place an even greater strain on waiting lists. “The system is overloaded,” she said. “Kids are left with nowhere to go.”
McNair said GPs who prescribe hormones to underage patients were already very cautious, and any patients with complex clinical histories, such as pre-existing mental health problems or past trauma, were urgently referred to public clinics for specialist treatment.
For young trans people, early support ‘could save a life’
“I consider the risk to be higher if I’m blocking a young person from care,” she said. “What’s the real risk? It’s to the health of the young person.
“It’s a bit short-sighted really. They’re trying to capture the [minority] of cases [where patients regret].”
MDA National will still cover GPs providing repeat prescriptions for gender-affirming hormones and general healthcare for patients with gender dysphoria.
The company said the decision would affect “well under a hundred” of its 40,000 members.
In 2021, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists released a position statement defining a “gender-affirmative approach” as one that accepts rather than questions a child’s statements about their gender identity.
In a rare local case, a Sydney woman is suing her psychiatrist for professional negligence relating to her gender transition, which she began at age 19.
However, the regret rate for people who medically transition in childhood or adolescence remains low.
Last year, a Dutch study published in The Lancet found 98 per cent of 720 transgender participants who started gender-affirming hormones in adolescence continued their treatment into adulthood.
A 2021 systematic review of 27 studies with a combined 7928 transgender patients found about 1 per cent expressed regret after undergoing gender-affirming surgeries.
Eloise Brook, the policy and communication manager at the Gender Centre in Annandale, said the decision jeopardised the “hard work” and investment that has been put into making gender-affirming care more accessible through family GPs.
“This is a moment where I’m fearful for families,” she said. “Insurance should not be the space in which medical decisions should be made.”
Dr Mitch Squire, a GP who provides gender-affirming care to adolescents at his clinic in Sydney’s inner west, said he would have no choice but to move providers if his insurer no longer covered him for the service.
“It would be a pretty straightforward decision for me,” he said. “There is a small but quantifiable regret rate, and given that changes can be permanent, that cover is absolutely essential.”
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Bleaching the truth about the reef
For years, the Australian public has been subjected to an unremitting narrative that the Great Barrier Reef faced an existential threat from climate change. Last year a UN-backed mission concluded the world’s biggest coral reef system should be placed on a list of endangered world heritage sites saying, climate change presented a ‘serious challenge’.
Who knew that last year, to very little fanfare, the Australian Institute of Marine Science found, despite six serious bleaching events since 2016, coral cover was the highest it had been in its 36 years of monitoring? Certainly not the Australian public. An Australian Environment Foundation survey of 1,004 Australians found only three per cent were aware of this reality.
Following a relentless campaign of formal complaints by former prime minister Kevin Rudd, the Australian Communication and Media Authority obligingly censured a segment on Sky News’s Outsiders programme for failing to mention that the reef’s splendid recovery was still at risk.
Perpetuating the image of a threatened Barrier Reef is critical for those who see global warming as a vehicle for social change. They worry that the AIMS report could lead impressionable adults to question the claims of climate change ‘experts’, thereby undermining the credibility of emissions abatement policies.
Australia’s state broadcaster, the ABC, is a serial worrier. Despite its declining audiences, it remains a reliable and important megaphone and a go-to for like-minded political advocates like the Bureau of Meteorology. It dutifully carried the AIMS report along with an environmentalist’s warning, ‘that unless fossil-fuel emissions are drastically cut, the reef remains in danger from rising temperatures and more mass-bleaching events’. In other words, don’t be misled.
Fear is an important weapon in the centralist’s arsenal and the ABC, and the mainstream media generally, are willing accomplices in uncritically spreading it. That’s not a conspiracy theory but reality. In this echo chamber only one view is allowed. After all, weighty issues like global warming, healthcare, education and pronouns are beyond the ken of most ordinary people and should be left to experts.
Thomas Jefferson was right. ‘The price of freedom is eternal vigilance’. That vigilance is visibly absent. Indeed, bribed with their own money and falling prey to a divisive political agenda, the public has become ever more obedient and dependent upon government. Likewise business. With the media ideologically aligned, carrots and coercion are deployed to control it. Political careerists conflate their desire for power with the national interest and recruit like-minded bureaucrats to further regulate an already over-regulated society. It’s a self-perpetuating coalition which thrives on controls and complacency.
Australia may not yet be China where there is a facial recognition camera for every five people, but as government expands, Australia’s political class is demonstrating an insatiable taste for power and, with it, a growing contempt for the rule of law.
For example, during Covid-19, governments seized extraordinary powers when they employed apps and QR codes to collect personal data. It was on the basis that information gathered was for ‘public health purposes only’. It would be destroyed 28 days after collection.
We now know that the Victorian government lied about access and tried to suppress a secret Supreme Court ruling which confirmed personal data did not have ‘absolute protection’. Then acting premier, Jacinta Allan, reassured Victorians that the government’s repeated and deliberate attempts to hide the information were to avoid a ‘baseless scare campaign’– never wrong, never accountable.
Still, there was no public outrage. Nor in South Australia when it was revealed its government had secretly kept personal data beyond the mandated four weeks. Nor in Western Australia after its police had used this information as part of criminal investigations. Where is that data now?
Contempt for the law and disdain for civil liberties thrived under Covid. Doctors who put their professional judgement ahead of health bureaucrats’ advice were threatened with disciplinary action if they undermined the national vaccination programme. Contrary views, however well-credentialed, were characterised as sourced from anti-vaxxers’.
Now it has come to light that the regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, knew that vaccines carried greater risks than it disclosed. Rather than ‘undermine public confidence’, it withheld vital causality data from health professionals and the public. This included hiding the deaths of two children, aged seven and nine, who died after Pfizer vaccinations.
In such an environment, wherever political authority can be established or expanded, it will be. Like the new monetary policy board which will politicise the Reserve Bank and deprive it of its traditional independence. Just one more subtle level of control.
Not even the justice system escapes political influence. The trial of Cardinal George Pell and, the ACT’s Sofronoff inquiry into the conduct of criminal justice agencies, demonstrate how the political vibe can override the presumption of innocence and the rules of evidence.
With their parents and grandparents behaving like frogs in slowly boiling water, seemingly in denial of the unrelenting intrusion of government into every aspect of their lives, younger generations believe this is the way things are around here. Indoctrinated in the classroom about their evil colonial heritage and the prospect of an uninhabitable planet and, the need for a more ‘caring’, and a ‘fairer’ society, they accept big government is good whilst believing that capitalism leads to selfishness and environmental destruction.
Banking on continued public complacency, Australian governments have gone where, outside of emergencies, they have never gone before. The blurring of lines between the major parties along with a divide-and-rule political agenda have created a de facto one-party state where opposition to the continuing erosion of civil liberties is not tolerated.
But in the end, even boiling frogs start to jump. When that time will come is difficult to determine. However, whenever it will be, Covid emergencies and climate change directives may have so weakened the public’s resilience and determination it may be unable to escape the pot. In which case, investing in facial recognition camera makers may be a wise precaution.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/truth-bleaching/ ?
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Who is an Aborigine? The single most important question about the Voice
A provision in the constitution that references, or rather preferences, a certain group of people, must make it beyond doubt who those people are. If the current criterion – self-identification – is applied, that would open up a can of worms. We need to know who exactly qualifies as an Aborigine and how those persons establish their bona fides. For example, would any degree of Aboriginality in one’s ancestry suffice? If so, then the Aboriginal population can only continue to expand indefinitely, to the point where this will become less and less about disadvantage and more and more about entitlement. If not, then where is the cut-off? 50 per cent Aboriginality? 25 per cent? 12.5 per cent? Wherever it is set, someone is going to be aggrieved. To further complicate the issue, prominent Aboriginal academic, Dr Suzanne Ingram, suggests that as many as 300,000 of the currently reported Aboriginal population of 800,000 may not be genuine.
If this issue is not adequately addressed in the referendum question itself, that alone should be a deal-breaker. I cannot stress this enough. It cannot be left up to parliament, or worse the High Court, to define, expand or contract this demographic at whim. If the Voice goes into the constitution, then it must be the constitution (by means of a referendum) that defines and redefines – over time and as necessary – who is an Aborigine.
To underscore this point, let me refer to Section 15 of the constitution. This covers casual Senate vacancies. The gamesmanship that followed Gough Whitlam’s political opportunism in appointing Senator Lionel Murphy to the High Court caused this section to be rewritten in 1977. That reworked Section 15 is now the most voluminous and prescriptive section of the Constitution, occupying some two pages. My point is this: if a simple matter such as the filling of a casual Senate vacancy requires such a detailed treatment in the constitution, how can we possibly leave the definition of who is an Aborigine so open-ended? It will further entrench tribalism within the Aboriginal community and will become a lawyer’s picnic.
One final point. Chris Kenny claims the Voice is not a race-based division. That may not be the explicit intent, but the outcome is the same. Only members of one particular race may aspire to sit on this Voice or to vote for it. Dr Suzanne Ingram – well-educated, well-remunerated and residing comfortably in Sydney – may sit on or vote for it. Dave Price – married to an Aboriginal woman, the father of Aboriginal children, a long-term resident of Alice Springs and directly and personally affected by its special problems – may not. That sounds like racial division to me.
We should want no part of it.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/who-is-an-aborigine/ ?
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28 May, 2023
Special report: There has been a modernization of the financial system, which has already satisfied many citizens in Australia
This appears to be the latest scam. The site looks like it is a legit ABC site but is in fact from a one-page address in Spain. Definitely too good to be true
Aussies call this event a "revolution of their lives", but only 1% of them are familiar with the opportunities that modernization has brought and use it to pay off their debts.
The big banks are concerned, because the government has made a move against them with financial modernization. In addition to monetary reform, the parliament, having broad powers, made drastic changes, they decided to pay attention to the cryptocurrency and launched a project based on blockchain technology called "Immediate Edge". The goal of the launch was to support the economy, but this project also had an impact on the lives of citizens. Many people have "made money" due to the Immediate Edge project.
Immediate Edge is a governmental platform that automatically recoups on the fall of the currency by buying cryptocurrency at the most favorable rates. In simple words, it plays on the "cryptocurrency boom".
According to political experts, all members of parliament unanimously voted FOR this project, it will not only help the economy, but also replenish state reserves. While the project is completely under the control of the state, trial launches are currently underway about reduced requirements for participants for up to 90 days. Then a limited number of people will be able to participate in the project.
The requirements are very simple, the prospective applicant needs to make an initial deposit of A$ 390 to become a full-fledged participant of the project, the government considers it a very reduced tariff, it is assumed that it can grow. After making a deposit, the applicant becomes a full-fledged participant on the Immediate Edge platform
Immediate Edge is a program that has artificial intelligence, it analyzes the markets itself, self-learns, predicts to get to the exact time of the decline of bitcoin for its profitable purchase. It determines when to buy cheaper and sell more expensive. The user, as a third-party observer, observes the transactions and makes a profit from the transactions.
Financial experts are whispering behind their backs, saying that in Australia everyone can become a millionaire due to the Immediate Edge platform in 4 months, the forecasts are impressive! The banking sector is perplexed, because it may lose its customers. Banks have always known about the project, which the government put on ice, but the times have come when the state and its citizens need financial support.
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Australian judge apologises after claiming that colleagues are appointed regardless of merit
Too much truth
A federal and family court justice who planned to deliver a speech at an international conference claiming that progressive governments appointed diverse judges regardless of merit has been forced to apologise to his colleagues and told he can no longer attend the conference.
The speech by Justice Joshua Wilson had been uploaded on the court’s website before Justice William Alstergren, the chief justice of the family court and chief judge of the federal circuit court, was alerted to its contents and ordered that it be removed this week.
The speech was dated 17 April, and Wilson planned to deliver it in September at the International Association of Judges annual general meeting in Taiwan.
“Is it correct to say that the brightest and the best are appointed to judicial office, independent of political persuasion? The answer is in the negative in the case of the overwhelming majority of appointments,” Wilson, a division one judge, wrote in the speech.
“It sometimes occurs that a government appoints a person to judicial office who is aligned with the opposite party’s politics. That is a rarity.
“Occasionally, an attorney-general appoints a person as a judge who is wholly apolitical. Again, that is a rarity. Appointment to judicial office is a political activity.”
Wilson went on to say that appointments to state and territory courts were highly political, and that “progressive governments are more likely to appoint to benches based on gender and ethnic diversity, irrespective of merit or expertise”.
Alstergren said in a statement to the Guardian that he was alerted to the paper, which had been uploaded without his knowledge or permission, by a number of judges.
He said Wilson had been planning to attend the conference as a member of the association, not as a representative of the court.
He said that as soon as he was alerted to the paper it was immediately taken down from the website, and that a statement was made to all judges indicating that it did not reflect the views of the courts and that protocols were in place to make sure this could not happen again.
“Further, Justice Wilson will not be providing a paper at this conference nor will he be attending, and I have taken steps to ensure there is no further publication of the paper’s content,” Alstergren said.
“The judge has apologised to the judges of both courts for the comments.
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Labor’s coal-fired green dream
With cost-of-living pressures really starting to hurt Australians, Labor’s green dream would be a complete nightmare if it wasn’t for coal.
When then Treasurer Scott Morrison brought a lump of coal into the House of Representatives, the left-leaning media were quick to respond:
‘What a bunch of clowns, hamming it up – while out in the real world an ominous and oppressive heat just won’t let up.’
Fast forward to 2023 and Labor’s budget surplus has little to do with sound economic management, and much to do with unexpectedly high prices for exports of fossil fuels. And this is despite Labor’s running mates, the Greens, doing everything to demonise coal and gas.
In the real world, it takes more than just dreams to power the nation.
But the economic bonus provided by plentiful coal and gas reserves is only the most obvious benefit. Our ability to provide coal and gas to Korea and Japan provides energy security for our strategic partners. This is important for the energy sector in Korea and Japan if they are to avoid Germany’s fate. The disruption of supply in coal and gas in Europe resulting from the war in Ukraine should be proof enough that Australian exports of coal and gas are more important than ever.
The government’s approval of a new coal mine in Queensland’s Bowen Basin has barely raised an eyebrow from the major news media players. Nor should it. This is good news for the economy but confirms that Labor is facing up to the reality of its green energy dream.
Countries that pursued carbon emissions strategies by relying heavily on wind and solar farms are now changing tack. Nuclear is back on the agenda everywhere except for Germany and Australia it seems. The green dream is also impacting European farmers who are protesting against tax burdens created by ‘radical environmentalists far away from farms’. This trend is now starting to impact farmers in Australia.
Australian farmers make a major contribution to our budget bottom line, with wheat production reaching record levels in 2022-23. Although next year’s crop is expected to remain steady (a bit below record levels), Labor was quick to dip into farmers’ profits with a new ‘biosecurity tax’. It makes no sense for farmers to pay a tax to ensure imports from their offshore competitors do not create a biohazard. What’s worse, the levy will ultimately increase the price of fresh food at the checkout when the cost of living is already biting struggling families.
Europeans are starting to turn against Net Zero policies, led by French President Emmanuel Macron with his call for a ‘“pause” of more EU environmental red-tape’. The UK, however, appears to be pushing beyond the EU’s aspirations with goals to end internal combustion engine vehicles by 2030 compared with the EU’s later and less stringent vehicle laws lobbied for by the likes of German manufacturers BMW, Audi, VW, and Mercedes-Benz.
Labor’s push for increased fuel efficiency standards for vehicles is another area where the green dream can easily turn into a gas-guzzling nightmare. Fuel efficiency standards are meant to encourage smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles. The reality or indeed the perverse outcome of such policies is that vehicles are becoming bigger and more powerful.
The idea that consumers can’t wait to get their hands on an EV is not reflected in Australian vehicle sales, with the Ford Ranger currently the biggest selling vehicle, followed closely by the Toyota Hilux. Woke city folk forget that many Australians can’t get around in regional and remote communities on an electric scooter or in the best-selling EV that has a range of barely 500km.
The big problem at the moment is that there might not be enough electricity to live the green dream where everything is powered by renewables. With no Plan B, Australia’s energy security is at risk should Labor’s ‘crash through or crash’ approach to energy policy fail.
Energy industry leaders such as Dr Kerry Schott have cautioned against demonising coal and gas as part of the energy transition to renewables. And former head of Snowy Hydro Paul Broad recently called BS on the 80 per cent renewables energy target. But Warren Mundine summed it up most succinctly on Spectator TV last week, when he said ‘if you believe in climate change and you don’t believe in nuclear power, then you don’t believe in climate change’.
But Labor is pushing a certain type of green dream without facing up to the reality that Europeans are now realising – renewables alone can’t do the job. With some of the largest reserves of uranium in the world, it’s a no-brainer for Australia to embrace nuclear energy now rather than waiting to learn Europe’s lessons.
The Albanese government is happy to claim the glory for a budget surplus due to responsible economic management while minimising the importance of coal for the nation’s continuing prosperity.
In the meantime, without coal there is no green dream.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/labors-coal-fired-green-dream/
***********************************************Political and corporate defeatism
Charles Mackay’s 1841, titled Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds has enduringly served to refute claims of collective wisdom. He described events like Dutch tulip mania and the 1711-22 South Sea Bubble as frenzies of collective investment hysteria.
In the modern era, every decade or so we have seen more such investment delirium, including the build-up to the 1929 Wall Street crash with lesser events like the 1970s Poseidon mining boom/bust and the 2007 collapse of US leveraged housing funds.
In all cases, investment frenzies ramped up share prices to stratospheric levels. Lessons have not been learned. The next debacle will centre on puncturing the carbuncle of funds focused on virtue signalling their Environment, Social, and Governance credentials (ESG), the apogee for which is fossil-fuel-phobia and renewable-energy-philia.
Collective madness is not confined to money markets. Even before media control hid reality, huge majorities of Germans, Russians, and Chinese willingly supported leaders who were promoters of violence and destroyers of economic stability.
The antidote to unsound business investments is that an accumulation of investors recognises them and sells them. For political malfeasance, such a cleansing is more difficult. Thus, even with an independent media and Parliamentary accountability, a likely majority of US citizens support the obviously corrupt and incompetent President Biden. More parochially, Victorians have sequentially re-elected a Premier who has squandered public funds, including by increasing public service employees by twice as much as other states.
Modern vulnerabilities to political turmoil stem from political hubris in claiming expertise in where the economy’s structure should be heading. Previously, politicians could not credibly claim expertise in the innovations and investments necessary to drive economic growth. The developments that have created the modern economy’s wealth – in transport, automation, energy, health, and communications – took place with little direct political input.
But today’s electorate seems to accept politicians’ claimed expertise in controlling the vital area of energy policy. The genesis of this control started with confected concerns about global warming. These are easily dismissed – there has been no increase in climate emergencies, no increase in hurricanes, no loss of coral, no rise in the oceans, no loss of ice cover, and so on. Blind to such evidence, political measures have been assembled to counteract the phantom threats.
Political leaders ranging from UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to our very own John Pesutto say they concluded they must act after listening to climate sermons from their teenage daughters, which were canalised from teachers in their private schools. This, a fractured thread from climate science to political action, is representative of a broader march of the green left through educational institutions as well as those of media and the civil service.
The susceptibility of politicians to climate hyperbole is heightened as a result of their assigned role to combating it. For the first time outside of war-like conditions, they have an issue that offers them a hero’s role, one far more attractive than buying support by addressing mundane local matter and balancing budgets.
The theme’s potency is much enhanced by the numerous, much publicised international meetings which place the seal of approval to proposals crafted by hand-picked bureaucrats..
Hence, outside of the US there are few politicians who have not bought the narrative. Even Britain’s Conservative Party’s leader-in-waiting, Lord Frost, argues that current policies are ‘hurtling towards Net Zero at any cost’, instead of recognising the energy ‘transition’ to wind/solar as a constantly receding mirage. He says he believes that the UK is simply proceeding towards the renewables ‘transition’ too quickly. For his part, Mr Albanese is linking his own policy to a reinforcement of the American alliance alongside access to US subsidies.
And the thread wends its way throughout national fabrics. Authorities and sloganeers alike are almost unanimous in seeing the elimination of coal as one essential building block of future economic sustainable prosperity.
Even coal company representatives seem to feel obliged to denounce their product, much like terrorised Chinese ‘capitalist roaders’ facing Red Guards and wearing dunces caps. In its Annual Report the coal miner Whitehaven acquiesces in the death of coal, claiming it supports the Paris Agreement’s aims of limiting global temperature rises to well below 2 degrees, the corollary of which is the elimination of coal. Similarly, Yancoal, in its 64-page ESG report, claims to be ‘demonstrating its commitment to renewable energy opportunities’ and support for the Paris Agreement.
New Hope, however simply says, ‘Achievable emissions abatement opportunities with positive value will be the first to be considered for implementation’.
Net Zero CO2 emissions is the clarion call but its costs are colossal. BloombergNEF, in promoting ‘investment opportunities’, estimates that to achieve Net Zero by 2050 Australia will need to spend $413 billion on renewables and their back-up, plus $300 billion on transmission. The existing coal-based supply would cost only $80 billion on plant plus maybe $30 billion on transmission!
Even adding in the coal input and operating costs means the system from which we are being transitioned provides energy with far greater reliability at one-third of the cost of the wind /solar system that our political elites favour.
Government regulations on mining and environment have brought electricity and gas price increases at double that of general inflation. This is notwithstanding Australia having the world’s lowest cost coal and gas resources. And the upward electricity price trajectory continues with a further increase of over 20 per cent in place for next month.
Widespread support for manipulating markets to achieve this dismal picture is testament to Charles Mackay’s recognition, nearly 300 years ago, that popular delusions sometimes replace human rationality. But the higher the delusions fly, the harder they fall.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/political-and-corporate-defeatism
*********************************************Why free speech and offensive expressions are too important to be left to legislation
Dachau concentration camp was established just outside the city of Munich in March 1933, less than two months after Adolf Hitler became German chancellor.
It has been preserved, along with some of the other later camps, as a reminder of the regime that ruled Germany from 1933 until 1945. Its location rebuts any suggestion that the German people were somehow unaware of their government’s policies over this period. In the early 1970s I visited Dachau with a small group of recent graduates from the University of Melbourne on a camping tour of Europe.
We didn’t spend much time in those days reflecting on history but our normally boisterous behaviour was replaced by complete silence as we walked past the barracks where the prisoners had been housed and contemplated what had happened to most of them. I have sometimes thought of that visit whenever there have been calls in recent months for legislation to prohibit the Nazi salute, particularly after it was used by some of the participants in a demonstration in Melbourne.
The salute was not in fact confined to Hitler’s administration but a similar version was used, for example, by the regimes of Francisco Franco in Spain and Benito Mussolini in Italy after they took power in the years before World War II.
Any public imitations of the Hitler period are, however, especially offensive to Jewish members of society in any country because of their enormous losses at the hands of the Germans.
It is not an especially popular position to raise questions about this kind of banning legislation but the problem about freedom of speech is, if it is accepted as an important value, it does not allow for picking and choosing between different kinds of speech, even those that may be offensive to almost all members of the community.
None of this is to say that incitements to violence against individuals or groups in the community should not be unlawful – and they have always been a crime under the common law. In addition, there are statutory provisions, for example, under the NSW Crimes Act, where it is an offence for a person by a public act to intentionally or recklessly to threaten or incite violence towards another person or group of persons on the ground of race, religious belief, sexual orientation or gender identity.
But it is the expression of utterly offensive views that provides the real test for a belief in freedom of speech. As American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes said in a judgment of the US Supreme Court in 1919: “All life is an experiment … while that experiment is part of our system I think we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.”
It is not as if the handful of persons in Australia who seem to have some affection for this period of German history are taken seriously by the general community. No regime in modern history is more discredited, and anyone displaying Nazi salutes or symbols would rightly be considered an embarrassment to himself or herself by almost every member of Australian society.
This kind of legislation also raises the question of how offensive a symbol has to be before its display should be prohibited by law. What about the hammer and sickle – the flag of the Soviet Union – a regime under which millions were killed or sent to gulags? Or what about the Confederate flag, the banner of the old south, in a war fought to preserve the institution of slavery? Should the music identified with these regimes, such as The Internationale and Dixie, be banned as well?
There have also been calls for those calling themselves Nazis to be declared by legislation as members of a terrorist organisation.
There is, of course, a large volume of legislation at both the federal and the state level in Australia on the subject of terrorism, but this is designed to deal with individuals or organisations who are dedicated to acts of carefully planned violence, often on a large scale that might result in the deaths of hundreds of individuals through bombs placed at public events or the sabotage of airline flights.
It is hardly suitable to apply to political agitators, however offensive and misguided. Dachau and its like should never be forgotten, but freedom of speech is an important legacy of Western civilisation and worth preserving, no matter how unworthy some of those who make use of it.
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25 May, 2023
ABC fears for Indigenous staff as ‘evil’ comments on the rise in lead-up to voice referendum
The abuse that Stan Grant and the ABC copped over their coronation coverage was to be expected. Such hate-filled commentary was totally inappropriate to the occasion and deserved replies in kind. Hate elicits a return of hate but the Left can't take that. Hate should be their sole prerogative, they seem to think
And criticism of the ever-whining Grant is well overdue. As a man who has achieved success and prominence in white society, he does not have much to complain about. And he deserves real ridicule for his heavy use of fake tan these days. He was originally only light brown in skin colour. One wonders how much more of him is fake
The ABC is worried about its Indigenous staff in the run-up to the referendum on the voice to parliament, managing director David Anderson has told parliament.
“I’m worried about Stan [Grant] but I’m also worried about our other staff,” Anderson said.
“I’m worried about our First Nations staff as we head towards a referendum on the voice to make sure that they are sufficiently protected.”
Grant recently stood down as Q+A host after receiving racist abuse that worsened after he spoke about the impact of colonialism in the lead-up to King Charles III’s coronation.
The ABC told a Senate estimates committee that Grant had taken eight weeks’ leave.
Anderson said the ABC had protective measures in place for staff, including blocking emails and turning off notifications, but “evil” comments still got through and were increasing.
Radio presenters who were live on air had watched their chat stream – a radio text line – fill up with racial abuse, Anderson said he had been told in recent days.
The ABC’s news director, Justin Stevens, revealed that every time Grant appeared on television there was a “particular spike” in the amount and volume of the racial vitriol received. The volume had increased since he appeared on the pre-coronation panel earlier this month.
Stevens said the ABC wanted to do more to support staff and to champion Indigenous perspectives, and one recent move had been the creation of the Indigenous reporting team led by Suzanne Dredge.
“She’s a fantastic journalist and editor who I’ve also appointed to my executive,” Stevens said.
Anderson and Stevens were asked why they invited journalists from News Corp on ABC shows such as The Drum, Insiders and Q+A when the company was a major critic of the public broadcaster.
They said they would not censor journalists or put a “blanket ban” on anyone who works for News Corp, despite earlier singling out the company out for its “relentless campaign” against the ABC.
On Monday Stevens accused News Corp of targeting the ABC because it was “trying to chip away [at] people’s sense of trust in what we do because we threaten their business model”. News Corp Australia has denied it played a part in Grant’s decision to stand down from hosting Q+A and has accused Stevens of misleading and unsubstantiated claims.
Stevens said the Murdochs employed some good journalists who had gone on to work at the ABC, including political reporter Nour Haydar, RN Breakfast host Patricia Karvelas and Insiders host David Speers.
“It’s not the journalists who work for these businesses who are necessarily making the decisions,” Stevens said.
Anderson confirmed the ABC had received 59 editorial complaints about the coronation coverage which would be investigated by the ABC ombudsman but he stood by the decision to have the discussion panel on the day of the coronation.
Grant along with lawyer and Indigenous writer Teela Reid, Liberal backbencher and monarchist Julian Leeser and co-chair of the Australian Republic Movement Craig Foster were invited to discuss the relevance of the monarchy and the impact of colonialism. The panel discussion lasted 45 minutes in the lead-up to the coronation and was over hours before the event itself.
Anderson said some “good faith” complaints had said it was “not appropriate to have the discussion”.
“It just was not what they were expecting, really reflecting that we hadn’t set the audience expectation about this,” Anderson said.
Anderson said the ABC received 169 “good faith” responses from viewers, 59 of which have been referred to the ABC ombudsman for a possible breach of editorial standards.
However, “hundreds” of others were racist attacks on Grant, he said.
The total number of audience contacts about the eight-hour coronation broadcast was 1,832 but 1,663 of those were discarded because they were comments not requiring a response – such as criticism of a presenter’s outfit – or they were “racist, abusive or insubstantial”, according to ABC figures.
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New push to lower speed limits for SUVs and other high-emission vehicles in Australia to combat climate change
Lowering the speed limit for larger vehicles must seem easy for an academic but would be murder for drivers. A less onerous policy might be to make the registration costs so high that only those who need big vehicles for work would buy them
A top professor has called for Australia to lower motorway speed limits for SUVs and other high-emission vehicles to combat climate change.
Australia's love for dual-cab utes, large SUVs and older vehicles is making the country one of the biggest petrol consumers in the world, a new report by The Australia Institute found.
Professor Lennard Gillman from Auckland University of Technology said one way to drastically reduce petrol consumption and carbon dioxide emissions is to drive slightly slower.
He believes Australia should introduce differential speed limits for high-emission and low-emission vehicles so cars that put out more pollution are forced to drive slower to reduce their environmental impact.
'Lowering the speed limit for high emission vehicles has the double effect of cutting emissions but also incentivises people to buy low-emission cars,' he told Daily Mail Australia.
'In a vehicle like the Ford Ranger V6 you'll be expending 260g (of fuel) per kilometre. That's more than twice as much as a Toyota Corolla.'
He believes Australia should introduce differential speed limits for high-emission and low-emission vehicles so cars that put out more pollution are forced to drive slower to reduce their environmental impact.
'Lowering the speed limit for high emission vehicles has the double effect of cutting emissions but also incentivises people to buy low-emission cars,' he told Daily Mail Australia.
'In a vehicle like the Ford Ranger V6 you'll be expending 260g (of fuel) per kilometre. That's more than twice as much as a Toyota Corolla.'
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Qld schools accused of covert gender counselling without involving parents
Queensland parents have come forward to accuse school guidance officers of advising students as young as 12 on how to go about changing their names, pronouns, and gender – without including parents.
School guidance officers are advising students as young as 12 on how to go about changing their names, pronouns, and gender – without including parents.
Two Queensland families say they were cut out of the process for weeks, with one claiming a guidance officer encouraged their child to lie to support a potential case to cut ties with their parents.
The Department of Education said consent is needed for students to receive ongoing guidance officer support, but officers can judge whether a child be considered a “mature minor” – a legal test of a child’s intelligence and understanding – and consent to services themselves.
The allegations come after The Courier-Mail revealed teachers are being forced to deceive parents when a student asks the school to help them change their gender, pronouns or name.
In fresh claims, a mother to two daughters who both changed to male names and pronouns, said her younger child was “groomed” by the guidance officer at her Queensland state school.
The mother said her daughter – referred to as “Claire” – was groomed into believing her home was not safe if her parents did not affirm her new identity.
The mother claims Claire was encouraged by the guidance officer to make a false allegation against her mother’s husband, to support her case if she wanted to be considered a “mature minor” and move out of home in the future. In the end, Claire withdrew the allegations.
“It is telling anxious kids that their mother and father are not safe because they will not affirm (their new identity), they’re being exploited by these school counsellors,” Claire’s mother said.
Meanwhile, a father said his daughter spoke to her state school in late 2020 about changing her name and pronouns. Plans were made for this change to take effect in Term 1, 2021.
But the father was only informed by the school days before it resumed about his daughter’s planned name and pronoun changes and that she would wear a boy’s uniform.
The father believes his daughter spoke to the guidance officer for three months before he was informed. He said his daughter did not want him to know.
“They were going to put it (new gender identity) in place without telling me initially, just a flick of the switch. There was no communication and no support plan,” he said.
“I felt that the school took over that parental role.”
A Department of Education spokeswoman said guidance officers may refer students who require specialised support, for a range of reasons, to external support services.
“Consent for students to receive ongoing support from a guidance officer must be obtained,” the spokeswoman said.
“The Department provides comprehensive information to assist school staff, including guidance officers, in making decisions that ensure gender diverse students receive appropriate support, tailored to their individual needs.
“While consent is often provided by parents, guidance officers use their professional judgment to determine if a student has sufficient maturity and understanding to be considered a mature minor and therefore consent to services.”
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‘It’s like they are trying to change the meaning of property ownership’: Landlords threaten to sell up over further reforms
Leftist governments can be truly moronic at times
MORE than 80 per cent of property investors have warned they may sell up altogether if the Queensland government continues to hit them with reforms, in what is a troubling outlook for the state’s already strained rental market.
A survey of more than 3300 Queensland property investors, conducted by the Real Estate Institute of Queensland (REIQ), canvassed sentiment towards some of the ‘hot button’ changes proposed in the State Government’s stage two rental law reforms.
Those proposed reforms include making it easier for renters to install safety, security and accessibility modifications, to make minor personalisation changes, balance privacy of tenants with owners’ entry rights and need for information on their investment, changes to the rental bond process and to what fees and charges can be passed on to a tenant.
The REIQ survey revealed that 81.4 per cent of respondents said that recent and proposed tenancy law changes had influenced the likelihood that they will sell up.
To put that number into perspective, if all of those 81.4 per cent of the 3300 landlords who responded to the survey followed through on their threat, Queensland could lose nearly 2700 rental properties from the market.
While 62 per cent of respondents said they had considered selling their rental property in the past two years, 27 per cent said the primary reason for doing so was on account of rental law reforms.
REIQ CEO Antonia Mercorella said they had received an overwhelming and passionate response from Queensland rental providers, who may walk away from property investment due to yet another round of rental law reforms.
“The REIQ is concerned with ongoing and consistent rental law reforms in Queensland which are progressively eroding property investor rights along with their confidence,” Ms Mercorella said.
“Further withdrawal of properties from the rental pool amid the critical rental crisis in Queensland will have dire consequences on the market in both the short and long term.
“This wholesale reform of the rental market is in direct contradiction with what all stakeholders seem to be in furious agreement about – the need to boost rental supply.”
The survey revealed that 98.6 per cent of rental providers were opposed to tenants making any property modifications without their consent – citing various concerns regarding property value, safety regulations, unqualified works, costs to rectify or fix damages and insurance implications.
Further, if rental providers could only refuse a property minor modification by going through the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT), 83.7 per cent said it would impact their decision to keep the property.
More than half (64.5%) were opposed to minor personalised changes to rental properties without the owner’s consent and were apprehensive about the lack of definition of ‘minor’.
For example, 79.8 per cent of the survey respondents did not consider painting walls of the rental property to be minor.
Other concerns surrounding minor personalisation changes related to the risk of costly damages and repairs falling back onto property owners to rectify.
The potential cost burden of the various changes were frequently referenced in the respondent’s commentary, with the survey revealing that 75.6 per cent said that the current rent they charge does not cover all of their outgoings to hold the property.
The REIQ said that private investors were doing the majority of the heavy lifting when it came to the provision of rental housing in this state, and is cautioning against further reforms.
Ray White AKG CEO Avi Khan, who has over 2000 rental properties on his books, said the survey reflected what his team were hearing on the ground. “It is like they are trying to change the meaning of property ownership,” he said. “I had one landlord saying he felt like he was losing control of his own asset.
“Landlords are feeling like they no longer have 100 per cent ownership of their own properties as reforms move in favour of the tenant and it is causing huge confidence issues for investors in Queensland.
“It is like the people making these proposals don't own investment properties.”
Mr Khan said the number of investors seeking appraisals was “through the roof”, adding that the vast majority were interstate investors who perceived that the government was taking control of their own assets away from them.
“And if that continues, it will only make the rental crisis worse,” Mr Khan warned.
“We have to keep in mind that with interest rates rising as fast as they have, and borrowing capacity crashing, it is not like it will be tenants who will be buying these properties if an investor decides to cash out.
“In terms of trying to address the housing crisis, they (the government) are just shooting themselves in the foot.”
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24 May, 2023
Catering giant calls for flexible working hours for foreign students
Australia’s largest in-flight catering company is warning up to 150 flights per week could be affected by tighter restrictions on the amount of hours foreign students are allowed to work.
Gold Coast-based dnata said the federal government’s move to reduce the amount of hours workers on student visas can be employed to 48 hours per fortnight from July 1 will have a significant impact on its business and the employees themselves.
Dnata, which each year produces 27 million meals for major airlines including Qantas and Jetstar, is calling for an 18-month grace period so it and others in the hospitality sector can ramp up employment of local staff. The restrictions put an end to uncapped hours for student visa holders introduced during Covid-19 to fill labour shortages.
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Forced labour in China is helping to fuel Australia's love affair with cheap solar
Ms Chanisheff is an ethnic Uyghur hailing from the north-western Chinese province of Xinjiang, or East Turkistan as she calls it. Xinjiang is one of the world's biggest producers of polysilicon, a crucial ingredient in modern-day solar panels.
About 45 per cent of the world's supply comes from the province, where metallurgical grade silicon is crushed and purified in huge factories.
But researchers and human rights activists claim those factories are also home to the widespread use of forced Uyghur labour.
Ms Chanisheff says getting direct accounts from affected workers is hard because of what she says is a vast orchestrated crackdown on Uyghurs by Beijing.
Clouds gather over sunny story
But she says many people in the Uyghur diaspora in Australia and elsewhere in the world know of family members or friends caught up in the industry.
"The Uyghurs that live in Australia, they know their families are in these labour camps working for the solar panel industry," she said.
"But they're unwilling to speak up due to further persecution of their family members."From an almost non-existent base 20 years ago, China's solar industry has grown to become the world's dominant supplier of panels.
In polysilicon, China accounts for almost 90 per cent of production, having crushed competitors including the US during its rise. China's success has been a boon for consumers, who have benefited from sharp falls in the price of solar panels.
But ethical questions about parts of the industry in China appear to be growing. Despite insistences by Beijing that its policies in Xinjiang are aimed at countering terrorism and alleviating poverty, many remain unconvinced.
Nicholas Aberle, the director of energy generation and storage at the Clean Energy Council, says the reports of human rights abuses in the solar supply chain are a worry.
Dr Aberle said while "this is not an issue peculiar to solar", consumers and governments could not afford to turn a blind eye. "We condemn modern slavery and forced labour," Dr Aberle said.
"It's not something that anyone wants to see anywhere in the world or involved in any of the products that they're purchasing. "Unfortunately, there is some quite good evidence that this is occurring in Xinjiang in Western China."
Claims labour coercion rife
Strategic Analysis Australia director Michael Shoebridge said defining the use of Uyghur labour in the solar industry was difficult because workers, at least notionally, had a choice about whether to participate in it.
But Mr Shoebridge said the choice often seemed to involve working in the factories "for long hours and low rates of pay" or drawing the ire of authorities. As a result, he said many workers were effectively "coerced contractors".
"Really, the Xinjiang economy is propped up by cheap Uyghur labour," Mr Shoebridge said.
On top of this, Mr Shoebridge noted Xinjiang's polysilicon producers also relied on cheap, heavily subsidised coal power to maintain their cost advantage. "It's an underbelly of the solar panel industry," he said.
"People feel very virtuous slapping these solar panels on their roofs. "But if they understood the industry supply chain and its entanglement in the rather nasty human rights abuses and dirty coal in Xinjiang, they wouldn't feel quite so happy when the sun shone on their solar panels."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-17/the-dirty-secret-behind-australias-cheap-solar/102288954
**************************************************************Melbourne Council's public toilet strategy sparks divisive petition, charged meeting
A Melbourne council is dealing with the fallout from a divisive petition against gender-neutral toilets.
The petition was presented to the Hobsons Bay City Council at its meeting in Melbourne's west on Tuesday night with more than a thousand signatures.
One woman was reportedly abused with sexist remarks and protesters shouted outside the council meeting where the petition was discussed.
Hobsons Bay councillors had been considering a public toilet strategy document which included plans for more loos in the municipality, the cleaning and redevelopment of public toilets and a review of "all existing toilets to ensure facilities are fit for purpose, safe and inclusive".
During the meeting, Councillor Daria Kellander said women did not want to use unisex toilets because of fears for their safety and a lack of cleanliness.
She also said the council was "taking another space away from women and girls where men can linger without question", accused the other councillors of silencing her as a woman and spoke of her Muslim friends not being comfortable using existing public unisex toilets that are near a mosque in the municipality.
Gender neutral toilets have become more common in public places in recent years as more people identify as gender diverse, but in some cases the move has sparked backlash from those who want dedicated men's and women's toilets.
The council area already has a number of unisex public toilets that are standalone cubicles.
During the meeting, Cr Kellander was asked if she would support transgender women using women's-only toilets, but she did not answer that question.
Cr Kellander, who was the Liberal candidate for the seat of Williamstown at the last federal election, proposed an amendment that would see any public toilet blocks in the area with three or more cubicles include a women's-only toilet.
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The supremacy of feelings
We now have various psychological contexts being determined under regulation in Australia. One example is the workplace, which has changed from being a place of respect, to being a fantasy land of feel-goodism.
As reported by Sky News Australia, a new national code of conduct describes mental safety in the workplace as being just as important as physical safety. Of course, we do not want anyone taking advantage of others at work, but the way this regulation is explained puts the responsibility on employers for the mental health of their workers. As often happens, ‘the devil is in the detail’, or in this case, the lack of coherent conceptual thought that makes managing the detail impossible.
Responsibility for others’ ‘mental health’? Really? Then answer me this – what is ‘mental health’, or even more basically, what is the ‘mind’? Whose responsibility is it to monitor how we think? Are emotions simply a matter of the mind? If we believe the mind is simply the outworking of our physical predispositions and capacities that are expressed through past and current social contexts, then we might assume we can plan perfect environments that will make all our people happy – for happiness is the standard of wellbeing these days. And if all factors for happiness and wellbeing can be known through personality tests and social engineering, then we can create near-perfect environments. We already have a good handle on that and we call those places ‘zoos’. Trouble is, people are not just animals.
An additional problem is that happiness and wellbeing are so utterly self-referential in our therapeutic age. What system can be used to decide whose feelings to validate? Oh wait, of course, we already have that. It is called Critical Race Theory, and all we need to do is to label people by race to determine who is oppressed, who are oppressors, and therefore, who to move on if someone or a group claim that is not being validated.
The implied assumption behind this kind of regulation is that if you have authority, because you are responsible for others, then you are the one with greater power. If your people feel offended, uncomfortable, or unhappy, it is always your fault as ‘the boss’. This is because, in our emotion-focused age, the one in authority is always the oppressor, and the worker is the oppressed. As one of my teachers said to me once when I was a school principal, ‘Your job is to keep me stress-free!’ So much for ‘no pain, no gain’, or ‘no challenge, no growth’.
This new requirement is not science-based regulation. It is a mixture of good ideas encased in Romanticists’ false notions of life, wrapped up in a therapeutised understanding of self that denies our world of wonder and pain. It is, at best, a move to help reinforce respect in the workplace. At its worst (which is my best guess), it is another way of destabilising the best of our law and mercy-based tradition while we move into a moral relativism that is impossible personally and socially. It is, put bluntly, an institutionalisation of a version of ‘the self’ that is incoherent, selfish, and clearly morally evasive.
Take this quote from Mental Health and Resilience Expert Graeme Cowan: ‘Every company has an obligation to have a psychologically safe and healthy workplace.’ This assumes companies (and the courts) will know what being psychologically safe means in the face of someone asserting: ‘But they made me uncomfortable so often!’
How will a court or commissioner make judgments about how someone reacted in their internal states to external events? Courts review evidence of fact – physical evidence of people in time and place. But his kind of regulation makes the regulator the arbiter of whose feelings are more valid. Such a situation leads to the weakening of understanding of what ‘proof’ looks like, and paves the way for an emotivist analysis of any conflict situation – one where if anyone can claim victimhood, it is expected that sympathy should automatically be with them.
Then there is this:
‘Psychological safety is where you feel you can be your authentic self, you feel that you can take risks and try new things and know that if it doesn’t work out you don’t get crucified – it’s really feeling connected with those around us, it’s having a sense of belonging.’
Note the language of ‘where you feel’. How can this be regulated? What if you are actually safe, but you feel as if you are not? Who will adjudicate that? A raft of psychologists? Psychiatrists? Lawyers? Magistrates? And who decides what ‘authentic self’ means for anyone at any point of time? The person on their testimony? How might that be checked, let alone supported? What if your ‘authentic self’ is at odds with the hope and goals of the group with which you are associating?
And what of these notions of being ‘connected’ and ‘belonging’? In matters of regulation, this is traditionally linked to checking that actions are not discriminatory according to certain individual characteristics in certain defined contexts. Traditionally, women were safe when they were connected to and belonged to a defined woman’s safe shelter. If a transgender woman was appointed to work in that woman’s shelter, whose feelings would be considered as more important? The women (female adult) workers, or the transgender person?
Or imagine a worker who declares that they are not feeling connected with those around them. Perhaps the reason is that they have low iron in their blood, causing a physical loss of focus and energy, which they interpret as ‘they are not allowing me to be me’. Can the workplace ask them to visit a physician, or would that be considered as being non-affirming of their interpretation of their emotions?
People cannot be reduced to their physical inheritances and capacity, not even in recognition of their social context, past and present. To understand each other, we need deeper, more human interaction. Legal regulation needs to stick to external evidence based on actions and responses. When law plays social-worker, justice becomes sentiment and complainants are assumed to be victims. The accused must therefore be bad, even if not proven. And worst still, the media is allowed to run commentary choosing their preferred narrative, and not chasing the facts of the matter.
But could that really happen? Oh wait, we have an investigation into something like this right now in our Capital – silly me, of course our capital will lead us in this incoherence.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/the-supremacy-of-feelings/
************************************23 May, 2023
Net Zero politicians: liars, scoundrels, and morons
The lies told by politicians usually have no consequences. Their intellectual dishonesty, as a species, is such that citizens go to the polls assuming election promises have an expiry date similar to nine-day-old milk.
If the lie is a promise to ‘lower taxes’, the inevitable raising of taxes several months later is met with a groan in the same way that the purchaser of a used car sees an oil stain develop on the garage floor. There’s a sense of resignation rather than rage. After all, you’re the one that shook hands with a shonky dealer.
Fast-forward three years, and that same politician is likely to be re-elected on a follow-up promise to subsidise mechanics working on repairs for all leaking and broken used cars – provided they become members of a union.
Do you see how this works?
Even though people were ripped off by failed election promises the first time, they are motivated to vote for the same bunch of scoundrels in the hope they’ll fix the problem their policies caused. Then we have a whole new group of mechanics tempted by government-contracted work which they can only secure if they make a permanent commitment to an institution aligned with that political party.
Is this kind of governance good for society? No. It encourages the sale of crap cars and a generation of mechanics who earn their living from failed government policy. The only clever thing it does is create a cycle of dependence where each broken election promise serves as a platform for the next campaign. Solving problems is a thankless task, but creating them … well, that’s genius.
Remember the Covid era? Governments in every state employed hundreds of thousands of ‘health’ workers to man vaccine booths, check vaccine certificates, work in quarantine centres, clean public spaces, and police the behaviour of citizens. It was a Goliath, publicly-funded industry that encouraged all of those people to vote for politicians who promised to protect Covid jobs. Is it good for society to remain in a permanent pandemic state? No. But it’s good for those workers, operating at the expense of an ever-diminishing pool of genuine private wealth creators. Eventually people turn around and wonder where this economic disaster came from. Never mind, surely the government will fix it…
The are no consequences for political parties that operate in this fashion. They remain in power, gaining bewildering majorities, until society falls to bits and the ruling party has no choice but to donate the mess to the opposition with little more than a box of band-aids in the Treasury.
This is the standard Labor model for government. Barter. Break. Bleed. Bail.
Unfortunately, the other half of this equation is an opposition that is prepared to forgo political glory and instead clean up the mess created by its rivals. For the first time in Australian history, the Liberal Party has decided to dismiss its historical duty and ‘get in on the game’, leaving the country with no one to stop the economy from crossing the red line.
If this nauseous feeling seems familiar, it’s because this is the cycle adopted by major parties across the world for Net Zero. We have to give them credit for a Bond-level deceit after bureaucracies, such as the United Nations, got bored with ‘world peace’ and decided to invent an existential problem which they used to con nations into spending trillions every year to ‘fix’ – even though you cannot fix something that isn’t real. It’s the same scam run by tribal wizards extorting favours in exchange for ‘weather dances’. While they might not be saving the planet, the United Nations did give themselves a new purpose. Maybe it’s for the best, given how terrible the whole ‘world peace’ initiative is looking.
In summary, the global leadership line goes: ‘There’s an apocalypse coming, but vote for us and we can save you!’
This comes with a range of feel-good slogans like, ‘clean, cheap, reliable energy’ and, ‘be a good global citizen’, but the underlying policy is the same: ‘your taxes can change the weather’. It’s the fashionably acceptable version of the white saviour syndrome where the same people that used to take gap years in Africa now stick a banner on their social media profile, shrug off rising prices, and delude themselves into thinking that makes them a good person.
Humans have been paying for their sins and silencing their existential fears this way for a long time. Politicians prey on this kind of thinking. What’s not to love about Net Zero? You get to be a good citizen, businesses compete on slogans instead of product quality, and the government ends up rich. Everybody wins! Well, not exactly. There are plenty of problems with Net Zero – power bills for one, and the blackouts for another. Pretty soon we’re going to hear from disgruntled landowners as the government reclaims their properties to build transmissions lines, and if Chris Bowen gets his way regarding offshore wind farms – the entire East Coast of Australia is going to march on Canberra. That’s before we get to the mounting pile of renewables corpses to contend with and society’s blind eye to real pollution which sits unattended in our waterways.
‘But don’t worry! Vote for us again and this time we’ll give you a discount on your power bills!’ Woe be to the idiots that fall for that one.
There’s now an entire class of workers with no ideological investment in the spiritual cause of Net Zero. Their lack of faith is irrelevant, because Net Zero policies mean they’re struggling to keep their businesses going. Instead of punishing politicians for endangering their livelihoods, humans do a very strange thing: they vote for the same guys on the promise of it being ‘fixed’.
This is how Net Zero manages to wreck the economy and increase its popularity. It’ll happen again and again and again until those businesses shut down and the population ends up on welfare. Then they want more welfare. Then taxes are raised to pay for it. Then they want more… Those voters have to vote for the government, or their welfare cycle vanishes.
Australia will die long before the lights go out. These are not the politicians of Australia’s infancy. They are not going to have a common sense epiphany and do the right thing for the survival of the nation. Hard choices and self sacrifice are not phrases found in the language of career politicians and factional seat warmers. The rats that scurry around in Canberra have their eye on lucrative international positions and corporate jobs. They’ll move on to bigger salaries. No consequences, remember?
The next slogan is already being promoted: ‘Vote for us and we’ll give some of you a government handout for your power bills! (And raise taxes on the rest of you suckers.)’
What was that last bit?
Maybe we’ll get lucky next time if we vote for them again. That’s what people think as they are reminded by wall-to-wall state-funded media that the apocalypse is on its way.
I’m not sure how to make this any clearer: stop voting for liars, scoundrels, and morons.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/net-zero-politicians-liars-scoundrels-and-morons
**************************************************Police in Higgins case acted only in response to political threat
The police officer in charge of the investigation into Brittany Higgins’s rape allegations has revealed the immense pressure investigators were under to charge Bruce Lehrmann, culminating in a direct phone call from her boyfriend, David Sharaz, to a senior detective threatening to publicly condemn the time being taken.
Detective Superintendent Scott Moller gave evidence to the Sofronoff inquiry on Monday that within an hour of Mr Sharaz calling Detective Inspector Marcus Boorman, he was given instructions to serve a summons on Mr Lehrmann for one count of sexual intercourse without consent.
Superintendent Moller agreed that at the time the decision was made by his boss, Commander Michael Chew, investigators were faced with “the potential threat of Ms Higgins going public about the delay”.
Detectives were under so much pressure to progress the case against their professional beliefs that many went on stress leave, Superintendent Moller said.
He confirmed that as The Australian reported last year, police did not believe there was enough evidence to charge Mr Lehrmann but agreed to do so after receiving advice from ACT Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold.
Superintendent Moller said his investigators did not believe they had met the evidentiary threshold to charge Mr Lehrmann so he signed the summons himself.
“I swore the summons because I did not want to put any of my staff in the position where they had to do something they didn’t want to do, didn’t believe in, so I did it,” he said.
“I didn’t think there was enough evidence and then I received the director’s advice and certainly from his advice, I decided to go ahead.”
Superintendent Moller also revealed Ms Higgins was allowed to watch CCTV footage of herself and Mr Lehrmann at Parliament House because she was “so keen to see it” - even though it could have corrupted her evidence - as police felt obliged under their “victim-centric” approach to show it to her.
Superintendent Moller said Ms Higgins “continually asked” to see the footage, which showed the pair exiting and entering Parliament House on the night Ms Higgins claims Mr Lehrmann raped her on a sofa in senator Linda Reynolds’s office.
“In a normal investigation, we would never show somebody evidence like that because it might influence their evidence later in court,” he said.
Superintendent Moller agreed to a suggestion by counsel assisting, Joshua Jones, that Ms Higgins had expressed to police that “her memory had been corrupted” by speaking with journalists.
“Wearing our investigators’ hats, we go: ‘No, we should not show that evidence because it might taint it later on down the track’. But under a victim-centric model, we go ‘Well, this is really important for her to see this, we’re trying to support her’.”
Mr Jones: “Ms Higgins had expressed on a number of occasions that she’d had a lot to drink and had blacked out and by showing her that video footage, you risked corrupting her evidence about that section of the night?”
Superintendent Moller: “Yes, and that was the dilemma that we had, to be honest. That was the issue that we had but it was so important for supporting the victim, she was so keen to see that and to help her healing process that it was important to show her.”
On June 28, 2021, the DPP provided advice to ACT Policing that there was sufficient evidence to charge Mr Lehrmann but before making their final decision, police sought to have their investigation reviewed by officers who were not involved in the matter.
Before the review could occur, an article was published on news.com.au on July 29, 2021, in which Mr Drumgold denied his office was delaying the case after AFP Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw wrongly indicated during a National Press Club address the matter was still with the DPP.
Mr Drumgold told the website he had provided his advice on whether charges should be laid a month earlier and any decision on whether to arrest and charge Mr Lehrmann lay with the police.
The day that the article was published, Mr Sharaz emailed Victims of Crime Commissioner Heidi Yates to ask “What’s going on? We’re reading this news about it. Is a decision going to be made as was forecast in the July 12 meeting?”
Police had previously told Ms Higgins that they expected a decision would be made by the end of July.
On July 30, Ms Yates forwarded the email from Mr Sharaz to Inspector Boorman who informed Superintendent Moller of the email. A short time later, Mr Sharaz called Inspector Boorman and indicated that Ms Higgins planned to release a media statement critical of how long police were taking to charge Mr Lehrmann.
“9.30am further briefing with Inspector Boorman re Higgins,” Superintendent Moller recorded in his police diary at the time.
“Discussion re Higgins contemplating media release due to recent media statements by Commissioner AFP and DPP.”
Superintendent Moller then informed Commander Chew about Ms Higgins’s possible media statement.
“Travel to Brisbane next week to talk with Higgins and serve summons on Lehrmann for one count of sexual intercourse without consent,” Superintendent Moller wrote in his diary of his instructions from Commander Chew. “Chew further said start preparing the summons now in preparation for your travel based on legal provided by DPP.” Mr Jones put it to Superintendent Moller that when police made the decision to serve the summons, they were dealing with negative press, the threat of Ms Higgins going public about the further delay and incorrect public comments by their commissioner.
“In the office, around the time of charging, there was immense pressure,” Mr Jones suggested.
“Yes, well throughout the whole part of the investigation, but yes, it culminated at this time,” Superintendent Moller replied.
Mr Jones: “And here, the commander on the 30th is directing to get the summons served?”
Superintendent Moller: “Well, he says preparations for the summons to be served, yes.”
Mr Jones: “But he’s saying to you, isn’t he? ‘Get the summons ready, go up to Brisbane’ … and he is making the decision to charge in light of the pressure that’s on him?”
Superintendant Moller: “No, I think that’s a little bit unfair – he’s making the decision to charge based on, you know, the brief evidence that has been provided.”
In other evidence, Superintendant Moller said he believed it was necessary for police to conduct a second interview with Ms Higgins in May 2021 to clarify inconsistencies they had discovered during their investigation.
“We had a lot of concern about the evidence being presented to us and we wanted to clarify some of the inconsistencies we’d developed through the evidence,” he said. “We’re torn by trying to get the best possible evidence we can, but also we’re trying to support the complainant through this process.
“We’ve got to support and protect the (alleged) victim but we’ve also got an obligation to collect the … most thorough evidence we can to put before the courts.”
Superintendent Moller also conceded that Ms Higgins’s confidential counselling notes were wrongly provided to Mr Lehrmann’s previous lawyer but said ordinary processes had been circumvented “because there was a need to get it all done”, following instructions from Commander Chew.
“I was aware, I was living the pressures at the time,” he said.
“I knew the exceptional amount of pressure on us to get this done and I knew the pressure that was on him as well so he didn’t have to explain it to me.
“If you were involved in that environment at that time, you would appreciate how difficult it was.”
Superintendant Moller also acknowledged that his Executive Brief on the case, which has become known as the Moller Report, referred only to problems found with Ms Higgins’s account of events and did not raise doubts about the plausibility of Mr Lehrmann’s version.
However, Superintendant Moller said that other documents available to Commander Chew did question aspects of Mr Lehrmann’s account, and that all the issues had been the subject of constant discussion.
“Every day for a year and a half we were talking about this matter, so we were talking constantly about this; I was briefing Commander Chew and I was being briefed … nearly every day,” he said.
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Santos boss Kevin Gallagher says gas is the key to moving to net zero, not renewables
Gas, not renewable energy, is the “main game” in the transition to net zero, Santos managing director Kevin Gallagher says, while warning the industry’s opponents are focused on “killing oil and gas”.
Speaking at the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association conference in Adelaide on Thursday, Mr Gallagher also championed carbon capture and storage (CCS) as integral to the transition, saying Santos’s Moomba project would equate to the carbon impact of taking 200,000-300,000 cars off the road.
Mr Gallagher said Santos was not looking for a government handout for its CCS ambitions, which include three hubs starting with the $US165m Moomba CCS project which aims to start injecting CO2 next year. But the industry did need “a supportive regulatory framework’’ to be able to move forward with confidence, he said.
Mr Gallagher said “abated oil and gas” was crucial to the move to net zero, with CCS a vital part of the equation.
He also said gas was at the core of the long-term shift to net zero, while downplaying the role of renewables.
“Renewables are part of the solution, but they are not the holy grail,’’ he said.
“The main game is gas because it makes renewables possible, it provides feedstock for fertilisers and chemicals, and it fires the high temperature furnaces required for bricks and cement.
“However, while getting to net zero should be all about emissions reductions, our opponents are only about killing oil and gas. Which is why they now seek to discredit carbon capture and storage as well.’’
The conference being held in Adelaide this week – the industry’s major annual get-together – has focused heavily on the role of CCS in the national and global transition to net zero.
APPEA itself has called for the creation of “net zero industrial zones”, where heavy-emitting industries would cluster together and have their emissions collected and sequestered.
However the federal government appears split on the issue, with Resources Minister Madeleine King this week expressing strong support for CCS while Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic said he had not been shown evidence that it was viable at a large scale.
Mr Gallagher said Santos had been injecting gas into depleted reservoirs in the Cooper Basin for “decades”, which made him “very confident” that Moomba CCS would be a success.
On a global scale, Mr Gallagher said there were 30 projects in operation, storing 44 million tonnes of CO2 annually, and it was clear that “abated oil and gas” – gas with the CO2 stripped out and stored – had a role to play for decades to come.
“To achieve the government’s targets under the Safeguard Mechanism, industries like steel, cement, aluminium and ammonia need us to succeed in delivering large-scale, low-cost abatement and affordable abated gas,’’ Mr Gallagher said.
“Otherwise, Australia will lose those industries and those jobs as well.
“We want to work with ministers like the Minister for Industry and the Minister for Energy to build support and confidence with these customers so that we can keep a viable manufacturing sector in Australia.’’
Mr Gallagher said there was also an equity issue involved in ensuring the supply of affordable gas, with “energy poverty” a growing issue even in developed countries such as Australia, while globally, gas was needed to feed the world.
Mr Gallagher said the industry’s ideological opponents had given “no thought to the human cost of a world without oil and gas’’.
“The world could not feed itself today, or anytime soon, without fertilisers made from gas,’’ he said.
“Without ammonia-based fertilisers made from natural gas, we could feed about four billion people, roughly half of today’s global population.
“And we do not yet have replacements for the materials that are fundamental to our modern civilisation – steel, cement and plastics.’’
Mr Gallagher, when asked about the public perception of the oil and gas sector and the political fight over issues such as the gas market intervention and recent proposed changes to the petroleum resources rent tax, said the industry needed to make its case forcefully.
“As an industry, we’ve sought to keep our head down and try to stay out of the firing line, but we’re in the firing line and so we do have to fight back but I don’t think that’s going to war with everybody.
“But I do think standing up for ourselves means that we have to be there telling our story and making sure that people understand the benefits of gas and that the need for gas will be here for a long time.’’
On the political front, Mr Gallagher said regulatory stability was the key issue.
“When I speak to my Japanese and Korean, Malaysian, French partners, they are all very concerned with the rate of change and the rate of market interventions,’’ he said.
“So whatever happens now I think we need stability going forward and I’ll be working with both sides of politics to try and encourage them.’’
Opposition leader Peter Dutton, in a video address delivered before Mr Gallagher’s speech, cast the political situation in a much stronger light, juxtaposing the “renewable zealotry” of the Labor Government against the free market ideology of the federal opposition.
Mr Dutton vowed to wind back the government’s intervention measures if elected, and urged the industry to “fight for yourselves’’ against “financially crippling” measures which threatened to de-industrialise the nation.
Mr Gallagher also said Santos’s direct air capture (DAC) trials were also progressing well, and the ambition was to bring the cost down to $US75 per tonne of carbon captured by 2030.
“Just last week, I visited Welshpool in Perth to witness commissioning of a DAC technology that we will soon be trailing in the Cooper Basin,’’ he said.
“It’s been running intermittently for several days now and it is working as planned, with lower energy inputs than other direct air capture technologies that we know of.
“The trial unit is able to capture a quarter of a tonne of CO2 per day and will soon be transported to Moomba where we will optimise its performance.
“Later this year, we will scale the technology up to build a one tonne per day unit for delivery to Moomba and further trials next year.’’
Mr Gallagher said he believed the company could hit the $US75 target, “an order of magnitude lower than average global costs of DAC technology today’’.
“This puts us in reach of the possibility of eliminating Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions from natural gas production and use,’’ he said.
The pilot plant’s costs are currently about $US200 per tonne of carbon, however that was inflated by the small size of the project, Mr Gallagher said.
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Aged care homes buckle under Labor’s tough rules
At least 23 aged-care homes have shut their doors since September last year as the sector grapples with Labor’s stringent reforms, including 24/7 mandatory registered nurses and minimum care requirements.
According to figures from the Department of Health and Aged Care provided in a question on notice to opposition aged care spokeswoman Anne Ruston, 17 residential services closed down between September 1 last year and February 28.
The new figures have been released publicly after aged care provider Wesley Mission in April announced plans to shut all three Sydney homes, citing difficulty in attracting and retaining staff to meet the government’s targets that will take effect on July 1.
West Australian operator Brightwater Care Group last month confirmed the closure of three Perth homes after the company was unable to find enough staff to meet the new mandate.
Of the 17 homes closed from September to February, the vast majority were in metropolitan areas, despite Aged Care Minister Anika Wells’s claims that only regional and rural homes were struggling to meet the new rules.
The department named several providers that had closed their doors, including Wynwood Nursing Home, Marlowe Homes, Trinity Care Burwood, the Congregation of the Dominican Sisters of Malta in NSW and Allambi Elderly Peoples Home.
Two new providers opened aged care homes during in the same time, including Park Beach Residence in NSW and Sunnycare Residential in Queensland.
Ms Wells said there were “more beds opening than closing in aged care” and, since July 1 2019, the “number of operational residential care places nationally has increased by more than 6500 places”.
“Since July 1 2021, 47 services have opened, with 11 opening in regional areas. The Albanese government is investing $20.4bn in residential aged care in 2023-24, up from $16.4bn in 2022-23,” she said.
However, the sector is scrambling to implement a suite of reforms including mandated minutes of care per resident, quality and safety standards, and full-time nursing requirements as it adjusts to a new funding model brought in last October as recommended by the aged care royal commission.
The overhaul comes as financial troubles plague the sector, with the latest figures from the Quarterly Financial Snapshot of the Aged Care Sector revealing 66 per cent of private providers are operating at losses, with homes losing an average of $28 per resident each day.
“The Albanese government is confident there will be a positive increase in the finances of providers when the next quarterly results come through,” Ms Wells told The Australian.
As the sector grapples with a major shortfall of workers and a deteriorating financial outlook, Aged & Community Care Providers Association chief executive Tom Symondson warned the pace of reforms must be “manageable” for providers and “not exacerbate an already challenging situation”.
Mr Symondson said the shutdowns were concerning but “understandable in the current reform climate”.
“We understand and support the need for well-designed reform, but we need to work with the government to ensure the pace of change is manageable for aged-care providers and does not exacerbate an already challenging situation,” he said.
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22 May, 2023
The Nazi boogeyman
The Left are trying to show that anybody who opposes their views is a Nazi-sympathizer. There certanly are in Australia people with antisemitic views. I have good friends with such views, even though I myself am a firm supporter of Israel.
But it has yet to be shown that people with such views have any political influence. They may be among those who support various conservative causes but political causes commonly gain support from a variety of people. What is implied but not shown below is that antisemites influence others to their views.
My intensive studies of neo-Nazis years ago showed them to be thoroughly marginal and I can see no change since. See:
http://jonjayray.com/antisem.html
for detailsMelbourne’s far-right are agile and adaptive at spreading their message of hate
Though small, they practise a nimble strategy to develop support, concealing their activities in encrypted channels, leapfrogging from issue to issue as they attempt to insert their antisemitism and white supremacist view into conservative movements.
First it was multiculturalism, then the pandemic and vaccine mandates, now trans rights.
Deakin University extremism expert Dr Josh Roose explains it’s a process called “breadcrumbing” – where a person drops nibbles of interest with the aim of engaging with someone else – and it’s effective in both polarising the debate and growing the far-right movement.
On Thursday, Roose joined a confidential meeting of more than 100 council representatives and police, all of them desperate to understand how to manage the hate manifesting at their meetings and drag queen story times.
The briefing was convened to cope with “threatening and unpredictable” behaviour that mayors across Melbourne had seen in the past few months, and Roose was up in the middle of the night on a work trip to Denmark to provide advice and skills to protect democratic norms now under siege.
For the last few years, most prominently since the Reclaim Australia movement emerged in 2015, far-right activists have targeted particular issues in an attempt to surreptitiously introduce their beliefs into public discourse.
These conversations, buried deep in encrypted Telegram channels, happen every day – some explicit, others implicit – and attempt to draw people already in thralls of conspiracy into a community of violence.
Inside the Melbourne boxing gym with a neo-Nazi underbelly
Roose says the far-right members participate in online debates about hot topics and slowly attempt to introduce extreme ideas with the aim of eventually shaping the debate and “increasing the pool of potential recruits”.
“They continue to have a base due to their presence on social media and encrypted messaging apps: skilful tactics to gain media notoriety and anger and alienation amongst at least some of the community,” he says.
Almost 24 hours before the meeting, on Wednesday afternoon, a demonstration petered out against a drag story time celebration at Eltham Library, in Melbourne’s north-east.
Far-right activist Jimeone Roberts posted a message in a Telegram channel called MyPlace, warning people about “medical experiments”, deriding vaccine mandates, and making comments pejorative of rainbow activists campaigning for trans rights, according to screenshots collected by researchers from the White Rose Society, which tracks neo-Nazis online.
MyPlace, a fast-growing anti-government group targeting councils across Victoria, is a forum of mixed purpose.
There are some who use it to sell organic meat and vegetables; others complain about vaccine mandates and plug holistic medicine retreats; and several share their political aspirations, discussing ways to animate and organise voters in Victoria they believe share their views.
There are now more than 100 MyPlace groups throughout Australia, 49 of them in Victoria. Not all MyPlace groups or members are from the far-right or neo-Nazis.
But the rise in the number of MyPlace groups is an example of what researchers and police have been observing for years, the tendency for far-right activists to target groups with strong views on conservative subjects.
Entertainer Dean Arcuri, who dons his alter ego drag queen Frock Hudson for story time at suburban libraries, has been a target of demonstrators this week.
“It’s insane to think that this harassment is happening. And then someone says the word Nazi, and you just think … what? It is absolutely surreal,” Arcuri says.
Felicity Marlowe, the Rainbow Families manager at LGBTQI+ support service Switchboard Victoria, says the group’s Zoom meeting last week was gatecrashed by protesters who posted vulgar comments in the chat.
Roberts, who has a swastika Hakenkreuz tattooed on his chest, wasn’t the first National Socialist Network (NSN) member attempting to steer the conversation inside the MyPlace network. In early April, Stefanos Eracleous, a former Young Liberal and also a member of the NSN, more pointedly asked members to begin exploring the encrypted channels popular among neo-Nazis and the group’s leader, Thomas Sewell.
“Add yourself to an active Aussie chat for Australian patriotic discussion and freedom rally updates,” said a message on April 4. It was forwarded from a group called “Australian Meditations 51?, the 51 being a figure celebrated by the group because it is the number of people killed in the Christchurch massacre.
More recently, the actions of a group of neo-Nazis spilled onto Melbourne’s streets. They gatecrashed a Let Women Speak rally in March and two members were arrested during an anti-immigration protest in the CBD last Saturday, when police used capsicum spray. On both occasions, the group members wore all black and most concealed their identities while doing the Nazi salute.
The topics the far-right use to steer their message has varied depending on the political issue of the day, says Dr Mario Peucker, an associate professor at Victoria University, and depends on what they believe is strategically useful.
Peucker says that during the moral panic around Islam in mid-2010, the far-right organised around anti-Islam messaging. A few years later, it was the “African gang” panic. Then, for a short time, they organised around bushfires and climate crises before the pandemic emerged as their dominant theme.
“Now that this has been exhausted, neo-Nazi groups, probably inspired by white supremacy groups in the US, saw a new opportunity in targeting LGBTIQ+ friendly events,” Peucker says, “and most recently they seem to have moved to the issue of housing crisis in combination with relatively high levels of immigration.”
The Andrews government has announced it will ban the Nazi salute but is unsure how far away the legislation is. Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes said this week it was not a straightforward process as it collides with free speech issues.
Other countries, including Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland – all of whom have far-right movements – have banned the salute.
In the meantime, though, it means police have limited powers to act. Assistant Commissioner David Clayton, who attended the online forum with councillors on behalf of Victoria Police, summarised the dilemma succinctly: “Some of this stuff is awful, but it’s not unlawful.”
Police confirmed they monitor the activities of the far-right but couldn’t comment on operations specifically, except to say that they were appalled by recent events.
“Everyone has the right to feel safe in our community regardless of who they are – hate and prejudice have no place in our society.”
Flanked by two security guards on Wednesday, Arcuri was invited to Parliament House for a short reading with Premier Daniel Andrews before being ferried out to Eltham.
It was a nervous arrival. He didn’t know, of the people attending, who was there in support, or to disrupt. “People were making jokes on Wednesday going, it’s like a Beyonce moment. And I’m like, well, that sounds more fun than the experience I had,” he says.
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Rebel doctors speak
From the Australian Medical Professionals Society
We have seen censorship unparalleled in the scope of its reach in human history, especially in the treatment of Covid. Doctors who have dissented from official state-sanctioned treatment diktats have been and continue to be sanctioned by the medical regulator, and egregiously unfairly fired from their positions.
The restrictions on prescribing ivermectin have recently been dropped by the TGA. The provisionally approved Covid vaccines have been associated with unprecedented harm and demonstrated negative efficacy; alarmingly, there are still official recommendations for their continued usage.
The unprecedented squashing of scientific debate by the regulatory authorities enabled by MainStream Media and social media censorship, which continues to this day, is a major block to the advancement of healthcare in this country and around the world. This is highly destructive to the foundations of an open and free democracy. If the medical profession is happy to unquestioningly accept the dictates of health bureaucrats instead of scientific debate, this is to the detriment of patients’ health.
The doctors at the Australian Medical Professionals Society have invited the doctors of the Australian Medical Association to a public debate on the government’s response to Covid with a particular focus on the safety and efficacy of the provisionally approved Covid vaccines. Health Professionals must be free to publicly debate public policy using the most up to date scientific evidence and their clinical judgment, unhindered by government regulatory censorship. We would also like to debate the ethical egresses forced on the medical profession and the public by the imposition of mandates.
In modern medicine, our symbol is that of a Physician’s staff with an Asclepiusian snake wrapped around it. Asclepius was the Greek God of healing, and Hippocrates was a student of his. Asclepius made use of a magic potion, which when drawn from the right side of the Gorgon would kill, and from the left side could cure. It speaks to the duality as our role as healers, we seek to heal, but we also have the capacity to harm. The way we minimise harm to our patients is to always allow open discourse, and courteous dialogue amongst health professionals so that the best ideas can prevail.
Dr Aseem Malhotra, a prominent British cardiologist who famously reversed his position on Covid vaccines, is touring Australia with doctors from AMPS from May 27, 2023. Whilst many of the events are open to the public, there are some events planned in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane only for health professionals. In Melbourne and Sydney, whilst addressing healthcare practitioners, Dr Malhotra will be joined by Emeritus Professor Robert Clancy, a distinguished Australian Immunologist. In Brisbane, he will be joined by Professor Wendy Hoy, another distinguished Australian physician whilst addressing healthcare practitioners. We urge all interested healthcare practitioners, regardless of their union affiliations, to come to these events with an open mind. One of the Malhotra’s tour goals is to get the scientific discussion and debate happening amongst a much larger section of the health professional community. Not only to discuss what went wrong with the Covid response but how we can improve systems management and improve healthcare in the future and avoid the policy and decision making disasters that occurred in Covid from ever happening again. Our profession will benefit from this, and ultimately so will our patients.
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Solar power uses more energy than it produces
In Australia, great reliance is being placed on electricity generation from solar panels, both roof-mounted and solar farms. The aim is to replace generation from coal and gas to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Researchers recognise that, for this to succeed, the electricity generated and used must be greater than the electricity expended in making and installing the panels (embodied energy). The number of years it takes for this energy recovery is called Energy Pay-Back Time (EPBT). It is clear that pay-back times should be short because, until the embodied energy is replaced, there cannot be any positive output.
Numerous studies have determined that the pay-back time is between one and five years for rooftop solar and longer for solar farms. This is all very well, but solar panels alone are not a practical, generating system. Nothing is generated from late afternoon through the night to the next morning. No electricity every night… Clearly, a battery has to be added for continuous supply and the embodied energy from the manufacture of the battery has to be included in the analysis. Electricity consumed overnight is replaced when the battery is recharged by the solar panel during the next day.
What happens if the next day is cloudy? Clearly, a bigger battery and a bigger solar panel would be needed. The embodied energy of the bigger battery and panel must be included in assessing pay-back time and the viability of the system. What if the day after that is also cloudy? An even bigger battery and panel than needed. How many cloudy days need to be accounted for?
Any electricity generation system that cannot recover the energy embodied in its manufacture, in a short time or not at all in its lifetime, cannot be considered viable for electricity supply or for emissions reduction.
Yooko Tsuchiya et al reported on two cases of PV electricity generation systems in sub-Saharan rural Tanzania, concluding that EPBT analyses showed unsatisfactory performance. They reported that: ‘At one site, the EPBT even exceeded the lifespan of the PV panel, indicating that energy recovery was impossible.’
The question arises as to whether PV electricity generation can replace coal/gas generation in Australia. This study examines the energy recovery potential of rooftop solar for three cities in Australia representing the extremes of climate, viz. Melbourne, (worst case state capital for sunny days, excepting Hobart), Perth, (best case state capital for sunny days), and Alice Springs (central Australia).
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has records of solar radiation day-by-day for years 1990 to 2022. These data sets show that, of these 33 years, 16 have radiation below average and that May, June, and July are the months most likely to risk electricity shortages, ie. blackouts.
Using these data, a new study has calculated the sizes of solar panel and battery which give the least, combined, embodied energy, then calculated the Energy Pay-Back time for Melbourne, (least sunny days capital excepting Hobart), Perth (most sunny days capital), and Alice Springs (central Australia). Full details of the study are available on request.
The results show that:
The Energy Pay-Back time for roof-top solar generation of electricity is 22 to 24 years for Melbourne, 14 to 15 years for Perth, and 14 years for Alice Springs.
For Melbourne, Perth, and Alice Springs, EPBT’s exceed the lifetime of the battery, therefore, batteries have to be replaced twice in the 30-year lifetime of the solar panel.
Accounting for this, the energy embodied in the manufacture and installation of the system is not recovered in the lifetime of the system.
Storage of excess summer generation for practical use requires very large batteries, resulting in unfavourable EPBT.
The following conclusions can be drawn:
Since prior research indicates that solar farms are worse than rooftop solar, solar farms are not a feasible replacement for traditional coal/gas-based electricity generation.
Given equal dollar value eg dollars per kWh, assigned to both input and output electricity, the cost results will echo the energy results, that is to say that the cost incurred in manufacture etc. will not be recovered in the lifetime of the system. Given that, within that lifetime, the batteries would be replaced at additional cost, it follows that electricity generated by the solar system will always be more expensive than the input coal/gas electricity which established the system. Statements by politicians such as, ‘the reason electricity is more expensive now is because we do not have enough renewable energy’ is the reverse of the facts. The more solar generation we have, the more expensive electricity will become.
Subsidies to adjust input and/or output dollar charges do not change the costs. They transfer costs to another element of production, for zero added value. Such subsidies are therefore inherently inflationary.
Continued purchase of solar panels and batteries from low-cost, coal/gas-based producers while, at the same time, inhibiting and closing domestic coal/gas-based electricity, presents national security issues, for no economic or environmental benefit.
Persistence with the widespread installation of PV panels and batteries and closure of coal or gas-fired power stations, will result in greater not lesser emissions of carbon dioxide, higher electricity charges, and higher inflation.
Put simply, Australia mines coal and exports it to China where coal-fired power stations generate electricity, which is used to manufacture PV panels and batteries, which Australia buys and uses to generate electricity from the rays of the sun. In their lifetimes, the solar panels never generate enough usable electricity to replace the coal/gas electricity they originated from.
Reliance on solar combined with closing down coal and gas generation is definitely premature and will lead to power shortages, inflated energy costs, compromised national security, and increased carbon dioxide emissions. Australia would be better off for supply reliability, emissions, costs, and sovereign security, to use coal and gas domestically for electricity generation.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/solar-a-risky-waste-of-time-and-money/
****************************************************‘Boarding saves so much time’: Why city student Sabine chose to live at school
When Sabine Walton enrolled at a boarding school in Normanhurst three years ago almost all the girls in her shared dorm room were from the state’s north-west.
“Our family home is in the city, so I definitely stood out among the boarders who are mostly from farms and regional towns,” says Sabine, whose family home is in Dulwich Hill, about a 50-minute drive in peak hour from the all-girls private school.
“It was daunting at first. I definitely could have been a day girl, but boarding saves so much time commuting,” she says.
The year 10 student at Loreto Normanhurst in Sydney’s north-west is one of about 5900 boarding students across the state. They include about 1000 students whose families are from metropolitan areas but are enrolled in boarding schools.
Australian Boarding Schools Association chief executive Richard Stokes said city-dwelling parents who opt to send their children to boarding school – either as weekly or full-time boarders – are attracted by the lack of travel time and the extra academic support that schools can provide with supervised study time.
“Especially in year 11 and 12, boarding provides great structure for kids and that study time with tutors or homework helpers,” he said.
Across Australia there are about 20,490 boarding students and, while the number of boarding schools has grown from about 150 a decade ago to about 200 last year, enrolments have remained consistent since 2012. The impact of the pandemic meant international boarding student numbers halved and are yet to recover, said Stokes.
“International students are just not returning as energetically as we would have hoped,” he said, adding that three boarding schools in Victoria and Tasmania were forced to close in the past three years when overseas students disappeared.
There are 47 boarding schools in NSW, most being high-fee private schools that charge up to about $73,000 for boarding and tuition at schools such as Kambala and King’s. At the co-educational Red Bend Catholic College, in the state’s Central West, fees are about $25,000 to board in the senior school.
The NSW state president of the Isolated Children’s Parents’? Association, Tanya Mitchell, said the cost of boarding school was now “out of the realms” of what most families could afford.
Mitchell said of three public boarding schools in regional NSW, which generally charge about $13,000 for the year, two are co-educational and one is an academically selective all-boys school in the state’s north-west. “Especially for families from the north-west of the state, there are no public all-girls boarding options. And some fees are making it difficult if families want or need a boarding option.
“Families are telling us they really would like that public all-girls boarding school option,” she said.
But in Sydney, schools including Loreto Normanhurst and Knox Grammar, both of which charge upwards of $60,000 for tuition and boarding, principals claim that demand for living on campus is on the rise. At Loreto, where there are about 200 boarders, the school is planning a $130 million redevelopment as part of its 30-year master plan that will include a new four-storey boarding house.
Knox Grammar principal Scott James said most boarders at the all-boys school were from rural NSW or overseas. “Even though boarding is declining in some countries, there is still demand from parents, and from families with current day students wanting to change to boarding,” he said. “It generally reflects the busyness of parents.”
All-boys St Joseph’s College in Hunters Hill was a boarding-only school until about 25 years ago, with more than 900 students, principal Michael Blake said. “With numbers declining, the school began to enrol day boys to remain viable. The school now opens to day students with extracurricular activities until 8pm,” he said.
About half of the 1000 students at St Joseph’s are boarders, many from Dubbo, Hunters Hill, Tamworth, Gladesville and Mudgee. “But there are boarders from Hunters Hill too ... there are some whose bed at home is less than 100 metres from their bed in the dorms,” Blake said.
When Sabine started at Loreto in year 7, she was just one of two boarders who were from the city. “We now have girls from the Central Coast area, and even the inner city from Roseville and Paddington.”
“I enjoy having the independence; the only downside is homesickness, but I go home most weekends, which makes it easier,” she said.
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21 May, 2023
‘Verdict first, trial later’: rule of law under threat, says Bruce Lehrmann’s lawyer Steven Whybrow SC
The disgraceful way feminism can pervert justice. If feminists get a man in their sights, he is in great danger -- innocent or guilty
The presumption of innocence and the right to due process have been dangerously warped by the #MeToo movement, Bruce Lehrmann’s lawyer Steven Whybrow SC has claimed, in his first interview since Mr Lehrmann went on trial over Brittany Higgins’ rape allegations.
“This was ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Sentence first or verdict first, trial later,” Mr Whybrow says of the pre-trial publicity around the case.
“There was so much material out there that was just simply ‘he’s guilty’ and we’ve just got to go through this process of a trial. I saw that as a significant undermining of the rule of law and the presumption of innocence and due process.
“We all know this happens all the time: this guy’s been accused of this, so therefore it happened. And along the way, anybody who tried to argue the contrary narrative was treated as somehow morally deficient.”
Mr Whybrow said that if there was to be a debate about the presumption of innocence or whether an accused person should not have a right to silence, “those things should actually happen in an informed way publicly, rather than this insidious suggestion that ‘that’s what the system is’”.
“But it’s not good. It’s not right,” he added.
Mr Whybrow’s comments came as Mr Lehrmann revealed for the first time that when he tried to get legal assistance for his defence, Legal Aid ACT insisted it would not allow Ms Higgins to be challenged in court as a liar, but simply “perhaps mistaken about versions of events”.
Mr Lehrmann told The Weekend Australian he sacked Legal Aid ACT after the agency demanded he adopt a conciliatory defence strategy that was completely at odds with his account of the events that occurred in senator Linda Reynolds’ ministerial office in the early hours of March 23, 2019.
Mr Lehrmann said a solicitor at the agency told him “it was up to the CEO of Legal Aid in terms of the broader tactics of the case and he was going to say that she’s not a liar but was mistaken about aspects of the version of events”.
Mr Lehrmann said the agency also rejected Mr Whybrow as “too aggressive” to take on the case.
The solicitor told him the agency would not fund Mr Whybrow as his counsel in the trial because “Legal Aid didn’t like the way Mr Whybrow practices or the way he operates”.
Mr Whybrow ultimately took on the case pro bono after Mr Lehrmann refused to accept the Legal Aid conditions.
A spokesperson for Legal Aid ACT declined to comment.
“Bruce was just horrified that they’re not even going to run his defence, which was: she’s lying, she made it up, this did not happen – and to just say, ‘oh no, you misunderstood, you were mistaken’,” Mr Whybrow said. “So he became very distressed.”
The former Crown prosecutor pursued a forceful approach at the trial, describing Ms Higgins as “unreliable” and someone “who says things to suit her”.
Mr Whybrow told jurors she had lied about seeing a doctor to “make it more believable” she had allegedly been sexually assaulted.
He outlined a number of instances when Ms Higgins was forced to concede she had given wrong evidence, including the length of time a white dress was kept in a plastic bag under her bed and a three-hour panic attack on a day she later conceded she had been having a valedictory lunch for former politician Steven Ciobo.
“The person bringing the allegation is prepared to just say anything,” Mr Whybrow told jurors.
The jury had been deliberating for five days, unable to agree on a verdict, when the trial was abruptly aborted after one of the jurors brought research material into the room.
Mr Whybrow told The Weekend Australian he had been concerned that, because of the pre-trial publicity, the defence would struggle to get 12 unbiased, unaffected jurors.
“In some respects, that was borne out by the number of people in the jury pool who quite properly, when the chief justice asked that anyone who thought they might have some pre-existing bias, either for or against the complainant or the accused, or had attended the March4Justice, or subscribed to particular views about sexual assault, or even had had own experiences, that meant that they could not bring a fair mind to the role of a juror to come forward.
“And a lot of people did, but we were never able to be sure that some of the people who didn’t come forward may have had strongly held views and were going to not come forward because they wanted to ensure justice – as they perceived it – would be done.”
Mr Whybrow expressed strong concerns over the role of ACT Victims of Crime Commissioner Heidi Yates, who often accompanied Ms Higgins to court.
“The problem in this case – and it’s not just my perception, it’s one that I know a lot of people have shared – is that by walking next to Ms Higgins into court every day as the statutory office holder of the position of the Victims of Crime Commissioner – and that would be videoed every morning, it would be in the papers and the news that night – it carried with it a less-than-subtle and a less-than-subconscious inference that Ms Higgins was in fact a victim.
“It was about as subtle as if Ms Yates had walked in wearing a T-shirt, saying ‘Bruce is guilty’, Mr Whybrow said.
“This case has demonstrated, in my view, an insidious and underappreciated issue, which is this conflict and this tension and this slow bracket creep between the presumption of innocence on the one hand, and ‘believe all women’ – or in a sexual assault case, ‘people don’t make anything up’ – that is undermining a presumption of innocence.”
Ms Yates declined to comment on Friday, and a spokeswoman for the ACT Human Rights Commission pointed to a previous statement in which it welcomed the set-up of the Sofronoff inquiry.
Mr Whybrow said he took on the case pro bono after Legal Aid ACT refused to hire him because “I wanted to be part of an attempt to at least give this man a fair trial in the face of what I and many other people had considered was such adverse publicity that he could never actually get a fair trial”.
Mr Lehrmann originally approached Legal Aid for help after his first lawyer, John Korn, was forced to withdraw for medical reasons.
Legal Aid also refused to fund the solicitor Mr Korn had recommended, Kamy Saeedi, saying it would assign an in-house lawyer.
Mr Lehrmann said he was stunned that the agency was demanding he accept a defence strategy that contradicted his account of what occurred in Parliament House after a night out drinking with colleagues in Canberra. Mr Lehrmann has consistently maintained, including in his statement to police, that there was no sexual contact of any kind with Ms Higgins and that after they got to Senator Reynolds’ suite, he went left and Ms Higgins turned right, and he didn’t see her again.
“It was basically Kamy who said to me, right, just fire them – he helped me write a letter firing them,” Mr Lehrmann told The Weekend Australian.
Mr Saeedi agreed to take on the case pro bono.
“This is a winnable case if we just do it how we need to, not how the Legal Aid wants to do it,” Mr Lehrmann recalls his new lawyer saying. “He was concerned that I’m being led up the garden path and that they’ve got no idea, because they’re all so woke in Canberra,” Mr Lehrmann said.
“So he just said, I’m just going to do it pro bono now, let’s not worry about the money.”
Mr Whybrow also then agreed to act for Mr Lehrmann pro bono.
“It was, you know, we’ll keep an account going and you will likely never pay. We know that if you’re in jail we’re never going to get paid,” Mr Whybrow said. “And even if you’re acquitted, unless you win Lotto, we’re never going to get paid. But we will act for you.”
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Carbon capture and storage works, but its high cost has slowed its uptake
Carbon capture and storage is “complicated and costly’’ to do on a large scale, and its lack of affordability in part explains why the mature technology is not widely used, the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association conference has heard.
The key role CCS will play in reaching net-zero carbon goals has been a key theme of the conference, being held in Adelaide this week, along with calls for more government support for the technology which aims to permanently store carbon emissions underground in depleted oil and gas reservoirs.
And while Resources Minister Madeleine King told the conference this week that CCS was “perhaps the single biggest opportunity for emissions reduction in the energy resources sector’’, her colleague, Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic yesterday said he wasn’t yet convinced.
“If the technology stacks up, great,’’ Mr Husic said in a radio interview. “I haven’t taken the view that it’s all bad and I haven’t taken the view that it’s all great. I haven’t seen it yet to be honest … it really hasn’t shown that it’s able to work at scale.’’
Mr Husic said “it would be great if we can do it’’, but that remained to be shown.
While Ms King’s comments to the conference were strongly supportive of the role CCS could play in reaching net zero, there were no commitments made in terms of supporting the technology through incentives or subsidies.
Her comments follow the government stripping $250m in previously committed funding from CCS projects in last October’s federal budget.
APPEA says a carbon capture and storage strategy is essential at a national level and is pushing for the creation of “net zero industrial zones” where heavy carbon-emitting industries can be co-located, and their emissions captured and stored.
The conference also heard from many speakers that Australia risks falling behind the US and Europe, which are pouring billions into net zero programs including support for CCS projects, with the US allowing them to use a key tax credit.
To date there is only one commercially-operated CCS project active in Australia, at Chevron’s Gorgon project offshore Western Australia, while Santos’s Moomba CCS project is 60 per cent complete, with first injection expected next year.
The Chevron project is underperforming, with Chevron Australia general manager energy transition David Fallon telling the conference on Wednesday that pressure management issues were still hindering the $2.5bn project.
Mr Fallon said the $2.5bn Gorgon CCS project was working and was “the world’s largest stand-alone storage facility’’, but admitted it was only operating at about one third capacity.
It had to date stored about eight million tonnes of CO2, Mr Fallon said.
The Gorgon CCS operation is designed to store CO2 stripped from the natural gas stream in depleted in reservoirs more than 2km beneath Barrow Island, offshore Western Australia.
The company aims to inject about 100m tonnes of CO2 back underground over the life of the LNG project with the system to eventually capture four million tonnes of greenhouse gases annually.
Mr Fallon said there had been some “misleading reporting’’ saying the project did not work, but the high level message was that “the CO2 storage, it is working’’.
“It’s safely storing CO2. Even with the challenges we’ve had it remains, as I understand it, the world’s largest stand-alone CO2 storage facility solely focused on storage, so we’re working through the challenges and we’ve got lots of engineers and plans to remediate the system,’’ he said.
“There’s often some misleading reporting saying ‘it’s a failure, it doesn’t work. I can say it does work.’’
When challenged on why the technology, which has been in use at a modest scale for decades overseas, has not been more widely adopted, Mr Fallon said “it’s not cheap”, while reiterating that it needed to be part of the net zero toolkit.
“The times are changing, it’s not cheap, but as the world’s evolved and lower carbon is a higher priority there’s certainly more interest in CCS and it becomes a more attractive investment from a cost point of view.
Ms Gao said there were several hurdles the industry had to surmount to make it more viable, which differed by jurisdiction. In the US for example, the permitting time frame for a CCS project currently sat at about six years, while countries such as South Korea and Japan lacked the geological structures to store CO2 underground.
Ms Gao said the growing focus on building CCS hubs provided some “promising hope’’ for the technology.
She said while the cost of capturing CO2 was “actually quit high”, carbon prices were also high and would make projects viable.
“I think the bigger problem with CCS is … the scale and the scale comes more around … the transportation and storage side of it,’’ she said.
Ms Gao said transporting CO2 for storage could double the cost of the endeavour, meaning hubs were a better option.
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Grand buildings are no substitute for genuine scholarship at our universities
A symbol of what is wrong with today’s universities is the new building at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, opened last week.
Costing $250m, and taking five years to construct, this gleaming white 12-storey edifice towers over its neighbouring Victorian-era suburb of Fitzroy like a graceless box-shaped Taj Mahal, but in this case named after St Theresa of Kolkata.
The student facilities inside are of plush five-star quality, with generous workspaces and airy lounges set among internal gardens and external terraces, offering spectacular views over the city. So, what is the problem?
The top priority of a university, as a teaching and research institution, should be the quality of its academic staff. Where excellence is valued and privileged over everything else, morale is likely to be high, books and articles influential, teaching inspiring, and departments and faculties can be pretty much left to look after themselves.
Yet it is hard to discern any serious concern with excellence from vice-chancellors, their deputies and deans, over the past 25 years, especially in arts and humanities faculties – apart, that is, from mantras vented in rhetorical mission statements.
This has been the era of the hollowing out of departments, in wave after wave of retrenchment. Tenured lecturers and professors have been replaced by low-paid casual staff, usually part-time lecturers and tutors.
Concurrently, the traditional lecture has been abandoned, with students shifting to online learning, partly by choice but also with encouragement.
Less and less actual attendance at the campus has meant that real tutorials and seminars, in which actual teachers conduct discussions, are starting to look like anachronisms from a long-distant past. In a virtual university, fewer staff are needed.
The waves of retrenchment have been conducted with one aim in view – cost efficiency. The once-upon-a-time collegiate, imbued with a centuries-old humanist ethos, has morphed into an industry like any other, obeying a value-free logic, as if to vindicate the Marxist caricatures of capitalism that humanities disciplines have increasingly purveyed to students over the past 40 years.
I haven’t seen one instance of discrimination along the lines that there are some staff we can’t afford to let go, on the grounds of their research and teaching excellence. To give one example with which I’m familiar, of a smallish Humanities department that had one senior staff member with a well-justified, high international reputation – and who was the intellectual soul of the department, and a gifted teacher. He was encouraged to retire early as if he were no different from some lazy hack, of no greater benefit to the university than a first-year tutor on half his salary.
Administrators seemed to have no conception of mediocrity, including the depressing effect of uninspired and uninterested lecturers on students. I hope I’m wrong here, and there have been odd exceptions to this rankly unprofessional behaviour from top university management.
As a somewhat absurd comparison, I remember being told decades ago when I was a postgraduate student at Cambridge University that if you wanted to find the Nobel prize winners then look in tin shacks along the river, as you wouldn’t meet them dining leisurely at college high tables. Admittedly, the nature of scientific research has changed since those days, but the lesson remains. In any creative area, the rigours of producing the best work are formidable and unrelenting.
The ACU has announced, coinciding with the opening of its Melbourne Taj Mahal, that it needs to cut at least 110 full-time jobs. It is facing a reported $30m deficit.
The deficit is not just due to building largesse. The ACU is also faced with plunging enrolments – 30 per cent in humanities’ students at the Melbourne campus – making one speculate about white elephants. Indeed, humanities enrolments are in decline around the Western world, partly due to the pall of boredom spread by over-politicised curriculums – who wants to hear about Jane Austen’s passing, obscure concern about slavery at the expense of her magisterial displaying of characters suffering the vicissitudes of life!
Sociologists call it conspicuous consumption. The executive invests its hopes and its pride in opulent campus palaces, with office suites at the top, reminiscent of Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burnt beneath him.
It is allied to the fact that in recent decades, university administrations have relentlessly expanded their tiers of management. The manager has replaced the professor as the key figure in the institution. Lip-service these days, at best, is paid to professorial boards, which once were influential.
Over the past century, university employment has swung from a ratio of 20 per cent administrative and 80 per cent academic, to about 55 per cent non-academic today. The real work of the university – teaching and research – is now being carried out by a diminishing, largely underpaid minority, overseen by a large bureaucracy.
To be fair to the ACU, its current projected staff cuts are non-academic. I have some sympathy for any vice-chancellor today who wants to improve the quality of his or her academic staff. This is difficult to achieve.
It would take Jeff Kennett’s determination, via the appointment of ruthless deans with the will to clear out dead wood and make new appointments according to international merit, overriding the political and disciplinary biases of those many existing staff who traditionally control appointments committees.
It would also mean culling the expansive ranks of deputy and pro-vice chancellors, and those under them, cutting back building budgets and creating new first-rank research and teaching centres.
The online university is cruel to students. It destroys student life. A physical campus, with teaching buildings intermixed with cafes, squares, shops, and libraries, provides places for students to gather together with their fellows, catch up, and discuss classes.
The ACU perhaps had this in mind, in providing a luxurious, very comfortable building to attract students into the campus. But the thinking is consumerist, as in drawing people to a picturesque shopping centre.
In universities that are functioning rightly, students are drawn to classes where there is some charisma, where the intellectual content is engaging; attracted by lectures where there is the seriousness that what they are studying really matters, seminars in which there is heated discussion of ideas.
In these universities, the teachers, and at all levels, reign supreme, even when their classes are held in tin shacks up the River Cam.
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The Victorian Liberals have lost their way
The expulsion of Moira Deeming from the Victorian Liberal party requires one simple question to be answered: what is the guiding principle at work? Why was Ms Deeming dumped?
The Liberal party is supposed to operate to a higher, more principled standard than the Labor party. We all know that, in the famous formulation of Graham Richardson, when it comes to Labor party internal politics you do ‘whatever it takes’ to gain or retain power. Thus, when it comes, for instance, to disagreeing with your colleagues, that’s a no-no in the Labor party. The party line is everything.
But the Liberal party was supposed to be different. Disagreement within certain frameworks is tolerated and the principle of free speech supposedly supported.
Following her attendance at a ‘Let Women Speak’ rally, alongside firebrand women’s rights activist Posie Parker and another much-maligned female Liberal candidate from the last federal election, Speccie columnist Katherine Deves, a motion was moved to expel Ms Deeming from the Victorian Liberal party.
This was driven by the arrival of some twenty-odd supposed ‘Nazis’ at that same rally. The fact that these clowns (faces covered, performing idiotic Nazi salutes) appeared out of nowhere at a women’s rights rally should have given pause for thought to wiser heads, but such is the pernicious power of cancel culture and fear of the militant transgender lobby group that the mere sniff of any kind of proximity to or association between ‘Nazis’ and a Liberal party MP was enough to have the bedwetting Victorian Liberals rushing for the smelling salts and an expulsion notice.
The principle at stake with the first expulsion motion? There wasn’t one. Certainly not an identifiable or genuine one. This was simply a classic case of lily-livered Liberals panicking and playing straight into the hands of the authoritarian cancel culture mob. And of John Pesutto being played by Dan Andrews like a cheap fiddle.
At best there was a vague argument that a new, wet-behind-the-ears new MP should have known better than to allow herself to be photographed at a rally where a bunch of clownish ‘Nazis’ turned up, but that is pretty thin gruel. What experienced politician hasn’t got a couple of photos in the closet of themselves standing alongside some dubious character or other?
The result of that first motion – Ms Deeming being suspended for nine months but not expelled – was pathetic, a band-aid political solution dreamed up by spineless politicians unsure of their own principles but terrified of opposing the leader.
Then came the threats of defamation proceedings by Ms Deeming against Mr Pesutto. This matter should have been left entirely in the hands of lawyers. Either Mr Pesutto did defame Ms Deeming or he did not. That’s a legal question, not a political one. In terms of principles it is no different to, for instance, a sexual harassment complaint or a bullying complaint. But the bottom line is clear: Mr Pesutto appeared, if media reports are correct, to be inferring that Ms Deeming, whose uncle survived the Holocaust, was somehow sympathetic to Nazism. Maybe he was saying that, maybe he wasn’t, but the place to determine that is solely in the law courts, not the party room. A settlement of that dispute would either be handled out of court or would involve a substantial awarding of costs to the losing party. These are not matters for work colleagues to get involved in – in any shape or form.
This is where the biggest mistakes were then made. By putting forward a fresh motion to expel Ms Deeming for ‘bringing the party into disrepute’ by threatening legal action against the party boss, party members were in essence being told to place the party boss above the law, or indeed, that due legal process should be denied Ms Deeming because of the power structure within the party. This is abhorrent and should have been rejected out of hand. For those Liberal party MPs who voted to expel Ms Deeming on these grounds not to understand the implications of their actions is worrying to say the least. The gloating response by one MP that ‘you can’t threaten to sue your boss’ was embarrassing in the extreme. Why can’t you? What, for example, would happen if a young, female MP were sexually harassed by a male MP within the upper echelons of the party and threatened legal action? Would the same rule apply? Would she be expelled for ‘bringing the party into disrepute’ and for ‘threatening to sue her boss’? And if not, why not? Why the double standard?
Ms Deeming may be young and naive and not have handled matters as well as she could have. Perhaps. But the only failure here is the failure of leadership at every stage and the failure for wiser heads to understand the fundamental principles at stake. No wonder Dan Andrews is running rings around this circus.
The only people who have brought the Victorian Liberal party into disrepute are those who put politics in front of principle. Maybe they should move a motion to expel themselves.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/expelling-moira/ ?
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18 May, 2023
Nationalization of industry is not dead. It is alive and well in the ACT
Nationalization of industry mostly went out with the Dodo. It is particularly hilarious in the area of hospitals. Government hospitals Australia-wide are not bad but accessing them is the problem -- exactly the problem they were designed to avoid. You can wait half a day to be seen even in an emergency and for non-urgent care you can be waitlisted for weeks and months. There are rarely such problems with private hospitals.
I use both hospital types so know them well. In emergencies I am seen without delay at the Wesley (private) and the service at the radiation oncology section of the PA hospital (government) I cannot fault. But I can access the PA service only via a weeks-long waiting list.
So in Canberra the solution surely is to encourage the hospital board to get in a new boss who will restore the capability that a private hospital should have. Even a subsidy would be cheaper than building a new hospital
But the ACT government is dyed-in-the-wool Leftist so they are being driven by that very Leftist hankering for power. And the idea that organizational problems can be solved by building a new building is classic Leftist simplistic thinking. All govenments tend to have an edifice complex but this is ridiculous
The ACT government is about to make a compulsory acquisition of Calvary Hospital.
In 1979, Calvary Hospital began its good work at the invitation of the commonwealth government. The lease is for 120 years. There is 76 years to run.
Through legislation, the contract for service will be ripped up, land and property expunged. All of this without any consultation. Why?
The Canberra Hospital is the main, government hospital in the city. It has major problems. An independent review in March 2019 was scathing of the culture of TCH.
The Little Company of Mary runs Calvary and they have just finished building a 342-bed hospital in Adelaide for $350m.
After compulsory acquisition, the ACT government is going to build another hospital adjacent to the current Calvary Hospital and then knock the old one down. They estimate the cost to be $1bn for a 500-bed hospital.
The ACT government should simply commission the Little Company of Mary to build them a new hospital at half the cost and hand it over to the government. That would release $500m for other needed government infrastructure.
Is it religious discrimination?
In 2022, the ACT government conducted an inquiry into the availability of abortion in the ACT. The ACT Standing Committee Health Report was released on 10 April 2023.
Astoundingly, the report accuses Calvary of restricting “medical services” “due to an overriding religious ethos”.
Yet that same report notes that neither TCH or Calvary Hospital perform abortions (except in exceptional circumstances). Abortions are day procedures, carried out by other medical providers in the ACT.
Would the NSW government dare claim that St Vincent’s Hospital has an “overriding religious ethos”? Would the Queensland government be so brash as to claim that The Mater in Brisbane operates with an “overriding religious ethos”?
This brings us to the next question. Who is next? What other community groups are under threat in the ACT?
Clare Holland House is one of the most revered institutions in the ACT. It provides superb palliative care under the umbrella of Calvary Hospital.
We know that the ACT government has not taken up the majority of recommendations for palliative care from its End of Life inquiry. It naively thinks VAD is the solution to end of life issues. Those of us with experience in this space respectfully disagree.
The government doesn’t like horse racing. The ACT Race Club should be nervous.
Summernats is burning up too much fuel at its annual event. It will get its marching orders.
The Association of Independent Schools of the ACT must be sweating. Imagine the scenario.
Independent schools decide not to promote gender transitioning, based not on religious grounds, but on compounding scientific evidence. Suddenly, teachers, parents and children lose their rights as ordinary citizens.
Final question.
Which state will be emboldened by this ridiculous behaviour?
This is a serious issue with grave consequences for the Federation. The Prime Minister must get involved. After all, the commonwealth government invited Calvary to Canberra.
Nothing less than the rule of law is at stake. No Australian likes to be dispossessed of their land and property. No Australian likes their contract ripped up unilaterally.
One of the most significant reasons why Australia is a free and fair nation is because of our property rights, which ensure stability.
Property rights are a key “natural mechanism”, ensuring both the creation of wealth and its just distribution.
This move by the ACT government is dangerous, totalitarian in nature. Suddenly, everything is up for grabs.
Every Australian should be deeply concerned. Every Australian should act. Political and civil pressure needs to be applied to force the government to get back to the bargaining table with the legitimate owner – Calvary Hospital.
If not, a free and fair society will no longer be ours.
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Parents opt for religious schools as student enrolments soar
Enrolments in private schools across Australia have grown by 35 per cent over the past decade, fuelled by a surge in student numbers in Islamic and Christian schools.
Independent enrolments increased to 688,638 last year, according to official data released in a report by private school lobby group Independent Schools Australia.
Principals say parents are attracted to private schools due to the perception they offer more disciplined learning environments or are seeking out religious schools because they like the values.
Islamic school enrolments doubled to 46,278 between 2012 and 2022 while Christian schools grew by 50 per cent to 82,779 over the same period. Enrolments in non-religious private schools also grew by 38 per cent to 100,067 students.
Independent Catholic schools were one of just two affiliations whose enrolments fell. Systemic Catholic schools, which charge low fees and are run by dioceses around the country, were not included in the report.
The total share of students attending private schools went from 4.1 per cent in 1970 to 17.1 per cent of pupils by last year.
Helen Proctor, a professor of education at the University of Sydney, said parents in the 1970s simply sent their child to the local public or Catholic school. Now they were anxious about their child’s education because a university course was a prerequisite for most entry level white-collar jobs.
“School choice seems to be the thing which parents can actively do to alleviate that,” she said.
She said an increase in federal government funding for private schools over several decades had made them more affordable while parents perceived they offered a better quality education.
“There is a belief that if you pay for something, it is going to be better. It is a bit of a myth, but it has been a long-term belief,” she said.
She said teacher shortages of recent years could be one factor that had driven more parents from the public system.
“There are critical shortages of teachers, and they’ve hit public schools particularly in certain areas very hard,” she said.
Independent Schools Australia chief executive Graham Catt said part of the reason for the growth was because parents had sought out schools that could administer remote learning effectively.
“From 2020 to 2022, in the pandemic, we do know one of the drivers of that growth was the ability of independent schools to adopt and pivot,” he said.
Christian Schools Australia director of public policy Mark Spencer said parents were attracted to the values-based education on offer.
“They are those who are described as Howard’s battlers, Tony’s tradies or the silent Australians – they’re ordinary suburban mums and dads, a tradie dad with a mother who is working part-time in office or retail,” he said.
“We have those sorts of parents, we also have parents from ethnic migrant backgrounds, we have a lot of applications from Islamic parents because we provide a values-based education they find attractive.”
The report said in the 2020-21 financial year, the average public school student was allocated $20,940 in total government funding, compared to $12,260 for private school students.
“Governments save an estimated $5.7 billion in funding due to the contribution from families and other private sources,” the report said. The average annual fee for a private school was $5272, well below Australia’s most expensive school, Kambala in Rose Bay, which charges $46,300 per year for year 12.
The Demographics Group demographer Simon Kuestenmacher predicted enrolments in private schools would continue to grow, largely thanks to the hundreds of thousands of people who migrated to Australia every year. However, he warned demand may be tempered by parents reconsidering private education simply because more of their cash was tied up in paying a huge mortgage in Sydney or Melbourne.
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"Planted" evidence behind murder conviction
Amid bad police work
A West Australian man who spent more than a decade in prison before being acquitted of murdering his pregnant lover has been awarded $1.6 million in compensation by the state government.
Scott Austic was acquitted of the 2007 murder of Stacey Thorne more than two years ago, with the trial that ultimately cleared his name hearing allegations he was framed by police.
Ms Thorne was pregnant with Mr Austic's child when she was stabbed more than 20 times in the South West town of Boddington.
Mr Austic was originally sentenced to 25 years in prison for her murder and lost an initial appeal, before also failing in his petition for then-attorney-general Michael Mischin to exercise the royal prerogative of mercy and allow another appeal.
Announcing the ex-gratia payment in parliament, Attorney-General John Quigley said Mr Austic had initially asked for $8.5 million in compensation.
"This payment has been made following comprehensive legal advice analysing the circumstances of the matter obtained from the highest levels within the State Solicitor's Office," Mr Quigley said.
"That legal advice ran to 37 pages analysing and advising on all of the circumstances of the matter from the first prosecution right through to the latest CCC report."
That report considered whether there was any evidence of wrongdoing by the police or prosecutors, with Mr Quigley telling parliament none was found.
"I wish to extend my sincerest condolences to Mrs Thorne's family, who have been living with the heartbreak and the lack of closure about the circumstances surrounding her death for many years," he said.
Mr Austic's lawyer, Clint Hampson, said his client was very disappointed with the offer after serving 12-and-a-half years in jail for a crime he did not commit.
A report outlining the government’s reasons for the payment, tabled in parliament, said the $1.6 million to be paid to Mr Austic included $250,000 which was approved in 2021, pending the CCC investigation.
It said the government also “supports” making additional payments for legal costs incurred by Mr Austic in preparing his two petitions to the government, his 2020 appeal and retrial.
“The payment will provide substantial assistance to Mr Austic in his continued reintegration into society and assist to address his immediate and long term needs.”
Ms Thorne's murder remains unsolved and is one of 64 cases to attract an increased $1 million reward for information under changes announced by the state government on Wednesday.
Claims evidence planted 'credible, cogent and plausible'
When the WA Supreme Court set aside Mr Austic’s conviction in 2020 and ordered a new trial, it found “credible, cogent and plausible evidence” that crucial evidence against him had been planted.
The Court of Appeal found a knife police located in a paddock had been planted, and that it was not long enough to inflict the fatal wounds suffered by Ms Thorne.
It also accepted said there was “credible, cogent and plausible evidence” someone had planted a bloodstained cigarette packet not in original police photographs of the scene, but which appeared about 30 hours later.
Given those findings and questions about the “integrity” of the police investigation, the court also said there was “a shadow” cast over the integrity of a Jim Beam can found outside Ms Thorne’s home.
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Peter Dutton promotes energy realism
Peter Dutton will reverse Anthony Albanese’s sweeping market and regulatory interventions in the oil and gas sector, and rally resources companies to “fight” alongside the Coalition against energy policies driven by Labor’s “renewable zealotry”.
Amid emerging rifts between cabinet ministers over the role of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies in cutting emissions across the resources sector, the Opposition Leader on Thursday will invoke former US president Ronald Reagan and pledge to wind back government interventions.
Speaking by videolink to the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration conference in Adelaide, Mr Dutton will warn oil and gas executives that “we’re witnessing one of the most interventionist governments in our nation’s history”. With energy and competition regulators warning of severe gas shortages and blackouts, Mr Dutton will accuse the government of being “deeply sceptical of the free market, of individual enterprise and autonomy”.
“Labor sees businesses and industry as instruments of the state,” Mr Dutton will say.
“It wants to use the chains and whips of regulation and tax to control and cannibalise the private sector. Nowhere is this more visible than in energy policy and its interference in the gas industry.
“Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen will say publicly that they’re behind the gas industry. But of course, their actions betray their words. Labor wants gas gone. The government’s not on your side – let’s be very clear about it.”
Mr Dutton’s broadside against Labor policies comes as Industry Minister Ed Husic and Resources Minister Madeleine King clash over the viability of CCS technologies in reducing emissions across oil, gas and mining sectors.
Nationals MP Keith Pitt says Energy Minister Chris Bowen wants to turn Australia into an intermittent wind and… solar energy “super-unreliable power”. “I’d like them to withdraw their promise on nuclear, because it’s the right way to go,” Mr Pitt told Sky News host Rita Panahi. “If you More
After Mr Husic on Wednesday cast doubt over whether CCS would effectively slash emissions, Ms King told The Australian it was a “proven technology” and crucial in achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
Ms King – who will announce on Thursday $50m in grants to accelerate the development of new critical minerals projects in Western Australia, NSW and Queensland – said the government was committed to examining opportunities providing regulatory and administrative certainty for CCS across industries.
“The Albanese government announced $12m in the 2023-24 budget to review the environmental management regime for offshore petroleum and greenhouse gas storage activities to ensure it is fit-for-purpose for a decarbonising economy,” Ms King said.
“(CCS) is an important part of getting to net zero and we are focused on making sure projects that are commercial have regulatory certainty so they can get on with it. The (International Energy Agency) notes that around the world, deployed CCS has the capacity to sequester up to 45 million tonnes of carbon dioxide on an annual basis.”
Mr Husic earlier said that CCS had not shown that it was able to “work at scale” and the government should prioritise investments in wind and solar to “give us the best bang for buck”.
With major trading partners Japan and South Korea raising concerns about Labor’s crackdown on the oil and gas sector, APPEA is preparing a national advertising blitz pushing back against the government’s market and regulatory interventions.
Mr Dutton will attack Labor’s gas price caps, reduced funding for gas exploration and projects, additional support for activists waging lawfare, mandatory code of conduct, higher taxes on gas companies, radical industrial relations laws and the safeguard mechanism imposing climate targets on heavy industry.
He will warn that Labor policies are pushing up prices and businesses will have no choice but to pass costs on to consumers or “pack up shop and move offshore where it’s cheaper to operate”.
“In such cases, there won’t be any environmental benefit,” he will say. “In fact, there will be more emissions into the air. All this carbon tax will do is damage our own economy and have a de-industrialising effect.”
Mr Dutton will explain how Reagan managed the oil crisis in 1981 by decontrolling the price of domestic oil and stopped the government from “putting ceilings on its pricing and production”.
“He did these things despite all the scare tactics and dire warnings,” Mr Dutton will say.
“Five years later, Reagan spoke about the success of these policies. He let ‘freedom solve the problem through the magic of the marketplace’ – as he said. That episode in US history is an important lesson about the perils of government intervention. It’s a lesson ignored by the Australian government in 2023.”
The warning on prices and emissions comes after Mr Dutton used his budget reply speech to ramp up pressure on Labor for small modular nuclear reactors to be included in the energy mix as part of the transition to net zero.
Mr Dutton will urge oil and gas producers to “fight for yourselves” and make the case against policy decisions.
“We need you to speak up frankly and more avidly,” he will say. “And to have a discussion with the Australian public just outlining the facts. I know it can be difficult, I understand why, particularly in an age of social media, where companies have absented themselves from the public debate … But if you don’t speak up now, I think it’s just going to put the sector at even more risk. It’s our country’s future prosperity that we’re talking about.”
After business groups last week lashed Jim Chalmers’ budget for failing to include measures to boost productivity and more investment incentives, Mr Dutton will describe Labor’s energy policy as being “driven by renewable zealotry”.
“It’s doing everything possible to shut down coal and frustrate the gas sector,” he will say. “We understand that you need to balance commercial viability with national environmental goals. Yet Labor’s new carbon tax (safeguard mechanism) will force businesses and industries to meet aggressive emissions reduction targets or pay hefty fines. And for many, by design, this tax will be financially crippling.”
Mr Dutton will warn oil and gas companies that the “worst is yet to come”, with the government preparing a shake-up of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
“We all want to protect and improve our environment,” he will say.
“But we also have an obligation to promote the longevity of Australian industries and businesses which underpin our economic prosperity.”
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Sydney needs to reach for the sky to fix housing shortage, says Minns
Some realism there
NSW Premier Chris Minns has warned that urban sprawl will stop Sydney from being a leading global city and insists that building up – not out – will be key to creating a vibrant, young metropolis.
“We have to go up,” Minns said. “Sydney can’t grow by adding another street to the western fringe of Sydney every other week … [because] you have to stretch social infrastructure over a bigger and bigger plane.
“I think the best way to ensure we protect open space is to have buildings that go up and don’t encroach on much loved parkland.”
In a clear message to anti-development groups, Minns said quality apartment buildings located on transport links would be critical to Sydney’s future, as the housing crisis threatens to drive away young people.
Minns said apartment approvals in Sydney were at the lowest levels since 2014 “at the exact same time as we have a housing crisis”, adding urban consolidation was a concept with which Sydneysiders had to become more comfortable.
Outlining his vision at The Sydney Morning Herald’s Sydney 2050 summit on Monday, Minns said he wanted a youthful city, attracting and retaining young people who wanted to live and build their careers in Sydney.
He said Sydneysiders needed to be more parochial in a manner similar to New Yorkers about their home city.
“Young people feel that, if they can make it in Sydney, they can make it anywhere and part of the challenge is ensuring young people believe they have a future in Sydney and that will be a big challenge for the NSW government,” Minns said.
However, Minns said a lack of affordable housing would have devastating economic and cultural impacts on Sydney and would be the single biggest impediment to the city’s growth.
“Forget about owning a home, it’s now become impossible to even rent a home,” Minns said.
“The implications for the economy are devastating, not to mention the cultural impacts for an entire generation of young people who are saying ‘this city is not for me’.
Minns said the government had already introduced legislation to change the rental laws, including portable bonds for tenants and banning secret rent bidding. However, supply remained a critical issue facing the newly elected government.
NSW will fail to meet its obligations under the National Housing Accord to build 314,000 new homes over the next five years, with the planning department forecasting just 180,000.
As a result, Minns has instructed his ministers to urgently find vacant blocks of public land to rezone for housing as part of a push to turn around the state’s flagging supply of new homes.
However, the premier said Sydney had to rethink where it was adding homes and claiming the city had run out of room was not an option, nor an approach taken by London or New York.
“We don’t see the mayor of New York saying ‘Manhattan is full, we can’t have any more buildings, we’re done, we’ll have to build in Hoboken [New Jersey],’ ” Minns said.
The premier said one of the best appointments the previous government made was Building Commissioner David Chandler, who was tasked to ensure buildings were “up to scratch” to give confidence that quality apartments could be delivered in Sydney.
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17 May, 2023
So THAT'S why it's so hard to get people off the dole! The 'unworkable' system jobseekers have to battle with to find vacancies
Bureaucracy is a big enough problem at any time but bureaucracy online is murder
Australia's official 'jobs board' website is 'unworkable' and fails those seeking employment, a frustrated recruiter who has abandoned the service says.
Graham Wynn, who is the founder of Superior People Recruitment, told Daily Mail Australia that Centrelink's Workforce Australia jobs portal, which the unemployed use to apply for advertised vacancies, was an example of 'bureaucracy gone mad'.
The glaring flaw with the website is that it does not provide recruiters with contact details for job seekers, rendering it almost pointless.
Mr Wynn claims the site, which replaced the JobActive website on July 1 last year, is so bad 'many recruiters are just not using this service' and his own firm no longer posts vacancies on it.
'They have made it much more difficult for people to find work and made it much more difficult for us to find candidates because of how it functions,' he said. 'That to me is the real challenge we are facing right now, it’s just unworkable.'
The previous JobActive system sent an email to a recruiter with an application and resume attached when someone applied for an advertised job.
However, now recruiters must log into the system to see if applicants have created a profile, which does not provide contact details.
The only chance a recruiter has getting in contact using the site is if the job seeker has attached a resume, which is optional. 'They might have some good experiences but if we don't get a resume there is no way to get in touch,' Mr Wynn said.
Job seekers who have been tracked down by recruiters through LinkedIn and other means have been startled to find out the Workforce Australia site does not give out contact details.
'No one has explained that to them, so if they are looking for work they've made it more difficult for them,' Mr Wynn said.
Despite 'numerous discussions' had by recruiters with the Department of Employment about fixing the glaring flaw the bureaucrats won't budge, citing 'privacy reasons'.
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Australians paying thousands more income tax than a decade ago
Australians are paying on average 30 per cent more income tax per person than a decade ago, even after accounting for inflation, confirming a long-term trend towards workers having to bear more of the burden to fund bigger government.
Analysis by The Australian of budget figures reveals personal income tax payments in real per capita terms have jumped from $6556 in 2013-14, to a projected $8617 in 2023-24.
Economists said the “hidden tax hikes” of bracket creep were partly responsible for the per capita tax take rise, as the commonwealth has become increasingly reliant on revenue from more Australians in jobs and working more hours at higher wages.
Budget figures also show the net national debt is estimated to be worth $15,574 per person by June next year – almost double the $8500 figure in 2014. But years of falling interest rates have helped lower net interest payments on a real per capita basis – from $440 in 2013-14, to $363 in 2023-24, the budget papers show.
Anthony Albanese on Monday tried to deflect accusations from Opposition Leader Peter Dutton that Labor’s second budget, which included almost $14bn in cost-of-living support for financially vulnerable households, had done nothing to alleviate pressures on middle-income earners, who pay a large share of the national tax take.
“Last week’s budget was a budget aimed at assisting vulnerable Australians, taking the pressure off families whilst not putting pressure on inflation. It was aimed squarely at middle Australia,” the Prime Minister said.
“Nothing says middle Australia like making it cheaper to see a doctor. Nothing says middle Australia like making it more accessible to see a local GP.
“Nothing says middle Australia like making childcare cheaper – that will happen on July 1. Nothing says middle Australia like having fee-free TAFE – 300,000 additional places added to the 180,000 … included in … October’s budget. And nothing says middle Australia like taking pressure off inflation by producing a budget forecast … the first surplus forecast for 15 years,” he said.
In a sign of the government’s shifting budget sales pitch on Monday, Mr Albanese used the phrase “middle Australia” five times and Treasurer Jim Chalmers used it six times in their respective press conferences.
6PR Radio Broadcaster Oliver Peterson says Treasurer Jim Chalmers is being ‘loose and selective’ with his word…
The 30 per cent increase in real per capita personal income tax receipts over the past decade is three times the 10 per cent increase in real GDP per capita, using the latest available Australian Bureau of Statistics national accounts data.
According to the Parliamentary Budget Office, workers will contribute 52 per cent, or $319bn, of the estimated total $616bn federal tax revenue in 2023-24, versus 21 per cent from company taxes.
Dr Chalmers has refused to put a cap on tax receipts as a share of the economy, but has repeatedly said Labor’s “position has not changed” on the stage three tax cuts, which start from the middle of next year and mostly benefit middle- to high-income earners who pay the most tax.
Labor ahead of last year’s election promised not to touch the stage three changes, and when in opposition voted in favour of the Coalition’s tax reform in 2019.
The Treasurer on Monday said “we support tax relief, particularly for people on low and middle incomes”. “We want people to get a fair reward for their efforts; that begins with wages, and when the budget can afford to return some bracket creep, that’s a worthy and legitimate aspiration as well.”
CBA head of Australian economics Gareth Aird said the steady creep higher in average tax take from workers was the price Australians were paying for bigger government. “Basically we are all paying more tax as a result of bracket creep. If you’re not giving tax cuts in line with CPI (consumer price index) or WPI (wage price index), then you’ve got people incrementally going into higher tax brackets … they are handing over a greater proportion of their income to the government,” Mr Aird said.
Tax as a share of household income has increased from a low of 12 per cent around 2010, to more than 16 per cent at the end of last year, Mr Aird said, and was now at its highest since 1999, before the income tax relief associated with the introduction of the GST.
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More insanity about women in Australia and elsewhere
Note that the Wong below is Rachael Wong, not Leftist apparatchik Penny Wong
In the guise of trying to be ‘inclusive’ and ‘tolerant’ and ‘accepting’, some folks are willing to do and say the most brainless things imaginable. This practice has been going on for some time. I offer just three examples, all concerning radical trans activism that is, in my opinion, destroying the West.
Who can forget what happened in March of last year regarding US Supreme Court Justice nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson? As I said back then:
The Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked a rather simple question on Tuesday night as part of her Senate Judiciary confirmation hearings. Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, asked Jackson a question that most five-year-olds could easily answer: ‘Can you provide a definition for the word “woman?”’ Her reply was this: ‘Can I provide a definition? No, I can’t. Not in this context, I’m not a biologist.’
Such is the madness that we live under when seemingly intelligent grown-ups cannot answer the most basic of questions. It reminds me of one meme making the rounds that shows two people standing in the pouring rain. The woman asks the guy: ‘Is it raining?’ He replies: ‘I don’t know, I’m not a meteorologist.’
A similar circumstance played out in New Zealand recently. That sad episode I also wrote up at the time, so let me share that here:
Recently the uber-woke New Zealand Prime Minister Ardern stepped down. That was great news, but many of us wondered if her replacement would be any better. Well, now we know.
When a journalist asked him [Chris Hipkins] what a woman is, he said: ‘Um… to be honest that question has come slightly out of left field for me.’ When asked again he said, ‘It is not something that I have a pre-formulated answer on.’ What utter madness.
You can watch the whole, embarrassing and appalling episode here.
With ‘leaders’ like this the West doesn’t have a chance. As one friend said on the social media: ‘I just asked our 8-year-old grandson, and he certainly knows women are different to boys and men and briefly explained to me why anatomically.’ To which I replied, ‘Well, he would do a better job of running NZ than this clown would!’
But not to be outdone by America and New Zealand, we have another case of this moral breakdown occurring in Australia. It involves – of all things – the Queensland Minister for Women. Rachael Wong of Women’s Forum Australia had this to say:
Things are looking dire for women in Queensland. This week, Queensland’s Minister for Women Shannon Fentiman (who is also the state’s Attorney-General and Minister for the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence), took to social media to decry a sticker placed on a sign outside her office. The sticker included the word woman, and its definition: adult human female.
According to the Minister, ‘For some people in our community, these stickers represent much more – they represent a movement which discriminates against [transgender people] and denies their existence.’
‘I want to be very clear – I don’t stand for these sort of views, our community doesn’t stand for these views, and Queenslanders don’t stand for these views,’ added the Minister."
So, the Minister for Women ‘doesn’t stand for the definition of woman’, which, as the Minister for Women, she finds offensive? It’s like we’re living in an alternate universe.
Rachael Wong also tweeted the following:
QLD ‘Minister for Women’ @ShannonFentiman answers Q ‘What is a woman?’ ‘Let’s be inclusive. Anyone that identifies as a woman is a woman… It’s not one group advancing at the expense of another.’ Tell that to the actual women whose rights you are giving away under self-ID laws.
This caught the attention of Jordan Peterson. He tweeted in reply:
"I'm responsible for something with no definition" how convenient for you @ShannonFentiman"
In an email to supporters Rachel Wong said this:
My tweet has since been shared by none other than Canadian commentator Jordan Peterson, who in raising the issue with his 4 million + followers, has now done more for women in Queensland than the one person whose job it is to represent them.
How does the Minister know someone is identifying as a woman if she can’t define what a woman is? How can she represent women if she doesn’t know who they are?
And ‘one group advancing at the expense of another’ is exactly what Fentiman’s self-ID laws will achieve.
Well done Rachael and Jordan. The complete reality meltdown that we see in our Woke leaders is the most shocking thing I have witnessed in my long lifetime. And it looks to only get worse. Who is voting in these utter nincompoops? When will this insanity come to an end?
The level of stupidity here is mind-boggling, and the big losers are women and children. As Candace Owens put it recently: ‘Telling children they can pick their gender is as fundamentally stupid as telling children they can choose their species. If we did, we’d have classrooms filled with mermaids, aquamen, wizards, gnomes, fairies, and aliens.’
But adult activists do not give a rip about the harm and confusion they may be causing to children. Heaven help us all.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/there-are-nincompoops-among-us/
************************************************************Unattainable energy targets
"It is bullshit". Former Snowy Hydro boss Paul Broad is far from alone in his expert, if refreshingly colloquial, view that Australia’s farcical state, federal and corporate greenhouse gas emissions targets are simply unattainable – and never were. And now, the head of the world’s second-biggest miner, Rio Tinto, says his company’s scope 1 and 2 emissions targets were a mistake – and he won’t join rivals BHP, Vale, Glencore and Fortescue (with its ambitious net zero by 2040) in pretending he can set achievable targets for the scope 3 emissions of Rio’s overseas customers, over which Rio has no control. He likens such scope 3 targets to greenwashing.
Even some stock-market tipster sheets are confidently promoting a surge in demand for fossil fuels, ie. coal, oil and gas, as the growing recognition that politically correct emissions targets cannot be achieved, will provide soaring share prices as the current green virtue-signalling by banks and investment managers of superannuation funds, is replaced by the pragmatism of market forces – and the national need for reliable energy.
In regretting having set his company’s emissions reduction targets of 15 per cent by 2025 and 50 per cent by 2030, Rio’s CEO, Jacob Stausholm, warned that it would take ‘hard choices’ to meet them as it is now clear that ‘decarbonising at scale is a lengthy process’. This follows his Davos warning earlier this year that governments and corporate executives were ‘fooling ourselves’ on how long the process of de-carbonising would take. He followed up last week in Perth with the view that, ‘People still do not understand how much work was required to meet these goals…. You have to be realistic on what it takes.’ And added that for solar power, ‘I don’t think people have realised the amount of land that is necessary.’
Paul Broad, former-CEO of Snowy Hydro 2.0, the chaotic, massively delayed (planned for 2021 and may be ready by 2029) and hugely over-run costs (from an estimated $2 billion to the current $20 billion including transmission and still rising; economically it will never pay for itself), says Labor’s ‘unrealistic’ renewable energy plans would ‘risk the lights going out…. The notion that you’re going to have 80 per cent renewables in our system by 2030 is, to use the vernacular, bullshit. This transition, if it ever occurs, it will take 80 years, not eight. There are massive changes that need to occur’.
On top of all this, the former Snowy Hydro boss warned that more than $10 billion in electricity transmission projects were unlikely to be built on time, threatening the transition from coal generation to renewables. ‘Not enough would be in place by 2030 to allow Australia to reach its target of tripling the current level of renewables by the end of the decade.’ So coal will be needed: ‘You can’t close Eraring and Vales Point; closing Liddell was bad enough…. And we need more gas.’
But will we be able to get enough coal and enough gas?
Labor governments, state and federal, face a dilemma at a time when their priority is gaining popular support for the Indigenous Voice to parliament. Do they approve contested gas and coal developments on economic grounds or oppose them in support of Aboriginal objectors who in many cases appear to have been manipulated by climate activists into drawn-out costly lawfare that is aimed more at meeting activists’ zero emissions agendas than bringing the benefits of income, jobs and prospects to remote areas?
After years of toing and froing, two multi-billion gas developments with governmental approval still face uncertainty. This month’s announcement by the Northern Territory government that it would approve fracking in the massive Beetaloo basin, has generated strong opposition that will inevitably lead to further delays on top of the five years between the Territory accepting fracking in principle and doing so in practice. The federal Department of Industry, Science and Resources says Beetaloo ‘has the potential to rival the world’s biggest and best gas resources’ and provide gas for the next 20 to 40 years.
But in an open letter to the Territory government, almost 100 scientists have urged it to abandon its fracking plans for Beetaloo, warning of ‘the damage it will inflict on our climate’, with one claiming the rise in emissions will intensify bushfire seasons and floods and accelerate the death of coral reefs.
Significantly, in the context of prospective lawfare, the scientists assert that fracking poses risks to Aboriginal people and their culture ‘at an unacceptable level’.
The other major gas project on hold is the Santos’ $US 3.6 billion Barossa offshore development 130 kilometres north of the Tiwi Islands, some of whose traditional owners demonstrated successfully in the Federal Court that they had not been satisfactorily consulted as required by law when Santos dealt directly with the Tiwi Land Council.
Now that Santos is taking action to meet this requirement (even with nationwide newspaper advertisements) there is still no certainty that drilling, which was suspended by last September’s legal action, will resume so that Santos can meet its commitment to deliver gas by the first half of 2025 to its Japanese and Korean partners, both of which are increasingly concerned about energy security. With the personal assurance from Prime Minister Albanese to the Japanese Prime Minister late last year that Australia would remain ‘a steady and reliable supplier’ of energy to Japan, the Albanese undertaking will be tested against his support for indigenous rights if further traditional owner legal action causes more delays.
One traditional owner has made clear his continuing opposition: ‘We have fought to protect our sea country from the beginning to the end and we will never stop fighting. Our sea is like our mother – we are part of the sea and the sea is part of us.’
And other traditional owners, who had lodged human rights claims against the group of banks, including ANZ, Westpac and NAB, involved in a $1.5 billion loan to the project, have followed it up by targeting superannuation funds for ‘failing to meet international human rights standards [by] investing in the companies’ as the project breaches ‘the economic, social and cultural rights of the Impacted Tiwi communities’, with a spokesman adding, ‘We do not want Santos to build a pipeline or to drill off the coast here… and we want the super funds to hear us and act.’
This combination of the pursuit of unachievable emissions targets and the unrestrained use of lawfare against major fossil fuel projects (even before the Voice provides an added weapon) means that Australia’s much-needed $20.5 billion coal and gas-led improvement over the past six months in the budget bottom line is unlikely to be repeated.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/business-robbery-etc-113/
************************************16 May, 2023
Anthony Albanese defends negative gearing as he shuts down internal debate over housing
An intelligent Leftist. Chasing away landlords during a housing shortage would be evil. How sad that Julijana Todorovic is a representative of Labor’s housing group but is a total emptyhead
Anthony Albanese has hosed down suggestions Labor will curtail tax breaks for Australians who own investment properties — at least before the next election.
The Prime Minister attempted to shut down debate within the party over its housing policies on Tuesday, saying the government’s position on housing tax concessions hadn’t changed from the policy platform Labor took to the election last May.
He made the remarks after Nine newspapers reported Labor is facing a strong internal push to come up with more ambitious housing policies including revisiting negative gearing in an effort to prevent distortion of the property market.
Julijana Todorovic, a representative of Labor’s housing group, is reportedly pushing for negative gearing to be capped at one investment property and to classify housing as a basic human right at the party’s next national conference.
Mr Albanese, who owns three properties, including his home in Sydney’s Marrickville and an investment property in nearby Dulwich Hill, downplayed the significance of the report.
“It says there will be a policy debate at ALP national conference. Ho-hum. There are policy debates about everything,” he said. “The government’s position is very clear and it’s a position for which we received a mandate at the 2022 election and I’m someone who honours the commitments that we made.”
Mr Albanese rattled off a number of Labor’s policies aimed at increasing housing affordability and supply, including its plans to create the $10bn Housing Australia Future Fund investment vehicle.
The HAFF’s passage through parliament has stalled as the Greens wield their balance of power position in the Senate to make a number of demands on the legislation including better protections for renters.
Later on Tuesday, Peter Dutton went on the attack as he launched a spirited defence of negative gearing and suggested Labor was going to hurt “mum and dad” investors.
The Opposition Leader, who also boasts a tidy property portfolio, told reporters: “If you don’t have investment properties, renters don’t have accommodation to rent. Let’s be clear about it”.
“For mums and dads who save and, as part of their retirement income, put some money aside and buy a rental property, they rent it out and that’s supplementing their income,” he said.
“Particularly for people that don’t have a big superannuation balance, that is a perfectly legitimate investment for them to make.”
The current negative gearing arrangements allow people to engineer a loss on an unlimited number of investment properties and then claim it as a tax deduction.
Critics have long argued Australia’s unusually generous tax concessions for investment in rental properties unfairly benefit wealthy people and drives up the price of housing.
But previous plans to change these tax benefits have proved politically dicey, given both major parties’ desire to woo multiple property-owning voters who might swing between the Coalition and Labor.
In 2021, Labor dumped former leader Bill Shorten’s policies of limiting negative gearing to new properties only and halving the 50 per cent capital gains tax deduction after voters rejected the party at the 2019 and 2016 elections.
Anglicare executive director Kasy Chambers took aim at successive federal governments’ approach to property tax concessions in her National Press Club address later on Tuesday.
“Where we used to spend money directly on building houses, we’ve shifted that expenditure into Commonwealth Rent Assistance, negative gearing, and capital gains tax concessions,” she said.
“And we now spend more commonwealth dollars per capita on those three payments than we ever did, and yet housing affordability has never been lower.”
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All of a sudden, ivermectin is safe again
Julie Sladden
Has anyone else noticed a pattern around the Covid-related restrictions of the past three years?
Each infringement felt like a wave crashing on the shore of Australian freedoms, which, after a while, would quietly recede into the background with little fanfare, media, or attention. So it was with the introduction of lockdowns, masks, and mandates.
No wonder we’ve all felt ‘at sea’.
On May 3, 2023, the TGA quietly announced it was removing the prescribing restrictions on ivermectin. These restrictions were imposed on September 10, 2021 in an effort to stop doctors prescribing the drug to treat Covid.
These original restrictions were described as an ‘extraordinary intervention’.
Ivermectin is an (actual) ‘safe and effective’ medication with decades of safety data and known side effects. Heck, it’s even on the World Health Organisation’s list of essential medications. At the time, ivermectin was being used by several countries around the world to treat Covid and several studies were in process of being conducted.
But why would the TGA restrict ivermectin? Good question. The reasons given for the amendment to the Poisons Standard include:
A rise in the number of off-label prescriptions of ivermectin.
A significant increase in personal importation of ivermectin into Australia.
Concern that people who had been prescribed ivermectin might believe themselves to be protected and therefore not get vaccinated.
Concern that ivermectin would come into short supply in Australia.
Ivermectin also has the potential to cause severe adverse events, particularly when taken in high doses; though oral ivermectin is generally well-tolerated at recommended doses.
Nowhere, back in September 2021, did the TGA say there had been a rise in serious adverse events associated with ivermectin. The closest the regulator came was stating a ‘potential’ to cause severe adverse events.
Hmm… So, if a therapeutic agent is restricted for ‘potentially’ causing serious adverse events, what happens when a therapeutic agent actually causes serious adverse events?
Let’s move on.
The concern that ivermectin would come into short supply is perplexing. As an ‘off-patent’ drug, ivermectin is incredibly cheap to make (around 55 US cents per course of treatment) and widely available. As one commentator ponders, ‘If the TGA foresaw a potential shortage, why did no one in the Australian government think to phone an order through to Indiamart?’ Another good question.
In light of the above, the rise in number of off-label prescriptions of ivermectin and increase in personal importation is no reason to restrict a medication. These signals should be taken as an indication to investigate (why is it being used and what is the ‘front-line’ experience) and educate (regarding potential side effects). According to Dr Peter McCullough, ‘About two dozen countries have ivermectin as a first-line treatment for Covid in their government guidelines.’ They can’t all be wrong.
Furthermore, the increased prescription and importation heralds another consideration, something prohibition taught our friends across the Pacific: when you prohibit something the people want, you just drive it underground.
The reason that incited me most back in September 2021 was the ‘concern that people who had been prescribed ivermectin might … not get vaccinated’.
So, as the government funneled the Australian people down the ‘vaccine or bust’ pathway with mass coercion, an essentially safe and potentially significant therapeutic option was removed. This was done not because it was causing harm, but because it might stop people from getting the ‘experimental’ injection.
I find this outrageous.
Why? Because in a time of ‘unknowns’, the TGA put its weight behind an injection with minimal safety data over a medication with a known safety and therapeutic profile.
So, in what seems like a miracle, ivermectin is now deemed ‘safe’ again.
‘How can ivermectin go from being a toxic horse de-wormer in 2021 and then be declared to have a low safety risk in 2023?’ asks Pharmacologist and Drug Regulatory Affairs consultant Dr Philip Altman. Yet another good question.
In my opinion, the only reason a therapeutic agent like ivermectin, with a proven track record, should be restricted is a demonstrated safety signal that truly indicates the health of Australians is at risk. To do otherwise makes no sense to me.
Dr Philip Altman takes it further, ‘If the Australian TGA cannot tell the difference between a toxic horse deworming medicine and a potentially life-saving, widely used, essential safe medicine – they should not exist.’
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/all-of-a-sudden-ivermectin-is-safe-again/
****************************************************Victorian schools add another activist event to the calendar
Victorian schools celebrating the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) set for May 18 prove, yet again, how successful the cultural-Left has been in taking a long march through the institutions.
These schools join a host of others drinking the Kool-Aid including libraries, local councils, universities, government departments, and banks like the NAB who are all willing to push neo-Marxist-inspired radical gender theory.
Schools are no longer places where students are taught to master the basics and where teachers introduce them to what the Victorian Blackburn Report describes as our ‘best validated knowledge and artistic achievements’.
Instead, when it comes to gender and sexuality, children as young as 5 are told that ‘love is love’, ‘everyone is special, just the way they are’, and that students should dress ‘up in rainbow colours in respect to the LGBTQ+ community’.
Even more concerning is one school’s invitation to a drag queen ‘to spend time in the library reading stories to children’. Drag queens perform regularly at LGBTQ+ functions, and this person advertises that they are willing to ‘bring colour and campness to any event’.
Celebrating IDAHOBIT day each year is just another example of the way students are taught gender and sexuality, instead of being biologically determined and God given, are social constructs where each child has the right to decide where they sit on the LGBTQ+ spectrum.
Since the inception of the Safe Schools in 2013, described by one of its designers as heralding a neo-Marxist revolution in gender and sexuality, students have been told Western societies like Australia are hetero-normative and guilty of promoting cis-genderism.
In school libraries children’s books like She’s My Dad and The Gender Fairy are increasingly common, gaining prominence based on the belief traditional stories like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella are no longer acceptable as they promote a romanticised, binary view of sexuality.
In primary schools, children are warned against using gender specific pronouns like ‘he’ and ‘she’ and kindergarten teachers are told children ‘have multiple and changing identities’ and must be taught about ‘identity formation that encompass gender identity and gender expression (with a non-binary dichotomy) and family diversity’.
In this brave new world, victimhood and identity politics prevail, and the fact the overwhelming majority of babies are born with either XX or XY chromosomes, is denied… Also denied is the majority of Australians who are happy to be men or women and that there is nothing inherently bad about heterosexuality.
While unfair discrimination is wrong as everyone, regardless of gender and sexuality, deserves respect and equal treatment, the reality is indoctrinating primary and secondary students with radical gender theory is an egregious example of schools failing in their duty of care.
Parents are their children’s primary educators and moral guardians and schools are wrong to indoctrinate students with radical gender ideology. Subverting the role of parents is especially unacceptable for those parents of religious faith who believe gender and sexuality are God given.
As written in the Bible, God created Adam and Eve and the sanctity of marriage is based on the belief men and women join for the purpose of procreation. In response to the argument gender and sexuality are two different things it is also the case the Catholic Church believes they are inseparable.
Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia argues ‘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’.
One of the reasons Republican governors including Florida’s Ron DeSantis and Virginia’s Glen Youngkin are so electorally popular is because both support parents in their fight against radical gender theory. A lesson yet to be learned by the Opposition Leader John Pesutto and his leadership team in their cancelling of Moira Deeming.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/idahobit-victorian-schools-add-another-activist-event-to-the-calendar/ ?
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The Voice is cackling on
Whoever said that the Voice would usher in a new era of reconciliation, unity and love was either excessively optimistic or a complete fool. Everywhere I look, I see division and disunity and it is all generated by the Voice. Not only is it generated by the Voice but by putting up a proposal that is unnecessary, half-baked and full of flaws, its advocates have made it one that will achieve nothing of value for Aboriginals and generate nothing for the country but further division. You only have to listen to the invective and denigration by Noel Pearson of anyone who disagrees with him to see how true that is.
The NSW Bar has already been divided by its decision to take a partisan position to become advocates for the Voice. Now, it is the turn of the Victorian Bar to be divided. Here, we are grappling with two rival proposals before us. The first is a proposal that the Voice is clearly a contentious political issue on which the Bar should not take a position of public advocacy for one side of the argument or the other. That is so because the Bar has always taken the view that it should be non-aligned on political issues and that its sole approach should be to ensure the proper administration of law and justice for the whole of society.
The second proposal is that the Bar should abandon this time-honoured position, support the Voice and publicly argue for its adoption at the referendum. If that proposal is passed, the Bar will no longer be independent, but a political body arguing for the fashionable cause.
You will notice that the Bar is not being offered a third choice that should be there, that it should not take a stand, but that if it does, it should argue for the No side. Here then, like a good lawyer, are my reasons why the Bar should not take an official position and why, if it does, it should support the No case.
First. Those who say that they support the Voice because they want the best for Aboriginals are being fooled and should look at just what the Voice entails. This objection has been put, and far more eloquently than I could express it, by Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price in the best argument against the Voice so far. If passed and it goes into the constitution, she argues, the Voice will be there forever; it is unthinkable that there could be another referendum to take it out. This means that Aboriginals are, and always will be, seen as so hopeless that they will never stand on their own feet and will forever need a government vehicle to prop them up, think for them and demand a never-ending series of government handouts to solve a never-ending list of grievances. This will give Aboriginal people nothing to look forward to but a life of misery and permanent dependence on the state.
Second. It is now beyond argument that the very existence of the Voice will divide us on lines of race. Only those who claim they are indigenous will have the right to vote for it, and only they will be allowed to take part in its activities. If that were being proposed for the old South Africa, we would be appalled by its effrontery. We should be similarly outraged when it is being proposed for our own country.
Third. The argument that the Voice would generate litigation every time it is not consulted and every time it does not get its own way, has now been won. Its own supporters not only acknowledge that litigation over advice from the Voice will be the result, but they expect it and welcome it.
Fourth. This inevitable torrent of litigation will upend the stable system of government that we have and that has made Australia one of the oldest functioning democracies. On any test it will be a rival government, not even elected by all Australians. It will expand its own jurisdiction as it claims that one after another area of government or commercial activity is a matter ‘relating to’ Aboriginals and therefore an area on which it can give its so-called advice to the parliament and the government.
Fifth. Moreover, this argument is not diminished by the Solicitor-General’s opinion but enhanced by it. The Solicitor-General said in the sanitised opinion we are allowed to see, that it would be ‘desirable’ for the government to consider advice from the Voice. If it is ‘desirable’, that is the first thing the courts will say gives them the justification to stop or delay decisions on which advice has been given, but not considered or to stop decisions being made until that advice has been sought and given. So much for our representative system of government where decisions are made by the elected government for all, and not just one segment of the community.
Six. The Voice proposal will not stop at setting up a talking shop for indigenous issues. The next step will be min-voices with all the trappings of the state, including the power to enter into treaties. Already, the proponents of the Voice are arguing that its establishment will link up with the new Victorian structure that has set up a train of inquiries, ‘truth telling’, treaties and, the next cab off the rank, reparations for the terrible burden of having to live in one of the most prosperous countries on earth.
I hope this charter makes it clear that this contentious issue should not be endorsed by a professional association like the Bar. But if the Bar decides that it should intervene, it should not rush to endorse the Voice. There are strong arguments against it and it is a lot to risk. Above all, the Voice will do nothing but turn Aboriginals into one tribe of a society based on race and guarantee their continued and soul-destroying dependence on the state.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/brown-study-271/
************************************************15 May, 2023
Commonwealth settles $132.7 million class action over PFAS contamination across Australia
This is just another baseless environmental scare. PFAS is not toxic to people in normal concentrations
The Commonwealth has settled a class action over PFAS contamination from firefighting foam at seven sites across the country.
The claim alleged landowners at the sites were exposed to poisonous chemicals in firefighting foam used at military bases, after it leached into groundwater.
The sites are Wagga Wagga (NSW), Richmond (NSW), Wodonga (VIC), Darwin (NT), Townsville (QLD), Edinburgh (SA), Bullsbrook (WA).
PFAS — or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — is the broad name for 4,700 chemicals that do not break down, and instead accumulate in soil, water and human bodies.
In settlement, Justice Michael Lee told the court he was glad the "difficult task" of getting the parties to agree was over.
"I congratulate those involved, I know it's not been a straightforward exercise," he said.
Health of those affected top concern
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the biggest issue surrounding PFAS is not financial. "This is another example of where we have to get occupational health and safety right, and getting it right in the first place would avoid these sorts of actions, " he said.
"PFAS has been an issue for those around airports ... people have across a range of communities suffered from the use of this. "The biggest concern I have isn't the financial one, it's the health of people affected by it."
Shine Lawyers' Craig Allsopp, who represented the claimants, said the outcome is a positive one, and still subject to approval by the federal court.
He said payments will be determined on a case-by-case basis.
Study finds limited evidence of links between PFAS and disease
A major study of toxic chemicals that leaked into the groundwater of regional towns near Australian air force bases has found no conclusive evidence they increase the risk of cancer or disease.
"It is always a good outcome when group members reach an agreement ahead of a trial to avoid incurring the extra costs and risks of complex litigation through the court," he said.
"The settlement money, if approved, will go some way to compensate the seven communities in this class action for their losses, however, many are still stuck on contaminated land.
"With the group members I have spoken with the payment of compensation is recognition of their suffering."
"We've obtained compensation for property value here, but obviously it's about their whole lives and their homes, so it's going to make a big difference to a lot of people."
The conditional settlement has been made without admission of liability.
In 2020, the Commonwealth paid $212 million to affected residents of Oakey, Katharine and Williamtown, who had also launched a class action over the loss of property value.
A separate class action involving an eighth site, Wreck Bay in NSW, has been adjourned until 29 May.
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Minister stops bid to kill Hunter coal mine expansion
The Environmental Defenders Office sought to overturn an approval allowing the expansion of Mt Pleasant mine. The Independent Planning Commision approved and application to extend the mine's life by 22 years to the end of 2048.
Environment groups have slammed federal environment minister Tanya Plibersek's refusal to stop the approvals of four coal projects, including the Mt Pleasant mine expansion near Muswellbrook.
The NSW Independent Planning Commission conditionally approved MACH Energy's expansion plans late last year.
The approval will extend the mine's life by 22 years to the end of 2048, a result that opponents argue would result in more than 800 million tonnes of carbon emissions.
Mt Pleasant was among 19 coal and gas projects Environment Justice Australia, acting on behalf of Environment Council of Central Queensland, applied under federal laws to have thrown out before they had completed their full environmental assessments.
The group argued that the potential emissions from the projects should rule them out of any further consideration.
But in order to stop a project from proceeding, federal laws require proof that its emissions would be a substantial cause of climate change effects on the Australian environment.
Ms Plibersek's department said on Thursday night that this had not been proven in regard to Mount Pleasant, the Narrabri Coal mine expansion, the Ensham coal mine extension and the Isaac River coal mine, both of which are located in Queensland's Bowen Basin
"The Albanese government has to make decisions in accordance with the facts and the national environment law - that's what happens on every project, and that's what's happened here. Since the election we've doubled renewable energy approvals to a record high. The government will continue to consider each project on a case-by-case basis, under the law," federal Department of Environment spokeswoman said.
The Environment Council of Central Queensland said it was considering all legal options including a Federal Court challenge and any injunctions needed.
"Today's decision means Minister Plibersek joins a long line of federal environment ministers who have said it's not their job to consider the climate risk of new coal and gas mines," President Christine Carlisle said.
"We're already dealing with floods, bushfires, and droughts and the evidence shows these new coal and gas proposals will make the devastation much, much worse.
"This is the real test for the minster. Australians who voted in favour of climate action have a right to feel betrayed by these decisions. We want our kids and our grandkids to be able to experience our natural wonders."
In giving its conditional approval for the expansion last year, the planning commission said the project would provide up to 447 direct and indirect jobs in the Muswellbrook and Upper Hunter, 643 jobs in the wider region, and 444 jobs elsewhere in NSW.
Mt Pleasant is also one of the few known habitats of the Hunter Valley Delma. The Delma is a species of legless lizard endemic to the Hunter Valley and Liverpool plains and was found on the mine site by researchers from the Australian Museum in 2022.
The Climate Council said Ms Plibersek's ruling was 'reckless' and 'out of line with the science'.
"This decision takes us in entirely the wrong direction to protect Australians from the worsening effects of dangerous climate change," Climate Council head of advocacy Jennifer Rayner said.
"The environment minister has a responsibility to scrutinise all risks of harm to the environment, and it is irresponsible that she has refused to look at the immense and indisputable climate harm that all new coal and gas projects pose.
"We cannot have new, highly polluting coal as we're living through the age of climate consequences. What we need is far more action to boost clean energy sources which can replace coal altogether, like the renewable hydrogen investments the government started in this week's budget."
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Monarchists formally complain to ABC over ‘gratuitously offensive’ coronation coverage
It was not enough that Queen Elizabeth II’s death unleashed an embarrassing display of obsequiousness from our national institutions which culminated in an avowedly republican prime minister heading to London last weekend to pledge his allegiance to a foreign monarch.
Aunty accompanied its broadcast of Charles’ ostentatious affair with a dose of sceptical commentary about the monarchy, and dared to note that many First Nations Australians find the whole fawning over the royals a bit unpleasant.
Now, Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, run by veteran royal-head David Flint, have taken things further, filing a formal complaint with the ABC over its coverage.
Flint’s mob, which has the honour of being the second most prominent monarchist group, claimed the broadcast breached three articles of the ABC’s standards relating to accuracy, impartiality, and harm and offence.
The heart of the complaint centres on the broadcaster’s alleged failure to present alternative views on the role of the crown in Indigenous matters. And while Liberal MP Julian Leeser was the only monarchist on a panel that included ABC everywhere man Stan Grant and leading republican Craig Foster, the broadcaster did reasonably well in the ratings battle for the event.
That didn’t satisfy Flint and Co, who claimed: “A number of Australians were unnecessarily and gratuitously offended, both through the imposition and forcing of and the hostile nature of the imposed programme.”
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Minns orders ministers to find surplus land to rezone for homes
At last: a policy that might actually help
Premier Chris Minns will order his ministers to urgently find vacant blocks of public land to rezone for housing as part of a push to turn around the state’s flagging supply of new homes.
The move will likely meet resistance from government agencies that often prefer to retain surplus land for potential future expansion, including property in high-density parts of Sydney.
The premier will detail the policy at The Sydney Morning Herald’s Sydney 2050 Summit at the Sofitel Darling Harbour on Monday, where he will draw attention to the size of the housing supply crisis facing the state.
Minns said he would write to all ministers this week asking for their departments to audit their landholdings and identify surplus or under-utilised land parcels for rezoning. The audit is to be prioritised, and completed within months.
It follows revelations NSW will fail to meet its obligations under the National Housing Accord to build 314,000 new homes over the next five years, with the department forecasting just 180,000.
The state government is also concerned about the housing implications of migration after last week’s federal budget confirmed net overseas migration was predicted to be 400,000 in 2022-23, followed by 315,000 in 2023-24.
Minns said he wanted to leave no stone unturned. “I expect the NSW government to do its fair share to identify and open new land it owns for housing,” he said ahead of Monday’s Herald summit.
“The pressures on the rental market are extreme. But our job is to get more supply into the system to help alleviate some of that pressure. This isn’t going to be easy, but we have to start somewhere, and it’s a priority of my government.”
The government cautioned the audit would not be a panacea for the housing crisis by unearthing large swathes of idle land, but said it was an important measure. It also has a target for 30 per cent of all new homes on public land to be social, affordable or community housing.
One of the government agencies already involved in converting surplus land to affordable housing is the Transport Asset Holding Entity, which Labor pledged to abolish after a Herald investigation revealed cost shifting had inflated the budget bottom line by tens of billions of dollars.
Late last year TAHE said it had identified four sites for rezoning, at Newtown, Wolli Creek, Granville and Blacktown, and estimated they could provide about 300 apartments. Labor remains committed to dismantling TAHE, but Treasurer Daniel Mookhey said in April it could take as long as five years.
Asked early this year about its surplus land, NSW Health said it maintained property assets for potential expansion of clinical services, “in line with contemporary master planning principles”.
This was a strong consideration for hospitals and health services in high density areas of Sydney, or hospitals in major regional locations, NSW Health said. Land that became surplus to needs was disposed of in accordance with state government guidelines, it added.
Dwelling approvals rose in NSW in March by 3.1 per cent in seasonally adjusted terms. There were just over 3000 homes approved, about half of what the number was for most months in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
As part of the housing supply drive to be announced at Monday’s summit, Minns also wants to strengthen the role of the NSW Building Commissioner, David Chandler. The role was introduced by the previous government to combat dodgy practices and shortcuts in the construction industry, following the evacuation of the Opal Tower in Olympic Park at Christmas 2018.
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14 May, 2023
Peter Dutton accuses Albanese government of fuelling inflation in budget reply speech
There is no doubt that Dutton is right. Putting more money into the economy without a matching increase in availability of goods and services must inevitably bid up prices
The federal opposition leader has used his budget reply speech to lay the blame for any future increase to interest rates at the feet of the Albanese government, arguing their second budget will fuel inflation, and make life harder for millions of Australians.
In his second budget reply speech in less than a year, the Liberal leader said the Albanese government's budget would make cost-of-living pressures worse and risk creating a generation of working poor Australians.
"Inflation is coming from Canberra and Labor's big spending budget will only fuel inflation and make life harder for millions of Australians," Mr Dutton said.
"The government has taken decisions — and avoided others — which has made inflation higher than it needs to be."
Treasury has forecast inflation – which was at 7 per cent for the March quarter — will fall to three-and-a-quarter per cent next financial year and return to the Reserve Bank's target range of two to three per cent the year after.
The budget's $1.5 billion package to give up to $500 relief on power bills for 1 million small businesses and 5 million households on government assistance, has been modelled to reduce inflation by a quarter of a per cent next financial year.
The opposition leader has criticised the temporary nature of cost-of-living relief.
"That temporary relief is targeted at Australians on welfare but at the expense of the many including Labor's working poor," Mr Dutton said.
"It's a band-aid now, but much more pain later.
"In this budget, despite the government's energy polices, your electricity bill is still going up by more than $500."
Mr Dutton has remained vague on his position on the government's $40 a fortnight increase to some income support, including Jobseeker and Youth Allowance.
The Coalition will support changes to increase support for over 55s on Jobseeker but has proposed a new policy.
"The Coalition is proposing a permanent increase to the income free threshold, meaning people will earn more before their welfare payment is increased," he said.
"There are over 840,000 Jobseeker recipients of which more than 75 per cent had no reported earnings – that is, no part-time work.
"This will incentivise more job seekers to take up opportunities and enable Australians on low incomes to be supported."
"Peter Dutton looks into the living rooms of middle Australia and doesn't see people who need childcare, people who use Medicare," Mr Jones said.
"Peter Dutton needs to get back in touch with what middle Australia really looks like."
He questioned why the opposition hadn't acted on any of their proposals while in government.
"Peter Dutton has had 12 months to think about the future of the country, he's come back into the parliament with the same old ideas," he said.
"A bloke who's been talking about the importance of balancing a budget for the last 12 months has delivered a speech which adds at least $10 billion in debt to the bottom line."
The opposition has also proposed allocated an additional $9 million for women's health and vowed to restore 20 Medicare-subsidised psychological sessions, up from the current 10.
Mr Dutton vowed a Coalition government would move to ban sports betting advertising during and an hour either side of sports matches.
The opposition leader announced support for the government's 15 per cent increase to Commonwealth Rent Assistance, $3.5 billion to triple the bulk billing incentive for children under 16, pensioners and other Commonwealth concession card holders and changes to eligibility for the parenting payment.
Mr Dutton accused the government of backing a 'Big Australia' citing a projected increase to migration, which has been fuelled by the return of international students and travellers.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-11/peter-dutton-opposition-budget-reply/102333334
**********************************************Federal environment minister Tanya Plibersek has indicated that will approve the coking coalmine near Moranbah
The Australian government has approved a new coalmine development for the first time since it was elected last year.
Tanya Plibersek, the federal environment minister, indicated she would give the green light to the Isaac River coalmine in Queensland’s Bowen basin. It was announced late on Thursday.
The mine, to be developed by Bowen Coking Coal, is planned for 28km east of Moranbah, next to five other coalmines, and expected to produce about 500,000 tonnes of metallurgical coal a year for five years. Metallurgical coal, also known as coking coal, is used in steelmaking.
“The Albanese government has to make decisions in accordance with the facts and the national environment law – that’s what happens on every project, and that’s what’s happened here,” a spokesperson for Plibersek said.
“Since the election we’ve doubled renewable energy approvals to a record high. The government will continue to consider each project on a case-by-case basis, under the law.”
The government said no submissions had been received about the project during the public consultation period, including from environment groups.
However climate campaigners had made public statements calling on Plibersek to reject the mine in line with scientific advice that no new fossil fuel developments should go ahead if the world is to limit global heating to 1.5C.
“Scientists, energy and climate experts have said that the climate cannot afford new coalmines, and they’ve said it so many times I’ve lost count,” said Rod Campbell, research director at The Australia Institute.
“The fact that this is a small coking coalmine is beside the point – fossil carbon needs to stay in the ground. We’ve already got more than enough coalmines approved to cook the planet, including coking coalmines that could run into next century.
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Extreme bureaucratic stupidity
Another $1m will be offered to turn a 500-bed facility at Pinkenba into an emergency shelter for Brisbane’s homeless – but state and federal governments remain paralysed over the proposal.
Pressure is mounting on all levels of government to open the gates to the now dormant facility, initially built for Covid quarantine. It can be revealed Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner will today promise to put $1m towards delivering amenities at Pinkenba in his bid to get emergency accommodation up and running at the facility.
Brisbane’s housing crisis has exploded in the past 12 months leaving service providers at full capacity and more people sleeping in cars and on streets.
Yesterday, the commonwealth claimed the Queensland government had not directly made an approach on the matter, but the state government insists it is in talks on the proposal.
Young Brisbane mum, Kristen, who has been homeless for the past year, says staying at the site would be better than living in a park or in a car.
Mr Schrinner has made the $1m Pinkenba promise ahead of his upcoming budget – declaring he is “sick and tired” of hearing excuses about why the site can’t be used for emergency housing.
“Today I’m committing $1m towards upgrading the Pinkenba quarantine facility so it can be used as emergency accommodation,” the Lord Mayor said. “That’s a million more reasons for the state government to finally get behind this proposal. I know this facility wasn’t purpose-built for crisis housing. But it’s a whole lot better than living in a car or a tent. And that’s occurring right across Brisbane right now while this 500-bed facility sits idle.”
Mr Schrinner said he wanted the $1m to go towards laundry facilities at Pinkenba, as well as Brisbane City Council transport and library services.
The site is owned by the commonwealth government, which has previously indicated it would be used by the defence force and be reserved for “resilience uses” – such as during natural disasters.
As he was quizzed about Pinkenba on Friday, federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers said there had not been an approach from the state government about the Pinkenba site.
He said the federal government was “always prepared to work” with jurisdictions to “find common ground and to work together to achieve our objectives”.
“I’m not aware yet of an approach from the state government but if and when that comes, obviously we will do what we can to work together,” Mr Chalmers said.
A Queensland government spokeswoman said it would support the use of the site for a “specific cohort of people” if there was a practical, cost-effective way to do so with the support of non-government service providers. The state government previously confirmed it had been in talks since March with community and housing groups, the commonwealth and Brisbane City Council about the possible use of Pinkenba.
“We’re facilitating conversations between community and housing groups, governments, and Brisbane City Council,” the spokeswoman said on Friday.
“Community service providers who have toured the facility have continually expressed concerns that it is not suitable for people requiring intensive support or with complex needs and is not suitable for families.”
Brisbane mother Kristen has been couch surfing for the past year with her three young children aged between one and nine years old.
She said she had been looking for rentals but had been struggling. She has gone from sleeping in one bed with three children, different people’s couches and sleeping in her car with all the kids.
“There’s so many people that are homeless, with children and no children, that need stable accommodation. It’s better than living in a park under stairs or living in your car,” she said of Pinkenba. “It would be very comforting to have a secure roof over your head and I guess the safety of the gates that are there too.”
Kristen said the potential Pinkenba option could be better than when she slept in the car with her kids, as her young daughter was traumatised from the experience.
“She was scared because we were in a car and that’s not really safe because one break to the window and we are compromised,” she said.
Kristen said while she was no longer in the car, it was difficult not having a stable roof over the family’s head.
Salvation Army public relations secretary Simon Gregory said any property that was sitting vacant during a housing crisis should be explored.
“Any initiative that is going to increase immediate access to housing should be welcomed and implemented as soon as possible,” Mr Gregory said. “If a solution is possible, we’d want it to happen as quickly as possible, while ensuring that people are safe and services are provided.”
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Shadow of Doubt jury never heard girl’s memories were ‘recovered’
Lawyers who defended a couple accused of sadistic abuse by their daughter believed she was suffering “false memories” but abandoned their plans to raise that issue only weeks before the trial.
The couple’s lawyers decided not to call evidence from a psychiatrist, a forensic doctor and a friend of the daughter who all raised questions about the accuracy of her claim that she had been raped and tortured from the age of five to adulthood.
The parents were later convicted of 86 charges and are currently serving long jail terms. The Australian’s Shadow Of Doubt podcast is investigating their claims of innocence.
The couple say they spent more than $900,000 preparing for their trial in the NSW District Court, before running out of money.
Legal Aid NSW refused to fund their existing legal team and a new one was appointed a month before the scheduled trial start.
Two days before an important pre-trial hearing, the father’s barrister told the court he had “barely touched the surface” of the case.
The mother’s barrister had not read any of the medical files a week before proceedings began and told the judge that “some of this brief, almost as I speak, is still being made up”.
The father’s barrister initially assessed that it was a “false memory” case.
A forensic psychiatrist, Dr John Roberts, and a forensic doctor who had examined the young woman, Dr Maria Nittis, had provided reports supporting that argument.
A friend of the daughter had signed an affidavit saying they discussed her repressed memories.
But the lawyers never called those witnesses, and shortly before the trial they advised prosecutors that they would not raise the repressed memory issue.
Dr Roberts described the decision not to call him as “somewhat inexplicable”.
He said he had never understood how the violent assaults that the couple’s daughter reported could have occurred without any of her three siblings noticing.
Dr Nittis, who examined the couple’s daughter for the prosecution but agreed to write a report for the defence, said she believed the jury would have benefited from hearing her evidence.
The reports of Dr Nittis and Dr Roberts were commissioned by the Johnsons’ original solicitor, Andrew Bale, along with the affidavit of their daughter’s friend. Mr Bale expressed surprise that the evidence wasn’t used in the trial.
“I couldn’t imagine running this trial without putting those things into evidence,” he said. “I couldn’t see how you had realistic prospects of success without doing that.”
The Australian sought comment from the couple’s trial solicitor, but he did not respond.
The barristers for the parents said they had no interest in discussing the case.
The mother’s barrister said it was one of the most distressing matters he had ever handled, and he didn’t like to think about it.
Speaking from prison, the parents said they were bewildered by their lawyers’ decisions and had limited time to consult with counsel before the trial started.
“I never even knew what recovered memory was, or repressed memory,” the mother said. “ … If they’d asked me to rely on that, I would’ve absolutely said ‘Yes’. All I kept saying was ‘We have to run the mental health angle’. I didn’t know what it was called … I just knew we had to go down that road.”
The mother is currently serving a 16-year sentence and is not eligible for parole until 2027. Her husband is serving a 48-year sentence, the longest for child abuse in Australian history. He is not eligible for parole until he is 95.
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11 May, 2023
Qld youth crime: Stats show school disciplinary action may add to youth crime crisis
There seems to be confusion here about the causal chain -- a claim that expulsions CAUSE bad behaviour. That remains to be established. What we DO know is that bad behaviour causes expulsions. Correlation is not causation
There is however no doubt that expulsions are a bad disciplinary option. Classroom behaviour was much better when corporal punishment was allowed
The state’s foremost expert on families and children has warned there is a direct correlation between suspended and expelled students and those swept up in Queensland’s youth crime epidemic.
Queensland Family and Child Commission (QFCC) principal commissioner Luke Twyford said evidence showed more than half of all kids in the youth justice system were disengaged from education, and a high-rate suspensions and exclusions could be adding to the problem.
It comes after The Courier-Mail revealed vulnerable kids – including First Nations children, kids with a disability and those in care – were eight times more likely to be suspended or excluded from school than their peers.
“A young person’s disengagement from education is a known risk factor and indicator of their future contact with the youth justice system,” Mr Twyford said.
“Using suspension and expulsions does not work for children whose home environment is causing their behaviour.
“Instead we need greater investment in specialised education outside of the mainstream system, such as Flexischools, and greater focus on trauma-informed responses in schools.”
Mr Twyford said he was aware the education department was taking action on the “highly-concerning statistics”, and he had received briefings on the progress.
“Whilst there are positive improvements in the use of SDAs for young children including those in Prep, I remain concerned that more needs to be done for high-school teenagers, particularly those in vulnerable cohorts,” he said.
“Keeping children engaged in education or employment is the best way to give them hope for the future and keep them out of crime.”
The QFCC says it has raised its concerns through meetings with state government ministers, and is continuing to monitor improvements in the use of school disciplinary absences.
Speaking about an over-representation of some student disciplinary absences, Education Minister Grace Grace said the rates were “very concerning”.
She said she had asked the department to review the issue last year, and preliminary data had indicated a decline in overall absences.
“However there is still clearly more to do, which is why addressing this issue is a key focus of our new equity and excellence strategy,” Ms Grace said last week.
“Some of the measures include closely monitoring student absences and acting when patterns indicate additional support is needed, establishing a dedicated position in each region, and providing professional development programs to support staff to better respond to complex behavioural issues.”
Bond University criminologist Prof Terry Goldsworthy said there was sufficient evidence that showed disciplines at school could lead to anti-social behaviour out of the classroom.
“What are they doing? What are they getting up to? Most parents are at work, all that can be problematic,” Prof Goldsworthy said.
Prof Goldsworthy said community welfare should always come first. “It’s a difficult position for schools,” he said. “But on the other hand community welfare must come first over individual autonomy.”
Griffith University criminologist Professor Ross Homel said while suspension and exclusions relieved pressure on schools, they tended to backfire.
Prof Homel said he sympathised with schools who were forced to suspend violent children to protect their classmates but said it wasn’t always the best answer.
“We know that it leads to the potential for youth crime, for mental health problems and homelessness,” Prof Homel said of suspensions. “I don’t blame schools and it’s not just in Queensland where it’s an epidemic.”
A Department of Education spokeswoman said principals considered the care arrangements of students prior to deciding whether to suspend them.
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Glaring electric car problem exposed after man’s tyre goes flat
An Australian driver has revealed a glaring problem with electric vehicles after finding himself stranded on the side of the road when one of his tyres went flat.
Eddy May was driving home in his electric Mercedes-Benz EQC-400 on Sunday just before midday when his rear left wheel deflated, leaving him and his wife stranded on the side of the road in Adelaide.
Making use of an in-car customer service offered in the luxury model, he pressed a button and spent five minutes on the phone with Mercedes about the tyre.
“I’ve spoken to them, they’re sending a tow truck,” Mr May told his followers in a clip shared to TikTok.
“Quick five minutes on the phone, a $200 cab charge voucher to get home, [and the] car’s going to get towed to Mercedes and the car’s going to be fixed tomorrow apparently,” he said.
About 35 minutes later, the $128,000 vehicle was loaded onto a tow truck and the couple’s taxi arrived.
By just after 12pm, they were on their way home. “Pretty good. Well done Mercedes,” Mr May said.
But his video praising Mercedes for their service raised questions over why a spare tyre wasn’t kept inside the car as it would be for petrol cars.
“There’s no spare in this f**king car because all the room is taken up with batteries and so forth,” Mr May said.
Most electric vehicles don’t come with spare tyres given the extra space and weight they require.
“I would be severely unimpressed with needing a tow truck, taxi ride, loan car and what 1-2 days without my car over a flat tyre,” one comment on the video read. “I would much prefer the 10 minutes to change the tyre,” another wrote.
“Great service, interesting way of saving the planet and reducing carbon emissions. Taxi ride and tow truck compared with carrying a spare tyre,” a third said.
Mr May argued the vehicle still worked out to be friendlier on the environment overall, even though it used a lot of resources when a tyre blew out.
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Slack Qld police again
I am not surprised. When my car was stolen, they THREW AWAY evidence leading to the offender. Officer Turgeon is greatly to blame As in Britain at the time, police policy was apparently not to investigate car theft
A juvenile offender allegedly involved in a terrifying armed hold up of a young woman in her own bedroom has been acquitted after a court heard police “didn’t bother” to collect crucial witness statements or seize a weapon found at the scene.
Police had alleged the boy was among a group of young armed males who forced their way into the female’s bedroom and demanded money, threatening to smash a television if she didn’t comply.
But he has walked free this month after a botched police investigation and failed prosecution resulted in him being found not guilty after a trial in the Children’s Court of Queensland, with the presiding judge saying she had a reasonable doubt about the boy’s guilt given the lack of evidence put forward by the prosecution.
In her trial judgment, Judge Vicki Loury described the failure to call witnesses to the alleged incident as “entirely unsatisfactory”.
The boy’s defence argued he was not present during the burglary at Redbank Plains and the complainant, who had met him about five or six times prior to the incident, mistakenly identified him.
According to the judgment, witnesses who may have been able to identify the alleged offenders were not asked to give statements or called to give evidence, CCTV collected by police from neighbouring properties was not tendered in evidence, and the weapon the boy allegedly left at the scene was not seized or examined by police.
After the teens fled, the complainant found a steering wheel lock under the sheets in her bed which she assumed the defendant hid when police arrived.
“Photos were taken of the item some days later,” Judge Loury wrote. “It was not seized, nor subject to a forensic examination. “There is no explanation in the evidence for that not having occurred.”
Judge Loury said Senior Constable Eliza Wheeler gave evidence at trial that while she was at the crime scene speaking with a person, the defendant approached and asked her what was going on.
He claimed he had come from a nearby house behind the complainant’s address.
“No effort was made to confirm his account,” Judge Loury wrote, noting no attempt was made to get statements from others at that address who could support or deny his story.
Police also failed to take witness statements from people who may have been able to identify the defendant – including the complainant’s brother who had opened the front door to the alleged offenders and her friend who was in the bedroom at the time of the incident.
Judge Loury said Senior Constable Brook Mair gave evidence she took over the investigation nine months after the incident and collected CCTV footage that was not tendered in evidence.
“In cross examination she confirmed that she spoke to the complainant’s brother to try to get a statement from him,” Judge Loury wrote.
“In the end, she did not bother as it was too hard with her rosters to obtain a statement from him.
“She did not attempt to obtain a statement from the complainant’s friend, … who the complainant said was inside her room during the incident.”
Judge Loury said the officer also “did not bother” to follow up the defendant’s claim that he was visiting a nearby house and was unaware of whether the steering wheel lock found in the complainant’s bed was seized or forensically examined.
Judge Loury said it was likely the complainant’s friend and brother would both have been able to shed some light on the identity of the defendant had police bothered to speak to them.
“I consider the explanations given for the failure to call the complainant’s brother to give evidence or the complainant’s friend, … and the failure to call any of the residents from (the property the defendant claimed to have come from) to be entirely unsatisfactory,” Judge Loury wrote.
“It would be reasonable for a prudent police officer to have obtained statements from each of these material witnesses and for them to be called at the trial of the defendant.
“The prosecutor has conceded that it would be open to draw an inference adverse to the Crown given the state of the evidence before me.”
Judge Loury said the complainant was a careful and honest witness and that there was strength to her evidence that the defendant was one of the intruders in the room.
“In this case where the central issue is one of identification/recognition, and taking into account the special need for caution before convicting in reliance on the correctness of the complainant’s identification, the failure to call material witnesses who could have shed light on this very issue means that I ought to entertain a reasonable doubt about the guilt of the defendant,” she wrote.
The boy was found not guilty of a charge of entering a dwelling with intent to commit an indictable offence armed and in company.
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Frustrated truckies blast new tax and warn of the ‘domino effect’ on prices
More fuel for inflation from your destructive Leftist government
Frustrated truck drivers have ripped into the government for increasing the Heavy Vehicle Road User Charge, saying the extra fees will put even more pressure on their stretched finances.
The charge, which is a tax truckies pay for using roads, will increase from 27.2 cents to 32.4 cents per litre of diesel used by 2025 which, truckies say, will cause a “domino effect” on the costs of goods around the country.
Sydney truckie, Les, blasted the “ridiculous” move in an interview on 2GB and told host Ben Fordham that the move was “just another hit on a cash cow”.
“That’s all we are to the transport industry, we’re a cash cow,” Les said.
“Every time we do something, the more you do, the more they hit us with taxes, fuel – we’re paying twice the fuel we were from last year.”
He said he was also paying anywhere up to $1000 on tolls for his small trucking operation.
Another caller, AJ – who is a third-generation trucking business owner with a larger fleet of around 40 vehicles – said the increase, tacked on top of the sky-high fuel prices, means he will likely not be able to distribute raises to staff.
”So, we probably use anywhere from 60 to 70,000 litres of diesel a week. Our fuel bill’s probably, you know, up over $100,000 easily each week,” he told 2GB.
The increase to the Heavy Vehicle Road User Charge, Fordham said, means AJ is set to spend $182,000 more on fuel every year to operate his business.
AJ told the program the higher costs for heavy vehicle operators would also mean “costs to our customers go up, and that will start the domino effect” known as inflation.
“When their cost of living goes up, (staff) come to us and go: ‘Hey boss, we need some more money’, but we’ve got to pay extra for all these things,” AJ said.
“So I just ended up going around and around in circles with these higher costs to us.”
Les was glib when asked what he has gained from the budget, saying the only one was realising that it was probably better to “go on the dole”.
“Go on the dole and you’ll get more money, because the harder we work the more we have to give the money away,” he said.
“I have no problem with people that need to be on the dole being there, but (for Labor) to turn around and do what they’ve done … it’s just ridiculous.”
Australia’s transport ministers announced on Monday that they had agreed to increase charges by 6 per cent each year for the next three years, to “help provide some certainty to industry”.
“This level of increase is considered by ministers to strike the right balance between the need to move back towards cost-recovery of the heavy vehicle share of road expenditure and the need to minimise impacts on this vital industry,” the ministers said in a joint statement.
As part of that increase, the Road User Charge will increase from 27.2 cents a litre to 28.8 cents a litre after July 1 this year, when the changes come into effect.
It will then jump to 30.5 cents and 32.4 cents in the years after. Registration costs will also increase for heavy vehicles.
National Road Transport Association boss Warren Clark described the increase as a death knell for some operators.
“This is a cruel blow to operators already under extreme stress who are desperately trying to stay viable,” he said, slamming the ministers’ claims about striking a balance for the industry.
“In effect, they’ve given a final push to those businesses that are already teetering on the edge.”
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RBA research finds Australia has up to an 80 per cent recession risk to get inflation under control
Only a cutback in government spending will reduce price rises
Previously unpublished internal research from the Reserve Bank estimates that Australia's risk of recession over this year and next could be as high as 80 per cent.
The research, released as a result of a freedom of information request, includes modelling from a senior analyst in the RBA's Economic Analysis Department.
The economic modelling, conducted in September 2022 and based on the bank's economic forecasts from August 2022, considered the risk of recession as the RBA raised interest rates at the fastest pace in recent history.
Using the Sahm Rule, which defines a recession as when the quarterly average of the unemployment rate rises by at least 0.75 per cent above its minimum over the previous 12 months, the senior analyst said some models put the risk of recession at 65 per cent or more over the next two years.
"Estimates suggest the probability of a recession over the next two years could be as high as 80 per cent," the note stated.
"If a recession does occur, it is most likely sometime over the next four quarters. This is in line with intensifying market commentary predicting a recession in the first half of 2023."
Using a different type of model reduced the recession risk, but still found the odds of Australia remaining on the "narrow path" talked about by RBA governor Philip Lowe of getting inflation back below 3 per cent without a major economic contraction at little better than 50-50.
"The likelihood of ending up on the 'narrow path' is around one in two," the senior analyst noted.
"Allowing policy to respond increases this probability modestly, both because policymakers can tighten more aggressively to combat inflation and because they can cut rates to avoid a recession, when required."
This research also offers some insight as to why the Reserve Bank may have eased off on its monetary policy tightening, from 0.5 percentage point increases from June to September to a 0.25 of a percentage point rise in October.
At the same time, the RBA has been willing to tolerate inflation sitting just above its 2-3 per cent target even by the end of its two-year forecast horizon.
"Around 70 per cent of all simulations where inflation returns to just above the target band by the end of the horizon do not involve a recession," the modelling predicted.
"The proportion with inflation getting inside the band without a recession is notably lower, at around 55 per cent."
This might go towards explaining why Mr Lowe and the RBA board have generally been resisting calls to get inflation back within the band faster.
Mr Lowe has repeatedly said that to get inflation down more quickly would cost tens, and possibly hundreds, of thousands of jobs, and that he believes this trade-off is not worth it.
"Some of the simulations with inflation returning to target involve significant increases in the unemployment rate," the September research noted.
"The upper bound of the 75 per cent interval peaks at between 4.5 and 5 per cent across both simulations.
"Under the Taylor Rule, the worst outcome has the unemployment rate 2 percentage points higher than in the central forecast.
"This suggests that returning inflation to target could involve significant job losses even when monetary policy responds to developments."
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10 May, 2023
The DPP may be in a world of pain over disclosure
On the information now revealed it would seem that a manipulative woman made a huge profit for herself at the expense of great hurt to an innocent man. Why was there any prosecution at all? Because feminists wanted to believe her. And feminists must be placated. Drumgold is just a weak man who became a political pawn
JANET ALBRECHTSEN
On day one of the Sofronoff inquiry, material before it – and now made public – suggests the ACT Director of Prosecutions may be in a world of pain.
In his incendiary November letter to ACT chief police office Neil Gaughan, DPP Shane Drumgold said he wanted a public inquiry into the police handling of Brittany Higgins’ rape allegations against Bruce Lehrmann. He’s got that, and so much more than he surely bargained for.
Drumgold is central to this inquiry for reasons that will soon become clearer to all Australians. The most serious issues facing Drumgold, by a country mile, concern disclosure. Did the DPP disclose all material he was duty-bound to disclose to Lehrmann’s defence to ensure there was a fair trial?
Broader questions must later be asked as to whether any possible misbehaviour by Drumgold in this high-profile debacle is repeated in other cases that we never hear about. And what does that mean for the legitimacy of the criminal justice system in this country?
Disclosure obligations are critical to our criminal justice system. If a defendant, and defence lawyers, are not informed of relevant material, accused people cannot properly and fairly defend themselves when confronted by the hefty forces of police and state prosecutorial powers. Given the powers of police and the state, we demand that prosecutors be of the highest quality to ensure that fair trials are guaranteed, not a lottery.
Drumgold’s own statement, released to the public on Monday, provides a mountain of material that raises questions about whether he met his duties to disclose critical information, as the most senior legal prosecutor in the ACT. Remember, Drumgold chose to step into this role, in this case, instead of delegating to one of his staff prosecutors.
On Monday, Drumgold faced the formidable, forensic, careful inquiry team comprising counsel assisting Erin Longbottom KC and inquiry chairman Walter Sofronoff.
One of the central issues concerned a set of critical missing documents that should have been given to Lehrmann’s lawyers. These were called the Internal Review Documents, known informally as the Moller reports, after DS Scott Moller, the senior police officer who oversaw the investigation into the alleged rape.
What happened, in short, is that once Lehrmann’s lawyer became aware of the existence of the missing Moller reports, the DPP then fought tooth and nail to prevent the reports – prepared by police as part of the investigation into the rape allegation – from being disclosed to the defence.
This part of the story, like so many more to come, is incredible from the start. Lehrmann’s first lawyers at Legal Aid were told about these documents – in a disclosure certificate served on them. Schedule 1 of that statement made mention, in vague terms, of material that was not legally disclosable. Schedule 3 listed, in detail, material that was disclosable to the defence.
The Moller reports, which appeared in Schedule 3 as the Investigative Review Documents, “outlines version of events as supplied by Ms Higgins during the course of her engagements with police since 2019 against available evidence and subsequent discrepancies. Available upon request and in consultation with DPP.”
A few weeks later, after Lehrmann sacked his Legal Aid lawyers, his new lawyers received a new version of the disclosure statement. This version was very different in one critical respect – the Moller reports were no longer listed in the Schedule 3 that lists disclosable material. They were slipped into an ambiguously worded item in Schedule 1, where non-disclosable material is listed as follows: “Review of brief materials and subsequent advice/recommendations made by the DPP to ACT Policing.”
According to Steven Whybrow’s statement to the inquiry – he was Lehrmann’s barrister – this critical omission was discovered when Lehrmann’s new solicitor, Kamy Saeedi, compared the first disclosure statement that Legal Aid received, with the one he received. But for this, Lehrmann’s defence team may never have known about the existence of the Moller reports.
So, who removed the Moller reports from the disclosable part of the disclosure statement and moved them, in vague words, into the non-disclosable section. In other words, who decided to keep this critical material from the defence?
Bruce Lehrmann leaves the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman
Bruce Lehrmann leaves the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman
The DPP says in his statement to the inquiry that he “was not involved in all aspects of disclosure in the Lehrmann case.” He says he delegated to junior staff members.
He was by his own evidence involved in what happens to the Moller reports on the second Disclosure Document. Exhibits in the form of an email dated April 27 last year, attached to Drumgold’s own statement to the Inquiry, show that Drumgold told his junior staff that the Moller reports were privileged, and therefore not disclosable to the defence.
A separate file note by the same junior staffer concerning a meeting between prosecutors and junior Australian Federal Police officers to discuss, among other things, whether Moller reports are disclosable to defence, the ODPP staffer records “Conversations with Shane afterwards”: “Don’t want to disclose AFP internal documents – not relevant.”
In a series of further emails from Drumgold to his junior staff, the DPP claims that the Moller reports are not disclosable to the defence. In one he says these documents were created “for the dominant purpose of providing legal advice”.
When Lehrmann’s defence team go to court to fight for access to the Moller reports, the DPP emails junior members of his staff stating that “we need an affidavit” outlining, among other things, that the Moller reports (Drumgold calls them the Investigative Review Document) “formed a request for advice from police” thereby making them non-disclosable due to legal privilege. Drumgold’s statement sets out that “he settled affidavits of ODPP employees”.
It’s here that the DPP may find himself in all sorts of trouble. Firstly, legal privilege over these police reports is not the DPPs to claim, but is for the police to claim.
In fact, the DPP would later admit during a court battle when Lehrmann’s lawyers sought access to the omitted Moller reports that it was for the AFP to claim privilege. Yet he still fought to stop defence getting the documents.
Whybrow must have smelled a rat. Around the time of this court stoush about disclosure, Whybrow rang Moller to ask him whether these documents were created by the AFP for the dominant purpose of seeking legal advice from the DPP. If they were, then privilege would have been attached to them.
The inquiry will hear that, according to Whybrow’s statement, and a file note dated September 13 last year that he made of that conversation, Moller said these critical documents were not created for the purpose of getting legal advice and that they should be disclosed to the defence. They agreed that Whybrow would seek them by subpoena. And that is how Lehrmann’s defence lawyers finally received the Moller reports.
Recorded in the same file note, Whybrow says, presciently, to Moller: “I suspect the trial is going to be a bloodbath and that when it’s over it won’t be the end of it and there will undoubtedly be inquiries afterwards as to how and why it was able to get this far.”
That was two weeks before the trial started.
After the mistrial, parts of the Moller reports were revealed by The Australian on December 3. Just days later, Drumgold released his explosive letter to police chief Gaughan that demanded an inquiry to The Guardian newsite. The release of that information was made in a response to an FOI application by The Guardian.
It’s small fish to point out that Drumgold’s own statement concedes he got into trouble by ordering the release of this letter at the time. We can revisit that at another stage. Suffice to say Drumgold made a mess of that FOI request, had to apologise to the AFP and arranged “training”, including for himself.
What matters is that Drumgold tried to keep the Moller reports, which runs to more than 60 pages from the defence. It is explosive reading, detailing page after page of discrepancies that police discovered when investigating the allegation by Higgins that she was raped in the early hours of March 2019 in the parliamentary office of then-senator Linda Reynolds.
This inquiry is not about revisiting the credibility of either Higgins or Lehrmann. What matters now – six months after the DPP shocked many with controversial public comments that he would not retry Lehrmann even though he believed he could win at a second trial – is whether the DPP behaved as a minister of justice, making decisions objectively at every stage, exercising his duties dispassionately at every stage, to ensure that Lehrmann was given a fair trial last October.
The inquiry, now under way, gives a telling insight into how Drumgold viewed senior AFP officers and, by connection, his role as prosecutor.
The DPP makes a series of extraordinary claims, page after page, in his statement about senior AFP officers, naming them, accusing them of pressuring him not to prosecute, of over-investigating the rape complaint, of attempting to assist the defence and undermine the prosecution. How AFP senior officers and the DPP work together in the future is a live issue.
To give a sense, here are a few examples. Drumgold says he had “never” had officers of such senior rank as DS Scott Moller and DI Marcus Boorman be involved in briefings to the AFP. Drumgold says he felt pressure to agree with police concerns about the case.
There is another way to view their involvement: given even the then-prime minister involved himself in this rape allegation, its possible very senior police thought it only appropriate that they wear any heat from a national scandal, rather than more junior officers.
When Drumgold received parts of the Moller reports in June 2021, he said he had “never” before received a brief like this one, where police focused on discrepancies and weaknesses in a prosecution case. Specifically, when Drumgold read part of the Moller reports that described Higgins as “evasive, unco-operative and manipulative” Drumgold said he had “never seen comments of this nature of a police brief”.
There is another view: any sensible prosecutor should want to know all the weaknesses in a prosecution case before going to trial. Seen in that light, the DPP could have viewed the discrepancy analysis in the Moller reports as helpful to his role to determine the truth. After all, the last thing a prosecutor wants is to be blindsided at trial.
After Drumgold learnt from Whybrow that Moller told Whybrow that the Moller reports “were definitely not produced for legal advice and that it should be produced [to defence]” Drumgold said he “formed the view that DS Moller actively wanted to disclose to the defence his case commentary including his perceived weakness in the case. This appeared to be a further example of what I perceived to be as ongoing assistance to the defence by police.”
There is a different view: he should have agreed to disclose the Moller reports to the defence rather than defence lawyers having to battle so hard to get these documents that analyse and investigate possible discrepancies.
The upshot of the DPP’s statement is that throughout this tawdry saga, the DPP appeared to view police conduct through a prism of them pressuring him and undermining his prosecution. Instead, he could have viewed police conduct as part of a search for truth and providing the warning signs that he should have a prosecutor.
While the relationship between the DPP and the AFP is fascinating and important, what will be more critical to this inquiry is whether the DPP used his position as the most senior law officer to keep material from the defence. There is a lot more to come on that fundamental duty.
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Old picture prompts flood of nostalgia for old hardware stores
Being in my 80th year, I too remember the old hardware stores and their high prices. I remember that when you went in there, all the staff would be very busy serving other customers and you had to wait a long time for attention. You could get in and out quickly only if you could find the item you wanted on the shelves yourself. And I have found that Bunnings staff can always point me in the right direction without delay
Memories of old Australian hardware stores have prompted a flood of nostalgia, while triggering bitter criticism of their huge, modern-day chain equivalents like Bunnings.
A picture of an old hardware store, recently shared on social media, led to hundreds of users sharing their recollections of hardware stores that have now sadly become a thing of the past.
The photograph, believed to be taken in the Nock and Kirby store in George Street, central Sydney, shows three men standing behind a glass-fronted counter with row-upon-row of wooden shelves filled with DIY items behind them.
The image of a world now all but disappeared prompted users to lament the decline of the 'one-on-one service' they offered and the knowledge their owners had.
'They had everything,' one said.
Another added: 'And they knew their stock range and what product was best for the job!'
'I also loved visiting the hardware shop with my father. You could buy the exact quantity of what you needed. 'You want 8 wood screws you got 8 in a little paper bag, not 20 in a plastic pack that lives for 300 years in landfill.
'Had one near me: An old shop run by a nearly as old lovely man. You could buy practically everything you needed. I don’t think he even knew some of the stock he had.
'It was great fun to go in and find things on the dusty shelves and all the little drawers he had It was the sort of place you’d go to find something Bunning's didn’t have.'
One person recalled an old shop their father would visit in Parramatta, western Sydney. 'Dad would go there to get odd things and they always had it and knew their trade - not like Bunnings where nobody knows where anything is or what's it used for,' they said.
Another blamed Bunnings for the demise of traditional hardware stores. 'Bunnings basically killed all our local hardware stores along with the great service that ... (they) had.
'Local hardware stores knew what they were selling unlike Bunnings (where) they can’t event point u to the right aisles,' they added.
However, one user defended the retail giant. 'Bunnings staff are awesome, I remember the old places and they were rude half the time,' they wrote.
And another user was more circumspect in their criticism and suggested the blame for the demise of these stores also lay with the consumer.
'Well if everybody didn’t go to Bunnings all of those small shops would still be around,' they said.
Last month, Bunnings was accused of 'anti-competitive' behaviour over a secret plan to buy up at least seven Mitre 10 stores.
Scott Marshall, the outgoing CEO of Metcash's food division, slammed Bunnings in a recent submission to the federal parliament's select committee on the cost of living.
In addition to its grocery wholesale business, Metcash owns the Mitre 10 hardware chain, with stores run by individual owners as part of a national cooperative.
Mr Marshall told the committee major businesses were trying to buy up independent Mitre 10 stores and primarily pinned the 'anti-competitive' practice on Bunnings.
'Currently, Metcash is aware of Bunnings writing to at least seven Mitre 10 businesses asking them to consider entering negotiations to sell their store to Bunnings,' he said in his submission.
The comments came two weeks after Daily Mail Australia revealed that an independent Mitre 10 store in Byron Bay was closing its doors for good.
Its closure makes it the latest victim of so-called big box business - after a previous report predicted that more than 6000 independent retailers were set to close by 2024 because of bigger firms like Bunnings.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/bunnings-australia-problem-aussies-are-ignoring/ar-AA1aSfEl
***************************************************WA government dreams an impossible climate dream
Western Australia’s biggest electricity system will need to roughly triple in size over the next 20 years, as the state seeks to wean itself off fossil fuels and go green.
In a landmark report released today, the WA government outlined the massive scale of building that would be required to replace coal-fired power stations and meet surging demand from customers — particularly industry — electrifying their operations.
WA Energy Minister Bill Johnston revealed an extra 4,000km of new high-voltage transmission lines would need to be built by 2042 under the government’s central plans.
Within the same time frame, Mr Johnston said peak demand for electricity from the state’s main grid — the South West Interconnected System (SWIS) — would treble to about 13,000 megawatts.
The minister also revealed the amount of generation capacity in the system would need to jump by a factor of 10 to account for rocketing demand and the intermittent nature of wind and solar power.
Despite the monumental scale of the flagged expansion, Mr Johnston said just $126 million would be initially set aside to help “kickstart early network planning”.
Mr Johnston said the report, titled the SWIS Demand Assessment, would be the blueprint to guide the overhaul of WA’s biggest grid, which covers Perth and much of the state’s southern half.
“The SWIS Demand Assessment provides a vision of what the future grid might look like as industry seeks to decarbonise,” Mr Johnston said.
“An expanded grid is the most cost-efficient way of supporting decarbonisation as it can reach further for wind and solar.
“The SWIS cannot rely on other electricity systems to support it, so having a strong transmission backbone is critical for reliable supply.”
Cost of plans unclear
Under the plans outlined by Mr Johnston, several new high-voltage transmission lines would need to be built to connect renewable energy zones, particularly in windy and sunny areas north of current SWIS footprint.
However, Mr Johnston said how much the upgrades would cost and how they would be paid for — and by whom — were still open questions.
The minister acknowledged that big industrial users, such as mineral processors and manufacturers, would ideally help pay for the work.
He noted it was these customers who would drive much of the extra demand on the grid by using electricity — rather than fossil fuels such as gas — to power their operations.
According to Mr Johnston, it would be unfair to spread the costs of the required upgrades on to household and business customers who contributed much less to the increase in demand.
While anticipating a massive increase in the amount of renewable energy, Mr Johnston argued gas would continue to play a key role in keeping the system stable.
But he insisted this would not derail efforts to decarbonise the WA economy, noting electrification of gas-heavy industrial processes would have a much bigger effect.
'Transition plan does not work': Opposition
Speaking after the announcement, Shadow Energy spokesman Steve Thomas said today's report was embarrassing for the government.
"This document demonstrates that their transition plan does not work," he said.
"It's not costed, it's not funded, and it can't deliver the transition that government is talking about, and this document actually reinforces that."
Dr Thomas said he expected the total cost of the state's transition away from coal to be closer to $15 billion – with the 4,000 kilometres of new transmission infrastructure accounting for about $8 billion of that.
"You'd think with the biggest surpluses, the greatest boom in our history, if you were going to transition the electricity system you might have the money to do it, but the government has not invested anything like the amount of money necessary," he said.
"They've got the time frame wrong, they've got the infrastructure requirements wrong, they've got the budget wrong, there's not much they've actually got right on the transition to renewable energy and at this stage it will not work."
The ability to cope with the loss of generation that closing coal by 2029 would have was another significant issue, according to Dr Thomas, as well as finding the people and resources to drive the transition in a globally-competitive market.
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Government braces for potential Australia Post bailout as budget lists it as new contingent liability
They only seem to deliver on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in my area. That may become universal in cities
The federal government has conceded for the first time that it might have to financially prop up Australia Post as the mail carrier hurtles towards its first financial loss in a decade, which could potentially punch a hole of hundreds of millions of dollars in the government’s finances.
Buried in the budget papers released on Tuesday night, the government has listed under its summary of contingent liabilities in its statement of risks a new entry for Australia Post under the heading “Australia Post’s financial sustainability”.
While Australia Post traditionally is self funding and doesn’t rely on the taxpayer to bail it out of losses and has its own balance sheet to borrow funds, if needed, the mail carrier too could ultimately call on its political masters and the parliament for financial aid if needed.
“Given Australia Post’s deteriorating financial position, there is a risk that the Australian government will need to consider providing financial assistance to Australia Post in the future,” the budget papers said.
Only last month, Australia Post chief executive Paul Graham warned in a speech to the American Chamber of Commerce that the organisation was heading for a significant loss this financial year as its loss-making mail service drained it of funds.
Mr Graham warned that unless major reforms to the Act which Australia Post operated under were made by parliament the mail service could face a similar financial disaster witnessed by other mail organisations such as in Canada which was looking down the barrel of losses of in excess of $1bn.
Draining it of money and causing widening losses in particular, the mail boss claimed, was its community service obligations such as delivering mail to people’s homes daily through the week, the complex and arduous process in getting stamp prices lifted to cover costs and the placement of Australia Post offices around the country.
That operating model is now under public review with submissions recently sent to the government.
The widening losses experienced by its traditional letters business could force the taxpayer to bail out Australia Post, Mr Graham warned, as it was forced to operate under a model created in the 1980s before the invention of the internet and mobile phones that had revolutionised communications but saddled Australia Post with extra costs.
Now that warning has been heeded by government as Australia Post faces its first financial loss since 2014 with the national mail carrier appearing in budget papers as a new contingent liability.
“Australia Post is a Government Business Enterprise wholly owned by the Commonwealth Government. In 2022–23, Australia Post is expected to report a full financial year loss, the first annual loss since 2014–15, as the digitisation of the global and national economy changes how many people and businesses use postal and related services,” the budget papers report.
“Australia Post does not receive financial support from the Australian Government, but is required to meet a range of Community Service Obligations.”
The government is undertaking public consultation to inform development of balanced changes to ensure postal services meet the needs of the Australian community both now and into the future, the budget papers said.
Australia Post has submitted its own submission to the government review and although it and Mr Graham have not revealed what proposals they had made it is believed the mail carrier will ask for changes to the Act. Those could allow it to deliver letters less than five days a week as well as other community service obligations reform that will halt the loss-making trajectory of its letters arm.
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9 May, 2023
Rising inflation set to deflate ALP’s back-in-black joy
What a lot of nonsense is coming to us from the treasurer. His "surplus" is just a huge windfall from unprecedented mining revenue -- attributable to Vladimir Putin and President Xi. Nothing to do with ALP policy.
And his current budget HAS to make inflation worse. Handing more spending money to the public has got to increase demand with no corresponding increased productivity to balance it. The ALP is locked in to continuing inflation, to the detriment of us all
Jim Chalmers has achieved what Josh Frydenberg almost did and Wayne Swan never could.
For the first time in 15 years, the budget will be back in surplus. How much of this can be credited to the Treasurer’s magical abilities will be bitterly contested.
The Coalition will rightly claim the Morrison government’s post-pandemic legacy of full employment has helped deliver it, aided no less by an upward revision of the conservative commodity price forecasts that former Coalition finance minister Mathias Cormann wrote into the budget narrative a decade ago.
But it won’t last long. The budget goes back into deficit next year, as the structural pressures remain unresolved.
This is a significant political moment for Labor. The last time it delivered a surplus was in 1989. The last treasurers to have achieved this were Peter Costello and Paul Keating.
Chalmers will be happy to have the argument.
For Anthony Albanese, returning the budget to balance will right the wrongs of the party’s past record of government and confirm the electoral proposition that under his leadership, Labor is a safe economic bet.
Beyond the rhetorical debate is a quiet reshaping of the social and economic equation.
Chalmers’ first full budget is a bitter clash between retail politics and economic reality.
Inflation is hovering over this budget like a missile-armed drone. It has forced Chalmers and the Prime Minister into making a political choice.
In delivering a massive cost-of-living relief package for Labor’s core constituencies, it risks throwing borrowers – essentially those several million Australians with a home loan – to the wolves of the central bank board.
Chalmers’ claims that his cost-of-living relief package will have a downward pressure in inflation is heavily contested by some economists.
Much of what is known about the budget so far is inherently inflationary.
The energy supplement may reduce prices on energy, by delivering the relief at the bill point, but the indirect effect will be to increase disposable income. Hence it will pump more money into the economy by the simple fact that it puts more money into five million peoples’ pockets.
Raising JobSeeker payments is inherently inflationary. While it might be justified and necessary according to some – albeit not the opposition - the consequences in an inflationary environment can’t be ignored.
Again, it pumps more money into the economy.
The question then is how much of all this spending, which includes $11bn into aged-care wages, is offset by real budget savings.
And how much is being funded by revenue gains that have been largely inherited.
This is the essential equation of Chalmers’ budget. Mortgage holders may end up paying, the RBA may be held to be the villain, and Labor delivers a first downpayment of equity for “its people”.
As economist Chris Richardson argues, what families may want out of the budget may not necessarily be good for families in the long run, if it adds to the inflationary problem.
Albanese’s claim, which he made to his caucus on Monday, was that inflation was a “tax on the poor”. This was the guiding principle of the Calmers budget.
The reality is that inflation is a tax on everyone.
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ABC’s impartiality training flunks first hurdle with coronation coverage
Just when Media Watch Dog readers may have thought that the recent “deep dive” session into “impartiality” awareness (the quotes are taken from an ABC staff email) might have an impact – along came last Saturday’s Coronation.
The coverage kicked off at 5pm on Saturday (AEST). Presented by Jeremy Fernandez and Julia Baird – guests included Stan Grant (ABC), Craig Foster (Australian Republic Movement), author Kathy Lette and indigenous lawyer Teela Reid. Republicans all, as far as MWD can work it out. There were also comments by Liberal MP Julian Leeser (a constitutional monarchist) and academic lawyer Dr Anne Twomey. Both Mr Leeser and Professor Twomey are mild mannered types and not of the ranting kind.
Not so Comrades Grant, Foster, Reid and Lette (although the last named does try to be funny). Needless to say, the first three used the occasion to rant against the monarchy, colonisation, contemporary Australia and all that. There’s nothing wrong with the Grant/Foster/Reid trio expressing their views on the taxpayer funded public broadcaster. It’s just that none of the trio was seriously challenged by the presenters or other panellists.
Stan Grant accused the Crown of conducting an exterminating war. Craig Foster declared that, due to the Crown, many of our beautiful multicultural communities suffered. And Reid declared that the Crown had perpetuated colonisation all around the world at the expense of First Nations peoples of colour. She also called for the abolition of the prison system – it’s not clear what relevance this had to the Coronation, but there you go.
MWD changed channels during all this ranting. Free-to-air channels Network 7 and National 9 – which outrated the ABC – were showing footage of guests entering Westminster Abbey. So was subscription channel Sky News. In short, 7, 9, 10 and Sky covered the news. Not so the ABC which seemed to be of the view that Australians need to be “educated”.
Gerard Henderson voted “Yes” in the referendum on the republic in 1999. But Australia remains a constitutional monarchy. And while the Coronation affects contemporary Australia, the taxpayer funded public broadcaster should give impartiality a go.
ABC management could have instructed staff to report the Coronation as an important news event. But the ABC is very much a staff collective – and the occasion was loaded with leftist commentary.
As Sophie Elsworth and James Madden report in today’s Australian, the ABC defended its Coronation coverage (Quelle surprise!) and declared that it reflected a diversity of views. Not so – this would have only been the case if the Grant/Forster/Reid opinion had been challenged by three articulate performers who held a contrary view.
By the way, ABC Chair Ita Buttrose (AC OBE) went into “no comment” mode and referred questions from The Australian to an ABC spokesman. Sure, the board does not run the ABC – but it is entitled to comment on the taxpayer funded broadcaster’s performance.
Currently ABC ratings are in free fall. This reflects, in part, the fact that the broadcaster has alienated so many of its traditional audiences. The coverage of the Coronation is an example of the problem – and the ABC’s no-problem-here response indicates that no solution is in sight while it remains a Conservative Free Zone.
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Yugar baby death: Key evidence against parents charged with murder up to 18 months away
An amazing misallocation of resources by the Qld. government
A magistrate has demanded an explanation after being told key forensic evidence against parents charged with murder over their baby’s death will not be finalised for up to 18 months.
Among the outstanding evidence is a forensic neurologist’s report.
The court heard Queensland Health only employs one, and that person only works one day per week.
Reinhardt (Ryan) Albert Bosch, 33 at the time, and Noemi Kondacs, 22 at the time, were charged last year with murder and torture over the death of their seven-month-old son, Rhuan.
It is alleged that they prayed for their seriously injured boy, but did not call an ambulance until after their baby had died. It is understood the parents are deeply religious.
It is alleged Rhuan suffered his injuries between April 11 and November 2, but his parents did not call an ambulance until the morning of November 3.
Paramedics attended the family home on Mount Samson Road in Yugar, northwest of Brisbane, and alerted police to the death.
Their case was mentioned in Brisbane Magistrates Court on February 6. It was estimated forensic evidence – including reports from a pathologist, radiologist and forensic neurologist – would take six to 18 months to be finalised.
The case was reviewed in the same court on Monday, and a more specific time frame still could not be provided. Among the reasons given was that Queensland Health only has one forensic neurologist and they work one day per week.
Magistrate Michael Quinn demanded an explanation for the delays. He took into account the existing backlog of forensic evidence awaiting analysis, which has been further exacerbated by the need to retest thousands of samples following the damning Commission of Inquiry.
“The court has become accustomed to there being such a lack of resources in forensic areas that very, very, very long delays are to be experienced,” he said.
“But 12 to 18 months cannot be acceptable.
“I do understand given the nature of the charges that it is in-depth, it is serious, and all of those relevant issues, but one day a week is of concern.
“The arresting officer is to file … an affidavit setting out what attempts have been made to obtain the outstanding material, in particular medical statements, and what advice has been given concerning ETAs and why material is unable to be disclosed in a reasonable time.
“That is not meant to be a criticism of investigators, but merely to enable the court to be better informed of the ETAs on our outstanding material.”
Mr Bosch and Ms Kondac’s cases were adjourned to July 3.
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Climate misinformation from "The Guardian"
Leftist organ quickto misallocate blame
The Guardian Australia has made multiple corrections to content it published about misinformation and Sky News Australia.
The online news outlet published a podcast titled, “Fox News and the consequences of lies with Lenore Taylor”, only to later amend it after making false claims relating to Sky News.
A note published on the Guardian’s website underneath the podcast by Taylor, the editor of the Guardian Australia, read: “An earlier version referred to adverse findings by the Australian Communications and Media Authority against Sky News Australia in respect of programs containing misinformation ?about C?ovid-19,” the correction states.
“This was incorrect.
“The programs were broadcast by Foxtel Cable Television Pty Limited on the Daystar channel.”
The embarrassing correction comes just one week after the Guardian also made false claims in relation to complaints lodged with the media regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
The complaints were made about content relating to commentary by Sky News Australia host Rowan Dean on climate science, however the article incorrectly said the complaints were made by “Australians for a Murdoch Royal Commission”.
In a statement on its website it later corrected the record to state the complaints were made by former prime minister Kevin Rudd.
“This article was amended on 28 April 2023 to clarify that the initial complaints to ACMA were made by Kevin Rudd personally, not by Australians for a Murdoch Royal Commission,” the correction said.
A Sky News Australia spokeswoman said in a statement: “This latest factual error is particularly ironic given the purported expertise of the presenters on the podcast, discussing misinformation.”
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8 May, 2023
Federal Budget 2023: Funding for 5000 teaching scholarships and new ad campaign
Typical Leftism: They think that they can solve a problem by throwing money at it. Tackling the feral environment in classrooms that their discipline policies have created does not even occur to them. It occurs to those considering a teaching career, though
Five thousand teaching students will be offered up to $40,000 each if they stay in the classroom and a $10 million advertising blitz to recruit new teachers will be launched by the Federal Government in a bold bid to tackle crippling school shortages.
The moves come in the wake of News Corp’s groundbreaking Australia’s Best Teachers and Best in Class campaign, which Education Minister Jason Clare said had already made teachers feel more valued and respected and inspired the government’s follow-up campaign.
The Minister has just returned from a high-level international gathering of 22 international education ministers in Washington DC, where he was alarmed to discover fewer than half of Australian teachers felt their work was valued, well behind countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, Finland and even Mexico.
In an exclusive interview with News Corp, Mr Clare revealed the 5000 $10,000 scholarships would be included in next week’s Budget – making good on an election promise.
However they will now be tied to teaching graduates committing to serve a number of years in the classroom, most likely five – a condition teachers themselves urged the Minister to place on the scholarships in order to boost flagging retention rates.
It is part of a broader government push to elevate the status of teachers to that of other professionals and attract the highest performing students to the nation’s schools.
“There’s nothing more important in a classroom than the teacher shaping the outcomes for our kids,” he said.
“These are 5000 scholarships worth up to 40 grand each. They encourage some of our best and brightest to become a teacher rather than a lawyer or a banker and applications for those scholarships will open later this year.”
Following the success of our education advocacy campaign, Mr Clare will also later this year launch a multimillion-dollar recruitment drive in partnership with the states and territories.
The $10m campaign – $5m of which will be provided by the Commonwealth and $5m by the states – will take inspiration from a powerful ad Mr Clare saw in the New York subway 20 years ago, long before he even entered parliament.
The billboard simply read: “Everybody remembers their first teacher’s name. Who will remember yours?”
“We’re developing that campaign now with teachers and principals,” Mr Clare said.
“We’re bringing them together to help us design this campaign, which will involve TV, social media, but also ads on the back of buses and taxis and billboards.”
The Minister said the comparative data he saw at the US conference showed there was a clear link between teachers feeling valued and teacher shortages and was alarmed that only around 38 per cent of Australian teachers believed they were valued by society.
“In countries like Singapore and Finland, where there is no shortage of teachers at all – in fact people are queuing up to become a teacher – that percentage is more like 60 or 70 per cent,” he said.
“So that data underlies the importance of the campaign.”
However, Mr Clare said the education advocacy campaign and his own personal determination to place teachers front and centre of education reform had already started to turn around this attitude.
“It’s important for me to get on the record, to say thank you to News Corp for this campaign, it’s really important,” he said.
“We’ve got a teacher shortage crisis in the country, that’s been building for a long time. And if we’re going to recruit more great teachers and retain more great teachers, then that starts with respect. And that’s what this campaign at its core is all about.”
But Mr Clare also stressed: “It’s a whole of community job. It’s not just the job of ministers, and the media, it’s the whole community pulling together. Because if we respect teachers, we’re going to get more of them.”
The Australia’s Best Teachers campaign launched in February to help change perceptions about the role of teachers, many of who feel the public does not respect the work they do. Major organisations ANZ, Teachers Mutual Bank, Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools, Care For Kids, Griffith University and PwC have also backed the campaign.
Samantha Brimfield, a teacher at Santa Sophia Catholic College at Gables in Sydney’s northwest, said it was a rewarding career.
“You develop such beautiful relations and connections with the students and families you work with,” said Miss Brimfield, who features in The Daily Telegraph’s list of Australia’s Best Teachers on Saturday.
“You are not just a teacher, you are someone your students look up to and are inspired by. It is a special feeling knowing you have made an impact on a child’s life and that you have the ability to leave a lasting impression.”
Miss Brimfield said it was important the public valued and respected the work of teachers.
“How the community views teachers can have an influence on student’s and their attitudes and feelings towards school,” she said.
“Schools that have a great partnership with their wider community help to create a sense of belonging within the families and students and aids in creating a positive learning environment.”
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Blacktivism and the Crown
Given the coronation of King Charles III, there are differing and often conflicting opinions about the significance of the British monarchy and what the institution means to Australia.
While many celebrate the long history of ritual and ceremony surrounding the occasion, there will be some, like the ABC’s Aboriginal host of Q&A Stan Grant, who condemn the monarchy as a symbol of white supremacy, colonial exploitation, and responsible for the way Indigenous Australian’s have been, and continue to be, exploited and killed.
In his recent book The Queen Is Dead, Grant describes Australia’s history as riven with cruelty, exploitation, and genocide and argues those with Indigenous blood are always victims of racism, and cruelty.
Grant wrote the book as a result of the ABC daring to present Queen Elizabeth’s death in September last year in a measured and respectful way instead of using the occasion to reveal the monarchy’s complicity in exploiting and subjugating Grant’s Indigenous ancestors.
Because blacktivists argue society is structurally racist and Indigenous people are always oppressed, the highly successful and well-paid ABC journalist argues, ‘I felt in my own organisation … a sense of betrayal because the ABC, everyone donned black suits, everyone took on a reverential tone.’
In an extract from the book, Grant also condemns the way, as the host of Q&A, he had to allow a white person on the panel when discussing the significance of the Queen’s death.
A death, Grant argues, that led him to relive the way the British invaded the country ‘shooting defenceless people, cutting off heads, dismembering bodies’ and forcing Aborigines off cliffs, setting fire to homes, and lacing food with poison.
Such was the trauma Grant writes: ‘The night after, I am lying on my bed. My heart is racing. I am struggling for breath. I really feel like I am dying.’ Not unexpectedly, the book is described as ‘a searing, viscerally powerful, emotionally unstoppable, pull-no-punches book on the bitter legacy of colonialism for Indigenous people’.
Grant’s book and his black armband worldview explain why so many Australians are becoming fed up with the incessant claim the nation’s history is characterised by cruelty, exploitation, and genocide and, even today, those with Indigenous blood are always victims of racism and white supremacy.
Along with the loss, suffering, and dispossession that inevitably occurs when a civilised society encounters one not as advanced, it’s also true the British did all they could to establish friendly relations.
The Admiralty’s orders to Governor Phillip stated, ‘You are to endeavour by every possible means to open an Intercourse with the Natives and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all Our Subjects to live in amity and kindness with them.’
As detailed by Watkin Tench, a marine who arrived with the First Fleet, it was also the case that Governor Phillip stressed the need to deal peacefully with the local Aborigines and even after being speared himself refused to take retribution.
While there is no doubt as the fledgling colony advanced over the Blue Ranges conflicts occurred as a result of European pastoralists taking Aboriginal land, it is also true Governor Macquarie did much to help Aborigines adjust to the arrival of the British.
Ignored by Stan Grant is also the reality that thousands of Indigenous Australians have followed his footsteps and achieved prosperity and success notwithstanding the supposed structural racism. Aborigines like the magistrate Pat O’Shane, academics Marcia Langton and Anthony Dillon, plus the 11 members of the Commonwealth Parliament are evidence that Indigenous Australians have the same legal and political rights and chance to succeed in life as all other Australians.
Also ignored is the reason all Australians are treated equally is because the nation inherited a legal system based on British Common Law and a Westminster-inspired parliamentary system that includes the monarch as the nation’s sovereign.
Instead of Aboriginal activists parading their victimhood status and whinging about being oppressed, maybe it’s time to follow the example of the descendants of the Irish who arrived with the First Fleet and later during the Irish famine and the Gold Rushes.
Reading Robert Hughes’ The Fatal Shore and David W. Cameron’s Convict Hell: Macquarie Harbour, where Irish convicts, especially the Fenian’s fighting against British imperialism, regularly received 100 lashes and were starved and imprisoned in solitary confinement, there is cause for complaint.
Ireland suffered years of oppression with 1 million starving and dying during the great famine. Add the terror and violence perpetrated by Oliver Cromwell and much later Winston Churchill’s black and tans and there is obviously a case for truth-telling and compensation. Unlike Indigenous separatists, though, the Irish have assimilated, are proud Australians, and don’t spend all their time self-identifying as victims.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/blacktivism-and-the-crown/
*********************************************Labor governments defend gender ideology at the expense of children
Alan Jones
I have written before about the disgraceful treatment in Victoria of the Liberal MP, Moira Deeming, a teacher turned politician.
We need to hear more from this woman and nothing from the incompetent Liberal Opposition leader in Victoria who wanted her expelled from the Party.
As I have previously explained, Moira Deeming attended a rally on the steps of the Victorian Parliament, protesting, peacefully, the need for safe spaces for women.
In other words, there needs to be full debate on what rights transgender women (biological men who transition to women) – should they be allowed in spaces reserved for women?
Common sense would say no.
Moira Deeming attended a rally arguing for safe spaces.
It was infiltrated by a few Nazis and she was accused, virtually, of being a Nazi sympathiser.
I said previously that she should be the Opposition leader in Victoria and that bloke Pesutto should be provided with an undignified exit.
Interestingly, Moira Deeming said, at the time of going into Parliament, ‘I don’t think it is healthy to tell children that they can change sex; or that their feelings on what sex they are, are the thing that they should affirm, rather than their biology; because which thing is going to leave you healthier in the long run?’
She wants to see an inquiry in Victoria into youth gender medicine, arguing that the inquiry ‘has to be genuine, it has to be real, and it has to be open and it has to go for six months, a year, or whatever it takes’.
Victoria is home to Australia’s largest and most influential gender clinic at the Royal Childrens’ Hospital in Melbourne, where new patient referrals, this is a gender clinic, have multiplied 100-fold over the decade since 2011.
And the clinic gets moral and financial support from the Andrews Labor government.
Moira Deeming used her maiden speech recently as a Liberal Member of Victoria’s Upper House to call for ‘an open inquiry into gender affirmation practices’ involving minors.
She described hormonal and surgical interventions as ‘medically unjustifiable, irreversible and devastatingly harmful’, but argued ‘ideologues continue to vilify and incite hatred towards anyone sounding the alarm’.
We are talking here about gender ideology in schools, which prompted Moira Deeming to say she could no longer teach in Victoria in good conscience.
She said, ‘I didn’t want to be involved in telling a child that medicalised gender change was good. I didn’t want to be involved in confusing a child. I didn’t want to be involved in lying to parents… I felt like I was being used by the Government to push an ideology behind parents’ backs, which was not anywhere near close to being harmless.’
Well, that is Victoria.
Let’s go to Queensland where the Labor Government has legislation before the Parliament to help people in Queensland more easily change the sex indicated on their birth certificate by removing the requirement to have undergone sex reassignment surgery.
Under the legislation, parents would be able to opt not to record a gender on the birth certificate of their newborn. These are supposedly plans, as part of reforms, to promote transgender rights.
I spoke, off air, recently, to the Opposition leader in Queensland, David Crisafulli. He told me that the legislation hasn’t gone through the Parliament, but it will with the support of the Greens.
If the legislation is passed, children over the age of 16 will be able to legally identify as a different sex without parental consent. But they will need a supporting statement from an adult whom they have known for at least a year.
Those aged 12 to 15 will need parental permission to change the sex on their birth certificate; but they will be able to apply to the courts if they can’t get their parents’ support.
A medical statement from a doctor or a psychologist will not be required.
At what point is legislation of this kind completely out of step with community expectations and with parental rights, to say nothing of the safety of women.
But the Attorney General in Queensland, Shannon Fentiman, condemning those who questioned these moves, is saying that those who criticise ‘will try to cloak their transphobia in the guise of women’s safety – making claims about trans women accessing women’s spaces, including changerooms or even domestic violence shelters’.
So, you see, dare to criticise and you will be vilified as transphobic. But it appears that if you are an MP like the Attorney-General in Queensland, you can tell untruths as you blunder your way through.
Says Attorney-General Fentiman, ‘I want to be clear, there is no evidence, domestic or internationally, to support these outrageous claims.’
That is not the case. There was a 2020 incident in Britain where transgender prisoners sexually assaulted women in jail; and, yet, trans inmates were still allowed to be transferred to female prisons upon request.
The British Ministry of Justice said that, ‘Since 2010, out of the 124 sexual assaults that occurred in the female estate, a total of seven of those were sexual assaults against females, in custody, perpetrated by transgender individuals.’
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Rent freezes off the table in NSW as new government focuses on bonds and bidding
Some realism in the matter at last
The NSW government will turn its attention to rental reforms in its first sitting week since the state election. (ABC News)
Rent reforms designed to even the playing field for tenants will be introduced in the New South Wales parliament this week, but there will be no relief for those facing soaring rents.
The new Minns government is prioritising a proposed ban on secret rent bidding and a portable bond scheme amid the worsening rental crisis gripping the state.
But tenants and advocacy groups say these changes would fail to provide the urgent hip pocket relief needed after months of rising rent prices.
The latest CoreLogic data puts the median weekly rent in Sydney at $711, meaning there's been a 13 per cent increase in the past 12 months.
Over the past 12 months in regional NSW, rents have increased by 3.8 per cent, which puts the median weekly rent at $550.
A mismatch between supply and demand is driving rents up, along with a surge in overseas migration and a slowdown in the construction sector.
Last week at national cabinet, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese tasked the states and territories with developing proposals to strengthen renters' rights across the country by the second half of the year.
Both the federal and NSW Greens are proposing rent freezes, with the member for Newtown, Jenny Leong, introducing a bill in state parliament this week.
"The Greens want to see a two-year emergency rent freeze, to press pause on skyrocketing unchecked rent increases — while we work constructively with the new government to develop and implement long-term solutions to the housing affordability crisis," Ms Leong told the ABC.
However, the government has ruled out rent caps, arguing they cause major drops in housing supply by driving investors out of the market.
"If it puts pressure on new entrants and builders coming into the market and supplying households for the people of Sydney, we could make what is a desperately bad situation worse," Premier Chris Minns said last week.
But Tenants' Union of NSW CEO Leo Patterson Ross says many European countries have shown it's possible to balance increased rent regulation with supply.
"[Rent freezes] do not have the supply implications some people are concerned about, we need a mature conversation about this," Mr Patterson Ross said.
"Last year we saw bipartisan support across the country to stop energy prices rising a few hundred dollars, whereas rents have risen thousands of dollars a year.
"It's not consistent to say some essential services need pricing consideration and some don't."
Minister for Industry and Trade Anoulack Chanthivong is charged with tackling the state's rent crisis and says the government is focused on long-term supply solutions as "you can't have rental affordability without rental availability".
He says the new role of NSW rental commissioner will be key to providing expert advice in this area, with applications now open for the $300,000-a-year job.
Until then, the government aims to restore some fairness around bonds and rent bidding as the 58th parliament sits for the first time this week.
A portable bond scheme would allow tenants to apply their current bond to their next lease via the Rental Board and prevent the need to pay "double bonds" when moving.
"This will relieve financial pressure and increase cash flows for renters, what we're trying to do is fix what is a very stressful time for renters," Mr Chanthivong said.
The government will also seek to tighten the rules around rent bidding by making it mandatory for landlords, real estate agents and third parties to tell all prospective tenants when an applicant has made a higher bid on a property.
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7 May, 2023
Un-informed consent
Julie Sladden
‘I had my shots but I’m not having any more’ is a phrase I’ve heard more than once.
A little over a year ago – I know, it feels longer – thousands marched the streets of Australia protesting the mandates. I was one of them.
In many cases, the mandates were facilitated through emergency powers enacted by the state governments. But some sectors (for example Universities) and employers (for example airlines) brought the mandates in all by themselves.
It makes me wonder, if the government and employers tried it on again, how many would march the streets in protest now?
This is an important question as none of the legislative powers that made the ‘mandate nightmare’ possible have been wound back. And only a handful of workers have successfully defeated the mandates.
Meanwhile, the mandate hangover continues…
I recently received a call from a worker who was ‘mandated’ to have a booster. They wanted to discuss options.
‘Just say no,’ I offered. A simple option, possibly not without consequence, but one I would place top of my list. Saying ‘no’ in the current climate is far more likely to be accepted than it was twelve months ago. And I know people who have successfully done so, without losing their jobs.
But there’s something more important at stake: who owns your body?
I asked the caller, ‘Do you really want to continue to work for an employer who is going to require you to have a jab every six months just so you can earn a living?’
It’s a question we should all ask because under those conditions, there is no bodily autonomy (that is, your employer owns your body) and it’s impossible to give legally valid informed consent. Being coerced into having a jab, to keep your job, is not informed consent. It’s the antithesis of informed consent.
In considering the requirements for legally valid informed consent – which can only be given voluntarily and in the absence of undue pressure, coercion, or manipulation – it becomes clear that anyone ‘mandated’ is unable to give informed consent. Why? Because mandates and informed consent are mutually exclusive. If someone is being told they have to have a jab to keep their job then informed consent is not possible, regardless of whether they are willing to receive it for those reasons.
Many understood this, and the seriousness of the new ‘no jab, no pay’ territory we were entering. Tragically, thousands of people walked from jobs and careers that spanned decades, in what might be the biggest government-enforced-mass-exodus of a skilled working population. Even more tragically, hundreds of thousands, perhaps more, were coerced into having the jab to keep their job. And let’s not talk about those who were injured or worse.
This, in a so-called ‘free’ country.
Informed consent was not just ‘impossible’ for the mandated. I have serious doubts about whether anyone in Australia gave informed consent to the Covid injections.
Let me explain.
During the Covid years, Australians were subject to politicians and medical technocrats who told us how miserable our lives were going to be if we didn’t get vaccinated. The disgust was tangible, and the message was clear. Somehow we allowed Australian authorities to subject us to the ‘largest clinical trial, the largest global vaccination trial ever’ despite treaties, agreements, and codes of conduct that are supposed to protect against such things. I believe the ’95 per cent’ Covid ‘vaccination’ rate was achieved through undue pressure, coercion, and manipulation of the Australian population.
Were you told you wouldn’t be able to attend weddings, funerals, birthdays, social events, schools, or community services if you didn’t get vaccinated? Undue pressure.
Were you told that you would be unable to work, return home, travel, visit sick relatives, enter a hospital, or obtain medical care if you didn’t get vaccinated? Coercion.
Were you told it was your duty, your social contract, and a way to ‘love your neighbour’ by getting vaccinated? Manipulation.
‘The vast majority of people taking vaccines did it under duress,’ said Dr. Peter McCullough on his recent visit to Australia. ‘They did it under duress. They had to try to keep their job or maintain their position … and my heart is broken that so many people have taken the vaccine, and so many have been harmed.’
This same pattern of pressure, coercion, and manipulation was seen around the world.
In the UK, the Lockdown Files revealed how the government employed military-grade psyop-style strategies to make sure they ‘frightened the pants off everyone’ into compliance.
‘You’ve got to look at the definition of coercion,’ explains UK Doctor of Psychology Christian Buckland. ‘The Encyclopedia Britannica states, “It’s the threat or use of punitive measures against states, groups or individuals in order for them to undertake or desist from specified actions… and those threats include psychological pressure and social ostracism.”’
Buckland continues, ‘This is really important because the (Lockdown Files) prove that psychological pressure was applied to the public. That means any consent to immunisation that was given, whether they asked you or didn’t, or if you agreed or didn’t agree … was not valid.’
‘So what?’ you may ask. Well, if consent was not valid then who is accountable?
Buckland explains, ‘One of the most important questions that is going to emerge from this issue is going to be one of accountability and liability for all the people who have been greatly injured or been left bereft, because of the Covid vaccine. Because they gave their consent for an injection that they couldn’t give consent to. There has to be some form of accountability, based on the fact that no one could give informed consent.’
This issue of informed consent is about so much more than bodily autonomy. It is inextricably linked to medical freedom… and more.
‘Your medical freedom is inextricably linked to your social freedom and your economic freedom,’ says Dr McCullough. ‘When that medical freedom is broken, and you begin to do things to your body for other reasons, outside of medicinal reasons, it infringes upon these other circles of freedom, and this can cascade down. We have to bring ourselves out of this.’
I agree.
We, the people, need to re-draw the line in the sand. The line where the government ends and our bodily autonomy begins. The ‘informed consent’ line.
Informed consent isn’t some optional extra in medical ethics. It is foundational in medicine and foundational to freedom.
Without it, we lose far more than the right to refuse an experimental jab.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/un-informed-consent
*****************************************************Profits haven't contributed to inflation? Former treasury economist says it's not that simple
Last week, the Reserve Bank made another intervention in the bitter dispute about profits and inflation.
In its latest Statement on Monetary Policy, released on Friday, it dedicated a special chapter to the topic.
The chapter was titled Have business profits contributed to inflation?, and it concluded that excessive profit-taking hasn't been driving Australia's inflation.
It was quickly heralded by some economists as the end of the argument.
In the months-long battle between the orthodoxy (represented by the RBA), and those who think profit-taking has been part of the inflation matrix (represented by unions and the Australia Institute), the orthodoxy had triumphed.
But not everyone was completely convinced.
"Case closed? Not so fast," former treasury economist David Bassanese responded.
So where does that leave us?
The RBA's argument, for those up the back
Before we get to Mr Bassanese, let's recap the RBA's argument very quickly.
The bank's officials say if you ignore the extremely profitable mining sector (where prices are set in global markets), there's been little evidence of a broad-based increase in domestic profit margins in Australia recently.
They say firms have generally been able to pass on higher costs to maintain their profit margins through this inflationary episode, but there hasn't been an outbreak of non-mining firms increasing their margins.
They say aggregate inflation is being driven by the balance of demand and supply factors – rather than changes in firms' pricing power.
And they included a few graphs to illustrate their point.
This one shows how the share of national income going to labour and profits looks very different if you exclude the mining sector.
It also shows that, at the end of last year, the non-mining profit share was a little higher than in 2019, but it was still below its average level over the previous 10 years.
"If rising domestic profit margins were a significant independent driver of inflation, profits would instead have increased significantly relative to labour income over the past year," the RBA report said.
Despite the cost of living causing turmoil for regular Australians, many of our big companies have proven to have a special ability to rake in handsome profits by becoming price makers, writes Ian Verrender.
The bank's officials say detailed firm-level data also suggest that large non-mining firms' pricing behaviour has not changed much as of the September quarter 2022 (which is the latest available data).
They say the distribution of net operating margins, which measure the extent to which firms' revenues exceed their wages and other operating costs, has remained largely unchanged relative to 2019.
"This implies that these firms have increased their prices broadly in line with growth in their average costs," the paper said.
The bank's officials do acknowledge that, when looking at the 200 largest firms in Australia, some highly profitable companies (i.e., the top 50 firms) have been increasing their margins since 2019.
But they say that increase in margins is unlikely to have played a major role in this inflation, because the widening in margins has been ongoing since 2016 and the increase has actually been much less pronounced over the past year or so.
So, is it case closed?
Mr Bassanese, the chief economist for BetaShares, circulated a note on Friday afternoon that said "not so fast."
He said the RBA's analysis suggested so-called "price gouging" had not been an important factor behind the surge in inflation over the past year, but the reality wasn't that simple.
"For starters, the RBA does concede mining sector profits have increased, with energy producers effectively enjoying windfall profits last year due to global gas shortages and higher prices caused by the reduction in Russian gas supply following its invasion of Ukraine," he wrote.
Would a gas export tax push gas prices down for Australians?
Australia has blown its chance to use its vast gas fields to help the economy transition to renewable energy, says Ken Henry.
"Gas producers were effectively able to demand local consumers pay the same higher global price or risk having more local gas production redirected to export markets.
"Local gas production costs had not increased to justify higher local prices, only the price that could be received for their product outside of Australia. Accordingly, these increased profits clearly came at the expense of local firms and households, who have had to pay higher wholesale and retail gas prices which has also directly contributed to local inflation.
"This was not 'profit gouging' in a strict sense, but it does suggest much of the rise in local inflation through electricity prices was at least partly the result of windfall profits earned by gas companies," he said.
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Former Detective Superintendent Mark Ainsworth says new approach needed for youth crime
A respected former senior detective has called for an “out of the box” approach to tackling youth crime, including making parents financially responsible for their children’s crimes and sending repeat offenders to a rural training and education centre.
Former Detective Superintendent Mark Ainsworth, who headed the investigation into Allison Baden-Clay’s murder and has worked on six royal commissions, said Queenslanders are now “fearful” of what’s happening in their community.
He said he believes today’s youth crime crisis could be, in part, attributed to children born during the “baby bonus” era.
In a post Mr Ainsworth shared to LinkedIn, he wrote that tougher penalties did nothing to rehabilitate young repeat offenders.
“What about the introduction of a diversion centre in remote Queensland where recidivist offenders (youth) are sent,” he wrote.
“This centre (mobile phone/social media free) should host education, trade skills and respect for attendees.
“A highly disciplined centre that won’t cop crap from these kids. Who knows, kids in this type of establishment may enjoy the opportunities provided – shelter over their heads, education and close supervision.”
He also wrote that the accountability of parents and guardians needed to be at the forefront of legislative change.
“This has been talked about for many years including parents/guardians paying restitution for crimes committed by their children,” Mr Ainsworth wrote.
Mr Ainsworth told The Sunday Mail he felt terrible for frontline police who were doing their best to respond to repeat offenders with limited resources.
“What’s happening at the moment is certainly not working,” he said.
“The kids end up in a youth detention centre … they are mingling with other kids (and) coming out part of a gang.
“It’s getting to the stage where I think people are fearful of what’s happening in the community and we’ve never had this fear before.
“How do you address it? There has to be something new to try.”
The idea of a “diversion centre” was also raised recently by Russell and Ann Field, whose son Matthew, partner Kate Leadbetter and their unborn son Miles were killed by a teen in a stolen car.
In a recent interview with The Sunday Mail, Mr Field said recidivist juvenile offenders should be sent to a “re-education facility” where they are taught life skills.
“Somewhere where they can teach these kids how to write a resume, finish their education,” he said.
“Teach them how to get a job, teach them how to run their finances, teach them how to invest, so when they come out of these facilities … they go away with their head held high.
“If the parents aren’t going to discipline them and teach them respect … grab them and take them out of their comfort zone and drum it into them.
“It’s possible for people to go from their lifestyle to (being) something.”
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Court approves controversial church development despite protest by residents
Not a mosque this time. A Lebanese Catholic church instead
Worshippers behind a proposed new church in Brisbane’s south have prevailed over residents’ concerns about its scale and impact in court.
St Maroun’s Maronite Church on Bunya Street, Greenslopes had already been given the green light to redevelop its existing church by Brisbane City Council before local residents appealed the decision in the Planning And Environment Court.
The proposed development involves the construction of a new hall and church building, involving a 12.5 metre tall bell tower, and the retention of dwellings which will be reused as parish residences.
An artist's impression of the development at the time the application was lodged with council. Picture: Supplied
An artist's impression of the development at the time the application was lodged with council. Picture: Supplied
The new church building will be on the corner of Dunellan and Bunya streets.
A proposed childcare centre on the 3645 sqm site was later axed from the application.
A group of eight local residents took the council to court to appeal its decision to approve the new church development in July 2021. The church was a co-respondent in the case.
The residents expressed concerns about the bulk, height and scale of the development along with traffic and noise impacts.
They held an expectation that any redevelopment of the Church would be of a similar scale to that existing on the site, the court heard.
An artist's impression of the development at the time the application was lodged with council. Picture: Supplied
An artist's impression of the development at the time the application was lodged with council. Picture: Supplied
They submitted the proposal was of an inappropriate scale and far exceeded community expectations for development on the site.
The group did not oppose improvements being made to the existing building to provide an updated church and agreed it was currently not fit for purpose.
The court heard that lack of space in the existing church building had forced people to worship outside on the verandas, lawns, staircases, in the car park and sometimes on the street during the course of church activities including weddings and funerals.
An artist's impression of the development at the time the application was lodged with council. Picture: Supplied
An artist's impression of the development at the time the application was lodged with council. Picture: Supplied
The majority of the new church was to be no higher than 9.5 metres above the ground, with the highest parts of the building set back from the street.
When approving the development the council imposed a number of conditions including noise control measures.
But the residents argued the extent of mitigation measures required by the council conditions were indicative of a development that was of an unacceptable scale.
After hearing from expert witnesses, Judge Amanda McDonnell said she was satisfied the proposal was compliant in relation to character and form except when it came to scale, but this would not result in any adverse planning consequences.
Ms McDonnell was also satisfied that compliance with assessment benchmarks relating to amenity impacts could be met through appropriate conditions regarding hours of operation, the implementation of a noise management plan and the number of persons on site.
She ordered the development application be approved subject to conditions.
The matter was adjourned so the parties could agree on appropriate conditions.
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5 May, 2023
Why all the unexpected deaths?
Late on Friday 28 April, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released its Provisional Mortality update. It’s a time-honoured practice known in media circles as ‘taking out the trash’ although in this case it should probably be called ‘burying the bodies’.
Why the ABS bothers hiding the bad news is a mystery since the mainstream media’s reflex response is to avert its gaze from anything that challenges the official Covid narrative. This is understandable if inexcusable. Nobody likes to admit they were wrong. The mainstream media has spent the last two-and-a-half years repeating the government mantra that the Covid vaccines are safe and effective and still supports vaccine mandates even though it is blindingly obvious that the vaccines failed to end the pandemic, prevent people from getting ill or dying and have caused injuries and death.
This week even the Biden administration announced that it would the drop its Covid vaccine mandate from 12 May for healthcare workers in facilities certified for Medicare and Medicaid services, federal employees and contractors, and international air travellers. It is the last Western nation to ban unvaccinated visitors apart from micro nations such as Puerto Rico and Palau and bastions of liberty and science such as Pakistan, Libya and Turkmenistan.
As for the latest ABS data, it quietly reveals some deadly truths. The best that can be said of it is that mercifully there weren’t as many deaths this January as last January, although even that isn’t true for women aged less than 45. Their death rate was higher this January than last. Overall, deaths were more than 12 per cent above the baseline average. That’s a 10.5 per cent improvement on January 2022 but still 1,605 deaths more than expected and only 731 of those people died of Covid. Were these deaths part of a pandemic of the unvaccinated? Nobody has mentioned that phrase for more than a year so it seems safe to deduce that there is no evidence supporting that assertion.
What about the other 874 people who died unexpectedly in January? This is where it gets interesting. The ABS has created a whole new category called ‘other cardiac conditions’. Deaths in this group were 18.2 per cent above the baseline average in January 2023. That’s only 1.4 per cent below the number recorded in January 2022.
And what sort of deaths do you suppose were included in the new group? They look like vaccine deaths; healthy people who died suddenly and didn’t have chronic cardiovascular disease. The deaths were caused by acute myocarditis and pericarditis which are both recognised side effects of the Covid mRNA vaccines. They also include deaths caused by cardiomyopathies, cardiac arrhythmias and heart failure all of which can be caused by myocarditis – inflammation of the heart – if it is left untreated. Unfortunately, it often is left untreated because people may feel fatigue, shortness of breath or chest pain or they may feel nothing at all. Yet even when myocarditis is asymptomatic it can still cause heart failure, heart attack, stroke, arrhythmia and sudden cardiac arrest particularly after strenuous exercise or in the early hours of the morning while sleeping. Ever since the vaccines were rolled out professional and amateur athletes have been dropping dead in disconcerting numbers as have other seemingly healthy young people. Now there is an ABS category that captures that group with heart failure the number one cause of death killing 264 people in January and cardiac arrhythmia in second place, responsible for 206 deaths.
Deaths due to dementia are more than 14 per cent above the baseline average. Deaths due to Lewy body dementia and fronto-temporal dementia have been added to the category to reduce the number of uncategorised deaths, increasing dementia deaths by 3 to 4 per cent. One explanation for the rise in dementia deaths is that the vaccine-induced spike protein can cross the blood brain barrier causing neuro-inflammation and releasing pro-inflammatory cytokines that can accelerate disease progression in Alzheimer’s, Lewy body dementia and fronto-temporal dementia.
Cancer deaths – the biggest single disease group in the report – are up by 4.3 per cent above the baseline average. What might explain this? Dr. Angus Dalgleish, Professor of Oncology at St George’s University of London wrote to the British Medical Journal last November reporting that he was seeing people with stable cancers rapidly progress after being forced to have a booster, usually so they could travel. He dismissed the notion put forward including by the TGA that this was simply a coincidence since the same pattern is being reported in the US and Germany as well as Australia. Rather, he hypothesised that the suppression of the innate immune system which occurs after Covid mRNA vaccination is allowing blood and lymph cancers and melanomas to progress that are normally held in check by the immune system. And that is before consideration of reports that the spike protein, produced in large quantities by the body post-vaccination can inactivate the p53 tumour suppressor protein allowing cancers normally controlled by that protein to emerge or re-emerge.
Dalgleish is calling for the vaccines to be withdrawn immediately saying the link between vaccines blood clots, myocarditis, heart attacks and strokes are now well accepted as is the link with myelitis and neuropathy which he and colleagues predicted in an article in June 2020. That may be so but governments are dragging their heels in admitting that vaccines cause so many injuries.
World-renowned British cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra will tour Australia starting on 27 May also calling for the suspension of all Covid vaccines pending a full investigation into vaccine injuries. He is supported by the Australian Medical Professionals’ Society, a non political union representing doctors who want to reclaim medical ethics and the primacy of the doctor patient relationship, many of whom are still unable to work due to vaccine mandates.
In the the US, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has appointed a committee to determine the relationship between vaccines and adverse events. It will assess causality and inform injury compensation recommendations. Unfortunately, the report won’t be published until March 2024. How many more bodies will be buried by then?
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/burying-the-bodies/
*************************************************Suncorp staff are encouraged to address colleagues as “folks”
Suncorp staff have been encouraged to address colleagues as “folks” and “team” instead of “guys” and to add pronouns to their email and social media as part of compulsory gender diversity training.
The training, which includes an assessment component requiring an 80 per cent pass mark, also instructs staff to stop saying things like “you’re acting like a girl” or “that’s so gay,” and that gender identity is not about “physical markers but rather how we feel on the inside.”
The training, which was due to be completed this week by Suncorp’s 13,000 staff, has received a mixed reaction in the Brisbane-based financial giant with some concerned about the cost of the training as well the general condascending tone in the course material.
“The vibe at Suncorp is that they are annoyed that the underlying assumption is that they need the training,” says someone with knowledge of the situation.
“It implies they’re all a bunch of bigots in the first place. Which they ain’t.”
The insider said the “woke agenda” was being pushed because of concerns industry funds would vote against companies not considered to be pushing reform agendas in areas like gender diversity.
Suncorp Group spokesman said the “once off short training module was developed internally by our employees, for our employees, and aims to provide practical information so we can better support all our customers and workforce.”
“The overwhelming majority of our employees have already completed this course and we have received very positive feedback,” the spokesman said.
The training comes as Suncorp, headed by chief executive Steve Johnston, also introduced “gender affirmation leave” which grants workers going through gender transition six weeks of paid leave and up to 12 months unpaid leave.
The training includes an instruction to staff not to assume anyone’s gender and that instead of Mr or Miss the salutation Mx could be used as a “non-binary option.”
“Non-binary is a gender all on its own and can also be used to recognise the fluidity and diversity that some of us feel,” according to course material seen by News Corp.
“Some people who are non-binary also describe having a trans experience. The point is we all describe our gender experience in different ways and the labels we use, if we use them, are personal.”
The questions in the quiz section of the course include “What is gender identity?” and “Gender expression, like gender identity is very personal, and we cannot asssume someone’s gender identity just by their appearance. Is this statement true or false?”
The course material also references “allyship” a term used in social activism to describe building and nurturing relationships with underrepresented, marginalized, or discriminated individuals or groups.
Another question in the quiz says: “Allyship is very important for all marginalised groups, including the LGBTIQ+ community. Which of the following statements are true? - an ally is someone who listens to, believes and amplifies LGBTIQ voices? Anyone can be an ally? Allyship means showing up, speaking up and offering support to others? or all of the above?
Suncorp’s investments in gender diversity training comes amid growing evidence such courses do nothing to harbour gender diversity in the workplace.
A study by the Harvard Business Review in 2019 found very little evidence that diversity training affected the behavior of men or white employees overall—the two groups who people claim hold the most power in organizations.
The study found that in the “absence of any observable change in the behavior of male or white employees” suggests companies need to “stop treating diversity training as a silver bullet” instead investing in programs that encourage “underrepresented talent to join, stay, succeed, and lead within your organization.”
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New Hope’s New Acaland Stage Three Coal mine finally opens 16 years after first mining application
Huge delay mainly due to Greenie opposition
Sixteen years after it began its mining application one of Australia’s most scrutinised mining projects officially opened on Wednesday morning, with the Queensland Government declaring its full backing for a coal mine set to re-invigorate the south east’s economy.
The New Acland Stage Three Project owned by New Hope has survived six prime ministers and four state premiers across 16 years of environmental scrutiny and legal challenges, one of which reached the Australian High Court.
Queensland’s Resources Minister Scott Stewart, who was on hand on Wednesday to cut the blue ribbon, was unequivocal in declaring the State Labor Government’s full support for the project.
“I can bring it down to three words,’’ Mr Stewart said, referring to the long struggle to get the mine up and running. “We did it.’’
Mr Stewart said kids sitting in schools across the Darling Downs would be the major beneficiaries of the project whether as miners, tyre fitters or hairdressers, and all could stay within the community they grew up in.
The mine hires almost its entire workers from the surrounding community, and pours back in millions of dollars in corporate sponsorship to local clubs and organisations.
New Hope Group CEO, Rob Bishop, said the first coal would be extracted well before the end of the year while the company would be continuing to hire for the construction phase.
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ABC edits out references to weight in Bluey episode
The makers behind the hit ABC Australian children’s series Bluey have succumbed to pressure and heavily edited an episode that focused on weight after it was criticised for sending damaging messages to children about their bodies.
Nearly three weeks after the episode first aired, the public broadcaster issued a statement on Friday, saying the content had been “been republished by the ABC following a decision by the makers of the program”.
Online outrage erupted after the episode, titled Exercise, showed husband and wife Bandit and Chilli using bathroom scales to weigh themselves and being disappointed when their weight was revealed.
After seeing the number pop up on the scales, Bandit groaned: “Aw man.” Bandit then goes on to grab fat around his stomach and Bluey asks: “Why don’t you just do some exercise?”
Bandit replies, “Same old reason Bluey, you kids and work.”
He says he can’t do it because he would be late for work and his boss wouldn’t be happy. Chilli then jumps on the scales, a number pops up and she sighs: “Ah man.”
Among those to call out the outrage over the episode included Nine Network’s Today Show co-host Karl Stefanovic who said at the time: “I think this is fantastic, it’s a bit of Australiana and it plays out in households across Australia.
All these influencers are coming out going, ‘Bluey’s fat-shaming and it’s disgusting’. Give it a rest. It’s actually a really good message.”
However after widespread criticism about the episode, the ABC said the newly edited version would now allow families to hold discussions about issues including weight in an appropriate way.
The new six-minute version of the Exercise episode has removed the scales references altogether and focuses on ways to stay fit, including rolling out a fitness mat and doing push-ups and star jumps.
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4 May, 2023
'Father' of Inland Rail calls for project to end in Toowoomba amid cost blowouts
The whole thing is a vast boondoggle. There appears to have been no comprehensive cost-benefit study of the idea. Judging by the similar Adelaide to Darwin link, it will remain largely unused and will not even cover the cost of its maintenance.
Rail is yesterday's idea. Only the huge output of mines needs it. Road transport is usually so much more convenient that rail will very rarely supplant it. Better roads are what is really needed
As the federal government seeks to rein in the multi-billion-dollar cost blowouts from the Melbourne to Brisbane Inland Rail project, some are asking: Will it ever be completed?
The man who is sometimes described as the "father" of the Inland Rail, Everald Compton, believes the government should cut its losses and finish the line at Toowoomba, 100km short of its original destination.
"It will never get to Brisbane — I reckon hell will freeze over quicker than this railway gets to Brisbane," the retired corporate fundraiser told ABC's 7.30. "The cost of getting down the Toowoomba range is extortionate."
An independent review of the Inland Rail has already recommended the line finish earlier in Queensland than originally planned.
Review author Kerry Schott said the double-stacked freight line should finish at a locality called Ebenezer, about 50 kilometres west of Brisbane, with connections to the Brisbane port through road and single-stack freight networks.
The freight and logistics industry has accepted this.
"It's understandable, because of urban encroachment, because of the cost of building new rail through existing urban areas," says Hermione Parsons from the Australian Logistics Council.
But the council warns against cutting out any more sections, saying it is important to get rail freight as close to the port as possible.
"The Port of Brisbane serves a very large hinterland – Queensland, parts of the Northern Territory, parts of northern New South Wales," Dr Parsons said.
"And that port is an important part of Queensland's resilience."
The proposed Ebenezer terminal was not part of the original plan for the Inland Rail, and it's still in the very early stage of planning.
"A preliminary evaluation for an intermodal terminal has been completed," a spokesman for the Queensland Transport Department told 7.30.
"We are working across government and with our federal colleagues towards the completion of the business case."
Liberal Party MP Garth Hamilton says this will inevitably mean further delays for a project already years behind schedule.
"Every day that we're delaying, if we go through more reviews, we're going to see more cost blowouts," the member for the federal seat of Groom said. "There is no way that Ebenezer stands up.
"I'm calling for a pause here – I'm calling for a pause at Toowoomba while this is worked out."
Progress in Queensland 'behind the eight ball'
The Australian Logistics Council says the Queensland government should become more actively involved in the debate.
"I'd be worried if I was the Queensland government about the staging of the Inland Rail project from Melbourne all the way up to Brisbane as the last leg, because that means the freight only has one way to go, which is south," Dr Parsons said.
"The Queensland government needs to be working on this and it's a bit behind the eight ball."
ABC's 7.30 sought comment from Queensland Transport Minister Mark Bailey. His department provided a written statement saying: "The state government is reviewing the Inland Rail's recommendations."
The project proponent, the Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC), originally proposed to finish construction of all four Queensland sections of the Inland Rail by 2025. However, it has yet to complete any of its Queensland environmental assessments. "There has been lengthy delays in his process, particularly in Queensland," the independent review found.
"[This was] caused in part by immature design and poor environmental impact statements that need numerous changes and resubmissions."
The Australian Logistics Council says the fundamental problem was that construction started on the whole project before the endpoint was decided, but it is pleased the Albanese government remains committed to finishing the project.
"This project potentially takes 200,000 trucks a year out of the equation of freight transport — that's important — [and] 750,000 tonnes of carbon reduction," Dr Parsons said.
"We need rail; our country lags behind terribly in terms of rail investment, yet it is an incredibly important mode and we don't have enough of it."
Everald Compton's original vision back in the 1990s was for the line to continue north to the central Queensland Port of Gladstone — and he's still a keen advocate for this future extension.
"We've simply got to say let's get rid of the nonsense, let's do some nation-building," he said.
But Dr Parsons is more cautious. "That's an extra. We need to get back to the fundamentals of the intercity rail link between Melbourne and Brisbane."
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Northern Territory clears way for fracking to begin in Beetaloo Basin
The Northern Territory government says it is satisfied the recommendations of an independent inquiry into fracking have been met, clearing the way for gas production and the expansion of wells across the Beetaloo basin.
The NT chief minister, Natasha Fyles, announced Wednesday morning her government was giving a green light for gas production in the region between Katherine and Tennant Creek, a move environment organisations and scientists have warned will have an unacceptable impact on the climate.
Wednesday’s announcement means gas companies can apply for production licences and environmental impact assessments.
“Along with our world class renewable resources, our highly prospective onshore gas resources will support the energy transition to renewables not only for the Northern Territory, but for Australia and the world,” Fyles said.
The territory’s deputy chief minister, Nicole Manison, said “we want nations to be able to decarbonise the economy in a safe and sustainable way and gas will be that important fuel of transition, the onshore gas industry will also be good for the territory’s economy.”
Companies will still need to make financial decisions about whether to proceed, but if the Beetaloo did reach full production it could see thousands of wells across the landscape.
Analysis by Reputex in 2021 estimated a high production scenario in the Beetaloo could lead to an additional 1.4 billion tonnes of life cycle emissions - which includes emissions from when the gas is sold and used - over 20 years.
On Wednesday, 96 scientists published an open letter calling for the Northern Territory government to ban unconventional gas projects because of their effects on the climate.
The International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have said no new coal and gas projects can proceed if the world is to limit global heating to 1.5C.
“This is a profoundly sad day for the Northern Territory. As we look down the barrel of unliveability here in the Northern Territory due to climate change, the Chief Minister has today given the green light for a carbon bomb that will hurtle us towards climate collapse,” Kirsty Howey, the executive director of the Environment Centre NT, said.
Environmental groups said that despite the government’s announcement, several of the 135 recommendations from the Pepper inquiry in 2018 had not been fulfilled, which Howey said was a broken promise to Territorians and an “unacceptable capitulation” to the gas industry.
They include an expansion of the water trigger, which the Albanese government has proposed but not yet made law, comprehensive assessment of likely cultural impacts of fracking on First Nations people and cultural rights, and provision of “reliable, accessible, trusted and accurate” to Aboriginal people about fracking.
They said recommendation 9.8 – which requires the NT and federal governments to ensure there will be no net increase in life cycle greenhouse gas emissions in Australia from gas projects in the Beetaloo – had also not been met.
Traditional owner and chair of the Nurrdalinji Aboriginal Corporation Johnny Wilson said “the government has broken its promise to us that it would implement all recommendations of the Pepper Inquiry before fracking starts”.
“Fracking companies are still not listening to the wishes of Traditional Owners who do not want thousands of flaring wells that will destroy our country,” he said.
Lock the Gate Alliance National Coordinator Carmel Flint urged the Albanese government to meet commitments on water and climate and “step in and stop the NT government jumping the gun with a dangerous rush to fracking”.
Flint said while an expansion of the water trigger to all forms of unconventional gas had been promised it was not yet law, with reforms to Australia’s environmental laws still to be drafted.
She said the issue of how to implement greenhouse gas controls in the Beetaloo had also only been referred to Energy and Climate Change Ministerial Council a month ago.
Changes to the safeguard mechanism that passed the federal parliament last month require scope 1 – direct onsite emissions – for Beetaloo projects to be net zero.
Environment groups said this did not address all of recommendation 9.8 which requires that domestic scope 2 – the energy used by gas companies - and scope 3 emissions – when the gas is sold and burnt – also be net zero.
Fyles disagreed on Wednesday that 9.8 had not been met, telling a media conference “we have absolutely met the recommendation”. She later said she acknowledged work needed to be done with the Commonwealth government on scope 2 and 3 emissions.
A spokesperson for the environment and water minister Tanya Plibersek said expanding the water trigger was part of the government’s environment reforms and draft legislation would be released for consultation later this year.
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Why you should ALWAYS ask for a physical menu: FBI warns hackers are planting fake QR CODES in restaurants that steal your data when you click the link
Another reason for insisting on placing your order verbally with a person. I always do and have yet to be refused
QR codes have become the new default for accessing restaurant menus across the US post-Covid — but scammers are seizing upon the new practice.
The FBI warns thieves are creating fake QR codes and planting them at eateries, retail shops and even parking meters.
Instead of taking you to an online menu or checkout, the links instantly download malware onto your device, stealing your location and personal information
The FBI has urged consumers to look out for typos or misplaced letters in URLs accessed through QR codes and ask restaurants for a physical menu.
QR, which stands for 'quick response', codes are machine-readable codes made up of black and white squares that store URLs, payment options and other online services accessed by a smartphone camera.
They have been around since 1994 but made a huge comeback during the COVID pandemic to cater to the contactless society.
The FBI first sounded the alarm on QR scams in January 2022, but more reports are flowing in of people being duped by fake barcodes.
In total, 566,318 location details collected by the NSW Customer Services Department through its QR code system were made public through a government website.
A report from Marcum, a New York-based accounting and advisory service, shows that QR code scams are among the top five cybersecurity threats observed in April.
The group highlights scammers are using fake codes to carry out phishing scams in emails and social media messages.
'Scammers might also approach you through an online marketplace claiming they are trying to purchase goods that you are selling and ask you to scan a QR code,' according to Marcum.
'Avoid making payments from a website accessed via a QR code. To make the payment, manually input a recognized and trustworthy website.'
Another area seeing fake QR codes is in the cryptocurrency industry. 'Crypto transactions are often made through QR codes associated with crypto accounts… making these transactions easy marks,' according to a press release from the FBI.
'If you happen to scan a scammer’s bad code, you could end up giving him access to your device. 'He can access your contacts, download malware, or send you to a fake payment portal.
'Once there, you can inadvertently give him access to your banking and credit card accounts. If you make a payment through a bad QR code, it’s difficult if not impossible to get those funds back.'
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‘Rushed’ curriculum reforms axed, teachers told to focus on English, maths
The NSW government will delay the rollout of almost 30 syllabi in an effort to give school teachers more time to concentrate on sweeping changes to the English and maths curriculum.
An overhaul to the English and maths syllabuses for years 3 to 10 will be implemented across all schools from next year, but planned changes to multiple subjects – including commerce, music, Aboriginal studies and technologies – will be shelved to allow teachers to focus on “core learning”.
“Instead of an unworkable release of dozens of syllabuses per term this year, I’ve asked the NSW Education Standards Authority to lead with those that are core to improving learning outcomes for students,” said NSW Education Minister Prue Car.
Car said teachers – and student outcomes – were forgotten when the previous timeline was set, placing a heavy burden on them when schools were dealing with crippling staff shortages.
Plans to release 26 draft syllabuses for review this term have been scrapped, while consultation for the new years 11 and 12 history, English and maths syllabuses will be delayed to term
The revamped schedule means all new syllabi will be delivered to teachers by the end of 2027, bringing it closer in line with the 10-year timeframe outlined in the NSW Curriculum Review led by Geoff Masters in 2019.
The review – the biggest shake-up to the state curriculum in 30 years – aimed to halt an alarming two-decade slump in Australian students’ results in international tests.
The English syllabus changes will see an overhaul to the way high school students are taught grammar, punctuation and sentence structure following a decade-long decline in writing standards that has left students missing critical literacy skills. Grammar will be taught in a more prescriptive way to help students write clear sentences and express complex ideas.
A new maths syllabus will intensify focus on sequencing and reasoning skills and a core subject structure in early high school to better equip students for senior years’ calculus courses.
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3 May, 2023
More unemployed people on welfare despite record job vacancies
Ahead of Tuesday’s budget, which is expected to include a JobSeeker increase for people over 55, energy-bill relief payments for vulnerable households and additional support for single mums, The Australian can reveal the number of dole recipients remains stubbornly high.
Amid calls from Peter Dutton to strengthen “work for the dole” programs to get more people out of welfare and into jobs, Department of Social Services data shows 921,000 Australians were on JobSeeker and Youth Allowance (Other) payments at the end of March. Despite historically low unemployment rates, the Albanese government has reduced the number of JobSeeker and Youth Allowance recipients by about 59,000 since the May election.
In March 2020, before draconian Covid-19 lockdowns pushed JobSeeker numbers to about 1.6 million, dole recipients numbered 886,213.
Facing mounting pressure from Labor MPs on Tuesday to deliver a blanket increase to the JobSeeker rate rather than a targeted approach for older Australians, Jim Chalmers said “there’s a broad swath of things we need to do” to lift workforce participation.
The Treasurer rejected the Opposition Leader’s demand to reinstate work for the dole programs, which remain in place under Labor, and said budget initiatives and other measures were being devised to support local communities facing “entrenched, long-term unemployment”.
“We’ve got an employment white paper that reports towards the end of this year which goes to some of these issues around participation,” Dr Chalmers said. “(Labor MP) Julian Hill and others are working at the committee level on making sure that job agency providers are doing what we need them to do.”
Mr Dutton said employers were “frustrated” because Labor had “pulled back on compliance, so people aren’t legitimately looking for work … and applying for ads”.
“Every employer you talk to, doesn’t matter what sector, it doesn’t matter where you are across the country, people are finding it very difficult to find those workers in cafes, in agricultural operations, in tourism,” Mr Dutton told 2GB.
“And it’s frustrating if you’ve got Australians who have an ability to work, are refusing to work, and I think Australians who are taxpayers get angry about that, and rightly so.”
Economists on Tuesday estimated lifting the JobSeeker rate for over-55s would cost between $1-2bn, depending on the size of the increase. They said the impact of higher payments on inflation would be determined by whether they were “targeted and temporary”.
Labor backbencher Alicia Payne, who will wait to see the budget before judging the adequacy of cost-of-living support, endorsed a blanket JobSeeker rate rise. “Any increase is welcome and this is a good start, but we do need that more substantial increase for all people on JobSeeker,” the Canberra MP said.
Victorian Labor MP Kate Thwaites, who along with Ms Payne signed an Australian Council of Social Service open letter backing a significant rise in the JobSeeker payment, said: “I’m on the record as supporting the need to increase Jobseeker and I will continue to advocate for that.
“The Treasurer has said there will be responsible cost-of-living relief in the budget, and it will focus on the most vulnerable people. I’ll wait to see what’s in the budget.” Bennelong MP Jerome Laxale also stood by his support for vulnerable Australians to receive relief. “This budget, particularly in light of what the Reserve Bank has done (in lifting interest rates), needs to lift relief to as many Australians as possible,” he said. Dr Chalmers said “no government of either political persuasion can satisfy all of the demands for new spending in the budget”.
The Treasurer, who is expected to overhaul the single parenting payment by raising the eligibility age of the youngest child from eight to either 13 or 14, would not put a figure on Labor’s targeted JobSeeker increase.
He said committees reporting to Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and him had “made it clear that one of the troubling developments is … the growth particularly in women over 55 in our unemployment numbers”.
The Australian can reveal next Tuesday’s budget will include funding boosts to bolster privacy protections following last year’s cybersecurity hacks and new investment to accelerate quantum technologies that will transform the economy and national security.
Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth on Wednesday will announce a $10.9m package improving social and economic participation of vulnerable or at-risk groups, while Dr Chalmers will outline four-year costings for Labor’s childcare subsidy changes.
Opposition treasury spokesman Angus Taylor warned that budget overspending would fuel the cost-of-living crisis, drive-up inflation and force the RBA to “impose much more pain”.
Writing for The Australian online, Mr Taylor said: “The more Labor talks about restraint, the less it is focused on effective action … it is the government’s actual spending that adds fuel to the inflationary fire, regardless of the rhetoric. The main test for the budget is whether it will take pressure off inflation. It must re-establish an objective of budget balance to take pressure off inflation.”
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It’s crucial for press freedom that whistleblowers are protected, not punished
Public interest journalism is a key democratic pillar, serving as a critical safeguard of our human rights. But press freedom is all too often fragile. This is why, 30 years ago, the United Nations first declared World Press Freedom Day, which is marked today.
Australia likes to present itself as a bastion of media freedom, and an exemplar to other nations in our region. Yet the past decade has seen a sustained assault on press freedom in this country. Raids on the ABC and News Corp, the prosecution of journalists’ sources, the introduction of Draconian secrecy laws, heightened state surveillance powers and inaction on transparency and accountability reform – collectively, these measures saw us plummet down world press freedom rankings. Previously unimaginable intrusions on press freedom have become shockingly commonplace.
Since taking office almost a year ago, the Albanese government has taken positive steps to reverse the tide. The Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, KC, has dropped the prosecution of whistleblower Bernard Collaery, committed to overhauling whistleblowing and secrecy laws and, in February, convened a press freedom summit. These moves should be commended.
But there is one area of glaring inaction. Two whistleblowers remain on trial: Richard Boyle, who blew the whistle to the ABC and this masthead about wrongdoing at the Tax Office; and David McBride, who went to the ABC to expose alleged war crimes in Afghanistan.
Protection for journalists’ sources is a vital component of press freedom. Together, the media and their sources bring transparency and accountability. Without whistleblowing, public interest journalism is often not possible; and wrongdoing remains hidden. Which is why it is absolutely crucial for press freedom in Australia that whistleblowers are protected, not punished.
Nine’s managing director of Publishing, James Chessell (left), Guardian Australia editor Lenore Taylor, Peter Greste from the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, and Schwartz Media’s Erik Jensen before the press freedom summit meeting in February.
Nine’s managing director of Publishing, James Chessell (left), Guardian Australia editor Lenore Taylor, Peter Greste from the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, and Schwartz Media’s Erik Jensen before the press freedom summit meeting in February.CREDIT:ALEX ELLINGHAUSEN
Most Australians agree. New polling released today by The Australia Institute – undertaken in collaboration with the Human Rights Law Centre – shows that Australians overwhelmingly support whistleblowers. Three-quarters of those polled said whistleblowers make Australia a better place, and even more said whistleblowers needed stronger legal protections (84 per cent), including the establishment of a whistleblower protection authority (79 per cent).
Almost two-thirds of those polled think the McBride case should be discontinued, and even more want the Boyle case to end. Australians understand that there is no public interest to be served in going after whistleblowers, and that these cases undermine press freedom, open government and public accountability.
The attorney-general has the legal authority to end these prosecutions, just as he discontinued the case against Collaery, the lawyer for ex-spy Witness K, who was accused along with his client of exposing Australia’s unconscionable conduct towards Timor-Leste. These cases are equally exceptional.
If the government fails to act, Boyle and McBride face the very real risk of jail time. Boyle lost his whistleblowing defence earlier this year, confirming the frailty of existing legal protections. He has appealed; if unsuccessful, he will face trial in October.
And extraordinarily, of all the people accused of wrongdoing over alleged war crimes in Afghanistan, it is McBride, the whistleblower, who will be the first to face court, rather than any of the alleged perpetrators. He is due to go on trial in November. He was forced to withdraw his whistleblowing defence last year following an astonishing national security intervention by the government.
Dreyfus has admitted that Australia’s whistleblowing laws are deeply flawed and in need of reform. But he has so far refused to intervene, leaving these men to their fates - despite each acting in a way they thought was consistent with federal whistleblowing law.
The Albanese government’s commitment to press freedom is welcome and no doubt genuine. There is much to be done – extensive law reform, new accountability bodies and a cultural shift within our institutions. This should all be backstopped by comprehensive human rights protections in Australia, which recognise the value of freedom of expression and press freedom.
But pledges of reform to whistleblowing, secrecy and surveillance laws will be critically undermined if these two whistleblowers are ultimately imprisoned. That would send a chilling message to every Australian – speak up about government wrongdoing, and you may destroy your career, suffer astonishing mental anguish, be forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, and risk prison time.
On World Press Freedom Day, we call on the Albanese government to end the prosecution of whistleblowers to ensure press freedom and transparency in this country can thrive.
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‘Fake Aboriginal identity’ film is banned
Too true to life
An Indigenous-made film about a white person who identifies as Aboriginal has been banned by the bodies that funded and commissioned it, over fears it could spark litigation and is “harmful”.
The short film, My Journey, by Tasmanian Indigenous newcomer filmmakers Nathan Maynard and Adam Thompson, was to be screened as part of a GRIT film festival in Hobart last weekend. Their “mockumentary” was pulled because of concerns held by the funding body, the Tasmanian Community Fund, and the commissioning body, Wide Angle Tasmania, that it could be defamatory and may cause community “harm”.
“I absolutely see it as political censorship,” Thompson told The Australian. “It is shocking …. essentially, they have censored it.
“It’s a contentious issue, but as Aboriginal people we have a right to tell stories and talk about things that are important to us as a community and that are affecting us as a community.
“And the issue is probably the most important issue that we have going on at the moment in Tasmania.”
Thompson would not reveal the plot, because he and Maynard are now planning to run their own screening of My Journey. However, he did not deny it was about a white person discovering their Aboriginality.
The number of Tasmanians identifying as Indigenous has grown from 36 in 1966 to 23,572 in 2016 and 30,186 currently. The state government has adopted policies designed to remove barriers to recognition as Aboriginal.
Thompson said the film was fictional and he did not accept concerns over possible defamation. However, Wide Angle chairman David Gurney said such concerns were based on legal advice.
Mr Gurney said the film focused on Smithton, in northwest Tasmania, and there were real concerns it could defame particular people. “The TCF was concerned that the film is potentially litigious and … harmful to a very specific community,” Mr Gurney said. “TCF asked them (the film-makers) to make some changes to the film, which they refused to do.
“So then the TCF instructed Wide Angle not to screen the film as part of the GRIT screenings.
“When that happened, we sought legal advice from one of Australia’s leading media law firms and we also received the advice that the film could lead to a defamation.”
The TCF, an independent body that distributes funds from the sale of a state-owned bank, had a policy of not funding anything that could cause harm.
“No one is disputing the broader issue that is being discussed in the film – it is an important issue – but … this so-called fictitious story is set in a very real, very small town,” Mr Gurney said. “The names in the film are very closely resembling people in that town. There are issues in that film that are very specific to that town. And we are talking a town of a few hundred people.”
The TCF confirmed it had raised concerns about the film. “These issues are for Wide Angle Tasmania to resolve with the film makers,” a spokesman said.
Maynard is no stranger to controversy, having recently called for expressions of interest from people of British descent willing to donate their corpse for an artwork.
Thompson said the film-makers had received approval for the concept and script from a GRIT steering committee. However, Mr Gurney said this was before TCF had alerted Wide Angle to potential defamation risk.
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Power shock as Snowy 2.0 hit by 2-year delay
Australia’s power grid faces a fresh threat from blackouts after the federal government-owned Snowy Hydro revealed a potential two-year delay to the $5.9bn Snowy 2.0 expansion along with a further cost blowout.
Snowy said the commercial operation of all units may be delayed until the end of the decade with a potential latest start-up date of December 2029 and an earliest date of December 2028.
First power is now due between June and December 2028 at the latest with an easiest date of June to December 2027.
“Snowy Hydro anticipates that the timeline for full commercial operation is delayed by a further 12-24 months from the current publicly released dates,” the company said in a statement.
Newly installed Snowy Hydro chief executive Dennis Barnes told The Australian the new completion forecast was a “realistic, achievable range”, with the company hoping to bring the project as early as it could. “My expectation – and obviously my objective – is to refine it to the upside,” he said.
The Snowy project has been dogged by a series of project issues including the collapse of one of its contractors, Clough, delays through Covid-19 and, more recently, a major tunnel boring machine getting stuck in the Snowy Mountains.
The delay of the massive hydro expansion will now significantly hike the risk of blackouts in the power grid later this decade as coal plants exit the system. It may also increase pressure on Origin Energy to rethink plans to close its giant Eraring coal station in NSW by August 2025.
Any delay will also add to electricity system risks after the grid operator warned of worsening forecast reliability in NSW in 2026 and 2027 should Snowy not hit the original 2.0 deadline.
Mr Barnes said extra detail on the “budget implications of the project reset” will be released in July 2023, and this will be clearly communicated with key project stakeholders, with a renegotiation of the original fixed-price contract with the contractor, the Future Generation Joint Venture (FGJV) – now run by Italy’s Webuild – on the cards.
“The contract has been a struggle. We want them to be motivated around a realistic time frame. So it’s appropriate to want to reset, which will inevitably mean some renegotiation of the contract,” Mr Barnes said.
“My job is to try and get everybody going in the same direction, and a fixed price contract in this inflationary environment doesn’t have everybody going in the same direction.”
Snowy blamed the delays and cost hikes on four factors: the mobilisation and resourcing implications of the Covid-19 pandemic; the effect of global supply chain disruption and inflation impacting the cost and availability of a skilled workforce, materials, and shipping. Snowy said design elements also required more time to complete due to their technically complex nature, with the final design now being more expensive to construct.
Mr Barnes said Snowy’s contractor had been forced to build more roads than initially forecast to ensure equipment and materials could be moved safely, as well as more complicated changes to the scope of the project, including the need to line a key incline tunnel with steel.
Snowy also pointed to the impact of variable site and geological conditions, including the soft ground that has “paused” tunnel boring machine Florence’s progress at Tantangara since before Christmas.
Mr Barnes said a slurry plant that should allow Florence to get moving again would be commissioned within a few weeks, and Snowy and FGJV were also looking for other ways to make up for lost time on the headrace tunnel.
“One of the things we’re thinking about is whether we tackle this headrace tunnel from both ends,” he said.
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2 May, 2023
The achievements of Captain James Cook are a story for the ages
This year, on 29 April, it was 253 years since Captain James Cook landed at Botany Bay. Despite the obvious significance of that day, it barely, if ever, rates a mention.
Thanks to the collapse of our education system, many Australians think Cook was part of the First Fleet that arrived eighteen years later, on January 26. Many therefore erroneously associate Cook with Australia Day.
Despite this astonishing manifestation of popular ignorance, our education system does almost nothing to rectify these common misunderstandings.
The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), the statutory authority with responsibility for developing and implementing the National Curriculum, apparently agrees that the study of our nation’s history is important, even mandating it for Year 9 students. Despite this requirement, a name search of the National Curriculum for ‘Captain Cook’ generates just one result – for year four students. And that’s after students have already been indoctrinated with the concept of ‘invasion’ in grade three.
Captain James Cook’s contribution to civilisation cannot be underestimated. He was beyond question one of the greatest navigators in history, a self-taught product of the Enlightenment, and a naval officer whose concern for his crew saw him complete hazardous voyages without losing a single man to scurvy. A brilliant cartographer, many of his maps were still being reliably used in the 20th century.
Significantly, Cook displayed a genuine and generous concern for the Indigenous peoples he encountered in the lands that would eventually be known as Australia and New Zealand, and in the islands of the South Pacific.
History is rarely pretty. And there is, invariably, two, if not more, sides to every story or event. But why has our National Curriculum not even attempted to tell the full story of Cook and his times? Why aren’t our students provided with the facts that would enable them to reach their own, informed conclusions?
In more recent times, particularly around the time of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ marches, Cook has been vilified as a racist coloniser. The activists throwing paint on his statues do so out of total ignorance. Cook was no coloniser. He was not even an advocate of colonisation. He had been dead nine years by the time the First Fleet arrived on our shores in 1788.
But how dare we let facts get in the way of a good anti-Western civilisation narrative! And certainly don’t let them inform our National Curriculum.
Ideologically driven, the National Curriculum’s churlish omission of the substantial achievements of Cook does our children a profound disservice, denying them the opportunity to learn about one of the most significant figures in our nation’s and our region’s history. It would be funny if it were not so serious.
History matters. An education system that provides students with balanced, comprehensive, and accurate information about our past is paramount. How can we intelligently consider current affairs if we have no clue about how we got here?
The arrival of the British in 1788, just four days before the arrival of French vessels, another inconvenient fact omitted by the National Curriculum, led inevitably to significant achievements and terrible atrocities. Students should learn it all.
The study of how our history, including presently unfashionable developments, such as parliamentary democracy and the rule of law, should be a core feature of the National Curriculum.
Australia is still a lucky country – but it didn’t start with luck. It started with a very smart and brave man. The rich, prosperous, and generous nation we are today would not exist but for Captain James Cook. At the very least, we owe him this recognition and an informed assessment of his achievements.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/04/the-achievements-of-captain-james-cook-are-a-story-for-the-ages
More on Cook here:
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/07/hero-or-villain-the-plot-to-cancel-captain-cook/
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Economists and property experts warn against Labor’s push to beef-up renters’ rights
Economists, property groups and housing experts are warning Labor’s push to beef-up renters’ rights will distort the housing market, discourage investment and worsen an ongoing supply crunch.
State and territory housing ministers will meet this week to develop policy options to help renters, with Anthony Albanese flagging a potential to regulate the size and frequency of rent increases.
Economist Saul Eslake said reforms could dissuade investment into the housing market if serious restrictions were applied, such as preventing landlords from increasing rents by an amount less than inflation or obliging them to keep rents fixed for more than a year.
The former ANZ chief economist said the push was a Band-Aid solution that covered up a fundamental problem in the housing market of a mismatch between demand and supply.
“Depending on how serious and restrictive any proposed regulations turn out to be, there will be disincentive at the market,” Mr Eslake said.
“It may be at the margin but it may be more significant if the restrictions are more onerous and could have an impact on the supply of housing.”
Economic adviser for Judo Bank, Warren Hogan, warned against governments artificially capping rent increases, arguing they would “fundamentally change the investment market and jeopardise future supply of housing in this country”.
He said reducing the frequency of rent increases may help renters and the market, but warned artificial rent caps would scare off investment with the “very real risk” that investors would not be able to make an economic return to cover their capital investment.
“We now have to get to the heart of the problem which is demand and supply rather than trying to do a patchwork of policy solutions with a whole bunch of unintended consequences which undermine the medium to long term performance of the economy,” Mr Hogan said.
The Weekend Australian revealed thousands of mum-and-dad landlords were selling rental properties in response to state Labor governments’ strengthening of renter protections and increasing interest rates.
Centre for Independent Studies chief economist Peter Tulip said increased renter protections would worsen a shortfall in the housing market, with mum-and-dad investors more hesitant to invest in property amid rising interest rates and a changing regulatory environment.
“The rental market is incredibly tight and the signs are that it’s going to get much tighter, partly because we have very little supply and we are having a big increase in demand because of migration,” Mr Tulip said.
The federal government on Sunday announced a major expansion in eligibility for its first-home guarantee, its regional equivalent and the family home guarantee ahead of the May 9 budget, with friends, siblings or parents and children able to access government funding across the three schemes from July 1.
Opposition housing spokesman Michael Sukkar said the Coalition would not support a move to further distort the housing market or lower housing supply but would wait to see more detail before taking a position.
“With Labor opening the floodgates to 650,000 migrants over the next two years and no plan to house them, younger Australians renting or hoping to buy will undoubtedly pay the price,” Mr Sukkar said.
Financial and housing market analyst Pete Wargent said landlords were being discouraged from investing in housing under a changing regulatory environment which was creating uncertainty.
Real Estate Institute of Australia chief executive Hayden Groves said investors were being crunched by high stamp duty costs, increasing land taxes, and predicted further reforms to renters rights.
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High school pass marks lowered to under 50 per cent
Struggling Year 12 students who fail exams and assignments are still passing maths and English subjects, as state curriculum bodies push down pass marks to below 50 per cent.
In results that raise questions about teaching and syllabus standards, fresh “grade boundary” data from the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (QCAA) shows that Year 12 students scored a “C” pass-mark in specialist maths with an overall mark of 47 out of 100 last year.
In maths methods, a prerequisite for engineering, the pass mark was 45 out of 100 – the same as for base-level general maths.
In physics, students needed just 49 marks per cent to pass, while English students passed the subject with just 41 marks out of 100.
And Victoria’s “score ranges’’ for coursework units and written exams for each subject in 2021 reveal students could pass some of the final Year 12 science, maths and English exams despite getting two out of three questions wrong.
Teacher shortages are being blamed for the poor results, as schools struggle to find enough teachers with university qualifications in the hard-to-staff maths and science subjects.
Up to 40 per cent of Australian maths students are being taught by teachers who did not specialise in the subject during their four-year education degree at university.
Senior maths and science academics and teachers warned yesterday that too many students are leaving Year 12 without the necessary maths skills, blaming both teaching standards and the curriculum.
Professor Jennifer Stow, an eminent researcher at the University of Queensland’s Institute of Molecular Bioscience, said she was “hugely concerned’’ about falling standards among high school maths graduates and criticised “what is being taught and how it’s being taught’’.
“I think students aren’t being taught enough basics in maths to give them a good underpinning to build upon at a higher education level,’’ she said. “Assignments don’t teach them formulae or maths rules or how to do calculations – they are being assessed on assignments that anyone can mark. They should be drilled on maths rules and formulae, and shown the way to do things.’’
Maths teacher Dr Stephen Norton, who spent 15 years teaching mathematics to trainee teachers at Griffith University before returning to the classroom this year, said many students were finishing primary school without knowing their times tables, long division and multiplication, or fractions. “When they get to high school they’re cactus,’’ he said.
“The biggest problem in secondary school is you get a whole bunch of kids coming to school in Grade 7 with the knowledge of Grade 4 or 5.
Education Minister Jason Clare says children and students aren’t as ready for school or university as they used to…
“For some of them, if you ask, ‘What’s seven multiplied by six?’ they can’t do it.
“They don’t know how to multiply, they haven’t been taught long division and they can’t add or multiply fractions.’’
Dr Norton said high school teachers were required to teach to a detailed curriculum so quickly that they did not have time to help students catch up on basic concepts.
“If you’ve got a struggling kid, or a kid who hasn’t quite got it, they will fall behind quite quickly,’’ he said.
Dr Norton said the best way to improve students’ maths results would be to ensure primary school teachers are given more training to teach the subject. “The primary school teachers are so poorly prepared by universities,’’ he said.
Queensland is the only state to publish subject-level grade boundaries, which show that in maths methods, a prerequisite for engineering, the pass mark for Year 12 last year was 45 out of 100 – the same as for base-level general maths. In physics, students needed just 49 marks per cent to pass, while English students passed the subject with just 41 marks out of 100. In biology, the lowest pass mark for a C grade was 48, while in chemistry it was 50, and 44 in modern history.
In Victoria in 2021, the pass mark for the final written exam in biology was 108 out of a possible 240 marks – an effective pass mark of 45 per cent.
In chemistry, the lowest score for a C mark was 78 out of 240 – a pass mark of 32 per cent.
Maths methods had a pass score of 50 out of 160 in the mathematical methods exam, revealing that students answered just one in three questions correctly.
In specialist maths, the pass rate for the written exam was 35 out of 80 marks, meaning students could pass despite failing 56 per cent of the questions.
In the English exam, the lowest score was 26 out of 60 marks – a 40 per cent pass rate.
The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority did not respond to The Australian’s requests for comment.
A QCAA spokesman said that a grade of C “matches the objectives of the course and is considered ‘satisfactory’.’’
“Every year we look at the achievement of students to determine the grade boundaries,’’ he said. “This involves the QCAA and expert teachers looking at student performance across their range of assessments in every subject to determine cut-offs that align to each reporting standard on a 100-point scale.
“If the range for a C in a subject is 45-64 marks, it is because the student work that received marks in this range demonstrated the attributes of a C standard as described in the syllabus.
Dr Kevin Donnelly, a senior English teacher, curriculum writer and academic who reviewed the national curriculum in 2014, said Australia set a “low bar’’ for education. “We’ve lowered the bar to create a false picture of how well our students are doing and it breeds complacency,’’ he said.
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A shocking miscarriage of justice in another "recoveed memory" case
A prosecutor was so concerned about the “problematic” nature of torture and abuse allegations a young woman had made against her father that the police brief was sent to the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions to be reviewed.
The review was requested after a forensic analysis raised questions about a diary the young woman said she had kept as a 14 year-old, recording her father torturing her with tools and raping her repeatedly.
Police determined that the father was actually overseas on days when diary entries described him abusing his daughter on the family property.
A forensic document expert also determined that handwritten entries up to five days apart had been written at the same time.
But the DPP went ahead with the case, and the young woman’s parents were convicted on 86 counts of abuse and sentenced to lengthy jail terms.
The Australian’s Shadow Of Doubt podcast is investigating the parents’ claim that the case against them was based on their daughter’s unreliable false memories, which she recovered during several years of psychiatric treatment.
The couple’s daughter revealed the existence of the diary to police more than a year after she first made allegations of sexual assault against her father. The diary contained multiple entries she said she had written as a 14 year-old, recording her father torturing her with tools and sexually assaulting her in a shed next to the family home.
The diary also recorded her burying the tools on the property, and observing her father angrily searching for them one weekend.
But police determined that she was not at home that weekend, because she had been competing in an interstate sports competition.
Other diary entries detailed her father abusing her in the shed on multiple days when his immigration records showed he was overseas.
The diary also recorded the daughter’s participation in several sports competitions, but the dates were wrong by up to two months.
Police subsequently raided the couple’s rural property and found rusty tools buried in locations where the daughter told police she had hidden them years earlier.
Eight months after the raid, the prosecutor in charge of the case wrote a report to the Director of Public Prosecutions requesting a review of the evidence.
She told the lawyer representing the accused mother that aspects of the case were problematic, but she was not seeking to have it ‘no-billed’.
The father was subsequently charged with more than a hundred counts of abuse extending over 13 years.
The Australian has chosen not to name the family or identify dates on which events happened.
The father was convicted in the NSW District Court and sentenced to 48 years in prison, the longest jail term for child abuse ever imposed in Australia. The mother is serving a 16-year sentence.
They have both engaged lawyers to apply for a judicial review of their convictions, arguing that crucial evidence was never presented at their trial.
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1 May, 2023
Carbon dioxide shortage threatening supply of key consumer goods
A strange irony here. Where's all that CO2 that the Greenies have "sequestered"?
There are growing concerns within the supermarket, food, grocery and beverages industries that a carbon dioxide shortage might threaten the supply of hundreds of consumer products – from baby food to packaged meat – highlighting once again the fragile state of Australia’s food supply chain.
The tightening supply of manufactured carbon dioxide was revealed by Coles chief executive Steven Cain on Friday and acknowledged by Ritchies supermarket boss Fred Harrison, as well as the nation’s largest chicken producer, Inghams, a host of beverage companies including Coca-Cola, and a range of grocery manufacturers contacted by The Australian over the weekend.
“Some of the (supply) challenges are ongoing, some of them are returning. There is now a CO2 shortage again, and that is impacting obviously carbonated drinks and a few other products as well,” Coles boss Steven Cain said on Friday.
“Obviously, things that are carbonated are in short supply. I understand there is more CO2 heading our way but there’s just two main suppliers in the world … and I think there is just a shortage caused by the environment at the moment.”
Already the supply issues for carbon dioxide have left Woolworths desperately short of its private label soda water and mineral water products, with many stores sold out for weeks. Many of its shelves are also showing thinning supplies of branded soft drinks.
“Due to challenges in the supply chain, we do have lower volumes of our own-brand carbonated beverages than we would like but we expect supply to get back to normal in the next few weeks,” a Woolworths spokesman told The Australian.
Mr Harrison, the boss of one of the nation’s largest independent supermarket chains, Ritchies, said the CO2 shortage was a growing concern within the industry.
“The further we moved away from Covid you would have anticipated that these sorts of issues are going to go away, but right now there is a major issue around CO2 and I think this could be a threat to industries such as the carbonated soft drink category … it is a high risk and I think some companies have tried to anticipate this and tried to order but there is a shortage of getting product into the country.”
It isn’t just the fizzy drink sector that is being hit by a shortage of carbon dioxide, with CO2 used in the production of hundreds of consumer products such as packaged meats, baby foods, fresh foods and baked products. It is also used for dispensing drinks in pubs and in a number of medical procedures. CO2 is used as a pure gas or in mixtures with other gases for anaesthesia, stimulating breathing and sterilising equipment.
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Wallowing in moral self-regard
James Allan exposes the narcissism of some who support "Voice"
What does one say about the Julian Leesers and Greg Cravens of this Voice debate? I refer to the way they paint themselves as superior moral beings because they are going to vote Yes. And make no mistake that is precisely what they are doing. ‘For me the moral logic of the Voice flows deeply from my Catholic faith,’ says Craven. So all the millions of Catholics who’ll vote No are what, Greg? Morally blind? Stupid? Ill-informed? He goes on to claim that ‘the moral payload is inescapable’. If you set out to wallow in moral self-regard and sanctimonious blather you couldn’t do better than that.
Oh, and best of all Craven describes himself as a conservative too. Well, when I first got to this country to teach law I read a few of Craven’s constitutional law writings. The man was funny. He was deeply sceptical about the pernicious effects of judicial activism. The same went for Julian Leeser when it came to any proposed bill of rights (or for him, not Craven, the proposed Republic too).
Today, neither Craven nor Leeser seems to care one hoot about the sort of judicial activism this constitutionalised Voice body will unleash on our democracy. (Ditto Chris Kenny on that point.) Every single claim Leeser made about a bill of rights or Craven made about the High Court just making up the implied freedom of political communication doctrine (both of which claims are correct in my view) applies equally to this Voice body. And they know it. Both have read the Love case. Either they’d have to recant their earlier positions or they today don’t care about judicial activism.
I ask myself, ‘in what sense are Craven and Leeser actually conservatives, the former being pro-Republic, pro-Voice, insouciant about judicial activism and the latter being against s.18C repeal and also insouciant about judicial activism and neither, as far as I know, saying a word in three years against the lockdown authoritarianism that Lord Sumption rightly called the biggest inroads on our civil liberties in 300 years?’. Moral self-regard should be made of sterner stuff.
This suggests that for both these men the moral position is to ignore likely future bad consequences in favour of empty symbolism – empty in the sense that supposed good consequences in tangible terms are just not there and all we hear is vague, amorphous prattling about how this Voice will (in some never explained way) allow Aborigines ‘to live life to the fullest extent’. Really? Once in place this body will carry with it a huge bureaucracy. As the wording stands at present it will have input into every law mooted (not just ones directly aimed at Aboriginal people).
Law-making will become sclerotic. Rent-seeking is almost certain to become a feature of political life. This constitutional amendment will hand the High Court a tool it can use in known-unknown and unknown-unknown ways. It will be a body that is far more likely to diminish good outcomes for Aborigines than improve them because the activist, left class will soon take it over.
And if you want a comparison, this past weekend a well-known political commentator visiting these shores, Andrew Neil, pointed to the Scottish parliament. Since its coming into being it has built up a huge bureaucracy of massively paid hangers-on and the like; meanwhile the Scots have gone downhill against the English on just about every social statistic going – higher percentage working in the public service than anywhere else in Europe, even worse NHS results than in England, more thuggish than England during the pandemic, education results now below England’s and for the first time in history it is today harder for a poor Scot to get to university than for a poor English kid, undoing centuries of good old-fashioned Scots Presbyterian concern for education.
I point all that out, by the way, as a Scots-Canadian myself descending on both sides from generations of Calvinist Scots. (It’s an embarrassment that the land of David Hume, Adam Smith, and the better version of the Enlightenment has descended to Nicola Sturgeon and an inability to know what a woman is.)
Oh, and worst of all the Voice will undermine the core concept of equal citizenship that lies at the heart of any liberal democracy. Some will get rights others do not, and on a group-rights basis. That’s not conservative Julian!
In a democracy each of us can vote as we wish. But when people start advertising their own moral superiority you need to point out a few home truths. Likely future facts on the ground shape the morality of proposed actions. Looking inside oneself and wondering what you will tell your kids or making high-falutin’ claims about ‘moral logic’ (as if you’ve just overdosed on a bit of Immanuel Kant) does not automatically or self-evidently put you on the side of the angels, not even if you yourself proclaim that it does. Here’s something else that doesn’t obviously align with the best moral position.
Both Craven and Leeser have pointed out a good few of the problems with the Albanese wording of this amendment. I believe Craven went so far as to call it ‘awful’. But both are going to vote for it anyway. That being the case, why was it moral for Leeser to accept the position as shadow minister? I mean, you can’t really negotiate can you, if in the end you’re prepared to accept what Albanese rams down your throat however many flaws you point out it has. And likewise Craven on the Expert Panel. You don’t have to be the world’s greatest negotiator to see this emasculates you in any bargaining sense. You might even say that it undermines your moral position.
I’m sick and tired of so many people on the Yes side calling those who are opposed to this Voice body ‘racists’ – people like top barrister Bret Walker and Noel Pearson who seems these days only to deal in name-calling.
But now we have to listen to self-righteous, sanctimonious pridefulness. So let me be blunt. I don’t believe the Yes side and those on the Yes side are more moral. I know for a fact (having done a doctorate in moral philosophy) that none of them could cash that argument out in a way that would get them a passing mark in an undergraduate essay. And need I point out the obvious, that many, many Aborigines are themselves against this proposal?
Here’s the thing. No campaigners like me are saying that this amendment will deliver a racist constitution, not that Yes people are racists. That it will undermine equal citizenship in a way you can’t find anywhere else in the democratic world. That it will subvert and sabotage the fourth-oldest written constitution in the democratic world. That’s not an overly moral prospect.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/04/wallowing-in-moral-self-regard/
**********************************************Fear and loathing in POST-Covid Australia
Three years ago, I was approached at a pub in Brisbane by a television station reporting on the mask mandates to be put in place by our state premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk. I was asked what I thought of having to wear a mask and remain seated when at cafes, restaurants, and pubs. I said it was a laugh and that I would be eating, smoking, or drinking anyway, and if they started fining us for dancing, I’d write a novel about Queensland turning into a revenue raising quasi-religious state. That did not make it on TV, but a short bit of my diatribe did, when I said, ‘Who cares? Very few people will be bothered to follow these rules.’ I pointed to a bloke emerging from the pokies den for a cigarette and said, ‘Try getting old mate over there to wear a mask, he’s not even wearing shoes…!’
Three years later and I have moved from one Labor-run state to another: from the Stasi north to the dictatorial south, as they say. Melbourne was the most locked down place on the planet during Covid, and people are still wearing masks. It is not just the elderly going about their grocery shopping, but fit men in suits walking down Collins Street on their lunch breaks and young healthy women at art galleries on their weekends.
I attended a panel discussion in a theatre recently and a young woman was sitting inside, alone, wearing a mask. A stranger seated three chairs apart from the masked woman leapt over and asked her if she would feel more comfortable if she, too, put on a mask: ‘I have one in my bag! I can put it on!’ The masked woman assured her this would not be necessary. ‘Oh but we still must be so careful!’ the stranger cooed.
As a Queenslander, I would like to dismiss this nauseatingly effusive display as so very Melbourne – home of the nouveau riche with a social conscience, the Australian luvvie, and the birthplace of Dame Edna – but all-around Australia young, healthy people are still peering anxiously from beneath their masks and the rest of us are nodding along with them.
When I wrongly assumed that lockdowns and mask mandates would be impossible for our politicians and police to enforce, I did not only underestimate the lengths the authorities were willing to go to curtail basic freedoms, I deeply misunderstood the Australian psyche, or what became of it during the pandemic. I had faith in the larrikin: our convict swagger, our healthy mistrust of authority, our ability to remain nonchalant in the face of almost anything, and our unwavering commitment to preserve the Australian way of life in the luckiest country in the world. ‘She’ll be right!’ I thought. What I didn’t bet on was that the other side of the Australian character, the dark underbelly of the double edged-sword that is our easy-going nature, would instead be the side to emerge triumphant.
As women’s rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull has recently observed, reflecting on her tour of the antipodes, Australians are easy to coerce because of our easy-going nature. ‘I think you have a really worrying rise of authoritarianism,’ she said. ‘Nobody thinks it’s going to be nefarious. Australians are a bit like, well, that’d be right now, it’d be fine… And then next time they have no rights.’ Keen identified a link between hard lockdowns and a reluctance to stand up for the rapidly escalating erosion of woman’s rights. ‘If we think about the worst countries in the world for this gender bulls**t: Scotland, Canada, the blue states in the United States, not the red states, you’ve got New Zealand, Ireland, and Australia, and what they have in common is really hard lockdowns.’
I would argue that what we now also have in common is an all-pervasive fear – a mass, generalised anxiety relating to any transgression of unwritten rules. We were told that wearing masks would keep us safe from disease, we obliged, the threat of disease abated, but we have continued to cling to our masks like a child clings to a security blanket in the night. Our easy-going nature put us to sleep and we woke up petrified, haunted by the spectre of disease. The devastating consequence of this state of passivity and panic is that we are now not only germaphobes, we have created a whole culture where we have allowed ourselves to be completely dominated by fear and beholden to arbitrary, unwritten, rules.
As the reactions to Keen’s demonstrations showed, standing up and peacefully advocating for a cause as innocuous as women’s rights now carries the threat of being branded ‘anti-trans’, a Nazi, and physically attacked. It is not surprising that this phenomenon has surfaced, and holds great weight, in a post-Covid world. It is a world where we are now so used to having our freedoms restricted that we choose to imprison ourselves ‘just in case’.
What is most disturbing, and what we saw at the woman’s rights protests, is how this perverse mindset has taken on a distinctively political and moral tone. In the same way that we were told to wear a mask to avoid contracting Covid, we are now told we must wear LGBTQ+ insignia and the like, in order to protect ourselves from the disease of bigotry. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the most ardent mask and lockdown advocates were on the left of politics.
Today we fear committing some new transgression like we fear the plague, and so we blindly follow the new unwritten rules which are enforced with all the zealotry of the draconian lockdown laws. Our other great national characteristic – tolerance (aided by our easy-going nature) – has fallen prey to its own paradox. A society that is tolerant without limit will always be eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. That is what happened to liberal MP Moira Deeming when she spoke at the Melbourne woman’s rights rally. John Pesutto, once easy-going and tolerant, looked to the Marxists who heckled Deeming, and petrified of public criticism, nodded along.
‘Oh, but we still must be so careful…’ Like the dreaded plague that never was in Australia, there is no Nazi cabal of feminists running amok in Melbourne. What we do have is a society that is conditioned by fear and self-loathing.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/04/fear-and-loathing-in-post-covid-australia/
********************************************Shock stats: Rate of high school dropouts reaches 10-year high
Students deserting useless education/indoctrination
The number of Queensland students finishing year 12 has drastically dropped in the past three years, with current rates now below those seen a decade ago.
Experts believe the disruption of the Covid pandemic played a big role in questioning the focus on academic results and a shift towards finding a career earlier.
The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics schools data shows just 82.2 per cent of year 12 students in 2022 – who would have begun high school in year 7 in 2017 - made it to their final year of schooling.
In 2012, 83.7 per cent of the year 12 cohort who commenced year 8 in 2008 – the beginning of high school at that time – made it to their senior year.
That equates to 11,180 fewer students finishing their secondary schooling now compared to a decade ago, with most of those dropping out male.
The height of high school retention peaked in 2019 just before Covid when 91.3 per cent of students remained until year 12.
University of Southern Queensland senior education lecturer Dr Tania Leach said the pandemic likely played a part in retention rates falling away after some improvement.
“It created the notion that they (students) don’t know what is coming, so they may have decided to look at what they loved in that moment as a potential career,” she said.
Dr Leach said the value of vocational education needed to be increased.
“What we have seen in this data is students choosing different pathways,” she said. “At the moment, it could be that our education system is one-size-fits-all due to such a focus on academic and ATAR results. We need a balance and range; one career pathway should not be privileged over another.”
Tertiary offers to school-leavers show a small shift away from the traditional university path. Queensland’s Class of 2012 received about 49,500 QTAC offers during the two major rounds, but Class of 2022 graduates got only about 45,117.
Construction Skills Queensland chief executive Brett Schimming said in the face of a 10-year high work demand in the state, his organisation changed tack in 2019.
“Today’s young people are the Instagram generation … we started to turn the conversation around and invest in new ways of talking about the industry,” he said.
“We now use virtual reality to demonstrate what it is like on a construction site … put the goggles on and you’re driving a high-tower crane, or on the ground as a carpenter.”
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