This document is part of an archive of postings on Australian Politics, a blog hosted by Blogspot who are in turn owned by Google. The index to the archive is available here or here. Indexes to my other blogs can be located here or here. Archives do accompany my original postings but, given the animus towards conservative writing on Google and other internet institutions, their permanence is uncertain. These alternative archives help ensure a more permanent record of what I have written
This is a backup copy of the original blog
30 November, 2021
Family moves to Canberra to escape ‘atrocious’ temperatures in Western Sydney
She might be disappointed. Canberra is pretty hot in summer
Sydney has always been a hot place. As Watkin Tench recorded, it got so hot in 1790 (Yes. 1790. not 1970) that birds and bats were falling out of the trees dead. And that was in coastal Sydney. Inland has always been even hotter. So the lady's claim that she is escaping anthropogenic climate change is tendentious. There were no SUVs or power stations in 1790
An Australian climate scientist who specialises in heatwaves has told of how she moved her family to a new city to escape “atrocious” temperatures due to climate change.
University of NSW climate scientist Dr Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick shared her story in the documentary series Life at 50 Degrees, available to stream on Flash News.
The mother of two said she was so concerned about the extreme temperatures her family endured where they lived in western Sydney, that she made the decision to relocate.
“I have experienced days of 45 and 47 degrees celsius and that was appalling, it was atrocious. You couldn’t do anything,” Dr Perkins-Kirkpatrick said. “The only way we could stay cool in Western Sydney was to have the aircon running all day and that was a hard thing for me to do.”
She said she made the extreme decision to move her family to Canberra, where the climate is much cooler, for her daughters, aged 2 and 4.
“It really bothers me that the world that they’re experiencing now is a lot different from my childhood,” she said.
“During my first pregnancy, it was so hot that I actually struggled to put the washing on the line. “While I was literally about to bring this child into the world, I was thinking what will the summers be like for her in the future.”
According to Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub, temperatures in Western Sydney already experience 10 degrees higher than in the city’s eastern suburbs. The region’s local government areas (LGAs) including Penrith, where Dr Perkins-Kirkpatrick was living, are expected to be the worst affected with a forecast of an average of four extra days of extreme heat by around 2050.
The climate scientist said the outlook for the area forced her to take action and make the move. “As a scientist, I know how bad the future looks. I understand all that, I comprehend all that. That’s what I do for a living,” she said.
“But as a mum, as a person, as a human being, I really struggle with just how bad those impacts will be.”
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Sydney University academics’ fury over dumped departments
This is just about a new boss wanting to make his mark. The only possible reason for the rejig is to increase cross-disciplinary contact and co-operation. But that is a snark. It already happens when the parties concerned want it. I studied and taught in a "School" that comprised people from psychology, sociology and anthropology -- the School of Behavioral Sciences at Macquarie university. And I saw no instance of research co-operation across those disciplines.
Arts and social sciences academics at Sydney University are furious about a plan to refashion the faculty’s departments as disciplines, with many saying they have never seen such anger in decades at the institution.
Sixty senior faculty members, including more than 20 chairs of departments – including history, philosophy and English – and almost 30 professors within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, or FASS, have written to the university’s administration to express their alarm.
It is the first major skirmish between university management and academics under the rule of new vice-chancellor, Mark Scott.
Chair of Archaeology Annie Clarke said it would be more than a name change.
Departments were as old as the university itself, and were an integral part of its intangible heritage. She warned the proposed “disciplines” were nebulous and risked damaging the university’s reputation. She has been at Sydney since 2003 and said “I’ve never seen people so upset”.
“All the major universities in the world have departments, and this slippage into a different kind of culture around disciplines is increasing centralised control of what we do,” Professor Clarke said. “For us, it’s a line in the sand.”
A proposal presented to FASS academics this month said the faculty regularly failed to meet budget targets for domestic students, and only two of its schools – economics, and media and communications – attracted significant numbers of overseas students.
Those schools cross-subsidised the rest of the faculty, but, as COVID-19 border closures showed, the international market was volatile. Costs were growing at 2.8 per cent a year but revenue was only climbing by 2 per cent a year, which was unsustainable. “It makes sense for us to consider changes in the way we work,” the proposal said.
FASS is divided into six schools, which are in turn divided into departments, with a chair of each. In 2019, only two of its schools returned a surplus: Economics ($41 million) and the School of Languages and Cultures ($6m), the proposal said.
The loss-makers were the schools of Literature Art and Media ($91,000), Education and Social Work ($532,000), Social and Political Sciences ($5 million) and the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry ($13 million).
The proposed changes involve re-naming schools and shifting the subjects within them. A new School of Humanities would take in subjects from the old School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, while adding linguistics and religion but losing gender studies to social sciences.
All undergraduate units with fewer than 24 students would be scrapped.
The departments within schools would be renamed disciplines, to “move away from the administrative and financial silos”, increase interaction between similar subjects, and reduce internal competition. The department chair would become a discipline lead.
Other universities, such as Melbourne and Monash, have also adopted the “discipline” approach. The university defines a department as an organisational unit, and discipline as a sub-field of knowledge. Departments don’t have their own budgets.
However, academics are worried this will curtail their ability to manage their own subject.
The letter from angry FASS academics said the discipline concept was nebulous and risky, and their views had been ignored. “There is no clear reason or benefit for the proposed change, as no specific problems with the current structure have been identified,” it said.
Professor Clarke said students, alumni and staff strongly identified with departments. The new structure would lead to an “erosion and loss of identity,” she said.
“There is an increasing centralised control of academic life. In departments we have a fair degree of control over what we teach our students, what we do, and public facing, the engagement work we do. We feel that there’s a slow erosion of the structures of a university that we feel are really important.”
Not everyone agrees. Sociologist Salvatore Babones, who was not a signatory to the letter, said his colleagues were justifiably concerned about the consolidation of smaller departments into bigger ones.
“But relabelling departments as disciplines is the epitome of pro forma reform: departments become disciplines, department chairs become discipline leads, and the rest is business as usual,” he said. “It’s yet another missed opportunity for a genuine reexamination and long-overdue modernization of how we educate the next generation.”
A spokeswoman for the university administration said the FASS proposal involved significant consultation with staff, and the latest version involved smaller changes with no redundancies or reductions in employment.
More consultation was underway. “Like other institutions, we need to look for ways to ensure ongoing sustainability alongside continued high-quality teaching and research,” she said.
“The proposal to change from departments to a disciplinary structure – and to merge a very small number of disciplines – will allow our academic staff to collaborate more easily, reduce administrative double-up, produce a more consistent and flexible student experience and contribute to securing the future of our smaller disciplines.”
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How the pandemic changed our population
The article below clearly favours high levels of immigration. But why? The claim is that there is a shortage of workers in some occupations -- such as care of the elderly. But there is only a shortage at current pay rates. Pay more and you will get more workers. The only valid reason for immigration that I can see is to enable family reunions.
It is true that paying more for services to children and the elderly will increase the costs to users of those services but that could usually be prevented by reducing the burden of regulation on such services. Requiring that people tasked with the care of little children have a university degree is one example of the towering stupidity in current regulations.
And traffic congestion and the price of housing can only be worsened by an increased population. And both of those things are already hugely problematical in Australia -- mainly as a result of past high levels of immigration
Disputes over population are a staple of Australian politics. So, it’s no surprise there are plenty of views about what to do about immigration policy now that pandemic restrictions on international borders are being lifted.
Some urge a rapid catch up. A leaked briefing prepared by bureaucrats for new NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet suggested he push for “an aggressive resumption of immigration levels”. It proposed Australia welcome 2 million migrants over the next five years. That’s 400,000 annually or nearly double the pre-pandemic rate.
High rates of migration have been blamed for worsening traffic congestion and other urban challenges
High rates of migration have been blamed for worsening traffic congestion and other urban challengesCREDIT:NICK MOIR
Others want a much more gradual build-up in migration numbers following the economic upheaval caused by the pandemic. This would help drive up demand for local labour and revive wages growth which has been sluggish for nearly a decade, they argue.
And as always there are those calling for much lower migration levels, or even none.
On Monday Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that from next week eligible visa holders including overseas students, skilled work visa holders and working holidaymakers will be allowed to enter Australia for the first time in almost two years. The government anticipates this will pave the way for around 200,000 new arrivals in coming months.
“The return of skilled workers and students to Australia is a major milestone in our pathway back,” Morrison said.
The Federal Government appears to have rejected the idea of an immigration catch-up period. But nor will there be a go slow. The May budget forecast net overseas migration to bounce back to pre-COVID levels (235,000 per year) by mid-decade and remain around that level into the early 2030s.
That strategy will have far-reaching consequences.
Since the 1970s Australia’s population has been expanding at an average rate of 1.4 per cent a year which is relatively fast compared to other developed countries. But growth has come to a virtual standstill thanks to COVID-19 travel restrictions.
In the year before the pandemic hit Australia added 357,000 people, but that plunged to 36,000 in the year to March 2021. According to official estimates the national population increased by just 0.1 per cent last financial year and is forecast to grow by 0.2 per cent in 2021-22.
AMP chief economist Shane Oliver says the hit to population growth delivered by COVID-19 means that Australia “will be 1 million people smaller than expected pre-coronavirus”. Longer range forecasts show Australia is now expected to have 35.3 million people in 2050, which is 2.5 million less than forecast in 2015. The population will also be older than otherwise would have been the case.
The pandemic has affected another important population driver – the fertility rate. The number of babies born per woman in Australia is expected to fall temporarily because of the economic uncertainty created by COVID-19.
Official forecasts for Australia’s long-term fertility rate have also been subject to major downward revisions, largely unrelated to the pandemic. Back in 2015 the federal government assumed women would have an average of 1.9 babies over the next 40 years but this year it was cut to 1.62 babies per woman.
Australian National University demographer Liz Allen says the pandemic’s simultaneous disruption to both net overseas migration and the fertility rate will be noticeable for many years. Things as basic as family formation have been interrupted by the way COVID-19 put a stop to the way we normally mix socially.
“What’s happened to Australia’s population during the pandemic is nothing short of extraordinary,” says Allen. “We’ll be able to look back in generations to come and actually see the impact on the composition of our population.”
Even the way population is distributed across Australia has been affected. Terry Rawnsley, a demographer and urban economist at KPMG, says population growth in many regional areas, especially those relatively close to capital cities, will be much stronger than expected before the pandemic.
“The surge in people working from home has made a move to a regional area much more attractive,” he says.
Dr Allen says overseas migrants will form an essential part of Australia’s post-pandemic recovery and is fundamental if Australia is to maintain a healthy population profile in the longer term.
“What’s really concerning is that the composition of the population’s age structure has become more problematic during the pandemic,” she says. “Prior to COVID we were struggling with an age structure that meant we had insufficient people for our workforce needs, and that’s even more pronounced now. That’s going to put pressure on the nation in the post-pandemic recovery phase.”
Migrant labour is crucial to many services industries including the care of the young, the elderly and the disabled. A recent study found just over 37 per cent of paid frontline care workers were born overseas in 2016, up from 31 per cent in 2011. Another survey found 60 per cent of migrants in caring occupations were on temporary visas, and around 38 per cent arrived on student visas.
Australia is facing a shortage of at least 110,000 aged-care workers within the next decade according to research published in August by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA). The study concluded Australia is unlikely “to get anywhere close” to meeting its aged care workforce needs without migration.
“We require a workforce to sustain the nations needs and at present that means we require immigration to help us,” says Allen.
“Because of our age structure we don’t have a sufficient number of people ageing into the workforce to fill the gaps left by those ageing out, that’s the reality.”
Australia’s permanent migrant intake is capped at 160,000 per year, down recently from 190,000 a year. Skilled workers are favoured for permanent migration, although a growing share of places has been allocated under a program designed to boost business investment. Australia grants a further 13,750 permanent visas under a separate humanitarian program to resettle refugees and others overseas who are in humanitarian need.
A separate temporary migration program is largely uncapped (except for limits on working holiday visa grants for some countries) and demand driven. The stock of temporary migrants - which includes overseas students, working holidaymakers, skilled temporary residents, seasonal workers, and others - has increased by about 50,000 each year over the past decade.
Economic change along with Australia’s increasing integration with global trade and commerce has helped make population flows more complex. Knowledge-based industries which make up a growing share of our economy require skilled foreign workers to be able to come and go much more than in the past. The rise of the international education sector has added to this complexity. During the past 20 years it has emerged as Australia’s biggest services export. But overseas students are also part of the temporary migrant labour workforce (and are sometimes blamed for suppressing wages). They also increase demand for local housing and other services.
“Population can be a complicated issue,” says Allen.
Immigration is routinely blamed for a clutch of problems including traffic congestion, crowded trains, high-rise property developments and rising property prices.
A survey conducted for The Age and the Herald by research firm Resolve Strategic found 58 per cent favour restarting migration at a lower level than before the coronavirus while 20 per cent supported a return to the pre-pandemic rate.
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Brisbane developer wins approval to build $300m tree house
A Brisbane developer has received approval to build one of the world’s greenest residential buildings in the heart of the city.
A Brisbane developer has finally been given the go ahead to build what it claims will be one of the world’s greenest residential buildings — an apartment tower with “backyards in the sky” covered in more than 500 trees and 25,000 plants.
Designed by internationally renowned architect Koichi Takada, Aria Property Group’s $300 million “The Urban Forest” project will be a 20-storey building with 194 apartments in the heart of South Brisbane.
Plans for the development were lodged with Brisbane City Council in June last year and have just been approved, with 90 per cent of all submissions in support of the proposal.
The development was originally designed to have 32 storeys, but was scaled back due to the council raising concerns about height and scale during the approval process.
Aria development manager Michael Hurley said the project had attracted “overwhelming” interest, with more than 800 inquiries domestically and internationally since the development application was lodged.
Mr Hurley said the project would be “Queensland’s first stand-alone five-star green star design and as-built residential development” and a sustainable landmark for Brisbane in the lead-up to the 2032 Olympic Games.
“Urban Forest will redefine apartment living, with the best residences we have ever delivered, iconic recreation spaces and innovations such as a two-storey fitness centre with basketball and squash courts on the rooftop,” Mr Hurley said.
“Demand for buildings like this moving forward will be huge. We hope this could lead the way for other (developers) to follow.”
The project’s major green initiatives include a 1450 sqm public park at the base of the building and a recycled greywater system that can save up to 50,000 litres of water a week.
‘The Urban Forest’ will offer 3700 sqm of resident amenity including a rooftop ‘canopy club’ with 360 degree views across South Brisbane, Musgrave Park, the CBD and Brisbane River, and Australia’s first rooftop basketball court.
Architect Koichi Takada said he hoped the project would inspire the next generation to work towards a more sustainable future.
“Urban Forest will change the way we live,” Mr Takada said. “We designed away the barrier between the building and nature resulting in the greenest residential building ever with generous backyards in the sky and offering a healthier lifestyle.”
Construction is set to begin mid-next year and is expected to be completed by late 2024.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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29 November, 2021
New words for "Advance Australia Fair"?
The proposed second verse is a rather clumsy reference to Aborigines so is hardly appropriate for general use. The proposed third verse, by contrast, refers to common Australian phenomena so is reasonably appropriate.
The real issue is why one population group is being singled out in what is supposed to be a NATIONAL anthem. Rather confused thinking.
There is also a Christian verse to the anthem that is widely sung in church circles. Christians so far have been content to use the verse only on their own occasions but if we are going to recognize special groups, the Christian version should also be recognized. There are more Christians than Aborigines
The Australian national anthem could be rewritten under proposed changes to make the words better reflect indigenous history.
Non- profit group Recognition in Anthem is pushing for a new second verse to Advance Australia Fair titled 'Our People' and a third verse 'Our Values'.
The group already had one victory when Prime Minister Scott Morrison made a one-word change from January 1 this year that altered the line 'we are young and free' to 'we are one and free'.
Cathy Freeman - who carried both the Australian and Aboriginal flags during her Sydney Olympics gold medal lap of honour in 2000 - is backing the move.
Her support was instrumental in the one word change - with Mr Morrison personally calling her to let her know - but now she wants to 'finish the job'.
The revised anthem has already been sung at high profile events including most recently at the Sydney Opera House during National Reconciliation Week in May 2021, attended by Ms Bulger.
She said the change to the lyrics made on New Year's Eve was a small step and the new verses 'would mean that we could truly celebrate our anthem because it would include us, the First Nations people, and the special places that are around Australia'.
Advance Australia Fair was chosen as the de facto national anthem in a 1977 plebiscite by just over 8.4 million voters who picked the song over God Save the Queen, Waltzing Matilda and Song of Australia.
It was officially adopted as the national anthem on April 19, 1984 on the recommendation of the federal government.
The song was composed by the Scottish-born Peter Dodds McCormick, first performed in 1878 and was sung in Australia as a patriotic song.
PROPOSED SECOND AND THIRD VERSES:
Verse 2 - Our People
For sixty thousand years and more
First peoples of this land
Sustained by Country, Dreaming told
By song and artist's hand.
Unite our cultures from afar
In peace with those first here
To walk together on this soil
Respect for all grows there.
From everywhere on Earth we sing, Advance Australia Fair.
Verse 3 - Our Values
In times of drought and flood and fire
When all but hope is gone
Australians join with helping hands
And wattle blooms again.
Tomorrow may this timeless land
Live for our young to share
From red-rock heart to sun-filled shore
Our country free and fair.
Beneath the Southern Cross we sing, Advance Australia Fair.
Beneath the Southern Cross we sing, Advance Australia Fair.
Christian verse:
With Christ our head and cornerstone,
We’ll build our nation’s might,
Whose way and truth and light alone,
Can guide our path aright.
Our lives, a sacrifice of love,
Reflect our Master’s care.
With faces turned to heaven above,
Advance Australia fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing,
Advance Australia fair.
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Premier vows NSW WON'T go back into lockdown and will remain open to the world despite global fears over new Omicron Covid variant
Premier Dominic Perrottet has vowed NSW will stay open and forge ahead with its Covid roadmap despite fears about the Omicron variant.
NSW Health confirmed on Sunday urgent genomic testing found two travellers who touched down in Sydney from southern Africa on Saturday night have the new strain.
The latest virus mutation, first detected in South Africa, sparked concerns around the globe amid fears it is more transmissible than world's most contagious and dominant strain, Delta.
But Mr Perrotet said Omicron could be contained and the state's timeline of lifting restrictions at 95 per cent vaccination or on December 15 was on track.
He said 'for the moment' he intended to stick with the state's plan as NSW could not be a 'hermit kingdom on the other side of the world'.
'Ultimately, we not only need to learn to live alongside the virus, but live alongside the variants as well,' he said.
'This pandemic is not over. These variants will continue, cases will continue to rise and the best thing we can do to keep the community safe, keep your family safe is to go out and get vaccinated and get that booster shot when you can.'
Experts say mask wearing, social distancing and better ventilation will help prevent all variants of Covid-19, including Omicron
Mr Perrotet said it was inevitable that Omicron would seep onto our shores. 'If you look at Delta… how quickly that come into countries around the world, the prime minister cancelled flights into here,' he said.
'The reality is these variants are highly transmissible and that means it is almost certain it will get into countries around the world. That is the reality of the situation.
'We can’t look at the world as we want it to be, we need to look at the situation as it is.'
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‘Vandals’: Victoria, Queensland fume over federal climate intervention
The Morrison government has used sweeping new powers to override state and territory government support for an international agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The federal government has deployed recently passed laws to overturn the participation of five states and territories in the global Under 2 Coalition.
In an email dated 23 November, an official with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade told his counterpart in the Victorian government that its participation in the coalition was “no longer in operation”.
The email warned the Victorian government that under the new Foreign Relations (States and Territories) Act 2020, sign up to the agreement was now illegitimate.
The email said Victoria had 14 days to tell the global organisation it had “failed to properly classify” the state’s involvement in a 2015 Memorandum of Understanding.
Two-hundred-and-sixty sub-national governments worldwide have signed up to the the Under 2 coalition, representing 1.75 billion people and 50% of the global economy. Members commit to keeping global temperature rises to well below 2C, with efforts to reach 1.5C. Thirty-five states and regions in the coalition have committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050 or earlier.
“[T]he MOU has also been invalidated for a number of other states and territories,” the official said, naming the ACT, Northern Territory, Queensland and South Australia. He did not cite NSW, which has lately signed up.
Lily D’Ambrosio, Victoria’s energy, environment and climate change minister, said Dfat had used a technicality that was “illogical” to cancel her state’s participation.
“It’s just a really ridiculous technicality,” D’Ambrosio said. “It’s egregious. They are vandals.”
The move came less than a fortnight after the Glasgow climate summit ended. The Morrison government had weathered extensive criticism at the event for being among the few rich nations to avoid raising their 2030 emission reduction targets.
“This is going to be a global embarrassment, not for the Victorian government but the federal government that has already covered itself in ridicule on the climate change stage,” D’Ambrosio said. “Rather than addressing the urgency of climate change, they are actually putting forward more barriers.”
A spokesperson for Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne said the Under 2 Coalition MOU had not come to the minister for a decision.
“The MOU was not properly notified by the relevant states and territory under the Foreign Relations Act 2020 and was therefore automatically invalidated by operation of the Act,” the spokesperson said.
Dfat was also approached for comment, as was energy minister Angus Taylor.
The Dfat official suggested in the email if Victoria wanted to sign up to the Under 2 coalition’s 2021 MOU, his department would consider approving it. He also said Victoria should join with other jurisdictions to make a single submission.
“Under what conditions would they be prepared to consider an application?” D’Ambrosio said. “Are they saying that if there’s one or two states that maybe hadn’t wanted to pursue it or have delayed it, then everyone else will be held up?”
Meaghan Scanlon, Queensland’s minister for the environment and the Great Barrier Reef, said her state had also received the cancellation advice.
“Clearly, the Morrison government aren’t content with their own failures on climate change, they’re now trying to stop the states from taking action.” she said.
“Surely their time would be better spent funding renewable energy projects or delivering a credible policy on reducing emissions, than on playing silly bureaucratic games,” Scanlon said.
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Another 10 million students under education growth plan
Australia should shake up its $40 billion international student sector to shift the focus to teaching online and offshore, the government says, arguing that an extra 10 million students could benefit from an Australian education over the next 20 years.
In its new 10-year international education strategy, the government says Australia should look to Britain which in 2019 taught 407,000 students in offshore arrangements, compared to 117,000 – or 22 per cent – by Australian education providers.
The new strategy says Australia must diversify where students come from and what and where they study. Louie Douvis
Experts, however, say the prospect of living and working in Australia is a strong drawcard for students.
“We know that the vast majority of international students still want to study onshore in Australia for a significant proportion of their studies,” said Jake Foster, chief commercial officer with education consultancy AECC Global.
“The government is actively encouraging and supporting students to start their studies offshore, which could help grow the Australian international education sector in the years ahead.”
The international education strategy for 2021-2030 also says Australia must diversify the number of countries from which students are sourced and diversify the courses in which they study.
While China and India are the highest source countries for all major international education destinations, Australia has the highest concentration of them, with 58 per cent of students arriving from those two countries. That is compared to 50 per cent for the US and Canada and 36 per cent for Britain.
The strategy argues that study for an Australian qualification and the right to live and work in Australia for a time following graduation should be linked as a means of driving skilled workers into the economy.
Alignment with skills priorities
The strategy notes that almost half of all international students who study in Australia are enrolled in business and management courses, but there would be greater benefit for the country if they were to graduate in priority skills areas such as computing.
“Better aligning program choices with priority employment fields will delivery more job-ready graduates in the disciplines and regions where they are most needed,” the strategy reads.
The strategy argues that the diversification of source countries and study areas will improve the educational experience for international and domestic students.
Brett Blacker, chief executive of English Australia, which represents the country’s English language, or ELICOS, colleges, said teaching students online and offshore required a trade-off with the soft diplomacy and flow-on economic benefits of teaching students onshore.
“But that doesn’t mean they have to be mutually exclusive. We can build some pipelines through students doing some of their program offshore and then coming to Australia,” Mr Blacker said.
Vicki Thomson, chief executive of the Group of Eight, said concentration of Chinese students in the group’s universities was higher still at 68 per cent, with just 5 per cent from India.
Students, skilled migrants are next priority entrants
“Clearly, diversifying into alternative markets is going to take time,” Ms Thomson said.
She also said most international students in Go8 universities were postgraduates in fields such as engineering and science.
“These are precisely the skills that we need to address our current skill shortages and research demands,” she said.
Over the past two years, the number of international students enrolled in Australian institutions has dropped by 150,000. The sector was valued at $40 billion to the economy in 2019 and is expected to be worth half that by the end of the year.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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28 November, 2021
CSIRO study proves climate change driving Australia’s 800% boom in bushfires
This is a childish level of logic. There is no doubt that weather changes impact fires but PROVING that the weather changes are due to global warming shows no awarenes of the scientific and philosophical requirements for proving anything. As David Hume pointed out, you have to show constant conjunction between two things to substantiate a claim of causation and there is NO constant conjunction between any meteorological phenonena. Weak probabilities are all we have.
And there is no recognition below that Greenie restrictions on good forest management have increased the risk and severity of fires. There IS constant conjunction between restrictions on backburning and the severity of fires in the area
I have read the academic article concerned ("Multi-decadal increase of forest burned area in Australia is linked to climate change") and it goes to great length to prove what was in no doubt -- that fires have been on the increase in recent years
Of greater interest is what they found to correlate with fire incidence and severity. Their contribution there is assertions plus some desultory modelling. And the data they put into modelling is of the low quality that we have come to expect of modelling in this area. Let me quote their look at preventive burning:
We found no changes in the mean annual area of prescribed burning over the past 32 years, although we have no information on how successful those burns were in reducing fuel loads. However, given the lack of trend and the fact that on average, only 1% of forests are subject to fuel reduction burns every year, it is very likely that fuel management had no effect on the observed multi-decadal increasing trend in the burned area of forest fires
They correlate "prescribed" burning and admit that such figures tell us nothing. What is prescribed and what Greenies allow to happen are two different things. Their figures are clearly rubbish, as are their conclusions
But here is the clincher. I quote:
"The research also found Australia is bucking an international trend of decreasing fire activity"
If nobody else is getting the trend, how come it is due to global warming? Can you have global warming in one country? Is it global or is it not? Yet another logical failure in this pathetic study.
Climate change is the dominant factor causing the increased size of bushfires in Australia’s forests, according to a landmark study that found the average annual area burned had grown by 800 per cent in the past 32 years.
The peer-reviewed research by the national science agency, CSIRO — published in the prestigious science journal, Nature — reveals evidence showing changes in weather due to global warming were the driving force behind the boom in Australia’s bushfires.
Lead author and CSIRO chief climate research scientist Pep Canadell said the study established the correlation between the Forest Fire Danger Index – which measures weather-related vegetation dryness, air temperature, wind speed and humidity – and the rise in area of forest burned since the 1930s.
“It’s so tight, it’s so strong that clearly when we have these big fire events, they’re run by the climate and the weather,” Dr Canadell said.
The bushfire royal commission identified climate change as a key risk to ongoing bushfire catastrophe but did not make recommendations about reducing greenhouse emissions to curb the threat.
The CSIRO report found other factors have an impact on the extent and intensity of bushfires such as the amount of vegetation or fuel load in a forest, the time elapsed since the last fire, and hazard reduction burning. But Dr Canadell said the study showed the link between weather and climate conditions and the size of bushfires was so tight, it was clear these factors far outweighed all other fire drivers.
“Almost regardless of what we do the overall extent of the fire, really, is dictated by those climate conditions,” he said.
Climate scientists have found climate change is exacerbating the key fire risk factors identified by CSIRO’s study, with south-eastern Australia becoming hotter, drier and, in a particularly worrying trend, more prone to high wind on extremely hot and dry summer days.
The weather system that drove a blast furnace’s worth of westerly wind across NSW and Victoria’s forests, sparking some of the worst fires of the Black Summer in 2019-20, will be up to four times more likely to occur under forecast levels of global warming.
“All the various climate trends, which are so important, are all on the rise and they’re all connected to various degrees with anthropogenic climate change,” Dr Canadell said.
The study shows fires are becoming bigger and more common even when the Black Summer is not factored in. When the first half of the study period, from 1988 to 2001, is compared to the period between 2002 and 2018, the average annual forest burned area in Australia increased 350 per cent. That figured ramps up to 800 per cent when the fires of 2019-20, which burnt more than 24 million hectares of land, are included.
Mega-fires, which burn more than 1 million hectares, have “markedly” increased with three of the four recorded from 1930 occurring since 2000, while the gap between big blazes has had a “rapid decrease”, the study says.
Last year, the bushfire royal commission reported fuel-load management through hazard reduction burning “may have no appreciable effect under extreme conditions” that typically cause loss of life and property.
The CSIRO findings bolster that conclusion and call into question calls for native forest logging to be used as a bushfire management tool.
“This is happening regardless of anything that we might or might not do to try to stop the fires,” Dr Canadell said.
The increased frequency of bushfires is giving the bush less and less time to recover, which is changing ecosystems and threatening the survival of many plants and animals that are struggling to adapt to the pace of change and loss of habitat.
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Melbourne's anti-vaxxers have started placing Nazi-themed stickers around city. Stickers show Star of David, image of Adolf Hitler and a syringe with messaging
I am a great fan of vaccines. I have had them all. But I fundamentally object to compulsion in the matter. I had no side-effects at all from my two Astra Zeneca shots but most people do get side-effects of varying degrees of severity, including death. In the circumstances, people are surely entitled to say "No thanks".
So using Nazi imgery is a very clear way of emphasizing that government tyranny can be a very bad thing. I think the handling of the coronavirus by methods copied from Communist China will go down in history as one of the great medical disasters
Melbourne's anti-vaxxers have started placing stickers around the city controversially comparing themselves to Jews in the Holocaust as they continue to protest against mandatory vaccinations.
The stickers, which have been spotted around the Victorian capital in recent weeks, show three images - the Star of David, Adolf Hitler and a syringe.
'What's the difference between vaccine papers and a yellow star? 82 years. We are increasingly living under National Socialiam. Stop medical apartheid,' the message reads.
The stickers have caused outrage in the Jewish community, with community leaders calling for the government to take a stand against the propaganda.
They have been placed on walls, street signs and crossings around the city, usually in areas of high foot traffic.
The Chairman of the Anti-Defamation Commission said the comparison between anti-vaxxers and slaughtered Jews was 'hateful and cruel'.
'To hijack the Holocaust, in which six million Jews and millions of others were slaughtered and burned, to suggest that Hitler's Final Solution is comparable to lifesaving vaccination efforts is to trivialise and downplay humanity's most immense tragedy,' Dr Dvir Abramovich said.
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New Australian laws to unmask anonymous online trolls and make tech giants pay
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced he is set to introduce new internet safety legislation as a way to allow 'real world rules' to exist in the digital world.
If the companies refuse or are unable to identify who made the defamatory comments, then they will have to pay the defamation costs.
Announcing the measures on Sunday, Mr Morrison said the internet should not be a “wild west where bots and bigots and trolls” can harm people without consequence.
He said women and children were the people most affected by anonymous bullying and defamatory abuse online and there needed to be a “quick and fast way” for people to raise these issues with the platforms and get it taken down.
“Free speech is not being allowed to cowardly hide in your basement and sledge … and harass people anonymously and seek to destroy their lives,” Mr Morrison said. “That is cowardice — and there is no place for that in this country.”
Mr Morrison said the online giants needed to be held accountable for the world they had created, to ensure there was a “quick and easy” method for users to address harassment.
“They have created the space, and they need to make it safe, and if they won’t, we will make them laws such as this, and I will campaign for these all around the world as I have done on so many other occasions with Australia taking the lead.”
Social media giants will also have to establish online customer shopfronts in Australia to make sure they comply with orders as part of the measures.
The centrepiece crackdown on online trolls will be a change to the law to make it clear social media providers are responsible for payouts arising from defamatory comments on their platform where the troll cannot be identified.
The measures will force social media companies, such as Twitter and Facebook, to create a complaints scheme which will allow victims to know if comments were made in Australia and, if so, to obtain the contact details of the poster, with their consent.
If that is unsuccessful, a complainant will also be able to seek a new form of court order, to be called an “End-user Information Disclosure Order”, which will allow a social media company to unmask trolls without consent.
Mr Morrison said the government would seek test cases because it was aware that most litigants in defamation cases against social media giants will be outgunned financially.
He said the government was prepared to intervene in defamation disputes involving social media companies to support victims and make it clear to the courts how it thinks the Commonwealth legislation should be applied.
The laws were first flagged by Mr Morrison at last month’s G20 summit in Rome, where he proposed a new round of coordinated action to protect people online.
Australia and other countries have joined forces at previous G20 summits to impose tougher rules on digital companies, including an agreement in Osaka two years ago when France backed a push to halt the spread of violent terrorism online after the Christchurch attacks.
Attorney-General Michaelia Cash said the measures would also “bring clarity” to the High Court decision in September when it dismissed an appeal by some of Australia’s biggest media outlets including The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian, finding they are the publishers of third-party comments on their Facebook pages.
The court found that, by running the Facebook pages, the media groups participated in communicating any defamatory material in the case of former Northern Territory detainee Dylan Voller which were posted by third parties and were therefore responsible for the comments.
“Social media services, they need to step up and they need to understand that they have a responsibility in this regard, and that is why this important step, providing clarity to all Australians, but in particular to social media companies - you will be deemed to be publisher,” she said.
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‘Grotesque, leftwing back-scratching’: failed Senate inquiry into ABC leaves Coalition enraged
A coalition of Labor and Green senators managed to head off an inquiry into the ABC complaints process – which was labelled “politically motivated” by ABC chair Ita Buttrose – but the manoeuvre left some Liberal senators apoplectic.
Queensland senator James McGrath described the 11th hour block as a “grotesque, leftwing, back-scratching orgy of flatulent arrogance from the ABC and those on the left” and called for the ABC to be broken up and Triple J to be sold off.
Related: Senate inquiry into ABC suspended after Labor and Greens motion gets cross-bench support
The deputy whip’s personal attack on the prime minister’s captain’s pick for ABC chair was unprecedented, seemingly more personal than Michael Kroger’s spray in June, when the former Victorian Liberal powerbroker said Buttrose was a “hopeless failure” and should resign.
“This ABC who sneers at us is led by an arrogant chair who sees the ABC as a country apart from Australia,” McGrath told the Senate. “And that is quite sad. The inevitable result of decades of free rein, of grossly excessive budgets and diminished accountability, is that we’ve ended up with an inner-city hive of woke workers, hiring woke friends to do their woke work in their quest to ‘wokify’ the world.
“But in conjunction with the first-night crowd, the chair of the ABC and her fellow first-nighters are at the opera, chinking their champagne glasses, sneering at middle Australia and at those who believe in a pluralistic, diverse media market.”
The decision by the Senate to delay the inquiry was a win for Buttrose who had called a week ago on the upper house to act to “defend the independence of the ABC”.
The government inquiry was sprung on the ABC days after the ABC’s complaints division told Fox News it had not upheld any of the complaints made in a lengthy submission about a Four Corners program on the News Corp broadcaster aired in August.
The ABC, which returns to Senate estimates on Monday, declined to comment.
An issues paper by the ABC’s independent review of its complaints handling is due to be released on Friday, and it will call for public submissions.
Professor John McMillan, a former commonwealth and NSW ombudsman and one of the co-reviewers, said a story in the Australian claiming the aborted parliamentary inquiry had put pressure on the external inquiry to call for public submissions was wrong.
“It is incorrect to suggest that the independent inquiry into ABC complaint handling I am conducting with Jim Carroll has only recently decided to invite public submissions,” McMillan said on Friday. “A public inquiry and submission process was planned from day one.
“A standard inquiry practice is to invite public submissions following initial consultations and preparation of an issues paper. That practice has been followed in this inquiry. An issues paper will shortly be released.”
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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26 November, 2021
Top Australian Official: We’re Transferring COVID-19 Patients to Quarantine Camps
The story below is from an American publication, apparently based on a Facebook post and a story in The Guardian.
To comprehend it you need to know that it refers to Aboriginal settlements. The inhabitants are totally welfare-dependant and famously inert in response to all government initiatives and requirements
Australian authorities are removing COVID-19-positive patients and residents in the Northern Territory to a quarantine camp in Howard Springs, after nine cases were identified in the community of Binjari, according to a local official.
Hard lockdowns were implemented in Binjari and nearby Rockhole on Nov. 20, according to Northern Territory’s chief minister.
“Residents of Binjari and Rockhole no longer have the five reasons to leave their homes,” Chief Minister Michael Gunner said in a Facebook post dated Nov. 20. Australia’s five allowable reasons for people to leave their homes include going to work or school, buying food or supplies, exercising, caregiving, or getting vaccinated.
Officials have “identified five additional close contacts in Borroloola that had not previously been known to us. … They have all tested negative, and they are being transferred to Howard Springs,” he said.
Gunner said on Nov. 21 that eight people have been taken to a facility in Howard Springs, the Guardian reported.
“It’s highly likely that more residents will be transferred to Howard Springs today, either as positive cases or close contacts,” Gunner said. “We have already identified 38 close contacts from Binjari, but that number will go up. Those 38 are being transferred now.”
According to the Northern Territory government website, those who are taken to Howard Springs or the other quarantine camp, the Alice Springs Quarantine Facility, and “do not undergo a test, you will be required to remain in quarantine a further 10 days at your own expense.”
On Nov. 22, Police Commissioner and Territory Controller Jamie Chalker confirmed to news outlets that a 77-year-old man who was on an international repatriation flight died at the Howard Springs quarantine site over the weekend.
“He was an international repat. Obviously, he was a 77-year-old individual,” Chalker said, local media reported. “We’re just looking at whether they had any existing other issues, but certainly the initial advice is not indicating that it was a death relating to COVID.”
Over the weekend, thousands of people demonstrated in multiple Australian cities against vaccine mandates. About 85 percent of the eligible population is currently vaccinated as of Nov. 19.
In recent months, concerns have been raised about Australia’s federal and state governments’ COVID-19 emergency lockdowns and restrictions. For example, Melbourne has endured likely the longest lockdown in the world.
“There are concerns among parts of the community about some pandemic management legislation that the state government is currently trying to pass through the upper house of Parliament,” Melbourne-based journalist Dana Morse told Al Jazeera. “That bill has stalled, but people are concerned about the amount of power that the state government will have if the bill passes.”
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Commonwealth to support private sector in gas push
Taxpayers will fund the private sector to accelerate gas exploration across Australia, with the federal government’s new strategy pinpointing locations off the coast of Victoria and the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin as priorities for development.
The national gas infrastructure plan, released on Friday, says the government must act to alleviate the risk of gas supply shortfalls and support companies to open up new gas basins and construct gas pipelines.
A fortnight after nations at the Glasgow climate meeting, including Australia, affirmed the need to keep global warming within 1.5°C and phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies, the new plan has angered climate and environment groups, which describe it as “corporate welfare”.
Under the plan, the Commonwealth will support the private sector to search for viable gas fields and develop an extensive network of new pipelines and related infrastructure. The plan’s modelling suggests at least one new basin will be required to meet projected domestic and export requirements.
“There may be circumstances where private sector investment is not available in time to ensure priority infrastructure projects are in place when required,” the plan says. “In such conditions, the government stands ready to drive new infrastructure development.”
The 36-page plan document, which does not mention climate change, was released along with an investment document that details which types of projects would be prioritised.
Australia’s energy market operator, AEMO, has warned that Victoria and the other southern states face a shortfall of natural gas on peak-demand winter days by 2024, and probable gas price rises.
To date, $285 million has been committed by the federal government to the development of private gas projects, including $224 million for the Beetaloo Basin in the Northern Territory and $21 million for Queensland’s North Bowen and Galilee Basin.
The gas industry’s expansion sets Australia at odds with the global shift towards renewables. Earlier this year the International Energy Agency released analysis that found the global route to net zero emissions was “narrow and extremely challenging”, and that no new fossil fuel projects should be approved.
The federal priorities include the development of the Port Kembla gas terminal in NSW, and envisages opening up new gas basins. The Beetaloo Basin in the Northern Territory should be brought into production by 2025, Narrabri in NSW from 2026 and Queensland’s Galilee and North Bowen basins in production by 2028, the plan says.
The plan also identifies potential offshore supply from the Bass, Otway and Gippsland basins. But the majority of new southern fields within these basins are in the ‘discovery’ phase, and it is unclear when production might start.
Protect Country Alliance spokesperson Graeme Sawyer said the fracking industry in the Northern Territory, still in an exploratory phase, was being supported by “corporate welfare”.
“The Morrison government would be better off giving taxpayer money to just about any other industry if it wanted to seriously stimulate the economy,” Mr Sawyer said.
The Climate Council’s head of research, Dr Simon Bradshaw, described the plan as a “disaster”. “What part of gas is a polluting fossil fuel does this government not understand? The science is very clear: to avoid a climate catastrophe, fossil fuels must stay in the ground,” he said.
The plan underlines the government’s interest in developing its so-called “clean” hydrogen industry, noting hydrogen may be produced using gas and that carbon emissions could be stored using the controversial practice of carbon capture and storage. This would not be classed as “green” hydrogen, which is produced with renewable energy.
Not everyone is convinced Australia faces a looming gas shortage. Environment Victoria analysis found there is enough gas supply capacity in Victoria until 2027.
Over the following three years there is a shortfall of between 26 petajoules (PJ) and 85 PJ, but the adoption of gas-demand reduction measures, like increasing energy efficiency and electrification, eliminates the forecast shortfall.
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Iron ore prices back up
Iron ore producers are holding steady this morning, avoiding a post-rally sell-off after iron ore grasped at the significant US$100/t mark overnight.
Iron ore US$100© Stockhead Australia Iron ore US$100
It came after a day of barnstorming trade in iron ore futures and producers, following signals China was planning to ease its fiscal policy to recover lost economic growth.
That has fuelled suggestions China will unwind steel production curbs in December, with October figures suggesting its ambitious plans to constrain steel output to 2020 levels will be met.
Steel output across the world fell 10.3% in October to 145.7Mt, a fall almost entirely attributable to China, which produced 3.5 year lows of 71.6Mt (down 23.3% on October 2020).
Production was well up in other markets like the US, Brazil, India and Japan, but China’s role in the steel sector is so substantial its trade with Australian iron ore producers effectively sets iron ore prices.
Benchmark 62% fines were trading for US$99.83/t on Tuesday according to Fastmarkets MB.
Fortescue (ASX:FMG), Rio (ASX:RIO), Champion Iron (ASX:CIA), MinRes (ASX:MIN) and BHP (ASX:BHP) will fall well short of the radical gains they posted yesterday – FMG was up almost 10% – but are all comfortably in the green this morning.
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Melbourne council to ditch slave-link name
This is absurd. "Moreland" is a perfectly normal Anglo name. Google records 17 million uses of it. Are they all wrong and racist?
A Melbourne council is making moves to change its name after discovering its namesake was a Jamaican slave estate.
Traditional owners and other community representatives presented the City of Moreland with information showing the name came from land between Moonee Ponds Creek to Sydney Road, that Farquhar McCrae acquired in 1839.
He named the land 'Moreland' after a Jamaican slave plantation his father and grandfather had operated from 1770 to 1796, which produced sugar, rum and slave trading with 500 to 700 enslaved people there in any one year.
In 1994 the local government areas of the City of Brunswick, the City of Moreland and part of Broadmeadows were amalgamated and the state government named the new local government area Moreland.
Mayor Mark Riley said the council was "shocked and deeply saddened" by the discovery. "The history behind the naming of this area is painful, uncomfortable and very wrong. It needs to be addressed," he said.
"Moreland stands firmly against racism, we are one community, proudly diverse. Council is committed to working with Wurundjeri people and we take the request very seriously."
A new name would be developed after a consultation process with the Moreland community, but ultimately it is the state government that must make the change.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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25 November, 2021
Regulator decided against cancelling the license of a tradesman guilty of sex assaults
The grub took advantage of women when he was in their house doing building work
Internal documents have revealed the real reason why the building regulator delayed taking action against a tradie who had pleaded guilty to multiple sexual assaults.
Queensland’s embattled building industry watchdog decided against immediately cancelling the licence of a convicted sex offender earlier this year because he was considered “unlikely’’ to break the law again.
Internal case file notes from the Queensland Building and Construction Commission seen by The Courier Mail also reveal that bureaucrats failed to get a copy of the judge’s sentencing remarks when making the decision.
Instead, they relied on the text of an ABC news article online which quoted the judge saying Townsville tradie William Emanuel Camilleri was not likely to reoffend.
Mr Camilleri pleaded guilty and was convicted in August of eight counts of sexual assault against five women while he was carrying out renovation work in their homes. He was given a 12-month sentence, suspended for three years.
The QBCC documents show the agency became aware of the charges against Mr Camilleri when they were first laid in May 2019.
“The QBCC immediately opened a fit and proper investigation but could not take any action as the Human Rights Act section 32(1) states person (sic) charged with a criminal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law,’’ the notes say.
That contradicts subsequent comments from the responsible minister, Mick de Brenni, who blamed two former senior licensing officers for failing to immediately revoke the license right after Camilleri was charged.
“On 11 August 2021 QBCC received verbal advice that Mr Camilleri had been convicted of sexual assault charges. We immediately commenced action, sending Mr Camilleri a Notice of Reasons for Proposed Cancellation or Suspension (NRPCS) of his license,’’ the notes say.
“The QBCC considered an immediate suspension at the time however it was determined that we cannot meet the legislated test for an immediate suspension that we reasonably believe there is a real likelihood that serious harm will occur to the parties identified in Section 49A.’’
The parties referred to in that section of the QBCC Act include consumers, as well as other licensees, employees and suppliers.
“The known offending occurred between 25 May 2016 and 27 March 2019, the QBCC has no evidence to suggest that any offending has occurred after 27 March 2019,’’ the notes say.
“In addition, while we do not have a copy of the sentencing remarks to consider the statement in full, the abc (sic) news article states ‘The judge said Camilleri had no criminal history and was unlikely to reoffend’.
“Based on the above we cannot meet the legislated test for an immediate suspension.’’
The notes indicate that Mr Camilleri’s solicitors contacted the QBCC and requested an extension of time to respond to the proposed licence cancellation or suspension. They were given until October 6.
When The Courier Mail revealed in late September that Camilleri remained able to work in the industry despite his conviction more than a month earlier, Mr de Brenni responded immediately that “regulatory action to cancel or suspend the license has been commenced and will be rigorously pursued’’.
It still took another two weeks after that comment for the QBCC to finally cancel the license.
Last week, Mr de Brenni announced an independent governance review of the QBCC which will be led by Jim Varghese, a former government department director-general and current Springfield City Group director.
That move followed months of damning claims of improper ministerial and board intervention into regulatory matters. Largely as result of this alleged interference, more than two dozen senior executive have resigned from the QBCC over the past two years.
“There is an awful management culture at QBCC,’’ one of these former executives said.
“They seem to have forgotten that the QBCC exists to protect the community and the honest builders and tradies. What’s worse is that when things do go wrong, they seem to either pretend not to see it or blame others to deflect personal accountability.”
Tim Mander, the shadow Minister for Housing and Public Works, said the case “proves the state’s building watchdog is an out-of-touch, rudderless mess’’.
“It beggars belief that the QBCC didn’t do its proper due diligence after such a serious offence was brought to light,’’ Mr Mander said.
“Camilleri’s offences weren’t ‘one off’ … he was convicted of serial sex offences. The risk to the community is too great for him to ever be considered a ‘fit and proper person’ to hold a builder’s licence.
“Instead of checking with the courts, the QBCC did a Google search. This man pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting women in their homes but the QBCC allowed him to continue operating due to a technicality and a Google search.
“The organisation has no genuine leadership and that starts with the Minister.’’
A spokesman for Mr de Brenni declined to comment on Tuesday.
A QBCC spokesman confirmed the licences for both Mr Camilleri and his building company were cancelled on October 7. But he would not elaborate on the decision-making process leading up to that point.
“The QBCC determined that he was not a fit and proper person to hold a contractor’s licence, having regard to his conviction for an indictable offence,’’ he said.
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Fanatical warmist high school teacher allegedly berated students who wanted airconditioning turned on in 30C-plus heat
Schoolteachers are refusing to turn on classroom airconditioning, citing climate change as the reason to keep the kids sweating, a frustrated parent has claimed.
The father of a student at Corinda State High School in Brisbane’s west claims the teacher refused cool air relief to uncomfortable Year 9 pupils on November 4, saying she would consider turning it on if the temperature hit 40C.
The Courier-Mail has been told the aircon has remained off since that date, including days over 30C with extreme humidity
The parent claims the teacher berated the class about their lack of interest in climate change and called them “ignorant and selfish”. Corinda State High School has solar panels generating 266.6kW of power.
As the Queensland Government works towards completing its $447 million program to install airconditioners in all state schools by next June, the parent said teachers needed to be aware of what the Department of Education’s policy was on airconditioning, and needed to adhere to the policy regardless of any personal climate change beliefs.
“Several pupils spoke up to the teachers requesting aircon,” the parent said. “She advised the students she’d reconsider the request if the temperature reached 40C – a preposterous position by any reckoning.
“She didn’t appreciate the way the students were thinking about the issue of climate change and they should be grateful previous generations are doing things to prevent climate change.
“Her comments are unwarranted, abusive and harassing — contrary to her obligations under the fiduciary relationship which exists in her classroom.”
The parent claims the school has not responded to an email asking for an apology to the Year 9 students.
The use of airconditioning and its impact on the planet is a hot topic as the warmer it gets the more airconditioning is used.
A Department of Education spokeswoman said that the department is aware that an anonymous complaint email was received.
“To date, the anonymous complainant has not responded to the principal’s invitation to address their concerns,” she said.
“The school has diligently investigated these claims, however, none of the classroom students confirmed the allegations or expressed concerns regarding classroom temperatures or the teacher’s conduct.
“Teachers use airconditioning in their classrooms as needed to ensure that everyone in the classroom benefits from the best conditions for learning.”
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Dan Andrews' government is slammed as lockdowns leave thousands in agony while they wait months for life-changing surgery
After years living with an aggressive form of endometriosis, Danielle Noon has spent the past six months waiting for life-changing surgery.
It took four years for her to be diagnosed with the condition which can cause painful periods, cramping, nausea, back and bowel pain.
Earlier this year she found out she had deep infiltrating endometriosis and was booked in for surgery. But Ms Noon will have to wait in agony for at least another six months.
Last week she was told her private hospital procedure, scheduled for mid-December, had been delayed due to surgery caps imposed by the Victorian government.
"I basically spent two days crying. I'm exhausted and this has completely broken my spirit," she told AAP. "I was literally counting down how many periods I'd have to go through until I could get surgery."
Her operation has been postponed until March or April 2022. She will soon enter her last year at university, with a busy few months of work placements ahead. "The thought of navigating all my placements next year, still in this amount of pain each month, seems unbearable," she said. "I honestly don't have the tools to be able to deal with a setback like this."
The surgery is needed to stop tissue growing, which could break through her bowel wall. Despite this, her procedure is considered non-urgent.
Ms Noon is one of thousands facing delays, after 18 months of changing COVID-19 restrictions led to significant wait lists. As of September 30, 67,000 Victorians were waiting for elective surgeries.
Two weeks ago the state government allowed hospitals to increase surgeries up to 50 per cent capacity, but health bodies say this is not enough.
The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons says government plans to gradually increase elective surgeries are "too slow" and risked running into Christmas, when many health workers will take holidays.
RACS has sent a proposal to the state's health department to support "rapid" change to the current system, calling for the 50 per cent cap to be removed.
"We believe that the current stabilisation of the COVID-19 situation with high vaccination rates, fall in the number of COVID-19 cases and a gradual reduction in hospital in-patient ICU cases presents an ideal window of opportunity for government to restore surgery to full capacity," president Sally Langley said.
It is calling for more transparency about how these decisions are made, and said many small private hospitals should be permitted to recommence surgery with no cap, since they do not form part of the COVID response.
Additionally, larger hospitals "have significant unused operative capacity" that could be used to address private and public sector wait lists.
The Australian Private Hospitals Association said anyone waiting for surgery at a private hospital is facing "long waits for some time to come".
APHA chief executive Lucy Cheetham said deferred procedures included total knee and hip replacements and cataract surgery, impacting a patient's ability "to move around or to see".
A Victorian government spokeswoman said it would "continue to adopt a staged approach" to increasing non-urgent surgeries.
"We always said we would increase our elective surgery capacity when we could and we'll have more to say soon on any further capacity increases," she said.
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Morrison's religious discrimination bill could face High Court showdown as Victoria digs in
The Andrews government has vowed to fight attempts by the federal government to override state anti-discrimination laws, paving the way for a possible High Court stoush over religious rights.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison plans to personally introduce his controversial Religious Discrimination Bill within days, to deliver on a pledge three years ago to protect religious freedom.
At the same time, the Victorian Parliament is debating equal opportunity law amendments that ban religious schools and other institutions from sacking or refusing to employ teachers because of their sexuality or gender identity or marital status.
The clash of the two bills, the latest battle in Australia's long-running culture wars, comes with both levels of government due for election next year.
On Wednesday, Victorian Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes said while it was a "little unclear" what the Coalition's intentions were, she would not rule out any action - including a High Court challenge - to defend state laws.
She said she was waiting for legal advice before a decision about how to respond. "If there are any attempts to water down the Victorian laws, which aim to protect people in organisations from being discriminated against based on their sexuality, their marital status, etc, then I will be very firmly opposed to any measures that do that."
Rachel Colvin is a committed Christian who was effectively forced to resign from her job at Ballarat Christian College in 2019 after refusing to sign the school statement of faith that declared "marriage can only be between a male and a woman". Ms Colvin has a husband, Mark, and she has three children. She grew up in an evangelical Christian household and has been a missionary.
She had taught happily at the evangelical college since 2008 but in the wake of the marriage equality debate, the school sought to firm up its position on issues such as marriage and homosexuality.
"When I read this [the belief statement] I was immediately concerned. I knew that this didn't align with my Christian beliefs. I believe that God loves all of us," she said.
Ms Colvin offered to teach that the school had one view about marriage but there are other Christian views. "I was hoping we could agree to disagree."
But one morning she was called into a meeting and asked to resign. "It was such a devastating time for me. I truly loved my job. I loved the students. I worked with a great bunch of people."
After a long stand-off leaving Ms Colvin anxious and in poor health, she decided to leave the school as requested.
Under the Andrews government amendments to the Equal Opportunities Act, Ms Colvin would be better protected from discrimination. Under the Morrison bill, protections for people in Ms Colvin's position would be rolled back.
The revised federal bill includes a new provision to protect the right of religious schools to positively discriminate in their employment practices.
If passed, it would shield people who make a statement of belief as long as it is made in good faith, is in line with the teachings of their religion, is not malicious and does not vilify or harass.
In contrast, Victoria's proposal would leave religious schools in the state prohibited from sacking or refusing to employ teachers because of their sexuality or gender or marital status.
Victorian upper house MP Fiona Patten said if the federal bill were to pass in any form that threatened to override Victoria's anti-discrimination laws, the state government should launch a High Court challenge.
"Were it to pass, it would sideline Victoria's anti-discrimination tribunal
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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24 November, 2021
Top scientist referred to corruption watchdog over alleged research misconduct
It looks like he has "massaged" his data to produce a more significant result
One of Australia’s leading cancer scientists, who secured almost $40 million in taxpayer-funded research grants, has been referred to Queensland’s Crime and Corruption Commission by his institute over allegations of research misconduct.
The Brisbane-based QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute confirmed to The Age and Sydney Morning Herald on Monday it had referred Mark Smyth, until recently the institute’s head of immunology in cancer, to the commission following an external investigation into complaints about his research conduct.
The external investigation, headed by retired Appeal Court judge Robert Gotterson, found Professor Smyth had seriously breached codes of responsible research, the institute said in a statement. The findings of the investigation were referred to the Crime and Corruption Commission, it said.
The institute declined to detail the specific allegations made as the matter is now before the commission, but The Age understands they centre on data manipulation.
Professor Smyth could not be reached for comment.
A second independent review, to be headed by Bruce Lander, South Australia’s former Independent Commissioner Against Corruption, had also been commissioned into what the institute called a “broad range of issues” arising from the initial investigation, the institute said.
Professor Smyth is one of Australia’s foremost scientists and has received millions of dollars in government and commercial funding. The investigation is likely to have wide-ranging fallout across the research sector.
He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, which lists him as the “the most highly cited immunologist in Australia” whose “research has helped pave the way for effective immunotherapy of cancer, beginning with immune checkpoint inhibitor drugs”.
He had been awarded government research grants worth a total of $38.2 million as chief investigator, the National Health and Medical Research Council said.
The council confirmed it was considering taking action to recover the grant funds.
Professor Smyth is listed as a reviewing editor at Science, one of the world’s top scientific journals, and an honorary professor at the University of Queensland.
He was head of immunology at QIMR until recently. The institute said on Thursday he was now a former employee. He formerly headed the Cancer Immunology Program at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Victoria.
In 2006, a paper in Nature Immunology he co-authored was retracted because it contained “several errors, including duplications … and incorrect reporting of … values that in some cases weakens the statistical significance”.
In 2015, a paper Professor Smyth co-authored in the Journal of Clinical Investigation had a correction notice attached because it also contained several duplications and errors.
In a statement, QIMR director and chief executive Fabienne Mackay said: “QIMR Berghofer is introducing a new robust research integrity framework under which all staff will be expected to operate, in consultation with leading research integrity experts.
“Our researchers and community deserve only the highest standards, and that is what we are going to deliver.”
Professor David Vaux, former deputy director of science, integrity and ethics at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, said the case further reinforced the need for an office for research integrity in Australia.
“QIMR deserves kudos for handling this rigorously and properly,” he said. “Generally, things like this are swept under the rug in Australia because here, research integrity is self-regulated, which means conflicts of interest inevitably arise as people investigate their own colleagues.
“Twenty-three European countries, the US, Canada, Japan and China have national offices to handle research integrity. Australia is being left behind.”
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The Victorian experience suggests that Queensland can reach a Covid victory
Victoria has emerged as the real-world example of living with Covid with a drop in hospitalisations despite high case numbers.
Just one fifth of Covid patients in the state’s hospitals are vaccinated, with more than 80 per cent requiring treatment unvaccinated.
Hospitalisation rates for Covid-19 in Victoria have more than halved in a month, despite the state dropping almost all lockdown restrictions.
There were 851 people in hospital with Covid in Victoria on October 18 and on Tuesday it was just 303.
Of those 97 in intensive care, including those who have recovered from Covid-19 but still need ongoing treatment.
That’s an overall drop of more than 64 per cent, as the state hits a sweet spot of high vaccination, strong immunity and warmer weather which has reduced cases across the globe.
Of those in hospital in Victoria on Tuesday, 77 per cent were not fully vaccinated – and 80 per cent of those in intensive care were not vaccinated.
Victorians aged 12 and over are 89.3 per cent fully vaccinated, with more than 93.5 per cent having one dose.
The state has continued to record the most Covid cases in the country with 827 in the community yesterday and on October 18 there were 1903 new local cases.
Leading epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely said Australia has no choice but to live with COVID-19, as Victoria becomes the testing ground of how to reopen with high case numbers.
Victoria had its “freedom day” last week even though it recorded 1,160 coronavirus cases on the same day.
During Melbourne’s lockdown the case numbers were a daily marker of the mood – with case numbers of more than 10 flattening the mood of the city.
But Premier Daniel Andrews, who had enforced the world’s longest lockdown on Melbourne, dropped his ambition for zero Covid-19 cases as vaccination rates improved.
Professor Blakely, of the University of Melbourne, said Victoria was in a sweet spot of high vaccination rates and immunity, but that was likely to wane as winter approached next year.
Queensland has a natural advantage because of it’s warmer weather and larger homes, which reduces the spread of Covid, Mr Blakely added.
“If people in Queensland are having parties outside on their verandas then that bodes well for them,” he said.
“We just have to brace ourselves for winter when everyone goes indoors (in Victoria).”
He said it was unclear if warmer weather reduced the spread of the virus, or if people spending more time outdoors contained outbreaks because Covid-19 spreads faster in confined spaces.
Either way, based on world evidence and the falling cases in Victoria and New South Wales, he said summer was a limiting factor on Covid-19.
There were 827 cases in Victoria on Tuesday, and sadly, 19 people died with the illness. Of those who died, only two were fully vaccinated.
The cases in Victoria are now overwhelmingly among younger, unvaccinated people, who generally do not need hospital treatment.
Britain’s Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health had “made clear” that “the overwhelming majority of children and young people still have no symptoms or very mild illness only.”
Australian Federal Health Department figures provided to the Courier Mail show that only 2.5 per cent of children who contracted Covid-19 attended hospital.
However, the Health Department cautioned that of those who were taken to hospital, some went only because they could not be looked after at home because their parents were sick.
Dr Nick Coatsworth, a former deputy chief medical officer who was the face of the Federal Government’s coronavirus advertising campaign, was critical of the Victorian Government’s approach.
He said the Victorian Government could have opened schools earlier than it did. “No, it’s not a fair system, Victoria is taking an overly cautious approach,” he said. “A study in the Journal Nature found there was no supporting evidence for shutting schools, based on research in late 2020.”
Prof Blakely said cases would be suppressed if primary school aged children were given the green light to get vaccinated in January.
Booster shots would be required at Easter to prevent another outbreak next winter, he added
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Labor senator warns party about reacting to climate ‘extremists’
Victorian Labor senator Raff Ciccone has warned his colleagues against demonising regional industries, particularly forestry, as the federal opposition prepares to finalise its climate policy ahead of next year’s election.
In a speech to the Senate on Tuesday night, Senator Ciccone said “extremists” who sought to damage or disrupt the activities of timber workers were not only hurting the livelihoods of families but would make it harder for Australia to hit its climate goals.
The senator has been a vocal advocate for timber workers and has criticised his side of politics over the Victorian Labor government’s decision to phase out native forest harvesting from 2024, with a full shutdown by 2030.
The federal opposition is close to settling its climate policy, which is likely to include revised emissions reductions targets, but is wary of creating a blue-collar worker backlash after failing to convince voters over climate change during the past decade.
Senator Ciccone told the Senate on Tuesday evening the timber industry would prove critical to Australia’s hopes of hitting net zero by 2050, which the federal government officially signed up to at this month United Nations climate summit.
Labor climate policy poised to respond to PM scare tactics
“We cannot afford to be distracted by radicals more concerned with making themselves feel good than protecting our planet,” Senator Ciccone told the Senate.
“The real climate heroes are providing sustainable, green building materials to our construction industry. They are taking and storing carbon from our forests and re-growing the harvested trees to store even more carbon.”
He cited research from the Centre of Policy Studies at Victoria University, released earlier this month, which found the forestry industry would almost double as decarbonisation boosted tree planting to take advantage of bio-sequestration opportunities.
The report found a net-zero policy would lead to significant increases in forested land and increased sales of logs for processing and export as forest pulp.
Senator Ciccone said the paper showed the forestry industry was Australia’s greenest form of carbon capture and would need to grow to meet climate targets.
“Radical activists need to understand that attacking the timber industry is not going to prevent climate change. You are targeting an industry that needs to get bigger, not smaller, to protect our planet.”
He said the Coalition government also needed to show greater support for the industry by spruiking the role forestry would play in reaching emissions targets over the coming decades.
“The Morrison-Joyce government needs to understand that leadership isn’t just waving a brochure around at a press conference,” he said. “Leadership is assessing the impact of your decisions on the Australian economy, so we can help those who will need a leg-up and create the jobs of the future right here in Australia.”
The industry has argued Australia has untapped potential as a bioenergy powerhouse through industrial heat in the future renewable energy mix. The federal government’s road map forecast that bioenergy could make up a fifth of Australia’s resource potential.
Veteran CFMEU forestry union leader Michael O’Connor has criticised Victorian Labor’s “disgraceful” treatment of timber workers in the state and warned it was undermining federal Labor’s pitch to voters that workers and communities reliant on transitioning industries would be looked after.
“Federal Labor’s task of convincing blue-collar workers and communities they will be looked after is threatened by the approach of the Andrews government toward timber workers and their communities. Because these workers are being thrown on the scrap heap,” Mr O’Connor said last month ahead of the Glasgow climate summit.
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Religious Australians to get protection to make ‘statements of belief’
Australians will be able to make statements of religious belief under the protection of federal law in draft changes to a bill that sparked a warning about the risk to people who lose their jobs or suffer hurt because their sexuality is at odds with someone’s faith.
The federal government ended months of uncertainty by releasing a draft law to shield people who make a statement of belief as long as it is made in good faith, is in line with the teachings of their religion, is not malicious and does not vilify or harass.
Australians will be able to make statements of religious belief under the protection of federal law in draft changes to the Religious Discrimination Bill.
Australians will be able to make statements of religious belief under the protection of federal law in draft changes to the Religious Discrimination Bill.CREDIT:GETTY
Prime Minister Scott Morrison plans to introduce the Religious Discrimination Bill to Parliament personally within days to deliver on a pledge three years ago to protect religious freedom, but he faces major barriers in the Senate after LGBTQI activists called for a halt to the plan.
The revised bill includes a new provision to protect the right of religious schools to positively discriminate in their employment practices, with a clear intention to override state laws, including those being pursued by the Victorian government.
Equality Australia chief Anna Brown said the statement of belief provision would license “new forms of discrimination” by overriding state and territory laws and allowing remarks that would currently breach those laws.
Liberal MPs express concern over religious freedom bill
“All of the attempts to override state and territory and federal discrimination laws are extraordinarily unprecedented and extraordinarily dangerous in a democratic society like Australia,” Ms Brown said.
The stronger protections against discrimination being considered in Victoria are expected to be made to the state’s Equal Opportunity Act, one of the laws explicitly named in the new federal bill to be overridden.
The final draft confirms the removal of a clause that would have stopped employers acting against workers who make statements of faith that offend others, a case that arose when Rugby Australia terminated its contract with Israel Folau after he said homosexuals would go to hell.
The draft includes broader safeguards, however, that will intensify arguments about faith and sexuality while a Senate inquiry considers the details before a final vote next year.
The bill says a statement of belief does not constitute discrimination under other federal law and a list of equal opportunity and anti-discrimination laws already in place in every state and territory.
The statement of belief has to be one of religious belief that is genuinely held and made in good faith and part of religious doctrine, although it could also be the statement of an atheist.
The new safeguard does not apply if the statement is malicious or something that a reasonable person would consider a threat, or would intimidate, harass or vilify a person or group.
A note to the draft bill says a “moderately expressed religious view that does not incite hatred or violence” would not constitute vilification.
A separate section protects religious bodies such as schools from claims of discrimination if they make decisions to hire or fire workers such as teachers.
“A religious body does not discriminate against a person... by engaging, in good faith, in conduct that a person of the same religion as the religious body could reasonably consider to be in accordance with the doctrines, tenets, beliefs or teachings of that religion,” the draft says.
“Religious educational institutions must have a publicly available policy in relation to conduct in the context of employment.”
A note to the draft says the conduct might still breach the Sex Discrimination Act. While the government said teachers could not be sacked on the grounds of their sexual identity, Equality Australia disputed this and warned that LGBTQI teachers could be removed on religious grounds.
The draft also says this protection for religious bodies does not cover religious hospitals, aged care facilities, accommodation providers and disability service providers.
Liberal MPs spoke up in a tense meeting of the Coalition party room on Tuesday to warn against any move to rush the Religious Discrimination Bill through Parliament when the changes have split church and gender equality advocates.
The meeting ended with Coalition MPs expecting the bill to be introduced in the next few days before it is debated by Labor and decided in the lower house next week, clearing the way for a Senate inquiry over summer and a final vote next year.
The Liberal MP for Leichhardt in northern Queensland, Warren Entsch, said he did not see the need for the bill and questioned provisions including the defence for statements of faith.
Fellow Liberals Bridget Archer, Angie Bell, Andrew Bragg, Fiona Martin, Dave Sharma and Trent Zimmerman also expressed their concern.
Mr Zimmerman told the meeting it would be better to refer the bill to an inquiry led by a joint committee so MPs had a say in the outcome rather than Senators alone, and he warned against putting the bill to a vote in the House of Representatives before the review.
Attorney-General Michaelia Cash told the meeting the effect of the bill was to allow freedom of speech but not discrimination, arguing that a Catholic could tell someone he or she did not believe in divorce but could not act on that by using it as grounds to sack someone.
In another example, Liberals who were briefed on the bill said atheists would be protected if they told people of faith they would not go to heaven.
However, a nurse who told a patient that he or she would go to hell because of their sexuality would not be protected because this would involve a breach of professional standards, according to the briefing. This was a change on earlier drafts sought by Liberals MP including Katie Allen, a pediatrician.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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23 November, 2021
Wild brawl on board 'cruise from hell' that saw more than a dozen family members booted off luxury ship – as court hears fracas was sparked after one of them stepped on a passenger's SHOE
Judging by the surname, they are Lebanese Muslims. Such people often have big egos and react childishly in response to perceived slights
A cruise ship brawl that ended with more than a dozen family members booted off the vessel was sparked after one of them stepped on a passenger's shoe, court documents allege.
The Zakhour family and some of their friends were escorted off the Carnival Legend after it was forced to stop at port in Eden, New South Wales, on February 16, 2018.
Shocking footage captured a group of passengers engaged in a bloody fist fight before security were forced to intervene and detain the family as the ship docked.
Three members of the Zakhour family are now suing cruise company PLC claiming security violently assaulted them before falsely imprisoning them onboard.
Carnival PLC has filed a defence at the County Court drawing up a list of allegations against the family.
They allege members hurled racist abuse at security, lashed out at staff when their supply to booze was cut off, and sparked a brawl with other passengers, Herald Sun reported.
PLC alleges the son of Zaki Zakhour, 52, stepped on a passenger's shoe two days before the brawl broke out.
Mr Zakhour then became engaged in a heated argument with the passenger before assaulting them the following day, court documents allege.
PLC alleges Mr Zakhour grabbed the passenger by the throat while other family members threatened to kill him.
Mr Zakhour said in his statement of claim that when security intervened he was punched in the head and kicked on the ground.
He alleges the chief of security yelled at him: 'I'm going to f***ing kill you and your son'.
PLC has defended the actions of the security staff saying Mr Zakhour and his son were handcuffed before they were taken to separate rooms.
Staff had been acting under the orders of the captain and employed 'a reasonable use of force' to ensure the safety of its other passengers, PLC claimed.
The cruise line company claims the Zakhour family and their friends were involved in several incidents in while on the cruise ship.
They allegedly took out their anger at staff when their booze privileges were revoked and pushed a bouncer after they were refused entry into a nightclub.
PLC claims members threatened passengers near a pizzeria and choked a security guard and told staff to 'be ready for a wrestle'.
The matter will go to trial next year.
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Climate weed sentenced to 12 months in prison over Newcastle protest
A climate activist involved in protests that disrupted the Hunter region's rail network for two weeks has been sentenced to a year in prison.
Eric Serge Herbert was sentenced in Newcastle Local Court to 12 months' imprisonment with a non-parole period of six months.
The charges included causing obstruction to a railway locomotive or rolling stock, attempted hinder working of mining equipment and attempted assist in obstruction of rail locomotive or rolling stock.
A police strike force was established last week in response to the ongoing protest action, which impacted coal, grain and passenger trains trying to access the Port of Newcastle.
The NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller delivered a stern warning to protesters, announcing that the continued behaviour could result in charges laid under the Criminal Act that carry a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.
The ABC approached Police Commissioner Mick Fuller to comment on the sentence but he was unavailable.
Group says it's a 'matter of concern'
Climate activist group Blockade Australia held a press conference in Newcastle this morning, describing the police action to stop the ongoing protests as "repression" and an "outrage".
One spokeswoman, 21 year old Hannah Doole, said she was "angry and scared on Sergio's behalf".
"This is a matter of concern for everybody that expresses dissent to the current political system and to politics in this country in whatever form.
"This is a young person who is fighting for their life, fighting for all life on the planet.
"And they have just been sentenced to six months no parole. 12 months imprisonment is an outrage," she said.
Another Blockade Australia representative, 24 year old Jarrah Kershaw, said he did not believe protesters would be deterred.
"Last week, people were threatened with 25 years in jail. And for the next three days, people continued to take action despite that," he said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-23/12-month-jail-sentence-for-newcastle-coal-protester/100642414
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New timeline throws doubt over ABC war crimes claim
Fresh evidence throws further in doubt a contentious ABC report on war crimes allegedly committed by Aussie soldiers in Afghanistan.
A platoon accused by the ABC of murdering a “hog tied” Afghan prisoner says it had not conducted outside-the-wire operations for more than a month after the alleged execution incident took place, a new timeline reveals.
The timeline issued by the 2 Commando Regiment November Platoon former commander Major Heston Russell on behalf of the 30 members of his squad, came after the ABC again defended its report, issuing a lengthy brief to defend its accuracy.
According to the controversial ABC report, in mid-2012 the platoon had seven Afghan prisoners but when told there was room for only six on a US extraction helicopter, a US Marine heard a “pop” on his headphones and six prisoners were presented.
The ABC claimed the man was murdered by the platoon and no other military or law enforcement agency wanted to work with the platoon again.
But Mr Russell has maintained that not only did the incident not happen, there was no record of the prisoner extraction. He said the platoon had not actually made any outside-the-wire operations in Helmand Province for more than a month after the alleged incident took place and since it was Ramadan, all operations were restricted.
The issue is to be debated in the Senate on Tuesday as the deputy chair of the communications reference committee Senator Andrew Bragg pushes for an inquiry into the ABC complaints process based on the platoon and experiences of others.
Mr Russell said no-one had ever heard of the allegation which as far as he was aware was not part of the Brereton inquiry into alleged war crimes or any US, Australian or NATO complaint into operations.
Mr Russell – who said it had been a 13-month ordeal since the ABC aired its report and since refused to remove it from online – has presented a lengthy brief to the Senate communications inquiry which is considering a probe into how the ABC handles complaints about its reports and journalists.
Last Friday the ABC said it had lodged an FoI request seeking audio copies of mission communications and complaints specifically related to the November platoon in June and July 2012 when it says the alleged incident took place.
Defence turned the request down in a generic statement related to not releasing material that was subject to any probe.
“Incredibly, the ABC last week used the FOI response from Defence to claim there is a criminal investigation into their original story when Defence has said nothing of the sort,” he said.
“Defence simply confirmed what is already known; that they are co-operating with the Office of the Special Investigator set up by the Government to examine alleged crimes contained in the Brereton report and other sources.”
On Friday when specifically asked about November Platoon, the ABC issued a lengthy statement defending its journalists and reports which it said had been followed up by the Brereton inquiry into war crimes “and sparked a war crimes investigation by the AFP”.
There is no evidence the inquiry has extended to the November Platoon.
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New Funds for green aviation, shipping
Low-emissions fuels for aircraft and cargo ships are targets of a new federal government initiative to harness organic waste for bioenergy, sparking calls for a ban on the use of native forest timber to fuel furnaces for power generation.
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency’s (ARENA) bioenergy road map, released on Thursday, has been backed with $34 million in public funds from Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor.
Bioenergy is produced from organic waste in forestry, agriculture, landfill or sewage and turned into energy in the form of heat, electricity, biogas and liquid fuels. It already generates about 50 per cent of the renewable energy consumed in Australia, largely through the burning of sugarcane waste, known as bagasse, to generate electricity to power sugar mills NSW and Queensland.
ARENA’s road map said if bioenergy achieved its growth potential, it could add $10 billion to gross domestic product by sometime in the 2030s and create 26,000 jobs while reducing emissions by nearly 10 per cent and using 6 per cent more landfill waste than it did now. The government’s green tech finance agency is responsible for supporting low-emissions technologies as the nation transitions to a net zero economy by 2050.
It said waste from the forestry sector, created during milling and harvesting, represented 22 per cent of the total resource potential available to the sector, raising fears among conservation groups that logging of native forests could be spurred by increased demand for organic waste for biofuels.
The Australian Forests and Climate Alliance’s submission to ARENA said whole logs could be “defined as ‘residue’ or ‘waste’, making this industry appear to simply be using leftovers” whereas a significant portion of a standing forest could be used for so-called waste recovery products such as woodchips or bioenergy.
Along with the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Wilderness Society, it has called for a ban on native forest timber being classified as renewable bioenergy.
But peak lobby group Australian Forest Products Association (AFPA) said timber products such as wood pellets, which are currently imported by Japan and the European Union, could make a significant contribution to Australia’s biofuel sector.
Carbon emissions from burning wood pellets were “captured by new plants as they regrow in a sustainable cycle”, its submission said.
Mr Taylor highlighted bioenergy’s “emissions reduction and economic opportunities”, which he said would be realised chiefly in regional communities surrounded by primary production.
Fuel producers and jetmakers are keen to showcase novel forms of aviation fuel deemed less harmful to the climate, from used cooking oil to the distinctly less glamorous meat waste.
ARENA selected aviation and shipping biofuel produced from food and agricultural waste as a near-term opportunity for clean energy.
International transport is a particularly difficult industry for emissions reductions, with scant alternatives to emissions-intensive fossil fuels. Aircraft and cargo ships could, potentially, be fuelled by zero-emissions hydrogen but this technology is further away from commercialisation.
ARENA said biofuels were more mature than other prospective clean aviation fuels, “with a growing number of pathways certified to industry standards, demonstration flights and fuel off-take agreements both in Australia and overseas”. Bioenergy could also be tapped to generate heat for industrial processes, gas to supply the electricity grid or fuel for road transport.
“Bioenergy has significant potential to complement Australia’s future energy mix and our economy,” said ARENA chief executive Darren Miller.
But the Australian National University’s school of electrical energy and materials engineering said harnessing renewable energy to electrify carbon-intensive industrial processes, such as swapping gas-fired heating to electric heat pumps or switching from liquid fossil fuel car engines to electric vehicles, was more efficient than converting organic material into bioenergy.
“The expected extremely low cost of wind and (solar) photovoltaics will likely out-compete most biomass options in the near future – decisions should be made with this fact in mind,” ANU’s submission said
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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22 November, 2021
The Left is now dominated by highly educated people
Higher education tends to lead to arrogance and the most arrogant ones find a natural home on the Left, who never cease trying to impose their ideas on the whole of society. The great tyrannies of the 20th century -- from Communism to Fascism to Nazism -- were all "socialist"
Highly educated people tend to be well-off so their chief concerns are a long way from the concerns of poorer people. So the Left is steadily losing the working class vote that it once relied on
Since 2016, the year Britain voted to leave the European Union and the United States elected Donald Trump, to the dismay of the educated classes in both countries, speculation has grown about whether centre-left or social democratic parties can remain in the electoral race, or whether a polarising world has no place for them.
The centre-left’s demise is far from certain – the German Social Democrats did well in recent national elections. Yet in a host of countries, including Australia, social democrats are struggling to balance the interests of their two big support bases: educated progressives and working people, who in Australia are majority Anglo-Celtic but also contain people from many migrant and refugee backgrounds and Indigenous Australians.
The gaps between these groups over climate change, identity politics issues and – in many countries – immigration, can seem too great to enable a centre-left party to craft a coherent policy platform and election-winning story.
Fifty years ago, there was no such divide. The proportion of the population that was university-educated was just too small. As late as 1975, only 15 per cent of Australian 19-year-olds went to university. Most young people left school to enter factories, trades and shops, as well as nursing and white-collar jobs in banks, company offices and even the public service. Half of all workers were union members.
Today globalisation and technological change have swept away the manufacturing and clerical jobs that were so plentiful in 1975. Unions represent a mere 14 per cent of workers, and just over 5 percent of workers are under 24 years old. As the number of middle-income jobs has shrunk, inequality and the premium paid for a good education have soared.
Aside from some tradies, construction workers and the odd DJ or sports star, people who leave the education system after year 12 will not have a well-paid job. The gap between the lifetime income produced by someone with a university degree and those with a year 12 qualification or less is $700,000, according to a 2016 report by the Grattan Institute. These changes help to explain why 42 per cent of 19-year-olds now go to university.
As the size of the tertiary-educated class has expanded, its political views have changed places with those of the less educated. French economist Thomas Piketty calls it “the great reversal”. Piketty analysed electoral results in the US, Britain and France since World War II to show that in 1960, a person of low education and income in these countries was almost certain to vote left. Today, except for members of some minority groups, that person is increasingly voting right. At the other end of the scale, a person of high education levels in 1960 was most likely to vote right. Today, he or she is almost certain to vote left.
In the US, Trump won much of the white working-class vote in 2016 and held a good share of it in 2020, despite slashing taxes on the rich and trying to nobble initiatives such as Obamacare that helped lower-income people. On the night of Trump’s defeat in 2020, Republican politician Josh Hawley, a graduate of Princeton and Yale, tweeted: “We are a working-class party now.” Hawley’s tweet was self-serving and only half true: there remain plenty of rich and powerful Republicans.
Yet the change may be underway in Australia, too. The ALP still holds most federal lower-income electorates; there has been no Trump tide or breach of the “Red Wall”, the Conservative rout of British Labour in working-class seats in the north of England in 2019.
Nevertheless, in the 2019 federal election, the average swing to Labor in the 20 seats with the highest share of university graduates was nearly 4 per cent. The average swing against Labor in the 20 electorates with the lowest share of university graduates was just over 4 per cent. It is a perfect reflection of Piketty’s argument.
In their report on that election defeat, senior Labor figures Craig Emerson and Jay Weatherill pointed to the growing gap between the party’s two constituencies. The party had “become a natural home for diverse interests and concerns, including gender equality, the LGBTQI+ community, racial equality and environmentalism”.
These issues were important, and Labor should not abandon principled positions on them, Emerson and Weatherill wrote. However, working people often resented “the attention progressive political parties give at their expense to minority groups and what is nowadays called identity politics”. At a time of great economic dislocation, working-class voters “would lose faith in Labor if they did not believe the party was responding to their needs”.
The risk for Labor is that if its membership continues to shrink and become more concentrated in the inner cities, the priorities of its progressive activists will predominate. The party has a model for where that might lead in the crushing defeat of British Labour, including the loss of many working-class seats, under Jeremy Corbyn in 2019.
A progressive politics that emerges almost exclusively from universities will take particular forms. The student cohort is much more culturally and economically diverse than it once was. Yet political or viewpoint diversity on campus seems to have shrunk.
The shift is troubling political scientists on the centre-right, according to Cancel Culture: Myth or Reality?, a paper published in July by Pippa Norris, an Australian political scientist at Harvard University. Her analysis of a survey of nearly 2500 political scientists around the world, including Australia, suggests that “cancel culture is not simply a rhetorical myth”. More conservative political scientists are experiencing “worsening pressures to be politically correct, limits on academic freedom and lack of respect for open debate”.
Another trend emerging from universities and shaping left-wing thought, including its extreme manifestation in episodes of cancel culture, has been identified by Nick Haslam, a professor of psychology at the University of Melbourne.
About eight years ago, Haslam noticed that concepts of harm were taking on broader meanings across many fields of academic research. He also found that the threshold for identifying an instance of harm seemed to have dropped. This pattern held true in work on abuse, trauma, bullying, mental illness, addiction, violence, prejudice, racism and hatred, among other concepts.
For example, the meaning of abuse had expanded over time to include not only physical or sexual assault but psychological or emotional injury, and neglect. Bullying now refers to adults as well as children, while addiction can refer to sex and gambling as well as drugs.
In a 2016 paper Haslam gave the trend a name: “concept creep”. He thinks an increased focus on harm is helping to shape the goals of the progressive left.
“It has become standard operating procedure in sections of the left to appeal to harm, to the need to protect the vulnerable, when trying to justify some initiative,” Haslam says in an interview. “It also explains why verdicts on behaviour are so moralistic, since harm is central to moral judgment.”
He sees these trends playing out in the claims of identity politics, with their frequent use of terms such as hatred, phobia, racism and violence. “People are reacting in a way that seems disproportionate to the acts themselves (at least if you don’t accept the recent stretching of these concepts), and in a way that is turbo-charged by social media and political polarisation.”
Haslam stresses that “concept creep” has positive aspects. Broader concepts of mental illness and bullying, for example, have helped sufferers. People concerned about harm often show high levels of empathy, and in many ways we are a kinder society than we once were. Nevertheless, he worries that “concept creep runs the risk of pathologising everyday experience and encouraging a sense of virtuous but impotent victimhood.”
Haslam’s work shows how ideas born in universities migrate over time to the wider society, as students in the humanities, psychology and law go on to work in the media, arts, publishing, the public service and education – fields where the priorities of the progressive left will be most powerfully expressed.
A left dominated by the educated class is likely to be idealistic and principled in fighting racism, sexism and prejudice of any kind. It will support redistribution of wealth – it remains a left-wing movement – but is likely to
register material issues and poverty as more distant concerns. It will focus intently on climate change and on creating the no-carbon economy, but be less sensitive to the claims of workers whose jobs are lost in the transition to it, as Bob Brown’s 2019 Adani convoy revealed.
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Albo’s plan to win back blue-collar trust
Industrial relations will be put front and centre of Labor’s election campaign, as Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese seeks to repair trust with blue-collar workers who turned their backs on the ALP in 2019.
When Parliament returns for the final sitting week of the year today, Mr Albanese will move new laws which would mean casuals at labour hire firms could not be paid less than workers employed directly by a company.
Labour hire has become a huge issue, particularly in coalmining regions, but also in meatworks, construction and aged care.
While the law is unlikely to get the necessary support of the Federal Government, it is expected to signal that Mr Albanese will be putting the “same job, same pay” issue, as well as industrial relations, at the top of the party’s agenda.
A review of Labor’s devastating 2019 election loss, conducted by Craig Emerson and Jay Weatherill, found blue-collar workers turned away from the party and the party needed to find a way to reconnect with Queenslanders.
Mr Albanese said the proposed laws would stop labour hire firms “making a quick buck off the backs of working Australians”.
“From airport check-in counters to coalmines, you can have two Australians working side-by-side, doing the same hours and the same job at the same level – yet one gets paid less than the other,” he said.
“The difference can amount to hundreds of dollars a week. That’s just not fair and it goes against who we are.”
Under the proposed amendment to the Fair Work Act, which is also Labor’s industrial relations policy suit, labour hire firms would be obliged to pay any workers they employ at least the same amount as a permanent worker employed directly by the company contracting them.
There would be some expectations, including allowing for short-term surge workforce, where there could be different wages and conditions but for no more than one month.
Companies using labour hire firms would also be required to provide all workers the same access to amenities, facilities, training and conditions.
The industrial relations step up comes as federal politics has entered a faux-election campaign, with both Mr Albanese and Prime Minister Scott Morrison hitting the hustings in recent weeks.
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Natural gas mining project under fire from Greenies
Woodside is set to make a final investment decision on a major LNG project in Western Australia's north within weeks, but opponents are vowing to push on with their attempts to stop it.
But Woodside says the project has been through rigorous environmental assessment processes
The project — which has been labelled Australia's biggest new fossil fuel investment in nearly a decade — involves developing the Scarborough gas field, west of Karratha, and expanding its current Pluto facility on the Burrup Peninsula in the Pilbara, where the gas would go for processing.
If the project goes ahead, it is expected to emit millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually at a time when countries are being urged to decarbonise.
large pipe with gas plant infrastructure in the background
Woodside says it's set a target for its expanded Pluto LNG facility to reach net zero emissions by 2050. (Supplied)
Woodside received an important financial boost this week, selling a 49 per cent stake in its $7.6 billion proposed second train at Pluto to New York-based Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP).
As the clock ticks on Woodside's financial commitment to the project's future, former WA Labor Premier turned Conservation Council President, Carmen Lawrence, has spoken out against the plan, fearing the environmental impacts it could cause.
"I don't see how anyone living in Western Australia can ignore this because it adds to our emissions," Dr Lawrence said.
"Climate change is happening now, it's real, it's destructive and anything that adds to it, surely has to be questioned."
Woodside's chief executive Meg O'Neill received a fresh legal letter from the Conservation Council of WA last week, warning the project could have a negative impact on the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef, on the other side of the country.
The ABC requested to interview Ms O'Neill, but she was unavailable all week.
A spokesperson for Woodside said the primary environmental approvals from both the Commonwealth and state governments were in place to support the final investment decision, but requests to start drilling were still being assessed by Australia's offshore energy regulator.
"The development of Scarborough has been assessed by the Western Australian Environmental Protection Authority, the Australian Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment and the Australian National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority," the spokesperson said.
"These environmental assessment processes concluded the proposal may be implemented, subject to conditions and activity-specific Environment Plans."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-22/woodside-scarborough-gas-project-under-fire/100570746
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‘They cancelled me as a human’: What nearly killed actor
Not OK that he was "straight"
Early last year, the actor Hugh Sheridan was confirmed in the lead role for the musical, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, scheduled for the 2021 Sydney Festival. Six months before the show was due to open, Sheridan left his home in Los Angeles, leased a house in Sydney, and began walking around it in high heels and a denim miniskirt, excited, reciting his lines.
Sheridan, now 36, had won four Logies playing Ben Rafter, the goofy suburban boy in Channel 7’s comedy-drama, Packed to the Rafters. But in Hedwig, a highly demanding role that requires the actor to play a handful of characters, he had the chance to act, sing and dance, skills he’d trained in since a boy. Hedwig is born Hansel, a boy from communist East Germany who falls in love with an American soldier and has a sex-change operation so they can marry and flee to the US. But the surgery is botched and later the soldier leaves, pitching Hedwig into a life of sorrow, crazy bravery, fabulous wigs and rock ‘n’ roll.
One day in November, just weeks into rehearsals for Hedwig, Sheridan opened his Instagram account to read some “horrific messages”. Four trans advocates had organised an open letter demanding he be dropped from the role. The letter, signed by more than 1700 people, said only a trans actor could play the role. Hedwig was a transgender character, and a male who was not transgender should not be “the gatekeeper of a trans story”. The choice of Sheridan was “offensive and damaging to the trans community” and “continues to cause genuine stress and frustration amongst trans and gender non-conforming performers”.
The letter prompted the American creators of Hedwig, John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask, to issue a statement saying they did not believe that Hedwig was trans, and that anyone could play the role. But the Australian producers, Showtune Productions, cancelled the show. “We wish to assure the Trans and LGBTQIA+ community that the issues raised are respected and taken very seriously,” said Showtune in a statement
The band, stage crew, set designers, props, lighting workers and wig and make-up staff (including a trans woman) all lost work. Sheridan lost much more.
“I went into a very, very dark place,” Sheridan says. He tried twice to commit suicide. “I put the people I love through hell.” Nearly a year later, he still feels devastated.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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21 November, 2021
An "indigenous voice"?
The Proposal: A national body made up of elected Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that could provide advice to the Australian Parliament and Government on relevant laws, policies and programs and could engage early on with the Australian Parliament and Government in the development of relevant policies and laws
Peta Credlin
The PM and key ministers (such as the Health Minister and the Treasurer) have been preoccupied by Covid, but not so other ministers. The pandemic is no excuse as to why these significant proposals haven’t been openly discussed with the community, rather than sprung on them just before an election.
Take the Indigenous “voice”. Of course, our Aboriginal heritage should be honoured and respected, and Aboriginal people should fully participate in Australian society. And obviously there’s been past discrimination, injustice and racism against them. But how do we become a colourblind society? How do we become a country, in Martin Luther King’s immortal words, that judges people “by the content of their character not by the colour of their skin” by setting up a special body, with members elected on the basis of race, to give laws meant for all Australians special race-based consideration for just some?
Yes, it’s meant to atone for past racism, but isn’t making racial distinctions wrong? Certainly, that’s what we were asked to think, until Critical Race Theory came along, with its insistence that white people are inherently racist unless they manifest in their lives a kind of permanent, institutionalised apology.
As the First Australians, Aboriginal people could perhaps claim a special status, but this would be much better done through some form of acknowledgment in the constitution – such as Tony Abbott’s suggestion that we include, in the preamble, that Australia is a country with “an Indigenous heritage, a British foundation, and an immigrant character”. Such words would include everyone who has helped build Australia – now and in the past – by defending our flag and freedoms, creating our prosperity, and shaping our institutions as well as those who, in race terms, have been here for thousands of years.
I’m inherently cautious about any institutionalised special treatment for particular groups, especially as Aboriginal people are certainly not the only ones who’ve had a raw deal in the past and continue to face issues: what about women, migrants from non-English-speaking backgrounds, some religions, and people with disabilities?
If every group with a claim for special consideration needs its own special representation to parliament, soon there’ll be a multitude, indeed a babble of “voices” to parliament, and governmental decision-making will be even more gummed up with special pleading, and the overall national interest even more drowned out.
Already, at almost every official event, there’s a “welcome to country”, in a special nod to the 3.3 per cent of Australians who identify as Indigenous, which the 96.7 per cent who don’t normally accept as the courtesy due to the people who were here first.
There are now six (out of 226) members and senators in the federal parliament who identify as Indigenous, with more standing as candidates at the next election. Surely continuing to elect Aboriginal people to parliament (which, after all, is the voice of the whole Australian people) is the best way to ensure that they get the hearing they deserve and is further demonstration that Australian voters are colourblind when it comes to choosing the people best able to represent them?
With its pandemic-driven spending spree, softly softly approach to authoritarian state governments, and commitment to net zero emissions (even though there’s no new policy to deliver it), the Morrison government has already sorely tested the goodwill of its political base.
One Nation, the reconstituted Liberal Democrats and the cashed-up Palmer party are already trawling for first preference votes among the “Howard battlers” who used to be the Coalition’s strongest supporters.
Maybe if the government had better addressed the concerns of conservative voters, via vetoing the incorrigibly politically correct national school curriculum or by supporting nuclear power on land as well as at sea, this wouldn’t matter so much because the splinter party votes would return in preferences.
But legislating a “voice” especially, rather than risking defeat by having a referendum, looks sneaky. Given the pressures on the parliamentary timetable, the only way a “voice” could be legislated before the election is with Labor support.
Asking people to support something they inherently mistrust, and a Labor version of it at that, would be a bitter pill to swallow – and for many could be the last straw.
If there’s an argument for a separate Aboriginal body, then it should be put to the people to decide, not the politicians.
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Thousands of protesters march through Melbourne, Sydney as COVID rallies begin across the country
Large crowds were present in both Melbourne and Sydney.
In the Victorian capital, a large police presence was monitoring two separate crowds in Melbourne's CBD. Protesters had been camped outside Victoria's Parliament House throughout the week calling for the scrapping of the state government's controversial pandemic bill.
Today thousands more have joined and have begun marching through the city.
Meanwhile, another group of protesters, who have labelled themselves anti-fascist, gathered for a rally at the Eight Hour Day Monument in Russell Street.
Police have cordoned off the area, separating the two groups.
The ugly escalation in Melbourne is the sort of moment you would expect leaders to quickly respond to and settle down — but the Prime Minister couldn't resist adding a political kicker.
The Victorian government's pandemic bill was designed to replace State of Emergency laws which were used to bring restrictions in during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The bill has been the subject of intense debate and has attracted protests outside the Victorian parliament.
Some people associated with those protests wheeled out violent imagery, while legal groups and the state's ombudsman have been calling for greater oversight to be included in the legislation.
The state government has managed to delay a vote in the upper house while its tries to win enough crossbench support for it to pass into law.
Thousands of anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination protesters have also gathered in Sydney's Hyde Park and marched through the streets of the CBD.
Crowds carried Australian flags, Eureka flags and the Red Ensign and sung the national anthem while a bagpipe group performed.
Some people brought babies to the demonstration to protest against vaccinating children.
Mounted police are in position to control crowds which have been largely peaceful.
Meanwhile, about 2,000 people have gathered in Adelaide's Rundle Park as part of the protests.
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NSW passes Zoe's Law to impose harsher penalties for the death of an unborn baby
It sounds like this has got through the upper house as well
New laws which impose tougher penalties for crimes that result in the loss of an unborn child have passed the NSW parliament 12 years after first being proposed.
Under what is known as Zoe's Law, offenders whose criminal acts cause the loss of an unborn child will now face longer sentences.
The new offences will commence next year and will expressly recognise the loss of an unborn child as a unique injury for a pregnant woman and other family members.
The reforms were first proposed after Brodie Donegan from the NSW Central Coast was hit by a drunk driver when she was 32 weeks pregnant with baby Zoe on Christmas Day in 2009.
Attorney-General Mark Speakman said the laws had been a long time coming.
"These laws give recognition to the unborn children that are lost due to third party criminal acts. This has been a long fight for people like Brodie Donegan and I thank her and other bereaved expectant mothers for the long struggle they have undertaken to get to this day," Mr Speakman said.
Up until now, the loss of a foetus through a criminal act had been considered grievous bodily harm to a pregnant woman and there had been no separate offence for the unborn baby.
Two new offences will now be added to the Crimes Act.
One will cover when a foetus is lost as a result of a wide range of criminal acts (such as dangerous driving or grievous bodily harm) and will carry a maximum penalty of between five and 28 years imprisonment, depending on the type of act.
This offence carries a maximum sentence that is three years higher than what was previously available for this conduct.
The second offence can be used when a homicide offence (such as murder, manslaughter, dangerous driving occasioning death) kills both the pregnant woman and her foetus.
It carries a maximum penalty of three years imprisonment and applies in addition to the maximum penalty for homicide.
These charges can be laid when the unborn child has a gestational age of at least 20 weeks or is at least 400 grams in weight.
The Attorney-General said he hoped the new laws would help mothers deal with the loss of an unborn child.
"What the new laws do is acknowledge the unique nature of losing an unborn child, the heartbreak, the tragedy the family suffers when that happens," he said.
"No law can make a family whole after an event like that but hopefully these laws will temper that loss a bit."
The new laws also mean family members of a woman who loses a foetus can give victim impact statements in court and the name of the unborn baby can be included on the indictment.
Family members will also be able to claim funeral costs for the loss of an unborn child caused by a car accident.
Zoe's Law has been controversial among pro-choice groups, who have argued it could be used to weaken abortion rights and affect access to late-term abortions but Mr Speakman rejected this suggestion.
"The reforms deliver higher maximum penalties to reflect the gravity of these crimes, without undoing longstanding legal principles or affecting NSW abortion laws."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-20/nsw-parliament-passes-zoes-law/100636536
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Greenies don't like hydrogen either
Owners of Fortescue Metals Group Limited (ASX:FMG) shares may want to know about a threat to Fortescue Future Industries’ (FFI) hydrogen plans.
Fortescue Future Industries says it’s taking a global leadership position in the renewable energy and green products industry and has a vision to make green hydrogen the most globally traded seaborne commodity in the world.
But not everyone likes the plans that Fortescue Future Industries is doing.
According to reporting by the Australian Financial Review, the former leader of the Greens, Bob Brown, has said that green hydrogen must not be “based on mega dam projects, bird-killing wind farms or without a “social licence” that returns foreign earnings to communities.”
Energy Minister Angus Taylor reportedly released modelling that showed green hydrogen could replace LNG as the top energy export, with $50 billion of revenue by 2050.
The AFR speculated that the Greens could use any balance of political power to block hydrogen projects that sustain fossil-fuel industries, like ‘blue hydrogen’.
The Bob Brown Foundation took out a full-page advert in the AFR this week to challenge some of Dr Forrest’s claims and Fortescue Future Industries’ potential projects including hydroelectric dams in countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Papua New Guinea.
What’s the problem?
Why doesn’t Dr Brown like these projects? The Bob Brown Foundation said the aim is to foster debate about the environmental and social impacts of Fortescue Future Industries’ global hydrogen production. Bob Brown said:
He is promoting huge hydro-electric schemes on some of the world’s last remaining great rivers and there would be massive social and environmental consequences. As reported in the AFR, he has contracted with the president of the DRC for a scheme on the Congo River twice the size of China’s Twin Gorges Dam. It is reported to threaten the displacement of 25,000 people, involves massive transmission lines, and has been dropped by previous interested parties including the World Bank.
In Papua New Guinea, Forrest’s hydrogen vision brings dams on a number of major rivers into focus. There can have been no time to consult the local populations nor to assess the impact on some of the most spectacular tropical gorges on Earth. His global vision deserves global scrutiny. We want him to get social licences. That is what we seek.
We support a hydrogen economy based on renewable energy where the production of that energy does not contribute to climate change, damage the environment or cause social dislocation. That is going to take a lot more considered judgement than is evident in Dr Forrest’s global mission.
Time will tell what impact, if any, this has on Fortescue Future Industries, the Fortescue share price and FFI’s green hydrogen plans.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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19 November, 2021
Taking neurodiversity seriously
By Maria from Murrumbeena
Being neurologically diverse myself -- I am a high-functioning autistic -- I have some sympathy with the girl below. I too realized from an early age that I was different and found normal classrooms stifling.
But schools are tasked with all sorts of requirements so asking for special attention to non-neurotypicals may be piling too much onto them. Certainly, school health personnel should be trained to diagnose and communicate such abnormalities but after that I think the main burden of coping has to fall on the pupil and his/her family
When I was younger, I often thought something was wrong with me. Why was I so different from my classmates? I was made to feel broken.
I wasn't struggling with schoolwork; I love to learn. I just hated the environment. Noisy open plan classrooms, the expectation to concentrate for long periods and being confined to a desk.
But in year 8, I received a diagnosis of ADHD, Anxiety and Sensory Processing Disorder. A huge wave of relief came over me.
Imagine your brain as roads and each thought is a car. "Neurotypical" brains have traffic lights and road signs to keep thoughts organised and to stop the distracting thoughts from going on the main roads. ADHD brains don't have that.
So, there's a lot more cars on the main roads and the unnecessary information doesn't get filtered out.
But it turns out, I was not alone. After being unable to focus in class and turned away from the wellbeing office as they were full, I saw a year seven girl also waiting around.
She told me she had ADHD and anxiety and was being sent home. Although she wanted to stay and learn. She was a younger reflection of me.
This encounter flipped a switch inside my head.
I want high schools to start taking mental health and neurodiversity seriously. I'm going to continue raising awareness, educating, and advocating for fellow neurodiverse brains.
I will finish high school and get my education, even if it is the hard way.
To anyone like me, you are not alone. You do not need to be fixed because you are not broken. The system that is educating us is broken.
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/melbourne/programs/takeover-melbourne/winner-maria-glen-eira/13615324
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Booster shots needed for some travellers
One of Australia’s leading vaccine experts argues Covid-19 booster shots should not be mandatory - but some international travellers will need to get them.
Aussie travellers are being warned they may need Covid-19 booster jabs in order to get into a growing list of countries that includes Austria, Croatia, Switzerland, Vietnam and Israel.
But while Covid-19 booster shots should be “strongly recommended” for Australians flying overseas, they should not be made mandatory here, according to one of the country’s leading vaccine experts.
University of Sydney Professor Robert Booy said mandating a third jab was “not palatable to the public, not practical, and not needed – you get substantial protection from two doses”.
There had “already been enough opposition to mandating the first two doses,” he said.
But Australians heading overseas should talk to their GPs, and a third jab was “strongly recommended,” particularly if they were going to areas with bad outbreaks such as Austria and Germany, Prof Booy said.
With studies showing most Covid-19 vaccines declining in efficacy over time, a growing cohort of countries is adopting expiry dates for their equivalent of our vaccine passports. This could mean if an Australian traveller’s second jab is outside the expiry period, they will need to get a third jab to enter the country.
For incoming tourists, Israel insists upon a jab within the preceding six months, while Austria, Croatia, Switzerland and Vietnam have opted for 12 months.
From mid December, France will require those aged over 65 to have had a booster shot in order to get into public venues, while in the UK, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has specifically mentioned booster shots when discussing future international travel arrangements.
Asked on the Insiders program on Sunday about the Morrison government’s position on boosters for international travellers, Health Minister Greg Hunt said they were recommended but not compulsory.
“The advice at this stage of Professor Murphy’s Scientific and Technical Advisory Group is that you’re regarded as fully vaccinated with two doses,” Mr Hunt said.
“Everything is always under review, but there’s no plan to change that requirement at this stage. But as we’ve done throughout, we’ll continue to follow the medical advice.”
Prof Booy said there was some suggestion it might be a better long-term strategy for fully vaccinated people to forego a booster shot and eventually get the virus. This would increase their “mucosal protection” – but studies on this were still ongoing. “We’ll have a lot more clarity on that in six months,” he said.
Booster shots have been offered to immunocompromised Australians since October 11, and all adults since November 8.
As of Wednesday, 298,841 Australians had received a third dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.
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Lord Jim slams ‘incompetent’ OIA despite complaint dismissal
The embattled Office of the Independent Assessor has been slammed as “grossly incompetent” by former Brisbane lord mayor Jim Soorley, despite it dismissing a complaint about his association with Ipswich councillor Paul Tully.
Cr Tully, Queensland’s longest-serving councillor at 40 years, was the subject of a complaint alleging he had a long standing and historical business relationship with Mr Soorley, who the complainant claimed was attempting to influence a development application before the council.
The complaint was dismissed by the OIA, however it ordered Ipswich City Council to publish a finding that Cr Tully and Mr Soorley had an association, but it was “too remote” to require declaration.
Cr Tully said the finding was “completely false” and said the OIA did not contact he or the former Lord Mayor to check the allegation.
Under legislation the council must put the outcome of the complaint on its website.
The OIA determined there was a business relationship but it was too remote to declare
“The fact it’s been dismissed is cold comfort when the OIA has directed the finding to be published,” Mr Tully said. “It casts too many aspersions on innocent people and puts a continuing stain on councillors.”
While neither of the men were named, Cr Tully said residents familiar with the operations of the council and those within local government could easily identify the subjects.
Mr Soorley, lord mayor from 1991 to 2003, said the OIA was “out of control” and said membership of the Australian Labor Party was the closest thing to an association between he and Cr Tully. “It’s (the OIA) proven over the last few weeks to be grossly incompetent and does not have a clue about what councillors do,” he said.
Under OIA policy the subject of a complaint is notified when it is received and the outcome. A spokeswoman for the OIA said the complaint “was dismissed by the OIA at the earliest stage after receiving the complaint”.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk in October revealed the conduct of the OIA would be scrutinised under a parliamentary committee after The Courier-Mail revealed several damning complaints about the watchdog.
“(The OIA) respects the role of a parliamentary committee in conducting this task,” a spokeswoman said.
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Dark roofs ditched, commercial buildings must be net-zero from 2022: NSW Planning Minister
Coming from a warm climate, I have alwayus favoured white or silver-coloured roofs as they help keep the house cool -- so the policy below has its merits
All large commercial buildings designed from next year will be required to operate at net-zero in a major climate policy announcement by the NSW Planning Minister.
Rob Stokes said dark roofing will be discontinued on homes built across Sydney and has taken a swipe at the Commonwealth’s climate agenda while unveiling a suite of measures to ramp up the state’s emissions reductions response.
Speaking to an online forum for urban think-tank Committee for Sydney, Mr Stokes also targeted parts of the property sector for their backlash over an earlier decision this year to mandate paler roofs in the south-west growth area, saying he found it “incredible” legislation was required to force change.
“There are no practical reasons why we shouldn’t be ditching dark roofing on new homes permanently to ensure that future communities of Sydney’s west don’t experience the urban heat that many communities do now,” he said, revealing he had asked planners to include the policy switch under a new umbrella approach to emissions.
The proposed rules will be contained in planning mechanisms developers must adhere to under Mr Stokes’ showpiece Design and Place policy, a wide-ranging document that aims to lift the statewide standards of sustainable urban design.
In his speech Mr Stokes referenced recent University of NSW research, commissioned by the federal government, that found switching to cool roofing would lower Sydney’s summer temperatures by up to 2.4 degrees.
He also revealed office skyscrapers, hotels and shopping centres would be among commercial developments in which energy usage must run at net-zero emissions from 2022. He said the vast majority of buildings operating under the NABERS emissions rating system already had net-zero commitments well ahead of 2050.
Stockland, which runs major shopping centres as well as residential developments and retirement villages, has committed to achieving net-zero by 2028.
The announcement was lauded by Committee for Sydney chief executive Gabriel Metcalf, who said it would “propel NSW event further into a leadership role on climate action”.
The Green Building Council’s chief executive Davina Rooney said constructing buildings powered by renewable energy was the best way to achieve this.
“We’d also encourage owners of large commercial office buildings to take strong action in reducing upfront carbon emissions from products and materials,” she said, referring to a new focus within the industry to cut down on embodied carbon.
As part of the state government changes, new residential developments will also be asked to meet higher energy ratings standards.
Property Council of Australia western Sydney director Ross Grove urged the government to allow time “to ensure building designers and developers can make the necessary upgrades”.
Steve Mann, chief executive of the NSW branch of the Urban Development Institute of Australia, said policy changes needed to be considered in light of the crisis around housing affordability and supply.
“Anything that means we’ve got to reset our supply pipelines would have some short-term impacts,” he said, adding that certain councils mandated against lighter roofs because of reflectivity. He said there could also be cost impacts to material supply chains: “[Colorbond] Ironstone is the strongest in demand at the moment.”
NSW Treasurer Matt Kean announced earlier this month that the state had signed a pledge with the United Nations Climate Change Conference to boost electric vehicle sales and was on track to make 50 per cent of all new vehicles sold in the state electric by 2030.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has hit campaign mode with a “technology not taxes” mantra in regard to emissions reduction, announcing plans such as investment in charging stations for electric vehicles and a $1 billion scheme to be co-funded by private investors to decarbonise the economy.
Mr Stokes, who is temporarily juggling the transport portfolio, said he was left “bemused” by Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s comments to a business forum earlier this year during which he said net-zero wouldn’t be achieved in inner-city cafés and wine bars.
“He was making a different point but ... actually we won’t achieve net-zero without including our wine bars and inner-city cafes,” Mr Stokes said.
“Thankfully, the anti-climate rhetoric emanating from sections of Canberra has cooled significantly over recent months.”
He added that, while COP26 didn’t go as far on commitments as hoped, “it did put climate firmly on the agenda of our federal counterparts”.
Conversely, Mr Stokes said NSW’s response had shown a Coalition government was capable of an “ambitious” climate response while managing economic factors. He said his government not only wanted to act but, in light of recent legal and oversight decisions, was obliged to.
NSW independent MLC Justin Field said caution was needed in regard to increasing the role for timber in net-zero buildings.
“Expanding sustainable softwood timber plantations as a renewable construction resource makes sense, however we get exponentially greater carbon benefit from allowing our native forests to grow old while also building the resilience of the environment to adapt to a climate change,” he said.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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18 November, 2021
“My body is a temple”: Vaccine hesitancy, religious exemptions, and the integrity of Christian witness
This is a fairly competent bit of theology below but it seeks to apply a broad context to 1 Corinthians 6:19-20. That may be convenient but it ignores the specific context of the passage. The passage is primarily about fornication (illicit sex). Paul regards fornication as unnatural and hence defiling the body.
But it is precisely unnatural things that some Christians object to: Vaccinations, blood transfusions, smoking, consumption of coffee and alcohol etc. A "pure" body would not have those things within it is the conclusion
One can argue about what is unnatural but if illicit sex is unnatural, a fairly broad definition is obviously intended by Paul.
So I think the avoidant stances of some Christians are well justified by the "temple" reference
As governments and businesses implement COVID-19 vaccine mandates, increasing numbers of people are seeking exemption on religious grounds. As such, mainstream social and political discourse has begun to stray into theological territory, with uninspiring results. One common refrain among those seeking exemption from vaccination is the assertion, “My body is a temple”. Given the near ubiquity of this phrase in the sphere of health and wellness, most people are likely to have forgotten that it comes from the apostle Paul.
In 1 Corinthians, Paul writes, “do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.” (1 Corinthians6:19-20) Here, Paul is repeating a refrain from earlier in this same letter: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (3:16)
It has become common for Christians to claim that being forced to take the COVID-19 vaccine is a violation of their religious convictions because their body is a temple, and they are commanded to keep it pure. They make this argument for a variety of reasons. For example, some believe the vaccine has dangerous side-effects; others think it contains microchips; and some have suggested that it can alter your DNA or cause infertility. Each of these, it seems, would violate the purity of their bodily temple, making it unsuitable as a vessel for the Holy Spirit.
It is worth stating unambiguously that there is no evidence that any of these things are true of the available COVID vaccines, beyond some extremely rare and typically mild side-effects. Nonetheless, the question I would like to consider is whether a vaccine could, in theory, go against Paul’s exhortation in this passage.
“A temple of the Holy Spirit”
Let’s begin with Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians itself. Most commentators agree that the purpose of the letter is to urge unity among the Christians in Corinth. In the third chapter, Paul addresses the elephant in the room. The Corinthians have been drawing lines of separation based on who brought them to the faith. Some have been saying “I belong to Apollos” (which is to say, “I’m a member of Apollos’s faction”), while others say “I belong to Paul”. And yet, Paul sees no reason for this to cause strife: “We are God’s servants, working together; you are … God’s building.” Paul and Apollos cooperate in building on the foundation that Christ himself laid. And this leads him to ask: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person” (3:16-17).
Paul says that the Corinthian church as a whole is God’s temple, and those who cause division among them are threatening to destroy it. Paul’s warning is not about the pollution of their individual physical bodies, nor any threat from outside. He is warning them about the effect of their own divisive actions on the community. Paul follows this with fitting words for our time: “So let no one boast about human leaders” (3:21).
Three chapters later, Paul returns to the image of the temple, this time with individual Christians in view. Now he is discussing specific sinful habits that are causing division among the Corinthians. In particular, he commands them not to engage the services of prostitutes, and in general to “shun fornication” (6:18). And why should they do this? Because their body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (6:19). Far from suggesting that the Holy Spirit cannot dwell in a body that is physically contaminated by illness, microchips, medicines, or other substances, Paul is urging them to keep themselves free from sin.
Paul is repeating a central theme of the New Testament, which is that the purity laws found in the Torah no longer hold for those who are in Christ, because he has fulfilled them (Matthew 5:17). Christian notions of purity are not about food laws and physical cleanliness, but about the heart. As Jesus explains, “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth.” He goes on to explain that “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person.” (Matthew 15:11, 19-20)
Paul has something similar in view in his second letter to the Corinthians: “let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and of spirit, making holiness perfect in the fear of God” (2 Corinthians 7:1). He explains that the sins of sexual immorality and idolatry defile the body and the spirit, and he urges them to free themselves of it (see also 1 Thessalonians 5:19-24).
Grounds for exemption?
It is worth considering the implications of Paul’s words if they did mean what those seeking exemptions from the COVID-19 vaccine take them to mean. If the Holy Spirit cannot dwell in a body that has been contaminated by chemicals or debilitated by injury (let alone in a body injected with a safe and effective vaccine), then countless people who have fallen victim to natural or manmade disasters would be bereft of the presence of God. Similarly, if physical cleanliness was in view, then surely the COVID-19 virus itself would do at least as much to contaminate one’s body. After all, natural illness is one of the main causes of impurity in Leviticus.
Furthermore, it is central to the Christian faith that we may well be called to sacrifice our bodies for the sake of others (see John 15:13; Philippians 2:3-4; 1 John 3:16). We witness this most acutely on the cross. Jesus’s body was made impure by his crucifixion — in fact, that’s a considerable part of the point. It is worth repeating that there is no reason to think that receiving a COVID-19 vaccine involves bodily sacrifice. Regardless, the theological principles here do not support those seeking exemptions. There is no Christian belief that the body must be kept free from physical contamination in order to be a fitting vessel of the Holy Spirit.
In reality, what those seeking exemptions are arguing is that they believe the vaccine will harm them, and therefore they shouldn’t be forced to take it. There is nothing distinctly religious about the fear of bodily harm involved in vaccine hesitancy. In general, non-religious people fear bodily harm just as much. This should lead us to question why religious exemption is being sought here. The answer, it would seem, is that there is a long-standing precedent for exempting religious communities from government mandates, so people have reached for religious exemption as a ready-made solution for their fears.
This should give Christians pause. Freedom of religion plays an important role in our society, but it is always in danger of being abused and misused. As Christians, we have a vested interest in ensuring that it is not. If our non-Christian neighbours come to see us as people who think the rules don’t apply to us, or as people for whom the well-being of the wider community is irrelevant, their tolerance for our beliefs is likely to wane. At the same time, if our theological beliefs are sacred, then we should be unwilling to let people twist them for political or legal purposes. The truth of what Paul wrote should matter more to us than the use to which it can be put in court. A vaccine cannot go against Paul’s exhortation, because it is not what goes into us that defiles us, but the sin that emerges from our hearts.
Paul warns the Corinthians not to deceive themselves, but to have true wisdom (1 Corinthians3:18). James describes such wisdom as “first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy” (James 3:17). Especially in the United States, the belligerent response on the part of many Christians to the public health efforts of the past two years looks rather different from this vision of wisdom. If we take Paul’s words seriously, our main concern shouldn’t be the physical purity of our own bodies, but the purity of our witness to the world around us. After all, the Christian witness has always been grounded, first and foremost, not in individual political liberty, but in self-sacrifice for the well-being of others.
https://www.abc.net.au/religion/vaccines-religious-exemptions-and-christian-witness/13580026
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A new higher education ranking has placed five Australian institutions in the top 50, comprising almost 10% of the top 50 universities.
The Aggregate Ranking of Top Universities (ARTU) ranked the University of Melbourne as the 28th best university in the world, followed by University of Queensland and the Australian National University at 42nd and 44th respectively.
The report also placed University of Sydney and University of NSW in the top 50.
In its third year, the ARTU combines the three main global university rankings to form a single index, examining 10 years of data.
Nicholas Fisk, the ranking’s creator and deputy vice-chancellor (research) at the University of NSW, told the Australian Financial Review the project provides a comprehensive picture of the state of the university sector.
“It smooths out the volatility and variance of the three major ranking systems,” Fisk said.
The rankings show that Australia has catapulted in global standing over the past 10 years, with the country’s Asia Pacific neighbour China following closely behind.
“In the past decade, Australia has gone from five universities in the top 200 to 13, China has gone from five to 10,” Fisk said. “It is Australia and China that have really been the movers and shakers.”
With 13 universities in the top 200, Australia is behind only the U.S. with 54 and Britain with 27.
Fisk said that considering the country’s population, its growth as a higher education superpower was impressive.
“??10% of the world’s top 50 universities are in Australia,” Fisk said. “That is truly remarkable for a country with 0.3% of the population and 1.7% of GDP.”
UNSW vice-chancellor Ian Jacobs said the internally developed index came together when the institution began working on a 10-year strategic plan to understand how it was performing against the world’s best.
In 2015, UNSW set a target to be in the world’s top 50 universities by 2025, a goal that has been achieved four years early.
“We wanted to be hard on ourselves and objectively measure what we had done,” Jacobs said.
“Rankings are one way of looking at how we are performing relative to other universities in the world,” he said, adding, “We are not suggesting that rankings are in any way perfect, but they are about the best surrogate measure we have.”
Fisk said each of the major rankings had quirks, adding to the arguments for its aggregated index.
The Academic Ranking of World Universities gives 33% of its score for Nobel and Fields medallists over the past century, whereas the Times Higher Education places significant weight on reputation by asking academics which universities they think are the best, and QS judges teaching quality by looking at staff-to-student ratios.
Jacobs said the success of Australian universities was “not something that happens overnight” and suggested it was based on strong foundations, including healthy public investment over the past three decades.
Universities are Australia’s third largest export industry, contributing a record $22.4 billion to the Australian economy as of 2017. However, the shockwaves of the pandemic rocked the sector hard, exposing the uneven nature of government funding and its internal business models.
The top five universities in the world are: Harvard, Stanford, Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Oxford and Cambridge. The rankings that feed into the ARTU are the Academic Ranking of World Universities from China, those from Times Higher Education and QS.
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Religious discrimination bill overhauled
Schools would receive legal protection to hire staff on the basis of faith under a bill expected to go to federal parliament as early as next week.
However, Education Minister Alan Tudge says the religious discrimination bill will not allow a school to reject a teacher based on their sexuality or other trait.
The draft bill will be presented to a joint coalition partyroom meeting in Canberra on Tuesday and could be introduced to parliament as early as Wednesday.
It is understood a contentious part of the bill - known as the "Folau clause" - has been scrapped from an earlier version.
The section would have protected organisations from indirect discrimination claims if they acted against employees for misconduct for expressing their religion.
There had been a push from conservative groups for the bill to allow individuals and organisations the freedom to make statements of belief, such as Israel Folau's controversial social media posts saying homosexuals would go to hell.
Folau, who was sacked by Rugby Australia in 2019 over the posts, later received an apology from the body and a confidential settlement.
Also believed to be axed is a section in the bill allowing healthcare providers to "conscientiously object" to providing a service on religious grounds.
Mr Tudge told Sky News on Wednesday the bill would uphold the right of a religious school to employ teachers of their own faith. "This is a critical principle at stake here ... you can't be a Catholic school if you can't employ Catholic teachers, you can't be a Muslim school without employing Muslim teachers."
Asked if it also meant a Catholic school could reject a gay teacher, Mr Tudge said: "That wouldn't be lawful under our bill."
But Equality Australia chief executive Anna Brown labelled his comments "breathtakingly misleading". "Nothing in this religious discrimination bill acts to fulfil the federal government's previous commitment to protect LGBT students," she said.
"In fact, the Morrison government's bill licences more discrimination against all our communities, by overriding existing protections for women, people with disability, LGBTIQ+ people and even people of faith."
Mr Tudge said while there had not been a significant problem to be resolved by the bill, the laws would enable schools to "provide a good education consistent with the values which they articulate".
The bill was an election promise by the Liberal-National coalition but has sat in the too-hard basket since then as conservatives and moderates disagree on how far it should go.
Labor is awaiting the detail before determining its position.
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Peter Ridd and the reef
The essay below by Jennifer Marohasy dates from October 13. I have hesitated in putting it up because it is so long. It does however provide an excellent coverage of a number of points so repays the effort of reading it.
I was pleased that she mentions water-level variations as a factor in coral death. I had thought I was the only one pointing that out
Coral reefs can be messy, and so can court cases. And so it is with the case of Peter Ridd, sacked by James Cook University because he exercised his intellectual freedom. The only thing that is neatly settled from this case is apparently ‘the science’, never mind that this is only because anyone who publicly disagrees with it is censored or sacked. In the case of Peter Ridd, even after he managed to raise over A$1.4 million to appeal his sacking by James Cook University all the way to the High Court of Australia, he lost.
This sends a very strong message to all politically astute academics: if they are likely to make findings that do not accord with the consensus, these findings should be hidden within phrases that are unintelligible gobbledygook. In other words, their findings should be communicated in language that is meaningless, or is made unintelligible by the excessive use of technical jargon. They should certainly not translate their findings into plain English, or, worse, air them on national television, because that way the average Australian would have some understanding of what they are actually funding with their hard-earned taxes.
The climate science literature is replete with hidden meaning and technical jargon. The extent of the gobbledygook is such that the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently concluded that humans are the main cause of global warming and the role of the sun is inconsequential, never mind that there is prestigious scientific literature that arguably comes to the opposite conclusion – which is that much of the global warming we have been experiencing can be explained in terms of solar variability. This extensive literature was recently reviewed by Ronan Connolly, Willie Soon and 20 of their colleagues from 14 countries and published in the international journal Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics (Volume 21). However, it appears that tenured academics are not allowed to argue, at least not publicly.
There was a sense of irony this morning that made me smile. As I waited for the High Court judgement, I looked through a paper by Peter Ridd’s former colleagues – Emma Ryan, Scott Smithers and others – entitled ‘Chronostratigraphy of Bramston Reef reveals a long-term record of fringing reef growth under muddy conditions in the central Great Barrier Reef’ published in the very respectable journal Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, Palaeoecology (Volume 441, page 734–747, 2016).
It would be difficult for the non-specialist to decipher this jargon-filled technical analysis that essentially supports what Peter Ridd has been saying for some years – and which earned him his first censure by the University, but, in short, it says there is still healthy coral reef in Bowen Harbour.
It’s cold comfort, by the way, for the High Court to find in passing that the 2016 censure was unlawful, especially when it led directly to the 2018 censure, which, in turn, resulted in Peter’s employment being terminated.
Anyway, I’m told Scott Smithers is a very competent scientist and an all-round good guy. He never replies to my emails. Perhaps this is because I could translate his gobbledygook into plain English. His potentially subversive publications would then be understood by the intelligent layperson for what they are – which is that they back up what Peter Ridd is saying and provide a very detailed explanation of how many inshore reefs of the Great Barrier Reef have been in decline for more than 1,000 years because of falling (yes, falling) sea levels.
Because academics are not allowed to speak freely about controversial subjects most people have no understanding the cyclical nature of sea levels. The general public are under the misconception that the most important global trend is one of sea-level rise. There are cycles within cycles and the most significant cycle has been one of sea-level fall, by some 1.5 metres over the last 2,000 or so years, notwithstanding that there has been sea-level rise of some 40 centimetres since the industrial revolution, which coincides with the end of the Little Ice Age (circa AD 1303 to AD 1835).
To put all of this in some context, along the Great Barrier Reef there is a large and variable daily tidal range. For example, at Hay Point the tide varies by as much as 7.14 metres; at Mackay by 6.58 metres; and at Gladstone by 4.83 metres.
The daily cycles can be averaged to show that sea levels can change even more dramatically over geological time frames. For example, just 19,500 years ago, during the depths of the last major ice age, sea levels were 120 metres lower (yes, lower) than they are today. And the Great Barrier Reef did not exist. This very long record shows changes in temperature precede their parallel changes in carbon dioxide by 800 to 2000 years. This vital point establishes that carbon dioxide cannot be the primary forcing agent for temperature change at the glacial-interglacial scale, but this reality is mostly hidden by the modern astute geologist and ice-core expert who arguably cares more for his career than the truth. If this were not the case, they would be marching on Glasgow.
The modern Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef system to have ever existed on planet Earth, according to Peter J. Davies writing in the Encyclopedia of Modern Coral Reefs. It is but a thin veneer growing on top of at least five previous extensive reef systems, each destroyed by dramatic falls in sea level in the past. The modern reef has grown up on top of extinct reefs, the last of which existed 120,000 years ago. In some places the depth of the coral growth since the last ice age, which had begun by 100,000 years ago, is 28 metres – layer upon layer. This growth is now constrained by sea level.
Many of the nearly 3,000 reefs that make up the modern Great Barrier Reef have a crest that is flat-topped because the most recent 1.5 metre drop in sea level has sliced this much off their tops. So, the crests of these reefs expose dead coral that is thousands of years old, sometimes capped with coralline algae. These reef crests were dead long before European settlement. Yet it is surveys of exactly this reef habitat, taken from the window of a plane by Peter Ridd’s nemesis Terry Hughes flying at an altitude of 150 metres, which have made media headlines around the world, and which suggest that the Great Barrier Reef is more than half dead. Worse, they were used in a recent Australian Academy of Sciences report (March 2021) to claim the imminent demise of the Great Barrier Reef due to carbon dioxide emissions and thus the need for a commitment to net zero greenhouse gas emissions in Glasgow. It is all nonsense, and politics. But beware the academic who explains as much in plain English, especially following this morning’s ruling by the High Court of Australia.
On 2 May 2018, Peter Ridd was sacked by James Cook University for serious misconduct. It all started when he called-out Terry Hughes, whom he believed was falsely claiming that the inshore coral reefs at Bowen, specifically Bramston Reef, were dead because of climate change and the deteriorating water quality.
Professor Ridd had been complaining quietly for years. He had already published peer-reviewed papers explaining in detail some of the serious issues with the official science. It was nevertheless a tough decision to go public, which he made in full knowledge that there could be consequences. At the same time there was a feeling of optimism; eventually, the truth would win out and the University would acknowledge the importance of implementing some form of quality assurance over the various pronouncements made by one or two high-profile academics. These academics, whom he believed were speaking beyond their area of expertise and hammering the theme of the reef being dead in order to progress their own personal political agenda and, at the same time, their careers.
Former Chairman of the Institute of Public Affairs, Janet Albrechtsen, wrote in The Australian on 25 July 2020:
“Remember that Ridd wasn’t querying the interpretation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. He was raising questions, in one particular area of his expertise, about the quality of climate change science. One of the fundamental challenges of our generation is to get the science right so we can settle on the right climate change policies. JCU told Ridd to keep quiet, then it sacked him.”
Peter Ridd did win the first round in the Federal Circuit Court back in April 2019. Judge Salvatore Vasta found in his favour and order that the 17 findings made by the University, the two speech directions, the five confidentiality directions, the no satire direction and the censure and the final censure given by the University and the termination of employment of Professor Ridd by the University were all unlawful.
Then the University appealed, and the Federal Court of Australia overturned the decision of the Federal Circuit Court. That decision, according to Dr Albrechtsen, has sent intellectual inquiry down the gurgler in the 21st century at an institution fundamental to Western civilisations:
“Is that to be the legacy of JCU’s vice-chancellor Sandra Harding? And what oversight has JCU’s governing council provided to this reputational damage, not to mention the waste of taxpayer dollars, in pursuing a distinguished scientist who was admired by his students?
"Following this decision, no academic can assume that an Australian university will allow the kind of robust debate held at Oxford University in 1860 between the bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, and Thomas Henry Huxley, a biologist and proponent of Darwin’s theory of evolution.
"The Historical Journal records how this legendary encounter unfolded: ‘The Bishop rose, and in a light scoffing tone, florid and fluent he assured us there was nothing in the idea of evolution: rock-pigeons were what rock-pigeons have always been. Then, turning to his antagonist with a smiling insolence, he begged to know, was it through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey? On this Mr Huxley slowly and deliberately arose. A slight tall figure stern and pale, very quiet and very grave, he stood before us, and spoke those tremendous words ... He was not ashamed to have a monkey for his ancestor, but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used his great gifts to obscure the truth.’
"Not for nothing, Ridd’s lawyers submitted this example of intellectual freedom during the first trial. In sacking Ridd, and to win in court, JCU had to argue against the means that seeks the truth – intellectual freedom.
"In deciding whether to grant special leave for the appeal, the High Court considered whether the case involved ‘a question of law that is of public importance’. It was the first time the High Court had been called upon to consider the meaning of ‘academic and intellectual freedom’, a term that is used in enterprise agreements covering staff at almost all Australian universities.”
We now have a judgement. For the High Court, it seems that intellectual freedom is like a delicate flower that does not survive being plucked. It can be contemplated from afar but cannot be held or given as a gift. Intellectual freedom survives in academia only if limited to gobbledygook that alludes to the truth in such a way that no member of the pubic could understand how deeply that truth contradicts the official scientific consensus. Perhaps I already knew that.
Some argue there are other legal avenues – not through the courts – that could, perhaps, have been pursued and may have achieved a different outcome, but which may or may not have provided some vindication. But as for the courts: if you have to raise A$1.4 million and put in a further A$300,000 of your own money, as Peter Ridd has done, just to run one argument all the way to the High Court, how much would you need to fight on the substance of each issue?
This alternative strategy might have been to try and get the matter raised under the Queensland whistle-blower legislation. Peter Ridd would at least have been, theoretically, protected while an investigation was conducted. The focus would have been on science rather than a narrow construction of employment law and the procedures laid out in the University’s Code of Conduct. But given the determination of James Cook University to silence its critics, and the need for this to have included testimony from colleagues desperate to avoid controversy – lest they are admonished by their family and communities for failing to be respectable, thereby jeopardising their own careers – it is unclear this would have been any more fruitful.
And so to this day there has never been any consideration given by the courts or any other independent body to the actual state of the corals in Bowen Harbour, including at Bramston Reef, even though this was the reason for the first censure that the High Court has ruled should not have been issued in the first place. Yes, the ruling this morning clearly states, in agreement with Judge Vasta, that Professor Ridd’s initial comments about his colleague Terry Hughes and the state of the corals in Bowen Harbour were reasonable and that the censure should not have been issued. Yet that is where all the other allegations subsequently came from as Peter Ridd tried to defend himself in the public domain.
Following today’s decision, Peter Ridd has accepted an invitation to join the Institute of Public Affairs as a Research Fellow, without salary, to lead a newly established project for ‘Real Science’. The Project’s aims are to improve science quality assurance and to support academics speaking out for integrity in science and research. You can support this project by way of a tax deductable donation to the IPA. It is the case that long ago scientific inquiry was mostly privately funded, now is your opportunity to be a part of this new initiative for open and honest inquiry.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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17 November, 2021
The sad reality of gender quotas
Bettina Arndt
My firefighter quota story has attracted a lot of attention and prompted all manner of interesting correspondence. I thought I would send an update, showing you some of the comments and intriguing news about ongoing battles on the gender quotas front.
First a wonderful story about a fracas currently taking place over the National Jazz Awards. This year this major award focused on jazz pianists and the ten finalists have been announced. Take a look at them here. Horrors, they are all men!
All hell has broken loose at this politically incorrect outcome, particularly since, due to COVID, the competition was judged through blind online auditions. All ten best candidates just happened to be men. Naturally, the very active women in today’s jazz world immediately started complaining, saying it needed to be made “fairer” by removing the blind audition and including a gender quota. Isn’t that pathetic? But, oh, so typical.
Science caves to gender warriors
Scientific American has just published an intriguing story about the most prestigious award given by the world’s largest earth and space science society, the American Geophysical Union. The AGU’s fellow’s award recognizes members who have made exceptional contributions to their fields through scientific innovation, breakthroughs and discoveries.
The list of the top five candidates, all nominated by peers after a rigorous process, came in – and they were all men. So, the committee charged with making the final decision about the fellowship wimped out. The fellowship was not awarded.
Gender battles in the police force.
Plenty of policemen have been in touch with me, talking about the impact of gender quotas on the police service. Here are comments from some of them:
“At the police academy back in 1978 all recruits had to pass an aerobic course in a limited time in order to graduate. We all had to train early in the morning for months to get through, unless you were one of the 50% female recruits who weren't required to complete the same standard. Later, after graduating, I was badly beaten by a huge drunk driver I was trying to arrest; the policewoman who was my partner had locked herself in the police van.”
Another one who has been in the force for 12 years talked about declining physical standards:
“We used to have large fences in the obstacle course but a lot of the girls trying to join did not have the upper body strength to get over the fence, so they just removed the fence from the course. Hmm, I’m pretty sure they will have to jump fences in real life and the bad guys run just as fast if it’s a female officer chasing them.”
He also mentioned other ways the training has changed:
“The actors who play the role of bad guys at the academy used to call us horrible names and really go to town on us during scenarios because that's what happens in real life. But a few of the girls complained about being called "a cunt" or being told that they were going to be raped. So, the actors are not allowed to say things like that anymore. Well. I’m sorry but on the road, you’re going to have the worst things said to you and you need to get over it! It’s your job to take it and remain professional.”
Various people alerted me to the interesting fact that six months ago Queensland’s corruption watchdog, the Crime and Corruption Commission found thousands of men had been discriminated against as a result of the Qld police department’s 50 per cent gender target. Different standards were found to apply to male and female applicants with men forced to reach “artificially high” cut-off scores and female applicants approved despite failing physical and cognitive tests. Funnily enough, the gender quota was introduced under a male police commissioner Ian Steward, but scrapped by a female one – Katarina Carroll, when she was appointed in 2019.
Thoughts from the trenches
Finally, random thoughts/comments from a variety of people, including many dealing with these gender issues in their workplaces - mostly gathered from my YouTube channel where I posted the firefighter video:
“A couple of decades ago I was a controller in the Rural Fire Service. It was notable that two occasions I had to call ambulance to female firefighters who had either collapsed or were close to collapse. In a crew returning from a hazard reduction a lightly built young woman of about 18-22 was very faint, lost muscle tone, went deathly pale. The whole crew and truck were out of the game while the group captain responded to the ambulance. Very embarrassing for her but potentially dangerous on the fire ground with half a dozen strong fit young men withdrawn.”
“Early this year, near our local shopping centre carpark, my husband noticed two female ambulance officers obviously struggling to lift patient up into their ambulance. They were grateful when he went across the road and helped them lift the stretcher (with a strapped on fairly solid male) up and over the deep gutter and up into the ambulance. He said the two youngish women were of rather slight builds and quite obviously just did not have the combined physical strength to get the stretchered patient up into their vehicle.”
“I've been a firefighter for 23 years. In reality, half the guys on my department have a hard enough time doing the job when it comes to a serious working fire. And as you get older it gets harder to perform. In my younger years it was exciting fighting fires but the past couple I have been on were taxing on my stamina. You have to have a maniacal attitude and be in shape to be able to get the job done when the sh*t hits the fan. This ain’t no reality show or TV series.”
“Women will be killed by this change in rules, or members of the public. Will there end up being civil suits against the government for allowing people that aren’t competent to do the job? I am a woman & have worked in the fishing, plumbing, and manual labour industries and I know I am unable to do physical tasks that men can do. Does that mean because I am a woman all of us should be put at risk by attempting a task that I cannot safely do? That is a blatant OHS issue that as an employer I could be prosecuted for, but the government is allowed to breach it because it’s woke.”
“It's also about camaraderie. The other firefighters want to make sure they can trust the capabilities of the other members of their team. They're trusting those people with their lives.”
“About time! I've noticed a huge gender gap in the statistics between men and women killed on the job. More women in dangerous jobs should close that gap significantly.”
“The women won’t be in dangerous jobs- they will be in admin, communications, etc, because they will be too much of a liability to their colleagues and themselves to be actually on the front line. They will, however, get paid the same, if not more.”
That’s it, folks. I hope you enjoyed reading this lively correspondence, often from people who told me they wouldn’t dare talk publicly about these taboo topics.
https://thinkspot.com/discourse/OJuqOX/post/bettina-arndt/the-sad-reality-of-gender-quotas/bvZtjy
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Are rare vaccine reactions being brushed off by doctors?
Dan Petrovic describes himself as an avid “pro-vaxxer” who has long advocated vaccines to his more hesitant friends – so it was a “comedy twist” when he was the one who suffered a rare side effect.
The marketing executive, 42, spent six weeks after his second Pfizer shot with constant chest pains, which his GP ultimately said was likely a mild case of pericarditis, or inflammation of the lining around the heart.
On September 18, four days after his jab, Mr Petrovic began to feel unwell while watching TV. “I can’t lean to the left side, I feel a bit short of breath,” he said. “It’s just like constant pain and palpitations. It doesn’t go away. Imagine enduring six weeks of that.”
Mr Petrovic, the managing director of search engine marketing firm Dejan, said he was bemused that for “six weeks of pain, they classify it as subtle and mild”. “This wasn’t a little bit of pain, this hits really hard and it was lingering for a long time,” he said.
“It’s a debilitating condition – can’t work, can’t walk, can’t walk up and down the stairs, can’t play with my daughter.”
After weeks of “ping pong” between appointments and $3000 in medical costs, he has now largely recovered with only a “little bit of pain” once a week.
While he still doesn’t regret taking the vaccine, Mr Petrovic says one thing concerns him. Neither his cardiologist nor his GP would submit an adverse event report to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).
After his experience, he fears that the TGA, which monitors adverse vaccine reactions, may not be getting the full picture. “I asked my doctor, ‘Are you going to submit this to the TGA as suspected pericarditis?’” Mr Petrovic said. “He said, ‘You can go online to do it. I’m too busy.’”
Similarly, his cardiologist, having ruled out more serious myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart itself, would not submit a report as he didn’t “see any damage” on his scans.
“Shouldn’t this be mandatory for medical practitioners?” Mr Petrovic said. “There’s a big difference between a doctor report and a patient self-report. I cannot make a medical diagnosis, I’m not a practitioner.”
He did submit his own, which now appears in the Database of Adverse Event Notifications – the TGA’s anonymised list of raw, unconfirmed reports – but it’s unclear whether his case is included in the regulator’s overall numbers of pericarditis.
“My problem is that I have absolutely zero visibility into how my submission of an adverse effect has been treated, collected, processed and classified,” he said.
In its weekly safety report, the TGA lists cases assessed as “likely” myocarditis, as well as a larger number that are “suspected”.
Among likely cases, those classified as “level one” are “confirmed to be myocarditis based on strong clinical evidence including the patient’s symptoms, and results of tests and imaging”.
Mr Petrovic stresses he is still a strong supporter of vaccination against Covid-19. “The pamphlet was saying [the risk of rare heart inflammation] is one in 100,000 – even if it was one in 10,000 I would have gone ahead and done it anyway,” he said. “I was willing to accept the risk to protect the community.”
But he is concerned – from a data perspective – about what appears to be a lack of rigorous protocols for medical practitioners to report adverse events.
“I believe every doctor, every medical professional, when a patient complains of a complication after a vaccine, they should make a report,” he said.
Even if the doctor is not 100 per cent convinced the reaction is connected to the vaccine, he argues, the TGA should still be receiving this “dirty data”.
“I don’t appreciate working with bad data,” he said. “Bad data means bad science. To me that’s not OK. In my profession I work with data – if I have bad data I make bad decisions for clients, and that’s just marketing. In health there is an even bigger responsibility.”
Mr Petrovic worries that people being brushed off by health practitioners only fuels mistrust and conspiracy theories. “The public cannot lose trust and confidence in science and the scientific method,” he said.
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Strollout is the word of the year from halfcinated Fortress Australia
Strollout, the term invented by ACTU boss Sally McManus to describe delays this year in Australia’s coronavirus vaccine roll out, has been named word of the year by the Australian National Dictionary Centre.
If you haven’t heard of strollout, you are not in iso – 2020’s better-known word of the year for isolation.
Strollout was chosen because it was uniquely Australian, said the centre’s director Amanda Laugesen. “It’s yet another example of how a truly Australian expression can make waves globally,” Dr Laugesen said.
The term, defined as “the slow implementation of the COVID-19 vaccination program in Australia”, had also been exported to the world. It made headlines in the United States. In New Zealand, Kiwis adopted it as their own.
“Vaccine stroll-out must now be to all New Zealanders,” said a headline.
Dr Laugesen said the expression “captured a very particular moment in our nation’s history” when the federal government was being criticised for delays in distributing coronavirus vaccinations. Since vaccination rates have risen, the term’s use has fallen.
Like many people, Richard Neville, the Mitchell Librarian at the State Library of NSW, had never heard the word before. “It is just a bad pun. And it only works if there is a bank of understanding,” he said.
Mr Neville said it was very specific to a moment in time. “We have now excelled at the vaccine rollout so strollout might be a wipe out,” said Mr Neville, who is one of the judges of the Miles Franklin awards.
ACTU secretary Sally McManus coined the term, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which works with the Australian National Dictionary Centre to publish the Australian version of its dictionary.
In November, the OED chose vax as its word of the year but mentioned strollout as one of a range of new words coined during “our intense interactions with vaccines”. These included halfcinated (partially vaccinated) and fullcinated (fully vaccinated).
Though strollout is rarely used in relation to vaccinations now, the OED and Dr Laugesen said it seemed likely to be used to describe delays in other areas.
When Ms McManus criticised the federal government on Twitter in May, the feedback was immediate. “A crack up name for the delay,” according to one tweet.
A month later, the former leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten used it to attack Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s failure to address vaccine hesitancy. “So far, it’s been more stroll out than rollout,” said Shorten.
ABC 702 Drive host and Herald columnist Richard Glover was responsible for exporting the word to the United States and beyond with a column in the Washington Post with the headline, “Australia’s vaccine ‘stroll-out’ shows the dangers of covid complacency.”
The expression was a lovely witticism, Glover said on Tuesday. While he couldn’t claim ownership, he was “pleased to be its exporter”.
Other terms on the shortlist, some of which will be considered for inclusion in the next edition of the Australian Dictionary in 2023, include:
Double-vaxxed: Not Australian, but a word used more here than overseas, said Dr Laugesen.
Clayton’s lockdown: A twist on the old Australian expression popularised by actor Jack Thompson in an advertisement for Clayton’s non-alcoholic drink: “Claytons: it is the drink you have when you are not having a drink.”
Fortress Australia: Similar to the way Australians described early immigration and tariff policies, the term was used during the pandemic to express Australia’s isolation from other countries.
AUKUS: The security partnership between Australia, Britain, and the United States centred on the Indo-Pacific region is likely to join ANZUS in the next Australian dictionary.
Net zero: The term for offsetting the amount of greenhouse gases produced by human activity through reduction measures is not uniquely Australia, but was popular here.
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Teachers complain of information overload, extra difficulty in maths exam
Several teachers have criticised the advanced mathematics HSC exam for being too wordy and overloading students with unnecessary information, while others said it was more difficult than year 12 deserved given the challenges they faced in 2021.
Their comments come after about 17,000 students sat Monday’s two-unit advanced maths exam, which is the intermediate calculus-based course offered to year 12 students.
President of the Mathematical Association of NSW, Karen McDaid, said she heard mixed reviews about the paper, but some students were upset. She said teachers’ main issue was over the wording of some questions.
“They made comments such as information overload,” she said. “I have no problem with words, but apparently the way some of the questions were worded needed students to concentrate not only on what the question was asking, but also on interpreting the questions effectively.”
She said the association had complained to the NSW Education Standards Authority last year about “wordy” questions, after a standard maths paper stumped students.
“Our concern was the amount of time students needed to decipher the question before they could even begin answering it, and the associated cognitive load they had to carry,” she said.
Dr Julie Greenhalgh, the principal of private girls’ school Meriden which typically performs well in maths, described the paper as “unnecessarily difficult”. It was the second time the new maths syllabus has been tested in the HSC.
“[It] seemed to focus on the new sections of the syllabus which meant that the students were, perhaps, encountering types of questions that they had never seen before,” she said.
“As teachers and students work out the meaning and extent of sections of a new syllabus, I think it is more helpful to see an HSC paper that contains fewer tricks and fewer surprises.”
Another teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak, said his students were in tears after the advanced paper. He said the exam contained too many questions based on material students would have learned in the last few weeks of the course, when the system had switched to remote learning.
“Experienced teachers .... are saying the advanced paper is the worst written in 30 years,” he said.
Not all teachers agreed; Burwood Girls High’s head of maths said after the exam that none of his students had left upset and the questions seemed reasonable.
Monte Sant’ Angelo Mercy College student Kasia Kliman made a complaint to NESA after the exam, saying students who had finished course content during lockdown could not fairly complete the test.
“Learning mathematics online [was] extremely difficult,” she said. “Some schools were unable to finish their content due to the online learning. Going into the very long exam and seeing questions about topics we have never learnt completely shocked us.”
A NESA spokeswoman said all questions came from the syllabus and adhered to the published exam specifications.
“The exam is developed by a team of experienced teachers and reviewed by a range of experts,” she said. “This year’s exam had a balance of questions across all five topics in the syllabus. The style of wording used in the exam is consistent with the language used in the syllabus.”
The spokeswoman said the advanced maths’ cohort of 17,000 students meant the exam needed to cater to a range of abilities. “The exam includes a full range of questions from easy to hard and must differentiate student achievement,” she said.
“Recognising that COVID made it tough for all HSC students, students who experienced significant disruption during lockdown were able to access NESA’s special consideration program for the written exams.”
The Universities Admissions Centre has also released more than 15,000 early university offers this month; 25 per cent more than last year due to a spike in applications. The offers are based on students’ year 11 results and school rankings, among other criteria.
“I hope these offers are good news for all those HSC students currently in the midst of their final exams. It’s been such a challenging year for them, but they’re almost there and having an early offer could give them some extra momentum as they finish year 12 and look forward to their future after school,” said UAC’s general manager of marketing and engagement Kim Paino.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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16 November, 2021
Another so-called Aborigine -- blue eyes and all
He presumably has some Aboriginal ancestry but you would never know it. His ancestry is essentially Northern European. It's really pathetic that the only way the Left have to praise Aborigines is to claim whites as Aborigines. It just shows that real Aborigines do NOT fit into white achievement patterns
"You can't be Aboriginal, you're too smart for that," Benjamin Wilson was told when he was at school.
But the 23-year-old Wiradjuri man dismissed those slurs and instead focused on storytelling and learning — which has seen him named a recipient of the Dr Charles Perkins Memorial Prize.
"I think that's because I had really strong role modelling from my family and the people around me," he said.
One of those strong role models is his 84-year-old grandmother, Elsie Heiss, who instilled in him a love of learning and reading, as well as resilience and a strong work ethic.
"At 16, she hopped on the train at Griffith to Shepparton in Victoria, to go and work in a fruit cannery," he said, "that kind of drive has always been in my family".
That drive is also clear in Benjamin — and why he has been named a recipient of the Dr Charles Perkins Memorial Prize at Sydney University, for excelling at his studies in a Bachelor of Arts in Media and Communications.
Dr Charles Perkins AO was a ground-breaking civil rights activist, academic, and public servant.
The awards would usually be presented in a ceremony in the University's great hall, but as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing restrictions, that wasn't possible this year.
Filmmaker, director and screenwriter Rachel Perkins is the daughter of the late Dr Perkins and announced the recipients of the awards.
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University of Tasmania joins others in ditching face-to-face lectures in favour of online learning
A large and important part of the university experience takes place on university premises outside the classroom so much will be lost if this idiocy prevails
While many universities are adapting to the post-COVID world by continuing both online and in-person lectures, some are ditching the on-campus lecture experience entirely.
The University of Tasmania is the latest to say it will scrap in-person lectures in favour of online meetings, even though the state has been relatively isolated from the pandemic so far.
The university's management described the move as offering a more "flexible" and "effective" path to education.
UTAS academic executive director Mitch Parsell said traditional lectures had been "poorly attended".
"Small group, on-campus activities such as workshops, tutorials, practicals, and seminars are a focus … our students have been clear that these are the activities they value most," he said.
But while many university students have benefited from the flexible schedule online lectures afford, some lament the lack of face time with their peers.
UTAS Student Association president-elect Sophie Crothers said she had seen a significant change in her student experience in the past two years during the pandemic.
Ms Crothers, a fourth-year student, said "it meant that all of a sudden you weren't seeing anyone, new students didn't get to make any new friends, and they do not know anyone they study with.
"It's been an isolating experience for some."
Ms Crothers said while online lectures offered people flexibility to fit their learning around their day, the format could take longer to get through.
"Usually you would have three hours of lectures a week, but it can sometimes take up to eight hours in a recorded format because lecturers don't have to worry about how they deliver the content as much," she said.
Melbourne resident and university student Roz Casey is currently doing her second masters degree online and said it suits her lifestyle and helps to balance work and family.
"Students need to have a positive attitude going into any learning environment because having a positive attitude will help you to stay motivated and engaged in the learning process," she said.
Fears unis will recycle recorded lectures
A union representing academics said there were pros and cons when it came to the educational value of face-to-face lectures, but added there were risks in scrapping them entirely.
Pat McConville, from the National Tertiary Education Union, said staff had "concerns that the university will look at recycling and reusing lecture recordings and there doesn't seem a plan to keep lectures up-to-date at this present moment".
"It's a shame [UTAS] has taken a crisis operating model and converted that to the standard operating model."
But Mr McConville said there were still positives in regard to the university's move towards workshops, tutorials, practicals and seminars.
Some universities scraping lectures entirely
UTAS is not the only university to offer a mix of online and face-to-face learning.
Western Australia's Curtin University has a range of online study options for students, and while it has a focus on face-to-face teaching, some lectures will remain online, even post-pandemic.
The University of the Sunshine Coast has gone even further and chosen to ditch all lectures — in-person and online — from next year, in favour of tutorials, podcasts and quizzes.
The university's pro vice-chancellor of students, professor Denise Wood, told the ABC's RN Breakfast: "We've taken on board student feedback and will offer more contemporary and flexible approaches to learning."
"We are increasing the opportunities for small group occasions like tutorials and workshops, which is a more interactive learning style."
The University of Tasmania said putting lectures online was not a cost-cutting measure, but one that would provide the "best possible learning experience for students".
UTAS said the changes would be reviewed next year.
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Anti-coal protesters in Hunter/ Newcastle region face 25 years in prison
A group of climate activists have been blocking coal trains in the Hunter Region from entering the Port of Newcastle for more than a week, resulting in NSW Police establishing Strike Force Tuohy.
On Tuesday, Police Commissioner Mick Fuller issued a statement, saying the ongoing protests were placing public safety at risk and endangering the lives of those who use the rail network. “They will not be tolerated,” he said.
“I have sought further legal advice and am warning anyone who intends on behaving in the manner we’ve seen over the past week that they could be charged with offences ... which carry a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.”
Mr Fuller said this was in addition to the various trespass and rail disruption offences numerous protesters have been charged with since Friday, November 5.
The statement from Mr Fuller comes after Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce claimed protesters had disrupted $60 million worth of coal exports in the past week.
“If they’ve got other ways that the nation can earn money right now, then we’re all ears,” Mr Joyce said from the Singleton train station on Monday.
“In the meantime, we've got to make a buck. “For each one of these (trains) that goes through, that’s about $1 million in export dollars.
“It’s about $100,000 in royalties, so what you’ve got here is payments for your NDIS … payments for pensions and unemployment benefit.”
Mr Joyce said protesters believed their views were “more important than the law”. “They are a different breed,” he said. “(They) believe they can shut things down, a legal industry that underpins their standard of living.”
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Glasgow summit is 'green light' for more coal mines, Senator says
The Glasgow COP26 climate summit was a "great result" for the Australian coal industry, Senator Matt Canavan has said.
His declaration came us UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the UN get-together had sounded the "death knell" for coal power.
Appearing on Today with a screen behind him displaying the slogan "Glasgow: A huge win for coal", Senator Canavan said there had "never been stronger demand" for the industry.
"Given the fact that the agreement did not say that coal needs to be phased down or taken out, it is a green light for us to build more coal mines," he said.
The agreement finally reached by 197 countries yesterday did in fact include a commitment to "phase down" the use of coal, but the phrase was changed from "phase out" after an intervention by India.
Senator Canavan also speculated that numerous countries would not take the commitment seriously. "The agreements themselves have wiggle room," he said. "We always see countries not comply with the agreements."
He claimed there was "not really any country around the world" taking it seriously. "The countries in our region, like India, like China, like South-East Asia, are growing and developing their industries, and their demand for coal almost has no limit," he said.
"So, we have got the best quality coal in the world and we should be supplying that to the world, because it is good for the environment to do that, and it is, of course, very good for people's growth, development, and getting people out of poverty."
Negotiators at Glasgow said the final agreement was aimed at keeping alive the overarching goal of limiting warming to 1.5C since pre-industrial times. The world has already warmed 1.1C.
Coal is among the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson hailed the UN climate summit as a "game-changing agreement" that sounded the "death knell for coal power" - although he added that his delight at the progress on fighting climate change was "tinged with disappointment."
Mr Johnson said it was "beyond question" that the deal coming out of the Glasgow conference marks an important moment in the use of coal, because most of western Europe and North America have agreed to pull the plug on financial support for all overseas fossil fuel projects by this time next year.
Mr Johnson also said the compromise that saw the language changed to "phase down" did not make "that much of a difference."
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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15 November, 2021
Northern hemisphere energy crisis hits Australian fertilizer supply
With so many coal-based generators shut down for Greenie reasons, Europe is grabbing natural gas supplies for electricity generation. And that is causing gas prices to soar worldwide
With global prices soaring, it seemed odd timing this week for Incitec Pivot to announce plans to close one of Australia's largest fertiliser plants.
The rising cost of another commodity — natural gas — appears to have sealed the fate for Incitec's Gibson Island facility in Brisbane.
"Despite extensive efforts, [we have] been unable to secure an economically viable long-term gas supply," the company said in a statement to the ASX.
"The decision to close the Gibson Island manufacturing facility after more than 50 years of operation is expected to impact up to 170 employees."
The company said it would cease manufacturing with natural gas at the end of 2022 but was looking into the potential of green ammonia.
The facility has spent decades converting gas into fertiliser products. According to its website, it has the capacity each year to manufacture 300,000 tonnes of ammonia, 280,000 tonnes of urea and 200,000 tonnes of ammonium.
China has enforced a ban on some ports exporting fertilisers, and more recently Russia invoked a six-month quota on its fertiliser exports.
"Incitec's [announcement] is not ideal in light of the other dynamics going on ... and we need to get our product from somewhere, so it's going to be a challenge," GrainGrowers chair Brett Hosking said.
"So to hear reports [about Incitec] has thrown another spanner into the works and that little bit of extra complexity in a grower's mind around how do I make sure I'm covered and how do I make sure I've got product?"
According to Thomas Elders Markets analyst Andrew Whitelaw, the announcement by Russia was another "death by a thousand cuts" for Australian farmers.
"The China ban is worse for us," he said. "Russia's quota will mean hundreds or thousands of tonnes, not millions of tonnes lost to the global market, but it comes at a time when we need every tonne available.
"So it's another weight against the fertiliser price, which is a really big challenge for Australia."
Research by Mr Whitelaw shows Australian wheat farmers need 2.8 tonnes of wheat sold to buy a tonne of diammonium phosphate (DAP).
"The biggest risk for a grain farmer in the coming year is buying high-priced inputs but not having high-priced grain," he said.
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Palmer to swoop on angry Nationals voters snubbed by green shift
Make no mistake, seats based on coal production and farming will determine the outcome of the next election, writes Peter Gleeson, and Clive Palmer will spend millions trying to convince miners and farmers the National Party is selling them out.
Clive Palmer has his sights set well and truly on the National Party. The Queensland billionaire will ramp up political ads against Barnaby Joyce and his team in coming months. The campaign will centre on the Nationals being part of a Coalition Government which has committed to net zero emissions by 2050.
Palmer knows that mining and agriculture will be hardest hit by any “transitioning’’ of jobs to meet those 2050 renewable targets.
He will spend tens of millions of dollars trying to convince miners and farmers that the National Party is selling them out at a time when they are most exposed.
For the Nationals, the Palmer strategy – mirrored by Pauline Hanson and Bob Katter – is a massive threat to their ongoing electoral success.
The reality is that people like Senator Matt Canavan and Resources Minister Keith Pitt will not preside over the demise of these two industries.
They can’t, and they know it. This is where Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Joyce must use all of their political expertise and skill to ensure Palmer-Hanson-Katter does not cut the National Party’s voting grass.
Make no mistake, seats based on coal production and farming will determine the outcome of the next election.
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$33 million Grampians Peaks Trail opens but land clearing, tent site fees are questioned
The Grampians Peaks Trail is now open after six years of construction and more than $33 million of investment from the state and federal governments.
Dozens of construction workers have laid 97 kilometres of new trail along with accommodation huts, 11 hike-in campgrounds, and trailheads almost doubling the number of walking tracks in Victoria's fourth-largest national park.
A large portion of the remaining 63 kilometres of the track has been upgraded.
With the trail, Parks Victoria says it hopes to appeal to first-time and part-time walkers beyond the more hardcore regular visitors.
Mr Thompson has been a member of Friends of Grampians Gariwerd since the area was declared a national park in 1984.
The group works to involve the community in conserving the walking tracks and natural environment.
Construction has involved removing 14.4 hectares of native bushland, and it is this aspect of commercialising the trail that is the source of Mr Thompson's conflicted feelings and those of his colleagues.
"As an organisation, we believe commercial projects should always be outside the park and the park itself should be for conservation and education more than anything else," Mr Thompson says.
"The amount of clearing in the national park always raises concerns, but it's necessary to give people access so they can realise what a wonderful place we have."
Around 35,000 walkers are expected to visit the Grampians annually by 2025, adding more than $6 million to the local economy. The park is already the third-most visited in Victoria.
Victoria's Environment Minister Lily D'Ambrosio says the protections in the national park are "very strong".
"Working across jurisdictions, we've made sure any disturbance has been more than compensated for by offsets in other parts of the state, including ensuring we go for similar classes and values of vegetation," she says.
"We are investing in other areas of the park, through tourism [and] as a result of the bushfires."
In the 2020 Victorian budget, the state government committed $7.8 million to upgrade McKenzie Falls, another popular Grampians destination, and $5.8 million for the Brambuk Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Centre at Halls Gap.
Jobs creation
The trail runs for 160 kilometres from Mount Zero near Horsham in the north to Dunkeld in the south.
Halls Gap is the only town along the Peaks Trail, meaning hikers have nowhere to stock up on supplies for the first or last eight days of the full trip.
This has created a business opportunity locals are looking to take advantage of.
Adrian Manikas has set up the Grampians Peaks Walking Company to cater for the demand with food drops, adding to his existing rock climbing business in Halls Gap.
"We've got a strategy to hire a number of new staff over the next 12 months," he says.
"You do have to walk the trail from north to south if you are camping overnight, and there's a transport service based out of Halls that can take you to the start of the walk and then pick you up from the end and bring you back."
A registered Aboriginal group hopes the trail will lead to improved economic opportunities for Indigenous residents as well.
A bit rich?
Some hikers have raised concerns that the $47.70 per plot per night's camping fees make the 13-day hike too expensive.
But Parks Victoria chair John Pandazopoulos says it's an appropriate rate.
"With the licensed tour operators it's a higher price, and the whole pricing structure is about ensuring the cost of maintaining the track and servicing all the sites is recovered through the overnight charges," he says.
No less than 1,400 reservations have been made at Peaks Trail campgrounds since they opened on October 28.
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Consumer-minded parents treating schools like shops, says principal
When John Collier, the retiring head of St Andrew’s Cathedral School, began teaching 50 years ago, parents had nothing to do with their kids’ schooling. They didn’t even turn up for parent-teacher interviews. “In many ways they were mystery figures,” he said.
Now, they’re much more involved, and - mostly - that’s a good thing.
But some, Dr Collier says, are behaving like chauffers, cheerleaders and customers while treating schools as a product, rather than a community. At the same time, they’re abrogating their authority and letting children have their way too often.
While leading a previous school, a father told Dr Collier his son had decided to leave. The boy was in year 2. While Dr Collier supports consulting children, they “lack the wisdom of perspective that comes from life experience, so having them make all the decisions is sometimes not good,” he said.
Dr Collier - a graduate of James Ruse Agricultural High - began his career in the early 1970s, teaching English at western Sydney public schools. He has been a principal for 31 years.
In 2018 he famously sent a newsletter to parents saying too many of them had verbally abused, physically threatened or shouted at staff members, and some saw the relationship with teachers as a master-servant one because they were paying fees.
While he says most parents, the silent majority, are supportive, Dr Collier worries about high parental anxiety, and how it affects students. Too often, for example, parents will take children out of a school because of a minor incident.
“There’s an increasing consumer mentality among parents about education, so they can at times approach it much like they will approach buying a garment at a department store,” he said. “If they decide they don’t like it, they’ll take it back and go somewhere else.
“The difficulty is we are dealing with people and not garments, there are relationships that are severed when people move on. Sometimes I see children in middle school who are in their fifth school, it’s very disruptive to their education.
“It teaches them that the first time you see a problem, you flee.”
Dr Collier said too many parents also shielded their children from accountability and negative consequences, while trying to be their friend rather than their guide.
“Parents are less inclined to direct their children as society changes, and more inclined to give the child his or her way,” he said. “My argument is that children need guidance; they have age-appropriate friends. Their parents need to be prepared to make decisions that are unpopular but in the child’s best interest.
“What we sometimes see is parents who’ve taken on the role of cheerleader and chauffeur rather than authoritative parent. This means some parents will defend their child no matter what their child has done, and try to prevent appropriate accountability occurring.
“People take the view that their family is their fort ... and must be defended and advanced, an aspect of growing individualism. Understandably parents are focused right down on their child, whereas schools have to focus on everybody’s child.”
Parental pressure on teachers is only one of the aspects of teaching that have changed during Dr Collier’s career. The job is now far more demanding, salaries have not kept pace, and severe shortages are looming.
He said the teacher shortage was an “urgent” problem; the state’s 39 Anglican schools alone will need another 1700 teachers for new positions - plus replacements for those who retire or leave - in the next eight years.
The most effective way to increase the attractiveness of the profession would be to increase pay, Dr Collier said. “To do so will be expensive, not to do so is in other ways more expensive in terms of the future of the nation,” he said.
“We have a splendid system of education which is often unnecessarily deprecated, but there are structural problems in terms of salary and conditions for teachers, and governments need to deal with those.”
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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14 November, 2021
NSW Just Had A Major Change In Sexual Consent Law — Here's What That Means And What Comes Next
A lot will depend on what the courts make of this. A sexual encounter is often initiated by touch (kisses etc) rather than by words. So are such encounters now illegal?
Maybe if the law applied only to people who had not previously had sex, it might make some sense
Last night in the Legislative Assembly of NSW, a model of affirmative consent was approved. This means that NSW is one step closer to changing sexual consent laws for the better.
Under the new Bill, proposed by NSW Attorney-General and Minister for Prevention and Sexual Violence Mark Speakman, a person only gives consent if "at the time of the sexual activity, they freely and voluntarily agree to the sexual activity", and if it is communicated clearly.
Jenny Leong, the Greens spokesperson for Women's Rights in the NSW Parliament, excitedly announced that the State Parliament voted an "enthusiastic yes" to the Bill.
Jenny Leong and Lucinda Hoffman stand outside NSW Parliament representing sexual assault victims© Provided by Are Media Pty Ltd Jenny Leong and Lucinda Hoffman stand outside NSW Parliament representing sexual assault victims
What does the affirmative consent bill mean?
This Bill recognises that:
(i) every person has a right to choose whether to participate in a sexual activity,
(ii) consent to a sexual activity must not be presumed,
(iii) consensual sexual activity involves ongoing and mutual communication, decision-making and free and voluntary agreement between the persons participating in the sexual activity.
Jenny has been particularly instrumental in driving this change. This morning, in light of the news, she reflected on how revolutionary the Bill would be if it were to become law.
"The Bill puts victim-survivors at the heart of the law, and removes rape myths and assumptions from the Crimes Act. It removes the patriarchal assumption that anyone is entitled to sex without the active, enthusiastic consent of the other person," she said.
"This is a significant moment. This is a very significant reform," Ms Leong said. "It means that it can no longer be assumed that someone consents to having sex. The person who wants sex must be able to demonstrate that they took steps to ensure that the other person also enthusiastically consents to this," she continued.
What needs to happen now?
While this is a huge step forward, it's not the final step. Now, the Bill will be passed to the Legislative Council to be debated, either later this week or early next week. Once it passes through (assuming there are no amendments), the Bill will become state law.
If, however, the Legislative Council decides to make amendments, it will be passed back down to the Legislative Assembly to be debated again.
While the Bill is an incredibly important piece of the puzzle, Jenny reminds us that there are other crucial factors to consider.
"The law change in and of itself is not enough. Around that law reform there needs to be really strong education and training to ensure that the police, judiciary and agencies around the justice system are all aware of the reforms and are implementing them in line with those laws," she told ELLE this morning.
"We need to ensure that there is sufficient resourcing, policy changes and education in place, so that when this law comes into effect, we see a change in society," she continued.
how does affirmative consent differ to our current laws?
As the law currently stands, a person has committed sexual assault if they know the other person is not consenting, if they are "reckless as to whether" they consent, or there are no reasonable grounds for believing there was consent.
In 2017, NSW consent laws fell under intense scrutiny following the acquittal of a man accused of raping Saxon Mullins outside a Sydney nightclub. While the Judge agreed that Saxon had not consented to sexual intercourse, she ruled that her 'freeze response' had provided 'reasonable grounds' for the man to believe he had gained consent.
Following his acquittal, Saxon bravely came forward to tell her story and was the subject of a major Four Corners investigation. Here, after staying anonymous for the entirety of the trial, she told the entire world, "I am that girl." In doing so, she hoped to spark a wider conversation about the current consent laws in NSW, and how they were failing sexual assault victims.
Over the past few years, we have seen a major societal shift in our approach to sexual consent and the way in which we understand it, which means our laws need to be updated to reflect those attitudes. The affirmative consent Bill is a pivotal change, which if passed, will be instrumental in ensuring that cases like Saxon's do not happen again.
It is hoped that it will also encourage victims of sexual assault to come forward and report their experiences with the knowledge that they will receive a just outcome. Our low reporting rates are a reflection of the mistrust people have in the current system, and it's something we desperately need to change.
If one thing is clear after last night's decision, it's that change is coming. It may have been a long time coming, but it's finally here. And, though they may not be inside parliament, we can never forget that it is the incredibly brave work of sexual assault survivors and advocates that continues to drive this change forward.
"While it's important to acknowledge the Attorney General in bringing the Bill, and the multi-partisan support for this Bill — it is critical that we acknowledge that credit for this reform sits with some incredibly strong survivor-advocates, feminists, experts and activists who have been through so much and who have never given up — and in particular survivor-advocate Saxon Mullins," Jenny said, in a statement this morning.
For now, we will patiently await the decision of the Legislative Council as the Bill moves into their hands, and soon, the interest of victims and survivors will be at the centre of our consent laws.
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Pauline Hanson “mayhem” for Morrison over vaccine mandates
One Nation’s Pauline Hanson is threatening to deliver “mayhem” to the Morrison Government’s agenda in the final weeks of the year, revealing they will vote against all its legislation unless it takes action to oppose vaccine mandates.
The move will make it extremely difficult for the government to pass any legislation before the end of the year, when it will be looking to secure a win as it heads into campaign mode.
Promising to “cause so much mayhem” in parliament for Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Senator Hanson will on Friday declare the bold power play.
In direct reaction to the Queensland Government announcing restrictions on unvaccinated people from December 17, Senator Hanson is demanding the Morrison Government take action to ban any rules she says discriminate against unvaccinated people.
“We’re not anti-vaxxers we’re freedom of choice. Scott Morrison says he believes in freedom of choice, well, he’s a coward,” Senator Hanson said.
“I’m going to cause so much mayhem in that parliament, as Scott Morrison is doing to the Australian people.”
The vote boycott means the government will require the support of all three remaining crossbenchers, Jacquie Lambie, Rex Patrick and Stirling Griff, to pass any contested legislation.
It comes on the back of one of its own Senators, the LNP’s Gerard Rennick, announcing he will abstain on all government legislation unless certain steps are taken regarding vaccine mandates.
One of the key pieces of contested legislation coming up includes requiring voters to bring identification to the ballot box, or make a declaration vote.
Senator Hanson said she supported the proposed law, but she would still vote against it if needed. “We might lose that but this is a bigger issue to me,” she said.
One Nation has a proposed bill before the Senate opposing “discrimination on the basis of Covid-19 vaccination”.
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Australia’s only working carbon capture and storage project fails to meet target
Australia’s only working carbon capture and storage project in Western Australia has failed to meet its target to lock away greenhouse gases from a major gas processing plant.
Chevron, an America-based multinational oil and gas company, was given a target by the WA government to capture at least 80% of the CO2 that would otherwise be released at its Gorgon LNG project.
But the company has said it fell short of the target by 5.23Mt and will buy the equivalent amount in carbon credits while also investing $40m in unspecified “low carbon energy projects” in the state.
Based on today’s prices for carbon offsets – which analysts say are rising – Chevron would have to pay between $78m and $194m.
Chevron announced last month it made more than $8bn profit in the most recent financial quarter.
The Morrison government is prioritising CCS technology as a way to lower emissions, even though its impact after decades of promises and about $4bn in Australian taxpayer cash has been marginal.
Environmental campaigners said the shortfall in emissions reductions at Gorgon showed CCS should not be relied on as justification for allowing fossil fuel production to increase.
Chevron has not said what kind of accredited carbon offsets it will buy, but analysts told the Guardian the cost to Chevron could range from $15 per tonne for some overseas credits to as high as $37 per tonne for Australian credits.
Calculated over a five-year average with the clock starting in July 2016, Chevron said it had missed the 80% target because of technical problems that delayed the CO2 injection into geological formations under Barrow Island.
Since injection started in August 2019, the company says it had captured and stored 5.5Mt of CO2.
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International students to return to NSW
Fully vaccinated international students entering NSW from overseas will not have to quarantine when they return to the state next month.
The first chartered plane of returning international students will touch down in Sydney International Airport on December 6.
The flight will carry about 250 students from 15 countries including Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, China and Canada.
A second flight transporting international students from South Asia and India is also scheduled.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said the decision to scrap quarantine for fully vaccinated international students was a “significant milestone” for the state.
“They don’t just make a significant contribution to our economy but international students play a role in our culture and contribute to our community and lifestyle,” Mr Perrottet said.
“I can’t wait to welcome back such an important part of our community.”
It came as NSW recorded 250 new locally acquired cases of Covid-19 and no deaths on Saturday as the state’s vaccination figures continue to rise.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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12 November, 2021
Last homes in asbestos-riddled Wittenoom to be demolished, but some want to stay
Nobody seems to be taking into account what it means that there are elderly people still living there. So if asbestos is so bad for you how come? Shouldn't they all be dead?
What it shows is that the toxicity of asbestos is very low. You only get ill if you have been breathing in a lot of it for many years. So the hysteria about it is greatly exaggerated. Asbestos products in peoples homes ("fibro") are no threat to health at all
The former asbestos mining town of Wittenoom has claimed many lives, but it is not enough to deter some who proudly call it home.
After years of compensation offers, the WA government will turn to forcibly removing the remaining properties, under a bill expected to pass Parliament.
It is hoped the clearing of the former town site will reduce the attraction for visitors, who ignore significant health warnings of asbestos fibres on the ground and in the air at Wittenoom. Just 12km away lies three million tonnes of asbestos tailings.
Peter Heyward moved to the area in the 90s and said he knew of the dangers but enjoyed the lifestyle. "This is just beautiful living here," he said.
"Looking at the mountains, you get the view of the savanna and you're right beside a gorge that's got water all year round."
Long-term resident Lorraine Thomas said she had options if she was forced to leave, but she hoped to live out her life in Wittenoom. "This is home, and I haven't got anywhere else that I've found in this state or in this country that I'd like to call home," she said.
"They can't move the hills, the whole area… I love the weather. "No person can take that from me."
The WA government's planned eviction and demolition would come with an undisclosed amount of compensation.
Mario Hartmann is one of the residents who recently took up an offer to hand over his property, but it has not kept him away. "It's too cold down south so I come in winter to enjoy the warm weather," he said.
Tourists warned to stay away
With more West Australians exploring their own state during the pandemic's travel restrictions, Mr Hartmann noticed a surge in visitors.
"This year I've never seen that many people come here, some days you would have 50, 60 cars going out [to the gorge and the asbestos tailings]," he said.
It is an alarming figure for Curtin University Associate Professor Alison Reid, who has examined the health impact of the mine.
"People [who visit Wittenoom] are putting themselves unnecessarily at risk," she said. "We know that the risk of mesothelioma [a rare cancer] can occur with low exposure, so I think in that case it should be closed."
At least 1,200 former Wittenoom residents and workers have died from lung cancer and mesothelioma, according to a database maintained by UWA's Occupational Respiratory Epidemiology Group.
"The Flying Doctors used to hone in on the town of Wittenoom from the blue haze on the horizon and that was the dust…that's how the workers and the people in the town got exposed, through that dust. "It has made Western Australia have the highest rates of mesothelioma in the world."
The area is no longer on official maps, it was declared a contaminated site and the state government have repeatedly warned the public against visiting.
Lands Minister Tony Buti said visitors posed a risk to the wider public because cars could spread particles beyond the area.
"There is no question that this area is one of the saddest chapters in WA history," he said. "However, we must be realistic, and the fact is it's unlikely Wittenoom will ever again be a safe place to live or visit."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-12/wittenoom-closure/100599722
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AstraZeneca’s new Covid treatment: what is it and how does it work?
Australia’s drugs regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), has granted “provisional determination” to pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca for a long-acting antibody cocktail which has shown promise in preventing Covid-19 in adults.
Provisional determination is an early step in the drugs approval process and means AstraZeneca can now submit further data to the TGA from human trials about how the treatment works and its safety. Once the TGA has scrutinised the data, and if it is satisfied with it, it may grant Evusheld “provisional approval” for use in Australia in limited circumstances. Further data must be collected and given to the TGA even if this occurs.
This treatment consists of two laboratory-made antibodies, tixagevimab and cilgavimab. These antibodies bind to the spike protein of the virus, stopping the virus from entering the body’s cells and causing an infection.
Because each of the antibodies attach to different parts of the protein, using them in combination may be more effective than using either alone. It is also hoped this will offer good protection against variants, since the virus would have to mutate in multiple ways to escape both antibodies’ actions.
Evusheld is being considered for use as a Covid-19 preventive in Australians aged 18 years and older. In August, AstraZeneca released the results of a trial of the treatment involving 5,197 participants from the US, UK, Spain, France and Belgium who did not have Covid-19. Seventy-five per cent of participants had comorbidities, including medical conditions that often mean vaccination is weak or ineffective. Two-thirds of participants received Evusheld, and the rest were given a placebo.
The trial found Evusheld reduced the risk of developing symptomatic Covid-19 by 77% compared to the placebo. There were no cases of severe Covid-19 or related deaths in those given Evusheld. In the placebo group, there were three cases of severe Covid-19, which included two deaths.
The results now need to be replicated more widely in further trials, which is why regulators such as the TGA require AstraZeneca to submit ongoing data.
Is it a vaccine?
No. A vaccine trains the body’s immune system to respond to the virus if a person becomes infected in the future. Evusheld provides antibodies directly to the body via two intra-muscular injections administered consecutively. It immediately targets and neutralises the virus, preventing the virus from entering cells and causing an infection in the first place.
If approved, Evusheld will be the first long-acting antibody available for Covid-19 prevention in vulnerable populations who are unable to mount an adequate immune response to the virus from vaccination alone, for example people with cancer, and some elderly people.
Associate Prof Nada Hamad, a haematologist in Sydney, said Evusheld and similar treatments under development are designed to fill a gap left by vaccines, and by antibody treatments like Sotrovimab.
Sotrovimab is given to people already diagnosed with Covid-19 who are at high risk of developing severe disease. Sotrovimab needs to be administered early after someone is diagnosed to be effective.
“But Sotrovimab is very short-acting,” Hamad said. “It just lasts as we wait for the virus to dissipate. Once you get over the virus, the treatment doesn’t hang around in your body.
“Evusheld is a longer-acting antibody, and the hope is it will prevent the infection.”
Clinical trials to date show Evusheld may provide six to 12 months of protection from the virus. This is significantly shorter than vaccines. Even though the protection offered by vaccines does slowly wane over time, they are still effective at preventing severe disease, death and hospitalisation months down the track.
“Evusheld and similar treatments being examined should be seen as a major advancement in protecting the very vulnerable, but not a vaccine alternative,” Hamad said.
Evusheld also takes longer to administer, is more expensive, needs to be given by a trained doctor or nurse, and patients may need longer monitoring afterwards than the 15 minutes required for a vaccine. It is not something that can be quickly given in a pharmacy or hub, so it is not ideal for widespread, fast rollout, Hamad said.
Plus, further data from ongoing trials is still needed, while the efficacy and safety of the vaccines are now well known.
Evusheld has also shown promise in preventing severe disease when given early as a treatment to those infected with Covid-19, similar to Sotrovimab.
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Taxpayer-funded 'how to be woke' courses for public servants are slammed for 'teaching Australians to hate white people'
Taxpayer-funded courses for public servants in New South Wales on 'how to be woke' have been slammed as an extravagant waste of money by critics.
State One Nation leader Mark Latham said the 'SBS Inclusion Program' which teaches about 'intersex inclusion' and 'unconscious bias' is nothing more than 'political indoctrination'.
Numerous government departments have been shelling out tens of thousands of dollars to participate in the programs, with the NSW Treasury spending $56,000 and the Department of Communities and Justice handing over $22,000.
Public broadcaster SBS started the courses in 2019 to guide workplaces on cultural diversity. The training includes sections on gender equality, LGBTQI issues, disability awareness and Indigenous culture.
But Mr Latham argues the courses are 'designed to make participants hate Australia and white people in particular'.
'They depict our country as inherently racist, sexist and homophobic,' he said. 'It's not about inclusion at all. It's about division, propaganda and political indoctrination.
'It says a lot about how the NSW Government wastes taxpayers' money on this stuff, instead of having public servants get on with their day jobs in delivering basic services.'
Australian Taxpayer Alliance spokesman Gabe Buckley also took aim at the 'wasteful' spending. 'Not only is it a gross misuse of taxpayer funds, it is inappropriate for the government to indoctrinate a worldview through propaganda,' he told the Daily Telegraph.
But the NSW Treasury dismissed the criticism saying it gives public servants a better understanding of inclusion and the diverse communities they work for.
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Simply foul and morally vacuous: if Keating had his way, we’d cast aside 24 million free people
Former prime minister Paul Keating has every right to express his long-held sympathies towards China and to share his views about how Australia should respond. But we should be equally frank about how misguided and dangerous they are.
Misguided because Keating’s assessment of Australia’s security outlook in the Indo-Pacific does not reflect the reality of the deteriorating strategic environment of the region. And dangerous because if we were to follow Keating’s advice it would be a recipe for a weaker Australia that is more isolated from our closest allies in an increasingly uncertain era.
When a great power’s words and actions align, it’s wise to pay close attention to them. Xi Jinping has vowed to “reunify” China with Taiwan as part of its “grand national rejuvenation” by 2049, promising to do this by force if peaceful means fail.
Given China’s increasingly frequent incursions into Taiwan’s airspace, in concert with its illegal militarisation of the South China Sea and its rapid expansion of its military capability, it is cavalier and irresponsible to not take them incredibly seriously.
In downplaying the likelihood and consequences of a Chinese military takeover of Taiwan, Keating claimed Taiwan was “not a vital Australian interest” and that Australia should therefore not be drawn into military conflict over Taiwan. This is a morally vacuous position which casts aside the aspirations and desires of 24 million free people, whose self-determination would be wiped out in the event of a Chinese annexation of the island.
It is also gravely detrimental to Australia’s national interest, which lies in deterring a Chinese invasion and preventing conflict from being initiated in the first place – not just for the sake of the people of Taiwan, but for every US ally in the region and for the rules-based order, from which we have all prospered in the post-war era.
Military conflict would indeed be disastrous for Australia and the region, but if we followed Keating’s advice and signalled that the fate of Taiwan was unimportant to us, we would increase its likelihood.
As history shows, weakness can be provocative. Appeasement has often led to miscalculation which causes far more serious and costly conflict.
Instead, we need to stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies by contributing to the collective deterrence against military action initiated by China.
Deterrence requires two things: capability and intent. The $270 billion we will spend over the next decade acquiring new defence capability, the AUKUS agreement and our planned acquisition of nuclear submarines demonstrates Australia is serious about contributing jointly with our allies in the region to that task.
Equally important is being clear about our intent. This is a generational challenge that will span governments of both persuasions, so both the Coalition and Labor must be clear that we would not welcome a military solution to China’s cross-straits ambitions. By raising doubts about the commitment of his side of politics to that task, Keating has done a grave disservice to our national security that only a clear and robust denunciation by Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese and his senior colleagues can address.
Keating’s now regular public insults towards our closest regional partners Japan and India are disrespectful and deserve unambiguous condemnation, particularly from his former Labor colleagues who continue to so publicly venerate him and his legacy. His insults of journalists and the media for simply doing their jobs is tiresome and unwarranted. His attacks on the professional and dedicated public servants in our intelligence community is appalling and unjustified.
And his false moral equivalence between the United States (an imperfect liberal democracy but one that is open about its faults and seeks to address them) and China (an authoritarian regime widely accused by human rights groups of systemic abuses and even genocide) is simply foul.
Our security and that of our partners in the region depends on an active and engaged US which is uniquely capable of shouldering the immense burden of upholding an international order. That order respects the rights of individuals and sovereignty of all states, no matter how small.
If Keating had his way and the US bowed out of the Indo-Pacific in favour of China, we would live to regret it.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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11 November, 2021
Junee Licorice and Chocolate Factory dumps ‘Bottle of Boobs’ product after claims of sexism
A popular organic chocolatier has scrapped its “Bottle of Boobs” product after activists accused the NSW company of being sexist and dehumanising women.
Junee Licorice and Chocolate Factory has been selling containers of the chocolate – depicting disembodied women’s breasts – for about 14 years, but after Collective Shout began a social media campaign this week, the product was quickly removed.
Collective Shout spokeswoman Caitlin Roper told NCA NewsWire the chocolatier had reduced women to sexualised parts “for literal consumption”.
“This is an example of everyday sexism and the casual dehumanisation of women,” she said.
“It’s not about offence … it’s about the known, established harms of objectifying women.”
Junee managing director Neil Druce told NCA NewsWire the company donated a portion of the profits to breast cancer charities.
He said it first started when women raising money for breast cancer awareness approached the company about making the chocolates, which they were happy to do.
“Our staff followed it up and made it happen,” he said.
The chocolates were sold all-year round, with a small percentage of sales going to charity, he added.
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Zoe's Law bill introduced to NSW Parliament to punish crimes that cause loss of unborn child
A bill proposing harsher penalties for crimes that result in the loss of an unborn baby has been introduced to the NSW Parliament.
Zoe's law has been controversial among pro-choice groups, who have argued it could be used to weaken abortion rights
The legislation, known as Zoe's Law, has been 12 years in the making.
It was first proposed after a drunk driver hit Brodie Donegan, who was 32 weeks pregnant, and caused the loss of her foetus, Zoe, on Christmas Day in 2009.
"The police came and spoke to me about the charges that would be laid, and I just didn't understand how my daughter, who didn't survive, wasn't being accounted for in the charges, that she would just be listed in my injuries," she said.
"We wanted a separate bill to reflect and acknowledge the loss of the child rather than just be counted as an injury to the mother."
Under current laws, the loss of a foetus through a criminal act is considered grievous bodily harm to a pregnant woman. There is no separate offence for the unborn baby.
Since 2014, there have been multiple attempts to introduce Zoe's Law to parliament without success but today, during the second reading of the bill, NSW Attorney General Mark Speakman said he was confident the current iteration struck the right balance.
"Each amendment has been carefully developed to take into account the range of views held by stakeholders and the community," he said.
"They acknowledge the gravity of the loss of a foetus without abrogating ... the rights of the pregnant woman."
He apologised to Ms Donegan for the time it had taken for the law to be introduced.
"As a legislator, as a minister, I am part of the collective responsibility for the delay. I apologise," he said.
Zoe's Law has been controversial among pro-choice groups, who have argued it could be used to weaken abortion rights and affect access to late-term abortions.
Mr Speakman said that was not possible in the bill's current form.
"This bill does not in any way affect a woman's ability to obtain a lawful abortion under existing NSW legislation," he said.
The most significant parts of the bill propose adding two offences to the Crimes Act, which each add up to three years onto a sentence where a woman has been killed or inflicted with grievous bodily harm and loses her pregnancy.
In both cases, the foetus must have reached at least 20 weeks gestation or weigh 400 grams.
Other proposed amendments to the bill would allow the name of the unborn baby to be included on an indictment when charges are laid.
They would also allow families to claim funeral costs and include a provision for family members of a woman who has lost a foetus of any gestational age as a result of a criminal act to provide victim impact statements.
Ms Donegan said prior to the the driver being sentenced, she had been the only one allowed to provide a victim impact statement to the courts.
"It's a loss that affects everyone in the family," she said.
She said she hoped to finally get some closure on a difficult chapter in her life.
"I think I'll rest a bit easier just knowing there's something there to help anybody who might find themselves in the same situation."
Mr Speakman said the NSW government was also developing a scheme to provide bereavement payments to families who lose a foetus due to third party criminal acts.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-10/zoes-law-bill-introduced-to-nsw-parliament/100608538
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Scott Morrison says ‘can-do capitalism’ will solve climate change
Scott Morrison says the Glasgow climate summit had marked a “passing of the baton” from government-imposed targets and timetables to private enterprise and consumer-led solutions as the world’s leading economies seek to become carbon neutral by mid-century.
Launching a new fund for fledging companies aiming to develop emerging low-emission technologies, Mr Morrison said the biggest change since the Paris agreement was struck in 2015 had been $100 trillion of private capital which was “pouring like a waterfall into climate technology solutions”.
He said he believed climate change would ultimately be solved by “can-do capitalism; not don’t-do governments” who were “seeking to control people’s lives and tell them what to do” with interventionist regulation and taxes that would force up the cost of living and force businesses to close.
“The world does not need to be punished for climate change, we just need to fix it. And it will be fixed painstakingly, step-by-step, by the entrepreneurs, by scientists, by technologists, by innovators, by industrialists, by financiers, by risk-takers,” he told the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry breakfast in Melbourne.
“That’s the Australian way. That’s the way I’ve been championing on the world stage. And, you know, like-minded capitalist market-based economics should be doing the same.”
Sharpening his attack lines on the opposition ahead of the election, Mr Morrison said after two years of the pandemic he believed Australians were now over governments telling them what to do.
He said he had imposed restrictions on Australians along with state governments was necessary at the time, but it was important to let those who drive the economy be able to do that again as soon as possible.
Mr Morrison told hundreds of people who gathered for the annual business breakfast that Australia was now entering a “new energy economy”, with countries with net zero commitments covering more than 80 per cent of world’s GDP.
“And 90 per cent of Australia’s exports are to countries with net zero commitments. That of course is going to have an impact here in Australia. These are decisions being taken in other countries,” he said.
“We can’t ignore the reality of this. We cannot just sort of wish it away.”
He defended criticism from other world leaders and his domestic opponents by refusing to sign up for hard deadlines to phase out coal-fired power, saying the summit reinforced his view that Australia must chart its own unique path for achieving net zero emissions by 2050.
Mr Morrison said Australia’s geography, demography, resources and export profile all meant the nation’s pathway would be quite different from relatively small, densely populated, services-based advanced economies in Europe.
“Just because it works in the North Atlantic doesn’t mean it’s going to work in the Indo-Pacific, in countries in the same way like Australia and certainly not in the developing countries of our region who we do business with every day,” he said.
“This is why we will continue to join others in opposing prescriptive deadlines for phasing out particular fuels or gutting our agricultural sector – demands that are disconnected from realities, our industries, and our people, particularly in rural and regional Australia.”
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Entrepreneur Dick Smith says year 12 marks do not determine success
He's right. There is very little connection between academic course content and skills needed in life and employment
Famous entrepreneur Dick Smith told 2GB that he received terrible grades at school but still managed to go on to become highly successful.
“I was absolutely hopeless. I came 45th out of 47th in the class. I always thought I was hopeless at school but I managed to do OK,” Mr Smith said.
Mr Smith told parents and grandparents not to worry about their children or grandchildren who did not perform well at school, insisting there are many opportunities for success outside of the traditional path of a university education.
“If they're no good at schoolwork don’t worry too much,” he said.
“I say to everyone, get as many qualification as you can – that's good – but there's still potential to open your own business. “This is a great country and you can still do well even if you can’t get those qualifications.”
Mr Smith became one of the richest men in Australia after he successfully grew his electronics business from $610 in 1968 to $1.4bn in 2014.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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10 November, 2021
Well done! Australia has been ranked last for its climate policies behind Russia and Brazil
Like most conservatives wordwide, Australian conservatives don't think global warming is a serious threat. So our conservative PM just puts out flim-flam policies about it, with minimal damage to the economy
But Australia is not alone in walking on both sides of the street. Germany claims great climate virtue but is busily building coal-fired power stations -- including brown coal, the most polluting coal of all. Everybody else is supposed to be phasing out coal. I wonder why Australia's coal exports are at a record high?
Australia's climate policies have been ranked last out of 64 countries and the nation is among the worst offenders for emissions, renewables and energy use.
The country slipped four spots to 58th overall place in the latest Climate Change Performance Index unveiled at the COP26 summit in Glasgow.
Australia ranked last among 64 countries behind the likes of Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Brazil in terms of climate policy.
The country's highest ranking was 52 for renewables, followed by a score of 54 for energy use and 56 for greenhouse gas emissions.
The index criticised Australia for bringing to Glasgow a 2050 target of net zero emissions that involved no new policies or plans.
Its 'technology investment roadmap' was deemed insufficient to decarbonise the economy, cut fossil fuel use and promote renewables.
'This failure to promote renewables ... is exacerbated by inadequate infrastructure investment despite subsidies for fossil fuel production and promotion of a 'gas-led' economic recovery following COVID-19,' the ranking said.
'The country's international standing has been damaged by climate denialism by politicians, refusal to increase ambition and refusal to recommit to international green finance mechanisms.'
The annual ranking designed by German environmentalists has compared the performance of countries responsible for 90 per cent of global emissions since 2005 across four key categories.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has emphasised Australia's 'technology not taxes' approach to climate change led by private investment over government leavers.
The latest policy is a $250million 'future fuels' plan aimed at getting up to 1.7 million electric and hybrid vehicles on Australian roads by 2030.
'It's the private sector that now is responding to consumers, they're responding to what people want,' Mr Morrison said.
'Governments don't have to step in and tell everybody what to do anymore when it comes to this, if they ever did.'
The plan was criticised by the electric vehicle industry for leaving out tax incentives or fuel efficiency standards.
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We have some yawning gaps in balancing the history we teach
There has been much throwing about of brains in the review of the Australian national history curriculum. The federal Minister of Education, Alan Tudge, has declared that the draft consultation curriculum taught students to suspect Australia’s Liberal democracy: that teaching ANZAC Day as a “contested” idea is downright un-Australian, and that Christianity and liberal democracy should be far more emphasised.
Professor of History at the ANU, Frank Bongiorno, dismissed Tudge with a “gigantic yawn” in this masthead on Saturday. ”Any well-educated history student would know that … he is simply wrong. The origins of democracy lie in classical and pagan Greece, not Christianity or the West, both later inventions.”
As Australia’s pre-eminent historian of Australian politics, this kind of easy contempt, frankly, is below Professor Bongiorno. Christianity and the West do lie at the origins of democracy, and he knows it. Pagan Greek philosophy, Roman administration, and Christian spirituality combined to form the engine room of Western European history.
Over many centuries and contexts, the tiny Athenian 5th Century BC experiment was spun into modern democracy, through, for example, the Reformation, the English, French and American Revolutions, the Clapham sect reformers, the independence movements in the Central and South Americas, the struggle for female enfranchisement, among many other examples. After its short-lived origins in pagan Greece, radical Christianity and its various ideological offspring lay at the base of most of it.
That aside, however, he and many historians attacking Tudge’s complaints – particularly those who have never set foot in a primary school – have missed the larger point. The Australian Curriculum is not a tutorial for clever history undergraduates but mandatory school education: millions of small children, and their families, are compulsorily involved.
Consequently, this has far less to do with the theory of history than the theory and practice of mass education and civics. Unlike former prime minister John Howard, Tudge’s complaints about the curriculum have not peddled a particular theory of history, but relate to an imbalance between the big social ideologies that inevitably bump into each other in every mandatory curriculums, in every school subject.
In the past 50 years, all Australian curriculums – across all disciplines – have been framed by three ideologies. First, skills: that students graduate as economically useful. Second, cultural heritage: passing on through the generations “the best and the good”. Finally, and most recently, emancipation: to equip students to question and oppose dominant, oppressive power structures.
All three are important in a liberal democracy. Cut emancipation and the marginal are crushed; reduce skills and everyone runs out of money; trim cultural heritage and everyone forgets what is best, good, honorable and beautiful. The key to a successful curriculum in a liberal democracy is a judicious balance between all three.
There is much good about the recent history consultation drafts, particularly in teaching history as a disciplinary foundation, and especially the introduction of “Deep Time” First Nations Australia.
However, it is also clear that a balance between curriculum ideologies was lost. The relentless interrogation of European history, and Australia’s colonial cultural heritage, belonged squarely in the emancipation camp. This was mostly characterised by the depiction of First Nations Australians post-colonisation, almost exclusively, as a devastated, oppressed minority. The sheer volume of the material, inevitably, would displace the time for children to study other basic facts about European and colonial history, including, by the way, the incredibly rich post-colonial heritage of First Nations Australians, from first-contact to the present day, that is far more complex, diverse and proud than just that of a moribund, weakened people.
True enough, this oppression happened, it was abominable, and one of the original sins in our national story. The teaching of mandatory history is a necessary vehicle to propel us towards the great social goal of redemption and restoration.
However, teaching small children to relentlessly question a heritage about which they have not been substantially taught is like creating a literary critic who hasn’t read anything – the worst kind of critic. When emancipation drowns out cultural heritage in a curriculum, our children are consigned to spin round and round in an echo chamber of unresolvable complaint, never able to find solid footing on what is useful, what is good, and what is true. Such imbalance does not make us freer, and it certainly doesn’t make us kinder.
Bongiorno is right that the understanding, publication and teaching of history has different perspectives. This is something children must be taught over time: to rationally question and test the veracity of sources, and the merits of interpretations.
However, for children to learn history primarily about one perspective – that all power is suspect – is just one of many theories of history. Mandatory history as a vehicle for intelligently celebrating national heritage, is also a widespread, defensible educational approach. However, without emancipation in a curriculum, the teaching of national pride through the history classroom produces monsters. The balance is all.
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Australian regulator requests information from Pfizer after medical journal alleges contractor ‘falsified’ safety data
Australia’s medicines regulator has sought additional information from Pfizer after an investigation by the British Medical Journal alleged serious issues with a small number of its vaccine safety trials, including claims of “falsified data” and slowness following up on adverse reactions.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has stressed that Pfizer’s vaccine is “highly safe and effective”, and that Australians “should not be concerned about the issues raised in the article”.
The BMJ’s report, published last week, centred on a former employee of Ventavia Research Group, a Texas-based contractor involved in the phase-three trials for Pfizer’s Covid vaccine last year.
According to Brook Jackson, a former regional director at Ventavia, the company “falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events”, the BMJ reported.
The whistleblower, who provided the BMJ with “dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings and emails”, recounted that she repeatedly notified the company of the problems before finally emailing a complaint to the US Food and Drug Administration on September 25, 2020.
She was sacked the same day, with the company saying in her separation letter she was “not a good fit”.
In a statement to The Conversation, Ventavia said Ms Jackson was employed for “approximately two weeks” in September of 2020 and “no part of her job responsibilities concerned the clinical trials at issue”.
Ventavia said the “same accusations” were investigated and “determined to be unsubstantiated” last year.
Pfizer’s full phase-three trial involved about 44,000 participants across 153 sites. Ventavia enrolled more than 1000 participants at three sites – or only around 2 per cent of the total.
The drug company made no mention of the alleged problems at the Ventavia sites in a briefing document submitted to an FDA advisory committee meeting on December 10, 2020.
The FDA, which never audited Ventavia after receiving the complaint, issued its emergency use authorisation for the vaccine the next day.
A Pfizer Australia spokeswoman declined to comment on the BMJ report.
News.com.au understands the TGA has contacted Pfizer to further clarify the issues raised, although given the allegations only pertain to 2 per cent of the trial population, the overall results are not expected to be impacted.
“The Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine is highly safe and effective and has been approved for use in nearly 100 countries and also approved by the World Health Organisation,” a TGA spokeswoman said.
“Australians who have received the Pfizer vaccine should not be concerned about the issues raised in the BMJ article.”
She noted that “the safety and efficacy of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine demonstrated in clinical trials has been thoroughly substantiated by real-world use in many millions of people worldwide”.
“The benefits of vaccination are clear and not in dispute,” she said.
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More love for Communist China from Keating
Leftists usually have a soft spot for Communist regimes: "Just Leftists in a hurry". The American Left's love affair with the Cuban tyranny never seems to wane
Former prime minister Paul Keating has begun his National Press Club appearance by lashing Australia’s foreign policy on China, saying the country is “at odds with its geography and has lost its way”.
He said Australia should be looking to its immediate north, Indonesia, to engage in the region, rather than the “Quad” alliance with the US, India and Japan.
The former Labor leader said India would never be engaged in a conflict in the South China Sea, and Japan should have reached a point of accommodation with China “years ago”.
“No, they are hanging out for some Quad which has us in it, the Americans, the Indians in it… This is the kind of hopeless environment we are in.”
He said China’s economy would be 250 per cent the size of the US in the years ahead, but the US was refusing to acknowledge China’s preeminence in East Asia.
Mr Keating said the problem with Australia’s foreign policy was that it is informed by the “spooks” - referring to intelligence and security agencies.
“It’s informed, our foreign policy debate now in Canberra, is informed by the security agencies.
“You are not getting a macro view of what China really is.”
Mr Keating’s views about China are, of course, well known.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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9 November, 2021
Government commits to expanding electric vehicle charging stations but no subsidies to increase uptake
The Prime Minister says he will not do anything to force Australians into electric cars, as the government announces its new strategy for zero emissions vehicles.
Instead, the federal government will partner with the private sector to fund 50,000 charging stations in Australian homes, in a bid to encourage more people to buy electric vehicles.
The long-awaited Future Fuels strategy does not include subsidies, tax incentives, sales targets or minimum fuel emission standards that would make electric vehicles more affordable though, according to industry groups.
However, it is a pivot from the government's 2019 assertion that Labor's electric vehicle policy was "a war on the weekend".
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he had no problem with electric vehicles, but he opposed governments telling people what to do.
Mr Morrison said customers should be able to lead the pace of change to electric vehicles, but his government would make sure the infrastructure was there to support them.
"Reducing the total cost of ownership through subsidies would not represent value for the taxpayer, particularly as industry is rapidly working through technological developments to make battery electric vehicles cheaper," the government's strategy said.
It instead aligns with the "technology not taxes" mantra that underpins the government's broader approach to emissions reductions.
The strategy includes expanding the Future Fuels Fund to a total of $250 million of taxpayers' funds, which the government estimates will create 2,600 jobs over three years.
It does not say exactly how or where those jobs will be created but does point to employment opportunities through supply chains and manufacturing needed to sustain an electric vehicle market.
The government argues its investment will help ensure companies do not concentrate charging stations in inner-city areas, which may dissuade people in outer suburban or rural areas from purchasing an electric vehicle.
"We will not be forcing Australians out of the car they want to drive or penalising those who can least afford it through bans or taxes," Mr Morrison said.
"Instead, the strategy will work to drive down the cost of low and zero-emission vehicles and enhance consumer choice."
The federal government will ask state and territory energy ministers to incentivise the use of smart chargers in homes and work with energy regulators to ensure the electricity grid can handle more batteries
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Another QBCC horror story proves costly for small business
This time it’s another small contractor who can’t claw back about $1 million it is owed because they say the QBCC process is flawed.
At the heart of the problem for Civex is what they term a lack of action by the relevant Minister, Mick de Brenni.
They say they have asked for a dozen meetings with Mr De Brenni, but have had no positive response.
Civex performed civil electrical services on the Federal Government’s upgrade of Amberley Airbase in 2017, as a subcontractor.
Civex was terminated by the main contractor after they submitted a Notice of Intent to apply to the QBCC for adjudication for unpaid invoices.
Civex has been chasing what it is owed ever since, spending almost $1 million in legal fees.
Civex wrote to Mr De Brenni, saying the investigation had “failed miserably’’.
“Our first stop was the QBCC adjudication process,’’ the Civex letter said.
“We had 20 days from the day payment was due from Fredon to raise an adjudication claim. Because in Fredon’s contracts they had two conflicting reference dates, the adjudicator defaulted to legislation that says we “should” have been paid 10 days from invoice, not 30 as was in the contract and had been in action from the start.
“Which means that we only had 20 days from the 10 to submit our application rather than 20 days from 30.
“So the day that we believed Fredon were due to pay our invoices was the last day for submitting our adjudication application.
“We lost the adjudication and had to pay $15K in fees for the privilege of the QBCC adjudicator stating that we were out of time in submitting our documents so he couldn’t adjudicate.
“Nothing to do with us not being paid, legislation being breached. - a legal technical loophole that Fredon deliberately exploited to defeat our application.
“We’ve had two more applications with the QBCC on other matters and they failed us both times - so now we know to never go near the QBCC adjudication process because it is not there to help subbies. It should be disbanded.
“We put in a monies owed complaint against the contractor which went nowhere because we are in court.
“Circular conversation - they breached legislation to not pay us, QBCC failed us so we had no option but to go to court, yet once in court they cannot enforce any action regarding the legislative breach. It is a closed loop with no help for the subbie.’’
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Tasmanian Education Department shielded paedophiles, disbelieved students, inquiry finds
The Tasmanian Education Department's predominant response to child sexual abuse complaints has for decades been to ignore students, shield abusers and protect itself from legal, financial and reputational risks, an inquiry has found.
The inquiry found "very recent" examples of student concerns and complaints that have been assumed to be untrue
The Tasmanian government has released the findings and recommendations from an independent inquiry into responses to child sexual abuse in government schools announced last August, prior to a commission of inquiry being established.
It was conducted by professors Stephen Smallbone and Tim McCormack, who made 21 recommendations, which the government has fully accepted.
The full report has not been made public due to legal impediments.
The professors said that across the 1970s, 80s and 90s, the department's primary responses to allegations "routinely involved deflecting or ignoring concerns and complaints, often by disbelieving or blaming students, and by shielding alleged or known sexual abusers."
"We have found it deeply disturbing that, as concerns, complaints and ineffectual responses literally piled up in DoE's records, serial abusers like Harington and LeClerc were not just allowed to keep teaching for decades, but that DoE leaders and others so wilfully disregarded the obvious risks and harms to students," the professors said.
Darrel George Harington, who was a teacher and sports coach at New Town High School, was found guilty of historical child sexual offences last year.
The department knowingly moved him between Hobart schools. The department also shifted paedophile teacher and former priest Anthony LeClerc between schools in the north-west.
"We cannot explain this by assuming that 'that's just the way things were back then', because the evidence in DoE's own records shows that DoE officials very often acted in ways that were completely at odds with community expectations at the time," the report's findings say.
'Recent' examples of students not being believed
They said while the culture and leadership of the Education Department have since changed for the better, there were residual cultural problems, and "very recent" examples where students' concerns and complaints had been assumed to be untrue.
The professors said they were unable to determine whether the incidence of sexual abuse in Tasmanian government schools had declined, increased or remained stable over the last five or six decades due to problems with record keeping.
They recommended the urgent implementation of a complete record of all sexual abuse concerns, including both substantiated and unsubstantiated incidents that could be regularly analysed to monitor patterns and trends.
The report recommends a range of new measures around safeguarding students, and that the University of Tasmania's education courses be updated to include content on understanding, preventing and responding to sexual abuse in schools.
'Uncertainty' over who should call police
The report found there was "significant uncertainty" amongst schools principals and student support staff about who should notify Tasmania Police about allegations, and in what circumstances.
Tasmania's Education Department has apologised to victims and survivors of abuse in schools, and said it was fully committed to making schools safe.
Education Minister Sarah Courtney said she shared the Department's deep sorrow and regret about the experiences of some Tasmanian students.
"The stories and experiences that have come to light are deeply concerning and confronting," she said.
"However, I'm also really pleased that we did commission this report, we did so that we can continue to progress positive steps forward to safeguard our children.
"We found there are a lot of matters raised that aren't acceptable.
"To those Tasmanians that contributed to this report, and others in the community that have been impacted by abuse within the Department of Education, I am deeply sorry."
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Black on black violence comes to Brisbane
Wild footage has emerged of two cars driving dangerously down the M1 shortly before an 18-year-old man was found with critical injuries on the side of a road at Logan.
Detectives have launched an investigation into the incident that allegedly began with a fight outside a Fortitude Valley venue and ended with a teenage boy being found unconscious on the side of Kruger Road at Carbrook about 3am on Sunday.
Detective Superintendent Brendan Smith said while it was initially thought to be a car crash, it was now believed to be a “vicious assault” on the man.
He said the incident started to unfold at Yeovil St, Fortitude Valley after a conflict between two groups.
It’s understood the group police say were involved had attended a concert at a Brunswick St nightclub before the incident unfolded.
They then pursued each other through the city, down the M1 and into Carbrook.
Supt Smith said the vehicles had collided at Carbrook and men fled from their cars. He said police believed the victim was assaulted as people fled.
In the footage, a silver Toyota Camry and a red Holden Commodore can be seen racing down the M1 forcing other motorists to take evasive action.
At one point during the wild chase, one of the vehicles drives onto the wrong side of the road, forcing another vehicle to change into another lane to avoid a head-on collision.
Supt Smith said two groups of youths of African heritage were involved in the incident.
“I wouldn’t say it’s gang related but often there are groups of youths that get together and there is conflict,” he said.
Supt Smith said there were up to 15 people involved and seven to eight people in each vehicle.
He said the two groups and their associates had been involved in “assaults and other matters” in previous months.
The men were aged 16 to 20.
“They’re all very young and that’s concerning too that they’ve got people who don’t understand the consequences of their behaviour or have that gangster attitude and think that this is acceptable – and it’s clearly not,” Supt Smith said.
Supt Smith said police were investigating connections to previous assaults.
He said it appeared a red Commodore was attempting to get away from a silver Camry who were “more likely to be the offenders than the victims”.
Supt Smith said the man’s injuries were not consistent with being hit by a vehicle.
He said there were bats found at the scene but it’s unclear if they were involved in the assault.
One of the groups was largely based in northern Brisbane and the other was based in the Ipswich area.
Police allege there was a “disagreement” between a group of people at a venue, before one car allegedly chased another vehicle down the motorway at speed towards Carbrook.
An 18-year-old was found with horrific head and face injuries on the side of Kruger Rd, Carbrook, about 3.30am.
He was transported to the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital where he remains in an induced coma.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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8 November, 2021
Cyclones Downs, Corals Up – Except in Glasgow
Written by Jennifer Marohasy
It is impossible to reconcile the official statistics and what is under-the-water with the media reporting – including the reporting from Glasgow. There are meant to be more cyclones and less coral, but we have quite the reverse according to the official statistics. It is also making no sense that those who purport to care so much about the Great Barrier Reef still haven’t visited it. Then there are those who have visited it once, and then there are those who have visited it but never actually got in the water. Some of them are in Glasgow.
It was not for nothing that former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull – he apparently visited Magnetic Island some years ago but never got in the water – approved a A$443 million grant to the tiny Great Barrier Reef Foundation. As far as I can tell it is paid out in little bits to all those in proximity who are prepared to lament how the corals are dying. I’ve meet so many who have received something, and so the useful idiots are paid off by the special people now in Glasgow.
On the eve of Glasgow, the same foundation put out comment:
Insufficient global action on climate change is taking a serious toll on the health of our Great Barrier Reef and coral reefs around the world. The facts are clear – coral reefs and their communities are on the front line. We know current climate change commitments don’t go far enough to protect them and we know this is the critical decade in which to act with urgency. Next month’s UN Climate Change Conference – COP26 – will be a pivotal moment in the global response to climate change.
On Tuesday 13th October 2020, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology put out a media release ‘Tropical Cyclone seasonal outlook for The Coral Sea’ in which it was acknowledged that, and I quote: "Recent decades have seen a decline in the number of tropical cyclones in our region."
Bureau climatologist, Greg Browning, went on to explain that this summer is likely to buck that trend, and that: "On average Australia sees 9 to 11 tropical cyclones each year, with 4 crossing the coast."
Cyclones can be devastating to coral reefs. Huge waves pound relentlessly smashing branching and fan corals. Sponges and squirts are upended. Massive Porites can be lifted and thrown metres – sometimes beyond the reef proper and onto the beach.
Given the Great Barrier Reef, as one ecosystem comprising nearly 3,000 individual reefs stretching for more than 2,000 kilometres, cyclone damaged areas can almost always be found somewhere. A coral reef that is mature and spectacular today, may be smashed by a cyclone tomorrow. So, I’m always in a hurry to visit my next reef particularly given all the modelling suggesting an inevitable increase in the number of cyclones and an inevitable decline in coral cover.
Yet!
The 2020–21 Australian region cyclone season was another ‘below average’ season, producing a total of just 8 tropical cyclones with just 3 of these categorised as severe. So since records began it is a case of less cyclones and less severe cyclones which must be good for the corals.
The Bureau has not updated this chart since the 2016/2017 season. The trend continues a downward trajectory with just 8 tropical cyclones last season (2020/2021) with 3 categorised as severe.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/climatology/trends.shtml
Perhaps not surprisingly we are also seeing an increase in coral cover, and this is exactly what the latest report from the Australian Institute of Marine Science concludes. According to their Long-Term Monitoring Program (LTMP) based on surveys of 127 reefs conducted between August 2020 and April 2021, and I quote: "In 2021, widespread recovery was underway, largely due to increases in fast growing Acropora corals.
Survey reefs experienced low levels of acute stressors over the past 12 months with no prolonged high temperatures or major cyclones. Numbers of outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish on survey reefs have generally decreased; however, there remain ongoing outbreaks on some reefs in the Southern GBR.
On the Northern GBR, region-wide hard coral cover was moderate and had continued to increase to 27% from the most recent low point in 2017.
On the Central GBR region-wide hard coral cover was moderate and had increased to 26% in 2021.
Region-wide hard coral cover on reefs in the Southern GBR was high and had increased to 39% in 2021."
More information at https://www.aims.gov.au/reef-monitoring/gbr-condition-summary-2020-2021
Meanwhile former US President Barack Obama – who has never ever actually visited the Great Barrier Reef – confirmed he will attend the COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow. He is apparently meeting young climate change activists and highlighting their work around the world. I’m wondering when he will bring them to see the corals. The closest he has got, so far, is to Brisbane back in November 2014. He gave a speech at my old university lamenting the parlous state of the corals and claiming he wanted to take his daughters to see the corals before they were all gone.
But. We are still waiting. As far as I can tell, like Malcolm Turnbull, Barack Obama frightens the children about that which they have never actually seen or experienced with his own eyes – and with opinion that often does not even accord with the available statistics.
Former US President Bill Clinton hasn’t made it to Glasgow, but he did visit the Great Barrier Reef back in November 1996. He apparently spent a short hour snorkelling at a reef off Port Douglas.
If I didn’t know something about the scientific method, greenhouse gases, the Great Barrier Reef, and that foundation, I would be inclined to believe there was a crisis – and that there really was something I should do about it. As it is, I know that coral bleaching occurs as part of a natural cycle that will repeat irrespective of any agreements made in Glasgow. I also know as fact that there has been no increase in the incidence of cyclones and that coral cover is good and improving. It is also fact that coral reefs would benefit if there was rising sea levels because they could keep growing-up and also that they grow faster as sea temperatures increase.
Did you know that there are arguably more colourful corals and even better coral cover in waters just a few degrees warmers? The warmer waters are just to the north of Australia around New Guinea and Indonesia.
https://ipa.org.au/ipa-today/cyclones-downs-corals-up-except-in-glasgow
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Pfizer linked to 18 new cases of heart inflammation in Australia
The number of cases of heart inflammation in Australia linked to the Pfizer vaccine has risen to 253 from about 21.9 million doses.
There were 18 new likely cases of myocarditis in the past week, a condition that sees patients experience chest pain, abnormal heartbeat and shortness of breath.
One new blood clots case linked to the AstraZeneca jab was also recorded, taking the total to 158 cases and nine deaths in Australia from about 13.1 million doses. The confirmed case involved a 40-year-old man from NSW.
The figure was released in the Therapeutic Goods Administration Covid-19 vaccine weekly safety report on Thursday afternoon.
The youngest case classified as ‘likely myocarditis’ to date was 12 years old.
Of the cases classified as likely to be myocarditis, most of the patients experienced symptoms within three days of vaccination.
Around half of the patients were admitted to hospital with eight treated in intensive care. Most patients treated in hospital were discharged within four days.
The TGA says “the estimated reporting rates in Australia appear similar to overseas rates.”
“As we have received limited adverse event reports for Spikevax (Moderna), our analysis of likely myocarditis cases focuses on data for the Comirnaty (Pfizer) vaccine,” the medicines regulator said.
In Australia, myocarditis is reported in nearly one out of every 100,000 people after receiving the Pfizer vaccine. While it is more commonly reported in young men and teenage boys after the second dose (6.7 cases in 100,000 people) it remains rare.
Cases usually occur within 10 days and resolve after a few days following treatment and rest.
The TGA advises people to seek medical attention if they experience symptoms that could suggest myocarditis or pericarditis.
This includes: chest pain, palpitations (irregular heartbeat), fainting or shortness of breath, particularly if they occur within one to five days of vaccination.
“ATAGI advises that people who develop myocarditis or pericarditis attributed to their first dose of Comirnaty (Pfizer) should defer further doses of an mRNA Covid-19 vaccine and discuss this with their treating doctor,” the TGA says.
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Push for school kids to sing national anthem daily
Queensland students would be made to sing Advance Australia Fair at the start of every school day under a plan put forward by the LNP rank-and-file, in a bid to foster “national identity” in younger generations.
LNP members, at the party’s state council meeting in Gladstone on Saturday, supported calls for the state Opposition to “adopt a policy that would mandate the singing of the National Anthem at the beginning of the school day for all schools”.
Former state candidate Pinky Singh argued singing the anthem each day would foster unity, regardless of a student’s race or religion.
Maroochydore MP Fiona Simpson, who led the singing of the anthem at the meeting earlier in the day, said if children didn’t learn to embrace the importance of the national anthem in school they wouldn’t understand it when they left.
She said she had been “surprised” to learn that a small number of schools never sing the national anthem.
“We must ensure our children understand how important it is as part of their national identity and then grow that as citizens,” Ms Simpson said.
Meanwhile, a number of federal LNP candidates and incumbents were formally ratified ahead of the looming election.
This included Henry Pike for Bowman and Olivia Roberts for the South Brisbane seat of Griffith, currently held by Labor.
Ms Roberts ran for the LNP in the same seat at the 2019 election and picked up 40 per cent of first preferences — though this was not enough to win in a three-horse race which included a leap in support for The Greens.
The LNP secretariat could be heading into the campaign cycle with a freshly minted state secretary, following the departure of Tony Eyres.
President Lawrence Springborg confirmed the party was in the process of a nationwide recruitment process for the top ranking administrative position, with the aim of selecting someone “sometime in the early part of next year”.
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Innocent politician run out of politics by fake news. Media complicit
It took police less than a day to clear an MP of upskirting claims, but that didn’t stop the Twitter mob, writes Des Houghton.
Quick quiz: What do Derryn Hinch, Sarah Hanson-Young, Murray Watt and a string of journalists, actors, bloggers, academics have in common?
They have all issued grovelling apologies to Andrew Laming, the federal member for the bayside electorate of Bowman that straddles Brisbane and Redlands.
The tone was set by a national political reporter who said: “In March 2021 I published tweets about Andrew Laming MP that referenced him taking a photo up a woman’s skirt.
“This was factually incorrect; the woman was not wearing a skirt. “I regret this error and unreservedly apologise to Andrew Laming for the hurt and distress I have caused him. I corrected it as soon as it was brought to my attention and have deleted the tweets.”
A university academic, who cares not for full stops, said: “Earlier in 2021 I published 2 tweets about Andrew Laming MP.
“I accept that the claims made about Mr Laming in those tweets were false & defamatory" “I unconditionally withdraw those claims and apologise to Andrew Laming for the hurt and offence caused to him by reason of my conduct”
More than a dozen media commentators and federal and state MPs issued apologies after they got concerns notices from gun defamation lawyer Rebekah Giles, who is acting for Laming.
Rebekah Giles is the lawyer who defended Christian Porter. A top company lawyer I know was almost quivering at the mention of her name. She is relentless.
A number of Facebook posts by Labor figures and a union group were also deleted.
There are two prominent people who deleted tweets without any apology that I know of. One was Senator Kristina Keneally, a former NSW Premier. And there are two members of the Queensland Parliament still under scrutiny for other comments they made on social media. One post, in my opinion, was an indirect smear on Laming’s character.
The affair began innocently enough when Laming went to the bayside landscape supplier Nuway at Thornlands on December 18, 2019, to buy some river stones for a heritage property he was restoring.
In what appears to me to be an unremarkable act, Laming, took a photograph of a young woman on bended knee putting cans of soft drink in a small bar fridge on the floor. She was “crouching” not bending over, and she was not showing underwear or revealing a G-string, as some reported.
I know this because I have copies of the pages of Det Sen Sgt Mat Wickson’s notebook, where he says in his own hand that the woman was wearing work shorts and a work shirt with long socks and work boots.
Wickson described the shorts as “ruggers”. He said she wore her polo shirt out, over her work shorts. So, any suggestion her underwear was visible was incorrect. The copper’s notes also confirm that Laming’s picture was a general one of the workplace taken at normal zoom.
I’ve decided not to name the woman here. She must be sick of it all by now.
I do know it is not unusual for politicians of all persuasions to photograph people they meet and post them on Facebook.
On that fateful day he went to buy the stones, Laming even had a conversation with the woman about her future, and she later befriended him on Facebook.
Laming was officially cleared by police in less than a day. Yet the media tsunami was unstoppable.
I’ve been pounding the keyboard for more than 50 years and can honestly say I cannot remember a case where the commentators got it so wrong.
The cold hard truth for all of us in the media is that Laming was bullied out of office by fake news.
Journalism is in a bad place when it stoops to reporting allegations aired on social media.
Radio, TV and print media were in a frenzy and there was even a rally outside Laming’s Cleveland office with Labor’s rent-a-crowd holding up insulting signs.
Laming was even criticised by his own side, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison also weighing in to condemn him before he was fully apprised of the facts. ScoMo had done another Holgate. From that time on Laming’s political future was untenable.
Then Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese called him a creep.
Laming remains an MP but will exit office the day the election is called.
Laming has already had a significant victory in the battle to clear his name after Twitter attacks by high-profile ABC journalist Louise Milligan.
Milligan posted multiple tweets which Laming alleged “irrevocably damaged his personal and professional reputation”.
ABC managing director David Anderson said at parliamentary Estimates hearings that ABC paid $79,000 in damages to Dr Laming plus $45,000 for his legal costs. The ABC’s costs were $168,000, and rising.
But the drama is far from over. Laming is suing Channel 9, the original publisher of the accusations. In court documents, Dr Laming’s lawyers say he has “suffered substantial hurt, distress and embarrassment”.
Laming is seeking damages, interest and costs, as well as an order that Nine be permanently restrained from repeating such claims in the future.
It’s destined to be a landmark case for journalism that may run right up to next year’s election.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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7 November, 2021
Federal Court slams criminal case against ANZ bank as a 'complete shemozzle'
ANZ now off the hook after the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions spent 3 years running around in circles. They could not specify exactly what the ANZ did wrong.
Government regulators tend to be lax about case preparation as they think nobody will have the funds or courage to take on the government. They think people will fold immediately. There have been some atrocious cases of that in Britain, notably the prosecution of Vincent Tchenguiz by the Serious Fraud Office. Their bureaucratic arrogance cost the SFO many millions
But the ANZ is a big beast so was not afraid to take on the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions
Prosecutors have abandoned a long-running criminal cartel case against ANZ and one of its senior executives, Rick Moscati, after the Federal Court described the matter as a "complete shemozzle".
The court also said the committal hearings — where a magistrate decides whether there is sufficient evidence to take the matter to trial — were "long, drawn out and ultimately ... fairly pointless".
In an embarrassing blow, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP) was ordered to refile its indictment, for a third time, because it was "deficient and defective".
Despite the setback, the CDPP has decided to proceed with its criminal prosecution against banking giants Deutsche Bank and Citigroup, which are also defendants in this matter.
Criminal test case
In June 2018, ANZ, Deutsche and Citi were prosecuted for being "knowingly concerned in alleged cartel conduct".
It is essentially a form of alleged collusion — and the matter was the result of a two-year investigation by the competition watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
This case arose from ANZ's decision to raise extra cash from institutional investors, by issuing $2.5 billion worth of new shares in August 2015.
Citi, Deutsche and a third major global bank, JP Morgan, through some of their most senior executives, allegedly came to an understanding on what to do with any shares that were unable to be sold.
Often, there aren't any left over — but this time almost a third of the shares, worth about $790 million, did not sell.
JP Morgan is not facing charges because it blew the whistle and was granted immunity.
This is seen as an important test case because criminal cartel charges had never been brought against an Australian bank before.
For companies, the maximum fine for each offence is either $10 million, or three times the total benefits that have been earned and are "reasonably attributable" to the commission of the offence (whichever is greater).
For individuals, the maximum sentence is 10 years in prison, a fine of up to $420,000, or both.
'Complete shemozzle'
Justice Michael Wigney did not mince words when he criticised the prosecutor's handling of the case on Wednesday morning.
"It would not be unfair to characterise the situation concerning the state of the indictment as a complete shemozzle," he said.
The judge also said it was "entirely unsatisfactory" that the indictment had not been finalised — three years after the banks and their executives were first charged, and about six months before the trial was due to commence.
The CDPP filed its first indictment (which outlines the criminal charges) against the banks and its executives on February 1.
But it was ordered to file a new indictment by July 7 because the charges were poorly explained and "defective" — partly because of the "complex nature" of Australia's cartel legislation.
The same thing happened again on Wednesday's hearing (November 3). In a brief summary of the judge's decision, the Federal Court noted:
"The accused argued that the charges did not sufficiently describe the nature of the offences that they were alleged to have committed because, for the most part, the charges were entirely bereft of particulars and simply repeated the words of the relevant offence provisions."
Justice Wigney decided to give the prosecutor a third chance — and a November 24 deadline to file yet another set of indictments.
Instead of trying again, the CDPP decided to abandon its case against ANZ and Mr Moscati, but is pressing ahead with its prosecution of Deutche and Citi.
In a statement, ANZ's chief risk officer Kevin Corbally said: “We maintained all along ANZ acted in accordance with the law in relation to the placement.
"We defended the bank and Rick on that basis and we are pleased the matter is now behind us."
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Palaszczuk government attempts to ‘censor’ political rivals with social media giants
Digital Editor Jack Houghton says the Palaszczuk government “embarrassed itself yet again” by attempting to censor political rivals critical of the state’s COVID-19 messaging.
The state’s Health Minister Yvette D’Ath wrote to Twitter, asking them to ban Opposition Frontbencher Jarrod Bleijie from the platform for his tweets.
Ms D’Ath described the tweets as: “Undermining not only public confidence in the vaccine, but the Queensland Government’s rollout of the vaccine, which could ultimately lead to vaccine hesitancy and harm to Queenslanders”.
According to Mr Houghton, her bid “thankfully” failed. “But this is a crazy move from an administration which tweeted anti AstraZeneca misinformation in the heat of the pandemic,” he said.
“In fact, Annastacia Palaszczuk herself spread vaccine hesitancy on social media by falsely claiming that the AstraZeneca vaccine was not safe for those under the age of 40.
“Her government completely botched vaccine messaging and they are now trying to say that criticisms of Palaszczuk’s false information tweets are the real fake news.
“This is something Queenslanders must not forget.”
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Muslim ignoramuses plead guilty to seeking genital mutilation of a baby girl in Perth
A Perth mother and grandmother have avoided being sent to jail for planning the genital mutilation of a newborn baby girl.
The 23 year-old-woman had given birth to the child two weeks earlier and, in January this year, she and her mother, who was aged 50 at that time, went to a doctor in the Perth suburb of Canning Vale seeking female circumcision.
In order to protect the identity of the child, the ABC has chosen not to name the women.
The District Court of WA was told the grandmother, who was described as "extremely persistent", wanted the procedure done straight away and when the doctor refused, she offered to pay cash.
State Prosecutor Danielle Clarke said the doctor managed to convince the women there was a problem with Medicare and so they left the practice.
Their actions were reported to the authorities after the father of the child became aware of what the women were planning.
They both pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring to unlawfully perform female genital mutilation.
The court was told that, since being charged, neither of them had been able to have any contact with the child.
Women sought 'lowest level' of genital mutilation
The grandmother's lawyer, Richard Lawson, told the court the procedure his client was seeking was the lowest level of genital mutilation, as ranked by the World Health Organisation.
He said it is less invasive than the other levels and that his client, who was of Malaysian heritage, and her daughter, had had the procedure performed on them.
He accepted that the grandmother had known the practice was illegal in Australia but, he said, she thought if they went to a Malaysian doctor, no one would know what happened.
Mr Lawson said his client, who has since undergone cultural awareness counselling, was deeply remorseful and now regretted her actions.
The mother's lawyer, Alana Taylor, said her client had agreed to consult a medical practitioner as part of a "desire to appease others". "There were underlying threats of going to hell if she wasn't following the religious notion," she said.
Ms Taylor said the woman was also facing the challenges of having her first child. "As a first-time mum, she felt pressures to conform and the notion of being 'the perfect mother'," Ms Taylor said.
The court was told she had also since undergone counselling and was fully educated and understood the procedure and the complications associated with it.
She had also not been able to have any contact with her daughter which, Ms Taylor submitted, was already punishment for what she had done.
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Campus lies, damned lies and statistics
Bettina Arndt
What does it say about Australia that a student writing to me doesn’t dare give his name for fear his letter could be traced back to him?
Concerned Student wrote to me last month after being asked to complete the National Student Safety Survey, which has just been distributed to over 400,000 random students on our campuses:
“As I was completing the survey, I was shocked and alarmed at how the survey had seemingly been deliberately constructed in a way likely to produce results that will exaggerate perceived rates of sexual violence on campus and thereby distort and manipulate public opinion and policy. The authors have applied definitions of sexual assault and harassment that are so broad they conflate normal interactions between men and women with heinous and brutal acts of violence. This is an injustice to survivors.”
Concerned Student very helpfully sent screen shots of all the questions he responded to in the survey. And he’s on the money. The National Safety Survey is all about cooking the books – asking biased, leading questions aimed at proving there’s a rape crisis on our campuses.
The activists are having another go following their disappointment over the 2016-million-dollar survey from Australian Human Rights Commission which found only 0.8 percent of students reported any type of “sexual assault” per year, even including incidents such as a grope from a stranger on the train to university. The AHRC disguised these disappointing results by claiming widespread campus “sexual violence” which was actually mainly low-grade harassment like “unwanted staring”. Universities were bullied into establishing a huge industry staffed by Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment (SASH) bureaucrats and counsellors, supporting secretive committees running kangaroo courts adjudicating sexual assault.
Every year activists run more campaigns claiming universities are not doing enough. Just two months ago a group of protesters interrupted a speech by ANU Vice Chancellor Brian Schmidt, claiming the university had done nothing to protect students from the dangers of SASH. Schmidt groveled to the students saying he was prepared to put in unlimited resources to address the problem. “But there’s no easy fix. It’s a wicked problem.”
Let’s face it. It ain’t easy wiping out unwanted staring. But now this righteous man will have to battle new scourges - “loitering” and “invading personal space”.
These are the latest additions to the ever-expanding definition of sexual harassment included in the new survey. To make Brian Schmidt’s wicked problem even more challenging, “inappropriate staring” is now just “staring”. It’s hard to imagine any student who could say they have never been subjected to staring. And even if they have never been stared at themselves, surely everyone could tick the box asking if they had witnessed this happening to anyone else on campus?
Who could deny experiencing someone “making comments or asking intrusive questions about your private life, body or physical appearance”? As we know, one person’s compliment is another’s intrusive question in an era where even using the wrong pronoun could be seen as an inappropriate comment on a private life. Tricky stuff, indeed.
It gets worse. The section on harassment of students now includes, “Making requests for sex or repeated invitations to go out on a date.” So, apparently you are only allowed to ask once for a date – twice is harassment.
But isn’t “making requests for sex” exactly what the feminists demand in their new enthusiastic consent laws? The new survey labels that as harassment yet all sexual acts including kissing are now deemed sexual assault if your partner “made no effort to check whether you agreed or not.”
It is all pretty confusing. But none of this should come as a surprise when you consider who is in charge of this survey. Meet self-described “feminist criminologist” Dr Anastasia Powell who has built her career on promoting feminist views on enthusiastic consent and similar issues. Interesting that University Australia happily promotes the fact they are funding advocacy research through the choice of this ideologically driven scholar.
Even though enthusiastic consent is not yet law in most Australian states, Powell and colleagues have slipped this into the survey, which is bound to greatly expand the number of events students regard as sexual assault. Students are told that any sexual experience, including a kiss, which lacks that prior check for consent is now sexual assault. Ditto intoxicated sex of any kind. The survey defines all sexual acts as assault if you were “affected by drugs or alcohol.”
Concerned Student isn’t a sexual assault survivor, so he wasn’t able to send through all the questions that apply for self-defined victims. I’ve been making strenuous efforts to get hold of the whole survey but unsurprisingly, Universities Australia is keeping that firmly under wraps. I sent through a series of questions asking why they were withholding this information. Their response was simply to state the survey and results will be published early 2022: “Universities Australia is committed to transparency, and the public release of the results, along with the survey instrument, is testament to that.”
From the questions we do have available it looks like there’s been another big shift. While the previous survey asked questions about events taking place in 2015-16, in the new survey the timing seems to be open-ended – the events could have happened anytime. So, a mature age student could report on any event from 30-40 years ago, but their experiences are claimed as evidence of our current campus rape crisis. Neat, isn’t it?
Similarly, the new survey appears to be not confined to campus events but includes sexual acts happening anywhere to the student, and not just involving other students as perpetrators. The survey explicitly and repeatedly invites responses about non-campus incidents. “We’re interested in ‘all of your experiences – whether they happened in ways connected to your university, or at other times and places in your life’.”
The survey also asks students to report on not only their own experiences but also if another student from their university “told you, or you suspected, that they may have been sexually assaulted in a university context.” So, the data will include not just hearsay evidence – say, something you read in a student newsletter - but students’ own fanciful assumptions about what might have happened to another person.
Similarly, they are asked if they had witnessed another person being sexually harassed. The survey itself points out that sexual harassment is about conduct which the recipient regards as unwelcome, or leaves them offended, humiliated or intimated. Yet they assume that it’s ok for other people to make that decision for the other person. Wow, this is taking manipulation of data to a whole new level.
This new survey hits campuses after four years of solid propaganda telling students they are facing a rape crisis, compulsory sexual consent courses for staff and students, endless misinformation in the media promoting the idea that young women are at risk. Students today are far more likely to see themselves as victims than they were when the first survey came out. Back then, the self-selected students who answered the survey were an unrepresentative 10 per cent of the total sample. Now End Rape on Campus activists will be hoping for a far better turn out as reward for their constant advocacy.
Universities Australia is rightly stating the results from the two surveys can’t be compared, given that so much about the survey has changed. But what’s the bet that next year our biased media will use this manipulated data to scream blue murder about increased sexual violence and the mighty SASH industry will have their hands out seeking more money to tackle the growing crisis?
In 2017, I was the only journalist in Australia to report we should be celebrating the good news from the AHRC survey – that there was no rape crisis on our campuses. At that time, I was very fortunate to have the assistance of Chris Lloyd, professor of business statistics at Melbourne University, to ensure I analyzed the results of the survey accurately. I asked Chris to compared key questions in the current survey to the previous one.
“Universities Australia claim to be serious about measuring levels of sexual harassment and sexual assault on campus. Ambiguously worded surveys with very low response rates are no way to achieve this,” said Chris, adding, “I cannot see anything scientifically useful emerging from what I have seen of this new survey.”
As Concerned Student points out, we need to consider the impact of this survey on the way young men and women relate to each other – messages bound to be reinforced in the endless campus propaganda promoting the rape crisis.
“It is encouraging young women to perceive any uncomfortable or awkward sexual experience as a violent sexual violation, and it is casting benevolently intentioned young men as sexual predators. How many men will undeservingly have their lives and reputations shattered because of this rhetoric?’’
That's so right. It is male students who are the targets of this never-ending campaign to encourage women to redefine disappointing sexual misadventures as sexual assault. For their sakes, we all have to find ways to speak out and expose this malicious, ongoing social engineering.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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5 November, 2021
Renovated Queenslander smashes Brisbane suburb record by $650k
What a magnificent house! I have owned broadly similar houses but none that grand. Below is my best house of that ilk
This property at 20 Pring St, Hendra, has sold for a new suburb record of $4.5m.
HENDRA’S suburb price record has been spectacularly broken with a renovated Queenslander selling under the hammer for $4.5 million, as Brisbane’s auction market continues to amaze.
Seven local bidders competed for the grand, five-bedroom home on more than 1000 sqm at 20 Pring Street before a couple upgrading from New Farm secured the winning bid.
https://www.realestate.com.au/news/renovated-queenslander-smashes-brisbane-suburb-record-by-650k/
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Labor states push back on positive history curriculum bid
Federal Education Minister Alan Tudge’s hopes for a national curriculum that presents a positive view of Australian history is facing a challenge from Labor states, with ministers in Victoria and Western Australia accusing him of trying to reignite culture wars over the nation’s past.
Mr Tudge will head into the final education ministers’ meeting of the year next Friday having graded the draft curriculum a “C” last month, saying it would teach students a “negative, miserable view of Australia” and future generations would be unwilling to defend the nation against threats to its liberal democracy.
The meeting is the last formal opportunity this year for education ministers to discuss the final draft curriculum, which requires a consensus to be implemented, unless an additional out-of-session gathering is scheduled. But the path to agreement, particularly over the history content, is unclear, with Labor ministers in Victoria, Queensland, WA, the ACT and the Northern Territory critical of Mr Tudge’s comments.
Victorian Education Minister James Merlino said Mr Tudge’s remarks were aimed at “inciting culture wars”, adding Victoria would advocate for a curriculum “that will produce the thoughtful and proud Australians of the future”.
“We have long called for Australia’s Indigenous heritage to be firmly embedded in our curriculum – not at the expense of other important aspects of the Australian story, but as part of a balanced, diverse history offering that covers both the inspiring and challenging parts of our nation’s history,” Mr Merlino said.
WA Education Minister Sue Ellery said it was important students learned different perspectives on the past as well as the skills to form their own judgments.
“I don’t think going again to the fake so-called history wars has added anything to the review as history is always judged by the perspective of who is looking at it,” she said.
Queensland Education Minister Grace Grace said it had been unhelpful for Mr Tudge to comment on the review before it had been completed.
“I don’t think it helps to provide a running commentary on the teaching of Australian history and other subject matters,” she said.
A spokeswoman for ACT Education Minister Yvette Berry said she did “not share Minister Tudge’s concern regarding the history learning areas of the draft curriculum”.
NT Education Minister Lauren Moss said the independent review process “should be respected” and she supported attempts in the draft to strengthen Indigenous history content.
“Critical to two-way teaching and learning is being honest about the many facets of our history, and the Australian curriculum review seeks to improve this, including the ongoing impact of colonisation on First Nations Australians,” she said.
Mr Tudge’s criticisms of the draft curriculum included that Anzac Day should not be taught as a “contested idea” but as the most sacred day of the year. He has also argued the curriculum struck the wrong balance when it came to teaching Indigenous perspectives, saying they should be included but not “at the expense of dishonouring our Western heritage”. It is unclear whether these concerns have been addressed in the final document.
Mr Tudge did not respond directly to questions about whether consensus could be reached at next week’s meeting. In a statement, he said his concerns went well beyond the history content.
“I’ll be reviewing the final draft curriculum closely. Parents, guardians and school communities would expect nothing less,” he said.
Liberal education ministers in NSW, South Australia and Tasmania declined to say whether they agreed with Mr Tudge’s criticisms of the draft when approach for comment.
Speaking at NSW budget estimates this week, Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said students should have a “proud understanding of Australian history”.
The review was undertaken by the independent Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, which has held briefings with ministers on the final revised curriculum this week.
According to the timeline agreed by education ministers in June last year, the review process should be completed by the end of 2021, with the new curriculum documents made publicly available from the start of the new year.
“Once endorsed by Education Council, the revised F-10 Australian curriculum will be published on an improved website platform and be available for implementation from the start of 2022,” the terms of reference for the review state.
Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority chief executive David de Carvalho told Senate estimates last week the board had signed off on the final draft of the curriculum on October 14 and it had been sent to senior state and territory education officials for review before the ministers’ meeting.
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Australia eyes more oil and gas fields as COP26 seeks fossil phase-out
Morrison's flim flam at Glasgow has left Australia free to pursue its best interests
Australia’s coastline could soon be opened up to more oil and gas drilling even as the United Nations declares the world cannot afford to increase fossil fuel production if it wants to avoid catastrophic global warming and 80 nations pledge to cut methane emissions.
The federal government is preparing to begin community consultations on potential exploration activities spanning new parts of Western Australia’s Bonaparte, Browse and North Carnarvon basins and Victoria’s Gippsland Basin, which oil and gas companies have identified as areas of interest.
Environmental advocates on Wednesday described the push for new fossil fuel exploration along Australia’s coastline as “callous and cynical”.
“This is an attempt to broaden the footprint of fossil fuels, while Scott Morrison and Angus Taylor attempt to make friends in Glasgow,” Wilderness Society WA campaigns manager Patrick Gardner said.
“The mindless creep of fossil fuel expansion is being pushed onto communities that do not want it.”
The launch of community consultations – after which exploration companies must bid for a release and be assessed as a deserving applicant – comes amid growing warnings against ramping up production of planet-heating fossil fuels.
Supporters of gas, including the Morrison government, describe it as a necessary “transition fuel” in the green power shift, as a comparatively less-emitting alternative to coal that can keep energy reliable and affordable in periods when weather conditions for wind and solar generation are unfavourable. Gas is also used as a raw material in a range of manufacturing processes.
But the fossil fuel’s future is increasingly under question, with scientists and climate advocates arguing gas remains a heavy source of emissions and its role must be urgently reduced not expanded.
Another major achievement at Glasgow came with the agreement from 40 nations including Australia, which together generate 40 per cent of global GDP, committing to collaborate on clean technology to replace carbon-intensive industries like steelmaking and power generation.
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Leftist government to allow more logging
A refreshing change. Vast areas of Australia have had logging completely locked out
Victoria's water catchments will now have fewer protections against logging, after the state government changed legislation to allow the practice in previously off-limits areas.
The change removes a strict ban on logging on steep slopes in those areas — a law experts allege was repeatedly broken by VicForests.
Scientists say logging on steep slopes can result in soil eroding into waterways, which can pollute them, and even cause dangerous algal blooms.
Since 2019, the ABC has reported a string of allegations that VicForests was breaching laws designed to protect Victoria's important water catchments, including the Thomson, which provides the majority of Melbourne's drinking water.
On at least two occasions the Office of the Conservation Regulator confirmed breaches had occurred, but declined to take any regulatory action.
Scientists alleged breaches occurred in hundreds of locations. Much of that alleged activity would now be legal.
Victoria's state-owned logging company VicForests has put Melbourne's drinking supply at risk by illegally logging on steep slopes in an important water catchment.
"Instead of abiding by the law, what they've done is simply change the laws to make what was a widespread, illegal logging approach legal," said David Lindenmayer, a professor of forest ecology at the Australian National University.
Professor Lindenmayer led research that alleged "widespread" and "systemic" breaches of the slope proscriptions.
"This is what you might expect to see in places like Indonesia or Madagascar, not in a developed first world nation like Australia," he said.
When it proposed the changes, the Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning said it was doing so to clarify the intent of the existing law.
"Without this allowance, even a small hill or landscape variation could cause technical non-compliance, which was never the intention of these limits," the department said in an explanatory note.
In a logging area, known as a coupe, of 40 hectares, the new law will allow an area about twice the size of the MCG to be logged beyond the slope limit.
Under the change to the code, up to 10 per cent of any coupe in a water supply catchment can now be logged over 30 degrees.
"This is one of the most retrogressive changes to forestry practices I've ever seen," Professor Lindenmayer said.
"It makes the Environment Minister look very weak. It makes the Premier look very weak. It's the Victorian government kowtowing to the CFMEU and VicForests to cover up illegal behaviour."
Loggers welcome changes, advocates slam weakened protections
A spokeswoman for VicForests said in a statement: "VicForests takes its responsibility of sustainably harvesting coupes within our state forests for today and future generations extremely seriously."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-05/victorias-logging-laws-changed-fewer-protections/100595676
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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4 November, 2021
What motivated Cleo's kidnapper?
Bad or mad? Rather madder than the guy says below, I think. The only picture we have of him (Terry Kelly?) so far shows a brown face so he would seem to be an Aborigine. But he is also described as a loner. Which is very odd indeed. I would have thought that an Aboriginal loner was an impossibility. Aborigines are hugely social. So if he really is an Aborigine he is very mentally disturbed indeed. The area is mostly welfare housing and Aborigines do live in the neighbourhood
UPDATE of 5/11: I was of course right. Kelly was an aborigine and was very weird. He was a doll collector, of all things. Pic of him below
A top criminal psychologist claims the man who allegedly abducted Cleo Smith is likely to be 'very bad, not very mad' - as Perth's Lord Mayor calls for the city to 'turn blue' to celebrate her homecoming.
The missing four-year-old was found at 12.45am on Wednesday alone in a bedroom in a locked and rundown house in the Carnarvon suburb of Brockman in Western Australia, after being missing for 18 days.
A 36-year-old man has been arrested over the alleged kidnapping from her family's tent at the Blowholes campsite on October 18, with psychology expert Tim Watson-Munro telling A Current Affair he believes whoever took her was likely meticulous and calculating.
'I think it's someone who's very bad, not very mad,' he claimed.
'A person capable of planning this crime, executing this crime, keeping this thing under wraps for nearly three weeks now and not really caring about the consequences.'
Cleo, 4, was described as safe and well but was immediately taken to hospital for further tests and to be reunited with relieved and overjoyed parents, Ellie and Jake.
In Mr Watson-Munro's opinion the abduction was highly-planned over a significant period of time.
'He probably waited for the right opportunity to strike. They live in the same country town, he's probably thought about it for awhile,' he claimed.
'Clearly to have done what he did, in such a brazen way, to escape the crime scene the way he did and keep a lid on it, to me suggests a lot of planning.'
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Chairman Dan (Stalin and Mao were chairmen)
As much of Australia moves out of Covid-19 lockdowns and international border closures ease with respect to some states and territories, it is hoped that – among other things – language usage will return to pre-pandemic normality.
On Wednesday, Christopher Blanden QC, president of the Victorian Bar, received national attention for his critique of Daniel Andrews’ Labor government’s Public Health and Wellbeing (Pandemic Management) Bill which was introduced into the Victorian Legislative Assembly the previous day. Blanden said that the Stasi police in former East Germany “would have been more than happy with the range of powers if they were given it”.
Interviewed by Virginia Trioli on ABC Radio Melbourne on Thursday, Blanden was asked if he considered the Stasi reference a “bit of hyperbole”. To which he responded, with complete frankness: “Well, of course it’s a bit of hyperbole but it has got everyone’s attention.”
Quite so. Blanden’s point was that the proposed new laws would give the Victorian Premier unprecedented powers over all Victorians. Sure there was hyperbole in the description – but he did get his message across. In any event, Blanden was correct in that the Stasi were not known for rejecting new powers of whatever kind.
When I lived in Victoria up until the mid-1980s, there was usually a group of vibrant civil liberty lawyers who supported individual liberty and railed against the power of government. Up until the election of the Labor government led by John Cain Jnr in April 1982, Victoria had been governed by the Liberal Party for most of the period after the end of World War II.
The evidence suggests that much of the Victorian legal community has gone relatively quiet on these matters following the end of Jeff Kennett’s Coalition government in September 1999. Since then, except for three years, Labor has been in office. And it has become increasingly authoritarian since Andrews became premier in 2014.
Tim Smith, the newly appointed opposition legal affairs spokesman under the new Opposition Leader Matthew Guy, has many political enemies outside the Liberal Party and a few within. But Smith can get a message through.
Speaking to Peter Stefanovic on Sky News on Tuesday, Smith described the proposed legislation as “rule by decree in perpetuity for Daniel Andrews”. He added: “The Premier is trying to get the parliament to give him decree powers – powers that are foreign to this country for an elected leader to be able to rule by decree and do whatever he likes and lock people down in 2022 on a whim, on a whim of his signature.”
Smith is correct. As is widely known, Melbourne has been the world’s most shutdown city with the harshest lockdown provisions in Australia. Yet, on Andrews’ watch, Victoria has experienced the greatest number of Covid-19 related deaths and currently has the highest number of Covid-19 infections.
A political leader with a modicum of self-awareness might have reflected that the current easing of restrictions in Victoria was an opportunity for quietude and reflection. That’s not Andrews’ style. On October 22, he tweeted: “I’m trying not to sound like some kind of soppy dad here, but I am proud, bloody proud of this state. We have gone though such a hard time together, this pandemic has been exhausting in every sense of the word.”
It seems that the Premier believes he is the father of Victoria. He’s not. Only authoritarian leaders make such claims. Moreover, as Gideon Haigh wrote in The Weekend Australian last Saturday: “What’s Andrews got to be grateful for?” Haigh added: “We did as we were told, to avoid draconian fines for noncompliance.”
And that’s the point. Andrews came to the premiership via Labor’s Socialist Left faction. Yet those Victorians who have suffered most during the lockdowns were the poor and the disadvantaged – especially those with young children living in small apartments.
Victorians on Andrews’ salary can readily pay what to others are draconian fines – as the Premier did on two occasions for minor infringements of Victoria’s mask-wearing laws. But two $200 fines to a politician can be a massive penalty to a single mother with three children.
However, as Victoria moves out of lockdowns, Andrews wants higher fines. The proposed new legislation could lead to a Victorian citizen being fined up to $90,870 or facing up to a maximum of two years in jail for breaking health orders.
This follows the various lockdowns in which some members of the Victorian Police appear to have used excessive force with respect to a woman at home with her children and a man quietly talking to police – and more besides – under the guise of enforcing health regulations.
What’s surprising about this is that so many journalists – especially those at the ABC and The Age – have accepted Labor’s clampdown on even peaceful protests in a way that would not have been tolerated when Kennett was premier.
On Tuesday, Smith faced a hostile interview from Trioli – who appears to be a proud member of the “I stand with Dan” club. Towards the end of the interview, Trioli went into denial mode, declaring: “I don’t make arguments on this program, I ask questions.”
In fact, Trioli put it to Smith that by opposing Labor’s legislation, the Coalition could bring about a “loss of public faith” in the health system. She went on to suggest that the opposition should be supporting the bill since it “has exactly what it was you guys have been calling for, for so long”. There is no evidence that Smith has ever called for $90,000 fines for noncompliance with health orders.
When, and if, the heat of the pandemic debate scales down, it will be time to restore balance in language. Australia during the pandemic has not experienced a period of Mussolini-like fascism or Stalin-like communism and it is not run by one or more dictators. In totalitarian societies there is no right to free speech. Also, dictators don’t subject themselves to re-election.
Daniel Andrews is simply an authoritarian who presides over an increasingly authoritarian government which wants to attain yet more draconian powers.
He’s not like East Germany’s Erich Honecker. But Andrews is the most self-obsessed authoritarian leader that Victoria has ever had.
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Anti-vax senator from Queensland
A little-known government senator from Queensland has quickly become a big figure on Facebook after his embrace of anti-vaccine rhetoric.
Queensland LNP Senator Gerard Rennick has seen an explosion in popularity on Facebook as he shared first person accounts of people claiming to have been injured by vaccines, critical news articles and memes that are all negative about vaccines.
This has extended to his politics. Early on Monday morning, Rennick posted a letter sent to the prime minister on Facebook saying he will not vote with the government until a number of policies are enacted, including stopping all vaccines for children, overturning workplace vaccine mandates and ending COVID-19 domestic travel restrictions.
Although Rennick may not be explicitly calling for a vaccine ban, his rhetoric goes against expert advice and echoes that of anti-vaccine campaigners. And as he found an audience with this posting, he’s leaned into it more.
In October — when he posted about using Senate estimates to ask government departments about vaccine mandates and shared reports of Pfizer’s leaked contacts — Rennick doubled his Facebook following to more than 35,000 and his interaction increased to a sky high 13%, despite not increasing his posting significantly.
As analyst Ariel Bogle noted, Rennick’s content dominates the most popular content on Facebook from all Australian users about vaccines in the past week.
So, has Rennick tapped into a vessel of unheard voters with vaccine concerns who will vote below the line for him at the next election? It’s impossible to know for sure, but the important thing about social media engagement is that it’s international. So it’s likely some (if not a lot) of this newfound audience is outside Queensland.
Increasingly, the internet is organised around individuals and communities who act in concert. Hyper-engaged anti-vaccine communities on spaces like Telegram or Facebook groups will mobilise when they see a public figure supporting their cause, flooding them with positive engagement. But just as easily as the attention comes, it goes. These groups are united around a cause — eroding support for vaccines — and are not loyal beyond that. Additionally, they tend to be limited to providing online engagement.
But Rennick is only halfway through his Senate term, with years until he next faces the voters. For the time being, he can continue to post his views with little consequence.
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Call for research into jellyfish sting treatments, as experts admit 'real gap' in knowledge
A large variety of jellyfish lurks in Australian oceans, including the potentially deadly Irukandji and box species that inhabit tropical waters in the north of the country.
There are calls for more research into available treatments
Those who have been stung by one of these jellyfish have described the pain as excruciating.
But is there anything you can do to quell the pain and stop the venom from spreading?
There are many theories about how to treat jellyfish stings, but medical experts say the advice is unproven and ever-changing — so they are calling for more investigation into treatments and antidotes.
WA's St John Ambulance medical director Paul Bailey spent seven years studying jellyfish and said experts still only had a basic understanding of the marine creature.
"There's a real gap in the medical evidence, so absolutely I would advocate for more and better trials looking at available treatments," Dr Bailey said.
"We're really stuck as to know what to recommend in many cases.
"We're just going to have to go with expert opinion unless someone can put a high-quality, beach-side trial together."
Beware of home remedies
In jellyfish tentacles, there are millions of stinging cells called nematocysts that inject venom under the skin.
Some first-aid treatments, like vinegar, are thought to stop the nematocysts firing and stop the sting from getting worse, but other home remedies do not work and could make things worse.
Dr Bailey said there were a lot of myths about jellyfish.
"Every fluid available at the beach-side has been tried in jellyfish envenoming including urine, Coca-Cola, Fanta, seawater … but none of them have been shown to have any effect on jellyfish stings," he said.
"[But] I don't want to be the guy that laughs too hard at Fanta or any other fluid because the reality is there's not much evidence about many of the treatments."
Vinegar a saviour, but not urine
After removing any tentacles from your body, most experts agree using vinegar as first aid is helpful, or at least not harmful.
World-renowned jellyfish expert Lisa-ann Gershwin said putting vinegar on a sting could save someone's life.
"In the tropics, vinegar is the thing that will give you the best chance of actually surviving a potentially lethal sting," Dr Gershwin said.
"The vinegar actually locks the stinging cells so they can't discharge."
As for the age-old rumour about peeing on a jellyfish sting, Tasmania-based Dr Gershwin said it came down to "are you feeling lucky?"
"Our urine changes its pH with the time of day, hydration, food, age, seasonality," she said.
"If it's in an acidic state, it will work 25 per cent as well as vinegar at killing the stinging cells.
"But if it's in an alkaline state it will cause an immediate and massive discharge of all the stinging cells."
While the home remedy suggestion of using hot water was potentially useful for treating stings from less dangerous jellyfish in southern waters, Dr Gershwin warned it was dangerous to use in places where Irukandji and box jellyfish lived.
"That could kill someone," she said.
"When you apply freshwater to a jellyfish sting, the freshwater causes the stinging cells to discharge — so you get immediate, massive discharge of all of the stinging cells that haven't fired yet."
She said beach-goers often were not sure what type of jellyfish had stung them, so the best advice was to never use freshwater, hot or cold, to treat any jellyfish stings in the north.
Prevention the best way to survive
Broome Emergency Department GP Casey Parker backed calls for more research.
"Unfortunately, in the past 10 years or so most of the research has found that the things that we thought worked, probably don't," Dr Parker said.
"With climate change and the warming up of northern Australia, we could see more of these jellyfish heading further south to northern New South Wales and Geraldton and places like that. So it may become more relevant in the future."
In the meantime, Dr Parker said avoiding the stingers was the best advice. "Staying out of the water once the wet season is upon us … [and] wear a stinger suit if you can," he said.
Dr Parker said bad stings were becoming less common because of early-warning systems and public awareness.
"Back when I first started in Broome we'd sometimes see 150 or so in a single year," he said. "[Now] we seem to see them in waves, so if we see one, we sometimes see five or six or more in a day, and sometimes we go weeks without seeing any."
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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3 November, 2021
Asian banks are backing aussie coal mining while the big four banks abandon it
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says “financial markets are currently assessing a range of challenges and opportunities related to climate change and policy responses to it. Climate risk has become one of the key issues raised in my discussions with CEOs, investors and counterparts, here and overseas. It is no different for boards and executives of Australian firms in their discussions with global investors.”
Reserve Bank of Australia Deputy Governor Guy Debelle revealed that “to date, we have only isolated examples of divestment from Australia because of climate risk, but the likelihood of more significant divestment is increasing”.
While Commonwealth Bank chairman Catherine Livingstone has vowed to “support the transition” to a low-carbon economy by gradually phasing out loans to fossil fuel producers.
What’s the reality?
Australia will not experience capital flight because we refuse to commit to net-zero – the latest argument from the “modern Liberals” who are only in parliament because ScoMo rubbished Shorten’s net-zero target in 2019.
Just ask Whitehaven Coal.
Although almost everyone in the media and circles of politics are declaring Australia will be deprived of finance if it continues to back fossil fuels, Whitehaven plans to raise up to $1 billion in Asian bonds in the year ahead and expects Asian lenders will support its coal growth plans for decades.
According to Whitehaven’s Chief Financial Officer Kevin Ball, “our view here is the Asian debt capital markets will provide the funding for Asian debt capital and Asian resources for decades to come”.
“We expect that to grow and expand over the next decade, so that is really why we want to try and put a foot in that,” he said.
Even better, Whitehaven will be in a “net cash position in the March 2022 quarter” (a great result given the company had net debt of $808.5 million at June 30) due to record high thermal coal prices, which have been driven by a global energy crisis sparked by the closure of coal and nuclear plants and their unreliable replacements: solar panels and wind turbines.
So, there you have it.
“King coal is not dead” as the do-gooders continue to profess.
Although Australia will cop some flack from the world’s woke banks if we refuse to go net-zero, other banks will happily pick up the slack because they understand renewables are nowhere near producing enough power to underpin industrial economies.
And if Australia continues to sell our high-quality coal and iron ore to growing Asian economies, we’ll have a significant strategic advantage in the Asia-Pacific region as more start to rely on us.
This is precisely what has happened in China last week, after the Chinese Communist Party’s coal-fired power plants ran out of coal amidst a global shortage.
The CCP lifted the ban on Australian coal (which was put in place after ScoMo asked for an independent inquiry into the origins of COVID-19 almost a year ago).
According to analysts, some 450,000 tonnes of coal had been discharged at the same time the price of coal from Indonesia jumped sharply, due to increased Chinese demand.
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Australia snubs methane reduction pledge at COP26 climate change conference
Nearly 90 countries have signed a key climate change commitment at the COP26 conference, however Australia was not one of them.
Nearly 90 countries have joined a US- and EU-led effort to slash emissions of methane by 30 per cent by 2030 from 2020 levels at the COP26 conference in Glasgow.
Methane is more short-lived in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide but 80 times more potent in warming the earth. Cutting emissions of the gas, which is estimated to have accounted for 30 per cent of global warming since pre-industrial times, is one of the most effective ways of slowing climate change.
The Global Methane Pledge, first announced in September, now covers emissions from two-thirds of the global economy, according to the US official.
Among the signatories is Brazil – one of the five biggest emitters of methane, which is generated in cows’ digestive systems, in landfill waste and in oil and gas production.
The other four – Australia, China, Russia and India – have not signed up. Australia had been under pressure to sign up but Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor said the only way Australia could achieve that target would be to reduce numbers of cattle and sheep.
“At present, almost half of Australia’s annual methane emissions come from the agriculture sector, where no affordable, practical and large-scale way exists to reduce it other than by culling herd sizes,” Mr Taylor wrote.
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce said his Nationals had insisted Mr Morrison not commit to reducing methane at the Glasgow summit.
Inaction on methane was one of the conditions the rural-based Nationals had placed on support for Morrison’s Liberal Party’s target of net zero emissions by 2050.
“The only way you can get your 30 per cent by 2030 reduction in methane on 2020 levels would be to go and grab a rifle, go out and start shooting your cattle because it’s just not possible,” Mr Joyce said.
US President Joe Biden said the pledge was a key part of reducing carbon emissions.
“One of the most important things we can do between now and 2030, to keep 1.5C in reach, is reduce our methane emissions as soon as possible,” said Mr Biden, referring to the central goal of the 2015 Paris agreement.
He called the pledge, which has so far been signed by more than 80 nations, a “game-changing commitment” that covered countries responsible for around half of global methane emissions.
European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen said that the methane cut would “immediately slow down climate change”.
“We cannot wait until 2050. We have to cut emissions fast and methane is one of the gases we can cut the fastest,” she said.
Heads of state and government are gathered in Glasgow for a two-day high-level summit that host Britain is hoping will kick start ambitious climate action during the two-week COP26
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Covid rapid antigen tests: how do they work, and can Australians rely on them?
From Monday, Australians can buy rapid antigen Covid-19 tests at retail stores including supermarkets and pharmacies, and also online. Previously, only health professionals were able to administer them. Australia’s drugs regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), has so far approved nine different home rapid antigen tests for sale.
They cost roughly $30 for a packet of two, and between $50 and $100 for five, depending on the retailer and brand. They have a shelf life of about two years.
So who will benefit from them, and in what situations is it best to use them?
How do they work?
Currently most people are diagnosed with a PCR test, usually administered by a doctor or nurse, which involve taking a swab of the nose and throat. PCR tests are government-subsidised and are the gold standard for diagnosis – they can diagnose Covid-19 even in the early stages of the virus, sometimes even before someone feels unwell. They detect the virus almost 100% of the time when it is is administered properly.
The downside is the sample needs to be sent to a laboratory, taking between several hours to a couple of days to get a result.
Meanwhile, rapid antigen tests are most useful for detecting the virus when someone has a high viral load. Outside of this phase especially, they are not as accurate as PCR tests. There is a higher risk of false positive and false negative results.
The benefit of rapid antigen tests is they are quick, convenient, and don’t require a laboratory. The home tests involve self-performing a nasal swab using a small cotton bud that is placed into a chemical solution. The result displays within 10 to 15 minutes.
How will the home tests fit in with the pandemic response?
Rapid antigen tests are already being used by workplaces such as fly-in fly-out mining sites, supermarkets, aged care facilities and distribution centres, especially in states and suburbs with high Covid-19 case numbers.
In these workplaces, the tests are provided free by the employer. They are usually administered daily, or each time someone has a shift. This regular testing increases the probability of detecting the virus. They are performed or supervised by a registered health practitioner, increasing the chance of an accurate result.
“This is where the rapid antigen tests have real utility, and I advocate their use in these settings and workplaces absolutely, mainly when there is a lot of Covid around in the community,” Dr Emma Miller, a public health epidemiologist with Flinders University, said.
“But for the average punter at home, they will be less useful really than they might appear, and it’s difficult to see why you might use one. First of all, they’re quite expensive. And as an epidemiologist with an elderly mother in hospital with stroke, I won’t be purchasing them, because PCR tests are still the most accurate and best for peace of mind.”
They could do more harm than good, she said, if people were to return a false negative, then visit a vulnerable person or go to a party.
In a press release, Roche, a manufacturer of one of the approved rapid antigen tests for sale, said self-testing could be useful before attending parties, before travelling to regional parts of Australia, for families with young children at school who have not yet been vaccinated, and in offices and other work settings as part of return-to-work plans.
What should I do if I test positive from an at-home test?
While there will be no requirement to formally report the result of a rapid antigen screening test to the health department, a NSW Health spokesman said people who test positive from a home test should arrange a PCR test “as soon as possible”.
NSW Health and other state and territory health departments do collect and report positive PCR test results, and can then begin contact tracing.
The World Health Organization recommends that if you have Covid-19 symptoms but test negative from a home test, you should follow up with a PCR test to be sure.
The TGA says home rapid antigen tests are a useful initial screening tool, while the traditional PCR test is a diagnostic tool. Manufacturers and sellers cannot advertise home rapid antigen tests as a “diagnostic” test.
They also can’t claim one test is better or more accurate than other approved tests on the market.
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Parents who home schooled deserve payment, says Professor Lyndall Strazdins
She says that parents who oversaw education - often while doing their own job from home - have been "overlooked". They should have been given a wage subsidy for their "invisible" work.
"Parents couldn't stick their kids on a computer and leave them for eight hours while they were working. They had to motivate, support them and be there to help them learn."
"Where was HomeTeacher?" Professor Strazdins asked.
"There could have been an opportunity for parents to take parental leave, similar to what they can access after having a baby, so they could take an absence from their work and actually do the other job of home schooling.
"Parents have faced the impossible conflict between trying to manage their job and trying to manage their children's future."
New South Wales has announced a one-off payment of $250 to people who home-schooled students. The professor said that was a "promising start".
But more was needed to help parents, she felt "particularly women and single parent families".
"When we entered lockdowns across much of the country, parents were suddenly forced to take on an entirely new job in an entirely new environment, without training, while managing their day job."
Another ANU specialist echoed Professor Strazdins.
Professor Peter Whiteford, an expert on social policy, said: "The pandemic exposed many of the weaknesses in our system of social protection. We need to think about what the future holds and if our social policy settings are able to cover the new risks we will face."
About a fifth of Australian households have children of school age - almost two million households, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics,
Professor Strazdins also argues that the lockdowns and the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic had entrenched long-standing inequality, with women still having to do the majority of "invisible" work.
"The new normal looks a lot like the old normal. This invisible work often falls to women," she said.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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2 November, 2021
Experts give controversial ‘hippie school’ top marks
I don't generally put much faith in "experts but I see that John Hattie approves of this unusual school. Hattie is a formidable data analyst so I think the story below is interesting. Whether such a school would work in a less affluent area is a question
Jason Wong gets two types of reactions when he tells people his three daughters attend Lindfield Learning Village, an unorthodox public school on Sydney’s north shore. “That hippie school?” some say, sceptically. “That school that’s doing amazing, progressive stuff?” say others.
LLV, as it’s known, is in high demand; when it opened in a fortress-like former UTS campus 2019, it had a 3000-strong waiting list. Some parents tried to enrol their unborn children, attracted by its abandonment of old-school traditions, such as uniforms, detentions and timetables.
P&C president at Lindfield Learning Village Jason Wong with his wife Teresa and daughters Ella (black t-shirt) Bree (white dress) and Lucy (pink dress).
P&C president at Lindfield Learning Village Jason Wong with his wife Teresa and daughters Ella (black t-shirt) Bree (white dress) and Lucy (pink dress).CREDIT:RHETT WYMAN
But others, including some educators, are dubious. They worry Lindfield - a government-run school - is relying on what they call faddish, untested ideas such as basing learning on a child’s stage rather than their age, replacing normal subjects with student-driven projects, and putting pupils in charge of their own learning.
“[We have been] unlearning what school is, shedding those assumptions that we bring as educators to what school has to have,” principal Stephanie McConnell said last year.
In February, One Nation MP Mark Latham called for the Lindfield experiment to end and its teaching to be “normalised” after photos showed ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Stop Killer Cops’ had been written on butchers paper during a brainstorming session about what the students already knew about key moments in recent Indigenous history.
But a new report by two eminent education academics, commissioned by the NSW Department of Education in the wake of the February furore, praises Lindfield as “an impressive school” and a “high achievement place of learning” that carefully tracks its students’ progress, acknowledges when it needs to change tack and could teach other schools a thing or two.
COVID-19 stopped Professor John Hattie and Tim O’Leary, both from the University of Melbourne, from travelling to Lindfield to see its brutalist architecture, the grand piano in the indoor play area, or the students, aged from kindergarten to year 12, mingle in the downstairs café.
Nor were they asked to investigate the February incident. Their brief was teaching and learning, and they were given access to all the school’s information, ranging from NAPLAN data and meeting agendas to the system that tracks each child’s progress.
“It was very impressive,” said Professor Hattie. “What impressed us was the evidence they had on what was working and what was not, and what was going to work and what wasn’t.”
Many in the education sector are still working out how to use data effectively in the classroom, but Professor Hattie said Lindfield’s system of collecting examples of student work, tracking progress against the NSW standards and curriculum, and taking feedback from students “actually stunned us,” he said. “I’ve never seen a better system.”
One of the school’s strengths was its ability to assess itself, and jettison anything that was not working. “Not every kid achieves brilliantly every day, but [teachers at Lindfield] were able to pick out those kids and subjects, and focus on them,” said Professor Hattie.
“I’ve done enough of these [reviews to know] they don’t always work out as well as this one. To say they’re perfect is not true, but they told us before we found out where they needed to grow.”
The report also found Lindfield’s NAPLAN results were comparable with similar schools, and its attendance and student satisfaction were higher than average. However, it could improve in numeracy.
Mr Latham said the report looked encouraging. “But generally we would expect Lindfield students, in the highest socio-economic area in the state, to get good school results and strong opportunities in life,” he said. “My main concern is not to have racist comments and police vilification hanging from the ceiling of a 5-6 classroom.”
Mr Wong said the February furore felt like “an attack on our ability to make decisions about what school to send our kids to,” he said. The parents threw their support behind the teachers and principal, filling the corridors with messages of support.
Parents have read the report and are “pretty chuffed,” Mr Wong said. “It wasn’t surprising for me. It was pretty spot on. We took a bit of a risk as parents sending our kids to this school, and although we don’t really need a report to tell us how the school is going, it’s always nice to have that validated by an external authority.
“The way most of us gauge the success of the school is feedback from our kids. I’ve got a year 9, a year 2 and a kindy; they all love going to school. They have an environment in which they want to learn.”
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TGA recognises more international vaccines
Two more international COVID vaccines have been formally recognised by the national medical regulator, paving the way for more overseas visitors to come to Australia.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration said on Monday it would recognise the Indian-made Covaxin and the Chinese-made BBIBP-CorV vaccine.
In a statement, the administration said the decision would allow those who had been jabbed with either of the vaccines to be eligible for travel to Australia.
Only travellers who have been fully immunised with a vaccine recognised by the administration will be able to arrive in Australia under travel arrangements.
"This will have significant impacts for the return of international students, and travel of skilled and unskilled workers to Australia," an administration spokesman said.
"Citizens of China and India as well as other countries in our region where these vaccines have been widely deployed will now be considered fully vaccinated on entry to Australia."
It comes as international arrivals touched down in Australia without having to undergo quarantine, for the first time in almost two years.
Monday saw fully vaccinated Australians being able to arrive back in Sydney and Melbourne for the first time since the pandemic began.
There were tearful scenes at airports, with many families able to be reunited after more than a year of travel being restricted
While international travel is currently limited to fully vaccinated citizens, permanent residents and their families, it's expected skilled workers, those on visas and then tourists will be allowed to enter in coming months.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia was again open to the world, following a rise in vaccination rates.
"The Australian public have been keeping their side of the deal, which means the national plan is enabling them to regain the things that COVID has taken from them," he said.
It comes as quarantine-free travel arrangements resumed with New Zealand, after the travel bubble was suspended earlier this year following the Delta variant outbreak.
Australians will also be able to travel to Singapore from November 8, while residents from the Asian city state will be able to come to Australia from later this month.
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7491678/tga-recognises-more-international-vaccines/?cs=14264
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South Australia adopts electric vehicle tax, joining New South Wales and Victoria
Many unhappy Greenies
Electric car buyers in South Australia will soon be charged for every kilometre they drive, with the state joining New South Wales and Victoria in adopting electric vehicle taxes.
The new tax will come into effect in July 2027, or when electric vehicles make up 30 per cent of the market, whichever is earliest
South Australia was the first Australian state to propose an electric vehicle (EV) tax in November last year, but delayed the introduction of legislation amid debate and community opposition.
A bill to allow the tax passed South Australia's Legislative Council on Thursday, with SA Best's MLCs Connie Bonaros and Frank Pangallo as well as independent MLC John Darley voting with the government to approve it.
In order to secure its passage, the government offered some short-term sweeteners, including a three-year registration fee exemption for new electric vehicles, and a $3,000 subsidy for the first 7,000 electric vehicles sold.
Those subsidies will not apply for hybrid vehicles, or those priced at more than $68,750.
The bill will also establish a parliamentary committee to examine the rollout of electric vehicles.
The new tax will come into effect in July 2027, or when electric vehicles make up 30 per cent of the market, whichever is earliest.
Owners of plug-in hybrid vehicles will be charged an indexed fee of 2 cents per kilometre, while the owners of any other electric vehicles will be charged an indexed fee of 2.5 cents per kilometre.
The charge will be levied in arrears as part of the vehicle registration process, with the final cost calculated on the distance travelled since the previous registration renewal.
Treasurer Rob Lucas said that, while South Australia was the first to propose the tax, it would not be the last state to enact it.
"Look, I think it's a recognition that this is inevitable," he said. "Sooner rather than later, we're going to be almost 100 per cent electric vehicles on our roads.
"And we're going to have to have a mechanism which funds the maintenance and replacement of our road network, because fuel excise will completely disappear."
Fuel excise is currently charged by the federal government.
Opponents of the new tax said its passage would slow the state's ambition to be a national leader of electric vehicle uptake.
"While statements and goals are good, adequate policy commitments to support the EV sector are now needed," said the Australia Institute's South Australian director, Noah Schultz-Byard.
"Our research shows the EV package in South Australia falls well short of what is being offered by the SA government's Coalition counterparts in New South Wales."
The Labor opposition said the passage of the bill days before the Glasgow Climate Change Conference sent the wrong message.
"This is a state government trying to fix a federal government revenue issue while the planet is literally on the verge of climate catastrophe," Deputy Labor Leader Susan Close said.
"While most of the rest of the world is trying to incentivise take-up of electric cars, Steven Marshall's government has just brought in a big new tax to act as a disincentive.
"Sadly, it seems the reckless climate policies of the Liberals at a federal level are now infecting the Liberals here in SA.
Greens MLC Robert Simms said the vote on the bill was an "embarrassing day for South Australia".
"Much like the Morrison federal government, the Liberals here in South Australia just aren't taking the threat of climate change seriously," Mr Simms said.
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Enthusiastic consent - more feminist fantasy than real world sex
Bettina Arndt
Ivan is 74 years old. He has been making love to his wife, Suzie for thirty-five years. Their foreplay starts early, sometimes at the breakfast table. He writes:
“Remember the song, Come on Baby, Light my Fire? That can mean starting the mating dance hours before....
If the signals are faint, I’ll gently see if I can strengthen them … with a lingering kiss or a touch here and there. If there is no obvious inclination, then I won’t push it. I’ll back off. I look for tacit communication that she is in the market—or could be. The communication is in the eyes—and the way they look into mine. I can feel instantly if we’re on the same wavelength”.
He knows what to do if he senses she is interested:
“I can then be emboldened to make suggestions, like ‘How’s your skin at the moment? Does it need to be creamed?’ We both understand the code. We are both averse to being obvious and blunt. We prefer innuendo and teasing.”
This long-married couple like to keep things subtle. He’s aware she doesn’t want him to ask for consent. He’s spent decades learning to decipher her desires:
“This is a woman who has real trouble talking about sex and whose main method of communication is a whispered yes, a small groan, a tensing of her leg muscles, so it was a difficult process.”
Ivan’s lucky. He lives in West Australia where their lovemaking is still legal. But in NSW it is now a different story. Enthusiastic consent legislation has been law for the last two months.
According to NSW Attorney General Mark Speakman it is all “very simple”. Consent now has to be communicated by the other party “saying or doing something." Subtle interpretation of long-established codes is not enough to let the accused off the hook. “A reasonable step has to be an act or something said to ascertain the complainant's consent."
That’s it, you see. Most people don’t seek consent before and during lovemaking and nor do they have any interest in doing so. But that means we are all now prospective complainants or alleged perpetrators.
Consent is certainly not “very simple,” Mr Attorney General. It’s obvious you and all the other people making these laws don’t have a clue about what goes on beneath the dancing doona. There are many, many women like Ivan’s wife who’d be appalled if their husbands asked them for permission for sex. They expect their men to be able to tell if they are receiving a green light... or not… and sometimes to work hard to achieve it.
I’ve had people talking to me about these complex interactions for much of my adult life, having started my career as a sex therapist using the media to encourage more open conversations about sex. It recently occurred to me that I’m sitting on just the evidence to show why this simplistic talk about consent makes no sense.
I have diaries I collected from hundreds of couples during a 2007-9 research project about how they negotiate differences in sexual desire. I’ve already used this material for books about the gender desire gap and why sex means so much to men. But these revealing his-and-hers diaries offer clear proof as to why enthusiastic consent laws are totally barking mad. And whilst they focus mainly on people in long-term relationships, the research did include some very young people who’d only just met and believe me, here the communication is even more dense and bewildering.
Let’s have a look at another of my diarists – I called him ‘Anthony’ (unsurprisingly most of the participants preferred their names withheld from this revealing project). This 47-year-old man just couldn’t get his wife, Adele, to be open about her desires. He was yearning for her to admit that she wants him:
“To just say she felt like sex and wanted me to do it to (or with) her. I would like to see her wanting sex the way I want her to want it (now there’s a selfish, unrealistic thought!). I would really like her to verbalise her sexual thoughts. Over the years I have tried to move toward that point but have been frustrated by her apparent difficulty in finding the words or willingness to share them. Tactile is OK but it’s so damned ambiguous. I don’t want to imbue her touch with my meaning, I want to know what she’s been thinking to want to touch me. I want to know how she wants sex. I want to be inside her head.”
Now, see here, where he describes one of their interactions:
“Before I get out of bed, I pick up my book for a half hour of reading. Adele usually wakes before me, and she is reading already. She rests her hand on me and from time to time strokes my skin with tiny finger movements. The movements themselves and the places being touched don’t carry any overt sexual overtones at all but the persistence of them tells me she probably wants something. Whether it is to please me or to please her I don’t know. I don’t trust my judgement about that anymore. After a while I begin to think about the possibilities—imagining she wants pleasure and I feel a slight sexual response developing.
“Adele persists. She treads a narrow path so well—lots of practice, I suppose. She makes no overt sexual move and thereby avoids making the exchange unambiguous, ie with the potential for rejection. I put my book down and cuddle up to her. I can’t see her face but I’d bet anything that she is smiling.”
Look at this, Mr Speakman. She is touching him but deliberately making her approach ambiguous, so she won’t be seen to be asking for sex and won’t risk rejection. She’s ensuring it is up to him to make the next step.
This is classic of the complex dance of desire playing out in even the most harmonious of couplings. What makes you think you can go stomping into this delicate arena using your brand new, glistening legal jackboots and work out who is raping whom?
I have hundreds of such interactions I could trot out here, all showing why today’s sexual thought police are on the wrong planet. Clearly today’s 4th Wave feminists never bothered to read the classic 70s sexual works that educated and enthralled many of their mothers. Like Nancy Friday’s famous collection of real women’s sexual fantasies, My Secret Garden, full of steaming rape scenarios and women who want men to take charge. They are still well and truly out there, Mr Speakman.
Here’s another of my diarists, Anthea, describing a fling she had with an American guy, who was ten years her junior:
“From the outset it was aggressive, hard, powerful and incredible, so much so I cannot really begin to do it justice with a description. During our second day together, I gave him my vibrator to do what he chose with. His response was to throw me to the bed, tie me up with a tie that happened to be hanging on my bedroom door and then use the vibrator on me to get me to reach multiple orgasms. He said nothing before we did this, there was no discussion, he took charge, and it was incredible.”
She wanted him to take control, not ask for permission to throw her on the bed, to tie her up, and use the vibrator to drive her crazy. It was a perfectly straightforward, mutually advantageous transaction.
But imagine this scenario was happening now and the younger man tired of her attractions. What if this wonderful fling ended badly and Anthea decided to take advantage of this open invitation from the government inviting her to rethink? To retrospectively withdraw her consent and claim he’d overwhelmed her. The man was a marine after all, a big burly aggressive toxic male. Who’d believe him in a she-said, he-said legal battle if she decided to play the aggrieved victim?
It’s a simple fact of life that most love-affairs, most hook-ups end leaving one party disappointed. When the wounded party is a woman, she is now presented with a new legal weapon targeted to destroy the man who has let her down. Oh yes, in theory the legislation is gender-neutral but the reality is that women are rarely charged with such crimes, even though our most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics Personal Safety Survey found almost one in three people claiming to be victims of sexual assault were male (28.4%). Men rarely take action over such crimes, knowing that if they do, they are unlikely to be believed.
Men are the ones in the firing line – primarily because their stronger levels of sexual desire mean they are usually the ones pushing for sexual consent. “Men want sex more often than women at the start of a relationship, in the middle of it and after many years of it,” reports Roy F Baumeister, psychology professor at University of Queensland and a world expert on gender differences in desire. And as my diarists proved, most women still prefer men to initiate, partly because the female psyche seems to struggle more with sexual rejection.
The new sexual consent laws are all about encouraging women to rewrite the history of their sexual relationships in order to find more men guilty of sexual assault.
These laws willfully ignore women’s own ambiguity and confusion which means men face a lethal guessing game.
For one final example of these complexities, here’s a his-and-her version of one couple’s lovemaking session:
Terry’s diary - Wednesday, 26 September
“Last night she was drawing on my back. This is unheard of—her touching me like that. So, I lay there for a bit and enjoyed it. Then she ran her finger down my side and it tickled so I laughed and she rolled over, so I turned and cuddled her and we were having a good moment together gently stroking each other and cuddling. But then she pushed me away, saying ‘You always reject me!’ I protested and said I was enjoying our time together but she had made up her mind, ‘No, you rejected me. That’s why I don’t make a move on you, it hurts me to be rejected.’ I tried to say sorry, but it fell on deaf ears.”
Megan’s diary - Wednesday, 26 September
“We got into bed, he turned his back to me and I started stroking his back. He said it was nice. Then I tried to reach around to touch his penis and he started being really silly, saying that it tickled. I felt rejected so I pulled away. He then came over to my side of the bed and cuddled me but it was too late. I was lying there thinking mean thoughts about him. Then I said to him ‘Why did you do that? You could tell I was making an effort to initiate sex with you and you knocked me back.’ To which he responded, ‘What? What? I didn’t knock you back.’ He didn’t make an effort to make moves on me (it probably would have been unsuccessful), and he fell asleep shortly after.”
He says, she says. Two totally different versions of who did what, written within days of the actual event. Go figure….
Now we are expecting juries to sort out what actually took place years after a confusing liaison which one person claims took place without consent. In our current climate there’s a very real risk that such contradictions and confusion will be just swept aside, and those twelve ordinary men and women will step up, conform to the zeitgeist and believe-the- woman.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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1 November, 2021
Black gold and housing boom driving Qld economic recovery
China shot itself in the foot. It cut off orders for Australian coal when the demand for coal was going through the roof worldwide. Result: Blackouts in China and big profits for Australian coal miners
About $60 billion in mining projects are driving the state’s economic engine room right now, the vast bulk related to coal.
Queensland’s exports to China were nearly halved in the past year, but high prices of coal are still driving a strong economic recovery for the state, according to a new report.
It will be revealed in the Deloitte Access Economics investment monitor report to be released today.
There are about $60 billion in mining projects driving the state’s economic engine room at the moment, the vast bulk of which are related to coalmining, it found.
A housing construction boom is also helping to drive growth in the economy.
The report found investment in private housing in Queensland had grown more than 11 per cent and was back above pre-pandemic levels.
But report author and economist Stephen Smith warned the construction boom soon stall due to material and worker shortages looming as a result of complications from the pandemic.
Queensland’s exports fell by about 10 per cent in the 2020-21 financial year, including a 48 per cent drop in goods sent to China.
Beijing’s ban on Australian coal was the driving factor in this, but the report found that rising to record high prices for both thermal and metallurgical coal would lead to a strong recovery for the state’s export sector.
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Cyberbullies to be suspended, more social media put on notice under new online safety laws
I am not sure about this. It is normal for kids to be very critical of one-another. We would have to be careful not to stop a normal part of growth
Australia’s program to shut down cyberbullies will get even bigger next year, reaching social networks like Snapchat, Discord and WhatsApp.
Children who suffer threats, harassment and humiliation in gaming forums and private messaging apps will be able to ask the eSafety Commission for help in a shake-up of the country’s world-first anti-cyberbullying laws next year.
The changes, which could see bullies stripped of their accounts or taken to court, will also reduce the time social media giants are given to remove harmful messages from their platforms from 48 hours to just one day.
But experts say cashed-up social media and gaming platforms needed to improve how they tackle cyberbullying and shouldn’t rely “on the eSafety Commissioner to do their job”.
The changes come after weeks of pressure on tech giants, with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen revealing the company’s own research showed Instagram had the potential to harm children, and Prime Minister Scott Morrison pledged to introduce new laws to deal with offensive content on social networks.
The expansion of the Australian eSafety Commission’s cyberbullying scheme will come as part of the Online Safety Act due to begin in January.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said cyberbullying reports made to the agency jumped by 30 per cent last year, and one third of those reports involved children being bullied in private messages.
A recent study of 3600 Australian children by the Commission also found one in five children were bullied while playing online games, but the current anti-bullying scheme was only set up to deal with content posted to open social networks.
“We know that harms happen in any online spaces that kids are in,” Ms Inman Grant said.
“(With this change) we’ll be able to help children who are experiencing serious cyberbullying on whatever platform they’re on.”
Under the new rules, any Australian child or their guardian will be able to report serious threats, intimidation, harassment or humiliation to the eSafety Commission that have been sent using services including WhatsApp, Discord, Twitch and Snapchat, and in private messages on Instagram or Facebook.
The harmful content must first be reported to the platform that hosts it but they will have just 24 hours, rather than the current 48, to take action before it can be escalated.
While the agency could currently seek court-ordered injunctions against online bullies and civil penalties from online platforms which did not respond, Ms Inman Grant said the new scheme would require a different approach.
“We might not be dealing with content take-down notices because this is happening in real-time but there are important things that can be done to make sure platforms are enforcing their own policies and, if there are abusive accounts, that they are suspending them,” she said.
Cybersafety educator Leonie Smith welcomed the change to the reporting scheme, saying “the majority of cyberbullying reported to be from schools happens in direct messages”.
But she said social networks and online gaming platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Roblox, needed to do more themselves.
“This will put pressure on social media companies to make reporting easier and that’s what they should be doing,” she said. “But we shouldn’t be relying on the eSafety Commissioner to do their job.”
Ms Smith said online platforms needed to introduce greater safeguards for children under the age of 13, including easier reporting and better moderation of online bullying, and greater parental controls for younger users.
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$130k tweet storm shows there is no more doubt that the ABC exists in a parallel universe
Mike O’Connor
If there was ever any doubt that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation now exists in a parallel universe, it has been swept away by the Commonwealth auditor-general.
Investigating a decision by ABC management to pay $130,000 in legal costs and damages awarded against staff member Louise Milligan for a defamatory tweet she had made, Auditor-General Grant Hehir found that there was “no documented advice … prepared to support the appropriateness of the decision to meet the costs of an employee”.
In other words, someone decided that it was a good idea to burn $130,000 of taxpayer funds on behalf of an employee when there was absolutely no appropriate reason for it to do so.
The ABC did not publish the tweet. Milligan did, yet the ABC paid. The individual defamed by the tweet, Federal MP Dr Laming, had asked Milligan to delete it and apologise. The chances are that at this stage, the issue could have been defused, but Milligan refused to apologise and so we picked up the tab.
It is only a few months since under questioning by the senate, the ABC was forced to reveal that legal action taken by former Attorney-General Christian Porter against it and Milligan had cost it $780,000.
While all this was taking place, ABC managing director David Anderson was enjoying a 10 per cent pay rise, which boosted his salary to $1.098m, while chairwoman Ita Buttrose had to struggle by on $195,000.
Sadly, Ms Buttrose has been a profound disappointment to those who had hoped she would have the courage to subject the ABC to desperately needed corporate and editorial discipline.
Belatedly, she has ordered an external review of the corporation’s Audience and Consumer Affairs Investigation Unit, but only after ongoing claims that complaints made against the ABC were routinely dismissed. It investigates itself and finds – surprise, surprise – that all is sweetness and light.
In recent months, Four Corners screened Exposed: The Ghost Train Fire series. It took an external review, only commissioned after an outcry, to find that the series wrongly implied that former NSW premier Neville Wran was linked to corrupt activity.
Complaints were made to the Audience and Consumers Affairs unit and the program faced accusations of sloppy journalism and lazy research, but no action was taken.
David Hill, a one-time ABC managing director and chair who has been among the critics of the complaints-handling process, said the review was essential because the complaints process that followed the airing of Ghost Train was “deeply flawed”.
Then there was the two-part TV series Juanita Nielsen: A Family Mystery – removed from the ABC website after serious doubts emerged surrounding the accuracy of material it contained.
When I was learning this trade as a young, moustachioed, safari suit-wearing newspaper reporter – yes it’s true – the ABC represented the gold standard of journalism.
Balance was rigorously enforced and opinions were banned with the emphasis on hard news accurately reported – what happened, where did it happen and when did it happen? If you heard it on the ABC, then you knew it was right.
It is sad that what was once the nation’s premier news-gathering organisation has now lost its way.
Climate change alarmism, doomsday projections, endless opinions parading as news and a perceived lack of impartiality are now its trademark.
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Watchdog admits holding back Right to Information details
The Queensland Building and Construction Commission’s senior Right to Information officer has admitted holding back details about an RTI request.
The bombshell admission comes as hundreds of small businesses are at risk today of closing their doors as a result of the State Government’s new fire protection regulations.
It has sparked fresh calls for a commission of inquiry into the troubled government body.
According to evidence tabled to a recent parliamentary hearing, the QBCC’s principal RTO officer wrote to the integrity and complaints director, Geoffrey Airo-Farulla, on March 23 after a request for invoices.
“I’ve already taken out as much as I can in line with LPP (legal professional privilege),’’ she says.
“If this were to go to OIC (Office of the Information Commissioner), more information would be released than (sic) what I’ve decided.’’
State Opposition Leader David Crisafulli said Public Works Minister Mick de Brenni must resign to preserve the integrity of the Government.
He said it was further evidence of the culture in Mr de Brenni’s office.
“It’s becoming increasingly apparent that this third term Labor government doesn’t value honesty and transparency,” Mr Crisafulli said.
“Mr de Brenni operates the QBCC like a fiefdom and Queenslanders are worse for it.
“Every week we have another scandal involving the QBCC and Minister de Brenni at a time when proper regulation of the industry has never been more important.”
Opposition public works spokesman Tim Mander said this was another example of Mr de Brenni not following the rules.
“The Right to Information Officer is admitting she is deliberately keeping stuff out,” Mr Mander said.
“Every week another QBCC scandal comes to light.
“Just last week we heard further evidence of Ministerial intervention in to QBCC operational matters despite de Brenni’s denials.
“Allegations of a conflict of interest by Board Members gave us no choice but to call for a commission of inquiry.
“There must be a full and thorough review into the QBCC and how much influence the Minister has over it.”
Mr de Brenni has been under fire over claims he made to parliament that he and his office did not get involved in QBCC operational matters.
Emails show the former commissioner Bret Bassett had regular correspondence with Mr de Brenni’s office but the Minister says there has been no interference from his office.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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For the notes appearing at the side of the original blog see HERE
Pictures put up on a blog sometimes do not last long. They stay up only as long as the original host keeps them up. I therefore keep archives of all the pictures that I use. The recent archives are online and are in two parts:
Archive of side pictures here
Most pictures that I use in the body of the blog should stay up throughout the year. But how long they stay up after that is uncertain. At the end of every year therefore I intend to put up a collection of all pictures used on the blog in that year. That should enable missing pictures to be replaced. The archive of last year's pictures on this blog is therefore now up. Note that the filename of the picture is clickable and reflects the date on which the picture was posted. See here
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